by C H Gideon
Xi barely had time to catch her breath before Elvira’s alarms once again screamed in warning: thirty missiles inbound.
With Two Launcher still down for at least another fifteen seconds, Xi had no choice but to launch just half of her mech’s potential arsenal of rockets from the still-functioning tubes. “4th Platoon, intercept missiles,” she barked, knowing that this time, it would be difficult to snipe them all before they arrived. “Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Eight rockets sprang forth from Elvira’s functioning launcher and were soon joined by twelve from Cave Troll. Even with twenty rockets in the air, only ten of the inbound missiles would be met by anti-missile rockets. The engagement book was clear on this point: no fewer than two rockets were to be sent against any given Jemmin missile. She had already seen a twenty percent miss rate on her own rockets, so Xi knew that the book was right.
Jemmin ordnance was so potent that it only took one missile strike to scrub a mech. Even one as robust as Elvira.
Railguns stabbed into the sky from every mech in range to lend fire support. 4th Platoon’s anti-missile rockets tore all ten of their targets down, and the railguns brought another eight down. But the railguns were beginning to miss nearly half the time, and she had just three seconds before the missiles would impact.
Unleashing the interception drones that had arrived via drop-can mere hours earlier, Xi activated thirty of the already-flying devices, putting them on intercept courses with the inbound missiles.
Blinding flashes and deafening reports overpowered her senses, which were protected from the harsh inputs by Elvira’s neural link filters. But those filters rendered Xi blind for a full second before the streams resumed.
And when they did, she saw that Gym Cricket was nothing but a smoldering wreck with debris scattered across and around an icy crater.
Her mind instantly tried to grasp the hope that the crew might have survived, but she pushed the foolish wishful thinking from her mind. Gym Cricket and its crew were dead. She wanted to feel sorry for them, to mourn them as they deserved, but she knew that doing so would only endanger the rest of her platoon.
“Elvira to HQ,” she said, projecting as much stoicism as she could muster, “Gym Cricket is down. Maintaining posture and moving drones to inspect impact sites.”
Elvira’s second missile launcher finally came back online, but it was too late. The damage had been done. The Jemmin had killed Terrans, but thus far, Xi was unable to confirm that a single Jemmin had been harmed in reply.
And that was unac-fucking-ceptable.
“Copy that, Elvira,” came Colonel Jenkins’ near-emotionless reply. “Perform search-and-rescue before resuming patrol. HQ out.”
“Blinky,” Xi called over her shoulder, “take a bio-scanner and search that wreck for survivors. And be quick about it.”
“On it, Captain,” Staubach acknowledged, and a few seconds later, he was out the hatch. Naturally, he was followed by Sarah Samuels’ video drones.
“Ms. Samuels,” Xi called, raising her voice, “up here.”
The reporter arrived in the cockpit, her face no longer the perfectly-composed mask it had been during the earlier “interview.” This woman understood the magnitude of what had just happened, and what it might mean for the Terran Republic. Had Xi not seen that realization on the other woman’s face, she would have been even harsher than she decided to be.
“I know you’re here to take pictures,” Xi said, making firm eye contact, “but you need to remember that those men were sons of the Terran Republic who gave their lives to safeguard it. Be respectful with whatever images you gather. Do I need to spell that out for you?”
Surprisingly, Samuels shook her head and held Xi’s gaze unflinchingly. “No, you don’t. I met the Gym Cricket’s crew aboard the Dietrich Bonhoeffer…” she trailed off, and Xi found herself actively hoping the reporter was just putting on a show. But it seemed she was genuinely shaken by the deaths of the mech and its crew, so Xi decided to let it be.
Two minutes later, Private Staubach returned to Elvira’s cabin with a grim expression as he carefully replaced the bio-scanner to its locker. “All crew accounted for, Captain…no survivors.”
“4th Platoon,” Xi grunted, “resume patrol. Stay on your toes. We’ve got three hours to go before we return to the barn.”
As Samuels and Staubach returned to their respective seats within the mech’s cabin, Xi did her best to conceal the brief stream of tears she shed for the Gym Cricket’s crew.
“Captain,” came Heavy Metal Jesus’ report, “I’m reading ceramic fragments and trace polymer residue in Cave Troll’s target zone.”
“The SRMs or the plasma cannons?” Xi asked, her spirits suddenly buoyed by the good news.
“Plasma cannons, ma’am,” replied HMJ. “I don’t think it was enough for a full Specter, but it was definitely from a vehicle of some kind. I’m logging the spot and would like to request an APC be deployed for immediate inspection and retrieval of the debris.”
“Permission granted.” Xi nodded. “Looks like we just got our first Jemmin trophy. Good shooting, Cave Troll. You just notched an entry in the history books: first human to scratch a Jemmin.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Cave Troll replied.
“It looks like the rest of us get to play catch-up,” Xi continued. “You’ve got a target on your back, Cave Troll. Hope you can handle the pressure.”
With that, the patrol resumed without incident as they eventually returned to HQ, where they restocked munitions and prepped for their next turn on the circuit.
“Report, Lieutenant,” Jenkins greeted as he boarded Lieutenant Koch’s mech, Kochtopussy.
Debris fragments, most of which were smaller than a human torso, were neatly arranged on the shop floor at the mech’s center. Koch gestured to a few of the larger bits. “It definitely had some kind of light-bending skin on it before the plasma melted it away, and it’s also pretty clearly Jemmin design. We don’t know a lot about Jemmin technology, but their ships use ceramic composites similar to this stuff.” He picked up a shard the length of his forearm and handed it to Jenkins.
Jenkins’ eyebrows rose in surprise. “It’s barely two centimeters thick.”
“And it’s ruined.” Koch nodded bitterly. “But this kind of stuff has been theorized for centuries as being potentially stronger against impacts than thirty centimeters of conventional composite armor like what we use on most of the battalion’s mechs.”
“Good against kinetics,” Jenkins mused, “but weak to sustained thermal attacks.”
“Weak is a relative term,” Koch snorted. “This stuff is still better than our best material at soaking up and dispersing heat, but anything over six thousand degrees will strip the camo skin right off it. Without camouflage, its only advantage would be speed and maneuverability.”
“How big was this vehicle?”
“Hard to say for sure…” Koch cocked his head skeptically. “But I’d wager it was two and a half, maybe three meters long and a third as wide.”
“Airborne?” Jenkins clarified.
“Almost certainly.” Koch nodded, waving a shard of the vehicle’s ceramic skin. “And given how lightweight this stuff is, it wouldn’t take much thrust to get it off the ground. But we still don’t know much about their drive tech, and it seems that whatever system propelled this vehicle was destroyed by the plasma strike.”
“A fortunate coincidence for the Jemmin,” Jenkins mused.
“Probably not a coincidence at all.” Koch shook his head firmly. “And Fellows has gone over this debris with a fine-toothed comb. There is zero organic residue anywhere.”
Jenkins’ brow quirked in surprise. “That’s strange.”
“Indeed, it is,” Koch agreed. “If this thing was handled by a Jemmin at any point in the past, there should be some kind of residue. Shed skin cells, secretions, saliva, something. But there’s nothing here. Fellows even took a few of the best-preserved pieces and made a culture bath to
try to find some kind of organic traces, but his preliminary results suggest he won’t find anything.”
“Questions upon questions,” Jenkins mused.
“Oh, and with Gym Cricket down,” Koch added, “we’ve only got one bridge-building mech left, the Jamboree. Frankly, with all the crevasses near this mountain, we’ll need it operational if we want to perform time-sensitive retrieval operations. I think it would be prudent to reassign Jamboree to my command and keep it here at HQ.”
“You’re probably right,” Jenkins agreed, having debated the inclusion of Gym Cricket and Jamboree on the patrols before ultimately deciding to include them. Jamboree’s pair of SRM launchers were probably less valuable on patrol than its bridge-building capability would be later on. Especially if they ended up investigating one of the Vorr underwater shafts.
“Were they specifically targeting the Gym Cricket?” Koch asked, breaking Jenkins from his brief reverie.
“We don’t know,” Jenkins replied. “Jemmin missiles corkscrew in flight, and make erratic flight path adjustments to throw off antimissile attacks. There’s no way to know which mech they were targeting.”
“But they did stop attacking once they scrubbed it,” Koch observed.
“They did.” Jenkins didn’t want to indulge this particular line of dialogue just now, and thankfully Koch took the hint.
“I’m sending up the next batch of parts requests to the Bonhoeffer.” Koch changed subjects. “Is there anything you’d like me to include?”
Jenkins snorted. “Other than a crystal ball?”
Koch laughed. “They hit us, we hit them back. It’s what we came here to do. Shake it off, Colonel. We stood tall, and at the end of the day that might be the most important thing to come out of this: that the Terran Republic will stand up for what it thinks is right, no matter how steep the climb might be.”
“I know.” Jenkins ran a hand through his hair. “Keep looking over this debris and update me with any new findings.”
“Will do, sir.”
Jenkins disembarked the Kochtopussy, returning to the frigid, serene exterior of Shiva’s Wrath. Before he had taken three steps, he was ambushed by Sarah Samuels.
“Colonel Jenkins, a moment please?” she asked in that annoying yet somehow commanding way that all journalists seemed to master.
“Walk with me, Ms. Samuels,” he replied, knowing it was a full three minutes’ walk to his next destination. He could give her that much time. God knew Xi had been forced to deal with her for more than ninety-eight percent of the woman’s time in the battalion, which made her a more patient person than Jenkins would ever be.
“Do you believe the Jemmin attacked the Gym Cricket specifically?” she asked, surprising Jenkins with the acuity of her thought process.
“We don’t have any reason to believe that at this time,” he replied, hoping he could stall her by overloading the conversation with technical information. “Jemmin missiles release multiple micro-warheads before impact; there’s no way to know precisely which vehicle was their target, given the altitude at which they were met by the interceptor drones.”
“Why would the Jemmin openly antagonize Terran military forces on a human-controlled world?” she pressed, easily switching gears and not falling for his trap.
“That’s unknown at this time,” he said flatly. “We have conducted ourselves in accordance with every applicable ordinance, including Terran, Solar, Illumination League, and even Jemmin doctrines governing the peacetime deployment of military assets. The Jemmin violated two dozen interstellar treaties with their blatant hostility here on Shiva’s Wrath, and I’m confident those who occupy the Terran Republic’s highest offices will lodge a formal complaint with the Illumination League after we’ve reported this incident.”
“Do you think the Jemmin will let us off this world?” she asked, causing Jenkins to stop mid-stride and round on her.
He removed his re-breather and fixed her with a stony look. “Re-phrase that,” he said, his voice colder and harder than he expected it would be.
“Do you think the Jemmin will permit Terran forces to peacefully withdraw from Shiva’s Wrath?” she reiterated, removing her own rebreather and steadily meeting his gaze.
“Let me make something perfectly clear,” he started coolly. “Shiva’s Wrath is a human-controlled world. We have the right under every known interstellar law to be here. The Jemmin are our guests, but they have chosen to abuse our hospitality rather than reciprocate it. Will they let us leave?” he asked, openly scoffing at the notion. “I think the question you should be asking is this: will we let them leave? And the answer, frankly, is that I don’t think they’ve earned the right to a peaceful withdrawal. They’ve killed Terrans on this rock, Ms. Samuels, and have demonstrated nothing remotely resembling remorse for having done so. You might not be clear on how to reply to such wanton acts of aggression, but I can assure you that the Terran Armor Corps knows exactly how to speak this particular language.”
She seemed genuinely surprised by his reply, but rallied and asked, “Why would the Terran Republic send Armor Corps out here, to safeguard a relatively minor mining operation funded by one of the wealthiest mega-corps in the Republic, Durgan Industrial Enterprises? Are a few crates of rare minerals worth a shooting war with the most powerful civilization in the galaxy?”
Jenkins set his jaw. “We’re being tested, Ms. Samuels. The universe is asking if we’re ready to stand out here on our own two feet and deal with whatever it can throw at us. Some might be tempted to retreat to the safety of their homes and hope that someone, somewhere, can keep them safe. But the Terran Armed Forces doesn’t run from fights. We run to them. You don’t point a gun at someone unless you’re prepared to pull the trigger. And you don’t deploy armor unless you’re ready to use it. This isn’t about minerals, Ms. Samuels. This is about standing up for what’s right, and that’s exactly what the Terran Armor Corps does every damn day.”
“Even if it gets you all killed?” she challenged, her blue eyes seemingly searching his own as they flicked back and forth.
He smirked. “Especially if it gets us all killed.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” she said agreeably, and a trio of hovering video-recording drones flew to her where she plucked them one-by-one from the air and put them in her pocket. She replaced her rebreather mask and added, “That’s all I need right now.”
She turned and made her way to the hospital APC, while Jenkins re-donned his own rebreather and resumed his trek to Elvira.
He needed to make sure Xi was adequately coping with the Gym Cricket’s loss. She was the fastest-rising star in the entire Metal Legion and his battalion XO. Knowing where her head was at, especially after losing a team under fire, was important on several different fronts. Jenkins had crawled all the way down a bottle during his first brush with such a loss, and hadn’t come out for a full decade.
He was betting Xi would pull through a hell of a lot better than he had.
6
Contact
“Lu, I need you to visually inspect Two Launcher,” Xi commanded. The control systems weren’t as responsive as they should be, which suggested there might be ice built up on the launcher’s exterior. They had already fine-tuned the mech’s temperature, resulting in a near-sweltering interior environment, and they had not suffered a mechanical malfunction in two days.
Xi intended to keep it that way. And she also intended to push her Wrench harder than he seemed to like.
“What’s the problem, Captain?” Lu asked.
“It feels like ice buildup on the lateral servo housings,” she replied. “Get eyes on it and tell me what you see.”
Judging by his delayed reply, it was clear he didn’t want to do it, but he thankfully complied. “Yes, Captain. Opening the hatch.”
Xi fractionally slowed Elvira’s pace as Chief Lu clambered up the ladder beside the hatch. She wanted to see how he coped with the combined cold and unsteady footing, but to protect herself from
the sudden chill, she closed the cockpit doors.
Blinky, Elvira’s dedicated Monkey, had already gone atop the hull a dozen times during the last few days’ patrols. His eager demeanor and surprisingly capable technical skills had been as much of a pleasant surprise as Lu’s drag-ass, sandbagging tendencies had been an unpleasant one.
Despite his lack of internal fire, Lu made it all the way to Two Launcher, albeit in twice the time it would have taken Blinky. He soon reported, “There’s a little ice on the laterals and maybe some on the recoil mech. It’s hard to see from here.”
“Torch it off,” Xi ordered, “then take a quick look at One and tell me what you see.”
“Acknowledged,” he replied tersely before igniting a bottle torch and clearing the obstruction. The battalion had already gone through five full pallets of liquid-hydrocarbon fuel bottles, but fortunately, there were hundreds more on the Bonhoeffer.
Lu spent at least twice as much fuel as he needed before moving to One Launcher. He crouched there, examining its underside for at least a minute before standing.
“I don’t see any buildup on One, Captain,” he reported.
“All right,” she acknowledged, “spray another layer of water-lock on Two before coming back inside. Keeping the topside gear above melting temperature means we have to maintain moisture barriers or we’ll lock up again in the middle of combat. 2nd Company won’t have another cold-related mechanical failure on my watch. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Captain,” both Lu and Blinky replied.
Lu soon returned to the cabin, his work topside complete. He continued to shiver once inside, remaining still as he simply breathed.
Just as Xi was about to re-open the cockpit door, proximity alarms rang throughout Elvira’s cabin.
“Hostiles at three hundred meters!” Xi barked, halting Elvira’s forward motion and pivoting toward the new contacts. She set One Launcher to unload its anti-missile rockets and reload with armor-piercing SRMs. Meanwhile, she trained her dual fifteen-kilo guns on the newcomers.