Heart of Steel: Book II of the Jonathan Pavel Series

by J. S. Hawn

  Chaucer's Gap, In orbit of Scarva, Solarian Republic

  RSNS Elysium flagship of the 3rd Fleet

  October 31st 844 AE

  Minutes after Vice Admiral Chou Meyers, Commander of the 3rd Fleet aboard her flagship the Sinking Class Battleship Elysium, received word of the attack, news began to filter in from one of Chaucer's own listening posts, which guarded the Chaucer side of the wormway linking the system to the now un-garrisoned Ozawa. The post sent out an alert that it was detecting a massive disruption in the wormway. No sooner had the message been sent, than the wormway flared and let forth a massive burst of radiation. The nearby installations were shielded against such things, but many of their sensors were not. Their visual scopes remained active and were able to record an unusual sight. A massive asteroid more than 100 miles across came through the wormway tearing apart the wormway ring in the process, and destabilizing the wormway.

  “Ma’am,” Meyers’s Chief of Staff said, “The Colonials have pushed a big ass rock through the wormway from Ozawa. The resulting radiation storm is blinding what's left of our sensor net. I’ve ordered the wormway pickets to withdraw to join the rest of Task Force 4 in the orbit of Scarva. What are your orders?”

  Meyers was torn. On the one hand, the Task Force guarding New Helsinki was reporting what looked to be a full battlefleet, including four battlewagons and a carrier, supported by destroyers, cruisers, and planetary assault ships on an attack course. She had been in the process of sending three of her five Task Force to reinforce New Helsinki and hopefully cut off the enemy's escape. Now, however, the situation had shifted. An asteroid push was not a new tactic. In fact, it had been pioneered at the dawn of interstellar warfare as a useful tactic when assaulting an enemy system. Sending an asteroid through the wormway shielded any ships following it from detection or direct fire. It also caused any blockading force to scramble out of the way, which was why navies rarely kept more than a picket in close proximity to a wormway, that and the ever present threat of temporal storms and gravity fluxes. An asteroid this big could be hiding half the Colonial fleet and Meyers would be none the wiser. Alternatively, it could be concealing squadrons of fast light ships, frigates and such that would disperse to Chaucer’s nine other wormways and start raiding the Solarian interior. It could also have nothing behind it and just be a decoy. Meyers bit her lip till she tasted blood, but finally made a decision.

  “Task Force 2 and 3 under Rear Admiral Kittredge are to proceed to New Helsinki as ordered. The rest of the Fleet is going to form up on us, and we're going to intercept that monster. Is it on a collision course with anything?”

  The answer was no. The asteroid would continue to fly harmlessly through the system driven by the drive engines strapped to it whose fuel was being robotically mined from the asteroid itself. In five years, if no one did anything it would leave Chaucer's gravity and sail on into interstellar space. It would pass within 3 million miles of Scarva first, but wouldn't hit it. That was a relief. All of humanity still cringed at the memory of what mass drivers, asteroids hurled at planets could do. The most recent memory was of the planet Hera where after such an attack a lush green world had been turned into a radioactive ash pile. The three Solarian Task Force closed on the asteroid at flank speed, their weapons armed and their kinetic barriers up. They didn't have to wait long to see the enemy. From behind the massive body, the Colonial Task Force appeared. Seven battle wagons and two carriers, with the four battleships committed in New Helsinki, this comprised half the Colonial’s entire force. They had bet big on this assault. The forces were evenly matched. The three Solarian Task Force had six battleships and two carriers, one heavy and one light. Including supporting forces, the Solarian fleet came to 78 ships to the Colonials 80. The forces arrayed themselves for battle as they closed to weapons range. The battleships positioned themselves in a wall, three ships long and two high with heavily armored cruisers filling the gaps between them. Around this wall, the destroyers, and in the Colonials case frigates, formed a ‘bubble.’ The carriers positioned themselves at the center of the pack launching their fighters and bombers who stayed within the bubble. Single man fighter craft were a valuable component of space warfare, but they weren't the kings of naval warfare they had been on Old Earth. Mostly because in space there is no horizon for fighters and bombers to hide behind, which gives defensive weapon systems plenty of time to track and destroy an incoming craft. Once missiles start flying and defensive networks become overwhelmed with the explosions and debris, then fighters and bombers could show their worth. Manned craft could penetrate chinks in an enemy’s defense phalanx and unleash decisive attacks. The two forces closed at a rapid pace. Aboard both ships men and woman passed the time the best they could at their battle stations. They prayed, they played ideal games of chance, or they stared off into space. Finally, six hours after the Colonial force had made its first appearance the klaxon sounded and the order went out ‘FIRE”!!!

  Two fully armed battle fleets coming into range of each other was like a collision between mountains of mighty gods. The fury of their barrage was truly awesome to behold. Rail guns fired as fast as they could cycle, plasma cannons let forth streams of molten fire, missiles and torpedos flew, point defense lasers flared, barriers strained under the barrage, and battle steel buckled from impact. As the battle commenced, a second Colonial force appeared from behind the asteroid. This one consisted solely of two squadrons of frigates and six planetary assault ships. The frigates, which all together numbered about twenty, burned like mad for Chaucer's other wormways, while the planetary assault ships closed on Scarva. Scarva was well fortified against attack and upon seeing the closing threat activated its Orbital Denial Battery and ground defense forces. The ODB batteries firing sounded like thunder as they hurled their massive shells skyward at a fraction of the speed of light. The projectiles flew so fast through Scarva’s thin atmosphere they broke the sound barrier many times over. As the Colonial assault ships closed, hyper velocity missiles from the smaller ground batteries followed close behind the gargantuan shells. As they closed to near orbit, the planetary assault ships dodged the incoming shells and intercepted the missiles. This was what they had been designed for, but no design is perfect. One ship jinked when it should have jucked and was struck dead on by an ODB shell the size of a truck. The shell ripped through the reinforced barrier and tore the planetary assault ship CNS Legion in half. The entirety of its 600 man crew and 4,500 Colonial Marines died with their vessel as its reactor melted down and it was consumed by a ball of nuclear fire. The remaining assault ships stayed on course and entered the atmosphere not long after. Planetary assault ships were designed to do something no starship should ever have to do, fly through a planet's atmosphere. Grav repulsors and massive turbo fans helped, but it was an ungainly and unweilding craft and it flew nevertheless. Over the radiation soaked deserts of Scarva, the massive planetary assault ships deployed their landing craft. Each pair of ships had originally been tasked with a different target, but the destruction of the Legion had forced them to go to their backup plan. All five remaining ships with their division worth of Colonial Marines converged on Tumbledown Town home to the largest supply depot on the planet, the anchor point of one of Scarva’s three orbital elevators and headquarters of the 12th Army Division.

  As the ground battle began to brew, the war in orbit was growing to a furious crescendo. The Colonial Battleship Deja Victorium was broken in half by a well timed Solarian torpedo. Five Colonial destroyers, six frigates, and two cruisers were so badly mauled they had to be abandoned or were forced to retreat. It wasn't all good news though, three Solarian destroyers were pummeled into submission, one going down with all hands when its reactor blew. They were joined by three light cruisers, two heavy cruisers, and the battleship New Delphi whose central control systems were hit forcing the mighty vessel to fall out of formation in a spiral death roll. Admiral Meyers’s 3rd fleet was holding its own, but it was evenly matched. The Colonials didn't nee
d to destroy her fleet they just needed to buy time.

  Time for their Marines to land a blow that would delay any Solarian offensive by weeks perhaps even months, and that blow was falling on Tumbledown. Like all settlements on Scarva, Tumbledown was a domed settlement. Its human inhabitants lived under the massive, plasteel domes or in an adjacent system of underground tunnels to avoid the almost certain death that came with exposure to Scarva’s twin suns and the radiation they constantly bombarded the planet with. Being a military installation first and foremost, the city was well defended surrounded by a twenty foot concrete and adamantine curtain wall, with a network of bunkers, trenches, and minefields in front of it. By the time the Colonial troops were arrayed for battle, the fortifications were fully manned with 25,000 Solarian Army troopers and another 8,000 Militiamen. Against them were 20,000 Colonial Marines, supported by a full array of heavy artillery and armoored units.

  The planetary assault ships halted at the edge of the effective range. Tumbledown’s anti-aircraft batteries, hovering at 15,000 feet, were below the horizon and thus beyond the effective range of ODB batteries. In close formation, they were also well defended against hyper velocity missiles, which didn’t have adequate time to reach killing velocity at this close range, making the missiles far more vulnerable to their close defense weapons. Once in position, the assault ships began disgorging their cargo. Each one dropped six heavy carriers, which held the Marines’ heavy equipment. Meanwhile drop pods, each holding a squad, fell like steel rain and gunships and fighters took flight from the ship's atmospheric flight deck. A planetary assault ship was sometimes compared to a flying aircraft carrier, which was an adequate description.

  The Colonial ground forces assembling into battle formations began to close on the Solarian position. As they did, they began launching a barrage of missiles. The Solarian interceptors knocked the heavy missiles from the sky, which was exactly what the Colonials wanted. From their positions in the trenches and bunkers, Solarian soldiers in their battle armor could see what appeared to be a grey mist falling over the battlefield. Few thought anything of it, until the alarms on their armour began to sound as the suits started to suddenly dissolve and decay.

  “SHREDDERS!!!” The screams echoed across the trenches and bunkers, and it was joined by cries of agony as the tiny nanobots contained in the grey cloud finished eating through the battle armor and began gnawing through flesh, and bone. All Solarian soldiers received combat nanobot injections that would keep the Shredders from attacking any vital organs, but it wouldn't stop them from causing painful injury. Through the Solarian fortifications, blue lights flashed as Solarian troopers detonated Anti-Nanite Grenades in their own positions. These grenades blasted electromagnetic energy and ultraviolet light that disabled the deadly shredders, but also scrambled the Solarian soldiers communication and weapons systems to all hell and gone. Normally, Shredders were a dangerous and nasty weapon used by states who were willing to stomach them as terror weapons, but on a world where combat needed to be fought in enviro suits they were devastating. Scarva was such a world. Men could survive outside their environmental suits for a brief time due to Scarva having an atmosphere. It was one that was heavier on carbon and argon than Terra, but an atmosphere nonetheless. The danger of the world came from the massive amount of solar radiation that battered it from its twin suns. Anyone outside an environmental suit for ten minutes felt their skin begin to blister, and after a half hour they’d need a severe course of anti-cancer treatment. After an hour, only the most advanced medical systems could save them. The Colonials exploited the terror and chaos sown by their nanite barrage with brutal efficiency. An armored spearhead lead by battle tanks, mechanized battle suits, a scaled up version of the heavy Testudo, followed by heavy infantry crashed into the disorganized Solarian line. Hover tanks on grav-repulsors floated over minefields and tank traps, their rail guns blasting Solarian positions. Close behind Colonial Infantry followed, while the Solarians did their best to fight back. AT rockets and guns smashed into Colonial armor while machine guns chewed up infantry. Hundreds of Solarians soldiers, their suits torn by Shredders, stayed at their stations even as their skin blistered and burned. It was heroic, but it wasn't enough. Not even close to enough. With their communications fried, the Solarian defense was sloppy and badly coordinated, while the Colonials were operating in synch. In less than an hour, they had cut through the outer defenses and were closing on the city itself.

  From his fortified bunker, the 12th Division commander General Oshin watched on a holo table the Colonials progress toward their ultimate objective, the cable tether and the huge supply depot surrounding it. Scarva hosted three such orbital elevator nodes, but this one was the most important. It connected to Athero Naval Station the primary dockyards for the Solarian fleet in the system. The other two cables served to tether a pair of auxiliary stations that combined lacked the dock space and drydocks of Athero. If the cable was cut, Athero would have to be abandoned. Oshin saw two potential outcomes of this engagement. The Colonials would be beaten back that much was assured. Already reinforcements were rushing to Tumbledown Town, but they wouldn't arrive with enough force before the Colonials reached the Elevator base station and destroyed it. If they got in range of the Cable itself, they could either try to force Oshin to release it or they could cut it. If they cut it the cable would snap and the bottom section would fall, potentially destroying the entire city, while Athero dragged the remainder away as centrifugal force sent the station speeding out of orbit. If Oshin activated the emergency release, Athero would still be sent zooming out of orbit and it would still have to be abandoned, at least temporarily until a complex and costly salvage operation could be mounted. Since salvaging the station at some time in the future would only cost time and money rather than lives, it was perhaps the less costly option.

  Oshin made up his mind, “Prepare to release the cable.”

  The sequence was remarkably easy, a series of commands were entered into one console in the cable’s traffic control center. Word was sent to the people on the station to get to the lifeboats, and the elevators themselves were mercifully all grounded at the base station or the space station, having been locked down when the enemy first entered the system.

  “Execute,” came the command. With that, two technicians turned their keys simultaneously and hit the release lever.

  At the anchor point the cable’s terrestrial end point, the cable was held in perfect alignment suspended in the air by a complex system of magnets. As the kill switch was hit, the magnets shut off and in orbit above the Athero, freed from its earth bound, began to drift away. The centrifugal force of its trajectory sending it on a seemly sedate course millions of miles an hour out of Scarva’s orbit. Behind it the cable came, harmlessly pulled away from the ground. Far below seeing the cable beginning to rise skyward, the Colonials began their withdrawal, but not before another barrage of heavy ordnance. These, mostly incendiary, fell on the supply depot around the cable’s base. Tumbledown Town’s fire suppression systems would keep the flames contained, but not before millions of tons of supplies were destroyed. Though tactically the battle of Chaucer's Gap was a draw, strategically it was a Colonial victory. Tumbledown Town was badly damaged. The supply warehouses had been devastated by Colonial artillery or airstrikes. Those supplies had been stockpiled over the course of years, and could not be readily replaced without a massive effort from Solaria. Their destruction would paralyze Solarian operations across the entire sector for months, and probably cause shortages for an extended period of time after. What was more, the Solarians had prudently chosen to untether the orbital cable themselves. Although this had saved Tumbledown Town and Scarva extensive devastation that could have been caused by the cable falling out of orbit, it also neutralized the primary Solarian dockyard for the system. Athero was billions of metric tons. The laws of physics dictated that such a vast construct had too much mass to be slowed or stopped once it was set in motion. To salvage the great sta
tion would take months of work. First work barges would need to intercept it, then massive engines would need to be bolted to it and a fleet of tugs secured to it in order to slow it down to the point where it could be brought back into something like a controlled orbit. Even then it would be months before the cable could be resecured, if at all. Athero’s uncoupling combined with the destruction of its accompanying supply stockpile would put the 3rd Fleet on a defensive footing for the foreseeable future, allowing the Colonials to dictate the course of the war’s opening moves. The Colonials having accomplished their goal began their retreat in earnest, but they didn't get away cleanly. One of their planetary assault ships was crippled and forced down by a well timed barrage of OD hypervelocity missiles, while another was torn asunder by a direct hit from a skyscraper sized OD battery. With the destruction of three of its planetary assault ships combined with the casualties from the battle, the Colonials had lost 18,000 of the 24,000 ground troops. It was a bloodbath by any standard. The Colonial fleet did not get off easily either. Covering the retreat of their terrestrial forces cost them another battlewagon and a carrier along with half a dozen smaller ships. When at last the Solarian fleet broke off pursuit, it was clear that the 3rd fleet had lost far fewer ships than the Colonials, but it was a hollow victory. Wearily, Vice Admiral Meyers began to compose a status report to Solarian Fleet Headquarters for the immediate attention of Chief of Naval Operation 1st Admiral Douglas Whitaker copying it to Commander-in-Chief of the Solarian Navy Admiral of the Fleet, Marcus Ho.