Nobody who's seen it so far has any idea what the "Star Palace" was. Some kind of Edger venue, but what or where?
Showing posts with label Battle Of Ganymede. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Battle Of Ganymede. Show all posts
15 January 2011
War Poster
C. Jay (you would not believe what the C stands for, by the way) has a nice collection of ephemera and books -- stuff from the NATO and Russian worlds and a few things from the Far Edge like this poster, nearly fifty years old now:
Nobody who's seen it so far has any idea what the "Star Palace" was. Some kind of Edger venue, but what or where?
Nobody who's seen it so far has any idea what the "Star Palace" was. Some kind of Edger venue, but what or where?
17 February 2010
The Battle Of Ganymede, Part 2
Story begins at The Battle Of Ganymede, Part 1 [Editor's note: Accuracy of this fictionalized account of the only battle fought between FCS forces (Mil/Space and others) and USSF plus NATO allies within Earth's own solar system is in some doubt. Many of the incidents have not been verified and most of them cannot be. The Mil/Space Tech "Hawkins" does appear to be the father of Juliette Hawkins, first known case of Hawkins-F.]
On the surface, the soldier was still struggling with the cleaning rod and muttering a steady stream of imprecations directed at the Army, USSF and someone apparently named "Damn Ted Armalite." It wasn't helping.
Sudden movement caught his eye; he looked up in time to see rocks, dust and ice hanging in the middle distance, then starting a lazy fall back down as the ground underneath shook. He missed the flash of movement to his right that could have been two men carrying large packs. They didn't miss the glint of reflected light from his faceplace and ducked behind a truck-sized rock.
* * *
"Snakecrap!" Hawkins said it; braided line connected the two men, clipped to attachment points at front and back of the harness built into the outer coveralls they wore over their leotard-like pressure suits. Mil/Space had thoughtfully included an intercom cable; mating jacks at each end connected it to an earphone and microphone in their bubble helmets. SOP called for VOX rather than push-to-talk, reasoning time and a free hand to flip a switch might both be in short supply if things went wrong. "You saw it, too, Lieutenant."
"Yes. He is not one of ours."
"Check. Now what?"
"We have a closer look." Griffon began to check his weapon as he spoke, then moved the sling to a looser, front position that would allow easy aim but hang out of the way until needed. Hawkins did the same, with a shorter loop to keep it mostly clear of the line between them. Hardly more than an oversized handgun, their "rifles" looked like nothing so much as something hastily welded together to lubricate heavy machinery. "He's out in the open. Looked like he was seated or dug in."
"Pretty sure he was seated, up against one of those rocks." Hawkins wasn't their top imaging tech — that had been Feelie — but manpower was too scarce for the Edgers who ran Mil/Space to assign any man to an imaging post who wasn't both sharp of eye and quick to grasp what he saw.
Griffon nodded. "Could be. Suggestions?"
Neither man had set out to be a professional soldier and neither one had undergone extensive training in the ancient skills of ground troops. Their employer, Mil/Space, was one of several contractors supplying skilled manpower to the Federation of Concerned Spacemen, still the only real ruling body on the Far Edge. Specialists, their war had been a matter of images on a screen, of the sudden flash that told of a hundred lives lost, of stealth and subterfuge, months of boredom punctuated by hours of frantic activity. The ground war on Ganymede had come as a surprise to the Edgers; confident of the technological advantage from the German 'Drive technology that reduced the effective mass of spacecraft and their own improvements that allowed safely controllable, albeit jerky, maneuvering near a planetary surface, even the recent loss of Peace-and-Prosperity, their most populous settled planet, to a USSF flotilla had not appreciably shaken their opinion. Nothing had until routine scans found a very large USSF/NATO fleet approaching from an unexpected direction and by then it was too late.
The officer had been born on Earth itself, a child of one of the original FCS conspirators, smuggled aboard along with many others. Most of his life since had been spent aboard spacecraft and space-based industrial facilities. While he didn't suffer the paralyzing agoraphobia that was the bane of many of his peers, he didn't have Hawkins' ease in the wide-open spaces, either. The Tech was from Peace-And-Prosperity, formerly Linden, of mixed Edger/German background; he claimed Ganymede reminded him of the mining camp at Pitty on his home world. Anyone who hadn't seen the place assumed he was exaggerating. "Ground's pretty torn up. I think there's enough cover to get a closer look before we plan too much. Might even be able to just grab him."
While they spoke, the subject of their discussion had managed to remove the KIT, CLEANING, XM-16E from its storage location and was assembling the contents, remembering the lecture: "These kits are scarcer than your rifle. You are the first soldiers to receive them and you will learn to use them!" Should'a tried it one-handed, he reflected. Locking the bolt back was going to be even more interesting, but it was a better bet than trying to get the receiver open. He looked up again, thinking he'd seen something. Shouldn't be anyone — or anything! — at all out here, not so soon after— After what? He couldn't remember. Hell with it. Clear the rifle, find out where you are, figure out what to do next. He turned back to his rifle, wondering what the chances were the body he'd spotted was still carrying any air.
He didn't wonder long. A figure in a funny-looking spacesuit popped out from behind a boulder to his right, pointing a nasty-looking grease gun at him and then ducked back out of sight.. He started to reach for his XM-16 with both hands, nearly dropped it at the stab of pain from his shoulder, but managed to bring it to bear, just as another guy slid down the rock he was leaning on, landed to his left, made a long reach and grabbed his gun, attempting to twist it down and away. He shouted and tried to stand as the second man bumped his helmet, grabbed him to maintain the connection and yelled tinnily, "Drop it!" While he was distracted, the first one closed the distance and yanked his rifle away. He was their prisoner, as fast and simple as that.
* * *
"He doesn't look too good," Hawkins protested. "And we're not in the greatest shape ourselves." They'd reattached the line and intercom between them. At their feet, the subject of their discussion still sat where they'd found him, deprived of his rifle and knife, trying unsuccessfully to read their lips. The shorter one was gesturing. "There's no way we can carry him and I don't think he can walk."
The Lieutenant was having none of it. "Are you a mindreader, then? We do not know that."
"Nossir. But he sure didn't try to stand when we grabbed him. Even if he can, we can't take him along."
"What else? Leave him? Shoot him?" Life was hard on the Far Edge but it was not cheap; there were rarely enough hands for any task. Extensive automation helped and aggressive recruitment of Earth's displaced, disaffected and unwanted had begun to make a difference — possibly too much so on Peace-and-Prosperity, but that was Earth's problem now. Between the harshness of space and the shortage of manpower, few Edgers would consider leaving a man behind. Even if they had to invent reasons why. "We need to find out what he knows. General Filiaggi needs to learn what they know."
Hawkins almost rolled his eyes. The General — founder and principal of Mil/Space and one of the chief proponents of hired contractors rather than civil servants for nearly everything — was infamous for his strong opinions and fierce temper. Keeping him happy was both necessary and nearly impossible. "You think so?"
"I'm certain of it - and it's an order. We're taking him along."
The soldier wasn't having much luck making out what they were saying but frequent glances his way left no doubt it was about him. It's sure not about where to stop for lunch, he thought, and nearly grinned. Better to think about that than what the other two might do next. Or about what might've gone wrong with his arm. Their coveralls — clearly not spacesuits, open at collar, sleeve and cuff with something shiny that looked skin-tight underneath — bore familiar-looking name tapes and unfamiliar insignia, starting with some kind of star-and-rifle logo under a banner that proclaimed "MILSPACE ASSOC." or something similar along with a smaller design consisting of a star and the letters "FCS." One of them had upside-down chevrons-and-rocker on his sleeves, with a lighting bolt over a bowl shape at the center. The other had bizarre triple bars. Digging up a memory from his childhood in Chattanooga, he took a guess and when triple-bar bent down to bring their helmets in contact, spoke first: "Captain, what's the verdict?"
The other man made a sound like a chuckle, "Hah. Captains command ships. Call me 'Lieutenant.' Senior Lieutenant, about the same as one of your 'Captains.' Less confusing." His speech was almost unnaturally distinct, like a telephone operator's. "What is your name? Can you stand? Can you walk?"
"I might need some help standing. Walking, I could do that for—" he glanced at his air gauge and made a rapid estimate "—about forty-five minutes." Faces pressed too close and at a funny angle, he could still sense puzzlement change rapidly to annoyed comprehension. "And my name is..." This was nuts. How could a guy forget his own name?
The enemy officer wasn't waiting. "Insufficient air. Not good. What are your oxygen connections like? We might be able to jury-rig—"
He interrupted, "We might not have to." It took some explaining. The other Edger, "tech-not-sergeant" Hawkins, freed up the breather backpack from the partially buried body and brought it back. The nametag on the pack read, "Wilkerson, M." It didn't ring any bells. One tank was full; the other was just over three-quarters. The chemical bargraph on the CO2 absorber, the one you normally had to have a buddy read, showed ten percent gone.
While he sat with the pack on his lap, steadying it with his left arm and holding the pendant gauges in his right, his captors reconnected their intercom.
"Lieutenant, he's got threaded connectors. Fine threads! And manual valves!"
"Not quick-connects? Those big suits do hold a lot of air. As for manual valves, Tech, your suit has them, too. I am certain you follow S.O.P and use them; the check valves are merely a back-up." He suppressed a sigh. Hawkins did no such thing unless he was being watched. Planet-dwellers were easy to spot by their causal, sloppy observance of safety procedures, at least until the first time their luck failed. Afterward, well, the survivors were more careful. The tension between long-held Edger belief that stupidity ought to be self-correcting and not wanting to lose a man was usually subsumed in the larger concerns of the increasingly-heated conflict with Earth. Usually.
Hawkins, feeling unfairly chastised, folded his arms and tried to look resolute. The officer had other worries. "Is there a radio in that thing? Did you notice a radio on the dead man's suit?"
"No and no. And no antenna on his. Could be something transistorized, low-power, too small to notice. I doubt it."
"H'mm. And without quick-connects, he has only as much time as his pack and the one just salvaged will allow."
Griffon considered the options. Odd were good there was an Earth vessel, some kind of low-radar-image landing craft nearby, which it would not do to encounter even if only a skeleton crew was aboard. Closest friendly — if she'd made it — was Skidoo, a lightly-armed freighter that had been landing when his imaging installation had been hit. Next best was a tie between the another imager and General Filiaggi's "flagship," the mostly-hidden Not Minneapolis, a repurposed seagoing battleship "borrowed" under dubious circumstances. The freighter was out; it would have been an obvious target, for one, and if enough of the imagers had been taken out, odds of a successful landing weren't good. Heading for the next imager was a shorter trip but one that would take them farther away from the flagship, towards a destination in unknown condition with uncertain communication. And he didn't want to share credit for the capture, he admitted to himself with a sour grin. On the other hand, the Minnie was either intact or his destination didn't matter. And on the other other hand— Operational security was tight; he knew where the flagship was, offset from and little outside the ring of five imagers that surrounded the township-sized landing area, but he didn't know the intervening terrain or how to find the hidden accesses.
He was looking towards his prisoner but not really seeing him when the scene suddenly lit up. Hawkins, intercom still plugged in, yelled distortedly, "Holy howling snakes!"
He turned in time to see the fireball still growing and moving upward. Had Skidoo's captain decided to run for it and been hit? The location looked right, but it could have been an Earth ship hunting the freighter and struck by fire from his own side. It was an expanding blob of hot gas, molten metal and twisted debris now. Molten metal including the reactor. "Hawkins, help me grab the Earther, now. We need to be on the far side of the rock he's leaning on."
Unsurprisingly, the prisoner was staring at the fireball, too. Griffon and Hawkins rounded on him, hoisted him up in a chair carry with the spare air pack still in his lap, the lanyard a trip hazard between them and made good time getting the boulder between themselves and the explosion. Their passenger struggled briefly until Griffon put his helmet in contact and shouted, "Explosion. Rad hazard." It wasn't much cover — the glowing mass was still headed up — but it was better than nothing at all. The explosion was well distant, almost to the horizon, so their direct exposure couldn't have been significant. Or if it had, there was nothing to be done here and now. Indirect exposure was another story; "hot" debris was going to be settling gently down for a long time. Maybe even days; but the same low gravity that was going to keep material aloft for such a long time meant it wasn't raining rads yet.
"Set him down here, Tech." When had Earth become so bold? He was used to thinking of them as incompetent clods, timid navigators who lacked the closely held tricks and techniques that allowed FCS-allied ships to twitch and jitter their way down to a planetary surface, controlling their effective mass and altering their vector with tiny, subcritical Stardrive jumps. What had been a battle of infrequent feint and parry in which Earth's only gains were the result of blind luck had turned nastier, starting — as far as he was concerned — with their imager and who knew what else. With a nuke plant vaporized and sprayed across Mil/Space's landing field, the fight had to move elsewhere. Didn't it? He didn't have enough information; it didn't matter, he had to act. Six months ago, he'd been graveyard-watch imaging officer on an independent "covert freighter" little larger than Skiddoo, a watchstander-cum-engineering manager with a fancy title. Recruited by one of the several contractors hired by the Executive Committee of the Federation of Concerned Spacemen to provide "external security," he'd been run through a hasty military officer's school, most of it a stack of reading and a handful of lectures, then assigned to a series of imager installation much like his shipboard job. Or they had been until today, when a lot of material that had seemed dull, unlikely, even paranoid had suddenly become sensible.
Griffon's prisoner, picked up, hauled around the huge boulder and dumped on the ground with barely an explanation watched the enemy officer with gnawing worry. To him the man seemed distracted, almost alien, his body language close and cautious. He'd seemed not unkind but he was an enemy officer and by everything he'd been told, the enemy was sneaky, untrustworthy and profoundly different. The other one, the "Tech," (and what kind of rank was that?) acted a little more normal — he'd even been looking over the XM-16 he'd slung on his back when the lieutenant sent that around the boulder — but "Tech" was one of them, too. He took another look at his air gauge and did a little mental math: a half-hour, no, call it 40 minutes left. Sure felt like the last time he'd looked had been longer than five minutes ago. He looked back up to see the Tech looking at the sky and looked that direction himself to pick out three shimmering stars slowly descending. The enemy officer, Griffon, was beside him in a couple of loping steps; the "clonk" of their helmets colliding pulled his attention away.
"Are those are your side's ships?"
"How should I know? Anyway, I don't have to answer."
The officer was silent for awhile, as the lights grew larger and brighter, one clearly closer to them then the other two, shapes almost visible through the white light of the rockets. Finally, he spoke, "They're not ours. It's either yours or we both have company."
As they watched, Another light, dimmer, redder, joined the three, jittering and jinking, the light flaring and flickering. Griffin spoke again, "Now that is one of ours." Squinting, the soldier could almost make out its shape, like a hat with a narrow, conical rim. It seemed to jump from one position to another almost randomly; closer and then farther away, tilting and turning. It stabilized briefly, upside down and moving up, then vanished. Almost immediately, one of the three likely-USSF ships blossomed into a swelling sphere, reddening and churning. Griffon asked, "That is steam? Just how 'hot' are your landers?"
A whole shipload of good guys just died and this weirdo wants to talk shop? Not a chance! "Damifino. Wouldn't tell you if I knew." Bits of wreckage were starting to rain down, raising widely scattered puffs of dust in the distance, a vague wave sweeping towards their position. Griffon said something about "...Cover!" and waved the tech over.
———
The narrative breaks off there. Further specifics of their actions that day are unknown. Sr. Lt. Griffon stayed with Mil/Space during their re-organization from a corps of mostly specialists to the deadly "Space Marines" known today, a change prompted by huge losses during the fighting on Ganymede. The USSF soldier may have been Cpl. Lawrence Mathis, recorded with Griffon as having been treated for mild radiation exposure aboard FCS Saint Paul (the "Not Minneapolis," a converted former Brazilian seagoing battleship "borrowed" while being towed to the breakers) and repatriated in the war's first prisoner exchange some weeks later. Mathis was reported lost later that year when the USSF Mitchell went missing while investigating a reported Edger smuggling base on the far side off Earth's Moon; no wreckage has yet been found. As for Hawkins, he is known to have died on Ganymede; his body is interred in the monument there, a vast, faintly radioactive raised terrace bulldozed up from the former Far Edge landing field, site of the fiercest fighting and where four ships fell or were destroyed on the surface: USSF landers XL-5 and XL-17, the FCS armed freighter Skidoo and FCS "gunship," the privateer Extraneous.
On the surface, the soldier was still struggling with the cleaning rod and muttering a steady stream of imprecations directed at the Army, USSF and someone apparently named "Damn Ted Armalite." It wasn't helping.
Sudden movement caught his eye; he looked up in time to see rocks, dust and ice hanging in the middle distance, then starting a lazy fall back down as the ground underneath shook. He missed the flash of movement to his right that could have been two men carrying large packs. They didn't miss the glint of reflected light from his faceplace and ducked behind a truck-sized rock.
"Snakecrap!" Hawkins said it; braided line connected the two men, clipped to attachment points at front and back of the harness built into the outer coveralls they wore over their leotard-like pressure suits. Mil/Space had thoughtfully included an intercom cable; mating jacks at each end connected it to an earphone and microphone in their bubble helmets. SOP called for VOX rather than push-to-talk, reasoning time and a free hand to flip a switch might both be in short supply if things went wrong. "You saw it, too, Lieutenant."
"Yes. He is not one of ours."
"Check. Now what?"
"We have a closer look." Griffon began to check his weapon as he spoke, then moved the sling to a looser, front position that would allow easy aim but hang out of the way until needed. Hawkins did the same, with a shorter loop to keep it mostly clear of the line between them. Hardly more than an oversized handgun, their "rifles" looked like nothing so much as something hastily welded together to lubricate heavy machinery. "He's out in the open. Looked like he was seated or dug in."
"Pretty sure he was seated, up against one of those rocks." Hawkins wasn't their top imaging tech — that had been Feelie — but manpower was too scarce for the Edgers who ran Mil/Space to assign any man to an imaging post who wasn't both sharp of eye and quick to grasp what he saw.
Griffon nodded. "Could be. Suggestions?"
Neither man had set out to be a professional soldier and neither one had undergone extensive training in the ancient skills of ground troops. Their employer, Mil/Space, was one of several contractors supplying skilled manpower to the Federation of Concerned Spacemen, still the only real ruling body on the Far Edge. Specialists, their war had been a matter of images on a screen, of the sudden flash that told of a hundred lives lost, of stealth and subterfuge, months of boredom punctuated by hours of frantic activity. The ground war on Ganymede had come as a surprise to the Edgers; confident of the technological advantage from the German 'Drive technology that reduced the effective mass of spacecraft and their own improvements that allowed safely controllable, albeit jerky, maneuvering near a planetary surface, even the recent loss of Peace-and-Prosperity, their most populous settled planet, to a USSF flotilla had not appreciably shaken their opinion. Nothing had until routine scans found a very large USSF/NATO fleet approaching from an unexpected direction and by then it was too late.
The officer had been born on Earth itself, a child of one of the original FCS conspirators, smuggled aboard along with many others. Most of his life since had been spent aboard spacecraft and space-based industrial facilities. While he didn't suffer the paralyzing agoraphobia that was the bane of many of his peers, he didn't have Hawkins' ease in the wide-open spaces, either. The Tech was from Peace-And-Prosperity, formerly Linden, of mixed Edger/German background; he claimed Ganymede reminded him of the mining camp at Pitty on his home world. Anyone who hadn't seen the place assumed he was exaggerating. "Ground's pretty torn up. I think there's enough cover to get a closer look before we plan too much. Might even be able to just grab him."
While they spoke, the subject of their discussion had managed to remove the KIT, CLEANING, XM-16E from its storage location and was assembling the contents, remembering the lecture: "These kits are scarcer than your rifle. You are the first soldiers to receive them and you will learn to use them!" Should'a tried it one-handed, he reflected. Locking the bolt back was going to be even more interesting, but it was a better bet than trying to get the receiver open. He looked up again, thinking he'd seen something. Shouldn't be anyone — or anything! — at all out here, not so soon after— After what? He couldn't remember. Hell with it. Clear the rifle, find out where you are, figure out what to do next. He turned back to his rifle, wondering what the chances were the body he'd spotted was still carrying any air.
He didn't wonder long. A figure in a funny-looking spacesuit popped out from behind a boulder to his right, pointing a nasty-looking grease gun at him and then ducked back out of sight.. He started to reach for his XM-16 with both hands, nearly dropped it at the stab of pain from his shoulder, but managed to bring it to bear, just as another guy slid down the rock he was leaning on, landed to his left, made a long reach and grabbed his gun, attempting to twist it down and away. He shouted and tried to stand as the second man bumped his helmet, grabbed him to maintain the connection and yelled tinnily, "Drop it!" While he was distracted, the first one closed the distance and yanked his rifle away. He was their prisoner, as fast and simple as that.
"He doesn't look too good," Hawkins protested. "And we're not in the greatest shape ourselves." They'd reattached the line and intercom between them. At their feet, the subject of their discussion still sat where they'd found him, deprived of his rifle and knife, trying unsuccessfully to read their lips. The shorter one was gesturing. "There's no way we can carry him and I don't think he can walk."
The Lieutenant was having none of it. "Are you a mindreader, then? We do not know that."
"Nossir. But he sure didn't try to stand when we grabbed him. Even if he can, we can't take him along."
"What else? Leave him? Shoot him?" Life was hard on the Far Edge but it was not cheap; there were rarely enough hands for any task. Extensive automation helped and aggressive recruitment of Earth's displaced, disaffected and unwanted had begun to make a difference — possibly too much so on Peace-and-Prosperity, but that was Earth's problem now. Between the harshness of space and the shortage of manpower, few Edgers would consider leaving a man behind. Even if they had to invent reasons why. "We need to find out what he knows. General Filiaggi needs to learn what they know."
Hawkins almost rolled his eyes. The General — founder and principal of Mil/Space and one of the chief proponents of hired contractors rather than civil servants for nearly everything — was infamous for his strong opinions and fierce temper. Keeping him happy was both necessary and nearly impossible. "You think so?"
"I'm certain of it - and it's an order. We're taking him along."
The soldier wasn't having much luck making out what they were saying but frequent glances his way left no doubt it was about him. It's sure not about where to stop for lunch, he thought, and nearly grinned. Better to think about that than what the other two might do next. Or about what might've gone wrong with his arm. Their coveralls — clearly not spacesuits, open at collar, sleeve and cuff with something shiny that looked skin-tight underneath — bore familiar-looking name tapes and unfamiliar insignia, starting with some kind of star-and-rifle logo under a banner that proclaimed "MILSPACE ASSOC." or something similar along with a smaller design consisting of a star and the letters "FCS." One of them had upside-down chevrons-and-rocker on his sleeves, with a lighting bolt over a bowl shape at the center. The other had bizarre triple bars. Digging up a memory from his childhood in Chattanooga, he took a guess and when triple-bar bent down to bring their helmets in contact, spoke first: "Captain, what's the verdict?"
The other man made a sound like a chuckle, "Hah. Captains command ships. Call me 'Lieutenant.' Senior Lieutenant, about the same as one of your 'Captains.' Less confusing." His speech was almost unnaturally distinct, like a telephone operator's. "What is your name? Can you stand? Can you walk?"
"I might need some help standing. Walking, I could do that for—" he glanced at his air gauge and made a rapid estimate "—about forty-five minutes." Faces pressed too close and at a funny angle, he could still sense puzzlement change rapidly to annoyed comprehension. "And my name is..." This was nuts. How could a guy forget his own name?
The enemy officer wasn't waiting. "Insufficient air. Not good. What are your oxygen connections like? We might be able to jury-rig—"
He interrupted, "We might not have to." It took some explaining. The other Edger, "tech-not-sergeant" Hawkins, freed up the breather backpack from the partially buried body and brought it back. The nametag on the pack read, "Wilkerson, M." It didn't ring any bells. One tank was full; the other was just over three-quarters. The chemical bargraph on the CO2 absorber, the one you normally had to have a buddy read, showed ten percent gone.
While he sat with the pack on his lap, steadying it with his left arm and holding the pendant gauges in his right, his captors reconnected their intercom.
"Lieutenant, he's got threaded connectors. Fine threads! And manual valves!"
"Not quick-connects? Those big suits do hold a lot of air. As for manual valves, Tech, your suit has them, too. I am certain you follow S.O.P and use them; the check valves are merely a back-up." He suppressed a sigh. Hawkins did no such thing unless he was being watched. Planet-dwellers were easy to spot by their causal, sloppy observance of safety procedures, at least until the first time their luck failed. Afterward, well, the survivors were more careful. The tension between long-held Edger belief that stupidity ought to be self-correcting and not wanting to lose a man was usually subsumed in the larger concerns of the increasingly-heated conflict with Earth. Usually.
Hawkins, feeling unfairly chastised, folded his arms and tried to look resolute. The officer had other worries. "Is there a radio in that thing? Did you notice a radio on the dead man's suit?"
"No and no. And no antenna on his. Could be something transistorized, low-power, too small to notice. I doubt it."
"H'mm. And without quick-connects, he has only as much time as his pack and the one just salvaged will allow."
Griffon considered the options. Odd were good there was an Earth vessel, some kind of low-radar-image landing craft nearby, which it would not do to encounter even if only a skeleton crew was aboard. Closest friendly — if she'd made it — was Skidoo, a lightly-armed freighter that had been landing when his imaging installation had been hit. Next best was a tie between the another imager and General Filiaggi's "flagship," the mostly-hidden Not Minneapolis, a repurposed seagoing battleship "borrowed" under dubious circumstances. The freighter was out; it would have been an obvious target, for one, and if enough of the imagers had been taken out, odds of a successful landing weren't good. Heading for the next imager was a shorter trip but one that would take them farther away from the flagship, towards a destination in unknown condition with uncertain communication. And he didn't want to share credit for the capture, he admitted to himself with a sour grin. On the other hand, the Minnie was either intact or his destination didn't matter. And on the other other hand— Operational security was tight; he knew where the flagship was, offset from and little outside the ring of five imagers that surrounded the township-sized landing area, but he didn't know the intervening terrain or how to find the hidden accesses.
He was looking towards his prisoner but not really seeing him when the scene suddenly lit up. Hawkins, intercom still plugged in, yelled distortedly, "Holy howling snakes!"
He turned in time to see the fireball still growing and moving upward. Had Skidoo's captain decided to run for it and been hit? The location looked right, but it could have been an Earth ship hunting the freighter and struck by fire from his own side. It was an expanding blob of hot gas, molten metal and twisted debris now. Molten metal including the reactor. "Hawkins, help me grab the Earther, now. We need to be on the far side of the rock he's leaning on."
Unsurprisingly, the prisoner was staring at the fireball, too. Griffon and Hawkins rounded on him, hoisted him up in a chair carry with the spare air pack still in his lap, the lanyard a trip hazard between them and made good time getting the boulder between themselves and the explosion. Their passenger struggled briefly until Griffon put his helmet in contact and shouted, "Explosion. Rad hazard." It wasn't much cover — the glowing mass was still headed up — but it was better than nothing at all. The explosion was well distant, almost to the horizon, so their direct exposure couldn't have been significant. Or if it had, there was nothing to be done here and now. Indirect exposure was another story; "hot" debris was going to be settling gently down for a long time. Maybe even days; but the same low gravity that was going to keep material aloft for such a long time meant it wasn't raining rads yet.
"Set him down here, Tech." When had Earth become so bold? He was used to thinking of them as incompetent clods, timid navigators who lacked the closely held tricks and techniques that allowed FCS-allied ships to twitch and jitter their way down to a planetary surface, controlling their effective mass and altering their vector with tiny, subcritical Stardrive jumps. What had been a battle of infrequent feint and parry in which Earth's only gains were the result of blind luck had turned nastier, starting — as far as he was concerned — with their imager and who knew what else. With a nuke plant vaporized and sprayed across Mil/Space's landing field, the fight had to move elsewhere. Didn't it? He didn't have enough information; it didn't matter, he had to act. Six months ago, he'd been graveyard-watch imaging officer on an independent "covert freighter" little larger than Skiddoo, a watchstander-cum-engineering manager with a fancy title. Recruited by one of the several contractors hired by the Executive Committee of the Federation of Concerned Spacemen to provide "external security," he'd been run through a hasty military officer's school, most of it a stack of reading and a handful of lectures, then assigned to a series of imager installation much like his shipboard job. Or they had been until today, when a lot of material that had seemed dull, unlikely, even paranoid had suddenly become sensible.
Griffon's prisoner, picked up, hauled around the huge boulder and dumped on the ground with barely an explanation watched the enemy officer with gnawing worry. To him the man seemed distracted, almost alien, his body language close and cautious. He'd seemed not unkind but he was an enemy officer and by everything he'd been told, the enemy was sneaky, untrustworthy and profoundly different. The other one, the "Tech," (and what kind of rank was that?) acted a little more normal — he'd even been looking over the XM-16 he'd slung on his back when the lieutenant sent that around the boulder — but "Tech" was one of them, too. He took another look at his air gauge and did a little mental math: a half-hour, no, call it 40 minutes left. Sure felt like the last time he'd looked had been longer than five minutes ago. He looked back up to see the Tech looking at the sky and looked that direction himself to pick out three shimmering stars slowly descending. The enemy officer, Griffon, was beside him in a couple of loping steps; the "clonk" of their helmets colliding pulled his attention away.
"Are those are your side's ships?"
"How should I know? Anyway, I don't have to answer."
The officer was silent for awhile, as the lights grew larger and brighter, one clearly closer to them then the other two, shapes almost visible through the white light of the rockets. Finally, he spoke, "They're not ours. It's either yours or we both have company."
As they watched, Another light, dimmer, redder, joined the three, jittering and jinking, the light flaring and flickering. Griffin spoke again, "Now that is one of ours." Squinting, the soldier could almost make out its shape, like a hat with a narrow, conical rim. It seemed to jump from one position to another almost randomly; closer and then farther away, tilting and turning. It stabilized briefly, upside down and moving up, then vanished. Almost immediately, one of the three likely-USSF ships blossomed into a swelling sphere, reddening and churning. Griffon asked, "That is steam? Just how 'hot' are your landers?"
A whole shipload of good guys just died and this weirdo wants to talk shop? Not a chance! "Damifino. Wouldn't tell you if I knew." Bits of wreckage were starting to rain down, raising widely scattered puffs of dust in the distance, a vague wave sweeping towards their position. Griffon said something about "...Cover!" and waved the tech over.
———
The narrative breaks off there. Further specifics of their actions that day are unknown. Sr. Lt. Griffon stayed with Mil/Space during their re-organization from a corps of mostly specialists to the deadly "Space Marines" known today, a change prompted by huge losses during the fighting on Ganymede. The USSF soldier may have been Cpl. Lawrence Mathis, recorded with Griffon as having been treated for mild radiation exposure aboard FCS Saint Paul (the "Not Minneapolis," a converted former Brazilian seagoing battleship "borrowed" while being towed to the breakers) and repatriated in the war's first prisoner exchange some weeks later. Mathis was reported lost later that year when the USSF Mitchell went missing while investigating a reported Edger smuggling base on the far side off Earth's Moon; no wreckage has yet been found. As for Hawkins, he is known to have died on Ganymede; his body is interred in the monument there, a vast, faintly radioactive raised terrace bulldozed up from the former Far Edge landing field, site of the fiercest fighting and where four ships fell or were destroyed on the surface: USSF landers XL-5 and XL-17, the FCS armed freighter Skidoo and FCS "gunship," the privateer Extraneous.
15 January 2010
The Battle Of Ganymede, Part 1
[Editor's note: Accuracy of this fictionalized account of the only battle fought between FCS forces (Mil/Space and others) and USSF plus NATO allies within Earth's own solar system is in some doubt. Many of the incidents have not been verified and most of them cannot be. The Mil/Space Tech "Hawkins" does appear to be the father of Juliette Hawkins, first known case of Hawkins-F.]
He came to still annoyed, his XM-16E in his lap, a spent casing broken and stuck in the chamber. Frickin' poodleshooter! The light was wrong and he still felt seasick. They said you got used to it but he was starting to doubt that applied to everyone. He reached for his "advanced lightweight combat weapon" — the miserable malfing toy — and winced at sudden pain in his right arm, stabbing like lightning. He looked down and felt his irritation change to a stab of fear as he saw the huge dent in the joint protector at the right shoulder of his spacesuit. Lucky I'm not dead, he thought, pushing the fear away, then raised his head to stare at the empty, icy waste before him, a maze of pressure ridges and drifts of powdered ice and and rock dust, punctuated by the starker black and white chaos of a fresh crater perhaps a hundred feet away. It was hard to judge distances, until he realized a lumpy shape in the middle distance was a spacesuited form, awkwardly sprawled face down; on the edge of the crater, other shapes had to be a helmet, an arm, possibly a torso— He looked back down at his rifle. Yeah, some luck.
It was day three or maybe four of the battle. He was one of the specially-selected, specially-trained USSF ground troops, equipped with state-of-the art weaponry; as far as he had known — and not much cared — six months earlier, a mere handful of men had ever left the Earth and that was just for a few close orbits and a flaming, dangerous return.
The only thing he had known about space travel that had turned out to be true was the danger of re-entry and supposedly the science johnnies were working on that. He wasn't sure what the knowing talk of "gravitational anomalies" meant — there were too many new things to learn that weren't rumor: A decade earlier, the United States, in the person of one adventurously mutinous airman, had reached the Moon in secret. He had died in a crash landing on his return, destroying his vehicle and adding a new crater to the A-bomb range in Nevada. The "Outer Hebrides Agronomy Project" had jumped from raw physics to crude but workable hardware in three years and given rise to top-secret Project Hoplite, an effort by the United States and Western allies to establish a nuclear missile base on the Moon. The project had gone terribly wrong; the limited technology available included a nearly-miraculous faster than light Drive but control was so clumsy that the trip was effectively one-way. The "dedicated scientists" chosen to plan the venture had subverted it, packed the crew with fellow-conspirators and ultimately fled the Lunar base for an unknown destination, sending a single cryptic message when they departed: "We have saved you twice over."
What that could mean, no one was certain. The eventual follow-up trip had found the remains of what appeared to be a Luftwaffe Moonbase not far from the site Project Hoplite had selected and used to launch their unauthorized flight into the unknown, but the German base had obviously been abandoned years earlier. Just as obviously, the later conspirators, the self-described "Federation of Concerned Spacemen" had removed or destroyed anything that might have shed light on the Third Reich's 'Drive technology.
As time passed, reports of "flying saucers" had become more and more frequent; in NORAD-controlled airspace, the vehicles were increasingly elusive. Elsewhere in the world, men willing to deal in cash (or better, barter commodities) found new customers, secretive, close-mouthed foreigners who came and went in ways it was best to not inquire after too closely. NATO and Soviet intelligence services noticed, and drew their own conclusions.
Meanwhile, the remains of OHAP/Hoplite (under the new acronym JANETT) recovered from the Lunar mission's betrayal and grimly set about building what was to become the United States Space Force. As it grew, selected NATO allies -- supportive Brits, incredulous French, inventive Canadians -- were made privy to the secret. Of course the Russians had found out. The hue and cry from HUAC and Senator McCarthy did little to distract them or their spies.
He'd been told none of this when he was encouraged to volunteer for a "unique opportunity to serve;" during the rigorous (and frequently bizarre) training that followed, he and his peers quickly learned that excessive curiosity was one of the many ways to wash out. It wasn't until they were aboard the "experimental Navy transport" City of Philadelphia and well out to sea that they were assembled a squad at a time and given the first lecture of many to follow on the real situation, as the "Navy ship" brought its 'Drives online and squirt-boosted into Earth orbit. Freefall turned out to be a sorting process all its own; despite a lingering, floaty queasiness, he'd been among the first to adapt, rewarded by being put to work securing and cleaning up after the rest.
Philly and her sister vessels were hastily welded-together adaptations from USN's mothball fleet fitted with Stardrives and reaction drives that managed nearly a eighth of Earth-gravity thrust on a good day, hardly enough to keep feet on decks, mess trays on tables and chow in a soldier's stomach, but enough it was, especially if you could keep from thinking about the source of that acceleration. The Raytheon Mk. IIa Stardrive itself was barely-controllable in the gravitational field of a planet; it could reliably hurl the ship away from the surface but that close-in, the possible vectors occupied about a 70-degree hemicone of probability. Unlike later designs, the Mk. IIa was unable to "skim the interface," reducing the ship's effective mass; it could take you up to a selected altitude, more-or-less, and it worked adequately covering vast interplanetary distances but the detail work of accurately getting from place to place took a reaction drive. A rocket. More of a teakettle, really; aiming for simplicity, Philly-class space vehicles used an atomic pile to boil water, the same pile that ran twin, contrarotating steam turbogenerators to power the 'Drive and the rest of the ship's systems. Shielding was...adequate. Personal dosimeters were mandatory.
On the Earth-Moon run and starting stealthily, the ships couldn't carry enough water to manage the constant-boost profile that would have made the trip a day's excursion. Instead, it was a five-day trip. Fifteen minutes at maximum boost five times a day made bright spots of relief from the microgravity provided by the bare minimum water flow needed to keep the pile "lively," at least as lively went, which wasn't much.
Every minute of of the journey not given to rest, meals, meals headed back up and struggling with inadequate, clumsy relief plumbing was taken up by training. Drilled and skilled in the soldier's fundamental arts, he and his fellow-selectees had already been taught the basics of scuba-diving, parachuting, gymnastics and advanced hand-to-hand: everything their superiors thought might be of use without giving away classified information. Now that the secret was revealed, the pace was redoubled. There was a reason for it: America — and her NATO allies — had an enemy in space. The traitors of Project Hoplite were making raids, abducting innocents, mutilating livestock, triggering anti-bomber/antimissile alerts; who knew what they might try next?
Landed — with a grinding, scary thump — and billeted like sardines at USSF's Fort Hiram Q. Snodgrass — "the first American on the Moon and for all that he was an Air Force noncom, the first USSF spacemen and don't you forget it!" — his days and those of his fellow-spacemen became even more crowded: Space-suits, Care, Operation and Field Repair of; The XM-16E, Battle-Rifle Of The Future (plus range time, starting in a huge, isolated, pressurized range and moving to vacuum); Tactics and Maneuver in Vacuum, Zero-G and Low-G (largely speculative). They learned a specialized language of gestures ("Your suit will not have a radio transmitter! Transmitters can be tracked! Transmitters will get you killed!") and practiced working in heavy spacesuit gloves. Specialists learned their shares of thousand-and-one jobs required to support troops fighting and working in the most hostile environment Man's armies had ever taken on. Eventually his cadre, the entire attack group, was ready; the United States Space Force had their ground troops.
The enemy was on Ganymede, possibly Europa as well, snuggled deeper in the strong electromagnetic and gravitational fields that made navigation and communication increasingly difficult the closer ships got to Jupiter. "Fortress Europa" was a grim joke among the planning officers, fretting the uncertain margins of spacecraft performance and human endurance. They reasoned if the rebels could do it, so could our troops, despite the enemy's superior spaceflight technology. NATO/USSF Operation Bounty Hunter was begun at the appointed day and hour, proceeding faultlessly up to landing their new spaceships on Ganymede with all the elan the Moon shuttles had lacked. It had become increasingly less-smooth afterward in a series of brief, bloody firefights, equipment failures and/or overt action.
And it had all come to this: alone in a strange place with a malfunctioning weapon and unknown injuries, the immediate past a thunderous blank. He started to shrug, winced, and set about clearing his rifle one-handed. Step One, remove cleaning kit from buttstock, tricky enough in spacesuit gloves.
* * *
Not two hundred feet away, in a pressurized "hut" concealed, half buried, under a deliberately-random pile of the excavated material, an FCS imaging tech was working to free his superior's leg from a fallen equipment rack that had managed to trap the officer without — as nearly as either man could tell — doing serious harm. He gave the rack another shove, then stopped to poke at a tender spot on his left arm. "Ow!"
"Hawkins?"
"Lieutenant?"
"You do not know from 'Ow' until you have a, h'mm, comms package on your leg. Give it another push."
Hawkins grinned to himself. The Lieutenant was a decent guy and he must not be too badly hurt if he was still dotting every i and crossing every t.
It had taken a series of efforts, Hawkins heaving at the rack as Lt. Griffon inched his left calf free. The effort was not helped when a speaker on the wall began an anemic burbling. Both men turned toward the source of the sound, below which a panel hung slightly askew. One tally on it was flickering.
"'Pressure Low.' Want your fishbowl, Lieutenant?"
"I am almost out from under. Have your ears popped? Mine have not. Two or three more tries and we can both work on the next...challenge."
The other man nodded, realized Griffon wasn't looking at him, shrugged and gave the leaning rack another shove, and another, and the officer was free. Griffon rolled on out from under the table and stood in one smooth motion, patted dust from his garment, then looked down.
"Torn!" Sure enough, the tough, stretchy material of his pressure suit had a vertical, two-inch rip on the side, at mid-calf.
"Stand still." Hawkins swept fallen items aside with his foot and knelt for a closer look. "Could be worse, you didn't get cut."
"Do you think it will hold if wrapped?"
"It should. There's rip-stop gunk in the suit lockers, too. No reason to chance it."
"Absolutely. We had better check on Hix, Feelie and Ferrill, first." The remainder of their team, a remote-sensing outpost for the landing field, had been off-shift in the living quarters module when the impact happened.
"You stop at the lockers, I'll step on through. Deal?"
Griffon favored the soldier with a thin grin. "That's 'Deal, Sir?' And it is."
The suit lockers were next the airlock hatch at one end of the long, narrow enclosure, and opened into both the equipment room and the bunkroom at right angles to it by means of interlocked, pressure-tight hatches. The two sections connected via the main airlock; the suit locker, tucked into the angle between them, could serve as a crude back-up airlock.
The suit locker was only in mild disarray and the main airlock appeared to be intact. Hawkins grabbed his helmet and breather pack from their stowage, stepped into the airlock and secured the hatch. Across the small area, telltales next to the hatch into the living quarters glowed warnings for pressure and temperature, confirmed by direct-reading instruments beside them. "Should've shown up on the alarm board," Hawkins muttered to himself. He tried the hatch anyway. Undogged, it still wouldn't budge. He settled his helmet into place, shrugged into the breather pack, set the valves and then began to cycle the airlock, one careful step at a time.
When the pressure was low enough — surface-normal, a good enough vacuum for most purposes, he opened the hatch into the living quarters.
Into what had been living quarters; he stepped back as debris slid gently into the lock: a battered telltale panel, a ripped girlie calender from a hot-rod shop, unrecognizable lumps of ice and rock falling in slow motion to reveal...an elbow? Possibly. He stood for a moment as the mess came to a stop, puffs of dust still floating, and shook his head. There weren't any pressure-tight bulkheads past the hatch and all the pressure-suit helmets and breathers had been in the locker. No one could be alive in there. Clearing the blockage away, he gently closed and secured the hatch and set to repressurizing the lock. When it had finished cycling, he returned to the equipment room, where Lt. Griffon was winding a stretchy strip of fabric around his pressure-suited calf, covering the tear. Griffon started to speak, caught sight of the other man's face and stopped. His expression grew more somber.
"They're gone, sir." The two traded a look; both of them knew of men who had died in this conflict but never so close. "Looks like that side took a direct hit." The officer nodded. "Has there been any traffic on comms?"
"I haven't heard a peep, but I haven't checked the transceiver yet, either."
The FCS was using a wired-wireless system, low-power FM transceivers obtained surreptitiously on Earth or copied in their own shops, interconnected by coaxial cable. It was inefficient and not completely secure, but cut through the terrific radiofrequency interference around Jupiter better than any other system they'd tried.
Hawkins looked at the fallen rack. Cables exiting the top had parted raggedly. Tubes were still lit in the equipment. "Power's on, those cables were down low and there's plenty of slack, but the coax is broken. I can patch it up well enough."
"Well enough to keep us from being a shining beacon to our foes?"
"Dirtsiders, I'm not too impressed with their SigInt; I think so, sir."
"I would not be too hasty to underrate their abilities, Tech. Hook it up and we shall hope you are right or they are too busy to notice."
Expedient repairs notwithstanding — as long as there's duct tape available, you don't need a mating connector to hook RG-8 cable to an SO-239 jack, though it helps — Hawkin's calls produced no reply.
Griffon checked his watch. "Should be a time pip shortly." But the time came and went; either the officer's watch was a lot worse off than it looked or the radio circuit was dead.
Hawkins was the first to speak. "Nothing. Looks like we walk."
"Indeed."
* * *
On the surface, the soldier was still struggling with his rifle and the cleaning rod while muttering a steady stream of imprecations directed at the Army, USSF and someone apparently named "Damn Ted Armalite." It wasn't helping.
[CONTINUED HERE]
[DELETED SCENE: twenty minutes earlier, under the ice/dust surface, sparse lights flickered on, dimly illuminating drifting haze. A man coughed, retched, then asked, "Oh, holy snakes, what was that?"
From under a table, a fussily-precise voice muttered, "What do you _think?_ They shelled us."
"Um, right. Lieutenant Griffon?"
"None other. And you would still be Hawkins, correct? I don't suppose you're in a position to help me out from under here; my leg appears to be trapped."
The room had been small to begin with; shaken and jumbled, it appeared even smaller. Equipment cabinets were leaning at crazy angles, kept from falling over only by the lack of space to fall into. Hawkins was still strapped in position in front of the imaging display rack, which had rocked but settled back into its original position. He gingerly tried to move, his skintight pressure suit incongruous on his skinny, potbellied body. He poked at a tender spot on his left arm. "Ow!"
"Hawkins?"
"Lieutenant?"
"You do not know from 'Ow' until you have a, h'mm, comms package on your leg. Get over here."
Hawkins grinned to himself. The Lieutenant was a decent guy and he must not be too badly hurt if he was still dotting every i and crossing every t. END DELETED SCENE]
He came to still annoyed, his XM-16E in his lap, a spent casing broken and stuck in the chamber. Frickin' poodleshooter! The light was wrong and he still felt seasick. They said you got used to it but he was starting to doubt that applied to everyone. He reached for his "advanced lightweight combat weapon" — the miserable malfing toy — and winced at sudden pain in his right arm, stabbing like lightning. He looked down and felt his irritation change to a stab of fear as he saw the huge dent in the joint protector at the right shoulder of his spacesuit. Lucky I'm not dead, he thought, pushing the fear away, then raised his head to stare at the empty, icy waste before him, a maze of pressure ridges and drifts of powdered ice and and rock dust, punctuated by the starker black and white chaos of a fresh crater perhaps a hundred feet away. It was hard to judge distances, until he realized a lumpy shape in the middle distance was a spacesuited form, awkwardly sprawled face down; on the edge of the crater, other shapes had to be a helmet, an arm, possibly a torso— He looked back down at his rifle. Yeah, some luck.
It was day three or maybe four of the battle. He was one of the specially-selected, specially-trained USSF ground troops, equipped with state-of-the art weaponry; as far as he had known — and not much cared — six months earlier, a mere handful of men had ever left the Earth and that was just for a few close orbits and a flaming, dangerous return.
The only thing he had known about space travel that had turned out to be true was the danger of re-entry and supposedly the science johnnies were working on that. He wasn't sure what the knowing talk of "gravitational anomalies" meant — there were too many new things to learn that weren't rumor: A decade earlier, the United States, in the person of one adventurously mutinous airman, had reached the Moon in secret. He had died in a crash landing on his return, destroying his vehicle and adding a new crater to the A-bomb range in Nevada. The "Outer Hebrides Agronomy Project" had jumped from raw physics to crude but workable hardware in three years and given rise to top-secret Project Hoplite, an effort by the United States and Western allies to establish a nuclear missile base on the Moon. The project had gone terribly wrong; the limited technology available included a nearly-miraculous faster than light Drive but control was so clumsy that the trip was effectively one-way. The "dedicated scientists" chosen to plan the venture had subverted it, packed the crew with fellow-conspirators and ultimately fled the Lunar base for an unknown destination, sending a single cryptic message when they departed: "We have saved you twice over."
What that could mean, no one was certain. The eventual follow-up trip had found the remains of what appeared to be a Luftwaffe Moonbase not far from the site Project Hoplite had selected and used to launch their unauthorized flight into the unknown, but the German base had obviously been abandoned years earlier. Just as obviously, the later conspirators, the self-described "Federation of Concerned Spacemen" had removed or destroyed anything that might have shed light on the Third Reich's 'Drive technology.
As time passed, reports of "flying saucers" had become more and more frequent; in NORAD-controlled airspace, the vehicles were increasingly elusive. Elsewhere in the world, men willing to deal in cash (or better, barter commodities) found new customers, secretive, close-mouthed foreigners who came and went in ways it was best to not inquire after too closely. NATO and Soviet intelligence services noticed, and drew their own conclusions.
Meanwhile, the remains of OHAP/Hoplite (under the new acronym JANETT) recovered from the Lunar mission's betrayal and grimly set about building what was to become the United States Space Force. As it grew, selected NATO allies -- supportive Brits, incredulous French, inventive Canadians -- were made privy to the secret. Of course the Russians had found out. The hue and cry from HUAC and Senator McCarthy did little to distract them or their spies.
He'd been told none of this when he was encouraged to volunteer for a "unique opportunity to serve;" during the rigorous (and frequently bizarre) training that followed, he and his peers quickly learned that excessive curiosity was one of the many ways to wash out. It wasn't until they were aboard the "experimental Navy transport" City of Philadelphia and well out to sea that they were assembled a squad at a time and given the first lecture of many to follow on the real situation, as the "Navy ship" brought its 'Drives online and squirt-boosted into Earth orbit. Freefall turned out to be a sorting process all its own; despite a lingering, floaty queasiness, he'd been among the first to adapt, rewarded by being put to work securing and cleaning up after the rest.
Philly and her sister vessels were hastily welded-together adaptations from USN's mothball fleet fitted with Stardrives and reaction drives that managed nearly a eighth of Earth-gravity thrust on a good day, hardly enough to keep feet on decks, mess trays on tables and chow in a soldier's stomach, but enough it was, especially if you could keep from thinking about the source of that acceleration. The Raytheon Mk. IIa Stardrive itself was barely-controllable in the gravitational field of a planet; it could reliably hurl the ship away from the surface but that close-in, the possible vectors occupied about a 70-degree hemicone of probability. Unlike later designs, the Mk. IIa was unable to "skim the interface," reducing the ship's effective mass; it could take you up to a selected altitude, more-or-less, and it worked adequately covering vast interplanetary distances but the detail work of accurately getting from place to place took a reaction drive. A rocket. More of a teakettle, really; aiming for simplicity, Philly-class space vehicles used an atomic pile to boil water, the same pile that ran twin, contrarotating steam turbogenerators to power the 'Drive and the rest of the ship's systems. Shielding was...adequate. Personal dosimeters were mandatory.
On the Earth-Moon run and starting stealthily, the ships couldn't carry enough water to manage the constant-boost profile that would have made the trip a day's excursion. Instead, it was a five-day trip. Fifteen minutes at maximum boost five times a day made bright spots of relief from the microgravity provided by the bare minimum water flow needed to keep the pile "lively," at least as lively went, which wasn't much.
Every minute of of the journey not given to rest, meals, meals headed back up and struggling with inadequate, clumsy relief plumbing was taken up by training. Drilled and skilled in the soldier's fundamental arts, he and his fellow-selectees had already been taught the basics of scuba-diving, parachuting, gymnastics and advanced hand-to-hand: everything their superiors thought might be of use without giving away classified information. Now that the secret was revealed, the pace was redoubled. There was a reason for it: America — and her NATO allies — had an enemy in space. The traitors of Project Hoplite were making raids, abducting innocents, mutilating livestock, triggering anti-bomber/antimissile alerts; who knew what they might try next?
Landed — with a grinding, scary thump — and billeted like sardines at USSF's Fort Hiram Q. Snodgrass — "the first American on the Moon and for all that he was an Air Force noncom, the first USSF spacemen and don't you forget it!" — his days and those of his fellow-spacemen became even more crowded: Space-suits, Care, Operation and Field Repair of; The XM-16E, Battle-Rifle Of The Future (plus range time, starting in a huge, isolated, pressurized range and moving to vacuum); Tactics and Maneuver in Vacuum, Zero-G and Low-G (largely speculative). They learned a specialized language of gestures ("Your suit will not have a radio transmitter! Transmitters can be tracked! Transmitters will get you killed!") and practiced working in heavy spacesuit gloves. Specialists learned their shares of thousand-and-one jobs required to support troops fighting and working in the most hostile environment Man's armies had ever taken on. Eventually his cadre, the entire attack group, was ready; the United States Space Force had their ground troops.
The enemy was on Ganymede, possibly Europa as well, snuggled deeper in the strong electromagnetic and gravitational fields that made navigation and communication increasingly difficult the closer ships got to Jupiter. "Fortress Europa" was a grim joke among the planning officers, fretting the uncertain margins of spacecraft performance and human endurance. They reasoned if the rebels could do it, so could our troops, despite the enemy's superior spaceflight technology. NATO/USSF Operation Bounty Hunter was begun at the appointed day and hour, proceeding faultlessly up to landing their new spaceships on Ganymede with all the elan the Moon shuttles had lacked. It had become increasingly less-smooth afterward in a series of brief, bloody firefights, equipment failures and/or overt action.
And it had all come to this: alone in a strange place with a malfunctioning weapon and unknown injuries, the immediate past a thunderous blank. He started to shrug, winced, and set about clearing his rifle one-handed. Step One, remove cleaning kit from buttstock, tricky enough in spacesuit gloves.
"Hawkins?"
"Lieutenant?"
"You do not know from 'Ow' until you have a, h'mm, comms package on your leg. Give it another push."
Hawkins grinned to himself. The Lieutenant was a decent guy and he must not be too badly hurt if he was still dotting every i and crossing every t.
"'Pressure Low.' Want your fishbowl, Lieutenant?"
"I am almost out from under. Have your ears popped? Mine have not. Two or three more tries and we can both work on the next...challenge."
The other man nodded, realized Griffon wasn't looking at him, shrugged and gave the leaning rack another shove, and another, and the officer was free. Griffon rolled on out from under the table and stood in one smooth motion, patted dust from his garment, then looked down.
"Torn!" Sure enough, the tough, stretchy material of his pressure suit had a vertical, two-inch rip on the side, at mid-calf.
"Stand still." Hawkins swept fallen items aside with his foot and knelt for a closer look. "Could be worse, you didn't get cut."
"Do you think it will hold if wrapped?"
"It should. There's rip-stop gunk in the suit lockers, too. No reason to chance it."
"Absolutely. We had better check on Hix, Feelie and Ferrill, first." The remainder of their team, a remote-sensing outpost for the landing field, had been off-shift in the living quarters module when the impact happened.
"You stop at the lockers, I'll step on through. Deal?"
Griffon favored the soldier with a thin grin. "That's 'Deal, Sir?' And it is."
The suit lockers were next the airlock hatch at one end of the long, narrow enclosure, and opened into both the equipment room and the bunkroom at right angles to it by means of interlocked, pressure-tight hatches. The two sections connected via the main airlock; the suit locker, tucked into the angle between them, could serve as a crude back-up airlock.
The suit locker was only in mild disarray and the main airlock appeared to be intact. Hawkins grabbed his helmet and breather pack from their stowage, stepped into the airlock and secured the hatch. Across the small area, telltales next to the hatch into the living quarters glowed warnings for pressure and temperature, confirmed by direct-reading instruments beside them. "Should've shown up on the alarm board," Hawkins muttered to himself. He tried the hatch anyway. Undogged, it still wouldn't budge. He settled his helmet into place, shrugged into the breather pack, set the valves and then began to cycle the airlock, one careful step at a time.
When the pressure was low enough — surface-normal, a good enough vacuum for most purposes, he opened the hatch into the living quarters.
Into what had been living quarters; he stepped back as debris slid gently into the lock: a battered telltale panel, a ripped girlie calender from a hot-rod shop, unrecognizable lumps of ice and rock falling in slow motion to reveal...an elbow? Possibly. He stood for a moment as the mess came to a stop, puffs of dust still floating, and shook his head. There weren't any pressure-tight bulkheads past the hatch and all the pressure-suit helmets and breathers had been in the locker. No one could be alive in there. Clearing the blockage away, he gently closed and secured the hatch and set to repressurizing the lock. When it had finished cycling, he returned to the equipment room, where Lt. Griffon was winding a stretchy strip of fabric around his pressure-suited calf, covering the tear. Griffon started to speak, caught sight of the other man's face and stopped. His expression grew more somber.
"They're gone, sir." The two traded a look; both of them knew of men who had died in this conflict but never so close. "Looks like that side took a direct hit." The officer nodded. "Has there been any traffic on comms?"
"I haven't heard a peep, but I haven't checked the transceiver yet, either."
The FCS was using a wired-wireless system, low-power FM transceivers obtained surreptitiously on Earth or copied in their own shops, interconnected by coaxial cable. It was inefficient and not completely secure, but cut through the terrific radiofrequency interference around Jupiter better than any other system they'd tried.
Hawkins looked at the fallen rack. Cables exiting the top had parted raggedly. Tubes were still lit in the equipment. "Power's on, those cables were down low and there's plenty of slack, but the coax is broken. I can patch it up well enough."
"Well enough to keep us from being a shining beacon to our foes?"
"Dirtsiders, I'm not too impressed with their SigInt; I think so, sir."
"I would not be too hasty to underrate their abilities, Tech. Hook it up and we shall hope you are right or they are too busy to notice."
Expedient repairs notwithstanding — as long as there's duct tape available, you don't need a mating connector to hook RG-8 cable to an SO-239 jack, though it helps — Hawkin's calls produced no reply.
Griffon checked his watch. "Should be a time pip shortly." But the time came and went; either the officer's watch was a lot worse off than it looked or the radio circuit was dead.
Hawkins was the first to speak. "Nothing. Looks like we walk."
"Indeed."
On the surface, the soldier was still struggling with his rifle and the cleaning rod while muttering a steady stream of imprecations directed at the Army, USSF and someone apparently named "Damn Ted Armalite." It wasn't helping.
[CONTINUED HERE]
[DELETED SCENE: twenty minutes earlier, under the ice/dust surface, sparse lights flickered on, dimly illuminating drifting haze. A man coughed, retched, then asked, "Oh, holy snakes, what was that?"
From under a table, a fussily-precise voice muttered, "What do you _think?_ They shelled us."
"Um, right. Lieutenant Griffon?"
"None other. And you would still be Hawkins, correct? I don't suppose you're in a position to help me out from under here; my leg appears to be trapped."
The room had been small to begin with; shaken and jumbled, it appeared even smaller. Equipment cabinets were leaning at crazy angles, kept from falling over only by the lack of space to fall into. Hawkins was still strapped in position in front of the imaging display rack, which had rocked but settled back into its original position. He gingerly tried to move, his skintight pressure suit incongruous on his skinny, potbellied body. He poked at a tender spot on his left arm. "Ow!"
"Hawkins?"
"Lieutenant?"
"You do not know from 'Ow' until you have a, h'mm, comms package on your leg. Get over here."
Hawkins grinned to himself. The Lieutenant was a decent guy and he must not be too badly hurt if he was still dotting every i and crossing every t. END DELETED SCENE]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)