Warzone: Nemesis: A Novel of Mars

by Morris Graham

  July 16, 1970—Fourteen Ten Zulu

  MAJ Termination hailed the first officer. “Sir, The scavengers have finished their refit, and have just left to go place the mines.”

  “Excellent! How much scrap do we have?”

  “Sir, if we build nothing but artillery pieces, we will run out of scrap by seventeen hundred today. By then the temporary post HQ structure will be finished, and our fittings, fixtures and equipment to finish the permanent HQ should be arriving by freighter. Once we have the environmental systems and lighting up at post HQ, we can unload the four ships we’re living out of and recycle them to make the last few artillery pieces and a couple of tanks.”

  “Very good, as you were.”

  “Sir, yes sir.”

  July 16, 1970—Seventeen Hundred Zulu

  Morale was an element of management just as well as food, equipment and weapons. The fact that the Americans had held all of the Soviets outside of artillery range was a victory of sorts. It bought them time to get ready for the attack that would surely come when the Soviet big guns arrived. COL Red Fangs decided that he wouldn’t take his supper on the bridge, but with the men in one of the freighters serving food. For the first time since being there, he was feeling optimistic about the siege to come. He hailed his first officer.

  “Bob, join me for supper.”

  “Sir, yes sir. Be there in ten.”

  The mess crew was serving spaghetti and meatballs, hard biscuits, fruit cocktail, and hot coffee. The redeeming quality of the spaghetti was that if you dumped enough hot sauce on it, it was edible. COL Red Fangs decided that if they lived through this experience, he would press for better grub. His first officer grabbed a tray and sat down, prayed and made the sign of the cross.

  “Here, try some good old Louisiana hot sauce. It makes the spaghetti bearable,” he said, grinning.

  “No, thank you, sir, I never developed a taste for it.”

  “That’s right, I forgot. Yankees don’t eat the stuff. In Texas, they just put a baby nipple on the hot sauce bottle and hand it to the kids when they run out of milk.”

  The post’s first officer was glad to see his commander joking again. Having the men see him laugh was good for morale.

  “Status report?”

  “Sir, the minelayers left to mine the path of the advancing Soviet artillery at fourteen hundred fifteen this afternoon. We now have nine artillery pieces on the line. We started building steel for the main post HQ building at ten hundred. The oxygen extraction plant is operational and is able to produce the oxygen we need for the main post HQ building and anything else.”

  “Any indication that the Soviets are sending anyone around to our back door?”

  “Sir, no sir. So far our satellite has accounted for all of the enemies’ tanks either escorting the artillery, at the Frost Crater, or on the Soviet front line.”

  “Keep an eye on them. We need some of the tanks to split off and make a run for our back door. It won’t be good for us if they don’t take the bait.” The colonel finished his meal, excused himself and went back to the bridge until it was time for bed.

  July 16, 1970—Eighteen Thirty Zulu

  COL Red Fangs retired to his quarters and read for a while from The The Art of War. He came to a passage of interest.

  “The siege of a city is only done as a last resort.” Master Sun

  Red Fangs consider the maxim by Master Sun and considered his situation. The last resort? For the Soviets, there was only one choice. Soon the Soviets siege on the American post would settle once and for all if the Americans could stay here. He placed a cassette tape in his player, took off his shoes and lay down on the bed. The Credence Clearwater Revival version of “The Midnight Special” played while he thought about the meeting.

  “Well, you wake up in the mornin’

  you hear the work bell ring.

  And they march you to the table

  to see the same old thing.

  Ain’t no food upon the table

  and no pork up in the pan.

  But you better not complain, boy

  you get in trouble with the man.

  Let the Midnight Special shine ‘er light on me,

  Let the Midnight Special shine ‘er light on me,

  Let the Midnight Special shine ‘er light on me,

  Let the Midnight Special shine ‘er everlovin’

  light on me.”

  As the music continued to play, he fell into a deep sleep. His cassette played until the tape ran out.

  LTC Judgment Day had gotten the Tigers–Cubs baseball game from last Sunday downloaded from the satellite and was enjoying the game in his quarters over a cold beer. The only thing better would be to watch it with his little brother. The game was a much needed distraction to help him unwind so he could focus later on the unfolding events ahead. His hometown team the Detroit Tigers, won 3–2, and he hit the rack.

  July 16, 1970—Twenty hundred Zulu

  The Lunar steel plant had completed building the structural steel for the shell of post HQ. The construction team moved quickly to put up the structure right next to the water and fuel tankers. The barracks were chiefly constructed of tungsten steel, a by-product of the oxygen extraction plant. Once the shell was put up, the construction crew would weld the seams and stress test the welds. All of the outside fittings would be welded into place, and finally the structure would be sprayed with fireproof insulating foam two feet thick, then when it set would be sprayed again with a heat reflective finish. The building wouldn’t be complete until the final environmental equipment and interior fittings would arrive on July 17, seventeen hundred.

  July 17, 1970—Zero Hundred Thirty Zulu

  COL Red Fangs washed the sleep out of his eyes, shaved, brushed his teeth, got dressed, and headed for the bridge. Now, that the brief but tense moment over the scavengers had passed, the calm before the storm continued. 1LT Boolean didn’t have anything unusual to report. His first officer joined him on the bridge for their daily meeting and to share breakfast in private. Both men grabbed their cups of coffee and breakfast trays, made their way back to the cargo hold and took a seat. COL Red Fangs held his peace in quietness as LTC Judgment Day prayed silently. His first officer finished by making the sign of the cross, and looked up.

  COL Red Fangs took the lid off of his coffee cup, blew on it and had a sip of the dark, bitter liquid. “Status report?”

  “We now have ten artillery pieces on the line. Our next fleet of six ships is to arrive at zero four hundred today with our last one hundred and twenty men, equipment and supplies. The minelayers are still out. In that regard, no news is good news since they’re on radio silence running in redfield mode and haven’t radioed a distress call. In any case, everything is running on or ahead of schedule, with two days until the artillery battle.”

  The post commander was silent. He knew full well he would lose most if not all of the sixty-four men of the artillery counter-battery during the Soviet attack. These men were cross-trained and highly skilled in other areas and not easy to replace, not to mention the values of their lives. He could see no other way to defend this post, but knowing that wasn’t making him feel any better. Regret hung thick in the air like cigarette smoke in a Subic Bay bar, and his first officer sensed what he was thinking.

  “I don’t want to lose any of the men either. We will go to any lengths to minimize the losses,” injected LTC Judgment Day.

  COL Red Fangs smiled as he remembered a quote by GEN Patton. “Yes, let’s see what we can do about getting the Soviets to die for their country, rather than our men.”

  “That will remain my priority, but even so, I expect the losses to be extreme.”

  “Make sure all of the men have the opportunity to go to church services the morning the Soviet artillery battery arrives if they wish.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  July 17, 1970—Fourteen Hundred Zulu

  The two squads of minelayers had returned and were in the process of being re
fitted back to scavengers. COL Red Fangs was watching the activity over his monitor with keen interest. The refitted scavengers would recover scrap from the artillery pieces lost during the artillery barrage. His second crew of men was eating breakfast now, and when done, all three hundred sixty men would be on duty at once, at least for a couple more hours. The pieces were all falling into place, and destiny was calling in two more days.

  The Soviets had broken off into four units of hovertanks and were doing routine patrols just outside of the perimeter of the American artillery range. The action had two purposes. The Soviets didn’t want any alloy-x salvaging going on, or anyone leaving the post to attack the artillery escort arriving on the 18th. It also gave the men something to do; COL Glaskov didn’t want them getting lazy from inactivity. The Soviets tanks swarmed like bees just outside of the American artillery range. Watching them day after day would take its toll on the men inside the post; the psychological warfare was every bit a weapon as his artillery or tanks.

  He looked up from the report he was reading and smiled. He remembered as a boy the day he cornered a fox in his hole and how a few smoking leaves brought him out of that hole and into his bag. He hoped that the American would not surrender—he would take much pleasure in killing him.

  The Soviet commander opened a communiqué from Moscow confirming his appointment to the politburo after the end of the campaign against the Americans. This called for a cup of tea, which he brewed while listening to the song “Zhenshchina, Kotoraya Poyot,” by his favorite Russian artist Alla Pugacheva.

  July 17, 1970—Fifteen Hundred Zulu

  The Americans had the shell of their post HQ up. They were waiting for the transports to deliver the fixtures to finish the inside, as well as the environmental equipment to regulate the temperature and air pressure. The next fleet of ships would have all the fixtures they needed and most of the post’s men would be working to finish the interior construction.

  The Soviet patrols had missed the minelayers, but the Soviet artillery escort didn’t know that. MAJ Ilya Tarasov of the artillery battery escort was keeping a close watch on his detail to make sure the Americans hadn’t planned any surprises for them. To lose even one artillery piece would end in a demotion for him. He’d been here since the Soviet post was constructed and had participated in obliterating the American post. With care, they should repeat their success, and the Americans would be through on Luna forever. They weren’t restricted to radio silence but were using an encrypted channel. By zero five hundred hours on the nineteenth he should have his detail safely to the front lines to start destroying the hated Americans. The landscape was boringly the same on this side of Luna, flat terrain with a thin brown layer of moon dust that kicked up in a small dust cloud when they passed by, and pock-marked with trillions of craters, some very wide and deep and others very small and shallow.

  The Soviet detail was flying with tanks in front, back and sides of the artillery, ever watchful of possible attack from the Americans. MAJ Tarasov’s last communiqué from the Soviet commander assured him that the Americans were cowering behind their defensive grid and were no threat. But, the major was sure the Americans weren’t cowards. He’d seen that in the siege of Eagle 1. A cook had shot three of his best men with a handgun before going down. The notion that they were just cowering behind their defensive grid and doing nothing made him uneasy.

  The proximity mine’s triggers were set so that the ones in front couldn’t be triggered by the smaller mass of a hovertank. This was done so that the lead tanks would drive over the front mines without triggering them. The artillery pieces with more mass would trigger the front mines, while the lead tanks would trigger the more sensitive mines further up. The moon shook violently under them as two tanks and an artillery piece were blown apart. No noise was made, but men seasoned in lunar warfare were accustomed to it. The officer in charge of the detail, MAJ Tarasov, was killed instantly, along with his wingman. The next in charge was CPT Yakov Dvorkin, who called a complete halt to the detail.

  “Back up and leave the exact way that we came in. Once we are five kilometers due east, we will halt, and I will lead you to the front line.&rdquo

  The Soviet detail carefully reversed their paths, and their new unit leader took them an hour north, to plot a new course to the front line. His best friend and unit leader had paid the price for carelessness with his life. COL Glaskov would be angry that an artillery piece was lost. Still, with no other losses of the big guns or their tanks, they should be able to beat the Americans.

  “Sir, our satellite just passed over the Soviet artillery battery.”

  “Well?”

  “I'm sorry sir. The Soviet artillery count is now nineteen pieces led by eight tanks.” He turned around and grinned. “It looks as though they lost a big gun and two tanks at the minefield, sir. The Soviets have deployed twenty tanks from their line to rendezvous with them. The artillery will be an extra hour and a half delayed to the line. They took a detour after being hit.”

  “Very good, inform my first officer.”

  “Sir, yes sir.”

  July 18, 1970—Zero Eight Hundred Zulu

  The factory had finished building the artillery pieces. The count was seventeen armored M110L (Lunar) hovercraft powered self-propelled howitzers, with a barrel length of forty-five calibers, firing 155mm HE shells. COL Red Fangs hoped this counter artillery battery would do the job of neutralizing the Soviet artillery barrage, when it came. He knew such a battle of two nearly equal artillery forces would result in extreme losses of men and equipment on both sides. Since there was no cover or high ground for either side, it would be an artillery slugfest until most of the men on both sides were dead. He would wrestle with his conscience later. There was no other way to play this hand.

  The factory was now busy building tanks with whatever scrap was found and the estimate was that only three more could be made. COL Red Fangs knew this was cutting it very close. The earlier comparison of Eagle 1 and the Alamo was made to raise the men’s fighting spirit. With all of the alloy-x scrap the Soviets harvested from Eagle 1, this was beginning to look like the Alamo. The only hope for survival rested on being able to destroy the Soviet artillery and whittle the Soviet tank regiment down to a number small enough to repel with five American tanks and their defensive grid. The colonel sighed. They had a big job before them, and timing was everything.

  The post HQ building was complete. Within thirty minutes, the terminator would cross their post and plunge them into darkness, dropping the temperature down to -170 °F. The solar array would be out for another two weeks, leaving the fuel-driven generators to provide power for the post HQ until then. The power grid was ready to power the environmental control systems to make the dwelling livable. The electrical and environmental control teams had finished the inside. The new tactical operations room was complete, with all equipment moved in and installed. Some teams were still working on setting up the mess hall and finishing some of the interior. The last four freighters to be recycled were being unloaded. When finished, all construction hands awake and not building tanks or working on the post HQ’s interior would be moving in. The command officers had their personal effects moved to their new quarters.

  CPT Watchful Eye and 2LT Surveillance stayed on the bridge while 2LT Codecracker and 2LT Algorithm set up and tested the new tactical operations equipment. After equipment testing and installing software on the workstations, it was time to test all systems. They ran quality tests to the satellite uplink, radar array, surveillance cameras, and the two radios in the working tanks. After proving their workstation computers performed as needed, they routed all surveillance, tactical and command functions to the new tac ops room.

  The men quickly unloaded the food, medicine and other supplies from CPT America’s command vessel into the post HQ building. CPT America bid his goodbyes, and within minutes the fire and smoke from the freighter America’s exhausts disappeared into the night sky. Only the barest and most essential thing
s were built until after the Soviet siege could be beaten back. The main focus was on post defense, and meager but livable quarters; the rest was on beans, bullets and bandages.

  July 18, 1970—Fourteen Hundred Zulu

  The demolition team used lasers to measure from a “witness line” in the center of the post to each mine hole. The tactical team loaded the coordinates to their computer. Whenever a Soviet tank rested over or crossed it, they would be ready to blow it manually if they wished, or set it to go off if passed over by a target. For now, the mines were armed but had electronic safeties preventing them from going off prematurely. COL Red Fangs would send the electronic command to remove the safeties on them all just before the battle, and decide if he wanted them set to manual or automatic activation. Burying them in solid rock was akin to loading a charge into a cannon: the rock walls being the barrel. The minefield was just outside of guntower range and would help reduce the number of enemy tanks that could threaten the post. Anything that survived the counter artillery battery and the minefields would face the American defensive grid and whatever tanks the Americans could muster. The defensive grid was comprised of artillery, mines, guntowers and gun turrets essential for their survival. Fifty-three tanks had to be reduced to a number the American tanks could handle.

  The post’s first officer joined his commander in the cargo hold for supper before turning in. LTC Judgment day was carrying his last two beers.

  “Thank you, Bob. Sit down.” He gratefully accepted the beer and pointed to the food cart. His first officer filled his plate and popped the cap off of his beer bottle, found a crate to sit on, prayed and started to eat.