Chapter Two
Mornings and Dawns of Sorrow
Ever since the Hachi were subdued two-hundred thousand-years
ago, the Keller Homeworlds were the most sought-after planets
in the humanoid southern-half of the galaxy by the then-four
main imperial interstellar states. Therefor, the Terran
incursion into the two-hundred millenia war between the Corron
Empire and the Kellar compact resulted in two outcomes: the
formation of mutual defense alliance with the Corron's age-old
enemy. This outright rejection of the Corron possession claim
on the Kellar homeworlds turned out to be a grievious insult to
Imperial Salnav family. An argument has been posed that the
gateway to Terra has been the Thuban system (located to the
galactic east of the Local Bubble, more commonly known by its
primary gas giant and its inhabited moons as the Tital System.
However, the lack of Corron and H'than interest any farther
Confederation Standard East of the Giovanni system seems to
negate the potential for border skirmishes in that area of
space. However, a considerable portion of the Combined Fleets
have been stationed for the well-being in the case of H'than
and Corron incursions. It must also be pointed out that such a
force would have little effect on an enemy incursion if the
H'than and the Corron decide the Tital system's possession is
in their best interests. If the Giovanni Sectors fall, not only
does the Confederation fall, but Corron receives what it has
strived for for millenia, Ephos Keller I and II.
-Excerpted from "The Giovanni Stretch," Article 831 in the
Revised Articles of the Robotech Wars, Chapter XVII, pg 782.
circa ET 2166 (ASG).
* * *
The Rubian System, within the Rubian Star Cluster, 670
lightyears from Earth, February 18, 2171
HER TWENTY FIRST BIRTHDAY THIS UPCOMING FALL, MAI HOKOMO REALIZED
would more than likely pass without much commemoration. The
overwhelming workload--enough to daunt the most vivacious
workaholic--left little time for such "inconsequential"
celebrations. Mountains of paperwork lay waiting on her desk,
for the squadron executive officer--making good use of the
current stand-down alert status--decided that delegating his
paper work to her and the squadron quartermaster made for
greater reporting accuracy. Just five minutes ago, she had
just whisked out of her office to the O-Club to get Lieutenant
(JG) Latrell's signature on their Ultra-Valks' maintenance
ledger. Well, she said, at least I don't have to sign off on
five-hundred thousand for replacement guidance heads. When
Accounting saw fit to rattle an operational units cage, the
roof would topple over the XO's head--not hers.
She grinned at the thought, and then smiled inwardly at her
own amusement. A short time ago, she had thought that her
career would proceed in solemn regret. Two years had passed
since Mai graduted from the Academy; torn from a wonderful
dream of glory and honor and thrown into a murky realm blurring
the precarious line between peace and war. The young
lieutenant (junior grade) had been shipped to the line to link
up with the Mongol Strategical Veritech Squadron on Ishtar-anai
VI. By the time they had arrived, the colony world was already
reeling from the devastating 2169 raid. The entire capital had
suffered the equivalent of a five-hundred megatonne nuclear
blast. The sweltering climate the radioactive fire had brought
about as they tore their way across the city only magnified the
acridity of the Ishtar'me Resla's charred remains.
Five-hundred thousand in this city alone had died, and close to
three million lives were wiped out during the raiding party's
withdrawal. The enemy's laser beams and missiles laughed at
the colony world's weak planetary defenses, tearing away at not
only military installations, but homes and villages and
cities. The devastation tore at anything even slightly
resembling rectitude.
Unexposed and unprepared for the horrors that presented
themselves to her, Mai quickly learned the grim reality that
accompanied her trade. For the first few weeks, Mai felt as if
she were about to lose her nerve completely; the apprehensive
atmosphere that accompanied the wait for a Confederation
political decision only furthered to heighten her personal
anxiety. Despite all this--the clear provocation and the
devastating loss--the Confederation refused to take any
definitive action. At the behest of several of the
Confederation's interior alliances, despite the protests of
border worlds such as Jarao, Ishtar, and Rubia, the Council put
the DeForce on a very short leash, striving to circumvent the
expected--demanded--retalitory strikes against Corron positions
along the border. For close to five months into her tour, Mai
stagnated on planet, waiting in the futile anticipation of an
order from the President to counterattack. To her disgust, and
that of the entire DeForce, the Harcourt Administration and the
Core-dominating UPC Council accepted the apologies and excuses
of the Corron Empire, shifting the blame for the Ishtar-anai
raid onto a low-ranking Corron family and Chorymi privateer
forces. In spite of those allegations, no solider who had
fought in this "incident" could or would ever believe such
acrimonious prevarications. Anyone who looked upon the
caliginous, portentous form of that Hellfire dreadnought,
descending into low orbit to maximize the "shear angle" of its
devastating strike, understood with an unparalleled, rancorous
loathing that the Hwi-zhemal'orra alone had killed Ishatarani's
helpless colonials mercilessly. The Harcourt administration's
grievious insult had cost him the national elections, and had
thrown the Democratic Unificationists and their coalition out
of the legislative majority. Still, they retained enough power
to effectively block the Centrist and Federalist attempts to
reignite the war; the non-aligned, fickle block in the House
and Senate remained thoroughly indecisive--torn between two
very convincing arguments. Not if they had the chance to see
it for themselves, Mai thought, tasting the disgust which edged
at her conscience. The then-Ensign Mai Hokomo vowed never to
forget what her enemy had done on Ishtar-anai on February 8,
2169; nor would she forgive the butcher who had slaughtered
innocent lives in a demonstration of force against a virtually
defenseless world. At twenty-one, however, Mai was too young
to remember the Butcher's earlier crimes--infractions of moral
law so severe that no human could ever utter his fitting title
without unrivaled revulsion dripping from their lips.
As time progressed, Mai found herself still in the thick of
an extremely tense military situation; where brush-fire
incidents were sometimes even more dangerous than the hazard
posed by a full-blown war. The short-lieutenant discovered
that the politicians--more than any enemy mecha's pulsar beam
or point defense array--was her most hazardous obstacle; a fact
that had turned her anxiety into bitter acerbity for quite some
time. Now, with two years of experience behind her and the
warm camaraderie of her comrades, Mai could live out the rest
of her career without fear or anger. Alfred Lord Tennyson
couldn't have been anymore correct when he said, "Theirs was
not to make reply...theirs was not to reason why...theirs
(soldiers) was but to do and die." It took some time, but Mai
found that dwelling on the letter of such a grim verse did not
help to ease her situation. Instead, she had to look beyond
the words and actually understand the motivation behind the
light brigade as it made its suicidal charge. With that
realization, she quickly rediscovered the impetus that had
driven her into the service in the first place.
That had been two years ago, and since then, experience had
finally weathered Mai's unseasoned, lively temperment. After
seven months on Ishtar-anai, Mai accepted a transfer to one of
the Mongol SVS's detachments to the Hausther Star Cluster. The
Spacy made a tradition out of seasoning its officers with
combat experience by cycling them to trouble spots in
non-aligned territories. The Hausther Star Cluster, known
mostly for G2's Helsinki File operation years ago, provided
exactly the kind of trial that Spacy command was looking for.
After three months with Strategic Wing Three, attached to Light
Carrier Battlegroup 32, she had survived the hazards of
merchant convoy duty and had also gained the respect of her
superior officers. In fact, the Strategical Commander had
taken notice; growing more and more impressed with Mai's
evaluation reports to the point where she personally signed off
on them. Finally, after her tour in Hausther was completed,
the Strategical Commander assigned her to Strategical Wing Two,
attached to the UCSS Farragut--Dynacruiser Battlegroup Two.
Currently, Dynacruiser BG 2 was conducting exercises in the
Rubian Star Cluster, and Strategical Wing Two's Third
Detachment was dispatched onboard the RSS Livingstone--hull
number SDCV-10323--up the Hegerman hyper lane. The powerful
gravity wave stopped short of the Rubia system, branching off
into three smaller hyperlanes--one of which ran right across
the Buffer Zone and into the Empire. Consequently, the Rubian
picket was one of the strongest forces Spacy had committed to
the Giovanni Stretch, although the total strength of the
DeForce in the region was inappropiately low. Still, Mai had
gotten used to the peculiar nuances of politics, and knew
better than to question the irrational logic the government
used to justify its decision. Not unless she wanted to a
migraine, of course.
Indeed, two years in the ensign-grade had been enough to
educate her in the realities--grim and not-so-grim--of life in
the service. Her adaptation to that lifestyle, and the
enthusiasm in which she executed her duties, justified her rise
to the top of the promotion lists. Today, her rank pips,
situated on the scarlet collar of her black and red uniform,
indicated her rank as Lieutenant Junior Grade; a single-grade
jump up nearly two years in advance. With the early promotion
came the coveted job of the squadron operations officer. Mai's
left-shoulder patch indicated her unit affiliation; the
SVFA-442 "Craze," incorporated just five years ago, was a
newcomer to the Mongol SVS.
Regarding her character, Mai was a rather soft-spokened
individual, and her reading glasses contributed to her quiet
appearance. Never in her life had Mai touched make-up,
although her naturally attractive visage rarely betrayed that
fact. Her expertly hewed features captured her exotic Asian
ancestry in a sort of natural beauty that very few would
ascribe the word "pretty" to. Instead, her almond eyes and
recently tanned complexion tended to improve as she aged; the
prolonged lifespan of humanity ensured that her raw
attractiveness would only refine itself in the years to come.
Her dark-brown mane was bunned for the traditional reception of
the Rubian spring--a surprisingly austere season in the terms
of erratic heat waves and drought tendencies. Relatively
average in height, about five-foot-five (one-point-six-five
meters), Mai's outward appearance was still that of a sappy,
youthful cadet; only those who knew her well could appreciate
her inward maturity. Actually, Mai prized that superficial
deception. After all, it hadn't been that long since she
sported the greys of fourth form midshipman.
Her chestnut hair fluttered as a cool breeze, rare this
time of year, swept across around the tarmac. The humid air,
quickly stifling the mild zephyr, rushed across her face as her
air-jeep raced towards the southern end of the base. Even
riding in an open-air transprot did little to stifle the heat,
and Mai regretted having to wear the tight skin-suit and jacket
that made up her flight uniform. In the distance, she could
see the distorted silohuette of half-cylindrical hangars
flicker as the waves of humidity danced across the asphalt
surface. Peruv Air Force Base was the oldest Confederation
military base in this sector, and the 366th Composite Air Wing
pitched their tents here. Peruv served as the nerve center
eight other bases across the planet, as well as connecting
dirt-side military assets with installations and pickets
operating topside of the gravity well. Finally, the Rubian
Planetary Army's Air Force made good on its right to operate
off any allied base situated within their territory. The RPA
operated a number of aircraft--imported, for the most part,
from the Confederation. The local fighter jocks prefered the
SA/F-15M Heavy Crimean Eagle, the VA/F-23S Ghenghis, and the
VA/F-34 Zhu'lin Piao; light attack fighters the DeForce had
exported to nearly half a dozen allied star-systems within and
outside its borders. Additionally, the RPA also maintained its
own planetary fortifications, which included fourteen major
bases and dozens of smaller air fields spread across the
planet's surface. Three of the land bases, not counting Peruv,
doubled as dirt-side spaceports. The Rubian Space Army (the
RPA and the RSA supplemented each other frequently) often
launched from these facilities, while keeping most of their
equipment--including the space-version Ghenghises and Piaos--on
their three primary orbital stations. Nonetheless, the RSA
relied heavily on Peruv and the Confederation's forces to
increase their operating radius beyond Rubia II's orbital
shell. After all, the Rubians were relatively new to the
concept of a space-borne military, and their colonization
fleet, which mounted trivial laser systems for close-in
defense, had any real interplanetary capabilities.
Consequently, the DeForce had detached the 366th Composite Air
Wing and Destroyer Squadron 331 to supplement Rubian strategic
planetary and interplanetary defenses. While attack and
fighter-craft were the mainstay of the Composite's operational
complement, the Composite's mission demanded a strategical
outlet as well. Three Bayonet strategical bombers, with their
swing-wings retracted and engine cowlings removed for
maintenance work, lay prone on a support tarmac at the far end
of the base. While transatmospheric-capable, bombers like this
were practically useless anywhere except within a planetary
atmosphere. The SB-1B's airframe indicated a long tradition of
swing-wing bombers; a heritage that reached back across Terran
aviation history to the original B-1 bomber: the Lancer.
The space element of the defensive shell--DesRon
331--consisted of seven Andropov-class heavy destroyers. Their
picket radius, supported by a comprehensive, system-wide
gravitic sensor network, patrolled both the orbital space
around Rubia II and her in-system colonies and the outer-system
beyond the hyperspace gravititational limit. With the Hegerman
hyper lane virtually webbing outward in all directions towards
its eastern vector, and its third major tributary (west vector)
extending into the Corron Empire, the inherent vulnerability of
the system perfectly matched its strategical importance to the
Confederation. After all, if the Empire possessed the Hegerman
wave, then they could amass their forces at one point--on the
edge of the Western Front--and use the hyper lane to spread out
towards the Jarao, Rigel, and other major Periphery sectors,
deploying their forces in forty-three percent less time than it
would take them if their forces moved out on hyper-drive
alone. Also, part of the Hegerman wave led into a massive
tributary of similarly powerful hyper lanes. One of them
connected with an artificial augmented hyper-lane that's
opening terminus was the Ross 182 Gateway. That reason alone
was enough for the UPC Council's Centrist block to pass
legislation mandating at least a destroyer picket in-system.
If the Empire ever acquired the Hegerman lane's Rubia terminus,
then the Hwi-zhemal'orra would be free to conduct operations
extending into the Core itself.
This thought came to Mai just as one of the Andropov
destroyers made its final approach for the Peruv base. Far
more massive than any strike-craft mustered on this base, the
destroyer nevertheless represented the low-end of the Spacy's
tonnage. Light, agile, and mounting an appreciable long-range
missile load, the heavy destroyer made an ideal in-system
picket platform. The dart-like space ship set down landing pod
somewhere behind a set of medium-sized hangar complexes. The
transport set down gently in front of the largest one, dropping
Mai and her escort off before taking back to the air. Along
side the hangar complex was a sign labelled "India Block, "
indicating Peruv's space-oriented storage and maintenance
facility. India Block doubled as lodging for the
Ultra-Valkyrie fighters from Lieutenant Hokomo's detached
unit. One of the privileges of serving in a "foreign
detachment" unit was easy access to the taxi lanes, something
that had caused rivarly amongst the Rubian and Confederation
Air Force personnel and their Spacy counterparts.
Another brisk wind from an approaching cold front spilled
down from north-western Lasni--Rubia's primary continent.
Still, it seemed mild in comparisons to the wintery storms Mai
knew from her family ski trips to the winter resorts on
coastlines of northern Honshu and all throughout the island of
Hokkaido. And yet, Mai did not feel homesick for such cold
weather; Rubia had its own way of captivating people's
imaginations. As far as she could tell, very few worlds could
match Rubia's beauty, particularly the eastern coastline of
Mahme--the south-eastern Lansi peninsula that Peruv Base was
situated on. At one point, the tourism and trade revenues the
Rubian government received placed the planet amongst Dodger's
Fifty Wealthiest Small Nations; four years in a row--between
2130 and 2134, Interstellar Getaway named Rubia as one of the
top five most economical and enjoyable vacation spots on the
Periphery. However--Mai noted the exception--the tropical zone
of the planet was intolerably hot, and DeForce seemed to love
constructing Aerospace Force and Spacy bases shore bases on the
various archipelegos stretching between the four main
continents. Peruv itself was located within a cleared section
of Mahme's tropical quarter.
Celestially, Rubia differed from a great majority of the
Confederation's member nations. The planet did not orbit an
immense gas-giant, although there were Terran and Garudan
colonies on the moons of the Jupiter-sized Rubia VI. Rubia, or
155 Marullus II according to the Bernard Stellar Catalogue,
occupied the fourth orbit of her eleven-world system; orbiting
a prime, medium-sized yellow-white star over a period of
roughly three-fourths a Terran solar year. The home of a
non-indigenous, Corron-stock humanoid species, Rubia also
served as the natural habitat for three simian and two
non-simian intelligent species. The type G3II star she orbited
had been the source of clean energy for the homeworld and a
valuable resource in the Rubians out-lying colonies for the
past seven hundred years; the use of solar energy predated the
humanoid's Rubians first steps into space in the order of
centuries. At one point, many Confed citizens regarded Rubia
as the hind end of space; a rather insignificant blot on Terran
and Mutan explorers maps when they arrived in-system a century
ago. However, as familial relations developed between the
Confederation and the Rubian Stellar Republic, it became clear
that the primary humanoid sentience was clearly of the same
stock as those humanoid Corrons living within a sphere of
influence controlled by a medium-rank family in the Hw'ith
Imperial Senate. Furthermore, the discovery of the Hegerman's
Rubian terminus, twenty years after the first Confederation
explorers charted the Cluster, peaked the Confederation's
interest on the strategical level. Sometime in 2084, a
military convoy making the run from Rubia to Jarao ran into a
patrolling Corron destroyer group entering the system.
Apparently, both interstellar governments had diplomatic
dealings with Rubia, as was true on Jarao, Delrana and several
other Buffer worlds. Likewise, neither realized the other's
affiliation with their "mutual" trading partners until long
after those relationships had solidified; the natives never
felt compelled to inform either side of the other's consular
pressence. Obviously, neither side would willingly cede their
claims for exclusive mercantile rights with the Rubian and
Jaraoan peoples, ergo their influence in the area. And, as it
had been in Jarao and Delrana, war quickly ensued.
Fortunately, the Empire and the Confederation kept the shooting
to a minimum, and the "Rubian War" barely registered as an
"incident" in the history books; a side-note in annals chock
full of analyses, essays, statistics, and commentaries on the
Robotech and Corron-Confederation Wars.
Soon follwing the Rubian conflict, the Druse Star Kingdon
Accords drew up the current Buffer Zone's confines. The
neutral zone, methodically formulated from the astrophysical
average of the space surrounding 118 thousand stars, for the
most part contained strategically worthless stellar masses. As
far as the two government's respective armed forces were
concerned, ninety-nine percent of those stars were merely
navigational references. Only two-hundred thirty possessed
respectable planetary systems, of which only a limited number
actually came into close contact with a usable hyper lane.
Their were exceptions, of course. The Hegerman Wave, for
example, branched off at its Rubia terminus and headed towards
the Corron border. Smaller, "slower" hyper lanes tended to
cross through the rough chop around Pasori Space and 92
Trevayne--five lightyears from Jarao.
Of these respectable star systems, a mere seven possessed
inhabited or inhabitable planets--Rubia and Jarao numbered
amongst them. Four of those went to the Corron Empire, forming
the "trough" of the Giovanni Stretch's askewed wedge. The
Stretch extended across a seven-hundred lightyear line, from
the original buffer near the Tital system to the Rubia system's
farthest claim on interstellar space (one-point-five lightyears
radius from the system's sun marked Rubia's territorial space),
and ranged from half a lightyear to twenty-three lightyears in
width. At the point of its easternmost crest, the buffer came
as close as seventy parsecs from the Sol System. The proximity
of the region to Betelegeuse had attracted a number of
hyper-lanes over the aeons. In fact, a powerful gravity wave,
augmented by a Gateway traffic complex, stretched from that
region of space all the way to the Pollux system. In the late
2130s, the systems bordering the Mandella hyper lane witnessed
the fighting ships and mecha of the Hwi-zhemal'orra and the
Confederation's Defense Force.
Civil wars, outright warfare, and Chorymi pirating had
virtually robbed every border system of the social and
economical security "guaranteed" by Confederation membership.
Their governments were already destablizing under the pressure
caused by renewed commerce warfare--supposedly conducted under
the Hwi-zhemal'orra's flag, although specifically
Confederation-flagged vessels were unilaterally avoided.
However, that had been before '69. With the maiming of Ishtar,
the tolerance for the Corron incursions across the Buffer Zone
steadily decreased, even inciting Rubia's population to
consider secession from the Confederation if no forthcoming
action could be expected. If Rubia fell to the Empire, the
Giovanni Stretch's "western" flank would be open through the
Hegerman hyper lane, and the Corron could fight around the
Confederation for the long sought prize the Terran-led alliance
had successfully blocked for a century--the Kellar Federation.
Hopefully, Mai thought, it will still be idle speculation
at the Advance Strategy School by the time I get there.
However, it was clear that the Empire still wanted to acquire
the weaker Keller Federation, and that the Confederation
plainly stood in its way. With the threat of war looming over
an indecisive government's head, Mai realized that even the
most capricious of political institutions would eventually have
to bite the bullet and face reality. Otherwise...she
shuddered to think about it. No, they'd get up off their
collective managerial asses and get--
Mai suddenly lost her train of thought as her toe struck
against something hard and metallic. The clanking of smaller
metallic objects against the permaconcrete echoed in the hollow
hangar bay, and the lieutenant winced as she fumbled to regain
her balance. Looking down at the deck, she saw that she had
accidently kicked someone's tool box open. Looking up at the
Veritech--which, coincidently, was her temporary plane
assignment--and then back at the clearly outdated tools with
which the maintenance crew was working with, she frowned and
gathered one of them in her hand.
"What the hell is this?" she demanded, her gaze firmly
locked on the body working atop the plane's starboard
mid-fusealage.
The aircraft mechanic looked down. Thirty-six years
old--nineteen of which were spent in the service--he rose
through the ratings entirely within this hind-end (with respect
to the space-lanes). Engine Technician 1/c Bernard Lysden
strengths lied in the field of mechanical engineering; he
headed the groundcrew detachment to India Block's "Hatchet"
repair hangar--specifically reserved for visiting Spacy
detachments. Sweat mustered about his brow as he finish
locking down several modular components of a VA/F-23N, a naval
variant that Hokomo would eventually fly out to the RPA Navy's
fourth wet-navy aircraft carrier--the Uon'ilnoi. Mai had
served onboard a wet-navy carrier before arriving on Rubia, but
only for her junior year--during her field training with the
Terran Defense Force Planetary Navy; she quickly realized that
although she was completely accustomed to the terrible
conditions that a null-gee environment wraught on the organic
lifeform, the rolling roughness of the sea proved equally--if
not more--disturbing.
"What?" he sharply demanded, then looking down to see an
officer gazing quizically at him. He stumbled to to recover
himself. "I mean, er...uh--yes, ma'am?"
Mai held up an old-fashioned wrench to Bernard. "What's
this?"
"It's a hand wrench, ma'am," Bernard recognized Mai, with
whom he could comfortably relax the officer-enlisted
protocol.
"Why aren't you using a powered-wrench?"
"Because," Bernard replied, "I can't feel if your bird's
tip-top with some damn screwdriver. At least with these, I can
tell if it's in tight. Uh, I mean...I can tell it's in tight,
ma'am." Protocol wasn't one of Bernard's strong points. Then
again, he was a maintenance non-com--not particularly heavy
into the flashiness and discipline non-specialists were prone
to.
"But--"
"Don't worry, I only use it for low-impact areas; I know I
don't have the exact build to apply the seven-thousand pounds
of pressure on that wrench and secure the screws. After all,
its only made of steel."
"All right. But that's my ass that's up there. I don't
want screws popping out of my servos just because--"
"Don't worry, lieutenant," Bernard gave her his familiar
full ebony-faced grin. "Those are my pop's tools; they still
have yet to let me down."
Mai turned up a half-smile and continued on her way.
"Let's hope they don't for the rest of the week."
* * *
The combat aviation briefing room was a rotund structure,
unadorned and virtually open to the air. Mai wore
Lima-Charlie-type camouflage fatigues instead of her black and
red RSF-Spacy uniform, a typical deviation from the uniform
dress code amongst the planetary-based Spacy and Marine
aviation units. Taking her assigned seat near the rear of the
auditorium, a stocky Marine colonel took to the podium.
"Psst! Mai!" Mai turned her head around to face an
Aerospace Force second lieutenant by the name of Junko Hitoki.
"What?"
"I hear we're finally going to get our turn to kick some
blue-skin ass."
"Really?"
"Looks like our bosses back home decided to pull their
hands outta their cracks and let us take a shot at 'em. You
looking forward..." she suddenly trailed off.
"What--?"
One of pilot's behind both of them had whispered something
to Hitoki. The latter cut her off. "Listen. Something's
definitely come up, and its got CINCGIOV in a titty trying to
mobilize a whole lot of firepower around Rubia...well, in
comparison to what we usually assign here. Three new Spacy
Excelion-class Garfishes defolded to defense positions all
around the system. Some Washingtons and Andies are moving in,
too. Or so I hear."
"Why wasn't--"
"Good morning, children," The side conversations quickly
halted. Mai felt slight disconcerted by an obliging tone
coming from a Marine, but her voice quickly shifted from
standard Talusian repose to real, Corps-style intensity. The
Talusians were tight-faced, beautiful hominids with a permanent
smile and a drastically extended lifespan of nearly
five-hundred years. Whereas the colonel appeared to be forty,
she was actually well into her late three-hundreds. She had
been in some sort of military service a century before humans
had ever even thought about flying to the moon, let alone
colonizing the stars! "Let's get right to it. We've got three
years worth of planning crammed into two hours, and you weren't
called down her for some 'workshop.' I want your full
attention, candyasses. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am!" they all snapped back in unison. The
colonel's expression was especially humourous as she barked.
"Oh-seven-hundred hours yesterday, Spacy-COMINT intercepted
three India-band hyperstate--self-confirming--bursts during a
scheduled picket observation of this area," a cartograph of the
local sector was featured on the massive computer display that
compromised the entire rear wall. After several zoom-in's, the
image isolated steller-unit--roughly a parsec in diameter and
twenty-lightyears past Rubia and just a few light-hours outside
the immaterial Corron buffer zone--appeared on screen. It
looked pretty empty, save for one G3VI and one Class-B4V
star-system.
Hitoki gave Mai a "told ya so" tap on the shoulder as the
colonel continued. "We have reason to believe that a
long-range hyperspace transciever centralizes a strong
communication link between Corron forces along the the Buffer
Zone." The colonel judiciously avoided the use of the the word
enemy. After all, they weren't in a state of war--despite what
reality had to say about that.
"This astrography data is two years old, and allows for
potential changes in intelligence." The Talusian colonel
scrolled down the notes of her briefing data pad. "Backing
this up is a handed-down human confirmation of the data."
Confederation Standard English stressed the use of the word
human to refer to sentient beings in the adjective form, even
when that being from question was most definitely not Terran.
"CINCGIOV has been advised by DeForce Command and the
Interfederation Fleet to take out this orbital installation
within three weeks, and all indications are that the
commander-in-chief will accept Command's generous
'suggestion.' The reason for the excessive security of this
briefing is because any such operation will be made in blatant
disregard of the Corron-Confederation Treaty of 2150 by the
Corron Empire. That's right, we're throwing that piss-ant
contract back in the shitter where it belongs."
The colonel paused a second to allow her words to settle
in. An enthusiastic murmur rustled through the assembled
combat aviators, while their cool discipline betrayed no
obvious sign of elation. While their combat experience indeed
turned notions of peace wreaked in light of the facts they were
all to acquatined with, that same experience excercised a
degree of control that the Marine colonel could only feel proud
of. Without hesitation, she cracked down on the basic
technical overlay segment of the briefing.
"The installation," she continued, "codenamed Groucho, lies
within the designated Charlie-Lima-Oscar-November-Alpha attack
zone (CLO-NA [Cislunar Orbit Alpha]: in orbit of the first or
second moon of a Jupiter-size--Class Three--planet).
"We're assuming this is a Ocho-class Corron station,
commissioned February 2148. Sixteen hundred meters in beam
length, central spherical bulge and three discs affixed to
extruding, equidistantly-spaced trusses. These discs house the
fort's weapons magazines, including cruise missile, photonic
beam elements, and particle beam cannons. Directed energy
weapons and other point defense systems must be expected and
respected at a range closer than two thousand kilometers.
While the initial Ocho-class design indicates a lack of these
defensive weapon systems, remember that those bastards have a
tendency for very quick modifications. Watch your asses out
there.
"Participating squadron detachments will be shuttled up
tommorrow morning to an Andropov in geosynch--the Backfire--and
you'll be escorted by two other Garfish IV destroyers. Once
deployed, Craze and Hombres squadron units will procede
strafing runs on the station. The Tsunami will move in once
starboard offenses have been neutralized. Once deployed, the
onboard Corps battalion will detach two 'zooted' platoons on
ramming shuttles to board the station; they'll enter from the
highlight sections. Before the boarding, strike-fighters will
engage the outer defense batteries on the starboard side,
paving the way for our destroyers to move in. However, once
the Marines are away, all strike-fighter units will relegate
themselves to anti-mecha and anti-fighter operations only. The
Tsunami and the Backfire will reenage the station at exactly
five hours after operation commencement. They'll only need to
hit the station's orbital thrusters to force it back down into
the atmosphere for burn-up. Additional Marine and Naval
components are being appraised and briefed. The operation will
commence upon receipt of the go ahead--in roughly three to four
days. Are there any questions?"
No one replied, just as the colonel expected. Normally,
she would have accompanied her own Marine units on this
run--but fate would see it differently. What she hadn't
discussed at was that COMINT's data was virtually useless
without "humint" verification from deep within the Corron
Empire. Of course, that would entail discussing the specifics
of the Marines' part of the mission. The specifics were
need-to-know, and the youthful warriors that would die in a
matter of days would surrender their lives in silent service to
their leige--the United Planetary Confederation.
At no other time in her two centuries of existence--fifty
of those years in the service of the branch she now held
full-bird rank in--had such thoughts disturbed her.
* * *
The "Ministry" planetary-system, twenty-lightyears from the
Rubia System, February 23, 2169
The Backfire, an Andropov-class--Andie for short--heavy
destroyer, lead her provisional destroyer division--DesRon
331--into the star system under-cloak; safely defolding within
the vast interplanetary emptiness outside Ministry's orbit.
Inexpensive, small and agile, the Andie heavy destroyers
enjoyed a greater local acceleration factor than their heavier
battlecruiser and carrier sisters; and their completely
gravitic drives permitted them a greater overall delta-v than
lighter corvettes mounting pulse engines, with a "simulated"
terminal velocity of thirty percent of light-speed. Not quite
as sophisticated as larger vessels, or even a Corron
destroyer-carrier (Andies, like their Corron counterpart, could
carry up to thirty VTs) of comparable tonnage, Andropovs proved
to be useful in light of the fact that the Corron had
overlooked the necessity of developing an adequate cloaking
detection system to counter-point their own cloaking
advancements. That added "commander, intelligence vessel" to
the list of hats an Andie CO could wear. Five lightyears
behind her, five "Webster" battlecruisers--each one more than
capable of eliminating the entire task group--remained none the
wiser. However, it would be getting the hell out of enemy
territory that would be hard, maintaining a low profile and
preventing any notable suspicion during the bulk of the
operation that would prove most difficult.
The Tsunami, on the other hand, was about twenty-years old,
and one of the last of the DE105-class constructed. The
destroyer-escort's skipper, a full Commander in the RSF-Spacy,
first took command of her about five-years ago. While his
vessel had seen combat during the waning years of the Fourth
Corron War, no Andropov had ever participated in a shooting
confrontation. The Commodore was about to go down in history
as the first commander to field test these newer light warships
in the heat of battle.
"Captain, we're approximately one-point-five million miles
in lunar orbit," his flight technician apprised him. The CO
ordered his comm officer to open a channel to the Backfire
under the command of Commodore Davenport.
"Sir, we're proceding to point Alpine and moving up to form
the left flank." He adjusted his jumpsuit zipper quickly.
Young and idealistic, he grew up on a small farm just outside
of the ruins of Detroit. Most of his father's family left
Earth to serve as exo-agriculturalists on the Terran colonies
near the Sol System--particularly Eden. The Commodore looked
at him warmly; he knew the commander had never seen snow in his
life--the word "alpine" had no meaning to him. Nonetheless,
Davenport had grown up in the wintery hills of Minnesota; where
the flaky, white material carpeted his family's old dairy farm
this time of year.
"Good work, commander," the Commodore replied. He wasn't
terribly tall, roughly five-seven feet. Still, when sporting a
bristly, Quaker-style beard, the formal DeForce trenchcoat, and
the over-sized hat, Commodore Davenport looked rather
imposing. "Our astrotechs have determined Groucho's position
at a LEO orbit above Ministry II. We'll form up over Ministry
Five while you're vessel will be escorted to Ministry III's
orbit. Launch our fighters from a concealed position. I want
our Skylord gunships flanking you, commander. They'll be
least susceptible to enemy fire there until we move them into
escort configuration. Inform the Gabney to begin prepping the
boarding shuttles."
"Yes, sir," the commander replied. "Backfire out." He
straightened his uniform, a more classical jumpsuit design, and
turned to the port section of the enwrapping viewshield. The
Thelon-class Tsunami passed alongside the Backfire's port, to
the stern. Moving to the point position of the battlegroup,
the Garfish's modularly affixed weapon systems bristled from
the reflected sunlight off of Ministry Prime. One hour later,
the battlegroup had affixed itself in orbit of the fifth moon,
two destroyers forward and one flank of the carrier.
The commander checked his wrist-chronometer. Thirteen
minutes.
"Open a channel to the Gabney," he ordered. The forward
viewscreen was suddenly illuminated by the single Horizont on
this mission presented only point of emphasis on the nightside
of Ministry Five. Only a few million kilometers away from
their target, the battlegroup proceeded at sublight, using the
meteoric debris and their marvelous ECM as cover.
* * *
Alert klaxons sounded throughout the flight decks. The
five-hundred meter beam-length carrier boasted four main VT
bays and three smaller ones on her lower decks. The solid
cowls of the launching areas were already open for rapid
deployment, atmospheric shields were immediately enforced with
energy flowing through the structural integrity EPS taps.
Mai strapped in quickly into the snug area of her
VFB-1(SVF)-G "Redemption" Ultra-Valkyrie. Larger than the
standard any of the other Ultra-Valk versions, the Repemption
was ultimately a fighter-bomber. Fully armored, it seemed
slow, sluggished, and possibly cramped. However, it was
considerably more spacious and comfortably powerful in
comparison to the VA/F-23s she had flown during her tour on
Rubia.
Mai shuddered a bit. To think that her assignment had been
building up to this--all the shift DeForce reassignments and
postings.
"Lieutenant Hokomo!" a flight technician tossed her a pack
of mini-CDs, which had taken the place of the minidiskette data
solids she had used previously. The VFB-1G she was flying was
outfitted for strike and interception--heavy firepower for
multiple purposes. Using her Online Comm Display, she was able
to see the VFB-1M dedicated Strike Redemption-ER that would be
flown by the flight leader.
"Thanks, Hicks," she replied, plugging each CD in its
associated drive. The Redemption Valkyrie's interior was
slightly different from her VF-2-SVF she regularly flew.
Elongated and more heavily armored, her FAST CLV-044-LRA pack
resembled a stubbish, two-pronged fork. Like the a CLV-044-WRA
hyper-jump pack, the LRA pack was designed to increase the
fighter's operational radious--making carrier warfare a
valuable component of any space-faring military's strategy.
However, in place of a hyperspace jump mechanism was one of the
heaviest gravity engines. Also, whereas the WRA packs did not
have the cubage necessary to mount additional weaponry, the
CLV-044-LRA carried twenty-percent more missiles than the
CLV-035 mounted on the light Ultra-Valk variants. In addition,
the -044-LRA mounted a 105 mW "graser" cannon--which fired
beams of gamma radiation drawn from directly from the fighter's
own microfusion reactor.
The canopy closed just as the bird's internal avionics came
to life. The tac-net twittered a bit as she adjusted the gain,
but the interference quickly dissipated as the face of the
aerospace squadron commander came on every Craze main
viewscreen.
"All right, space-cadets," the no-nonsense Spacy squadron
commander barked over the tac-net. Like Manazya, he was part
of the detachment to Peruv. Mai understood his sharp tongue
was aimed for the newbies from the SVF-771 "Hombres," which had
been incorporated and dispatched only last month. "When
Control checks up on you, I don't want any bullshit. Your
launch units will do the dirty work and you'd better be ready
and in formation ten seconds after we hit vacuum. Got it?"
"Yes, sir!" the entire flight shouted back in unison. The
bay was suddenly overcome with the increasing whine of the VTs'
electric turbines engaging and their ion-fusion drives coming
online. Mai rechecked her reaction-mass intermix levels and
power ratio. She had enough reaction-mass for several weeks,
and that was only for cruise and normal flight purposes. Her
ion pulse drive could propell her at several hundred kilometers
per second, a special design that made use of a
magneto-hyperimpeller that gravitational warped the space
around the reaction mass exhaust of the fusion booster packs,
virtually extending the range from no more than a few tens of
thousands of kilometers to millions of kilometers, enough speed
without warp-packs to cross through gas-giant planetary systems
such as this in a reasonable amount of time. The planetary
defense value of armored Veritechs immediately increased.
Thirty seconds after her commander had informed her,
Control came through on her OLCD. "Charlie-Hotel One at
Five-Oh-Eight. This is Wildcard. Do you read,
Charlie-Hotel-One? Require current intermix status before
granting launch approval."
"Roger that, Wildcard," she replied. "Reading you
five-by-five. Intermix levels at maxim; she's in the green.
Request loading authorization code, Charlie-Hotel-One:
Whiskey-Three-Niner."
"Acknowledged. Charlie-Hotel-One. Your load code is
Five-Oh-Eight. Acknowledge."
Mai finished up the ordnance and launching code procurement
procedure. With the completion of her bird's final tactical
reviews, weapon system and flight system checks, and the
ceremonial once-over by her VT's chief mechanic, the launching
units clamped down on Craze-Harbinger 508 and lowered her into
the presurized launching chamber. Unlike a capital ship's
direct deployment units, the Andropovs launched their fighters
along rail-gun based catapults--similar to those used on
dedicated carriers. Electromagnetic waveguides would shoot the
fighter out of the bay like a projectile--zero to
one-point-three kps in five seconds. As the forward bays
opened, lightflooded her tinted canopy--causing Mai to squint
while the shade-sensors of the canopy raced to catchup.
The magnetic catapults, charged and ready, hurled the
fighters out into space. The SVFA-442 Craze and its three-man
sub-formations launched into the emptiness, their weapons
poised and ready to draw first blood.
* * *
Gu'len Hillth Dura leaned back against the unpadded,
metallic-grating wall of the elevator. Aside from the
incredible blur of machination and girders racing through the
skeletal structure of the fast-moving lift, the interior of the
'lift was rather uninteresting. No display panel or terminal
adorned the plain, grated siding, save for the elevator's
control mechanism. Folding her arms across her chest, she ran
her fingers across the rank insignia on her left shoulder. It
indicated her rank as that of a rhiov'shu--a
quartermark-commander in the Standard English translation, and
roughly equivalent to a lieutenant commander in the United
DeForce's naval units.
Dura came to maturity on a rural continent on Ogasho, one
of the ten key worlds of the Corron Empire. Ogasho once raised
at least fourteen percent of the Empire's livestock, a facet of
the Empire's food production that the Eastern Centralities
heavily relied on. Some time ago, Ogasho had been New Memphis,
one of the the Terran colonies along the disputed border of the
Empire and the Confederation. Nearly a hundred years ago, the
Second Corron-Confederation War had razed New Memphis'civilian
population, and nowadays, no citizen from the republican UPC
could ever set foot on her again. The Buffer Zone assured
that. The Empire, in its usual manner, immediately
transplanted their own population onworld, and Ogasho's
sophisticated agricultural economy had come as an economic
windfall to the Corron and their subjugates. Although the
colony was barely a century old, Ogasho's current inhabitants
had developed and maintained a set of unique traditions that,
for one, destroyed the ethnic divisions between families. Dura
was a Hillth, but many of her best friends had been Hw'italni.
The only daughter of a long line of hj'an herders--before and
after the Ogasho emigration wave--she learned the skills of
management and numbers quickly, serving as her father's trusted
accountant and chief of staff. Eventually, she grew tired of
the rural life, and upon her thirty-fourth season, she ran away
from home to join the Hwi-zhemal'orra Imperial Navy.
Only to be thrown back into the back-end of space.
Her current assignment, a border holding station, was
rather small for one of her rank; her garrison numbering no
more than five-hundred combat troops at a time. Fifty-eight
permanent crewmembers and a single Pariah squadron proved to be
somewhat less than adequate, but the Appropiation Committee
seemed to have no intention of diverting additional funds to
this post beyond the bare necessities to keep it running
(barely) and marginally staffed. As the or'han--garrison
commander--of this station, Dura had firmly established an
atmosphere that was expected on many "regular" Corron ships,
which more often than not was rather open and cooperative. So
long as her crew understood who ultimately made the final
decision, everything was fine. Also, despite the deep
inter-family enmities between her Hillth, Sulsos, Tulsos,
Turas, and Hw'italni crew, no one dared allow their personal
feelings to cloud their judgement or interfer with their
duties; at least not in her presence. Her Ogasho mentality had
actually seemed to incite a sense of unity amongst the various
ethnicites under her command. They weren't Hw'italni and
Hillth, Corron--Hw'ithai--or Hachi or even Chorymi. Not even
the fact that the Corron astrographical race dominated
thousands of other species and cultures, some of which served
in the Hwi-zhemal'orra, seemed to matter here. After all, they
were all subjects of Her Imperial Majesty, and proud of it.
The station itself was shaped not unlike a miniature
Robotech factory--bulbous in shape, although quite blue-gray.
Measuring no more than a kilometer in height, a great deal of
its interior functioned to support the mechanisms necessary to
generate the gravitational fields that helped it maintain its
awkward orbit. Five extensions extended like a star from its
main body, giving the impression of a turbine-like structure.
Within these pods were too full carrier-wing sized groups,
capable of mobilizing within five-minutes to answer any threat
or command. Fast reaction gun batteries dotted each pod and
the main body, although they had not fired in combat situations
since they were built.
If one dissected the artificial gravity generator, stark
similarities to the principles governing the physics of
hyperspace and folding rose to the forefront. After all, the
science behind both originated in the quest to unify gravity to
the fundamental force theorized by hundreds of cultures
throughout the galaxy. On Earth, the force "fields" produced
by such generators were called Yillian fields--gravitational
equivalents to electromagnetic "bottles." Such energy fields
could be used not only to observe the gravitational properties
of quantum-level particles, but also manipulate the "force" of
gravity on the quantum scale, thus opening thousands of doors
in the quest to understand the physical makeup of the
universe. However, the fields involved in anti-grav systems
were static, unlike their kinematic cousins. Such manipulation
allowed for the transfer of collimated energy beams over
incredibly long distances and faster than the speed of light;
the levitation of objects using anti-grav technology, and most
importantly, the generation of power within any sort of
energy-bleeding system. These fields were capable of gathering
and generating more energy than any solar panel or
hydroelectrical system. From centripedal force to
heat-entropy, Yillian fields were able to derive some energy
from even the most wasteful sources (although, as entropy would
have it, Yillian fields do release "nonsense" signatures as
waste). Both sides of the Zone considered developing the
technology into a weapon, where nearly limitless amounts of
energy could be gathered from a planet's magnetic field or a
gravitational well, and then be re-released as a directed
energy beam. Or, using the bottling properties of Yillian
fields, one could theoretically fold plasma (charged gas
particles) masses through hyperspace, extending the gun's
usable range from mere light-seconds to entire parsecs. While
it worked well in theory, putting it into practice was another
thing. The gravitational gun would have to be unfeasibly large
to make any signifigant use of the magnetic field, seemingly
isolating its construction to a ground-based installation much
like the Terran Grand Cannon of the 21st century. The
"construction" of a dynamic Yillian gravity bottle that deep
into a gravity disturbed many theoretical physicists on both
sides; consequently, the true advantage to such a weapon would
be inherently infeasible. Outside of military application,
other experimental offshoots of the technology included the
development of long-range matter transportation devices,
hyperstate-particle sensors, and hyper-state/tachyon
communications.
Thanks to the generators, the station hung safely at a
low-orbit over the first moon; which in turn orbited a
behemouth giant almost four times the size of Jupiter. The
solar system hosted no worlds capable of supporting humanoid
life; the massive B4V star was simply too flare-prone to allow
for development of a planetary biosphere within its liquid
orbit. Whatever forces or chaos chose worlds to breed their
miracles of life one, they were careful to select only the
finest few in the galaxy; only a few hundred million
inhabitable planets existed, lost amongst the billions and
billions of other worlds strewn throughout the galaxy.
The lift came to a halt at the bridge level, resting on the
"five-o'clock pod"--one of the station's structural
extremities. The doors slid open to reveal the typically
Corron blue-gray, drab interior of a sprawlingly massive
control centre. Nearly fifty people were scurring about. One
of the duty officers, a lieutenant, passed by her and handed
her a "loaded" datapad. Scrolling through it, she stepped off
the lift
Silently, the crew on her command deck immediately gave her
their attention with almost stark rehersal. "Station commander
present!" the bridge security duty chief bellowed, standing on
her immediate right and next to the lift doors.
"Stand down," she waived them to ease. "Report,
technician."
"Commander," another female, a subcommander, responded.
"The shuttles from the Golath Division, Western Fleet,
completed onloading fusion power-packs and photonic beam
elements at zero-one-zero acamas. We've had no further visits
and nothing on long range scanners."
"Maybe it will quiet down today." The ship transfers to the
various Corron battlegroups and picket squadrons, as well as
those going to "raider" missions, had been severely taxing on
the station's crew; Dura had finally taken the liberty of a
five-hour nap sleepless, two-day watch. "Stand-down to green
status; give the children a break. I doubt we'll need a full
battalion of techs to watch a blank screen."
"Sir! This--"
Dura's eyes narrowed. "Maruth."
"Understood, commander." Maruth, her face already withdrawn
after five days of non-stop work, stood down. Turning to the
rest of the crew, she dismissed the First, Third and Fifth
shifts, which had been tirelessly working for the past several
weeks. There were few protests as young and old technicians,
duty officers, and specialists filed out of the bridge, leaving
ten or fifteen men and women to look after things. Then,
turning back to the or'han. "Will you be taking--"
"Not today. I've had a break, already. In fact, why don't
you take the rest of the day offshift. Relax for awhile."
"Commander, I'm not sure that would be such a good idea."
"I know; you're what those Terrans call a...what's the
word?"
"Workaholic."
"Yes. Consider it an order. Besides, the current shift
can handle itself, and I think I know how to run my own
bridge," Dura replied turned up the corner of her lip. "Go.
Get out of here."
Turas Maruth grinned and followed the last of the Fifth
Watch off the bridge. The only officer left was a Fourth Watch
watch officer--a rather unfriendly lieutenant subcommander of
Hillth familial background. The ratings, from laymen to master
chief decurions, particularly avoided testing this fellow
patience, and his patentedly uncooperative attitude made Dura's
nostril's flare. "Althos?"
"Yes, commander?" Althos, the watch-officer, replied with
an caustic hiss.
"I want quarterly reports up to the exact micro-camas.
Lockdown and close off unnecessary routes and send the offduty
signal to the respective shifts."
"Yes, commander."
"And one other thing."
"Yes?"
"Don't ever hiss at me again," Dura said with a deceiving
pleasantness. She let it slide when Althos refused to
acknowledge.
* * *
"Switching to whiskers." The decision to switch to a laser
communications over hyperstate particle-beam bursts proved a
wise choice; the potent long-range sensors of an Ocho-class
station were of a similar power and scope as a Perry stardock;
a measure of quality that had been painfully discovered by the
Confederation ten years ago. Hyperstate particle beam commos
left a gravity ripple that basically broad-casted positions
like an old, omnidirectional radar emitter on active. "All
right. This is Craze Leader. I want a tight formation until
Point Lisa. Once we hit their forward batteries and take out
their leading edge scanners, we'll spread out--dispersal
pattern Charlie-Echo-Three. That means no more than two
engagements before we ram, understood? Harbinger One?"
"Acknowledged, Craze Leader. What's up?" Mai Hokomo spoke
up. Five hours into the trip, they had crossed the small
asteroid field separating Ministry III and Ministry II, they're
special ion-pulse drives
"Harbinger One, you'll lead your team up the three-o'clock
starboard relative, and hit the batteries on the lower decks.
Once we drop into their sensor range--in about five minutes,
disperse and lay chaff. You can expect a garrrison onboard,
but it doesn't look like any enemy carriers or other ships are
about. Keep a livewire laser link with the shuttles--they'll
stay in tachyon-contact with the battlegroup. You've got
twenty minutes after that."
"Gotcha, Craze Leader. Hotels Four and Nine. You're with
me."
Two other Redemption Veritechs, which had trailed the rest
of the formation for most of the descent to CLO-NA Point
"Lisa," quickly reformed at Mai's five and seven o'clock
positions. They dropped below the apparant target sensor sweep
elevation maxim and reformed once again into three-plane
V-Stack. Curt and efficiently handled, Mai's group aligned on
their break-away intercept in less than three minutes.
The descent from lunar orbit on quiet overdrive had taken
nearly three hours; the initial momentum from the overly
"taught" launch catapults carrying them along the first leg at
an incredible rate of one-thousand kilometers per second. A
third of the way through, the fighter and attack flights
quickly began the decelleration process; otherwise, Mai and her
comrades would easily overshoot their celestial intercept.
Finally, they were approaching at attack velocity towards Point
"Lisa," the orbit from which they could intercept Ministry II
and her artificial, parasitic satellite.
"C'mon, baby," Ministry II came into view as they jetted
across the emptiness between. "Fifty thousand more..."
The ETA meter had already locked on passively to the
station's signature, the identification meters confirming its
class and makeup. A wireframe image appeared on her HUD,
rotating and configuring to Mai's design. She fine-tuned an
objective course; however, the battery locations were vague and
ambiguous. They would have to watch their asses and take
extreme caution.
"Last run, kids," she said over the tac-net. "Point Lisa
in one minute."
The countdown continued, and still no response from the
station. With stealth's activated, hopefully they wouldn't be
detected until the last minute. Gradually, the fighters
descended into their precisely calculated orbits--approaching
the station from the most broad-side angle they possibly could
allow during such a rapid cross-orbit transit.
Concerned with the mission at hand, no one was the
slightest bit aware when the space behind the main battlegroup
suddenly began to twist and warp itself.
* * *
The warships of the Confederation battlegroup held poise over
Ministry Three. In thirty-eight minutes, they would be visible
to Corron sensors--if their fighters hadn't knocked out as many
firing batteries and SAM and SAB radars as possible. Commodore
Davenport was sipping a cup of Barai-tea when...
"Commodore, sir! I'm reading multiple defolds over
Ministry Six!" A youthful female duty officer suddenly blurted
out.
"What the--"
"Contact, sir!. Three small units--they look
like...Jesus! Battlecruisers, sir! Designate Sierra One,
Sierra Two, Sierra Three. Closing in at five-million
kilometers, bearing zero-niner-zero--starboard
broadside--closing at point-one-two-five sublight!"
"What?!" Commodore Davenport dropped his mug, shattering it
against the perma-adamantine deck. "Roll one-eight-zero port!
Bring up the shields. Drive up! Orders from the flag, all
ships roll!"
* * *
"What in Hy'adon's name..."
"Commander! Contact, bearing one-zero-zero mark
three-one-one relative orbital angle. Range is seven million
kilometers. IFF responds friendly--battlecruisers, sir!
Imperial Battlecruiser Formation Ghral 15. They seem to be
engaging an unidentified target bearing one-ten-zero mark
three-two-two! Friendlies are closing in on target area,
two-hundred thousand kilometers. Approach reads attack
acceleration."
"What? Open a hailing frequency!"
The NCO complied without hesitation. The first ship--a old
Margu-class battlecruiser--responded at almost the same time.
"Well, rhiov'shu Dura," Moa Lanka, the perfect example of
the spoils system within the Hillth family, commanded the first
destroyer. "It seems we've arrived just in time."
"What do you mean? Who are you firing at?"
"It seems that you've let an entire Confederation
battlegroup slip by your outer defenses. Fortunately, I, one
of your most competent 'protectors' managed to trace them
before they slipped away."
"What in the hell are you talking about?" He's hiding
something, Dura thought. "Why--"
The lieutenant at the comm station interrupted, "Confirmed
sir. Three enemy battleships and one carrier; Commander
Lanka's battlegroup is engaging."
"What is going on here, Lanka!" Dura shouted. Althos
looked suspiciously at the screen, typing in a few keycodes.
"Dear, oh'ran," Lanka smiled. "Maybe you don't understand
the gravity of your situation--"
"The hell I don't," Dura shot back. "Those were your
pickets they must have bypassed."
"Yes, but nobody has to know that. We'll destroy them
here."
"And? What makes you so--"
Suddenly, the communique to the destroyer group commander
was lost. Dura shot a look at Althos. "What happened! Get
him back!"
"Sir, I've lost contact," Althos said with seemingly
genuine concern. "Computers indicate a surge building up in
the five o'clock transceiver waveguide."
"Then fix it!"
"Yes, commander," Althos gave her a last quirky smile, and
rushed off the bridge.
* * *
"It looks like the party's started a little early! Get those
shuttles behind us, now!" the tac-net was alive with buzz
between the Craze Squadron commander and the main battlegroup.
Confusion seemed to be running rampid, and all of a sudden,
Hell's Bane disappeared completely from her tac-net locator.
She was in visual range; close enough to see Lively, without
explanation, turn away and afterburn all the way back towards
the main battlegroup.
"Craze Leader, this is Harbinger One. What the bloody
hell's going on here?"
"Something's come up. I'm dividing the flight. All Hombre
units, stay in reserve. We're bringing the shuttles in early."
Mai Hokomo acknowledged, throwing down the visor on her
helmet. Extra displays augmented her visual ability to zoom,
supplementing FCHUD info when focusing beyond the canopy
glass. Gripping the side stick tight, she watched as the last
few hundred miles between her and the station closed. The
first wing of the Craze squadron loosed a fury of suppresive
long-range, guided-missile volleys.
* * *
I need my people back up here! Chaos had broken loose. She
couldn't contact Maruth, and Althos had virtually disappeared.
Her department chiefs were almost all incommunicado, and it
seemed as if all communications on the bridge were cut off.
The tensity of the situation seemed to increase tenfold, and
with the tremendous burden of pulling her command together,
Dura begin to question whether the enemy fighters and vessels
rushing in at her were more or less dangerous than her own
comrades-in-arms.
"Incoming fire!"
"What!"
"Fighter contact coming in at zero-four-eight relative,
mark zero-seven-nine relative. Point defense on-line.
Anti-fighter crews are on hot standby. Contact in five
seconds."
"Point defense! Maximum spread!"
"No response!"
What? Dura paled, watching helplessly as the enemy's
missiles closed rapidly, breaking past what should have been
initial defensive suppression spread and charging
in--unchallenged--towards the station's bulbous hulk.
* * *
The escape pod bays were long corridors along the interior of a
beam extension facing towards the planet. All were aligned
with the counter-clockwise miniscule rotation of the
semi-tide-locked moon below, ready to descend into the
atmosphere and take refuge on the hospitable planet. A dark
figure moved among them, selecting the first one of the third
row. He touched the key marked OPEN; a cylindrical object with
a clear canopy--encasing a "hiber-bed"--popped out like a
drawer. Hillth Althos, rhiov heke'shu and the station
fourth-in-command, had previously served the Garthos, the
Margu-class heavy destroyer that the boisterously arrogant
Commander Moa Lanka Hillth now commanded. However, the
fourth-in-com-mand's rank was actually dn'a'Rhiov, roughly
translated as Commander Advanced Grade, and his real name was
Jilan Morgao. He had found himself close to wrenching his
lunch as he listened to the bastard harp on about himself and
his ingenuity in solving the border trespass. The Jilan
agent's mission was two-fold. One, to prevent the opposing
forces from acheiving their goal, which was obviously to
circumvent a major supply route to the ships raiding their
southern and western frontiers. The second mission proved far
more difficult; if he did not complete the first part, then
this unfortunate situation would either key another agent into
action, or the entire goal of the mission would remain
unrealized. The situation between Earth and Hw'ith was rather
delicate--it was profitable, he and his superiors assumed, for
his side (and possibly the enemy) to remain neither at peace or
at war with Earth. Afterall, the RHK, the Corron's
intelligence service largely under the Jilan family control,
relied on espionage and counter-espianoge operations to
maintain its credibility and funds. The RHK acted
independently, and often without the blessing and against
Corron policy, to maintain this brink of near warfare.
The second part of this mission entailed circumventing the
first, partially. It was the Confederation's mission to
destroy this supply post, assuming it would disrupt the raids.
It undoubtably would. However, after the Ishtar-anai attack,
it was clear that a mole within the government had passed on
information allowing the Confederation to erect a strong enough
defense to force the Corron raid off-planet. Whatever he (in
the non-genderal sense) his mission, Command realized the
spies' activities were related to the raids the Corron
government had been funding against the border worlds. Hachi
operatives (the paradoxical homo sapien colonists that had
arrived on a world deep within the Corron star-empire thousands
of years ago) inserted into the Confederation had secured data
regarding the flotilla shifts in the Rubia system, and the plan
simply fell out into the realm of "fair game." They had been
planning this ever since BEFORE the Ishtar-anai attack, and the
Corron--more accurately, the all-forseeing Jilan
family--expected and waited for it. The Confederation would
destroy this station, or so it would seem like it. It had
taken several months onboard the Garthos to convince Lanka of
the powerbase he could seize by destroying his distant cousin.
Lanka's group would hold back to until the Confederation's
cruisers made their move, and then move in and destroy them, as
well as the station. The Confederation would receive the
blame, and the credit for avenging the deaths of one-thousand
Corron warriors would go to Lanka and the Garthos. While the
enemy force currently attacking the station was far smaller
than Althos, or his co-conspirators, expected, the Jilan had
already effected contigencies. Several Confederation wrecks
would be moved to this moon's orbital space, increasing the
amount of enemy tonnage Lanka's battlegroup could claim as
kills.
A rather intricate and noteworthy scheme, until that idiot
Lanka decided to boastfully ímprovise. Disobeying his
instructions, he attacked the group before they moved in to
cover the fighters. Consequently, Lanka had given the
Confederation boarding shuttles enough time to actually make
contact with the station. Valuable information would
undoubtably be transferred. Whether Lanka still intended to
attack the station was no longer an issue. Althos had planned
for this contigency.
Several fusive devices were placed nearby. The station
would be officially destroyed by a tactical strike to the main
reactor area. With Lanka's expected success in eliminating the
enemy fighters wholly, the blame would posthumously fall on the
poor, uninformed Commander Dura.
Of course, Jilan operatives were not inherently suicidal,
unless no other avenue of escape presented itself. Althos had
pre-programmed this escape pod for reentry onto the
lunar-planet below, where a scout-class shuttle awaited him.
He was finishing keying in the last of the codes when a
cold metallic bar brushed against his back. Althos slowly rose
to his feet, and he heard footsteps hurl safely away from him.
"Why, hello lieutenant subcommander. Or is it dn'a'Rhiov,
now? Pardon my confusion, sir, but you simply mumble too much
when you address yourself. Please remain still."
Maruth was standing safely away with a wry and crooked
smile on her mouth. Understanding the Jilan's tendency to
educate their operatives in various ways of resolving similar
situation, Maruth took the liberty of putting a safe distance
between them. Althos had to admire her; if she knew his true
rank, then she knew his name, family, and exactly how dangerous
he was.
"Why of course, subcommander," he said with feigned
graciousness. "I was wondering where you'd turn up. The
commander wants you back up on the bridge."
"Shut up. The detonation code. I know you've set it
already; you've blocked out all onboard communications so no
warning can go out even if we were able to escape. Clever
enough. Now, either you'll cooperate, or--"
Maruth let loose a burst at his groin; Althos shrieked and
crumpled to the floor. Corron installations and vessels,
unlike Confederation ships, had no sensors to detect their own
weapons firing. Blood was dripping to the floor as Althos
clutched his pelvic area. The machine pistol was equivalent to
those in the Confederation that fired 10mm caseless
rounds--particularly Raptor cartridges. "Bitch..."
"I'm sure, superior-commander," the second officer smiled.
"Still, you aren't going anywhere until I get that code, or we
can both die here. Don't get me wrong. I will kill you, then
next time I see you. Cooperate, and I'll let you get in that
escape pod--maybe with a first-aid kit as well."
Althos was too weak to argue. His pain was growing
steadily, but he gave no answer.
"I always wondered if you Jilan spooks were as 'do-or-die'
as I've heard," she tossed the pistol into her left hand, took
aim, and buried another bullet in his foot. "Talk, you
bastard."
"You'll...have to do more than that," he spat at her.
Reflecting momentarily on his choice of words, he felt a wave
of disappointment at uttering such an overused cliché. Still,
chances were that she would kill him anyway. There was no way
Althos would grant her the satisfaction of spilling his guts.
Although he wasn't a particularly religious man, he somehow
felt compelled to prepare his soul for the Interrogation. The
Founders would be wait--
Suddenly, the station rocked, throwing Althos and Maruth
across the escape pod chamber bay.
* * *
Mai banked hard to the left as several anti-aircraft rounds
exploded off her port side, nearly singing her lower
fusealage. Her low-yield tac-nukes--reflex MvD-09's--on her
first wingbased hardpoint purred, indicating their readiness.
The first strike would be against the stabilization sector of
the station, at the South End; wiping the station out would
have to wait until the Marines were finished with their part of
mission. Buzzing against the surface of the station, she
cursed aloud as three Pariah's interrupted her clean run.
"This is Harbinger One to Harbinger Four."
"Acknowledge, Harbinger Four. I've got your back."
The Redemption-D Valkyrie was slight inept in
manueverability, but Mai's natural talent with mecha--the
reason she was a member of one of the crack squadrons of the
Mongol SVS--had seen through the Valkyrie's limitations.
However, she was too massed-down to make rather effective
moves, and she had yet to release her warheads.
A lighter and agile VF-2-SVF Ultra-Valkyrie dropped behind
her, loosing three very well placed Diamondback warheads from
the internal missile bays embedded in the FAST pack. Harbinger
Four had managed to pick off two the Pariah's, and winging the
third. "Watch your ass out here, Harbinger-One."
"Copy that, Harbinger-Four. Why don't you go scrounge up
some new game?"
In the meantime, Mai turned her attention to her tactical
display. The shuttles were away, moving in at high speed to
intercept the station. Phase Two was underway.
* * *
Marine Lieutenant Colonel Yorotsugu Goshunago, a native
Okinawan (one of the many industrialized Asian islands that had
survived, along with much of Japan, the Dolzan Rain of Death a
century and a half earlier), finished loading the stock of his
MR-20 flechette rifle. Although he commanded the 23rd Marine
Expeditionary Unit's infantry battalion, Goshunago decided to
personally lead Delta Company for this action. Roughly two
centuries ago, Goshunago's great-great-great-great grandfather
had been a member of a Japanese Self Defense Force observation
outfit assigned to commandos from a North American superpower
in a civil war stretching across the Indochina peninsula.
Through the years, all members of his family that had served in
a military branch were either of a Marine or Army background.
Through the decades, Goshunago after Goshunago passed down a
drab-olive scarf with the retiring rank insignia of a member of
the family sown to it. Obviously, Yorotsugu Goshunago's
insignia had not been affixed to the heirloom, but the he still
carried the scarf--wrapping it onto the stock of his weapon.
As he looked out on the young faces--most no older than
twenty-five--he felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his
stomach. On every other mission where he was forced to gaze
upon a sea of young faces, he realized that they would
sacrifice their lives for the greater good of their worlds, and
hundreds of other worlds that relied on their protection.
These young men, women and alien genders, however, were not
about to meet the honorable end that those of his previous
engagements had--before the ceasefire.
A dishonorable memory would darken the souls of all who
died here...
"All right, people. We've run into rough weather,
before--usually with plenty of time to do what we had to do and
get out. Now we've got forty-five minutes to do the impossible
and get what we came for and, then get our asses the hell out
of there. Hlon?"
The gruff half-Karbarran, half-Solosian ursinoid stood up,
his light and dark hair demonstrating the unique fur coloring
of the Solos ursinoids while he adorned the diminuitive horns
of the children of lost Karbarra. He was a jacker, and skilled
in Corron programming. Officially called Cul-D9, most jackers
preferred to call it "Blackjack," due the necessity of using
tricky and risky "hit or stand" algorithmic approaches to
cracking its encryption cycles. "We'll find the nearest
access terminal and start to jack past securities their.
That's about ten minutes. Colonel, you have thirty-five
minutes to do what you have to do, but we can't guarentee we'll
get the records intact if at all."
"Understood, captain," the colonel dimissed him. "Do your
best job, and if you don't--and we blow this popstand without
what we came for--you'll hear it from me."
"Yes, sir!"
"All right, Get ready, snot-wipes! Synchronize for Zulu
time, NOW!"
Colonel Goshunago watched intently as his people shuffled
to get ready, jackers grabbing their VR gear and hardwire
implants and the cover-squads loading particle guns,
submachine-guns, and pulse-action assault rifles. It disturbed
him deeply. The data that they were searching for had been
pre-programmed into the search engines that the jackers would
be employing--information gathering. They could take the moon
below in the matter of ours, but Command had them running on a
near-suicide paramilitary "spook" run. The colonel never cared
for such dishonorable and covert operations. Those who died
today would never be remembered for their last valiant action.
Such was the grim reality of the term classified.
Colonel Goshunago swallowed his doubts as he and his
Marines donned their powered armor--the RR-39A Augmented
Infantry Exo-Skeletal suit. The relatively outmoded, light and
non-transformable infantry battlesuit not only put a decent
plate of armor around him, but also mechanically enhanced his
strength, mounted heavier weapons and more ammo, and provided
state of the art computers monitoring and displaying everything
from the outside situation to the suit's diagnostics. First
Platoon needed to stay light, since the Spacy jackers assigned
to them were under their protection; those boys couldn't work
in anything bulkier than an ExoSkel, and the temptation to use
rock 'n roll weapons in such dangerous proximity to friendly
units left Goshunago with no choice but to break out these
antiques. Second Platoon sported their VR-67R Repulse Cyclone
moditransformable battlesuits. For the duration of this op,
they'd remain in Battloid mode, but Goshunago appreciate the
heavy firepower each one of those suited Marines represented.
A Cyclone could actually fly, leap farther, and run faster than
the ExoSkel, and their hover-cycle mode gave them a range that
the lighter battlesuits couldn't began to match. Similarly,
their armor was heavier--thermo-resistant ceramic alloys with
plastide-chromium protective coats--and their weaponry easily
outmassed that of a regular battlesuit. In fact, they had only
fitted Second Platoon with "scout" ordnance. The big boys,
donning the VR-69C Diablo suits, mounted five megajoule pulse
particle cannons!
Colonel Goshunago shifted his attention from his heavy
weapons units and back to his suit. As soon as he finished
"zipping up" the ExoSkel, he picked up the flechette rifle with
surprising ease. Snapping it into place, on a mechanical
"sling" over his right shoulder, he waited patiently for the
inevitable.
Many would die for a cause that only Upper Echelon held
dear--I hope its worth it.
* * *
Harbinger Five and Three escorted the first Marine shuttle
towards the nearly loading bay. Due to the incompatibilities
between Corron and Confederation hardpoints, the shuttle pilot
had to make a tricky, utterly barbaric entrance.
A titanium-alumide alloy glinted on the shuttles nose.
Lasers softened the nearest bulkhead, as soon as the local
shield generators were knocked off, and particle beams
disrupted the structural integrity system.
Harbinger Two accelerated by, firing strafing shots along
the bulkheads.
"Shuttles Three-One-Oh and Four-Oh-Two. We're sanitizing
now, over."
* * *
Maruth woke up, to find...no one. Althos was gone, and so was
an escape pod. She was beginning to understand he had no
reason professionally to kill her, and seeing an open first-aid
kit hold on the rear bulkhead, she wondered why he simply
didn't repay the debt.
Then she looked at her hand...
It was gone.
Oh shit!
She didn't scream, but she had been out for nearly five
minutes, and her hand was still bleeding. Getting to her feet,
the loss of blood had already caused a relapse and nearly sent
her pinwheeling back into the deck. Instead, she stumbled
against the wall, slowly making her way to the next first aid
kit.
Maruth had been watching Althos since he transfered over
five months ago. She knew he was part of that dishonorable yet
successful raid against Ishtar-anai, but she had only
discovered recently that-
"Maruth."
A dark figure stood in her path, blocking the first aid
kit.
"Subcommander Maruth."
She wasn't thinking right, her head was feeling. She
braced herself against the wall to single-handedly massage her
eyes. Her bushy, wild eyebrows were bloodied; Maruth assumed
it was from the blow she had taken when the station was hit.
"Who is it?" Something's wrong.
The figure approached her, holding something...a bandage.
"Subcommander," the figure said. "Don't worry. I'm a
friend. Communications are back up, and I want you to take the
nearest ejection pod. We're moving the crews off station now."
"Can't you stop the detonator?" Maruth asked weakly,
searching the darkness for some recognizable feature.
Something's wrong. Why didn't he turn on the lights? Where is
everyone else?
"Althos' program can't be stopped. He was severely wounded
by that groin shot of yours, so he didn't make a very clean and
silent launch. We were able to ascertain his position and
destroy his pod. However, we've only a few illacamas before we
ourselves are destroyed."
"And the commander?"
"I've informed her. We're being deployed offship now.
Commander Lanka is a bit too eager to cover his mistake, so
we've hailed several Hw'italni ships to the system. They'll be
here in a matter of hours." He held out his hand and began to
apply the bandage.
Something isn't right, Maruth thought to herself. Why are
the lights out, and why is he standing in the shadows. Why is
he...groin shot?
"Wait a minute."
The figure paused, as if he knew he had slipped up. She
pushed him slightly towards a light, getting a good look at his
face. No one she recognized, but she sense Jilan blood in
him. Removing his cap, she stared wanly at his shaved head,
the trademark of a member of the Jilan family hierarchy. There
were no such important persons onboard her station.
The Corron were much more hardy than their homo sapien
cousins. Her senses were still vaguely with her. "How do you
know where I shot him? There are no recording devices here,
and why didn't you--"
The bandage whipped away, and a handgun took its place.
"I'm sorry about this. Unnecessary bloodshed disgusts me, but,
as you probably understand, no one may know I was here."
Before she could scream, a single shot exploded inside her
mind, and red and white mixed together in an unholy bathing of
her soul.
He paused a few minutes, checking to see if anyone heard
and making sure the gunshot, what Terrans would call a
two-millimeter slug, didn't splotch blood on him. Once he was
sure he was clean, he pushed the dead body away, and threw the
gun into Althos' empty pod bank.
"Regiment-lieutenant!" Subregiment-lieutenant "Richas
Dols'na" called out to a search part making rounds through the
bay. "I found her!" He frowned to himself, stepping past the
corpse. Unnecessary executions did not trouble his conscious.
The inconvenience, on the other hand, of dealing with a dead
body resultant from his actions caused unwanted complications.
Complications irked him. He needed to find the nearest
access terminal, and make certain pieces of information more
readily, yet not noticably, available for his "uninvited"
guests. A most gracious gesture, indeed.
Althos--whose body was discovered only a few feet down the
dark corridor--would have never known that his fusive devices
were set to explode two minutes, fifty-three minutes later than
he originally planned.
* * *
"Well, there they go," Harbinger Four and Mai watched as the
station began spewing escape pods away from the thick of the
battle-like a Sentinel's Day fireworks display. Mai was still
unsure. Why surrender the station like this. They've enough
power too at least stand-off against a handful of fighters.
Mai considered the fact that she wasn't trained or paid for
intelligence work.
Still, the situation didn't completely 'go figure.'
"This is Harbinger One to Marine Shuttles Three-One-Oh and
Four-Oh-Two. Excercise caution; and I recommend cutting your
time down by another ten minutes."
"Roger that, Harbinger One," the shuttle pilot affirmed.
"Will relay to Marine commander. Shuttle Group Commander out."
Mai and Harbinger Four rounded the six o'clock pod and came
up alongside its apex, heading across the main body back out
towards interlunar space. Taking out defensive batteries on
the main body, they darted about, firing wherever permissable.
Diamondwreath and Mongoose strike missiles spread out across
the surface of the station, billowing white-orange explosions
at every impact zone.
"All right, Four! We've done what we can here. Disperse!"
Four gave her a thumbs-up on the display and pulled to a
higher relative altitude.
He never saw it coming. Mai suddenly watched her threat
indicator light up and had no time to react. Before she could
even formulate the words "Look out," indodgable laser struck
him dead center. When fighting with laser fire or particle
beams, you were almost destined to get scratched. The only
defense was not to be their when the beam was fired, and that
took practice and a whole lot of luck. Mai Hokomo veered to
move out of the way, just as a Pariah loosed laser-fire a split
second-later at her old position. Going to Battloid, she drew
her GU-23 autocannon and wielded with a warrior's intent; the
smooth-bore gauss cannon was already rotating, slowly building
up its electrical charge.
"Guns! Guns! Guns!" she shouted out, wondering if anyone
was alive to hear it. Her Battloid, racing at hypersonic
speeds backwards, let loose like a armed warrior from one of
the 20th century war films. Her relative speed had little
effect on the hypervelocity of the projectiles; the continuous
fire from her cannon caught the EPS waveguides of the Pariah
fighter. Bursting into flames, the Corron mecha was sent
crashing into the station, this time breaching the hole.
Slowing down for a split second, she saw bodies rising from the
smoky mist, and then disappearing in a vague decompressive
combustion. Wiping the images from her mind, she threw her VT
back into fighter mode, and jetted away from the station.
Another explosion, larger but not originating from the
station, suddenly reached her visuals, her hypersonic
amplifiers translating the fourth dimensional "compressional
waves" into sound and synching them intelligently to the visual
panaroma. Only a few ten thousand miles away, the front end of
the Backfire went hurtling towards the surface of Ministry II,
unprotected and trailing in flames.
* * *
"We've got it!" the jacker replied, just as another one of the
covering rifleman took flak right into his head. The
fragmentation pierced the powered suit's helmet piece,
rendering the rifleman's head into a fleshy, bloody stew. The
jacker, swallowing the surmounting vomit in his throat, bolted
across the corridor of crossfire towards the Marine
embankment. They had minutes to get out; minutes before they
either lost their ride or, as they had gravely discovered,
before the station blew up.
The Marines had inserted rather close to the terminal,
their shuttle forming a protective barrier to prevent
atmospheric depressurization. Colonel Goshunago had ordered
two of his platoons to secure the area as he and the other two
covered the vulnerable Spacy computer techs. In five minutes,
they had cracked the seemingly simplistic station codes, made
various copies, and punched out of the system.
Captain Hlon had just finished printing out a map when the
call that one of their shuttles and carrier had just been
destroyed. The destroyers were taking a beating, and it was
time to hit the road. Colonel Goshunago waived a white and red
cloth in the air, signalling his Marines to fallback. A
warning from Second Platoon's commander, a young human
lieutenant covering First Platoon's retreat, came over his
headset.
The lieutenant was suddenly cut down by a Corron plasma
rifle. The suit seemed to absorb most the brunt of the
explosion, but the concussion had caught him off guard. Not
even the internal padding could have saved him, for the platoon
leader had jerked his head too quickly; the sickening crunch of
his vertebrae violently tearing itself apart carried over the
commlink. Goshunago permitted himself one last glance as the
lieutenant--his suit intact--crumpled to the floor. "Damn it!
Somebody pick me--"
"Sir?" A nervous voice, definitely not one of the comm
guys, came from the embankment. "We gotta get out of here!
The shuttle's holding for five minutes--and she'll only take
three squads, and God knows if you'll even get here in time."
"What's going on out there!" the colonel said between
bursts.
"It's really sketchy, but all hell's breaking loose. The
station's defenses are starting to kick in, but they're
evacuating. Sir! She--the shuttle--took a hit. There's not
enough room onboard!"
Goshunago thought for a second, and then slid behind a
wall. They were being forced out. He couldn't move the whole
squad into the corridor they had battlerammed into--that would
leave them open to fire and damage the shuttle even more-so.
"Hdon! Where's that damn map."
The Karbarran sprawled it out in front of them, as two NCOs
took to firing in their place. "There's an escape pod ring
here. If we could get a message to our fighters, we could pick
up the rest of the thirty five men."
"All right, then. Did you get that....er?"
"Corporal Flanders, sir. Yes, I got that. I'll move the
fifth, sixth, and seventh squads to the shuttle. Good luck."
"Very good, lieutenant. You'll go far. Move OUT!"
The command was clear enough for everyone to here. Several
more Marines took fatal fire before the formation began moving
again. Goshunago and Hlon took the rear, moving from
intersection to intersection. Finally, three Corron riflemen
were able to pin down the colonel, his head nearly exploding
from the impact of the high-velocity bullets.
"COLONEL!" Hlon cried out. A second lieutenant, second
platoon's current acting leader, tried to pull him along too,
but the Karbarran refused. He tried to grab the Colonel's
rifle, but a massive bombardment of enemy flechette fire found
its mark on him even more easily than the colonel. The second
lieutenant--a young man of Italian-descent, Alphonse
Giraldi--ducked for cover behind the massive ursinoid's suit.
Then, the colonel's scarf popped into his mind. He remembered
what he had said about it; the promise he had made the entire
battalion make--under oath. Lying flat on the ground, with
little cover fire from the rest of the first and fourth squads,
he counted to three.
One...two...
"Three!" he shouted, taking three short bursts which cut
down two of the Corron forward riflemen. Even more enemy
troops flooded onto their level, taking up firing positions
some twenty meters away. However, Giraldi rolled over safely
to the bodies of Colonel Goshunago and Captain Hlon. Crawling
across Captain Hlon's corpse, he untied the scarf, stuffed it
in his uniform pocket, and then bolted for the rest of his
group.
The fall-back to the escape-pod ring was murderous, and
nine more were slaughtered before they secured and closed-off
the area. The Marines systematically filed into the escape
pods, the jackers first reconfiguring them for use of
non-Corron occupants. From the transparency wrapping about the
chamber, they could see the shuttle retreating for an engaged
Callant II class destroyer closing for the station. Two Corron
light destroyers were in pursuit; Giraldi could only pray that
Flanders' squads would make it out okay.
"C'mon, c'mon!" Giraldi barked. "Let's move! Flanders!
Retrieval transmission?"
"Yes! Craze has ten pilots coming for pick up, the Hombres
have two. The others are going after Flanders."
I hope that'll be enough, Giraldi thought as he strapped
into his pod. Closing the casing, the cyro-controls flushed
on, and helium immediately put the occupants into deep-sleep.
The timer sequence had been set, and it would be only seconds
before the Corron soldiers broke through the barrier keeping
the entrances lockdown.
"Five, four, three, two, one," Giraldi enumerated to
himself, matching the rhythm of what he suspected was Corron
version of a countdown. Before the cyro-pod's analgesic gas
withdrew his mind into a state of unconsciousness, he could
feel the weight of the pod shift violently as it accelerated
away from the doomed station.
* * *
Mai hadn't gotten far before Craze Leader had issued more
orders. Escape capsules were being ejected from the five
o'clock pod, and they carried RSF-Marines. Her VT was in full
swing before the commander's face disappeared from her screen.
Within a few minutes, she found herself looking over a field of
pods, arriving several minutes earlier than any over her
companions. Converting to Battloid, she gathered four of them
in her arms, looking out for Pariahs or any other Corron
fighter. Once the coast was clear and her quota filled, she
afterburned towards the Callant destroyer.
It virtually appeared out of nowhere. A Ruogan-class,
nontransformable space fighter managed to send three laser
strikes piercing into her armor. She ejected her still unused
left-leg armor casing before the missiles warheads inside
exploded. Whipping about, she brought her pack-mounted
particle beam cannon down across her VT's "shoulder" to bear
against the Ruogan. But before she could target, it had let
several rounds off into the lost escape pod, shattering it and
incinerating its occupant.
All the anger, fear, and hatred she had faced and built up
today was suddenly and ferociously released. She didn't let up
on the trigger as a continuous beam of charged particles were
accelerated from her cannon on the Corron ship. Shrieking a
fierce battlecry, she drained her cannon reserves, stunned and
amazed at what she had just done. Mai had nearly lost her
composure in battle; a dangerous mistake to any combat
aviator. Shrugging off the guilt and misery at watching a
comrade die in the criminal strafing act, she gathered the
three remaining pods, and a fourth, and found a clear road back
home. She could see the remnants of the Hombres and survivors
of the Craze also gathering up pods, as the rest of the Corron
fighters began to worry about those VTs that were fiercely
defending their only surviving ticket home.
How many Marines had been horrifyingly strafed by that
machine, that blue-skinned bastard, she would think to herself
later on. How many didn't return?
* * *
The fusion detonators had been well placed. The first took out
the bridge and five o'clock pod, on the instance that any
survivors might be on the station. Had the crew been
onstation, Althos' mission would've been successful. The
destruction and removal of a key piece of evidence that could
destroy his family's profit-base, and probably more. However,
it relied on a no-survivor count; and Althos had failed.
Or so it seemed.
A shuttle, of Chorymi design and make, manuevered away at
the last minute, by the lieutenant that had "stumbled upon"
Subcommander Maruth. He wasn't a lieutenant, nor was he of the
Richas family. His real name was Jilan Kara'simov, a rather
law clerk in the First Directorate of the RHK. Adequately
educated in the art of making his own opportunities, he had
succeeded in implementing those valuable lessons and completed
the first phase of his own personal mission. The shuttle would
rendezvous with the one of the ships heading for Ministry II to
pick up the station survivors. He would then depart back to
Hw'ith, and prepare the next stage of his mission; assuming the
Confederation would act on the information he had given them.
He knew that the information would depart on the shuttle, which
he gave specific orders not to attack. Kara'simov ordered the
sparing of one of the Confederation destroyers to make a run
back to Confederation space. While making the incusion out to
be a "victory" in Corron terms, he would be affectively
completing Althos' mission to prevent war between the
Confederation and the Corron Empire. However, he had plans to
reignite that war in the near future, and he now had a weapon.
The Confederation and the Corron Empire were playing right
out of his hand.
* * *
Giraldi awoke with a torturing pain covering his entire
bodice. According to the chronometer his helmet piece
projected onto the visor...shit.
He couldn't find it, and he didn't feel alert. Logical.
Its the dreariness after being--
However, the sharp sting that graced his cheek, along with
the violent thud he felt on his helmet, and the blood--drawn
out by the concussion--that he tasted in his mouth, didn't feel
like any post-hypersleep dreariness he had ever experienced.
Slowly, and painfully, he opened his eyes.
"Gulan'da Confederasi? Aonrg Terin....Hageg!"
He saw a blurred silhouette, blue and black, swinging what
looked like a rifle towards his face. A brief light and a
desert air swept across him as the butt of the gun struck his
other cheek, sending him pinwheeling.
Later on, when his senses finally came about him, he found
himself surrounded by a garrison of Corron warriors, led
apparently by a rather attractive Corron woman. He couldn't
quite make out her insignia, but she wore the uniform of an
Imperial Navy officer.
"You, Confederation-man," she said in broken English.
Giraldi nodded, suddenly feeling a thirst crawl through his
throat. He was on the planet, on the desert Ministry II.
There were several broken escape bods about, but he couldn't
see much beyond the garrison of Corron men and women.
"Why you here?"
"Giraldi, Lieutenant RSF-Marines. Serial--" He was
rewarded with another rifle strike across the vulnerable gape
in his suit--right below the back of his head. The blow was
delivered by a hefty, light-gray skinned Corron man, and the
last thing Giraldi saw was the enviro-suited brute rushing
forward to catch him.
"Godalthae odei'me surakuma. I told you not to harm him."
"But, commander!" the senior chief decurion was about to
protest, when the commander pulled off her heavy gauntlet
jabbed him in the stomach; with enough strength to force the
brute to wince at the sharp, sudden pain.
"Nerokunaite!" she cursed. "You will do as I order,
understood?"
Several of her men, bearing submachine guns, backed her
up. Dura smiled at her chastened NCO. "I command your
respect, as I always have. As for the Confederation man--"
The commander turned to the unconscious body. "He's our
prisoner," she pointed a finger at him before turning her
attention to the sky. The fighting had stopped, and the
station, destroyed hours earlier, was raining down on the upper
atmosphere, clear on the other side of the planet. The
commander made no expression that could betray both her sorrow
and her shock--she was an officer, and Dura knew she damn well
better start acting like one.
The commander issued the orders to ready the scouts.
Ittenbe-ju'remi. It would be a long night, indeed.
* * *
78 Cephaid Delphanis IV (Katherine), March 31, 2171
The news of the botched attack on Corron-space had remained at
a nearly mute level for the first two weeks--the newsworthiness
of the story quickly plummeted due to reasons unknown. The
Empire had made a point to openly protest the incursion through
their envoy in the Druse Star Kingdom. However, their cries
for blood and vengeance were rather light when one considered
what the current government naturally expected. The
Confederation President and the Council Premier were still
debating whether or not the Confederation should press the
issue, risking another shooting war with the Empire. The issue
of the possible culmination of decades of unremitting hostility
into open warfare, after such a brief period of "peace,"
lingered controversially amongst the UPC's public. The
Confederation's proletariat was sharply divided on the
subject. Many progressive and liberal moderates believed that
peace should be maintained at all costs, and they were quick to
condemn their most invariable opposites--the warhawks of Terra
and her colonies--of subscribing to a reactionary, imperialist
dogma. There were those who believed that the Confederation
should take steps--carefully--to intercede in the Empire's
attempt to regain control of the Buffer Zone and disputed
territories, and still more who believed that threatening
action against the Corron might ignite a three-way war with the
H'than Star Empire--as it had in CCW-3. Even after that,
H'than transports and screening vessels, on loan to the Corron
Empire, supplemented Corron ships during the 2134 invasion of
Ganymede, and H'than battlecruisers had launched several
city-killer missiles from lunar orbit toward's Earth's capital
during the 2141 First Invasion of Earth. The heroic actions of
Captain Jonathon Wolff Patton, one of the heroes of the Fourth
Neo-Robotech War, had halted the nuclear strikes, but at the
ultimate cost of the lives of his carrier aerospace wing, his
home carrier battlegroup, and himself. Immortalized in the cry
for vengeance that arose from Terra and her colonies, Wolff's
image served to represent the unforgiving enmity Homo sapiens
would always feel for their former Corron occupiers.
Still, even Terran-born humans differed on the issue of
renewing or preventing the reengagement of hostilities with the
Corron. The reasons for the Terran public's differing
positions varied from the taste for vengeance for the blatant
attack on their world fifty years ago to the fear that another
attack would succeed again; the cost of life would undoubtedly
be far greater. Considering the election of the 25th
Confederation Congress, whose duties included the approval of a
presidential call for war, would be largely Terran, Karbarran,
and Zentraedi for the next four to six years, the position of
the government resembled that of Terra and her system and
local-group colonies. However, the minority delegation
maintained a strong enough xeno-influence over Terran colonial
interests, and further division regarding a response to Corron
agitation persisted in the Council. Even the current President
was a pacifist by nature, and the DeForce found its hands tied
by the lack of political will instilled in their civilian
overlords.
Indecisiveness generally swung the advantage from the
neutrality the irresolute would find haven in the favor of
those far more crisp in such matters. For some, the lack of
focus on the Corron issue proved to be more than profitable.
The Council had yet to realize that an enemy came in more than
one flavor and color. More often than not, an enemy came from
within.
"The first Tellenet relay in this system is...illegal," the
Syrix Crucible's commander announced. The Katherian--more
accurately, the Normandy-Meurceurian--"heavy cruiser" drifted
deliberately in 78 Delphanis' outer-system. Outside, a single
Tellenet relay buoy marked one a lonely point in interplanetary
space. "Interesting."
"Illegal by whose standard?" the Tellenet representative
beside her responded. "I was unaware that the Katherinian
government formally acknowledged Confederation supremacy in
this sector."
"That's still in dispute, Mr. Halsey," the Commander
despised and loathed the brutish executive that had some how
weaseled his way onto her ship. Probably sang a few religious
platitudes to the central-command back home and probably
twisted a few arms as well. The man seemed strong enough to do
so, "We do, however, acknowledge that the Confederation
currently has a force advantage. They did successfully
confiscate the majority of our standing navy."
"I'm surprised," Mr. Halsey responded contemptously. "I
wasn't aware that you people readily discussed your dismal
failures." The smartly dressed man paced a subtle, yet undue
emphasis on the word "failures."
The Commander snarled softly before turning from Halsey and
back towards the main viewscreen. "It's my ex, sir, that only
fools do not understand and accept their mistakes. Besides, I
was never one to toe the party line."
Halsey turned and smiled at her with an indiscernable
expression resting between a slight perk of interest and his
typical comportment; normally one of contempt for the dogs he
and his employers utilized, like the pack animals they were.
* * *
DeForce Command Offices, Earthdock, April 10, 2171
"The whole thing has been categorically blown-up by Hw'ith's
media services and public relations agencies, and the Empire
would rather gloat upon the matter than actually act," Admiral
Rolf Dawson, Chief of Naval Operations of the Spacy, surmised.
He had succeeded Admiral Rensselaer under similar circumstances
two years earlier, when the attack on Ishatarni VI toppled the
current admiralty's standing amongst the public. Rensselaer
himself--on the track to becoming the next Chairman of the
UPDC--had been ousted by the Administration in order to stem
the stigma of failure within the Admiralty before it flooded
uncontrollably into the Administration. Already,
Harcourt--suffering a severe decline amongst non-Terran
sovereignties in the opinion polls--was looking at throwing the
2172 elections; leaving his strongest election-year challenger
for the primaries, Hamil Farkash, virtually a free ride to the
Presidential Mansion. Harcourt's self-expulsion from the
upcoming election would leave Dawson in position very similar
to Rensselaer's, two years earlier. In fact, the only reason
Dawson could see himself riding out the rest of 2171 and '72 in
office was that the craven bastard didn't have the dignity to
resign. The parallel's continued to pile-up as he noted that
the ex-CNO and his staff were largely held over from a previous
administration's UPDC appointees, much like Dawson himself.
Harcourt undoubtedly would take out his frustration over the
rape of his political career on the UPDC, and
heads--escpecially UPDC Chairman Senatorial Admiral
Levinson's--would roll. The only thing that remained to be
seen was how far the purge would continue.
However, his frustration with the situation did not
originate largely from the fear of losing his appointment to
the position of the CNO; instead, it was due to his old
skipperish mannerisms. The black and white view of the world
that the assertive, command-types like himself--the quarterdeck
breeds--held as gospel rarely let political interests pervade a
skipper's principles. "No aggressive actions, nothing. It's
just TOO damn strange."
DeForce constructed its actual headquarters in Geneva over
a century and a half ago. However, Earthdock was the hub of
the space-operations of the united fleet, and served as much as
a base of operations for the Robotech Space Forces and
Interfederation Fleet as much Admiral Jonathan Brethan's
sprawling complex in the ancient city of neutrality. While the
planetside base served as the political operation center, the
decisions regarding fleet movement and manuevers were made
here. This was the proverbial center of the Confederation
military universe.
"If it hasn't been brought to the admiral's attention,"
Colonel Lionel Makastrus--G2 intelligence--closed his portfolio
boook, looking up towards the CNO, "Confederation trade
relations with the Corron and her subjugate levels on an
independent level have increased tenfold since the 2150
Treaty. Whether we like it or not, the YUGGPF is still
oeprating cross-border investments. Hell, several Earth-bound
realstate companies have worked more deals in just the Reznick
(Corron-held) system than our entire side of the Rim
combined." Even with "limited belligerent status,"the Corron
Empire's business institution was still firmly involved with
their Confederation counterparts, even as trade delegates from
both sides hammered each other with words. War makes strange
bedfellows, Admiral Dawson thought to himself.
"Ten times nothing is still nothing."
"Not these days, Rolf," Fleet Admiral Presley H. Cannady,
an RSF-Spacy alumni and the current CINC of the Western
Giovanni Command, crossed his legs, sinking onto the
plush-cushion couch. His command, at the time being, consisted
of only a fifth of the "Liberty" TF19's standing force, which
amounted to a squadron of destroyers, three aging
Ikazuchi-class vessels--configured as carriers--and one
Ikazuchi-class battlecruiser variant. CINCEASTGIOV and
CINCWESTGIOV--Admiral Cannady--and their commanders-in-chief,
technically his subordinates, pretty much operated those
independent of CINCGIOV's office. That left the admiral
patrician to attempt to bolster not only his pathetic naval
units, but his virtually non-existent Marine and Army/Armored
Corps components. The Aerospace Force detachments in the
Giovanni region operated separately of his command in
peace-time, although they usually deferred to his office as a
courtesy.
Staff Office 45, Deck Alpha-One, sat on the pinacle of
Earthdock's primary berthing tower; looking down on the
billowing mushroom structure that served as the station's
principal docking ring. Here, the upper-echelons debated on
and dispatched orders and assignments for close to thirty-eight
thousand operational commanding officers on active duty, while
engaging in honest discourse over the current interstellar
situation.
"We're talking about white markets, too," Admiral Cannady
continued. "It's not just your typical black market fare
anymore. Y'know...the arms dealers, contraband out of
Sharonia, etc. We're trading perishables by the teratonnes,
from wholesale grain shipments to some of our best wines and
ales. Even during wartime, some measure of trade between
interstellar powers exists. Look at CCW-4. New
Memphis--er...Ogasho, I mean--still received shipments for
grain lifters up until the third years. After all, what else
can justify the letter of a treaty? Just ask the Trade Union
lobbyists why they keep insisting that the Rockwell and
Rigellan colonies retain a non-aggressive vote every time the
Treaty Charter is brought back for re-ratification. It's a
political game, totally separate from the real world out
there--and the reality is that we're already at war. The
politicos just won't let us play ball, and God knows the border
entrepeneurs like the way their game is going."
"God knows you've been away to long to play that one,
Prez."
Cannady nodded in agreement, a smile punctuating his wan
expression. With a great deal of his command delegated to
competent operational officers, he found time now and then to
browse the financial situation of the "family" corporation, a
multi-trillion hyaku-nuyen industrial giant that ranked as the
largest and wealthiest Terran interstellar enterprise. Without
a real war, the Western Front was nothing more than an alert
area for rusting ships (and so few of them) to congregate and
give trainee crews a deep-down, gutwrenching homesickness that
only hundreds of lightyears from their respective worlds could
entail. It sickened Cannady, especially when one considered
the grim reality of the UPC's deteoriating border security, but
the political players had basically ordered, and the entire
Western Command, to submit to the military equivalent of a time
out.
"I'm catching up, though." Presley Cannady VII was
forty-eight, rather young for a flag officer of his status. By
business, he referred to his familial association with TXI
Encom; it was no secret he was born into one of the wealthiest
Terran families in the Confederation--a family owned the
majority share of the Confederation's largest corporate
conglomerate.
Having started on a sterling military career as an aviator
in the RSF-Spacy for the 5th Fleet, he had grown up under the
wing of the then-Rear Admiral Dawson, whom he had grown
accustomed to refering to as Big Rolf, or just plain Rolf. By
the time Dawson was finally rested from the 5th Fleet to assume
the CNO position in the stead of Admiral Rensselaer, Cannady
had already been frocked to fleet admiral--technically superior
to that of the CNO's rank. However, do to the positional
arrangement, Cannady and Dawson operated on equal footing--both
subordinate to the Commander of the RSF and the Chairman of the
UPDC.
"Sirs," a G2 staff lieutenant--Army Intelligence--entered
the room. "A package from Comp-Trans have arrived."
"Bring it in," one of the generals of the same branch
beckoned. "What does it say."
"Sir, I'm not cleared for the details, but I can tell you
the header involves the Foxtrot 2A."
The room went dead silent; memories of a vicious Corron
raid two years ago simultaneously returned to everyone's
memory.
"Lieutenant, tell them to meet us in the briefing hall. I
want it secured and locked down, understood?" Dawson ordered.
"Yes, sir," the staffer turned on-heel and headed back for
the door. Admiral Dawson turned back to his company, each
displaying the same expression; their fears had been finally
and indisputably confirmed.
-------==========*****End Episode One*****==========-------