by JD Clarke
I removed my helmet and breathed in the hot, arid atmosphere of this planet. The air was thin, and the oxygen content was below that of Earth’s, but it was breathable. The Unity seemed to prefer arid climates, less oxygen and less water to corrode their metal components. But the availability of mineral resources was their highest priority. Heavy metals and rare earths were needed for their electronics production. Carbon, aluminum, iron, and other structural materials were needed for warship production. Any materials not available on the planet were shipped via cargo vessels between planets and moons. Subassemblies such as cannons and other weapons were often produced at one factory and shipped to others. This planet was nearly self-sufficient in materials and production capability for the construction of warships, making it a rare and very valuable planet indeed.
I walked out to the bunker where Legion was stationed. It was a rushed design. The main control room was belowground, a mound of earth covered graphite shielding above, and a brace of four pulse cannons protruded out the front, facing the open ground. The cannons could be swiveled only ninety degrees—a design compromise between strength, shielding, and rapid construction. Other small hills had rail guns sticking out the front. Their high-velocity rounds packed a heavy punch, but a slow rate of fire. The pulse cannon’s projectile was lighter, and even with explosive tips, it did less damage. But with an extremely high rate of fire, it could spit a constant stream of destruction over a wide area. The trench here was covered with protective shielding, and I had to open a hatch to enter.
“Legion, are you ready? They’ll be coming at any moment now.”
“Yes, Jason, we are ready. Sergeant Klanton did not have enough time to build protective shielding over all of the trenches, and we could use more bunkers, but we are ready to fight. The Warriors are always ready for a fight.” The four Warriors in the bunker with him shook their fists in agreement, the equivalent of a human nodding his head.
“I saw the extra warships inside with the laser tanks.” I noted the change.
“Yes, the sergeant wanted to keep them out of sight. He wanted a surprise for our enemy.”
I glanced over the computer display screen Legion had set up. It gave a good readout of the terrain ahead and also the sky above in a limited arc. “Where are your sensors for your display?”
“They are scattered around, under the shield and some outside the shield. They may not last long, but enough should survive to give us continued news of enemy positions. The Sarge sent robots out to place the sensors that are exposed.”
I had not been consulted by the sergeant on sensor placement. No big deal, but it bothered me just the same. I watched the display. It continued to show a video image of only rock and sand.
“Commander, we are picking up movement in the canyon, heading 268, directly ahead of your position.” Sybil was giving me information from her screens in the control center. Positioned higher than the ground sensors of the bunkers, she had a longer range.
Then we saw them, a formation of thirty-two land vehicles. The front was covered by a thick, heavy shield shaped like a snowplow. It was so large it obstructed our view of the rest of the vehicle. They came just within sight and then stopped. There was silence as the Warriors awaited Legion’s command to open fire. I wondered what the enemy vehicles were waiting for. Twenty seconds of eternity later, we found out.
A hail of fire descended from the warships above. Striking the open ground between us and the shielded vehicles, huge pillars of dirt and rock flew upward. The ground erupted everywhere. The air became thick with dust and falling debris. Our vision was totally obstructed. The rain of hell continued for almost ten minutes, then stopped abruptly. The air gradually cleared in the silence that followed. Before us was an entirely new battlefield. Like a moonscape, it was littered with craters, but these craters were organized, designed to give maximum cover for the advance of the enemy vehicles. A series of ridges and depressions were formed. The enemy could approach our position, exposing themselves only as they mounted each ridge and then falling out of view as they descended and crossed the valley between ridges.
Sergeant Klanton’s voice rang out. “Rail gunners, open fire!” Two-hundred-pound projectiles screamed from each rail gun along our line. The impact with the enemy vehicles’ front shielding could be heard from within the bunker. Metal vaporized, and ceramic layering shattered, throwing debris in all directions. But the shields were not broken. The vehicles continued down into the first valley. Sarge ordered a cease-fire. We waited as they slipped from sight, waiting for them to reappear at the next ridge.
Again, the sergeant ordered the rail guns to open fire upon the advancing armored vehicles as they came into view again. The air whined with the scream of hypervelocity shells streaking toward the enemy. Legion ordered his bunkers to open fire with the pulse cannons. Billowing clouds of debris enveloped the enemy’s shields, but the vehicles came on until they dipped out of sight into the next valley of craters.
“They’re not returning our fire,” Sergeant Klanton observed. There was worry in his thoughts.
“I hope they mean to fight up close, hand to hand,” Legion growled. “It is what we do best!”
“Legion, have your fast attack vehicles manned and ready. I want them to swing around and attack the Unity armored vehicles from the rear before they get under our time shield.”
“Jason, that will expose them to fire from above. The Unity warships will have a clear shot at them.”
“Tell them to target the vehicles’ propulsion systems—whatever it is, wheels, legs, whatever. But I want them stopped before they get within our shield’s perimeter.”
Legion hesitated, considering the implications. It would mean heavy losses among his Warriors driving the assault guns. To his credit, Legion followed my orders. The Unity armor began coming over the last ridge as Legion’s Warriors began emerging from within the factory where they had been waiting, out of sight. They swung wide in two groups. Our guns opened up again, splitting the air with screaming volleys of projectiles, the thunder of impact and explosives. The clouds of debris again enveloped the enemy, but now billowing columns of dirt arose as our fast assault vehicles exposed themselves and began dodging through the valley just beyond in an effort to get behind the enemy armor and simultaneously dodge the rain of enemy fire from the warships above.
The Unity armor slipped out of sight into the last valley. Our guns fell silent, but the rain of destruction from above continued. It was not as heavy as before when the Unity was shaping the battlefield to provide cover for their attack. They must have moved most of their warships into a better position to fire upon our time shield. A column mushroomed upward, and I could see bits of metal glinting in the sunlight, then a large section of one of the huge wheels of a fast assault vehicle. A direct hit.
“Sasha, direct four warships to leave the base. Give Legion’s troops some cover fire.”
“They won’t last long exposed to the Unity Fleet, Jason.”
“Do it, Sasha. Do it now.”
Immediately, four doors on the building behind us opened; and four warships emerged, gathered speed, and then blasted out from under the shield and began circling the battlefield. They were met with an instant barrage of enemy fire. One was crippled within seconds and turned to retreat. It was met with even more concentrated fire along the top of the ship, raking it from stem to stern. Shielding gave way, and the entire ship exploded in an enormous fireball. The other three continued firing on the Unity warships above them, but they were taking a terrible beating as well.
“The Unity pilots are requesting to withdraw,” Sasha reported to me.
“Negative, keep firing,” I ordered. I also sent an order directly to the Warriors on board those ships to keep an eye on the Unity pilots. Any attempt to retreat without permission was to be dealt with immediately. The Warriors on board acknowledged my orders.
Twenty-nine armored vehicles came up out of the valley onto the open plain in front of us and
just outside our shields. The Warriors had managed to stop only three. As they came on toward us, I could see holes in their front shields, sunlight peeking through. Our rail guns had been making an impact after all. So they weren’t invulnerable. Then the fast assault vehicles emerged from the valley behind them and dodged and darted, firing continuously. Four more Unity armored vehicles lurched to a stop, then two more, and finally, all had been stopped just shy of our black umbrella of protection, their wheels disabled by the fast attack troops.
“Call your troops back, Legion. They’ve done their job.”
“They are reporting that the Unity armor is powered by wheels that are exposed. The wheels are an easy target.”
“How many did we lose?” asked the Sarge.
“More than half have met a glorious and honorable death today.” Legion’s thoughts bore no sorrow. Perhaps he was focused on the battle; it was not yet over.
Only one of our warships managed to limp back under the cover of our time shield. It passed near us, its outer shielding jagged, red-hot and smoking from the many hits on it. The other two were destroyed before they could make their way back and lay smoking in the valley beyond.
The Unity armored vehicles had managed to keep a semblance of order. Their forward shields still blocked our view. We could hear motors activating doors, equipment disembarking. We waited—every eye on the enemy, fingers on triggers, waiting for new targets.
They emerged from around the heavy shields in a flood. Legged laser tanks, but these were smaller, more compact than the ones that had been guarding the planet-side base, and some were armed with pulse cannons instead of lasers. The firefight began immediately, both sides sending a hail of explosive bullets toward the other. Their lasers lit up the area with flashes of high energy, targeting our rail gun emplacements. Our rail guns answered back with devastating impacts that shattered the laser tanks’ armors, sending still-flexing legs and chunks of metal showering outward. Legion’s pulse cannon crews concentrated on the enemy tanks legs, their weakest point. Tanks went down, stumbled to rise again, fell back as they lost the use of other legs, but they continued firing, punishing the bunkers and the Warriors within.
A rail gun bunker went up in a blast that shook the ground as a laser penetrated its gun portal and superheated everything within. At another bunker, the protruding barrels of a pulse cannon blew apart. The half-melted remains of the barrel drooped from the result of a well-aimed laser.
The enemy tanks were suffering the greatest damage, though. They were losing numbers quickly, and soon, only a handful were actively firing. Each tank received more concentrated fire as the number of targets decreased, and Legion’s gunners focused on the remaining tanks. Then the Unity’s armored vehicles detonated. Exploding in a huge massive fireball of destruction. The shock wave spread over our emplacements, ripping the surface up in a wave of dirt and metal. Leveling half of the bunkers and causing the metal wall of the factory behind us to bend, a permanent concavity of wrinkled structure. Only our personal heavy-battle armor had saved our troops. Anyone exposed to the blast would have died instantly.
“Sergeant Klanton, report.”
“We’re OK here, Jason.”
“Legion, your troops?”
“I am getting reports now. Many are buried, a few injuries, twelve fail to answer. We will be able to fight again once we dig our Warriors out of our bunkers.”
“Jason, if that blast had occurred within the confines of our shields, the damage could have been much worse. How did you know?”
“The Unity aren’t the only ones that are getting better at predictions. I was afraid their plan was to drive right past us and plunge into the factory. If the blast had occurred just within the factory walls, it could have taken out our shield generator. The tanks could have disembarked and attacked us from the rear, keeping us pinned down.”
The battlefield had gone silent; even the bombardment on our time shield had stopped. We had won the first round. The cost was heavy among Legion’s fast assault troops, and our gun emplacements would have to be rebuilt. But we were alive, and we were still a fighting force.
Under Siege
The next several days were quiet as far as Unity attacks. Legion and Klanton repaired the bunkers and strengthened them with proper shielding. The rail guns and pulse cannons were replaced with newly manufactured weapons. Even the base’s turrets were rearmed. The androids that had been destroyed in the assault were replaced. The holographic processor units that had been in control of those androids had synced their experiences with their android bodies just prior to the battle, so the only memories lost were those of the actual engagement itself. Their consciousness could only reside in either the android or the processor unit, not both simultaneously; otherwise, two distinct individuals would eventually emerge and compete for control. As long as the holographic processor unit was preserved, the individual did not suffer “death.” The destruction of the android body triggered the holographic processor unit to reboot its consciousness routine. This was a lesson learned from when Sybil had lost her android body, and we had been unable to awaken her processor to regain consciousness.
“Sybil, are the cargo vessels of android bodies being allowed to pass through the blockade?”
“Yes, Commander, they are continuing on their course without interference. They are being closely scanned, but not detained. The Unity forces view the shipments as beneficial to them and a drain on our resources to produce the androids. They are aware of our limitations on rare materials needed to manufacture the electronic processors in the androids. There is a high probability that they view the manufacture of androids as detrimental to our ability to produce more effective weapons, especially intelligent weapons systems.”
“How long can we continue to produce androids, given our current stock of materials?”
“At the current rate of production, we can continue for twenty-seven planetary years.”
“Well, Sybil, the Unity certainly take a long-term view on things. A twenty-seven-year siege of this planet would be a long campaign in anybody’s book.”
“They will return with another assault before too long. They have tested our defenses and will adapt to our weapons and tactics. They will be determined in their recapture of this planet. It is highly valued.”
“And if we can hold the planet, it will prove to them what a formidable adversary we are. It will encourage them to negotiate peace with us.”
“Perhaps, Commander, or it will stiffen their resolve to defeat you here.”
“Time will tell, Sybil. Where is Mako?”
“He is at the shield generator, making adjustments and modifications to it. He wishes to have more control over the size, placement, and duration of pulsed time neutral openings.”
“Thanks, I’ll go check on him. I had a new idea I wanted to get him working on.”
I left the control center and made my way to the central power source where the shield generator was located. Sure enough, Dr. Tanakai was crawling all over it with a satchel of tools and a collection of electronic parts unrecognizable to me.
“Mako, have you overcome the problem of extending the shield all the way to the surface?”
“No, Jason, that’s a power problem. We simply don’t have the power to do that. Anywhere the shield comes into constant contact with the ground is an enormous power drain. The only solution would be to level the entire perimeter surface to a consistent level. The shields could then be extended to within a few inches of the surface around the entire perimeter.”
“The Unity could just blast craters in the surface to make openings below the shield. We already discussed that option.”
“Exactly, and the conditions have not changed, Jason. I am doing the best I can.”
“Can the shield be adjusted to simply slow time by, say, 50 percent?”
“Yes, I could do that. It would not make as effective a shield. The Unity could overcome our advantage by increasing their warships and the barr
age on the base until it overwhelms our capability to counter their incoming fire.”
“Would we have the power resources to run a second time shield at 50 percent?”
“It would be stretching it, and I would have to do some computations, but I think so. The power drain at 50 percent time reduction would not be anywhere near the power demands of our primary shield.” Mako was intrigued now. “What have you got in mind, Jason?” He even came down to talk to me. I knew he would love the idea and the challenge of getting it to work.
“Let me explain what I want. Then you tell me how soon it can be operational.”
We discussed the general idea, the problems, details that went beyond my technical knowledge, and finally agreed it was a workable plan. Of course, I pushed him to have it ready sooner than he said was possible. Then I left an emotionally charged and highly motivated Mako. We would have to delay further android production, but it was a compromise I was willing to make.