Mettle

1

January 5, 2060

“Here you are, sir,” the dark blue uniformed Star Force attendant said, gesturing to the short staircase that led up into Davis’s office. “He’s waiting for you inside.”

“Thank you,” the Chinese ambassador said, hitting the stairs with even paced steps and circling his way up into the impressive panoramic tower office, giving him as good a view as any of the surface of Atlantis, stretching off into the horizon in every direction.

Directly opposite the top stair was Davis, waiting behind his desk along with a trim individual standing nonchalantly off to the side, leaning against the crystal clear window that stretched around the entire perimeter of the office.

“Ambassador,” Davis greeted him from his chair, then pointed to the one across the desk from him, “have a seat.”

“I thought you had a press conference scheduled,” the slightly shorter man commented, sensing a sternness to the Director’s mood that typically wasn’t part of his demeanor. “I was headed there myself before your attendant intercepted me.”

“This won’t take long,” Davis assured him, “and you won’t be attending the press conference.”

The Chinese man raised an eyebrow. “May I ask why?”

“Because you will be the subject of said press conference…and because you’ll be busy relaying the bad news back home, I imagine. You see, we,” Davis said, gesturing to Paul on his right, “know who is responsible for the pirate attacks. We’re about to reveal the facts to the rest of the planet…here’s your copy.”

Davis threw a data chip into the ambassador’s lap in a symbolically undiplomatic fashion.

“If you’re inferring that we had anything to do with…”

“I’m not inferring anything,” Davis said, his voice rising slightly. “The proof is there. While your warships were of an unrecognizable design and equipped with self-destruct devices so we couldn’t capture and interrogate the crews, the same can’t be said for your cargo ships, of which we now have several in our possession. Same goes for your illicit shipyard, which we captured intact, both the station, the crew…and your computer records for the entire operation.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the ambassador protested, “and until we can review this so called evidence I can’t offer you anything more in way of a response.”

“I don’t think they told him,” Paul said, studying the man closely.

“I think you’re right,” Davis agreed. “If that’s the case I think we’ll have to postpone the beating.”

“Ah shucks,” Paul said, sounding genuinely disappointed as he cradled his left fist in his right hand and rubbed his knuckles distractedly.

The man’s eyes widened a hair. “You wouldn’t dare. I’m a representative of the People’s Republic of China.”

“You’re a representative from a country of murderers,” Paul growled.

“As I’m about to explain in the aforementioned press conference,” Davis continued, “China is responsible for the attacks, and therefore will suffer a number of nonnegotiable penalties.”

“This is absurd!” the ambassador said, standing up in protest, subsequently dropping the data chip on the floor. “I will not sit here and be insulted. We had nothing to do with those pirates, and any attempt to pin this on the People’s Republic of China will be met with the sternest response.”

“Sit down,” Davis said, with Paul stepping forward a moment later when the ambassador didn’t budge. He grabbed the man by the shoulders and dragged him back into his seat with alarming strength.

“Stay put or I’ll knock you back down,” Paul warned.

“You will regret this. Mark my words, you will regret this.”

“Your penalties,” Davis said, ignoring his threats. “China is hereby banned from all Star Force services for a period of 50 years. Your leases are hereby nullified and you have 90 days to remove yourselves and all equipment from our facilities, including the Lunar zones. Anything remaining after that time period becomes our property. Furthermore, your ambassadorial credentials here are also revoked for the 50 year period. You have 48 hours to clean out your embassy and leave Atlantis, after which time the city will no longer accept Chinese governmental traffic.”

“We will not stand for this!” he said, standing again only to have Paul gently knock the wind out of him with a punch to his ample gut, whereupon he pushed the man back down in his seat.

“Our spaceport in China is also hereby closed. We’ve already evacuated our equipment and personnel, you’re welcome to what’s left. Your citizens will have to travel into space through one of Star Force’s other spaceports, the nearest being in Japan, India, or Kazakhstan…assuming those countries will allow it.”

“We’re not banning travel for anyone carrying a Chinese passport, but your bad behavior will cost them the convenience of launching from your own country, which will induce a sizeable economic drain. Travel permits for your government officials will be denied, of course. We appreciate the difference between the Chinese government and its citizenry…but the citizenry will bear part of the penalty, for putting up with corrupt leaders.”

“You physically assault me, now you insult our integrity,” the ambassador said, spitting on the floor to his right. “You are foolish to make an enemy of the People’s Republic of China.”

“No, Ambassador. We’d be foolish to let this incident pass, else it might encourage more. We are not denying you access to space, though we’re militarily equipped to do so if we chose. Though you may not believe this now, or perhaps ever, what we are doing is a matter of justice, not vengeance. Furthermore, we will not permit any other nation to engage in military action against China in space in retaliation for your pirate attacks, just as we won’t tolerate you doing the same. Star Force’s imperative is to keep space from becoming a war zone, and that’s what we’re going to do. How the other nations deal with you on the surface of the planet…is not our concern.”

“We hold veto power on the Security Council, the UN will not move against the People’s Republic of China. You are the only ones stupid enough to do so.”

 “You might think otherwise when you look at that datachip,” Paul said, standing behind the man. “We included a bit of information concerning our fleet, just so you don’t do something stupid out of ignorance. As far as we can tell your pirate ships didn’t transmit back anything when we either took them out or they self-destructed, so you may really not know how badly we kicked your ass. I made sure to include enough footage and analysis to alleviate that problem.”

“Move against our fleet if you want a swift death,” the ambassador warned. “We have more military assets in space than any other nation.”

“Wow, he is ignorant,” Paul commented to Davis.

“You may have more than any other nation,” Davis clarified, “but while Star Force is independent, we don’t technically count as a nation, and I can assure you that our fleet is far stronger than you can imagine, which the records on that chip will confirm. We’re giving the same data to all the countries present at the press conference so that everyone knows what we’re capable of, and that we’re serious about maintaining the peace in space.”

“Peace!” he objected. “You assault me and you have the gall to speak of peace.”

Paul leaned down next to his ear and whispered, but still loud enough for Davis to hear. “Believe me when I say, if I thought you were complicit in these attacks, you’d be leaving Atlantis via the hospital. China is responsible for the murder of 103 people. With that in mind, we’re being generously civil.”

The ambassador didn’t say anything, sensing the truth behind Paul’s threat. He thought for a moment, choosing his next words carefully.

“And when you realize the truth that you’ve falsely accused us?”

“When you review that data,” Davis said, leaning forward on his elbows, “you’ll see otherwise.”

“And if my government doesn’t?”

“The penalties stand regardless of your response. This is a notification, not a discussion. The ban is in effect as of now, with all current orders summarily cancelled and payments returned. Now…get out of my city,” Davis said, swiftly ending the conversation.

The ambassador glanced up at Paul to see if he was going to let him up. When it appeared that was the case he reached down and picked up the data chip then hesitantly stood, straightened his jacket, and glared down at Davis.

“This won’t be forgotten,” he promised before turning about and hurrying off down the stairs.

“Strong enough?” Paul asked after he was gone.

“Yes, your performance was just what I wanted,” Davis confirmed. “Thank you.”

“Do you need me for the press conference?”

“No, I don’t think we need any of them beat up just yet,” the Director said, cracking a smile.

“How do you think they’re going to respond?”

“I don’t know. Depends how much international pressure they receive in addition to our penalties. This is the first military loss for them since the Korean War, and admittedly that was a draw. They’re not used to having people stand up to them other than with meaningless rhetoric, so it makes it difficult to predict their reaction,” he said, standing up and abandoning his desk.

“If there’s nothing else…” Paul asked.

“Go back to your training,” Davis said congenially as they walked down the stairs together and headed for a nearby elevator, “I can handle the others on my own.”

“Call me if you need anything,” Paul said, throwing him a quick two fingered salute before he walked off to find the nearby hidden entrance to the secure transport network that would take him down through the city and out underneath the seafloor back to the Archon sanctum.

Davis stepped into one of the waiting elevators and keyed for the terminal nearest the press conference location, held in the main amphitheatre that he used for nearly all such occasions. It was private yet large enough to accommodate all the invitees, which in this case included every spacefaring nation on the planet along with a hoard of media, all of which were begging/demanding to know what was going on with the pirate attacks and Star Force’s sudden revelation that it had a military branch, seemingly in contravention with the organization’s policy of an automatic decline to all requests for military orders.

When he exited the elevator it was a short walk to the entrance where his security personnel had to physically make a wedge through the crowd outside the meeting place to get him inside. For all the media passes he’d allowed, fifty times that number of requests had been declined, but it didn’t keep their reporters from camping out as close by as they could, hoping to grab an interview with him or the dignitaries present, with some heads of state or ministers replacing their ambassadors for the occasion.

After squeezing through the crowd and into the chamber, the doors were sealed behind Davis with a loud thunk of the locking mechanism as he strode down between the seated delegates and took the podium amidst a whirlwind of hushed conversation.

“I apologize for the delay,” he began, looking out at the eager, and mostly hostile, crowd, “but there were certain logistical matters that we had to attend to first. Among them was the compilation of a data package that will be distributed to each of you at the conclusion of this meeting. The subject matter of which concerns the pirate attacks, Star Force’s role in eliminating the threat, and the subsequent penalties that we are handing down to those responsible.”

“Let me make one thing clear before we begin…and that being that Star Force is committed to ensuring the peaceful colonization of space, and that we will not tolerate any nation turning space into a war zone. Our fleet is now in place, as you have all witnessed, as a visible deterrent to maintain that peace.”

“We have held our military capability back from public knowledge because up until now it wasn’t needed, and had these pirate attacks not occurred we would have continued to keep it a secret, but the reckless destruction we’ve recently witnessed confirms the fact that Star Force must have the capability to defend both itself and the innocent against the aggression of others. Unfortunately, at this time our planet has shown once again that it isn’t capable of playing well with others.”

“History has taught us as much, but Star Force contends that dishonor is not inherent to Human nature and that we can be better than our ancestors…and we expect as much from you. For those nations, corporations, and individuals willing to walk the path of honor, you can breathe a sigh of relief when one of our warships is present, for you know it will protect you if you are in the right.”

“The reverse is also true, and those of you with plans of continual murder and conquest can and should fear any sign of our war fleet, because we will not stand for any misbehavior. When I say that our fleet serves as a deterrent, do not mistake that word for an empty threat. We will take military action when it is necessary, as we have done with the pirates, the footage of which you will see shortly.”

A murmur swept the crowd, but Davis didn’t pause for it to die down.

“We are defenders, not conquerors, and our record to date supports that, as do our current actions. For those of you counting countries, you will note that one has no representative at this meeting…and that is because their embassy staff are currently cleaning out their offices. As you are about to see the evidence of, this country is responsible for the so called ‘pirate’ attacks and the murder of 103 people.”

The murmur accelerated, with apparently some of those present already having taken a nose count.

“That nation is hereby struck with a 50 year penalty during which they shall conduct no business with Star Force. All their current leases are hereby cancelled, along with any current orders. For the next half century they are on Star Force’s black list, and will be denied any and all services save for search and rescue, which we continue to extend to anyone and everyone in need.”

“This penalty will not be renegotiated or mitigated. It is firm and done. Let this stand as both a warning and as an example of Star Force’s commitment to maintaining the peace, for any of you that should conduct yourselves in a manner similar to the Chinese will reap the same penalties.”

As soon as he mentioned their name the entire assembly erupted in various forms of outrage, some directed at Star Force and some at the Chinese, but most of it was an incoherent babble that did not abate for several long minutes, during which Davis waited patiently for them to vent as he brought up the first image of the Chinese ‘pirate’ ships on the large screen behind him.

The response was much as he had expected, and now came the delicate matter of dealing with the politics of the situation, which he’d just shattered…but that had been necessary in order to begin establishing a new standard, one of accountability and honor, in space-bound relations at least, for an international community stagnant with inaction and corruption.

Change was hard, he knew, but one way or another the status quo was going to change…it had to, if Earth was ever to stand a chance of survival against the V’kit’no’sat, pathetic as that notion seemed now.

2

March 14, 2060

“Packing crew finally get here?” Harry asked.

“I hope so,” Mike said, watching the security cameras as a Chinese dropship began offloading containers on a small auxiliary landing pad at mining site 7 inside the Chinese-leased Lunar zone 217, “but it looks like more cargo containers.”

“Yeah, but never this many. My money says they’re finally pulling out,” the Star Force security guard said, leaning back in his chair in the control room of the mining facility. Star Force had built the entire complex with the purpose of leasing it out, meaning that the top levels of the sprawling central residential section were separate from the lower levels, affording the Star Force overseers and the lease owners a bit of space from one another while the staff remotely monitored and maintained the facility from their perch atop the partially buried structure, as well as ran the transit hub that sat between the two levels and connected site 7 to site 8, site 9, and site 17 in addition to the central spaceport via buried monorail tracks.

“Maybe they’re trying to take as much ore with them as they can,” Mike speculated as they watched spacesuited crews driving treaded surface haulers lift and carry the rectangular crates from the dropship’s bays over to the specialized docking ports into the mining facility. The haulers gently lowered the transport ‘bricks’ into fitted tracks, then pushed them up tight against the facility where they interfaced with automated docking systems that connected their pressurized interiors directly to the station where the cargo loading could take place in a shirtsleeve environment.

“You might be right,” Harry admitted. “I just hope they go with it so we don’t have to kick them out when the deadline passes.”

“You and me both,” Mike agreed as he walked around the control room, glancing at the empty stations to monitor for activity. The other two security staff, both technicians, were temporarily absent…one heading down a level to check on a mainframe glitch while the other was taking a restroom break down the hall.

A muffled scream turned both men’s heads around to the open doorway behind them. Mike immediately walked over to the entrance, his long strides looking odd from his haste in the 1/6th gravity. He reached down out of reflex and flipped the charge button on his holstered pistol as he stepped outside and looked to the right, the direction that the scream had seemed to come from.

Down at the end of the long corridor he saw the female technician being held aloft with a hand held across her mouth belonging to a man standing behind her. When he dropped the woman she fell slowly, twisting around enough to reveal a black spot on the back of her dark green uniform…along with the knife in the man’s hand that had created the blood spot. Behind him were two more men, one of which fired a pistol at Mike.

The shot echoed loudly and was followed by two more misses as the security officer ducked back inside the control room as his counterpart jumped to his feet, drawing his own stinger pistol.

“Man down, three tangos,” Mike said, his jaw clenching with anger as he hid around the corner.

“Firearms?” Harry asked, taking up position on the opposite side of the doorway.

“Small caliber. They got Michelle with a knife.”

The sound of approaching footsteps became audible and the two guards exchanged glances, then nods, after which Harry bent at the knee and jumped sideways into the hallway, firing off several charged stingers as soon as he cleared the doorjamb.

Two splotches of energy-laced blue paint hit the knife-wielding man in the chest and knocked him unconscious, while three others shots hit the two men behind him, numbing body parts and causing one to drop his weapon while the other responded with a shot over Harry’s head that hit a console down the hall, shattering the viewscreen into dozens of slowly falling pieces.

Another two quick shots from Mike pin-wheeling around the doorjamb and into view finished off the wounded two, dropping them to the floor only to reveal the presence of several more Chinese men coming up the hallway behind them, who immediately started firing once their own men were down and no longer blocking their aim.

Harry scrambled back across the floor and inside the control room as Mike sent a few wild shots down the hallway to slow the approaching troops. He stayed there, ducking in and out of sight while Harry rushed across the small room to get to the comm panel.

“Hurry,” Mike said in between the echoing ‘booms’ of the gunfire. His return stinger shots made an inaudible ‘puff’ in response, taking down one more man before Mike caught a round in the shoulder, spinning his gun arm around and knocking him back into the room. His pistol flew from his grip and bounced against the doorjamb, ricocheting down beneath his feet.

“I’m hit!”

“Flag sent,” Harry said, grabbing the pistol from the floor and slipping it back into Mike’s other hand as he took up an ambush position. Mike pulled back as well, blood leaking from his shoulder and lips where he had accidentally bit his tongue when the round hit.

“As many as we can,” Mike instructed, his tone grim as he aimed at the open doorway from an angle off to the right.

Harry nodded from the left, taking his meaning as the intensity and number of approaching footsteps increased. As soon as he saw the first inkling of the dirt brown Chinese uniforms he started firing as fast as he could pull the trigger on his pistol…

“Commander, we have a code 0 flag!”

Sheridan’s head immediately came up and he tossed the datapad he’d been working on aside. “Where?”

“Sector 217, site 7…mining complex.”

“That’s Chinese,” one of the other control room staff commented.

The commander of Star Force security forces on Luna turned his head to face the communications officer. “Get me a comlink ASAP.”

“Got another! Same zone, site 4…no wait, make that three. Site 3 as well.”

“Get me sector command now!” Sheridan demanded, looking over the ops officer’s shoulder as more flags in zone 217 began popping up.

“Commander?” the man asked, pointing to a spot on the map that showed sector 205 with tiny flashing red dots beginning to appear also.

“Damn it,” he said, returning to his seat when the comm officer pointed, indicating that the line was active.

“What’s going on?” he asked as soon as he slid back into his central station.

“I don’t know,” the sector security Chief said with a confused/worried look on his face. “We can’t reach any of the sites by comm, so we’re trying to…oh god,” he broke off, his face going white.

“What is it?”

“Security camera, one that’s still live from site 7.”

Sheridan snapped his fingers and one of his staffers pulled up an identical feed and shot it over to his auxiliary monitor inside of three seconds flat, where he was able to see the final seconds of combat as the two guards on station were defending the mining site’s control room as a wave of armed Chinese soldiers flooded inside, tripping over the bodies of their own as they overwhelmed the guards through sheer numbers. Both Star Force officers were shot at point blank range numerous times, then one of the soldiers lifted his pistol and shot out the camera.

“Where are they coming from?” Sheridan asked.

“I don’t know,” the Chief said, exasperated…then an alarm sounded somewhere in the 217 control room. “Lock it down, now!”

“Report!” Sheridan insisted, but he had to wait several more seconds as a flurry of activity was happening on the other side of the comm.

“We have a security breach at the spaceport,” the Chief reported. “I think they came in through the tram. We’ve sealed off the upper levels and are deploying countering forces, but they’ve got numbers. How many I don’t know, but more than us,” he said, breaking off to give a few more hasty orders.

“Bunker up,” Sheridan ordered as soon as the Chief’s face returned to the screen. “We’ll get reinforcements to you as soon as we can. You have to hold out until then.”

The Chief shook his head. “You don’t understand. They’ve slipped an army in under our noses. I don’t think we’ve got enough security personnel on Luna to handle this,” he said, then his head suddenly turned to the side as he received another report. “Looks like they’re shooting everyone on sight, our people and the civilians…” he said as a muted explosion was audible in the distance behind him. “What was that?!”

“Lock yourselves in,” Sheridan suggested. “Buy me as much time as you can.”

“We’ll try, but they’ve got explosives. They just blew through a security door on level six. Sorry Commander, but I have to cut this conversation short. Monitor our feeds while you can,” the Chief said, disappearing from view.

Sheridan pounded the armrest of his chair then turned to his staff. “I want reports from every sector and put them all on alert and immediate lockdown until further notice!”

“Commander, all Chinese lease sectors are reporting flags now.”

“It’s a damn invasion,” he said angrily as he stood up. “Are we safe here?”

The local security Chief for sector 001 nodded, taking his eyes away from her terminal for a brief moment. “All points have reported in clear, and I’ve ordered additional men to the tram stations.”

“I need the barracks emptied,” Sheridan ordered. “Full combat gear, and get them moving out through secure sectors. We need to establish a containment perimeter and find out where the hell those troops are coming from.”

“Radar contacts are negative, only scheduled landings,” one of the staffers reported.

“Are there landings at all in the besieged sectors?”

“A few, but not all.”

Sheridan chewed on his lip as he thought hard. “Get a message to our warships in orbit, warn  them of trouble and see if they can shed any light on the source of these troops…then get me a comlink to Atlantis, Archon command.”

“I’m here, sir,” Marshal said, rubbing his bleary eyes at the 2am wakeup call. On the other end of the vidlink was Archon Jason-025’s face, the Knight’s most senior commander, so whatever this was about it had to be important.

“I need you and your team to gear up immediately,” Jason said, his voice icily tight, which Marshal picked up on immediately.

“What for?”

“Combat,” Jason said, letting the word hang in the air until Marshal was fully awake.

“What’s going on?” he asked, running possible scenarios through his mind as his adrenaline began to pump. He and five other Knights had been undergoing Lunar gravity training for the past month and were due for another two weeks before cycling back down to Earth. Given their position he didn’t see many possibilities for deployment, unless another ship had been attacked and they needed a boarding party to deal with the situation.

“Somehow the Chinese have smuggled an invasion force onto Luna. They’ve launched an attack on all their leased sectors, plus an additional two adjacent ones, moving through the tram system, we think. Our security forces have been overrun in most of the engagement zones. I need your team to assist in evac and containment until we can arrive with reinforcements from Earth. Slow them down and buy as much time for me as you can. Clear?”

“Crystal, sir.”

“Go.”

Marshal jumped up out of his seat and ran/lurched his way back to the barracks and whacked Henderson on the gut in bed, waking him up in a jolt. “Everyone up, now!”

Less than an hour after the initial call came through Paul and the others arrived back inside Atlantis in full armor through their private transit system, exiting back in their original quarters block which put them nearest the topside runways where four hastily prepped dropships waited, two the small-sized Sparrow-class and two the midsized Eagle-class.

Davis, surprisingly, was waiting at the transit hub for them. “I know you’re in a rush, but fill me in,” he said as he began walking quickly alongside Paul and the other Archons, all wearing their red combat armor and making them appear every bit as powerful as the Director knew they were.

“Security forces have held several sectors long enough to redeploy forces from elsewhere to reinforce the lines, which have two major engagement zones as of 20 minutes ago. There are six Knights in play, but at best they can only delay the Chinese advance. Somehow they’ve managed to land hundreds of troops inside their lease zones and are pushing out from there. We’re headed up to deal with this personally.”

“How many are you taking?”

“All of us,” Paul said, passing through the doorway to the stairs and heading single file down to the block exit into the public areas of the city.

“700?” Davis asked from behind him as he struggled to keep pace going down the steps.

“No, the newbs are staying here. We’re handling this with our original teams. We can’t afford any mistakes.”

“What do you need from me?”

“We’re making this up as we go…just get the civilians out of the way.”

Davis nodded. “Good luck,” he offered, stopping a few steps outside their quarters block as the line of armored superhumans marched single file through the city in full view of the milling civilians, who scattered like ants out of their way. Davis watched the broken line walk by, offering nods of support until all 100 of the trailblazers had passed, weapons and equipment sacks in hand, then he followed them as the ceremonial 101st member, grabbing the next available elevator after them and heading up to his office to start cancelling and redirecting the Lunar cruises and tourist traffic.

By the time he got to his office the first of the dropships was taxiing onto the runway, which he was able to watch lift off into the sky like a giant insect…one of the Eagles, he guessed, based on the size. Three more followed in quick succession, then disappeared from view just as fast, climbing hard to reach maximum altitude as rapidly as possible before they released the spacecraft they carried which would carry his military commanders up to Star Force’s chain of starports ringing the planet in low orbit, from which he assumed they’d already commandeered waiting or nearby starships to ferry them out to the moon.

Speaking of which, he’d better check on those arrangements…and make new ones if they hadn’t already planned that far ahead.

Davis spun his chair around and pulled up his network access and began tracking transponders in orbit and searching through deployment orders. Any time he could save the trailblazers would be of the utmost importance, because even at the best speeds it was going to take them hours to get to the fighting…and there was no knowing how the situation was going to develop in the interim.

3

March 15, 2060

After a massive deceleration burn that left the Cougar-class starship’s fuel reserves near depletion, the Archons arrived at Lunar starport #3 in just over 10 hours after lifting off from Atlantis, whereupon they commandeered ten waiting dropships, seven of which had been redirected to the starport specifically for their use.

Paul and the 2s boarded the 5th dropship and detached from the ‘Tie bomber’ style starport, with the pilot thrusting them away at maximum speed while avoiding the others as they hastily departed, each angling down to the moon for different landing zones. The 2s’ landing zone was the relatively secure sector 107, which was currently the front line in the invasion force moving out from the Chinese-leased and captured sector 109. At present, this particular part of the invasion force had secured four adjacent sectors and was working on 107 as their 5th, but the entrenched security forces in that sector’s spaceport were doing a good job of thwarting their advance past the tram station level.

As the 2s’ spherical dropship, reminiscent of the similarly named landing craft in Battletech, thrusted against the orbital drift and began dropping down to the airless surface of Luna their fellow Trailblazer teams were spreading out to 9 other sectors that were currently contested or adjacent to contested areas. The Chinese assault had begun in their 7 leased sectors and had expanded out to a total of 13 held with an additional 5 contested, all being assaulted through the tram system.

The surface of Luna began to grow fast, as evidenced from the viewscreens inside the dropship, with Paul and the others strapped into their seats in full gear, with their equipment packs likewise belted in to the seats adjacent to them. Given that they didn’t know how long this engagement was going to take or where they would eventually end up, they were bringing a full load of accessories ranging from explosives to foodstuffs so that they could remain mobile and move as fast and far as they could fight their way into enemy lines.

The view of the moon seemed as natural as ever, without so much as a single wink of light out of place…but Paul knew that was because all of the fighting was taking place indoors, connected through the spider web-like buried tunnels that were now just starting to become visible from their vantage point high above the surface. Each of the lines was a pair of half buried tubes, one stacked on top of the other and unpressurized, containing the monorail lines that spanned the dozens of kilometers between sites within each sector, radiating out like spokes on a wheel…as well as the hundreds of kilometers between each sector’s central spaceport.

Given the long travel distances between sites, the trams that ran through the tunnels were essentially small spaceships in that they contained their own magnetic propulsion units, continually recharged by power lines running the length of the tubes, but also capable of running on backup power sufficient enough to get them to their destination point before depletion.

At each terminal was an automated docking system that couldn’t be locked down, so as to not strand and potentially kill any travelers because of a computer glitch, power outage, or in this case a hostile takeover. The docking system operated inside the spaceport and was capable of switching a car from one track to another while operating on power solely supplied by the tram. Once inside the pressurized zone, there was a small foyer that led to each facility’s security doors, which is where the stoppage should have occurred when the Chinese attacked.

It was unclear how they had gained access to the spaceports prior to the simultaneous attacks, but the more recent expansion into the adjacent sectors was being accomplished through the use of cutting torches and explosives, which were able to bypass the security doors with a lot of effort and time, which had slowed the Chinese advance considerably without completely stopping it. Had the enemy only been equipped with handguns they never would have been able to gain any ground beyond those facilities taken during their surprise attack, but unfortunately they had come well prepared for the assault.

The 2s’ landing zone was going to be the main spaceport in sector 107, though there were a few auxiliaries at dedicated sites. Those were still secure, given that the Chinese had to go through the spaceport to access the secondary intra-sector tram lines, so Paul and the others were going to be put down as close to the front lines as possible, with the kick of the deceleration burn underscoring that fact as the spin of the surface on the viewscreens began to slow, with the first glimpse of their target spaceport coming into view over the horizon.

The pilot of the dropship made his approach at twice the normal speed, but had no trouble with the final braking maneuver, bringing the ship into a controlled hover over the spaceport before extending the landing gear and lowering down onto one of twelve pads, each of which was ringed by a support pylon from which extended one of several docking umbilicals that could reach any point on the circumference of the dropship.

The closest one extended out, adjusted laterally a bit, then attached, matched atmospheres with a tiny hiss/puff, and opened up to allow the 2s access into the spaceport, with Jason leading the way.

Paul grabbed his equipment pack and attached it onto the back of his armor, snapping it into place as he mentally adjusted to the light gravity and followed the others into the spaceport, passing through a small airlock at the far end of the umbilical before setting foot inside, whereupon they were met by one clearly shaken security guard.

“Thank God you’re here,” she said, sweat streaking her face. “They just took another level.”

Jason pointed her forward as he began to walk past her and she didn’t immediately follow, but she quickly took his cue and ran a few steps to catch up.

“How many are there?” Jason asked through his helmet’s external speakers, giving his voice a slightly mechanical sound. His face was hidden behind an equally red reflective faceplate, with the rest of his body also obscured from view, given the fact that the armor was rated for short term vacuum excursions and completely sealed, with an atmospheric snorkel to bring in outside air for normal respiration with an automatic cutoff valve and backup oxygen tank should the environment suddenly lose pressure.

“Several dozen, but we haven’t been able to get an exact count because they’ve neutralized all the security cameras. We don’t even have telemetry feeds from the tram system, so they could be bringing in more troops without us knowing.”

“How many points of contention?”

“We’ve locked down all security doors on every level save for one each, and have situated our defenses there, but they’ve been cutting through others to try and flank us, so we never know when or where the fighting will break out. We’ve got cameras working on our levels and someone watching them at all times, but when they breach we have to pull back to the next level…we just don’t have the numbers to hold multiple locations.”

“Civilians?” Jason asked as they made a right turn and walked out of the docking pylon and into the spaceport’s outer edge…into the face of hundreds of people cluttering the floor of a large, low ceilinged promenade.

“We’re keeping them as close to the evac points as possible. With your permission we’ll start loading them onto the dropship you came in on.”

“No,” Jason said firmly, as he weaved his way through the crowd. “They’ll be safe here. I need you to gather all remaining security personnel to protect these levels and establish a makeshift brig for the prisoners.”

“What prisoners?” she asked, nearly tripping over an elderly man lying on the floor.

“The ones you’re going to be picking up off the floor after we finish sweeping the spaceport. We’ll let you know when it’s clear to begin. Don’t follow us down.”

“I’m not the security Chief, you’ll need to brief him,” she said as they came to the far side of the room to a double set of stairs, one leading up and the other down. She motioned for them to go up but Jason went the other way.

“You tell him. We’ve got work to do,” the Archon said, leaving the security guard behind and taking the steps down to the next level, having already reviewed the spaceport’s schematics on their trip out from Earth. Like all Star Force spaceports, the complex was the size of a small city, offering a wide range of services and tourist options independent from the facilities within the sector it served.

The civilians present were a mix of workers coming to and from the regional sites and tourists either staying in the spaceport or transferring over to the Swiss resort that lay to the northeast of the facility at the opposite end of a secondary tram line, the entrance to which sat four levels above the primary and currently one above the engagement zone, meaning it and the other sites within this sector were safe from the Chinese invasion force for the moment.

The entire spaceport was the shape of a pancake, consisting of 15 levels, all but three of which were underground. The secondary tram lines intersected with level 4, while the primary lines bottomed out at level 8 due to the track-shifting apparatus that pulled the trams out of the near surface lines and docked them with the terminal that lay below.  The rest of the spaceport sat underneath the terminal, and was currently cut off from the spaceport control room, situated atop level 1.

All in all, there was a lot of ground to cover, but their immediate objectives were to break through the engagement point and recapture the tram terminal, so as to stop any more reinforcements from coming through. After that, they could begin hunting down the remaining troops room by room with the help of the security forces to hold and monitor cleared areas.

When Jason reached the next level he saw that the staircase down was blocked by heavy security doors, meaning that the guards had wisely set up access points at varied locations rather than having one staircase lead all the way up through the levels. That way, if one point was breached it wouldn’t expose all levels to the enemy simultaneously.

“Keep comlinks open from here on out,” Randy said, two positions behind Jason as they began to run across level 3 in search of the next staircase down.

Jason adjusted his wrist-mounted control panel, locking the transmit button on before sliding the armored casing back over the delicate controls, meaning that everything he said would be transmitted to the rest of the 2s and vice versa, keeping them in constant contact.

The next closest staircase was also closed so they moved onto the next where they spotted three guards behind a makeshift barricade consisting of a pair of desks and a heavy potted plant.

“Follow us,” Jason ordered as he ran down the stairs.

The three men stared at the line of armored soldiers as they passed, unsure of what was happening, until one of them tagged another on the chest with his fist.

“That’s the help we were promised. Let’s go,” he said, jumping into line behind the last of them, pistol held at the ready. The other two reluctantly followed a few steps behind.

At the base of the stairs Ivan turned around and confronted the first of the guards. “Which way down?”

“Far side…down this hallway, then take a right at the fountain.”

Ivan’s helmeted head nodded, then sprinted to catch back up with the others. “Head straight,” he told Jason, “right at the fountain.”

Jason responded by increasing the speed of his run and the line of red armored bodies stretched out slightly, leaving the seemingly sluggish security guards falling behind. When he got to the fountain, sitting in the center of a corridor crossroads, he turned the corner and spotted another makeshift barricade with six guards waiting, these more agitated and alert than the others had been. The nearest one turned, pistol drawn, at the sound of their approach.

He almost pulled the trigger, but hesitated just long enough to realize these were friendlies…especially since they weren’t aiming at him, though their appearance was completely foreign to any of the combat equipment available to security.

“Report,” Jason said as he slowed to a halt, pulling the stinger rifle off the attachment hook on his back and hefting it at the ready across his chest while simultaneously hitting the charge button.

“Who are you?” one of them asked.

“Archons,” Jason answered simply.

The lot of them visibly stiffened, standing a bit straighter when their minds realized that these were their commanders’ commanders.

“We’ve got level 5, for now,” one of them finally answered, picking up verbal speed by the word. “We’re expecting them to breach again at any time, so we have to keep this access point covered. The main defense force is on the level below.”

“Leave four men here, the rest of you follow us down,” Jason said, jumping up and over the barricade and almost floating down the open stairs in the low gravity, with the others following suit single file behind him. Before he hit the last stair the sound of gunfire spiked his adrenaline and he moved right against the wall, halting a moment to let Paul close up on his left, then as one they turned outward, covering both directions in the lower hallway…which was clear.

“This way,” Jason said, following the sound of the gunfire further right. It didn’t take them long to find the source, just a few dozen meters down a bullet deflected off the wall, chipping a piece of it away to fall to the floor. Whatever was happening, it was happening around the next corner.

4

Jason skidded to a halt just prior to the turn, poking his head around the corner for a brief look before pulling back. The stairs down to the next level must have been at the far end of the hall, because halfway down there was a hefty blockade at another intersection with dozens of security guards in position behind it and clustered off to the sides.

“Paul, we’re going over in pairs. Dive, roll, and fire. Three second gaps.”

His counterpart pulled up next to shoulder. “Ready when you are.”

“Go,” Jason said quietly, then turned the corner and ran.

His run was awkward, with almost no bounce and his torso leaning forward heavily to maintain traction with the floor. Paul was half a step behind him, but caught up even just as they reached the back row of guards hunkered down three deep behind a crate barricade that rose up to head level save for two peep holes that they were firing through. With a hefty jump, both Archons did a superman dive over the security officers, passing over the top of the crates and through the meter high gap quick as a flash.

Jason got three shots off before he tucked into a ball and landed on the floor, rolling over his ample backpack and onto his feet in a crouch, where he followed through with a hail of their trademark green stingers towards the two men hunkered down in the stairwell recess. The paint splattered over their heads, but made them flinch long enough for the pair of Archons to get to their feet and continue charging forward.

The Chinese men didn’t take long to recognize the threat and began spraying the hallway with a hail of bullets from their automatic rifles, with one of them going down a second later with a stinger to the left eye, spreading its stun energy directly into the man’s head and rendering him unconscious on impact.

Jason juked left, Paul right as the bullets came their way, hoping to minimize the impacts. Paul took one round to the knee, Jason two to his right arm but none of the small caliber rounds penetrated their armor, though the physical impact did cause them to stumble, but within a handful of seconds they were to the stairwell, throwing paintballs into the depression and temporarily stopping return fire.

Taking advantage of the moment of confusion, Jason jumped up slightly and came down feet first into the stairwell, kicking into a man coming up and knocking him back down into a pair of others, all of which fell to the foot of the stairs. Jason stepped on them and fired into the knot of reinforcements just off to his left, taking three down within two seconds, but there were dozens more behind them.

Paul came down a moment later, pumping stingers into the men on the floor before running forward and passing Jason, then ramming his shoulder into the sternum of the closest standing enemy, driving him back into the others and making a mess of their formation. He jammed his foot on the floor, slowing his momentum and getting a few inches of separation between him and the man, then punched his armored fist into the man’s face, knocking him out with the single blow, then he began swinging frantically, busting up anyone within range with his fist, elbow, rifle butt, knee or whatever else was available, tearing through the crowd before they knew what was happening to them.

Jason followed him, policing the downed men with efficient chest shots, making sure they were fully down. He took another bullet to his chest plate as one of the men Paul hit swung his gun arm around and accidentally pulled the trigger. A moment later the hallway was clear of standing enemies.

When Paul busted through the last of them he did an about face and pegged two in the head with green paint splats before he noticed Jason’s armor. “You hit?”

“Cracked…surface only I think.”

“Do a seal check,” Emily suggested, coming up behind them with the others.

“Sweep the area,” Jason said. “I’ll get security to round up these,” he said, kicking one of the downed men in the leg. “Get moving before they figure out what’s going on.”

Several nods were the only response he got from his team, which began fanning out in both directions, then splitting up by twos when they came to intersections. Paul stayed behind, pressing a finger into the hairline crack on Jason’s chest. The gloves he wore were heavy, so he couldn’t feel the damage, but he wanted to see if the material underneath had been compromised enough to flake off, which fortunately it didn’t.

“You just can’t help getting shot, can you?”

“You took a few dings yourself,” Jason pointed out.

Paul’s faceplate glanced at the floor, then he stooped down and picked up an object from the belt of one of the soldiers. He stood back up, holding the grenade up for Jason to see.

“Everyone stay sharp,” Paul said over the open comm. “They’ve got grenades.”

“Think our armor can handle that?” Jason asked.

“Should…but I don’t feel like testing it.”

“Me neither. Let’s get them picked up for security. If one goes off accidentally they can’t take the hit. Go get ‘em, I’ll pick up the Easter eggs.”

“Make sure they’re all napping,” Paul said, stepping over the downed enemies as he headed up the stairs. When he got back to the barricade he heard muted gunfire over his comm, then silence. He gave his team a moment to deal with the situation then voiced his curiosity. “Report.”

“Caught a couple roaming the halls,” Emily said as Paul made it back to the security checkpoint. “No trouble.”

“We’re through,” he said, temporarily disabling his comlink output so as not to interfere with his teammates’ concentration, though he left the input active. “We need the prisoners stripped of weapons, bound, and transported to a holding area.”

“Yes, sir,” one of them said gratefully through the peep hole.

“Come with me,” Paul said, pulling the top crate off and tossing it aside effortlessly. The guards began prying several others off with considerable effort. “Keep a man on the stairs, everyone else start policing the bodies. They should all be alive and unconscious. See that they stay that way until your commander has confinement set up.”

Paul met up with Jason at the bottom of the stairs cradling both arms full of grenades and gingerly passed by him.

“Put these somewhere safe,” he said, looking at the nearest guard. “Come back for the prisoners.”

“Guys, some help,” the guard said, grabbing two of the grenades and pinning them against his chest with his left arm, then he grabbed a third and moved off, not wanting to risk carrying any more than that. The other guards picked Jason clean and headed back up the stairs, leaving the rest to begin restraining the unconscious enemies with bundles of plastic binders that they carried in their utility belts.

“Found a nest of them,” Megan’s voice said through Paul’s helmet. “Looks like a staging area just short of the next stairwell. We could use some help.”

“We’ve got it,” Jack said. “We’re one corridor behind you.”

“Are they contained?” Jason asked.

“Looks like three entrances, plus the stairs,” Megan answered. “They’re in a room just off a T-junction.”

“Make sure they don’t get a chance to retreat, then push ahead to the tram station. Once we have that secured we can start sweeping level by level.”

“Copy that.”

Paul toggled his helmet’s tracking device and pinged for the location of his teammates, requesting a brief radio transmission that his HUD flashed in the form of blue dots superimposed over the walls. He rotated his head around, getting an idea of where they were, then turned the ping off and pointed down the hallway to the right of the stairs.

Jason nodded and fell into step with him as they pushed into an area that hadn’t been explored yet, but one that should connect back to the stairwell that half their team would be assaulting shortly.

The hallways were all straight, but made up more of T-junctions than conventional intersections, making long distance line of sight impossible. Paul and Jason had to zigzag their way through the level in a question mark-like route to begin approaching the target area from the south, but before they got there they came across another soldier standing guard outside a partially open door.

Jason nailed him with two quick shots, one hitting him in the head, the other impacted his left shoulder before he could even turn to face the Archons. The man fell forward, twisting as he went down and taking a third shot in his chest thanks to Paul, who covered Jason as he approached the doorway.

When he ducked his head and weapon inside, kicking the door wide for Paul simultaneously, he found a large number of people bound at the hands and feet and essentially dumped on the floor in piles. Jason swung inside, covering the left flank with his weapon, then whipping it back around to the right, finding no more Chinese in the room.

Paul followed him in and took a quick glance around. “Hostages found and secured,” he reported for the sake of the others as Jason knelt down next to one woman in civilian clothes who screamed as he reached for her.

“Relax,” Jason said through his menacing helmet speakers as he untied the wire bundled so tight around her wrists that they were bleeding. “We’re Star Force.”

“Told you they would come,” one of the other civilians said.

“They killed the rest!” another shouted, then the whole room became so noisy he couldn’t make out individual voices.

Paul untied another two, then motioned that they needed to get moving. Jason untied one more man’s hands then stood up. “Untie the rest of them, but stay in this room until we come back for you. There are still enemy troops loose on this level.”

“You’re leaving us?”

“We have bad guys to shoot,” Jason said before ducking out the door behind Paul.

By the time they caught up with the others they’d already taken the ‘nest’ as well as the stairs, leaving a pile of bodies behind. Paul shot one again when he saw movement, but the pair didn’t stop to look around, instead pinging for the location of their teammates and confirming that six were below them, then running/floating down the stairs onto level 7, which was where they found their first civilian body.

They passed by several more, most just kicked off to the side, leaving blood smears on the smooth white tile floors, until they realized that the others had already pushed down another level, apparently encountering little resistance this far from what had been the front lines. Paul and Jason quickly located the open staircase down and caught up with Randy and Jack just as they were finishing off a knot of soldiers down a side hallway.

“About time you guys showed up,” Randy quipped.

“You found survivors?” Jack asked.

Jason nodded. “You?”

“No, just dead bodies. Hopefully there are some more below.”

“Tram secured,” Megan’s voice sounded in all their helmets.

“Dan, you still up top?” Jason asked.

“Level 6, chasing a rogue.”

“Let me know when you get him.”

“Will do.”

Jason adjusted the frequency of his comm unit to standard security bands, selecting the one for command. “Archon 025 to control, acknowledge.”

There was a long pause, as if the person in the control room wasn’t expecting radio contact.

“Control room here.”

“Is your security Chief handy?”

“Uh, yeah. Just a second…”

“Chief Porter here. I’m assuming you’re the ones that just arrived at the station,” he asked, a bit peeved at them not checking in.

“We are. We’ve secured the tram terminal, but we’re going to need help sweeping and securing the starport. I need all the men you can spare to lock down each section as we clear them, starting with 6. We’ve also got more prisoners to be hauled out, bodies to be recovered, and a number of civilian survivors to be dealt with. Keep the elevators locked down until further notice, we don’t want any of the enemy sneaking past our lines.”

“You said there were survivors? How many?”

“Group of 20 to 30, bound up in a room on level 6. Do you have a holding area for the prisoners yet?”

“We’re working on it.”

“Work faster. We have other facilities to clear, and I don’t want to leave you here without proper containment.”

“Nor do I. I’ll take care of it. Just send them up when you bag them.”

“Have your men rendezvous at the stairwell down to level 6. We’ll coordinate from there.”

“Yes, sir,” Porter said, a mixture of relief and fatigue.

“How many civilians and staff are missing?”

“Over a thousand.”

“Do you have medics?”

“A handful up here, the rest were caught below when the attack came. Our med facilities are on the lower levels.”

“Get them ready, some of the captives looked pretty banged up. And check in with your sector satellite facilities, make sure none of the Chinese slipped through. We can’t chance them having a foothold in our rear areas when we move forward.”

“I don’t see how they could have got through, but I’ll make the inquiries.”

“And pull as many personnel as you can back into the spaceport, security or not. We’ll look for more survivors below, but don’t count on there being any.”

“Understood,” Porter said grimly.

“Contact me on this frequency if you have any updates, otherwise let us work our way through this. We’ll call if we require anything else.”

“Yes, sir…and thank you.”

“Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” Jason said, ending the conversation and toggling his comm system to pipe through this frequency on a regular basis.

“They’ve got supply crates,” Megan said, appearing with Brian as they came back from the tram station. “I think we can assume they’re making regular trips.”

“Stay here and keep the hole plugged,” Jason said as the six of them met in an intersection. “The rest of us will start clearing level 6 with security holding our turf. If another car comes through let us know and we’ll double time it back here.”

“Will do,” Brian said, tagging Megan on the shoulder as he headed back to the terminal. She followed a step behind, leaving Paul and Jason with Jack and Randy.

“Room by room?” Jack asked.

“Only way to make sure we don’t miss anyone,” Paul noted.

Randy glanced right, then left. “Wish this place wasn’t so big.”

“I hear you,” Jason said, feeling the same.

Paul leaned over and picked up one of the unconscious men and swung his limp body up over his shoulder so he could carry him back upstairs. “Let’s get going before they try and send more through.”

5

“You hear that?” Brian asked.

Megan strained her hearing until a muted thunk and the whine of mechanical lifts made it obvious that the tram terminal had been activated.

“Incoming car,” she guessed, backing up to the security doors…or what was left of them. One side of the heavy metallic sliding doors had been blown off its track and peeled back inside the spaceport along the bottom, while the other one was mostly intact but missing several chunks where the explosives had been placed. It was currently half retracted into the wall, giving her some decent cover.

Brian positioned himself behind the curl of the other door, with both of their weapons poking out of the narrow gap in between and trained on the egress doors, which were still shut, but the sounds of the lift system were growing even louder, meaning it wouldn’t be much longer until the enemy reinforcements started spilling out.

“Tram incoming,” Megan reported for the benefit of the others as they searched the lower levels of the spaceport. Listening in to their comms, she knew they’d been racking up a considerable amount of prisoners, seemingly spread out randomly across almost every level, doing what she didn’t know, but it had started to irk her that she and Brian had to wait and play guards while the others got all the action…but it seemed they were about to get a reversal of fortune.

Brian reached back over his left shoulder and unclasped a latch on the top of his equipment pack and fished his hand inside, pulling out a stinger grenade and tossing it to Megan, who deftly caught it mid air. He pulled out a second for himself and resecured the clasp, then waited in throwing position, with his thumb hovering over the charge button.

A loud shimmy was felt through the floor a moment before the doors leading to the tram parted, revealing a second pair of clear ones underneath that were part of the car itself. They pulled back a split second later, getting only a meter apart before two green balls passed through and bounced around…one hitting the far side of the tram and the other bouncing off of one man’s head.

A moment later the paint bombs blew apart, covering the inside of the tram with green splatters that carried the stun energy pumped into them by the trigger charging mechanisms. Several of the men went down, with more than half of the rest getting hit by small pieces, with those parts of their body numbing as a result.

Before they could react stinger rounds started coming in through the doorway, targeting all those who were still standing and dropping them to the floor in a heap…but the rest were out of range down the length of the bus-like tram, so a brief pause in the combat ensued that let the Chinese survivors regroup and reorient themselves.

Megan and Brian waited patiently. The enemy had nowhere to go save for turning the tram around and heading back the way they had come. The tracks leading out to nearby spaceports were physically separate from this line and had been locked down by the control room early on, meaning that in order for the Chinese to continue their advance they’d have to make their way up to level 1 and release the security doors…something that wasn’t going to happen now that the 2s had arrived.

Retreat or attack…those were their only two options, because the Archons weren’t going to come to them. A long minute later the enemy chose the second option and mass rushed into view and out of the tram, firing bullets wildly down the hallway as they met with a hail of green stingers.

When the leading edge of the group went down those behind took up their firing positions as the entire group continued to run forward, stepping on or over their downed comrades. Half of the thirty or so remaining Chinese went down before they reached the explosive-torn doors, whereupon they had to pass through 1 or 2 at a time.

Brian had moved back a few steps along the hallway’s wall, keeping the twisted door between him and the rest of the gun-toting Chinese, peppering those trying to make their way through the breach with paint and dropping them in the gap, making it all the more difficult for the rest to come through, but come they did, staggering like a hoard of zombies and firing a slew of bullets whenever they got the chance in a berserker-like rush designed to intimidate their opponents into retreat or hesitation, both of which would give the Chinese the advantage in a less than opportune situation…at the cost of many men.

One of the Chinese soldiers fell to his knees, his chest covered in paint and his finger still pulling the trigger, hitting one of his own men in the head and killing him instantly, but before the unconscious man’s finger fell off the trigger the assault rifle tipped towards the wall and fired a round that hit a meter in front of Brian, then deflected off and hit him square in the faceplate.

His head jerked backwards from the force of the impact and he stumbled a few steps, unable to return fire. The men coming through the gap tried to take advantage of the lack of return fire when they were suddenly hit from their left flank by several point blank shots from Megan, who had hidden behind the half-open door while Brian played bait.

Those inside the door line went down instantly, and the next man through caught the butt of Megan’s rifle in the face, knocking him backwards with a bloody and broken nose into the men behind him…then Megan’s red armored form pushed her way through the doors and mowed down the rest of the soldiers, using their man as cover as he struggled to keep his balance. She finished him off last with a kick to the gut that knocked him backwards onto the floor, then added a green splatter approximately where her foot had landed.

“Brian?” she asked, firing a couple extra shots into wriggling men on the floor.

“Here,” he said, firing off a shot of his own on the other side then walking through the gap…with a huge cracked glass-like crater in his faceplate where the ricochet had hit.

“Damn,” Megan commented, turning her attention to the tram, rifle held at the ready as she approached, not expecting anyone conscious to still be inside but checking none the less. “That’s a nasty hit.”

“My vision is obscured, but I don’t want to lose the helmet just yet,” he said, following her inside. Aside from the men down at the door, the car was empty of other people, but it had several equipment crates stashed in the back stacked two high. Judging from the size of the car and the number of men, which she guessed was around fifty, they’d crammed about all they could inside, making her wonder just how many troops they had in play.

“Tram secure,” she reported. “We’ve got a lot of prisoners down here, plus some Christmas gifts they brought for us.”

“Such as?” Jason’s voice responded.

Megan walked over and popped the lid of one of the crates. “Ammo, explosives,” she said, glancing over at the one Brian pried open, “and foodstuffs for starters. Looks like they were planning on camping out for a while.”

“We’ve found more of the same down here,” Emily chimed in. “They even commandeered the galley and started reorganizing the storage shelves with their own supplies added in.”

“You think they’ve been stashing this stuff away the past few months, little by little with each cargo shipment?” Megan asked.

“Security is supposed to inspect all shipments into lease zones,” Paul pointed out over the comm. “Sorry, we’re going to have to postpone the analysis. I think we found another holdout.”

“I’ve requested security send some men down to pick up your prisoners, Megan,” Jason said, whispering as he and Paul snuck up on their targets. “Sit on them until they arrive.”

“Copy that,” she acknowledged, not wanting to distract them further.

“Wow,” Brian said, pulling open another crate to reveal a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher with extra rounds. “No wonder they’ve been getting through the security doors.”

“Let’s clean this stuff out and get the errant weapons picked up before anyone wakes up. I don’t want it within easy grab range.”

“Them first,” Brian said, clipping his rifle onto the hook on the back of his armor and walking over to the tram car’s door and the wad of bodies on the floor. He picked up several assault rifles and stacked them on top of one of the unopened crates, then pulled off the ammo pouches, knife sheaths, grenades, and other odds and ends that some of the soldiers were carrying as Megan began dragging the processed ones out of the car and stacking them up against the walls of the small terminal area this side of the broken security doors.

When they finished with them Megan went through to the other side and began the same process, with Brian hovering around both groups alert for trouble. By the time the first security guards arrived they had all the weapons retrieved and stacked within the tram, with Brian keeping himself between the prisoners and the weapons.

“Do you have restraints?” Megan asked the first man to arrive.

He turned to the woman behind him, who held up a bundle of the plastic ‘instacuffs’ for her to see.

“Good, but we’ll need more than that,” she said, motioning for her to toss them her way.

“How many you got?” the man said as his team of five came down the hall.

“Sixty two,” she said, kneeling down and starting to bind the prisoners’ hands behind their backs.

One of the guards whistled.

“That’s a lot to carry,” another one said, rubbing his already sore shoulder.

“One at a time, fellas,” Megan prompted. “Where’s the containment area located?”

“Empty residential wing on level 3. Chief has the techs rewiring the door locks so we can seal them from the outside.”

“Alright then, drag these guys to the nearest elevator and pile them there. The rest of our team should have the lower levels cleared by the time you get done.”

“Thank you,” one of the guards emphasized as he moved towards the first prisoner Megan had restrained.

“Just keep one of you on station as a babysitter…don’t let these guys out of your sights, no matter how unconscious they appear to be.”

“Believe me, we’re not taking any chances,” the woman said, reaching down to pick another one up over her shoulders in a fireman carry. Soon the five security officers were gone, and their stash of captives was down to 57.

 Brian saw one of the men on his side of the doorway begin to stir and reached for his rifle…then thought better of it and instead detached the pack on his back. It wasn’t much of a burden to carry in the low gravity, but he’d been wearing it ever since they’d arrived and his shoulders let out a tiny sigh of relief when the weight came off. He set the pack leaning against the side of the tram and pulled out a stun stick and flipped the on button…then walked over and jabbed the man in the ribs, reversing his trek back to consciousness.

“How are you on ammo?” he asked.

“Decent,” she said, glancing at the counter on the side of her rifle, then slinging it onto the hook on her back, “but there’s no way of knowing how many more firefights we’re going to get into before this campaign is over.”

“If we have to, we can use their weapons,” Brian noted, reaching down to jab another man starting to show movement.

“That rocket launcher is tempting, but I’d prefer we stick with the stingers.”

“Same here,” he agreed, “but I think we need to call for more supplies and security, I have a feeling we’re taking too many prisoners for them to handle.”

Megan glanced around at all the enemy combatants cluttering the hall. “I know.”

Two hours later, after a nasty little firefight on the bottom level, the sweep of the spaceport was complete, along with a casualty count of 1,286. Only a few dozen people had survived on the lower levels, managing to hide out in areas the Chinese couldn’t quickly find them, one of which was a child who had hid under her bed while her parents were gunned down in the same room. Similar acts of carnage were widespread throughout the spaceport’s lower levels, leaving a bloody mess of bodies virtually around every corner.

Chief Porter had assembled a small retrieval team to start recovering the corpses and a cleaning crew to follow, but he had nowhere to store the bodies so he reluctantly began stacking them in a temporary shelter outside the spaceport…an unpressurized ‘tent’ that would keep the corpses from rotting, though subsequent depressurization damage mangled them even more.

The surviving techs were dispersed throughout the facility to get the security feeds back online, which required a lot of patch work on the control lines, but once they got the tram station connection reestablished they were able to monitor approaching traffic from kilometers away via the control station on level 1, allowing the Archons to be relieved from their guard duty and be replaced by a small contingent of security looking after the mechanics disassembling the damaged security doors.

Megan and Brian met up with the rest of the 2s in the control room, along with Chief Porter and a handful of other security personnel and one station Administrator that had survived.

Jason pulled off his helmet, taking his first breath of unprocessed air in more than twelve hours and ran his gloved fingers through his short hair, shaking off beads of sweat. Behind him Paul and the others did likewise, save for Dan who elected to keep his helmet on.

“I need a comm line to Atlantis and Lunar Security Headquarters,” Jason said impatiently, setting his helmet down on a nearby table.

“Already got the latter,” one of the staffers said, directing him to a side monitor with the image of an empty chair showing.

“Commander Sheridan?” Jason asked.

A moment passed then a man appeared standing behind the chair. “Hold on a moment,” he said, raising a pause finger. “Let’s make this a conference call, shall we.”

Suddenly the screen split in three, with Greg and Sara’s faces appearing.

“Here,” the staffer said, shuffling the auxiliary feeds to different screens off to the side. “Camera on the center monitor.”

“Jason, what’s your status?” Greg asked.

“Spaceport is secure, but we have a lot of prisoners and even more dead bodies. The Chinese shot just about everyone they came in contact with. We lost about 80% of the inhabitants.”

Greg shook his head in dismay. “We didn’t lose quite that many, but they were using the same MO.”

“We need more security transferred here before we redeploy to the next spaceport. A lot were lost in the initial fighting.”

“We’re shorthanded everywhere,” Sheridan chimed in. “We don’t have much more to redistribute on the surface, but I have arranged for men to be brought in from orbital facilities. That’ll take some time though.”

“Time we don’t have,” Sara commented. “4s and 6s have already secured their targets and moved into sector 45 from different vectors. 4s went in through the tram while the 6s used a dropship to hop onto an auxiliary pad and take a satellite facility, hoping to go in through the backdoor.”

“8s are taking back a second non-Chinese spaceport with the help of the Knights, but they’re encountering more resistance than the rest of us, so I sent the 0s their way,” Greg said, filling them in. “We’re still waiting on word from the 3s, 5s, and 9s, but we’re all coming up short handed. We can take it to the enemy, but we don’t have the numbers to secure the territory we’re reclaiming.”

“I think we need to bring in the others,” Sara said, repeating a conversation she’d been having with Greg. “Not all of them, but the top 10-20 teams to secure our backlines while we move forward.”

Jason exchanged glances with Paul, who reluctantly nodded. “We concur, but we’re going to need a lot more support personnel to fill in the gaps, security or otherwise.”

“I’ve already spoken with Davis,” Greg said, “he’s scrounging up an army of varied personnel, but it’ll be a few days before they can all get here.”

“The longer we wait, the more dug in the Chinese will get,” Paul pointed out.

“I know, which is why we need to reclaim our sectors as soon as possible. It’s probable that they’ve already got their own sectors entrenched by now, so those will just have to keep. Any chance I can convince you to send part of your team over to assist the 5s? They’re closest to your position.”

“I’ll stay,” Paul offered. “I need to get in contact with the fleet and figure out where all these reinforcements are coming from.”

“Go Jason,” Emily said, knowing that the dynamic duo didn’t like to split up. “I’ll stay with Paul and watch the back door.”

“Alright,” Jason agreed, turning back to Greg’s screen. “And while you’re at it, have Knight teams 3,4, and 5 sent up with the others. I want them nearby if I need them, and they’ll make for good wardens for the prisoners.”

Greg cracked a smile. “Good idea. My team is cleaning up the satellite facilities, so it’ll be a while before we can redeploy. Rex and I are covering the spaceport, and I’m stuck playing coordinator for the time being, so if you need anything route it through me.”

“Will do. We’ll get under way in a few minutes,” Jason confirmed.

“You take any hits?” Sara asked.

“Nothing that got through armor, but Brian’s faceplate is messed up…that and my bladder is about to explode.”

Sara smiled and shook her head. “Jace’s shoulder armor cracked from a grenade and part of it sliced into his arm, but other than that we haven’t had any casualties. He’s patched up, body and armor, so we’re still ten strong indoors but he’s not airtight anymore.”

“Hopefully we don’t have to take a walk outdoors,” Greg suggested.

“I’m more concerned about a hull breach, with all the explosives they’ve brought,” Sara explained. “Regardless, we’ve been kicking ass so far.”

“Knight team1?” Jason asked.

“The same,” Sara confirmed.

“Good, let’s keep it that way. Paul,” Jason said, abandoning the seat and picking up his helmet as he swapped, then he looked over at Porter. “Mind pointing the way to the nearest restroom?”

“Follow me,” the Chief said, no merriment in his voice. He knew how long they’d been fighting without respite. “If you can spare a few minutes, I’ll get some water and food up this way before you head out.”

“Thank you, yes,” Megan said as the 8 of them headed out of the control room.

“I’m going to roam about,” Emily told Paul. “Call me if you need me.”

Paul nodded then turned his attention to the screens, glancing over at the staffer in charge of communications. “Get me that line to Atlantis.”

6

March 16, 2060

“Captain, we just lost the Chinese transponder signals.”

Voss frowned. “Which ones?” he asked, glancing at the main orbital display of Luna, which he was currently tasked to patrol. He had three ships in orbit, while the Turok was stationed just off the high traffic zone near Star Force’s Lagrange point station, located where the gravitational pull of the moon and planet evened out and held the station suspended between them rather than in its own orbit.

“All of them,” the bridge officer replied. “Every transponder from every ship in orbit around Earth. They all went out within a few seconds.”

“Damn. How many do we have radar on?”

“I’m checking now…but I think we’ll lose a few on approach to Luna.”

“Give me a status of the Chinese cargo ships in lunar orbit,” Voss demanded. They’d been holding position quietly ever since the invasion began, but there were six ships in total, spread out at various positions, while he only had his three ships to corral them with.

Without transponders, the Turok bridge crew had to manually tag radar signatures, but with the monitoring stations in orbit there wasn’t anywhere the Chinese could hide from Star Force near the moon. It took a moment to confirm, but all six ships had begun moving.

“Two are escalating orbits, the other four are…breaking up?”

“What do you mean...,” Voss began, then realized the answer before the words were out of his mouth. “They’re launching dropships. Get the warships moving to intercept now!”

“We’re not in position to do that,” one of the remote pilots pointed out.

“Get as close as you can,” he urged, watching the untagged blips adjust their trajectories on the orbital display. The Turok’s computer had course projections painted as faint lines leading out from each dropship, and as Voss watched those lines began to angle in towards the lunar surface.

Unlike Star Force, the Chinese didn’t have any stations in orbit, so all the cargo transfers they made came directly from surface landing pads up to their orbiting freighters. Several other nations utilized Star Force dropships for the up and down hauling, opting to dock with a public starport and transfer cargo over internally rather than try to own and operate their own dropship fleet. The Chinese had preferred to purchase dropships directly from Star Force and bypass the bureaucracy, which saved time, fees, and inspections…as well as giving them the ability to reach the surface without Star Force’s blessing.

Voss’s three ships in orbit were a destroyer and two corvettes, with the lighter, faster ships having been deployed closer to Earth in station-hopping patrols. This meant the closure rates weren’t as high as Voss would have liked, but his warships were still multiple times faster than the cargo-laden dropships, especially the non-Star Force models which lagged behind the others as they spread out in a wide formation, either headed for different landing sites or scattering to increase their odds of making it to the surface.

Intercept estimates appeared on Voss’s screen, with lines from his warships arcing out to intersect with the lines from the enemy dropships, only one of which was going to be a safe catch. The nearer corvette was easily going to intercept a klunker before it got within the deceleration zone to drop down to the surface, but the others had too great a head start. The destroyer had a shot at an intercept, but the timing estimates were too close to be sure, and shooting down at the surface was problematic.

 “Cargo ships are reversing course…now moving out from the moon,” the radar officer announced as Voss watched the tracking lines begin to move out to higher orbits

“Track each dropship…I want to know what sectors they’re heading to,” he turned to his comm officer. “Get me a comlink to one of the Archons on the planet.”

Paul was waiting on the docking ring as the first Star Force dropship arrived with supplies and reinforcements scavenged from other lunar sectors. It had taken a short ‘hop’ across the surface in a shallow orbit from sector 23, a third of the way around the moon. Direct tram lines to that area had yet to be constructed, plus they couldn’t carry the amount of cargo that a dropship could, nor move as fast. As it was, dozens of already grounded dropships had been refueled and redeployed into troop transports, with the first just beginning to reach the conflict zones.

As the dropship docked and Paul waited for the umbilical to extend and connect a security guard ran up noisily behind him, skidding to a halt when he had trouble checking his low gravity momentum.

“Sir, we have an urgent transmission from the Turok for you.”

“What is it?” Paul asked, jogging back the way the guard had come towards the nearest elevator.

“They wouldn’t say. Wanted to speak to you in person.”

Paul frowned beneath his helmet, but said nothing further until he returned to the command center atop the spaceport and slid into position behind the video screen. “Report.”

Voss’s face suddenly replaced the image of his comm officer. “Bad news. The entire Chinese fleet, warships and civilian ships alike, have cut out their transponders. Four cargo ships in orbit have launched dropships. We’re in pursuit now, but there’s no way we’re going to catch even a tenth of them. It’s hard to pinpoint this early, but their trajectory looks like they’re heading for the lease zones rather than their own territory. We’ll transfer landing coordinates to you when we have them.”

Voss visibly stiffened. “What are your orders?”

Paul didn’t hesitate. “Take out as many dropships as you can before they reach the surface. Do they have any warships nearby?”

“No, they’re keeping to low Earth orbit for now…but without the transponders some of them could be redeploying without us knowing.”

Paul thought for a long moment, knowing what he was about to say but thinking it through several times before he issued the order. “Captain, are you recording this transmission?”

Voss looked at one of his bridge crew, who nodded. “Yes.”

“Retransmit the following orders to Harper and Minsk…you are to hunt down and confront all Chinese warships in play, demand their surrender and removal to an empty orbital track of your choosing. There they will wait to rendezvous with one of their cargo ships to remove the crew, after which you will destroy their ships. Don’t worry about the debris, and don’t try to board them. I don’t want to risk our crews with their penchant for self destruct devices. If they do not surrender, destroy them on the spot.”

Voss stared at Paul’s red reflective faceplate for an agonizingly long two seconds, realizing what this meant. “That will take some time.”

The Archon’s helmet nodded. “I know, but we can’t risk them launching an assault on our unarmed orbital facilities. You have to get to them first, take them out of the equation.”

“What about you?”

“We’re going to have our hands full, by the look of it. Don’t let any Chinese ship…check that, don’t let ANY ship from any nation near the moon. Define a holding orbit far enough out that you’ll have plenty of time to intercept any landing attempt and shuffle everyone outside that perimeter. They won’t like it, but at this point we can’t take the chance that some of them might be working with the Chinese.”

Voss nodded, agreeing with the wisdom of that caveat. “What about the cargo ships that launched the dropships?”

“Aside from making a kamikaze run, they’re irrelevant at this point. Let them go and focus on the warships.”

“Sorry they got by us, sir.”

“Don’t sweat it. We still don’t know how they landed so many troops in the first place…speaking of which, keep a close eye on the Chinese territorial zones. I’m probably going to be out of communications range, but if they so much as twitch over there let one of the other teams or security know so they can get the message through. Or, if you’ve got a ship close enough, transmit on frequency 23.8 at full power and we might be able to receive on our helmets, but we won’t have enough power to respond.”

“Can’t the spaceport act as a relay?”

“I don’t think the equipment is set up that way, but even if it was it won’t do us any good when we get to the enemy-held zones. They’re not going to retransmit for us.”

“We’ll make do then,” Voss said, unsatisfied. “I just wish they’d sent you a mobile transmitter strong enough to stay in contact.”

“A suggestion for the techs later…along with a lot of other things,” Paul said, acknowledging many design flaws or oversights that they hadn’t been previously aware of. “Start making a list in your downtime. I’ve got fresh security forces coming in that I need to organize. Anything else I need to know before I step away?”

“Do you want us to try for any type of orbital bombardment?”

“Not unless one of us explicitly calls for it. Not much you could shoot at anyway, this whole fight is indoors.”

“I was thinking more about the Chinese territorial bases.”

“Hold that idea in reserve, we have to deal with them on our turf first.”

“Yes, sir. Good luck.”

“Take all I can get,” Paul said, signing off.

Above Luna the three Star Force warships ran their engines up to full power, forcing their way across the orbital paths in a more or less straight line, building up an insane amount of momentum in order to try and intercept the Chinese dropships before they got out of range…knowing that their closure rates were far too high for a decent weapons lock, taking the rail guns and lasers out of the equation.

As one of the corvettes approached the area where three of the slower Solaris Industries-manufactured dropships were beginning to rotate around to align for their descent burns, it opened its protective armor plating over top of its missile racks and slammed in its forward engines, attempting to bleed off as much momentum as they could as the ship slipped beneath the dropships’ altitude and shot by underneath as fast as a bullet.

Using radar installations in orbit, the corvette’s pilot tagged the three dropships as targets and launched all of his missiles up towards the where the enemy was going to be and watched them disappear into the distance.

Each of the missiles had been reprogrammed for the unusual intercept, using their thrust to slow their approach rather than accelerate towards the target, given that they were already approaching too fast to assure good hits or even detonations, meaning they had actually been launched away from the dropships and were now sliding backwards toward them, trying desperately to slow themselves down.

It didn’t happen in time, and the missiles passed by the dropships like drops of rain heading down to the moon’s surface, as the corvette sped off towards the horizon ahead of them, soon to disappear from sight entirely. The little raindrops, however, still had fuel left and continued to bleed off speed on the other side, essentially sitting them in place below the dropships as they came down towards them.

The ‘pause’ didn’t last long and the missiles began to inch their way back up, tracking the dropships thanks to the orbital radar relay, now that the corvette was obscured by the curve of the moon. They began to adjust course to target each of the dropships when their fuel ran out, one at a time in the sequence that they had been fired.

The missiles passed by the dropships harmlessly as they began their descent burns…save for the last few launched, which the corvette had bled a bit more speed off from, saving that little bit extra amount of fuel. They too ran out before impact, but they were close enough that several coasted into their targets and detonated against the hulls of two of the dropships, cracking them open to space in a hail of debris.

That debris shredded the interiors, killing some of the crew and troops on impact, then exposing the rest of them to the explosive decompression of space. One of the dropships shredded under the impact of two missiles, while the other was hit by three, with enough auxiliary damage to detonate the fuel cells, utterly destroying the craft in a firework-like spherical explosion leaving little but a cloud of space junk behind…one that would soon fall to the surface of Luna as dangerous meteors.

Voss regretted that, knowing that if the debris landed on an inhabited section of the moon it could damage or even depressurize any structure hit, and even with Star Force’s hardened structures, hit them with enough inertial energy and they would crack. Even worse would be any exterior crews, with nothing more than an armored work suit to protect them.

He did not regret, however, taking out the two ships. Yes, he’d probably just killed a lot of Chinese troops, but letting them land and go into battle would have put the Star Force personnel on the surface at risk, and if he had to choose between the two then the decision was a no-brainer. Still, something about the pointless loss of life gnawed at him, but he pushed the feeling away, knowing he needed to focus on protecting those still alive.

As he watched, his destroyer cored through one of the Star Force models with its rail gun, having gotten beneath it slightly so it could shoot at an angle that wouldn’t threaten the surface…or any orbital facilities, he hoped. His pilots had an automated warning system that calculated post impact trajectories…

“Please tell me you placed that shot?” he asked the pilot, seated just a few meters away from him in the heart of the Turok.

“Yes, out orbit from Luna and Earth, nothing with a transponder in the path.”

Voss knew that meant the Chinese ships could have been in the way, but at the moment that was their problem. As he watched the visuals being transmitted from the destroyer a plume of missiles shot up and away, honing in on another nearby dropship as it started to decelerate and fall in towards the moon, with the missiles fighting hard to catch up.

“When you’re finished, break up that dropship so it doesn’t land in one piece, please.”

“Can’t get to any of the others, sir,” the destroyer pilot apologized as his missiles stretched out and tagged the dropship, one after another in sequence, pounding it into pieces. He keyed for a new target and launched more from the extra-large missile hold on the sizeable warship. “Making rubble as ordered.”

A few moments later the first dropship, depressurized and disabled with a hole punched in the front that connected all the way to the backside where the slug had exited, got reduced in size to several large chunks as the missiles broke it apart, but the sturdier Star Force design didn’t shred like the others, making its debris all the more dangerous when it would eventually impact the surface.

“Do you want me to hit it again?” the pilot asked.

“No…get your ship out of there before you hit the surface too.”

“I can do both,” he offered.

“Save your remaining missiles, we might need them later.”

“Aye, sir.”

Voss watched as the destroyer kicked in its engines and averted the collision course with the surface that it had taken to intercept the dropships. On another screen he saw the other corvette take out one of the enemy landers.

“What’s the final count?”

“Five killed, 13 heading to ground,” his ops officer reported.

Voss closed his eyes for a moment, wandering how many more troops that added to the equation.

“We did what we could,” he said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Now it’s up to the ground troops. Our job from here on out is to clear out the lower lunar orbits and make sure nothing else gets within spitting distance of the moon without our say so. Get on the comm with the individual freighters and inform them of the situation and that we’re not taking no for an answer…and get me a link to the Orion and Mjolnir. We have some hunting parties to organize.”

7

Paul and Emily spent more than two hours in a tram heading over to the ‘nearby’ sector 318, following the tracks that the rest of the 2s had taken earlier to assist the 5s in reclaiming that spaceport. All together there were 1,453 sectors on the Lunar map, but only 83 of them had spaceports as of yet. They were all connected by at least one track, but on the whole Luna was still barely inhabited.

The trip took place several meters underground, with the tram zipping through the dark tunnels floating on magnetic rails to reduce friction and enable faster speeds. The tunnels remained unpressurized for the same reason, but crossing the vast distances between spaceports still took an agonizingly long time.

When the tram finally slowed to a crawl and moved inside the sector 318 spaceport, it was lifted off its track by an automated system and reshuffled to a docking offshoot. The tram door finally opened to reveal an identical foyer to the spaceport they’d left behind, save for the doors on this one had been completely removed, with minor scorch marks on the walls attesting to past explosive damage.

“No greeting party,” Paul commented, stepping off the tram with his rifle in hand.

“Anyone home?” Emily asked over the 2s’ private comm channel.

“Emily? Where are you?” Jason’s voice asked in a hurry.

“At the tram, we just got here.”

“What’s your status?”

“We’re here, but no one else is. Why don’t you have a guard at the terminal?”

“Because we lost the terminal an hour ago,” Jason said, letting that tidbit sink in.

“What’s going on?” Emily asked as she and Paul jogged ahead, past where the security doors had been and up to the left turn that led out of the terminal hallway and further into the spaceport, where they took up combat positions with Paul sneaking a look around the corner. There was no one in sight, but the end of the hallway was chewed apart by bullet holes.

“They have a tank.”

“A tank?” Paul asked, not believing him.

“They brought it along with several tram cars of reinforcements. It’s the size of a rover with a chain gun on top. We couldn’t hold the tram, and once they had it secured the reserves started pouring in.”

“That explains the wall,” Emily commented. “Where are you guys now?”

“Hiding.”

“Why?” Paul asked, frowning inside his helmet.

“They sent so many men we ran out of ammo. We’re ambushing them where we can with our stun sticks but those are getting low on charge…not to mention that all the prisoners we took earlier are probably awake and back in the fight now.”

“Civilians?”

“We evacuated most through the secondary trams to a facility that the 5s had already cleared out, but a lot were caught when the Chinese took the upper levels before the 5s arrived. Our dropship got away just in time with some of them, the rest I don’t know.”

“Did we lose anyone?”

“We’re spread out and on the run, but they haven’t taken any of us down yet. We’re trying to keeping them guessing and away from level 15. We came across six techs hiding in a restroom and have no way to get them out, right now we’re just trying to keep them alive. Figure the enemy has several hundred troops in play by now, counting the ones they recovered, but we don’t know how many for sure since we lost the control room.”

“Well it’s all quiet at the terminal now,” Emily said, glancing up. “And the security cameras are junked, so I don’t think they know we’re here yet.”

“They might be able to monitor incoming traffic,” Jason pointed out. “The security Chief tried to lock out the computers before they got to him…I don’t know if he succeeded.”

“Where are you now?”

“Level 9 playing tag and learning how to snap necks. Getting pretty good at it now,” he said, tension in his voice. “Half of the 5s were at auxiliary sites when the reinforcements came in, and I’d guess they’re still there. The rest of us were clearing out the lower levels like we did last time, with Olivia and Brad covering the tram. When the tank pushed those two back they flooded the upper levels, overwhelming security. We were caught below and cut off, and couldn’t get back up there in time to hold the control room.”

“And here I thought we were winning,” Paul commented.

“We were until they got backup. Where the hell are all these guys coming from anyway?”

“I don’t know about this group, but just before we left fleet reported that the transponders for the entire Chinese fleet cut out and they launched dropships from their cargo ships in orbit. I ordered them to take out as many as they could, but I’m pretty sure some got through.”

“Wonderful,” Jason’s voice said, finally showing a bit of fatigue. “Then there could be even more on the way.”

“I don’t know, and we can’t get any intel if the control room has been lost.”

“Then let’s take it back,” Emily suggested.

“Let’s,” Paul agreed. “Any chance you can make it up another level?”

“No, they’re pretty thick here. I’m in over my head as it is. If you’re behind their lines go for it. If they pull back to deal with you it might give us an opening to exploit. Some of the others have gotten their hands on assault rifles, so we’re not totally unarmed, but their weapons are noisy confetti makers and an invitation to grenades whenever we use them. The walls down here are a mess. They’re chucking them at us whenever they get the chance.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Paul said, taking another peek around the corner. “Where’s the tank at?”

“It’s here with me, guarding the stairwell up. They’re locking us out with the security doors they didn’t blast open on the way in, so we’ve got little maneuvering room. I played possum and got behind them a bit, but couldn’t get past the tank. Speaking of which, I got some friends to deal with in a few seconds. Get going and make some chaos.”

“Gladly,” Emily said, walking around the corner, rifle drawn. Paul stepped up behind her then veered off to the right to clear his firing line as he followed her out into the hallway, noticing the twisted remains of the security doors piled in a heap against the end of the main corridor on their left. They headed right towards the nearest stairwell, found the horizontal security door locked in place, then ran off in search of the next closest.

Two guards walked around a corner and into view, then went down within three steps, splattered with paint and unconscious. Paul stopped briefly to snag a grenade off of one man’s belt, then sprint/loped through the low gravity to catch up with Emily.

The next stairwell was open…no explosive damage evident, meaning the enemy must have opened it to allow them access to the upper levels. Both Archons paused at the base, listening for activity at the top. When they heard none Emily jumped up the staircase in three powerful strides, then fired off several shots at targets Paul couldn’t see.

When he followed a moment later three more men were down, apparently a back guard for the stairs, and Emily was darting up the opposite staircase, finding it also open. Paul didn’t hesitate and followed her up, hoping someone wasn’t watching the security feeds and quick enough to close it ahead of them.

Just as Paul crossed over to the ascending stairs he caught sight of a guard down the hallway in his peripheral vision. He jammed his foot hard against the stairs and backtracked, then stood absolutely still in full view of the hallway and took careful aim. He fired three shots down the long hallway, noting how they didn’t drop as fast as they normally did in full gravity, and caught the man in the chest with two of them, the third hitting the butt of his rifle. Paul didn’t wait to see him drop and took back to the stairs in a flash.

The Chinese had left all the level access doorways open on this staircase, which made it easier for them to move up and down behind the front lines, but it also gave Emily and Paul a direct shot up to level 1, which they gladly exploited, taking out an additional two guards on the top level before exiting into a large promenade that had been used as a welcome center before the attack. The dimensions of the room and the entire spaceport were identical to all the others, and they were already familiar with the route to the control room, just two sections away.

The welcome center was filled with trash and debris, but empty of personnel…the next room over was not, as the Archons walked right into the middle of the enemy’s headquarters with a dozen plus leaders and support personnel wandering about between makeshift tables covered with portable gear, including comm equipment.

There were three guards with assault rifles that went down quickly, surprised by the sudden, almost silent arrival of the armored soldiers through the side door. The quiet puffs of their stinger weapons didn’t draw any alarm from the others immediately either, only a few turned heads followed by wide eyes. A pair of the leaders got off a few shots with their sidearms, all of which missed as Paul and Emily split up, running and juking about the room, taking down each of the personnel with precise shots before moving on to the next room, which held the control center as an adjunct.

Two more Chinese troops were present, unarmed, and apparently sorting through the stacks of Star Force supplies that had been scrounged from the other levels. They went down without incident and Emily jumped over one of them enroute to the control room, where she waited outside for Paul to catch up. He went in first, with her swinging around and following him in support.

“Empty?” he said after pulling a quick search of the medium sized room to make sure nobody was napping behind a chair or console.

Emily took one look around and did an about face, taking up guard position inside the short walkway that connected back the way they’d come. “Ok, they’re officially stupid. Get busy.”

Paul dropped his rifle on a tabletop within easy reach and began detaching his gloves, pulling out sweaty hands to access the keyboard controls that the blunt fingertips of his armor couldn’t manipulate. First thing he did was pull up the security door diagram for the entire complex, which showed which were locked, open, and malfunctioning. A string of doors on the lower levels were showing damage, ostensibly from his teammates to keep their movement options open, otherwise every single stairwell door below level 9 had been locked, but the handful of lateral access doors on the levels were still open.

“Open sesame,” Paul said, triggering every functional door in the spaceport to open. “Now, where’s that tank?”

“Control room secure,” Emily reported over the team comm.

“That didn’t take long,” Megan commented.

“Guards were pretty light, and I think we just took out their base of operations. Now, if one of you would like to get up here and tag me, I’ll start shooting people for you.”

“Open the security doors and we’d be happy to,” Randy commented.

Emily glanced back at Paul.

“Sorry, had my comm linked to you,” he said, taking a moment away from the keyboard to adjust his comm protocols. “All security doors are open, you are now free to move about the facility at your leisure.”

Paul tapped a few more keys, then amended his statement. “Is anyone in section 4 of level 9?”

Nobody chimed in, so he altered his comm again to the 5s’ frequency. “Kerrie, you guys have anyone in section 4 of level 9?”

“Paul? When did you get here?”

“A few minutes ago. We did an end run around your friends and just retook the control room. I’ve got the tank located and I’m about to lock it down, but I need to know if we’ve got anyone in that section.”

“If you were within arms’ reach I’d kiss you.”

“I’m here,” Emily broke in, also now on the 5s’ frequency. “You want me to do it for you?”

“Level report, guys,” she said instead to her teammates. “Anyone on 9?”

A series of negatives reported in, then fell silent as they got back to playing their cat and mouse games with the enemy.

Paul switched over to dual frequencies, so he could talk to everyone at the same time. “Listen up, I’m about to lock down section 4 of level 9 with their pet tank inside. We’ll deal with it after we clear out the rest of the troops. With the rest of the doors open you should be able…”

“Paul, hold up. I’m not clear yet,” Jason said, out of breath.

“How much time do you need?”

“Just a few seconds…keep your finger on the button. I’ll tell you when to hit it.”

“Standing by,” Paul said, keying all the doors in that section to respond to the same command. He waited a long time, hearing nothing but heavy breathing and the almost undetectable sound of footfalls, followed by a large bang of a grenade and a crunch of armor plates.

“Now!” Jason yelled.

Paul smashed the button into the board and watched the display. It took four seconds for all the little green icons around section 4 to switch over to red, during which a hail of gunfire was audible over the team comm.

“I’m through,” Jason reported.

“You hit?”

“A few scuffs, nothing major. Stay put and play with the doors as we call in, help us divide them up a bit.”

“Someone needs to come get my ammo then,” Paul said, already searching through security camera footage to find out where the enemy concentration was the highest.

“Tyr, Ross, head up and give them a hand,” Kerrie suggested.

“On it,” Tyr confirmed.

“Everybody who wants a weapon, our friends have a stash up here of stinger pistols,” Emily reported as she visually scanned the captured equipment spread out across the room in front of her. “Looks like they cleaned out what was left of the security armory and brought it all up here. Should be able to scrounge enough ammo to refill your rifles.”

“I’ll get it,” Jason offered. “Rendezvous at that little switchback where we set up the barricades.”

“Level 8?” Kerrie asked to make sure.

“That’s the one,” Jason said, his breathing heavy again. “Keep them distracted until I get back. Last thing we want is them rushing the control room.”

“Jason, might want to lock down level 1 until we get there,” Kerrie suggested.

“Already thought of that, but one of the doors is damaged. Probably where they blew through to get in here the first time.”

“I’ve got it covered,” Emily said assertively. “Get hunting.”

8

Eight hours later…

The security door opened up, with Jason and Paul waiting on the other side. As soon as they had a gap they ran through, with the rest of the 2s following them in. Randy and Jack took up position at the doorway to make sure no one slipped out the back while the others went after the tank.

With Olivia up in the control room and the rest of the 5s guarding strategic positions throughout the otherwise clear spaceport, the 2s had opted to tackle the last nest of enemy troops, considering that they were the more rested, though to be honest they were all in a desperate need of sleep by now.

As Jason led the way the others broke off by pairs down separate hallways, fanning out and taking different directions to the location where the security cameras said the tank and its handlers were. In all, there were 40-50 Chinese contained within section 4 of level 9, none with enough explosives to break through the security doors, though they had tried using grenades, which had done little more than jamb the doors enough that the Archons couldn’t remotely unlock them. Fortunately there were multiple access points, with the 2s choosing the least popular one.

Another reason for leaving the 5s out of the assault was the limited ammunition they had remaining. They’d given the 2s all the stingers they had left, but as it was Paul, Megan, and Ivan carried stun sticks only, and those were already partially depleted.

Jason had his semi-full rifle to complement Paul, who was also carrying a bandoleer of captured grenades, knowing that it was going to take more than paint to take out the tank. He’d been elected for that duty given his propensity for dealing with rovers…and the fact that he and Emily were the two with the most energy remaining.

Paul was tired, he could feel his limbs aching from the hours of fighting and his head numb from the constant beating of adrenaline surges, but he could visibly see the others slowing down and he knew they had to be in a rough spot. As he and Jason headed for the room where the tank had last been seen he knew that he’d have to be quick to avoid the chain gun, because there was no way his armor could stand up against that many bullets.

When they came to the intersection that led to the bunk area where surveillance had said some of the Chinese had gathered, Megan and Brian split off and went inside, with the sound of multiple puffs of compressed air the only audible sign of a fight. By the time Paul and Jason were up to the next intersection the brief fight was already over.

“Dorm clear,” Megan reported. “Caught them napping.”

Paul smiled, knowing that being stuck in here for 8 hours had probably taken the edge off the enemy. If they moved quick, they might be able to catch most of them off guard.

“In position,” Kip said.

“Almost there,” Jason responded, picking up his jogging speed a bit. The tank and the main group of the troops had gathered in a food court with multiple entrances, which the 2s planned to make use of. “Eyes?”

“Nothing in the hallways outside,” Olivia reported, monitoring the security cameras still active. “Still blind inside.”

“Take a peek,” Paul suggested and he and Jason finally got into position.

On the other side of the courtyard Emily slowly crept her helmet into peripheral view, without drawing a response. She held her head there for three long seconds, then just as slowly pulled back around the corner of the open doorway in the S-shaped entrance walkway.

“Gun is pointed towards you,” she reported. “A few guards pacing, the rest are lounging around on the wings, but still armed.”

“After you,” Jason prompted.

Emily tagged Kip on the chest, then walked quickly forward, with him barely half a step behind her. As soon a she got inside the large room she sidestepped, heading for cover off to the left in the form of a fountain wall, hiding behind the curtain of water coming down in what looked like slow motion from a rectangular frame. Her red armor made a wrinkly blur from the other side, but no one noticed her presence at first.

Kip headed the opposite direction, dropping to a knee as he slid down behind a low wall alongside a shallow staircase that led to a lower level eating area with dozens of tables and chairs, currently filled with several Chinese playing cards, napping, or just having a chat. One of them, seated directly across from the stairs, knocked his chair over backwards as he tried to jump to his feet, his excitement overpowering his balance in the low gravity as he reached for his rifle lying on the table in front of him.

Kip put one stinger solidly in his chest, then started making precise twitches of his upper body, twisting his rifle a few inches here and there, firing one shot at each of the nearby men as they scrambled to respond, some not waking up in time to even see who shot them.

Emily let the alarm spread and focus on the opposite side of the room before she stepped out from behind the side column of the waterfall and started shooting men getting to their feet from where they’d been sitting on a long bench. She ran down behind them, picking them off as they sprinted away from her, giving her easy shots before someone noticed her presence and turned around, firing wildly and almost hitting one of his own men in the process.

The three troops sitting near or leaning on the tank jumped to their feet with the gunner hopping up into the seat behind the turret mount and grabbing the hand controls. The small treads spun on one side, pulling the front of the tiny vehicle around to bring it in line with the attackers.

“Now!” Emily said over the comm.

Jason ran in from the opposite doorway, his image seeming to split as Paul pulled wide and underhanded a Chinese grenade, sliding it across the floor towards the side of the tank. With Jason nailing anyone who even looked their way, which wasn’t many with all the commotion going on, Paul rhythmically chucked out three more grenades in a similar fashion, trying to slide one underneath the treads from halfway across the courtyard.

The first one overshot, blowing up in front of the multi-barrel as it swung around to target Kip. The gunner froze, ducking down out of reflex as bits of shrapnel bounced off the light armored hull, with one clipping the man’s shoulder. Before he could get the bang out of his ears the whole room seemed to explode around him as the subsequent grenades blew out behind and underneath him, filling him with shrapnel and shredding the inner mechanisms of the tank, along with the men standing nearby.

Paul dropped the bandoleer with two extra grenades and sprinted off to the side, thumbing on his stun stick and long jumping forward into a knot of soldiers, jabbing one on impact then swinging through several hasty arcs as he rolled to his feet over the chest of the man he’d landed on. Two seconds later he had them all knocked unconscious while the rest of the four man Archon squad systematically took down the others, most of whom never had a chance to fire a shot in response, stumbling around looking for their weapons in the confusion.

“Room check,” Jason demanded when there were no longer any standing opponents. He and the others began running about, looking for movement and delivering a few extra shots, or in Paul’s case jabs, where needed.

“Tank down, room secured,” Jason reported over team comm. “Anyone else need help?”

“Just got a few stragglers to deal with,” Dan reported. “We’ll be finished in a moment.”

“Starting room sweeps now,” Megan added. “Olivia?”

“All visible targets are down,” she reported, “but I don’t have eyes everywhere, so be thorough.”

Paul listened to the conversation as he kicked an assault rifle away from a downed man’s grip, making sure he wasn’t playing possum before he knelt down and pulled out a stack of temporary restraints and lashed the man’s wrists together, then moved off to the next closest one and did the same.

Ten minutes later they had all the captives secured and their weapons picked up and emptied of ammunition, which they piled in one of the trash cans for safe keeping. They checked the dead bodies, then pulled them off to the side to be dealt with later. Kip and Jason stayed put to watch the prisoners while Paul and Emily went back out to help the others sweep rooms, finding a few more nappers and disposing of them quick enough. Once section 4 was secure, they began hauling the prisoners over to the nearest elevator and sent them up to the 5s for safe keeping.

After all was said and done, everyone pulled back up to the top levels, save for a pair of 5s stationed at both tram stations. Half of them immediately went on rest period while the others milled about on watch as Paul took Olivia’s place in the control room and reported their progress to Sara, who was playing coordinator at the time, as well as arranging for another dropship to be sent to pick up the civilians that were on their way back from an auxiliary sight with two of the 5s that had been stuck outside the spaceport when the Chinese reinforcements came in. The others had already returned and joined the group, but Will and Andre had stayed to protect the survivors in case there were Chinese troops roaming around the sector sites, of which a few had been spotted.

Most of those sites had yet to be secured, but Paul, Jason, and Kerrie had all decided it would be futile to go after them now given their current fatigue and lack of ammunition, so they decided to hold position and rest up until their reinforcements got to Luna, then they could finish up here and move on to the next combat zone.

Paul was through three hours of his sleep shift when the second generation Archons arrived via dropship, along with a host of supplies, including replacement armor custom designed for the trailblazers to replace their damaged pieces. They’d had the spares already made up and sitting in Atlantis, but hadn’t elected to bring them along initially, not realizing that they’d need them.

They’d learned quite a bit over the last two days, and had requested auxiliary supplies early on, including shields and sniper rifles, two things that they hadn’t thought would be required fighting indoors against a handful of men, but the Chinese numbers and armament had changed the game, so now it was time for the trailblazers to do what they did best…adapt.

Jason woke him up as the dropship was landing so that he could be there when they came through. Paul almost punched him, but when his mind finally woke up he realized he did want to be there to get things moving even though his body was screaming for more sleep.

He waved Jason off, then groggily slid his bare legs off the bunk he’d been snuggled up in. His armor was lying in pieces on the bunk next to him, leaving him wearing nothing but what looked like a very skimpy swimming suit, skin tight so as not to get bunched up underneath the armor.

At the foot of his bunk was a neat pile of casual clothes, apparently deposited there while he slept. He took one look at his armor and decided to not put it back on.

Five minutes later he walked into the docking ring dressed in the light green computer tech uniform as the umbilical to the dropship opened up and a stream of armor-clad reinforcements marched into the spaceport.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” Kerrie asked, walking up behind him in full armor with her helmet off.

“Parts of me still are,” he said, taking a deep breath.

“You’re not going to do us much good sleepwalking,” she pointed out.

“I’m heading back to bed after I get a sitrep.”

The first of the newly arrived Archons stopped short of Paul and five other trailblazers that were waiting for them on the docking ring and pulled her helmet off. “Gamma team reporting as ordered.”

Jason took a step forward and looked them over as they came out of the walkway one at a time. Gamma team was a composite team made up of adepts from different classes that had banded together to try and beat the trailblazer teams in their regular combat challenges…none of which had ever succeeded. The better of the teams had been given Greek alphabet designators and the privilege of trying their hand against the legends, while the rest of the newbs were too outmatched to be worth the trailblazers’ training time.

Ariel-375 was their unofficial leader, while some of the members were rotated out occasionally as they tried different combinations in an attempt to gain an advantage, but she had always been there, providing some stability to the team. Like Jason, she had focused her elective training on hand to hand combat, and all around he’d confided in Paul that she was one of the more capable, yet unimaginative fighters.

“Just the ten of you?” Jason asked.

“No, there’s a team of Knights and some support personnel, along with half the supplies in the armory. What have you guys been up against?”

“A lot of prepared, but dumb enemies,” Jason explained. “They’ve got numerical superiority and heavy weaponry, including explosives to take down security doors. This group even had a chain gun mini-tank that caused some problems. We’ve got the spaceport cleaned out, but the rest of the sites in this sector need swept and secured. We also need a proper guard on the prisoners until we can get them shipped off to who knows where.”

“I hope you brought a lot of stingers with you?” Paul asked.

“Boxes full,” Ariel confirmed.

“We ran out,” Jason explained. “Part of the reason why it took us so long to secure this facility.”

The level 3 adept nodded. “Where do you want us?”

“Come with me,” Kerrie said. “The Knights are Jason’s.”

Ariel nodded and led gamma team off following in Kerrie’s wake, headed for the secondary tram terminal that would take them out to the auxiliary sites. Behind them, still coming out of the umbilical, was a long line of techs and security officers, finally followed by a group of 7 foot tall, white armored giants.

“Sir,” Harrison said, his helmet still on. Five others walked up and stood in a semi-circle around the Archons, looking down at them waiting for orders. All carried stun swords attached to their equipment belts.

“You two, go with Randy,” Jason said, pointing. “You, head to the tram station and relieve Brian. Level 8. You and you, go with Megan. You’re going to be playing wardens until we’re ready to assault the next sector.”

He received nods of confirmation and the five Knights left with the pair of Archons, leaving Jason, Paul, and Harrison behind.

“And me?” the Knight asked.

Jason glanced at Paul.

“This sector was an assault zone for the Chinese. After we clean up here we’re moving on one of their lease-zones, which they took by surprise in the initial attack. We know they got here through the trams, but we’re not sure how they first arrived on the planet, or what they’ll have waiting for us. We assume most, if not all of our people there have already been killed, but there may be survivors or captives. Point being, they’re not going to make this easy on us and they’ve had the benefit of receiving reports from their forces here on how we’ve been countering them, with that tank as evidence that they may have armaments in reserve that we haven’t encountered yet.”

“They brought a tank?” Harrison asked.

“Miniature version with a chain gun,” Jason explained.

“We don’t know what we’re going to come up against, or how we’re going to go about it. We’re the assault. We’re going to be the ones doing the fighting, you, the Knights, and the other Archons are our backup. You only move when we tell you to move, you shoot when we tell you to shoot, and you don’t go off on your own volition. You keep it tight and on mission, which we’ll update enroute. Understand?”

“You don’t want it to turn into a free for all,” he surmised.

“No,” Paul emphasized.

Harrison nodded. “We’re here to help, if that means standing off to the side and keeping score we will, but understand that we’re ready to dive into the thick of it the moment you say so.”

“Good man,” Jason said, clapping the taller fighter on the elbow. “I’ve got some security camera footage I want you to study, glean what you can about the enemy before you run into them face to face. You good?” he asked Paul.

“Who’s handling the supplies?”

“I’ll get Ivan on it. Your armor replacements will be ready when you wake up.”

Paul nodded. “I want to check the status of the other teams, then I’m heading back to bed.”

“I can do that,” Jason insisted. “Go sleep.”

Paul almost argued the point, but his fatigue stopped him short. “Fine. Let me know if any fleet reports come in. If there’s trouble wake me up no matter what.”

“Deal, now get going. We need you and Emily fresh when we move.”

Paul waved sarcastically then headed back down to the bunkroom, noticing Emily’s prone form on another of the bunks, sound asleep. He resisted the urge to make a loud noise to wake her, because he knew she needed the sleep as bad as he did, but he didn’t like how deep they were falling unconscious. Normally they were light sleepers and he wondered if Emily was aware of him returning or really was as out of it as she looked.

He let her be and crawled back into his bunk, losing connection with the world around him the few seconds after his head hit the pillow.

9

March 17, 2060

“Five minutes,” Jason said, monitoring their progress from the control station in the tram as it sped through the underground rail line to the sector 508 spaceport. He and Paul were alone in the transport, having spent the past 5 hours sitting patiently while the rest of the 2s, the 5s, and the Knights transferred over ahead of them via dropships to the target sector’s auxiliary facilities. If all was going as planned, they would have spent the past 3 hours assaulting those sites and traveling through the secondary tram lines all throughout the sector, recapturing those facilities and daring the Chinese in the spaceport to come out after them.

Unlike the spaceport, the work sites didn’t have lockdown capability, meaning no security doors or locks on external hatches. Only the central spaceports were configured to have a ‘castle’ mode, given that the primary tram lines only connected there, making the rest of each sector’s facility a closed circuit network. According to the earlier reports from the assaults that had begun in 5 of the 7 Chinese-leased sectors, the auxiliary sites had varying levels of troops, depending on what their function was, but overall weren’t as heavily defended as the spaceports, which the Chinese had dug in on ever since capturing them in the first wave of the invasion.

Given that the 2s and 5s had captured their last sector late, they had the benefit of intelligence from the other teams, transmitted back via the comm systems in the captured auxiliary sites. Early reports indicated that the tram system terminals in the spaceports were defended by fixed gun emplacements and other heavy weaponry. The 4s had actually been repelled when they first attempted to attack through the tram terminal, forced to retreat back to their point of origin and resend in their forces via dropship to the auxiliary sites.

The other teams, after hearing this, began devising different methods of attack to counter the heavier defenses, some going after the auxiliary sites first and attempting to come in through the back door secondary tram terminals, which were also heavily defended, while others had taken dropships to the spaceport itself and tried to get in through exterior airlocks and even the surface equipment bay, but no matter how they went about it they still had to contend with closed security doors at every entrance, which either had to be cut through or taken apart via explosives.

The 7s had elected to try a brute force approach through the primary tram, and had dispatched their augmented assault team about an hour before Paul and Jason left, heading off in the same manner, but with a different plan entirely.

Paul nodded in response to the time count, then walked over to the few equipment crates in the otherwise empty tram and began to pull out varied pieces and connected them to harness straps that he cinched around his fresh set of armor. He pulled out an auxiliary oxygen tank and attached it to a port just behind his neck on top of the pack that he wore that was already filled with combat gear, water, foodstuffs, and ambrosia doses.  When he got the first harness rigged he took it off and laid it aside for Jason, then went about prepping his own heavier version to handle the extra-bulky equipment.

 As he prepped their gear, Jason stayed at the tram’s control terminal, monitoring their progress. Theoretically the Chinese could be doing the same from the spaceport’s control room, but with any luck they would be distracted by the assaults taking place elsewhere in the sector. Even if they weren’t and did notice the tram coming, it wouldn’t matter, but the less attention they attracted the better, which was why they’d been scheduled to arrive hours after the others had already started their sweep through the outer facilities.

When the tram approached the spaceport it automatically slowed, braking magnetically against the rail it was floating above, offering no vibration or bumps, just a slow forward momentum tilt until the car arrived at and crept into the pancake-like spaceport just below the surface and even with level 4.

As soon as it got into the large terminal it came up against a stop wall, then the section of track beneath it detached and lowered down two levels, connecting to and depositing it on a holding track that sat below four other tram line entrances that connected out to other spaceports. All of the cars from those lines also came down on removable sections of track and were deposited on the holding level on different spur lines, some of which had to be rotated about to match up rail sections in a very confined, but precise futuristic version of a train station roundhouse.

Using the onboard controls, Jason paused the movement of their car, preventing it from being shuffled to the central lift and accessing the door controls in an attempt to override their atmospheric protocols, given that the tram terminal was, like the underground tunnels that they traveled through, completely unpressurized. Jason had to look up and input an override code from the databank, confirm the command three times through varying button combinations, and submit a timed command sequence before the computer finally let him execute the potentially fatal command, asking him one last time to abort.

Do you truly want to open the door in an unpressurized area, killing all those onboard? (Y/N)

Jason smiled at the programmer’s sense of humor and hit ‘yes.’

Immediately the doors cracked open and the air inside the cabin rushed out in its entirety before the doors fully retracted into the walls. Both of their armored suits immediately shifted from external air draw to oxygen backups, meaning they were now on the clock.

Paul walked by, loaded up with gear, and handed Jason his harness before stepping out the door and falling two stories down to the bottom of the terminal, landing amicably well thanks to the reduced lunar gravity. He stepped aside to make room for Jason who, after setting the trigger on a special container in the tram, dropped down behind him, with the tram doors closing some twenty seconds later as the timed sequence began to run its course.

When the doors closed the cabin repressurized using atmospheric backups and the halt command lifted, sending the tram on its way with only a small delay that the Chinese wouldn’t be able to detect, given their unfamiliarity with the systems.

Jason and Paul walked off to the side of the lower level as their tram car passed by several others above them and moved into the central lift, which then lowered it down to the bottom level and connected to the single track there, which shuffled it up against the docking port that led into the station.

There wasn’t a lot of extra room below, but more than enough to walk around in, capable of holding several more trams if there had been extra tracks. Looking up they could see the underside of the holding lines, but that wasn’t what they were searching for.

They’d gone over the spaceport blueprints in detail, enough to be able to spot the exact wall segment they needed, so it didn’t take long before Paul’s arm lifted up and pointed to a location directly under one of the holding tracks along the wall opposite the docking port.

“There?” he asked for verification.

“I think so,” Jason agreed.

“Don’t think so, know so…or we’ll run out of air before we get a second chance.”

“Know so…get going.”

Paul walked over to the wall underneath the holding track and pointed a magnetic grapple gun up at the underside and fired. The projectile, approximately the size of a hockey puck, attached without incident, trailing a sturdy synthetic rope behind it. Paul dropped the pistol on the ground, along with the excess line in a bundle as Jason leapt up and grabbed hold, then climbed up to the top next to the sweet spot on the wall, identifiable as nothing significant other than its place underneath the track.

Still on the ground, Paul pulled a large canister off his harness and began to unfold the soft seal airlock as Jason hung by an arm several meters above him. The construction began to expand into the phone booth-like airlock on its own while Paul took a step back and detached a bracing addition from his harness and expand that manually, looking like a short scaffold. When it was locked in place he walked over to the bottom of the rope and tossed it up towards Jason, who caught it with little trouble.

The next maneuver was a bit more difficult, and involved Jason finding the exact position on the wall and placing the scaffold over top of it, then triggering the bonding agents on the scaffold’s tips to melt and seal it in place, all while hanging on the rope. He accomplished this by flipping head over heels and lassoing his foot in the top of the rope, allowing him to use both hands to maneuver the frame in place. Once it was secure he gave Paul a thumbs up, who then tossed up the portable airlock.

Jason caught the top edges and pulled it up using a sit-up maneuver to get the proper height, then attached one of the two faces containing doors to the premade latch points, snapping it in place though no sound was audible in the nearly airless chamber. What atmosphere had been gained from the tram’s depressurization had already expanded and dissipated down the rail lines outside the spaceport, creating a less than negligible atmosphere, given that those lines ran hundreds of miles.

Jason grabbed the rope and unhooked his foot, flipping back right side up before touching the second stage activation button, which sprouted the expandable material ring with adhesive edge. The circle of material expanded outward quite far, with Jason tugging on it to get the maximum expansion before he pushed it down past the scaffold frame until it touched the wall. The solid spokes in the barrier bent over like an umbrella and allowed the clay-like outer ring to touch and stick to the wall without any recoil pressure.

It took a long time for Jason to maneuver around the entire ring, smooshing the clay in place and forming the tent-like canopy over the blank wall section, but once he was confident he had an airtight seal he triggered the third stage activation and the clay melted and hard bonded to the wall, throwing off a bit of smoke in the process.

He waited a long time before he triggered the fourth stage, wanting to make sure the liquefied seal material had solidified before the canopy inflated and stretched out, making the walls of the umbrella appear to go rigid and no longer drooping in between the spokes.

“Tag,” Jason said, hopping off the rope and falling to the floor.

Paul responded by climbing up and wiggling into the claustrophobic airlock. No pressurization sequence was necessary since the other side had no air as well, but it still took him a good minute to get himself and his equipment harness through and inside the scaffold perimeter, which thankfully was secured to the wall well enough to hold his weight.

Judging the approximate position on the wall, he pulled out a powered drill and dug the tip into the metallic panel, for once not liking Star Force’s robust design, because the metal plate was well over half an inch think, and behind it was additional sealant and wall material that took him several minutes to get through.

When he did a stream of air shot through and began to fill the vacuum underneath the umbrella, expanding it in size until the spokes held tight, secured to the wall via the ring. The soft seal airlock had been designed for exactly this type of situation, but Paul still breathed a sigh of relief when the ring held firm and his little tent became an extension of the spaceport’s atmosphere…otherwise it would have provided a continuous leak down the rail lines.

A small hole like that could easily have been patched, but not the one Paul was about to make. He slid a tiny, rod-like probe into the hole and piped the image through to his head’s up display, getting a look at exactly what was on the other side of the wall. The end of the rod curled like a snake on command, allowing him to see in all directions as he rotated it around, judging where exactly he needed to cut.

Mentally planning it out, Paul retracted the probe and put both it and the drill back on his harness, exchanging them for a cutting torch. He lit the precise, almost too tiny to see blue flame and began tracing one edge of a square on the wall, outlining his cuts with a tiny groove before going back over them again and burning all the way through. As he did, his suit began processing the atmosphere rather than using his backup oxygen, with the heat level noticeably rising with each breath as the torch slowly cooked the tent’s air. Meanwhile Jason waited below him in vacuum, still pulling from his reserve oxygen tanks, one part of his armor and the other an auxiliary attached at the back of his neck identical to the one Paul wore.

After twelve minutes of cutting Paul finally made it all the way around the square a second time, seeing the segment shift ever so slightly as the last physical connection was severed. He shut off the torch and gently kicked the piece inside the station, feeling a cool rush of air enter his helmet as the heated air mixed with the rest of the atmosphere inside the hotel suite.

Paul tossed the torch through, then followed himself, going feet first and landing on a hot tub, fortunately with the cover on. He stood up and stepped off, taking a look around and making sure the room was empty. “I’m through.”

“Are we good?” Jason asked, climbing the rope.

“No welcome party,” Paul said, pulling off his equipment harness and unslinging his stinger rifle from his back latch. He walked into the next room, finding it equally empty, and waited at the door for Jason.

He came through a couple minutes later, his suit now replenishing its oxygen supply by draining small amounts out of the air as he was now back to normal respiration. With no more time limit to worry about and the hole they cut in the wall temporarily sealed, they’d successfully made an end run around the Chinese blockade at all the known entry points…and with the rest of their teams attacking the auxiliary sites and not the spaceport, odds were the internal security doors would still be open, as well as the elevators, giving them freedom of movement until they were discovered.

The question was, how long would that last? And when they were spotted by a security camera or guard, how much firepower did the Chinese have to throw at them? They had no eyes on this spaceport, no reports on numbers or placement of defenses, just guestimates based off the initial reports from the other teams, none of which had taken their target sectors by the time that Paul and Jason had dropped out of contact.

The pair of adepts may have made it behind enemy lines, but the real question, one posed by Kerrie before they left, was how much damage could the two of them alone do?

Paul had responded by reminding her that they were the high scoring tandem pair for a reason.

“You ready for this?” Jason asked.

“Just try and keep up,” he said, cracking the door and pausing to listen outside for a moment before he stuck his head out. “Clear.”

Jason followed him out and shut the door behind him ever so softly, then quickstepped following Paul, trying to make as little noise as possible as they worked their way through the resort hotel, making sure to stay clear of known security camera positions, which they’d memorized beforehand.

When the tram that Jason and Paul arrived in docked with the terminal, the doors opened automatically in response to the connection, along with the terminal’s doors, exposing the interior of the tram at the forward section to the security camera above the bulky doors, which were partially open, leaving a narrow, man-wide slit between them on the other side of which sat a machine gun turret bolted into the floor, in direct line with the tram’s doors, waiting to shoot the first person that came into view.

No one appeared, however, and the Chinese troops didn’t know how to respond, so they just waited…and waited…and waited, but nothing ever happened.

Eventually one of them was sent forward, ducking through the doors then disappearing off to the side to keep out of the line of fire. He crept forward along the side wall slowly, listening and watching for any sign of the enemy, but he eventually got to the tram without a sign of resistance, and glanced back at his commander standing next to the machine gun on the other side of the doors, who pointed at him to move inside.

Swallowing hard, the man poked his head inside for a split second, expecting to get shot…but nothing happened. He looked again, realizing that the entire tram was empty, save for some crates, one of which sat directly in front of the door with a metal plate on top.

“There’s no one here, just some boxes,” he yelled back to the others.

His commander frowned, then came forward with two other men, stepping through the crack in the doors and carefully walking up behind the first trooper. When he got there he saw that the tram was in fact empty, with a message on top of the crate directly in front of him, written in Chinese.

He picked up the square plate, reading the hand written message scrolled in some type of marker.

A moment later an extra-large stinger grenade exploded, covering the inside of the tram with green splatters, as well as part of the terminal outside, with several of the dots reaching all the way to the security doors. All four men dropped to the ground, stunned into unconsciousness, with the commander dropping the message plate that had been holding the timer trigger down.

The other guards immediately came forward, ready for trouble as they checked on the condition of their commander. One of them picked up the plate, confused, and looked at the sloppily written message on it, now marred by a slew of green paint.

PRESENT FOR YOU

10

When Paul and Jason entered the central lobby of the resort they ran across a trio of guards coming in, halfway across the room from the doors. The men were chatting and lazily carrying their weapons when the Archons quietly slipped into view and mowed them down on the run.

Jason fired an extra shot into one man’s chest as he jumped over him, following Paul out the entrance and around the corner, wasting no time. He kept within two steps of his partner, close enough for support but not so close as to interfere with each other’s firing lines.

Paul led the pair in a zigzag pattern across the level, avoiding the cameras on the elevators and making their way towards one of the stairwells, scouting it from afar. They knew there was a camera on the side hallway that crossed in front of the stairs, but not on the T-spur that they were in. There was no one standing in sight between them and the stairwell, but it was impossible to see whether the horizontal security doors were closed over the top or bottom flights. If they were, they were going to have to quickly divert to their backup plan.

The sound of footsteps from behind prompted a quick glance at each other, with Jason nodding and heading away from the stairs while Paul ran towards them, easing up just before he hit the cross hallway and staying clear of the camera view, stopping a meter short and listening around the blind corners for traffic as he waited.

Meanwhile Jason headed directly for the sound of the footsteps behind them, catching up just in time to see a pair of guards walking into their hallway. He shot the first one to appear in the head, then his momentum brought him around the corner and in front of the second, which he also downed with a pair of shots to the man’s chest who dropped to the ground unconscious, clearing the view behind where Jason saw a third man in the distance, who turned and ran backwards.

He knew he couldn’t let him get away to warn the others, and judged the distance too great to quickly catch him on the run, so he steadied his stance in the hallway and calmed his arms, bringing his rifle up and taking precise aim…then fired more than a dozen distance shots.

The low gravity assisted his targeting, keeping the stingers aloft far longer than they would have been on Earth. Several of them still missed though, but enough connected to take him down, with the man bouncing slightly on impact then rolling over like a limp doll in the middle of the hallway.

That was the best Jason could hope for…maybe a minute or two before someone found him. More time than they would have had had he let him run off and raise an alarm. Jason double timed it back around the corner and down to Paul’s position.

“Doors are open,” he commented over their private comlink as he caught up.

“Go,” Jason prompted when he was still several meters away.

Paul didn’t hesitate and jumped across the hall into the ascending half of the staircase and pounded his way up, taking three stairs with each step. Jason followed, appearing on the security cameras for a brief instant as he crossed the main hallway, then he too was racing up the stairs heading for level 1 and hoping all the security doors were and stayed open until they got there.

Straight, left U-turn.

Ascend, left U-turn.

Straight, left U-turn.

Ascend, left U-turn.

Straight…into descending guard.

Paul barely had any forewarning before he ran into the assault rifle-toting soldier as he was walking around the bend in the stairs, coming down from an upper level. Not enough time to fire, but he did have just enough time to bring his left elbow up and slam the man out of the way against the wall as he ran through/over him and continued upwards.

Shell shocked, the soldier didn’t realize what was going on…then felt something hard hit him in the gut and he fell to the floor, his head spinning as Jason flashed past and up around the corner. The pair ran as fast as they could up through the levels and succeeded in reaching level 1 without any security doors closing on them, with Paul hesitating at the top long enough for Jason to come up beside him.

“So far, so good,” Paul commented as he scanned the small, empty room they were in. There was one large table with a host of brochures and trinkets spread across the top, as well as advertisement posters hanging on the walls in between display booths…apparently this room was part of the spaceport’s tourist reception area and had yet to be disturbed by the combat, which hopefully meant the area was of little interest to the enemy.

Jason nodded and took the lead, with Paul dropping in behind him as they moved around the displays towards two other entrances. Jason checked the nearer, then signaled for Paul to cross into view and head to the other, with him following again in a leapfrogging motion that had become second nature to the pair, so much so that they rarely needed to communicate or plan the details. Jason only signaled to indicate that the side exit was clear, with Paul doing likewise, only this time raising a stop-hand, indicating that there was trouble.

“Control room is three rooms over, right?” Paul asked.

“Should be, what’s up?”

“You remember that scene from Star Wars when Solo is running around the Death Star, turns a corner, and there’s a whole mess of storm troopers?”

“That many?” Jason asked.

“More. Let’s take the detour.”

“What do you mean more?” Jason said, taking Paul’s place as he headed back. He peeked around the corner and his eyes went wide when he saw the long room filled with dozens of men sorting and servicing racks of weapons, grenades, explosives, and even another mini tank. The Chinese had turned the tourism center into their own personal armory.

“Hmmn…yeah, let’s take the detour.”

“Told you so,” Paul said, not waiting for him and disappearing into the next room.

It took them a long time to work their way around the armory, bypassing several other clusters of soldiers until they were one room away…one room filled with makeshift barricades, a pair of machine gun turrets, and 8 guards.

“I got left,” Jason said, waiting beside the doorway into the room.

“Make it quick,” Paul said, pulling out a stinger grenade. “They’ve got a lot of friends.”

“Go,” Jason said, jumping around the corner and running sideways, shooting the closest of the guards before sliding in behind the cover of one of the barricades. As he did so and drew the guards’ attention, Paul waited a few heartbeats then casually walked into view and slipped off to the right, priming and chucking the grenade towards the right turret, then likewise diving towards cover as a hail of bullets impacted the wall behind him, chewing off the paint like sandpaper.

The grenade fell just below the gunner’s feet and exploded upward, rendering him unconscious but not affecting the gun at all. One of the other guards leapt into action and reclaimed the gun, just as Paul popped up and shot the other turret’s gunner before ducking back down again.

Like clockwork Jason appeared and downed two more guards before diving behind a different barricade, this one closer to the control room. The one live turret fired into the metallic crates, denting then cracking the material as the bullet stream pushed the heavy box backward half a meter.

Paul popped up again, this time into a run, and shot one of the other guards in the arm, then took out the gunner as the others took aim with their assault rifles and peppered the area with shots, but Paul ducked back around the edge of an outcropping in the wall adjacent to the control room, essentially putting him behind the blockade.

With half the guards turned towards Paul, Jason jumped up and over the broken barricade and shot the guard trying to reclaim the machine gun, then fired on two more, one of whom had his back to him as he was still firing on Paul’s position, trying to pin him in place while the others circled around to line up a shot.

Paul held ready for an opening, but suddenly all gunfire stopped.

“Clear,” Jason reported, with Paul immediately jumping into view and heading toward the control room. There was a single shot of what sounded like a pistol, then no more noise at all as Jason took out the occupants and sat down at one of the stations, prying his gloves off.

Paul stormed in behind him and grabbed one of the three unconscious bodies and threw it outside with the others, then came back and repeated the process for the other two just in time before reinforcements arrived. Paul took up position just back of the doorway, so that the short walkway into the control room cut down the attack angles against him and created a small bottleneck. He had five seconds of peace then started firing as the first troops came into view.

Jason raced through the interface, finding the security door controls and locking down level 1 as fast as he could, then he jumped out of his seat, pulled his gloves back on, and grabbed his rifle.

“Coming through,” he said, jumping over Paul and running out into the open, firing at anything he saw as he darted across the room and back the way they had come in.

Paul knew he had to hold the control room and make use of the bottleneck…as well as deny the enemy from reclaiming their machine gun turrets, but with Jason now outside and loose they had a shark in the water that wouldn’t let them set up a coordinated assault. If Paul could hold position long enough, he knew Jason would thin their numbers and cause as much confusion and chaos as possible, lessening their available resources to assault and retake the control room. If they could keep them guessing and off balance for a few more minutes, then they should own them.

Three more men came into view, firing at Paul with all but one of the bullets missing over his head as he took them down with single shots from a crouching position tucked up against the wall. The single shot that did hit him deflected off the side of his helmet, ringing his bell from the concussion, but not enough to disorient him for more than a heartbeat. More men came into view, which Paul shot down quickly and professionally, creating a pile of bodies at the entrance that ironically worked as a blockade to slow the advance of the soldiers, who had to step on or over them to get to the doorway.

The flow of Chinese troops didn’t diminish, and after several minutes of fighting Paul knew he was going to have to reload, which was going to bring a moment of vulnerability. When it finally happened he ducked back inside and around the corner and reached back over his shoulder into his pack, drawing out another clip of the stinger ammunition and placing it on top of a nearby console as he reached to the butt of his rifle, flipped the release switch, and yanked out the nearly depleted cartridge.

When he grabbed the full one and brought it in towards the rifle a soldier appeared in the room less than a meter away, with Paul shooting him at point blank range. Even without the new cartridge, 5 rounds should still have been held within the priming chambers, and he blew two of them into the man as more of the Chinese poured in behind him.

Paul fired off the remaining three, then dropped his rifle on the ground, unable to take the time required to insert the new cartridge. He punched at the nearest two, then bodily rammed a third back into the walkway, knocking down three men behind him in domino fashion before yanking the assault rifle out of the hands of the first man he punched.

The second man managed to fire off a shot into Paul’s gut before he was pulled off his feet and thrown on top of the others, then the Archon found the trigger on the Chinese weapon and fired a slew of bullets into the pile of soldiers, wounding some and killing the others. He didn’t wait to count casualties and threw the assault rifle aside, scrambling back into the control room and searching for his own weapon and spare cartridge, thoughtful enough to reach over his shoulder and into his pack as he did so and pull out his stun stick.

He found the cartridge first, but before he spotted the rifle more reinforcements stomped their way over their wounded and ran inside, firing wildly as they came, damaging many of the control boards on the far wall. Paul was partially around the corner and out of sight of the first round of shots, but as the enemy rifle barrels came into view he was forced to jump towards them and physically pushed the weapons out of alignment, flipping the charge switch on the stun stick as he did so, bringing it down on another man’s gun arm in a flash.

It knocked his weapon askew, but didn’t stun the man for lack of charge. The next whack did, however, and soon Paul was a blur of slashes and jabs, piling up the men as they came in. The Chinese weren’t being smart about the attack, nor were they coordinated, they were simply trying to overwhelm Paul with numbers, recklessly sending more through hoping that no matter how many men went down, some would eventually get to him.

Those barbarian tactics angered Paul, and made him fight just a little bit harder, not to mention the ache in his gut from the rifle shot. It hadn’t penetrated his armor, but he was sure he’d have a bruise across his abdomen by the end of the day, assuming he lived that long.

A dozen more thrusts of his stun stick and his arm suddenly went numb…not so much that he dropped his weapon, but enough to keep him from jabbing again. The soldier closest to him nailed him in the faceplate with the butt of his rifle, pushing him back a step, then the man fell to the ground with a green paint splat on his back.

A moment later Jason hopped into the room over the bodies and Paul noticed that his arm also had green on it.

“Nice shooting,” he said, wasting no time and finding his rifle on the floor to his left, just off the edge of the body pile. He retrieved the bulky cartridge and lined it up with the access port as Jason fired several more shots back out through the doorway as Paul felt the numbness begin to bleed off as his armor soaked up the stun energy, much as the Black Knight’s armor had been designed to do, only less so given that the Archons’ armor was primarily designed for ballistics defense.

“Sorry, didn’t think you had time for me to aim.”

“They ran me out of ammo,” Paul said, clicking in the cartridge and hitting the power button. The first few rounds were pulled into and charged with energy, then those in the cartridge also began receiving charge, one at a time down the rows, until all of the stingers were prepped several minutes later.

“I’ve got half a clip left. Looks like you’ve been busier than me.”

“How many did you get?” Paul asked, taking up position and firing as more tried to come in. He adjusted his aim down and shot one of the men on the floor as his rifle began to lift.

“A lot. Unless this level was their favorite, I don’t even want to guess how many are below us.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Paul said, shooting two more. “They’re going to pin us down with bodies.”

“I hear you,” Jason said, readjusting his aim to the wounded inside the room and covering them with a hail of stingers just to make sure. He didn’t want them getting up and unlocking the security doors. “Let’s go.”

Paul, with his rifle now full of ammo, climbed up on top of the row of arms, legs, heads and other assorted body parts covering the short walkway and ran across the top, getting tripped up several times but managing to stay on his feet until he got outside. He took another bullet, this one in the chest, before downing three more soldiers just outside the mound of wounded at the entrance.

Paul slid down the heap, firing at everyone in sight, with Jason emerging a step behind him. Once in the clear, Paul was able to move around and avoid most of the enemy’s weapons fire, and within fifteen seconds they had the room cleared.

A quick hand signal from Jason had the two split up, running into adjacent rooms and mowing down anyone they came across. They spent several minutes tracking down enemies, finding several more clusters of troops moving towards the control room and dealing with them in turn, but before long there weren’t very many conscious Chinese troops left on the top level, so they both went back and resecured the control room, insured that the security doors were in fact still closed, and started policing the bodies, adding more stun charge where needed and dragging them out of the way.

They didn’t have enough binders for them all, so they didn’t bother with any, opting instead to haul them over to another section of level one which they then sealed off with additional security doors, making an impromptu prison out of a piece of the level.

Half an hour later they had level 1 secured and cleaned up…fortunately without any of the Chinese below blowing a hole through the security doors to get at them. Once they had the time to use the security cameras they spotted some soldiers milling about on level 2 near the security doors, but overall it seemed like the rest of the enemy didn’t realize what had happened, and were still camping out wherever they’d been prior to Paul and Jason’s secretive arrival.

“Lock the rest down,” Jason said as Paul manned the controls. “Play around with it a bit and see if you can get us a route down to the secondary tram station without too many guests.”

“Will do,” Paul said, triggering every security door below level 1 to close, cutting off the bulk of the Chinese troops from the level 1 doors. Even if those on level 2 had enough explosives to break through, now they wouldn’t have the numbers to overwhelm the pair of Archons…meaning the spaceport was essentially theirs, albeit with a lot of cleanup work to do.

Jason slid over to the communications terminal, luckily it had not seen any bullet damage, and contacted the auxiliary sites within the sector, eventually finding their teammates in the site 13 control room.

“How’s your progress?” Jason asked when he saw Jack’s face.

“We’re two thirds done with our sweep…where are you?”

“Spaceport control room,” he said nonchalantly.

Jack frowned. “Are you serious?”

“Totally,” Jason said, pulling off his helmet. “Told you we’d get in.”

“Are you secure?”

“We’ve got the facility locked down and we’re in the process of arranging to clear out the tram stations for you guys, so get your asses off the playground and over here. There’s a lot more troops in play than we thought.”

“Same out here,” Jack pointed out. “But we can finish this later. How soon do you think you can clear our entry?”

“Get moving now and it’ll be done by the time you arrive,” Jason promised.

“Haha, I’ve got to see this for myself. We’re on our way,” Jack said, smiling as he cut the transmission.

“Call for the newbs too,” Paul added. “We can use their help for this, now that the hard part is over.”

“Is it? Even assuming the other teams recaptured the lease zones, we aren’t stopping there. I don’t care what Davis has to say about it, after what the Chinese did, we’re kicking them off Luna permanently, which means we have to take their territorial sectors.”

“I meant for this mission. But yes, we’re kicking their asses off the moon and taking out everything military that they have above the atmosphere. I’ve already given the fleet orders to intercept, capture, and destroy all Chinese warships…and I don’t think Davis will give us grief over it. Not after all the people they’ve killed. We can’t let them have a second chance to do it all over again.”

“Why not kick them all the way back to the surface?”

“The civilian angle is Davis’s turf, and he may very well do that, but for now we focus on taking out their military and denying them a foothold on Luna. It may take weeks, or even months to fully accomplish that, but when all is said and done, the Chinese are going to be totally disarmed. I won’t settle for anything else.”

“Same here,” Jason agreed, contacting sector 001. “Commander Sheridan?”

“Just a moment,” the officer at the comm station said as he flagged down the head of Lunar security.

“What do you need?” the man asked as soon as he came into screen, his tone all business.

“We’ve secured sector 508’s spaceport control room and will have the tram entrances cleared soon. We need at least two Archon teams sent over to assist with containment and capture of the troops we’ve got pinned down between security doors.”

Sheridan nodded. “I’ll relay the order.”

“Any word from the others?”

“Team 7 took sector 109 a little over an hour ago, no word yet from the others.”

Jason nodded. “In addition, send over whatever security and support personnel you can, I doubt there’ll be any survivors found here to take over for us.”

“We’re spread thin, but I’ll at least get a skeleton crew over to you,” Sheridan promised. “And good work, sir.”

“Thanks,” Jason said, cutting the comm and looking over at Paul. “Greg beat us again.”

“He had a head start,” Paul pointed out, his eyes on the camera feeds. “If you’re done here, head on out and I’ll play door king for you.”

“Happy to,” Jason said, pulling his helmet back on and retrieving his rifle. “Watch your back,” he said, leaving the room.

Paul watched his progress remotely, taking heed to his advice. No Chinese troops should have been running around this part of level 1, but he didn’t want to be caught off guard if they missed any…or if a team broke through from below.

“Open sesame,” Jason requested over the comm when he got to the first security door. With a few keystrokes Paul opened it and his teammate headed down to the next level, with Paul closing the door behind him once he was safely through and uncontested. Jason moved off to engage the few troops trapped in that section of the level, with Paul feeding him information about what was up ahead as he gradually worked his way down to the tram terminals to clear them out for their incoming reinforcements.

The tough part of this mission may have been over, but the cleanup was going to take a long time. As Paul followed Jason he also searched around the rest of the spaceport, taking a crude head count and coming up with more than 1000, and those were just the ones in camera range.

No, the danger hadn’t passed just yet, but as long as they were sitting king of the hill he had no doubts as to their eventual success. A lot of fighting still had to be done, but even the newbs could handle this, as long as they were careful.

Paul just hoped that somebody had figured out a place to send the prisoners, because they were collecting an awful lot of them and he had no intentions of staying put and playing babysitter while there was still more fighting to do.

Disarmament

1

March 20, 2060

“Missiles incoming!” the remote pilot said, his hands frantically working the controls to prepare the cutter’s defensive systems.

“I guess that’s a no, people,” Minsk said, seated in the captain’s chair of the Orion, the flagship of the Star Force fleet, while he watched from afar the confrontation with the Chinese warship. “Take them out.”

There was a few seconds delay, but not from the signal lag, for the battle was taking place only a few thousand miles away, before the cutter launched a small stream of its own missiles in a parabolic trajectory. The furious key strikes on behalf of the pilot had been setting up the warship’s defensive apparatus, which began picking off the swarm of incoming Chinese missiles a few seconds later at range with the ship’s pair of anti-missile laser cupolas.

The delay was the result of having to reprogram their own missiles to fly wide and then come in on the much larger Chinese warship from an angle that would keep them clear of the enemy missiles and not get in the way of the defensive countermeasures. On the Orion’s display screen Minsk and the bridge crew watched as the tiny dots that represented the enemy missiles began to wink out one at a time while the cutter’s missiles, which appeared as a small school of fish swimming the distance between ships, took the long way around.

Once the laser defenses had chewed nearly 2/3rds of the enemy missiles apart the cutter began shooting off smaller missiles to intercept the remainders. The ‘intercepts’ skirted across the screen at much greater speed, meeting up and cancelling out the rest of the incoming dots.

Minsk nodded approvingly and watched the offensive missiles track towards their target…an elongated Chinese destroyer shaped similar to a submarine without the dorsal tower. Instead there were two symmetrical appendages running the length of the smooth port and starboard hulls that contained missile boxes, which even now sprouted more plumes, indicating the launch of a second, much larger wave of missiles.

As they launched, an anti-missile Gatling gun mounted on the bow of the Chinese destroyer took aim at the incoming missiles, firing a slew of bullets in their general direction. Computer controlled, it tracked and targeted the Star Force missiles via radar and took out four of the 16 before they hit the hull, cracking the bow of the ship open to space in a series of explosions followed by a rush of atmosphere that propelled additional debris away from the wounded vessel.

While the ship suffered through its death throes the Star Force cutter began backing away, creating more distance and rate between the ships to slow the relative approach of the missiles while the lasers trimmed down their numbers. More than 50 had been launched, and there were only so many the two cupolas could track and destroy in the handful of seconds before impact.

Just when it looked like the cutter was going to be overwhelmed its missile racks sent a flurry of intercepts out, looking like a crazed swarm of bees on the radar display, as the computer-controlled attack selected individual missile targets for each intercept at a speed no pilot could hope to match. Within four seconds the fireless fireworks display ended with all enemy missiles destroyed and a cloud of debris surrounding and bouncing off the cutter, but leaving its remaining intercept count dangerously low.

With that knowledge, the pilot switched the power source charging the laser cupolas over to recharging the capacitor for the medium laser. Once it was charged he targeted the Chinese destroyer’s missile racks and blew a hole in the port side near the back, with a secondary internal explosion multiplying the damage tenfold. He repeated the attack several times, running the length of the long box and destroying the missiles inside, along with a small portion of the hull on that side of the ship, which now looked like a cigar with the front end cut off.

After several minutes of inactivity from the destroyer the radar screen lit up with new contacts and the pilot’s control board flashed multiple warnings as whoever was left alive on the warship launched ALL of the missiles on the starboard side…

“Damn it,” the pilot said loud enough for the entire bridge crew to hear as he kicked the engines into maximum thrust and tried to futilely outrun the missiles as he switched the laser power back over to the cupolas and primed the remaining intercepts.

“Finish off the destroyer,” Minsk ordered, seeing the writing on the wall.

“Aye,” the pilot confirmed, switching his attention to the offensive missiles and launching his remaining count seconds before the enemy wave arrived. The Star Force missiles launched up from the ‘rear’ of the ship and arced lazily overhead as they streaked towards the destroyer while the cutter was hit below. The tiny warship took the first few hits on its armor successfully, but the following cascade of more than 200 missiles punched through the weakened plates and into the interior, repeatedly blasting apart the sturdy craft like a jackhammer.

The control and visual feeds went dark, with the only remaining active battle display on the bridge belonging to a distant Cyclops station, which had the Chinese ship centered in its high powered telescope. Minsk watched the cutter’s missiles thoroughly rip apart the destroyer, leaving a more or less intact corpse of a ship, but with so much hull damage that he doubted any pressurized sections remained.

“Tag the location for cleanup,” the Captain ordered, “with priority on picking up our debris. We can’t afford anyone getting their hands on the armor fragments and reverse engineering the Herculium…or anything else for that matter. What’s the status on the other target?”

“Intercept ETA at 42 minutes,” another remote pilot answered.

“Stay on your toes,” Minsk warned, leaning back in his chair and turning his attention to his personal display screens and controls. He hadn’t expected to lose the cutter, but then again this was their first engagement against the Chinese line warships, which were designed a bit more robustly than their ‘pirate’ fleet had been. With an entirely missile-based offense, each ship contained an intimidating amount of firepower and their destroyers were certainly capable of living up to their class namesake, but missile for missile Star Force’s were more powerful, had longer range, better guidance systems, and faster attack speeds.

Same went for the ships’ armor, engines, navigation, missile defense…everything Star Force had was superior in design, so the idea of a cutter taking on a destroyer wasn’t so farfetched.

Minsk mentally started calculating the mistakes/disadvantages they’d encountered, with the first being the mandatory offer of surrender. The Archons had ordered it so, but it meant that the Chinese had been able to launch the first strike.

The second had been having the cutter move in so close to the destroyer. Star Force had a missile range advantage…it wasn’t much more than 25% by their estimates, but the next time they approached to issue the ultimatum they would stay outside of the enemy’s effective range while just edging inside of theirs.

Third, he wouldn’t discount their practice of an all-out missile launch. True, this ship was already dying and had nothing to lose from launching all their missiles simultaneously, but given that the Chinese offense was entirely missile-based, conventional wisdom would have them launch small segments of their arsenal at intervals, for if they expended all of their ordinance on one target it would leave them unarmed. If the results of this battle made their way back to the Chinese, then they might very well consider using such a massive attack at the outset of the next engagement.

Minsk frowned, then turned to his comm officer. “Check the logs and see if there was any comm traffic coming from the enemy during the battle.”

The woman nodded and worked her terminal for a long moment, then nodded an affirmative. “Two signals. A lengthy one at the outset, then a brief one at the end.”

“Then they know we’re after them,” Minsk said for all to hear.

“Captain, incoming signal from the Turok.”

“Put it through here,” he said, toggling a small side screen near his command chair. A moment later his fellow Captain’s face appeared.

“I was watching your feeds,” Voss explained, “congratulation on the kill.”

“They got one too, unfortunately.”

“Yes, a bit of luck on their part. That first attack should have incapacitated them and didn’t. Makes me wonder exactly where the bridge is on their ships.”

“Any further contacts?” Minsk asked.

“We picked up a blip in zone 6 that we’re tracking down, but no radar contact yet.”

Minsk nodded, knowing that was at least something to go on. Ever since the Chinese fleet had gone dark they’d been like ghosts, with only a few errant passes through Star Force radar detection zones. The Archons had a number of their civilian ships passing through dark areas with active radar to keep the Chinese from having a static detection map to work around and they’d come up with several hits, but most of them were the Chinese cargo fleet.

The ship he’d just destroyed had cut through low orbit on a high speed redirection angle, thinking perhaps that Star Force didn’t have any ships fast enough to intercept before it escaped radar range…but thanks to a little mathematical calculation and naval extrapolation they were able to find the ship again and were in the process of hunting it down, but the real question running through Minsk’s mind was what it had been doing coming out of ‘cover’ in the first place.

If the Chinese were simply evading the Star Force fleet then running through low orbit literally waving their hands for all to see was the last thing they should be doing. If they were intent on resupplying and supporting their troops on Luna then they’d likewise take the backdoor approach to the moon and stay out of radar contact as long as possible…but if they had some other agenda, such as targeting Star Force orbital facilities, then he, Voss, and Harper were going to have a serious problem on their hands.

“Any word from Luna?”

“I’ve got it buttoned up tight,” Voss said confidently. “The Chinese haven’t brought a ship within detection range yet and the ones that were here are long gone.”

“What about the fight on the surface?”

“I spoke with Paul an hour ago. He wanted to make sure the Chinese didn’t have any support ships nearby. They’re beginning their assault on the Chinese territorial zones as we speak.”

2

With a subtle bang the dropship landed on the rough lunar surface, its landing legs sinking into the soil and stabilizing the giant golf ball before the cargo bay door opened up and a ramp extended down, revealing a narrow portion of the starlit sky and dim surface to Paul as he looked outside.

“Let’s go,” Jason said, rolling his mongoose out of the bay and down the ramp, momentarily disappearing in front of Paul then reappearing in the distance as he wasted no time milling about the landing site. Randy followed him out, then Jack and Megan, leaving the otherwise empty bay with Paul as its only occupant. He gave Megan a two second head start then accelerated out of the bay, dropping off sharply down the ramp and jamming his armored body against the seat as the four wheeler bottomed out on the sandy surface.

Paul hit the accelerator and took off, following the single file line of mongooses as Jason led them across the airless lunar surface in one of the 14 Chinese territorial zones towards their regional base of operations. Aside from a scattering of remote sites, the Chinese had only colonized three of the zones, with the bulk of their infrastructure being piecemealed purchased units connected by a spider web of buried tunnels into functional, yet awkward cities.

The nearest of which lay 52 kilometers distant and was defended by three SAM turrets that prevented the Star Force dropships from approaching any closer. As it was, the pilot had had to skim the surface in a fuel guzzling hover to get them in this close, with the rest of their prepped dropships passing by overhead in parking orbits, waiting for the all clear signal to begin their assault in force.

The other half of the 2s were landing at a different spot on the perimeter, tasked with taking out a different surface to air missile launcher, while Sara and a group of 1s took out the third. Simultaneously the other teams were making landings around the perimeters of the other two Chinese cities in prep for the coordinated assault. According to orbital surveillance, the SAMs were the only defensive weapons present at the sites, which meant after they were taken down the Star Force troops should have little trouble taking the territorial zones.

Meanwhile, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma teams had been dispatched to search, capture, and clear the disconnected Chinese sites of personnel, most of which were assumed to be unmanned at present, but they still needed to be secured. All of those sites were reachable only by dropship, too far away from the Chinese rovers to reach and without any surface or subsurface rail line connections…which meant they were also far enough away from the Chinese cities to be outside of the defensive sphere afforded by the SAM launchers.

Paul doubted the newbs would have any trouble, but giving them the first shot at it not only provided them with some more unsupervised combat experience, but it freed up the trailblazers from the monotony of having to clear each and every one of the hundreds of Chinese sites so that Star Force’s army of engineers could come in and start cataloging, dismantling, and scrubbing the surface of the moon clean of any trace of the Chinese presence.

The bulk of the fighting was over, he assumed, given the lack of security they’d observed from orbit. Most of the structures within the city were small, meaning even if they’d wanted to, the Chinese couldn’t mass a large number of troops to throw at them…which also meant whatever fighting was to come would be close quarters in confined hallways, most of which were of Star Force manufacture. The Chinese had purchased hundreds of the prefab units, but had insisted on installing them themselves, so the exact layout of the cities was guesswork, based on orbital analysis.

The largest structures were prefab domes made by Udaris Industries. They contained an interior atmosphere the size of a football stadium and could house regular ‘buildings’ inside. The city the 2s were roaring across the lunar landscape towards contained four of the large domes, connected through dozens of access tubes to the smaller Star Force structures, with a scattering of other corporate purchases mixed in between.

Paul twisted the handlebars on his mongoose slightly to the right as the Archon line swung around a house-sized boulder and down into a shallow crater. He saw Jason ramp up into a bit of hang time on the far side, then disappear over the rim as he followed Megan down into the center. She swerved a bit to avoid a cluster of rocks that had rolled down, skidding through the dirt as she did and making a small dust cloud that hung in the ‘air’ briefly behind her.

Paul punched through the cloud, trying to match her tracks as he climbed up the far side of the crater, goosing the throttle to keep his momentum as his wheels began to break traction. A moment later he came up over the rim and likewise caught some air, then landed heavily on the four wheeler’s ample shocks and skidded a bit as he rebalanced his weight and followed the others off across the relatively flat landscape.

He saw the others shrinking a bit and accelerated, trying to keep pace. Jason was keeping them moving fast, but Paul noticed that the speed was just below the mongoose’s maximum, giving him a little throttle to work with to catch back up, and once he was tucked in neatly 12 meters behind Megan he took the opportunity to look around a bit as he followed in her tracks, trusting Jason to navigate for them.

This portion of the moon was currently in shadow, but the ‘night’ was brighter than he expected, given that the Earth was glowing brightly just over the horizon, giving them more than enough illumination to travel by. All around them were small rocks littering the sandy landscape, and their route to the Chinese city wavered here and there as they avoided some of the larger ones, but they more or less held a straight line trajectory across the bleak, waterless landscape. Nothing living was present, and aside from the vibration felt through his seat and handlebars there was no sound, making their journey across Luna’s surface both eerie and awe inspiring.

After several kilometers Jason finally broke radio silence, jolting Paul a bit after having spent so much time in silence.

“Crack ahead. Make ready to jump.”

Paul tightened his grip on the mongoose’s handlebars and looked ahead, trying to spot the fissure. Nothing was visible save for a wash of gravel. They’d passed out of the thicker sand areas and had been traveling on what would have been hard packed dirt back on Earth, but the lunar version was more rocky. Never the less it was diminishing their drag and travel time, with Paul pegging out at 42 mph in the smoothest areas.

Up ahead he saw Jason’s red helmet bob up into the air, then drop back down just before Randy did the same. Paul still couldn’t see the crack, but then again they were traveling down a shallow depression, looking like a dry creek bed, and Megan was blocking part of his view directly ahead.

Just before she jumped he spotted it…a sharp drop off cutting into the lunar surface. He had only a few seconds to react at the speed they were traveling, but it was more than enough. Just before he hit the precipice he jabbed the ‘jump’ button on his left handlebar and triggered the hydraulic lifts in each of the wheels that ‘bumped’ the mongoose up in the air a few inches…except that in 1/6th gravity those few inches became a few feet, launching Paul up into the air as he sailed over the two meter wide crack in the rocky surface.

As he drifted over it in mid ‘air’ he glanced to his left, seeing the crack trace off a good 100 meters or more before it disappeared into the sand. What had made it he didn’t know, but given the dim light he couldn’t see the bottom and was glad that Star Force’s engineers had given the mongooses the jump ability. He’d figured it was more for urban settings and sidewalk lips, but it worked quite well for the Lunar cross country trek, vaulting him well over the gap and dropping him on all fours in the tracks of the others with him barely losing a mph as the Archons continued on silently across the desolate terrain.

“Target in sight,” Jason noted some time later.

Paul swung out of line slightly to get a better view and noticed four tiny bumps on the horizon…the tops of the Udaris domes. They were still several kilometers away, but Paul felt his body stiffen slightly. The enemy city was now in sight, and before long they’d be back in the thick of it again.

They’d had 3 days to rest, refuel, and regroup after the nasty fighting in the spaceports, and to a lesser effect in the auxiliary sites, some of which the Chinese had tried extra hard to hang onto. During that break they’d also had the chance to study the Chinese territorial zones and plan out their assault while Star Force reinforcements began to flow into the lease zones, replacing the personnel that had been killed and quickly repairing the damage the fighting had caused to the infrastructure.

With security maintaining a partial lockdown until the Chinese presence on the moon had been permanently dealt with, the trailblazers had relinquished their posts and moved on, transitioning to the sectors bordering the Chinese territorial zone, in which all 14 of their sectors resided. Other countries had split theirs up, spacing them around the planet as they tried to grab the most valuable regions in the first 10-year allotment, but the Chinese had preferred to carve out their own little niche of the moon, which ironically made containing them all the easier, now that Star Force had the advantage.

With no rail line connections to the outside, the only way the enemy had to assault Star Force’s holdings now was by dropship lift…which the orbital naval presence was not going to allow…or by surface attack, and while the Chinese maintained a large number of transport rovers, the distance to the nearest spaceport was too far for any reasonable assault, given that Star Force would see them coming hours in advance from orbit and could prepare accordingly.

How many troops they had left to oppose them with was a question mark at this point, but Paul didn’t figure that they would have held too many back, and those that they’d used in the attack didn’t deploy from here. The ones they’d been fighting had been surreptitiously delivered via civilian berths initially, followed up by ‘cargo’ containers reconfigured into troop transports for the final surge.

Their handiwork, along with personnel transfer records, had been captured along with the rest of the Chinese possessions within their former lease zones…all of which indicated that they believed they could launch a lightning fast strike and seize a significant portion, if not all, of Star Force’s sectors before their war fleet could respond, at which point they’d hold onto the surface of Luna at all costs and weather whatever orbital reprisals would ensue, figuring that in the long run so long as they held onto their foothold they would be able to maneuver or negotiate their way into a position of power, checking Star Force and elevating themselves into the preeminent space nation.

Based on the captured reports, as well as the initial debriefing of some of the English-speaking prisoners, the Chinese had not counted on Star Force’s rapid response to their invasion, nor had they known that the space corporation maintained an army of supersoldiers to supplement their naval fleet. They’d believed that the visible security forces were all that Star Force had available to oppose them with, meaning that the likelihood of the Chinese having a strong defense force waiting for them in the city ahead was unlikely, but without eyes on the inside Paul wasn’t sure what exactly to expect…which meant the trailblazers went in first and sized up the situation before calling in the newbs and Knights for backup.

As they continued to zip their way across the barren landscape the domes rose continually higher, until a myriad of smaller buildings manifested themselves around them, stretching out more than 3 kilometers in diameter.

“Looks bigger from down here,” Randy commented.

“Too much for us to secure on our own,” Megan added. “And we have no idea how many people they have in there. Even if they’re all unarmed we’re going to have a logistical mess securing the place.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Jason reminded them. “Take it one step at a time. SAMs first. Entry second. Foothold third. Then we can pass the tedious work off to the newbs.”

Paul took a hand off the handlebars and adjusted his comm settings via a panel on his left wrist. “Emily, Sara…either of you copy?”

“Barely,” Sara responded, her voice scratchy. “Where are you?”

“We’re still several kilometers out, but we’re getting one hell of a view of the city.”

“Same here, but we’ve got that ridgeline in front of us so we can’t see anything yet. How’s it look?”

“Wide…and a lot of ground to cover.”

“Have you spotted the SAM yet?”

“No, we’re too far away. I think it’s hiding behind one of the outer buildings. What’s your ETA?”

“GPS says 23 minutes.”

“Good, looks like we’re going to beat you,” Paul said playfully.

“You don’t have this many rocks to dodge,” Sara argued. “Save me somebody to shoot.”

“No promises,” Paul said, readjusting to his team’s frequency. “Sara’s group is 23 minutes out. No word on Emily’s yet.”

“Are we in radio range yet?” Jason asked.

“Barely.”

“23 minutes huh?” Jason said, studying his own GPS. “We’re ahead of them.”

“Let’s keep it that way,” Randy prompted, closing up on Jason’s mongoose a bit, with the others following suit. Jason responded wordlessly, eeking another mph out of the gravely surface as they sped towards the mismatched construction of the Chinese city.

3

“Found it,” Jason announced as they closed within a kilometer of the city’s perimeter. “Far left.”

“I see it,” Randy confirmed as the SAM site became partially visible behind one of the buildings with the tip of the missile box extending above the low roof.

Jason eyeballed the nearest gap in the building cluster and steered their 5-man line of mongooses towards it. They crossed the open plain without incident, decelerating on the outskirts and pulling up short of a small rise where a submerged tunnel was buried connecting the two closest buildings.

Paul pulled up last and slid off the mongoose’s seat a few seconds after the others, disconnecting the tether running from his armor’s oxygen intake port to the tank attached to the back of the four wheeler. He pulled a much smaller version out of the cargo compartment and clicked it in place on the back of his neck, then retrieved his equipment pack along with his stinger rifle and joined the others as they hiked up and over the meter high dirt rise.

Randy and Jack had their rifles slung over their backs, attached to the frame on their equipment packs, as they each carried a rocket launcher in their hands. After a short jog across an open area, then two more hops over tunnel bumps, they arrived in a wide gap between buildings that gave the SAM launcher a decent field of fire.

Jack took a knee just past the last tunnel bump and aimed carefully, knowing that a miss would probably hit the buildings behind, depressurizing and killing those inside. Also, he had only one shot to work with. Randy had a backup shot, though today it wasn’t going be necessary. Jack’s rocket fired off true to its mark and soundlessly streaked a fiery line directly into the SAM’s missile box.

The tip penetrated briefly, then the whole assembly blew apart, enhanced by the missiles’ fuel loads’ secondary detonations. Debris from the pieces scattered everywhere, some of which arced up high enough to fall down on the surrounding buildings, but none appeared to break through the rooftops…at least not from Paul’s vantage point.

“Nice,” he commented.

“This way,” Jason said, wanting to get inside and back into atmosphere as soon as possible. He led his fellow Archons a short distance through the city until they reached one of the larger Star Force manufactured buildings that contained an exterior airlock.

Like all Star Force designs, the airlock had no actual lock on the outside, just a trigger mechanism that opened up the Chinese base to the invaders. Jack and Randy left their launchers outside, propped up against the side of the building, and pulled their rifles off their clasps, ready to get into the action again.

Megan went in first, carrying a personal shield and pistol, cycling through the small airlock by herself with the others waiting outside. Given the smaller confines of these modular habitats and their recent combat experience against the Chinese troops, they knew it was unlikely that they would have much opportunity to duck, dodge, or hide behind cover during this assault, meaning they would probably be walking into oncoming fire more than their armor alone could stand up to.

So for this mission Megan was the designated blocker, with the other four being the shooters. When the hiss of the incoming air sounded through her helmet’s external audio and the inside door ground open she stepped out into the face of...nothing, just a blank wall and a clear hallway.

Megan held position and a few moments later Jason cycled through the airlock and stepped out behind her, with both of them shifting positions to cover alternate directions, taking a few steps forward to make room for the others to come in behind them. As they waited, Jason pulled out a small, compact beacon from his pack and hit the activation button, sending the ‘all clear’ signal up to the dropships waiting in orbit.

Once all three teams signaled that their target SAMs had been destroyed the full assault would begin…until then it was up to them to cause whatever havoc they could. The room by room sweeps were going to have to wait for the others, given the size and complexity of the prefab labyrinth that the Chinese had put together.

When Paul finally came through Megan stood up and began to slowly walk down the hall towards the closed door at the end. She reached a hand around the side of her shield and pulled the slide lever on the wall that activated the powered door, which slid aside revealing a small lab filled with ore samples, chemistry equipment, and two scientists.

Megan walked in and stepped aside, letting Randy shoot both men unconscious. They fell slowly to the floor in the low gravity, knocking a few beakers aside in the process, but otherwise leaving the cluttered lab just as it was.

Jack and Jason came forward and bound the hands of each scientist behind his back, then the team moved on to the next room, which was an empty storage area, before eventually emerging into a slightly larger central hallway that connected to the underground tunnels heading out at all four compass points to the nearby buildings. The Archon team shot a few more scattered personnel on the way down to the small center square where they hung a right and ran across a few more, all unarmed.

The 2s dispatched them without trouble, but stopped restraining their targets after the first dozen or so, opting to keep on the move through the smaller prefab structures towards the center of the city before their presence was widely known so they could get to the more strategic positions with some measure of surprise still intact.

Without eyes on the inside, and only satellite reconnaissance to work with, they really didn’t know what they’d come up against inside the city. Where were the barracks? The security stations? Armories? Control centers? Security doors? Or was this entire base purely civilian in nature. Paul didn’t figure it would be the latter, but so far they hadn’t encountered a single armed enemy.

“Anyone else get the feeling that they didn’t expect we were coming...at all?” Randy asked over their helmet to helmet comm.

“I wouldn’t count on that just yet,” Jason cautioned. “Let’s see what they’ve got in those big domes.”

“I thought we were heading to the landing pads?” Paul asked, still bringing up the rear of their short formation.

“That depends on who’s closer,” Jason said, trying his comm again. “Emily, Sara? Are your teams in yet?”

“Not yet,” Sara answered, the static gone from her voice. “We’re just pulling up to the perimeter. I assume that explosion was your handiwork?”

“Nope, that was us,” Emily cut in. “We’re approaching the airlock now, be inside in three minutes. Any resistance?”

“Not yet,” Jason answered. “We’re trying to figure out who’s closer to the landing pads.”

In response to his question, a tracking marker lit up on his helmet’s internal display, set against the orbital snapshot of the base.

“Looks like you’re a hair closer,” Jason measured. “You guys secure the LZ while we check out those domes?”

“Deal,” Emily answered eagerly.

“Don’t leave us out of the party,” Sara interrupted.

“Just get that SAM down or there won’t be a party,” Jason reminded her.

“We’ll get it, then see if we can flush out some opposition and draw attention away from the pads.”

 “Sounds good. Let us know if you find anything interesting.”

“Will do,” Sara echoed.

“See you in a bit,” Emily said, signing off.

Megan pulled open the door on a non Star Force module, tipping her head down slightly as she walked through the smaller opening and into a long barracks with thirty or so bunk beds and a scattering of half dressed personnel.

She immediately broke right and started firing with her pistol down the row at the people standing or sitting next to their bunks while Jason went left, taking the other aisle. Both of them walked forward quickly, but purposefully, splattering the conscious men and women with paint and returning them to sleep. One of a pair of women chatting quietly between two bunks screamed a warning and suddenly many more bodies manifested themselves from beneath blankets and began to spill into the walkways.

Jack closed up quickly behind Megan and tapped her on the shoulder twice. She responded by bolting down the aisle in a heavily forward leaning run, trying to gain as much traction as she could in the low gravity.

She bounced one man aside with her shield and shot another still sitting in his bunk, then pulled her gun arm in and just smashed through and over the others now littering the narrow walkway in a state of panic. Jack followed up behind her, shooting the people she knocked down and quickly cleared each of the bunks. Paul followed up behind them, making sure they didn’t miss any, and met up with the other four at the far end of the crowded building, stepping over a pile of unconscious Chinese to get to the door…none of which had been armed.

The five of them moved on into the short connecting tunnel and then the next module, working their way in towards the larger buildings, with one of the domes some seven structures away. They encountered a myriad of personnel, some of which seemed to already have been on alert, but they didn’t draw any fire until they crossed the connecting tunnel and opened the door that led into the first dome.

Megan took several hits against her shield and instinctively curled backwards around the corner while her teammates disappeared against the walls and out of the doorway.

“So much for the easy part,” Jack commented.

“Anyone get a good look?” Jason asked.

“Barricade a few meters ahead,” Randy reported. “Open air, looks like room to move around. At least three tangos behind cover.”

“Probably more than that,” Paul reminded them, ducking his head into the doorway to take a peek…and drawing five more shots through the aperture. He reached back over his shoulder and dug into his equipment pack, drawing out a stinger grenade.

“Pop and push,” Jason said, guessing what Paul was thinking.

“Ready when you are,” Megan said, knowing that she was the pusher.

Paul pressed in the button on the grenade and held it motionless for a second, letting the paint soak up the stun charge and triggering the built in timer function to truncate the delay down to 1.5 seconds. When he was sure he’d waited long enough he leaned out into the doorway and side-armed the grenade through as fast as he could throw it, exposing him to some fire in the process.

A bullet bounced off his right pectoral, then the grenade exploded and sent a few splatters back his way. He felt a hint of the cool numbness hit his chest, but it disappeared as soon as it began. The tiny bits of paint didn’t hold much energy, and his armor had blocked most of it from getting through anyway, then ate up the last bits, soaking it back out of his body.

The rest of the grenade’s spray flew into the barricade, propelled by the small explosive charge and the momentum Paul’s throw had added. Before he could see how many tangos had gone down, Megan’s armored body eclipsed the doorway and she charged forward, with the others jumping in right behind her and spreading out once they hit the other side.

Paul followed them through, looking for targets. He found several off to his left, firing from behind a lateral bunker. Two of them went down from Jack’s shots, but Paul managed to get to the third before the others did and took him out with a precise shot to the forehead. The Archon flipped around, looking for others, but none remained standing.

With no nearby threats, Paul’s mind opened up and he took in the geography. They were standing underneath the curved edge of the dome, which was visible several meters over their heads as the wall curved slightly to end up at a smooth peak capping several small skyscrapers that looked like they’d been plucked out of a city on Earth.

In fact, all the buildings Paul could see inside the dome were traditional Earth manufacture, right down to the cement sidewalks and landscaping. Several trees lined the small streets, over which the buildings towered…but the biggest impression on Paul was the amount of atmosphere the dome contained, which rid the feeling of claustrophobia that the rest of the tight city confines had impressed on him.

“Where do you want to start?” Paul asked.

“Let’s find the checkpoints. I doubt they knew we’d come in through here, so they’ve probably got at least a few others set up.”

“These streets are the right size for those mini-tanks too,” Randy pointed out as they began to move together in a tight formation, Megan still in the lead.

“Should have held onto that other rocket,” Paul commented.

“If there is one, let’s find it before the others get here,” Jason suggested as they came up to a five-way intersection. He fired off a quick pair of shots at a nearby pedestrian, dropping him to the ground with two chest hits while Randy tagged another on the left.

“This way,” Megan said, leading them upper right down a short alley.

Emily jumped over a computer terminal row and kicked the man reaching for his sidearm in the chest, knocking him backwards onto the ground. Her body slid across the console and she landed feet first on top of his abdomen, firing four shots directly into his sternum. The pistol fell out of the unconscious man’s grip and Emily kicked it aside, raising her rifle to shoulder level and scanning the area, finding that her team had already taken out the few Chinese manning the docking station on the number 3 pad.

From here they could extend the docking umbilical when their dropship arrived and make for a smooth transition for their reinforcements. Two other landing pads were adjacent to this facility, but they each had their own terminals, meaning that her team was going to have to secure them all with five men.

“Brian, you’ve got this one,” she said, stepping off the unconscious man and heading for the perimeter tunnel that connected to the other two stations.

“On it,” he said, picking the best defensible position on the far side of the control station, with his back to the tunnel his teammates were heading down, giving him a good field of fire on the far side tunnel as well as the entryway into the rest of the city.

Ivan, Dan, and Kip followed Emily around the long, curved tunnel in a staggered line, loping oddly to keep from bouncing too high when they ran. Their legs gave quite a bit with each step, making them look like they were running through sand in order to keep a good cadence. When the curve of the tunnel finally cracked a peek at the next terminal, Emily saw that there were a good more number of personnel on station, with several being assault rifle bearing soldiers.

“Heads up,” she said, taking aim and firing off several distance shots. The Chinese were becoming aware of their presence and starting to redeploy their security forces…maybe they’d even detected the approaching dropships from orbit and had come down to secure the landing pads? Either way, they had to clear and hold this area. One pad would have done, but there were six dropships of reinforcements coming their way, and the more offloading positions they could take, the faster this invasion would proceed.

Kip fired off several rounds as well, running just beside Emily’s left shoulder and a step behind. His stingers passing within inches of her shoulder didn’t concern her. She’d been fighting next to Kip and the other 2s for more than a decade and they knew each other’s movements and habits well enough that a few inches of firing clearance was more than they needed for a ‘safe’ shot.

Both Archons took a few rounds on their armor before the shooters went down, then several more came out from behind the corner to respond to the attack…but by that time the attackers were at the station, jump kicking or punching the soldiers off their feet while the following pair stunned the downed men into unconsciousness.

The entrance into the city was a set of wide open double doors with three more soldiers milling about, seemingly shocked at the presence of the red armored attackers. Their hesitation was rewarded with green paint splatters across the chests of their dull brown uniforms. They dropped to the ground almost in unison, revealing a clear hallway behind them that led into another cargo module.

“I’ve got this one,” Ivan called, kicking a body aside as he picked up the rifle pinned beneath the man’s arm as his teammates moved on. He continued to clean up the loose weapons, keeping an eye on the three attack angles around him, then bound the hands of the unconscious men. He stacked the bodies up against the side of the left tunnel wall, out of the way of any potential weapons fire coming from within the city.

“Station secured,” he heard Emily report over the comm. “Dropships, you’re clear to land on all three pads. We’re holding the door open for you.”

“We copy,” Sam’s voice said from the dropship containing his 9s along with other reinforcements and supplies. “ETA 18 minutes.”

4

Paul and Jason passed by the elevator on level 6 of the Chinese building and climbed the stairs up to level 7 while Megan and Randy continued up behind them to take level 8. As soon as Jason opened the door onto the level of the mini skyscraper he walked ahead, covering Paul as he opened the first side door and scouted out the inside.

Jason waited a meter past the door in the hallway as he heard his teammate fire off several puffs to the screams of the people inside, then switched with him when he came back out. Paul held position in the hallway while Jason took the door on the other side of the hall. He forced his way in quickly, banging the door aside and immediately taking fire from a man with a sidearm hiding behind a conference room table.

A single shot from his stinger rifle splattered on the tabletop just short of the man’s face and sprayed him with numbing specks. The man blinked and shuttered, not understanding why his left eyelid wouldn’t fully open and he couldn’t feel his lower lip. A second shot from Jason nailed him in the forehead and he went down hard, banging his head on the edge of the table and cutting a nasty gash on his chin before falling to the floor.

Jason shot three other people hiding in various nooks and crannies around the room, then did a quick circular sweep to make sure he didn’t miss anyone and that the ones he’d shot were truly unconscious, then he left the prisoners for the bagging team that was following them up the building.

He swapped back again with Paul and covered the hallway as he cleared the next room, making sure nobody switched rooms while they weren’t looking. They proceeded across the entire level, some 22 rooms in total, then made their way back to the staircase.

“Level 7 clear,” Jason reported over his comm. “Proceeding to level 9.”

“Copy that,” Harrison-167 reported. Archon Epsilon team were backing up the 2s foursome while they cleared the building, restraining and collecting the Chinese prisoners that the trailblazers were efficiently racking up. As it was, they were having a hard time keeping up, even with there being a full 10 of them with Knight backup to handle the transfer of prisoners to the makeshift detention area in one of the smaller perimeter buildings where the dome wasn’t as tall.

Paul and Jason moved up and pacified level 9, then took the top level while their counterparts were finishing up 10. Most of the upper level was a luxury suite that had several chambers, designed to house a family by the looks of it, but for whatever reason it was uninhabited at the moment, giving the Archon pair an easy finish to an overwhelmingly easy assault on this particular dome.

Reports from the other teams were coming in with similar results. The Chinese were throwing very little resistance at them, which made Jason think that they hadn’t planned on Star Force getting this far. They probably hadn’t thought past their assault on the spaceports, figuring that they’d be safely in hand by now with Luna becoming defacto Chinese territory.

Jason was happy they’d caught the enemy off guard, but for some reason it seemed a little too easy. Too anticlimactic.

“Level 10 clear,” Randy reported.

“11 is empty,” Jason added. “Move on to the next.”

“Copy that, we’ll take 1,” Randy said as he and Megan headed back down stairs.

Paul peeked out one of the wide windows that afforded a good view of the top of the dome and the shorter buildings to the north of the main tower…though there was another just as tall to the northwest and south, both of which they’d be taking momentarily. “Wouldn’t want to be in here if a meteor hit.”

“I know,” Jason echoed. “That dome is just asking to be breached,” he said as they paid the window one last glance then headed back to the staircase and down to the entrance where they passed the other red-armored Archons carrying prisoners by the twos, one over each shoulder, out of the building and off to the left in a stretched out line, making them look like worker ants.

They passed by one of the white-armored giants at the entrance of the building, standing guard to make sure the building stayed secured and no one slipped in or out until the dome was completely cleared. Jason nodded to the man as he transitioned into a run and gestured to another as he and Paul headed over to the next skyscraper, seeing their cohorts just entering the building down the narrow road.

The other Knight followed them, his long strides eating up the ground as he dragged his large shield over his right shoulder. When Paul and Jason entered the building he stayed behind, guarding the entrance and acting as liaison to the other personnel that would be coming over soon to deal with the new prisoners.

The four Archons made their way up through the levels without serious incident. A few armed denizens were encountered, but not so much as one properly armed soldier. All were rendered unconscious and bagged by the recovery team, then eventually transferred out through the secured portions of the city to the dropship pads, where they were loaded up and flown over to a nearby spaceport, allowing the Star Force troops to slowly clear and evacuate the entire Chinese city.

The 1s and 9s were also working on their own sections of the city and making good time at it…as it was there was always a line of prisoners waiting for transport near the landing pads, with the dropships running nonstop to absorb the load.

It took more than 2 days for the city to be completely cleared of enemy personnel, after which an army of Star Force techs and engineers came in to appraise and catalog everything. Very little damage had occurred to the city, but as usual Star Force was going to be methodical and assess every inch of the interconnected facilities, after which the Archons and/or Davis would decide what to do with the place.

Same went for the auxiliary sites within the Chinese territorial zones, and the zones themselves. Star Force was washing away any claim the belligerent nation had on Luna, including future zone allotments. As soon as the last of the prisoners were removed, what once belonged to the Chinese would become Star Force property, no matter how much they or anyone else diplomatically complained about it.

Most of the Archons left the cities along with the last prisoners, transferring back over to Star Force spaceports while a few remained behind just in case the civilians ran into anything unusual while cataloging and mapping out the cities. Secondary or hidden chambers weren’t entirely out of the question, and until they had documented every square inch of the place they weren’t going to leave the civilians by themselves…at least not until additional security forces arrived, which were in short order these days with so many having been killed and the replacements that were incoming being devoted to replenishing the existing sector security teams.

Paul was not one of those staying behind, nor was Jason. Both immediately transferred up from the spaceport to a ship waiting for them in orbit. Once onboard the Cougar the pair raced back down to low Earth orbit while the rest of the Archons waited for redeployed cargo haulers for a lift back down to one of the starports where they’d hop an Earth dropship and return to Atlantis at a much slower pace.

The reason for the dedicated Cougar and quick transit for Paul and Jason was that the pair weren’t going to Earth, rather they were transferring to the Orion to take command of the ongoing naval war against the Chinese fleet. While it was true that they could have directed the efforts from the Archon sanctum or Atlantis, Paul didn’t want to waste the additional hours it would take to get there, so when the small starship pulled up next to the mammoth command ship a small shuttle was immediately sent over to retrieve the two military commanders.

It docked with the Cougar then hurried back over to the Orion’s hangar bay, with the Archon pair heading straight through the ship to the bridge, not even bothering to stop off and change out of their armor.

“Report,” Paul demanded when he hit the bridge, eliciting mildly shocked reactions from the crew.

“Four kills, with a fifth imminent,” Minsk said, not missing a beat. “We’ve identified the location of the Chinese carrier in a holding position in zone 6, with most of their fleet having gathered around it. A few other ships are scattered about, but most of their firepower is right there,” the Captain said, pointing to a position on the orbital map.

“Any further losses on our part?” Jason asked.

“No, we learned our lesson and have been attacking from range. They haven’t so much as scratched us since.”

“No surrenders?” Paul asked.

“We’ve been offering prior to combat, per your orders, but there has been no response.”

“Do we have all their ships accounted for?”

“17 of the 18,” Minsk said, running his finger in a circle around a particular position on the map. “There’s a frigate somewhere in this area, but we haven’t been able to pin it down just yet. We should have the location in a day or two, and neutralized not long after that.”

“Have they made any aggressive moves against our stations?” Jason asked.

“Fortunately no, we’ve pretty much had them on the run ever since you let us off the leash, though they could have done a hell of a lot of damage if they were of a mind to. 90% of our infrastructure is still on the waiting list for the basic defense packages to be installed.”

“What about the rest of the fleets?”

“The other nations are keeping their warships at home. Those that were on patrol were pulled back as soon as the fireworks began. My guess is they don’t want to get caught up in the fighting and are waiting to see how this plays out.”

“At least they’re showing some sense,” Jason commented, still perturbed that the Chinese really thought they could get away with this despite Star Force having informed them of just how strong their fleet was.

“Where are we at?” Paul asked, looking for their own warship icons on the extensive tabletop map.

“The Turok is gathering our assault fleet here,” Minsk said, pointing at a position in zone five just ‘below’ the Chinese fleet but above one of the major inhabited orbital regions. “The Mjolnir is enroute on the other side of the planet while I’m coordinating the hunt for the remaining strays. If the Chinese battle fleet stays put, we’ll be ready to engage them inside of 3 days, 4 at the most, depending on how fast Harper chooses to get in position. He’s been complaining about having to be married to the tanker fleet just to be able to move around, which I can empathize.”

“Prototypes,” Paul reminded him, “are always slow. The important thing is we’re faster than the Chinese. We’ve got engine upgrades coming down the pipe and new systems on the drawing board. From here on out you’ll see a steady flow of improvements, but for now this is what we’ve got to work with.”

“You don’t mind playing moon, now do ya?” Jason asked sarcastically.

“Not with the firepower I’ve got to hide behind,” Minsk responded. “And she’s still faster than a station.”

“That’s the spirit, Captain,” Jason said, mirthfully.

“What have you been able to find with regards to the Chinese civilian fleet?” Paul asked.

“They’re still running without transponders, and seem to be keeping away from non-Chinese installations. Other than that they’re ghosts.”

“Let me see the sensor records you’ve got…”

After Paul and Jason finished on the bridge and made sure everything was set in motion they retreated back into the upper section of the armored ‘needle’ that housed the gravity cylinders at the heart of the command ship. They moved up through the ring-like levels until they came to a large door, code locked, that was off limits to the crew and even the Captain.

“Are we the first ones to go in?” Jason asked as Paul input the Archon code.

“Unless someone has snuck onboard without me knowing, yes,” he confirmed as the thick doors slid apart, allowing them access to the Archon sanctum. When they entered the doors closed behind them, locking once again and giving them the privacy their rank afforded.

The sanctum was a tiny version of the main facility situated alongside Atlantis beneath the Pacific Ocean. It contained all the necessary equipment for their core workouts, along with some auxiliary training devices, ambrosia stores, weapons, spare armor components, uniforms, and everything else they required. The cafeteria was still located with the crew, but other than that it was a home away from home for the Archons who gladly shed their armor and dressed out in training gear, then headed over to the private track that ran the perimeter of the gravity cylinder.

It’d been days since they’d had a workout, and while combat had its own training effect, they knew it was necessary to get back into the traditional training groove as soon as possible. The moment they hit the track Paul immediately felt awkward, but accelerated up to his required pace, following the moving guide lights in the floor.

“Ouch,” Jason said, finding himself sore from having been loping around in 1/6th gravity for days.

“Best thing to do is flush it out,” Paul reminded him.

“I know. Let’s keep it short…5k?”

“Deal,” Paul said, finding it difficult to maintain pace. He too was feeling the transitional effects from the low gravity.

“Damn Chinese,” Jason said, focusing on relearning how to run a normal stride.

Paul didn’t say anything, but he agreed. Messing with an Archon’s workouts was a surefire way to piss them off.

5

March 26, 2060

Before the Star Force fleet could fully assemble, the Chinese warships sensed the threat and moved to intercept. The Mjolnir, a pair of cutters, and a destroyer had yet to arrive within weapons range, but all were close. The rest of the 23 ships were milling about in a holding formation, spread wide with the Turok in formation center.

The Chinese had 10 escort ships surrounding their large carrier, with a group of 2 cutters and 3 corvettes driving hard to get out ahead of the rest of their fleet as they sped towards the Star Force ships…aimed not at the gigantic battleship, but one of the destroyers situated on the forward starboard edge of the formation.

A warning hail went out, advising the Chinese to stand down and surrender, but like all those previous it didn’t draw a response and when the first of the enemy warships crossed into weapons range the Star Force destroyer took aim with its heavy lasers and blew two small holes in the hull of one of the cutters.

The ship immediately depressurized, given that its armor was paper thin to maximize weight to speed ratios. Inner bulkheads had already been closed prior to battle, so only the crew in that particular section of the ship were killed, leaving the bridge and other compartments intact and the cutter burning hard to close the range with the Star Force fleet, hoping to pounce on the momentarily isolated ship before the rest of the group could coalesce into weapons range.

The destroyer repeated the twin blasts again, knocking another couple of fist blows against the hull, then launched a salvo of long range missiles on fuel delay towards the other cutter, which was outpacing the corvettes along with its twin. 25 missiles leapt up out of the racks and arced over as they accelerated in a blink of the eye towards the distant enemy…then their fiery tails went out as they coasted on their momentum closer to their target.

A small anti-missile chain gun opened fire on the undamaged cutter…the other had lost their defensive weapon from one of the laser hits…and started spraying a hail of tiny bullets in the path of the missiles which weren’t yet within effective range. The waste of ammunition missed them completely, and it wasn’t until the missiles closed within a predetermined distance and relit their rocket engines did the Gatling gun succeed in hitting one of them.

The other 24 adjusted their trajectory to the new position of the ship and hammered its hull, ripping apart the small ship and taking it out of the fight.

The destroyer launched another salvo of missiles as its forward engines flared, pushing it backwards and away from the approaching ships, buying a little more time before they got within their own weapons range as well as bringing the destroyer closer to the rest of the Star Force fleet.

The second salvo of missiles entered their coast phase briefly, but as they relit and angled in towards the surviving cutter, the Chinese ship launched all of its 48 missiles, just getting them out of the tubes and enroute before the Star Force missiles arrived and diminished the Chinese ship count down to 9.

The twin heavy lasers on the destroyer fired off their shots at one of the trailing corvettes, then switched their recharging power flow over to the 4 anti-missile cupolas as it prepared to defend itself against the incoming Chinese missiles.

Meanwhile one of the nearest Star Force cutters enroute launched its own missile salvo, with the 15 warheads streaking out on a vector into the gap between the Chinese corvettes and the destroyer, entering their coast phase and disappearing from view…save for on radar, which gave Captain Voss their exact position.

He nodded distractedly, approving of the pilot’s tactic. Instead of firing at where the enemy ships were and having the missiles fly in an arc to intercept the targets, he had fired at where they would be, allowing them to travel in a more or less straight line. The captain of the Turok watched the engagement unfold as he leaned to the side towards his first officer.

“Status on the carrier?”

“Still buttoned up and thrusting hard.”

“If you get a kill shot at range, take it,” he ordered his bridge crew. The rest of his fleet ‘controllers’ were situated in their stations at the fore end of the bridge in front of him, but those stations in between housed the people flying, and soon to be fighting from, the battleship.

“Yes, sir,” the female gunner said, a sly smile worming its way onto her face. Ever since she’d been given control of the Turok’s primary weapon she’d been itching to fire the big gun.

On the radar Voss saw the Chinese missiles start to wink out as they came within laser range, then a host of new contacts blossomed from the destroyer as it fired off its intercepts.

On another display screen each of his fleet’s ships was lined up in virtual rows according to their tonnage. Voss tapped the touch screen image of the destroyer and it enlarged into a 3d diagram of the ship. He glanced it over, seeing no damage indicators, meaning all of the missiles had been successfully intercepted.

The Captain returned the image to its smaller form and studied the battle map, seeing that the Chinese ships weren’t decelerating or cutting thrust…meaning they intended to overshoot or ram the Star Force vessels.

“All ships,” he said aloud, the cue for the remote pilots to listen. “Maneuver around their trajectory lines…I don’t want any collisions with them or their debris.”

A slew of nods confirmed his order, but no voices responded. All of the pilots were intently focused on their screens and controls, now that the fighting had actually begun. Those not already within weapons range were trying to eek as much thrust and appropriate angles out of their ships as they could, wanting to get in position to back up the others.

As soon as the missile maelstrom abated a metallic slug shot out from the destroyer’s rail gun and tracked across the radar screen, impacting the middle corvette, then exiting out the other side at a slower, but considerable speed, traveling back towards the other Chinese warships and incidentally passing within 500 meters of the carrier, which was now beginning to launch the first of its fighters.

The Chinese corvette, elongated like the rest of their warship designs, was cored on the prominent bow and gutted along the length of the slender ship, exiting out the starboard aft quarter, cutting a line almost parallel to the ship’s hull. An atmospheric plume washed out of both holes, draining the interior sections and pulling debris out with them. The engine bank in the rear was clipped, knocking the starboard engines offline with the ship immediately curving to the right as the thrust was unbalanced.

The ship arced lazily, cutting across the path of the missile-damaged corvette, nearly clipping it but missing cleanly, though both ships were already severely damaged, but not entirely out of the fight, with the cored corvette firing off a salvo of missiles that were apparently still operational.

By this time a frigate had caught up to the Star Force destroyer and passed it by while starting to reverse thrust to decelerate and fall back into position alongside it. When the corvette’s missiles angled in towards the destroyer the Star Force frigate launched a salvo of intercepts, taking down half of the attack with the destroyer’s diminishing reserve of the effective anti-missile missiles neutralizing the rest.

Meanwhile the five escort ships surrounding the carrier suddenly diverted and headed straight for the Turok…though still some distance away. The fighters, now numbering 14 in flight with a few more still waiting to come out of the bays, split up into two groups, one of which was also heading for the Star Force battleship, but at a ponderously slow speed, pacing the capital ships.

The other group of 6 tore away in formation and caught up to the three corvettes, only one of which was still fully operational. Just before the intercept occurred, all three Chinese ships launched missiles on the destroyer simultaneously, with the fighters following behind the segmented salvo.

The intact corvette launched all of its missiles in a long train, with a lesser number coming in two small groups from the others just before the starboard most Chinese corvette blew apart from a second missile attack from the Star Force cutter closing on the flank and breaking hard so as to not overshoot, placing itself directly in the gap between the two fleets, seemingly unafraid of the larger ships.

Invisible laser fire broke out as the destroyer and its pacing frigate began to shoot down the 284 incoming missiles, with the pair of ship’s popping intercepts a few seconds later to counter the rest while bracing for the impact of any that got through. Behind the fireworks the 6 Chinese fighters targeted the destroyer and frigate, launching their own missiles, two apiece, following the hoard.

The four that went towards the frigate were shot down by laser fire, but two managed to get through to the destroyer a handful of seconds after three other missiles hit the hull, damaging the armor plating in different locations, none of which punctured all the way through, though visible, cracked craters manifested themselves at the impact points.

When the fighters’ missiles hit, one was already damage by a few laser hits, but not enough to destroy it before impact. The trigger mechanism, however, did not fire, having been melted away, with the missile ramming and crumpling against the hull…only to be vaporized a moment later as the other one hit, detonating the 125 kiloton nuclear warhead it contained.

The rectangular cube that was the destroyer vanished from the radar screen, with the frigate flashing damage warnings along its port side, conceivably from debris impacts as a deep scowl dug its way into Voss’s forehead.

“What the hell was that?”

“Rad signature,” his first officer reported. “I think that was a nuke.”

“From where?” he insisted. All of their missiles couldn’t be carrying nukes.

“Check the fighters,” the remote pilot flying the frigate half yelled in suggestion.

Voss’s eye line darted to the Chinese fighters pacing their capital ships heading for the Turok, realizing now why they were laying back. They couldn’t fire their nukes straight on because the anti-missile systems would take them down easily…unless they overwhelmed the defenses with a convention missile attack en mass.

“All engines full reverse!” he ordered, realizing the threat they posed to his ship. They’d lost an unmanned destroyer, but he and his entire fleet’s crew were aboard the Turok. Take the battleship out and the drone ships would fall dead…at least until the Mjolnir, Orion, or Atlantis assumed control, though at that point he wouldn’t care because he’d be dead.

“Cutters, move ahead and engage those fighters before they get within firing range. Main battery, co-op with the helm and get me a firing solution on that Chinese cruiser. I want it dead before it can launch missiles.”

“We’ll need to cancel thrust to fire, Captain,” the gunner reminded him.

“Helm, get it done, now!”

“Ten seconds,” the pilot of the lumbering battleship said as he moved the knife-like bow of the Turok up and to starboard with maneuvering engines, then thrusters, getting it within the narrow targeting window that the main rail gun could micro-adjust within. The entire assembly was designed to move within the ship over a 2.4 degree arc, meaning the helmsman had to do the primary aiming, with the gunner then fine tuning the shot. “Engines…offline. Thrusters stabilizing.”

“I have a shot,” the gunner said, her voice rising slightly as she saw the targeting reticule pass onto the hull of the largest warship the Chinese had, after their carrier.

“Fire,” Voss ordered.

“Firing!”

The star destroyer-esk battleship launched a bobsled-sized metallic slug out the 600 meter long barrel faster than the eye could see, with the projectile popping up on radar briefly as it travelled the distance between ships before hitting the port side of the cruiser at a shallow angle, but it didn’t deflect. Instead it dug into the aft quarter, carving a furrow into the side before boring all the way in and exiting through the engine bank…and yanking a chunk of the ship free in the process.

The torsion of the impact also spun the ship about, bringing the submarine-like nose around to port slowly, setting the ship aspin as it no longer had any primary engine thrust to correct with and thrusters alone wouldn’t be able to settle the ship for some time.

“Hit it again!” Voss yelled.

“Reload complete, capacitors charging.”

On the visual displays Voss saw the first missile plumes coming from the Chinese as they counterattacked the cutters zipping forward into their lines, targeting the fighters in rear with their lasers. Intercepts puffed out from the ships like a bear swatting at a bee hive as one of the fighter icons disappeared in back from the concentrated, point to point instantaneous laser fire.

A small blob of radar contact remained where the fighter had been destroyed, but the ship’s computer no longer tagged the debris as a target…either due to the breakup of the signal or because one of his crew had manually removed the tag. Either way, it was down thanks to the 6 cutters.

Another smaller rail gun slug shot out from one of the other two Star Force destroyers…this one flanking the Turok on the port side and easing ahead of it as the battleship’s backward momentum effectively moved the Star Force lines ‘forward.’ The slug hit the Chinese cruiser in the bow, tearing a monster hole in the hull, but failing to penetrate all the way through. Before Voss could figure out why it hadn’t, his gunner fired off another super-sized round.

This one hit square in the center of the ship, thanks to the spin that brought the starboard side around into plain view, making for one big lateral target. The round crumpled the ship along the vertical centerline, pulling the hull in around the impact hole and making the once straight line of a ship now look like a shallow arrow, pointing back at the carrier it was defending.

Subsequent explosions marked the cruiser’s hull as it was bombarded by long distance laser strikes as the Turok’s gunners opened up on the nearly dead ship, wanting to make sure it couldn’t launch a last second missile strike. The heavy destroyer sitting underneath the Turok contributed a medium-sized rail gun slug of its own, along with additional laser blasts. Between the two heaviest Star Force ships in the fight, they ripped apart what was left of the cruiser while the rest of the fleet switched to other targets.

As the other four Chinese ships continued to accelerate and left the corpse of the cruiser behind, the ranges between the fleets shrank dramatically fast, bringing the enemy inside missile range only a few seconds after the Star Force ships entered theirs and launched a salvo of over 1000 missiles at the dwindling Chinese fleet.

6

The Chinese ships returned the gesture with a salvo of their own as their momentum carried them quickly towards the Star Force ships. The two groups of missiles crossed paths with only three collisions out of the 1400 involved, then travelled towards their designated targets, splitting into various groups tracking towards individual ships.

Every Star Force ship within range let loose with their point defense lasers and started picking the missiles out of the black sky while the Chinese ships attempted no defense, instead launching a continuous second salvo of missiles, emptying each box on the ships as fast as they could, sensing their impending deaths and wanting to do as much damage as possible before they died.

Intercepts began popping from the Turok and the nearby destroyers as the remaining Chinese missiles came within final defense range in a last ditch effort to get them all. Voss let his gunners handle the task while he monitored the position of the fighters approaching behind the first missile salvo, now being overtaken by the leading elements of the second, mixing them into the flow and making them easy to miss.

The speed tags on the fighters relative to the Turok were high…too high for a long engagement window. With their kinetic speeds factored in, their effective missile range was stretched out, meaning they could launch before the laser gunners had decent sized targets to shoot at. So far, however, they hadn’t fired a missile, according to Voss’s keen eye, meaning they were waiting for what they thought would be the opportune moment.

With his left hand the Captain toggled the orders panel and tagged the 6 corvettes mixed in between and around his larger capital ships. He typed out a quick message using the shorthand commands preprogrammed into the panel then submitted the batch orders…which went directly to the consoles of the remote pilots just a few meters ahead of him on the bridge.

He could have shouted out the orders, but with things becoming so intense and chaotic, some things were best left on the quiet side.

With his eyes still on the approaching fighters behind the missile storm, he noticed that all six corvettes immediately began to move backwards as they began gathering speed to intercept the Chinese warships that were soon going to overshoot their lines. Even if they’d wanted to, their ships had gathered so much momentum that even a linear flip and full engine thrust couldn’t have bled off a tenth of their speed before crossing.

Voss hit another button and the trajectory tracks for each ship appeared. Several of the Chinese ships were going to pass close to the Turok, but none were actually going to collide, assuming they didn’t change course…with every passing moment making that more unlikely as mathematical uncertainty diminished. The rest of his fleet’s ships also appeared to be clear of potential collisions, which meant the primary threat now was the nukes and the conventional missiles.

Voss continued to watch the fighters, his hand held over the tagging button in anticipation.

There! he thought, seeing a radar image appear to come out of the blip that was one of the fighters. Pushing the primary target button and tapping the icon on the touch screen, the battleship’s targeting system immediately highlighted the location on every gunner’s screen.

A few seconds later the nuke disappeared, hit by several pinpoint laser strikes…but more began launching and Voss hastily tagged as many as he could, with his 1st officer grabbing the rest. The next set of intercepts launched were all cued for the fighters’ missiles, with the rest of the convention ones nearly being ignored. Some of them got through to the Turok’s hull, but barely damaged its thick armor. It was the nukes that were the real threat, and the tradeoff was absolutely necessary, as every gunner knew.

Suddenly the hulks of the three Chinese destroyers and frigate passed by the outer cameras on the battleship in a blink of an eye, with the dead cruiser drifting by moments later. Voss took a moment to get his bearings…everything had happened too fast.

“No nukes hit,” his 1st officer reported.

“Where are the rest of the fighters?” he asked while searching the displays himself.

“Past us now…wait! Four more alongside the carrier.”

Voss’s eyes moved back to the massive ship and almost missed it, because it was nearly on top of them. Just ahead of it the fighters launched their missiles.

Voss punched his buttons hard, tagging the nukes, but he needn’t had bothered. With the conventional missile storm already having abated every gunner on the ship was free to scan the area and picked up on the launches the moment he did. Every one was shot down, as well as the fighters, but the carrier got by with only a few small hull punctures due to laser impacts.

“Corvettes, get after it!” Voss ordered aloud. “How many cutters are operational?”

Over the din he heard the shouts of 3 of the cutter pilots, though all seven were still showing on his control board, the rest with varying degrees of damage.

“Get moving, best speed to intercept. I don’t want anything getting away, not even the debris until we’re sure it’s completely dead. There could still be live weapons even if the ships are immobile.”

“It’s going to take time,” the helmsman pointed out. “You want us following them?”

Voss glanced at his control boards, finding the long range map.

“No, take us here,” he said, tagging an orbital facility. “The destroyers and frigates come with us. The rest keep after the carrier. Drop a marker beacon for our damaged ships and destroyer debris, then get us moving…and get me a comm channel to the Orion and Mjolnir.”

It took a long time for the corvettes to match speed with the Chinese carrier, then there was the matter of eating up the distance in between without overshooting themselves. As they patiently pursued, the lighter cutters began to catch up, but they were also a great distance behind, with the navigational calculations suggesting the corvettes would catch up first if the carrier didn’t add any more thrust into the mix.

It didn’t, which was odd to Voss. Either the ship had expended all of its fuel or it didn’t think that it could escape the pursuit…which it couldn’t, but if you were going to be killed wouldn’t you want to stretch out your remaining time left?

The Turok’s captain got his answer just before the first of the corvettes came within weapons range in the form of a text transmission from the carrier, in English, signaling their surrender.

Voss raised an eyebrow. “Reopen the comm line to the Orion.”

A few moments later Captain Minsk’s face appeared on Voss’s communication screen. “Yes, Captain?”

“Is Paul still there? I need a quick answer.”

“I’m here,” the Archon replied, appearing behind Minsk on the screen. The captain moved aside to give him his seat.

“We just received a transmission from the carrier, signaling their surrender,” Voss reported. “What are your orders?”

“Accept. I’ll get a cargo ship with security on an intercept course. Request they slow down with whatever fuel they have left.”

“You’re sending one of our ships to pick them up?” Voss asked. His prior orders had been to have the Chinese civilian fleet pick up their own people.

“I don’t want to wait for them,” Paul said resolutely. “I want that ship disposed of as soon as possible.”

“Define ‘disposed of.’”

Paul chewed on his lower lip as he thought. “No need to make another mess of debris. I think we’ve done enough of that to send the proper message. I’ll send a recovery crew to bring it into one of our shipyards for dismantling.”

“So we just have to babysit and wait for reinforcements?” Voss asked, wanting to clarify.

“Pretty much. Three ships should do it,” he answered, guessing to the Captain’s line of thought. “We’ll give you a reprised target list later, depending on how we plan to proceed. Until then, redeploy what you need for the shipyard and scatter the rest in standard patrol routes.”

“And the Mjolnir?”

“Split deployments. We shouldn’t need a combined force again for some time.”

“Yes, sir,” Voss acknowledged with a satisfied nod. “Then I’m guessing Harper will be wanting his ships back.”

“Take what you need, then reshuffle the rest. You’ve got mission priority,” Paul ordered just before disappearing from the screen.

Voss leaned back in his chair, studying his navigational, ship, and radar screens, getting a feel for the position of everything in orbit. With the Chinese military fleet now out of the picture one might have thought that they had the situation under control, but Voss knew better. The Chinese civilian fleet was still running dark, and with their nuclear arsenal all it would take was one missile launch out of a retrofitted cargo bay to destroy one of their orbital facilities.

As it was, Star Force engineers were equipping them with light defense packages, suitable for shooting down a handful of missiles or running off any unarmed ship attempting to board, but there were so many Star Force stations now that it was going to take more than a year to get to them all, meaning they were still vulnerable should China wish to continue pushing the conflict.

He expected that hunting orders for the civilian ships would be coming down soon, but for the moment the Chinese shipyard responsible for making all their warships was their sole target…along with the partially completed ships housed within its berths.

This wasn’t going to be a simple ‘shoot and destroy’ mission…his orders involved co-oping with a boarding party that was already enroute, with the backup plan being a naval bombardment of the facility if the capture of the station became unfeasible. Also, some of the partial ships could have active weapon systems onboard, which Voss would have to find and disable before the SR could close to deliver the boarding party.

“Get me all recent surveillance on and around the shipyard,” Voss ordered. “And stay on your toes…with nukes in play one sneak shot will be all it takes to cause us a world of hurt.”

When Paul switched off the comm from Captain Voss the feed immediately switched to Greg’s face, who’d been waiting throughout most of the conversation. “What’s up?”

“Confab with Davis. Where are we at with the Chinese civilian fleet?”

“They’re still running dark. Until they show themselves again they’re a threat, especially with the Chinese using nukes…and even if they play nice, I want every ship that delivered troops to Luna seized.”

“So we’re not kicking them back dirtside?” Greg asked.

“Personally, I can go either way with that, but if we do it’s going to involve a lot more work up here.”

“I hear that, but we really need to make sure they feel the pain on this one. I doubt they really care about losing a few ships and people, so the penalties need to affect the government.”

“No weapons, for starters.”

“No Lunar territories either, now or in the future. Same goes for other territory?”

Paul hesitated. “Through us, no. On their own…I don’t know. Work it out with Davis. Just let him know that if we let them pursue civilian colonization I’m keeping them on a very short leash up here. He can decide where we tether it.”

“That’s what I needed to know,” Greg said. “Have we got their carrier yet?”

“It just surrendered.”

“Surrendered? Really. That’s a change.”

“They were about to get blown to bits with nothing to shoot back with…not all that surprising.”

“True,” Greg conceded. “We have a clean slate then?”

Paul nodded. “All known military assets have been neutralized, and I’ve got the Turok headed in to deal with the shipyard that made them. Unless they’ve got some trick up their sleeve, or someone else wants to jump in the fight, things should be deescalating pretty soon.”

“And cue the political reprisals,” Greg added dramatically.

“That’s Davis’s problem,” Paul gladly deferred. He didn’t have the patience required to deal with their stupidity short of physical contact.

“I’ll get him up to speed and an update back to you within an hour or two,” Greg promised.

“Sounds good. Enjoy the real gravity down there. I’ll be back to kicking your butt on the track in a few weeks. Make the most of the advantage while you’ve got it,” Paul prodded.

“We’ll see,” Greg said, wryly smiling as he signed off.

“What’s the difference?” Minsk asked as Paul returned his seat to him.

“With what?”

“The gravity,” the Captain said.

Paul did a double take. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Wow,” Paul said, trying to figure out how to explain it. “How long has it been since you were planetside?”

“A little over two years.”

“After this mess is over, take a week’s leave and head down to Atlantis. Your body will explain better than I can.”

“I think I’ll take you up on that,” Minsk said, curious. The Orion had become his home, and now that Paul had mentioned it, he wondered how much of a difference there really was between AG and the real thing.

7

March 28, 2060

A salvo of defensive missiles leapt out from a small launcher attached to the Chinese shipyard towards the lone Star Force destroyer encroaching on its perimeter, but the anti-laser systems ate them up before they even got within intercept launch range. Another salvo followed with similar results, then a large laser shot from the destroyer melted/exploded the base of the launcher, disconnecting the missile box from its power and control lines. The few missiles left inside ceased to be a threat as they floated away from the station, twisting around in a chaotic list.

The destroyer continued to move in towards the octagonal station, coming into range of another launcher and quickly dispatching it as well. The center of the zero gravity station was a large block, with eight berths radiating out from the sides. Unlike a more traditional construction ‘slip’ the berths were entirely self contained and pressurized, allowing the workers a shirtsleeve environment to construct the gigantic ships. Six of the berths were closed, but two were open to space with nearly complete warships showing, docked via umbilicals so workers could continue the internal construction.

From one of those two a small stream of bullets flew out towards the destroyer as it made a close flyby over top. The small Gatling gun was designed for anti-missile work, but apparently whoever was inside the docked ship decided to try and poke a few holes in the attacking destroyer. Most of the rounds simply deflected off the Herculium armor, though a few did manage to put a few scratches on it.

The small gun quickly blew apart from a pinpoint laser strike, ending the brief and wholly one-sided space battle. The missile boxes on the Chinese frigate were unloaded, and the nearby destroyer had no operational weapon systems. Both ships were forced to sit in their berths, exposed to space, but powerless to do anything about the Star Force destroyer making a long loop around the station, searching for any more hidden weapon systems or surprises.

Several hundred kilometers away sat an SR with the boarding party, as well as two cargo ships full of support personnel and security. Once the destroyer signaled that the station was disarmed Voss ordered the ships in to take possession of the shipyard.

Meanwhile, the Turok and the other larger Star Force ships in Voss’s small armada were still several hours away, enroute after rendezvousing with a refueling ship. The destroyer they’d sent on ahead had been almost fully fueled at the time of the battle, while the other ships had had to travel longer distances to get there, eating through their massive reserves of liquid hydrogen.

The refueling ship was a converted Leo, with the cargo bays having been retrofitted into holding tanks. During mid flight…which in space was the same as standing still…it had connected to the Turok and other ships in turn via a long, flexible umbilical into their shielded refueling ports after the armor slabs slid out and away to expose the connections.

The battleship had three such ports on the starboard side, and the refueler connected to all three simultaneously, two with liquid hydrogen lines, the other with liquid oxygen. Most of the tanker’s supply was hydrogen, given that that was what the plasma engines on all of Star Force’s ships used to create the plasma. Heavier elements were used in the competition’s engines, but none could match the thrust or efficiency levels of the Star Force designs.

The reason for using hydrogen only was twofold. First, hydrogen was the most abundant element in the known universe. Second, Star Force engine design ‘efficiency’ was laughable compared to the most primitive designs recovered from the V’kit’no’sat pyramid in Antarctica. Most of the technology in the database was so far above the engineers’ heads that Davis had told them to focus on one thing and try and push that single technological vector as far up the rankings as they could, hoping to break through to enough discoveries that would allow them to begin to ‘mine’ the scientific knowledge that they’d stumbled upon.

That single vector, as far as engine designs were concerned, was hydrogen-based plasma engines.

In addition, the electrical power that ran the starships was produced by fuel cell engines that also ran off of liquid hydrogen combined with the liquid oxygen, producing water as a byproduct. That excess water was then returned to the refueler, which would carry it back to either a storage depot or one of the fuel production facilities in orbit that collected solar energy and stored it in the form of hydrogen and oxygen, using the immediate electric current collected to execute hydrolysis on the water, splitting it apart into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

All Star Force technology operated off of this simple process, eschewing nuclear reactors in favor of continuously upgrading the fuel cell technology until Star Force could master the more basic power generating systems noted in the pyramid database, the closest of which involved using metallic hydrogen…something that Star Force had only recently been able to create in minute quantities for a brief period of time. The pressures required were immense, something only naturally seen within stars and larger planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn.

Which meant that for the time being Star Force was going to have to make do with the simple technologies at its disposal, though fortunately those were far more advanced than their competition had access to.

The SR and cargo ships thrusted their way in towards the shipyard with controlled bursts from their plasma engines, breaking with the same as they neared, then maneuvering about with thrusters based on the same design. The SR deployed shuttles to dock with the station, delivering their boarding parties led by Jason and Alpha team, which quickly began spreading out and neutralizing all of the shipyard’s work crew.

Nathan Hampton was sitting strapped into his zero gravity work chair when the alarm sounded, bolting him out of his thought-induced coma staring at the technical specifications for the next generation of warship Solaris Industries was planning to build for the Chinese. He and the other Solaris personnel on the station were hired contractors, borrowing construction berth space in a contract arrangement designed to save the nation a considerable amount of currency on their purchases…and to give the Chinese total oversight on the project.

“What is that?” one of the other Solaris engineers asked.

“I don’t know,” Nathan said, unstrapping and floating up until he grabbed one of the handholds on the low ceiling. He hand-walked over to the open doorway leading out into the hall and poked his head out, seeing several other people doing the same and conversing in a smattering of Chinese he couldn’t fully understand. His knowledge of the language was workable, but he was by no means fluent enough to pick apart multiple conversations overlapping on top of one another.

“Something’s up for sure,” he said, ducking back inside along with the other two Solaris engineers on station in the small design room. Most of their staff was located in the fabrication areas, leaving no one nearby to fill them in on what was going on.

“What can we do other than sit it out?” Ric asked, seeming not to worry.

“And if it’s a hull breach? Nathan pointed out.

“If it was a hull breach,” he countered, “we’d either be dead or in a secure…”

A scream from outside cut him off, with Nathan bouncing off the ceiling as he reflexively turned his head towards the sound and sent his body twisting erratically. He grabbed hold of another edge and righted himself as more screams and small puffs were audible from outside.

One Chinese man floated past the door in a hurry, followed by two more scrambling to get down the zero g hallway away from something. A few moments later a large white-armored figure passed by the doorway, apparently in pursuit.

Nathan and the others shrank back into the room as far as they could go, with Ric hiding behind one of the chairs. None of them said a word, willing themselves to sink into the walls.

Suddenly the entryway filled with a smaller, yet equally terrifying red-armored soldier hoisting a rifle. It shot Ric in the head as he panickly jumped across the room trying to run to who knew where. There was only one entry/exit and the soldier was blocking it.

The other engineer went down next, leaving Nathan just enough time to blurt out a few words.

“Wait! We’re not Chinese, we’re Solaris…” he shouted, but the red soldier didn’t care and shot him in the chest.

Nathan’s vision went blurry and he felt a sense of disconnection from his body a moment before a second caused him to black out completely.

With a violent twitch Nathan banged his head on a very solid floor as he woke, sending waves of pain throughout his body.

“Ouch,” he moaned, finding his head pounding from more than the bump. He instinctively tried to sit up and felt a pair of hands come in to assist, pushing against his back.

“Easy,” someone said as Nathan blinked away his sleep-induced haze. He raised a heavy arm and rubbed away at his eyes, belatedly realizing why he felt so heavy…gravity.

“Where am I?” he asked, seeing a few familiar faces standing/sitting around him, with a host of Chinese filling the rest of the large room.

“Some kind of holding cell,” Ric said from his left.

“We’re guessing Star Force, but nobody knows for sure,” Karen added from behind, connected to the hands holding his back up. Nathan’s body was not liking the transition back to gravity after spending so many months on the zero g shipyard…that and he was both hungry and insanely thirsty.

“Holding cell?” he repeated. “We’re not military!”

“Try telling that to him,” Ric said, pointing across his chest to the far end of the room.

“Who?” Nathan asked when he didn’t notice anyone in particular.

“Big guy, just outside that door with a sword. Not much of a conversationalist.”

“One of the Chinese started arguing with him,” Karen said, “and he knocked him out with one whack. I don’t think the man’s woken up yet.”

Nathan felt around his chest for bullet holes, but found nothing other than a slightly squishy chest and dried paint. “What did they shoot me with?” he asked, noticing the others also had paint marks on their uniforms.

“Some kind of non-lethal weapon,” Ric guessed as Karen handed him a small bottle of water.

“They’re paintballs,” another engineer added. “I saw Mandy get shot before they hit me.”

“Do paintballs usually knock you unconscious?” Nathan asked, half serious as he guzzled the bottle. He’d never had any experience with the toys.

“No, they don’t. Something must have been added to them.”

“At least they took us prisoner,” Karen pointed out. “I’d much rather get hit with paint than bullets.”

“Point taken,” Nathan agreed. “What are they going to do with us?”

“They haven’t said yet,” Ric answered. “At least not since I woke up.”

Nathan got his feet underneath him and struggled to stand up. The gravity felt like 5 times Earth norm.

“Take it slow,” Karen suggested, handing him some type of energy bar.

“We’re still in space,” Nathan said, noticing the slight curve to the floor as he bit into the bar. He could have sworn they were back on Earth.

“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock.”

Nathan glared at Ric. “Ship or station?”

“Take your best guess,” the engineer said as the small door on the far side of the room opened.

“Somebody’s coming,” Karen said, pointing through the wall of bodies now standing up en mass to get a better view. Suddenly there was some sort of scuffle near the door, but after several loud thumps it stopped and the Chinese workers scurried back from the man walking across the hold, revealing three downed and apparently injured men behind him on the floor while a giant of a man stood guard at the door, dressed from the neck down in white armor.

“He’s coming over here,” Ric pointed out, standing up from his sitting position against the wall. The man walked towards them calmly, wearing a white Star Force uniform, similar in design to what Nathan had seen before in promos, but never one in this color.

As he came closer Nathan realized that he was about the same height and probably a few kilograms lighter…a stark contrast to the guard at the door.

“Solaris?” the man asked, coming to a halt in front of the small group.

“Yes,” Karen answered, timidly, though it was a superficial question. All of them were wearing the company uniform.

“Come with me,” the man said, turning about and heading back to the door.

Nathan exchanged a ‘you don’t have to tell me twice’ look with Ric as both scrambled to catch up.

As they approached the door the guard stepped further in and pointed a thick finger towards the surrounding Chinese.

“Back!” he ordered, grabbing the hilt of his round sword with his other hand.

The prisoners took heed to his warning and stepped back, allowing the man and the Solaris prisoners to pass through without incident.

Nathan followed the group of 18 out of what appeared to be a cargo bay and into the bright white lights of a ship’s interior. They made their way quietly through the corridors until they came to a zero g transition point, with Nathan’s body relishing the relief from the pressure as he floated through the small opening at the center of the spinning disc and down a connecting tunnel to more corridors, save for these had handholds to move around with.

The man stopped short of an open airlock and gestured with a hand palm up for the others to halt and listen. When they had all caught up he nodded to a second man that had been quietly trailing the group, apparently to insure that no one tried to run off, dismissing him.

“Through this umbilical is a Solaris starship that we’ve allowed to come pick you up. Given that you were not actively engaged in the in the war we’ve agreed to let you go, but you will not be returning to the Chinese shipyard. It has been seized by Star Force, along with all the warships contained within. China has been slapped with disarmament protocols, forbidding them to build, own, or operate any weapon systems above Earth’s atmosphere. If Solaris continues to do business with the Chinese, you will be held accountable to this ban as well.”

Liam pointed into the umbilical connecting ship to ship. “Go.”

Eager to get away, the first of the Solaris personnel pulled their way forward via the ceiling holds and ducked into the umbilical, scooting across to a corporate rep ‘standing’ on the other side of the connection along with several other recovery personnel. They counted, cataloged, and assessed the physical health of each prisoner being returned in precise fashion, making sure that Star Force didn’t hold any back.

As Nathan progressed up the line towards the umbilical he couldn’t help his curiosity and pulled aside just before he got to the man letting them go. “What war are you talking about?”

Liam starred him down for a moment, then realized that word of the fighting might not have been as widespread as he assumed it would be, especially for engineers working in a foreign facility.

“Your employers launched an attack on our Lunar zones,” Liam said as two others engineers lingered behind to hear his answer. “We neutralized them and their fleet, then we came to take the station that built the warships. All caught up?” he said with a trace of anger.

Nathan swallowed hard, realizing that they’d been caught up in a mess without even knowing about it…and also realizing how fortunate they were that Star Force was letting them go.

“We didn’t know,” he said apologetically as the other two engineers scurried ahead, wanting to get off the ship as soon as possible.

“I suggest you find some new customers,” Liam said, pulling him forward by the collar and pushing him into the umbilical, but holding him at the entrance for one last word of advice, whispered into his ear.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t accept any more contractor assignments.”

Nathan looked over at the man’s chiseled face, mere inches away. “I think you’re right about that.”

Liam stared back expressionless and shoved the man down the umbilical with decent accuracy, delivering him to the other side without bouncing him off any of the walls. He closed their side of the airlock, undoing the double door override and sealing off the ship from the Solaris personnel.

Nathan caught himself on the other end, with the female Solaris rep pulling him inside and into the hands of a medic while another employee shut their side of the connection. Nathan felt a considerable amount of relief when the door closed and the umbilical retracted back into the other ship.

“Are you alright?” the medic asked, looking at his flushed face. “Did they hurt you?”

“Just my pride,” Nathan admitted, holding a hand to his head. The transition back into zero g had left him with a headache. He looked over at the rep. “Why weren’t we pulled out when the fighting started? Or at least warned?”

“I don’t have an answer to that,” she said honestly. “I’m just here to make sure you were all returned safe and sound.”

“You’re the last one,” the head counter said from behind the rep. “238/238.”

“Then we’re done here,” the rep said with finality, floating past Nathan.

“Come with me,” the medic insisted, leading him back into the ship to an analysis and treatment area. “Even if you’re alright, we have to do a standard physical on everyone.”

“Ok,” Nathan said as his mind wandered. As he pulled his way across handhold after handhold he got the distinct feeling that he’d dodged a bullet and was happy to just be alive.

Several meters down the hall that ran along the edge of the Solaris-manufactured starship he crossed by a small window, pausing to look outside as the Star Force Jaguar-class cargo ship pulled away underneath them, with the gravity disc already having passed by. He waited and watched as the cargo compartments transitioned through to the engine banks and marveled at the sheer size and power the ship possessed…far above and beyond anything Solaris could presently manufacture.

“We need to move,” the medic urged after giving him a long moment to reflect.

Nathan nodded and pried himself away from the window, making a silent resolution to resubmit his engineering application to Star Force.

8

April 6, 2060

“I’d heard you’d arrived in the city,” Davis said from behind his desk as a man walked up into his panoramic office, “without the typical fanfare. I take it you’re here on clandestine business.”

“Clandestine…interesting word choice,” President Jamison noted as he walked up and stood behind one of Davis’s guest chairs, placing his hands on the shoulder rest. “I felt it best if we talked face to face without making a political scene.”

“What do you want?” Davis asked the US President amicably, but with a hint of disinterest.

“To be of assistance in ending this conflict,” Jamison said bluntly.

“How do you figure you can do that?” Davis asked, putting down his touch pen and leaning back in his chair to listen to the American’s proposal.

“The Chinese are a proud people. They don’t take defeat well.”

“I think you’re confusing me with someone who cares,” Davis replied icily.

Jamison conceded the point with a nod. “I can understand that, and given what they’ve done I privately agree with your sentiment, but the situation still remains that you’re in a de facto state of war with China, and they’re not inclined to publically surrender. I’m offering to arbitrate an armistice agreement, behind the scenes, to put this to an end.”

“We are in a state of war with China,” Davis corrected him, “and have been ever since they attacked and killed my people on Luna. And whether they choose to surrender or not, this conflict will be coming to an end shortly.”

“I heard you’re seizing their civilian ships now?”

“They’re still running without active transponders, making them a menace to navigation. Until they choose to turn them back on we’ll keep taking their ships until we’ve eliminated the threat.”

“And if they did turn them back on?” Jamison hinted.

“They will still suffer a permanent ban from all Star Force related activities, and must voluntarily comply with full disarmament…not that we’ve left them with anything to shoot at us with, but we’re not going to let them rearm, even for defensive purposes.”

“So…you’re still open to letting them retain orbital installations and ships?”

“If they comply with disarmament, yes.”

“And if they don’t?”

Davis stared him in the eye. “We kick them back dirtside, permanently,” he said, borrowing the metaphor from Greg.

“That could cause more political trouble than it’s worth,” Jamison warned.

“What’s the worst they can do? Start a war? They already did that and got their asses kicked, so what exactly are you so afraid of?”

Jamison took the criticism without so much as a twitch. “You defeated them in space. That’s not the same as a surface war…and I needn’t remind you that mainland China isn’t that far away from Atlantis.”

“Appeasement encourages wars, Mr. Jamison. The Chinese are going to be held accountable for their actions regardless of how big a fit they throw over it. And don’t concern yourself with Atlantis’s safety, we’re prepared to defense ourselves from a naval or air attack.”

The President raised an eyebrow at that caveat. He hadn’t been aware that the city was also armed…and by the Star Force standards recently displayed in orbit he doubted that Davis’s definition of ‘prepared’ was anything less than considerable firepower.

“None the less, we have to live with the Chinese down here. Do what you think you have to with regards to them, but if the U.S. is in a position to…alleviate some of the conflict, we’re prepared to do so.”

“I take it you’ve already spoken to them?”

“Discussions only. Our current policy is to not get involved unless our assets, or those of our allies, become targets.”

“And the so called ‘pirate attacks’ don’t qualify?”

“As long as Star Force was doing the fighting for us, it was better to take a seat and watch how things played out.”

“An honest answer, I’ll give you that,” Davis offered. “Now you want in on the politics post conflict, after we saved you from potentially having to fight World War 3.”

“That point has been brought to my attention,” the President noted gratefully, finally sitting down in the chair he’d been holding onto. “Let us help repay the favor now.”

“You’ve obviously got an idea…let’s hear it.”

“Allow them to stay in the game, otherwise they’ll try to disrupt it for the rest of us. You’ve already stated that they can retain their space interests if they concede disarmament. Does that go for their Lunar territories…not the ones they leased, but the ones they owned?”

“No,” Davis said flatly. “Their attacks forfeited those territories, along with all future allotments.”

“Some would argue that Star Force doesn’t have the authority to strip China of territorial holdings.”

“Out of curiosity only, mind telling me who does?”

“The international community, through the UN.”

“If a nation is subservient to the international community, then there is no longer any concept of national sovereignty,” Davis argued.

Jamison smiled. “A fair point, that.”

“Also, Star Force doesn’t answer to the international community, or the UN, of which China is a founding member and holds veto power, so no resolution to punish them would ever see daylight there.”

“So we’re left with what then, if there is no law. Rule of the jungle?”

 “Star Force represents civilization, not the jungle,” Davis lectured. “And at the end of the day, the law is nothing more than ink on paper. It’s those who have the means that dictate the course of history.”

“You’re dating yourself with that analogy, you know.”

“Perhaps,” Davis admitted, losing a touch of his animosity.

“And you intend to dictate the course of events by making an example out of the Chinese?”

“Their fate may serve as an example to others, but we are not inflicting any punishment that they don’t deserve. They brought this on themselves and we’re not going to let them wiggle out of it.”

“And if the international community decides otherwise?”

“Then we’re back to the point of my not caring.”

Jamison leaned back in his chair, obviously relieved. “That’s what I was hoping to hear from you.”

Now it was Davis that raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“China needs a political beatdown, but no nation is in a position to do so without potentially starting a much bigger war. You’re in a slightly different position, not having any real presence on the surface. You beat the Chinese militarily in space…and yet down here people look at it like it’s one big game. From a sociopolitical standpoint space has become a separate entity, with events up there not automatically triggering a response down here.”

“And you’d like to maintain that separation by allowing the Chinese a foothold up there?” Davis surmised.

“Not a gimme. That too would send the wrong signal. But if they had to sacrifice a great deal to stay in the game, then yes, I think letting them maintain that foothold would stabilize the political situation greatly.”

“And you think you can get them to accept terms?”

“I think they’ll be more applicable to a neutral party than to dealing with you directly…especially since you kicked out their diplomatic delegation, apparently never to return?”

“I did.”

“That’s what I like about you. I envy your ability to make decisions with such finality. As President I can’t do that. Everything is fluid with regards to the future, so we have to keep our options open as much as possible. The Chinese know that and have been kicking us under the table with it for decades. You seem to have them pegged down, and we’d like to contribute to the effort, while maintaining public deniability.”

“Have you discussed terms with them?”

“We broached the issue.”

“And?”

“They want their ships back.”

Davis shook his head firmly. “Not happening.”

“What about the rest of their civilian fleet that you haven’t captured yet?”

“If they turn their transponders back on before we get to them, they can keep them…save for the ships that participated in the attack on Luna by ferrying troops down to the surface via dropship. There are still two that we haven’t caught up with. Those must be turned over to us.”

“As penalty for their participation in the invasion,” Jamison thought aloud. “Fair enough…and with you scooping up more and more as time goes on there’s pressure on them to make a quick decision. I think we can work with that. Is your intention to deny them access to the Moon forever? What if they purchased or leased territory from another nation?”

Davis considered that for a moment, with his eyes glassing over as he thought. “Are you considering offering them some of yours?”

“No, but it’s possible that others might, so I’m asking now to avoid a future confrontation.”

“I’ll say no to purchases, but we’ll consider leases to be the private business of the territorial owners…and will hold them accountable for anything the Chinese do under their watch, but no military assets will be allowed, and no Chinese personnel will be allowed into Star Force leased zones, regardless of the other nations leasing them.”

“Workable. What about Mars, if and when you get there?”

“China is banned from all Star Force business, which includes territorial allotments. However, I won’t expand the ban on purchasing territory from other nations past Luna. That’s where their invasion occurred, and that penalty will only apply there.”

“What if they land on Mars first? Claim territorial rights as we did, or as far as you’re counting them. We never made an official claim.”

“They won’t get there first,” Davis said dismissively.

“So you are planning another expansion, and soon?”

“Soon enough…and no, they can’t hitch a ride there with someone else to plant a flag.”

“That’s one caveat I hadn’t considered. I could see them pulling something like that. If they do accept having to buy territory, we could see them forming an alliance or coalition with other nations to exert their space based power in the future…even militarily if they use puppet nations?” Jamison asked with a glance at Davis.

“Name changes won’t fly, but if they want to ‘borrow’ another nation’s military assets, then we’re going to hold that nation responsible. They’re not going to be able to cheat their way around the ban.”

“Name changes?”

“Say a province of China suddenly gains its independence and starts building a space-based military…or a governmental coup claiming that the old regime is gone and the ban only applied to them.”

“What if there was a legitimate breakup, like Baja seceding from Mexico? Would you still apply the ban to the original geographic boundaries?”

“If it’s a true breakaway, we might offer a penance agreement to recover some, potentially all privileges and status. If it’s a breakup, then all the pieces will retain the same ban…and a coup is little more than a name change. Same country, same ban.”

“No wiggle room. I like it,” Jamison said approvingly. “Now that we’ve got that covered, I hear you’ve taken some Chinese troops prisoner, along with the inhabitants of their territorial zones on Luna? What do you plan to do with them?”

“Actually, we captured more than 90% of their troops and are in the process of moving them down to lower orbit, or perhaps here. We don’t have prison facilities, so I’d planned on letting them go at some point. There’s nothing to be gained by us hanging onto them.”

“Generous of you. If you like, we can arrange to transfer them back to China?”

“That would be helpful…after China agrees to terms.”

“I think they will. Their plans backfired on them, and I think they want a way out without completely losing face. Give them a road ahead, no matter how narrow, and they’ll jump on it…all the while planning to stab you in the back later on.”

“I expect nothing less,” Davis confirmed. “And make sure they understand that this is their last chance. Any future misbehavior and we ban them from all space travel.”

“I’ll underscore that point. How well they’ll listen is anyone’s guess…but now at least they know you’re not going to be a pushover. I think that will give them pause enough to play things safe for a while. Regardless, we’ve got your back if things go south again, though at this point it looks like you don’t need our help militarily.”

“I suppose you’re also interested in acquiring the Chinese facilities we captured for a moderate price?”

Jamison hesitated, clearly caught by surprise. “I wasn’t going to mention it, but yes we are, if you’re selling.”

Davis finally cracked an ironic smile. “The Russians made a similar inquiry yesterday.”

“And your answer was?”

“We’re open to the idea, but no promises.”

“First things first?” the President guessed.

“Something like that. Have your ambassador inquire after the Chinese are dealt with.”

“If it’s alright with you, I’d like to establish a more direct communications link between the White House and Atlantis, so that we could discuss matters in person rather than having to go through the State Department.”

Davis extended his hand across his desk. “Done.”

Jamison accepted the gesture. “I think we’re on the same page now.”

“We are,” Davis confirmed, releasing the man’s firm grip. “Glad to have the help.”

9

April 18, 2060

The first of the dropships landed on the runway at the Star Force spaceport in Phoenix, Arizona, touching down at considerable speed but making contact with the ground smoothly before slowly bleeding off speed down the long runway. By the time it had passed General Akerson and was about to pull a u-turn off to the left and circle back on an auxiliary taxiway that paralleled the main track, a second dropship became visible on the other end, dropping from the sky to deliver more of the Chinese prisoners into American military hands.

More and more dropships came down in precision intervals and eventually made their way to a closed down terminal where Akerson and his troops were waiting for the handover. The General and his senior staff were standing on the observation platform, watching the landings when the first gangway connection began spilling out people one level below. Several Star Force personnel were the first ones out, followed by a line of handcuffed prisoners dressed in an assortment of civilian clothes.

One of the Star Force reps was directed up the stairs to the open air platform by an American officer on the deck, and soon the thin man was standing before Akerson.

“General,” he greeted with a nod and a data chip. “Here’s the head count.”

“And you are?” Akerson asked as one of his subordinates stepped forward and took the chip.

“Greg.”

“Just Greg?”

“Greg-073,” the trailblazer clarified.

“What’s that, a Star Force service number?” he asked, curious to see what Star Force’s idea of a military really was.

“Something like that,” Greg answered.

The Major standing to Akerson’s left frowned as he stared at the man, then his eyes widened. “You’re an Archon?”

Greg turned his head and stared at the man for a long second. “Kudos to your intelligence service. I didn’t think word would get around this fast.”

“Apparently not fast enough,” Akerson said, a bit miffed. “What are you talking about?”

“Sorry, sir. There was a report from civilian survivors of the Lunar attack that there were some sort of super-soldiers that had saved them from the Chinese. One of them dropped the name Archon, but we haven’t gotten any confirmation past that.”

“Then let me save you some time,” Greg offered. “The Archons are Star Force’s military commanders. When the Chinese overwhelmed our security forces we went in and repelled them personally, myself included. And I am more than happy to get this scum off our hands,” he said, referring to the prisoners that were being corralled into groups waiting for processing before being led out of the building under guard to waiting buses that would ferry them off into the city, and from there to wherever the Americans had planned for their eventual trip back to China.

Akerson sized the shorter man up. He guessed he weighed about 175 lbs and stood just over 6 foot tall, but his build was deceptively small. Underneath the man’s red striped white uniform he could see several pressure points that indicated a muscular physique without the bulk of a body builder…and based on the way he leapt up the stairs the General imagined his speed was abnormally high, but super-soldier was stretching it. He doubted the man was anything more than a special forces caliber soldier, and nothing the Army’s own Delta Force couldn’t handle.

“That’s what we’re here for,” Akerson said. “Tell me, how bad was the fighting up there? We haven’t heard much, but it looks like the Chinese hit you pretty hard.”

“It was a serious attempt to seize the moon, and a lot of people were killed in the first few hours,” Greg explained, “Star Force personnel and tourists. They did a lot of damage until we got there, then it took a while to push them back. All of it was indoors, so I’m not sure how high that rates on your scale of heavy action.”

“How many did you lose?”

“4,219 dead, counting tourists.”

“That’s worse than I heard,” the General admitted. “How many from your unit?”

“None.”

“None?” Akerson asked, not believing it.

“No Archons died in the fighting,” Greg clarified, “but we did lose a lot of security personnel.”

“Forgive me for being curious, but when you say you were in the fighting, do you mean personally, hand to hand, or leading the fight from a command post?”

“Hand to hand.”

Akerson eyed him again. “You must be a lot stronger than you look, son.”

“I am,” Greg said evenly.

The General’s throat caught for a moment, unsure what to say. “How many of you are there?”

“Several hundred,” Greg answered without giving specifics. “Are you going to have enough cars for all of them, or do we need to establish a holding area?”

“The buses will run a continuous circuit until all the prisoners are relocated. We were told to expect 8,000. Is that number accurate?”

“8,507…including the nonmilitary personnel from their Lunar cities.”

“We shouldn’t have a problem then. Tell me, how did you manage to take so many prisoner? How many did they hit you with?”

Greg smiled. “Professional secret. I’ll let your intelligence division earn their pay on that one. As for how many they hit us with, there were less than 100 Chinese casualties on the ground, we took almost all of them prisoner. The number of those killed in space is impossible to determine.”

“Not sure I would have been so forgiving if our situations were reversed.”

“We went there to neutralize the threat,” Greg explained, “not to take prisoners. This is just the way it worked out.”

“Space combat is new to us, but my urban fighting experience suggests a high casualty count where resistance is heavy.”

“Less streets, more hallways,” Greg offered as the second dropship connected to the terminal and began offloading personnel as the first one was just finishing up.

Suddenly the American troops waiting at the entryway tensed, half raising their weapons at something underneath the General’s and Greg’s feet, down where they couldn’t see, given that the gangway was situated directly underneath them.

Akerson frowned and walked forward to the railing, glancing down at another line of prisoners dressed in civilian clothes…and a huge figure dressed in all white armor, complete with helmet and sword. “Good Lord, is that one of your men?”

“We wanted a guard on each dropship, to discourage trouble.”

“You use full body armor?”

“Yes…we don’t trust the enemy to shoot where we want them to.”

“Can I assume that’s a criticism of our vests?”

“What if they shoot you in the face?” Greg answered pithily.

Akerson tore his eye line away from the Knight and looked squarely at Greg. “His visor is bulletproof?”

“Against a few small rounds, yes.”

“Must be damn expensive.”

“That’s not a problem for us.”

Akerson grunted in appreciation. “I hear Star Force’s GDP rivals that of Russia now?”

“Not yet, but we’ll get there eventually.”

“You wear the same armor in combat?”

“Mine’s a bit smaller than his.”

“How much does it slow you down?”

“They double as spacesuits until they’re hit, which gives you more mobility in certain situations, but as far as reflex speed, the dip is significant but worth the payoff.”

“They have an air tank?” the General asked, looking down on the Knight as he watched the passing prisoners motionlessly, ready to snap into action at the first sign of trouble. After their earlier experience with the Knights, the prisoners knew better than to try anything and quietly allowed themselves to be corralled, cataloged, and escorted out of the building now free of their shackles.

“A small internal unit, good for a few minutes. Means that if a section depressurizes we’re not killed instantly.”

“Hmmn, not something that we have to worry about down here, but I imagine it’s a constant concern in space.”

“Depends how sturdy you build your infrastructure.”

Akerson turned to his aid. “Major, where are we?”

“272 processed. All match with ids supplied by the Chinese,” he said, monitoring the cataloging occurring on the deck via a handheld computer giving him a running tally on the transfer.

“Ah, we’re going to be here a while then. Somebody grab me a coffee. Would you like anything?”

“Never touch the stuff,” Greg said, patiently watching the prisoners over the railing where they were being filed through 8 checkpoints. Once on the other side they were technically in American hands, though still inside a Star Force spaceport.

He and the Knights stayed until all of the prisoners and American troops were off Star Force property, just in case something got out of hand, though no problems occurred. The handover went smoothly, with no press coverage and a minimal impact on the spaceport. When the closed terminal was reopened some 7 hours later, it officially put an end to the brief conflict between China and Star Force that became known in media circles as the Lunar War.

China bore its Star Force ban with disinterest, redoubling its orbital expenditures to the delight of rival corporations who had seen anemic earnings given Davis’s virtual monopoly over the orbital economy. With the influx of revenue those rivals would triple in number and skill, creating the first true corporate opposition over the coming years, but in volume only. Star Force had an ever increasing technology gap that bore no heed to patent limitations, and continually turned a blind eye to all lawsuits attempting to force them to turn over technology for public use, reiterating their independent status which bore heed to no nation’s laws.

Given that Star Force was so large and powerful…and contingent to the varying nations’ colonization plans…no serious attempts at forcing their hand manifested themselves outside of the impotent courts.

China held itself to the disarmament dictate, sensing that Davis’s threat to deny them any and all space travel was legitimate, but toed the line skillfully, pressing civilian expansion hard and carving out a niche in Earth’s orbital economy in an attempt to reassert its power through the social, political, and corporate angles, conceding the military dynamic. It was a new approach for the belligerent nation, and spawned a new divide in the geopolitic.

Together with Sudan, North Korea, and Pakistan, China forged an economic alliance that sought to take a bite out of Star Force’s monopoly, though their allies still did business with the mega corporation and fielded their own militaries, which were encouraged to beef up to sufficient levels to protect the Chinese via alliance if any fleet other than Star Force’s sought to press their advantage.

Dancing around the ban artfully, the alliance coalesced into the focal point for all those opposed to Star Force’s dominance, with the exiled Chinese pulling as much influence and resources away from them as they could. It was a futile effort, if it was devised to hurt Star Force’s financial situation, but it did offer the first viable path in competition to what Davis had laid out for the planet to follow, which was socially significant.

Though China had lost the Lunar War, and lost it badly, historians would point to this loss as the birth of the Star Force opposition movement, which would result in an even greater diplomatic largess for China in the coming years.

10

November 5, 2061

The luminous sign over the boarding gate switched off the red ‘closed’ marker and transformed into the brightly lit green ‘boarding’ status, with dozens of surrounding people beginning to move in response, floating out of their seats and slowly making their way toward the docked starship.

One of his coworkers pointed back over Terry Anderson’s shoulder and the engineer turned to follow the prompt.

“That’s us,” he announced to the dark green uniformed foursome seated in one of the starport’s hanging tables, midway up the gigantic, cube-like receiving area. He reached down and undid the latch across his legs and released himself to free float along with the others, then grabbed the nearest handhold and pulled himself ‘down’ towards the gate, though in the zero g room there was really no up or down, save for the orientation of the display screens.

Every single person in the room made their way across what was essentially an empty receiving area and headed into the transition terminal, then across a short umbilical into the waiting starship. The starport was so new that it hadn’t been opened to the public yet, and without the throngs of civilians going every which way with hundreds of different agendas, the grandiose architecture of the Star Force installation seemed eerily silent.

Terry and the rest of the engineers tagged as the primary excursion team for the upcoming mission had also been prime team on the construction of this starport’s twin…situated 180 degrees around the orbital track and sitting on a straight line that passed through Earth, with the small planet blocking line of sight communications, though with the ever growing Star Force communications infrastructure that was never conceivably going to be a problem.

Star Force on a whole was growing exponentially, with the nations of Earth following suit, albeit at a much slower pace. The inner orbital tracks were filling up with installations quickly, with only Star Force’s enforced placement mandates keeping the whole mess from becoming a navigational hazard. As engine capabilities improved and more and more stations were needing to be constructed, the range of Earth’s colonization efforts began to stretch out, with the need for an external starport arising, given that maneuvering all the way down to low orbit was fast becoming a tedious and time consuming endeavor.

The two brand new inter-planetary starports had been placed on opposite sides of zone 13, at 675,000 km and the nearest zone of high orbit. Star Force marked Earth’s micro-system in 15 zones, ending at 1 million km, with a catchall zone 16 for everything beyond that. The clandestine military shipyard that had built Star Force’s military fleet sat at 650,000 km, previously making it the furthest reaching orbital installation, though now it was within the ‘civilian window’ and officially on the public charts.

Its existence was a moot point now, given that the existence of the fleet had been revealed and all of Star Force’s shipyards were now able to visibly construct warships. The command slip hadn’t been replicated, but to date the second gigantic starship under construction was being held up in anticipation of a new breakthrough in plasma engine research, so little work was being done there, though the nearby regular shipyard was still cranking out warships as fast as it could get the resources allocated.

 Star Force had plans for more clandestine facilities, but they were going to have to be built elsewhere, as the public awareness began to push further and further out from Earth. Construction in the higher orbits wasn’t off the table, but it was time for Star Force to push its boundaries again…before the colonization creep filled in what had once been considered the ‘frontier.’

To that end the inter-planetary starports had been built, in part to denote an outer boundary to Earth’s orbital colonization efforts, as well as to facilitate the transit from one planet to another. The reason for having two was that any ship arriving to Earth wouldn’t have to cut across the orbital traffic of the lower zones to get to the starport currently on the other side of the planet during its 63 day orbit. With two spaced directly opposite each other, at least one would always be within line of sight, allowing for high speed decelerations directly up to the star-shaped starport.

The space station was the largest constructed yet…not counting the Orion. It had a massive flat disc at the center housing two opposite rotating gravity sections, circled by a ring of zero gravity levels, then six massive pylons stretching out to create the sunburst motif. Each pylon held an enormous amount of cargo storage, with some bays large enough to accommodate small starships, as well as the docking mechanisms for multiple attachments.

Currently all six of the pylons were in use, connected to the six inter-planetary starships readying to depart. A cluster of smaller starships were docked nearby, offloading cargo into the station before making runs back down the orbital ladder to pick up additional loads and bring them back out, ferrying supplies…and eventually people…out to the starport, establishing the facility’s link to the Star Force transportation grid.

When Terry and the others passed into the zero gravity section of the Cobra-class starship they were met by a dark blue uniformed rep and led down a series of halls until they came to the central column of the ship and were handed off to other ship’s personnel that took the passengers out through the sides of the column and into the massive gravity cylinders where they were given small, individual cabins for their longer than usual trip.

Altogether, the inside of the ship reminded Terry of the passenger transports that Star Force used to move personnel around, save for the lack of seats. Normally there would be large, theater like seats supported by auxiliary areas for the multi-hour trips, but this ship had been designed with longer transits in mind, meaning that Terry had a small bunk, video screen, desk, and closet to himself, with dozens of identical rooms packed alongside each other around the circumference of the cylinder.

When he got inside cabin 58 he saw that his luggage had already been delivered, resting inside his duffel on top of his bed. There was about 3 square meters of floor space running along the length of the bed, with the TV imbedded into the opposite wall. Terry sat down and leaned back, finding a backrest across the bunk, meaning that it was designed with the dual purpose of sleeping and functioning as a chair.

The engineer quickly discovered the pull down armrests, with the screen remote built in. He experimented with the device, looking through the available menus and finding a library of movies and TV series that he could watch, along with the time-stamped news broadcasts coming out from Earth in packet form, due to the signal lag. The ship’s computer would record and store the data stream as it came in, then make it available a few seconds later through ‘delayed broadcast’ or store it away for passengers to look through later, making for a visual newspaper of daily events.

After two minutes of exploring the limited living space, Terry walked out the lockless door and headed for one of the commons areas, which included restroom/shower facilities, cafeteria, a series of small lounges and game rooms, and a physical training area. Terry opted to head over to the cafeteria to grab a bite to eat, finding a few dozen of his fellow engineering team and ship’s crew had the same idea, but otherwise the massive commons area was empty, much as the starport had been.

Terry lingered there for the better part of an hour before a warning klaxon sounded, with the cafeteria workers springing into action to lock down the food serving areas and get everything secure. Retractable panels started to come down, closing kiosk after kiosk, and those remaining ship’s personnel began to walk out, while the engineers looked about quizzically.

“Acceleration warning,” a purple uniformed female officer offered as she walked by. “Commons areas are going to be locked down for a while. Best place to ride it out is your cabin or one of the lounges.”

“Are the restrooms going to be locked down?” someone beside Terry asked.

The woman half laughed. “Out of necessity, no, but unless you really have to go I wouldn’t recommend trying it,” she said, walking off.

Terry noted that a countdown clock had manifested itself at various places around the room, with just under 5 minutes till completion.

Taking the woman’s advice, Terry headed back to his cabin, making one quick stop in the restroom on the way, and slid into his chair with just under a minute remaining, as noted on another clock just above his video screen. He flipped on the TV and selected a movie to watch, noting when the countdown expired.

A moment later he felt a sudden lurch, with his body being pressed back into his seat as if he was sitting in a car accelerating down the road. Fortunately his chair was aligned with the axis of thrust, so it caused him little discomfort, though the sensation didn’t abate. It felt like the gravitational plane had shifted, and his body quickly adjusted to the difference. In fact, he eventually forgot about it entirely…until he tried to stand up after the movie was over and fell sideways onto his bed, rolling partway up the wall.

“Right,” he said, reminding himself to be more aware. He got an arm under him and pushed off, then rolled out of bed and stood up, leaning heavily towards the video screen. Wanting to stretch his legs a bit, Terry opened his door and walked outside, grabbing a useful handrail imbedded in a shallow cavity inside the wall so as not to protrude into the walkway.

Leaning forward comically he walked a bit, establishing a rhythm and cadence that was functional as he climbed ‘uphill’ until he eventually came to a cross hallway that had a 45 degree angle at the intersection of wall and floor that allowed him to walk almost normally…though he was stuck out sideways as far as the orientation of the corridor was concerned.

Terry made several laps, getting the feel for fighting the acceleration and exploring the dynamics of it from an engineer’s point of view until he eventually ended up at one of the lounges.

“Nice acceleration she’s got,” one of his colleagues commented as Terry walked inside, looking for all the world like he was leaning into a stiff wind.

“Tolerable,” he declared before grabbing an open chair, which thankfully was bolted into the floor.

“I don’t know, I’m starting to get a headache,” another engineer said, squeezing his eyes in obvious discomfort.

One of the ship’s crew nearby overhead the comment and gestured to another in an aqua-colored uniform. The man pointed to the reclining engineer and the other nodded in confirmation.

“Having some trouble?” the man asked, sliding over and down to a knee next to the man with the headache.

“A little,” he admitted. “I think the angle is throwing me off.”

“What’s your name?” the medic asked.

“Preston Cooper.”

“Well, Preston. If you’re up for a little walk, I think I can help you out. You’re not the first person to have acceleration sickness, and won’t be the last.”

“How?”

“Follow me and I’ll show you,” he urged, standing up and walking sideways to the nearest door.

“Come on,” Terry said, offering Preston his hand. “I’ll go with you.”

“Alright…but be warned, my stomach doesn’t feel too stable.”

“Slow steps,” the medic suggested, waiting patiently. When the two engineers finally got to him and left the lounge, he led them down into the central column, only to find that it was blocked off by security doors.

“Down here,” the medic said, showing them to another door that opened into a small elevator car. “During acceleration the hallway would be a death trap, so we’ve got this elevator to use,” he said, clicking one of the level buttons.

“I’m starting to feel better already,” Preston commented as the door closed, then thought better about having made the comment as the elevator seemed to drop out beneath his feet. The sensation only lasted a few seconds, then the door opened up again, revealing the slowly rotating access point into the zero gravity section of the ship.

Terry walked across the small circular floor to the hole in the center, where he found a slowly revolving ladder with hazard lights on top. The medic went down feet first, then waited for them some four meters below.

“There now, you should be able to get your feet under you. We have a small room down there for those who can’t handle the binary gravity. You’ve only got about half a g to worry about down here, and from one constant angle,” he explained as they walked to the nearby lounge, which was completely empty, though designed to hold upwards of 30 occupants.

Preston walked over to one of the lounge chairs and sat down, feeling his head buzz, but it was a good buzz, and within a few minutes of reaching equilibrium he was back to feeling normal.

“You’re probably wondering why we don’t halt the gravity spin altogether?” the medic asked as the three of them began watching packeted newscasts.

“We know why,” Terry commented, tugging at the dark green fabric of his uniform.

The medic inclined his chin. “Ah, techs. Of course.”

“Engineers, actually,” Terry corrected him.

“What’s the difference?”

Terry pointed to the thin gold stripes running the length of his sleeves and legs. “Techs are trained to handle existing equipment within established parameters, kind of like maintenance personnel. Engineers build new equipment.”

“Or troubleshoot,” Preston added.

“Or troubleshoot,” Terry repeated. “We have to know what’s happening and why. Techs just have to follow instructions.”

“So that earns you the gold stripes,” the medic mused. With so many Star Force uniform varieties he’d never learned the intricacies of all of them.

“One gold stripe. The other two we had to earn. The more stripes, the more experienced you are. Three denotes a prime crew.”

“Prime being what?”

“We build the important stuff,” Preston commented, his attention half on the conversation and half on the newsfeeds.

“We also get the prototypes, which is why we were assigned to this mission. Once we get the starport built, the lower level engineers can study our results and replicate the process.”

“First build away from Earth then?”

“Gotta make sure we get it right the first time,” Preston said, turning to face the medic. “Feeling much better, by the way. Thanks.”

“That’s why I’m posted here,” the man said with a casual smile. “You’ll get adjusted eventually if you keep spending small chunks of time in and out. I’ll even bet you’ll be acclimated by the end of the return trip.”

“Actually, we won’t be returning to Earth orbit any time soon,” Terry commented. “We’ve got a lot of building to do.”

“I imagine you do. In that case, find a ship’s medic on your return trip and they’ll show you how to get to one of these rooms until you do make the adjustment.”

Eleven days later the Cobra arrived in low Mars orbit along with 5 other inter-planetary starships, all flown by remote pilots onboard the personnel transport. All six ships were the same size, each a third larger than a Jaguar, with the difference being that only the personnel transport had the gravity cylinders, while the drone ships had additional zero g cargo bays to hold more than 3x the supplies onboard Terry’s ship, which looked like an elongated blockade runner from Star Wars with the two gravity cylinders stacked end on end in the middle/front of the ship behind a hammerhead zero g front portion.

The aft of the ship contained the cargo containers, ample fuel supply, and engine bank, which held a cluster of Star Force’s most powerful plasma engines, which were needed to get the inter-planetary starship up to sufficient speed to travel from one micro-system to another in a matter of days as opposed to the months it had taken the first American expedition to reach Mars.

The other four Cobra variants, designated as Cobra-B’s, had additional cargo compartments where the gravity cylinders were missing all the way up to the hammerhead forward module, which was covered in thick armor plating to catch or deflect small scale debris impacts resulting from the higher speeds of travel the ship was capable of.

While from a mathematical perspective speed was technically a relative measurement, within the presence of a gravity well all matter tended to move within a certain range, with those traveling faster eventually leaving the orbital tracks and flying off into interstellar space while those moving slower would eventually be swallowed up by the well itself.

Most material in orbit around Sol was traveling in the same speed band, meaning that the faster the starships traveled, the greater the speed of collision with dust, sand, or even pebble-sized debris…which could do serious damage to the hull of a lightly armored ship.

To diminish those odds, the hammerhead ‘plows’ had been created to take the brunt of the impacts, with no critical systems being built directly behind the armor. Instead there were only redundant systems, which the ship could afford to lose if the armor was breached, making the whole forward section of the ship expendable in order to protect the lighter armored sections further aft.

One drawback of the design was the fact that when arriving at a destination the ship had to flip over and face engine-first in order to decelerate. Because of this there was additional armor surrounding the engines, but it was impossible to cover the exhaust vents themselves, though it was theorized that exhaust plume would interfere with debris well ahead of the ship, given that it would expand out for hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers with sufficient mass to impact and deflect potential debris away from the ship’s flight line.

Given that was a best-case scenario, the Cobra-class ships were equipped with 18 plasma engines, ensuring that even if some became damaged, there would be others left operational to navigate with.

No such crippling incidents occurred on the journey out though, and Star Force made its first presence in Mars orbit an inspiring one. After having decelerated from their transit speeds at considerable time gaps between ships, all six rendezvoused together over the red planet and the engineers boarded small work craft and transitioned over to the drone ships to begin offloading prefab segments of what was going to be the first Martian starport.

A few of the engineering skiffs made their way over to the oddball of the drone ships, designated as a Cobra-C. Whereas its twins were full of cargo compartments, this inter-planetary starship had an empty section on the neck of the craft, just behind the protective hammerhead, where another pair of smaller starships had been attached.

Two unmanned Cougars were lashed onto the rigid frame of the Cobra and had ridden piggyback all the way to Mars to be used as orbital starships in Mars’s micro-system, rather than having to wait the agonizingly long time for a Martian shipyard to be constructed or attempt to send them on a slow trip between planets with low fuel reserves. To the Cobra, they were just more dead cargo weight, which its engines were more than able to haul about, allowing the smaller ships to leapfrog the inter-planetary doldrums and make the hop over to Mars in style.

Once the engineers had freed the Cougars from their shackles and powered up the ships, their naval crews transferred over and took command, then began assisting the engineers with the towing of the larger prefab facilities and components, arranging them into orbital slots for storage or use as the prime engineering team began assembling the pieces and having to construct other ones from raw materials shipped over, forging support beams in small orbital factories and cutting down others for the fits they needed.

All in all, the moment Star Force arrived at Mars it launched into a fury of activity…none of which so much as touched the thin atmosphere of the planet, let alone the surface. That would remain the case until the starport was fully constructed and the transportation link from Earth’s micro-system and Mars’s was established, with regular inter-planetary ferries bringing in the people and materials needed.

That occurred some three and a half months later, with two Cobra-C’s hauling over a small fleet of Martian dropships, designed aerodynamically to fly through the planet’s atmosphere, which was 0.6% the density of Earth’s, but still far too thick for a zero atmosphere dropship like those used on Luna…and too thin for the short winged craft used on Earth.

The Martian dropships were designed as wide bodied wings, with a much higher surface area/weight ratio than Earth dropships. They had both air breathing and vacuum engines, but did not use a lift cradle for the initial liftoff from the surface, given that the planet’s gravity was .37 g. The giant ‘boomerangs’ did require runways to take off and land, though with modification could be configured for light cargo runs using vertical takeoff chemical engines, which were put into use for the first few landings until the engineers got the first makeshift runway constructed.

Once the dropship flow began, the construction of the first Martian spaceport followed, establishing a conduit to space on the red planet. After that point, with the surface of Earth and the surface of Mars accessible to each other via Star Force’s transportation network, all a person had to do was buy a ticket to travel to another world…opening up space travel to the public in a whole new dynamic.

The worldwide reception of Star Force’s expansion to Mars was met with mixed reviews. The anti-Star Force crowd used it as an example of the corporation’s already too powerful position growing by leaps and bounds, with renewed calls for international pressure to place all spaceborn operations under the UN’s mantle.

Star Force supporters hailed the milestone as an example of what Humanity was capable of, with great ambitions for the future colonization of the planet and the upcoming territorial allotments that Davis had promised would follow.

Everyone though, sensed opportunity in the wings, and began positioning themselves to pursue their national or private agendas, with most of the players involved realizing that they relied too much on Star Force business to ever conceive of bringing the mega corporation to an end. Davis’s near monopoly had become a force of nature, something to work around, against, or with…but not something that could be lived without. Like it or not, Earth needed Star Force’s technology, experience, and funding to continue the colonization of space.

The calls for UN oversight eventually died out, and business continued on as usual.

The US Secretary of Defense was of a different mind, however, and continued to pressure President Jamison to legally prosecute the corporation for a myriad of American legal violations. The Star Force expansion to Mars resulted in a very heated debate in the oval office, with Jamison refusing to accede that Star Force denoted a clear and present danger to American sovereignty and security. The meeting ended with Mr. Mendez cursing him for being a sell out after he resigned his position and left the White House bellowing at whoever had the unfortunate timing to be in his way.

The following week Mendez filed with the opposition political party and announced that he would be making a run for the Presidency on an anti-Star Force platform in the next election, three years away.

Deception

1

October 2, 2092

“Report,” Paul ordered as he stepped into the fleet command center, mug in hand. He sipped at the thick, syrupy concoction that the Archons had developed in conjunction with the Star Force nutritional scientists to be a low volume, high calorie replenishment option for between and during workouts when they couldn’t afford to fill their stomachs full of food. Over the years, as their bodies grew stronger and their workouts became more and more intense, eating had become an increasing priority…as well as a constant nag. The ‘Vivariquum’ had been one of their ideas to counter the problem.

The command center was one large open room, with what looked like smooth boulders sticking up from the floor in orderly fashion to form workstations. Spread throughout were monitors on the walls, tabletops, and even an accurate and updating model of the Solar system floating in holographic splendor over a prototype generator, backwards engineered from the tech found in Antarctica. The image was grainy, with a lot of static and interruptions in the luminal transmission, but the valuable 3d perspective had warranted the inclusion of the prototype in the command center, even if it wasn’t ready for general distribution.

Paul glanced up at the flashing icon on the hologram, nearby Mars, as he walked over to one of the 36 manned stations.

“It’s the Aussies,” Parker-834 said, pulling up the distress call for Paul to read.

“Damn,” Paul whispered as the rest of the fleet control staff went about their routine business, most of whom were not Archons. “So much for a successful first run.”

“Could be worse,” Parker pointed out.

“Do we have their transponder?”

“Yes,” the level 4 adept said, bringing the location up on one of three theater-like wall screens. The prototype inter-planetary starship was the first such non-Star Force vessel attempted to be built by the nations of Earth, and though it wasn’t publically known Star Force had unofficially sent one of their engineers to observe the design project and nudge the Aussies in the right direction.

Of all the space-faring nations, Australia wasn’t the most powerful. The Americans held a slight advantage over the field, with Russia running a close second, in terms of territories acquired and the size of their military and civilian fleets. After that pairing the Brazilians held a solid third, with the Japanese not far behind, and the Aussies coming in 5th, with approximately 60% of the Americans’ powerscore, as Star Force measured them by.

Such a ranking was a significant achievement for the nation, given that it didn’t have the financial reserves of the 1st world countries, but what they did have was an eagerness to learn, and had taken Star Force’s generous advice to the letter and built up a sizeable offworld economy that actually exceeded that of Australia’s Earth-based economy by a factor of three. Of all the nations, Australia had devoted the largest percent of its GDP to the colonization efforts, tapping out at 58% during the 2060s. They’d been largely criticized for risking so much, but it had paid off in spades and their space-based colonies had elevated them to a major player, both economically and militarily, in the ongoing colonization push.

While Star Force sold starships freely, it had not yet put inter-planetary starships on the market, meaning that all movement away from Earth’s micro-system either had to be accomplished through the Star Force transit network or by using inferior designs from competing starship production companies. While a few designs were in fact capable of traveling between the inner planets, they were slow and ponderous, without one truly being able to call itself an inter-planetary starship…though the rival marketing divisions did try to press that point, despite their lack of sufficient engine power.

Australia had devoted the past 8 years to the project of designing and building their own model, knowing that it would open up greater opportunities if they were able to travel around the system at will, and Davis privately favored the Aussies over the others in the expansion race, but he couldn’t sell them technology that he didn’t offer the others…and in order to maintain control over the expanding colonization efforts, which had already reached Jupiter, he needed Star Force to be able to get to each planetary micro-system ahead of the others, meaning he couldn’t sell the longer-range ships to the Aussies either.

His backdoor solution was the loaning of an engineer to their project, not to give them technology, but to steer them clear of problems while they rose to meet the challenge on their own merits. Given the vast experience of the Star Force engineering corps, even a few nudges here and there had proven extensively helpful to the Aussies.

The ship that had transmitted the distress call was the prototype Aussie vessel, labeled Stargazer-class. It was oversized, heavy, and a third slower than the Star Force vessels, but according to specs it was a true inter-planetary starship…one that had made a significant fuel burn calculation error.

According to the detailed distress call, the ship had successfully ramped up to speed heading away from Earth enroute to Mars, endured its coast phase without incident, then flipped over and began its breaking burn…only to find that it didn’t arrive in the Mars micro-system, but rather just outside it and moving away at significant speed, headed back towards Earth.

“We can try to send a refueler after it,” Parker commented, “but with its latent speed, it’s going to be a distant catch.”

Paul nodded, looking at the projected intercept point and agreeing that wasn’t the best course of action.

“We’ll deploy a Cobra from here and intercept in the doldrums,” Paul decided, referring to the gravitationally weak areas that separated the planets, otherwise known as inter-planetary space where ships orbited the Sun rather than a local planet or moon. “Take an engineer and go with them. Track down the error and see that they get to Mars safely.”

Parker’s eyebrows rose slightly. “You want me to go?”

“You do want a field assignment?”

“Of course I do, but isn’t this something that the ship’s captain can handle? I didn’t think you’d want to pull an Archon away from training.”

“It’s an unfamiliar situation that requires some troubleshooting. The Cobra’s captain and an engineering crew could probably handle the problem, but I want you to go along to make sure there aren’t any more surprises. Last thing we need is the ship running through the Mars orbital bands and hoping it doesn’t hit any stations.”

“When you put it that way…” Parker said, swinging out of his chair and walking off happily.

Paul set his mug down and slid into Parker’s seat, issuing the appropriate orders to the few ships they had in Venus orbit, two of which were Cobras. He selected the Cobra-B and ordered two of the nearby tankers to transfer over additional fuel for delivery to the Aussie Stargazer, which also used hydrogen-based plasma engines.

By the time Parker got up to them, they should be halfway through with the transfer and ready to depart not soon after.

The Archon adept took to his solo assignment eagerly, packing a duffel with a variety of items that he’d need during the trip that the Cobra compliment couldn’t provide, such as ambrosia wafers, and headed out of the fleet command center via elevator across to the adjacent spaceport on the painfully hot surface of Venus. It serviced three other spur facilities, all of which were Star Force colonies, making the massive complex look like a four leaf clover sitting at the bottom of an ocean of thick air.

It was the largest of three facilities on the planet, with the two smaller ones having been built to construct the colony. To date, Venus was closed to the public. Not even the starport in orbit was accessible, making the planet a Star Force only zone. The other nations were a bit peeved at that decree, but no major protest resulted, given that the planet was useless to them. The atmospheric pressure was 92 times greater than that of Earth’s, making Venus seem like a baby gas giant, though the planet itself was almost identical in size to its habitable twin.

With a mass and radius coming in just under that of Earth by a few percent, the planet would have seemed the perfect location for a colony, far better even than Mars, which was now home to more than 5 million colonists from varying countries…except that the surface temperature was above 800 degrees Fahrenheit, twice as hot as a kitchen oven. In addition there were high winds, stronger than any seen on Earth, along with cloud layers containing sulfuric acid. Not to mention that even the gentlest of wind, given the atmospheric density, would toss you about like a rag doll.

Not exactly an ideal vacation spot, let alone someplace that you’d want to construct a colony.

Star Force, however, liked a challenge, and in addition to the planet’s natural resources there was something that Venus had that both Davis and the Archons wanted badly.

Gravity.

Venus’s gravity was 90% that of Earth’s, compared with the 37% that was Mars, the 16% on Luna, and the 2.8% on Ceres. Mercury measured up at 37%, matching that of Mars but with a much smaller radius, achieving its gravity through denser ores and metals, making it an enticing mining target, though no nation had yet been brave enough to attempt a landing. Even Star Force had chosen to tackle the challenge of Venus first, while currently planning out their excursion to the inner planet, which saw vast temperature swings from night to day, due to its almost nonexistent atmosphere and being so close to the system’s star.

Ironically, Venus’s surface temperature was hotter than that of Mercury, and surprisingly stable, due to the blanketing effect of its atmospheric clouds. And while the intense heat was certainly a challenge, varying parameters were more problematic, and the surface of Venus was anything but. The temperatures were high but stable, the winds were low and the air was clear, giving dramatic video-related panoramic displays of the desolate, rocky landscape under yellow skies to those living in the colonies and fleet command center, giving the deceptive appearance that the surface was habitable.

Walk out onto the surface though, and it’d be a tossup whether the pressure, heat, or lack of oxygen would kill you first.

Parker boarded a large, needle-like dropship that flew up from the surface on sharp, stubby wings, punching through the thick atmosphere and up into the turbulent winds and cloud cover that surrounded the planet at the upper altitudes. The hull of the dropship was heavily reinforced and ultra-aerodynamic, but it was still pushed around a great deal on the way up, only able to seriously accelerate once it had reached sufficient altitude and the atmosphere began to thin out.

Using internally fed rocket engines, the dropship accelerated up to orbital speed, eventually docking with the corresponding starport and depositing its passenger, along with some odd cargo that had been sent along on the spur of the moment. From there Parker flew out to the parked Cobra via a Cougar-class ferry, passing by the enormous solar arrays in orbit that harvested the intense light from Sol, transferring the electricity produced into the water stores, breaking them apart into hydrogen and oxygen and making for the largest fuel production facilities Star Force had created to date, surpassing even those around Earth.

Venus orbit was also resplendent with a number of small shipyards and other production facilities…all raw infrastructure with none of the extravagant, public-pleasing tourist and habitation stations that populated the orbits of both Earth and Mars. For Star Force, Venus was a work zone, with the three colonies on the surface inhabited purely by Star Force personnel, as both a base of operations to begin expanding Venus surface operations, as well as a test bed for project Canderous…something that Paul, Sara, and Davis had been diligently working on for the past two years.

Once onboard the Cobra, Parker assumed command of the mission and watched the video screens from the bridge as the inter-planetary starship slowly accelerated away from Venus, with the white/brown cloudy planet shrinking behind them and the small, but distinct red planet visible ahead. Currently the two planets were nearing orbital passing, making them geographically closer to each other than to Earth, and meaning that the rescue ship would only take a day to arrive, assuming it was going to waste fuel accelerating rapidly, then turning around shortly thereafter for a subsequent braking burn…which is exactly what Parker ordered.

With the help of the ship’s computer, the Cobra’s bridge crew plotted out the short trip and designated a rendezvous point with the now ballistic Stargazer. Confident that their math was accurate, Parker left the bridge and occupied his time with a few limited training exercises in lieu of the facilities that he no longer had access to.

Keeping an eye on the clock, Parker caught a quick nap and headed back up to the bridge before the Captain could call for him, wanting to get an update and radar lock on the target before they got too close.

A subsequent text message came in from the Aussies, reconfirming their status and position, along with a pulse from their transponder up beyond normal intensity to emphasize the point. Parker smiled at the unnecessary gesture…Star Force protocols mandated a power rating more than sufficient for this close a range on all transponders, with an extra large one for inter-planetary starships, given that their range of operation would make them more difficult to ‘see’ at distance.

The Stargazer was the first non Star Force ship to carry the enhanced model, and it was already over the top powerful for short range. Yet one more reminder of the inexperience of the Aussie crew. They still had a long way to go yet before they could be labeled competent.

“Position fix established,” the Cobra’s captain confirmed. “How aggressive an approach do you want?”

“How good’s your pilot?” Parker challenged.

The man at the helm turned around and frowned professionally.

“Good enough,” the Captain answered diplomatically.

Parker turned to face the man. “Make it quick, but if you scratch the paint I’ll throw you out an airlock.”

The Captain laughed heavily, and even the pilot cracked a smile before goosing the engines into a brief, but heavy burst, angling the ship in towards its out of fuel sister ship. Given that their engines weren’t as efficient, the Aussies had only enough fuel reserves for a 1-way trip to Mars, whereupon they would refuel from their own depot in planetary orbit.

Once both ships met up, Parker and the engineer transferred over to the Stargazer to assess where the problem had occurred while long refueling lines stretched out from the cargo sections of the Cobra and began depositing enough fuel into the Australian ship to get them over to Mars within a day’s time…which the Aussie’s would be charged for.

It took all of three minutes for Parker and the engineer to locate the problem…or rather, half the problem, with the engineer heading off to check the status of varying components on the ship in order to track down the other half.

Star Force protocol required all starships to maintain a 10% calculated fuel reserve whenever plotting out trips. How much fuel they had available then dictated how fast they had the option of moving. More fuel meant more available thrust and a quicker transit time. Less meant more coasting and little accelerating. Either way, the reserve was meant to cover any discrepancies in calculations as well as to keep a buffer for unexpected maneuvering, which usually involved steering around infrastructure near the arrival point.

The Aussies had calculated a 1% reserve, so when the ship wasn’t able to make it to Mars for a still unknown reason, they didn’t have enough fuel left to correct the problem…which left them drifting in space.

It was a rookie mistake for sure, and something that no Star Force crew would even think of screwing up, but the Aussies weren’t using Star Force protocols. They’d taken a lot of cues from them, but since they were having to build their own technology they were also having to write their own rulebook for using it, and with that came an annoying trial and error period, working out all the bugs so to speak.

As far as space travel went, having navigational bugs could lead to disastrous collisions…fortunately the Australian prototype had avoided that fate.

Later during the day, the engineer tracked back the source of the navigational error to the transponder system…not the beacon, but the receiver that read all the positions of the other broadcasting ships and stations. Within the software was a program to account for the orbital movements of those transponders and the signal stretching and compression that resulted from it. From that distortion, the relative speed of the source could be determined…in this case, the orbital speed of Mars.

The program had therefore assigned a delayed position for where Mars would be several days into the future as it should have done, but those calculations were based off of the fixed position of Earth, or rather they should have been. The program erroneously used the current position of the ship as the base point, during a time when it was orbiting the Earth in the direction of Mars, thus adding the orbital speed into the calculation.

So, as far as the program was concerned, Mars appeared to be moving slower than it actually was, meaning that when the ship’s fuel load ran dry the planet wasn’t quite where it was expected to be and the preprogrammed braking burn had been too much and too soon, actually sending the ship backwards.

The engineer also discovered several small miscalibrations of the transponder and radar systems which had probably contributed to the navigational snafu, but none of which couldn’t have been corrected by a second burn, had the ship retained enough of a fuel reserve. It was a boneheaded mistake, and one which Parker thoroughly explained to the Captain, who took the criticism well. Technically it hadn’t been an error on his part, but rather on the established Aussie protocols, but he still was ashamed that on the maiden voyage of their prize ship they’d needed to call for help.

Parker and the engineer also took the opportunity to give the Captain a thorough rundown on the changes that needed to be made, both in procedure and software, using the incident to teach the Aussies a bit more than they’d done before. The Captain understood the sleight of hand and made sure to ask as many questions as possible before the two ships departed, gaining quite a bit of technical data to send back home that the ‘observing’ Star Force engineer loaned to them for the project had not been free to share.

The Cobra stopped by Mars orbit on the way out, topping off its fuel tanks before taking a lazy return to Venus, whereupon it deposited Parker and returned to its normal scheduled cargo runs. After all was said and done, the Aussies successfully made the return trip to Earth without incident, establishing themselves as the only entity other than Star Force to possess the capability of regular inter-planetary travel, using that capability and freedom to continue growing the size of their holdings and gaining a leg up on the competition, as well as drawing a lot of business opportunities their way.

A second Stargazer-class ship was completed within the year, and from there on out the Australians would begin chipping away at the powerscores of the big four, eventually rising to challenge the Americans for dominance in the political/economic powergrab the media loosely referred to as the Colony Wars.

2

January 2, 2107

Morgan thrust her hand forward, palm up, and deflected the small ‘thud’ to her left, feeling her hand go numb for a moment, then the tingling sensation of reawakened nerves washed over her skin as the ring she wore sucked the latent stun energy out of her flesh. The Archon ran forward three steps and deflected another with her other hand, cycling between the two to allow her localized nervous system to denumb.

A few more steps and she was behind a large stone column that blocked the firing line of the nearby turrets. As she worked one of her other rings around, pressing against her middle finger with her thumbnail, she saw the thuds slowly rolling across the floor on the deceptively shallow incline and into collection terminals that would redistribute the flexible, golf ball-sized projectiles back up to the turrets. Their absorbent material gave them their characteristic ‘thudding’ noise on impact, and had become one of the upper level training devices used by the Archons.

The current challenge Morgan was running was referred to as ‘rings’ because each finger on her hands contained a metallic band, each with individual purposes. The ones on her index fingers were designed to pull away small amounts of stun energy, allowing her hands to become defensive weapons if used properly, while the one on the middle finger of her left hand contained a command laser.

After getting the setting prepped, Morgan climbed up shallow handholds on the column until she was three meters up in the air and in the line of sight of a receptacle on the far side of the large room, opposite the river-sized disqualification pit bisecting the chamber. A red laser shot out, invisible to the naked eye save for a slight bleeding effect on the ring and the dot on the far wall as she brought it over the target and hit the tiny trigger button.

The receptacle received the command in the laser transmission and moved the final bridge into place.

Steeling herself, Morgan jumped off her perch and landed in a crouch that immediately turned into a sprint across a wide opening that was turret haven. She blocked a few thuds with her hands, but knew that she was going to have to accept some hits, which quickly began to build up as she got to the bridge, slowing her usually fast gait as parts of her legs and back began to go numb.

Each of the thuds had a decent stun charge, though not as much as the stingers did. They weren’t designed to take you out with one hit, but to punish and slow you down for mistakes…or in this case, to prevent someone from finishing the challenge by crossing the bridge and climbing to the top of a pole.

Up until now Morgan had been able to use cover and guile to navigate the course, but this final element was designed to weed out the physically weak by making them take hits and keep moving. All of the Archons had taken too many stun hits to count over their lifetimes, and some of them had begun training to try and develop an immunity. Their efforts had yielded data that Morgan and others had used to diminish the effect a certain amount of stun energy had on their bodies, as well as increase the processing rate for the dispersement of the charges after they’d been hit.

The difficulty in accomplishing such an adaptation was staggering, but Morgan’s stun tolerance had increased by 17%, at least for as long as they’d been measuring. It didn’t mean she could get hit without it affecting her, nor did they expect that would ever be the case, but it did mean that she and some of the others could keep conscious and active a bit longer than everyone else…and this challenge’s finish was one of several scenarios that made them prove it.

When she made it to the bridge, coming at it from the side, she rounded the corner and dove forward, rolling beneath several thuds zipping over her head and coming up shakily to her feet before deflecting another coming at her face with a quick-reacting palm. It went dead, then started to come back to life just as she stepped off the railless bridge and onto a small path that led to the pole with the finish button on top.

She knew the worst was yet to come, but Morgan didn’t hesitate. She was on the clock and needed to beat the benchmark on this challenge to level up, so her mindset was full forward, and if she passed out so be it, but she wasn’t going to make the rookie mistake of hesitating.

With her improved vertical, she leapt up a meter into the air before grabbing hold of the pole with her partially numb hands and climbing it like a rope, taking hit after hit now that she was essentially a stable target.

Her rate of climb slowed to a grind, but she didn’t stop. Her rings kept her hands from completely losing their feel and grip, but the rest of her body suffered, seemingly severed from the rest in a blurry mind’s eye that saw nothing but the pole in front of her.

Suddenly she blinked her eyes open, realizing that she lay sunken into the crash mats at the bottom of the pole, her head swimming as the two tiny rings slowly ate up the stun energy saturating her body.

“Damn it,” she whispered, barely able to move her lips. As her vision cleared and she sat up, she noticed the scoreboard had a set of statistics indicating a completed run.

Morgan looked up at the top of the 12 meter tall pole and frowned. She must have hit the button at the top just before she fell, though she couldn’t remember doing either one.

Her attention turned back to the scoreboard and the time indicated, along with a glowing icon that meant she’d achieved the necessary par 3 score…which also meant she’d just claimed acolyte level 15.

With a sigh she picked herself up and hobbled off the empty course. There were no other Archons nearby to offer congratulations, no staff running the facility or any adepts around wasting time as spectators. Morgan was alone in this particular training chamber in the Earth sanctum and casually walked out, not thinking twice about her accomplishment, other than to start measuring up how much improvement she’d need to make in other areas to reach level 16.

Over the past decades, she’d taken on the mantle of trailblazer of the trailblazers, running up the ability levels far ahead of everyone else and setting the benchmarks they now operated off of. She’d helped create, then achieve the 99 adept levels before ascending to the next rank of ‘Acolyte,’ something that only she’d accomplished to this point, making her the top rated Archon, though there was a tradeoff involved.

In order to surpass the others she’d had to train nonstop, eschewing all the fieldwork. As a result she’d become a recluse within the sanctum, having lived there since its creation and not having gone off planet since the Lunar War. Even her last trip over to Atlantis had been more than 3 years ago.

As insular as that sounded, with the technology afforded them by Star Force she was able to monitor all activity across the star system via the newsfeeds…both the public ones and the private Star Force reports. She kept up to date with everything the Archons were doing, even if she rarely interacted with them. Most of the trailblazers were now stationed off Earth, with only 12 remaining in the primary sanctum on average, and a couple more rotating back and forth from Atlantis. The rest of the facility was filled with the younger generations, all of whom regarded Morgan as a god, which she quickly found irritating.

Only a few of the trailblazers could spar with her now on an even level, and Jason was the only true challenge she had left, but his duties kept him moving about overseeing the Knights and going on training missions. He spent about a third of his time in the sanctum and they teamed up for training whenever applicable, but most of Morgan’s workouts were spent in isolation. She regretted that, but knew she had a duty to the others to push her abilities far past theirs, in order to gain the knowledge and experience of how best to train at a level none of them had ever even dreamed of before.

As it was, she was having to design new equipment and challenges, beat those, then design more, laying the groundwork for those to come after her, allowing them to level up, in theory, faster than she had, all other things being equal, but she missed the camaraderie of those first few years when they were all going through the same basic training together.

When she got into the hallway outside she passed a low level adept, acknowledging her presence with a nod but not wishing to engage in conversation. She headed over to their version of a weight room and drew immediate attention in the crowded facility. All of the equipment was motion based, forcing the users to balance and move along with the weights…no static lifts or other ‘traditional’ weight room monstrosities that bulked one up while killing speed.

Morgan headed over to a small ring with a series of swing weights on a nearby rack. There were no safety nets or cages in place, given that this was a sanctum and the only ones with access were Archons, who should know how to handle the equipment properly. The acolyte picked up one of the medium-sized weights and began swinging the ball/handle combination around to the right then whipped it back across her body and began a very fluid and powerful figure 8 rotation.

 Half the activity in the weight room stopped as their attention was drawn to her movements, noting that the medium weights she was swinging about were rarely used, given that the facility had been equipped with insanely high capabilities, meaning that most of the equipment in the room had levels that nobody used, and it was questionable as to whether anyone ever would. The ‘heavy’ weights no one had touched, with everyone using the light and very light versions, so when Morgan picked up the mediums many of the younger Archons gathered around to witness what they’d thought was impossible.

That disbelief annoyed Morgan. Very few of the non-trailblazers measured up to Archon standards, in her opinion, with lack of motivation being her top gripe. Greg, or Paul, or Jason would have jumped at any new challenge, any insight into becoming more capable, any new knowledge that might give them an edge so that they could become better. They would have watched her to learn, been impressed, then tweaked their training so that they could one day match her. All of these kids just wanted to see a spectacle, so she just ignored them and went about her workout, moving from one apparatus to another, getting her quotas in then leaving for the track.

That’s what her days were like now. Get this much done, at this speed, this level, this weight, and repeat…over and over and over again until her body adapted and she was able to add a little. She had been living in this routine now for so many years it had become natural, and the sheer amount of raw workout she was doing didn’t seem awe inspiring to her, it was just normal.

When Morgan was in the cafeteria later Rafa approached her, sparking the first smile from her in more days than she could remember.

“When did you get back?” she said, chewing a mouthful of high density ration bar. Her calorie intake was insanely high, so her diet, like those of the trailblazers and a few motivated others required specialized food in order to get enough fuel in to compensate for their workouts. Her ambrosia intake was also the highest, at 18.2 doses a day. Nobody else had even broken 10.

“Trouble’s brewing. Just had a confab with Davis. He wants us to take some preemptive action, special ops style.”

“Oh?” she asked, finishing her mouthful without adding another.

“Three man team, all Archons. I’ve already tagged Taryn. Care to join the party?”

Morgan hesitated, running through her head how much missing days of workouts would slow her down…a bit of an academic exercise, considering she hadn’t missed a day in decades. She knew she’d take a hit, but that she could recover from it and get back to her daily quotas within a few days at most, or maybe even immediately if the mission allowed her to rest up a bit. She’d be rusty, and that first day back might be ugly, but bottom line was she wanted to go, so she resigned herself to work thorough whatever training trouble it caused when she got back.

“Gladly,” she answered, biting off the end of another energy bar. “Where we going?”

3

January 5, 2107

“As you requested,” the British Ambassador said politely, laying a data chip down on Davis’s desk, “the ship IDs, crew counts, and payment authorization from Parliament.”

“Thank you,” Davis offered as he slid the chip off his clear desk and into his palm. He plugged it into the appropriate slot on his computer and began pulling up the data. As the Ambassador had said, all the requested information for the fleet transfer had been provided in typical British clerical formality.

“Our intelligence reports the American fleet broke orbit yesterday. Will you be able to move our ships ahead of their arrival?”

“I think I can safely guarantee the first few warships will arrive first, though the timing for the rest will depend on the speed the Americans are traveling.”

“My information indicates that they have allotted a small tanker fleet to accompany the task force in order to maximize fuel range.”

“So I’ve also been informed,” Davis confirmed. “We’ve been running the numbers and it still looks like it will take them 2 months at minimum to cross the gap out to the asteroid belt. Your leading warships will arrive first, and I’ve already deployed some of mine to the area in order to encourage calmer heads to prevail.”

“We have no wish to provoke Star Force,” the Ambassador said truthfully. “But we will defend ourselves against any American aggression. We’ve already had one mining vessel go missing, and have no intention to allow there to be another.”

“Neither of us has been able to locate the vessel or debris thereof,” Davis reminded him, “so don’t start prematurely blaming the Americans. If they did have a hand to play in its disappearance, we’ll find out eventually.”

“I hope you do, but it has been six months and still no recovery. Not a sign of so much as a fragment of the hull? Or an emergency beacon? Your people designed the mining vessels we use, so you know their capabilities. They shouldn’t just be able to vanish unless there was foul play.”

“I know there is a lot of bad blood between your countries, but I’m not interested in guesswork. If anyone, the UK included, has been misbehaving and we find proof of it we’ll hold them accountable. You know that.”

“Our fleet movements are purely defensive, Director.”

“Possibly,” Davis differed. “You’re moving into a contentious zone. If your motives are purely defensive, that is your right, which is why I’m approving the transfer request. It is not, however, a license to begin poaching the American mining operations in retaliation. I trust your government understands this.”

“We do. But I hope you understand that it is becoming increasingly clear that the Americans are spoiling for a fight. If so, we are prepared to give them one.”

“Glancing down your ship list, I can see that,” Davis commented. “You’re dedicating the majority of your fleet to this redeployment.”

“Defense patrol,” the Ambassador politely corrected him.

Davis sighed. “I am well aware that certain factions have come to regard the asteroid belt as the wild west frontier zone, given the size and distances involved, coupled with the fact that we only have a minimal presence there and can’t keep an eye on everyone’s ship movements like we do here. But let me say, that we are not completely blind in the region, and that if you and the Americans plan to square off, then both of your contracts with Star Force are in jeopardy.”

The Ambassador nodded his understanding. “We take our business relationship with you quite seriously, and we have considered every angle of both the tactical situation and our obligations on part of our contract, but we feel that our…intentions lie squarely under the self defense provision of our agreement.”

“That depends entirely on what actions you take. Star Force will respond immediately to any illegitimate activities, regardless of who it is. I truly do not wish to have to send my fleet to hunt yours down on ‘capture or kill’ orders.”

The Ambassador stiffened. “We will honor our agreement to the letter. Can we assume the same for Star Force?”

“Of course.”

“Then I suggest you keep your eyes on the Americans. Our defense patrol is being established so we can watch where you do not have eyes…and to be in a position to respond immediately if there are any…violations.”

“As you wish. But be warned, simply crossing into your designated mining zone is not valid cause to destroy a ship. Intercept and stop it, if you wish, then notify us. Prove that the Americans are violating your territory and I will strip them of their mining privileges. Take the opportunity as just cause to start a war, and I’ll hold you both accountable.”

“We will gladly defer to Star Force when and where we can, but given the…lawless nature of the region, we may not have that option. Regardless of the future, our transfer order is accepted, yes?”

“It is.”

“Then if you will excuse me, I’ll relay the good news to our fleet commander. Good day, Director.”

“Good day,” Davis echoed as the Brit left his office. Once the man disappeared down the stairs he leaned back in his chair and let out a loud, heartfelt sigh. He’d been able to avert several potential international conflicts in the past decades, and not since the Chinese invasion of Luna had there been any major fighting, but he could read between the lines and knew that this showdown between the US and UK had been brewing for some time, with both sides intent on making it happen this time around.

One of the UK mining vessels had disappeared, which to his consternation his own fleets couldn’t locate. The asteroid belt was huge, but sparse, nothing at all like the public believed from watching scifi movies such as Star Wars. The belt stretched from Mars orbit out to Jupiter, with varying bands of higher density, all of which were still remarkably empty.

Star Force had established 7 belt starports for the use of the public to give nations access to select regions. These operations were mostly snatch and grabs, where a small asteroid would be located, flown out to, and ‘eaten’ by the ship in question, then brought back to a processing area or, for very small objects, processed on the spot with the unwanted material ‘regurgitated’ back out.

Mining territories existed as slices of a 360 degree circle/sphere centering on each of the belt starports, but overall the territory this covered was small, less than .1% of the entire belt. The mining potential was vast, but the technology hadn’t caught up with the dreamers yet, so Star Force’s accommodations to the various nations wishing to mine the belt was all they currently had to work with.

Star Force also maintained its own mining operations, some of which were much larger and actually were built attached to the larger asteroids, the primary site being on Vesta, a 570 km wide egg-shaped asteroid just below the threshold for becoming a planet. The Star Force outpost was actually cutting a hole in the side of the asteroid and building inside, gradually hollowing it out for future use while processing the materials harvested.

From this location Star Force also had snatch and grab mining operations heading out and picking over the local area, but far away from the nations’ zones. Given how much of the playground was available, it hadn’t been deemed necessary to set up directly next to one another.

However, one of the 7 national zones had the Americans and Brits sharing adjacent slices, which was where the trouble was occurring. Each slice radiated out from the starport far enough that radar tracking became impossible, leaving the various nations to their own reconnaissance in exploring and harvesting the local field. It was in these blind, lawless areas that they’d been flexing their muscle, knowing that Star Force wouldn’t be looking over their shoulder…or so they believed.

Davis had some intelligence about those regions that he’d never made public. It was insufficient, but gave him some key facts to work with. For starters, he knew that there were ‘ghost’ ships in the region, flying without transponders, which was a violation of the Star Force mandate. A few distant observations were all he had though, for whoever the ships belonged to was covering their tracks well, and no unaccounted for vessels could be identified in the official traffic logs.

Another tidbit of information that had come his way was the location of a mined out asteroid outside of the designated national mining zones. It had been a freak find, given how many were out there, but the football field long rock had clearly been at the mercy of power tools, excavating a cavity that his own miners had guessed contained a large gold deposit, based on micro-fragments of the metal found in the surrounding material.

While he didn’t technically have the authority to tell the nations where they could or couldn’t mine, it had long been established that all ships had to carry transponders for safety reasons, and the business arrangements between Star Force and its national and corporate customers required exception-less use of the devices, so if mining operations were being undertaken outside of the Star Force appointed zones, they should have been able to track the ships locally, if not from afar, according to what size of transponder they were broadcasting on.

The British Ambassador could very well have been correct about the Americans. Ever since President Mendez had taken office back in the 2060s, the United States had ceased to be a backer of Star Force, but they still maintained a sizeable business relationship. They also maintained business ties with the anti-Star Force block, both corporate and national, essentially having a foot in both worlds and straddling the fence artfully, all the while seeking to expand their powerbase and holdings.

They weren’t the only ones. Star Force had approximately 1/3 of Earth’s nations in the support category, with only half of those that Davis considered to be true allies. The bulk of the international community fell into the client category, the Americans included, who did business with Star Force on a regular basis but was not politically aligned with them, and more often than not socially and politically opposed them on one hand, but kept ordering ships and services with the other.

That left a handful of nations that were outright opponents of Star Force, led by the Chinese, and were confined mostly to Earth orbit, with a few territorial possessions purchased on Mars. As the rest of the planet moved forward with the colonization frenzy, the opposition had been left behind, unable to keep technological pace with Star Force’s improvements and raw construction capability. As a result they had been reduced to minor players beyond Earth, but maintained a strong economic foothold around the planet and on Luna, which still was the heart of the space-bound economy.

The Russians mainly kept to themselves, and were marginal Star Force backers. The Japanese fell neutral, preferring to neither praise nor condemn the mega space corporation while they pursued their own national agenda as a major and regular customer.

The Brazilians, however, were an avid supporter and exclusively used Star Force technology. He doubted that they or the Australians would risk penalties by running ships and operations without transponders. They’d grown in power by holding to all of Davis’s rules, and all indications pointed to that continuing to be their national policies well into the future.

Then there was a slew of second tier nations, some on the rise like the Brits, others on the fall like the French who had basically abandoned all territorial aspirations, selling off their holdings on Luna and Mars and focusing on building/purchasing orbital habitats to offload their growing terrestrial population as a last ditch endeavor before legislating reproductive limitations, such as China had done in the previous century.

India was in a similar situation, being the heart of the overpopulation problem on Earth, but they saw space colonization as not only the solution to the problem, but an avenue to rise to glory. They were another nation that Davis would have tagged as a slow riser, held back initially by lack of funds but slowly overcoming that deficiency as they opened up more and more space-based operations.

Most nations didn’t have the means to go rogue just yet, the problem was that some of Star Force’s competitors had advanced far enough to enable these countries to start thinking along those lines, and the more they advanced the less certain he could be as to who these ghost ships might belong to.

Regardless, the Americans and Brits were set to go at it, following a long string of incidents stretching over the past two decades. The two countries who once quoted each other as being the closest of allies had apparently decided to stretch back to their roots and reembrace the two wars that had bracketed the Americans’ birth as a nation.

The Brits didn’t have the largest warfleet, but they did have one of the best, and were deploying most of it into the asteroid belt, purchasing piggyback rides on Star Force inter-planetary starships to get them there. The Americans did have the largest fleet, after Star Force, and had sent a significant portion of it into the inter-planetary void between Earth and the belt, enroute to ‘secure’ their mining rights against trespassers.

Due to the travel time involved, Davis figured he had a couple of months to head off this fight and had already had the Archons dispatch a fleet larger than both the Americans’ and Brits’ combined into the general area in the hopes that its presence would discourage, or at least delay what seemed to be an inevitable clash. Meanwhile, he’d planned to get to the bottom of the illicit mining activity and have some answers to throw before both countries so he could take away some of their political firepower.

He also conceded the point that it might not matter, in which case their fleet would be there to protect the other nations’ facilities and ships from the fireworks, and be in a position to intervene if and when necessary…the dynamics of which he was leaving up to the Archons.

No matter which way he sliced it the situation was bad, and how he dealt with it would set a precedent for the other nations with squabbles amongst each other that had been gradually working their way to the surface, some of which had become emboldened by the friction between the Americans and the Brits.

He needed to get ahead of the situation, which was why he’d asked the Archons to send an expedition into the field to track down the missing British ship and uncover what was really going on beyond Star Force’s radar detection zones.

Davis just hoped they found the answers in time, for with the American fleet already having gotten underway, the clock was now officially ticking.

4

January 22, 2107

“We’ve got something,” Rafa said, tossing a data chip across the cabin only to see it arc to the right and fall into Morgan’s hand. The Viper-class inter-planetary starship was currently undergoing its braking maneuver prior to arriving at Starport 4 in the asteroid belt, creating the binary gravity effect that held Morgan’s feet to the ground as well as pushing her back into her seat inside the small cabin she’d been assigned for the duration of the trip.

The acolyte effortlessly stood up against the awkward gravity and grabbed a data pad, inserting the chip and accessing the files. Rafa leaned against the wall, also seemingly unaffected by the gravity aside from a slight tilt to his stance.

The report had been sent from Roger, who was overseeing Star Force’s warfleet in the asteroid belt in preparation for the American/British showdown that appeared to be forthcoming. The fleet had been spread out across the most likely places they suspected the ghost ships to be, based on prior crossings, and they’d picked up another sighting. Roger had ordered the target tracked at range and over the past 2 days it had been cherry-picking asteroids for consumption, then rendezvoused at another before retreading approximately the same geographic region.

As the Star Force cutter had kept its distance and followed the ship back out again, it caught a brief signal from another ship rendezvousing at one of the same asteroids. It only stayed briefly, then disappeared outside sensor range, but the location of that particular asteroid had been tagged and Roger dispatched a ship to investigate the area.

Morgan flipped through a host of reconnaissance photos, noting the small base attached to the half mile wide asteroid, along with Roger’s speculations as to it being some kind of supply depot.

“Sounds like our ticket in,” Morgan said, pulling out the chip and inserting it into a slot on the rim of the video screen. With a few button presses she had the photos enlarged on the TV for closer inspection.

“If they’re not running active radar we should be able to get in close,” Rafa commented, pointing to the back side of the asteroid. “So long as we time it right. Roger is redeploying a few more ships to give us a detection perimeter around the base.”

“A quiet one, I hope. Spook them and we lose the link.”

“He’s playing it coy. I doubt they even know they’ve been detected. We’ve picked up faint radar bounces from their ships, which seem to correspond to a low powered, forward-mounted array.”

“To target the asteroids.”

“Exactly,” Rafa agreed. “If our ships keep their distance and don’t start screaming active radar, they shouldn’t be noticed, and even if they are there are plenty of rocks out there to confuse their sensors with.”

“I don’t like the fact that we’re broadcasting any active radar signals, but I guess Roger knows what he’s doing. We’ll need an extraction team standing by in case this goes south…and those drone warships aren’t going to cut it.”

“I’ll inquire,” Rafa promised. “How are you doing?”

“Twitchy,” Morgan admitted. The downtime wasn’t something she was accustomed to.

“I know the feeling. It’ll pass quicker if you run your guts out on the track.”

“I’ve been taking a couple of hour runs each day.”

“Want a pacer?”

“If you can keep up.”

Rafa smiled. “Let’s go.”

Morgan frowned. “The gravity’s at the wrong angle.”

“That’s what makes it fun,” Rafa said tauntingly, retreating back outside.

Morgan raised an eyebrow then grabbed her running shoes and a pair of socks out of a side drawer and followed him out barefoot, sensing that they were about to play a game of cat and mouse and he wasn’t about to let her have any advantages.

She followed him through the ship, not having much trouble with the odd gravity angle but stopping here and there to pull on a sock while still keeping her fellow Archon in sight. By the time they got to the ship’s track she had both shoes on, but unlaced, and Rafa took off running to gain a lead.

Morgan knelt down and quickly tied her shoes snug, then took off in pursuit, more than willing to play chaser.

“Seal checks,” Rafa asked as the three Archons floated towards the hangar bay doors.

Morgan had already run through her armor’s checklist, but double checked her atmospheric integrity anyway.

“Tight,” she reported through the helmet comm.

“Good to go,” Taryn echoed from within her red armor, which matched the set Rafa was wearing. Morgan was the oddball, wearing the identical equipment but painted with the acolyte silver color scheme, giving her a dull chrome armor that only she had earned the right to wear.

When the doors parted the bay master saluted sharply at the three armored Archons. “Your stealth pods are fully fueled, and the auxiliary equipment you requested is loaded inside, as are the extra O2 tanks.”

“Do you have a comlink to the bridge?” Rafa asked through his armor’s external speakers.

“We do. Everything is set and waiting for your order to go. Just flash the ready lights and we’ll get you moving.”

Rafa nodded his red helmeted head and pulled himself into the nearby airlock via ceiling handholds, then cycling through into the airless portion of the SR’s hangar bay. Inside were an assortment of small craft, the larger of which were docked to internal airlocks, but three black ‘kites’ were sitting just inside the outer doors tethered to extendable pylons coming up out of the ‘floor.’

Rafa pushed off the airlock rim and flew across the bay, catching a hand on the corner of a shuttle and redirecting himself toward the nearest kite. He caught himself against the dark black hull with his hands, stalling his momentum, then climbed around to the access port and opened the stealth pod up.

Inside was a long chamber slightly bigger than his body that ran fore to aft behind a pointed nose cone. The sides of the pod angled out into stubby wings, making the whole apparatus look like a gigantic black diamond…that had been squashed. Jason had said the things looked like something Batman would build, and Rafa had to admit that he had a point, after which he wondered if Paul and Roger had designed them with that homage in mind.

Taryn came flying across the bay next, grabbing her pod and climbing inside feet first. Rafa stayed outside and examined the contents by poking his head inside. As the bay master had said, the equipment packs and oxygen tanks were already stowed inside, placed into niches with fastening clamps keeping them clear of the body cavity that he was going to ride inside.

“Cozy,” Morgan commented as she joined the pair and looked inside. “Either of you ever used these things?”

“Nope,” Taryn answered, already going through the power up sequence.

“Not in the field,” Rafa answered, sliding his feet inside, “but I did get to play around with one of the prototypes.”

“How do they fly?”

“Like a rock.”

“That’s reassuring,” Morgan commented, sliding inside and sealing the hatch over her head. The interior of the pod had several running lights and illuminated switches, but otherwise was dark.

Her navigation displays and controls were directly in front of her downward facing position, with the top of her head bumping up against the nosecone of the ‘bat.’ Reaching down, she located the pod’s oxygen feed and plugged it into her armor’s port, having to wiggle her arm around to reach the back of her neck in the claustrophobic confines.

The pod’s oxygen would last her several days, if need be, but the extra oxygen tanks clustered around her feet were for her use after they reached their target, in order to supplement her armor’s limited supply. Also clustered around her legs was an assortment of equipment, including food and water rations, a stinger rifle, pistol, stun stick, backpack of technical gear, and a second pack of odds and ends, including an ample supply of ambrosia doses, though she doubted she was going to need much with all this inactivity.

“Everybody set?” Rafa’s voice asked over her comm.

“Just,” Morgan said as her final prep sequence came back in the clear.

“Been waiting on you,” Taryn echoed.

Rafa flipped the ready switch in his pod, which transmitted the all clear signal back to the control room.

“Standby,” the bay master said to himself, floating over to another panel to relay the go order to the ship’s pilot.

Suddenly there was an acceleration burst from the ship’s engines, felt by the Archons in the pods as the SR accelerated towards the distant asteroid base, building some momentum before launch to save the pods some fuel.

After sufficient speed had been achieved, the bay master opened the forward doors and remotely detached the tethers holding them in place. Another ready light illuminated inside Morgan’s pod, indicating that she was now free to accelerate out of the bay.

“Taryn,” Rafa prompted.

“Taking the lead,” she said as her pod’s wingtip engines flared to life and slowly carried her out of the bay, cutting off a few meters outside.

Morgan followed next, with Rafa coming out last and joining the pair, drifting left and matching Taryn’s speed as close as possible. The acolyte did likewise to the right and the trio floated forward and clear of the ship a few inches per second.

In their rear view camera displays the SR tilted its giant hammerhead up in a slow arc until the engine compartment came around to a 90 degree angle, then it thrusted lightly, rising up above the trajectory of the pods before completing its flip and firing up its engines again, thrusting back the way it had come and away from the target as the pods continued to coast forward, passing out of radar and visible contact within a few kilometers due to their stealth plating.

“I’m thinking of a number,” Taryn teased, referencing the long wait they had in store.

“Oh don’t start that,” Morgan said, remembering back to the silly game some of them had played during their basic training. “It was annoying enough the first time.”

Morgan heard Taryn snickering over the comm, but otherwise she didn’t respond.

“Everybody got a nav fix?” Rafa asked.

“I’m showing a bit of drift, but nothing we can’t fix on arrival,” Taryn reported.

“Same here,” Rafa said. “We’ll try a correction when we get past the halfway point, there’s no way we can finesse it from this range without overcompensating.”

“Agreed,” Morgan said, studying her numbers.

“Alright, sit tight and coast unless you get farther than 50 meters off Taryn. Taryn, you can go ahead and take a nap.”

“Sleep flying, aye,” she said in her typical high pitched, energetic voice.

Rafa pulled up a card game on his display and started passing time…

5

Four hours later the three stealth pods began quietly decelerating on their tiny chemical thrusters, bleeding off speed as the target asteroid began to grow larger on their display screens. The top of the base was just visible on the underside, but the asteroid’s slow rotation would have it out of view within minutes, giving them the blank backside to make their landing on.

More small puffs of reverse thrust emitted from the wingtips all the way up to the sheer rock wall of the pitted asteroid, then the three ‘bats’ spread apart and flipped up, coming down on the rock belly first, but stopping a few meters short of it, hovering on occasional thruster bursts from the pen-sized attitude adjustment vents spread across the surface of the craft. Keeping close to the perimeter, the three Archons flew around the curve of the asteroid until the top of the base came into view.

“Where do you suggest we park?” Morgan asked sarcastically.

“It won’t matter now, so long as they haven’t noticed our approach. We’ll have to stow them inside later.”

“Then I suggest we get out here and approach on foot.”

“I agree,” Taryn echoed.

“Alright, but remember ‘on foot’ means handheld thrusters out there.”

Rafa micro-thrusted down to the surface of the asteroid and felt a slight vibration as the underside touched…then rebounded back off. He nulled out as much of the motion as he could then popped the hatch. As he climbed out he felt the pod knock against the asteroid again and begin to twist. His body weight was a considerable fraction of the pod’s mass, so every movement he made affected its orientation, and with almost zero gravity coming from the asteroid there was nothing to hold either of them in place.

Deciding to just make do for the moment, Rafa dove back inside the bat-like pod head first and dug into one of the equipment bundles that had been stored around his feet, pulling out a handheld thruster unit and a ‘parking meter,’ as the designers had affectionately labeled the gun-like device.

Rafa pulled back out with both, then reached back in and toggled the pod’s controls, micro-thrusting it back down to the surface, whereupon he fired the tether gun into the asteroid, imbedding a long metallic piton into the rock, leaving the handle of the device attached to the top with a flexible cord rolled up inside the hilt. Rafa pried the end of the cord with clasp out of the now firmly attached ‘parking meter’ and hooked it to a metallic loop on the nosecone of the pod, then let the stealth craft float on its own accord.

He pulled out the two equipment packs, attaching one to the back of his armor and holding the other in his hand as he lightly pushed off the top of the pod and floated over the surface of the asteroid, using the micro-thruster in his left hand to keep him down as he searched for footholds to propel himself forward on in lieu of liberally using his limited fuel supply.

“How’s everyone doing?” he asked, resisting the urge to turn his head and look, which would result in twisting his body in ways he didn’t want.

“Already ahead of you,” Morgan reported.

“Just off your right, a few meters back,” Taryn said, bringing up the rear.

Rafa looked to his right with his eyes and a bit of a head turn, trying to spot Morgan…then to his surprise found her well ahead of him, making good progress slithering across the ground on her belly.

“Showoff,” Rafa said, picking his steps carefully as Morgan left the other two Archons in the dust.

“Have you done this before?” Taryn asked, dropping to her knees and trying to mimic the acolyte’s low profile.

“Nope, just seemed like the best way. Plenty of finger holds over here.”

“Find the door so the slowpokes can make a straight line for it,” Rafa suggested sarcastically.

“Will do,” Morgan acknowledged, crawling across the surface with her second pack attached just above her butt and flailing like a tail behind her. With quick and precise movements she had her momentum constantly aligned with the curve of the asteroid and avoiding having to use the micro-thruster at all.

When she dipped down into a shallow crater she didn’t fall all the way to the center, skipping over part to maintain a straighter line and grabbed hold of the opposite edge, slithering over the top and into full view of the base that had been build into the side of the asteroid.

Within four seconds she had an airlock spotted and crawled towards it with gear in tow, instinctively looking for defenses, but finding none. The building had two sections from her point of view, one clearly a habitable module with the other larger section appearing to be some sort of garage. The airlock was situated three meters up the wall, giving Morgan the impression that the module had been prefab in design, multileveled, and partially buried inside the asteroid rather than having been built on top of it.

She slowed her crawl as she got up close, then carefully measured a tiny jump, angling up to the airlock handles, which were placed on all four sides of the square door, appearing as squarish loops that were easy to grab hold of.

With her silver glove wrapped around the top handle, Morgan pulled herself to the control panel and examined the controls, recognizing them as a non-Star Force make, but she couldn’t remember the manufacturer and there were no identification markings on the exterior to jog her memory. The key sequence was simple enough, and within 30 seconds she had the sliding door open and pulled herself inside the small cubicle.

“I’m in the airlock,” she reported, shutting the outer door and triggering the cycle. “Follow my beacon.”

“Got it,” Rafa reported after she pressed a small button on her forearm controls. “Be there shortly.”

Morgan steadied herself, planting her right foot and left arm against opposite sides of the airlock and disconnecting her second pack, letting it drift free as she gently backed up and placed her foot against the airlock outer door, ready to spring inside.

The air replenishment cycle ran its course and the inner door clicked open, sliding into the wall and opening up the interior to the Archon, who stayed in place as the view contained no troops or personnel. Morgan listened intently, but could detect no trace of any activity. Gently pushing off the back, she hand walked forward, keeping grip points to redirect herself if necessary.

Her head poked out and she scanned the room…finding it empty, but with two exits. One forward and one down.

The acolyte free floated out of the airlock and pulled her equipment pack out with her, fastening it to one of the nearby wall rungs and stashing her handheld micro-thruster back inside.

“I’m in. No contacts. Checking out the rest of the facility.”

“What is it?” Taryn asked over the comm.

“Processing,” Morgan identified immediately, based off the containers lining the walls and two workstations ringing the center floor exit. All had various grades of crushed ore waiting to be refined, by hand it appeared, which made her wonder what exactly they were extracting. She moved forward and looked down into the lower level, surprised to see that the ladder actually extended down several levels.

Reaching back into the pack on her back, Morgan pulled out her stun stick and charged it up, just in case, then sprung down the ladder head first.

The room below was empty, save for a myriad of enclosed equipment pods, but she did spy a hint of movement down the side exit and immediately twisted about and redirected across the room, pulling herself into the next one and coming across a robotic arm grabbing cylinders of ore from a rack and feeding them into some sort of smelter…an active device that she doubted would be left to run on its own if someone wasn’t nearby.

This room was built against a wall, but had a cattycorner exit, suggesting a four square design to each level. Morgan kicked off a bench and into the next room, then hung a left and checked the last quarter, finding it empty as well. She returned to the first room with the ladder and went back up to the first level, swinging around all four of its rooms before coming back down and running into someone coming up the ladder from the third level.

Morgan knocked the woman off her handholds and down the ladder with a stiff forearm, then pinned her on the floor below, belatedly noticing that there was a fourth level beneath them. The woman screamed, and Morgan heard a chorus of voices raise elsewhere in the facility in response.

A swift poke from her stun stick quieted the woman and the Archon moved off in hunter mode, taking down two more men in the other rooms of this level, then a second woman coming up from below. Morgan searched the fourth level, but found it empty, then collected the unconscious people and gathered them together in what appeared to be a small lounge in the upper right quarter of the third level.

“Four captives,” Morgan reported.

“I’m in the airlock now,” Rafa replied. “Were they armed?”

“No, but they did look really surprised.”

“Who are they?”

“Don’t know yet. They’re napping.”

“Uniforms?”

“Nondescript. In fact I don’t see anything here that has any prominent corporate logos.”

“The structure is Exxtron,” Taryn noted. “I can tell by the control panel. They sell to a lot of the anti-Star Force crowd.”

“I’m in,” Rafa reported.

“Third level,” Morgan told him.

“Found the keys to the garage yet?” he asked, still over the comm.

“I did a quick check and didn’t spot any exits save for another airlock up top.”

Rafa caught a glimpse of the moving robotic arm as he passed into the second level and frowned, then scooted off course to have a look at it. On closer inspection he found remote controls for multiple arms, as well as video screen displays that were currently shut off. When he flipped the on switch they showed the interior of the ‘garage’ with multiple large containers and a host of remote equipment, all apparently run from inside this room.

“Think I found the door,” Rafa reported over the comm as Taryn came through the airlock. “There’s an automated system that brings in material through a set of industrial airlocks.”

“Where are they?”

“In the walls. I’m going to try to find the button for the sunroof.”

“You want me back outside?” Taryn asked, coming up behind him in the room.

“Not until we get the loading doors open.”

“There,” she said, pulling herself into a pod-like seat and wrapping her armored legs around the base to keep put. “It’s next to the main control arm.”

She pressed a large button and there was a grinding vibration felt throughout the structure, making the material of the walls audibly protest until it was locked in place and the stars were visible through the roof on Rafa’s display screens over top the cargo canisters.

“Go,” he said simply, with Taryn jumping out of her seat and heading back to the airlock to begin parking their stealth pods inside and out of view of any approaching ships.

“Morgan, see what you can get out of the prisoners. I’m going to start digging through their computer systems.”

“Will do,” she acknowledged, reaching over her shoulder and detaching the pack on her back. She set it aside and pulled out a vile of destunning serum and injected one of the women in the side of her neck. As she fought to regain consciousness Morgan pulled off her helmet and got her first taste of ‘fresh’ air in hours.

When the woman started to blink her eyes open, Morgan snapped her fingers in front of her face to get her to focus. “Name,” she demanded.

“Wha…what?”

“Name,” Morgan repeated, staring at her from less than two feet away, one hand on her shoulder to pin her weightless body against the wall.

“Masterson.”

“Alright, Masterson. I need to know what your mission is here, who you work for, and when the next ship is due to arrive.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Who are you?”

“Star Force.”

Masterson’s jaw dropped, then immediately clenched shut. “I have nothing to say to you.”

Morgan sighed. “As you wish,” she said, flipping on her stun stick and poking the woman unconscious again. “Note to self, don’t mention Star Force.”

She set the unconscious woman aside and reached for the next closest prisoner, injecting him with the destunning serum.

“Name,” she demanded when he started to wake…

6

January 25, 2107

Morgan jumped from the open cockpit of her stealth pod onto the hull of the cargo ship that was picking up the full material containers from the asteroid base and depositing empty ones for the collectors and processors to fill via a series of robotic arms as the boxy ship floated just over the garage. On the reverse side, Morgan latched onto a dorsal airlock and quickly made her way into the ship, letting her pod drift off. She wouldn’t need it from here on out.

The airlock cycled through, giving her access to the inside of the large ship, whereupon she sprung into action, kicking aside the man curiously staring at what should have been an inactive airlock and bouncing him off a side wall as she passed by, belatedly swinging her stun stick back and tagging him in the side of the head.

The corridors were small, not allowing her much maneuvering room in full armor as she methodically swept every corridor and room for personnel, coming across the bridge halfway through her search and disabling the Captain and crew within five seconds of entry. She looked for the robotic arm controls but couldn’t find an applicable station, so instead she checked the navigational systems, ensuring that the ship wasn’t about to drift into the asteroid or base, then pushed off the back of a chair and zipped into the hallway, finishing her sweep to disable and capture the crew of 7.

“Ship secured,” she reported over her armor’s comm before sitting ‘down’ in one of the bridge chairs and trying to access the ship’s database, only to find that it was written in Spanish.

Morgan frowned, then glanced across the control boards spread out around the bridge…all of them were tagged in English.

“Rafa, need you over here for some translating,” she added.

“Do they have a shuttle?”

“I saw something near the cargo bay.”

“We can see an edge of it from here,” Rafa told her. “Mind giving me a lift?”

“Will do,” she said, heading aft and finding a pair of small ships tucked up inside the bay alongside the cargo containers at dedicated docking ports. Morgan took the left one and slowly flew it down and docked against the top airlock. Rafa was waiting for her and climbed aboard the cramped, four-man craft…had those four men been midgets. The seats were tiny, and the two Archons encased in armor more than filled the cabin space.

Within minutes the pair were back aboard the cargo ship and Rafa began pouring through the database.

“Interesting. The ship’s manufacturer is Solaris, but the software is from Estrella Mar.”

“With a base built by Exxtron,” Morgan added. “Either we’ve got a corporate alliance or someone who likes to build hodgepodge.”

“Got their nav charts,” Rafa said, pulling off his armor’s gloves so he could type faster. “Only one other location tagged, looks like this is a binary cargo runner headed further into the belt.”

“Another breadcrumb to follow,” Morgan noted, referring to the cellular structure of this mining operation. All computer records on the base had been limited to the onsite refining of ores and extraction of precious metals being brought in by a 10 ship fleet of ‘collectors’ spread out across this region of the asteroid belt, well away from both the national and Star Force mining regions and essentially off the map. The crews from those ships would rotate out periodically, taken aboard a cargo runner that would offload necessary supplies and replacement crew when it came to pick up the processed cargo.

The excess waste material from the processing was compressed into pellets and given back to the collectors, who disposed of it somewhere in the belt, with only the precious cargos being transferred over to the runners. Beyond that the base records didn’t say, nor had the captive crew been very forthcoming with information.

“Taryn, disable base communications permanently,” Rafa told her over the comm. “We’re transferring the ship’s crew over then heading out.”

Morgan nodded and turned around, heading for the compartment where they’d stashed the prisoners.

“Where to?”

“The other end of this cargo link. That’s all the nav charts have got.”

“Someone’s gone to a lot of effort to keep all this hidden.”

“They’re unconscious right now, but I think this crew is separately employed from those on the base. The computer systems are all in Spanish.”

“We taking the pods along?”

“No, we’re playing parasite from here on out. I’m going to send a directional transmission to our fleet, calling for a delayed cleaning crew for this site. They can retrieve them then.”

“I’d better grab mine then,” Morgan said, eavesdropping on the conversation.

“I’ll get it,” Taryn offered. “We need to tether the pods outside again anyway so this lot can’t get access to them. Pick me up with your shuttle when I’m done.”

“Deal,” Morgan said, dragging two of the unconscious men towards the shuttle port.

“Transfer over some additional rations and whatever else you think they’ll need, then get back over here,” Rafa told her. “We need to leave within the next two hours if we’re going to maintain their itinerary.”

Seven days later they found another starship at their rendezvous point, a much larger vessel equipped with a crude copy of Star Force’s gravity cylinders sticking out sideways across the center with cargo compartments fore and aft of that midline. Apparently the ship they were on was only supposed to exchange cargos and return to the asteroid processing base, for there was nothing else in range except empty space.

The course the nav system had taken them on went even deeper into the unmapped regions of the belt, where Star Force had yet to probe and far from its recently deployed patrol fleet. Had the Archons activated a distress beacon, it would take several days at minimum for them to receive help, given the navigational headaches of avoiding the ever-changing asteroid positions, which usually prevented a ship from flying a straight line trajectory.

When the two ships docked to exchange cargo Rafa, Morgan, and Taryn boarded and captured the larger ship, happy to have gravity back underneath their feet again, and even happier to find a much more complete navigational database in this ship’s computer systems, documenting a myriad of outposts within the belt, spread out over an insanely large area…all of which were far from any known mining operations.

Additionally, they had been able to verify that this particular ship was crewed by employees of the Atrican Consolidate…a merger of several smaller space corporations that occurred in the 2080s to cut costs and share resources, currently #7 on the corporate power charts. The ship they were flying, however, was of Solaris make, which was odd given that Atrican also had a shipbuilding line, though not producing anything of this size.

The ship itself was also part tanker, which explained how fuel was getting out to the dedicated mining ships. After a thorough sifting of the ship’s records, it appeared that the miners and cargo haulers out in the field were contract hires rather than employees, and had been deliberately isolated from the larger network that had been built up within the belt…all without Star Force being the wiser.

To be fair, Star Force couldn’t monitor the entire star system, and with more and more infrastructure popping up around Earth, Luna, and Mars it was getting harder to track individual ships, but by closely monitoring the competition’s shipyards and tagging the vessels as they came off the line they could reasonably insure that the mandated transponder signals corresponded to all ships in the field, with any absences immediately being noted.

If someone had been able to build ships outside of Star Force’s vision, then it was conceivable that they could be flying without transponders…and if they were, Star Force was going to be unable to track their movements. If they then could also hide the influx of raw materials coming from the belt, shrouding them in legitimate business, it was possible for someone to have built up all this in secret without Star Force having dropped the ball somewhere…but they also risked a lot just in the attempt. If and when Star Force caught them flying without transponders…which they just had…their corporate contracts would be revoked and penalties issued, which would be seen as an extremely hazardous venture and not worth exploring.

The Atrican Consolidate did a small amount of business with Star Force, mostly involving selling of raw materials on the Exchange and other secondary economic business ventures, though they had no direct contracts or purchases. They operated exclusively without Star Force tech, and were among several others to do so as a matter of principle and pr, so arguably they didn’t have so much to lose by ticking off Star Force, but whatever nation had hired them did. Unfortunately the ship records didn’t indicate who their customers were. That information was something they were going to have to find elsewhere.

Ship hopping again, the Archon trio left the cargo ship adrift and continued on with the larger ship’s assigned rounds, making another rendezvous at a different location three days down the line with the crew obliged to continue operations as normal. They cooperated, though there was nothing the smaller cargo ship could have done to help them even if they had sent out a warning, which Rafa explained to the crew beforehand, telling them they’d just seize that ship too if necessary, and give the Captain a few lumps for the effort.

After the successful cargo exchange the larger ship was due to return to port and deliver the valuable materials harvested from the belt. Each shipment it seemed contained differing amounts, looking like they were mining anything of opportunity rather than concentrating on a few compounds. Included in the ship’s inventory were small amounts of gold, silver, platinum, ruthenium, and molybdenum, along with larger amounts of iron, nickel, magnesium, tungsten, and palladium, coupled with stores of liquid hydrogen and oxygen collected during the ore processing, with data records showing another 22 materials being logged on previous material retrieval runs.

This current batch was slated for delivery to a fabrication station, which is where the Archons had the crew take them, dropping off Taryn and Morgan during the transfer while Rafa kept the ship’s crew under control, and mostly unconscious, on the freighter.

The station was more than 5 times the size of the freighter, and rivaled some of Star Force’s medium-grade orbital stations in volume, though the construction was poor. It had four sets of gravity cylinders clustered together at the center, with huge box-like zero g factory segments on either end, making it look like a weird hourglass, given that the cylinders were inset and visibly moving, unlike Star Force designs that had them behind a protective and static armored shell.

Docking ports were located along the rim of each end, and one other ship was seen to be leaving a few hundred kilometers away, apparently already finished offloading its cargo, or perhaps carrying away the finished products? Rafa didn’t know and he decided to let it pass, knowing that Morgan and Taryn would target the station’s communication systems first thing. Once those were down, the other ship wouldn’t be a discovery threat.

“Control room secured,” Morgan’s voice faintly reported in Rafa’s helmet. “And they have no long range comm gear.”

“Better to keep it hidden,” Rafa acknowledged, wondering if their ships retained that capacity as couriers or they just thought it too dangerous to be roaming about without the ability to call for assistance. “Any resistance?”

“Ha, hardly. Couple of sidearms. Taryn is out doing her thing while I get to babysit.”

“You lost?”

“Scissors again,” she moaned. “But on the upside, I found a talker. He didn’t want stunned and we had a nice long chat about his work here.”

“Go on.”

“Seems this whole station is a factory designed to build starship and prefab components, which are then shipped off to one of several shipyards they’ve got hidden out here.”

“Who has hidden?”

“Solaris, Udaris, Killman, Exxtron…just about every major competitor of Davis has its hand in this operation. My friend doesn’t know how it all got started, but says he was transferred out here through a Ukrainian mining ship along with several others. It seems they’re using Star Force’s transit network to shuffle personnel and supplies out from Earth and Mars and make the handoffs in the national mining zones where they’re outside of effective transponder range.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Rafa said, running the basic numbers through his head. “There’s no way they could have smuggled out this much equipment. They had to send some by ship.”

“I’m guessing they did initially, but he says that they make almost everything they need now from what they harvest in the belt. Only specialized components and personnel are smuggled out, with returning personnel and precious metals going the other way.”

“Enough precious metals to make this financially worthwhile, or do they have some other agenda at work?”

“It’s looking more and more like a purely economic venture. According to him, the shipyards are building more mining and cargo ships, expanding the network right now. He doesn’t know of any warships, but admits he hasn’t seen anything other than this station and the ship he was brought in on, though he does have access to manifests and shipping schedules. He also says there are no weapons components produced on the station…” Morgan said, followed by several audible puffs.

“Trouble?”

“Just a few stragglers wandering onto the bridge. There are supposed to be over 3,000 crew on the station, so it’s going to take Taryn a while to get through them all.”

“She’s going to run out of ammo,” Rafa noted.

“Then it’s my turn.”

“Gather as much intel as you can, then pull back to the ship. There’s no need to take prisoners if we’re not going to stick around.”

“Might as well secure the station if we’re calling in for backup,” she argued.

“We’re not finished yet. We still have a missing British ship to account for. Don’t suppose your friend knows anything about that.”

“Unfortunately not. So what are you have planning? Bounce around from place to place on their map and see if we find anything interesting? That could take months, and fuel we don’t have. And if they do have a warship out here I don’t want to run into it flying a cargo ship. If we abandon stealth, then we might as well do so with our fleet covering our asses.”

“Well then, we keep this a stealth mission, for now. How soon is the next ship due to arrive?”

“Hold on,” Morgan said as she conferred with her friend. “Three weeks, two days.”

“How many locations are on your nav charts?”

“More than on the ship. They’ve got six regional zones out here, but this station feeds components to all of them. The shipping fleets are reserved for individual zones, save for the big haulers. They rotate around the major installations carrying the prefab components and starship ribs...the stuff the regular haulers are too small to carry.”

“Any command centers on that list?”

“There are regional hubs that contain several stations in close proximity, including the shipyards. You wanna hit one?”

“Best place to mine data, wouldn’t you think?”

“If we can get there. Our ship isn’t supposed to have access to those areas, according to what I see here.”

“Find one that does, then make a copy of their database. When you’re finished get back to the ship and help me evac the crew, we won’t be needing them from here on out and I’m tired of babysitting them.”

“Copy that,” Morgan said signing off. She turned to the young man and flipped her helmeted chin up in a ‘pay attention’ gesture. “I need as much access to the computer systems as you can get me.”

“Sure thing,” he said, swiveling around in his seat. “So what are you going to do with all of us?” he asked as he worked the keyboard. “I didn’t know we were doing anything illegal.”

“Never said you were,” she said, leaning over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t sabotage her efforts. “We’ll be gone once we’ve got what we’re looking for.”

“And that is?”

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” she said dismissively.

“I can help…if you take me with you,” he said earnestly.

Morgan frowned inside her helmet. “Why?”

“Why I want to leave? I’m sick of being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. The pay is alright, but I never get to spend it on anything. I go to work, eat lunch, go to work again, go to my cabin, sleep, and repeat. I’d much rather work for you guys,” he said, almost pleading.

“We’re not exactly here on a vacation, kid. We’re flying around in a hijacked ship and you want to tag along?”

“Yeah.”

Morgan laughed, which sounded a bit menacing through her helmet’s external speakers. “You’ve got spirit, kid. I’ll talk with the recruitment division when all this is over, but you’ll have to find your own way there.”

The man frowned. “Thanks,” he said dejectedly.

“I’m an Archon. I say it, they do it. Get transferred back to civilization and I’ll get you on our payroll…if you help me get the information I need. I’d rather not have to hack it if I don’t have to.”

“You’re a computer tech?” he asked, perking up a bit.

“No, but I know my way around software and I brought some very cool toys,” she said, tapping the screen in front of him. “Now give me what you can.”

“Sure,” he said, beginning to call up directories. “You think you could do me a favor and let me see your face?”

“Trying to get me id’d by the security cameras?”

“Ha, those things are junk. They’re not even turned on. Just placebos to keep the staff from going bonkers from all the boredom.”

Morgan walked over to the reflective panel on the upper wall and punched her armored first into it, shattering the glass and crushing the camera beneath.

“Whoa!” the tech said, reacting to the sound of the breaking glass.

Morgan walked back over to him and pulled off her helmet, loosing her short, dark ponytail and sucking in a deep breath of air while hefting her stinger rifle in her other hand. “Better?”

“God you’re hot,” he said appreciatively, then turned back to his computer screen and got to work finding all the information she wanted.

7

February 17, 2107

Two quick pistol shots and the security guards coming around the corner down the hall were down before they even saw Taryn, a stinger to each of their chests as they came into view. The marksman specialist led the other two Archons past their fallen bodies and around the corner, shooting a third less than three meters away and knocking his stunned body aside with an elbow before it could even hit the ground. Morgan and Rafa jumped over him and followed Taryn deeper into the corporate rebels’ region 4 command center, headed for the administrative wing.

Their arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed this time. Instead of waiting weeks to hitch a ride on a scheduled transport, the trio had hijacked a smaller, faster ship at one of the agrostations supplying foodstuffs to the workforce and took it straight into the midst of the 8 stations that constituted the regional hub. Several other ships were parked nearby, but none of them were armed so their unannounced entry didn’t draw any fire, only attention.

They’d been met at the airlock by security, which they’d quickly overrun, but not before someone had triggered a station-wide alarm…and given that this station housed more than 15,000 people, it had a decent-sized internal security force, though nothing the Archons couldn’t handle.

With surprise no longer on their side, they’d decided to take the straight forward approach and capture whoever was in charge of this mess and demand answers. A quick review of the station’s blueprints at an information terminal showed them that the administrative offices/quarters were housed on the top end of grav cylinder 26…of which they were now at the bottom end, making their way through the labyrinth of tightly packed corridors on the huge, but claustrophobically designed station.

Taryn shot another sidearm-bearing security guard over the shoulder of a startled bystander, her stinger shot passing less than three inches over the man’s blue uniform and hitting the guard in the ear ten meters back, spinning him around and landing him on the floor, where he received a second shot for good measure.

Up ahead there were a wide set of doors where the hallway spread out double wide, announcing their transit into the administrative section. Morgan fell off the group and took up station there, ensuring that no one got in or out, allowing Taryn and Rafa to begin terrorizing the execs. She had only her stun stick and her fists as weapons, having given Taryn all her stinger ammo. The woman was a far better shot, and had trained with targeting as her primary objective, making her one of only a handful of Archons who could surpass Morgan in any category.

Hearing footsteps approach, she slid back behind the edge of the doorway. The inner hallway was a good half meter wider on each side, giving her the perfect hiding spot. When the footsteps came closer she let the first man come into view and pass her by, then she struck out with her right arm and wacked the second in the upper chest, knocking him off his feet as she ran forward a step and grabbed the first man by the neck, wrapping her arm around and dragging him backwards onto the floor before jumping into a kick and knocking down a third man behind the others with a well placed boot to the gut.

A brief moment of calm followed as two of the security guards tried to get their wits about them…the first man she’d struck had been knocked out when the back of his head hit the floor.

Two quick jabs with her stun stick finished off the others and she pulled their bodies forward down the hall, then doubled back to her ambush point, laying in wait for more to come.

 Taryn pulled another unconscious man inside the large office, with the heads of five other conscious ones turning around to see what was happening. They were all duct taped into their chairs in a comical board meeting, with Rafa at the head of a small semicircle.

“Got another,” she said, dropping him off and leaving to hunt down more of the administrators.

“Who’s this?” Rafa asked.

“Drayson,” one of the bound execs identified. “He’s in charge of station operations.”

“Welcome to the party, Drayson,” Rafa said as he hauled the man to his feet and plopped him down in another chair, taping him in place with a roll of the ever useful duct tape acquired from a maintenance closet. Rafa finished by giving him a destun injection, then reclaimed his position at the center of their little meeting as the man blinked his eyes open.

“What the…hell?” he mumbled when he discovered he was restrained.

“You’re here because I need information,” Rafa explained, his helmet laid beside him on the expensive table that he was sitting on as he looked down at the men strapped into their chairs. “The sooner I get it, the sooner I untie you.”

“Who are you?”

“He’s Star Force,” another administrator grumbled. “Don’t tell him anything.”

“Wrong answer,” Rafa said, hopping off the table and gently putting his foot against the man’s chest and pushing his chair over backward. The man thunked against the floor, knocking his head against the polished tile and stayed there, unable to move with his knees up in the air while Rafa casually retook his perch atop the table.

“Information,” he repeated, staring at each man in turn.

“What is it you’re after?” the newbie asked.

“We’ve had reports of mining zone incursions,” Rafa explained, ticking off the points on his fingers, “resource stripping, ghost ship sightings, hijacked shipments, a missing British ship, and an American warfleet on its way here to square off with an equally large British warfleet who think that each other are to blame. I want to know exactly what you’ve been up to and where the blame belongs before the shooting starts.”

“Our orders are to stay away from you,” one of the other administrators declared. “We’re not responsible for any of that.”

“Define ‘stay away,’” Rafa challenged.

“We keep our mining zones far from yours so our ships don’t intermix. You’re not supposed to know we’re out here.”

“How did you find us?” Drayson asked.

Rafa walked over to the elderly man, though in truth Rafa was probably older, and ignored the newbie’s question. “Better come clean with me before I get angry. I already know you have contacts in the national zones.”

The man’s face scrunched up, and suddenly he found himself unable to speak.

“Thought so,” Rafa surmised, knocking that man’s chair over backwards as well. “Anyone else want to give it a try?”

“We’re supposed to keep our operations hidden until the time is right,” another man offered. “Which is why we keep our ships away from everyone else’s…save for making shipments, and those are only delivered to the very edge of your zones, to waiting ships. Raiding would risk exposing our operation.”

“Shut up, Haskins!” the first man on the floor yelled up at the ceiling.

“They’ve already found us,” the other administrator argued. “If there’s war brewing we need to keep out of it.” He turned his gaze back to Rafa. “We may have been defying Star Force, but we haven’t done anything illegal. What right do you have to trespass on our property and hold us captive?”

“And I had such high hopes for you,” Rafa said deadpan before knocking Haskins’ chair over, with the man giving a shocked shout on the way down. “What shipments and to whom?”

“Our partners,” Drayson offered. “Please don’t kick me over, I have a weak heart that’s already beating a kilometer a minute.”

“Names,” Rafa insisted.

“Both the United Kingdom and the Unites States worked with us to set up this mining network, along with Germany, Ukraine, Mexico, Japan…”

“Drayson!” the first man on the floor bellowed out, his face going red, more with rage than the blood flowing into his head.

“India,” the administrator continued,” Egypt, China, Argentina, and Israel.”

Rafa held his gaze for a moment. If what he were saying was true it would have serious implications. “That’s quite a list. What are they giving you…and by you, I mean your corporate alliance.”

A few sets of eyes went wide when he said that.

“Yes, we know about your conglomerate,” he said, fixing his gaze back on Drayson. “What’s the arrangement?”

“They provided us with the initial funding to start operations in secret, with the emphasis on growing our infrastructure rather than turning a profit. They continue to give us a stipend, but we’re mining enough precious metals now to compensate them for part of it. We smuggle it back onto the market through their mining ships. They quietly distribute the allotments so they don’t attract unwanted attention. The funds help buy supplies we can’t make for ourselves out here, with that list diminishing by the year as we get more self sufficient.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“16 years.”

Rafa stared at him for a moment, then stood up and walked around behind the man, with Drayson’s pulse jumping even higher…then Rafa unwrapped the duct tape from around him, pulling off some fuzz from his thick uniform jacket. He wadded it up in a bundle and tossed it aside, returning to his perch atop the table.

“Thank you,” Drayson said, rubbing his hands together gratefully.

“Tell me more about this arrangement.”

“Well, it’s all temporary. Once we grow large enough we’ll go public and break your monopoly over belt mining. Once we can sell on the open market we can use the revenue to branch out into shipbuilding, tourism, habitats…every economic section that you dominate. This whole operation was designed to break your powerhold by offering competition that no one corporation or nation could field on its own.”

“Ambitious,” Rafa offered. “Are all your corporations going to merge and play nice?”

“No, it’s strictly a co-op.”

“Who employs you?”

“Me personally? Exxtron. They all have different employers,” he said, gesturing to the other administrators with his free hand, “but we operate under the same command hierarchy. Bit of a payroll mess, but it works out.”

“So you’re not into any piracy?”

“Never,” Drayson said with obvious disgust. “We’re businessmen and this is purely an economic venture.”

Rafa raised his hands in the air gesturing helplessness. “I’m still missing a British ship. We looked for it, hard…even extended our sweeps into areas of the belt that went beyond the designated mining radius, which is how we stumbled across your mining vessels, by the way. Still found nothing.”

“Those damn Limeys,” another upright-seated administrator who’d previously been silent swore between clenched jaws.

“Say again?” Rafa asked, turning his attention to the slender, red haired man.

The administrator stared him down angrily, but his anger wasn’t directed at Rafa. “This is all their fault.”

“I’m listening.”

The man growled, turning his head aside intent on stonewalling the armored soldier, but he changed his mind just as fast.

“I know where your missing ship is. It’s safely tucked inside a slip on shipyard 3 undergoing modification.”

“What?” Drayson asked. Several other administrators also shot the man questioning glances.

“Keeping secrets from each other?” Rafa guessed.

“The Americans and British have been raiding each other’s shipments. They always did it after we made the exchange, so it wasn’t our problem, but the Americans went and destroyed one of the British cargo runners that rendezvous with our ships outside your detection range and carry the cargo in to rendezvous with their tagged mining ships. These are probably what you referred to as your ‘ghost ships’ because they were built by us so you wouldn’t notice any unaccounted for ships. Thing was, the Limeys couldn’t report what the Americans had done, because the ship they destroyed wasn’t supposed to exist.”

“So they hatched a plan, which my superiors stupidly agreed to. They’d have one of their tagged ships go ‘missing’ and blame it on the Americans. That ship would be brought here and refitted for our use in place of a new cargo runner being supplied to them, without cost. A straight up trade that left them with a political weapon to use against the Americans, save it backfired and got you suspicious. Now here you are and I’m tied to my chair with tape thanks to their stupid national pride.”

“Wow, talk about dropping the ball,” Rafa commented with genuine sympathy. What these men had accomplished all these years was impressive enough, let alone without Star Force ever knowing about it…only to be outted by a nation more concerned with pressing a rivalry than protecting what they’d conspired to create.

Taryn walked in behind the reclining administrators carrying another body in identical uniform.

“Found another hiding under his desk.”

“We’re running out of chairs,” Rafa commented, grabbing one of only two remaining and taping the unconscious man into it.

“You have enough?” Taryn asked.

“I think we’ve got a good group here. We’re in the middle of a very enlightening conversation.”

“Really?” Taryn said, resting her stinger pistol hilt on her shoulder.

“Oh yes, you wouldn’t believe the progress we’ve made. This fellow here,” he said, tapping one man on the head, “was just informing me that they have the missing British ship in one of their shipyards…and that the British gave it to them.”

“What?!” Taryn asked, her ire rising.

Rafa held up a wait finger, then stepped back into the semi-circle where he could face all the administrators.

“Alright, now we can proceed in two ways. You can be our prisoners and we can keep kicking the crap out of your security forces and run around this station causing all sorts of trouble…we like doing that, by the way…or we can call a truce and turn our attention to the people responsible for this whole mess in the first place. I’ll let you decide.”

“Define truce,” Haskins asked curiously.

“Your cover is already blown. That’s not going to undo itself. As you said earlier, you haven’t done anything illegal. Stupid maybe, but not illegal, and since you’re not customers of Star Force you have little to lose from the services blackout you know is going to be handed down, so we might as well dust each other off and go about our business like professionals.”

“You want us to ignore all this?!” the man on the floor yelled.

Rafa walked over and tipped the man back up, his red face having gone nearly purple. “We came here chasing raiders and a missing ship. Who’s really to blame for that?”

“The Limeys and Yanks,” the other administrator grumbled.

“Exactly,” Rafa agreed. “So how about we let you get back to business and we get back to civilization before they decide to go and start a war out here.”

“You’re going to cut off our smuggling lines,” Drayson pointed out.

“Probably,” Rafa admitted.

“Agreed,” one of the men who’d been silent to this point said with a tone of finality. “I assume you’ll need access to a transmitter to call for a ship to pick you up?”

“That would be helpful,” Rafa admitted, looking at the man. “You in charge?”

“For this region, and you make a valid argument. We’re businessmen, and I’d prefer not to have to deal with a fleet of your warships. The economic fallout from this is going to be bad enough. I have no wish to see you confiscating our property the way you did with the Chinese.”

Rafa gestured with his head and Taryn walked over and untied the man, then went about picking up and untying the others. “We’ll be out of here as soon as our ship arrives.”

“Send our best wishes to the Americans and Brits,” the lead administrator said menacingly.

“No problem,” Rafa promised.

8

February 21, 2107

An SRL, Search and Rescue Light, arrived at the rebel corporate command station to pick up Rafa, Taryn, and Morgan, with the administrative staff happy to see them and their armed transport go. The smaller version of an SR had been built around the growing design parameters of the SR fleet, with their primary task no longer being purely search and rescue, but rather an ‘on hands’ presence to make up for what Star Force’s drone fleet lacked.

Personnel extraction missions such as this were a prime example of the limitations of the remote-controlled warships…they had no living quarters aboard, nor could they carry any cargo, so if you needed to retrieve, transport, or repair you needed a crewed vessel, and the SRL had been designed to accomplish these tasks on a smaller, more mobile level than the larger, full scale SRs.

The SRLs were also armed with defensive laser cupolas, a small rack of intercepts, and a single offensive laser, small grade, making them an adequate, multi-purpose platform which the SR fleet had morphed into out of necessity. A small pair of gravity discs made up the ship’s center, with forward, lateral, and aft zero g compartments designed in homage to the Defiant from Star Trek lore, right down to the compact, no nonsense design aesthetic of the interior compartments.

Morgan immediately felt better once they were aboard and she could get out of her armor. Rafa dealt with the Captain and organizing a flyby of the shipyard where the British ship was being refitted, so they could get concrete visual proof that it was actually there before they headed back to Star Force controlled space, while Taryn and Morgan were free to do what they liked. After a long, hot shower Morgan donned a tech uniform that the crew had provided for her and began going through a series of stretches/body lifts in the small fitness room, working out the stagnation that several weeks of inactivity and zero g had subjected her body to.

Unable to do anything even remotely like a normal workout, Morgan relished in being able to get even a little training in, reflecting on the mission as she did so. While she didn’t like the toll it had taken on her training, she didn’t regret coming. She’d actually found the change of pace refreshing, as well as being able to knock a few heads around. It wasn’t anything near as difficult as her sparring exercises, but it was live…and for so many years she hadn’t encountered anything that wasn’t specifically designed for her improvement, so tossing around a few inept security guards had been surprisingly gratifying.

Morgan slid her bare feet wide of her body and pressed down into a full splits, feeling her tendons tight and resistive. She’d worked her body into a state of extreme flexibility over the years and was glad she hadn’t lost all of it. In fact, after a few rounds of stretches she recovered most of her bend lengths, missing only a few centimeters here and there. Her ability to recover so quickly was odd…she’d feared it would takes days or weeks to get back into the swing of things, but apparently her flexibility didn’t fall into that category.

“Ouch,” Taryn commented when she walked in on Morgan stretched out between two chairs, hanging down from her ankles so her legs bent apart at more than a 180 degree angle with arms stretched out sideways for balance. “When did you learn to do that?”

“Took a while,” Morgan commented, having to keep focused to keep from rolling over forwards or back. “One of the advantages of nonstop training.”

Taryn took her shoes and socks off, then mimicked Morgan’s splits on the floor, minus the extra angle added by the chairs, and with a bit of daylight showing underneath her.

“That’s as far as I can get. I’m usually up a few inches higher for target practice.”

“You shoot from a splits?”

“It offers decent stabilization when firing under low objects,” the targeting specialist said, leaning forward in her splits until her chest touched the ground. “And I prefer this if I have to be completely flat. I don’t like firing sideways when I can help it. I need to keep gravity aligned with my sights and I can pop up easier because technically I already have my feet underneath me,” she said, flexing her legs and seeming to levitate her torso up as the ‘scissors’ closed, holding her hands out in front of her as a mock weapon.

“That I haven’t tried,” Morgan admitted, holding her stretch throughout.

“You don’t do a lot of shooting, do you?”

“Enough to keep improving my scores, but most of my focus is on speed, strength, and agility.”

“It was the last time we talked. No changes?”

“Not when it’s working and I’m continuing to level up.”

“To what point? You’re making unbelievable progress on your core levels, but don’t you want to work on your tech skills? Even with your strength and speed, I heard Jason can still take you with a sword fairly easy?”

“Can’t train for everything,” Morgan said, having had this discussion with others before. “My base routines run me almost 9 hours a day, so I have to divide up the rest for skill training…and that doesn’t leave me a lot of options.”

“9 hours? Why is it taking so long?”

“I’m running higher volumes than I used to. Only so many hours in the day.”

“Why haven’t you just kicked up the intensity?”

Morgan blinked, surprised by the question. “I have.”

“No, I mean really jacked it up. If you were back in the sanctum and only had 2 hours to work with, how much higher do you think you could take it?”

“I haven’t tried,” she admitted. “I’ve just been content to make small upgrades so long as I could maintain the volume, and those small improvements have added up over time.”

“How many doses are you up to?”

“18.2,” she said offhand.

Taryn blanched. “Girl, you should be twice as strong as you are now if you’re taking that much. What’s your running level? 25?”

“Comprehensive 28,” Morgan said, putting her hands down and tipping out of her stretch, only to reach up into a handstand, which she walked around so she could still face Taryn.

“Well I’m at 21, and only running 6.4 doses a day. Tell me what’s wrong with this picture.”

“Shooting doesn’t take that much energy,” Morgan said, upside down as she started doing handstand pushups with remarkable ease.

Taryn walked over to the nearby wall and pressed her leg against it, scooting her foot up as she bent forward, reaching up into a forefoot/backfoot splits while looking down at Morgan.

“You’re volume heavy.”

“That’s the point.”

“What for?”

“To maximize hours and reduce recovery time. I don’t like sitting around when I could be doing more.”

“You must be going nuts by now then,” Taryn commented, switching legs on her wall stretch.

“I thought so too, but it hasn’t happened…at least not like I guessed. I actually feel pretty good.”

“I think you got in a rut without even knowing it. You need some downtime to process, even if you don’t technically need it. Sounds like you’ve been hammering it out under less than optimal conditions just to toughen yourself up. Don’t you think it’s time to show off and see what you can do with proper rest?”

“I don’t want to lose my training rhythm,” Morgan admitted.

“Haha, spoken like a newb.”

Morgan rolled out of her handstand and stood up. “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t had very many training interruptions, have you?”

“None at all for…several decades,” Morgan said, starting to see her point.

“Well, the rest of us learned early on how our bodies respond to the disruptions. We snap back pretty good, so long as they don’t come too frequently. Hammer the training when you like, but don’t worry about losing it so long as you keep your intensity up. Have you been reading the training logs?”

“I’m usually the one writing the training logs,” Morgan quipped.

“Take a look at Jason’s. His schedule is more irregular than the rest of ours and his tips have helped me keep my fitness rising while I focus primarily on my shooting. You’ve done the full bore thing for long enough, take a break and mix it up. When’s the last time you really experimented?”

Morgan raised an eyebrow, thinking back.

“That’s what I thought, missy. Time for a change,” Taryn said, coming off the wall and kneeling on the ground. “Get your butt down here.”

Morgan sighed and took an opposite position a few inches away facing Taryn.

“Hands out,” she said, flattening her palms next to each other, then flipping her right hand over and placing it on top of her left so that the back of her hands touched, “like this.”

Morgan mirrored her position.

With a slow speed meant to instruct rather than awe, Taryn rotated her wrists around and clapped her hands together, taking her opposing palms, lifting them ever so slightly apart, and sliding her hands around to face one another all in one quick, fluid motion.

“You,” she said, moving her own hands slightly out of the way given that they were kneeling so close to each other.

Morgan thought it through for a moment then did her best to mimic the motion…but when she clapped her hands together they didn’t touch, because Taryn had somehow stuck her own hand in between in the blink of an eye.

She pulled her hand out. “Again.”

Morgan reset her hands, then tried to be quicker, but Taryn was still able to slide her tiny little fingers in halfway, keeping Morgan from being able to clap.

Setting her jaw and mind to the challenge, Morgan tried again and again, with Taryn’s remarkable eye/hand coordination besting her each time. They went on like that for an hour before Morgan finally looked up into Taryn’s face and her fellow Archon raised a mocking eyebrow.

“I feel like a stupid trainee.”

Taryn smiled. “You’re better than the rest of us…but you’re not better than the rest of us. Teach and learn, young one,” she said mockingly to the other 80 year old.

The 20-something face stared back at her with a sarcastic look. “And the lesson of the day would be?”

“High volume is a training stage preceding an intensity upgrade,” Taryn said, flicking Morgan in the forehead for her stupidity. “You’re wasting hours with repetitive nonsense when you could be getting a better workout in a tenth of the time. Forget about burning calories and raising your ambrosia threshold and stick with quality. There are super Humans, and then there are Superhumans…” she said, quoting one of Greg’s more famous lines.

“Point taken,” Morgan said gratefully.

“Not quite,” Taryn added. “We have the message boards for a reason. I don’t see you on there very much.”

“I don’t have the ti…”

“Uh, huh.”

Morgan sighed, this time in utter defeat. She had been rather shortsighted.

“We’re a team, and even if we’re posted to different planets we can still stay connected and help each other out. We need to, if we’re going to stay sane.”

“Alright, alright! I’ll go back into teenage rapid-fire texting mode as soon as we get back.”

“This ship has a terminal, you know.”

“Fine,” Morgan said, mock frustrated as she stood up then quickly reached back down and lifted Taryn up off her feet by the shoulders and hefted her up above her head with ease.

“What are you doing?” Taryn asked, laughing.

“Just wanted to remind you that all those hours I’ve been ‘wasting’ have been good for something.”

“You jerk, let me down!” she said, giggling.

“Say it,” Morgan prompted, holding on tight.

“I’m thinking of a number?” Taryn said almost deadpan, but couldn’t help cracking a bit of a smile.

Morgan rolled her eyes and dropped the Archon…hard.

9

February 27, 2107

A shuttle was sent over to dock with the SRL and pick up Morgan, Rafa, and Taryn, then deliver them back to the Draco, Roger’s flagship, which had only arrived in the asteroid belt three days prior after a long, slow trip out from Mars. The other elements of his task force had come on ahead, with him traveling out on the battleship Smash Brothers while they waited for the massive command ship to catch up.

“Nice work,” he offered Rafa with a nod as the trio disembarked the shuttle. “You even beat the Americans back.”

“How close are they?” Rafa asked.

“They’ve already begun breaking maneuvers and should be on station sometime within the next three days.”

“How many British ships are waiting for them?” Taryn asked, floating out behind Rafa, carrying her armor in a bundle over her shoulder rather than wearing it as Rafa was.

“About half their fleet is stationed on their edge of the border, with more arriving every day or so whenever a Cobra or Viper comes in. We anticipate they’ll have all of their task force here within the week.”

“Why didn’t you halt the transfer order?” Rafa asked as the foursome floated their way down the zero g docking area, headed towards the large ‘needle’ at ship’s center that held the internal gravity cylinders.

“We didn’t want to give the Americans any help. Davis is busting their balls back home, but with both their fleets here things are going to get tense. I doubt either side will just turn around and go back, especially with how much the Brits just paid for us to transport their fleet here.”

“So you get to play peacekeeper for a while,” Taryn commented.

“I’d like that to turn into ‘we’ for a while, if you’re willing to stick around, all three of you I mean.”

“What’s up?” Rafa asked.

“I have no one I can trust to lead the fleets if I have to deploy myself into boarding action. If we do get into a mess out here, I’d like the option of capturing their ships rather than outright destroying them, and I’m not sure that the two Knights I have onboard are up to the task.”

“You think things are headed that way?” Morgan asked, bringing up the rear as they hand-walked their way down the very long hallway.

“50/50 right now. We’ll have to wait and see how the politics realign, assuming the ship captains don’t get an itch to start something on their own.”

“How are you deployed?”

“I’ve got the 4th, 7th, and 8th fleets defending the two nearest starports and the surrounding civilian stations, so if they want to start a scrap they’ll have to do it further out. I’ve got a few patrols running through both the British and American zones, as well as three ships stationed on the far end acting as radar towers to discourage any more smuggling rendezvous, but there’s a lot of space to cover and our sensor range isn’t sufficient to block it all off, so I’m guessing as to the best placements.”

“I can stick around,” Taryn offered.

“Same here,” Morgan echoed.

“I’ve got a couple months before I have to get back to Atlantis for training duty,” Rafa clarified. “You’ve got me till then.”

“Appreciated,” Roger said, opening an emergency door. The ship was so big that even the internal hallways periodically had obstructions to keep any hull breach from sucking the air out of the entire ship.

“Anyone else making a play?” Taryn asked.

“Thankfully no, every other nation is keeping their warships at home, though they’re still operating their mining ships within the designated zones. My captains have standing orders to intervene before they’re put at risk, which I’ve been drilling the British fleet commander about on a regular basis.”

“So we’re going to let them fight it out so long as they stay away from everyone else?” Morgan asked.

“I don’t know,” Roger admitted. “This whole situation is fluid right now because of the intel you sent back. We’ll have to wait and see what happens after the Americans arrive.”

“Have a seat,” Davis said as the British Ambassador came into his office, only to find the live image of the American President on a large, two-way video screen.

“What is this?” he demanded, stopping halfway to Davis’s desk.

“I have something to inform you both about, and I don’t care to repeat myself. Sit down,” he reiterated icily.

The British Ambassador stared at the American through the comlink for several seconds then walked forward and pulled the empty chair a foot further aside, increasing the gap between himself and the screen.

“As you already know from the newscasts,” Davis began, “we recently discovered an illicit, and rather large mining operation in the asteroid belt. Those corporations responsible are going public with the operation, and are acceding to our demands to keep their ships running with transponders. That doesn’t undo what’s already been done, but they’re looking to the future and trying to put a positive spin on the debacle as best they can. We, however, know the truth.”

“Are you saying these people are responsible for the territory violations?” the President asked neutrally.

Davis stared at the screen. “The public is already suggesting as much, but no, I’m not.”

Both the Ambassador and the President did a double take, having expected Davis to point out that there was no need for the upcoming confrontation if neither side was to blame.

“You have been raiding the British operations,” Davis told the American bluntly, then turned to the Brit. “And you have been raiding theirs in return.”

“We have done no such thing…” the Ambassador began.

Davis held up his hand for him to stop. “You see, we found your missing ship.”

The Ambassador visibly blanched, and Davis turned to face the President. “The ship never went missing. It’s sitting in one of the corporate shipyards in the belt, being refitted for their use after the British gave it to them…or more accurately, traded it to them in exchange for a new smuggling ship to replace the one that you,” he pointed a finger at the screen, “destroyed.”

Both men fell silent, caught on the carpet so to speak, with events that neither of them thought Star Force would ever know about.

“Both of you have been engineering events to bring you into a military confrontation with each other, and I now have the proof which will be released to the media at noon today…a little over 2 hours from now. If you insist on starting a war, the public is going to know the real reasons as to why, as well as your part in establishing the covert mining operation, which both your countries will suffer penalties for, as will all the others involved. There’s not much I can do to our rivals, but I’m holding them accountable where I can. You two I expected better of…especially you,” he said turning on the Brit.

“We have a right to defend our national interests,” the Ambassador said slowly, trying to gather his thoughts.

“But you don’t have the right to lie, cheat, and steal.” Davis turned to the screen. “And you should have known better than to think we’d never find out. I know our relationship has been tenuous over the years, but your country has always conducted a high level of business with us, which you’ve now jeopardized.”

“What exactly are you accusing my country of doing?” the President asked.

“Zone violations…transponderless, untagged ships…smuggling through the Star Force transportation network…and falsified personnel IDs, which we’re only now starting to backtrack. You see, in order to keep the heavy end of the hammer from falling on them, the corporations you funded are coming clean on everything, while stating that Star Force has no jurisdiction over them. Like I said, that might fly in most cases, but your contracts with us hold you to a set of standards that both of you have repeatedly and flagrantly broken.”

“What are your intentions?” the Brit asked.

“You’re already facing a number of percentage fines, order nullifications, and partial blackouts on available services…but if you persist in this direction and start a war, both of your nations are facing a minimum 25 year ban on all Star Force services, with the side that fires the first shot getting an extra 10 on top of that.”

“You’d penalize us for defending ourselves if they attacked first?” the President said, distraught.

“My fleet is already present in the region. If any attacks occur, my forces will engage the aggressor…but if you see fit to hit them back you’ll be held accountable too, so my advice to you is to turn your fleet around and head back to Earth or Mars.”

“And what about their fleet? Are we supposed to just leave ourselves vulnerable and hope that you’ll be there to intervene in time?”

“Their fleet will be going back too,” Davis said, glaring at the Ambassador. “If I had known all this sooner, I would have cancelled the transit orders before your ships arrived, but it’s too late to do that now. Your ships will return to the staging area and await transfer back to where they came.”

“So you get paid twice as much?!” the Brit said exasperated.

“I don’t care about the money, I just want your ships out of the belt. We’ll take them back free of charge, and after that you can maneuver your military fleet around on your own, because we won’t be doing it for you anymore.”

“This is unbelievable!” the Ambassador said, standing up and pushing his chair aside. “They destroy one of our ships and you don’t blink an eye? Our fleet is there to protect our miners and our territorial rights. As long as the Americans stay on their side there won’t be a problem, but our fleet is not going back! We will not make ourselves vulnerable to another attack, and if Star Force can’t accept that then perhaps it’s time we renegotiated our contract.”

With that last word he spun about and stormed out of Davis’s office.

“Do you really expect us to turn around in the face of that?” the President asked calmly after the Ambassador was gone.

“As I said, we can insure your security so long as you play by the rules.”

“Perhaps you could, but those are our people out there in harm’s way and we intend to protect them ourselves.”

“You weren’t protecting anyone when you were raiding British ships,” Davis pointed out.

“Warfare occurs in many theaters, Director. Not all of them are so cut and dry as you would like to think. They hit us under the belt, knowing that we couldn’t publically acknowledge what happened, so we hit them back, tit for tat. You saw the lengths they were willing to go to frame us with a supposed just cause to start a war. They’ve been spoiling for a fight for a long time and we’ve had it with them. We won’t fire the first shot, you have my word on that, but if they do hit us again, we’re not going to hold back and wait for you to come in and save the day. If they want to settle the score, I suggest you keep your fleet out of it and just become a spectator.”

“If you start hitting civilian targets you know we’ll have to act,” Davis warned.

The President fell silent for a moment, then folded his hands together atop his desk as he stared into a duplicate screen on his end. “I apologize for the deceit, but not for our intent. We will defend our national security as best we see fit, and I hope that doesn’t involve a confrontation with you. But be advised, that if this does escalate into full war, then any British assets, armed or otherwise, are valid targets.”

“If you operate under that mindset then we will come into conflict,” Davis said, feeling his control over the situation slipping away.

“If it comes to that, so be it. You have my guarantee, though, that all other nations’ ships and facilities, including your own, we’ll mark as noncombatants and steer clear of. Our focus is defending ourselves from the British, not starting another World War.”

“Bear in mind,” Davis said, almost in a whisper, “the long term consequences resulting from a full ban. You’ve seen the effect it’s had on the Chinese.”

“If we have to go our own way, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time…it’s also my understanding that a permanent ban is reserved for those who attack Star Force ships or facilities?”

“That’s our policy.”

“Well then, let me put this on the table. Hit us with your 25 year ban if you must, we’ll take it. I understand your desire, even need to discourage other countries from turning space into a war zone. It’s bad for business and Humanity, and I can honestly say I admire you for it, but sometimes a fight is just plain inevitable and putting it off causes more harm than good. The British made that mistake with Hitler, and I do not intend to make it with them. They’re growing in strength, so we might as well settle this now, while we still have the naval advantage, rather than wait until it’s more of a fair fight. I hope you can understand that.”

“Understand, yes. Approve of, no.”

“Fair enough,” the President said, sitting back. “Enact what penalties you will. We won’t hold it against you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it seems I have a speech to prepare. Thanks for the 2 hour heads up.”

The President touched a button on his desk and the feed cut out, leaving Davis alone in his office.

He leaned forward, cradling his nose in his hands as he propped his head up via his elbows on his desk, closing his eyes to think for a few minutes.

With a deep breath he straightened up and flexed his hands, resigning himself to weather this storm, now that it had been made painfully clear it couldn’t be avoided. He pulled up a comm prompt and sent a brief text message to Paul in fleet command.

Diplomacy failed. War appears inevitable. Prepare accordingly.

10

March 19, 2107

The British patrol ship hung in space above the American mining outpost attached to the side of a 300m wide asteroid that had a week previously been in the American territorial zone, but given the fluid nature of the belt the valuable rock now found itself on the British side of the imaginary line. A cargo ship sat nearby, its engines destroyed by a British missile as the small patrol ship waited for one of their own cargo ships to arrive to transfer over the cargo and reclaim the mineral wealth that was rightfully theirs.

A tiny shuttle from the patrol ship had already docked and seized control of the mining station via a pair of armed guards, stopping any further mining from occurring until the Americans and their facility could be properly removed, but given the fact that this asteroid was well within the outer half of their territory it was going to take days to get the proper ships and engineers out to them.

The patrol ship, cutter-class, stayed on station guarding both the asteroid and the captured ship until an American counterpart arrived, with the British warship moving off to engage the approaching frigate, which began the attack with a pair of long range missile launches.

While the smaller of the two ships, the cutter was the only one that had any missile defense systems, which opened up with a hail of metallic shrapnel that succeeded in catching and destroying both of the larger missiles before they could reach the ship.

The cutter responded at medium range with its solitary cannon, belting a 115mm slug towards the larger American cross section. The frigate had a prominent prow compartment, linked to the engine bank at the rear through a narrow, but sturdy shaft around which slowly rotated two blocky artificial gravity sections, giving the bold white ship an oscillating look in an otherwise static backdrop. Beneath the white paint job were layers of armor plating, thin compared to Star Force standards, but twice as thick as the British patrol ship carried.

The American ship also sported two cannons, each placed on opposite ends of the prow. The top mounted one rotated slightly to the side and fired a 105mm shell in return, quickly followed by a second from below as the British cutter flew laterally, trying to get a broadside angle against the American, and given that it was the lighter and faster vessel of the two it succeeded in doing just that, then curving around to face head on, crossing the ‘T’ so to speak, and reducing its own cross section to just the angled nose that ran up to the top-mounted cannon, obscuring the rest of the ship behind that tiny target.

The cutter’s own artificial gravity section was essentially a hamster wheel imbedded into the hull just below the cannon. It housed a few compartments in the small ship, but didn’t have any visibly moving parts from outside. Instead its hull was a smooth, dark tinted blue that both American shells missed cleanly.

The aim of the British was better, and the first shell hit the frigate’s prow, crumpling on impact and putting a large gash in the composite armor as pieces of the protective layers flaked off and flew into space, but did little hull damage beneath. It wasn’t until several British shots hit around the same section of hull did the first clean shot get through, resulting in a plume of debris propelled by the internal atmosphere of the ship escaping through the hole in the hull.

Shortly thereafter the Americans got their first hit…a deflection off the angled prow that dented a section of the cutter’s armor but did not penetrate. Using her superior maneuvering ability, the British crew kept the ship at a perpendicular angle to the American vessel as they closed to short range and fired off a series of small missiles that landed square against the rotating section of the hull, blasting the armor off the nearer section and exposing parts of it to space.

The two American cannons kept firing nonstop, winging the cutter a few times without ever making a square hit. They tried another missile attack, launching 4 forward firing missiles in a wide arc to bring them back around at the British ship, which gave the anti-missile system enough time to swat them all down. Unlike the cutter, the American ship was only equipped with big, long range missiles, used to snipe at distant targets or even larger ships than itself, while the British missiles were small and short range only, and far more useful in this situation where the longer ranged armaments didn’t have time to build up attack speed.

The patrol ship exhausted its offensive missiles against the flank of the American frigate, damaging the rotating section so much that the entire ship began to list as the balancing mechanism was thrown off. The superior British gunners also managed to clip the American’s top cannon, taking it out and leaving the frigate with a massive blind spot which they quickly exploited, flying up over the back of the American and pummeling her hull with close ranged shells, slowly tearing it apart, bit by bit, over the course of a half hour.

The Americans continued to shoot off arcing missiles, but to no effect. They didn’t have the mass fire capability of the smaller missiles needed to overwhelm the defensive flack, nor could they get decent acceleration at this close range, giving the British ship a nice wide circling arc to fire at before the missiles even faced towards the enemy, though they kept trying until their racks ran empty.

The patrol ship continued firing shells into the prow of the American ship until they were certain to have penetrated all the way into the bridge, then the Brits left the wreck of the ship below them to drift in the asteroid belt as they returned to the captured asteroid, missile racks empty, with only a few shells remaining and several damaged spots on their hull, but with the first clear victory in the conflict, images of which would be transmitted back to British fleet command and immediately released to the media as proof that the mighty American fleet wasn’t unbeatable. They might have more ships, the UK press would spout, but the British had better ones with better trained crews and tactics.

After that both sides scrambled to reposition their fleets within the belt to engage vulnerable targets along a wide campaign zone, with no hope whatsoever of delaying a war that had been decades in the making.

“You were a second behind that lap,” Wilson told Davis as they passed the start/finish line on one of the many tracks inside Atlantis. “You’ve got 3 seconds of cushion left, don’t burn it off now. Grind this one out a bit.”

“Trying,” Davis said, ever so slightly increasing his pace. Running had never been his forte, but had become a staple of his training, with Wilson closely monitoring his progress and jumping in with him on workouts where he felt he needed an extra boost of confidence.

Davis was nearing his 136th birthday, and had the distinction of not only being the richest man on Earth, but the oldest as well, having to color his hair gray to downplay the ever present questions regarding his longevity, though truth be told, it was due mainly to the man running beside him…the constant thorn in his side that kept him steadily improving his workouts while supplementing his body with small doses of ambrosia. As it was, Wilson had worked him up to running 8:00 min miles, and had him on the clock so each lap he ran had to be kept at a cumulative 7:59.9 pace…which was a killer.

He’d gone two and a half miles already, a nice 10 laps around the track and had built up a 7 second lead on the clock, some of which he’d surrendered the past two laps as his legs began to tire more than he realized. The goal for today was to get 4 miles in, which mean 6 more laps without dropping behind pace, otherwise he’d have to stop, rest, then finish the remainder at speed, knowing he’d screwed up his perfect workout.

He didn’t want that to happen. He had a 17-day streak going, but when the body complained the clock had a tendency to slip and you’d find yourself in trouble without enough time to make it up save for a sprint…and he knew from experience how bad it felt the next lap if he had to sprint on one of the middle ones to keep pace.

“Come on,” Wilson prompted, “work the backstretch with me. Shave off a few tenths here so you don’t have to make it up later.”

Davis responded a little, again, not feeling like he had much to work with today. Wilson accelerated a little bit ahead of him and Davis forced himself to speed up enough to bring his right shoulder back even with the trainer’s left. By the time they got back around to the start line he’d succeeded in adding .3 seconds to his time cushion, meaning that lap had been just under pace.

“Good, now stay on top of it. Don’t relax or you’ll give it all away and then some. Focus on one lap at a time,” Wilson said, pressing ahead of him again.

Another man on the track came up behind them fast and moved around the outside of Wilson to where Davis could see him, then in typically cocky Archon fashion moved in front of Davis and began running backwards so he could talk to him face on.

“It’s started,” Jason told him, jogging backwards with little effort. “The British seized an American mining base that drifted across the territory line, captured the cargo ship with it, and destroyed the American warship that responded. The British took out a frigate with a cutter, and are plastering the newscasts with the results. Roger says both fleets are redeploying for combat across the border, but so far it looks like they’re keeping away from any of our facilities, and we’re moving ships into the gaps to keep them away.”

“Any movement…elsewhere?” Davis asked between heavy breaths.

“None yet. Paul’s keeping a close watch and said he’ll let me know the minute someone twitches.”

Davis nodded and Jason ran off annoying fast. Frustration boiling up inside at how events were deteriorating with him unable to do anything about it, Davis unconsciously started running harder and got back around to the start line where Wilson was happy to report that they’d ran that last lap 4 seconds under pace.

He would eventually finish up his run 22 seconds ahead of pace, extending his workout streak to 18 days as he distractedly headed off to arrange a meeting of all the nations’ Ambassadors who had assets within the belt, intent on making it crystal clear that their countries needed to keep out of this conflict rather than picking sides and escalating it to insane levels.

Escalation

1

December 8, 2107

Graham rolled his eyes and tossed his cards on the table. “I swear, you have to be bloody cheating.”

William reached forward and pulled the small pile of Star Force credit tokens towards him, eliciting sneers from the other three men.

“A combination of luck and skill, my friend,” he revealed, methodically stacking up the currency chits that had become extra valuable ever since Star Force had handed down the 35 year ban against the United Kingdom for their part in the ‘Belt War’ as many of the naval officers had come to call it, with the label quickly spreading throughout the rest of the British holdings along with the news of their victory over the Americans.

“Must be a shit load of luck, because we all know you’re as dumb as a rock,” Stuart said as he collected all the cards and began shuffling them for another hand.

“Whatever works,” William deflected, rolling a white/gold token across his knuckles artfully. The Star Force currency had quickly become the envy of the British soldiers stationed on Mars given that they no longer had access to the currency exchanges and Star Force now refused to accept British pounds from anyone, eliminating the possibility of them using a 3rd party middleman to make local purchases.

Everything on the Mars black market was traded for with physical currency, and with the pound no longer useful at Star Force installations it had become next to worthless outside of the British colonies, so those few Star Force credits still in circulation within the ranks had jumped in value, making the little circular, synthetic tokens worth their weight in gold.

Graham belatedly looked down at his watch. “Hey, turn on the telly!”

One of the British army regulars at another table in the military base lounge responded and walked over to the small screen on the wall and flipped it on, with British newscast feed already tuned in.

“There we go,” Graham said excitedly, seeing the attractive female anchor talking over a map of the asteroid belt and highlighting another section of the American territory where a recent battle had taken place. The Yanks continued to fall further and further back, already having lost 3/4ths of their fleet and trying to save the rest of it as they consolidated their remaining strength around their entry point with a host of unarmed supply ships and tankers to protect, otherwise they’d be stranded in the belt without fuel and easy pickings for the Royal Navy.

A cheer went up around the room, then half the men and women assembled went back to what they were doing while the others continued to watch with interest.

“Hey, mate. You’d play better if you paid attention,” Stuart said, dealing Graham his cards.

“We lost another ship,” Graham noted, only half paying attention to his dismal hand. “A cruiser? How the hell did they get one of our cruisers?”

Someone near the telly either heard him or was of a similar mind, because he stood up and tagged the news icon for that substory on the screen and brought it up into full view. The HMS Diadem had been engaging 16 American ships in a retreating action with only four destroyers and another cruiser in support, but they had succeeded in destroying 11 of the American vessels, including the carrier USS Bellicose.

The anchor explained in great detail how the Diadem had pushed through the sloppy American formation and pursued the carrier to her destruction, but eventually succumbed to the S-12 fighters and their ‘shipbuster’ warheads. A new American invention that lended the destructive power of a small, tactical nuke without the hazardous radiation. 17 confirmed hits from the dangerous missiles took down the Diadem, from which only 13 crewmembers were recovered.

“We got their bloody carrier,” Stuart pointed out. “That makes four for us, none for them.”

“A lot of good chaps died taking her down,” Graham said, taking a moment out of respect before turning back to his cards…which flew out of his hand as the man sitting behind him shoved a startled elbow into his back as a base-wide alarm sounded.

Graham and William exchanged glances, then bolted to their feet along with everyone else to get to their combat stations, theirs being the armory.

The pair ran down three flights of stairs and across half the level before they got to their barracks and hastily dressed into their combat gear, then met up with the on-duty armory guards another level lower as they were passing out firearms to the regulars.

“Corporal!” Sanders yelled, tossing Graham a rifle. He grabbed it out of the air and shouldered the weapon a moment before the cartridge came sailing his way. He loaded his weapon and took up an auxiliary guard post outside as more and more unarmed regulars poured in to receive their weapons.

“What the hell is going on?” William asked, standing on the opposite side of the hall in a small wall recess.

A passing Lieutenant turned his head towards the question as he waited in the ever moving line. “We’ve got incoming, 10-15 minutes out.”

“Americans?” William asked, not fully believing it. The fighting was way out in the asteroid belt, not here on Mars.

“Who else, Corporal?” the Lieutenant reiterated as if it was a stupid question. He retrieved a belt with sidearm from the armory handlers, along with a battle rifle and flak jacket, then headed off with a group of his men towards one of 8 airlocks on the army base where they began setting up barricades and fortifying the hallways around those sections, knowing that if the Americans intended to get inside, that’s where they were going to have to come.

Elsewhere on the base, crews were running for the vehicular bays where their defense tanks were housed, connected to the main base via underground tunnels. Once inside the garages, the crews boarded via internal docking airlocks, then drove their multi-wheeled craft out of the rising doors and onto the red martial surface, spinning about and wheeling across the base toward the boundary wall gate. In ones and twos they sped outside, passing by the defense turrets as they looped around the back side, out of the view of the Americans, as they organized themselves to flank the attackers.

Off to the east the Americans were advancing rapidly, driving their own multi-wheeled tanks by the hundreds, with support vehicles bringing up the rear. When the leading elements got within a few kilometers, the larger flatbed haulers in back stopped in their tracks and launched the close support aircraft they carried.

The small VTOLs were fuel hogs, combining rocket propulsion with fan-blade engines for use in the thin Martian atmosphere. The A-22 ‘frogs,’ as they were known, took off from the flatbeds and flew out past the tank lines, targeting the wall turrets with missile attacks before the assault force came within range.

The few automated turrets blew to pieces on impact, as did the thin walls surrounding the military base. A pair of anti-aircraft chaff guns responded to the frogs, driving them off momentarily before being targeted by mortar fire, with the positions of the guns supplied by the aerial frogs as the heavy cannon-bearing tanks fired up and over the wall in a shallow, low gravity arc, lobbing explosives that detonated on impact. After a few initial misses the tanks got their range and eliminated the anti-air threat, giving the American frogs free reign over the skies.

The light cannon-bearing tanks collected along the east wall and began assaulting the gate, knocking it down with successive hits as the British force counterattacked from both sides, coming in from the north and south and engaging the Americans at close range while the frogs picked at them from above with missiles and auto-cannons.

Several of the leading American tanks were hit and destroyed by the British explosive rounds as the flanking maneuver began, but the outnumbered defenders were quickly matched and driven back, with the survivors fleeing around to the far side of the base, skirting the wall to provide cover as the A-22s left the main force in pursuit. The six-wheeled British ‘Monarchs’ clawed away at the red Martian soil as they fired backwards on the run at the pursuing American’s lighter elements.

With a roar of engine wash, several of the frogs skipped over the corner of the base wall and came into view, firing down on the fleeing tanks with what missiles they had left, then chewing them apart with their depleted uranium slugs with the red-camo colored armor plates shredding on impact, killing the crews inside instantly or exposing them to the inhospitable atmosphere with rips in their pressure suits.

One of the frogs took a lucky/well placed tank shell to its starboard engine and went down hard, careening back over the wall and crashing inside the base perimeter with a plume of shrapnel marking its landing point. With the lower gravity, every explosion seemed larger, with debris flying further up and away, then falling more slowly to the ground, making for an eye-popping display had anyone been around to observe the carnage. The nearest habitation other than the base itself was some 53 klicks away, an industrial complex fed by several mining sites in this region, of which the military base was tasked to defend.

Due to the spread out nature of the British infrastructure and the inhospitable surface conditions, the military presence in the region had been designed to be light and mobile, with convoy escort and defense patrols being the primary duties of the otherwise unnecessary military presence. Prior to this attack there had never been any fighting on the surface of Mars, so the exact dynamics of such a conflict had never been thoroughly worked out.

The Americans had planned better, sending a convoy overland from an adjacent barren sector where they’d landed a fleet of dropships that ferried the ground troops some 1,500km from a much more substantial surface base. The attack convoy brought with it its own light tanks, but added a host of other vehicles, some combat in nature like the heavy, eight-wheeled Armadillos that stayed behind and pounded the main gate of the British base, and other mobile equipment sleds for later use in the assault.

As the frogs and light tanks finished mopping up the monarchs outside the base, the American heavies broke through the gate and moved inside the base, taking fire immediately from guard turrets with small arms that couldn’t penetrate the tank armor, nor could seriously damage the thick, airless rubber tires that carried the armadillos down the paved road towards the visible sections of the main base, a few kilometers inside the wall perimeter.

Behind the heavy tanks came the support craft, including the mobile A-22 landing trailers, refueling trucks, and breach gear…the last of which was maneuvered up to one of the personnel airlocks on the main building’s wall after the machine gun turrets flanking it were eliminated by sticky grenades launched from a swarm of APCs enroute to the vehicle hangars.

With the anti-personnel defenses down around this particular airlock, the nearest equipment sled, which was the size of a basketball court, rolled up against the side of the building and lowered its house-like central structure down half a meter on its 28 wheels so that its own airlock was approximately aligned with that of the military base, after which a breach umbilical ‘sucked’ up against the British side and visibly swallowed the airlock from the outside while the aft end of the sled lowered another airlock down towards ground level until it matched the height of the APCs.

Inside the sled, cutting devices began burrowing hard points into the outer structure of the British base, ‘building’ a larger American airlock annex on the exterior that would connect to the one inside the sled. Once it was firmly attached and pressure sealed, the American crew opened their side and began cutting through the British airlock door with handheld equipment designed for such a task while the APC train began docking with the sled and depositing soldiers inside the ‘waiting area’ who would form the initial breach party.

As the sled’s crew worked to gain entry to the main base, the other APCs assaulted the vehicular bays, which had wisely closed their exterior doors, but it wasn’t enough to stop the attackers. One of the Armored Personnel Carriers stopped outside and deployed a three man team in pressurized combat suits against the door, loading it up with explosive charges before retreating back inside their ride and driving off a safe distance, detonating the packages by remote.

The mammoth door crumpled along the centerline, cracking apart but not fully removing itself from the entrance. One of the nearest APCs drove up and nudged the door shards inward with the tip of its angled nose, reminiscent of the mako/rover design made famous by the Mass Effect video games, but it couldn’t budge the material more than a meter or so.

A few minutes later one of the heavy armadillos drove up and smashed through the broken door and pushed aside the fragments to allow the APC swarm inside where they began docking with the empty tank ports and pouring troops into the maintenance areas which connected to the main base via the underground tunnels. That’s where they met up with the first British troops and began a pitched firefight down the long, narrow tunnels that the Brits had set up with a series of defensive barricades that made it very hard for the Americans to advance…and even when they did manage to overcome one, the Brits could retreat back to the next in line and repeat the engagement all over again.

The exterior airlock was another matter, giving the Americans a direct line into the main structure, which appeared as a gigantic, low rising pyramid when viewed from afar. There were several other garages and auxiliary buildings connected to it by tunnel, but the main structure housed all the critical facilities underneath a thick concrete shell as opposed to the hundreds of different individual structures typical of military bases back on Earth.

Inside the equipment sled, the American cutting crew attached an extendable magnetic grapple to the center of the airlock door, connected to a mini utility rover/tank as the final torch cuts were being made. It held aloft, then pulled back the exterior door while the cutting crews got to work on the interior one, then dropped it in the corner of the workroom with uniformed, vest-wearing troops standing ready by the dozens off to the sides and behind in the now claustrophobic sled, with more still waiting outside in the APCs.

The rover returned to the airlock and attached to the inner door, waiting for the cutting crews to burn their way through the seals and hinges. There was an audible ‘clunk’ when the airlock was finally severed, with the cutters immediately pulling back a moment before the driver of the rover ordered its rubberized treads to move forward, pushing the airlock door inside the base as a type of shield while the soldiers followed less than a meter behind.

A hail of rifle fire ricocheted off the door, but the defenders weren’t yet visible to the Americans as they stepped over the small hump at the entry point and encountered a bouncing grenade that slipped under the edge of the rover’s makeshift shield.

Without thinking, the nearest American soldier stepped forward and kicked the grenade back the way it had came, just missing the underside of the airlock door as the rover pilot dropped it to the ground to keep them from sliding any more through. It detonated on the good side of the barrier, but threw some shrapnel back under the gap a split second before the door hit the floor. Three of the Americans took hits in their boots, then the rover driver gunned the accelerator and plowed the undersized airlock door ‘shield’ forward into the barricade the British had set up, jumping off the back as several of the defenders became visible around the edges.

The Americans charged forward with a deafening roar of battle cries, either trying to intimidate the British or psych themselves up for the bloodbath that was coming. Even with the rover/door providing some cover, they were running directly into the well placed British defenses.

Another grenade popped behind the American lines and killed five of the tightly clustered men instantly, but the attackers didn’t stop coming. As the sled’s waiting room quickly emptied, more and more APCs offloaded additional troops which fed into the base, having to crawl over the bloodied remains of their fellow soldiers until they got past the initial breach point and into a quickly reforming foothold as the surviving Americans from the lemming-like rush repositioned the British barricades and gave themselves their first good defensible position in a small atrium a few meters down the stubby hallway from the airlock.

To the front, left, and right of the atrium were more British defenses, situated several meters down each of the connecting hallways with rifle fire coming from the front and left…but not on the right. There was a high blockade of crates and other junk blocking that hallway up to the ceiling, creating a stop rather than a crossfire that could have resulted in the British shooting each other from opposite sides.

The Americans quickly took advantage of the blockage, forming a V-shaped defensive barrier as the Brits continued to lob grenades their way. As the forward American elements struggled to establish that foothold with mounting casualties, additional equipment came through, including a proper wedge which they attached to the front of the rover, replacing the grapple arm.

Once it was in place, the Americans opened up the forward hallway blockade and advanced behind their tiny tank shield, ramming into and through the British defenses and advancing further into the base.

With two entry points now established into the British compound, it was only a matter of time before the numerically superior Americans overwhelmed the British defenders and secured possession of the base…though the Brits made them earn every corridor and room they took, dragging out the internal engagement for 38 hours before finally succumbing to attrition.

It was a resounding American victory, and wouldn’t be the last. All across Mars the American army began assaulting British military bases and slowly kicking them off the planet in retribution for the losses they’d suffered in the asteroid belt, escalating this from a regional conflict into a full scale war, with both countries gearing up to take the fight to the enemy anywhere and everywhere they could in space.

2

January 4, 2108

The defending frigate and two cutters moved out from the American shipyard in low Earth orbit to intercept the approaching fleet of 18 corvettes, knowing full well that they were outgunned, but still determined to acquit their duty as best they could. With the local American fleet spread out to engage the limited British fleet around Earth and begin making strikes against key orbital facilities, the threat profile to the four American shipyards was low…which is exactly what the Japanese had counted on when they launched their simultaneous attacks.

Fleets of Japanese warships had redirected towards the American’s shipyards, with enough of a head start that the Americans couldn’t recall enough of their ships in time to make a difference. They’d seen the Japanese fleets approaching with hours of warning, but aside from the few vessels assigned as defensive patrols, the mathematics of orbital navigation made the inevitable attack painfully tedious to watch.

The 18 Japanese corvettes split up as they neared the 3 defenders, with 6 bypassing them entirely while the other 12 engaged the Americans head on in a flurry of missile exchanges, with the American cutters breaking formation to try and split the Japanese line, but it did no good. They were outnumbered and succumbed quickly enough, taking down three corvettes with them and damaging two others.

The Japanese ships stuck around long enough to finish off the remains of the American warships, thoroughly blasting them to bits while their leading ships tackled the limited shipyard defenses, taking out anti-missile batteries and a smattering of low caliber defense turrets protecting the 7 partially constructed warships and the fabrication facilities that had constructed the majority of the American fleet.

With the shipyard’s defenses gone, the 6 corvettes pulled back, appearing to leave the station to rendezvous with the rest of their fleet. As they did, two of the ships turned around with the starboard one firing a single missile back towards the shipyard. Without any missile defense systems remaining, the single weapon flew a clean track straight into the heart of the station housing over 6,000 construction personnel and detonated its 20 megaton nuclear warhead.

The explosion ripped a gaping hole in the center of the thick station, cracking and twisting the exterior construction slips around as a wash of debris expanded outward, with the bulk of the station still remaining intact. A second missile fired from the corvette detonated on one of the slips, blowing it and the ship it contained apart and succeeded in disconnecting a section of the ring-like exterior Halo that all the slips connected to clear of the station, with it and two other filled slips drifting away from the main body.

The second corvette launched a third nuke, then a fourth, and finally a fifth before the Japanese ships withdrew, leaving what had just been a highly active and productive shipyard behind as a messy, expanding debris field, with a mixture of small and massive chunks drifting about everywhere.

Similar Japanese attacks occurred on the Americans’ other three military shipyards, breaking through their meager defenses and nuking the stations in a remarkably swift and horrific tactical assault that, within a matter of hours, took away the Americans’ ability to produce more warships, leaving their sizeable fleet without the ability to replenish their numbers.

A fifth Japanese fleet consisting of four cutters had also been deployed on a simultaneous intercept mission, but wouldn’t catch up to their targets for an additional 5 days as they chased down an American supply convoy headed for Mars. Without Star Force transportation and supply purchase, the ground campaign on Mars had to be resupplied from Earth directly, which meant sending slow convoys of cargo ships across the inter-planetary gap in lieu of the inter-planetary starships that the Americans did not possess and that the Australians would not loan them.

The 17 cargo ships never stood a chance, given that they didn’t have a military escort. The Americans hadn’t considered one necessary, given that at Earth they had the British fleet on its heels, with most of its ships stuck out in the asteroid belt and unable to return home. When the Japanese cutters caught up to the American convoy they didn’t demand a surrender, rather they destroyed 16 of the American cargo ships before siphoning fuel out of the remaining tanker to replenish what they’d lost in the pursuit.

Afterwards they detonated that ship’s fuel tanks and turned around, heading back to Earth for the backlash they knew was coming, but given the serious blows they’d just struck, attrition would now be on their side in the soon to escalate naval war, and the American troops on Mars would not be receiving backup for some time, giving the remaining British territories that hadn’t yet come under attack some hope, along with the addition of Japan’s own meager Martian army forces to the surface war that the Americans had been dominating.

The conflict that had looked like a mismatch between the USA and UK suddenly took on a new dimension as Japan allied themselves with the Brits, considerably evening the field despite the impending Star Force black listing that they knew would result. Japan saw opportunity on the horizon, both with the revelation of a new corporate alliance that could render some of the services that they’d been relying on Star Force for, and the possibility of knocking the Americans off their perch of dominance…as well as potentially sweeping up a lot of territory in the process, now that it had become clear that Star Force was intent on letting the nations fight it out so long as they didn’t encroach on civilian targets.

As soon as word hit the newscasts of the Japanese attacks, the political dynamic immediately changed. Star Force was no longer dictating events, and every nation, corporation, and entrepreneur looking for an angle began aligning themselves with the faction they felt would come out on top in the end.

Eight days later, when Germany denounced the Japanese nuclear attacks as barbaric and intolerable, they pledged their moderate military forces to assist the Americans in defense against Japan. The British responded in kind, declaring war on the Germans and attacking their holdings in the asteroid belt, which symbolically and functionally kicked off what Davis had long feared would happen.

World War III had just begun.

And it was going to be fought in space.

Three weeks later all 11 of the Archon team leaders arrived back in Atlantis for a summit meeting, given that the lag times for communications between the planets was abysmal and the current system alignment had Earth centrally located. Davis was not in attendance, nor were any auxiliary personnel, just the original trailblazers who, aptly enough, called for the meeting to be held in the lounge of their original quarters block that few of them used nowadays.

They rearranged the soft, cushy chairs into a circle in front of the wall-sized video screen, their video game equipment still attached at the base, harkening back to their days as newly minted adepts. It was used sparingly now, given how little they saw of each other, but several recently released games were visible in the rack, indicating that at least one of them was still getting some use out of it.

Paul was the last to arrive, and took the remaining empty chair next to Jason. “Sorry I’m late. Got an intelligence update on my way down. Looks like the Germans are gearing up for a ground campaign on Luna.”

Morgan rolled her eyes. “Will they never stop? Seriously, what’s their objective…destroy or capture everything their enemy has and kick them back down to Earth? They’re fighting like this is some kind of feud, not a war.”

“I don’t think they are thinking,” Greg added. “They’re reacting to each other without an end game.”

“That’s what you get with artificial peace,” Jason pointed out.

“Meaning what?” Morgan challenged.

“Meaning that there hasn’t been a full scale war for more than a century, even though there have been just causes to start one. They’ve let people be murdered and/or starve to death in the name of ‘peace’ just to satisfy the status quo. You put that genuine frustration into the mix with greed-mongers and you’ve got countries and individuals that have been spoiling for a fight for a long time. I bet half of them don’t care what happens long term, they just want to stick it to the other countries as much as they can, right here, right now.”

“History repeats itself,” Rafa declared. “Avoid the small wars…end up with a big one.”

“Bottom line is, where does it stop this time around?” Sara asked. “Or is Morgan right and they’re just going to keep at it until everyone is dead?”

“Obviously we’re not going to let it come to that,” Sam said evenly. “The question is how we go about stopping this. So far, they’ve mostly held within our demands to avoid civilian installations and neutral parties. Do we ignore the sovereignty that we claim to acknowledge and stop this by brute force, or do we let them bleed each other out?”

“A good question,” Steve admitted. “I’m partial to a hybrid solution myself.”

“Such as?” Sam asked, curious.

“We took away China’s weapons because they were a threat and had misused them, but we let everyone else stay armed. Why? Because as much as we exist to keep the peace, we have a bigger objective in play. A much bigger objective.”

“Defense against the V’kit’no’sat,” Morgan said aloud what everyone was already thinking.

Steve nodded. “And to do that we have to unite Earth. Right now most of them are squabbling brats who can’t be trusted, but some are learning. However we handle this situation, we need to have the idiots cut their own throats so the others have a chance of learning from their example. I think a big concern that we’re overlooking is the threat of one or all of them attacking Star Force installations…and we’re overlooking it because the other nations learned from China’s mistake. They know we’ll kick the crap out of them if they so much as look at us the wrong way, so despite this gigantic mess we’re in, we are seeing some signs of progress.”

“So what’s the lesson we’re teaching this time?” Jason asked.

“We’ve got several to choose from,” Steve said, leaving the question open.

“Have there been any reports of them taking prisoners?” Ben asked.

“A few on Mars,” Greg noted, “but I haven’t heard of anything naval?” he finished, glancing at Paul.

“There were a few facilities that were captured in the belt where they didn’t kill the workers, but we haven’t heard of a single prisoner being taken from any naval engagement. They’re fighting like they’re out for blood.”

“We took back those facilities and crew, by the way,” Rafa added. “The British have since reduced their attacks only to military targets, so I think they got the message.”

“Military or not, nuking the American shipyards is going way over the line,” Greg said with a hint of anger in his voice. “The Japanese have to pay a heavy price for that.”

“Agreed,” Jason acknowledged. “How far is Davis willing to go?”

“He’s still saying it’s up to us,” Greg confirmed, having been the one most recently assigned to Atlantis and accessible for face to face discussions with the Director. “He’ll back whatever move we make, he’d just prefer that there be some bit of civilization left for him to work with after the dust settles.”

“Dust…” Kerrie said with a sarcastic laugh. “You have any idea how much debris those shipyards put into orbit, not to mention all the other engagements. We’re going to have a mess cleaning it all up, and probably still be picking pieces off our ships’ hulls for years to come.”

“All four countries have been slapped with the 25 year ban,” Morgan said, leaning forward in the soft chair and putting her elbows on her knees as she rested her chin on her interlocking fingers, “35 for the Brits, and no one seems to care. The Japs and Germans even jumped into the fight after the first two bans had been handed down. You’re probably right about them not thinking of the long term economic and tactical consequences, which will hold them all back relative to the other nations, but if they’re willing to take a hit just to get at each other, then I say we make it a bigger hit.”

“Longer ban?” Jason asked, fairly sure that wasn’t what she meant.

“Confiscations,” she said bluntly. “If they can’t play nice, we start taking away their toys, one by one, until they start to care.”

“Beginning with what?” Greg asked.

“Territories,” Kerrie said, her eyes narrowing. “They’re land hungry, so let’s start squeezing their borders and see how long it is before they take the hint.”

“We voided all their leases when the bans took effect,” Paul pointed out. “We haven’t gotten all of them evacuated yet, but they’re losing more than half the territories they possessed right there and didn’t so much as blink twice.”

“Those were never really theirs,” Ian pointed out, “and they’re gobbling up each other’s to replenish the losses. This way, they can gain more land and deny it to their enemies at the same time. By our rules everyone got a piece if they earned it. Now, it’s winner take all.”

“Their true colors are showing through, which is a mixed blessing, I think,” Kerrie said. “We can use this to feel out who our real allies are, as well as who is honorable and who isn’t.”

“The Japanese fall into that latter category,” Greg declared.

“Which is something good to know,” Jason acknowledged Kerrie’s previous statement. “Up until now they’ve played things pretty close to the vest. I wouldn’t have pegged them to jump in with the Americans or anyone else for that matter if they weren’t hit first.”

“The Corporate Alliance changed that, I think,” Ben said, referencing the official name taken by the asteroid belt economic co-venture. “With another fish in the pond, I think several nations are going to stop playing things by our rules and show us where their true priorities lie.”

“Where are the Russians in all this?” Morgan asked.

“Playing it smart,” Paul answered. “They quietly informed us that they intend to keep out of the engagement zones and requested a token naval presence from us in their fleets, so that if someone attacked them they’d have to move against us as well.”

Rafa raised an eyebrow. “That’s a surprising twist.”

“What was your answer?” Steve asked.

“We agreed, and have several warships moving into position now.”

Sara stared off in thought, then her eyes widened in understanding. “With the Americans suffering from a ban, they figure they’ll end up top dog.”

“Possibly,” Paul admitted, “though I’m hoping for a bit more from them. They’ve been uncharacteristically responsible the past three decades, long enough that we might be seeing an actual philosophy change.”

“Wishful thinking there,” Morgan differed.

“Maybe,” Paul conceded, “but for the moment they’re not causing trouble, which I’ll take.”

“Start with their mining zones in the belt,” Steve suggested, getting back to the crux of the matter. “Aside from the Brits, nobody’s in a position to defend those against us, so it should be an easy pickup. If that doesn’t get their attention, go for the Martian territories.”

“Why not just kick them dirtside and be done with it?” Sam asked. “Really, why aren’t we doing that already with Japan? Do any of you see a way where they get to keep a military after this is all over?”

Everyone was silent for a moment, thinking it through, before Jason began nodding his head. The more he thought about it, the more he realized Sam was right. “Anything less would send the wrong message.”

“Are we talking disarmament or denying them space travel?” Morgan asked to clarify.

“Good question,” Greg said, leaving it on the table. To date, no nation or corporation had been penalized that far, not even China.

“We have an intermediary option,” Paul pointed out. “Restrict their holdings to Earth orbit only…along with the military ban.”

Jason snapped his fingers as a thought came to him. “I’ve got an idea, and one I think Davis will like.”

3

January 27, 2108

The airlock to the exterior of the German mining station clanked with the connection being made, then it began to cycle through the atmospheric matching process, which took a few more tedious seconds. The outer door opened shortly thereafter, with a mass of white armor filling the small airlock cubicle, visible through the interior window, which soon slid aside into the wall with the massive armored Knight stepped through, his face hidden behind the reflective faceplate on his helmet.

The miners gathered at the airlock took several steps back, looking up at the giant as several Star Force personnel in standard uniforms crossed through the open airlock doors behind him, accompanied by a smattering of security personnel armed with holstered stinger pistols.

The woman who came in third in line wore the dark blue uniform of Star Force’s personnel relations branch and stepped forward alongside the towering Knight as she made eye contact with the miners.

“Good. I was hoping we could accomplish this transition peacefully,” she said, speaking German. “Due to your country’s recent military actions, this mining station is hereby being confiscated by Star Force, effective immediately.”

She held up a hand as a smattering of panicked reactions increased the noise level in the docking atrium and connecting hallways out of it, all of which were now packed with the station’s staff.

“You are not being taken prisoner,” she promised. “You are noncombatants and we apologize for involving you in this conflict, but your country will not be allowed to profit from spaceborn operations, such as mining this field, if they can’t conduct their business honorably. Again, I apologize that this has involved all of you. We have no issue with your mining activities on this station. As far as my information goes, you’ve followed all of the rules and have succeeded in processing a significant amount of material from what is, admittedly, the thinner portion of the national zones. You should be commended for this.”

“Instead, we’re here to escort you off this station. We’ll give you time to pack up whatever personal belongings you may have, then we will provide you with free transportation to wherever you wish within in the star system. Although I cannot guarantee anything, our recruitment office has authorized me to tell you that they will consider applications of highly skilled miners displaced during these confiscations as top priority during the next expansion phase of our belt mining operations, which is due to begin in less than three months.”

 “Wait a second!” one of the miners said, the ramifications sinking in. “How many confiscations are you talking about?”

“Many,” she answered without giving a specific number…which she didn’t have. “All of Germany’s mining assets in this region, as well as those belonging to several other countries are being confiscated. You will not be returning here, so please take your time and begin gathering up everything of value to you. We will allow several hours for this.”

“In the mean time, our people will be taking control of station operations. Please make this transition as seamless as possible.”

“We still have people out in the field,” someone blurted out amongst the crowd.

The Star Force rep nodded. “We have ships intercepting them now. You’ll all be leaving the belt on the same starship.”

“What about their stuff?”

The rep hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “I hadn’t thought about that. You’re saying the crews of the excavation ships have quarters here?”

“Some do.”

“Who among you is trustworthy enough to collect their things?” she asked openly.

The miners turned amongst themselves in a quiet debate, then a few volunteers raised their hands, often after their fellow miners pointed them out.

“Good. You men collect, pack, and label their belongings and I promise we’ll get them to the owners. In addition, Star Force will be providing each of you with a small stipend in exchange for the inconvenience and abruptness of this relocation. When you arrive back at the starport register for an account and the funds will be transferred.”

That aroused a few sideways glances from the crowd, and some of the harsher expressions softened a bit.

“Time is short,” she continued. “If there are no pertinent questions, please proceed to your quarters and begin packing. If there are any unforeseen problems, let me know and I’ll do my best to accommodate you. If any of you are thinking about causing trouble or sabotaging the station, you get to deal with him,” she said, pointing across her chest up at the towering, white armored Knight. “And he doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

The eyes of the miners tracked up and to the left as one, then they fell to the floor as they resigned themselves to the fact that they were going to have to leave. When the rep didn’t say anything further, the back of the crowd began walking off and slowly the atrium emptied, making room for the Star Force replacement crew to move in and begin securing the vital systems.

Elsewhere in the national mining zones, a task force of 18 Star Force warships led by the battleship Mortal Kombat held position 20 kilometers off of one of the British mining relay stations, where a third of the ore they mined was gathered and sorted prior to being transported back to the factory stations in close proximity to the ‘inhabited’ section of the belt, where most of the factories and other stations were clustered around the Star Force starports.

Two British warships and six of their cargo ships were floating near the station as Captain Brandai politely ordered them to surrender the facility, the cargo ships, and gave the frigate/corvette pair 20 minutes to withdrawal or they would forfeit the warships as well. The following fifteen minutes of silence were patiently waited out while the British naval Captains contacted their regional commander to ask for instructions, knowing full well that even two of the Star Force ships would be more than a match for them, let alone 17 and one of their enormous battleships.

To keep them from getting any notion that they could stall further, once 19 minutes expired on the clock, Brandai ordered two of his corvettes to slowly begin breaking formation and heading in towards the British warships. Before they could get within weapons range the British warships turned off, albeit very slowly, and began withdrawing from the station.

Back behind the warship formation some 1000 kilometers off there was a smaller group of SRs which moved forward as soon as the British warships left, delivering the boarding parties that secured both the station and the cargo ships, as well as carrying the replacement personnel that would either be taking over operations or beginning to decommission and lock down the facilities.

The British crews were transferred over to the SRs and eventually flown back to the regional starport where they were met by many other captured British personnel being forcibly removed from the asteroid belt. The same was true of the Japanese, Americans, Germans, and the West Africans, which had only two weeks ago thrown in with the Americans and participated in the taking of a Japanese Martian territory, though all members of the differing sides were kept apart from each other in the starport, as well as being transported away on different inter-planetary starships.

All across the belt mining zones Star Force task forces of significant strength began sweeping up the facilities and ships owned by the warring factions, with the British warfleet wisely backing down and not forcing a confrontation…not that they had a choice. Roger had enough firepower deployed in each task force to dismiss any notion of them being able to achieve a victory, and they knew well the permanent ban lurking on the horizon should they actually attack a Star Force ship.

Given the option of losing their mining operations or losing their mining operations and getting the economic death sentence slapped on them to boot, calmer heads won out and the British fleet opted to withdraw from the national zones entirely, heading off into the uncharted regions of the belt where the Corporate Alliance had established themselves, which gave them the option of refueling and returning to Earth or Mars, where the rest of their fleet was badly outnumbered in the ongoing war.

Had the Japanese not come to their aid, the Americans would have overwhelmed their other defense ships while their main battle force was marooned in the belt, since Star Force was refusing them access to the inter-planetary starship ferries that had carried them there. As it was, it would take them a long time to cross the doldrums, even after they refueled, but when they did return to ‘civilized’ space the naval war was going to swing in their favor, unless some dramatic turn of events occurred in the meantime. Currently the ongoing engagements were even handed, with neither side making considerable gains, rather they were trading off small victories and losses with no grandiose, game changing battle yet being fought.

And there wouldn’t be, as far as the British and Japanese had planned. They had agreed to keep their fleets on the move, defending their orbital facilities and surface territories with a series of hit and run attacks and not letting the Americans draw them into any large scale conflicts…at least until the main British fleet returned, at which time they were going to take the fight directly to them. If and when they achieved naval superiority, then a Lunar assault was a possibility and currently on their co-operative planning board.

Meanwhile the Americans chased them around Earth while pounding them mercilessly on Mars, expanding their ground campaign with an assault into the Japanese territories. None of the countries were seriously concerned with Star Force’s actions in the belt, figured that with the minimum 25 year ban on services already in effect that they had little to lose. Even the British, after getting over the initial shock and hubris of being driven off, privately acknowledged that they’d expected some sort of reprisal from Star Force and took it in stride knowing that so long as they didn’t militarily engage the mega corporation they could patch up their relationship later…after they settled up with the Americans and their allies.

 Over the next month two more countries would add their limited military resources on the British/Japanese side, incurring identical Star Force bans without seeming to care. India cited the necessity of supporting their British brothers over economic concerns while the South Africans upped their well known rivalry against West Africa with a counterattack on their Martian territories while the West Africans were busy hitting the Japanese.

That brought the World War III nation count up to 7, with dozens of other countries sitting on the fence, wondering whether it would be in their national interests to defy Star Force in the hopes of gaining the material and territorial wealth that was being touted as the ‘bounty’ for the winning side.

As serious as the nations were about fighting and killing each other in space, not a single shot was fired on Earth. It had become an unspoken agreement that Earth was off limits, and any fighting to be done would happen in space…thus insulating the home countries from the personal effects of war and turning the whole conflict into a massive game, with national pride and fervor rising to an all time high and people checking the news feeds every night for more updates and footage, eclipsing even the most popular entertainment channels in terms of ratings, with everyone eager to see the fight taken to their rivals from the comfort of their living room couches.

Those citizens living in space, however, were of a different mind, being right in the crossfire and fearing for their lives. The images that the Japanese publicized of their nuking the American shipyards horrified those people living on stations in Earth orbit, with many packing up and leaving to head back to Earth while entrepreneurs took their place, coming up from the surface for the chance of prosperity if they were lucky enough to avoid the fighting.

The outcries of the orbital population fell on deaf ears back home. Whatever voting bloc effect they could have in upcoming elections was overwhelmed by an average of 93% popular support for the war on Earth, across all the involved nations.

Space battle had become the new international sport, and everyone wanted in on it.

4

April 8, 2108

Free floating through space, 18 pressure-suited Americans slowly drifted down to the surface of Deimos from the cruiser USS Iowa that sat in blockade formation along with four other smaller warships in a lazy orbit around the smaller of Mars’ two native asteroids. It sat at an altitude of 23,400 km and orbited the planet once every 1.2 days, making it the further and smaller of the pair. Phobos was its larger brother, orbiting Mars every 7.6 hours at a much closer altitude of 9,400 km, and home to several Star Force mining operations while Deimos had been designated as a national mining acquisition.

The bidding process for the lumpy, 12 km wide rock had been extensive, with Australia and Japan eventually winning out the territorial rights to half the asteroid by completing a number of prerequisite infrastructure projects in the Mars micro-system. The Australian half sported five independent mining sites along with a surface-based storage depot, though with the 0.3% gravity all the Deimos projects operated as though they were zero g endeavors. The depot even had a small gravity disc built into it for the operational staff and mining habitats.

Long, flexible monorail lines connected the surface sites, precluding the need for dropships to move cargo from site to site. As in most endeavors, the Australians had copied Star Force procedures as much as possible, making their Deimos mining operation the envy of the other nations, both for securing the rights to half the rock as well as it being conveniently located within Mars orbit and furnishing a steady supply of construction materials, part of which the Australians floated on the local market, turning a tidy profit in the process.

The Japanese half of Deimos looked completely different, with only one mining site…but this operation was less interested in harvesting materials as it was in hollowing out a portion of the rock to build a secure, rock-armored base inside. Construction was still ongoing, but from the surface all that was visible were a set of large bay doors imbedded a few meters below ground level and several surrounding dots where elevator shafts carried excess material out for disposal as the mining crews continued to expand their hollow.

That excess material, some of it valuable, was collected by periodic dropship traffic while passengers to and from the base passed through the main doors. If one looked at a schematic of the site, the full forward half was a space station surrounded by and built into the rock, with the lower portion being null, unpressurized space lit by flood lamps as the Japanese crews scraped out more and more rock all the while adding additional levels to the underside of the base.

Given that Japan was in a state of war, the bay doors remained closed around the clock, making for an impregnable base within the Mars micro-system that the Americans otherwise had full run over. The limited Japanese and British war fleets around Mars had either already been defeated in battle, run off to higher orbits, or were taking up defensive positions around infrastructure, keeping away from the Americans as they blockaded the planet against cargo shipments from their enemies while allowing all other nations unfettered access…to avoid drawing Star Force’s intervention.

Several orbital factories had already been seized by the Americans, with the rest appearing to be easy pickings if and when they chose to claim them. The same couldn’t be said for Earth orbit, where the Americans were on their heels having to deal with the combined British/Japanese fleet, but around Mars the Americans held supreme, with their enemies unable to redeploy a portion of their fleets to counter them, given that they could no longer purchase transit from Star Force and taking the slow route meant weeks, if not months of travel time while the battles around Earth raged on.

The end result was that the battle for Mars was going to be fought by the forces that had originally been deployed there, which saw the Americans with a decided naval advantage.

The one thorn in their side was the Deimos base, which they couldn’t board or attack directly. The bay doors were incredibly thick, designed for military defense and, if damaged the right way, could seize up and prevent anyone from coming in or out without cutting your way through…which meant the Americans had to find another way inside.

After weeks of planning and heated discussion, it was decided that Seal Team 12 would assault the elevators and attempt a backdoor insertion into the underside of the base, though no detailed blueprints were available. They would have to find a way inside, secure the bay door controls, and allow the main invasion force’s shuttles to board the station with conventional troops.

The trouble was, with the war already having escalated to the fevered pitch it was running at, the Japs had pulled back most of their Martian combat personnel to the Deimos base, along with a lot of their technical workforce, meaning that the asteroid was going to be full of personnel and troops for the Seals to fight through.

To maximize their chances, the very visible American fleet would be firing off some small missile attacks on the bay door just as the Seals were reaching the surface, hopefully undetected, drawing the Japs’ attention up to the doors as the probable invasion point, rather than looking down underneath their feet for an attack.

The 18 Seals adjusted their trajectory via thruster packs to come down gently on top of three of the five octagonal platforms that contained an elevator shaft in the center and two robotic arm terminals along opposing edges to hoist crates of material aside, a few of which were still sitting on the platforms, waiting to be picked up by ships that were no longer coming, thanks to the American blockade. The car-sized crates stayed put thanks to the minimal gravity, but could have been pushed aside by hand if any of the Americans could have found a decent foothold for leverage.

A team of six landed at each of the target pads spaced around the perimeter of the base, two of which found the elevators positioned at the top of the shafts level with the pad. The other was retracted down into the deep, dark pit, meaning that one team of Seals had to float down to the bottom while the others rode down.

It turned out not to be an issue, as all three teams arrived within 30 seconds of one other onto similar loading platforms carved into the walls of a gigantic cave, all of whose equipment was shut down and stowed in neat racks.

Dozens of service craft, alongside cargo sleds with capture nets and small rail lines crisscrossing the open spaces made for a chaotic, but awe inspiring sight in the dim light coming from only two functioning flood lights. The rest were deactivated, like all of the mining equipment, apparently due to the fact that without being able to send or receive supplies there was no point in hollowing out the 700m wide chasm any further.

Happy to remain undetected, the Seals thrusted across the wide empty space towards the ceiling of metal that made up the underside of the Japanese base. It wasn’t smooth in the least, but had various blocky sections sticking out, along with support struts that had recently been added making the whole assemblage look prickly and a bit sloppy. The search for an entry airlock took them a while, but eventually they found the route that the miners took to get back inside the base, nestled up against one end of the structure. It was a temporary airlock that appeared to have been moved around whenever they decided to add on to that section of the structure...and based on the number of scrape marks on the surface, it had been bounced around by mechanical claws quite a bit.

The first of the Seals cycled through quietly, leaving his thruster pack outside and entering with only his pressure suit and sidearm, which was a cut down assault rifle best suited for close quartered indoor combat, conditions that most of this war had been fought under. Realizing the need to adjust to the new battlefield, the American weapon designers had come up with the M-46C adjustable fire ‘hand rifle,’ so designated because it was designed to be fired one handed.

It was put to its first use as the fourth Seal entered the station and sounds of weapons fire drifted back his way as the leading scouts encountered the first bit of resistance. That was bad, he knew, keeping his M-46 close by as he quickly stripped off his pressure suit and rolled it up into a ball and secured it with the attached bungee. He let it drift down to the ‘floor’ next to the other three pressure suits as the fifth man came through, knowing it was far too risky to fight in the cumbersome exoskeleton, for even the tiniest of tears would render the gear inoperable in vacuum.

“Seven in,” he reported over his unit headset.

The gunfire cut out a few seconds later, with the Seal pushing off a handhold in the direction of the sound and floating between unfinished walls that glistened with reflective thermal panels and lines of pipes and wires running up and down the hallway. When he got to the closest intersection he grabbed one of the pipes and stalled his momentum before he came into cross view, then pivoted around the corner with his weapon in his left hand and glanced down the fully paneled connective hallway.

One of his fellow Seals was holding position at the base of a ladder, aiming his weapon upwards as several shell casings ricocheted down the hallway from the recent firefight. He caught sight of number 7 and waved him forward with a hand gesture, then gripped his M-46 with both hands and fired up the ladder well again, bracing his legs against the rungs to counter the recoil.

“Iowa, do you copy?” the Seal team leader’s voice broke through the calm quiet on the American cruiser’s bridge.

The Captain punched the response button, eager for an update. “We copy. What’s your status?”

“We’re up against heavy…repeat, heavy resistance. We’ve secured and searched the bottom four floors of the base and found some sort of combat information center, but we have not located a means to open the outer doors and it is doubtful that we can proceed any further. Request permission to switch to an alternative plan.”

The American Captain chewed on his lip. They’d known that reaching the door controls would be difficult, especially considering that they didn’t have a floor plan, but should they have been able to find and operate the controls it would have been too good an option to pass up, and given the zero g combat capability of the Seals it was probable that they could have secured most or all of the station themselves, so they’d decided to make that their primary mission objective.

Secondary objectives had also been established in the likely event that the primary became untenable, which apparently it just had.

“Can I assume that ‘heavy’ resistance precludes the reinforcement option?” the Captain asked.

“50/50,” the Seal replied. “We might be able to take the complex, but casualties would be high.”

“What’s the status on your team?”

“One man down, two wounded. We’ve got our checkpoints secured for the moment, but we’re unable to push forward without walking into a wall of bullets. Please advise.”

The Captain sighed. “Can your men still pull out?”

“We stowed our suits on entry. They haven’t been hit.”

“Pull what data you can from their computers then exercise the Davy Crockett option,” he ordered.

“Aye, sir,” the Seal said, breaking contact with the ship as he informed his team of the new objective.

One of the Iowa’s bridge crew glanced at the Captain. “Shall I ready the evac shuttles?”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything further as he watched the visuals of the asteroid, wondering what exactly his men were up against in there. 18 minutes later the first signs of movement around the exit shafts manifested, jolting the Captain in his seat.

“Get the shuttles moving,” he ordered just before the comm opened up again.

“Iowa, can we arrange for a surface pickup or do you want us to jump back?”

The Captain again personally handled the response. “Affirmative, shuttles are enroute. What’s your mission status?”

“One moment, sir,” the Seal team leader answered, followed by 30+ seconds of waiting before one of the bridge crew reacted to the sensor displays.

“Rad spike detected!”

The Captain’s attention immediately was drawn to the bay doors on the asteroid…but no activity was visible. In fact, nothing on the exterior of the giant rock moved for a long time, then a thin plume of dust-like debris began to pour out of the elevator shafts like a slow moving geyser, propelled by the base’s atmospheric breach. Meanwhile the seal team members ‘walked’ further away from the shafts, clustering together and letting the microgravity hold them in place as they waited for evac.

“Mission completed, sir,” the team leader finally responded.

The Captain cracked a smile. “Were you able to recover any intel?”

“We pulled the hard drives out of their computers. I don’t know how much the detonation might have affected them, but our comm gear doesn’t seem to be affected, though it is supposed to be EMP resistant.”

“We’ll let the techs deal with that. Status on your wounded?”

“All present and accounted for…and we have Ramirez’s body in a pressure suit.”

“Very good,” the Captain said somberly. “Bring ‘em home.”

“Aye, sir. Activating beacon for pickup.”

The Captain leaned a bit further back in his chair, glad for the operation to be over. He’d hoped they’d have been able to capture the base, but he also had to admit there was a bit of poetic irony that they’d had to destroy it with a pocket nuke…a bit of payback for their shipyards.

“Comm, get a message to the Australians,” he ordered, steepling his fingers in front of his chest. “Inform them that their neighbors have left town, and that we’ll be mowing their half of the yard from now on.”

5

May 11, 2108

The British troop ship drifted snuggly up against the docking ring of American Habitat Block 18, a collection of 125 space stations tethered together in a giant cubicle grid 3.4 miles wide. Inside the cage-like external supports that kept the stations from drifting into one another as well as providing connective tram tunnels and a myriad of docking ports, a mass of movement was visible as each station’s rotating sections spun about, providing artificial gravity in a wide variety of designs.

There was enough room to maneuver small ships in between the stations, but those spaces had been declared dead zones and all traffic to and from the Habitat Block was directed to the docking rings, so alongside the invading British transport hung dozens of civilian ships, with the debris of two American patrol ships floating a few kilometers off Earthward. The British ships that had destroyed them had taken up guard positions as several more troop ships arrived and began making docking runs against the unarmed American construct.

The entire venture had been decades in the making, with 73% of the construction of Star Force make, cobbled together with the less than stellar work of competing corporations and the Americans’ own engineers. At present, there were 21 Habitat Blocks around Earth in orbital zone 6, only four of which were fully complete. All together they housed the 1.2 million civilians that made up the 54th American State, named ‘Nimbus.’

The 55th and newest American state, named ‘Armstrong,’ was home to 550,000 Americans on Luna and had yet to be seriously threatened, due to the strength of the American army’s defenses, but given that Nimbus was entirely spacebound the naval superiority achieved in the Earth micro-system by the British/Japanese fleet left it vulnerable…a vulnerability that the British were now beginning to exploit.

The troops being offloaded onto HB 18 met with light resistance from station security as they boarded, but were quickly engaged by Marine units once their point of entry was determined, beginning a long, drawn out engagement for the possession of each of the 125 composite stations within the block. The British deployed incoming transports to several different locations on the docking ring, attempting to flank the Marine defenders, but only to limited effect. They made initial progress, as the others had, until the Marine lines adjusted and attempted to push them back.

The continuing inflow of British troops under the protection of their naval fleet kept that from happening, and from a combination of grit and sheer numbers the British slowly gained ground on 4 of the stations, eventually securing them and locking down their holdings before assaulting the others, which the Americans made difficult by disconnecting some of the tram tracks to limit their movement options.

The British were persistent and determined on capturing the American ‘territory,’ and repositioned troops via transport to the other docking ring attachments, offloading additional boarding troops that fought their way into footholds on two more stations, after which a stalemate occurred as the number of British reinforcements began to thin. With nearly all his troops in play, the British commander shifted tactics and prepared for a long, drawn out engagement that he was certain the United Kingdom would win.

If nothing else, the lack of resupply for the Americans would be their undoing…as well as for the thousands of civilians trapped on the station, most of which had been moved into American held sections during the fighting, making those stations overcrowded and stressing their available supplies even further.

Content to be patient and confident of eventual victory, the British commander kept pressure on the Americans with continual, yet sporadic attacks, some coming from connecting tunnels, others from naval leapfrogs from one docking port to another. All throughout the British navy kept the American fleet at arm’s reach and their cargo ships away, pressuring the Marines to surrender in order to obtain supplies for the civilians they were protecting…but they were also being obstinate and held out with equal resolve.

All the while, dozens of other combat zones were popping up around Earth orbit, with mixed results as both sides continued to feed assets into the fire of war, supplying additional personnel and resources from Earth while those on the planet watched, waited, and cheered on their native countries while Star Force’s fleet stayed out of the fighting, guarding their own facilities and those of the countries and corporations not involved in the conflict in an attempt to keep the war somewhat contained while they made their calculated moves elsewhere.

An American convoy had just finished decelerating on the edge of the Mars micro-system, 28 ships in total including three warship escorts. Having been spread out during transit, the ships began to recluster together for the journey in towards the American stations in orbit serving as their makeshift starports now that the Star Force ones were off limits to their dropship fleet.

The convoy had taken less than 3 weeks to arrive, thanks to the present orbital positions of Earth and Mars, which were both on the same side of Sol with Earth making the pass just inside Mars and cutting down the travel distances required dramatically. This was fortunate for all parties involved, and had both sides sending convoys to Mars to reinforce their fleets and troops.

The Americans were determined to hold onto their naval dominance while pushing the ground war to the point where they could drive their enemies off the planet and lay claim to their territories. They weren’t there yet but with the supply convoys enroute, this being the first of 3, they figured that the extra reinforcements and supplies, namely small items and replacement tanks, would allow them to begin a second offensive, crushing the last of the British holdouts and beginning a serious ground campaign against the well dug in and unrelenting Japanese army.

That wasn’t going to happen, however, because as the American convoy drifted further into the micro-system it was met by a pair of Star Force warships, a corvette and destroyer, demanding their surrender.

The Americans outright refused, leery of getting into a military conflict with Star Force, and did not alter course as the Star Force ships held position. With both sides seemingly unwilling to blink, the convoy passed the two superior warships by virtue of its momentum, thinking that they’d called their bluff and dodged a bullet.

That sentiment quickly vanished as the Star Force corvette and destroyer turned about and accelerated hard, matching speeds with the convoy and coming up on their heels. The destroyer fired off one of its pair of large lasers at range, clipping the top mounted, anti-missile chain gun on the American destroyer.

Seeing that they were under attack, the 3 American warships turned about to engage the Star Force ships while the cargo ships accelerated and scattered, trying to run away from an engagement that the Americans were sure to lose.

With the only anti-missile system in the convoy destroyed, the Star Force destroyer opened up her modular aft bay and released a swarm of small cubes that jetted forward on tiny engines towards the American destroyer that was coming nose to nose with its slightly smaller Star Force counterpart. The drones quickly crossed the gap between the slowly moving capital ships as the American vessel launched multiple salvos of missiles in a panic-stricken move, knowing it was outmatched.

The drones passed the missiles by, already having moved away from the direct line to the destroyer to avoid its forward firing arc, as per the zonal movement restrictions the distant programmers had dictated. Everywhere on the American ship that had a weapons battery a conical ‘no go’ flight zone had been uploaded to the combat computer in each drone, telling it to avoid those firing arcs and to maneuver around elsewhere while they attacked the tagged locations.

Those target tags came quickly enough from the remote pilots, and as the drones swarmed around the destroyer and accelerated to match its pace, they began firing their single small lasers out of six eye-like firing nodes in the center of each cubical face, reducing the amount of maneuvering jets required to line up a shot. The internal power supply was limited, so the recharge time on the capacitor was significant, but the lasers were able to fire off a shot every few seconds, and as a group the dozens of little cubes began picking away at the American’s weapon batteries and engines while the Star Force destroyer chopped away at the incoming missiles with its lasers and intercepts.

Most of the missile storm was blunted, but a few stragglers managed to get by and hit the hull, spraying armor chips off into space but failing to penetrate. Unperturbed, the Star Force destroyer didn’t fire back in self defense, merely waiting for the drones to do their work and disable the American warship.

Likewise, the Star Force corvette had moved off to engage the two American frigates, equally fending off missile attacks as it took its time to place precision shots from its single large laser into the enemy’s engines, disabling the movement of one while drawing the other off to engage it individually.

The green naval commander followed, taking his wounded sister ship’s weaponry out of range as the dueling pair of warships exchanged short range fire. The American’s cannon got one solid hit in against the corvette’s hull before a precision laser shot took it out of the equation. Half a salvo of short range missiles also hit the Star Force ship, but the Herculium armor held up, shedding its outer layers while protecting the internal systems.

Twenty minutes later the distant corvette had the American frigate disabled as the Star Force destroyer approached the other engine-damaged frigate, repeating its demands for a surrender as the ship redeployed the cubical drones that it had just recovered. The frigate’s submission came across the comm before the little war ‘dice’ got to the ship, with about half of them turning around and returning to the destroyer’s hold, neatly lining themselves up for capture by the four emerging robotic arms that returned them to their recharge slots.

Fuel stores within the ship transferred over tiny amounts of liquid oxygen and hydrogen for their power cell and chemical thrusters while their twins held guard position over the frigate in case it changed its mind and decided to use the weaponry it still possessed. The corvette, meanwhile, chased down the closest of the cargo ships, disabling their engines and moving on to the next closest, leaving the crippled ships for the inbound SRs to capture while the destroyer held watch over the 3 captive warships.

Four of the cargo ships managed to get away, but before they could rendezvous with any additional escort ships Star Force dispatched some nearby cutters to intercept. The ships surrendered before their engines were taken out, choosing to decelerate and power down rather than risk catastrophic damage to their ships should the engine-disabling shots miss or trigger secondary explosions.

Those ships were then instructed to proceed to a set of orbital coordinates where an SR met up with the unmanned cutters and their captive ships, delivering the replacement crews to take full possession of their bounty.

Star Force repeated the process for the other two American convoys, as well as for one British and one Japanese, denying any reinforcements coming from Earth to the warring factions on the planet’s surface or resupply for those warships in orbit.

Two weeks later an Archon-led strike force assaulted two American orbital refueling depots, seizing control of the stations and the attached cargo ships, then surrounding them with a halo of warships to discourage any naval reprisals. A week later they hit a Japanese station, then a British one three days later. Over the following month Star Force slowly picked away the refueling stations belonging to the warring factions while stationing guard ships at those belonging to the nonaligned nations.

Coupled with the blockade, the Americans’ naval superiority around Mars slowly ground to a halt as their ships began to either run out of fuel or stop deployments to avoid such a fate, effectively neutralizing their orbital campaign as more and more inter-planetary starships arrived, delivering additional Star Force warships. Some came from fleet command at Venus, others from the expeditionary forces around Jupiter that were guarding the startup facilities there along with a pair of secret military shipyards kept off the public charts, but most of the fleet arriving at Mars was from the asteroid belt, now that those territories were fully under Star Force control.

With the mass of firepower entering the micro-system, tracking data for which Star Force kindly forwarded to both warring factions, the Americans began consolidating their widely dispersed fleet with what fuel they had remaining, turtling up around key facilities while leaving others undefended in preparation for what was obviously building up to be a massive confrontation.

Star Force didn’t oblige, instead taking its time in securing all the facilities the Americans left undefended, as well as seizing their ships that had been stranded away from their main formations. Patiently sweeping those vulnerable targets aside, Star Force handled the other nations in a similar fashion, though they didn’t possess enough ships for a ‘last stand’ scenario that the Americans seemed to be gearing up towards. They all capitulated without much trouble, though a few Archon teams had to be deployed onto orbital facilities to root out those that thought differently, setting an example that convinced the others to give up without a fight.

2 months later, with all but the American holdouts secured, Star Force brought in another group of inter-planetary starships carrying a fleet of heavy dropships that immediately proceeded down to the surface of the red planet, totally ignoring the fuel-stricken American navy and leaving it to sit and watch as Star Force began landing the leading elements of its own army.

6

September 3, 2108

“Sir, transmission from Star Force,” the Corporal reported from her console in the American Firebase 6 command center, the largest military complex on Mars. “They’re demanding our surrender.”

“Where are they?” General Marvin asked, his face grim.

“Radar is clear,” another soldier reported, “save for that sandstorm to the west.”

“Transmission is coming from the orbital grid,” the Corporal clarified, still waiting for an answer.

“Get me the Star Force commander on a private line,” the General ordered, then waited out the brief transfer process. One of his staff handed him a headset, then the Corporal transferred the signal to him followed by a thumbs up.

“This is General Marvin,” the elder man said with a deep voice. “Who am I speaking with?”

“This is Archon Ryan-096. Star Force is confiscating your base, General. We’d like you to leave in an orderly manner.”

Marvin laughed, summoning a bit more confidence than he felt. “This is sovereign US territory, son. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Your country forfeited its claim to sovereign territory when you disregarded the sovereignty of the other nations. Likewise, the territorial possessions of the other nations involved in this conflict will likewise be confiscated and all of you will be returning to Earth. The United States is hereby banned from Mars, meaning both the planet and orbit. We’re here to enforce that ban, and since your base is the most heavily defended on the planet, we figured we’d start with you to set an example for the others.”

“I’d like to know how you expect to enforce that ban,” the General said evenly.

“Can I take that as a no?”

“You can.”

“That’s what we expected,” Ryan said casually. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

“Orbital bombardment?” the General asked, knowing he had no defense against such an attack.

“We’re not here to kill you, General. We’re here to evict you. Though if you resist there may be some casualties.”

“May I ask what you intend to evict us with?”

“You’ll see soon enough. Tell your men if they want to live not to shoot back.”

“Likewise, son. You may have our Navy on its heels, but if you choose to tangle with the Army you’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

“As we figured, you require an example,” Ryan said, knowing that this was the way it had to go down. “But just for the record, I was born in 2025, which makes you the youngling.”

Marvin’s face scrunched up in confusion at what the obviously young voice was saying. “Is that your idea of a joke?”

“No joke, General. I have decades of military experience the likes of which make you look like a raw recruit, so believe me when I say you’re about to get the hammer dropped on you if you don’t surrender now. Last chance.”

“I’d like to see some of this combat experience you spoke of,” Marvin flaunted. “Take your best shot.”

“Don’t say you didn’t ask for this,” Ryan said sarcastically, then cut his end of the comm line.

“Eyes peeled, people! We’ve got incoming. Find out from where. Put the base on alert, I want everyone at combat stations and the field units prepped for immediate deployment. We cannot afford to be caught off guard.”

The command center staff went into a flurry of motion, bringing the entire military complex to life in preparation for the promised assault, but the Americans wouldn’t discover the source of the attack for another 20 minutes until a solitary contact manifested itself on radar.

“Sir! We’ve got something to the west. Something big.”

“A dropship?” the General wondered aloud.

“No, sir. Radar reports a ground contact…no, make that two ground contacts, moving slowly. They’re coming out of the sandstorm!”

“Deploy the tanks, but have the frogs hold back until the attackers clear the storm. I won’t risk them flying through that shit. Where’s the storm tracking?”

“Heading south/southeast. We might get the edge of it within an hour or so, but the heart of the storm looks like it’s going to miss.”

Marvin nodded, studying the radar silhouettes, trying to determine what was coming at them. Suddenly half a dozen smaller dots manifested around the larger ones…then a couple more appeared, followed by a few more as they gradually made their way out of the whirling sands enough for the radar to pick them up.

“Tanks escorting troop transports?”

“Maybe,” the radar tech answered. “Too far out to tell, and the storm is preventing visuals.”

The General stood up a bit straighter. “Let them come to us. Ready all defense turrets, form up the tanks inside the outer wall along the west gate…then open the gate.”

“Sir?”

“If they want in, they can take the route we give them or try to break through the wall. If they choose the gate they’ll have to thin out to come through, and when they do it’ll be a turkey shoot.”

“Yes, sir,” the comm officer said, relaying the appropriate orders out to the gate outposts and the tank commanders.

“Status on the airfield?”

“8 minutes,” another staffer reported.

The General nodded and took a seat, watching as his command readied itself for a fight. The Star Force Archon had been right about one thing…this was the most heavily defended American base on Mars. Aside from the outer wall, which was a 30 meter thick combo of concrete and Martian soil rising 15 meters high and running the perimeter around the 11 square mile footprint of the base, there were smaller walls ringing key structures within, making for crude ‘forts’ inside the perimeter, each with defense turrets and vehicle-sized subterranean tunnels connecting them to the other facilities.

The vehicle garages held the largest tank compliment on the planet by a factor of 3, and the airfield held over 100 frogs along with a scattering of other craft, plus a pair of grounded dropships that no longer had an orbital home to travel to or a means of refueling. Inside the four main compounds was the entire 98th infantry division, most of which was readying for internal combat, but one regiment was equipped with combat grade pressure suits and even now they were suiting up to take to the field and man a series of defense bunkers and trenches ringing the primary structures.

Large, geometric metal spike-balls littered the inner perimeter as well, preventing the passage of tanks through select geographic locations, with pit-like trenches covering other approaches to force any ground attack that made it past the outer wall defenses into designated approach vectors where the infantry backed up more defense turrets.

The four main buildings were large mounds of red dirt, under which the ‘city-structure’ extended well below ground level. Light bombardment wasn’t a threat, nor was the rogue tank shell, but sufficient orbital firepower could theoretically get through to the upper levels, which was why the command center in building 3 was situated at the very bottom of the structure…actually buried 50 meters beneath it, with a number of small personnel tunnels linking out to other sites in case evac was needed, so that the shielded structure wouldn’t become a tomb if the base was hit from orbit or a sufficiently large air strike.

It had been designed to survive a direct hit from a nuke, and General Marvin felt relatively secure, personally, but he worried for his men on the surface, knowing that Star Force wouldn’t attack without preparation. Their navy was second to none, and the rumored elite special forces they’d used to repel the Chinese 40 years ago had become the stuff of legend, popping up more recently in special ops roles, but Star Force’s military had never been known to hold a standing army, so the General was unsure what exactly to expect.

“Oh shit!” one of his staffers suddenly yelled out as his face went white with panic. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“Get a grip and report!” the General barked, standing up and walking over to the man, who was only able to point to his screen with a shaky finger.

“Shit,” Marvin repeated in a whisper as he saw the outline of one of the larger targets moving out of the sandstorm. “Main screen.”

The staffer transferred the image to the wall screen so everyone could see, with the size tags included, measuring the armored hulk around 50 meters tall as it walked out of a passing tendril of sand, eerily reminiscent of the AT-ATs that had invaded Hoth in Star Wars. In fact, Marvin was sure that movie was why half of his command staff seemed to be frozen with fear, which only amplified itself when the second monster emerged alongside the first half a kilometer back.

The General’s mind immediately went analytical, but his own sense of awe and dread was significant. The ‘walkers’ were thicker than the Star Wars version, with a bulky body elevated on equally thick legs, four in count if he was seeing correctly, and slightly set outside the main body, providing a more stable foothold than the tipable Hoth models. The most discerning feature was an identical head structure, making it clear to Marvin that Star Force had deliberately copied the science fiction design.

He silently admitted that the sheer intimidation factor was worth it, but he also knew that with their height these walkers would be able to fire over the top of the outer wall, and if they were true to the movie design, they’d have enough armor plating on them that they’d be tough to take down.

Star Force’s notorious naval armor strength reinforced that speculation, and the visuals that were becoming more and more clear with the passing sands suggested that they’d laid it on heavy. Even the leg joints appeared to be massive amounts of metal, actually bulging out like spheres which Marvin guessed was to protect their weak spots.

Before the General could speculate more the smaller contacts became visible and another wave of shock ran through the command staff. A part of his mind had expected AT-STs, but Star Force hadn’t been that keen on replicating the movie technology. These contacts were also ‘walkers’ but were the two-legged version in a myriad of designs. One that Marvin saw pacing the first AT-AT looked like a giant suit of armor, complete with legs, arms, and even a stubby head. Its movements looked almost Human, with a significant hip swing and arm carry that made it appear like a giant man encased in body armor.

Off to its right running a bit further back was a more mechanical version, with two spindly legs and no arms or head, just a boxy center body with weapon pods mounted on the outside at the shoulder joints…the spitting image of a battletech Mad Dog mech.

All around the feet of the two heavy walkers more and more of the mechs appeared coming out of the sandstorm, walking slowly and purposefully forward with even more contacts appearing on radar that hadn’t yet become visible to the camera. Two groups formed alongside the heavy walkers and split off laterally, running forward into flanking positions while the heavies came straight up the middle with a group of about a dozen escorts as a third heavy appeared on radar behind them.

Suddenly one of the tiny green dots on the base schematic map laid out on top of a touchscreen worktable a couple of meters to the General’s left flashed red for three seconds, then switched over to the solid color, indicating that one of the defense turrets on the west outer wall had just went offline.

“What was that?” he demanded, pointing to the map.

“Turret 19 is offline,” one of the staff reported.

“I can see that, what hit it?”

Another staffer with a headset flagged down the General’s attention. “Outpost 6 reports an explosion at the turret, but they couldn’t see what hit it over the wall.”

“Radar, are there any missiles airborne?”

“Negative.”

On the map board another defense turret flashed red.

“Sabotage?” his XO suggested under his breath. “Explosives planted prior to the assault by an infiltration team.”

Before Marvin could answer he was interrupted.

“General!” another staffer said, bringing up a different video recording from a side angle, taken by the northwest wall tower. It showed a panoramic of the Martian surface, too wide for a single camera lens. The staffer panned across it until the approaching enemy mechs were seen as small dots, then magnified the image and ran it through a few seconds of footage with the computer stopping on the designated frame.

Marvin stared at it, not believing his eyes. A segment of a faint line green line appeared from the base of the head, barely visible as a swirl of dust crossed in front of the heavy walker and reflected the laser beam, but the next few frames of footage caused everyone’s jaw to drop. The line of the laser beam began to glow blue/white, becoming instantly visible, dust or no, and illuminated even further in the form of a massive flash…then it was gone.

The staffer backed up the footage a few frames and froze the display screen on the height of the flash, with the entire laser line illuminated like a bolt of lightning.

All eyes that weren’t fixed on the screen turned towards the General, silently asking what he wanted them to do.

“Get the frogs into the air,” the General ordered, trying to keep his calm for the sake of his men. “Priority targets are those AT-ATs!”

A few heads turned and gave him disbelieving glances at his use of the Star Wars moniker, but the rest of the frozen control room staff snapped out of their haze and got to work. Marvin held his poise, though his insides were doing flips. The AT-ATs were just over 25 kilometers away and taking out his outer defense turrets with some kind of god-awful energy weapon. If that wasn’t bad enough, he knew that if those things got to the outer wall their heads would be able to shoot down into the base at will. They had to stop them before they got that far.

“Change in orders,” he added, regretting the decision immediately, but knowing that he had no other choice. “Deploy the tanks…all the tanks. We have to meet them in the field before those walkers can get to the wall.”

The lower ranking Brigadier General that served as his XO suddenly grabbed his arm, as if to stop him. “That’s suicide for them. Without the wall to narrow their lines our tanks won’t stand a chance.”

Marvin turned to look the other man in the eye, but there was no malice there, only regret. “At least they’ll have room to flank outside. If we wait they’ll be picked apart by those big guns.”

The XO relaxed his grip, but didn’t fully let go. “At least hold off until the aircraft have had their run. If they can’t at least wound those things, then there’s no reason to expect the tanks will, and it’ll be a lot harder for them to shoot the frogs at range. Let our tanks keep the cover of the wall for now. It’ll take those things a long time to get here, so there’s no need to rush.”

Marvin considered the suggestion, then nodded his head. “Belay that last. Make ready the tanks for an assault, but keep them inside the wall until I give the go ahead. Let’s see what type of armor these beasts are carrying.”

Another pair of turret icons went out on the tabletop, underscoring the magnitude of the approaching threat.

7

Warrant Officer Julia Peskin looked out the pressurized cockpit of her A-22 ‘frog,’ situated between four attached engines that pivoted to provide both lift thrust and forward/lateral momentum. Current the two widely spaced forward engines were tipped well forward, gaining the A-22 as much speed as it could manage as it and the 107 other such craft flew towards the approaching Star Force walkers across the 15 mile wide gap that was ever so slowly decreasing.

To the frogs, however, that distance wasn’t significant, and they would be engaging the enemy within minutes. Julia’s primary target had been tagged as the big starboard walker, which was even now, 10 miles away, visible on the horizon and growing in size by the second. The image ran a shiver of fear through Julia’s lithe body, making her feel like Luke Skywalker making a run against the AT-ATs on Hoth…and everyone knew how that turned out.

A flash of light crossed her peripheral vision as her target fired off another of the energy bursts at the base, less than 200 meters to her left. She blinked away the residual light in her retinas and focused on her target and the best approach angle to take on the behemoth, which would probably be a lateral strike against the largest cross section and well away from its big gun.

Feeling a bit psychic, tactical data flooded her cockpit monitor, indicating the exact attack vector she’d been visualizing, provided by her squadron commander. They’d hold to this line of flight until they came within 2 miles, then swing around to make the assault pass and unload all of their missiles into its side. If the attack worked, they would have time to fly back and reload for another run on the other heavy walker, and maybe even a strike at the third before the Star Force troops got to the base.

Gripping her controls through pressure suit gloves, Julia’s finger caressed the firing button, unsure of how much opposition they would get on approach. Before any further doubts could worm their way into her mind a pirate signal cut through into her headset, as well as those for all the other frog pilots.

“This is Archon Ryan-096, commander of the Star Force ground troops you are currently flying to engage.”

“How the hell are they…?” she mumbled, wondering how they got through the encryption.

“We’re not here to kill you,” Ryan assured them. “We’re here to remove you from the planet and confiscate this base…along with all the other American, Japanese, British, German, West African, South African, and Indian territories on Mars. All those parties involved in this war are being kicked off the planet and back to Earth, we’re just starting with you because you’re the best. If we have to fight you for this base, our victory will encourage others to surrender without a fight, but I’d prefer we didn’t have to.”

Julia glanced at her rangefinder as the miles clicked off, wondering how far out the approaching walkers could target them.

“I know you have your orders, and that General Marvin doesn’t intend to surrender, but consider this carefully in the few minutes you have before you get within weapons range. We will have possession of this base by the end of the day, one way or another. The question is, will you live to see tomorrow? We will, I promise you. You have no idea the kind of trouble you’re flying into right now, and there is no chance for you to win, but you can still survive. Our objective is to secure the base and either remove you from the planet or escort you off if you leave voluntarily. That can be achieved without your deaths.”

“If you choose to blindly follow orders, I can’t make any promises for your survival. Our mechs aren’t equipped with nonlethal weapons like our ground troops usually carry, so it will be difficult to disable your flyers, and even if we do, you’ll drop to the ground and probably crack your atmospheric seals, leaving you with Mars’ inhospitable atmosphere to deal with, even if you are wearing pressure suits. If you survive the weapons fire and the crash, manage to pull yourself out of your cockpits and escape any internal explosions, you’ll have a limited oxygen supply, assuming you didn’t suffer any tears in your suit.”

“You’ll be kilometers away from your base, and your only hope of rescue before running out of oxygen will be us, and as you’re about to see we’re not set up for a rescue mission, this is an assault force. We’ll be bringing in people soon afterwards for that sort of thing, but not while there is still weapons fire in the area, meaning you’ll have to wait, assuming we can find you out here, which will be damn near impossible if that storm veers off its current track a bit.”

“You might think you’ll be better off with a clean hit and dead before you hit the ground, and that might end up your fate. Our gunners are good, but hitting moving targets is always problematic. We’ll take you captive if we can, but I can offer no promises. If you fire on us we will defend ourselves, as ferociously as necessary.”

Ryan paused for a moment to let all that sink in.

“Your other option, the wise one in case you’re short on brains at the moment, is to disregard your orders and not fire on us. Our combat computers are tracking you now, but none of you are tagged as targets. Only when you open fire will you be so tagged, so as long as you don’t pull that trigger, we won’t shoot at you, even if you’re buzzing around our mechs at point blank range.”

“My people’s fire discipline is good, as is our armor, so they’re not going to spook. Hold your fire and you won’t be fired upon. Within a few hours we can have you on a dropship headed for orbit and a trip back to Earth as our guests, not our enemies.”

“The same goes for the tank pilots in the base, but I’m only talking to you now. Not even your General is hearing this transmission. Just me to you pilots. We’re Star Force. Our mandate is to protect Earth and its colonies, which includes each and every one of you. We’re not your enemy.”

“If you’re worried about the ramifications of disobeying orders when you get back to Earth, we can fix that. We can offer you asylum, both physically and financially. We’ll find a place for you to work for us or an ally, so the only thing you have to consider right now is your life and your future. Attack us as you have planned and I’d say you’ve got no better than a 50/50 chance of surviving when we shoot you out of the sky, with even worse odds after you hit the ground.”

“Hold your fire and take control of your future. Don’t leave it up to chance. Your country has made a lot of bad decisions in this war…you shouldn’t have to pay for them with your lives. Up until now you’ve had to follow orders, but now the decision is entirely up to you.”

“If you choose to go through with this attack and find yourself regretting it as your fellow pilots start going down left and right, go to ground and power down. We’ll accept that as a sign of your surrender.”

“It’s decision time, fellas. I recommend you choose to live. Either way, we’ll be meeting each other in a handful of seconds. Think it over,” he said, cutting the comm override which was replaced by the urgent chatter coming from the command center, demanding to know why the pilots weren’t responding.

They cut them off somehow, Julia thought, swallowing hard as she stared ahead at the huge pair of walkers leading the Star Force formation. A moment later their designated waypoint was reached and the formation of frogs turned to the right to begin their long sweep around to set up their flanking run on the target walker.

“What the hell am I doing?” she whispered to herself, making sure her finger wasn’t on the comm transmit button.

“Space it out high/low,” her squadron commander instructed. “Go in by twos at max speed and watch for return fire.”

“This isn’t right,” she said, complying with the order and pairing up with the closest frog next to her as the glob-like formation stretched out into a long thin line that quickly restacked, narrowing the gaps as they came out of their turn, finally lining up for a direct run on the mechanical behemoth…which wasn’t even bothering to turn towards them. Nor were any of the smaller ones, Julia noticed, her stomach sinking inside of her. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

The first few frogs fired off their missiles in huge, smoking waves, emptying their small racks then pulling up and flying over the AT-AT. Most of the missiles didn’t make it through, thanks to a small anti-missile laser turret on the ‘hump’ of the walker, but some of them did, detonating against the side and obscuring the impact point in a rolling explosion as more and more missiles poured in on top of them.

The frogs in front of Julia let their missiles fly…or rather the one in front of her did. The one to port didn’t fire, then they both pulled up, opening up Julia’s firing line.

She flew through the spot they exited, her finger gently pressing on her A-22’s firing trigger…but there it froze, and before she knew it the side of the walker was filling her canopy and she had to pull up, never having fired.

Her frog missed the aft end of the walker by a few dozen meters, flying her out across the center of the Star Force formation with dozens of smaller walkers beneath her and the second big one just off to her left. It continued to move onward unphased, but the smaller ones broke formation and lit up the sky with their own missile launches, targeting the frogs flying overhead.

Julia went evasive immediately, with the frog ahead of her going down as an invisible hand reached up and swatted the aft port engine off the A-22. It began to spin around out of control as it fell to ground, with the pilot frantically trying to stabilize the flight path on only three engines.

Several other frogs were also hit by the invisible lasers, while more took missile hits, mostly to their exterior engines, and began falling out of the sky like flies. Somehow Julia made it through to the south side of the Star Force formation, with the wall of sand a few miles in front of her rising up high into the sky, bracketing the back side of the battle.

Julia swung her frog around, unsure what to do with most of her squadron down and constant, panic-stricken calls for help coming across her headset as the rest of her fellow pilots were coming under attack. Her turn brought her around parallel to the walkers, but she didn’t move to make another strafing run. Her hand gently pulled back her throttle and the frog coasted to a stop midair as her heart made a spirited attempt at beating its way out of her chest.

She watched the rest of the frogs get shot down and fall into the path of the smaller walkers, one even hit a ‘chicken walker’ on impact, knocking it to the ground and pinning it underneath the crash heap.

A handful of other frogs made it through the weaponsfire and circled around to make another pass…but none of them did, nor did they open fire with their guns. They just seemed to fly around, unsure what to do, then Julia saw one go to ground…not crashing, but setting down on the Martian dirt to the South of the walkers. Soon the others did likewise and Julia decided to follow their lead, reducing power and dropping her flyer in altitude. She extended the landing gear and felt the jolt of impact shake her to the bone…then she realized she’d set down gently enough, it was the adrenaline mixing with fear that was making her jumpy.

Julia pulled her shaky hands away from the controls, afraid she was going to hit something without meaning to.

“Pilot, what the hell are you doing?” a voice yelled into her headset, startling her again, but she ripped the connecting jack out of her helmet before it could say anything more. The comm tether retracted itself back into the frog’s control board as she sat in silence, uncontrollable tears rolling down her face where she couldn’t swipe at them inside her pressure suit.

In front of her a couple of kilometers away on the horizon, the Star Force walkers wove their way around the crash debris and moved on, ignoring her and the other pilots that had gone to ground as they promised and moving on towards the military base. A second group had recently emerged out of the storm and was catching up from behind, centered on another one of the four-legged giants.

Before they got there, one of the Humanoid mechs in the first group doubled back to the pinned walker. It used its robotic hands to drag the A-22 off the top, then the Star Force mech underneath drew up its chicken-like legs and twisted about in an unusual manner that brought its center of gravity back into alignment. A moment later it stood up and walked off, slowly accelerating into a run to catch back up with the formation.

The Humanoid mech stayed behind and flipped the crushed A-22 right side up, then dug its metallic fingers into the cockpit, eliciting a wave of horror in Julia as it crushed the pilot inside. She choked on a surge of vomit, but managed to keep it down, wondering which one of her fellow pilots had just been murdered.

The mech threw the cockpit cover aside, then to Julia’s dismay the pilot climbed out of what was left of the cockpit and waved his thanks at the mech for unpinning him. The mech made a clumsy imitation of the gesture and left the pilot alone, turning about and running up to the back of the ever forward moving formation.

Horror turning to relief, Julia powered up her frog and took off again, flying over to the downed pilot before the second group of walkers caught up. She landed fifty meters away, kicking up a small dust cloud of her own, then depressurized her cockpit. Her pressure suit swelled a bit, but maintained her personal atmospheric pressure as she keyed the canopy to open.

As the other pilot walked towards her Julia unstrapped and turned around in her seat, leaning over the back and pulling out a pack of survival gear…pitching it outside along with several other pieces of mobile equipment located in a small nook behind her seat. When it was all gone she pulled a small latch on the back panel, lowering a compact second seat to the floor.

When she turned around she waved the other pilot forward, then reached down and helped pull him up the short drop until he got his foot in a small crevice on the frog’s hull. He clapped her thankfully on the back, then wiggled into the emergency passenger seat as she strapped in and lowered the canopy back into place. A moment later she had the internal atmosphere regenerated and, after double checking the pressure, pulled her helmet off.

The other pilot did likewise, allowing them to talk as Julia raised the frog back up off the ground as the second group of walkers came within 500 meters, flying off back south towards where the rest of the survivors were clustered.

“I owe you one, Jules,” the man said gratefully.

“I thought he’d crushed you.”

“Me too, until I realized he was breaking my canopy free,” he said with mixed feelings. “You got any weapons left?”

“I didn’t fire,” she admitted, circling in the air above the others as she watched the leading walkers moving closer and closer towards the base.

“Damn it,” he swore angrily. “That’s just what they wanted. If everyone had fired we’d have been able to…”

“To what?” she yelled, louder than she’d wanted to.

“To take that thing down,” he snapped back.

“If I’d fired I would have been shot down too, and you’d still be stuck on the ground.”

The pilot held back another comment, visibly trying to control his emotions. “Can you at least get a look at the other side. See how much damage we did?”

“You want me to fly over them again?” she asked in dismay.

“Just shoot the gap in between, like you did to come get me.”

“Fine…but then we’re going to ground,” she said, adjusting her flight angle and picking up speed. She did as he asked, shooting the gap between walker formations and came up around to the front on the far side, the same side they’d attacked from.

When they got their first clear look at the walker they saw large, black craters in the otherwise grey armor splattered across the center, making it look like someone had fired at it with a giant paintball gun…but none of the craters connected to the interior, and as messed up as the armor looked it had successfully held up to the assault.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, staring at the craters. “All those missiles and we didn’t even hit meat.”

“I think they’ve got a flack turret on top,” Julia said, pointing. “I thought I saw some of the missiles come up short.”

“Still…”

“Seen enough?” she asked, still shaken by what had just happened.

He looked at the back of her head and the short ponytail that held her brown hair. “Yeah,” he said, regretfully. “Yeah. Where are we going?”

“Nowhere for now,” she said, flying off a bit further before coming to a hover and beginning to land.

“Then what?” he asked, the anger momentarily gone.

“Then…I don’t know. Wait till the second group passes, then search for survivors I guess.”

“Thanks, by the way.”

“You’re welcome,” was all she could think to say. So many of her fellow pilots had just died, and it was all she could do to keep her mind distracted from that fact.

8

General Marvin’s face blanched, his stare locked on the wall screen so that he didn’t notice his XO glaring at him until he spoke.

“Signal our surrender,” he urged.

Marvin’s anger turned from the enemy to the Brigadier General. “Are you out of your mind?”

“We can’t stop that!” the slightly taller man yelled, pointing at the walkers on the screen that continued to creep ever closer. “They’ve offered an amicable surrender…take it!”

“If they want this base, General, then we’re going to make them take it,” Marvin declared, turning away from the man’s stern face. “Tell all our units in the field to target the walkers’ heads when they become visible over the wall. Mass fire.”

Marvin walked a few steps forward, studying the tactical situation and the base schematics, then glanced back at his XO. “The fire from the smaller walkers will be blocked, so we’ll only have to deal with the big ones. If we concentrate firepower on the heads, we may be able to disable their primary weapons. If we can, I think we can hold out.”

“If that’s the plan, I recommend shutting the gate.”

Marvin nodded at his staff, relaying his XO’s suggestion without animosity. Most of the others, he figured, felt the same way, but he knew they weren’t totally outmatched. The base layout was to their advantage.

“Recall all surviving frogs,” he added. “I want them rearmed and standing by to assist the tanks if and when the enemy breaches the wall.”

“Sir, we haven’t been able to reach any of the A-22s since the attack,” a staffer reported.

Marvin frowned. “Are they jamming our communications?”

“I still have contact with the tanks,” he pointed out.

Marvin’s hand swept across the tabletop battlefield display. “I have icons on the map, why can’t we contact them?”

“They’re not moving,” his XO pointed out, walking up to the map opposite Marvin.

“They can’t all have damaged comm gear…” the General said, then took his XO’s meaning. “Give me a headset, now!”

One of the staffers jogged over to his position and handed him the tiny wire-like device. “Put me through on the frogs’ frequency only.”

The comm tech gave him a thumbs up.

“This is General Marvin. Any surviving A-22s, you are ordered to report in immediately, acknowledge.”

Silence was the only reply he received.

“Repeat. This is General Marvin. Any surviving A-22s report in now, damn it! That’s a direct order!”

“Go to hell…sir,” one of the pilots responded.

“Identify yourself!” Marvin demanded, but that was the last word he was going to get from the survivors. “Who was that?”

“Charlie Seven,” the comm tech replied.

“Charlie Seven, get your ass back to the airfield now!”

Silence answered the General again.

“They’re surrendering,” his XO pointed out quietly.

Marvin took off his headset and threw it down on top of the map table as the little glowing tank icons repositioned themselves inside the west wall. He leaned forward, looking down at their movements but not seeing them, his anger coloring his thoughts. He didn’t say anything for a long time afterwards, merely waiting for Star Force to come to them before the next round of the engagement would begin.

The American tanks waited inside the wall, but far enough back to give them a decent firing angle when the head of the first walker would appear. Before it did another flash streaked over their heads and blew up an anti-air turret well back from the wall near the middle of the base. The AT-ATs were close to the wall, but still far enough back to be out of sight. Soon, very soon, they’d see their humps poking up over the concrete tops.

Before that happened a second electrolaser burst flew over their heads, destroying yet another of the unmanned base defense turrets with a controlled burst of lightning traveling down a temporary conduit of plasma created from the interaction of the thin air and a very powerful laser beam. The beam’s power changed the insulating carbon dioxide molecules between the walker and the target into conductive plasma, through which a massive electrical charge was delivered. As soon as the laser abated the plasma reverted back to gas and the conductive conduit disappeared.

Thicker atmosphere meant shorter range, given that more energy had to be applied to alter more air molecules, while no atmosphere meant no electrical charge delivery, though the laser itself was powerful enough to still do considerable damage. Mars’ thin atmosphere was ideal for long range strikes, so long as the approaching storm didn’t kick up debris into the path or the winds didn’t get too high, disrupting the plasma conduit. However, the longer range the charge had to travel, the more bleed off there was during transit, meaning that the heavy walkers’ most powerful striking capability would be at short range.

The tanks didn’t understand the nature of the weapon being used to destroy the defense turrets, but they knew they didn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of those blasts. Each and every gunner in the field had their fingers snugly over the fire controls for the tanks’ cannons, ready to launch a combined salvo as soon as the massive machines showed their heads. They hoped they’d be able to disable the weapon before it could kill them, but given that it’d only take one shot to kill a tank, everyone was filled to the brim with apprehensive adrenaline.

Before the walkers appeared Ryan’s voice cut into the tanks’ comm traffic, delivering another warning.

“This is Archon Ryan-096. Stand down immediately and you will not be harmed. We are not here to kill you. Our mission is to secure this base and return you to Earth. You will be free once you leave Mars. We have no interest in keeping prisoners, we just want you off the planet. The same thing is going to happen to your other military bases, as well as your civilian colonies. Your territories are being confiscated. Same goes for the British, Germans, Japanese, West Africans, South Africans, and Indians. You’re all being dispossessed. There is no reason to die here today. One way or another we’re going to be in possession of this base by the end of the day. The question is, will you live to see tomorrow?”

“Some of your pilots wisely heeded our warning and did not fire on us. We returned the favor and they survived the recent battle. I’ve signaled for dropships to begin their landing to retrieve those pilots and any survivors from the crashes before the storm swallows them up. Those same dropships will take any of you who surrender off planet within the day. You won’t have to answer to your commanding officers, you won’t even have to return to the United States if you don’t want to. Furthermore, if you’re concerned about your paycheck, Star Force can compensate you. We’ll find you work with us. The point being, you don’t have to die here today.”

“You’re not going to stop us from confiscating this base, and we’re not going to kill anybody that doesn’t shoot at us first. If you really want to throw down, we’ll give you the first shot, then you’ll be added to our combat computer as a target. Those of you who don’t fire, won’t be seen as targets. It’s as simple as that.”

“You have a few minutes to decide. If you want to move out of the fireworks, head towards the gate and park there, because we’re not coming in that way.”

Inside the command pod of the southernmost heavy walker, which actually resided at the base of the neck and not in the head, Ryan studied the tactical map while a lower ranking Archon drove the beast forward. Issuing commands through their CTS, or Coordinated Tactical System, Ryan ordered the mechs to begin their attack, tagging the two points he wanted them to move to, one being on the north wall, the other on the south while the two heavy walkers continued walking towards the western barrier with the second group coming up behind them in support.

Suddenly the throng of smaller mechs split up and moved away from the massive feet of the quadrupeds. The bipeds didn’t walk away, though. The machines took off running over the relatively flat Martian surface in packs, with the chicken-walkers moving to the front on their fast, spindly legs while the bulkier Humanoids lumbered behind them. It took the mechs a surprisingly short amount of time to skirt around the perimeter, then they ran about a kilometer back along the north and south walls to their waypoints, with the battletech-type versions pulling out away from the 15 meter high barrier a few hundred meters, forming up into lines while the others milled about to either side.

When they were all aligned the leading mechs began running slowly towards the wall. When they got within 100 meters exhaust plumes manifested beneath them and the heavy machines inexplicably began to float upwards…right over the wall.

The first few mechs came down on their ‘jump jets’ inside the base, landing awkwardly and stumbling to stay upright. One of them actually fell face forward onto the ground, but it picked itself up just in time to move forward and away from the landing zone as the second wave of jumping mechs came over the wall.  

Meanwhile the leaders ran forward, curving heavily to the west as they ran up behind the tank lines, catching them off guard but not firing on them. Several cannon turrets began to swivel around to track them, but with more and more mechs running up behind them at point blank range they didn’t fire. Looking up at the massive amount of weaponry attached to the walking machines, and the sheer terror the towering constructs elicited, was enough to freeze their trigger fingers, and with Star Force bringing so many mechs to bear so quickly not a single shot was fired.

Sporadically the top hatches on the tanks began to open and a pilot would pop his helmeted head out, hands raised to indicate their surrender.

Weaponsfire did break out, however, from a number of remote turrets inside the wall that hadn’t been hit by the heavy walkers, having been obscured from view by the wall. Flanking mechs moved off instantly, walking through the edges of the tank formation then firing on the turrets with their lasers, taking a few rounds in the process.

One small mech was knocked completely off its feet, taking a round to the upper left side of its boxy head and tipping it off balance to the right. After its fellow mechs took out the cannon turret that hit it, the mech got back to its feet with a massive dent on the side of its head where the round had hit, but the armor remained mostly intact. Either the round fired had been designed to be kinetic, or the explosive warhead had malfunctioned.

Six more turrets were taken out quickly enough, four of those being anti-air versions that couldn’t depress to shoot to ground. Another Star Force mech was hit with a salvo of missiles, tearing up its outer layer of armor plating, but it remained operational.

With the turrets near the west wall disabled, a portion of the mechs met up east of the tanks and began heading further into the base, hunting down more turrets in packs of four or five while the Humanoid mechs were just now climbing over the wall. The jumpless mechs had torn into the concrete retaining wall on the outside and clawed their way into the dirt embankment, creating a steep ramp that they climbed up using their metallic legs and arms which mimicked the precise movements made by the pilot’s body within the interior control pod, offering them a much wider range of available movements than the computer controlled walkers that the other pilots essentially ‘drove’ around.

The first Humanoid stood up on top of the wall then turned and ran across the wide flat top back towards the west end, with the others hopping down off the wall on the inside, half of which fell to the ground on landing. Those that managed to land on their feet took off running towards the west wall, bypassing the captured tanks and their mech guards. Those that fell pulled themselves upright and followed a ways back, eventually rendezvousing with about a dozen others as they waited for the runner on top of the wall to take the long way around the square corner to get to them.

When it did, it immediately blasted away at the concrete retaining wall on the inside with a plume of missiles. Shards of the manmade stone flew out, along with a plume of dirt that rose high into the thin Martian air but the Archon piloting the machine didn’t stop there. He turned his weaponry against the outside retaining wall as well, blowing off the top of it as more Humanoid mechs from the second ground met up with his position.

The mech delivered several more missile blasts into the retaining walls until it ran out of ammunition, then it backed off and hopped down inside the base, letting the others continue the onslaught with round after round of their own missiles, breaking up a good 50 meter section of concrete, after which they walked forward and began digging into the dirt with their robotic hands, pulling it down over top of the rubble.

Both groups worked on tearing down the dirt embankment as the heavy walkers repositioned themselves on a direct line for the breach point. Ryan’s mech was second in line, and he watched curiously as the other pilot moved the machine forward after the smaller bipeds cleared away. It gingerly stepped up on the loose dirt, sinking down into it several meters before finding sufficient leverage.

It took several micro steps with the other three legs, repositioning for another large step forward up the dirt ramp. One step at a time, it gradually rose up to the top of the wall, then just as slowly walked down the other side into the base as the captured tanks scurried out of its way to holding positions by the gate, as Ryan had instructed them to do earlier.

Back on level ground, the heavy walker moved forward at a decent pace, heading in towards the ‘forts’ and main base defense ring that ran around the four large buried structures, still kilometers away, while Ryan’s heavy walker began to rise up over the wall behind it.

In the sky above, three boomerang-like medium dropships descended, skirting the high clouds of the storm, keeping clear of the base and the few anti-air turrets still operational as they headed to ground to deliver recovery crews and pick up the surviving American pilots.

9

Another electrolaser blast took out a defense turret on the corner of the walled fort, blowing debris high in the air, visibly marking the location of the mini-base inside the large outer perimeter wall. Several other ‘forts’ surrounded isolated buildings, but most of the base’s interior was focused on the center four mounds, around which was a large defensive perimeter housing barricades, trenches, and infantry outposts…as well as additional defense turrets, some of which the mechs had already begun chewing apart.

A second electrolaser blast flew past the lead heavy walker and hit one of the distant turrets on the backside of the four mounds as a quartet of mechs circled around in that direction. It blew apart in an equally large dust cloud, followed by many more as the pair of heavy walkers strode through the inside of the American base, picking off defenses at range from their higher elevation as they slowly approached the inner perimeter defense line.

The first of the heavy walkers avoided the large metallic tank traps, walking around to the south a bit towards one of the large trenches. When it reached the edge the pilot shifted the feet underneath, pulling them in close to one another before reaching out with the front ‘paw’ as the machine lunged forward. The foot pad landed 2 meters past the opposite edge, but smashed down the dirt in that area, creating an imprint/cave in on that side, sinking in a meter but otherwise holding firm.

Very carefully the walker brought its other front leg across, then hunched down and brought one of its back legs down into the trench, dropping its aft end awkwardly into the gap, but it was shallow enough that it only came up to the machine’s knee. It pulled its last leg in, dragging a good amount of dirt with it, then pulled itself up the far side at a snail’s pace, but it succeeded in crossing the highway-sized gap that would have stopped any of the tanks dead in their tracks.

Several of the mechs used their jump jets and crossed along with it in flanking positions, largely ignoring the infantry outposts that guarded the bridges. Those were left to the Humanoid mechs that followed shortly thereafter, disabling the machine gun nests and anti-infantry turrets that still remained while scaring the infantry themselves back into their underground tunnels that connected to the rest of the base.

A small explosion underneath one of the outposts kicked up concrete dust through the bunker slits as the troops scuttled the tunnel entrance so Star Force couldn’t backtrack them into the main base. Likewise, the other outposts that came under attack put up a pitiful amount of resistance before succumbing in a similar manner, leaving the heavy walkers unopposed as the first two approached the four main building mounds while the trailing third headed over to the fort surrounding the airfield.

Ryan’s heavy walker stopped just short of the concrete outcropping that formed the surface entrance for the nearest surface mound, becoming a stationary part of the landscape as entry hatches on the underside slid open and descent lines deployed, spilling out red and white armored troops as they dropped down to the surface and took off running towards the three entry airlocks, two of which were oversized cargo hatches.

Ryan left the cockpit of the heavy walker and moved backwards into the troop pod, then was the last one down the ropes. He jogged across the sandy surface to the entry point, stinger rifle in hand, stun stick attached to his waist, and shield strapped over his back in lieu of an equipment pack. The other Archons were similarly equipped, but the taller Knights carried stun swords and massive, slightly curved shields that stood taller than Ryan’s head. The larger men carried them effortlessly as they jammed themselves into the two cargo airlocks and began to cycle through after one of the Archons worked a little technical magic on the locking devices that intended to prevent their use during a lockdown.

Ryan moved about through the lines and shouldered his way through into the second load of Knights going through the middle airlock, along with one other Archon. When the exterior door lowered down he heard an atmospheric hiss and his armor’s ‘breathing’ mechanism unlocked, drawing in outside air to feed his suit.

When the inner door rose up they found themselves walking into a huge firefight behind a set of locked shields covering their entry point. Bullets were ricocheting in droves off the large white wall of armor spanning several meters in the squarish, gymnasium-sized room, coming from several connecting hallways making the entire area one big kill box.

Ryan couldn’t see much from his position, but once the additional Knights arrived a group of five of them turtled up into a wedge and left the others. They walked briskly across the empty loading dock towards one of the doorways, ducking their helmeted heads down below the rim of the shields while keeping their bases an inch or two off the floor, giving the enemy no body shots at them.

A pair of grenades flew out towards the Knights grouped near the airlocks and exploded, cracking one of their shields down the midline, but otherwise not penetrating it…though little pieces of debris had imbedded themselves into the normally shiny exterior, emblazoned with the Star Force logo. Ryan poked around the edge of the formation and fired off three shots into the nearest targets, seeing one hit before he had to duck back behind cover.

As he did something clanked down behind him. He glanced back and saw a stun sword on the ground as a massive black blur leapt over his head, as well as the Knights and their shield wall. The man landed in the middle of the free fire zone as the Knight wedge made it to the first entryway, providing something of a distraction for him, but most of the American troops turned their fire on the hulking black armored figured as he ran with amazing speed across gap, holding his equally massive shield up as a block as he got hammered with rifle fire.

Ryan ducked out of cover again and sprayed stingers across the distracted enemy along with a few other Archons that had come through behind him. They downed several Americans with stun-laced paint splatters before the Black Knight got to the doublewide entryway directly across from the airlocks and threw his shield into the soldiers stationed there behind low barricades, knocking them down as he effortlessly hopped over into their lines and began punching the dozen or so of them into submission.

With additional reinforcements coming in behind them, the Knights began escorting Archons up towards the enemy and soon they had all the entryways secured, but the intensity of the fight hadn’t slowed. The hallways leading out from the loading dock were long and well guarded, making for a gauntlet to pass through, but at least Ryan’s troops had managed to secure the entrance to the base. From there, he knew, they could work their way through the rest of the base.

He walked back over to the airlocks and picked up the all too familiar black stun sword from the ground and carried it back over to the owner, who was now back inside the main room and around a corner, examining the few bullet wounds his armor had taken, none of which appeared serious. With a flick of his wrist Ryan tossed the extra-long sword through the air and Vermaire caught it between two fingers as if it were a twig, twisting it around and reattaching it to his belt.

“Team two, report?” Ryan asked over his suit’s comm.

“We’re in,” Mark-099’s voice responded. “Moderate resistance.”

“Same here,” Ryan acknowledged. “Team 3?”

“Airfield is ours,” Rex said, with audible gunfire in the background. “We’re pushing through the underground connection tunnel to the main base.”

“Cora, where are we at with the anti-air?”

“All clear, Ryan,” she reported from her mech. “We can bring the dropships down now.”

“Make the call, my armor doesn’t have the range.”

“Will do,” she acknowledged, transferring comm frequencies and contacting the dropships waiting in low orbit carrying additional ground troops and supplies. With their foothold secure, the reserves would come down and assist the breach teams with securing the base and evacuating the high number of captured American soldiers, which were even now beginning to stack up as three of the Archons began pulling the stunned bodies across the docking area and lining them up against the wall that contained the airlocks next to the supply bundles that some of the Archons had carried in from the heavy walkers.

Ryan helped them with the last few and policing their weapons as the rest of the breach force pushed on down two of the hallways and broke the American barricade lines, giving them access to the base interior as mobile base troops began to reposition to counter their advance. One Knight remained on guard with the prisoners while others began to take up holding positions at the entryways and further down the hallways where they had gained ground, locking down a perimeter while the Archons and a few other Knights flew off in hunter teams, running around the base taking down everyone they could find rather than trying to secure key areas, which was impossible considering the size of the base and the few dozen troops they currently had deployed.

Ryan joined the hunters, breaking up into a foursome with Archons 374, 285, and 603 as they headed around the perimeter of the docking area, hitting the backside of the barricade positions on the hallways they hadn’t cleared and eliminating those positions so the Knight guards could move up and take their place, establishing a double defense line for the docking area.

From there they made several forays deeper into the base, but never getting too far from their entry point. The Americans obliged by sending more and more combat troops their way to repulse the invaders, so they never had to go far to find additional targets. By the time they exhausted their rifle ammo and fell back to friendly territory to pick up reloads, the dropships that had come down to pick up the American pilots had already shifted over to the base to pick up the tank crews and deliver initial relief supplies, including additional restraints for the prisoners which were in danger of running out.

As it were, the docking area floor was half covered with bound, unconscious prisoners that had been dragged back by some of the auxiliary Archon teams trailing the hunters. The dropships took on as many of them as they could, then lifted up from the sandy soil in front of the airlocks and slowly rose up into the sky as the troop reinforcements began to come down in a long string of identical dropships landing at the airfield.

The prisoner-laden dropships made their first run up to orbit and offloaded their haul, refueled, then began making repetitive runs along with two dozen others, clearing American personnel off the base as quickly and efficiently as possible, though the Archons managed to keep ahead of them, insuring a backlog of prisoners every time one of the dropships landed.

It took a long time to clear out the base, but before they were even a quarter of the way through the structures Ryan and a team of 8 forced their way down into the underground labyrinth of reinforced tunnels, searching for the command bunker. Initially they’d thought it was towards the top of one of the mounds, but based off the layered defenses and a few incomplete base schematics that they came across, it became evident that there were secure levels well beneath ground level that the common soldier didn’t have access to.

It took several hours of searching, along with a lot of cutting through security doors, but eventually Ryan’s forward team broke through into the deepest structure they could find. The door was also the thickest, but when they finished cutting through with a portable torch apparatus they found the command center…but it was completely deserted.

Ryan and the other Archons ducked through the still glowing metal rim around the cut in the door, alert for trouble or booby-traps. What they found were four small escape tunnels headed off in various directions. He ducked his head into one of them, but could see no one down the long, straight passage.

The others couldn’t see anything either, meaning the command staff was long gone.

“Two man teams,” he ordered. “Go.”

Without any unnecessary chatter his team split up and ran off down the tunnels, chasing General Marvin, wherever he had ran off to. There was no way he was getting off this base, but Ryan knew it could take a long time to ferret him out.

A full base schematic would be helpful, but it looked like the Americans had done a good job of securing their data center. As Ryan tried to access their computer systems he didn’t come across any security measures…only blank hard drives. The map table showed a generic visual of the base from orbit, taken months or years ago, but when Ryan tapped on any particular building the files came up empty, as did the scrolling options for the underground caverns. They’d wiped the files clean, making the Archon wonder just what else was buried underneath the base.

“Carter, I need a guard unit down low. We’ve found the base command center, but the data has been erased and there appears to be a considerable amount of underground tunnels. We’re going to have to flush them out one by one, and I want this position secured. The General and his staff are also unaccounted for.”

“Copy that,” the Archon replied.

Two and a half hours later Ryan was helping clear out the third of the four mound-covered structures when he got a report from a search team that the General had been found, holed up on top of a catwalk in a maintenance shaft that connected the various buildings with power, water, and communications lines. He had him taken to a different holding area reserved for the high ranking officers to break down their chain of command during the evacuation back to Earth, as well as to keep them from giving the pilots flack for having surrendered.

Ryan finished his current sweep then headed over to the captive officers, finding the General with twenty or so others confined to a conference room. He nodded to the Knight guarding the one and only door and walked in, drawing attention of all those assembled, with most of them standing up upon his arrival. The man with the highest rank insignia stayed seated, with a gruff expression on his face.

Ryan pulled his helmet off and tucked it underneath his arm. “General, I think this is the appropriate moment to say…I told you so,” the Archon said with a satisfied grin.

10

February 9, 2109

The last of six inter-planetary starships began thrusting away from Mars, carrying the last of the American and German colonists being returned to Earth. Over the past five months Star Force had washed the surface of the planet clean of the seven nations involved in the war. Each and every one of their territorial zones had been confiscated. Their bases claimed and their civilian populations relocated, the banned nations’ militaries were returned to the escalating war zone around Earth, but so far no Star Force facilities had been attacked, despite the events on Mars, and the returning prisoner-laden ships were able to dock with the Star Force starports and transfer the captives down to the planet via dropship.

Without interference, the various personnel were returned to their native countries via their deactivated spaceports. Closed to the public for the duration of each country’s ban, most of the staff had been relocated to other facilities, but a skeleton work crew maintained each Star Force facility and oversaw a few isolated projects, but for the most part the spaceports in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, West Africa, South Africa, and India were shut down, forcing all of their citizens wishing to get into space to go through rival corporations or transfer through the Star Force spaceports in nearby countries, thereby increasing economic activity for those who had played by the rules and penalizing those nations that had not.

Unlike China, which suffered a permanent ban, it was understood that the closed spaceports would one day reopen, so Star Force didn’t dismantle anything, and it used that existing infrastructure to process and transfer the incoming colonists and soldiers from Mars back over to their host nations in private and potentially humiliating ceremonies that were kept away from the media.

The loss of Mars couldn’t be suppressed, but it was rendered to a footnote as the fighting in Earth orbit became bloodier and bloodier. Still, a number of other nations that looked to be poised to jump into the fighting on one side or another wisely chose to stay on the sidelines after seeing what Star Force had done to the warring factions on Mars…and saw the potential for opportunity as they announced that the captured territories would made available for lease and/or purchase by the other nations.

Interested in their long term strategy, the other nations began moving additional assets and ships to Mars to fill the void left by the disposed countries while those seven nations seemed to double down, tearing into each other’s forces with reckless abandon, dwarfing the naval conflicts of the previous two World Wars combined while opening up a massive ground campaign on Luna.

Meanwhile, with the surface of Mars secured and all orbital habitats reclaimed, the Star Force fleet massed in orbit to deal with the renegade American war fleet that was still clustered together and holding out on minimal supplies and low fuel. Slowly, more and more Star Force ships arrived within viewing range of the Americans in a display of how inevitable their victory would be that, by the time Liam made contact with the American fleet commander, there was little resistance left in them.

“Admiral Harrison,” Liam greeted amicably across the video link from the Aquarius, the third of three command ships built to date by Star Force, “I believe it’s time we ended this stalemate.”

The silver haired man, leaned by recent supply rationing, looked ghostly thin but held his poise well. “I see no stalemate, Archon. Only a total rout of our forces.”

Liam acknowledged that fact with a nod. “How then do you plan for this to end, aside from starvation?”

“In truth, I would have capitulated months ago for my crew’s sake, but I have my orders.”

“And what orders are those?”

The Admiral stood a bit straighter and crossed his arms behind his back. “To deny you the capture of this fleet.”

Liam frowned. “Short of suicide, how do they expect you to accomplish that?”

“I was told that burden fell on me. To date, I have not discovered a way to comply.  We obviously can’t survive forever on the supplies we have, but neither can we surrender. I see no resolution to this, the pity being that my crews have to suffer for it.”

“The solution is rather simple, Admiral. Disobey orders.”

“Betraying one’s country is not an easy thing to do, Archon.”

“Admiral, to be blunt, we already possess your ships. The decision before you is about yourself and your crew.”

Harrison glared slightly at what he detected as arrogance in Liam’s voice. “Perhaps there is truth in what you say, for we cannot escape, but our weapons have not been affected by the supply shortage.”

“You can’t run,” Liam said, ticking off the points on his fingers, “you can’t beat us, and you can’t get resupplied. Other than waiting and hoping for another solution to present itself, what options have you?”

Harrison sighed. “None, I’m afraid.”

“So let’s end this now, before the toll on your crew begins to snowball.”

“I have my orders.”

Liam stared at him for a long moment. He’d already had Davis contact the US President to try and get him to order his ships to stand down, but he’d been met with a polite refusal. It appeared the American leader was skimming the line between declaring Star Force either an enemy or an ally, neither capitulating nor negotiating…and leaving his soldiers to suffer for it, as if they were expendable commodities.

“Disobey orders,” Liam reiterated.

Harrison sighed again, his fatigue evident. “Aside from the obvious contradiction of duty, my career as a naval officer would be over. They’d probably ax my senior commanders as well.”

“Isn’t that preferable to starving?”

“For my crew, I would agree. As for me, at least I’d die at my post.”

Liam knew the lie for what it was. The man was arguing as much with himself as he was his opposite.

“But when you die, I still get your ships. How then does your country benefit from your death?”

“At the least, you won’t be able to turn them around to use against us immediately.”

“Ah,” Liam scoffed, “Admiral, I can honestly say I don’t want your crappy ships for use in combat. Ours are superior, and we have no trouble building more of them.”

“Then allow us to return home.”

Liam considered that. Actually, he’d considered that and many other options for weeks, but the final decision would depend on the Admiral’s compliance.

“You want me to give you fuel to get back to Earth so you can join in the fighting there? I don’t think so.”

“Even if I offer you my word that this fleet won’t take part in the fighting?”

“What happens when you’re relieved of your command and replaced by someone who won’t honor that agreement?”

The Admiral’s head sagged, as if he hadn’t considered that possibility. The lack of adequate nutrition must have been diminishing his mental processes. “Is there no way you will allow me to keep my ships? I have no interest in fighting you.”

“What are you interested in?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you wish to continue as a naval commander?”

“Of course.”

“Then might I suggest a change of sides, because with the ships we’ve already seized, your shipyards nuked, and a high level of attrition from the fighting in Earth orbit, the American fleet is going to be greatly downsized for years to come, if we decide to let you keep a military at all. Unless you’re willing to go rogue, your career is at an end no matter how you slice it.”

Harrison looked shocked. “You intend to disarm us the way you disarmed the Chinese? You attacked us, we didn’t attack you.”

“And that is why, currently, the American ban is a temporary one. China suffers from a permanent ban.”

“Is the military ban you suggest equally temporary?”

“That decision hasn’t been made yet,” Liam admitted. “A lot depends on what happens at Earth, but I can tell you for certain that your country, along with the others involved in this war, will be banned from any and all activity in the Mars micro-system. That includes territories, habitats, and economic interaction. Your ships won’t even be allowed transit passes. Mars is now off limits, and reserved for those countries that have learned to play well with others.”

“Star Force’s arrogance knows no bounds,” Harrison complained, but there wasn’t much energy behind his anger.

“We’re the peacekeepers, Admiral. Your country is the aggressor.”

“We defended ourselves against British aggression, if you remember back to how this war got started.”

“That’s debatable,” Liam said neutrally. “And even if it was true, your country was advised to let us handle the situation. Given our strength and neutrality, I doubt this war would have begun if you’d taken our advice. You wanted a war, and now you have to face the consequences of it.”

“I never wanted this war,” Harrison said honestly.

“Then quit it.”

The Admiral’s face scrunched up. “Resign? I can’t while I have a duty to acquit.”

“And you’ll have a duty to acquit until you resign. Circular logic, Admiral. If you don’t approve of this war, then get out of it. Here. Now.”

“Were it that easy, Archon.”

Liam sensed the man was looking for a way out. “Is this transmission secure, Admiral?”

“Meaning what?”

“I’d like to talk to you in private. No recordings, no crew overhearing. Just you and me.”

“For what purpose?”

“So we can drop ranks and talk as men.”

“I trust my crew.”

“What I have to say is for your ears alone. Fleet commander to fleet commander.”

“I thought you wanted to drop ranks? Very well. I have nothing else to do at the moment. I’ll have this line transferred to my private cabin.”

Liam nodded, then waited for the transfer. A few minutes later the Admiral reappeared behind what looked like a small computer screen. He removed his hat and ran his thin fingers through his hair.

“We have our private line. What is it you wanted to discuss?”

“Define your loyalties to your country,” Liam prompted.

“Alright, I’ll play. I support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and I will obey the orders of those appointed over me. I represent the fighting spirit of the Space Navy and those who have gone before me to defend freedom and democracy. I serve my country's Space Navy with Honor, Courage and Commitment and I am committed to excellence and the fair treatment of all.”

Liam recognized the memorized nature of his recitation, but knew he could work his point from there. “So, Constitution, Freedom, Democracy, and fair treatment of all?”

“And orders,” Harrison reminded him.

“And orders,” Liam echoed. “Define democracy.”

“Democracy is our system of government…which Star Force absconds, by the way…where the people take control of their own destiny and are not bound to a king or other hereditary ruler or dictator. Where exactly your Director Davis fits in I’m not sure, though it has been suggested his son took his name and position some time ago.”

Liam smiled. “He doesn’t have a son, and no, the old guy is still in charge. That has never changed.”

“He would be too old by now,” Harrison argued, curious now that he had an inside track to the subject matter.

“I’m 87 years old, Admiral.”

Harrison frowned. “Bull shit.”

“Physical training, when applied properly, can do wonders for the body. Davis isn’t nearly as fit as I am, but he’s progressed far enough that old age no longer threatens him. It may shock you to learn, but most of the troops we assaulted your ground bases with are more than 50 years old, with decades of military experience under their belt. Your seasoned troops are green compared to ours.”

“I find that hard to believe,” the Admiral said, his eyes widening a bit.

“It takes a lot of work, but one thing above all that Star Force emphasizes is the pursuit of excellence.”

“Is that your excuse for abandoning democracy?”

“Democracy asks those who know nothing about the subject matter what to do, and values their massed opinion higher than those that do know. How anyone can see that as a workable system is beyond me.”

“Elections are the only way to insure a dictator can’t rise to power. Without that check, anyone can go awry. Even your Davis. What do you do then?”

“He’s too good of a man to go bad,” Liam assured him. “But, for the sake of argument, if he did turn to the darkside the Archons would step in to set things straight.”

“Would you now? And what if the Archons went bad as well?”

“At the end of the day you must place your trust in someone, else you will have nothing. We place our trust in those that have proven themselves elite. You trust in the public. Is that a fair assessment?”

“It’ll do.”

“Elites can perform specific tasks, the public cannot, so democracies still have to rely on individuals, on leaders to safeguard and care for the public wellbeing. In this way, your protestations are a bit hypocritical.”

“Not really. The people choose those leaders, who are then responsible to the people. At the end of the day the people, as a group, are still in charge.”

“What do you do, if what the people want isn’t what they need? Do you obey their orders and assist in their self destruction, or do you disobey them to acquit your duty to protect them?”

“I sense a trick question here, Archon.”

“No trick about it. It’s a pointed question.”

“You’re asking if I’m serving the American people or serving the American people?”

“Exactly.”

“I would say I am responsible to do both.”

“How many thousands of your people are in your fleet, slowly starving to death? Are you acquitting your duty to them? They may be soldiers, but they’re no less American than the civilians back on Earth. Are you truly serving the people, or the orders of men who truly do not care?”

When Harrison hesitated Liam pushed further.

“Perhaps you’ll recognize these words,” he offered, reading off a nearby computer screen.

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

“The Declaration of Independence,” Harrison immediately identified.

“A bit wordy for me, but the root point is sound. Political bonds are not absolute. Following orders is not the highest duty you possess.”

“And what cause, pray tell, do I have for separation?”

Liam read on. “’We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’…which I would suggest means that neither the people nor the President have the authority to order you to your deaths. Furthermore, if they do have that power over you, then you do not have liberty, and I really don’t think starving to death fits into your pursuit of happiness either.”

Liam held up a finger to stop Harrison from speaking as he continued to read.

“That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,” Liam paused for emphasis, “and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty,” Liam emphasized again, “to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

Harrison waited to see if he was finished before he finally replied. “So you wish me to lead a revolution to overthrow the United States?” he asked sarcastically.

“Nothing that drastic,” Liam assured him. “I’m simply asking you to break ties with them in order to safeguard your people. It is your duty to make sure their lives are not wasted. If you betray one, you betray them all. Each are equal and separate, and do not bow in significance or value to the masses.”

The Admiral closed his eyes for a moment, thinking hard. “You’ve done your homework.”

“I read a lot. And when you have the fate of millions in your hands, it helps to be well versed on philosophical aspects of past and present societies, for reference, if nothing else.”

“You argue that if I follow orders and my people suffer for it, I am betraying the public trust that put the President and myself into positions of power. If I do so, then whatever orders handed down to me become irrelevant because I’m already a traitor?”

“Pretty much,” Liam agreed lightheartedly.

“You said my men would be returned to Earth?”

“If they wish, yes.”

“You won’t be taking any prisoners? The officers, perhaps?”

“Not unless you want me to. Our object is to remove the American fleet and personnel from the Mars micro-system. “We have no desire to keep prisoners.”

“Very well, Archon. You have my surrender. May I ask for relief supplies for my men? Many are more ill than I.”

“Within the hour, Admiral,” Liam promised.

“Thank you,” he said genuinely. “At least I know my last order given was in acquittal of my duty.”

“You don’t figure your superiors will see it the same way?” Liam guessed.

“I doubt it. And I don’t think reading them the Declaration will make much of a difference.”

“I pointed out the part about separation for a reason, Admiral. You don’t have to go back to Earth in disgrace.”

Harrison’s head came up. “What do you mean?”

“Not all of your people wanted to return to Earth. About 20% of your troops opted not to go back, and more than half of the colonists elected to stay as well. We have them split up into various facilities for processing, some of them will join Star Force, others have asked for asylum in other countries, both back on Earth and here on Mars, but we’re offering them a third option. The same option we’re offering the holdouts from the other six countries.”

“We’re creating a separate colony,” Liam explained. “An independent nation here on Mars. It will have strong ties with Star Force, but it will also achieve its sovereignty after certain measures have been met. As I said, I have no use for your ships…but this new nation might.”

“I could retain my fleet?”

“It would have to be reorganized, and you’d have to go through retraining, using a Star Force model, same as everyone else, but within a year’s time you could be back on your flagship…though it’d be flying a different flag.”

“Breaking political bonds,” the Admiral repeated, “to secure the same duty.”

“Your crew will have the same options, and a few days, at least, to think it through before the first of them are sent back to Earth.”

“This new nation…will it be a democracy?” Harrison asked in a tone that suggested he was going to accept regardless.

“It will be a Republic, as the United States was originally intended to be. We haven’t picked a name yet.”

The Admiral visibly straightened. “Archon, on behalf of my fleet I surrender it to you as the American commander. I also, hereby, resign my commission with the Unites States Space Navy, effective immediately, and request enlistment in your new nation’s space forces.”

“Surrender accepted, Admiral,” Liam said, matching his formal tone. “Request for enlistment, granted. I’ll send over a choice of nondescript uniforms for you to change into along with the supply shuttles and medics.”

“Thank you,” Harrison said, bowing his head respectfully.

“Do you expect trouble from your crew?”

“No need to fear, Archon. Your shuttles will not be fired upon.”

“I hope not,” Liam said sarcastically. “I’d hate to have to kill you now that we’ve become friends.”