Lines of Departure

^{CHAPTER 8} MISSION BRIEFING

The leaves I spend with Halley are always too short, but this one’s even shorter than usual, and by the time she has to go back to teaching young pilots how to stay alive, I report to the Transient Personnel Unit with great reluctance to wait for the arrival of my new ship.

Once upon a time, when the fleet was water bound, a ship would return to its homeport after a deployment and stay in port for a while, to give the crews some downtime. The modern, spaceborne fleet doesn’t have enough hulls to allow such indulgences. Instead, every ship in the fleet has two full crews, called Gold and Blue, and switching them out is a swift and well-practiced process. The Manitoba is cleaned up, restocked, and ready for a new deployment only six days after I step aboard to report to my new command.

“Our target,” Major Gould announces, “is Sirius Ad.”

The briefing room erupts into a cacophony of murmurs as we process this information. The Sirius A system has been solidly Sino-Russian territory since shortly after the colonization waves started in earnest. It’s almost as much established enemy soil as St. Petersburg or Dalian.

“The name of this operation is Hammerfall. For the last few years, we’ve been defending our own turf against their raids. Command figured that the time has come to let them have a taste of their own medicine.”

“They’ll need to send along an empty fleet tender just for all the body bags,” my seat neighbor, a fellow combat controller sergeant named Macfee, says to me in a low voice, and I nod in agreement. The Sino-Russians are paranoid when it comes to planetary defenses. They set up fully integrated air- and space-defense networks before the first wave of civvie construction ships even touches down on a new colony. A place that’s been in their possession for eighty years is likely to be carpeted with defensive structures. There’s a reason why we mostly fight over the new real estate—the old colonies are tough nuts to crack, and they’re hardly ever worth the attendant butcher’s bill.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Major Gould says. “You’re thinking that this will be another Barnard’s Star. You’re also thinking that Command has lost the plot completely, and that the old man can afford to be all gung-ho because he won’t be bleeding down in the dirt with the rest of you.”

There’s some chuckling from the SI troops in the front rows, but Macfee and I don’t join in, because Major Gould is pretty much right on the money. Barnard’s Star was a failed offensive three years ago. The NAC tried to take an ore-rich mining colony away from the SRA, and we got a severe mauling in the process. The attacking force expected a Russian regiment in garrison; they ran into a full Chinese combined arms brigade instead. Our forces attacked with force parity and suffered a three-to-one casualty rate.

“Well, this won’t be another Barnard’s Star, and I’ll tell you why.”

The major toggles the holographic display on the wall behind him, and it comes to life with a three-dimensional tactical display of our target planet.

“First off, we have perfect intel this time. Fleet let us have three of those superexpensive new stealth recon drones, and they’ve been collecting data in-system for the last seventeen days. We also have a SigInt boat on station out there. We know the size of the planetary garrison, and their exact disposition on the surface. We know they have a visiting task force in orbit—a supply ship and the space control cruiser Kiev. We know the commanding officer’s name, how many times per week he hits the head for a shit, and what kind of reading material he takes along. Hell, I bet the SigInt guys can even tell you the enemy’s mess hall menu for the next two weeks.”

He toggles a switch on his remote, and the display zooms out until Sirius Ad is just a speck in the center of the screen, and we see a general overview of the inner system.

“Secondly—and this is kind of the big deal—we have figured out where their Alcubierre transit zones are located. That’s both inbound and outbound chutes.”

Some of the troops present actually shout out in surprise at this revelation, and the room is once more abuzz with barely suppressed conversations. Major Gould smiles, clearly pleased with the reactions. Finding the enemy’s transit zones, the areas where their Alcubierre travel chutes enter and exit the system, is a major intelligence coup. The locations of a system’s transit zones are tightly guarded secrets, because an opposing force armed with that information can ambush a transiting fleet, or simply mine the transit zone to cut off a system from reinforcements. Getting bushwhacked while popping out of Alcubierre is a warship commander’s greatest fear.

“Holy hell,” Sergeant Macfee says next to me. “If that’s true, we may actually clean their clocks for a change. I’m impressed.”

“Military intelligence usually ain’t,” I remind him. “What do you want to bet they thought they had ‘perfect intel’ at Barnard’s Star, too?”

“Here’s the rough sketch,” Major Gould continues. “We’re going to punch them in the nose, hard. For this one, we’ll be Carrier Task Force Seventy-Two. We’re going in with two Linebackers, two destroyers, a frigate, a minelayer, and one of the new Hammerhead space control cruisers. We’re also taking along the entire Second Regiment, Fifth SI Division. That’s in addition to our own Fourth Regiment.”

I can’t remember when we last hit a target with half a brigade of troops dropping from space. Two full regiments of Spaceborne Infantry represent a fearsome amount of combat power: four thousand fighting troops in advanced battle armor, two wings of drop ships, four batteries of mobile field artillery, and two reinforced armor companies.

“At this point, our Russian and Chinese friends are spread a little thin. They’ve been steadily shuffling troops from the established colonies to those mobile task forces they’ve been annoying us with. Right now, Intel says that the garrison down on Sirius Ad consists of a single understrength regiment, the Chinese 544th Combined Arms. They’re also dispersed all over that rock, so we can first hammer them from orbit, and then hit them with both our regiments in turn. With any luck, we’ll be facing an understrength company once the Shrikes are done with them.”

Staff officers are notoriously overoptimistic in mission briefings, but I can’t help feeling just a little flare of hope that this mission won’t be quite the epic body-bag filler it had appeared to be at first. If our intel is good, and we can sew the system shut while we’re hammering the garrison, there’s even a chance Major Gould’s optimism is justified.

“Once we transition in, the minelayer and a frigate escort are going to peel off and make straight for the enemy’s transition zones. Once there, they’ll salt the place with nuclear mines, and Sirius A will be ‘No Exit/No Entry’ for a while. The bulk of CTF Seventy-Two is going to continue to Sirius Ad, where we are going to engage and destroy the ships in orbit. After that, we hit the garrison from above, land the troops, and mop up whatever the Shrikes have left for us.”

“And the other team is just going to lie down and take it,” I say to Macfee.

“Soon as they figure out what’s happening, they’ll shove a whole fucking division through the chute to take the place back,” he replies. “Hell, we would.”

“Be nice to pull one over on them for a change, though,” I say. “I’m getting sick of this chickenshit hit-and-run business.”

“Mission briefings will commence soon,” Major Gould says. “We’re five days out from the chute to Sirius A, and ordnance will start flying as soon as we’re out of Alcubierre, so use the time wisely. Operation Hammerfall commences in one hundred and twenty hours. Get your gear ready for business, and check your PDPs for briefing schedules. Dismissed.”

We spend the time to Alcubierre transition with maintenance, training, and the kind of recreational pursuits common among those about to go into battle. During the days, we’re at the firing range, in the shipboard gyms, or in our unit briefing rooms. In the evenings, we’re in the mess hall, the NCO club, and the makeshift gambling parlor some of the grease monkeys have set up clandestinely in a quiet corner of the storage hangar.

Joining a new unit means being the new guy all over again, and having to earn everyone’s respect once more. I only have a few days to get to know the troops that will soon rely on me in battle. I suppose some people would keep their distance, knowing that five days aren’t enough to really bond with anyone, and that some of them most likely won’t come back from that mission anyway. I don’t keep to myself because I want to know as much as I can about people whose hide I may have to save, or who may have to save mine. We’re not motivated by money, and only the most naive or optimistic among us are convinced we’re on the winning side, sandwiched as we are between the Lankies and the Sino-Russians.

I don’t believe the patriotic agitprop anymore—if I ever did—and I’m disgusted at the stupidity and shortsighted aggression on both sides, wasting lives and material by squabbling over whatever the Lankies haven’t taken away from us yet. I don’t think we’re any better than the SRA. Our motives aren’t any more noble than theirs, and our methods are the same. At the rate things are going, we have a few more years, a decade at the most, before all our colonies are swallowed by the Lankies, and we have nothing better to do with that borrowed time than to kill each other, like two spoiled kids fighting over how to divide their room while the house is burning down around them.

Still, I drink and joke around with my new comrades, and I know that when the time comes, I will suit up with them, and drop into battle alongside them. I will do so terrified, but on my own free will, and maybe even with a measure of gladness.