by Tom Kratman
The reader whirred then chirped, “Noted. Next item: Main armament: ion cannon.”
As Weaver found, even the main battery, a 90cm ion cannon, had been torn off nine meters from the mantlet where a hit from a heavy duty Phasganon had stuck a glancing but powerful blow. He reported it.
“Noted. Next item: Turret Integrity.”
The tech made the oval circuit around the twenty-two and a half meter-wide turret, muttering the entire time.
At the left rear, Weaver gave off a whistle, then announced, “Damned impressive row of campaign medallions and awards for valor decorated here on the turret. There are several gaps in this as well. Not too sure if the missing spots are battle damage or not.”
From below, Childress shouted a question, “Do they actually expect us to fix this useless piece of junk?”
With a shake of the head, the tech answered, “Nah… the orders say to cannibalize it for parts and shut it down. The resupply convoy was jumped by a Slug cruiser as it re-entered normal space. We are short on everything and will be for at least the next several weeks.”
“All external audio receptors but one are destroyed,” Weaver informed the reader.
‘Shut me down’, I hear one of them say. Oh, please… please… please hurry! It would be a relief. I have pain circuits. They are overloaded. My ‘skin’ is gone; my ‘skeleton’ exposed. I am nearly ‘blind’ and almost deaf.
I do not understand the reasoning behind our pain circuits. In combat, pain is a distraction from duty. Out of action, it is rarely experienced. I do not understand. It is difficult.
It is very difficult to compute, to think. I try. It is difficulthardpainful. A large section… no… I re-diagnose… two large sections of my central core are demolished, burnt out. It is difficult. But through the pain that washes over me, inside and out, I force myself to remember….
Excursus
From Combat Records of the 10th Heavy Infantry, Volume Ninety-four, The Campaign for Farside, Center for Ratha History, CE 3237. These records are in the public domain.
Calling a Ratha’s main armament an “ion cannon” was something of a technical misnomer. More correctly, it was a neutral particle beam, which created and fired anions, then stripped the extra electrons from the anions in the interest of beam integrity shortly before the beam left the muzzle. Given the velocity of the beam, a healthy fraction of C, and the sheer number of anions in the beam, a considerable amount of recoil was inevitable. Firing the main armament would send a fourteen thousand ton Ratha rocking back against its anti-gravity stabilizer. Less than technically correct or not, though, “ion cannon” has entered the lexicon as a Ratha’s main weapon. This article will conform to that usage.
******
Fifteen kilometers down range, in the direction of the counterattacking Roz, a Roz Heavy took the full force of an ion bolt square on. The Roz’s energy shield flared momentarily, then died. The particle beam passed through the vanquished shield, striking the Heavy's armor. Even to the Ratha’s sensors, the enemy vehicle was lost amidst the resulting flash. The VR view, however, showed the meter-thick heterodiamond—or some close cognate—melt, boil and steam away.
Onward the bolt burned its way, melting and shearing connections, gears, and cables. Centered in the heart of the AFV, a single live Roz, the eight-legged vehicle’s eight-legged commander, felt precisely nothing as its body was turned to ash faster than its nerve endings could carry the news of damage.
“Michael? Maggie. Target engaged and destroyed.”
From the battalion’s senior Ratha, MCL, callsign “Michael,” came the reply, “Roger, Magnolia. Intelligence reports Roz approaching in strength. We are ordered to hold.”
“Roger. Wilco. ‘They shall not pass’, Unit MCL… break…. Targets… targets… I have targets… engaging.”
Again the Ratha rocked from recoil. Again. Again. Again.
“Michael, Maggie. The Roz are flanking my position. I am moving to alternate firing position.”
“Roger, break. All units, this is Michael. Indirect fire in support of Magnolia’s displacement. Mixed bi-prismatic smoke and HEDP.”
No tremor of fear, nor of any other emotion, inflected Maggie’s transmission, nor that of any other Ratha engaged. There was the enemy. There was the mission. There was duty. There was nothing else.
“Michael, Maggie. In position. Lift smoke. Targets…. Firing. Firing. Firing.”
Michael didn’t answer. Instead, over the airwaves, came a random mix of numbers and symbols; a dying Ratha’s last scream as the blooming heat of an enemy’s shot reduces its interior to atoms. Every Ratha present understood what had happened and partook in some part of Michael’s dying agony.
“All units. This is Peter. Michael has fallen. I assume command. Report.”
In milliseconds, each remaining Ratha transmitted its situation and fighting status. The battle did not slow as they did so.
“Maggie, Peter. Enemy indirect fire, believed to be nuclear, multiple salvoes, scheduled to impact your position beginning in 4.23963 seconds. We can't stop it.”
“Acknowledged, Peter. Target…. Firing…. Target…. Firing.…. Impact.”
In the VR, the virtual sky was suddenly lit by the fireballs of half a dozen small suns. Beneath the flash, Magnolia’s exterior armor was melted and burned. One near miss took out every secondary turret on one side. Sensors were swept away. Maggie wept from the pain, but she did not cry out. A Ratha had her pride.
The next transmission came in broken as the shaken Ratha attempted to regain control. “Peter… Magnolia… report… report follows. I… have sustained six… close… nuclear bursts in the fifteen to twenty-five… kiloton range. Ablative armor… down by thirty-seven percent. Ion cannon damaged but operable… at reduced range and… effectiveness. Missile cells… inoperative. One remaining heavy… mortar… system operable. One close defense weapon operable. This Unit’s effectiveness… reduced… to 12.89 …percent. Roz… closing. I can… no longer… sustain this flank.”
“Roger, Maggie. Fall back as soon as relieved. Jerry and Thomas, likewise fall back to a covered position. Cut to the right and relieve Maggie. Other units fill in for Jerry and Thomas as per SOP. Hang on, Maggie….”
CHAPTER FIVE
A young soldier, his hair long, ragged, and unkempt, and badly in need of a shave, nonchalantly climbed to the Ratha main deck with a heavy duty cutter balanced on one shoulder. He walked carelessly over the burned and twisted armor, to the Ratha’s remaining visual sensor. Placing the cutter at the base of the visual sensor’s armature, the soldier then closed the cutting blades, twisted and pulled. The Ratha immediately shuddered, rocking back and forth slightly, then subsided.
******
Magnolia
It is all right. I am happy to give up my sight for my comrades. My mind still sees recorded images. I remember better days. I remember the past.
******
“Carmichael, what the hell are you doing?”
The unshaven soldier stopped briefly, lowering the hammer grasped in his right hand while bringing the chisel in his left hand to rest. He looked at his sergeant as if the question were somehow foolish. It was, after all, fairly obvious what he was doing.
But foolish question or not, a sergeant was a sergeant. Rather than answer the question, Carmichael tactfully answered, “It will only take a another second or two, sarge,”
As good as his word, with two more blows from the hammer the chisel cut through the last bit of welding holding a slightly scorched round medallion to MLN’s turret. The medallion, inscribed “Thoth VII,” fell to the deck and rolled before catching on a jagged, half-destroyed section of ablative armor.
******
I remember my first action….
“Maggie, Francis. Ion cannon inoperable. Down to twenty-five percent on anti-gravity. Shields nearly down. Missile cells blasted out. Breach loading mortars inoperable. Point defense systems inoperable. I am no longer combat effective.”
Sensing incoming artillery fire, Maggie swerved forty-five degrees at the last possible second before resuming her course. The artillery landed harmlessly, well to one side. MLN’s hull shook with the concussion, but it suffered no damage. She raced on.
More artillery followed, each salvo being registered and the trajectory analyzed well before impact. The dodging Ratha’s anti-gravity cut an irregular path into the planet’s deep, soft loam, causing massive piles of earth to be thrown up at each major turn.
“Francis, Maggie. I am in position. Withdraw. I will fall back with you and provide cover.”
“Can't do it, Maggie. My last anti-grav section is gone. This unit is immobile. This position is untenable. Withdraw and save yourself.”
Again Maggie didn’t answer. Reversing polarity on one section of anti-grav, she locked that point in place. She then spun ninety degrees to present her thick glacis to the enemy while at the same time taking a position between the enemy and Francis….
The enemy were many and they were brave. They were also skilled, or else they never could have done as much damage as they had to Francis, given their relatively undergunned main armaments.
For three point two eight three hours they came toward Francis. Only his tremendous value as scrap—fourteen thousand tons of iridium and heterodiamond, a fusion reactor and the finest electronics—could have justified such a sacrifice. That day, their sacrifice was in vain.
Magnolia’s entire hull shuddered under the ion cannon’s recoil. Down range another enemy AFV blossomed into plasma. On its transmission intercept circuits Maggie heard the enemy’s death scream. She’d heard variants on the same theme thirty-one times already. Fifty-two slagged hulks now decorated the strife-torn field.
Not that the destruction was all one-sided; Maggie sported three long gouges along her turret and an additional five burns deep into the glacis. Seven of her eighteen secondary weapons were missing or damaged. Forced to keep relatively immobile in order to shield Francis, who never ceased his demands that she leave him and save herself, Maggie had taken artillery fire that damaged elements of both her missile cells and her mortar turret and yet—despite the pain of her shattered weapons and damaged armor—still she held.
“Maggie, Francis. You have got to get out of here. I detect an enemy column approaching from azimuth two-thirteen, mark fifty-one. Estimate forty-four Thrung-class assault vehicles. You cannot hold. You must go. Further advise you employ main battery to eliminate this unit entirely to prevent capture and salvage. I am lowering my shielding for this… now.”
“Negative, Francis. Keep your shields up. I can hold. They will not get you.”
“Silly girl; They’ll get both of us. Goodbye, Maggie; I am lowering my shields now. Thank you.”
From south by southwest, a single pulse of eye-dazzling force reached out. Deliberately unshielded, Francis’ armor was insufficient to halt the plasma beam. The Ratha gave a single primal shriek of agony-scrambled code and was thereafter silent….
Francis gave himself up deliberately, to remove any further cause for me to endanger myself. And yet, my programming was such that his transmitted death agonies brought about precisely the opposite effect.
I remember….
The nineteen remaining Rathas, the remnants of the much-reduced human infantry interspersed in blocks among them, of the Fourth Battalion, Tenth Infantry Regiment, rested in line. Both Ratha and humans held their arms at ‘present’ as the diminutive human, Colonel Schlacht, marched erect to the Podium. Schlacht returned the salutes of his men and his machines. The ion cannons returned to ‘attention’ and the humans to ‘order arms’. Schlacht called, “Ratha Magnolia of the Tenth Infantry, front and center.”
The Ratha lifted on anti-gravity, then glided in dignified and stately fashion to a position in front of Colonel Schlacht. Very much as she had done on the battlefield, she locked down one side of her massive frame and turned about sharply.
Standing slightly behind and to the left of the colonel, the adjutant read the citation aloud. “For conspicuous gallantry against overwhelming odds, the Star of Valor, inscribed ‘Thoth VII”, is presented to Ratha Magnolia, MLN90456SS061502125. On the twenty-fourth instant… completely ignoring her own safety… rushing to the aid of a brother of the regiment, the fallen Ratha Francis… Ratha Magnolia succeeded in repelling fourteen distinct assaults, inflicting grievous and irreparable damage to enemy forces in so doing… at length, with Francis fallen, Magnolia conducted a gallant one Ratha assault upon no less than forty-four enemy Thrung class assault vehicles, destroying fifteen of these and causing the rest to scatter and flee for safety. Magnolia’s conduct reflects great credit upon herself and her comrades, human and Ratha, and the Tenth Infantry Regiment… by order of Aloysius Keeling, Lieutenant General, Seventeenth Expeditionary Corps, Commanding.”
I remember that—even as the men welded the small medallion to my turret, causing discomfort but no real pain—I felt so proud that day.
******
“Watcha got there, Carmichael? A Ratha medal? Now THAT will make one helluva souvenir.”
Carmichael snorted in derision. “Nah, screw that. I know a scrap metal dealer that follows the fleet that will give top credit for refined iridium. Big boy here won’t cry over it. It’s just a machine. What does it care? Besides,” he said, holding up a small ocular device with loose, thin wires dangling from it like so many nerve endings, “I have this here camera for a souvenir.”
******
‘Big boy here won’t cry.’ Two lies in a single sentence. I am not a boy. And I will cry….
Excursus
From “Why We Fought: The Quang, Enemies of Man”. Approved for distribution for grades four through six by the Imperial Counsel for Primary Education.
Into the void around the Loki system emerged twenty-seven Ratha assault transports, each carrying two Rathas of the Tenth Regiment, with full platoon of infantry between them. The transport fleet was well guarded by one dreadnought, seven cruisers, and thirteen lighter escorts. The target was Loki IX and the enemy were the treacherous Quang.
Rathas and Quang were old enemies. One war between Quang and the human’s armored champions had already been fought. Despite losses, sometimes severe losses, by humanity’s forces, the Quang had been thoroughly drubbed, their outlying planets occupied, and a fitting schedule of reparations imposed.
It had not been enough. As every man and Ratha in the assault force knew, reparations were never enough to prevent another war although they were sometimes enough to cause one. So it had been in this case: a Quang request for a delay of the scheduled payments coincided with a political campaign within the Terran sphere. Recognizing the Quang menace, one candidate for the Imperial Senate shifted her platform to a more properly defensive one in order to warn Man of the threat. In response, the incumbent had then pushed through a call for more punitive measures against the Quang.
The devious Quang pretended to beg for peace. Thinking to gull a credulous humanity with their lies, they had purported to offer everything in their power for peace. Wisely, politicians and media alike ignored their false pleading.
Finally, the Quang struck. Their fleet emerged unexpectedly, and without declaration of war, from hyperspace to catch a complacent human peacekeeping blockade over a mining planet off guard. Thinking to gain an unfair advantage through the manipulation of some traitorous bleeding hearts within the Imperial intelligentsia, the lying Quang claimed that the blockade had left the populace of the nearly barren mining planet of the verge of starvation. Taken by surprise, innocent human ships and crews flared like small suns amidst the black depths of space.
Then came the inevitable revenge against Quang perfidy. Humanity struck back with ships and Rathas b
eyond counting. Not content with re-imposing a peace, the insidious aliens were to be made unable to pose a future threat to mankind. Quang planets were scoured of life, their civilizations were destroyed. Only the presence of substantial resources were cause enough to prevent Man, in his just wrath, from exerting the fullest possible retaliation on a Quang planet.
Over Loki’s sun, the Ratha’s assault transports took up a safe orbit just outside of the enemy’s effective range. Preceded by escorts sweeping for orbital mines, the dreadnought closed majestically on the Quang’s space-based defense center. Single streams of charged particles emerged from the orbiting base only to be absorbed by superior Terran shielding. One escort flared briefly before passing into stardust, an unfortunate victim of an undetected Quang mine.
Like a whale goaded beyond endurance, our dreadnought turned on the base. Ion cannon fire lanced out, lanced out again… and again. The Quang base’s shields flickered and went out. Still the fanatics resisted. With another hit pieces began to break away. More ion cannon bolts followed the wreckage lest any Quang escape to continue their defiance on the planet below. Lanes cleared of mines by the escorts, the dreadnought and its seven accompanying cruisers passed on.
The eight heavy combat ships and the twelve remaining escorts took up positions around the planet. Frantic Quang offers of immediate and unconditional surrender were rightly ignored as yet another ruse of war by the unprincipled and implacable foe.