by C H Gideon
“Heavy counterfire!” Xi snarled as Elvira’s cabin filled with outgas alarms. She angled her mech’s dual fifteen-kilo guns toward the Solar Marines and fired HE shells. The shells struck the target bunker perfectly, cratering it and sending a shower of Lunar dust upward in a mushroom cloud that would escape the moon’s gravity and forever lurk in the emptiness of space.
Not one of the four Marines had been within it when her shells had struck home.
Using leg- and back-mounted rocket motors, the Solar Marines cleared the bunker a full two seconds before Xi’s shells struck. Using those motors in tandem with their power-assisted legs, the Solarian supersoldiers deftly leapt across the Lunar terrain, zigzagging as their coil guns sprayed slugs into Xi’s mechs. Microrockets tore loose from the power-armored Marines’ shoulder-mounted launchers, slamming into Mjolnir and Cleaver and carving torso-sized armor segments from the heavy mechs’ hulls.
In the absence of atmosphere Cave Troll’s plasma cannons cycled silently, but the blue-white of the twin weapons’ charge cycle grew brighter and brighter until the mighty mech unleashed its devastating knife-range firepower on the second bunker.
One of Cave Troll’s plasma bolts slammed into the bunker, carving a deep scar stretching fifty meters behind the slagged facility in the Lunar surface. Plasma jets erupted upward from the bunker, exposing a series of subterranean tunnels connecting the bunkers to other facilities on Luna One.
The second of Cave Troll’s plasma bolts surged toward the inbound Solar Marines. Caught at the apex of its bounding, zigzagging strides, a Solarian Marine was unable to react in time to avoid the inferno. The blue ball of plasma incinerated the Marine mid-jump, and a heap of glowing, misshapen metal floated to the ground as Cave Troll’s fury left the deadly battle-suit unrecognizable.
Xi’s chain guns roared to life, sending depleted uranium slugs at the Marines while the rest of 2nd Company’s close-in weapons systems did likewise. Even Terran battle-suits could be slowed down by the fifty-caliber slugs, and rumors abounded that TRMC’s power-armor was superior to Solar power-armor.
Those rumors were confirmed as 2nd Company’s weaponry carved into the enemy Marines. Coil and chain guns knocked the leaping Marines off-axis, sending two into the moon dust while another pair suffered catastrophic rocket motor damage. The damaged rockets flared violently, but their wearers ejected the errant systems. A handful of the damaged rocket motors energetically tumbled through the air, with one striking Mjolnir’s hull before dying.
The Marines, harried by the Terran chain and coil gun crossfire, authored another wave of counterfire. Power-armored Solarians were knocked left and right by the kinetic force of the impacts as they drew steadily nearer to 2nd Company. The Solarians launched another wave of counter-fire, and even before she was consciously aware of the event, Xi experienced the most cliched moment she could imagine…
Her life flashed before her eyes—and it was considerably less interesting than she’d expected it to be.
Elvira’s cockpit, like most in the Metal Legion, featured a highly-durable transparent alloy window. Capable of withstanding even a direct artillery strike, the window was probably the most robustly-armored segment of the entire mech—and rightly so, since protecting the pilot was of paramount importance.
Solarian Marines had railguns with greater penetrative power than fifteen-kilo artillery shells.
A sliver of hyper-velocity tungsten punctured the alloy screen before her, blacking the entire viewport out as its polarity reversed. That sliver of tungsten skewered Xi’s headrest, and it took her a full second to realize that it had also struck the left side of her head.
Her hand went reflexively to her ear. It flared with pain, but there was very little blood when she examined her palm. Even as she checked her wound, Elvira’s automated breach-sealing measures went into effect, filling the cabin with a thin mist of foam-like material that rapidly plugged the five-centimeter hole in the cockpit’s front window.
Sneering in anger at nearly being killed by sniper-precise railgun fire, she loaded airburst shells into Elvira’s fifteens and spat them at the nearest Marine. One of the shells went off fifty meters past the target, well beyond its effective blast zone.
The other exploded five meters behind the Solarian.
The bounding Marine’s back was filled with deadly shrapnel mid-jump, the impact of which knocked it to the deck long enough for a trio of Terran chain-guns to converge on it. Two seconds of sustained fire from 2nd Company’s anti-personnel weapons mercilessly tore the battle-suited Marine limb from limb.
Mjolnir and Cleaver, cruisers of identical design featuring single plasma cannons similar to Cave Troll’s duo, sent danger-close plasma bursts at inbound Marines. One Solarian was annihilated by the blue inferno. The other narrowly escaped the same fate with a well-timed leap that carried it over the ordnance’s arc.
Cave Troll was in prime position to snipe that Marine with coil gun fire, but its guns were ominously silent as the bulky, lightly-damaged mech stood motionless in the formation.
Covering for Cave Troll, Wolverine pivoted from the Marine it had previously targeted (a Marine Mjolnir had erased with its plasma cannon) and unleashed a hail of cleverly-employed anti-missile rockets. Those rockets hammered the Marine, bursting against the Solarian’s armored torso with just enough kinetic force to stagger it.
That momentary hitch in the Marine’s ultra-quick movements was all Xi needed.
She locked her starboard chain guns on the target and hammered the enemy battle-suit, ruthlessly pounding it with two hundred fifty-caliber rounds in less than three seconds. Shockingly, despite the hellish storm of fire, it seemed as though the Solarian super-soldier would regain its footing and escape her fire.
That fear vanished when Eclipse sent an SRM into the nearly stationary Marine.
Flying apart in a shower of metal shards, the vaunted Solarian power-armor succumbed to the overwhelming firepower. A few seconds later, Cave Troll’s SRMs went live, and a swarm of eight missiles erupted from its launchers to splash down around the last remaining Marines.
Elvira’s guns tore into the beleaguered enemy and were soon joined by the rest of 2nd Company’s. A combination of artillery strikes, chain guns, and coil guns put down the last Solarian elements on the grid, wiping the board clear of hostile contacts.
“2nd Company, report,” Xi called, and a stream of virtual acknowledgments filled her HUD. Her focus was rightly centered on the report from Cave Troll, though, and when it came over the audio channel and not via the HUD, she already knew its contents.
“This is Corporal Bowers, Captain,” Cave Troll’s Wrench reported. “Lieutenant Yuan was hit by railgun fire. I’ve assumed command.”
“Copy that, Cave Troll,” Xi acknowledged grimly, recalling the last words she had said to Lieutenant Yuan. She had called him a fat bastard, and in hindsight, she wouldn’t have done it any other way. He was a good man and a stalwart Metalhead. His steady hand, dark humor, and unflappable demeanor would be missed in the coming hours and beyond. “2nd Company, reform and continue the advance,” she called before switching to Dragon Brigade’s control channel. “Dragon Actual, Elvira.”
“Dragon Actual, go,” Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins replied.
“Hostiles neutralized,” she reported, transmitting the damage report on the P2P. “2nd Company suffered minor material damage and one casualty. We remain fully combat-effective, sir.”
“Copy that, Elvira,” Jenkins acknowledged. “1st Company is T-minus four minutes to the Nut. It looks like you’ll make your northern run ahead of schedule.”
The plan had initially called for Xi’s company to diverge from the formation after the insertion team had been delivered to the Nut, but the Solar ambush had accelerated that particular timetable.
Now or later made little difference to Xi. In fact, she had unsuccessfully argued during the planning phase for 2nd Company to break from 1st and 3rd ten minutes before the Solarian attack.
“2nd Company’s ready to mosh, Colonel,” she assured him as she sent out the orders, causing her mechs to change course and drive toward the transceiver array at flank speed.
“Glad to hear it, Captain,” Jenkins replied, impressed that Xi had managed to keep the casualties to a minimum. A single mech Jock was a small price to pay for thwarting an ambush by Solar Marines. It wasn’t the kind of thing he would have expected to survive without at least one or two mechs going down, which suggested that causing material damage was not chief among the Solarians’ objectives.
It was more likely that the Solar forces were probing them, looking to gauge their reactions. They had also demonstrated uncanny accuracy with their railguns, putting holes in four of 2nd Company’s six cockpits. Not only was it surprising that the Solarians’ Marine railguns could punch through the Legion’s heavily-armored viewports, but them doing so on the run under heavy fire was doubly concerning for Jenkins’ people.
Then there was the fact that those Marines had known, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they would die for their efforts. Power-armored Marines, be they Terran or Solarian, were offense-first. Their battle-suits were designed to maximize speed and firepower while providing protection from all but the heaviest ordnance, but against even just two platoons of Cruiser-grade mechs, those Marines could not possibly have expected to survive.
Jenkins suspected that was the ultimate point of the Solarians’ initial exchange: that in matters of resolve, Solar Marines were unrivaled. The opening shots had been fired, and the Solarians’ core message was that if this engagement boiled down to a test of resolve, the Terrans would fail.
Interestingly, the Solarians had not even attempted to contact the Terrans—not that Jenkins would have accepted such an overture. Too much was riding on Operation Antivenom’s success to risk its integrity before they uploaded Jem’s takeover attempt.
In spite of that, Jenkins was keenly aware that they had just killed at least eight human warriors; warriors who had made the ultimate sacrifice in service to Sol and, in their minds, to humanity. It was a sobering thought. Jenkins needed to make sure his fellow Metalheads didn’t descend into mind-numbing despair.
“This is Colonel Jenkins,” he declared over the brigade’s secure P2P comm network. “There come times in every family’s existence where a heavy dose of ‘brotherly love’ is not only acceptable but necessary, and that’s exactly what we’re here to deliver. The ends cannot justify the means, and I’d expect every Metalhead in the Legion to put me in my place if I suggested they could. Still, I firmly believe with every fiber of my being that if our fallen Solar cousins had known our objective, and agreed with our operation’s validity, they’d be looking down on us with approval rather than resentment. We all knew we’d pay a heavy price for this mission, and now we need to do everything we can to ensure that every sacrifice made in this operation—those paid not only in Terran blood but Solarian blood, too, every drop of human blood spilled—is worthwhile.” He set his jaw and finished with grim determination, “Let’s roll.”
He knew that his speech would do little to alleviate the gravity of the situation, but Jenkins had learned the hard way that most operations boiled down to minimal advantages being leveraged to maximum effect.
He had faith that the Metal Legion was up to the task. Now it was time to validate that faith.
9
The Nutcrackers
During Luna One’s initial construction, the military fortress had been the most secretive construction project in human history. At any point prior to its Phase One completion, it would have been vulnerable to a ground assault precisely like the one the Metal Legion was attempting.
To safeguard Luna One’s construction, a series of interconnected and heavily-fortified bunkers were erected and manned by no fewer than five hundred Chinese soldiers each. Two dozen mechs would have been stationed at these fortresses prior to Luna One going online, making them formidable defensive positions.
Fortunately for the Metal Legion, the bunkers had been largely abandoned after China achieved victory in Earth’s last Great War. Their subterranean tunnel network still connected them to the rest of Luna One’s vast infrastructure, however, which made securing one of these seven bunkers crucial to Antivenom’s success.
The target facility had been code-named the “Nut” for this operation, and the Metalheads had nearly reached it.
“EM readings faint, Colonel,” Chaps reported from Roy’s pilot chair. Normally the command vehicle would have a full crew of six, including a dedicated Sensor operator, but for this operation, it was down to Jenkins, Chaps, and Shalhoub, Roy’s Wrench. “But the Nut is definitely hard. At least six auto-turrets are up on those parapets, and God knows what else is buried between here and there.”
“1st and 3rd Company,” Jenkins called over the command channel, “assume positions. I know you mooks aren’t famous for subtlety, but we need to crack this Nut, not pulverize it. Precision fire only, no matter how hard they hit back.”
“Sensor pings,” Chaps called in a rising voice, confirming what they had suspected: that upon entering knife-range, Jem’s sensor deception would fail as local emergency sensors reacted independently of central inputs. “They’re painting us, Colonel.”
“All crews, engage targets,” Jenkins commanded as the Solar turrets whirred to life, spinning on their mounts toward Jenkins’ 1st Company. He was frankly amazed they had gotten this close before the Solarians targeted them, having feared that 2nd Company’s discovery would have led to 1st and 3rd being exposed as well. “Smoke ‘em.”
A roar of fire streamed from 1st Company as artillery and mini-guns were unleashed against the heavily-fortified weapon placements. Built from stone and reinforced with hardened steel, the six seven-meter-tall ‘towers’ were twenty meters in diameter, their curved slopes making them look very much like half-buried donuts on the moon’s surface.
And in each of those donuts’ holes were quad-linked railguns surrounded by twice as many coil guns.
The Terrans struck first, scrubbing half the railguns before the Solarians could reply, but when the counterattack came, it was every bit as fierce as expected.
Shirley Temple and Leaf Cutter were each hit twice in rapid succession, destroying the former outright and blowing the latter’s stern section off. Octopede took a near-miss to its rear left legs, temporarily knocking it to the ground before it regained its footing and continued advancing.
The fastest and lowest-profile mechs of 1st Company could get beneath the fortress’ firing arcs if they moved quickly enough, and once there, they would prove instrumental to the Legion’s takeover of the installation.
Blink Dog, Wet Willie, Forktail, and Anaconda were spared Solarian fire in the initial exchange. Those fleetest-footed of Jenkins’ mechs sprinted forward in a race to get beneath the enemy fire. Roy sent an HE shell into the highest-priority target since it could potentially engage the Recon mechs even after they reached their objective. He was rewarded with a scratch of the entire mount, which left just one platform capable of touching 1st Company.
Standing firm in the middle of the field, Roy’s artillery sent HE shells into the second donut-shaped railgun nest. Solarian coil guns spewed a near-constant stream of rounds, intercepting one of Roy’s twin fifteens and stabbing into Leaf Cutter’s flank. The lightly-armored Leaf Cutter shuddered as its capacitors took multiple direct hits, and the crew ditched in envirosuits mere seconds before their mech exploded. A shallow debris-strewn crater marked its passing, but the vital signs of its crew remained stable on Jenkins’ HUD.
The second HE shell from Roy’s fifteens landed less than three meters from the railgun mount. Although the weapon platform appeared to take minor damage, Jenkins knew that even cosmetic blemishes an artillery mount could shrug off were catastrophic for railguns.
Those guns’ silence confirmed his suspicion that the nest had been neutralized, which left 1st Company uncontested as the Recon-grade mechs rea
ched their first objective.
Wet Willie and Forktail were both equipped with short-range mortars. Normally such weapons would be useless against heavily-fortified positions, but railguns and coil gun mounts were eminently more delicate than chain guns, artillery, or even missile launchers.
From the safety of their newfound cover, the Recon mechs of 1st Company opened fire on the last remaining coil guns and railgun mounts. Roy’s added indirect artillery fire in support, and while the Solar coil guns managed a few stray hits on Roy’s robust armor, the Terrans methodically scrubbed the rest of the Nut’s guns from the board.
It had been every bit as straightforward as they had hoped. Easy even, considering the importance of the Nut to Operation Antivenom.
Almost too easy, in Jenkins’ view.
“Secure the site,” Jenkins called. “Blink Dog and Forktail, approach the access tunnel. Sergeant Major Trapper, deploy your demo team, and we’ll deliver the charges.”
“Roger,” Trapper acknowledged, and soon the mechs were in position.
Luna One had not been built to withstand an expert ground assault like the one the Metal Legion had orchestrated. As a result, the vast majority of the immense complex’s deterrent was focused on sniping aerial assaults and preventing ground forces from reaching the surface.
Still, it would be folly not to expect at least some resistance within the all-important network of tunnels.
Trapper’s people, wearing light armor over thin, low-grade envirosuits, disembarked the mechs that had carried them to the objective. They spread out in a fan-shaped formation that provided optimal overlapping fire on the sealed door that led to the tunnels below. The door was wide, squat, and thick enough to withstand multiple direct hits from capital-grade weapons. To break through, Jenkins’ people had brought along shaped charges and high-energy cutting equipment. The hope was to carve a hole in the door, send a team through to gain local control of its mechanism, and open it to permit the Recon-grade and other small mechs to travel down the wide, low-ceilinged passages.