Benjamin Gold

Location: CCIWS Stakeholder’s Views, Contested System, Unaligned Space

Ben kept his composure as A1’s sensors gathered data on the approaching behemoth.

The doctrine of space combat might have been revolutionized in the past year, and building programs had adapted those changes to new models of warships; but those ships hadn’t changed that much. A battleship was still five times the size of a destroyer, at least five times the mass, with ten times the crew, and the weapons systems . . . he didn’t even want to think about it. An old-school battleship had double the energy armament of A1, and hundreds of missile tubes. Whatever this colossus advancing toward them was, it wasn’t an older model.

“I’ve got nothing,” tactical was running data from the central holo-tank directly through her IOR. “It’s definitely a new build, probably out of Alamo since it got here so quickly.”

“Do you have a rough count?” Ben asked.

The Commonwealth might have changed up their offensive weapons proportions, but they hadn’t changed what those weapons looked like. The best way to get more ships off the line was to equip them with the same types of weapons, not design a bunch of new ones from scratch. A1’s AI was more than capable of looking for the telltale signs of energy mounts and the external covering of missile launchers on the hull of the big ship.

“Don’t quote me on this, but so far we’ve got eighty possible missiles tubes and just under one hundred and fifty energy cannons,” tactical’s voice remained steady, but Ben wouldn’t judge her if she peed herself a little.

“Okay, people, that’s enough for me,” Ben stated. “They’re still eight hours off, but I want to start packing things up. Let’s get the marines off the surface, the survey team back to their ship, and we’ll put the planet between us and them as we run.”

The battleship might be able to take A1 no problem, but the little destroyer was more than capable of outrunning the bigger ship.

“What are you waiting for. Let’s make it happen,” he clapped his hands, and people started moving.

They’d only just started working on scheduling the flights to pull everyone off when a transmission came in.

“Sir, I’ve got the survey team leader for you.”

“Throw him up on the central tank,” Ben ordered, and the face of the man he’d gotten off to a bad start with appeared on the center of the bridge.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Captain?” a vein in the man’s forehead was pulsing in anger.

“We have an enemy battleship inbound and are pulling our people back. We can take an enemy destroyer, but not this. Have your people ready to pull up stakes in the next hour. Only take what is absolutely essential. Captain Gold, ou . . .”

“I will do no such thing,” the surveyor replied. “I have my orders from the Board, and they are to stay here.”

“Sir,” Ben ground his teeth. This man might be good at finding pockets of precious metals deep beneath the surface of a planet, but he knew diddly crap about what a battleship could do to his little camp.

“No, captain,” the surveyor didn’t let him finish. “My people and I aren’t going anywhere,” and he cut the link.

“Get him back,” Ben rubbed his jaw in irritation.

“He isn’t accepting our comms requests,” the communication’s officer gave Ben an apologetic look.

Ben pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

“Okay,” he thought of contingencies. That was his job as the captain. “Have the Spyders pick up our marines and fly them over to the survey site. Get that idiot and his people onboard, at gunpoint if needed, so we don’t have to report back a body count.”

“Yes, sir,” the crew replied, and set off to make that happen.

“Sir,” comms came back to him about ten minutes later, just as the Spyder was getting set to depart. “I’ve got a QE burst coming in with full encryption.”

“Throw it to me,” Ben didn’t like his gut feeling on this.

Sure enough, it was orders from Naval Command, and they were what he feared. They were wordy and clearly written by someone who wasn’t a naval officer. Someone with a business background, or perhaps politics, was sticking their nose where it didn’t belong. There were just too many buzzwords for it to be anything else.

Despite the flowery language, the intent was clear: hold the planet, reinforcements on the way.

Ben rubbed his temples to ward off the migraine.

“Stand down flight ops,” he ordered. “We’re going to be sticking around until some of our friends arrive,” he tried to speak confidently to the crew.

his eyes went to the countdown clock on the holo-tank. The battleship would be in weapon’s range in a little under eight hours.

***

Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: CWS Pride of Summer, Contested System, Unaligned Space

Coop didn’t know what the hell was going on, and he didn’t care. He was cocooned in battle armor, and nothing short of the fist of God himself could reach into the battleship’s flight deck and hurt him.

he told himself as a chirp in his mind told him it was time.

“Boot’em up,” he ordered on the team channel.

The squad’s IORs had their armor in standby mode because Captain Berg had a stick up his ass. He had an excuse about enemy infantry being able to detect MOUNTs as they invaded the planet, and he wanted to keep that ACE up the Commonwealth’s sleeve, but Coop was pretty sure his soon-to-be brother-in-law was just full of shit. Either way, it wasn’t his call. For once, he was content to follow his orders.

As his IOR and MOUNT synched, the world blossomed in his mind; and what a bleak, utilitarian world it was. The troop compartment of a Spyder hadn’t changed at all since Coop had joined the infantry, and it likely never would.

You could tell a lot about a flight crew by the condition of their troop compartment, and a glance around the room told Coop this group was sloppy. His eye caught unlocked harnesses, a cargo box that wasn’t properly bolted to the floor, and a crew chief who was clearly watching something on his IOR and not paying attention to his responsibilities. Considering the chief looked about twenty years too young for his position, it was all par for the course.

Coop thought; even though he fully understood he was one of those people. He’d only been in a few years and he was a CW2.

Hell, the warrant officer structure was only a year old, and he was already almost halfway up it. he told the NCO in him to shut up, and he got while the getting was good.

{Report.}

Data started flooding across his vision as his own diagnostics joined the diagnostic results of the team. A lot of the data was superfluous, but when you knew where to look, you could skip most of it. He sent a quick message to the MSG to address a yellow result on the PVT’s shoulder joint. That actuator being out of sync with the armor would severely limit his range of motion with the powerful accelerator built into that arm. In any other situation, that would deadline the MOUNT, but the mission was already underway.

he led his own internal bitch session as he signed off on the other two MOUNTs and made sure his own armor was good to go. Then he turned into the command channel on TACCOM and STRATNET.

First thing he did was check out the OPORDR for any new FRAGOs. Changes to operations orders came fast and fierce, and being offline for so long put them at a severe operational disadvantage. Sure enough, intelligence estimations had been updated, target priorities reassigned, and unit reorganizations to address those accordingly.

The MOUNT squad, which at first was going to be a mobile reserve for the regular ground pounders, had been moved into a fire support role. The short battalion on Summer only had a couple HI troopers, but they weren’t being deployed. Why waste resources when the MOUNTs were heading down anyway. Captain Berg was being economical in his use of the forces under his command; or, at least that’s what navy pukes sitting in orbit always thought. Coop would rather have every swinging dick possible on a Spyder down to the planet then leave the second toughest bastards back on the ship. To his mind, that made no sense.

In the end, he was used to embracing the suck. {Master sergeant, I’m going to have you ride herd on the PVT. Make sure he doesn’t get himself blown up. Sergeant, you’re with me,} he informed his team, and sent the disposition of his forces to the infantry commander.

He couldn’t feel the Spyder being buffeted by the atmosphere inside his armor, but the elevation indication in his vision told him that’s probably what was happening. If the bird pulled evasive maneuvers, then he might feel it.

The LCDR came back with an affirmative, and forwarded him a file. It was entertaining to watch. A measly little destroyer took some potshots at Summer as they burned for a zero-point intercept with the planet. Summer didn’t even bother firing back, and the mere closure of distance forced the Confed vessel to abandon the high ground and run. It was at the edge of weapons range, probably looking for a shot at the Spyders. Coop might not like Brother Berg, but the skipper wasn’t about to let his people get blown out of the sky. Fire from the planet was a different concern all together, and Coop felt the Spyder start a combat descent.

Grunts in the other Spyders along for the ride would be feeling the Gs, and straining against their harnesses. Coop barely felt more than a slight pull that hardly caught his attention. His mind was on the intel and sensor readouts from the planet’s surface that showed their objectives . . . and the Confed troops guarding them.