by C H Gideon
The bolts exploded, resulting in a pop followed by a faint tremor as the heavy outer door fell to the concrete floor beneath Blink Dog’s cabin.
Blinky opened the inner door, and the trio’s envirosuits quickly expanded as their pressurized interiors were exposed to the vacuum outside. Podsy felt a wave of vertigo wash over him as the unwelcome sensation of a ballooning envirosuit surrounded him.
Andy Podsednik hated vacuum. Not as much as he hated R&B or snotty eggs, but definitely more than he hated heights or toothy hummers. It took a surprising amount of self-control for him to step out behind Staubach, who was first down the ramp and through the door leading to the uplink node’s interior. A team of Trapper’s people had already signaled that the area was secure and had moved through the room to check another adjoining passage opposite the one that had brought the Nutcrackers.
Podsy kept Jem’s satchel clutched against his chest as the trio moved into the junction, where a neatly-arranged bank of data interface terminals lined the walls. The chamber measured ten meters on a side, and in the center was a cylindrical data trunk two meters across and stretching from the floor to the ceiling nearly three meters above.
Staubach signaled all-clear, prompting Podsy and Styles to move into the chamber and approach the central data trunk. The data trunk was surrounded by a ring-shaped table with a handful of workstations built into it. None of the workstations were powered, which presented the first challenge the Nutcrackers had to face.
The door through which they had entered was not the only passage out of this chamber, and as Styles produced a toolkit and stack of data slates, the Pounders returned from the other main entry point and reported all-clear to the sergeant major. Another pair of exits were situated on the walls adjacent to those that the Terrans had already explored, but these third and fourth doors led to maintenance tunnels that followed the data lines out from the upload hub.
“This level of arrogance is absolutely amazing,” Styles muttered as he worked to bypass the interlocks that prevented the workstations from receiving power.
“Solarians believe their One Mind network is impervious to outside manipulation.” Podsy shrugged. “If they didn’t believe that, Jem’s whole theory would be out the window.”
“I know,” Styles said tersely as he switched tools and craned his head to look behind the panel he had been accessing by touch alone. “It’s just, a line like this in a Terran installation would have a full squad of Marines and a team of twice as many technicians ready to blow the whole thing if someone got as deep as we’ve gotten. The hubris on display here is just…ridiculous,” he finished triumphantly as the front panel popped off the workstation, revealing a surprisingly familiar-looking set of boards, wires, and processors.
“Jemmin is intelligent,” Jem explained, “and it uses that intelligence to manipulate less intelligent beings into following its designs. It is not such a difficult task once the information and cognitive-prowess gaps have widened to a certain degree.”
“God, you’re a snob,” Styles quipped as he took another set of tools out and worked to physically re-route several of the wires connecting the workstation to the main information trunk-lines. “I dated a girl like you once. She was hot. Real hot. Thankfully, my survival instincts kicked in and I left after appetizers and stiffed her with the check. She ordered lobster three ways and a zero-gee chocolate mousse on the first date. Who the hell does that?” he asked no one in particular.
“What, stiff a date after appetizers?” Podsy deadpanned, drawing a glare from Styles.
“Biological reproductive imperatives aside,” Jem said witheringly as Trapper’s people lugged high-explosives into the main tunnel opposite the one they had come down, “unlike a sexual encounter that might result in a worthwhile contribution to your species’ future generations, you do in fact need me. So, I would advise you not to ‘stiff me with the check,’ especially not before I have done as I agreed to do.”
“Got it,” Styles declared a few mercifully quiet seconds later, and the workstation before them sprang to life. Podsy put Jem’s linked data slate down beside the workstation and connected a pair of fiber-optic leads to the console’s inputs as Styles continued, “I don’t know how long it will last. Those wires don’t look like they can handle the load for too long at these voltage—”
He broke off when the workstation shut down, causing Podsy and Styles to exchange concerned looks before all five of the workstations booted up. Instead of relief, Podsy felt a measure of unexpected anxiety as Jem matter-of-factly declared, “I have assumed local control. Warning: inbound hostiles detected.” A tactical map of the surrounded facility appeared on the workstations. Podsy and Styles examined it and quickly saw eight fast-moving icons almost on top of their position.
Sparse video feeds showed images of those icons, each of which was a power-armored Solarian Marine.
“We’ve got inbound!” Styles declared. “Eight enemy Marines, with the closest four hundred meters down Alpha Tunnel. Three fifty…three hundred!”
“Take cover!” Trapper barked, a rare note of anxiety creeping into his voice as his people leaped into whatever cover they could find. Some, like Sergeant Major Trapper, ended up inside the hub. Others dove into a quartet of spiked coil gun nests. A few found no such cover and crouched behind their weapons, intent on giving the Solarians a traditional Metal Legion welcome.
Podsy watched as Trapper produced a remote detonator, which he primed twice before it unexpectedly fell from his hands to the ground. For safety reasons, all remote detonators require three successive primes before going hot, and the sergeant major had fumbled the ball before striking the third prime.
As Trapper reached to collect the detonator, fire erupted in both tunnels.
The Terrans sent a stream of RPGs, antimaterial rounds, and small arms fire down the tunnel to greet the power-armored Marines. One of the RPGs managed a direct strike to a Marine’s breastplate, breaking his stride long enough for a hail of small arms fire to hammer into his torso and limbs. But his three fellows surged past him, their railguns, microrockets, and slug-throwers returning the Terran fire tenfold.
Two of the spiked coil gun nests in Alpha Tunnel were hit by railgun fire and microrockets, killing all six Metalheads within. Another of the coil gun nests was targeted with sniper-precise small-arms slugs, knocking two of the Metalheads within out of the fight with direct hits to the upper torso.
Down Bravo Tunnel, Jem had assumed control over the nested coil guns and sent a hail of fire into the Marine quad. Round after round hammered into the charging Marines, whose railguns and microrockets slammed into the nests a tenth of a second too late as Jem closed the blast shields to protect the placements from Solarian fire.
Too fast to track, Jem opened and closed those armored shields in a seemingly inviting display, bringing Solarian railgun and rocket strikes to those nests while their opposites likewise opened, unleashed a fresh hail of coil gun rounds against the Solarians.
Slowed but not stopped, the charging Marines in Bravo Tunnel took what they probably thought would be temporary shelter in recesses built into the tunnel’s sides. Had they been given even a few seconds, they likely would have neutralized Jem’s cleverly-winking coil gun turrets, but Sergeant Major Trapper was determined not to give them those seconds.
Gripping the detonator in his hands, he primed it three times and rammed his palm down on the trigger. The chamber shook violently all around them as both Alpha and Bravo tunnels collapsed from the hastily-placed demo charges.
The furious exchange of fire abruptly ceased, and Trapper risked a look via mirror down Alpha Tunnel.
“Medics!” Trapper bellowed, rising to his feet and moving to where the majority of his people had been busy erecting defenses less than a minute earlier.
Podsy raced to help him, leaving Styles to oversee Jem’s ongoing operation. Podsy was no dimwit when it came to virtual architecture, but he would never be within two rungs of Styles’ level.
He could do more good helping the wounded than distracting Styles.
Up and down Alpha Tunnel, Metalheads lay in various states. Many were dead, some were badly wounded, and others merely dazed. Those next few minutes passed in a blur as Podsy’s training took over and he almost mindlessly did his best to help his wounded comrades.
All told, of the twenty-six infantry who had arrived at the uplink hub, only fourteen had survived, and four of those were immobile from the severity of their injuries.
Blink Dog had also suffered terribly in the exchange, both its rear legs ruined and multiple holes in its oxygen storage tanks. Unlike the Legion’s larger vehicles, most of their current Recon-grade mechs like Blink Dog were not equipped with robust O2 scrubbers. They generally had sufficient oxygen for between four and ten days of deployment. Recon mechs were sprinters, designed to leap in, achieve their objectives, and leap out. Their staying power was extremely limited as a result of the need for speed trumping nearly all other considerations, and as Podsy eyed those O2 tanks, he knew that even if the rest were intact, they only had another half-day’s supply of oxygen available to them.
And they had just collapsed their only real escape paths, which meant a half-day was probably all they had left.
Pushing that particularly dire thought from his mind was easier than he had feared as he focused on the fact that the surface team was scheduled to have overtaken the transceiver array. According to most pre-op projections, the Solarians would have already responded and sent an overwhelming force to dislodge the Metal Legion from their position.
Forget half a day, Podsy, he thought grimly. Xi and the surface team might not have half an hour.
With that sobering thought firmly in mind, he helped Sergeant Major Trapper pull the wounded back into the upload hub and hoped that Jem and Styles could pull off the greatest hack in human history.
15
Standing Tall
“There it is,” Jenkins muttered as his HUD finally displayed a long-awaited status update.
The update was such a minor thing that anyone not actively looking for it would have missed it. A minor blip in a nearby Solarian comm tower that signaled that Jem had successfully overtaken the local quadrant of Luna One’s underground infrastructure. During the op’s planning phase, it had been decided that attempting to hold the system against counter-takeovers would present too much risk.
Despite Jem’s impressive technique, the Solarians would eventually retake control of the system and use it to send a swarm of missiles to the surface team’s location. As a result, Jem used the brief window of control to shut down every fusion reactor and discharge every capacitor bank across Luna One.
The apparent ease with which Jem completed this objective was chilling to Jenkins. This entire operation hinged on Jem overpowering Sol’s robust defensive systems, and it was glaringly clear that humanity’s fate rested in the Jem’un gestalt’s virtual hands.
Of course, without the Metalheads to support Jem’s efforts, none of it would have been possible. But never had Jenkins been so keenly aware of how tenuous humanity’s circumstances were than when fifty-nine sub-surface fusion reactors powered down in unison.
With the beating heart of Luna One arrested, Jenkins focused on the inbound Mongol-class dropship.
With a complement of forty Solar Marines aboard and four void interceptors flanking it, the Solarian strike force hugged the Lunar surface on its way to the Terran position. Even a direct hit from the Sam Kolt would have difficulty putting the armored dropship down. And once the Kolt fired, it was probable that the interceptors would return the favor with unerring, deadly precision.
“It’s time,” Jenkins said grimly, knowing his next request for fire support would be costly in the extreme. “Sargon, pop a relay drone with coverage to Colonel Moon’s position.”
“Drone away, Colonel,” Eclipse’s Jock acknowledged, sending a rocket-powered comm relay drone high above the Lunar surface, but not so high that it was immediately exposed to hostile fire.
The comm link was established, and Jenkins wasted no time forwarding his fire support request. “This is Dragon Actual requesting intercept of five approaching bogeys.”
“Aces & Faces inbound. Engagement in forty-two seconds,” Colonel Moon immediately replied, referring to the elite pilots under his poker-deck-inspired naming convention. With four suits to a deck of cards, there were four aces and twelve kings, queens, and jacks. These were the sixteen best of Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades squadrons. Normally only two jokers were in a playing deck, but the Jokers of Moon’s command were the reserves and ideally numbered between eight and twelve. In Moon’s system, only the best pilots made Aces & Faces, and only those with bigger-than-average chips on their shoulders joined the Jokers.
Moon and nineteen of his fellow hot-shot pilots surged from their concealed position several hundred kilometers away. Jem’s initial fog had blinded the Solarian sensors to specific signatures rather than to locations. As a result, Colonel Moon’s people had lain doggo on the Moon’s surface, and their inactivity had rendered them completely invisible to Solar sensors.
Just like Jemmin’s vehicles back on Shiva’s Wrath, Jenkins thought darkly, wondering yet again whether they were indeed the good guys in this fight. It was a concern he knew his subordinates shared, but to their credit, not one of them had given voice to such doubts.
As Moon’s elite pilots sprinted to meet the enemy, they clung to the Lunar surface even more tightly than their Solarian counterparts. In reply to their seemingly sudden appearance, the four Solar interceptors broke formation and climbed skyward to gain a firing advantage over the low-flying Terran craft.
Moon’s people held formation, hugging the deck at top speed to buy as much time as possible for their firing solutions to achieve maximum effect. Every percentage point counted in this all-important exchange, and Moon’s people knew that every bit as well as Jenkins’ mech crews.
Even if Jenkins’ force could deny the dropship overwatch of the position, forty Solar Marines represented overwhelming firepower compared to his handful of battered mechs that stood sentinel at the transceiver array. If the dropship was permitted to unload all forty of its Marines in a coordinated fashion, the Terran force would be defeated in a matter of minutes and Operation Antivenom would fail.
Moon’s interceptors screamed through the void as the engagement clock wound down to twenty seconds. The Solar interceptors would achieve firing angles in just three seconds, but the Terran void pilots continued their course heedless of the pending danger presented by their Solarian adversaries.
Suddenly, one of Moon’s fighters kissed the deck and exploded in a violent release of stored rocket fuel. Its pilot, even with neural linkage enhancements, didn’t see the thirty-centimeter-tall mound of Lunar dust that claimed her life.
Then the Solarians reached a firing angle—and an eighth of a second before they did, Moon’s people scattered like dust in a whirlwind.
Solar railguns stabbed down from the four hostile interceptors, six bolts striking the Lunar surface and two hitting Moon’s ships. Moon’s pilots ignored the hostiles, authoring a reply as they kept their eyes fixed on the real target: the Marine dropship.
As the Solarians climbed skyward, they came into Preacher’s firing arcs, and the mech sent up the last four Blue Boys in the Legion’s arsenal.
The fusion-powered laser-missiles screamed skyward, seeking to gain enough distance to safely discharge their payloads without damaging the mechs or transceiver below with the rad-wash of their explosions.
Stunningly, the Solar dropship opened fire with lasers of its own at the precise moment the Blue Boys fired at the enemy interceptors.
Two of the four Blue Boys were lanced by the dropship’s beams before their fusion-powered lasers could engage the enemy. The others each sniped a Solar fighter, leaving two hostile interceptors lighting up the board.
Without hesitation, two of Moon’s pilots broke format
ion and moved to engage the fighters. Railguns fired and missiles loosed from the Terran spacecraft, while their Solar counterparts returned the favor with a swarm of micromissiles targeting every ship in Moon’s broken formation.
Those micromissiles were a half-second too late to prevent the Terran pilots from unleashing their ordnance on the inbound dropship.
Railgun bolts hammered into the Solar dropship, tearing deep rents in its forward hull. Missiles followed, slamming into the superstructure in tight groupings with relentless technical savagery. Each successive impact dug deeper into the heavily-armored prow of the harbinger of Marine-delivered death. The dropship soldiered forward, shaking off the near-mortal wounds from the coordinated fire of Moon’s people.
Until the Sam Kolt added its voice to the affair.
Aiming its capital-grade railgun, the humanoid’s posture was so stooped that it appeared to be a quadruped by design. Its capacitors flashed as the mighty weapon delivered a hyper-velocity tungsten bolt with the force of twenty kilotons directly into the rent in the Marine dropship’s hull. Even the Sam Kolt’s mighty railgun would have failed to penetrate that heavily-armored facing had the Aces & Faces not softened it up.
Explosions rocked the dropship’s interior, and power-armored Marines ditched the flagging craft in a cloud of fresh contact signatures. Thirty-five of the Mongol-class dropship’s Marines escaped the dying craft before its fuel storage systems lost containment, killing the vessel from within and sending a cloud of debris across the Lunar surface. Of the thirty-five Solar Marines to escape the dropship’s demise, four were killed by shrapnel, leaving thirty-one inbound Marines scattered across the Lunar plains stretching before the transceiver array.
Colonel Moon and his people, showing uncommon courage under fire, had stayed in the pocket and delivered their payloads into the teeth of the enemy before ditching their ships. The timing had been so precise and so close to the Solarian missile impacts on the Terran hulls that only twelve of Moon’s pilots survived their ejections and fell to the dusty surface of the Moon.