“Group B will ostensibly be preparing for a large construction project. They will be setting up their encampment and preparing their support assets, but much of their equipment will necessarily remain in the containers until the beginning of the active phase. I understand that, due to some paperwork snafu, the bills of lading and stenciling on the containers may not accurately reflect the contents of the containers destined for this location.”
There were some chuckles, and the display changed again, to a movement map.
“The active phase will entail the Aviation Battalion establishing air superiority and protecting Group A until Group B can move in support and secure the location. This should take about two hours once the ball goes up. Assets will then move against our ultimate objective here.”
Turley pointed out the walled government enclosure.
“Our goal is not to destroy this location, but to neutralize it and seal it up, forcing a surrender. If forced to, we will reduce this target, but we will do so with extreme prejudice. Since they’ve been kind enough to wall up all the rats in one place, we’ll do it the easy way. So we’re not going to do any of that building-to-building, room-to-room crap you all love so much. Sorry.”
There were chuckles at her sarcasm and more than a little relief at her determination not to risk their men on nasty urban warfare. When the noise died down, Turley continued.
“During the active phase, resistance assets will move as shown in the simulation, and our options as we go along will be informed by aerial reconnaissance.
“The support phase will entail us neutralizing any remaining pockets of organized opposition while the resistance assets perform policing duties and work to reinstate the government quo ante.
“The key elements of this plan include: 1) that we will be able to effectuate landing our assets on the planet without any resistance; 2) that we will decapitate the regime security forces at the very beginning of the active phase; 3) that we will have the active support of substantial resistance forces; 4) that the ultimate target is already walled and isolated from the rest of the population; and 5) that we will establish air, commo, and recon superiority early in the active phase and maintain it throughout.
“We will now discuss the elements of the plan in detail, after which I will entertain questions.”
After the briefing, General Turley, Colonel Jensen, and Command Sergeant Major Gordon met privately in a conference room simulation.
“How did things go with training, Hank?” Turley asked. “Are we where we need to be?”
“We’re close, Ma’am. And staff loaded up our simulation software on the liner’s VR system, so we have seven more days in the simulators while we’re in hyperspace.”
“I sent you the full three-D package for the planet, along with the operations plan, so you should be able to drill the op itself on the way.”
“That’s great, Ma’am. We won’t disappoint.”
“And remind everybody we’re gonna have ten thousand resistance guys running around with SBRs, Sir,” Gordon said. “They should all be in Marine-issue vests, and wearing IFFy-covers, so it shouldn’t be too hard to miss ‘em.”
“Got it. Thanks, Sergeant Major. We’ll remind everybody.”
“All right, then, Hank,” Turley said. “We’ll see you in ten days or so. Have a good crossing.”
“Thank you, Ma’am. We’ll see you then.”
And with that, Turley cut the channel.
Jensen let the captain of the Nebula Dreams know their conference was over, and the big ship turned toward the Alexa hypergate.
“All right. This has gotta be done right, or it’ll fuck up everything. Everybody know what they’re about? You all got the schedule?”
Heads nodded up and down the row of communications consoles.
“All right. Watch for it.”
A simulation was playing of a sergeant major addressing a room full of swells.
“Everybody be seated, please,” the sergeant major said.
When the crowd had taken their seats and the conversations had died down, the sergeant major continued.
“OK. Let’s get started. Today we will be familiarizing you with a number of new weapons systems with which your forces are being provided. We will start with the short-barreled rifle, or SBR, and move up to bigger and bigger systems as the day proceeds.”
“Now!” the first sergeant running the comm center said.
The QE console operators were first. They brought down the colony’s QE radio links to the rest of humanity. With its own secure QE node, the brigade wasn’t cut off, but off-planet links were currently limited to command staff.
“QE’s down.”
“Confirmed. QE is down.”
Next was the operator of the VR suppression equipment mounted in the roof rafters of the warehouse. He turned on the suppressors, cutting off all the swells in the room they were monitoring from the planetary VR system.
“VR suppression is active.”
“Confirmed. VR suppression is active.”
The first sergeant gave a thumbs up to the major monitoring the action, and he relayed status to brigade command over VR.
“Go active. Go active. Go active.” the order came in over VR.
Two dozen aerial reconnaissance drones shot into the sky, their operators watching for any hostile forces on the move, most especially air assets.
Six armored assault shuttles spooled up and leapt into the sky after them. They spread out around the encampment and the equipment stores near the terminal building, heaviest on the side toward the city. Two of them fired guided missiles that shot off toward the Government Center complex.
“Bogeys three inbound at one-five.”
“Weapons free.”
“Targets acquired.”
“Targets confirmed. Fire.”
“Firing one.”
“Firing one.”
“Firing one.”
“Targets destroyed.”
“Damn, that was nice. They ‘sploded and everything.”
“Yeah. Some simulations are better than others.”
The column of M15s was speeding down the highway into Monroe, the larger buildings of the central core of the city visible on the horizon. They turned in at the spaceport, where half a dozen assault shuttles hovered in the sky, keeping watch over the troops and equipment below. Hard on their heels came the APCs. The formation split up as it entered the spaceport, with one company each of M15s and APCs taking perimeter watch, while the other companies paused only long enough to form up into their platoons.
“Damn, I forgot how much fun this is,” the driver of one M15 said.
“It’s always fun until they start shootin’ at ya,” his tank commander said.
“Yeah, but then we get to shoot back. That’s its own kind of fun and games, right there,” the gunner on the big gun said.
“Hopefully, we don’t even use you, Blooey.”
The gunner’s name was Louis, but the obvious nickname stuck.
“Aw, really?”
“Yeah, we’re supposed to let ‘em surrender. OK, here we go.”
Their platoon headed out of the space port on a surface street, heading for the Government Center. They knew the way, and they raced down the street toward the downtown.
“Yee-haw!” the driver called as he accelerated away after skidding around a corner.
“Damn, these buildings and all look almost real.”
“Yeah, for a simulation, it’s a damn good one.”
“They didn’t surrender?”
“No.”
“What do we do now?”
“Take it down.”
“All of it?”
“All of it. Shuttle jockeys go first. Punch out the wall, though. Get ‘em looking our way while the shuttles go in.”
“Why do they always get to go first?”
“Because they’re prima donnas and have to go home before they get tired.”
Each of the dozen M15s alo
ng this side of the Government Center shot a single round at the base of the compound wall in front of them. Up and down the wall explosions blossomed. When the smoke cleared, the gap-toothed wall seemed to grin at them.
Then the shuttles hit. Big demolition rounds, dropped directly onto the center of buildings. They were penetrators, and went off deep in the buildings. The larger structures the tankers could see over the wall wavered and then collapsed.
“OK. We just got the all clear. Let’s roll.”
The tanks advanced up to and through the gaps in the wall, climbing over the rubble.
Once inside, they started firing.
The patrol of two M15s rumbled down the street. They were taking their time, looking to draw fire from any regime forces remaining after the surrender. After they had passed a side street, a van pulled out and chased after them up the street.
The rear osmium impeller of the trailing M15 opened up on the van, ripping it open and splattering the half a dozen men inside.
“Got ‘em!” the gunner yelled.
“You wouldn’t happen to have checked for IFFy-covers, did you, Cortez? ‘Cause I think you just splashed some friendlies.”
“Ah, shit. Really?”
“Yeah. Didn’t I tell you to keep the interlocks on?”
“But I don’t like interlocks. The make the gun not work.”
“They make the gun not work when it’s pointed at friendlies. That’s the point. Now turn ‘em on.”
“All right, all right.”
“Come on, everybody. Tighten it up. This is a simulation, not the latest VR game. Splash friendlies for real and there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Damn. We been in the simulators so much the last seven days, it feels weird to be eatin’.”
“Yeah, but you noticed how much cleaner we been gettin’? We’re really tightenin’ up on the plan.”
“Cleaner, yeah, but the opposition forces have been gettin’ nastier.”
“They been dialin’ the simulation up since we started. That’s almost like real opposition now.”
“Do you think the real opp force is gonna be that tough?”
“Well, with the way we been simulatin’ the last couple days, it won’t matter much, will it?”
“Yeah, I guess not.
“That’s why we do it. Why, I could drive aroun’ in downtown Monroe now without a map or nothin’. We get there, it’s gonna be like old home week.”
Seven days after leaving Alexa, the IPS Nebula Dreams and the ICV William Kemp dropped out of hyperspace within two hours of each other. It was midday at the drop zone when they arrived in orbit about Julian, so the shuttle pilots got busy bringing down the containers for the encampments.
Setting Up
With hours of notice before the arrival of the ships in orbit, Lyle Boardman and Lucas Joubert, the engineer from the infrastructure department, were out at the drop zone to see the containers come in. Of course, the Secret Police were also there. This time, Boardman had also brought his wife, Fran Kersey, to see the containers come in.
Despite all Boardman’s enthusiasm for the whole process, however, it was clear Kersey could have cared less. She sat in the back seat of the four-wheel-drive crew cab construction pickup with thinly disguised boredom.
“Yeah, women don’t get it,” Boardman complained to the sympathetic Joubert. “I live for this shit. Watchin’ those big shuttles come in, the construction camp go up. It’s fuckin’ great. And just wait until we get those big machines movin’, shovin’ stuff around. There’s nothing like it.”
Joubert nodded. He was looking up into the early afternoon sky, watching for the incoming shuttles.
“Look. Is that one there?” he asked.
Boardman followed his pointing finger.
“Look again. That’s four of ‘em.”
Sure enough, as they got closer, the track resolved into four separate contrails against the crisp blue sky. As they got closer, one split off from the rest, dropping toward the city.
“Where’s that one going?”
“There’s gonna be an encampment at the spaceport, too, for the training people or somethin’. I don’t know much about that. But those three are coming here.”
“Ah.”
They were parked well outside the corner markers of the encampment site, to stay out of the way and the wash of the big cargo shuttles. They watched the shuttles come down and line up with finicky precision on marks only they could see in their site plans. With twelve containers apiece, in three layers of four, they each set down their first four, moved a bit, set down another four, moved about some more, and set their final four. When they released from their final four, they spooled up their engines and, unburdened, virtually leapt into the sky.
Boardman clapped Joubert on the back.
“Ha! Isn’t that great?”
“So that’s it?”
“No, that’s just the first load. I think there’s probably another two trips for each of ‘em.”
“That would be, what? A hundred and eight containers? Does that include the equipment, too?”
“Nah. That’s just for the camp. But it should be ninety-six containers, I think. One of those other trips must have two shuttles for the spaceport or somethin’.”
“That’s still a lot of containers.”
“Takes a lot o’ guys to build a dam. They’ll come down tomorrow. The whole camp will go up in a day. Couple-three thousand guys. Like a whole city, almost.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Then they’ll bring down the equipment. Those containers will go over there,” Boardman said with a broad sweep of his arm. “Maybe another hundred. But those will be eighteen-foot wide jobs, and heavy. They won’t bring those down twelve at a time.”
“This is really something.”
“It’s a big project. To build a big project, you need big manpower, and big machines. And I love it. It really gets in your blood.”
Boardman jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Not that she would understand it.”
They watched the shuttles come in two more times, with Boardman hooting with enthusiasm each time.
And in the pickup truck, Kersey – a.k.a. Brigadier General Ann Turley – watched through slitted eyes with feigned boredom.
It was an oh-dark-thirty wake-up call aboard the Nebula Dreams. After mess it was straight to the waiting passenger shuttles. It would take several trips to transfer all the personnel groundside, and they still had to set up the camp when they got there.
The first shuttles down were therefore the lesser specialties – not the tank crews or the shuttle pilots or the communications guys. These first personnel would once again be first-in, the guys who started building the encampment from scratch, though not without a certain amount of grumbling.
“First-in again. Shit.”
“Hey, if you keep doin’ it long enough, you might get good at it.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t mention it.”
A first sergeant walked into the hall where they were queuing.
“All right, all right. Kwitcher bitchin’. Save that energy for the tent stakes. Now make sure you get on the right fuckin’ shuttle, so you end up at the right fuckin’ LZ. We don’t wanna have to be ferryin’ some dumbshit around. Signs in the hall, signs over the shuttle doors. Spaceport or dam site. Make sure you get it right.”
The queues moved forward as they boarded, then the first transfer was loaded and the shuttles unlatched for the trip down to the planet.
Boardman and Lucas Joubert, the infrastructure department engineer, together with their ever-present Secret Police escort, watched the first load of personnel shuttles come down at the dam site. The new arrivals started breaking open containers and pulling out the tents. They all had the target layout of the encampment available in VR, and, together with the RFID survey stakes and geolocation from the VR, were able to begin setting up the structures.
“Well, they sure are
a disciplined bunch,” Joubert said.
“They have to be,” Boardman said. “Lots of dangerous equipment running around a construction site. The lazy and the sloppy get weeded out pretty quick. We send the family a real nice card. Besides, no mess tent, no meals. No barracks tents, no sleeping out of the weather.”
“Makes sense. It’s fun to watch them work. Getting everything laid out and all. Just the purposefulness of it.”
“Yeah. It’s hypnotic. In training for these jobs, they show the set-up of a construction site in time-lapse mode. It’s great fun to watch.”
Joubert nodded as he continued to watch. The workers were pulling the main poles up on a big tent in the rough center of all the activity.
“What’s that big one there?”
“Mess tent,” Boardman said. “No matter what else you’re about, you gotta feed everybody.”
“Ah. Well, I have to say it’s amazing to see it all starting to happen. It seems like we’ve been planning this a long time.”
“Oh, I agree completely,” Boardman said without irony.
They watched the progress for another hour before they headed back into town.
Kersey was back in the hotel room, pretending to sulk after being dragged out to the dam site yesterday for the cargo shuttle landings. In point of fact, she was logged into her virtual command headquarters, getting reports on progress and watching the video feeds from both sites as the encampments went up.
The encampment on Alexa had actually been built as two separate sections, located next to each other. Here on Julian, the two sections were being set up almost sixty miles apart. She had fretted about everything getting to the correct place, but, based on what she was seeing so far, the NCOs had it all well in hand.
The equipment should come down day after tomorrow. Another day or two to set it all up. They were getting close. Kersey looked at the weather reports for the next week, at the projections for readiness from her subordinate commanders, and the preliminary calendar for the training of Security Ministry senior management.
EMPIRE: Intervention (EMPIRE SERIES Book 13) Page 9