The Battle of Broken Moon

by Michael E. Gonzales

  "None of the six are off the list, Matt."

  "His idea was not unsound."

  "Doctrinally, perhaps not, but it would leave the civilians all but defenseless, and accomplish what the enemy wanted in the first place—to have the majority of us here in sector zero. Remember, neither the enemy nor their spy is, as yet, aware we have armed all the Kilo Whiskeys, so they don't know our real strength."

  I was about to respond when Ava blurted to me alone over Ismay, "Matt, they have launched the other lander. They must be preparing for a major push with all their forces."

  "We bloodied their noses harder than they anticipated," I replied.

  "We have less than two hours before they start entering the BSC,” Ava continued, “Their company already on the ground is moving into the BSC and spreading out."

  "We don't want to bubble up again," I said. "Have the bots in sector five conduct delaying actions only. Tell them to access FM 3-24 section 2-102, Guerrilla tactics: hit-and-run attacks, ambushes, sniping, rocket and grenade attacks, and the use of explosive devices. Guerrilla fighting will delay them, buying us time to finish up here and be ready. Let's not waste this time, it's very expensive."

  So far, we had built large, thick barricades at each entrance into the hub. Beyond, we'd constructed obstacles designed to slow them down and injure them. We left them very little cover, and planted IEDs everywhere they might try to find cover. Little tricks I picked up in the Blood Archipelago.

  As we worked, the bots in sector five continued to fight. In one wide corridor, the bots built their own barricade and defended in line of battle. Their marksmanship was so good the enemy could not get close enough to use even their grenade launchers.

  Our bots held for forty minutes before a remotely controlled robotics weapons platform rolled toward them. This drone fired a couple of RPGs at their defensive works, which breached the wall and killed fifteen of our bots. The rest pulled back.

  In other locations, our bots harassed the enemy, firing from side doors and connecting hallways, launching single grenades or volleys of grenades. Long-range shots of five hundred meters and more down corridor number six caused their movement to stand still. It was at these times that the enemy called up the robotic weapons platforms. Our guys discovered these machines were well armored in the front, but were vulnerable to flank and rear shots, which often detonated their stored ammo.

  At one point, they launched three of these in an inverted 'V' formation, assuming they could provide mutually supporting fires. But there were too many connecting hallways, doors and ventilation shafts. Flank and rear shots destroyed all three before they could accomplish much.

  Their first objective became obvious, the intersection of corridor six and the first curvilinear hallway. From here, they would be able to spread out and ultimately surround Sector Zero completely. Forcing all their effort up corridor six illustrated why they wanted to spread out, we were murdering them in six. Of course, they still believed they outnumbered us. They did not, but the numbers were changing rapidly.

  "Matt," Ava said, "more soldiers are deploying from the lander."

  "How far out is the second lander?"

  "They are on final approach now."

  "Start rotating those bots that require the most charge to charging stations. If you have to pull them off the front, do it. Let's get as many charged up as we can in the time we have left."

  "What about you Matt? You have only fifty-eight percent remaining."

  "I'm fine."

  "Matt, we have time right now. Later, we may not have time to get you charged."

  "I'm good as long as I stay above twenty percent."

  "Don't be foolish, it means you only have thirty-eight percent to play with."

  "Ava, how long to recharge?"

  "About fifteen to twenty minutes."

  "I'll recharge as soon as I finish planting the rest of these IEDs."

  "Matt, the second lander is setting down now. Based on their performance last time, I estimate they will begin deploying in an hour and fifty minutes. Also, the first lander is deploying a third company. I estimate that each lander holds four companies."

  "A reinforced battalion," I mumbled.

  "Yes. Given the casualties the company we are currently engaging has sustained, I estimate their total strength when completely deployed at or about seven hundred nine. Our current strength, after calculating recent losses and the number Doc is likely to return to duty in the next few hours comes to one thousand one hundred ten. The gap narrows."

  "We still have the advantage in that they don't know our numbers. I say we let them encircle us. To attack, they will have to divide their force into eight segments, one per corridor, or they risk being flanked. If they put equal numbers in each corridor that means only eighty-eight per corridor, we're prepared, our guys can handle that."

  Ava briefed all the bots and I informed Walker and Dolph. Then the order was given and the bots in sector five began to slowly pull back in such a manner as to give the impression that they were being forced.

  Outside, through Ava, I could see the two landers sitting nearly side by side. At their base, all six enemy companies were assembled. That's when Ava called my attention toward the recently arrived lander. One of the elevators began a solitary decent. On it were seven figures clad in red exo-suits.

  "What do you make of this, Matt?" Ava asked.

  "They started with eight companies, now they're down to six and the remains of the one now fighting in sector five. I'd wager these are tactical commanders above the company commanders. We saw the regular soldiers in units we fought against in Oceania receive the same assistance when their commanders were not making the grade. Ava, can you put this on one of these big monitors in here?"

  Instantly, all the monitors in the hub burst to life, each showing a different view of the same group of red clad individuals. We all watched as they left the platform and walked to a position in front of their assembled troops. They had walked into the shadow cast by their lander, so each raised their helmet's sun shield. Ava's eyes looked directly into each helmet. All these individuals were female, all blonds, all blue eyed, only their hairstyle showed any individuality at all, otherwise they were each very similar in appearance. One other item of note—each showed an identifier. They were SUBs! Each identifier read, KB - RT.j2, and they were numbered 2131 through 2139. "I'll be damned," I said to Ava.

  Chapter 12

  The Alamo

  "It has been suspected that the SUB program was compromised about six years ago," Ava said to me privately over Ismay.

  I turned to Walker and Dolph, and without thinking, said, "Guys, I just got off the COMde with Ava, she tells me that these seven women are SUBs."

  "They can go under water?" Dolph asked. "I don't see that as a plus for them here."

  "No, no, wait." Walker held up a hand. "I heard something about this— an experiment a couple a years back that attempted to interface a human brain with a robotic body, like a remote control robot."

  "No," I corrected Walker, "SUBs is short for the acronym C.E.U.H.B. for Cybernetically Enhanced and Upload—"

  "Matt," It was Ava, over Ismay, reminding me of the projects secret status.

  "Upload what?" Walker asked.

  "Uh, yeah, basically they're remote control robots. They are strong, fast and difficult to kill. One bullet won't do it in most cases, and unless you're firing ammunition with uranium depleted penetrators, don't waste your time trying for a head shot. Their skulls are titanium, damn near bulletproof. Right between their breasts, where the base of the sternum is on a Bio, I mean a human, is their G-buc, a graphene based ultra capacitor—it's their power supply—aim for that. But I'll wager, like all of us, they have on body armor."

  Dolph stepped close to the monitor nearest us. Looking at the women in the red echo-suit, he said, "Sie sehen aus wie Walküren."

  "What?" Walker asked.

  "Yeah, they do sort of look like Valkyries," I said. "Exce
pt they're too skinny and don't have horns on their helmets."

  "Only in Amerika do you see them this way," his voice became low and his eyes did not leave the monitor. "The Walküren were originally harbingers of death. Dark sprites who soared over battlefields and collected the souls of the heroic dead and carried them to Vallholl, Wotan's feast hall, then he would include them into his army of ghost heroes. In Vallholl the Walküren served the slain warriors tankards of mead that never ran dry and plates of endless meat.

  "The Walküren were Wotan's shield-maidens, virgins of unsurpassed beauty. Their hair was as fine golden thread, their eyes as blue as the Rhine, their skin like snow.

  "They were beautiful, Ja, but terrible maidens, skilled in both battle and magic. In their hands lay the fate of warriors, heroes, cowards, and nations. They answered only to the will of Wotan."

  "Wow, Dolph, you're really into that shit, ain't ya?" Walker asked.

  One at a time, Dolph pointed to the female SUBs on the monitor. "This one reminds me of Skögul, the raging maiden. This one is Herfjötur, the war fetter. Next, she is undoubtedly Róta, She Who Causes Turmoil. And this one with her hair in buns on the side of her head, this is Hildr, the battle maiden. This one who seems so confident, she must be Sigrún, the victory rune.

  "But this tall one, here in the center, she must be the leader, so she is Freya, Wotan's wife and commander of the Walküren."

  The one Dolph called Freya was tall, and by far the more attractive of the Valkyries. She wore her long hair braided and coiled up like rope on the top of her head.

  "Okay, now we have names for the enemy, let's use them," I suggested.

  "We can now target their leadership," Dolph observed.

  "Tactically, yes. But their commander, their C in C is no doubt in orbit above us," I replied.

  "Wotan," Dolph said, turning to face me.

  "Gentlemen," it was Ava over the speakers, "the company already inside sector five has secured the intersection and is holding. And if you look at the monitors, you'll see that the other elements of the enemy force have started moving into the BSC at three different locations in the BSCs damaged hull. It should be noted that the enemy beyond the damaged area have erected barriers with integral airlocks. They have forced open our airtight doors and have started to remove their exo-suits. This provides them more and better range of movement and does not risk the suit in combat."

  We had our defensive plans drawn up and ready, we distributed the personnel, weapons, and ammo. We had more troops than we required at each barricade, so I held the remainder, about six hundred bots, in reserve. We established an aid station where the Bio-tech and CYB-tech stood by with their medical supplies and spare parts.

  I placed Dolph at our one o'clock position watching corridors two, three, and four. I put Walker at our six o'clock watching five, six, and seven. I was at our nine o'clock looking down eight through one. This was not for any other reason than dispersion. I did not want both my friends at the same place, where I might lose them both to a single grenade or some other random act of slaughter. The risk we were currently running was great enough.

  Ava watched as the enemy spread through the corridors to our left and right from the intersection. The forward-deployed bots kept up their harassment against them to prevent the enemy from becoming suspicious. As the enemy divided their forces, our guys were required to divide as well, and because our bots were hopping through rooms and offices and narrow hallways, they were slower than the enemy who held the main corridor. This was the lunar version of what used to be called house to house combat, today it’s generally called military operations in urban terrain, but the US military simply calls it UO, Urban Operations. I call it hell. It’s the worst possible of all forms of battle, usually conducted at close range, often hand-to-hand.

  Our casualties were mounting. The enemy knew that the force currently opposing them could not keep spreading out and covering an ever-expanding front, so at forty degrees of the arch I called them back. Their efforts had been heroic. Humans would have been awarded medals.

  Our bots were returning down corridors six, seven, and eight. I stood next to Walker at six, and we watched as the little bots entered the Alamo.

  The poor little guys were all shot to pieces. Every chassis showed the scars of battle. Some were sparking and smoking, some limping on bent and broken wheels. From one direction, came a bot trailing three mangled limbs. To our left, came one bot guiding three others that had been blinded. To our right, came several sets of two bots, each carrying a third who was no longer mobile. The floor was stained with various fluids, lubricants, and hydraulics.

  Everyone was silent. Designated bots went out to assist the wounded to the aid station. At Walker's side, Pasportu reached out with an articulated manipulator and took hold of Walker's leg. Walker looked down just as Pasportu looked up. "Sergeant Walker," he said, "I am afraid."

  Walker squatted down and looked into Pasportu's optical receivers. "Hey, we're all scared. Don't worry; I'll be right here with you." Then Walker stood and looked at me.

  "Harder than you thought it would be, isn't it?" I asked.

  "He's like a little kid," Walker whispered.

  "Well, if it means anything to you, he's almost eight years old."

  Time was now moving like molasses. Everyone was at their designated position, waiting. The only audible sound came from the aid station, the whir of power tools and the flash of arcing light.

  Ava kept me abreast of the movements of the enemy. As they spread out to surround us, they moved closer at every intersection. They were slowly tightening the noose around us. The hour was quite late when Ava reported they had completed their movement and were now moving their logistics from their depots in sector five. They brought up countless ammo boxes, food and water containers and a hundred larger, metal boxes that looked like government caskets.

  The food and water reminded me that these guys were all Bios, so they had limitations we SUBs and bots don't. The longer we held, the more tired and battle worn they'd become. They were going to require food, water, rest, and hospitalization as they were wounded. Of course, they were not cut off from their base of supplies as we were.

  Down corridors one, eight, and seven, several of the enemy's small robotic weapons platforms appeared. Now they were armed with what looked like multiple rocket launchers.

  We opened fire with our long-range rifles loaded with armor piercing rounds. Though several were stopped, the others kept coming. At about seven hundred meters, they stopped and launched all their missiles. These rounds shot straight down the center of the corridor and started detonating several meters apart. Each missile distributed a large number of sub-munitions which stuck to the floor, walls, and ceilings. In short order, corridors one, seven, and eight were covered in thousands of the small, black, sticky objects.

  "What the hell are those?" Walker asked over his COMde.

  Ava had the answer. "Those are Chinese Mk VII anti-personnel mines. They have proximity fuses. When one detonates, it shoots a jet of plasma energy outward about a meter, and metal shards out in a fifty-degree cone, it has—"

  "Okay, I get the picture," Walker replied.

  "What they have done is to deny everyone those corridors," I said. "This greatly deters us from reaching their base at the far end of seven, or our friends at the far end of nine. They can also better consolidate their forces. Now they can have one hundred eighteen soldiers at each of the remaining corridors. I'm going to leave a small guard on those three corridors and re-deploy the rest of our guys. Ya know, I still think we can handle—"

  "Matt!" both Dolph and Walker shouted urgently to me.

  Ava too called out, "They are deploying red phosphorous smoke in the remainder of the passages. Matt, we can't see through red phosphorous smoke."

  I then shouted aloud that age old warning that has echoed down the halls of history, "Here they come!"

  We SUBs and bots have extremely acute hearing, so we heard them fi
rst. There was too much noise to distinguish or locate a single target so we began to 'recon by fire'. In other words, we just started to fire into the smoke. The noise was horrendous! I adjusted my hearing to reduce the effect.

  Now, the enemy began to return fire, and it was vicious. Their large, powerful 7.62 mm bullets tore into our barricades so fast and furious that the debris they kicked up looked like smoke. Those rounds that passed over our heads were ripping into the walls all around us. I had a corridor to my back, so enemy bullets were slamming into the ceiling above my head.

  In front of us, we heard the sound of our projectiles hitting human flesh and the groans and screams that accompany a painful and devastating wound.

  We also started to take losses. To my left and right, bots stopped rounds and bits of them flew off. In one fellow, I saw a simple small hole appear in his chassis. The lights in his eyes went dark and he just stopped moving. Another took seven or eight rounds and kept fighting, even though he was belching black smoke from inside.

  I looked over my shoulder at the aid station. Several bots were being taken in, but neither of the humans was there yet.

  Behind me, the barricade at number five took a High Explosive missile to the front which seriously scattered the defensive works. Another missile zipped in over the top of the barricade and slammed into the wall high and to my right. I felt several pieces of shell fragment impact my right arm and side, but there was no serious damage.

  "Walker?" I shouted to his COMde over Ismay. I wanted to know he was all right.

  "Yeah, yeah, I got this!" he shouted back. I looked his way to see him and some of his bots trying to put the barricade back together. As I watched, the entire thing seemed to happen in slow motion.

  Walker had just turned to his left to grab a piece of junk to pile back on the barricade, so he didn't see the hand grenade come from the passageway to his right and land in the debris pile right in front of his head.

  Before I could shout a warning, little Pasportu leapt forward and knocked Walker off his feet. As Walker hit the floor, the grenade went off. Pasportu received the full force of the blast and, in so doing, shielded Walker.