Part 1
Before the Great War, there was great peace. For almost 1000 years,
the human
race had been united in their quest
for knowledge and new places to live. When
faster-than-light travel had first been
discovered, hundreds of scout vessels had been
dispatched from earth with the sole
purpose of finding habitable planets for future
colonization. When the probes reached
their destinations, they revealed scores of
planets rich in natural resources and
teeming with life. But one planet made even the
blissful paradise of earth seem pale
in comparison. It was located in the Trax star
system, the 4th planet from the sun,
and almost a twin for earth, so bountiful were its
minerals, so rich were its soils, so
beautiful its landscapes. Located only 1500 light
years from earth, this planet was quickly
colonized, even though there were other
habitable planets much closer to earth,
this planet was given top priority.
After the first colony ship arrived,
the construction crews began the long and
complicated process of preparing the
planet for mass habitation. The vast amounts of
heavy metals, and high quality marble
and onyx made it ridiculously cheap and easy
to build the structures, and the architects
designed the cities to not only be functional,
but a work of art. Ten years after the
initial colonists arrived, the first city had been
completed and work crews began expanding
their construction efforts. New housing
developments, roads, factories, research
labs, and monuments to the successes of
humanity.
Within 100 years, the population boomed
from a few thousand to a few million. The
planet soon became self sufficient and
no longer depended on supplies of specialty
manufacturing parts and food shipments
from earth. As the other planets in the galaxy
were slowly but surely settled and developed,
Trax became symbolic of everything
humanity achieved. No other planet in
the galaxy could boast of entire cities built of
pure black marble, or statues so tall
they could be seen for 30 miles in any direction.
Trax became the center for scientific
research for the whole galaxy. The first metal
makers were developed here. The first
self-sustaining cold fusion reactor was
designed and built in the huge research
facilities scattered all over the world. The
breakthroughs in light amplification
technology allowed the modern laser weapons to
be as powerful as they are. In short,
this planet became the source of 90% of all
technological advances leading up to
the development of "patterning".
With the start of the War, the fate
of the planet was quickly sealed, as both sides
began a vicious campaign to capture
its vast mineral resources. During the height of
the battle, a group of commandos, nobody
is sure from which side, caused one of the
nearby fusion power plants to go critical,
and both armies were completely
obliterated. The inhabitants of the
world watched in horror as one of their beautiful
cities was obliterated, taking with
it untold millions of lives. The remaining population
split into ARM and CORE factions. They
fought until the entire planet lay ravaged.
Only the tall, pock marked skyscrapers
gave any clue to how beautiful they were in
the past. After several hundred years,
not one person remained alive on either side.
Four thousand years ago, neither side
had the time or the resources to go back and
rebuild the planet, so desperate was
the struggle. Now, neither side could afford to
NOT go back and rebuild, so desperate
was the search for metal.
Part 2
The ARM commander stood on the platform in front of the Galactic
Gate and waited
for the signal from the technicians
that all was ready. While they prepared to channel
the combined power outputs of over dozen
fusion reactors straight into the gate, the
ARM commander, Trevalin was his name,
decided to look over the mission notes one
final time.
He keyed up the appropriate menu from
his HUD and scanned it quickly. ARM
intelligence suspected that the CORE
had happened upon an old record of Trax IV
and decided to exploit its mostly intact
mineral resources to use in a massive
campaign against the Arm homeworlds.
This made the purpose of his assignment
there doubly important. Not only did
the Arm desperately need new sources of metal
to keep its war machine going, but it
also had to prevent the CORE from gaining a
foothold in this sector. He read further
down the file; although the ARM didn't have an
actual presence on the planet, they
had an elaborate system of surveillance satellites
in place that had detected a jump ship
entering the system just a few days ago. The
ship had sent a small pod down to the
surface that was determined to be a Galactic
Gate construction facility. Arm high
command immediately dispatched their own Gate
construction ship, and began preparing
for a mission that would put a big hurt in the
CORE's plans for this sector.
At this point, there was a beep and
an image of the senior Gate controller appeared
on a separate view screen. "Ten minutes
until the charge is complete, we can go
anytime after that once you give the
word." Commander Trevalin responded "I'm all
set here, I'm the only one going through."
He resumed the scanning of his mission
profile, letting himself become absorbed
in the prescribed radio frequencies, routes of
advance to be used against suspected
CORE strongholds if the enemy got there first,
and other mundane, but very necessary
details that a modern war operation required.
His reverie was interrupted by yet another
beep from his communications console. He
looked at his internal clock, "It hasn't
been 10 minutes yet, what could those tech
boys want now?" he though, half angry
that they would interrupt him again. When the
image came up, he was barely able to
contain the look of surprise on his face. On his
screen was the Supreme Commander of
the entire Arm military forces. Commander
Lowe was the toughest S.O.B. to ever
stick it to the CORE. He had fought in over
one thousand battles during his life,
extended of course through multiple clones. Of
those many battles, 100 of them were
battles that directly affected the course of the
war. He greeted his superior quickly.
"Good morning Commander Lowe. To what do I
owe the pleasure of this call?" Lowe
ignored the pleasantries and got straight to the
heart of the matter. "Commander Trevalin,
your orders have changed slightly. You
now have some, uh, escorts to accompany
you to Trax." Trevalin raised his eyebrow
at the way Lowe had mentioned 'escorts',
but knew that if his commanding officer
wanted him to know who it was now, then
he would have told him, and he knew
better than to ask a question that wasn't
going to get answered. "When will they be
arriving at the Gate?" he asked. "They
should be there just about now. Good luck and
God speed, Commander Trevalin. Send
the soulless Bertha
s straight to hell." With that he signed
off and the screen went blank. Trevalin turned
his head, and to his utter horror, saw
his escorts walking toward him, each and every
one of them wearing a badge that read
"Press" "Good God!!! He sent the press to
escort me?!" he thought. "This is going
to be a long battle"
Part 3
There were four of them, all packed and ready to go. They seemed
to be quite
experienced at this sort of thing, or
at least smart enough to have all their gear
packed in one bag. They each introduced
themselves quickly. There was William
Flynn, Patrick Calloway, Matt Jamison,
and Mike Ellington. All four were from the Arm
Central News Agency. It was the first
time that he had ever heard of reporters
accompanying a Commander to the front.
The Gate technicians signaled that the
charge was complete. "Lets go, we don't
need to give the CORE the gift of time", the
Commander barked. The reporters moved
amazingly quickly to get in line with
Trevalin, and he waved to the technicians
to start opening the portal. Light began
swirling around and around, getting
wider and wider. Wind was whipped up and dust
and leaves blew around creating a miniature
of hurricane. Then suddenly, the wind
died down, the dust settled, and in
its place was a shimmering portal. It was about 3
meters high and wide enough for about
3 people to walk through at once. Now that it
was stable, the massive Commander suit
began walking toward it, with the reporters
behind him. No matter how many times
he was teleported via Galactic Gate, he would
never get used to the feeling of having
his atoms moved a hundred million miles in the
span of a few nanoseconds. When the
feeling passed, he found himself standing on
a grassy hill overlooking a ruined city.
The reporters stood silent, open-mouthed,
gazing at a world that had lain undisturbed
for almost four thousand years. Trevalin,
however, didn't have time to gaze at
the beauty that surrounded him. He went straight
to work, unlocking his nanolathe, and
starting to build the first structures of the
campaign.
His first base was just a few metal
extractors, solar collectors, and some factories that
would produce nothing but C-units for
the first few days. An aircraft plant turned out
twenty or so Peepers and these would
be ordered to scout out the surrounding area
in an ever in creasing radius, until
the whole continent was mapped and checked for
signs of CORE presence. Then once that
was done, their sensors would serve as
small aerial radar controllers until
Eagles could be built. For the time being, Trevalin
couldn't do much while he waited for
his nanolathe to complete the structures that
would create the C-units he needed to
help him. What he could do is talk to the
reporters who had come with him. He
learned through friendly conversation that
William and Patrick were the only true
reporters, while Matt was a
photographer/cameraman and Mike was
the transmission specialist that was in
charge of compressing the reports and
file footage to a size that could be sent back
to Empyyrean through a secure channel.
So far, all they were doing was filming the
surrounding area and giving some initial
observations about the planet. William and
Patrick had asked that after he dispatches
all of the C-units to begin the mammoth
task of fortifying the continent, if
he would submit to an interview. He agreed, knowing
that once he set the kbots, vehicles,
and aircraft on their way it would be several
hours, if not days until they were completed.
His plan for this world was both ambitious
and conservative. The world was
exceedingly rich in mineral resources,
and thus would allow huge armies to be raised
and supported. His initial goal was
to have the continent under his complete control
within two weeks. In that time, he would
have several hundred c-units constructing
static defense lines, firebases, command
bunkers, and massive base complexes all
over this continent. It was ambitious
in that it depended entirely on the CORE not
attacking until then, but conservative
in that he was not planning any offensive
operations until the main body of ARM
troops arrived by space born transport ships
had arrived and been dispersed. Although
it was entirely possible to clone all of the
needed personnel for this mission, the
fact that the CORE was also here didn't allow
for extensive training and education,
so ARM high command had allocated over one
million people drawn from the training
camps and facilities all over their part of the
galaxy. They were all scheduled to be
here in roughly 2 weeks, so Trevalin had his
work cut out for him.
His on board computer chimed. His nanolathe
had completed all that he had cued up.
He rapidly assigned each C-unit to a
group responsible for power production, one for
metal extraction, one for defensive
facilities, and one to assist him in beginning to
build the bases that would allow him
to support and effectively command the huge
number of fighting vehicles that would
soon be produced. An Atlas picked him up, and
more transports grabbed other C-units
and the reporters, and headed off for to the
location of their first large base.
Trevalin prayed to the nonexistent God that they
might have their two weeks to prepare
for the CORE.
Part 4
Trevalin was almost starting to like the idea of having reporters around.
It gave him
an excuse to get out of his Commander
suit more than once a month or so. He was
currently relaxing in his office on
the bottom floor of the newly finished command
bunker. The rest of the base was still
being constructed by dozens of C-units that
were almost overloaded with cued orders.
William and Patrick sat across from
him, laptops at the ready to record his every
word. Matt held a small digital video
camera and recorded the whole interview.
William started out, asking questions
about his past. "Commander Trevalin, you have
quite a distinguished career, but unlike
most Commanders, you didn't start out being
a leader, how did you earn one of the
highest positions in the Arm military?" Trevalin
grinned, and responded "I started out
as a civilian, not even a clone from a great
soldier from the past." His eyes took
on a far away look as memories long forgotten
came flooding back. "My parents were
totally against any involvement in the war. The
CORE hadn't touched our world for over
1100 years, and although we believed the
ARM was right in the galactic struggle,
we were more than happy to leave them alone
if it meant that we would be spared
the destruction that some of our neighboring
planets had seen." Then his eyes dimmed,
his smile faded, and his shoulders visibly
sagged. "But it didn't matter, not in
the least. The CORE didn't care that we hadn't
done anything to them in over 1000 years,
we were unpatterned, and that was all that
mattered to those cold, unfeeling SOBs."
His voice actually trembled, something that
was not common for a Commander. "They
slaughtered almost everyone. They
destroyed our cities, burned our crops,
and killed indiscriminately. Pattering was not
on their minds when they invaded. They
wanted only to have access to the minerals
that hadn't been tapped for so very
long."
The reporters hadn't expected anything
like this. Rarely did anyone escape a CORE
onslaught. Calloway said, "How did you
escape? I don't think the CORE just let you
live for a laugh." Trevalins voice hardened,
regaining the composure that most
Commanders had "I fled to the nearby
spaceport, and there I managed to escape on
board one of the last ships to leave
our world. We met up with an ARM convoy just
outside of the system, and joined them
in their struggle, as we should have done so
long ago."
"The rest of my story consists of combinations
of luck and skill that allowed me to rise
through the ranks to become a Commander."
Trevalin then spoke again "Now I must
ask you gentlemen, why do you accompany
me to battle? Never before have I heard
of such a thing as this."
Calloway and Flynn exchanged looks,
and then nodded. Just as they were about to
start speaking, a light on Trevalin's
console began blinking. "I'm afraid you will have to
excuse me for now gentlemen. Our first
troop transports have arrived, and I must see
to their deployments. Some other time
you must explain your mission to me. In the
mean time, feel free to roam about the
bunkers and the rest of the base. If you wish to
file reports back to Empyrrean, you
will be able to access the Comm room twice a
day."
Calloway and Flynn nodded, stood and
saluted the Commander, and watched him
leave to greet the first troops arriving
on the planet. The small group of newsmen
gathered their equipment and headed
off to locate the communication room to send
their first part of the story back to
their viewers. Within 30 minutes, a satellite dish
was uploading their story to a subspace
transmitter in geo-stationary orbit. When it
began broadcasting, a tiny, almost undetectable
piggyback signal began emerging
from the secure channel. So small was
this signal that the AI onboard the transmitter
didn't even know it was there. One person,
however, did notice it. The CORE
Commander . . .
Part 5
Trevalin surveyed the scene around him with grim satisfaction. The Mercury
class
transports shuttle craft and modified
Atlases were moving about with clockwork
efficiency. They all had but one purpose
for the moment: Unload the precious cargo
that had just arrived in the system.
Massive ships orbited the planet, carrying the men
and women who would pilot the tanks,
aircraft, ships, and Kbots that were being
produced at a phenomenal rate in the
major bases around the ARM territory. The first
people off the transports were senior
officers who would fill out the hierarchy of the
chain of command. Already, the main
command bunker was fully operational, staffed
constantly by radio operators, intelligence
specialists, and logistics personnel that
would effectively allow him to control
the entire ARM presence here on Trax.
Even as he stood there, another shuttle
landed and disgorged its regiment of troops.
The colonel in charge immediately started
barking orders to the people to head for
the assembly point to find out where
they would be stationed. A group of men and
women emerged from one of the mass briefing
halls and ran over to a battery of
Bertha Guns. He took one final glance
at the mass of humanity arriving and then
turned and stepped back into the CIC
of the command bunker. Two Zeus Kbots were
pulling guard duty by the entrance and
saluted him as he passed.
His aide, Captain Hansen, met him as
he entered and handed him a hand held
computer pad. He stood at his post and
reviewed the notes Hansen had given him.
There were seven major bases scattered
throughout the continent. Command staffs
were already in place at all of them,
and 90% of the base defensive structures were
manned and ready. Power production and
metal extraction were running at full speed
and heavily fortified against air raids
and ground assaults. Anti-Ballistic Missile
facilities were online at the main base
only, but were expected to be completed within
the next 24-48 hours. Transport battalions
of Atlases were stationed at every major
base as well as outpost so that communication
wasn't entirely dependent upon
radios. Squadrons of Hawks and Freedom
Fighters provided overhead cover at every
major base. Overall, only 45% of his
troops had arrived from orbit, and less that 20%
were mated with their equipment. Thankfully,
the commander of the interstellar
convoy had sent the staff officers down
on the first shuttles so that they could
organize the following waves of people.
Suddenly Hansen came sprinting across
the CIC at full speed. "Commander Trevalin,
we have reports of a small CORE scouting
party snooping around one of our
outposts." Hansen reached down and punched
a few keys on a console and an
image of the coordinates was shown.
The image was live and in color, one of the
benefits of real-time data transfer
from the elaborate satellite network propositioned
here. Trevalin keyed up a greater magnification
and infrared imaging. There were
perhaps thirty small CORE Kbots, escorted
by a dozen medium tanks.
"What do we have within range of these
guys?" Trevalin asked, curious as to how the
CORE vehicles got to that location.
Hansen looked over at another computer screen.
"We have an Eagle AWACS plane just coming
into range now. He is escorted by two
Hawks, but there are two full squadrons
of Hawks less than 10 minutes away." He
pushed another button "If you want to
wait a little while longer, we can whistle up
some Hurricanes to greet them, and we
can get an Anti-Armor battalion of Kbots there
in 45 minutes by air transport." Trevalin
considered his options; he could see at least
3, perhaps 4 Crashers, so they weren't
exactly a serious threat to his aircraft. On the
other hand, they were in heavy tree
cover so that would make it very difficult for
Hawks to get missile locks on them.
The Eagle now had all of them in its range and
reported that the final count to be
36 CORE units. He decided on a compromise. "Tell
the Eagle to have those 2 Hawk squadrons
patrol around them, just to make sure that
we don't have any leakers. Call up the
Hurricanes and get them airborne yesterday,
then authorize the transport of that
Anti-Armor battalion and set them down about 10
klicks in front of the CORE line of
advance." Hansen hurried off to issue the proper
orders while Trevalin shifted his map
view to and from different satellites to make
sure he wasn't missing anything. He
sure hoped not.
The commanding officer onboard the Eagle
looked at his radar screen, wondering
how the CORE had gotten here, but knowing
that in a few minutes, it wouldn't matter.
He had watched a battalion of troops
land about 5 minutes ago, and was currently
giving the Hurricanes their targets
exact coordinates. He sat forward in his chair and
toggled his radio. "All units, execute
orders now!" He sat back and watched.
On the ground, Major Sean "Maximum"
Karnoski maneuvered his Maverick around
the huge trees as he led his troops
toward the fray. He checked his nav display and
saw that they were exactly where they
were supposed to be. "OK men, hunker down
and wait for the signal." He ducked
his massive Kbot behind a thick tree and counted
down on his timer. Two thousand meters
away, the pilots of the twelve Hurricane
strategic bombers punched their throttles
to the stops and accelerated. They lined up
their sights on where the radar painted
targets. Scant seconds before they would
release their massive payloads of high
explosive ordinance, two Hawk stealth fighters
made a pass over the CORE column at
full throttle, their white-hot afterburners
blazing through the twilight sky. The
onboard computers immediately linked the visual
sightings of CORE units to the Hurricane's
targeting systems. The bomber pilots
made small corrections of their flight
path, and then their timer reached zero. One
pilot toggled a loudspeaker jury rigged
to the fuselage of his plane and said
"Welcome to Trax you heartless, overgrown
calculators!!!!" Their bombays opened
and disgorged dozens of general-purpose
bombs that cascaded into the treetops
below them. The few SAM launchers in
the group fired at the fleeing Hawks, never
noticing the Hurricanes until the bombs
were falling. Sixteen CORE units came apart
under the hammering impact of the bombs.
Several disintegrated completely due to
direct hits, while others burst into
flame and sprayed fragments all around them in a
fiery death throe.
Sean pulled his Maverick into action,
arming his two gauss rifles, and standing up
from behind his cover. His fellow soldiers
readied their Mavericks and charged
towards the stunned CORE troops. One
small A.K. had been blown off its feet and
slammed into a tree, rendering its legs
useless. Sean walked up to it, aimed one of
his weapons at it, and sent a ferro-fibrous
slug slamming into its pathetically thin head
armor. It exploded in a shower of shrapnel
and sparks, scoring the first kill for Sean
and his unit.
Two Instigator tanks rounded a fallen
tree and engaged a Maverick farther down the
line. The tanks sprayed his suit with
laser fire for almost 3 full seconds before the
pilot was able to get into position
to fire both of his weapons at once and blasted both
of the scout tanks into oblivion. By
now, the Hawks had been vectored in to assist the
Mavericks in the slaughter. The first
squadron passed and launched a volley of
air-to-ground missiles that impacted
on CORE vehicles in a series of loud thuds. Six
more CORE Kbots disappeared from the
Eagle's radar screen. The light
reconnaissance tanks and fast Kbots
were no match for the heavy Mavericks. The
ARM air cover simply speeded the process.
After another 10 minutes, Karnoski's
assault finished off the last CORE Kbot,
a pyro who was attempting to light the
surrounding forest on fire. He almost
succeeded, but it had rained recently and the
vegetation was too thoroughly soaked
to burn easily. The major summoned his XO
and had him inspect the other members
of his battalion for damage. One Maverick
would require a new arm after a tree
fell on it, and two others would require some
new armor plating from plasma rounds
that had impacted squarely on them. Aside
from those small jobs, the only maintenance
required would be to paint the stars on
the sides of the massive battle suits
that represented kills. Karnoski ordered his men
to form up and march to their extraction
point. Atlases moved in to collect their
charges, and then silently moved off
back towards their base.
The AWACS plane stayed behind and used
high intensity, small arc radar sweeps to
ensure the area was secure, then called
in a half-dozen construction aircraft to
recover the wreckage and tidy up the
landscape. Trevalin watched the short skirmish
from his command bunker, and although
the rest of the staff was cheering for their
victory, Trevalin's face was grim to
say the least. He turned to a Lieutenant manning
an intelligence post. "I want to know
where that scouting party came from, and I want
to know how they got there, and I want
to know yesterday!" He abruptly turned, and
stalked into his office. Fuming he wondered
how the CORE could have penetrated
his defensive line seemed to be so thorough.
A new thought came to him; he punched
a button on his communication display.
Captain Hansen's face appeared on the
screen. "What can I do for you Commander?"
he asked. Trevalin replied, "I want
personal inspection of all our coastal
defensive lines. I want visual confirmation that
all of our laser towers, missile batteries,
plasma guns, and artillery positions haven't
been compromised. The CORE got in a
little too easily, and I want to know how."
Hansen nodded and immediately set off
to begin this mammoth task.
Trevalin leaned back in his chair and
stretched, so thankful that he wasn't in his suit
just now. It stood in a compartment
in the corner of his office. The bunker was built to
accommodate a staff suited in their
battle suits, but also for times like this when the
bulky and uncomfortable robots weren't
needed. He knew that time would come soon
enough, and he wanted to get as much
fresh air and motion as possible. His brain
searched the maps he had memorized days
ago, looking for some gap in radar
coverage, some breach in the nearly
solid wall of guns that lined the coast. His mind
gave him the same answer he'd already
come up with a dozen times before, he didn't
know. Somehow they did, but he didn't
know. A knock came at his door, when he
pushed to button to open it; Calloway
and Flynn stood there. Trevalin sat forward in
his chair. "At least I might get one
question answered around here."
Part 6
The CORE commander watched in mute rage as his scouting party was blasted
into
atoms by the massive ARM contingent.
When the final Kbot was destroyed, he
slammed his fist into the table. "Human
scum! How did they find them so fast?" When
he said the word 'human', it made him
feel dirty, like he needed a good oil bath. The
rational part of his mind told him that
he hadn't really lost anything. "After all," he told
himself, "those rebels don't know anything
about our positions or how our defenses
are laid out." Although that put his
mind into a slightly calmer state, he was still angry.
"Emotions, useless human characteristics.
I wonder why Central Conciousness
allows its Commanders to retain them?"
He quickly put that out of his mind. Such
random thoughts would do little to help
him now that the battle looked to be rapidly
drawing near.
He turned his attention to a recently
updated tally sheet that showed the locations of
his main battle groups. He had divided
the continent he occupied into four different
zones. Each zone was controlled from
a central base, and had smaller outposts at
different strategic locations throughout
each zone. Each base had multiple batteries
of Intimidators, Ballistic-Missile Defense
Systems, and a ring of Doomsday Devices.
Pulverizers, Gaat Guns, Punishers, and
Cobras formed the primary defensive
perimeter of each base. Pop-up cannons
and laser towers were scattered throughout
the land, and heavy concentrations were
found in mountain passes and canyon
entrances. Krogoth Gantries were busy
around the clock, as were the vehicle and
aircraft factories. Already a dozen
tank divisions were completed, all of them Goliaths!
Vamp squadrons patrolled the skies above
each base, and above the main airfields,
Hurricane strategic bombers waiting
to be given clearance to land blackened the sky.
But his proudest achievement was his
navy. A dozen shipyards and ten advanced
shipyards were busy filling the harbors
with destroyers, missile frigates, cruisers, and
carriers. Torpedo bombers and Rapier
gunships covered the decks of his aircraft
carriers. Beneath the waves, Snakes,
Sharks, and Leviathan battle subs patrolled the
depths.
He had lots of tools to use against
the ARM. This planet was exceedingly rich, and
metal poured forth from the ground as
fast as it could be mined. Metal makers had
been built but put in standby mode in
case his troops got cut off from the mines
scattered around the land. But alas,
he couldn't use any of these weapons against
the enemy until he knew about where
they were located. Vulture radar planes and
Fink scouts were being produced to help
gather the information he so desperately
needed. What he did know was that none
of his Finks had penetrated the ARM
territory by more than a few miles.
They had an impressive array of SAM launchers,
Flak batteries, and fighter patrols.
The only source of information he had was so top
secret that Central Conciousness had
only informed him about it a few days ago. Its
code name was Mandarin. He didn't know
who or what it was, but it had provided a
wealth of information about the ARM
commander and the layout of his main base. He
keyed up the intelligence file, and
refreshed his memory. Commander Trevalin was
the name of his adversary. He cross-referenced
the rest of the data in the file with
records on CORE Prime. Only one similarity
was found, but it was a big one. Almost a
century ago, he had commanded a CORE
offensive against a small, backwater
planet. It was loosely allied with the
ARM, but didn't actively take part in the war. It
was a relatively rich planet, and he
had been sent there to capture it. That planet was
Commander Trevalin's homeworld. A disturbing
thought crossed his mind. "Could the
ARM have actually known that I was sent
here? More importantly, could they have
told Trevalin?" He brooded on that thought
for hours, staring blankly at the myriad
computer displays along the wall. He
didn't come up with any particular conclusions;
all he knew was that he didn't think
this was purely coincidence. His logic
programming didn't like the way this
thought patter was progressing, so it brought
more pressing matters to his attention.
He stood up and walked out to check the
placement of several new missile batteries.
He didn't have time to think about this
"coincidence" now; he had a war to wage.
Part 7
Calloway and Flynn made themselves comfortable in the synth-leather
chairs in
Trevalin's office. The two reporters
had decided that it was time to inform the good
Commander why they had been sent. Calloway
spoke first, "Commander Trevalin,
you have served the ARM for the last
hundred years, plus or minus a decade.
Correct?" Trevalin nodded his agreement,
not quite knowing what to expect.
Calloway continued, saying, "Before
that time, you had never been cloned, never
lived before that in any capacity that
you remember, did you?" Trevalin again nodded,
even more curious as to where this was
headed.
William Flynn picked up the story now.
"Throughout the course of the last four
millennium, the pendulum of war has
swung back and forth many times. Entire
quadrants of the galaxy have switched
hands dozens of times. The ARM and the
CORE have proven to be quite evenly
matched. The ingenuity of humans has
allowed us to effectively counter the
superior numbers and power of the CORE
armies. But four thousand years is a
long time. A very long time for mortal humans,
even those who are cloned. And therein
lies the problem."
Calloway took his turn speaking now,
and Trevalin wondered if they hadn't planned
how they were going to tell him. "Our
entire lives are lived around the war. From birth
to death we eat, sleep, and drink war
efforts. Put simply Commander, our people are
tired of war. People want normal lives
again. People want to be free to have families,
to watch their children grow up without
them being killed and cloned over and over
and over again." He lowered his voice
to a whisper now; "There are even some more
radical citizens who want an end to
the war by any means possible. Even if it means
coexistence with those monsters." His
body visibly shuddered at the mention of
coexistence. "The ARM must fight two
wars: against the CORE, and against human
nature. For the last two hundred years,
the CORE has been winning against us on
the battlefield, and is on the verge
of launching a major offensive against our
homeworlds. As far as our people are
concerned, they are desperately in need of
some good news to convince them that
we will win, and that the war will NOT last
forever. That is why we are here, to
film a successful ARM campaign. Something to
cheer up the folks on the home front."
Trevalin sat back in his chair. His
eyebrows grew deep furrows as he tried to take in
what he had just heard. It was almost
inconceivable; it went against everything he
had ever been taught. Being a Commander,
he had been privileged to information
that the normal troops never heard.
But this was still heady stuff for a loyal servant of
the ARM. Trevalin had a lot of thoughts
running through his mind, most of them
running by him too fast to make any
sense. He would really need to pull himself
together before he would be in any shape
to fight again.
Calloway took a deep breath and told
him the last part. "Commander, there is one
more thing that you must be aware of.
When the CORE invaded your world so many
years ago, a CORE Commander led the
charge. That Commander has been traced to
this planet. He is the leader of the
CORE forces that oppose you now. ARM High
Command feels that if you defeat him
here, that it will turn the course of the war in
this sector, and give us the material
to squash the peace movement."
Trevalin sat up abruptly. He was filled
with a feeling of purpose like none he had ever
felt before. He had before him a chance
to avenge his world's destruction. His face
became a stone mask. He rose to his
feet, and walked around to the two reporters.
"Thank you for telling me all of this.
It has been most enlightening. Now you must
excuse me, I have a meeting to attend."
He turned to walk out the door, then paused
and with a grin on his face, said "The
real excitement starts in three days, we take the
battle to the CORE."
Part 8
Trevalin strode into the CIC wearing his Commander suit. The staff officers
present
knew their lives were about to become
a lot harder. Organizing troop deployments
under normal circumstances was hard
enough. Under a full war footing it would
become infinitely more difficult. Captain
Hansen walked over to his boss to prepare
for the briefing. Trevalin had spent
the last two days drawing up a plan for gaining a
foothold on the Western continent, which
also happened to be the CORE stronghold.
Typical ARM operating procedure was
for a Commander to rely on his staff officers to
draw up detailed plans. Trevalin wanted
to keep this plan a secret until it was
absolutely necessary to make it known.
This was an extremely important campaign,
and he needed the extra security. He
didn't suspect his officers of being traitors, but
they had an amazing array of listening
devices that managed to find their way into the
most secure of rooms.
The officers took seats in the briefing
room, and just as he was about to begin
speaking, Calloway and Matt Jamison,
walked into the room. Trevalin signaled to
Hansen and the Captain walked over to
the two men. "Mr. Calloway, Mr. Jamison, I'm
afraid that you can't be allowed in
here for the time being. Commander Trevalin has
deemed this matter to be of the utmost
secrecy, and although he is aware that you
are here to make reports on the progress
of the war effort, this is not something that
should be broadcast. At least, not until
the outcome is known." Calloway started to
object, but then thought better of it.
It was true that he was supposed to record the
events that transpired here, but he
also realized that if the CORE did somehow learn
of their plans, then his life could
be put in jeopardy, and that could seriously interfere
with his assignment. He apologized to
the captain and immediately turned to walk out
the door. Jamison picked up his camera,
and too quick to be noticed by the people
around him, placed a tiny microphone
beneath the chair and then followed Calloway
out of the room. Unaware of the listening
device, Trevalin conducted the briefing.
24 HOURS LATER.
ARM AIRBASE #412
Colonel Mike "Shadow" Markiw woke up
in the barracks to the sound of rolling
thunder. He instantly sprang into action,
suiting up more on reflex from his years of
training and experience than from conscious
action. He ran out of the building toward
the hangar/ready room, for the first
time he noticed that it was dark outside. All
around him were running people, some
of them only half dressed. He watched in
disbelief as a CORE Vamp came in low
to the ground and launched a pair of missiles
at a SAM launcher and explode it like
it was made of plastic. Far down the defense
line he saw flak guns and missiles streak
up from the ground and towards unseen
targets. A second later a nearly continuous
string of explosions rocked the compound.
"Must be bombers down there." He thought,
his mind instantly coming to the
conclusion that the fight had started
sooner than expected.
A lieutenant standing at the door yelled
to him "Eron is holding an informal brief in the
theater in five minutes, all personnel
have to be there." He ran into the building,
feeling it vibrate from yet another
bomb-load being delivered. Eron was his
commanding officer and the CO of his
air division. There was mass confusion in the
theater, people were shouting at the
top of their lungs, demanding to know just what
the hell was going on here. Eron stepped
onto the stage and everyone hurriedly tried
to sit down. He started talking even
before everyone was seated: "Ladies and
gentlemen, less than 20 minutes ago,
a massive air raid was launched against this
base. As you know, we are the main airbase
for this sector, and we have reason to
believe that this is the opening move
in a massive attack on this area. We're
launching everything we have for the
moment, we need to regain air superiority and
kill as many bombers as possible. Control
will come from ground radar stations, its
too dangerous to risk launching the
AWACS planes when we're got Vamps heading
for us. Crew chiefs have been given
information on flight code names and launch
priorities. Good luck and Godspeed.
Now lets go kick some @ss!" The pilots gave a
cheer and jumped up to run out to their
aircraft.
Shadow's wingman, a Captain named Rick
"Iceman" Dunkleberger, was already at his
plane talking to his crew chief. He
flashed him a thumbs-up and grabbed his helmet.
His own crew chief came over and yelled
to overcome the whine of turbojets being
pushed to the stops in order to get
off the ground. "Colonel, you are number 3 for
takeoff, and you are Sigma flight. I've
preflighted your bird, and she's all ready for
you. Stingray and Paladin are also in
your flight. They'll be right behind on takeoff. Go
get 'em sir!" Shadow climbed into his
radar jammer
pit and closed the canopy. The ground
controller cut through the ground chatter and
cleared Tao and Epsilon flights for
takeoff, then gave his Sigma flight permission to
lift off. He punched the throttle and
watched as his airspeed indicator climbed rapidly.
He switched his radio to the air frequency.
This channel was much less cluttered as
pilots now had other things to worry
about than talking to their buddies.
The air-boss opened a channel and spoke
to the pilots "Tao, Epsilon, Sigma, Alpha,
Delta, Upsilon flights, come about to
heading 227, burner. We have multiple inbound
bandits. Splash me some bombers. Out."
Markiw toggled the radio to talk to just his
flight members, "OK guys, we're gonna
be up against the real deal here. Watch for
Vamps, they wouldn't show up on radar,
and the CORE won't risk its bombers without
a proper escort."
Shadow armed his missiles and warmed
up his own radar and targeting systems. A
screen full of blips showed up, all
moving slowly enough to indicate bombers heavily
loaded with ordinance. He scanned the
early morning sky visually, he couldn't see
anything below the horizon, the ground
was still dark, but the sky was beginning to
brighten and he could make out a few
silhouettes of other Hawks. Suddenly, a streak
of fire appeared ahead of him, then
another, and another, and more than he could
count. He screamed into his radio "VAMPS!!!!
Evasive action now! All pilots
maneuver individually, we'll form up
later. Weapons free!!" His missile lock warning
tone began beeping loudly; at least
one fighter had launched a missile at him. He
immediately pulled his fighter into
a maximum-G turn. He watched a missile streak
past his plane, and then followed the
smoke trail back to the fighter that launched it.
His targeting system locked onto the
CORE fighter. Shadow pressed the thumb
button on his flight stick to toggle
the missile launch systems and then pulled the
trigger with his forefinger and watched
as two missiles dropped off his airframe and
rocketed toward the Vamp. The fleeing
fighter detected the incoming missiles too late
and both air-to-air weapons detonated
less than 10 feet behind the stealth fighter,
peppering the tail section with fragments.
The fighter burst into flame and fell out of
the sky.
All around him a massive furball of
ARM and CORE fighters erupted. Missiles
streaked across the gray morning sky
in erratic patterns. Pieces of burning aircraft fell
from the sky like metallic rain. Half
of Shadow's maneuvers could be considered
self-defense; he didn't have a chance
to wonder about anyone else beside himself.
He turned to follow a Vamp blazing a
cross his line of sight. The quick turn caused a
blind-fired missile to miss him by scant
inches. "This is getting messy, I don't know
how much longer my luck can hold out."
He armed his cannon and sent a hundred
rounds into the engine of a Vamp that
was chasing a Hawk. But another immediately
replaced that Vamp, and this one launched
a snap shot missile that slammed into the
Hawk and obliterated it. Slowly, ever
so slowly the superior numbers of the CORE
gave way to the superior piloting and
equipment of the ARM. As the number of Vamps
diminished, Shadow actually began to
breathe normally again. He started trying to
piece together the rest of the battle
from radio transmissions. "Hunter, break left!!
You've got a Vamp coming up behind you!"
"He's got lock, I can't shake him!" A bright
orange fireball provided mute testimony
to the end of that crisis. A Vamp blundered
right in front of him and he dispatched
it with a missile. His group of Hawks was now
too far out of position to hit the bombers,
so the ground controller told them to
concentrate on finishing off the Vamps.
He then vectored in a second group of Hawks
to take out the Hurricanes.
This second group came into missile
range just as the bombers started making their
attack run. Twelve Hawks fired a volley
of missiles, and nine Hurricanes became
expanding clouds of smoking debris.
They closed, seeking new targets new targets
for their missiles and cannon. Over
twenty Hurricanes survived the swarming stealth
fighters and approached the airbase.
The Hawks were ordered to disengage from the
pursuit, much to their dismay. They
orbited about three klicks west of the base.
Suddenly, defenders, flakkers, Jethro's
and Samson's appeared. Ground crews
pulled on lines that uncovered the vehicles
and structures from their camouflaged
tarps. The coaxial laser turrets on
the bombers immediately engaged the targets that
suddenly filled their radarscopes, but
it wasn't enough. Although vehicles exploded
and people died, the wall of AA defenses
shredded the remaining bombers. Only one
hurricane made it through the wall of
missiles and flak, but it was mortally wounded
and crashed into the ground 300 meters
in front its intended target. The Vamps that
remained turned and applied their afterburners
to escape the slaughter. Hawk pilots
chased them a hundred miles off shore
before they were called back by the ground
controllers.
Shadow counted noses while they limped
back to base. Of the twenty-four Hawks
that entered the dogfight with the Vamps,
only sixteen were returning. His own flight
was cut in half; Stingray and Paladin
had been shot down, although the base radar
controllers were picking up Paladin's
rescue beacon, so there was some hope that he
had ejected safely. Upon returning to
the hangar he climbed out of his plane and saw
Iceman walking over. "Good shooting
Colonel!! I've been chatting with a buddy I have
in the control room here, and they estimate
we faced upwards of fifty Vamps!!! Visual
confirmation is coming in from observers
on the cost, when they fled, they say less
than a dozen! We kicked them all over
the place Shadow!" Shadow would have
grinned, but he was too drained, he
didn't know how Rick managed to still have such
energy. "Must have some sort of elevated
adrenaline levels or something." He
thought, and he actually managed to
grin at that though. As he dragged himself to the
debriefing room, he wondered how many
missions he would have now that the
shooting had started. Day One had started
. . .
Part 9
Trevalin stood in the Operations Room of the command bunker. All around
him
intelligence specialists were busy trying
to learn what they could about the sudden
CORE offensive that had materialized
in the southwest part of the continent. Aerial
reconnaissance was sketchy at best.
The CORE forces were heavily armed with
missile launchers and mobile flak vehicles
and were exacting a heavy toll on his
Peepers. CORE forces were somehow jamming
satellite imaging, and it wasn't known
how it was being done. The only information
they had was coming from front line
units that were being forced back by
the waves of CORE tanks. The current MLR,
main line of resistance, was stretched
along a hundred-kilometer front that was
supported by three firebases built in
the last 36 hours to drive back the enemy. Three
tank brigades had been dispatched from
the main base in the southwest sector to
support the beleaguered troops who had
been fighting for almost two days straight. A
screen in front of one of the dozens
of people working in the room suddenly came
alive. "Commander Trevalin!! We've burned
through the satellite jamming. Give me
ten minutes and we can locate the origin
of the invasion." Trevalin walked over to the
young man's station and watched his
fingers fly over the keyboard, inputting the
commands to every satellite in range
to focus their cameras on the CORE positions.
Captain Hansen was talking to the naval
liaison officer, and brought the captain over
to speak with Trevalin.
"Commander, this is Captain Colton McBryer,
Commander, Naval Operations West."
The two officers exchanged salutes,
and cut straight to the point. Although the two
high ranking officers would normally
exchange small talk, this meeting was of the
utmost importance. Trevalin spoke first,
"The CORE Commander has landed a large
force on the southwestern corner of
the continent. We believe that the first wave was
composed entirely of fighting units.
We have yet to detect radio transmissions that are
normally found coming from a Command
Node that is built in all CORE bases. This is
evidence enough that we believe we can
stop this invasion through a surgical strike.
Command Nodes cannot be nano-lathed
by mobile C-units, they have to be made in
a special factory and then moved whole
from one site to the next. This is where you
come in, Captain." A Lieutenant came
over and gave Hansen a palmtop computer,
which he in turn handed to Trevalin.
He raised his voice so that everyone in the room
heard him: "Excellent work people! You
found a needle in a haystack." He returned to
a normal tone of voice and spoke to
Captain McBryer again. "Captain, our satellites
have located the convoy that we believe
to carry the Command Node in it. It is a
specially modified hover transport.
There are several standard transport ships
accompanying it that probably carry
dozens of construction vehicles and Kbots. Six
Executioner cruisers, 2 Warlord battleships,
and over twenty anti-submarine
destroyers escort this convoy, so expect
a tough fight." He handed the computer to
the sailor and informed him that all
the details could be found in the computer. He
again saluted, and wished him good luck.
The convoy would make landfall in less
than 72 hours, even an experienced sea
combatant like McBryer would have to hurry.
He walked over to his Operations Officer.
"Call those three tank brigades, I've got a
plan for them. Now that we know where
they landed, I'm going to attack their flank."
The major grinned and began barking
out orders on his radio.
LOCATION: Coastal lowlands, Fifteen
kilometers from CORE lines
First Lieutenant Matt Bika stood on
the observation pedestal in the turret of his
Bulldog. With the hatch open and the
wind whipping around him, he was almost
having fun. He had to remind himself
that he was heading towards a major battle, one
that he might not survive. He looked
around at the fellow tanks of his brigade, fifty of
them in all, rolling towards the lightly
defended flank of the advancing CORE army.
With two other brigades accompanying
them, they were going to obliterate the
CORE. His CO began issuing orders, and
he descended back into the main
compartment to escape the noise of the
wind and the rumble of tanks. "Attention all
Bravo units, Bravo Eyes reports a platoon
of Reapers 2 kilometers down the trail."
Bravo Eyes was the designation for the
scout aircraft attached to his brigade for this
mission. Bravo was his brigade, and
numbers afterwards were used to identify
individual battalions and companies.
His company was Bravo two-six. "Bravo
three-one, Bravo two-five, and Bravo
two-six, take your lead from Bravo Eyes, we
need to clear those tanks out of our
path. You are designated Mike Force until those
tanks are history." Matt acknowledged
the orders and then tightened the chinstrap on
his helmet. He was in command of his
company of five other tanks, and rapidly
passed on maneuvering orders to his
subordinates. "Mike Force, this is Bravo Eyes,
glad to be workin' with ya. We got us
some Reapers about half mile away, think you
boys can help remedy that?" Matt couldn't
help but grin at the drawl of the pilot, he
had to be under enormous stress, especially
considering the fact that he was flying
an unarmed aircraft. He keyed up his
radio "This is Bravo two-six, I think that we can
be of some assistance in plowing the
road. Give us a heading." The recce pilot
rapidly gave target coordinates and
movement orders to the three companies of
heavy tanks. His company would sweep
around on their left side, and the other two
companies would draw their fire with
a frontal assault.
There were five CORE tanks, all sitting
on a small rise. They were watching for
aircraft, not ARM tanks this far behind
the line. The first volley of plasma shells
slammed into the first tank and blasted
it to bits. The remaining tanks immediately
returned fire and began evasive maneuvers.
The Reapers targeting system was
integrated into the personality hybrid
controlling the vehicle, and thus was much more
accurate than the manual targeting system
on the Bulldogs. Two Bulldogs exploded
before another Reaper was taken down,
and three others were seriously damaged
before Matt's company flanked the CORE
tanks, blasting them out of existence.
"Bravo Eyes, this is Mike Force, the
targets have been eliminated. Do you copy that?"
"Roger that Mike Force, I show no further
vehicles between you and your objective.
Good job guys! Now get back to your
units, the real tough stuff is coming."
Matt's tank wheeled and joined its comrades
for the trip back to his unit. His tank had
sustained no damage, but that wouldn't
last long, especially in the kind of firefight he
would be in soon. One of the few C-vehicles
to accompany his brigade began
repairing the tanks that had taken serious
damage in the skirmish. The massive
armored column continued on toward its
objective, which now lay only 5 kilometers
away.
At a naval base a hundred kilometers
away, a naval task force was forming up in the
harbor. Specialized antisubmarine aircraft
swept the harbor for CORE subs, while
Lancet torpedo bombers circled waiting
to pounce on the first contact that sonar
located. After several hours, the Fleet
commander was satisfied that nothing was
waiting for him inside the harbor, and
gave the order to sortie. The first ships out
were the destroyers, then followed by
the fast cruisers and missile frigates, the carrier
ANS Victory, and the flagship of the
small task force the huge Millennium class
battleship, the ANS Claymore. Once in
the open water, ASW aircraft based on the
carrier took over the job of the land
based patrol aircraft. They proceeded at a fleet
speed of 20 knots on a heading of 255.
In the darkened CIC of the Claymore, Captain
McBryer was sitting in his chair, studying
satellite maps and the spec sheets for
CORE ships. He rubbed his bloodshot
eyes and looked at the countdown clock on
the wall: 54:23.07, less than two and
a half days to intercept the convoy. The course
of the battle on the ARM continent hinged
on this action. He turned back to his
reading, the time was drawing near.
Part 10
Lieutenant Bika's Bulldog was speeding towards its objective at maximum
speed. His
CO reported that CORE forces had breached
the line and were moving to attack the
firebases that had been set up to stop
them. They had to draw the CORE's attention,
and hurt them enough to stop their drive.
Man made thunder rumbled in the distance,
no doubt the end result of scores of
Big Bertha guns pounding the massive tank
force. Smoke trails of cruise missiles
and smaller starburst missiles criss-crossed the
sky at uneven intervals. "All Bravo
units, this is Bravo Eyes, rear echelon CORE
forces are beyond the next rise. Fall
out of formation and prepare to launch the
attack." Matt listened as his CO acknowledged
the order. He took a deep breath of
fresh air before closing the hatch,
half-wondering of it would be his last. He shook his
head to clear it of such thoughts, and
began running a quick diagnostic of all his
primary systems. Everything was as it
should be. His tank slowed to a more
reasonable speed that would allow better
targeting. Five hundred meters to the crest
of the hill and to the battle.
Colonel Mike Markiw looked around the
sky, making sure everyone was where they
were supposed to be. His squadron had
been reinforced from the strategic reserve
forces, so they had been assigned to
escort a regiment of Brawlers to help out the
Bulldogs that would be hitting the flank
of the advancing CORE army. Although this
mission wouldn't involve any dogfighting,
his fighters were responsible for taking out
all of the SAM launchers they could.
Air to ground missions were normally quite easy.
All you had to do was send out a few
scouts to locate the targets and then hit them
before they knew what was going on.
A relatively straightforward process, it was also
relatively safe for the pilots. With
out advance warning of their presence, the aircraft
could launch their guided missiles and
escape before flak guns and SAM launchers
could target them. This sort of mission
was different though. He would have to make
multiple passes over the column, and
attacking alerted defenses was a good way to
wind up dead. His nav computer beeped,
brining his mind back to the matter at hand.
Only two minutes until his squadron,
code named Omega flight, went to full power
and pulled away from the gunships to
start taking out the missile vehicles. He toggled
his radio, "All section leaders, report
in.". "Gold leader, all ready here." "Red leader,
all set here sir!" "Green leader here
boss, we're primed, prepped, locked, loaded and
ready to kick some @ss!!" Mike chuckled
into his radio; Iceman had been assigned a
section leader for this mission because
he had a lot of experience in air to ground
missions. "Glad to hear the enthusiasm
Ice, but keep cool guys, we got a tough nut to
crack here." His timer reached zero
and he pushed his throttle all the way up. "All
Omegas, follow me on burner." Twenty
separate fighters pushed their power plants to
the max, and twenty separate sonic booms
followed them towards their targets.
The CORE rear guard brigade was commanded
by a newly 'lathed decoy commander
with no previous battle experience.
This was one of the reasons he had been
assigned guard duty. When the first
plasma shells started landing near him, he came
about as close to panic as a machine
can come. He followed CORE procedure to the
letter and called for reinforcements,
but while he was busy trying to convince his
superior that he needed a full division
of Goliaths to fight them off, the Reapers and
Goliaths in his command had no guidance
and were basically on their own.
Matt squinted through his view port,
trying to see the tank that was firing at him
through the trees. "There! Gunner, target
tank at 2 o'clock, range 500 meters. " The
turret swiveled to the right and the
gun barrel elevated. His power plant started
working at its maximum safe limit to
produce the plasma needed for his rapid firing. A
second tank joined him and opened fire.
The Goliath was a massive tank, one of the
largest vehicles on either sides, but
even its three layers of heavy armor couldn't
withstand the bombardment of plasma
that the two Bulldogs were dishing out. Matt
grinned with satisfaction at the bright
orange fireball that announced the destruction
of the huge war machine. A platoon of
Reapers emerged from behind a stand of trees
and began volleying off their guns at
Matt and his companion tank. Several of the
shells impacted on his tank, rocking
it violently back and forth, but not doing a terrible
amount of damage. The gunner cursed
loudly as he struggled to sight in on the tanks
through the clouds of smoke. A third
Bulldog joined him and began firing at the tanks,
spraying them with plasma. With the
sides evened up, Matt's line of sight began to
return as the smoke cleared. He immediately
targeted the nearest tank and his twin
guns spit out twenty quick shots, reducing
it to molten metal fragments. His radio
cracked to life with the voice of his
Forward Air Controller, or FAC "All units, air
support is 10 minutes out. Take out
any and all SAM launchers and flak vehicles you
see." Matt looked around, but didn't
see any more CORE vehicles in the vicinity. He
radioed his platoon and ordered them
to form up and advance with him. Several other
platoons emerged from the brush and
joined them.
The tanks climbed a hill and suddenly
fell under a hailstorm of missiles. A dozen
Slashers were hidden in protected revetments.
The tanks had blundered right into
their sights and were now being pummeled
by scores of missiles. Two Bulldogs
exploded, spraying fragments in a 500-foot
radius. The tanks that remained blasted
the lightly armored vehicles out of
existence. "Bravo leader, this is Bravo two-six,
scratch one missile emplacement. We
don't see any more missile units in this area."
He quickly scanned his map, "Grid square
523-821 is clear of AA, tell the flyboys
good hunting. Two-Six out." The tanks
moved down the hill, deeper into the CORE
lines.
Shadow scanned the ground in from of
him, alternating glances between his radar
display and his altimeter. He was flying
dangerously low to the ground in order to
keep a low profile to any missile launchers
that he didn't see. The FAC for the mission
called to Shadow. "Shadow, turn to heading
175. There is a hill 10 kicks south of you
with 3 mobile flak vehicles on it. Take
2 wingmen with you and take them out with one
pass. Out." Shadow took two members
of Red flight and turned towards the hill. His
radar quickly and easily picked up the
boxy gun vehicles on top of the high hill. Mike
took the middle target, and his wingmen
targeted the others. He rocketed towards his
victim at over 600 knots. At a range
of 100 meters, he tapped the trigger twice, and
two missiles streaked towards the Copperhead.
The missiles dove on the vehicle and
shredded it in a thunderous explosion.
The other vehicles were dispatched with
similar ease. As the Hawks flew on,
new targets suddenly appeared on their radar
screens. He squinted at the screen when
suddenly his warning tone began beeping
loudly. "SAMs!! Evasive maneuvers, now!"
He jinked his plane up and then down
violently and the missile passed overhead,
exploding harmlessly a hundred yards
ahead of him. His wingman wasn't so
lucky and he was relieved of duty in a black and
orange ball of flame. He pulled his
fighter into a tight turn and selected a new target
for his missiles. He launched missiles
at two vehicles, and triggered his cannon at a
third. Two of them exploded, and a third
was shredded from end to end. His one
remaining wingman dispatched the remaining
two with missiles of his own. He rolled
his fighter into a turn and headed toward
the front, the brawlers would be here in a
minute and he wanted to make sure there
wouldn't be any surprises waiting for them.
Matt was really starting to sweat now,
his targeting computer was out, and smoke
was escaping out of a hole in his armor.
A damaged Reaper was hiding behind a
huge tree, but was smoking so badly
that it wasn't very effective camouflage. He fired
two rounds into the trunk of the tree
and it fell over on the CORE tank, crushing it
beneath several tons of burning wood.
A fresh Goliath crested the hill in front of him
and fired its massive gun. Fifty feet
away a Bulldog exploded from the hammering
impact of the plasma shell. His gunner
immediately engaged the new target with his
gun, but the heavy armor of the Goliath
absorbed hit after hit with almost no damage.
The massive gun swiveled towards his
tank and leveled to face his Bulldog. Matt
prepared to face his death; he screamed
obscenities at the CORE at the top of his
lungs. Just then there was a loud whine
and the unmistakable roar of missiles. Six
Hawks made a pass over the Bulldog and
fired their missiles. They all impacted
squarely on the massive tank in rapid
succession. It continued moving for a second or
two, then shuddered to a halt and burst
into flames as the power plant melted down.
Shadow passed over the tanks that his
planes saved and waggled their wings. Men
jumped up and down and waved at their
saviors. Matt stood up in the turret and
looked around; twisted remains of CORE
tanks littered the landscape, with ARM
vehicles intermixed. Shooting could
be heard off in the distance, and the massive
booming of artillery was a constant
reminder of what was going on. The lighter sound
of EMG fire told the Lieutenant that
the Brawlers were having a field day against the
tanks now that the missile vehicles
had been decimated. The squeal of tank treads
diminished slowly as the CORE tanks
withdrew and consolidated their forces to deal
with the new threat.
In the command bunker, Trevalin nodded
with approval at the statistics he was being
shown. The latest breakthrough the CORE
had achieved had stopped of its own
accord, which was a good thing. His
forces had suffered massive casualties in this
sector, and if the fighting continued
much longer would force him to use troops
earmarked for his planned offensive
against the CORE. His own cloning facilities
were just now coming online, and it
would take several months at least before the first
new troops could be deployed. The enemy
was pulling back to avoid being over
extended. A newly constructed regiment
of Fidos was on its way to the front line to
begin driving the remaining CORE tanks
back towards the Bulldog force. The fight
was far from over in this sector, but
Trevalin knew that it was a situation that they
could easily handle. Captain Hansen
towards him, in his hands he held the latest
update on the naval situation . . .
Part 11
Captain McBreyer stood on the bridge wing using his powerful binoculars
to scan the
fleet around him. The Victory steamed
along about a mile from his command ship; the
huge flattop could be seen launching
aircraft every few minutes. Overhead, a
massive cloud of torpedo bombers circled
the convoy, ensuring a rapid response to
any sonar contact. He looked back at
the killboard with pride. Already three Leviathan
battle subs had been sunk, along with
a dozen Snake ship-killer subs. The airborne
sonar aircraft were an immense help,
but the CORE ships were incredible at evading
even those excellent sonar platforms.
Three of his precious anti-submarine
destroyers had been sunk, forcing him
to stretch his sonar coverage thinner than he
would have liked. Overall he was feeling
pretty confident about his mission, all of the
subs his ships had sunk had been taken
out so quickly that the CORE ships probably
didn't have a chance to radio their
location back to HQ. He took a deep breath of salt
laden air, and turned back into the
semi-darkness of the bridge and CIC, the real
work would be starting soon. The last
satellite photos showed the convoy to be less
than a hundred kilometers away, and
closing. He headed down the ladder to the
Ops-room to discuss plans with his lieutenants.
Lieutenant Commander Hutzley advanced
the slide. This frame showed a
high-resolution image of the CORE fleet.
The modified hover transport was easily
visible. Two massive Warlord class battleships,
and six Executioner cruisers flanked
it, while a dozen Enforcer ASW destroyers
patrolled the outer zone. Normally, an
anti-submarine force that large would
be a serious threat, but he had been forced to
plan his mission around speed and time
constraints, so ARM submarines had been
excluded. Hutzley used a laser pointer
to highlight various ships in the formation. "As
you can see Captain, this fleet seriously
lacks air protection. We can see no missile
ships, and the destroyer's missile systems
aren't advanced enough to fight off a
determined air raid. The Warlords and
Executioners can outgun us in a stand up
fight, so we'll need to remember that
in our plans. Submarine threats can't be
accuarately assessed from satellites
as you know, so we'll have to depend on our
patrol aircraft to detect and neutralize
them." McBryer fiddled with his briefing papers,
deep in thought. The man was right;
his ship wouldn't stand up to two Warlords, let
alone the six cruisers. He did have
the advantage of range, the Conqueror class
cruisers in his armada easily outshot
the Executioners, and his missile frigates would
rip up slow moving ships. He looked
at a tally sheet that showed his ship types and
what they were currently doing. The
Victory was supposed to stay well away from
danger, its main purpose was submarine
defense, but he decided that those orders
were no longer applicable to this situation.
He turned to the Captain of the Victory
who was seated next to him. "Captain,
tell your air group to stand down for a four
hour layover and rest. I want technicians
to run over every aircraft and every system
and make sure they're working at one
hundred percent. As of right now, I'm changing
your operational status from patrol
duty to offensive weapon." There was some small
chatter erupting around the briefing
table. Carriers were valuable tools of war,
especially in situations where the seas
were still contested. The CORE already had a
massive advantage on the water, and
losing the Victory could prove costly in this
theater. "Gentlemen, I know that this
is a direct disregard for orders from a superior
officer, namely Commander Trevalin,
but we MUST not allow the Command Node to
make landfall. I will take all necessary
actions to ensure that our mission is
accomplished, at whatever the cost."
His voice hardened, his eyes seemed to take on
a glow in the dim room, and he seemed
to grow a few sizes. He had to convince
these men right now to support him;
otherwise the mission could fail miserably. He
needed their whole and undivided support,
even though it meant disobeying orders.
The men one by one nodded and then gave
their support for the pan. McBryer tuned
to the Captain of the Victory again,
"Captain, I need to meet with your CAG
(Commander, Air Group) as soon as possible."
He agreed, saluted and left to return
to his ship. The rest of the briefing
was conducted as normal, with Captain McBryer
outlining his plan of attack on the
vital target.
SIX HOURS LATER . . .
The distance between to two battle groups
was now less than 20 kilometers. A
squadron of Lancet torpedo bombers circled
overhead, waiting for the signal. The
Victory was leaving the convoy now,
escorted by half of the ASW ships. The rest of
the ships formed up around the Claymore
and were preparing to attack the CORE
ships. The missile frigates had the
entire convoy in range of their missiles, and were
working on targeting solutions for the
transports. Captain McBryer stood in the CIC,
watching the mission timer count down.
In two minutes the entire formation would go
to general quarters.
The klaxon blared loudly and men raced
to their posts and donned emergency gear.
The gunners activated their targeting
systems and waited for the computer to forward
target coordinates to them. Radar operators
watched their screens for any signs of
incoming aircraft or missile attacks.
He felt the motion of the ship change as the
engines came to life and accelerated
the massive Battleship to over 40 knots. Aboard
the missile frigates, gunners depressed
fire control buttons, checked their solutions
and turned the firing keys. Massive
starburst missiles blasted out of their launch racks
and rocketed towards their unsuspecting
victims. Smoke trails criss crossed the sky,
and the Lancets roared off to their
targets.
The CORE ships began evasive maneuvers
as soon as the missile came over the
horizon. Half the missiles were thrown
off course, but the others flew onward, and
impacted on 3 conventional transports.
The explosions sent columns of water
shooting high into the air, drenching
ships that were in close proximity. The Lancets
were next to make an appearance. They
dove in on the Cruisers escorting the
convoy. They each dropped a torpedo,
then banked as hard as they could and
retreated before SAMs could reach up
from the water. The Executioners turned as
fast as they were able, but they couldn't
out run the laws of geometry. The homing
torpedoes impacted on 3 of the six ships,
and blasted two of them in half. The third
ship took a hit directly on the engine
space and its engine room flooded, rendering it
dead in the water. The visual sightings
from the torpedo bombers were relayed to the
targeting computers onboard the Claymore
and the other cruisers. Guns immediately
elevated and swiveled to the threat
axis. With a thunderous road dozens of plasma
shells arced across the sky heading
towards the wounded CORE ships. The CORE
cruisers were able to track their targets
now and returned fire with equal ferocity.
McBryer felt his ship shudder with the
impact of enemy shots, he fingered the two
earrings in his ears and wondered if
he would have to get another one. Among sailors
of old, it was tradition to get an earring
if your ship was sunk and you survived. He
kept many old traditions, believing
that the ancient sailors were wiser than people
guessed they were. After all, they sailed
the oceans long before compasses, satellite
navigation, or even powered engines.
They must have done something right, and he
wanted to take no chances. The warlord
were really in the fight now, green lasers
were burning holes in armor faster than
plasma shells could be fired at it. Three
Crusaders were sunk, and two others
crippled before the first one was sunk. By this
time the missile frigates had reloaded
their magazines and fired their one-ton
warheads at the remaining battleship.
The Claymore fired its massive guns and the
ship rocked back from the recoil. The
computer tracked the rounds and watched them
overshoot a fleeing transport ship.
It immediately adjusted the elevation and prepped
the massive rifles to fire again. These
shells flew straight and blew a 30-meter hole in
the side of the ship, sinking it in
a matter of seconds. Volleys of plasma from the
remaining destroyers and torpedoes from
Lancets were finishing off the last CORE
ships. The hover transport tried to
get away, turning away from the attacking ships
and accelerated. Captain McBryer was
about to give the order to fire again, but the
screeing of the printer in the corner
of the CIC delayed his action. A Lieutenant tore
off the page and brought the message
form over to him. It read:
000575748463MSG BEGINS: CAPTURE COMMAND
NODE ONBOARD HOVER
TRANSPORT. USE ANY AND ALL NECESSARY
FORCE TO SECURE THE
TARGET AND RETURN IT TO HQ. MSG ENDS74630302745
He showed it to his first mate, who
immediately headed down the ladder to signal the
security forces on board to prepare
for action. The ARM Marine detachment onboard
the Claymore was a reinforced battalion
of light Kbots. It was mostly composed of
Peewees, but there were a few heavy
weapon platoons that were filled by Hammers.
The assault craft were a small hovercraft
that would attach itself directly to the ship's
hull and use laser cutting tools and
shaped charge explosives to open a breach for
the troops. The trick was getting the
target to slow down enough to allow the troop
shuttles to cut through the hull. Colton
walked over to the gunner station and had the
computer narrow its targeting range
to just the engine compartment onboard the
CORE hovercraft. One of the massive
gun turrets swiveled toward the ship and the
center gun barrel barked, throwing a
glowing ball of plasma out of it. It arced
gracefully through the azure sky before
slamming into the side panel of the
hovercraft, burned through and detonated.
The shock of the explosion twisted the
carbon fiber structure of the massive
power plant. The Captain nodded with approval
as the transport gradually came to a
halt and a half dozen shuttles departed from
mounts on the Claymore's hull. They
flashed across the short distance between the
ships and quickly attached themselves
to the thin hull of the transport. Sudden puffs
of smoke told their own tale, the Marines
were in.
Corporal McIntyre led four fellow Peewees
through the silent corridors deep inside
the transport. His mission was to locate
the access panel to the main cargo hold and
gain access to the Command Node that
was located there. He turned a corner, and
saw a Kbot walking toward him. His targeting
system instantly began scanning the
target both visually and electronically,
and quickly decided it wasn't friendly. Two sets
of EMGs opened fire and reduced the
CORE unit to a smoking hulk of twisted metal.
They approached the wreckage and identified
it as a Construction Kbot. They all
laughed nervously before continuing
their search.
The Commander of the Marines was tracking
down a stray energy reading with a
hand-held sensor array. His Hammer bodyguards
followed him, their guns at the
ready.
McIntyre toggled his radio to call his
platoon leader "Echo four-five to Echo lead, we
have located the main access panel.
It is secure, and we can see what looks like the
Node inside, it's unguarded as far as
we can tell." "Echo four-five, the recovery team
is on its way, hold your position and
wait for reinforcements to arrive." He
acknowledged, and noted with satisfaction
the blips on his short-range scanner that
indicated the presence of other Marines
heading towards him. Five minutes later an
entire company of Marines was swarming
over the main cargo hold and the recovery
team was beginning the complex and tedious
task of capturing it.
An engineer had been taken to the engine
spaces to see about repairing the damage.
After five minutes, it was apparent
that even with a nano-lathe, it would take days to
repair this badly mangled engine, so
he called to the Claymore to pull along side the
ship and pass over a tow line so that
it could be taken back to land.
The Marine commander had localized the
energy source and was drilling through a
bulkhead to gain access to whatever
it was. The Millennium class ship had closed to
within 50 feet of the transport and
had passed over a messenger line to prepare the
tow line. The bulkhead was pried off,
revealing a complex system of circuit boards
and humming spheres. The hand-held scanner
was held closer to the bizarre
machine and took more accurate readings.
His eyes grew wide as he learned what
the device was. He activated his radio
and called the Claymore "Warning, Warning!!
We've located an anti-matter bomb hidden
in a small cargo hold, we're not sure what
its status it." He continued scanning,
trying to determine if they would have to
evacuate or have time to try and defuse
the bomb.
In the CIC, McBryer liked how things
were going. The Node was secure and in the
process of being captured, and they
had suffered minimal casualties considering the
naval superiority enjoyed by the CORE.
In fact, he had just been in contact with the
Victory and learned that two more Leviathan's
had been located and destroyed before
they had located the carrier. He climbed
the ladder to the bridge and walked out to
the walkway that circled the deck. He
took a deep breath of the sea air and gazed
upon the hovercraft that would soon
be back home where it could be taken apart one
piece at a time.
The Marine was busy poking around the
device, trying to patch in to the computer so
that he could defuse the device. Suddenly,
a red light blinked on and a loud tone
sounded. His eyes opened wide as he
waited the eternity that was the last few
milliseconds of his life as the light
turned green and everything went white.
McIntyre heard the massive explosion
and turned just in time to watch the wall
disintegrate and a massive flood of
debris slammed into his light Kbot, hammering him
into blessed unconsciousness, ending
the sudden pain that flooded his body. The
Node was consumed by the wall of expanding
energy caused by the release of
several hundred pounds of antimatter.
The sun-white flash of light that was
coming from the hovercraft momentarily blinded
Captain McBryer. He was thrown against
the railing and knocked to the deck. His first
thought was that he had been tossed
overboard, but it was simply the fountain of
churned up seawater that had been thrown
against him. He stood up, patting himself
to test for wounds and noticing the
odd slant to the deck of his ship. He looked
around and saw that the entire stern
half of the Claymore was missing; blasted into
pure energy by the expanding cloud of
antimatter. He tried shouting to the bridge
crew, but found he was deafened by the
blast. He ran across the deck to the bridge,
and saw a grisly sight. Half of the
sailors on duty had been shredded by flying glass,
and the few that had ducked behind solid
cover had been gravely injured by falling
ceiling fixtures. He looked around for
a working radio, but all of the instruments had
been destroyed. He ran out, scanning
the horizon for a nearby ship. Several aircraft
were circling nearby, their attention
drawn by the massive blast. He waved to them,
praying that a rescue ship would reach
him in time.
The Captain of the Victory radioed the
mainland and informed them of the situation.
He assumed command of the fleet and
began coordinating a rescue effort.
Destroyers closed in on the crippled
battleship and began looking for survivors.
Several dozen sailors were plucked from
the water, wide-eyed and in shock, but
mostly unhurt for the most part. On
the bridge deck, Captain McBryer said a short
prayer over each of the dead and wounded
officers that wouldn't be reached in time
before the massive ship slid beneath
the waves. He waved to a nearby ship and after
it turned toward him, be hopped over
the railing and plunged into the sea to await his
pickup.
After several hours, the significantly
reduced fleet formed up and headed back
towards home. Captain McBryer was transported
to the Victory where he began
making his after-action report. He sat
despondently in his temporary quarters, his
hand occasionally reaching up to the
sore spot on his ear where the ship doctor had
pieced his ear just a few short hours
ago. He sat back in his chair, gazing off into the
distance, and dreaming of revenge against
the CORE. Remembering the valiant
words of an ancient human mariner, he
found new resolve inside himself, "I have not
yet begun to fight!"
Part 12
The CORE Commander was sitting in his office, his patterned mind halfway
around
the world as he gave orders to the remaining
tank forces. They were still trying to
repel the ARM counter attack that was
slowly obliterating his plans for a rapid
campaign. His forces were badly outnumbered,
but if they could manage to destroy
even one of the ARM firebases, then
reinforcements could be justified and the
offensive could continue.
His mind was brought back to his physical
"body" by a beep coming from his console;
somebody was at his door. "Enter" he
said, annoyed to be disturbed during such an
important battle. The doors slid open
with a slight hiss, revealing a Decoy
Commander. CORE Commander suddenly became
very interested in this
interruption, this Decoy was in charge
of Research and Development. On Trax,
Research and Development meant searching
the ancient computer archives and
databases for viable information and
testing it against existing technology. The speed
with which Trax was destroyed four thousand
years ago left many of the labs in
relatively good condition.
"Commander, one week ago a team of C-units
discovered an underground structure
while building fortifications in the
path of a likely ARM invasion zone. Upon further
investigation, it was found to be a
rather immense underground laboratory. At that
time, my team and I were called to investigate.
The lab itself is in remarkable
condition. A self-contained geothermal
plant is still providing it with a constant and
steady source of energy and all entrances
from the outside world were still sealed so
the atmosphere inside hadn't become
contaminated. Most of the experiments in
progress had been ruined, and weren't
of consequence to begin with, but one project
caught our optical receptors." He opened
his hand and a small, white crystal fell onto
the desk. "Once we determined what this
was, I decided to come straight to you." The
Commander examined it closely; his built
in spectrometer identified it as extremely
pure Thorimite crystal. If he could
have whistled, he would have. Thorimite crystal
was supposedly just a theory, the huge
size of the atom had too large an electron
shell to allow proper crystalline structure,
yet here it sat in the palm of his hand. The
Decoy Commander continued, "At the beginning
of the war, most cloaking devices
were dependent upon Thorium compounds
to create the cloaking field. One of the
heaviest, naturally occurring elements
known to science, it was also radioactive. This
led to eventual damage to the cloaked
unit from the prolonged exposure to Alpha and
Gamma radiation. This problem was solved
partially by the development of
monofilament polymers. These huge chains
of molecules no wider than 5 microns
allowed cloaking abilities with no radiation.
The downside, as I'm sure you are aware
of, is that it takes massive amounts
of energy to sustain the cloaking field, especially
when moving. These Thorimite crystals
can create a cloaking field comparable to a
standard device at a fraction of the
energy requirement." As if to emphasize this point,
he waved his hand. A soft humming was
heard, and then a Parasite Kbot suddenly
appeared standing on the Commanders
desk, staring him directly in the face. If the
CORE commander were capable of grinning,
he would have. This type of cloak made
the possibility of cloaked aircraft
an attainable reality. Not to mention the ludicrous
idea of cloaked bases something to be
looked into. The Decoy Commander cut his
daydreaming short; "There is one small
problem. Activating the cloaking device with
Thorimite caused the radioactive element
to begin ultra-accelerated decomposition.
The half-life of the crystal shrinks
phenomenally, coming down to about two or three
minutes. This means that at most we
can cloak a unit for ten or fifteen minutes. Give
us a little time and we might be able
to stretch that into 20-30 minutes, but that will
take time. Also, we don't know how exactly
this crystal was created, the computer files
were corrupted beyond recognition, even
for us. We estimate we have around twenty
kilograms of the crystal in our possession
now." The CORE commander rocked back
in his seat, his mind drifting off into
the neural pathways of his brain matrices, running
trillions of calculations every minute.
He could order reinforcements sent to the ARM
front via cloaked ships, but that would
be a gamble at best. The ARM had excellent
radar coverage, and cloaked units were
only invisible to visual detection, not
electronic. He continued thinking, his
mind returning to the bloodbath being played
out on the southwestern plains on the
ARM continent. His mind linked with a
computer generated image of the battlefield,
he watched with cold, calculated
emotions as a squadron of Phoenix bombers
emptied their bays and a company of
Goliaths became smoking piles of rubble.
"No," he though, "the time is not right yet.
The ARM is too well emplaced in their
own territory. We must draw them out, give
them a false sense of success, and then
close in, destroying their forces and crippling
their plans. Only then can we achieve
victory here." He came out of his
semi-meditation and turned to the R&D
leader. "Commander, your orders are to study
the structure of this crystal so that
we may stretch its usefulness to the maximum, and
you must find a way to duplicate this
process. Kbot lab #035 will be given to your
department for testing. Use any and
all necessary resources to help your research,
and keep me posted of all developments.
You are dismissed." The Decoy turned to
leave, the Parasite followed him, visible
this time.
CORE commander cast a glance at the
tank forces still fighting valiantly against the
lowly rebels. They were beyond salvation.
Out gunned, out numbered, and most
importantly out of luck, he sent one
final order to them: "Fight to the last, do as much
damage as possible. You're on your own."
He turned to his tactical computer and
began making new plans, plans that this
time would not fail.
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER
Trevalin breathed an inaudible sigh of
relief. The offensive had been stopped just
short of a major energy-producing base,
saving him days of reconstruction that would
have been necessary to repair the power
grid. The massive CORE tanks had
stopped their tactics of just sitting
around waiting to destroy what came to them, and
changed to a last desperate rush. A
Fido regiment was pressing them backwards,
supported by nearly every available
fighter and bomber squadron within a day's flight
of the battle zone. Casualties were
still very heavy, and each explosion meant that
just a little more time would have to
pass before he would feel confident attacking the
CORE on their home turf. Cloning facilities
were finally online, and the fist 'class' of
soldiers was graduating their respective
training courses. Unit production would be
increased now that there were more pilots
for aircraft and Kbots, and gunners for
tanks. He increased the magnification
of his optics and zoomed in on a platoon of
CORE tanks cresting a hill a thousand
meters in front of him. Before they could do
anything, a hailstorm of plasma fire
from a Bertha battery saturated the hilltop, turning
the lush green vegetation to a wasteland
of brown dirt, smoke and white-hot metal
fragments imbedded in the charred ground.
The man-made thunder continued, a
constant reminder of what was going
on all around him. He turned and called for a
pickup. An Atlas hovered overhead and
the magnetic clamps activated, grasping him
firmly before lifting off and heading
back to his field HQ. He had seen enough here.
He was back in the Ops room an hour
later, discussing troop deployments with his
aids to determine the most efficient
way to load the transports for overseas action. He
was only half paying attention though,
he was expecting a guest shortly. He looked
back to the table map and assigned junior
staff officers to continue with the
deployments while he went into his stateroom.
Twenty minutes later, the door
beeped, and a Zeus entered. "Captain
McBryer is here, Commander." Trevalin
looked up from his computer screen and
waved the man in. The sailor took a seat in
front of the desk, wondering what he
had been summoned for. Trevalin seemed to
sense the question and answered it before
it was asked aloud "How would you like to
go back out?"
Part 13
Captain McBryer could barely contain his amazement. He had blundered
into a
CORE last ditch trap and lost his flagship.
Aside from the material loss, his mistakes
had cost hundreds of Marines and sailors
their lives. And yet, here was the ARM
Commander asking him if he wanted another
chance. He was even more surprised
when he heard himself say "Yes sir,
Commander. I would love a chance to avenge
the deaths of my crew." Trevalin stood
up "Excellent! We already have a new
assignment for you. Please follow me."
The two men walked out of the office and
through a maze of corridors until finally
stopping in front of the map room. He gave a
voice authorization code and passed
a retinal scan before entering. He waved aside
the guard and brought McBryer inside.
The entire wall was covered with huge maps
of various parts of Trax. Known CORE
strongholds were marked with rings denoting
artillery range, radar detection arcs,
and SAM missile ranges. Red arrows marked
CORE troop movements while blue markings
indicated ARM positions. All throughout
the room, ARM intelligence specialists
listened in on CORE low-frequency radio
traffic and examined satellite reconnaissance
photos. Trevalin led the Captain to a
set of doors in the back. An ARM Marine
sentry saluted the Commander and the
Captain, and then promptly opened the
doors.
Stepping through, they stood in the
special operations room. The darkened room was
illuminated from the dozens of computer
monitors and status readouts. Trevalin
turned to face McBryer and said, "It
goes without saying that this room contains some
of the most top secret and sensitive
information in the galaxy. If anything leaks out of
here and it gets traced back to you,
I'll D-Gun you myself. But that's just a formality, I
trust you well enough to bring you here
without a second thought. I brought you here
to be briefed on your new assignment."
They came to a halt beside a uniformed man
wearing the three gold stripes of a
Lieutenant Commander. He wore his water wings
badge, signifying his rank of ship conning
officer, and the badge of a gunnery officer.
"Welcome Commander, Captain McBryer,
please be seated. As you know, the ARM
offensive to the CORE territory will
have to go across the main ocean on Trax. As I'm
sure you also know, the CORE enjoys
a considerable advantage at sea because of
their Leviathan battle subs and Warlord
battleships. After extensive and exhaustive
investigation, we've managed to locate
the main shipyard and naval base for the
CORE. There is a large, natural harbor
far to the north; above the 70th parallel.
There is a massive surface task force
stationed there, guarding the mouth of the
harbor, and the precious shipyards inside.
The contents of the base are eight
standard shipyards, and four advanced.
Other features are six dry-docks, seaplane
platforms, a fuel depot, and munitions
storage. Advanced torpedo launchers guard
this facility, along with extensive
sonar coverage, and you can bet on numerous
Shark submarine killers. Your mission
will be to infiltrate the harbor and cripple their
production capabilities." The Lieutenant
Commander stood up and beckoned the two
officers to follow him. He continued
talking as they walked. "We feel that we can give
the CORE a fight, but only if we can
prevent reinforcement fleets from being sent to
trouble spots. This is where your force
comes in, Captain." They reached one of the
computer stations and called up the
mission profile. "We'll draw out the bulk of their
ships by offering them some bait, namely
the 7th Fleet, and that should leave you
able to sneak in relatively safely.
You will lead a force of five newly designed fast
attack subs. Mission timetables, routes,
and code names will be given to you at a
later time. Right now, you have a rough
two weeks ahead of you. The new boats are
currently three hundred kilometers south
west of the nearest naval base. They will be
back at the docks in three days, after
that, you have ten days of sound tests and trials
to test the new systems onboard. The
code name of these new class of attack boat is
the Barracuda." A junior grade lieutenant
entered the room. "If you will follow this
lieutenant, he will take you to a more
in depth briefing." Soon, only Trevalin and the
intelligence officer were left in the
room. Trevalin looked at the screen and the man
who had planned this mission. "A good
plan, Commander. Let's hope the CORE
doesn't throw another wrench into the
works."
LOCATION: ARM HQ COMPLEX, GUEST QUARTERS
Calloway and Flynn lounged in the common
room. The past weeks had allowed them
to gather war footage that showed the
ARM forces in combat. Repelling the CORE
invasion forces would be a tremendous
boost to public morale, but they still needed
more. "You know, Will, we need to find
some way to get inside the ops room
somehow. Seeing the fight is one thing,
but we need to get inside the command
structure and learn where the offensive
will take place." Flynn objected, "Patrick, we
can't just snoop around in there. There
are limits as to what we are allowed, and
more importantly, what we NEED to see.
And we DON'T need to see inside there. We
can't risk compromising the ARM position
on Trax, and in the long run not only our
personal survival, but ther very existence
of the ARM." Calloway nodded, "True, but
how would the CORE find out? We both
know each other well enough to know that
neither of us is a traitor. If I won't
tell, and you won't tell, where is the danger?" Flynn
thought about that for a second, and
had to agree with him. "OK, I'll agree to this on
one condition: we don't include locations,
names, or unit designations in our report."
Calloway readily agreed, seeing as how
he also liked the idea of living through this
little skirmish. They punched a button
on a vid-phone and contacted the other
members of their group to find some
way of gaining access to the information
contained in the ops room.
Part 14
Major Karnoski stomped around the barracks. After a small skirmish just
after arriving
here, his elite force of Maverick Kbots
had done nothing more than pull garrison duty
and occasionally visit the training
facility to keep their skills honed. Rumors were
flying around about a possible ARM offensive
force massing on the west coast in
preparation for a major amphibious assault,
but so far no orders had been issued to
him. A squadron of Hawk air superiority
fighters streaked low overhead, rattling
windows and raising mini tornadoes of
dust and dirt. Even the fighter pilots he knew
were getting anxious to fight again.
Just after the CORE assault had been stopped,
the air squadrons had been seriously
shuffled around. He knew from his own
personal experience that this was being
done to circulate the experienced pilots and
hope their lectures on CORE tactics
would filter around to the rest of the fliers. His
own troops were doing much the same
thing among the other ground troops.
Experience was very important to the
ARM soldiers. With the CORE holding the
superior firepower on their side, ARM
attacks had to rely on superior tactics to supply
the victories. Without even realizing
it, he had been pacing for over an hour now. He
looked at his watch, and decided that
if the fighting wasn't starting yet, then there was
more time to practice. "A few hours
of intense battlefield simulations should help pass
the time." He thought with a grin.
LOCATION: NAVAL BASE #34, SW THEATER OF OPERATIONS
Captain McBryer stepped out of the transport
aircraft and saw five sleek hulls tied up
along the piers. Shore hands were hard
at work carting supplies onto the decks while
the crewmen of the brand new boats stowed
them away below decks. He walked
towards the subs, gazing at the smooth
hull designs. He flashed his ID at a sentry
who immediately called for an Ensign
to take him to see the base Commander.
McBryer was led into an underground
bunker and into the Ops room. A man in a Zeus
Kbot suit met him and began talking.
"Glad to see you Captain! You've got quite an
impressive career in the Navy and your
deeds are well known to all of us here. I was
the one who requested you to lead this
attack." McBryer didn't like flattery, but he
ignored it. He wasn't here to gain glory
for himself or the ARM; he was here to destroy
the CORE. The Zeus continued, "I'm assuming
you've already been briefed about the
mission itself, so now I'll let you
in on why these subs are so new." He sat down in a
chair and tapped a few keys on a computer
console in front of him. A holographic
image was generated and hovered above
the briefing table. Colton sat down and
read the spec sheet that was placed
in front of him. He let out a soft whistle as he
read: nuclear powered, twin screws,
a top speed of over 60 knots, and perhaps most
impressive were the warfare systems
onboard. The torpedoes themselves were
small; only 125 kilograms. The warhead
made all the difference though, it was
antimatter! The top speed was over 80
knots, and anything within a two hundred-foot
radius of the blast would take serious
damage. The sonar was the most advanced
listening device the ARM had ever developed.
It could hear the telltale sounds of a
CORE submarine in transit from over
15 miles away. The last item on the page
caught his attention though. The line
read: Sonic Displacer, and then was followed be
a line of technical jargon that he didn't
understand too well. The Zeus saw the look on
his face and chuckled, "Ah . .I see
you've discovered our newest toy! The Sonic
Diplacer is the little gadget that will
save your @ss more times that you'll be able to
count. I'll spare you the technical
reasons that it works and tell you what it does.
Basically, it is a sustained energy
field generated by a special computer onboard
each Barracuda that bends the sound
energy that radiates from the hull. Depending
on the angle that you approach the CORE
ships, the displacer can make your
position appear as far away as half
a mile." Sections of the hologram were highlighted
and magnified. "The problem is one of
power. The displacer is similar to the cloaking
devices found on Kbots as it uses an
exorbitant amount of energy. The nuclear
reactor onboard your sub isn't capable
of sustaining it for more than a few seconds
without overloading." He pointed to
several blinking lights on the display. "To
supplement your reactor, we've built
in several small energy storage units that will
allow you to stay under the displacer
for almost 5 minutes at a time. Even when the
device is off, you will be very hard
to locate on active sonar sweeps. The anechoic
tiles that cover the hull are the most
advanced we've ever designed." Captain
McBryer nodded, closing the small briefing
packet. Colton tucked the papers into a
small folder, stood up and saluted the
officer. The boat he was going to command
was tied up at dock #23, waiting for
its new captain to arrive. The small fleet would
depart in a few days for a shakedown
voyage. It would also give McBryer a chance to
become accustomed to the new systems
onboard, and get acquainted with his crew,
a very important thing in military operations.
LOCATION: TWENTY-FOUR THOUSAND FEET,
HEADING 277, TWENTY MILES
OFF SHORE.
Major Markiw watched as his flight members
followed his frantic maneuvering. His
squadron was participating in some inter-squadron
practice sessions. The targeting
systems had been modified to allow it
to target other ARM fighters. Currently, they
were hunting a flight of other Hawks
on a simulated air strike. This was ideal practice
for his air wing; CORE forces rarely
used Avenger fighters except on air defense
missions, and tracking the ARM stealth
fighters would be very similar. Peeper scout
craft were patrolling ten miles out
from their position, using visual scanning to watch
for the "enemy" force. "OK guys, keep
it tight. Those guys from the 51st squadron
think they're God's gift to the Air
Force, lets show them who really is!" A resounding
chorus of yells came through the radio.
Peeper #A32 pulled his scout craft into
a tight turn and prepared to make another
circuit. He checked his radarscope on
reflex: nothing of course. Everything was just
as it should be. He couldn't help but
grin, practice missions gave him a chance to just
enjoy the feeling of freedom that flying
always gave him. He scanned the clear blue
sky, almost happy enough to let his
mind wander and start making shapes out of the
clouds. A beep sounded in the radar
jammer
pit, breaking his reverie. "The radar
warning receiver? What the heck is. ." A black
orange fireball replaced his scout craft.
The special Vamp stealth fighter blazed
through the smoke cloud at Mach 2, and
used the cover of the blackness to engage
the cloaking device again.
Shadow scanned the sky, an ever-increasing
feeling of uneasiness was replacing the
feeling of confidence that he once had.
His flight members had fallen silent of their
enthusiastic chatter. Most of the time
that would be good. Chatter distracted pilots
from the job of flying their aircraft.
This was different, though. Practice missions
weren't supposed to give you this kind
of feeling. It was sort of a hollow feeling in his
stomach. He had only felt this way once
before in his life; the time his flight had been
ambushed by Vamps. "All flight members,
disengage practice parameters and
re-enable combat settings. Possible
CORE fighters inbound on our formation." He
glanced around his fighter and watched
as the ships spread out, assuming a more
combat oriented formation. The light
on his status board blinked green, indicating his
missiles were armed and ready.
The Vamp flew on, oblivious to the frantic
searching of Shadow's squadron. There
was no room for error in this test flight.
It had now entered ARM airspace and was
currently within range of several long-range
SAM launchers as well as numerous air
defense squadrons of Freedom Fighters.
As it approached land it began a slow
decent to a safer altitude. It crossed
the coast and blasted inland. Several gun
emplacements noted a sudden gust of
wind and a high pitched whine that reminded
several soldiers of turbojets. Most
just ignored it, turning back to the much more
important business of playing poker
on their lunch break. A few looked up at the sky
longer than most. Having been in other
battles, they knew that the CORE was a
devious foe. A foe that would go to
any lengths to defeat the ARM once and for all.
This knowledge of the CORE was all that
they needed to radio a suspicious event to
local HQ. The Officer of the Day received
the message form, and immediately
forwarded it to the sector air controller.
He radioed for an Eagle radar plane. By a
random stroke of luck, the AWACS plane
on patrol was a prototype Eagle-J electronic
warfare platform. Along with a new,
advanced radar transmitter, it had over a dozen
passive sensor devices that could detect
low frequency transmissions from over eight
hundred kilometers away. The newest
electronics package was a brand new sensing
device called a Phased Tachyon Array.
It was designed to locate the disturbance in
gravometric fields caused by small masses
of metal, such as stealth fighters. This
was the ARM's latest attempt to gain
the advantage in the air, but it had yet to be
tested. As the modified Eagle banked
towards the south, its escorts flew ahead and
slightly higher than the vulnerable
aircraft. The Electronic Warfare Technicians in the
back watched their computer screens
for the signature of Vamps in transit.
Shadow's flight was recalled and sent
to assist the Eagle in their search. He toggled
his radio "Shadow flight, turn with
me and go burner, we got a stray Vamp to find." His
squadron spread out and pushed their
throttles to the stops, then applied the
afterburner. Shadow felt the reassuring
feeling of being pressed into his seat by the
thrust his twin turbojets were producing.
His sleek airframe cut cleanly through the
sky, accelerating to Mach 2 in less
than ten seconds.
The Vamp continued on as before, following
its pre-planned flight path. Flying over
radar sites, SAM launchers, main ARM
bases, all without being seen or detected. The
data from the onboard computers was
being transmitted to the Command Node back
on the CORE continent via UHF radio
channels. Normally, UHF depended on a clear
line of sight, but even after they passed
through their maximum range, they generated
a disturbance in the lower end of the
EM spectrum, which the CORE was able to
detect. It passed within 200 kilometers
of the Eagle, which had been monitoring a
stray transmission. When the fighter
banked for a turn, it presented enough of a
surface towards the PTA for it to be
detected. A small, fuzzy blip appeared on the
radar screen for just a few seconds,
but it was more than enough time for the
experienced radar controllers to vector
in Shadow's Hawk squadron. Although the blip
was rapidly fading, its straight flight
path was easily extrapolated and additional
fighters were sent to back up the Hawks.
Shadow stared around him, trying to
see the Vamp that had been detected by the
advanced Radar plane. His aircraft were
orbiting in a five-mile radius around the
expected position of the fighter, but
so far nothing had been seen.
The Vamp flew on, the patterned mind
looking around at the number of fighters that
suddenly appeared in its path. The pilot
had been ordered to fly the mission and
return safely to base. The pilot of
this fighter had been chosen for this mission
because of his skill. Copies of his
mind were responsible for hundreds of thousands
of kills across the galaxy. He checked
his data link, and made a decision. The CORE
would appreciate the date he would gather
about the system in a combat
environment. He toggled the cloaking
device off, and launched a pair of missiles at a
Hawk and then quickly re-cloaked. The
missiles blotted the plane from the sky before
anyone knew what was going on. Pilots
turned their heads just in time to see a
shimmering object turning away, dissipating
into nothingness. Shadow swore to
himself, pulling his fighter into a
maximum-G turn to follow the invisible aircraft.
Shadow punched his radio and called
the Eagle, "AWACS, this is Shadow, I need a
data feed on this guy's location, now!"
He watched as it reappeared at his nine
o'clock and used its cannon to drop
a second Hawk from the sky. Shadow rolled left
and blind fired his cannon, hoping to
at least damage the Vamp. "Shadow this is
AWACS, we're uplinking our data to you
now, take him out!" A second later his radar
screen was superimposed with the screen
from the Eagle. On his first look, nothing
showed up, but then he noticed a tiny,
fuzzy mark slowly moving across the scope.
He turned to the right and lined up
behind it. When the Vamp decloaked for the third
time, he locked on his missiles and
tapped the trigger. The Vamp detected the radar
lock immediately and took appropriate
evasive actions. The sudden turn took the
CORE fighter outside of the direct hit
envelope for the air to air missiles, but they had
secondary laser-proximity fuses that
detonated when they saw that they were as
close as they were going to get. Fragments
lashed out and carved huge holes in the
fuselage of the Vamp. It trailed smoke
and was now spiraling out of the sky. Shadow
tracked it visually until it impacted
on the ground, sliding several hundred yards
before coming to a stop in a large crater.
The Hawks circled the crash site until the
first ground units arrived and sealed
the area until a full investigation was completed.
The Eagle ordered Shadow and his wing
to return to base. Shadow was a grim man
the rest of the trip. "Cloaked AND stealth
fighters?!? Great, as if my job wasn't hard
enough to begin with." He landed and
parked his aircraft in the protective concrete
arch. He stalked towards the Air Ops
building. He was going to find out just what the
hell happened.
Part 15
The reporters met in Mike Ellington's quarters. The technician had a
mini-lab set up in the guestrooms of the ARM Central HQ on Trax. Currently,
he was
modifying a special Invader style robot
to carry a camera and microphone. The tricky
part wasn't in mounting the two devices
in the small object, but in finding a way to
feed the data out of the room in such
a way that would be hard to detect. Ellington
had a plan for that, but wouldn't tell
them what it was. He reached into a desk drawer
and withdrew a small black box. He motioned
for everyone to come closer, then
dropped his voice to a barely audible
whisper. "This is my plan." He opened the box,
and inside of it was a deactivated and
disarmed Roach. The two reporters let out a
small gasp. This was ridiculously illegal.
Possession of CORE technology was
expressly forbidden, and punishment
was imprisonment in a maximum-security facility
with notorious CORE spies and sympathizers.
"I can use the same data transfer node
in this Roach that it used to keep in
touch with the Commander and Central
Conciousness. I have to ask you guys
to leave though, I can't risk you getting caught
for something that I'm doing on my own."
His eyes were filled with concern for his
comrades who he had accompanied across
the galaxy covering the war effort. With a
look of concern on their faces, they
turned and walked out of the room quietly, careful
to not attract attention. An hour later,
the door opened again, but not for a person this
time. A tiny robot crossed the threshold
and turned for the long trek to the ops room.
ASSEMBLY POINT #15
20th TANK DIVISION
Lieutenant Bika stood atop his tank and
looked out across row after row of the deadly
war machines. His brigade had been reinforced
from the new clones from the cloning
facilities. These troops had no battle
experience, but the first 2 months of their life
had been spent in exercise after exercise.
They knew exactly what was expected of
them, what their tanks could and couldn't
do, and how to best use their tanks to
accomplish their mission. He felt confident
in their abilities, and felt confident in his
ability to work with them as the Executive
Officer of his Battalion. He looked towards
the ocean and the docks that ringed
the harbor. Transport ships lined every available
docking space and were beehives of activity
as Bulldogs were loaded on for long
distance movement. Aircraft of all types
circled endlessly overhead lest a CORE
aircraft try to get a glimpse of what
all the hustle and bustle was about. He turned his
attention back to his own tank. After
the last battle, his tank had been thoroughly
repaired by a Construction Kbot, and
then certified at his weekly training session.
The gunner was running a short battle
simulation, testing his reflexes in a lightning
round of holographic tank battles. The
driver was running a quick diagnostic of the
power train to try and pin point a small
fluctuation in horsepower that had been
detected on the drive to the assembly
point. All that was left for him to do was wait.
His time was coming.
ARM CENTRAL HQ
Commander Trevalin stood in the ops room,
prepared to give the first briefing about
the ARM offensive that would begin in
less than a week. The staff officers and liaison
personnel were slowly filtering into
the briefing room inside the Operations Wing of
his complex. He stood up and followed
them in, walking briskly up on the stage. He
couldn't have known about the extra
passenger he brought with him. After passing
through the door, the tiny object, no
larger than the head of a pin dropped off of his
leg and moved to the nearest wall and
scaled it.
He found Captain Hansen already there,
setting up and testing the sound system and
the video projector. The clock chimed
0600 hours, and the chatter died down as
Trevalin approached the podium. "Ladies
and Gentlemen, good morning. As I'm sure
you've heard, and expected, ARM forces
will execute a massive offensive operation in
less than ten days. Until now, I've
been able to do the work by myself, issuing direct
orders to unit commanders and keeping
a tight lid on things to prevent any
unauthorized personnel from getting
word of this plan. At this point, there is no turning
back, and the battle will soon be joined."
He paused and used a small wand to
activate the video projector. A map
of Trax's western ocean appeared on the view
screen. A small blue dot appeared on
the screen, its position about 200 kilometers
west of the ARM continent. "This is
our opening move, gentlemen. A group of five
Barracuda advanced attack submarines
on a deep strike mission against a CORE
naval facility. Their mission is to
disrupt the shipyards backing the CORE presence in
the western ocean. Once they are out
of commission, a large force of Lancet torpedo
bombers and Hawk stealth fighters will
accompany the Seventh Fleet on strike
missions against the surface forces
of the CORE navy. Without the shipyards to
provide replacements for lost ships,
the CORE will have to draw ships from other
sectors and assignments. These ships
will take some time to reach the convoy lanes,
and by the time they do arrive, our
own ships will be halfway across the ocean." He
pushed the button again, and three blue
arrows began marching westward across the
water. "These arrows represent the routes
our ships will use in the voyage to CORE
territory. Significant numbers of anti-submarine
warfare ships and aircraft will guard
our transports. Leviathan battle subs
have been spotted in these waters and we have
no reason to believe that they won't
be there again." Small murmurs began to be
heard throughout the room. Commander
Trevalin was one of the best ARM
Commanders, yet here on Trax, he was
using simple, straightforward tactics that
would allow the CORE plenty of time
to work up a defensive plan that would smash
any force that they managed to land.
The Commander ignored these whispers and
continued with his briefing. "Once we
have established a beach head, we'll begin
expanding inland towards this major
CORE base right here." He turned and used a
laser point to highlight a position
on the map. The video projector zoomed in on the
location and showed a metal farm that
the CORE had established. Several fusion
plants and storage facilities could
also be seen in the photograph. Defenses were
heavy, Gaat guns and Punisher plasma
guns ringed the perimeter, while missile
towers and flak guns were scattered
around the inner spaces of the base. "By
capturing this plot of land, we can
establish a base of our own and begin construction
of reinforcements and artillery sites.
I've had special assignment folders made up for
each of you, and they should be handed
to you at the door once you leave. Inside
you'll find more specific orders as
to developing more detailed information for the
assault. I expect to see all of you
back here tomorrow at the same time with your
preliminary results. Good luck! Dismissed."
He stepped back from the podium and
walked over to his aide. The Captain
whispered to him "Don't you think it's unfair to
have them plan an assault when they
don't know about your other plans? They could
incorporate that into their ideas and
maybe enhance it?" Trevalin nodded his
agreement, "Anything is possible, but
for now I'd like to have this little surprise up my
sleeve in case things don't go precisely
as planned." He turned and walked towards
the exit, waving for Hansen to follow
him.
Part 16
Major Karnoski moved forward and up to the firing step, arming his twin
Gauss rifles
at the same time. The armor plates on
his legs slid back, revealing the oversized,
pistol-shaped weapons. His robotic hands
reached for them and brought them up to
the proper height. In this training
exercise his targeting computer wasn't active, he
would have to depend on his own human
reflexes and judgment to pilot the power
armor suit. A model of an A.K. popped
up about one hundred meters away, and was
instantly blasted to bits by a depleted
Uranium slug. An Instigator was his next victim,
the thin metal mock-up exploding into
a million tiny fragments. A Sumo reared its head
and a beam of green light reached out
for him. He dodged out of the way of the fake
laser weapon. Just as he was bringing
his weapons to bear, a shaft of azure light
joined the head of the Sumo and melted
it into white-hot slag. He spun around and
brought his weapons to bear on a Shooter.
He instantly put his weapons away, and
prepared to chew out the sorry SOB who
so brazenly used an Annihilator weapon at
a shooting range.
Major Karnoski strode up to the newcomer.
He opened his faceplate and ordered the
pilot to stand down and disembark. The
Shooter lowered his weapon and opened his
own faceplate; he then saluted the Major.
Surprised by this unusual behavior, the
Major asked "Who are you and why are
you here? There aren't any shooters in my
battalion, or at this base for that
matter." The Shooter pilot answered "Captain
Christopher Murdoch and company reporting
for duty, sir!" Karnoski was seriously
confused now. "Company? You're the only
one . . ." He was cut off by a low hum as
twenty additional Shooters shimmered
into existence, disengaging their cloaking
devices. Just then, his radio beeped,
and the face of the training facility commander
appeared on the screen. "Major Karnoski,
your transports are arriving, along with all
the special equipment you requisitioned.
ETA is five minutes." He acknowledged the
message, then turned to the Captain
and spoke "This probably has something to do
with you, since I didn't request any
special equipment or transports. Care to explain
just what is going on?" Murdoch holstered
his massive laser cannon, and grinned.
"Welcome to the Special Ops Division,
Major. Commander Trevalin himself gave the
orders transferring you to this unit.
Come with me and assemble your officers, we
have important plans to discuss."
TWENTY MINUTES LATER
THE BRIEFING ROOM
Captain Murdoch handed Sean a folder.
He opened it up and found all the usual
papers that accompany a unit transfer.
Behind all the BS, he found the mission
profile. Almost twenty pages thick,
it outlined numerous planned attacks on CORE
facilities deep in their territory.
Captain Murdoch spoke "Major, CORE has had
months to fortify their territory. Satellite
reconnaissance has confirmed our suspicions
about the presence of Krogoth Gantries
at every major base. We haven't located any
of the experimental Kbots yet, but I'm
sure they'll find us when the time is right. As a
matter of fact, that will be our very
first objective. We can assume that the CORE will
meet our beachhead with a warm reception,
most likely the doorman will be a
Krogoth. While our main invasion forces
tie up the attention of all nearby units, we'll
be inserted behind them and push into
their lines from the rear, allowing our forces to
push inland and crush all front-line
opposition." Maps of the landing zone were
included in the appendices, with notable
landmarks highlighted to give them a point of
reference. The Major scanned them briefly,
then closed the folder. He looked at the
Captain and said, "When do we leave?"
Murdoch checked his watch before
answering. "We have to practice some
of our maneuvers together, and practice
staying in the radar jamming fields,
but then its less than a week. We leave here on
the Atlases six hours before our troop
ships make landfall. You are free to brief your
men on all necessary information. We'll
have our first joint field exercise at 1600
hours. I'll see you there."
ARM 7th FLEET, WESTERN OCEAN
ANS Concordia
Admiral Gibson stood on the bridge of
his carrier. The flight deck was a nonstop
beehive of activity. Flight operations
were being conducted around the clock to
provide continuous fighter cover and
ASW planes to assist the ring of Destroyers
protecting his fleet. Hawks could be
seen orbiting overhead in lazy figure eights,
conserving fuel and maximizing flight
time. He looked at the radar screen to his left.
Over thirty specialized anti-submarine
ships were blanketing the water around his
fleet with high powered sonar sweeps
and listening for the faintest sound signature of
CORE subs with towed array passive sonar
sensors. He didn't expect much to
happen yet; they were only a hundred
kilometers offshore, not even off the
continental shelf as yet. He wasn't
about to be caught with his pants down though, he
was running his ships at full alert
already, and would be the whole way since the
entire purpose of this mission was to
go draw fire from enemy ships. He shook his
head slightly; his orders might as well
say "Go stick your tongue out at the CORE."
He was here to get shot at, and hopefully
take out the ships firing at him. Fleet
Intelligence reports had estimated that
there were almost three times as many CORE
ships with in range of him as he had
in his entire fleet. He took one last look around
the horizon with his binoculars, inspecting
the decks of the two other carriers
escorting him. Satisfied that they too
were busy launching aircraft, he walked down
the ladder to the dark, electronic cave
of the Combat Information Center. He wanted
to run some drills on his crew to prepare
them for the days ahead.
STAGING AREA, 3rd FIGHTER GROUP
20,000 FEET
Shadow was watching a mock battle between
members of his own squadron. Hawks
were everywhere, diving, banking, climbing,
and rolling, all in an intricate dance that
both mesmerized and amazed him. It amazed
him that the art of war could be so
complex and almost beautiful. The graceful
movements of the stealth fighters were
truly a sight to behold. He had to remind
himself that this was anything but beautiful.
In just a few days, his squadron would
be doing these same maneuvers against their
ago-old foe, the CORE. At that point
any beauty that might accidentally find its way
into this affair would quickly make
its departure and the horrors of war would return
again, as they had for the last four
thousand years. People would die. People he
knew, his friends, would die. People
he didn't know would die. Everyone died sooner
or later; it was just a fact of life
for the soldiers of the ARM. Some were luckier than
others were, Shadow hadn't been killed
in almost 3 years, but that could change at
any minute. Death held no power of Shadow
or anyone else after this long. In ages
past, wars that lasted for more than
a few months were considered horrid events in
the course of humanity. Families would
lose friends and loved ones to the enemy,
whoever they might be. Shadow rolled
his plane to get a better view of the furball,
noting the tail numbers of planes that
were doing well. His mind drifted again, back to
thoughts that he had to get out of the
way before the fight started again.
Families, he barely knew what one was.
Nobody really knew what it truly meant to
have a mother or father, sister or brother.
Sure, families existed on the homeworlds of
the ARM. The billions of people who
depended on the ARM's military might to stop
the onslaught of the CORE. They weren't
real families though; they didn't grow up
together, go on vacations together,
and gather with each other on holidays. They
existed to expand the gene pool and
provide new gene patters for cloning. The
people in a family worked together on
a farm, or a factory, until the children were old
enough for military service, then they
were taken away, cloned and sent to the front
to die. His face took on a deep scowl;
cloning. Cloning, the way of the ARM. The only
way to counter the billions of copies
that the CORE produced of its soldiers. Clones
were beings who were created and brought
to life as eighteen-year-old humans,
prime physical condition, preprogrammed
minds with all necessary knowledge.
Except the knowledge of humanity, the
knowledge and experiences that come with
living a full and normal life. Very
few clones even knew of the concept of love. Mike
was a more fortunate one. His original
self grew up on a world on the far side of the
galaxy. He was a full adult, taught
in school about his profession and even had a
fiancee before the CORE came. Mike had
been away from his home when they
attacked and killed everyone he knew
and loved, his parents, sister, and girlfriend.
His home destroyed, his family killed,
his planet gripped by a war that would not end,
he did the only thing he could do; joined
the rebellion, he joined the ARM. He didn't
know much about the time between his
original death and the beginning of his current
life. That knowledge was lost with every
other body his genes had been put into. He
had always been a pilot; he knew that
from his service record. One of the best the
ARM had, but that was the extent of
his information. He took a look around him. The
ballet that the fighters were performing
around him, the lush green planet beneath
him, the millions of soldiers that inhabited
it, and wondered what it would be like if the
war ever ended. He almost laughed out
loud at that thought. The war had been
raging for almost 4 thousand years with
out ever slowing down for any reason. Why
would it end now? How could it end now?
He had served on many planets since his
assignment here, and with the exception
of Trax, every other planet had been blasted
by so much plasma and high explosive
that life had nearly ceased to exist. He had
seen rain forests turned into deserts
in the space of a week. He had seen cities
turned into a hundred square kilometers
of smoking wreckage in a day. He had
watched nuclear missiles carve craters
in the ground big enough to hold the largest
ARM base on the planet. What was left
of the galaxy to save? His mind was so deep
in thought that he almost missed the
chiming of the hour. The exercise was over. He
activated his radio and called to his
squadron to form up and follow him back to base
for debriefing. Wrecked planet or not,
it was time to show the CORE that their number
was up.
Part 17
Shadow was leading his squadron back to base. They had just taken part
in a mock
fight that lasted over an hour. His
men would be drained both physically and
emotionally. It was the perfect time
to throw a wrench into the works. Shadow grinned
as he switched his secondary radio to
a new frequency and called out to some
waiting aircraft "Hey Doc, its Shadow.
Do you copy?" After a short burst of static,
another voice came through "Roger that
Shadow, the gangs all here, awaiting your
signal." Mike had arranged to have a
squadron of Phoenix heavy bombers and
Freedom Fighters from the local air
defense forces participate in a last minute,
marathon combat drill. He marked their
position on a map on his knee, then called the
ground controller to ask a favor.
Iceman was tired. He'd been pulling
more than 3 Gs almost the whole fight. The
results showed it, he had scored over
twenty confirmed "kills" of his fellow flyers. He'd
been shot down twice himself by the
electronic missiles and gunfire that the planes
had been using to "shoot" at one another,
but he figured that a 10-to-1 ratio wasn't all
that bad. Suddenly, his radar screen
was packed with contacts. Over twenty blips
were moving towards them on an intercept
course. Another group of contacts was
high and behind them. Shadow called
to his flight members. "Configure weapon
systems to practice parameters and engage
at will!" Shadow pulled his Hawk into a
tight roll and dove towards the deck
with two fighters in pursuit. Iceman turned to
follow his wingleader and desperately
began trying to put the targeting pipper on the
"enemy" fighters. Shadow pulled out
of the dive at less than five hundred feet, using
the terrain to his advantage. He dodged
behind hills, hugged the nap of the earth on
flat fields, and pulled turns that took
him out of targeting envelopes. Iceman cursed
and struggled to follow the erratic
maneuvers of his leader. There were 24 Hawks in
Shadow's squadron, divided into wings
of 4 fighters each. Although the initial
advantage had been on the side of the
ambushers, ever so slowly the Hawk pilots
began coordinating their maneuvers and
eliminating the opposition. Shadow couldn't
help but smile as the red dots began
disappearing from his scope, even after
intensive exercises they were still
beating off an attack. The Phoenixes were
approaching an ARM metal production
facility, splitting up and bearing in on their
targets at different headings. The Hawks
went to full power and rocketed towards the
small base at over 700 knots. The first
wing made their pass and splashed three
bombers, but lost one member due to
laser fire from the coaxial laser turrets.
Additional Hawks came in below the bombers
before firing their missiles so as to
minimize their time of vulnerability
to the rapid-fire laser weapons. Shadow pulled up
hard on his stick, climbing rapidly
to an altitude of five thousand feet and moving out
of the way enough for Iceman to acquire
good missile locks. He pushed the thumb
button on his flight stick and pulled
the trigger twice, sending two electronic missiles
streaking towards the Freedom Fighters.
Neither one was able to avoid the missiles,
and were "killed". The disengaged and
waggled their wings to show that they
acknowledged the kill. Hawks swarmed
the last bombers just as they were crossing
the base perimeter defenses. Missiles
converged on the last group of bombers,
deactivating their practice systems
and preventing the release of any weapons.
Having been "killed", the bombers also
banked away from their targets and
proceeded to their own base. Shadow
was grinning from ear to ear, his pilots had
taken out all the Freedom Fighters without
losing a single plane. He realized that it
was probably due to the fact that Hawks
were stealth and had to be targeted by IR
weapons only, but still an impressive
feat nonetheless. He toggled his radio one more
time "OK guys, that was the last one,
I promise. You did a great job. We're gonna
stick it to the CORE big time when we
see them again." A resounding chorus of yells
accompanied his statement, followed
by several victory rolls and loops. "Last one
back to base has to buy the drinks!"
Shadow punched his throttle to afterburner,
feeling his plane vibrate through the
sound barrier.
WESTERN OCEAN, 50 KILOMETERS OUTSIDE OF CORE NAVAL BASE
Captain McBryer was taking no chances
on this mission. Thirty minutes ago, four
contacts had been detected on passive
sonar directly in their path. He immediately
slowed to bare steerage and spent an
eternity creeping towards them. "Captain,
we've identified the targets as Leviathans.
They seem to be spread out pretty far,
gotta be almost 2 miles in between them."
He looked at the chart on the table. Junior
officers were plotting the positions
of the CORE submersibles. Half a mile beyond the
submarines was the opening of an underwater
canyon that they had intended to
follow. "Looks like a barrier operation
to me, Captain. They've got a huge sonar range
on those ships and can probably intercept
any ship trying to sneak in behind them."
McBryer acknowledged and hung up the
receiver. This didn't ruin his plans, but they
certainly got a lot harder. If he was
able to get in the canyon, he could run at relatively
high speed and not have to worry about
anyone hearing because the walls would
reflect the sound back and forth and
only let a fraction escape. Colton walked over to
his weapons officer. "Any chance we
can take all of these guys out before they get a
message to their HQ?" The Lieutenant
pulled up the Intel file on Leviathans.
"Probably not on the first salvo, sir.
These subs have triple hulls on them, and even
with our new anti-matter warheads, there's
no guarantee that we can get through all
three layers with one shot. If we concentrate
our fire on one or two subs at a time,
then whoever we don't shoot will get
to the surface and send out a warning before we
can react." McBryer nodded, no wonder
the CORE enjoyed such successes at sea.
Their subs were huge compared to the
ARM ships. He scanned the chart again,
hoping to see some gap in sonar coverage,
some change in their formation that
indicated they were pulling out, anything.
Suddenly, an idea sprang into his mind. He
raced back to the weapons officer with
the file on the Leviathans. "Lieutenant, would
a direct hit on their propulsion systems
with a torpedo do anything?" The young man
looked at the screen, made a few mental
calculations and included a few calculated
guesses before answering "Well sir,
it would definitely knock them for a hurt. Their
internal screws are still connected
to shafts that lead directly from the engine room
like any normal submarine. A direct
hit on the propulsion ducts would either rip them
open render their system ineffective,
or blast them closed by bending the metal shut.
An indirect blast would probably just
bend the ducts to an angle and make them steer
crooked by a few degrees. Either way,
it would, at the very least, slow them down." A
grin spread to McBryer's face as the
ideas crystallized into a workable plan. He was
faced with only one last little problem,
getting the attention of all four Levaithans, and
getting them to turn enough for the
other subs to get into torpedo range. McBryer
walked over to the COM station and dialed
up engineering. The receiver was picked
up almost the instant it beeped. "Engineering
here." "What is the status on the Sonic
Displacer?" A new voice came on the
line. "Captain, this is Chief Engineer Scott. The
Displacer is all ready to go, sir. All
the energy storage devices are charged to full
power, and the reactor is ready to go
up to full steam at a moment's notice. We can
maintain the screen for up to 5 minutes,
maybe another 2 minutes if we push the
reactor into the red zone, but I'd rather
not try that." "Me neither Mr. Scott. At least not
on our first voyage. Be ready to activate
the Displacer when the signal comes. Bridge
out." He hung up the phone and turned
to the plotting table. "XO, plot a course to take
us right in front of those CORE sobs.
Weapon officer, prepare two torpedoes. I need
them to be fired at these locations."
He pointed to the chart and read off the positions.
A petty officer picked up a sound powered
phone to tell the other submarines of the
Captain's plan. The other boats moved
silently into their positions while the final
preparations were made for the attack.
Captain McBryer moved his sub just outside
of detection range of the Leviathan
nearest him. His four other boats maneuvered
far to the other side. He watched the
clock on the chart table count down
to the time he told the other subs to wait for. The
timer reached zero, and McBryer ordered
his sub to full speed, directly towards the
center of the four Leviathans. The sleek
hull accelerated to over thirty knots within a
few minutes, the sonar room reported
that the CORE ships had detected them.
Distance between the subs closed rapidly
to under a thousand meters. At that point,
he ordered the firing of two torpedoes.
The distinct sound of compressed air throwing
two of the underwater missiles out of
the launch tubes brought responses from the
CORE vessels. They began moving away
form the projected impact points as fast as
possible. The massive explosions that
followecool
ute later rocked the sub back and forth,
making the crew wonder whether it was their
torpedoes or a CORE depth charge detonating
nearby. The CORE ships were
shaken by the anti-matter blast, but
unharmed and immediately turned to follow their
attacker. The huge ships couldn't hope
to match the speed of the new attack boat,
but they chased it hoping to cut it
off at a turn. Suddenly, sonar onboard the
Levaithans detected a new contact, then
another and then all four remaining ARM
ships entered sonar range and launched
their anti-matter torpedoes. They tried to
turn away, but the prototype weapons
were too fast. Four thundering explosions
rocked the ocean bottom. Three of the
Levaithans were crippled, their engine ports
blasted into shapes reminiscent of modern
sculpture. The fourth had spoofed the
torpedo with a noisemaker and only taken
blast damage to its thick armor plating. It
blew all its ballast tanks and applied
full power to try and reach the surface. Captain
McBryer saw the ship rise on the sonar
display and ordered his course reversed to
intercept the huge battle sub. The deck
was tilted upward almost 20 degrees as they
raced to see who would get into range
first. The Leviathan launched a torpedo out of
an aft tube, but it was unguided and
was not even close to his ship. McBryer asked
aloud "What's his depth?" The sonar
chief answered him "Two hundred feet and
rising rapidly, sir. We're two hundred
feet below him and a thousand meters behind
him." McBryer grimly said "Fire control,
do you have a solution for the target?" "Aye
sir, tubes one and two are set." "Fire!"
The weapons shot out of the tube and
accelerated to their top speed of over
sixty knots. The Leviathan launched
noisemakers again, but couldn't fool
these weapons. A plume of white froth appeared
on the surface, but quickly fell back
into the cold, black water. The other ARM ships
were finishing off the crippled vessels
before reporting the mission complete. McBryer
examined the sonar plot for 10 minutes
before he was satisfied that no other ships
were around. They turned north for the
canyon and departed as silently as they had
come. A hundred meters below them, a
small CORE structure noted their passing
with no small surprise. Planetary Conciousness
had calculated that there was a high
probability of ARM ships using this
route on a deep strike mission. The Underwater
Dragon's Eye counted the ships and recorded
their sound signature before detaching
a tiny radio buoy that bobbed to the
surface and sent a burst transmission to CORE
Command. The ARM was on its way.
Part 18
CORE NAVAL BASE
The CORE Commander looked around the
harbor. The Shipyards were being
prepped for a massive production increase.
The ARM had a powerful surface task
force arrogantly steaming around shooting
up his patrol subs and ASW groups. They
had at least one, perhaps as many as
four aircraft carriers providing air support for
their ships. Every attempt to locate
and engage the ARM vessels with gunships and
fighters had failed miserably. He was
sure that amassing his fleet and attacking the
ARM carrier groups would play right
into their plans, so he was taking every
precaution to prevent being blind-sided.
Additional torpedo launchers had been
constructed at the mouth of the harbor,
as well as a nearly solid line of floating
dragon's teeth. An aide came up to the
Commander and handed him a small
electronic display pad. It contained
the transmission from the underwater Dragons
Eye sentry. He scanned the message form
quickly, entering its contents into his
memory before handing it back to the
messenger. "So that is their plan," he thought to
himself. He called up a map of the underwater
geographical features surrounding this
facility. He immediately recognized
the canyon where the ARM submarines had been
spotted. He traced its path to find
the end of it, and was amazed that the exit was only
15 kilometers from the mouth of the
harbor. He activated his routine for an uplink to
Planetary Conciousness. After entering
his proper authorization codes, he saw the
command line blinking at him. With a
thought, he entered a request for an analysis of
the canyon. The response came up a moment
later.
ANALYSIS COMPLETE. UNDERWATER CANYON
IS THE RESULT OF AN
EXTINCE TECTONIC FAULTLINE. THIS PLANET
HAD EXTREME TECTONIC
ACTIVITY BEFORE COLONIZATION WAS COMPLETE.
SUBSEQUENT
EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS DISRUPTED
COMMUNICATION
AND TERRAFORMING ACTIVITIES. LOCAL SCIENTISTS
DEVELOPED A METHOD
OF FUSING THE TWO MAIN TECTONIC PLATES
OF THE PLANET, THUS
NEARLY ELIMINATING PLANETARY INSTABILITY.
THIS CANYON WAS THE
FAULTLINE THAT WAS FUSED TO STOP THE
MOVEMENT GENERATED BY
SAID INSTABILITY.
The CORE Commander examined the map
again. "So much for trying to raise an
underwater volcano." The four thousand
years that had passed had given the planet
an extremely long period of time to
strengthen the bond between the plates. A cut
away computer generated image that accompanied
the analysis showed that the
crust was nearly thirty kilometers thick.
It would take far too long to drill through that.
He almost gave out orders to build additional
defenses to meet the new threat, but
suddenly a new plan sprang into his
mind. He called up a battalion of construction
aircraft and had them begin to reclaim
most of the newly placed torpedo launchers.
He then issued a slew of orders to the
construction ships and submarines present.
Better to draw the ARM ships into his
grip before putting the pressure on. The
phosphorescent glow from a score of
active nano-lathes bathed the harbor in a
surreal glow.
FIFTEEN KILOMETERS OFFSHORE
Captain McBryer scanned the sonar display
for the umpteenth time since they had
come to the canyon's end. On his orders,
only the passive sonar was operating.
Pinging the water would only serve to
alert the CORE of their presence. Of course,
this method of detection had its own
drawbacks, namely a greatly reduced ability to
locate any nearby submarines or ships.
A moving vessel would be easier to detect
because of the noise generated by engines
and screws churning up the water, but if
a sub was playing dead, using the same
tactic as himself, they would be outright
impossible to hear. Several objects
had been detected on the passive sensors. His
sonar chief examined them closely, and
declared that they were all of a defensive
nature; several floating weapon platforms,
two torpedo launchers and three advanced
sonar stations. "I think that's it,
Captain. I don't hear anything else out there. There
might be something further in, but the
mouth of the harbor is only covered by those
two torp launchers and three sonar stations."
The chief shrugged his shoulders; that
was all they could tell from passive
sonar. The water was really shallow here this
close to the shore, and the flow noise
from the tide and breaking waves was causing
a lot of interference. "Well, I'll trust
your decision. Anything that was a real serious
threat would be making enough noise
for us to hear anyway." He said out loud,
almost more for himself than for the
sake of the crew. "Work up their range and
position and contact me when that's
done. I'll be on the bridge." He turned and walked
out of the sonar room. As he walked
the short distance back to the command center,
he wasn't really how he felt about this
mission. True, they didn't detect anything on
sonar, but that didn't necessarily mean
nothing was there. He was also a little
perplexed at how the CORE would allow
such an important base to be so lightly
defended.
On the bridge, he ordered the navigator
to move slowly out of the canyon. Once
outside of the narrow channel, sonar
called up. "Sonar room here, we have three new
contacts. They are really far off, and
appear to be C-ships of some sort. I wouldn't
label them as a threat just yet, but
it might explain where some of the activity is. Sonar
out." The Captain went over and looked
at the chart. The new contacts were being
plotted. They looked to be about 8 kilometers
away, and slowly moving down the
coast. Either way, they were behind
his group and moving farther away, so he put it
out of his mind. A lieutenant came to
the bridge with a contact report for him. It was
the positions of the torpedo launchers
and sonar stations guarding the mouth of the
harbor. He walked to the sound phone
and ordered one of his boats to head back
down the canyon a few thousand yards
and get off a report. As part of the original
plan, McBryer had been promised a squadron
of Hawks to blast the defensive
structures out of the water before he
moved in. It might alert the CORE to the attack,
but they would be looking for more aircraft
or surface vessels. The contact report was
the signal for the Hawks to move in
and attack the torpedo launchers and sonar
stations first.
Twenty minutes later, a radio antenna
was raised a few centimeters above the water
and sent a burst transmission to a waiting
satellite, which then relayed it to a waiting
Eagle AWACS plane. The controller on
the radar plane toggled his radio "Charlie
Blue seven to all Charlie flights, light
em' up. Proceed at max power to the strike area.
Target coordinates are being relayed
now." The fighters rolled out of their lazy circles
and applied full throttle to reach their
assigned targets.
McBryer didn't like the feel of the
moment. Those three "construction ships" had
stopped moving down the coast and were
now just sitting in the water. There
shouldn't be any sound coming from a
ship that wasn't moving, but there was sound
coming from these three vessels. Nuclear
powered ships made noise from their steam
generators, but C-ships weren't nuclear
powered. Something wasn't adding up. He
walked to the navigator. "Move us closer,
something's not right. Five knots." The crew
was surprised at this. Why were they
risking being detected when the air strike was
already inbound? He checked the sonar
display, no noticeable change from any of
the contacts. Maybe he was just being
overly paranoid.
On the surface, the three ships that
the ARM submarines had assumed to be
construction ships were actually specially
refit destroyers. Special seaplanes had
detected a weak noise signature, and
were now trying to localize the contact with a
magnetic anomaly detector, or MAD device.
They were there to make an immediate
attack if they rushed the harbor. The
CORE Commander had been especially careful
in this trap. Two advanced torpedo launchers
were in the water, but were totally
deactivated. They would make no noise
at all until they were energized and armed.
The patterns running the ships continued
their watch.
The sonar plane had found the radio
beacon. The beacon had stayed atop the water
in case additional information had to
be relayed to the strike force. It looked at its
position and noted that it was less
than a kilometer away from the opening of the
canyon. This could only mean the ARM
was indeed here! The mind of the pilot
noticed that there was an odd noise
coming from somewhere. He narrowed the sonar
frequency and realized that the destroyers
had left their onboard nano-lathes active.
The humming was the onboard systems
'lathing additional weapons for the depth
charge launchers! "The fools! They might
hear it!" It sent a terse message ordering
the ships to immediately deactivate
their weapon systems. They complied, cutting the
power supply and letting the capacitors
drain completely to finish their last weapon
charge.
The intercom buzzed and McBryer picked
it up immediately. "Sonar room, we just lost
contact with the three ships near the
coast! These are not, repeat, NOT construction
ships! Sound signatures were identified
as matching those of a powering down
nano-lathe used in combat ships, probably
a destroyer sir." The Captain looked at the
chart. "It's a trap." He said softly,
then louder, and more forcefully. "It's a trap!! Sonar,
go active! I want a full range ping
on the area, now!" He hung up the phone without
waiting for a reply and ran back to
the sonar control station. The chief watched him
enter. "System is warming up now, sir.
Here we go." He raised a cover panel and
pushed a button, sending a wave of sound
energy traveling through the ocean water.
"Positive contact! Bearing 027 relative,
range eight hundred meters! Contact, bearing
019 relative, range eight hundred meters!
Sir, these weren't here before! They show
up on my screen as advanced torp launchers!"
He looked at the display with the
chief, the three ships to his south
had lit up their engines and were racing towards
them. The standard torpedo launchers
had launched torpedoes at them and were
reloading. The sound signatures on the
advanced torp launchers were increasing,
indicating they were about to come online.
"Keep me informed of the situation!"
McBryer turned and ran out the door
back towards the bridge.
On the bridge, he found the XO giving
a flurry of orders. "All ahead flank! Right full
rudder, come about to heading 090."
The XO saw the Captain come back on the
bridge and stepped back from the command
post. "What's the situation?" "We have
three torpedoes chasing us and we've
been pinged by those three destroyers." To
prove his point, a muffled boom echoed
through the hull. Someone was launching
depth charges. He looked at the chart,
they were moving away from the new torpedo
launchers at a fast clip. "Helmsman,
reverse your course. Come about to 270, fire
control, I was target solutions on both
torp launchers yesterday!" The other ARM
submarines began to spread out, seeking
the room they needed to dodge the CORE
weapons.
Charlie flight rocketed through the
air, a scant thirty feet above the waves. Each pilot
watched his INS display intently; they
had no radar support with them. Radar would
only serve to alert the CORE to an air
attack, and this was an in and out mission, no
time for messy dogfights this close
to the CORE air defenses.
The sonar plane was giving targeting
information to the destroyers and the torpedo
launchers. It was circling over the
relative position, using its ultra-sensitive sonar
equipment to keep tabs on all five boats.
Suddenly, the pilot detected inbound ARM
fighters. He attempted to shout a warning,
but it was too late. Three missiles silenced
him with a deafening blast. The Hawks
pulled up sharply to give them a better
targeting angle. They split into groups
of two to attack their targets. Less than two
seconds later, forty-eight missiles
were in the air and twenty-four Hawks were
banking hard and moving away.
Captain McBryer heard the seemingly
endless series of explosions and sonar
reported a gratifying number of targets
disappearing from their screens. Now, if only
they could get rid of those heavy torp
launchers. "Fire control, give me that solution!"
"Solution set, sir! Tubes one and two
ready to fire." "Match bearings and fire!" The
ship sent two aquatic missiles out into
the water with a hiss of super compressed air.
They accelerate to full speed, racing
towards the nearest launcher. The launcher had
fully powered up by this time and volleyed
its own torpedo in return. Slower than its
ARM counter parts, it was much larger
and carried a larger warhead. "Left full rudder!
Launch a noisemaker! Go down to two
hundred feet!" The torpedo continued chasing
them until it came near then noisemaker.
It veered off course and passed through the
cloud of bubbles that it thought was
its target. Upon coming through, it noticed a new
target just in front of it and altered
its course slightly to make the two objects meet.
The ARM sub rapidly changed course and
depth, but it wasn't enough. A thunderous,
booming, explosion rocked McBryer's
sub, announcing that the CORE weapon had
found a target. Enraged, he ordered
a solution worked up for the nearest of the three
charging destroyers. Meanwhile, another
explosion echoed through the metallic hull,
and sonar reported that their torpedoes
had both hit, destroying the first launcher.
The other ARM boats closed in and launched
weapons of their own before turning
and running away from the CORE torpedo,
another small explosion marked the death
of the second launcher, this time without
the death of any more ARM soldiers.
Captain McBryer looked at the sonar
display. The instant the CORE sonar stations
had been destroyed, the depth charges
had stopped. A realization popped into his
thoughts: These targeting systems have
to rely on sonar to target them. They must
be long range weapons. He picked up
the intercom, "Engineering, power up the
Displacer, time to put it to the test."
"Acknowledged, sir. Activating now!" A strange
humming was noticeable, but nothing
else seemed to happen. "Its active, captain. We
can maintain this for about 5 minutes,
but then we have to shut it down and
recharge." "We only need it for a moment."
He hung up the phone, and turned to the
tracking party. "Set a solution for
the nearest surface ship. Ready tubes three and
four to fire; this is going to be a
snap shot! XO, take us into weapons range." He
trusted the Displacer, but he didn't
see any reason to stay around hostile ships any
longer than necessary. They entered
into standard sonar range and as predicted the
CORE ships began firing their depth
charges. But they weren't landing anywhere
near him! "Solution set! Firing now!"
Two weapons emerged from the boat and
slammed into the ASW ship a minute later,
ripping open its hull and flooding the lower
decks with water. Dead in the water,
it slowly sank beneath the waves. Two minutes
later, two more ships joined it. McBryer
disengaged the Displacer and returned to the
rest of the group. They recharged the
power supplies and activated the Displacer to
head into the naval base.
The CORE Commander was furious. He watched
as ARM torpedoes blasted his
shipyards into Davy Jones Locker. The
few torpedo launchers guarding the naval
factories seemed incapable of hitting
the submarines and he didn't know why. Twenty
minutes later, another sonar plane showed
up just in time to watch the ARM ships
head back to sea, apparently unscathed.
As the CORE Commander watched them
leave, he D-Gunned a radar tower. He
radioed for a transport. He had some plans to
work out; the invasion was drawing near.
Part 19
ARM COVERT OPS CENTER
Commander Trevalin walked into the clean room after a thirty-minute
process to remove all
traces of dust, dirt, and other impurities from his clothing. A score
of men and women in white
lab coats were standing over tables filled with charred metal fragments.
This was the research
lab where the wreckage of the cloakable Vamp was taken. It had been
meticulously
reconstructed in an attempt to discover how it worked. After several
weeks, the project leader
had called Trevalin down here to give a thorough report on his findings.
The Major met Trevalin
at the door and saluted him. Trevalin returned the salute and said
"At ease, Major. We're much
too busy to be worrying about who needs saluted." The major smiled
at that; he was tired. He
had spent the last few weeks of his life in this facility. They walked
into a side room where it
would be quieter. Trevalin sat down in a padded chair, glad for the
opportunity to be outside his
Commander battlesuit. The Major picked up a small palmtop computer
and handed it to Trevalin
as he began speaking. "As you know, we recovered the wreckage of a
CORE stealth fighter
some three weeks ago about one hundred kilometers northwest of here.
Normally we wouldn't
have bothered with the effort of trying to reconstruct the fighter,
but since this one exhibited
special properties we decided to take a look into it. At first glance,
it appeared to be the standard
design Vamp. Typical power plant, propulsion and guidance systems,
and weapons. However,
last week we found a component we were not familiar with. We cross-referenced
it with all
known engineering archives to try and find a match. The only match
came up from a technical
manual dated more than 3700 years ago. We studied it and found that
it was the activation
module for a cloaking device. They used to rely heavily upon a radioactive
isotope of Thorium.
We ran a subatomic integrity scan and found that the armor plating
of the Vamp had been
weakened due to radioactive decay, more specifically from Thorium decay."
Trevalin examined
the small computer and saw the decay patterns embedded in the subatomic
bonds of the
metallic compounds in the lightweight armor. Trevalin looked up and
asked "Known Thorium
deposits have been exhausted for some time now. How did they power
this device?" The major
thumbed through his notes for a second until he found what he was looking
for. "We aren't
completely sure, but our best guess is that they must have uncovered
an ancient cache of the
isotope. Since their isn't a known ore vein of this element left on
Trax, we can only assume that
their supply is limited." Trevalin nodded, grateful for any good news
they could give him. The
Major continued, "Oh, one other thing Commander, we believe we might
be able to track these
units. They cause an unusual amount of gamma radiation that we can
detect at close range. It
isn't much, but it is better than nothing." Trevalin quickly scanned
the rest of the screen and
stood up. "Excellent work Major. Start work immediately on a detection
device, I have a feeling
we will be needing it soon." He saluted the Major and walked out the
door back towards the Ops
Room.
GEST QUARTERS, ARM HQ COMPLEX
Mike Ellington gently guided the tiny robot onto the data link. The
little machine uplinked its data
banks into the main computer, providing a wealth of information that
would be otherwise
unavailable to the reporters. They stifled a small cheer for Mike on
his successful espionage
mission. He compressed the data onto a minidisc for the two reporters
and then picked up the
tiny robot and dumped it into the waste tube, destroying all the evidence.
Flynn picked up the
disc and tucked it into his pocket. Calloway and himself would have
many busy hours ahead of
them studying the information and converting it into a form suitable
for the public to see. They
went into the other room to begin sifting through the mountain of data
they now had.
ARM AIRBASE #37
Colonel Markiw walked through the hangar. He never lost the feeling
of awe from walking
through a room filled with the finest war machines the ARM had. Phoenix
bombers were parked
in concrete arches to protect them from possible air strikes, while
Hawk fighters sat on the flight
elevators leading to the reinforced hangar bay beneath the main structure.
He looked across the
massive room and saw the guy he was looking for. He ducked behind a
row of bombers and
walked silently up behind a lone figure running some diagnostics on
a bomber. He stuck his
hand in the guy's back and said in a deep voice "Put your hands up!
This is a stick up!" The
man turned around, and gave a fake punch towards Shadow's head. The
two fliers broke out
laughing. "Shadow, what the h.e.l.l are you doing here? Don't you have
some paperwork to file
or something?" Mike quickly replied, "Nah, I have Majors to do that
for me, MAJOR Price."
pointing to the single star on Ian's shoulder. The two fliers bantered
on for a few more minutes,
catching up on past times and reliving fond memories. Mike helped his
friend finish up the minor
system check he was running before they headed over to the Officer's
Club for some drinks.
At the club, they found a table in the back and got a few drinks. "So
Ian, how goes the battle for
you?" Ian grinned for a second, and almost choked on his drink. "Heh,
you know me Shadow.
Always making the best of things. My CO was a little upset that I diverted
my flight away from the
training area to help you flyboy's get some practice in, but he relented
in the end." He paused for
another drink and grin "That and I told him you had a missile lock
on me and threatened to shoot
me out of the sky if I disobeyed a direct order." Shadow swore at his
friend; he would probably
have to file some sort of report on that little incident to clear his
name, and think of a way to get
back at the Phoenix pilot. "Well, glad to see you're still keeping
yourself out of trouble. So what
have you heard about the upcoming offensive?" Ian set his glass down
and became about as
serious as he ever got. "Mike, I'm not one to be all pessimistic or
anything, but from what I've
seen, this is going to be a rough time for us. A friend of mine in
the satellite intelligence sector
showed me a few frames from one of the invasion beaches. It's a solid
wall of DT on the sand,
and there is serious AA emplacements behind those. Flak guns, missile
towers, radar towers,
you name it, its probably there. Small firebases were farther inland.
They're going to be hard on
the ground pounders. Which is, of course, where we come in. My flight
has already been
assigned to support the first wave. We're being refitted with a new
type of bomb designed to
blast a hole through the Dragons Teeth on the beach. I figure that
shore bombardment from the
fleet or air to ground attacks from you fighter aces will probably
be used to punch some holes in
the anti-aircraft structures so that we can deliver our punch." Shadow
nodded, he'd heard pretty
much the same thing from other pilots and officers in the intelligence
division. "I've been
assigned to run my squadron through some serious ground attack mission
profiles in the last few
days, so I'm inclined to agree with you. Hopefully, the fleet will
take a more active role in this first
attack. I hate attacking flak guns and missile towers." A busboy came
around and took their
glasses away and left the bill. He recognized Ian and greeted him "Hey
Doc, what's going on?
Waste any more Sumos lately?" They chatted for a few minutes before
the young man got yelled
at by his boss for just standing around. Shadow asked Ian "Doc? Since
when do you carry a
callsign? I thought you were above that?" Ian laughed, "Yeah, I used
to, but this one isn't my
doing. During the CORE assault, I was assigned to attack a blip that
had separated from the
main column. I made my first pass and found it to be a Sumo. My bombs
weren't doing a whole
lot to it, so I set the plane on autopilot and took control of my laser
turret. My very first shot
managed to hit the d.a.mn thing right between the eyes and overloaded
his circuits. During the
debrief, my CO used the term "amputate" to describe my lucky shot on
the Sumo, so ever since
then my squadron mates have declared me to be the Doc, since I so skillfully
amputated the
brain out of that Kbot. Who am I to tell the difference between luck
and skill?" He chuckled again
and his crooked smirk appeared on his face yet again. Ian looked at
his watch. "Well Shadow, I'd
love to stay and amaze you with my tales of greatness, but I have pressing
business to attend
to. Paperwork to fill out for all you Colonels and such" He laughed
at his own joke and dodged a
friendly punch from Mike. They shook hands again and walked out the
door.
WESTERN OCEAN, TRAX
The ARM fleet was sailing northwest to meet up with the amphibious
task force bound for the
CORE lands. Seventh Fleet had taken a pounding from CORE naval forces,
but it had
accomplished its objective: clear lanes for the ARM strike force now
en route. All three carriers
were still in operation, although one of the massive Millennium class
battleships had been sunk,
along with a handful of Conqueror cruisers and almost a quarter of
the specialized ASW
destroyers. The remaining ships were at full strength, though, and
the Carrier Air Wings were
back up to full strength, reinforced by replacements from land bases.
The chief radar operator
onboard the Concordia, the flagship of the taskforce, suddenly snapped
up in his chair. The
Eagle AWACS plane had downlinked their radar picture to his station
for a second opinion. He
gravely picked up a red phone and dialed the CIC. "CIC, this is Donnely
here. AWACS has just
picked up our first contacts. Landfall in less than twelve hours."
He hung up the phone and
began to frantically run all kinds of tests and diagnostics on the
radar domes. All were in perfect
working order. The CORE continent lay just over two hundred kilometers
away.