by C H Gideon
As Xi moved Elvira back to the barn, her crew prepared to tear apart every single system related to her targeting controls. Something was affecting them at the most inopportune moments, and she intended to find out what it was before it cost any more of her people their lives.
Cave Troll’s death was a direct result of those targeting systems failing in the middle of combat. She was responsible for not taking more severe action after the SRM misses during the first bug engagement, and now three good warriors were dead due to her failure.
It wouldn’t happen again.
10
Jemmin Assault
“Orbital strikes inbound!” Styles called out a few minutes after Jenkins had donned his uniform and entered Roy’s command center.
“All crews to their stations. Active sensors to maximum. Prepare to receive Jemmin missiles,” Jenkins barked, perhaps unnecessarily as it seemed Styles had already coordinated as much. “Where are they hitting?”
“Four of our six APCs are down, sir,” Styles reported tightly as he pored over the sensor logs. “Two were shuttling troopers back to the mines, and the others were on standby.”
Jenkins quickly checked to find that the hospital APC was not among the targeted vehicles. Yet.
“Incoming missiles,” Styles called out in a raised voice.
“All mechs, engage anti-missile countermeasures at will,” Jenkins ordered, knowing that he would pour at least four times as much counterfire by giving the individual mechs their heads, but he also knew after talking with Xi and examining the evidence that the Jemmin had seemingly caused all manner of problems with various systems throughout the battalion.
Better to waste a little ammo than let missiles through.
“At will, aye,” Styles acknowledged as Roy’s own anti-missile rockets tore from their mounts and soared into the sky to meet the enemy ordnance. “Missiles engaged…twenty-five scrubs…thirty-four…forty-two...”
Roy was rocked by an impact so powerful that it nearly launched Jenkins into the far bulkhead.
“Preacher,” Jenkins snapped, “prepare to return fire on all priority Jemmin targets.”
“Priority targets, aye,” Preacher acknowledged.
“All crews,” Jenkins continued, “this is the Colonel. Execute fire package Hades. I say again, fire package Hades is authorized.”
Explosions erupted throughout HQ as fifteen out of two hundred Jemmin missiles slipped through the missile shield. Most of the missiles were near-misses, but a handful hit their targets with devastating effect.
Holy Diver was struck twice, knocking all four of its railguns off the board as its status changed to critically-damaged. The downed Cave Troll was struck once, but its robust armor protected it from being taken out of commission. Hawkeye and White Snake were destroyed outright by precise missiles strikes, and even Kochtopussy suffered a near-miss that blew two of the relatively unarmored legs clear off its chassis. Dozens of troopers were killed in five separate nests built around anti-missile rockets and micro-railguns.
Then, with a degree of precision and timing that would make any commander proud, Jenkins’ people executed fire package Hades in four seconds from start to finish.
Five hundred SRMs and MRMs flew from their mounts, and artillery cannons spat fifty shells of depleted uranium fury. The missiles streaked outward in nearly all directions, and the artillery screamed through the thin air of Shiva’s Wrath, as Jenkins’ people showed the Jemmin how humanity replied to her enemies. There was enough conventional ordnance in fire package Hades to destroy a mid-sized warship or to completely devastate all but the biggest Terran metropolis. That combined firepower was the most destructive fire order of Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins’ career.
But the beating heart of fire package Hades were Preacher’s four tactical nuclear devices, which were aimed at the four most likely Jemmin stronghold locations. In addition to the nukes were four Purgatory-class air-bursters, which would illuminate secondary points of interest that might be hiding the stealthy Jemmin vehicles. The Purgatories would, at the very least, shred the camo-skins from any Jemmin vehicles and make them much easier to target with conventional weaponry.
The Terran anti-missile shield continued to pour fire into the sky, sniping ninety-five percent of the inbound Jemmin missiles as their human counterparts tore through the frigid air toward their targets. For a moment it seemed as though the Terran missiles would reach their targets unmolested, as enemy counterfire failed to intercept at the optimal point of those projectiles’ flights.
But then, with chilling precision, laser beams erupted from two of the most-likely Jemmin base-camps, sniping nearly every single missile bound for them. Luckily, the Purgatory and nuclear missiles were more heavily-armored, and one of each pierced the Jemmin missile shields.
The Purgatory blossomed, its flames rolling outward with terrifying speed until the blast zone was briefly transformed into the gaping maw of Hell. Steam exploded outward, propagating the blast wave even faster than would normally be possible in such a thin atmosphere. The fireball managed to stay ahead of the steam cloud while seemingly gathering strength from it. Three distinct Jemmin vehicles were outlined by the blast-wave, their camo-skins stripped away by the raging inferno, and Jenkins’ mech crews immediately bracketed and eliminated the exposed hostiles with combined artillery and railgun strikes.
The tactical nuke was, predictably, even more devastating. Flaring with the luminosity of a short-lived star, the light-wash forced every sensor system in the battalion to self-protectively deactivate for two seconds. When they resumed operation, it was clear that at least two more Jemmin vehicles had been scrubbed by the one-hundred-fifty-five kiloton device.
Another dozen confirmed Jemmin kills flashed across Jenkins’ board, bringing the confirmed kill total to seventeen. Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing what class each of those vehicle kills had been, which meant he didn’t know how much damage he had actually dealt to the enemy.
Roy lurched from left-to-right as impact alarms rang out through the cabin.
“Railgun strike,” Styles reported urgently. “Point-of-origin…bearing two-one-niner, azimuth…forty-three degrees. Distance: eight kilometers.”
“Devil Crab 2,” Jenkins commanded the battalion’s second Scorpion-class mech, “scrub that bird.”
“Engaging,” Devil Crab’s Jock declared, and surface-to-air rockets streaked up into the sky in pursuit of the flying vehicle. Another railgun strike hit a nearby mech, the Fistandantalus, and blew one of its four legs off at the mid-joint.
“Widowmaker,” Jenkins called with forced calm, “return fire on second bogey with your railguns.”
“Railguns hot,” Widowmaker acknowledged before sending a pair of tungsten bolts into the sky in the opposite direction of the first airborne target. “Target neutralized,” Widowmaker reported with satisfaction as an intense explosion marked the Jemmin flyer’s end.
Devil Crab 2’s rockets failed to hit the mark, causing its Jock to report, “Negative impact on target, Roy. Oh-for-eight.”
“Seismics!” yelled Styles. “Emergence points throughout the camp!”
The tactical plotter filled with two dozen unique signatures as Jemmin vehicles emerged from the ice. They immediately opened fire with rockets and railguns, causing HQ to erupt into total chaos.
“All vehicles, maintain missile shield and engage local targets,” Jenkins commanded as Chaps put Roy’s coilguns on target and smoked a Jemmin vehicle that looked identical to the one whose hull fragments had been examined by Koch. He was pleased with the tweaks to their sensors that allowed the system to gain lock on stealthed technology. It was small, less than four meters long and a quarter as wide, but bore both rockets and railguns that it used to destroy a nearby infantry nest before Chaps tore it apart with coilgun fire.
The roar of rotary chain guns filled the camp as guns cycled at maximum speed. Twenty Jemmin targets were whittled down to ten in a matter of seconds, but then more Je
mmin vehicles emerged from the tunnels and soon more than fifty of the teardrop-shaped, hovering platforms filled the camp.
Roy’s coilguns killed another, and another, but a trio of railgun strikes tore into the command vehicle’s right flank. Myriad system failure alarms went off as Jenkins’ mechs moved into mutually-reinforcing positions from which to fight off the invaders.
Roy tilted dangerously to the right and Chaps yelled, “I’ve got failures on Two and Four Legs. Fix them or we’re sitting ducks!”
The Jemmin seemed to have correctly identified the command vehicle’s importance, and soon four more railguns stabbed into Roy’s left flank and stern. Rockets tore into its already-exposed flanks, causing even more alarms to go off.
“All guns, this is the colonel,” Jenkins declared over the battalion-wide P2P net, “calling in strikes on all enemy targets inside HQ perimeter. Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Coilguns whirred and chain guns roared, but their accuracy began to plummet as the enemy circled their primary targets and ruthlessly set about the task of eliminating them.
Then Jenkins’ people answered his call, and the Terran base camp’s former chaos gave way to apocalypse.
Dozens of artillery shells slammed into the ice, tearing five-meter-deep craters out of the formerly-pristine surface. SRMs struck the ice near enemy vehicles, with even near-misses knocking Jemmin fighters to the ground. A dozen Jemmin vehicles, half of which had previously fired on Roy, were scrubbed from the board and another dozen fell in the ensuing seconds as they tried and failed to resume their jerky, evasive maneuvering before being bracketed by Terran guns.
Somewhat alarmingly, the few Terran infantrymen who survived the initial attack proved to be the most effective at countering the Jemmin vehicles. RPGs were more than eighty percent accurate, with each one destroying a Jemmin fighter as the Terran infantry turned their weapons on HQ’s interior. Crew-served machine guns spat depleted uranium slugs at Jemmin fighters, and even those relatively light weapons were able to do enough damage to turn the tide of battle against the alien vehicles when they slowed their erratic, evasive movements enough for the mechs’ larger guns to sweep through and finish them off.
Slowly, but surely, the Terran forces began to push the Jemmin incursion back. Roy’s damaged drive systems were temporarily repaired, and the command vehicle waded toward the heaviest concentration of enemy with coilguns spewing high-velocity pellets at anything that moved.
Enemy rockets and railguns returned fire, skewering the more lightly-armored mechs at Roy’s back and knocking several out of the fight. Wolverine collapsed with its hip badly damaged by railguns, and White Zombie fell to concentrated rocket fire on its left foot that rendered it immobile and sent it to the deck. But even with those recent casualties, the Jemmin push had been halted. Now it was only a matter of time before the Terran armor ground them to dust.
Which was why Jenkins was anything but surprised when the Jemmin turned and fled down their holes. He didn’t need to give the order to intensify fire on the fleeing fighters, but he did feel it necessary to remind Styles, “Expect another wave of missiles, Chief.”
“All units acknowledge ready to intercept,” Styles replied promptly.
“Return fire on all missile points-of-origin as they appear,” Jenkins commanded as the last Jemmin disappeared beneath the ice. “I’m authorizing use of our remaining Purgatories on high-confidence targets.”
“Preacher acknowledges weapons hot on three remaining Purgatories,” Styles reported.
Sure enough, two seconds after the last Jemmin vanished, the tactical board lit up with a hundred and fifty-six inbound missile signatures. Jenkins’ people returned fire with deadly precision, targeting each of the seven points of origin with artillery and missile strikes while their anti-missile systems reached out to scrape the sky clear of inbound ordnance.
Preacher sent a Purgatory missile streaking off at a target as soon as it was visually-confirmed by one of the roving Owl drones. Another went off in the opposite direction even before Roy’s board confirmed the target’s location. The second was soon followed by the third, and last, Purgatory missile in Jenkins’ arsenal.
All three of the incendiary devices were intercepted by last-second laser fire, but only one of them was destroyed outright while the other two slammed home on their targets.
Raging domes of fire erupted, and each of those hellish fireballs revealed what appeared to be a Jemmin Specter-class platform.
Elvira, out on patrol to the west, was the first to engage an exposed Specter with her fifteens. HE shells exploded, one a near-miss and the other a direct hit on the Jemmin vehicle. Exploding in a primally-satisfying shower of ceramic debris, the briefly-exposed Jemmin Specter was annihilated by Elvira’s textbook-precise fire.
The second Specter was likewise taken down by artillery fire from Generally on patrol to the south, and soon the guns fell silent as the Jemmin disengaged completely.
For the moment.
“Get General Akinouye on the horn,” Jenkins commanded.
Styles made to obey but soon reported with a look of unmasked concern. “Colonel…the Bonhoeffer’s currently engaged with the Jemmin warship in low orbit.”
Jenkins set his jaw before barking, “Have the Sam Kolt acquire target lock and order Preacher to prep her last two nukes for low-orbital fire solution. Now!”
“Get those racks back to the magazines,” Podsy shouted as the Bonhoeffer lurched beneath his forklift. “If that ordnance goes, it’ll blow half the deck!”
“It’s too late for that!” Chief Rimmer shouted as grease-monkeys worked frantically to secure the pallets and racks of munitions which, just a few minutes earlier, had been staged for loading into the next wave of drop-cans. “Shove all this loose ordnance into Can Three and load it in the tube!”
Podsy nodded, knowing it was probably the right call even though it wasn’t the one he would have made. He rolled over to a rack of eight mid-range missiles, picked it up, and drove toward Can Three while others worked to secure the already-loaded supplies. “Forget about the perishables.” Podsy waved off a pair of crewmen working to secure pallets of foodstuffs. “Our people aren’t getting this can!”
Looks of comprehension came over their faces, and they backed carefully away as Podsy drove the fully-loaded rack of missiles toward the open back.
The Bonhoeffer lurched again, nearly causing the rack of missiles to slip off the front of the lift’s forks, but Podsy managed to keep it from falling by dropping it to the deck and letting it self-right. Breathing a sigh of relief at avoiding catastrophe, he was just about to call out for help when one of the grease-monkeys from Second Shift ran past the forklift and gestured hurriedly for Podsy to slide the rack into place.
Podsy did so, and the crewman locked the rack down with the quartet of manual clamps before hopping onto the forks and riding the lift back out.
“Good work,” Podsy congratulated as another forklift ran past him bearing four of the extremely valuable Purgatory LRMs. He wanted to tell the lift’s driver not to throw them in the can since Can Three was about to be sent into the void—hopefully to be retrieved at some later date—but he knew that securing the drop-deck was more important than salvaging half of their remaining Purgatory supply.
“Go! Go! Go!” he urged as the lift driver slowed, apparently sensing Podsy’s reticence. The driver sped off for the can, into which he and his lift’s attached grease-monkey moved to load the Purgatory missiles.
Soon the can was filled, and the rest of the deck had been likewise cleared of live ordnance.
“All right,” Rimmer barked, clapping his hands emphatically, “everyone off the deck. Move! Move! Mov—”
His words were cut short when a deafening roar filled the deck. A bright-red beam of light stabbed through the outer hull, tearing into two nearly-empty cans. Four crewmen locking those down were incinerated, and the beam carved deep into the heavily-armored secondary hull that protected the Dietrich
Bonhoeffer’s keel: the innermost segment of the ship which contained fuel stores, reactors, drive systems, and main processors.
The powerful beam cut through two full meters of armor but failed to pierce the rest as the Bonhoeffer rolled its damaged flank away.
And when the beam disappeared, the air in the drop-deck began to roar out through the five-meter-long rent in the outer hull.
Podsy’s earpiece was barely able to convey Rimmer’s voice over the howling gases as they vented into space. “Everyone to the control room!” the deck chief yelled, but thankfully none of the crew needed to be told. Podsy drove his forklift over to the windowed control room’s main door, reaching it before half of his crew. He unbelted himself as the roar of escaping air steadily began to die down in its intensity, which meant that the breathable gases were nearly gone from the compartment.
He tried to lunge for the door but fell after failing to achieve a firm grip on the forklift’s doorjamb. His head struck the deck, and all he could see were stars until he dimly became aware that he could no longer hear the roaring gases. This is it, he thought sourly. Dying of asphyxiation on a drop-deck…not the blaze of glory I hoped for...
He reached out, hoping to find something to grip and use to haul himself toward the door. But instead of a workbench leg or even the forklift’s tire, all his hands managed to grasp were soft, round bags of some kind.
Lubricant pouches? he wondered, not remembering seeing any of those on the Bonhoeffer’s drop-deck.
It took him several more seconds to realize he was already inside the control room, and that the “lubricant pouches” were, in fact, the mammary glands of the same grease-monkey who had locked down the missiles in Can Three.
She looked down at him with something between annoyance and amusement as she said, “I’m glad you’re all right, but you won’t be if you don’t get your mitts off me.”