by J.J. Mainor
Chapter 9
The RS Freedom glided through the star system with LX-925 forward in the view screen. The ship itself, still a tiny speck, was barely more relevant than a speck of dust hovering in a roomful of air. A network of satellites hidden throughout the system served as a detection grid for potentially hostile ships on approach. It would be amazing for anyone to spot such an insignificant object, but no doubt the miners on the planet had detected them. Freedom’s crew had tapped into the system themselves looking for other specks in the room; any ships that might have been replicated to hold them off.
“All quiet,” Dorsey announced, inspecting the signals coming in to his station.
“Stay frosty. They could be hiding behind a moon or an asteroid.”
Remy and Anders watched on nervously from the rear. Though the inhibitors were operational, Remy couldn’t get the image of his heart being removed from his chest, or his lungs, or his brain, or whatever organ the miners decided to target. Desperate men were known to do desperate things, and he couldn’t imagine too many men more desperate than a group of blue collar workers facing a military assault.
As Anders had briefed him on their way to this spectacle, those men were not entirely defenseless. Their scrambler gave them the ability to create small warships in the event a hostile nation decided to make a grab for the world. Their database included specs for all kinds of weapons, including small arms. It was the smaller weapons concerning Freedom the most because it gave the miners a means to drag out the conflict.
Ships and space-based weapons required materials. Being mined out, this planet could only supply enough material for two or three small ships. The RS Freedom could take them out and put that threat behind them. A rifle though, required far less raw material to manufacture; the bullets even less. As they neared the planet without resistance, Colonel Freedom knew the worst of this mission would be in his XO’s hands on the surface.
Riggs directed the ship into orbit. Freedom turned to his Communications Officer who confirmed the space around them was still clear.
“I’m still not detecting any ships.”
“Then drop the primary inhibitors and the secondary one over the main scrambler.” Freedom pushed the com button on his own control pad to signal the go ahead to his XO.
The surface of the planet was an endless field of bare, dark rock. Dust was hard to come by as was the atmosphere. Heat from below was not. Two years of mining had reduced the planet to near nothingness, and in the far distance, lay the barely visible compound responsible for this stark landscape.
Colonel Fortune materialized on the deserted plain in his armored suit. A scrambling unit appeared beside him with three massive cargo containers behind. His first order of business was replicating a series of inhibitors in a wide perimeter. Placed far enough out, they could create a protective ring while leaving the center free for scrambling. He could scramble to his heart’s content without fear of the miners scrambling him.
He set to work scrambling the troops from the ship’s personnel files. A hundred at a time, all within their own armored suits. There were no names or insignia distinguishing the men. The silver oak leaf on his own helmet was the only thing identifying Fortune as an individual from this group of drones. His orders were issued over the radios in the helmets: this first group was to replicate the structures, supplies, and other materials required to set up their Forward Operating Base.
The nameless, faceless army set to work erecting the huts. The FOB was nothing fancy. Fortune didn’t expect he would need it for long, but he did need a place where he could study reports, resupply his troops, and deal with the casualties away from the immediate danger. The hut erected for his office already had a desk and chair for him to work from, but his attention was needed at the scrambler.
These men were too green and inexperienced to trust with the equipment. If left alone and unsupervised, there was no doubt they would begin to manufacture alcohol or games to distract them from the job at hand. He would surely step from his hut to find half his troops somehow drunk, and the other half already dead.
Beyond the immaturity, most of the plans he scrambled up were classified. The officers all had clearance, even all those lowly lieutenants back on the ship, but there were reasons beyond irresponsibility why the enlisted troops could not gain access. This was no time to reflect on the military’s secrets, so Fortune began replicating the rifles they would be using to storm the facility.
Each of the armored suits they all wore contained a personal inhibitor embedded within the metal. These inhibitors, like those on the ship and around his FOB protected the wearer from energy weapons and malevolent scrambling even though their smaller size limited the protection to smaller arms; the blast from a shipborne cannon would not be disrupted enough to protect a man.
One necessity of the personal inhibitor was that its protection barely extended beyond the armor of the suit. Each of the rifles was equipped with a Class 1 scrambler that allowed each bullet to be manufactured as needed from materials in the surrounding environment. There was no need to weigh each man down with excess ammunition, nor was there any fear of running out should the battle become protracted. The narrow field of the personal inhibitors kept the tiny scrambler just outside the disruption field. Of course there was always the possibility the end of the rifle could be scrambled out of a soldier’s hands, but with a force of thousands against at most a handful of scramblers, such a tactic would prove impractical in combat.
As the men finished the last touches on their base, Fortune continued scrambling more troops, still a hundred at a time, and sent them forward in formation. There had been barely fifty miners and support personnel stationed in this complex, but there was no telling how strong their forces had grown in preparation for this conflict.
He looked out across his field, his pride in this moment shielded behind the mask of his helmet. The mining facility was several kilometers away. The march would be grueling as the men got underway in their heavy armor. There would be no stops for water or food. Removing the helmets meant instant death in what remained of this thin atmosphere. There would be no rest. Out in the open, they would be sitting ducks for the miners, and depending on the type of ammunition they were using, the armor may or may not be effective. But these men were the elite of the elite. Their survival on this field of battle depended strictly on their ability to break through whatever defenses lay ahead.
Odds against them on this open plain, the men marched onward in columns ten wide. The rifles remained slung over their shoulders for the time being as they pushed forward in lockstep. Fearless and practiced, this could have been formation during boot camp. The only thing missing was the cadence.
On the bridge of the Freedom, the officers watched on through Fortune’s helmet camera. Remy felt near-disgust that a force this size had been deployed against a few civilians. It seemed excessive to him. His job on this ship was to watch this unfold, and he couldn’t stand the sights. He needed no excuse to retreat to his quarters.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’d rather monitor this in my quarters.”
Fortune stopped him as he turned to the door. “Don’t leave now, Doctor. Things will start to pick up in a couple hours.”
The Colonel chuckled as Remy ignored him and led Anders off the bridge.
“Do we really have a couple hours before the fighting starts,” Remy asked.
“Maybe longer.”
In his quarters, Remy took up a suit of armor he had scrambled for himself, painted powder blue with the letters “UN” in large white print on the chest, back, and helmet. He slipped the pieces onto the appropriate parts of his body and locked them in place. It reminded him of the flak jackets and helmets he used to wear when entering the war zones back home, except this was heavier and more elaborate.
As he took up the helmet, he paused to admire the letters at the top, and the reflection of his own face in the visor.<
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“Don’t expect those letters to protect you,” Anders warned. “Whatever you think of us and our tactics, those men down there will be far worse.”
Remy understood. Whatever their gripe, they were desperate; and they had a Class 12 scrambler at their disposal. There was no telling what specs they had collected in their database, or what horrors they could conjure. He only had a couple hours at most if he hoped to de-escalate the situation and prevent the universe of regrets that were sure to unfold here.
He placed the helmet over his head and locked it in place. Anders magnetically fixed a small control box to his wrist.
“That’s a remote control for this scrambler so you can get back up here when you’re ready. Now I can deactivate certain inhibitors so your signal can pass through, but you’ll have to radio me before you transport. I can’t leave the field down longer than I have to.”
Anders handed him a rifle and pointed to a small button on the chest of the armor. “This is your personal inhibitor. The very first thing you do when you get down there is push the button and activate it. If you hesitate for even half a second, they could catch you with their scrambler. I promise you they won’t save your life pattern before they store your atoms.”
With that, Anders backed away from Remy and went to the computer at the desk. Since Remy had already networked it with the ship’s computer system, all he had to do was push a few buttons to deactivate a couple select inhibitors. Without hesitation, Remy pressed the button on the remote control and vanished in a flash of light. Then as quickly as he created it, Anders pressed a few buttons to close the hole again. Remy was on his own on the surface.