by Jay Allan
About half a dozen non-coms had walked up behind him, and a burly sergeant began barking out instructions about getting us settled in. I told my senior corporal to see about the billeting, and I wandered over to where the rest of the unit commanders were already congregating.
A corporal led us to a maintenance shed where we were able to store our armor. I told the AI to pop my suit and, after asking me if I was sure (and I really hated having to repeat myself to a machine), it powered down the servo-mechanisms, and I could hear the latch-bolts sliding open.
The cool outside air felt great, and I climbed out, feeling as always a bit like a snail wiggling out of its shell. My kit was strapped to the back of my armor, and I opened it up and pulled out a uniform and boots. The room was full of naked Marines doing the same thing. We got dressed, and our kits were moved to our billets while we headed over to the briefing dressed in wrinkled but clean gray field uniforms.
Mostly the colonel repeated what he had told us on the landing field, but we got a bit more detail. First, we got some hard intel. The enemy was definitely going to attack, and probably within the next two weeks. And it was going to be a significant force. We didn’t have solid numbers, but it was a good bet we’d be hard-pressed to hold out.
Second, Colonel Holm had been far from idle. He’d had most of the civilians conscripted into labor battalions to help build defenses. The interlocking grid he had in mind was a lot closer to finished than I’d thought when he first mentioned it. Having just faced something very similar on Tau Ceti III, I wasn’t about to underestimate the effectiveness of hardened defenses, especially under a commander like Holm.
Our supply situation wasn’t ideal, particularly among the powered infantry units. Because our weapons had access to the energy generated by our suits, we were able to put out a lot of firepower. But this time we were low on ammunition, so we’d have to make our shots count. It was another reason why the colonel wanted to hold us as a surprise attack force. We’d be able to conserve ammo, and use it when we could hit the hardest and make it count.
After the initial briefing we went into a question and answer session. The colonel asked for input and opinions, and then surprised me even more when he knew most of our names and could identify us by sight. This guy was one hell of a leader. Sometime in the last day or two he’d accessed the personnel files from the Gettysburg computer and committed to memory the face and name of just about every officer and non-com.
We spent the next two hours or so looking at maps, reviewing proposed deployments and going through a few scenarios for ways our units might exploit opportunities. This was the first time I’d ever been in on an overall battleplan. It made an impression on me that Colonel Holm not only wanted to familiarize us with it, but he also asked for comments and input.
When we broke up I headed across the landing field to the billeting area. Our people had been housed in what looked like a dormitory for workers. I had just about enough time to check on the troops before evening mess.
Everything checked out. The troops were all settled in. In fact, most of them had grabbed a couple hours sleep while we were at the briefing. Good. I wanted them to get as much rest as possible while they could. We’d had a lot of downtime on the Gettysburg, but resting on solid ground is different than trying to relax on a spaceship. Between the variable gravity, the acceleration/deceleration periods, and very cramped quarters, sleep on a ship was never very restful, at least it never was for me.
No one was still asleep when the mess hall opened though. Since it wasn’t a combat landing we didn’t have to do all the intravenous feeding crap before, but they still didn’t give us breakfast before we embarked, and it had been almost 20 hours since we’d eaten. Except what we’d stashed, of course. They didn’t feed us, but we weren’t under orders to avoid eating as we would be before a drop. And Marines always have food stashed someplace. I’d eaten a couple energy bars I had stuffed in my kit, and most of the troops were significantly better scroungers than I was.
After mess I went back to my billet and crashed. I only intended to rest for an hour or so, but I just passed out, and it was morning before I stirred. The rest did me some good, and when I got up I felt quite a bit better than I had.
I got the troops organized after breakfast mess and formed up on the field to get our work assignments. We could move mountains in our armor, but the fighting suit wasn’t exactly designed for precision construction work, so we were ordered to report in our fatigues.
There was a curving line of large rocky hills—not quite small mountains—around the outskirts of the capital. Weston was certainly going to be a major target of the attack, and the ridge line ran along the flank of any approach to the city. An enemy moving against Weston would be caught between the flanking force on one side and the sea on the other.
Between the hills and the ocean was a broad, flat expanse of plains, mostly used for agriculture by the colonists. It was really the only practical land approach, so the enemy would have to come that way if they wanted to hit the capital. And most of the planet’s power generation and communications infrastructure was centered in Weston. If you wanted to control the planet you had to take the city.
Colonel Holm had constructed an extensive system of tunnels and underground bunkers beneath the hills, enough to hide at least 1,000 troops. Unfortunately, he only had about 600 of us to deploy there, so we didn’t waste any time enlarging the network. Instead we worked on camouflaging the whole setup. If we could convince the enemy they were only facing the entrenched militia in front of the city, we might achieve a real tactical surprise.
The tunnels were probably deep enough to avoid being detected by enemy scans, but it wasn’t practical to dig far enough down to be sure. So the colonel ordered the hillsides seeded with powered Iridium, which included a sizable amount of radioactive Iridium 192. This would require a large cleanup later, but for now it would interfere with enemy scans of our position. Rare on Earth, Iridium was one of Columbia’s major exports, a fact very well known to the enemy. Hopefully they wouldn’t be unduly concerned when they picked up so much of it on their scanners.
We moved supplies and ammunition into the bunkers so they were ready to go on a moment’s notice. We even had a buried communications line creating a physical link between the main positions in the event that all our other comm was jammed.
Ten days later we got to test out our deployments for real. The monitoring satellites around warp gate two sent their warning via a relayed comm laser. The enemy had arrived.
There wouldn’t be any naval battle; there wasn’t an Alliance warship in the system. Columbia did have an orbital defense station and a string of laser satellites. The system was mostly automated, but there was a crew, and they had to realize they were on a suicide mission. Without naval support there was no way the planet’s limited defense array could hold off a battlefleet.
Despite being outclassed, the defense grid could hurt the invaders before it was destroyed. The orbital fort’s weapons, though limited in number, were heavier than those on any mobile platform. The enemy would have to take the station’s longer ranged fire before closing to attack the forts. At least the crews would get to fight back before they were overwhelmed and destroyed. Small comfort, but something at least.
It took two days for the incoming fleet to reset its vector and reach attack range. By the time they engaged the station, my men and I were deployed deep in our bunkers. I followed the battle in space on the command comm line, with my AI displaying some helpful graphics on my visor.
The orbital stations were essentially missile platforms, and the weapons they fired were multi-stage, with a significantly greater effective range than shipboard equivalents. Before the enemy got to its own launch range, our missiles were already entering their point defense zone. The stations fired all 200 of its weapons, and 16 of them detonated close enough to targets to have a serious effect. One CAC battleship was destroyed, and six other ships were heavily damaged.
The return salvo was a little ragged as only one of the damaged ships was able to fire. But there were still over 300 missiles inbound and, with no maneuverability, the result was a mathematical inevitability. The stations’ countermeasures were highly effective but nevertheless inadequate to the task. Short-ranged pulse lasers savaged the incoming spread, and point defense missiles detonated, strewing the path of the incoming projectiles with clouds of heavy metals. Even a small chunk of iridium or depleted uranium was enough to destroy any missile that impacted it at high velocity.
Even with almost 90% interception, 40 enemy missiles detonated around the fortress, and they were vaporized in the nuclear infernos. In the confusion we thought some of the crew managed to evacuate in time using one of the shuttles, but I found out months later that no one had gotten off the stations. It had just been one of those bits of misinformation that spontaneously occur on the battlefield.
Before the missiles hit, the stations activated the defense satellites. Each one was a bomb-pumped x-ray laser. One-shot weapons, they were powerful enough to destroy a major ship on a single good shot. There were 40 of them, and they fired within 30 milliseconds of each other.
The most effective countermeasures against laser-fire were large torpedoes loaded with crystalline debris, informally called angeldust. The weapons were detonated along the projected path of fire, and the cloud of reflective particles diffused and scattered the incoming laser energy. While effective in theory, it is a difficult system to use, requiring a great deal of prediction on the path of enemy fire. The satellites around Columbia were new, and it turned out CAC intelligence hadn’t discovered them yet. Unaware and careless, the CAC task force never even got off a single angeldust shot, and they took our fire with no interdiction. Half a dozen enemy support ships were vaporized, and the lead battleship was holed in three places and knocked out of the formation.
The space-based defenses had acquitted themselves well, causing far more damage than we’d dare hoped. The enemy battlefleet was in rough shape, but it didn’t do much for us on the ground. The assault craft had been kept back out of range, and they were completely undamaged. If we’d had even a small naval task force available, we could have seriously contested the space above Columbia. But we didn’t’. All we could do now was sit and watch while they bombarded the surface and readied their landing.
It didn’t take long before the enemy was in orbit and the bombing began. I’m not sure whether they wanted the planet intact or if the damage they’d suffered drastically reduced their firepower, but the bombardment was short and relatively ineffective. Our bunker shook a few times as shots impacted nearby on the surface, but we took no real damage at all, and from the chatter on the command circuit I could tell that even the entrenched units on the surface had suffered only light casualties and some minor disorder. It could have been much, much worse.
Columbia didn’t have much in the way of ground-based defenses, so there really weren’t many targets besides the troops themselves. It was hard to do too much damage to entrenched infantry from space, at least without totally wasting the planet, so once they’d knocked out the few anti-air batteries we had, the landings began.
Sitting in the bunker I flashed back to the nine times I’d stepped into a launch bay for an assault. Today the enemy was doing that, and we were waiting—as they had for me so many times. This was my first defense, and I felt oddly helpless, sitting and waiting for the attack.
I knew the assault would be virtually unopposed. First, we really didn’t have much in the way of effective weapon systems against incoming landers. Second, I knew Colonel Holm wanted to get them on the surface and deceive them into underestimating our true strength, so we could ambush them. He wasn’t about to make us look stronger by putting up a futile defense against the initial assault.
The colonel had managed to hide a couple of surface-to-air sprint missile launchers from the bombardment and, as much for show as for effect, we did launch a bit of an attack on the landing craft. Our fire was actually pretty effective, and we took out nine ships—and forced the rest to scatter into a defensive approach, disordering their landing pattern.
The CAC landers were bigger than our Gordons, each carrying one of their 18-man tac-teams. So that was over 150 casualties before they hit ground. Not bad considering we really didn’t have much of an air defense.
The tactical computers were furiously analyzing the size of the landing and the tonnage and number of assault vessels in orbit to create a projection of the attacking force. When that estimate came it matched my own unofficial one. We were facing a brigade-sized attack force.
A CAC brigade was about 6,500 strong, divided into ten of their tac-forces plus supporting elements. CAC tac-forces were the rough equivalent of one of our battalions. Based on their standard organization, two of those tac-forces would be powered infantry and the rest normal line troops, though the exact setup was mission-variable. There was a good chance they would have a higher proportion of assault units for an attack like this.
The enemy’s landing zone was centered on a flat plain about 10 kilometers from Weston, well within range of our infantry’s mortars and rocket launchers. They immediately opened fire and caused significant casualties while the attacking units were forming up and shaking out of disorder. The corresponding CAC formations quickly deployed and began returning the fire. We were entrenched and they weren’t, but there were a lot more of them. I wasn’t in the line of command to get streaming casualty reports from the surface, but I was sure we were starting to take losses.
The enemy could have deployed a greater distance from Weston, out of our initial fire range. We hadn’t positioned any defenses farther out. But they’d decided to trade casualties for time, accepting some additional losses to position themselves to attack immediately. CAC doctrine was considerably more tolerant of losses than ours, and if a battle was won, there was little concern for the casualties it took to secure that victory.
The attack force formed up surprisingly quickly and began its advance. Impressive discipline, much better than most CAC forces. Not a good sign—these were well drilled troops. Our forces on the surface were going to have their hands full.
The enemy approach was pretty much straight out of the book. Any advance in the open would become a bloody mess almost immediately, so standard tactics called for unloading everything you could against the defenders to give them something to worry about besides shooting at you.
It was also helpful for the attacker to obscure battlefield conditions as much as possible. We had state of the art targeting systems, battle computers, and enhanced optics, but all of these resources were subject to degradation. Dust and smoke interfered with laser targeting and, once the battlefield was full of heat sources, clear scanning became much more difficult.
The CAC support units blasted our positions with mortars, rockets, and several batteries of small artillery pieces while their infantry advanced. The enemy troops used the craters and irregularities of the ground to leapfrog their advance, just as we would, though the CAC forces were far less cautious than any of our units. They rushed their advance, covering more ground in each push—at the cost of additional time exposed and heavier casualties.
I certainly didn’t approve of their priorities, but I had to admit they closed the distance to our troops very quickly. Their first wave was barely a kilometer from our first defensive line, and the second was landed and almost formed up.
The troops manning the trenches were mostly militia. About half the unarmored Marine units were thrown in for stiffening, and the other half were positioned in the rear as a ready reserve.
The attackers seemed to be suffering losses considerably in excess of projected rates, but it wasn’t until they were fully engaged with our forces that we got the full report. The CAC force had no powered infantry units and no fighting vehicles. That was a surprise. They still had the numbers to overwhelm our apparent defenses, but they would suffer far greater cas
ualties. Probably three-quarters of the hits that took down one of their troops would have deflected off powered armor.
Ignoring the enormous losses they were suffering, the leading units began to assault our positions, overrunning the sparsely deployed defenders. Our defensive lines were designed to draw the enemy in so we could hit them from behind once they were fully committed. The strategy worked—almost too well—and the attackers sliced through our first three lines in several places.
The assault force had suffered at least 1,500 casualties, but they kept up the pressure, and the combat intensity increased significantly. The colonel shifted reserves constantly, launching focused counter attacks wherever there was a vulnerability. The CAC support units kept firing even after the lines were intermingled, and they took out as many of their own troops as ours. But they had a 6-1 edge on the surface and could take the losses. We couldn’t.
I kept waiting for the colonel to give us the order to move out. The enemy was heavily committed, with only support units and a few guards in the rear. It was perfect timing. But nothing. Not so much as a squad was committed from the flanking force. I couldn’t understand. Our troops on the surface were getting shredded, but we just sat.
My AI updated the projections on my visor. The enemy had pushed back to our final line of defenses. We’d bled them, but our units were down to 50% strength and running low on supplies. The situation was beyond critical, but still no orders to advance.
Holm did throw in the half dozen tanks, and they helped stabilize the line at the weakest spot, but it had turned into a bloody knife fight, and we weren’t going to win it. I had just asked myself for the tenth time why we were sitting here when my AI said, in its usual robotic voice, “Landing craft inbound.”
Fuck. Another wave. We were in serious trouble.