by C H Gideon
But if worse came to worst, the Legion had enough raw firepower to pulverize the door from the outside. Doing so would cost them precious time since they would then have to excavate the rubble before moving down the passage.
Now that the Solarians had been alerted to their presence, time was the one commodity the Metalheads were shortest of.
Roy rolled through the regolith, coming to a stop just before the eighteen-meter-wide blast doors, where Trapper’s people accessed external compartments that contained the ordnance required to blow a hole in the door. Moving with a long-practiced rhythm pounded into them by Sergeant Major Trapper, the Terran Armor Corps’ infantry placed the various charges where they would be most effective. With the charges set, Trapper’s people ran for cover while the sergeant major held the detonator.
“All clear of the door!” he barked. “All clear! Fire in the hole in three…two…one…pop!”
The demo charges flashed brilliantly against the reinforced door’s surface. In the vacuum of interplanetary space, they made no sound and left no smoke. The force of the eight shaped charges was channeled inward, leaving a meter-wide hole in the door’s surface.
Trapper ran over to inspect it before signaling for another batch of breaching charges to be brought up. That was good news since it suggested that he thought the first detonation had done the majority of the work and the second was likely to finish the job.
His people placed the fresh charges in less than forty seconds, having sprinted from cover on the low-gravity Lunar surface. Laden as they were with over a hundred and fifty kilograms of heavy explosives, the Legionnaires moved almost like they were on a standard-gravity surface. Their strides were bounding and longer than they should have been but nowhere near as awkward-looking as early Lunar exploration videos had shown for primitive astronauts.
With the charges set and his people once again safely hunkered down, Trapper called in a perfect repeat of his former declaration, “All clear of the door! All clear! Fire in the hole in three…two…one…pop!”
This time when the demo went off, it blew a perfectly circular hole in the door. Using his feet, he cleared a patch of regolith a meter in front of the door before leading a group of eight men and women through, diving with picture-perfect choreography. One after another, they cleared the hot metal surface, hit, and with an oft-practiced tuck and roll, recovered into a crouching combat-ready stance.
Jenkins had been impressed with their practice routines for that particular dive back aboard the Bonhoeffer, but seeing them do it for real made him appreciate the sergeant major’s foresight and training regimen. Wearing ultra-thin envirosuits that would have failed at the slightest touch from the jagged edges, they could have died from missing a single step by two centimeters. However, they successively hurled themselves through the breach without reservation as they moved to accomplish their all-important objective.
Seconds ticked by and stretched to minutes as the “door-knockers” worked to gain control of the massive metal barrier. Tension mounted in Roy’s cabin while Trapper’s people silently worked from within the tunnel.
Finally, the door began to lower, and when it finished opening Jenkins saw Sergeant Major Trapper withdrawing along with four of his people. Their rifles were trained down the tunnel, and without needing to be ordered, Chaps locked onto the offending wall-mounted pop-out turret a hundred meters inside.
Roy’s coil guns sent a near-steady stream of slugs into that turret, fragging it before it could recede back into the wall. But that turret had already claimed three of Trapper’s people, whose ruined bodies lay on the tunnel floor beside a wall panel they had opened to gain manual control of the door.
“Objective secure, Colonel,” Trapper reported professionally as the rest of his people moved to either side of the tunnel.
“Good work, Sergeant Major,” Jenkins replied softly. “Forktail, you’re up.”
“Roger, Colonel,” Lieutenant Ford acknowledged, moving his flat-bodied, low-profile mech to the front of the formation. Forktail’s artillery had been removed to streamline it sufficiently to fit into the tunnel, but the mech still possessed chain guns and missile launchers that were more than capable of engaging armored targets within the tunnel’s confines.
Blink Dog, Wet Willie, Anaconda and the damaged Octopede formed the rest of the insertion team’s column. The quadrupedal Blink Dog would need to “crawl” by lowering itself onto its “knees” instead of standing on its feet, but Blinky had demonstrated remarkable adaptability in that configuration. Podsy, Styles, and Jem were aboard Blink Dog, so Blinky’s mech logically took up a post at the center of the formation, while the multi-segmented Anaconda assumed the third post.
Anaconda’s Constrictor-class design was purpose-built for deployment in mining tunnels and other subterranean locales. With a segmented body and individual motive systems for each of its nineteen segments, it was capable of snaking through any passage large enough for its head to fit through. And that head was nearly as heavily-armored as a battlewagon’s, making Anaconda much heavier than any Recon-grade mech. But even at sixty tons, it was incredibly fast over short distances, its locomotion capable of exceeding two hundred kph under standard conditions. It was its speed, not its mass, that led it to be classified as a Recon-grade vehicle since that speed permitted it to conduct Recon operations. It was lightly armed with just a pair of fifty-caliber chain guns and a flame-thrower, all of which were forward-facing.
The rest of the mechs in the insertion team were typical Recon vehicles: lightly armored, lightly armed, and small enough to fit down the tunnel. They would be vulnerable to flanking attacks, which made Lieutenant Ford’s task of clearing the tunnel with Forktail on point vital to the operation’s success.
“Sergeant Major Trapper,” Jenkins called over the dedicated frequency, “you are hereby placed in command of the Nutcrackers. Our entire lives have prepared us for this moment, people, and I know we’ll prove equal to the task. Good hunting, Metalheads.”
“Metal never dies,” Trapper uncharacteristically acknowledged, and to Jenkins’ approval, the entire Nutcracker team passionately echoed the sergeant major’s words. Even as they did so, they removed the bodies of their fallen comrades and placed their remains in Octopede’s flank-mounted cargo racks. It was not the first time those racks had borne such cargo, and Jenkins suspected it would not be the last. They left no one behind.
With that necessary task complete, the Nutcrackers moved down the tunnel. Forktail went ahead of the rest of the formation while Trapper’s people clung to the walls and moved on foot down the underground passage.
“3rd Company,” Jenkins called over the P2P as Roy tore across the Lunar surface toward the rendezvous point, “form up on me and proceed to the relay at flank speed. Every second is crucial.”
“Acknowledged, Colonel,” Lieutenant Winters promptly replied. “ETA to rendezvous point, seventeen minutes.”
10
Down the Tunnel
Aboard the Blink Dog, Podsy watched in fascination and amazement as Blinky deftly guided the quadrupedal down the tunnel.
He was confident that Xi could have done the same, and word had it that Colonel Jenkins’ piloting skills were the best in the Legion. But to see such a young and inexperienced Jock literally crawl his mech at speeds upward of twenty kph by shuffle-stepping on its “forearms” and “forelegs” was impressive.
And a little inspiring.
Jem’s voice drew Podsy’s attention from the mech’s cockpit. “Based on what we have encountered, it is highly probable that there will be additional obstacles in our path.”
“That would be the safe bet,” Podsy agreed.
“However,” Jem continued, “I do not think it probable that Luna One’s information infrastructure has undergone radical modification since the schematics you provided were obtained.”
Podsy nodded at the potential revelation, having hoped that Jem would conclude as much.
In the aftermat
h of Earth’s last Great War, the Chinese government had attained absolute supremacy, in no small part due to Luna One. As a gesture of magnanimity and a display of dominance, the Chinese had made available the plans to Luna One for independent review by Earth’s separate nations. By that time, however, it was impossible for any nation to mount a takeover attempt of Luna One. It had already pulverized every single non-Chinese military installation on the planet, so there had been little risk in revealing the details of the all-important facility to the general public.
It was those very schematics, which had been independently verified to the best of the non-Chinese inspectors’ abilities, that the Metal Legion now used to navigate the vast network of subterranean tunnels.
Who could have guessed that their hubris might ultimately prove key to saving humanity from the very forces that had sundered and manipulated it? Podsy wondered in silence.
“This facility,” Jem continued, “is crude, but effective. It is also in keeping with Jemmin’s earliest iterations of the methodology by which it manipulated younger races into compliance.”
“You’re saying that Luna One was Jemmin’s doing?” Podsy asked in alarm. Even as he did so, he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Almost certainly,” Jem agreed. “The Chinese government was, at the time, the ideal candidate nation for Jemmin to support and guide to a position of power among your people. Their Communist philosophy, while certainly enlightened in many respects, contained fundamental flaws that Jemmin used to consolidate power far more effectively than would have been possible with any human society built upon a more distributed system of national power.”
“You sound like you approve of Communism,” Podsy mused.
“Of course,” Jem replied. “But as with any system of social organization, it possesses significant flaws. My forebears observed that there is no perfect and universally-applicable system of social organization. The possibility of such a system is anathema to a fundamental truth of life, which is that variation is key to life’s success. Less variation leads to less success, while more variation leads to more success. This is universally true of organic life. Of course, intelligence eventually overtakes environmentally-selected variety as the most critical factor in life’s continued success, but we Jem’un, using our own meager measure of intelligence, believed that it is only by incorporating individuality at every point of a social equation that social harmony and, indeed, organizational perfection could be attained.”
“Communism was often hailed as universally fair,” Styles said in a raised voice from across the compartment. “But I think its biggest flaw is that life isn’t fair, so why should a social system designed for life forms be fair? It doesn’t make sense. It’s asymmetrical.”
Podsy grinned approvingly as Jem replied, “That is indeed one of its major failings, another being increased priority given to the system itself rather than to its constituents. This factor aligns with Jemmin’s core nature. It would therefore have been appealing to it as it decided how to most effectively manipulate your species.”
“Contact!” Styles barked as flashes filled the tunnel ahead of Blink Dog, snapping Podsy’s attention to the window.
Fifty meters ahead of the rest of the column, Lieutenant Ford’s Forktail was enveloped in a crossfire as multiple pop-out turrets tore into the mech’s flanks. Forktail returned fire, sending depleted uranium slugs back while Anaconda added its own chain guns to the fray.
Sergeant Major Trapper’s people set up RPG launchers, sending rockets down the tunnel, where they carved meter-deep gouges in the soft, synthetic-rock walls. The Luna One’s automated coil guns tore into the lead mechs’ armored hulls.
Trapper led a team of six Legionnaires down the tunnel, ignoring the firestorm enveloping Forktail and Anaconda as they leapfrogged from the relative cover of one mech to another.
Using hand signals, he directed his people to target one of the left-hand pop-out turrets with at least two RPGs. Working in pairs with a loader and a gunner in each team, the trio of heavy weapons teams launched their grenades. One grenade missed entirely and streaked down the tunnel, where it exploded a full two seconds after being fired. The second was improbably sniped by turret fire just after it passed Anaconda’s position.
But the third struck home, sending a spray of shrapnel out with such force that some of it clattered against Forktail’s battered hull twenty meters away.
Heedless of the danger, Sergeant Major Trapper ran down the tunnel at the head of his six-man team. His goal was to reach the safety of Anaconda’s armored head, and he managed to do precisely that just as one of his fire teams was torn limb from limb by coil gun fire from the opposite side of the tunnel.
Trapper shouldered his fifty-caliber rifle from a kneeling position and swung the muzzle on-target in a single fluid motion. The grizzled veteran squeezed the trigger without a moment’s hesitation, sending a round into the armored shield affixed to the coil gun’s sensitive firing aperture. Trapper missed the aperture by eight centimeters with that first shot, which was nothing short of jaw-dropping, in Podsy’s mind.
Trapper’s second shot came even closer to the weapon’s muzzle, which swiveled toward him with mechanical precision. At this range, all it would take was a single coil gun round to kill the valorous warrior outright.
Fortunately, and against all odds, the sergeant major’s third shot went straight down the turret’s throat. The coil gun retracted into the wall, sparks flying from within as its high-voltage lines shorted amid a series of ultra-satisfying blue-white electrical discharges, arcing and sparking across the destroyed metal emplacement.
Podsy was speechless as Trapper’s two remaining fire teams formed up on his position, where they reloaded their RPG launchers and prepared to engage the next target.
All three of Trapper’s shots had gone off in less than three seconds. Using a fifty-caliber anti-material rifle, the sergeant major had pulled an eight-centimeter grouping with those shots at a range of sixty meters.
From his knees.
Under fire.
Without power-armor.
In three seconds.
Trapper’s fire teams sent a pair of RPGs down the tunnel, where they struck another coil gun. Shortly after they neutralized their target, Forktail’s left flank exploded, sending a short-lived fireball into the tunnel. Podsy knew with grim certainty that the only supply of oxygen that would make a fire in the tunnel was what the Metal Legion had brought.
Which meant Forktail’s cabin had just been breached.
Once again, Trapper led his fire team down the tunnel, this time racing toward Forktail’s position. The lead mech of the Nutcrackers shuddered, lurching to the right like a mortally wounded animal trying to avoid another wound. The true purpose of the move was made clear when Ford’s mech sent a hail of SRMs down the tunnel, where they engaged eight different pop-up turrets. Using such powerful ordnance in a confined space was dangerous, but without atmosphere to propagate the blast wave, it was considerably less dangerous than it would have been on the surface of a planet with a thick atmosphere.
Five turrets were scratched, and, mercifully the tunnel did not collapse from the AP missiles’ impacts. Man-sized boulders were hurled from the walls, and the floor was shattered at several locations beyond the impact points, but the column’s progress would not be slowed by the damage.
Then Forktail’s right flank exploded. Without so much as a death rattle, the Tactical-grade mech collapsed to the tunnel floor while Sergeant Major Trapper hurriedly reversed course and led his people back to the relative safety of Anaconda’s heavily-armored head.
Just as the infantrymen reached cover, Forktail’s capacitors exploded, and the mech’s hull was torn into three separate parts. The head, which housed the cockpit, was sent tumbling down the tunnel where it eventually skidded to a stop. The stern collapsed to the tunnel floor, motionless and largely undamaged.
But the mech’s torso exploded in a violent spray of shra
pnel that clattered against and even dug into Anaconda’s armored prow.
“Medics!” Trapper barked, coming out of cover as a team of corpsmen raced down the tunnel far behind him. Their long, bounding strides seemed completely at odds with the gravity of the situation, but those exaggerated low-gee steps brought them to Forktail’s head far faster than they could have managed under standard gravity conditions. “Walters, Lenin,” Trapper called mid-stride as he reached Forktail’s head. He pointed at two pop-ups that were partially-retracted. “Secure those turrets.”
The pair of troopers moved to their respective assignments, primed frag grenades, and tossed them into the pop-ups before jumping clear of the muffled explosions that neutralized the deadly weapons.
Anaconda and the rest of the column awaited Trapper’s all-clear signal before advancing. His people conducted thorough sweeps of the area while the corpsmen worked to access the self-contained cockpit of the destroyed Forktail.
Once they gained access to Lieutenant Eugene Ford’s cockpit, the news was not what anyone had hoped for.
“No survivors,” Trapper declared. “Lieutenant Podsednik, you’re in tactical command of the column.”
Podsy swallowed the sudden knot in his throat. “Copy that, Sergeant Major,” he acknowledged.
“The tunnel’s secure,” Trapper said after another minute had passed and his people completed their inspection. “Clear the debris and move out!”
“You heard the man, Nutcrackers,” Podsy declared as the last of the fallen were placed in body bags and put onto Octopede’s external cargo racks. “Roll out!”
11
Space Marines
“I’ve got inbound, Captain,” reported Sargon, aboard Eclipse. “Sixteen contacts on a high-speed, low-altitude approach.”