by C H Gideon
“Five,” Jenkins intoned. “Four…three…two…one…brake!”
The drop-cans’ braking rockets roared to life, the sound of their fury lost to the void while the regolith beneath each can billowed outward from the steady force of the rockets’ fire.
The braking thrusters cut out in perfect unison as the drop-cans touched down together, throwing outward what little Lunar dust remained beneath them as 1st Company landed with the expected jolt.
“1st Company, roll out and sound off once you’re clear,” Jenkins commanded, and Roy’s drop-can fell apart as explosive charges severed the unifying brackets that held it together.
The mighty Razorback-class mech’s legs unfolded from beneath it, stretching out on the thin metal deck as the vehicle’s central chassis rose from the floor. The lid had broken apart in an X-shaped pattern before flopping out onto the Lunar surface and paving the way for Roy’s disembarkation.
Roy rolled forward while the rest of 1st Company did likewise from their unfolded drop-cans. Chaps was the first to sound off as Roy’s four omnidirectional roller-bearing feet dug into the thin layer of regolith remaining after the landing. “Roy, checking the kitchen.”
“Blink Dog, in-and-out.” Corporal Miles “Blinky” Staubach was next to speak as his canine-looking mech moved out.
“Shirley Temple, not the drink,” reported the third of 1st Company’s Jocks.
“Leaf Cutter, tending my crop.”
“Octopede, defying classification.”
“Wet Willie, making you squirm.”
“Forktail, double the pleasure.”
“Anaconda, holding tight.”
“1st Company,” Jenkins called as the drop-cans of 3rd Company, led by Lieutenant Winters, splashed down five kilometers behind Roy’s position, precisely where they were supposed to land, “form up and roll on insertion point Alpha. Flank speed.”
As 1st Company’s mechs surged forward in a pair of offset columns, 3rd Company took up position at the formation’s rear.
That left just 2nd Company in the air, and according to the plan, they would be streaming from the Bonhoeffer’s launch tube momentarily.
“2nd Company,” Xi called, “we begin our drop in sixty second—”
Elvira lurched violently beneath Xi, briefly disorienting her before she realized what must have happened.
“We’re taking fire,” Colonel Li declared over the ship-wide as the Bonhoeffer lurched again. And again. And again. “An orbital defensive platform has us bracketed with railguns, and we’ve got Reaver-class missiles inbound. I’m assuming direct control of the drop. CIG, scramble! Scramble! Scramble!”
“2nd Company,” Xi barked, gripping the arms of her pilot chair, “activate links and prepare for a hot drop!”
The neural linkage flooded her body with a wave of endorphins as the now-familiar surge of coolness washed over every nerve ending in her body. Her senses blurred into the systems of the mech, and for a moment she felt as though she and the machine were no longer separate but had become a single entity.
The moment passed, as it always did, and her attention returned to her surroundings as the Bonhoeffer repeatedly lurched around her.
The telltale thrum of the Bonhoeffer’s launch tube signaled that one of Xi’s mechs was away. A second launch followed, then a third. A fourth. A fifth. But the launches ceased as Colonel Li’s voice came over the comm. “Brace for impact!”
Xi didn’t even remember what had happened as her senses slowly returned. Apparently, she had blacked out, and a quick check of her linkage showed that Elvira’s automated neural-balancing systems had pumped her full of stimulants to awaken her from the stupor.
The launch tube thrummed again. Then again, leaving only Elvira’s can in the tube awaiting deployment.
“Brace for imp—” Li’s words were cut short when once again the Bonhoeffer was struck by enemy ordnance and began to yaw well out of its previous alignment.
If Li launched Elvira now, she would sail into the dark void of interplanetary space. The drop-can would become a tomb for its trio of occupants, two human and one Vorr, and that thought filled Xi with an unexpected rage. She had not come this far and done so much to be erased from the board just like that.
Chief Rimmer’s voice came over the line. “Stand by, Elvira. I’m accessing the…emergency attitude control systems. CAC’s dark…hold…”
“Roger, Drop Control,” Xi acknowledged as her heart rate skyrocketed.
Fortunately, it seemed that Rimmer’s efforts met with success since the Bonhoeffer slowly re-oriented to its previous attitude. “Adjusting,” Rimmer said as he made minute changes to the ship’s orientation. Those changes were less than a hundredth of a degree, which could result in landing on top of another mech or even missing the drop-zone entirely. “Launch!” Rimmer declared, and Xi once again braced herself as Elvira’s drop-can was hurtled forward by the Bonhoeffer’s launch rails.
The drop-can cleared the Bonhoeffer’s launch tube less than a second before a hail of railgun strikes tore into the beleaguered warship’s resin-coated hull. Elvira’s sensor display, plumbed into the can’s external feeds, lit up as the damage to the Bonhoeffer became apparent.
Xi’s throat tightened when she saw just how bad the damage was.
The forward third of the mighty Terran warship had been blown completely off and was now a cloud of expanding debris, which Elvira’s drop-can was moving through.
Clatters and clangs sounded across the drop-can’s thin hull, but nothing larger than a human body impacted. Thankfully, the can’s braking and attitude-control thrusters were unaffected by debris leaving dents and scratches.
In Elvira’s wake, the Dietrich Bonhoeffer took round after round of railgun fire as no fewer than three separate orbital platforms pummeled the once-mighty assault carrier. Flashes enveloped the Bonhoeffer’s hull, each the telltale flare of a fusion-powered explosion. Improbably, the Zeen resin seemed to hold against even the nuclear-fusion-fueled weapon strikes.
As dozens of railgun strikes tore into and eventually through the Bonhoeffer’s reinforced hull, a handful of escape pods ejected from the Terran Armor Corps’ lone active-duty warship. Xi knew the Bonhoeffer’s layout well enough to understand that Colonel Li would not be aboard those pods, nor would anyone who had been stationed on the CAC. The strike that had shorn the forward third of the Bonhoeffer from the rest of the hull had taken the Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s command center with it.
Such precision could hardly be a coincidence, and Xi said a silent prayer of gratitude to Colonel Li, Chief Rimmer, and their people for standing tall long enough to deliver her mech to the drop-zone.
Orbital weapons fire hammered into the Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which was rocked by explosion after explosion as internal liquid fuel stores cooked off. One such store, apparently using a tiny break in the Zeen resin as a nozzle, threw a jet of flame fifty meters long out from the Bonhoeffer’s port hull. The fuel burned for twenty seconds, throwing the dying warship off-course and, somewhat mercifully, out of the path of inbound railgun fire.
Unfortunately, that improvised thruster also drove the Bonhoeffer on a new course that took it directly to the Lunar surface a thousand kilometers from Xi’s drop-zone.
Xi watched with a mix of sorrow and hatred as the assault carrier’s battered hull was wracked by an explosion that could have only been the death of the main reactor. The aft section flew apart, spraying a cone of molten debris from the falling warship’s stern. Everyone aboard the Bonhoeffer had known this would be its last ride, but watching its flaming wreck fall to the Lunar surface was still an intensely emotional experience.
And yet, in spite of the Bonhoeffer’s tragic death unfolding a thousand kilometers away, Xi’s focus pivoted to a more immediate concern: landing her mech.
“Braking thrusters firing in five…four…” she called as the Lunar surface rushed up to meet her, “three…two…one…braking!”
Elvira lurched beneath her, the s
ensation almost gentle compared to the violent strikes before they launched from the Bonhoeffer. Her rockets fired for four full seconds before cutting out, and Elvira’s drop-can touched down on a now-denuded patch of ground.
“Blowing the doors,” Xi declared and popped the explosive charges that unfolded the drop-can around her. The metal walls fell to the dusty surface, and Xi stood her Scorpion-class mech to its full height as she crawled off the can’s floor and set its feet down on the surface of the Moon.
Xi established P2P with the rest of her company, noting two absences from the rolls as she did so.
“2nd Company,” she barked as the Dietrich Bonhoeffer neared its final resting place a thousand kilometers away, “sound off.”
“Cave Troll, big and filthy,” reported Lieutenant Yuan, offering his mech’s traditional catch-phrase.
“Wolverine, snikt,” followed Lieutenant Nakamura.
“Mjolnir, dropping the hammer.”
“Eclipse, the blacker, the better.”
“Cleaver, ready to chop.”
“Elvira,” Xi finished the sound-off, “clickin’ my heels. Anyone have confirmation on Simple Jack and Broadside?”
“Affirmative, Captain,” Nakamura replied grimly. “Simple Jack’s can was scratched by an explosion en route to the DZ, and Broadside got knocked off-course on her way out of the tube.”
“Copy that, Wolverine,” Xi acknowledged as Nakamura forwarded his sensor logs, which confirmed his report on both counts. Her already-thin eight-mech company had just been reduced to six, and they hadn’t even engaged the enemy yet.
The enemy? She silently chastised herself. Solarians are haughty, disinterested, and barely human, but they’re hardly the enemy.
Her lips parted in preparation to order her depleted company to roll, but a flash of light in the distance snapped her attention to a patch of Lunar surface a long ways away.
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer had finally crashed into the Moon, its death throes sending out a bolt of light as the last of the once-proud warship’s fusion reactors lost containment.
She hated herself for not immediately recognizing the flash for what it was, and out of respect for the dead, she allowed a moment of silence to follow the mighty assault carrier’s end. Every Legionnaire had seen their carrier’s demise, and she knew without asking that they shared the sense of renewed resolve she now felt coursing through her being.
“2nd Company, form up on me,” she commanded over the P2P. “Roll out.”
As her mechs fell into formation, Xi received a secure P2P message from Lieutenant Colonel Moon. He had led his twenty best pilots into a crater three hundred kilometers from their objective and was confident the Solar forces had not detected them.
But that would change for all of them now that the Bonhoeffer had been destroyed by automated weapons fire. No amount of sensor trickery could hide such energetic exchanges, even if Jem’s method had been able to deceive the entire Solarian defense grid into ignoring the automated orbital platforms’ weapons fire.
The only question now was, how long until their Solar cousins discovered them?
Moving at flank speed, Xi led 2nd Company in a slightly divergent course from the one taken by Colonel Jenkins. The colonel’s objective was an underground access junction through which Sergeant Major Trapper, Podsy, and Styles would move in search of a suitable information uplink node. After dropping off the insertion team along with most of the light mechs in 1st Company, the colonel would rendezvous with 2nd Company at Xi’s objective: one of five transceiver arrays attached to Luna One’s vast compound.
Time was against them, and soon all of Sol would be as well.
8
Brotherly Love
With Blink Dog’s loping strides rhythmically rocking the mech’s cramped interior, Podsy gripped Jem’s custom-made case against his chest. Blinky piloted the Recon-grade mech with unerring precision as the Metal Legion drove across the Lunar surface in a trio of tightly-grouped companies.
1st Company took point, with Colonel Jenkins commanding Roy, Blink Dog, Shirley Temple, Leaf Cutter, Octopede, Wet Willie, Forktail, and Anaconda. Most were Recon-grade, with the exceptions of the Battlewagon Roy and the Tactical-grade Forktail. Of the Metal Legion mechs on Luna, these were the fastest and featured the lowest-profile chassis, except for Roy. Sergeant Major Trapper’s insertion team was spread between Roy, Forktail and Blink Dog, ready to disembark as soon as they reached their objective.
2nd Company, commanded by Captain Xi, flanked the formation’s left with Elvira, Cave Troll, Wolverine, Mjolnir, Eclipse and Cleaver. Those were the heaviest-armored mechs and had the most devastating short- and mid-range weaponry. Elvira’s extended-range artillery represented the most potent long-range ordnance in 2nd Company, while Cave Troll, Cleaver, and Mjolnir all featured game-changing close-range systems. This formation’s task was to take and hold the transceiver array to prevent Solar forces from securing or destroying it before Jem’s signal could be uploaded. Even diminished by the losses of Simple Jack and Broadside, 2nd Company’s knife-range firepower was nothing short of terrifying.
3rd Company, commanded by Lieutenant Winters, consisted of the longest-ranged mechs in the unit and took up a position fifteen kilometers to the rear of 1st Company. Generally, Preacher, Sam Kolt, and Huang Zhong were all Cruiser-grade mechs, equipped with platforms capable of effectively engaging orbital targets, especially in the vacuum of the Lunar surface. Supporting them were the Tactical-grade Osiris Risen, Indestructible-Mega-Titan Thunder-God Cid, Yekop, and Ybmug. These vehicles were tasked with providing a defensive shell for the formation, while the long-ranged mechs provided a potent deterrent to aerial targets.
Of course, should the Solar forces locate the mechs before they delivered Trapper’s team to their objective, the op would undoubtedly fail. As the Metal Legion mechs drove across the mostly-virgin field of regolith, they relied exclusively on Jem’s concealment method to keep them from the enemy’s sight.
“Range to objective twenty kilometers,” Styles called out from Blink Dog’s auxiliary console, normally used by the mech’s Monkey. Most of the Legion’s mechs lacked Monkeys for this operation. The diminished manpower was primarily a security concern. There simply weren’t enough trustworthy people, in the command staff’s estimation, to fill out the roster. It was a choice between fewer fully-crewed mechs or more skeleton-crewed mechs.
Which was no choice at all in an operation like this, where longevity and efficiency were less important than quantity and massed firepower.
“Contacts!” Styles called, then Blink Dog’s pace faltered, and a quick check of the tactical readout showed a swarm of inbound contacts. Too slow to be missiles, they appeared to be interceptor craft of some kind. After observing their acceleration figures and formation, he concluded they were short-range patrol craft, probably of the Locust design. “Four Locusts moving in our direction. No sensor pings detected.”
Like every other Metalhead, Podsy knew it was unlikely in the extreme that a random patrol would bring a squadron of Solarians directly to their position, but as long as there was a chance they remained undetected, it was imperative that they do nothing to reveal themselves.
Which meant acting like frightened rabbits and freezing in the hope the enemy wouldn’t notice them. No Metalhead was happy about doing so, but they all understood that strategy presented their best chance to avoid detection and carry out the op.
The Locusts moved steadily closer, and as they did so, Captain Xi’s 2nd Company had bracketed them. Seconds ticked by as the Locusts closed the gap, during which the tension inside Blink Dog’s cabin grew so thick it would take a blowtorch to cut through it. Breaths were held, shoulders stiffened, and knuckles turned white as the Locusts came into effective firing range of their SRMs.
Then the ominous chime of a sensor ping rang out, and a second later, the Solar interceptors unleashed a hail of missiles at 2nd Company.
Replying instantly, Xi’s mechs launched
interceptor rockets and spat railgun bolts at the offending interceptors. The Locusts broke formation, splitting with the precision of a parade flyover. Terran missiles burned toward their targets, carving through the void as a lone Terran railgun strike sniped a Locust.
Terran rockets intercepted Solar missiles, sniping them one by one and sending their shrapnel to the Lunar dust. As 2nd Company exchanged fire with the Solarians, 1st and 3rd Companies reluctantly held fire. It was still possible, however unlikely, that the Locusts had not yet seen through Jem’s sensor fog. Podsy felt his stomach twist and churn as Locust missiles were scrubbed by 2nd Company’s counterfire, with just a single SRM striking the heavily-armored Cave Troll. In response, the dual-plasma-cannon-wielding mech sent a trio of SRMs after the now-fleeing Locusts.
A second Locust was sniped by an SRM, followed by a third. The fourth Locust, juking and diving faster than any Terran craft could manage, pulled well over forty gees at its peak during evasive maneuvers. Those maneuvers brought it close enough to scrape the Lunar surface with its wedge-shaped hull, and even the ultra-maneuverable Terran missiles failed to match its chaotic movements.
Then a second alarm rang out, and Podsy felt his blood run cold at hearing Styles’ report.
“Solar Marines,” Styles said grimly as eight new signatures emerged from a pair of previously-concealed bunkers buried beneath the pristine Lunar dust.
The Solar Marines unleashed a storm of railgun and coil gun fire on 2nd Company from less than two hundred meters. Every bolt was a direct hit, and 2nd Company’s tactical icons all flickered dangerously during that initial wave.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Podsy gave voice to a normally-silent prayer as he watched his comrades enter into a battle with their Solar cousins.