Tales from the Inbox: The Forgotten Casualty

2951-11-08 – Tales from the Inbox: The Forgotten Casualty

Nojus here. Duncan is still spending time with his family, and I’ll be honest I would have preferred to leave this one for him, but that didn’t feel right.

We focus on this war as a conflict between adults. We have to, to stay sane, I guess. Because combatants are not the only people who are suffering and dying out there, especially on the Coreward Frontier.

This account came in a few days after Duncan went over to The Sprawl to meet his family, and I’d be lying if I said I slept well the next few nights after I read it. I have no idea what these two were doing on MacNeil's, nor how they got off, and I am not going to dig into it too much. Sometimes, we all need a reminder that many people are suffering every day. In the words of an ancient general, we should keep in mind that war is terrible, so we do not get over-fond of it.

Sophia Carrie held her breath as a trio of Incarnation cargo crawlers rumbled past on the road above. The metal-lined drainage culvert in which she had hidden carried the roar of their air-breathing turbine engines just as if they’d been passing six inches in front of her face.

She counted to thirty after the last crawler had passed before letting out her breath. In theory, breathing shouldn’t have given her away, but with as many sensors as Nate technicians had studded the hulls of those vehicles with, it didn’t hurt to be safe.

Only when she could hear the hiss of the day’s gentle rain again over the ringing in her ears and the fading sounds of engines humming and tracks squeaking against their bogeys did Sophia move, slumping back into a more comfortable position against the ridged wall of the culvert and letting her hand fall from the Ignatov cartridge-gun hanging from her web-belt.

“That’s the third convoy today.” Abe Lithgow put a hand on Sophia’s shoulder. “Our luck is going to run out eventually. We should get away from this road and go overland.”

“No.” Sophia shook her head. “We’d be wandering around out there until we starve.”

“Only if we got really lost.” Abe shook his head. “Even without sat-nav, I could-”

“You could get us there, just like you did at Point Kruger?”

“That-” Abe fell silent for a long moment, and his hand fell off Sophie’s shoulder. “That was different.”

“I don’t care.” Sophie sloshed toward the circle of gray light at the end of the culvert. “We stay near the road.”

After a few steps, Sophie heard Abe’s footfalls behind her in the ankle-deep water. She hated to shut him down like that, but this time, there was no room to take the sorts of risks he would normally accept. Their ride off MacNeil’s End wouldn’t wait too long if they were late to the rendezvous, and neither of them was particularly prepared to make an Incarnation-occupied planet their long-term home.

At the end of the culvert where it spilled out into a deep, waterlogged ditch. Sophia listened to the rain for several seconds before stooping and cupping her hands to boost Abe up. He grabbed the upper lip of the tunnel and she helped him clamber up to the roadside, then stooped to pull her up as soon as the coast was clear. The packed-dirt road, empty but for puddles, wound out of sight in both directions into the rain.

Pulling her hood over her head, Sophia checked the compass on her wristcuff and led the way along the roadside.

“Soph?”

Sophia turned to find Abe on the other side of the road, stooping over a lump in the mud. “What is it?”

“Not sure.” Abe flicked open an extensible multitool and prodded the object. “Wasn’t here before those crawlers went by, and Nate troops never litter.”

“Given how much they seem to hate MacNeil’s, they might make an exception here.” Sophia shook her head. Rumor had it that the garrison duty on MacNeil’s End was a punishment assignment for Incarnation troops. “Come on.”

“Oh, God.” Abe dropped his tool and reached for the bundle. “It’s a kid, Soph.”

Sophia hurried to where he was stooping and saw the small, pale arm below a layer of sopping rags. A few more layers, and Abe revealed the boy’s lifeless face, his unblinking eyes staring up into the rain-clouds. He couldn’t have been more than ten T-years old.

“Oh God.” Abe repeated, letting the cloth fall back over those glazed eyes. “They just threw him out of the crawler. Like trash.”

Sophia shivered, knowing what this meant about what the crawlers were carrying. Not all of the settlers on MacNeil’s End had evacuated in the face of invasion; tens of thousands had gone to the hills in the hopes that the war would pass them by. Nate had spent a lot of effort rounding up these potentially hostile, often well-armed civilians and shipping them to their own forced-labor colonies, where it was said the conditions were hellish.

“Who would just…” Abe shook his head. “Never mind. I guess I know who. Bastards, the lot of them.”

Sophia put her hand on his shoulder. “Abe. We have to go. If we don’t make that rendezvous-”

“No.” Abe turned to Sophia. “We can’t just leave him like this. We can’t. Just a kid, Soph.”

“We can’t.” Sophia shook her head. “Those crawlers will come back, and if they see someone moved him, they’ll know we’re out here.”

“I don’t care.” Abe shook off Sophia’s hand and straightened his shoulders. “I just don’t care anymore. I’m going to bury him.”

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Tales from the Service: A View from Headquarters, Part 10

2951-03-22 – Tales from the Service: A View from Headquarters, Part 10 

Nojus here. I’m back at Sagittarius Gate this week. There’s a lot more material from my trip to Quickley, but some of it – the best bits really – will have to go through the Naval Intelligence wringer before we can use it. 

Duncan will be taking a few weeks off his usual duties; his parents and sister arrived at The Sprawl the night before last and he’s spending time with them. Things are pretty quiet out here, and he’s left me plenty of material from the backlog to work with just in case nothing really interesting shows up. 

Before he left on leave, though, Duncan and I shuttled over to Philadelphia for another conversation with Admiral Abarca. The commander of Seventh Fleet seemed in good spirits, and our conversation mainly focused on the operation in the Lee-Hosha system. 

This interview was conducted in-person aboard the battleship Philadelphia in the Sagittarius Gate system on 29 Octobert. 

D.L.C. - Duncan Chaudhri is a junior editor and wartime head field reporter for Cosmic Background.     

N.T.B. - Nojus Brand is a long-time explorer, datasphere personality, and wartime field reporter for Cosmic Background.    

K.T.K. - Captain Kenneth Kempf is the Naval Intelligence attaché to Seventh Fleet commander Admiral Shun Abarca.  

S.R.A. - Admiral Shun R. Abarca is the commander of Seventh Fleet. 

[S.R.A.] - Gentlemen, it is good to see you in person again. Mr. Brand, how was your trip out to Lee-Hosha? 

[N.T.B.] - They didn’t let me get too close to any of the real fighting, Admiral, but it was good to have dirt under my feet for a few weeks. Quickley is pleasant, and whichever colonists end up getting it will be quite happy there. 

[S.R.A.] - Coming from you, that is not an endorsement. Too safe for one of your famous rambles? 

[N.T.B.] - Damned right it is. You can break a sweat hacking through the woods, but there’s nothing there to present a challenge. 

[K.T.K.] - Didn’t the last time you encountered some of this challenge put you in a geltank for more than a month? 

[N.T.B.] - At least it wasn’t boring. If there weren’t a war on, what would a man do down there? 

[S.R.A.] - I suppose he’d build a house and plant a garden. 

[N.T.B.] - Eh, I was never much of a gardener, Admiral. 

[D.L.C.] - You should see what happened to the terrarium Captain Mendoza gave him. Everything inside died within two weeks. 

[K.T.K.] - I will make a note in the Admiral’s records that this sort of gift is to be avoided. 

[D.L.C.] - To turn our attention to more important matters, gentlemen, I thought we’d use this time to discuss the war situation. At least as it pertains to the Sagittarius front. 

[S.R.A.] - Yes, that would be far more interesting to your audience than Mr. Brand’s black thumb. 

[N.T.B.] - Black thumb? 

[K.T.K.] - It is an archaic term for someone who cannot care for plants, from an era when such things were far more important. 

[N.T.B.] - Ah. If that is the case, I may have several black fingers. 

[K.T.K.] - That’s not really how it- 

[S.R.A.] - I suppose your audience knows very well by now how successful our operation in the Lee-Hosha system has been. The opposition there was light, and the Marines and Navy contingent were able to secure the spaceport site and surrounding area with few casualties. A few enemy soldiers remain in the hills far south of the operational area, but they are irrelevant to effective control of the planet. 

[D.L.C.] - And this wasn’t just a raid. Confederated troops are staying there. 

[K.T.K.] - That is correct, and we make no secret of it. Lee-Hosha is close enough to Sagittarius Gate that any attack there can be countered by the main body of Seventh Fleet.  

[S.R.A.] - I do not expect an attack on Lee-Hosha. If they have the forces here to overwhelm Seventh Fleet, they will attack us here directly. If they do not, they will limit themselves to fast raids, or leave the place entirely alone. 

[N.T.B.] - That makes sense. You could take out most of the listening posts and supply bases encircling Sagittarius Gate without risking a major battle. 

[S.R.A.] - Indeed. The Incarnation would have to sortie a major fleet element to stop such an attack, and I have seen no evidence that they would risk their cruiser squadrons to save a listening post or a depot world. If I were in their place, neither would I. Very little was invested in any of these places, certainly not enough to devote major fleet elements to save it. 

[D.L.C.] - They’ve been trying to take Sagittarius Gate for years. Why not build one of these depot worlds up into a forward base?  

[S.R.A.] - I prefer not to speculate. 

[K.T.K.] - Fifth Fleet command thinks their engineering elements are mainly focused on reinforcing systens on the other side of the Gap. 

[N.T.B.] - That sounds like as good an explanation as any. They took all those systems over there at great cost and don’t want to just give them away. 

[D.L.C.] - Concentrating them over there leaves Sagittarius exposed. Their home systems -  

[S.R.A.] - Their home systems were doubtless fortified against attack by the Grand Journey or the Kyaroh. The Incarnation is not well liked among its neighbors on this side of the Gap. 

[K.T.K.] - We think this is why they have been invading Kyaroh space recently; they were only content to leave this lesser hostile power alone until it was a hostile power in their rear as they attacked us. 

[N.T.B.] - Those poor Cutters. I had a chat with one before I left for Quickley, and it said they’re getting crushed. 

[S.R.A.] - There’s truth in that, though I don’t doubt the one you talked to exaggerates. They are putting up a real fight, and the more we can make the Incarnation look in this direction, the less forces will be sent to the Kyaroh front. 

[D.L.C.] - We can hope, anyway. 

[K.T.K.] - That is not the primary goal of our operations, but it is at least a positive side-effect. 

[S.R.A.] - The Kyaroh are not a very populous species; they have long lives and reproduce only very slowly. They have been spacefaring for longer than the Incarnation’s presence, but they only ever settled about a dozen worlds. It would not take long for the Incarnation to wipe them out, if that were its only focus. 

[N.T.B.] - Fortunately for our friends the Cutters, we’re the bigger threat right now. 

[S.R.A.] - And I intend to be a very noisy threat at that, but I think I am out of town today. Gentlemen, I must go, I am being summoned on priority channels. 

[D.L.C.] - Thank you for your time, Admiral Abarca. Captain Kempf. 

[S.R.A.] - Always a pleasure, gentlemen. 

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Tales from the Service: The Quickley Job

2951-10-25 – Tales from the Service: The Quickley Job

“You must be joking.” Avin Matveev folded his arms and leaned against the blast-scored wall of what had probably been built as a high-rise residence tower for the first wave of architects and technicians who would turn Quickley into a first-class colony. Now, it was the frowning massif looming over a forlorn ruin made all the more desolate by the fact that it had never been properly built before it was destroyed.

“Afraid not, Boss.” Leo Goranov, Avin’s chief architect, gestured down the arrow-straight street leading back the way they’d come. “Admiral Abarca’s rep says they have two brigades of fortress troops landing in thirty hours.”

“What in all hells am I supposed to do with thirty hours?” Avin threw his hands up. “We haven’t even been groundside for a whole shift! Has he seen what the grunts did to this place? We’re doing everything almost from scratch!”

Fortunately, Leo had worked with Avin long enough to know that these were rhetorical questions. He winced and pretended to make a note on his data slate, then soldiered on after a politely long silence. “The block tower will hold almost that many, if they don’t mind having room-mates and hot-bunking.”

Avin looked up at the twelve-story ferrocrete edifice. Most of its windows were dark, hollow sockets, and chunks of material had been blown out of its sides by wayward artillery fire. He’d already verified that its foundation was solid, but he’d expected that his crew had more than a week in which to complete their work. Leo was probably right, but even with most of the team working round the clock, there was no way they’d have that building ready. A new coat of paint wouldn’t even be dry in that time.

Avin dropped his shoulders. This was the part of being a military contractor that he’d never grown to like, no matter how big the payday. “Herb’s already on his way with the crane crawlers?”

“Soon as they’re unloaded.”

“Get back over and pull Lydia off the revetments. Bring her team this way as soon as you can.” Avin pointed toward the edge of the incomplete city, where one of his teams had already been bundled off to work on fortifications.

Leo nodded. “I’ll call ahead. The Marines won’t like losing their pet diggers.”

“The Marines don’t fill our bank account, Leo.” Avin shooed his associate away. “Go on, I’ve got to get the plan markers laid before Herb gets here.”

Leo scurried off, leaving Avin standing on the cracked walkway, staring up at the structure that would, in not much more than a standard day, be housing Confederated troops. They’d never have the whole inside ready by then, of course; running plumbing to sanitary stations on every floor alone would take most of the time he’d been given. It was time to do some of the famous Matveev improvising that his father and grandfather had built the company on. It didn’t have to be pretty; it just had to keep more than three thousand souls warm, dry, and mostly clean.

Walking across the street to the corner of a low building skeleton which had probably never had a complete roof, Avin reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of planning markers. Building a schematic in his head as he went, he set the markers down every ten meters or so as he circumnavigated the huge tower. The inside didn’t really need to house so many thousands of bunks; it just needed to have water, sanitary facilities, and somewhere to put the chow line. The fact that it was an ugly, over-engineered block of ferrocrete would also come in handy.

Just as Avin returned to his start point, he heard the rumble of polymer-coated treads on cracked pavement. Looking up, he saw the first crane crawler nose around a corner, a crimson Matveev Logistics insignia freshly painted on the front of the cab. Behind the telescoping crane mount, a flat bed held a towering pile of pre-fabricated metal beams.

Avin waved the vehicle over and hopped up onto its side while it was still moving. Inside the cab, behind a strung-out looking driver, Herb Armando was standing on the vibrating deck, scowling out at the ruined streets.

“This is impossible, Boss.” Herb handed Avin a disposable cup of coffee. “Did you hear we only have-”

“I heard.” Avin pointed to the tower. “We’re going to use that.”

“The whole crew working round the clock couldn’t make that ready in time.” Herb shook his head. “Prefab’s going to be faster, but still not fast enough.”

“Yeah.” Avin tapped his wristcuff to send Herb the locations of the planning markers. “Which is why we’re going to use that.”

Herb frowned. “I don’t get it, boss.”

“Start assembling support struts.” Avin looked out over the street, imagining a net of metal girders blossoming upward from the wreckage and converging on the top of the tower. Once the girders were secure, his imagination started dividing the intervening space with crossbeams, then flooring. Synth-canvas became walls, and a double layer covered the whole thing like a monstrous tent.

Herb, of course, couldn’t see Avin’s designs. He sighed and pointed to Herb’s wristcuff. “I need support beams to go from those points, up to the top.”

Herb glanced at the screen, then out at the building. “What good’s that?”

“Just do it, Herb.” Avin popped the top off the coffee, drained it in two gulps, then handed it back. “We don’t have time for the big picture presentation this time.”

Herb looked at Avin strangely, then smiled. “That almost sounded like your father, Boss.”

“Yeah, well.” Avin opened the door and started back out. He would need to head into the tower to set markers to give the other teams their marching orders before they arrived. “If we pull this off, even that grouch will be impressed.”

Though the fighting has been over on Quickley for some time, Nojus is still on that world and still talking to the combat troops and support personnel who were part of its capture.

Quickley is an interesting case; this was no hit and run raid. Seventh Fleet is apparently fortifying the world to resist attack long enough that the main fleet can depart from Sagittarius Gate to relieve it.

Among those who arrived on that world within hours of its capture was Avin Matveev, the chief executive of Matveev Logistics, a mid-sized civilian contracting company that has been building ground-side bases and facilities for the Confederated Navy for nearly seventy years. Nojus apparently knows Mr. Matveev from way back, and seems to have had little difficulty extracting this particular story of engineering exploits from him.

It should be noted that though the account included pictures of the odd circus-tent hab structure Mateev built to house the incoming troops, the strange building has already been largely disassembled. It was only needed for a few weeks, until Mateev Logistics could build more permanent barracks facilities.

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Tales from the Service: A Vertical Envelopment

2951-10-18 – Tales from the Service: A Vertical Envelopment

Though the concept of vertical envelopment has existed in combat doctrines since before the First Space Age, I doubt most of our readers are familiar with the concept as it is conducted by Confederated Marines in this conflict. In brief, it is the act of attacking an enemy from an unexpected direction through the air while that enemy is already engaged in battle. We’ve covered unorthodox uses of the jump rockets on Rico suits many times in this text feed, but this tactic is one of the most orthodox uses of this equipment.

Video recordings of this tactic are quite spectacular; though there are no good videos available on the datasphere of its use in combat, there are a number of videos of Marines performing vertical envelopment in training exercises which can be found with a few searches, and I highly recommend doing so. Such video would make an excellent visual reference for this account of the tactic from the now-concluded assault on Quickley in the Lee-Hosha system.

As soon as he had checked that Singh was all right, Sergeant Myron Vergossen consulted the drone’s overhead view of the situation. The rocket swarm had cleared most of the concealing brush from in front of the enemy bunker, but had done little real damage. The squad couldn’t go too much farther in the drainage ditch before it turned and became exposed to enemy fire, and the crashing of fallen trees behind him was sufficient proof that there would be little benefit in pulling back into the woods. The bunker’s lasers would scythe through the trees for hundreds of yards.

In the privacy of his helmet, Myron winced. As usual, the enemy had set up their defenses well; there was no way to draw sustained fire from the fortification without giving them something to shoot at. Singh’s armor had withstood a few hits from a small-wattage pulsebeam, but there was at least one heavy emitter in there capable of severing thick, ancient tree-trunks in an instant; their armor probably wouldn’t be able to shrug that off so easily.

“Listen up, boys.” Myron kept up his gruff, hard-as-armor-plate tone as best he could, even though this was the part of being a non-com that hated the most. “On my signal, get up there and give it to ‘em with your primary, then get back down. And keep doing it again until I call a halt. Watch for friendly transponders in your fire arc.”

A series of acknowledging clicks and chirps indicated that everyone had heard. While the Marines scrambled into ready positions, Myron switched channels. “Columbera, start your V-E when you hear shooting again. Lead with rockets on the way in. We’ll keep them distracted.”

“Aye, Sarge.” Columbera sounded eager, and Myron couldn’t blame him; there was little more thrilling in the life of a Marine than an offensive jump-rocket maneuver. There was also little more dangerous, especially if the rest of the squad couldn’t keep those lasers occupied. Mid-jump, Columbera and his fellows would be totally exposed, out in the open in every sense of the word.

The danger would only last a few seconds. Whoever was going to get hurt or killed would probably not even realize it until it was all over. “Make ready.” Myron found a spot from which he could execute his own orders. After all, if someone was going to buy the plot today, he was at least as good a candidate as anyone else. “Go, go!”

As one, the Marines in the gully rose up head and shoulders above the lip and started firing. Railguns rattled, autocannons thumped, and plasma lances blazed away toward the enemy bunker.

Return fire was instantaneous. Myron’s suit flashed warnings as he took two low-wattage laser hits to his chestplate, and another to the far lighter armor on the suit’s forearm, far beyond where his own fingertips were. The hits did little real damage, but he dropped back down, moved to the side, and popped up again in another place.

When the sensors in the suit’s low mechanical head once again cleared the ditch’s rim, Myron saw a quartet of smoke-trails arcing through the sky above the bunker. He swept his railgun across the target at random as a flurry of white-hot motes zipped down from the sky to explode on the bunker’s flat roof.

Even before the explosions had faded into smoke, four Rico suits, their feet enveloped in fire, slammed down in their epicenter. Columbera and his three associates plunged right through the synthcrete roof, weakened as it was by the blasts, and vanished inside the bunker.

“Fall back!” Myron, already heeding his own recommendation, dropped back down, then turned to survey the damage.

As he’d expected, there had been casualties. Most of the Marines had scorched or still-glowing spots on their armor, but only two suits showed internal damage to systems and Marine – Kinneman was down with his chest armor melted nearly through and still red-hot, and Jedynak’s right arm hung lifeless, the machinery within spitting black smoke and occasional spurts of hydraulic oil.

Myron pointed toward Kinneman. “Get him out before he cooks. He’s still got a pulse but his suit’s a loss.”

Two Marines immediately flipped Kinneman over and began prying apart the suit’s interleaving rear plates. When they broke the atmo seal, hot, steamy air billowed out, followed shortly afterward by a red-faced and gasping Private Kinneman. Despite bearing a garish burn across the left side of his face, Kinneman got to his feet quickly, then dove briefly back into his suit to retreive his side-arm and Nine.

“Bunker is clear, Sarge.” Columbera was almost cheering his report. “Heavy weapons spiked and reactor scrammed. No casualties.”

Myron breathed a sigh of relief. Once Marines were inside a tight space like the bunker, Incarnation infantry were largely powerless and they knew it, but that didn’t mean there was no danger to the marines who’d penetrated the fortification. “Good work, Corporal. We’ll come up to you.

Switching channels, Myron raised his robotic fist. “Columbera’s cleared the bunker. Move up.” While the other Marines hurried up the slope, he turned to the other casualty. “Jedynak, are you stable?”

“Suit arm’s toast, Sarge. Mine’s pretty cooked too.” Jedynak’s voice was an octave higher than usual. “I’ll live. God bless painkillers, eh?”

Myron sighed and dropped a med-evac beacon. “Might be an hour or two before the lifter gets here and we have to keep pushing. Keep your heads down, both of you.”

“Aye, Sarge.” Jedynak waved in the direction of the bunker with his remaining arm. “Should we take cover in there?”

“Negative.” Myron stopped half-way up the slope and turned back toward the wounded pair. “Do not occupy the bunker. Take the beacon back along this gulley a little way.” He pointed skyward. “You know our artillery and air cover.”

Jedynak chuckled nervously. “That I do, Sarge.”

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