Steel Gauntlet

by David Sherman

  The Marines had drilled on boarding the vehicles several times over the past few days—the boarding was eerily quiet, few sergeants or corporals had to speak up to redirect Marines going the wrong way.

  Bass stopped at the open hatch of the Essay third platoon would ride down to Diamunde’s sea and waved Hyakowa past. The first squad leader headed directly to the Dragon two-thirds of the members of the platoon would ride in and stopped by its ramp to wave his men through. He entered the Dragon behind MacIlargie and walked the length of the vehicle’s interior, making sure his men were properly strapped into their acceleration webbing before taking his own place next to the ramp and locking down. The ramp was wide enough that Eagle’s Cry was able to board and inspect his men without having to wait for first squad to finish.

  Four minutes after Bass entered the well deck, all of third platoon was secured for launch. Vanden Hoyt had brought up the rear from the troop compartments and was the last to strap in.

  The Dragons’ computers registered that each acceleration position was occupied and all locks properly secured, then simultaneously notified the Dragon commander and the Essay’s computer.

  “Dragon One, secured and ready,” the first Dragon commander reduntantly reported to the Essay’s coxswain.

  “Dragon Two, secured and ready,” the second Dragon’s commander reported.

  The third Dragon commander echoed them.

  “Essay Alfa zero-four, ready to drop,” the Essay’s coxswain reported to the well-deck officer, though the Essay’s computer had already made the report. The redundancy of voice and computer reporting was to protect against failure of the sensor system and to provide assurance that not only were the troops properly secured for launch, but the vehicle commanders and coxswains were alert and aware of their individual situations.

  As soon as all Essays reported themselves ready, the well-deck officer said, “Well deck, stand by for zero atmosphere.” Even through the walls of the Dragon and the Essay outside it, the Marines could hear the whisper as the well deck’s air was sucked out.

  “Open drop hatch,” the well-deck officer ordered.

  Inside the Dragons the Marines felt rather than heard the opening of the bay hatches beneath the Essay.

  “Stand by for null-g,” the ship’s female voice intoned.

  The Marines braced themselves for a sudden loss of weight.

  “Null-g,” intoned the ship’s voice. “Three, two, one, mark.”

  The ship’s gravity generators shut off. Everywhere in the ship and on its surface, people and objects slowly drifted upward from whatever direction had been “down” for them. In the Dragons, there was a slight shifting of webbing as weight went away from the overhead support straps and the newly floating masses were pulled into equilibrium by the deck straps.

  The klaxons blared once again throughout the ship and within the Dragons. The computer’s female voice said soothingly,

  “Land the landing force.”

  The magnetic clamps that had held the Essays to the overhead of the well deck suddenly reversed polarity and the Essays were ejected straight down from the ship.

  The Marines all shouted, screamed, or bellowed to “equalize the sudden pressure” of the launch.

  One second and three hundred meters from the already closing bay doors, the Essays’ engines fired up and added three g’s of forward momentum to the four vertical. The roar of the Essays’ engines, soundless in the space outside it, was loud enough inside to drown out the screams of the passengers it carried in the Dragons. Small rockets on the bottom of the Essays blasted to cancel the downward motion of the entry vehicle; the aft retros fired more strongly than the forward ones to angle them so the main rockets gave the entry vehicles a slight downward thrust. Little more than ten seconds after launch, the Essays were already past the two-kilometer-long battlecruiser; only the downward thrust from their main engines kept them from being flung into a higher orbit. Finer adjustments brought the seven Essays together in formation.

  “Essay Alfa zero-four clear of the ship,” the Essay’s coxswain reported. “Position in formation visually verified.” The other Essay coxswains made the same report.

  “Wave one, properly formed,” reported the chief petty officer in command of the formation. “Request permission to commence atmospheric entry.”

  “Permission granted. On my mark, commence atmospheric entry. Four, three, two, one, mark.”

  The coxswains were all listening in on the command circuit. At “mark” they punched the buttons that controlled the topside attitude jets of their Essays. The Essays’ computers received confirmation from the ship’s launch control computer then executed the command. Small vernier rockets above the Essays’ noses pulsed to angle the reentry vehicles sharply downward and convert their orbital velocity into downward speed. Five seconds later the main engines shut off and the Essays went into an unpowered plunge at a glide angle calculated to take them fifty thousand meters above the surface in five minutes. There, wings would deploy and forward thrusters would fire to drop speed to something that could be controlled by powered flight.

  “Sound off,” Hyakowa ordered into his helmet comm unit as soon as the decible level in the Dragon was low enough to be heard.

  “Three-one-one-one, okay,” Leach immediately reported.

  “Three-one-one-two, ready,” Schultz replied.

  “Three-one-one-three, here,” Dean said.

  “Three-one-two-one...” Ratliff said, and on through the rest of the squad until every man had reported. On the other side of the Dragon, Eagle’s Cry had his squad report, as did every squad leader on every Dragon in the Essay formation. Squad leaders reported to platoon leaders, who reported to company commanders, who reported to the battalion commander, who reported to the FIST commander who was riding to the surface with the first wave—the executive officer would follow with K Company and the air element. Seconds after Commander Van Winkle’s report of all Marines ready reached Brigadier Sturgeon, the formation of Essays reached atmosphere and the shuttle craft deployed their wings and hit their retro rockets. The Essays shuddered violently and the men in the Dragons were bounced and rattled about in their acceleration webbing.

  “High speed on a bad road,” was how Marines described the fall from the top of the atmosphere to the beginning of powered flight fifty kilometers above the surface. It was an apt description. The fall through the middle thermosphere felt like the Dragon was driving at top speed on a coarsely graveled road, the gravel getting coarser the farther down they went. The lower thermosphere was an eroded roadway with potholes and bumps. In the mesosphere, some of the potholes seemed deep enough to swallow the Dragon whole, and some of the bumps should have flipped it over.

  The Essay formation spread out during its drop to the top of the atmosphere, so by the time the breaking rockets and deploying wings cut their speed and the angle of the shuttles’ dives, the Essays were two kilometers away from each other. That gave the coxswains the space they needed to rein in the reentry vehicles without risking collision. Once the Essays’ wings were fully extended, huge flaps extended from them to further decrease the Essays’ speed. When the wings finally bit into the thickening air hard enough for controlled flight, the coxswains turned off the braking rockets, fired up the atmosphere jets, and maneuvered the craft back into formation and into a velocity-eating spiral that slowed their descent as well as the shuttles’ forward speed. At one thousand meters altitude the coxswains pulled out of the spiral and popped drogue chutes. At two hundred they angled the jets’ vernier nozzles downward. Seconds later the shuttles rested on the surface of an ocean, a hundred kilometers off the shore of Oppalia.

  “Ready landing craft to hit the beach,” the shuttles’ coxswains ordered.

  “Landing Craft One, ready to hit the beach,” said the first Dragon’s commander.

  “Landing Craft Two, ready to hit the beach,” said the second Dragon’s commander, and so on throughout the formation.

  T
he Dragon commanders revved up their engines; the vehicles’ curtains fluttered and they rose from the force of the air cushions that lifted the Dragons off the deck. On command from the chief petty officer commanding the formation, the coxswains opened their aft hatches and lowered ramps, and the Dragons drove out to splash onto the surface of the water. In seconds twenty Dragons were in a column, zipping at top speed across the wave tops toward the distant shore. At their top water speed of more than 140 kilometers per hour, the Dragons would cross the beach in about forty minutes. During that time the commanders and leaders, from Brigadier Sturgeon on down to the newest fire team leader, reviewed with their subordinates what they were going to do if things worked as planned. And they reviewed their options if intelligence was wrong.

  Twenty minutes after the wave of Dragons flowed off their Essays, five more Essays opened their hatches and tilted forward at seven thousand meters altitude. Ten troop-laden hoppers slid out of them. The hoppers’ engines revved up immediately and they were in controlled flight by the time they free-fell a thousand meters. The hoppers gathered in formation and headed after the Dragons. Fifteen minutes after the hoppers slid out of their Essays, ten Raptors slid out of five more Essays at twenty thousand meters. It took two thousand meters of free-fall for the Raptors’ engines to kick in and take control. The Raptors gathered together and made one wide orbit before they streaked toward Oppalia. Both flights were synchronized to cross the beach at the same time the Dragons did.

  Since the highest rank attainable in Marston St. Cyr’s army was Major General, the rank he had selected for himself, brigadiers commanded corps, colonels divisions, and lieutenant colonels brigades.

  While Lieutenant Colonel Naseby Namur did not understand the reasoning behind St. Cyr’s army reorganization, he did know how to follow orders. For two months now he had sat with his command, the First Tank Brigade of the First Armored Division, at Oppalia, watching the miners go to work every day. Of the 410 Main Battle Tanks assigned to his brigade, 405 of them were ready for action, although during the time he had been at Oppalia, he was under strict orders to perform no maneuvers with the behemoths.

  During that time, his men had practiced tank gunnery in virtual reality chambers, attended to the endless maintenance tasks to keep their tanks and vehicles ready for combat, endured forced marches across the desert to keep themselves in top physical conditioning, and practiced maneuvers on sand tables. And the weather during that time of year in Oppalia had been terrible—cold, windy, wet; clouds and fog hid the sun for days on end. All that work and military routine was necessary not only to keep the brigade in fighting trim but to keep the men occupied, otherwise they’d all go nuts. The miners had their families and friends to return to at night; his men lived in drafty warehouses temporarily converted into troop barracks. Still, morale was high.

  Lieutenant Colonel Namur had spent the day in the motor park with his tank commanders, inspecting engines and weapon systems. It had been tedious work. He had just put his feet up and was about to pour himself a glass of wine when his communicator bleeped.

  “Lieutenant Day, sir.” It was the brigade staff duty officer. Irritated, Namur asked what it was. “General St. Cyr, sir. He wants all commanders to sit in on a secure videoconference in five minutes.”

  Namur swung his feet heavily to the floor and walked slowly to his command post, where his staff had already assembled. They stood when he entered. “Seats,” he commanded. They had just returned to their chairs when St. Cyr’s image appeared on the huge vidscreen set up at one end of the storage room that had been converted into the brigade command post. Everyone jumped to attention.

  “At ease, gentlemen.” St. Cyr’s voice boomed over the audio system. He was sitting at a desk, wearing an ordinary soldier’s battle dress uniform. His only badge of rank were two silver stars on a bracelet he wore around his right wrist. “A Confederation Navy amphibious assault fleet has arrived in orbit around Diamunde,” he announced. “We are already under attack here in New Kimberly. Our intelligence service estimates a force of at least 120,000 troops will be landed somewhere on Diamunde within the next seventy-two hours.” The men in the command post looked at one another nervously.

  “I am addressing all my commanders at once on this net because we are not sure just where the invasion force will land. As of right now you will put all your commands on one-hundred-percent combat alert. Stay in constant touch with my headquarters. Hold the invading forces if you can, delay them if you can’t. You will be reinforced. That is all.” The screen went blank.

  For several seconds nobody stirred. Then Namur was on his feet. “Battalion commanders! Issue live ammunition to every man. I want fifty percent of our tanks manned, engines running at all times; two shifts, twelve hours each. S-4, get down to the spaceport, I want command-detonated mines everywhere down there. Sergeant Major, get me the mine operator on the horn right now—we’re closing the goddamned thing down.”

  Awakened from a deep sleep by the insistent shrilling of the communications console beside his bed, Gregory Gurselfanks, operator of the Oppalia mining complex, answered sleepily.

  “Namur here, sir. The Noncombatant Evacuation Order is now in effect. Get your people to safety at once. Enemy attack is imminent.” The connection went dead; Namur had said all that needed to be said. Weeks before his staff had worked out an evacuation plan with Gurselfanks. Food supplies had been prepositioned deep within the mines, enough for the 3,000 miners and their families to survive for two weeks. Overland evacuation routes and transportation had been arranged for those civilians who might want to flee to New Kimberly or some other refuge.

  Gurselfanks, wide awake by that time, bounded out of bed. Within minutes he had assembled his staff and his people were gathering their few personal belongings. One thousand of them opted to flee Oppalia for a small village in Rourke’s Hills. Weeks later their remains were found inside their burned-out vehicles halfway there. Flying 2,000 meters above the desert at a speed in excess of Mach 3, Admiral Wimbush’s Raptors had mistaken them for a fleeing enemy column.

  The next few hours were controlled pandemonium. Finally Namur was able to find a moment to sit down. He asked a sergeant to bring him a cup of coffee. He glanced at his watch: already past three hours, and dark as pitch outside. He hoped in a few minutes he might be able to get some sleep, although it would have to be right here, in his command post. He was just putting the coffee cup to his lips when his wrist communicator bleeped. It was St. Cyr himself, broadcasting in the clear.

  “Colonel Namur. The invasion force will land in your area!”

  A tremendous explosion shook the building, and Namur spilled the hot coffee on his legs. He never noticed. “General,” he shouted, “they’re already here!” and was out the door.

  Chapter 13

  “Shore’s in sight,” Corporal Duguid, the Dragon crew chief, said into the squad leader circuit in his comm unit. “Everybody get ready. We’re going feet dry in three minutes.”

  “Roger,” Hyakowa and Eagle’s Cry said simultaneously.

  “Look alive,” Hyakowa said into his all-hands circuit. “Less than three minutes.”

  The Marines ran through the checklist for hitting the beach. They checked their webbing, no longer in the horizontal acceleration attitude but in the vertical surface-transit mode. Each man made sure his weapon was on safe and had a battery in the well. They checked the rest of their gear, then flipped down the infra screens on their helmets. Instantly the view inside the Dragon changed. The dim red lights that were the only illumination in the vehicle had shown twenty barely seen faces hovering at intervals along the two sides of the troop compartment. Through the infras, twenty ill-formed, bulky bodies glowed red.

  The Dragons maneuvered to change their formation from one line twenty abreast to two lines ten abreast. They couldn’t go ashore in the harbor proper, it was too heavily built up with wharves, piers, and seawalls, so there was no place low enough for the Dragons to climb over. To
the north and south of the bay were points of land. The point to the south was smooth, gently sloping beach, ideal for coming ashore. The Dragons headed toward the north point, which was boulder-strewn and sloped upward at nearly thirty degrees. General Aguinaldo and his staff had chosen that as the landing spot because they thought—hoped—it wouldn’t be as well-defended as the southern point.

  “Stand by for rough road,” Corporal Duguid said, but not all the Dragon crew chiefs alerted their Marines. The Dragons cut their speed from full to one-quarter so suddenly that the Marines were thrown toward the front of their vehicles. Only the webbing kept them from being dashed against the front wall of the troop compartments. The Dragons lurched and yawed violently as they abruptly transitioned from level travel on smooth sea to climbing over the rocks. The undercarriages screamed and clanged from striking boulders as the uneven surface ripped tufts of air cushion from underneath. The Dragons rocked and rolled their way up the slope, clattering so loudly no one inside them could hear the hoppers that whooshed by overhead or the Raptors that screamed in above the hoppers.

  Fifty meters beyond the water line, the top of the slope abruptly turned level. The Dragon drivers increased vertical air pressure to maximum as they topped the slope. Still, as the Dragons shot up over the lip of the slope they lost enough cushion that the front ends of the vehicles slammed against the ground, rattling everyone aboard. But the cushions puffed back up almost immediately, and the drivers prodded the Dragons back up to over one hundred kpm.

  The sudden increase in speed was the only thing that saved them.

  In response to Lieutenant Colonel Namur’s abrupt command, Company C of the 552nd Battalion, First Tank Brigade—forty-five TP1s strong—raced to its shore defensive positions at the north point overlooking the harbor entrance. The tanks were taking their places among the half-dozen ferrocrete bunkers, which should have been enough to successfully defend that rocky slope, when the first wave of ten Dragons roared over the slope’s edge and picked up speed.