by Ryan Krauter
Two detonated against Aniteo, the huge Marine Assault Ship. A similar fate befell the behemoth. The same went for one of the two destroyers. The last one found Renown, and detonated against the battleship's starboard bow, a noncritical area that mainly contained the feed mechanisms for the forward torpedo launchers. For a second, Captain Grell hoped against all odds that nothing would happen, but it wasn't to be. There was a series of snaps, like electricity conducting across a gap to a ground, or a static electric charge. Then, the bridge went dark. It was eerie; she'd been aboard in drydock when her ship had undergone major refitting and had been almost entirely powered down. But there had still been some background noise; distant fans whooshing quietly as they recirculated the air, blowers and venting on the bridge equipment, the occasional thrum through the deckplates.
This, on the other hand, was a simple wrenching silence. Even her crew was silent; nobody on the bridge made a sound. Renown simply carried on, dead and silent. Even the gravity-generating deckplates were dead. She could already feel the reduced force of gravity from them, their pull less and less effective. In a few minutes their charge would be completely gone, and her crew would end up floating through the corridors of the warship.
She raced to the forward viewports. Unlike newer ships whose bridges were encased in armor and used viewscreens to show an outside image, the Starshakers had actual viewports. She looked out and saw more torpedoes exploding among her task force, both EMP and conventional. All her ships were dark now, and though she had thought it couldn't get any worse, she was wrong about that as well. She saw Priman heavy cruisers moving in, firing on the defenseless vessels and tearing them apart. The Priman frigate-sized ships known as Reapers, a post-invasion design bristling with AA batteries to counter the deadly threat of Confed's Talon and Intruder fighters, screened the main body of the force, picking off the few Confederation fighters that weren't already drifting lifeless in space. Grell swore an old epithet that she hadn't used since she'd made Captain. Her ships were being shredded and there wasn't a damn thing in the universe she could do about it.
On the other hand, the Primans were leaving Renown alone. It wasn't done out of mercy, though; her ship was headed right towards the moon's atmosphere.
"Nav," she said quietly as she turned her head a bit to look towards the navigation station. "What do you think? Steep angle, isn't it?"
"Too steep," the woman replied without having to think too long. They were coming in way too fast. There was no hope they'd just bounce off the atmosphere and get kicked back off into space, or even do a slow orbiting re-entry. No, they were going in nose first and would make a fiery show of it.
"Listen up," Captain Grell said, trying to muster her command presence. "Everybody get a vac-suit. We'll move through the ship as far as we can in the next few minutes. Try to kick loose some escape pods. I know they might not have power, but it's our only shot. Tell anyone you pass. We can go EVA and maybe last a few days. Maybe someone will check on us before the Primans settle in here. Let's go!"
She clapped her hands once to get their attention, and in short order her bridge crew recovered and started to clear the room. She could have told them it had been an honor to serve with them, that they'd all be avenged. But that would have seemed like giving up. Not that their options were very bright in any case, but as long as there was some hope, it was worth putting on the show that they'd live to fight another day.
"Umm," Captain Orjon's gunner said as she looked up into the sky. "Is that one of ours?"
She was pointing at a large starship, burning its way through the moon's atmosphere and headed straight for the ground. It was already almost unrecognizable; the re-entry had peeled off much of the superstructure, which created a flaming debris trail far aft of the doomed ship.
"All units," Orjon said into his comm unit. "Regroup on my position. I say again, everyone regroup here on the double. We may lose comms at any time."
He knew what was going to happen. His gunner, Rola, had read the full text of the Aniteo's last orders. 'EMP weapon, no known defense. Effective on impact, unknown abilities with proximity burst. Orbit is lost; you're on your own. Good luck'. They were pragmatic, simple words that glossed over the fact that six mighty Confederation warships were most likely gone with all hands aboard. And they'd said to expect a surface bombardment next.
It was unbelievable. All Confed systems were shielded against EMP; it was standard, had been for as long as anyone remembered. But the text from Aniteo was very clear: it was an EMP weapon, and he couldn't do anything to protect his people from it.
A minute later, all his units or at least advance runners from them were gathered around his tank. He heard a deep 'boom' from up high and lifted his head to look. He saw contrails in the upper reaches of the stratosphere; he'd heard the sonic booms of the torpedoes entering the ever-thickening atmosphere as they descended. Finally, he saw them air-burst. It was sort of anticlimactic in a way; just little explosions like dud fireworks, four of them scattered across the sky. They were not representative of what power the weapons held.
He didn't feel anything; no blast wave, no heat. He sort of expected some sort of physical effect. Instead, there were clicking sounds from inside his tank, the lift generators on the bottom surged once, twice, and then fell silent. The tank dropped unceremoniously to the ground with a crash, crumpling the skirt armor under its own weight.
"Holy sheifah," murmured Rola.
His troops started to murmur, the low-grade commotion of people who needed to hear something that would give them some answers.
"Alright, folks," Orjon yelled as loudly as he dared without seeming angry or off-balance. "Short version; our fleet's taking a pounding and we've just been hit with an EMP weapon. It's all new stuff, but we can't sit here and stare at each other." He surveyed the crowd and saw he was getting them back with him. He turned to his gunner. "Rola, get back in the tank and see if you can tell what exactly happened to our electronics." He picked out the next unit commander he saw and pointed. "Take an inventory of all your unit's weapons; tell me if anything at all is still working." He pointed at the other unit commander, a Trin who was built like a professional fighter. "Hilt, I need you to get us organized. The Primans probably see this town from orbit. With our vehicles humped, we need to make a stand. Get me a plan to defend this city, and then get me a plan to retreat through it. I'm not sure where we're going yet, but until we know what we're up against, we need to plan for both options."
"Captain!" Orjon heard from behind him. He turned to see two soldiers approaching with another man between them, hands cuffed in front. He was human, athletic, maybe thirty or so. Didn't look exactly like a soldier, but he was no mine rat, either.
"What's this?" Orjon asked as the party of three drew up to his now-silent tank.
"This guy approached us out of town after we got your message to RTB," one of the men began. "He said he's with Confed."
"You scanned the city earlier and found no life signs, correct?" Orjon confirmed.
The men nodded.
"I didn't want to be found. Until now, that is," the stranger said. "My name's Mithus; I'm a SAR operative."
"Sure you are," Orjon said easily. "Me too, in fact. It's easy to claim that since you know SAR personnel records aren't something I can access." He turned to the two that had brought Mithus in. "Go find a place to stash this man while we get ready."
The two placed their hands on Mithus and started to turn him around to march him away.
"Check the general code database," Mithus called as he was grabbed. "You know there's a physical hardcopy in every Confed command vehicle. I have a recognition code for you."
At that, Captain Orjon paused. This man Mithus was right; every week, some low-ranking officer from Aniteo's Intelligence branch had to go and stuff hardcopy printouts of certain procedures, codes and plans in every place a commanding officer might need to access them. The bridge, C3, fighter craft belonging to the CAG, briefing rooms, veh
icles, even the escape pods designated for bridge crew.
Grudgingly, Orjon looked down into the tank to see Rola looking expectantly at him. She already had the small sealed folder in her hand. He'd always mocked the anachronism of printing out orders on physical transparencies, something he'd thought was just busy-work to give the Intel nerds something to do, but suddenly it all seemed perfectly logical.
He held out his hand and his gunner gently placed the envelope in it.
Mithus shrugged out of the grip of the two men holding him. "Go to this week's recognition code for detached covert operatives," he began. He hated to break cover, especially in front of all these people, but it was acceptable under the circumstances. In addition, he had to allow for the possibility they might all be killed or imprisoned soon anyway. "The sequence is Plaza, Turn, Seventy-Six."
Orjon flipped through the pages, creasing the thin printouts and dropping a few out of the sheaf he held. He didn't notice. Mithus had given the correct passphrase for the week.
"Last week's should still be in there as well," Mithus continued. "It was Quality, Valet, zero four. Next week's will be Motor, Enjoy, forty-three."
"I was under the impression the words were generated randomly the day before issuance," Orjon said, though not as doubtfully as he would have imagined.
Mithus just chuckled. "You'd be surprised. I know a guy."
Orjon waved at the men who held Mithus and they backed off a few steps. Mithus shrugged his arms and removed the stunner cuffs from his hands.
"Where did you get a code key to release those?" asked Captain Orjon of Mithus.
"Don't need one," the SAR operative replied. "I just thought it would be courteous to leave them on until we were all good with each other."
Orjon hopped down off his tank deck and walked up to Mithus, eyeing him up carefully. "It appears we have a lot to talk about."
"And not much time to do it in."
Representative Ravine watched with satisfaction as the last of the Confederation ships disappeared. The battleship Renown had barreled into the ground a continent away from the mining town that was contested, creating a crater miles across and throwing up a debris cloud that would obscure the sun there for weeks.
"And now we begin the second phase of the operation," she said confidently to Captain Vol, who turned and nodded to his ops officer. The Priman female in turn started entering commands into her console which ordered dozens of dropships to churn forth from the hangars of his three escort carriers. He hated that his people had needed to adapt to a Confed tactic, but he also had to admit that the cruiser-turned-light-carrier design was a very important niche vessel to have. They had brought the thousands of troops that were now in their dropships headed to the moon's surface.
"Those mineral resources will be ours within the hour," Captain Vol said confidently.
Ravine just nodded, for though she knew he was being optimistic, she didn't think it was worth admonishing him over if it meant putting a damper on the crew's spirits. They were showing a swagger that had been lacking lately, and she fully approved.
Only Ravine also knew that the second phase was really only a part of the operational plan. Of course they were in orbit to appropriate the valuable resources that the Galactic Ore Corporation had been kind enough to leave stockpiled here. Those elements would be turned into fuel cells, blaster packs and various types of explosives and catalysts. But the operation in general had been conceived as a way to eliminate more Confederation forces. They'd been lured to this moon to die, and she intended to follow through.
Mithus was thinking fast, trying to decide how much to tell Captain Orjon. He'd been ordered to the installation to take inventory of the ore the mining company had supposedly left behind. On orders from the Governing Committee, the moon was on a list of approved targets, and once he'd verified the ore he'd called it in and was told to wait until the friendly forces had recovered the ore and left before he would depart as well. Those plans were obviously long since obsolete.
He and the captain were walking the perimeter of the city while inspecting the fortifications. Overall, it was a fairly defensible position. A large open plain to the east of the city was the best place to land. The mountains to the west and north, with their mines underneath, rose far up into the skies and created a natural barrier to easy movement. Dense forest to the south wound back behind the mountains, forcing any attacking ground force to approach from the east, just like Captain Orjon's Marines had.
He also knew about the EMP weapon. The SAR operatives had received a briefing cobbled together from many sources whose reports were more redacted information than text, and the end conclusion was that the Priman EMP weaponry was a game-changer. There was no available counter other than the possibility that some equipment wouldn't be affected if powered down. They weren't even sure if the weapons needed some sort of physical contact or if a proximity burst was all that was needed. However, this evidence was not properly validated, and so was considered unreliable. He could only guess as to why the nanites that inhabited his bloodstream were still functional. Maybe it was because they were designed to repair themselves as well as him. Maybe it was because they were more biological than artificial, or there weren't enough circuits to corrupt anyway. In any case, it didn't help him all that much now.
"I saw the fleet's transmissions," Mithus began. "And they're right; we can fight, or flee. But the Primans are going to come down here and get what they want from this place. There's just no way we can stop them without top cover. Do you have any orders that cover this?"
"You mean in case all our warships were destroyed and we were left down on the surface in a shooting gallery?" began Orjon in an exasperated tone. "No, I don't think they wargamed that scenario out." They walked on in silence for a handful of steps. "Alright," the captain continued, "sorry about that." He took a deep breath and continued. "I assume they want something from this mine, probably the same raw materials we were going to collect. If not, they would probably have just bombarded the surface until they'd created a nice glass-bottomed parking lot. You agree?"
Mithus nodded.
"So, I figure it's only right if we not let them have those materials. We could drop them back into the mine, blow the entrance, is what I was thinking. I wouldn't mind finding a way to not die in the process, either, but first thing's first: we need to hump their day."
"That, we can do."
The Priman ground commander, Azul, was done organizing his troops. His people hadn't fought any ground battles in the last few centuries, but had simply adopted Confederation and Talaran doctrine and copied their vehicles. In reality, this operation was an aberration; Primans fought in space, controlled the orbits above planets. They didn't have enough manpower to fully occupy and pacify every planet they'd taken, and had found it just as effective to leave capital ships in orbit that would obliterate anything on the surface that offended them. Having to land his own ground forces in order to capture these admittedly desirable raw materials was not his first choice of fights. Better to demand the Confeds on the surface do it for him or risk destruction. A civilian population would comply, but he'd learned from hard experience that the men and women of the Confederation military took a perverse joy in being difficult.
"Move up all elements," he said into his comm unit. Three swarms of Priman troops and vehicles surged away from their transports and lumbered towards the mining town.
CHAPTER TWO
"You're sure it will work?" asked Orjon of Mithus with a skeptical glance.
"Sure. Probably," Mithus conceded. "Look, we get enough debris in the air; even Priman sensors will take a beating. Your troops all have adaptive camouflage cloaks that will help as well. We occupy random buildings so they can't gauge our numbers, falling more people back every time we give ground. Then we take care of the mines and head all the way back through the forest to the southwest and back behind the mountain. Yes, they have the advantage and sooner or later they'll find us, but this give
s us a chance. At the very least it'll buy us enough time to get those minerals destroyed."
Orjon had to admit it was the best of the unpleasant options open to him. Mithus wanted to conduct a running retreat through the city, making the Primans fight their way through while the Confeds used guerrilla tactics to slow them down. Oh, and he also wanted to set the city on fire. He said that if they could generate a big enough firestorm and smoke/ash cloud, it would drastically hamper the Primans' ability to track them, which would give them time to accomplish their work at the mine and give them a chance to sneak out of town. It was a decent sized city; if the whole thing went up, it would make a hell of a mess.
Orjon had trained in urban tactics as well and together they'd laid out a plan. Only about one of every ten of his soldiers had a functioning weapon, though they'd managed to scrape together and cobble up an impressive array of explosives.
They stood now a block in from the eastern edge of town, watching as the Priman invaders approached. All of the Confed troops were using their adaptive camouflage cloaks to hinder the Primans' ability to detect them. They'd considered the city secure and stored the camo cloaks by the time the EMP torpedoes had gone off, and as a result they had powered right up. The cloaks attached to the shoulders of their web gear and received power from their body armor. Their function was to mirror their surroundings, helping them blend in instantly wherever they were. In addition, they masked IR and messed with silhouette detection gear. Couple that with their positions hidden in the buildings edging the town and the Primans were at a loss as to where their enemies were. It wasn't as good as the Confeds having their powered armor back, but it was better than nothing.