Heart of Steel: Book II of the Jonathan Pavel Series (22 page)

As the ground battle began to brew, the war in orbit was growing to a furious crescendo. The Colonial Battleship
Deja Victorium
was broken in half by a well timed Solarian torpedo. Five Colonial destroyers, six frigates, and two cruisers were so badly mauled they had to be abandoned or were forced to retreat. It wasn't all good news though, three Solarian destroyers were pummeled into submission, one going down with all hands when its reactor blew. They were joined by three light cruisers, two heavy cruisers, and the battleship
New Delphi
whose central control systems were hit forcing the mighty vessel to fall out of formation in a spiral death roll. Admiral Meyers’s 3rd fleet was holding its own, but it was evenly matched.  The Colonials didn't need to destroy her fleet they just needed to buy time.

Time for their Marines to land a blow that would delay any Solarian offensive by weeks perhaps even months, and that blow was falling on Tumbledown. Like all settlements on Scarva, Tumbledown was a domed settlement. Its human inhabitants lived under the massive, plasteel domes or in an adjacent system of underground tunnels to avoid the almost certain death that came with exposure to Scarva’s twin suns and the radiation they constantly bombarded the planet with. Being a military installation first and foremost, the city was well defended surrounded by a twenty foot concrete and adamantine curtain wall, with a network of bunkers, trenches, and minefields in front of it. By the time the Colonial troops were arrayed for battle, the fortifications were fully manned with 25,000 Solarian Army troopers and another 8,000 Militiamen. Against them were 20,000 Colonial Marines, supported by a full array of heavy artillery and armoored units.

The planetary assault ships halted at the edge of the effective range. Tumbledown’s anti-aircraft batteries, hovering at 15,000 feet, were below the horizon and thus beyond the effective range of ODB batteries. In close formation, they were also well defended against hyper velocity missiles, which didn’t have adequate time to reach killing velocity at this close range, making the missiles far more vulnerable to their close defense weapons. Once in position, the assault ships began disgorging their cargo. Each one dropped six heavy carriers, which held the Marines’ heavy equipment. Meanwhile drop pods, each holding a squad, fell like  steel rain and gunships and fighters took flight from the ship's atmospheric flight deck. A planetary assault ship was sometimes compared to a flying aircraft carrier, which was an adequate description.  

The Colonial ground forces assembling into battle formations began to close on the Solarian position. As they did, they began launching a barrage of missiles. The Solarian interceptors knocked the heavy missiles from the sky, which was exactly what the Colonials wanted. From their positions in the trenches and bunkers, Solarian soldiers in their battle armor could see what appeared to be a grey mist falling over the battlefield. Few thought anything of it, until the alarms on their armour began to sound as the suits started to suddenly dissolve and decay.

“SHREDDERS!!!” The screams echoed across the trenches and bunkers, and it was joined by cries of agony as the tiny nanobots contained in the grey cloud finished eating through the battle armor and began gnawing through flesh, and bone. All Solarian soldiers received  combat nanobot injections that would keep the Shredders from attacking any vital organs, but it wouldn't stop them from causing painful injury. Through the Solarian fortifications, blue lights flashed as Solarian troopers detonated Anti-Nanite Grenades in their own positions. These grenades blasted  electromagnetic energy and ultraviolet light that disabled the deadly shredders, but also scrambled the Solarian soldiers communication and weapons systems to all hell and gone. Normally, Shredders were a dangerous and nasty weapon used by states who were willing to stomach them as terror weapons, but on a world where combat needed to be fought in enviro suits they were devastating. Scarva was such a world. Men could survive outside their environmental suits for a brief time due to Scarva having an atmosphere. It was one that was heavier on carbon and argon than Terra, but an atmosphere nonetheless. The danger of the world came from the massive amount of solar radiation that battered it from its twin suns. Anyone outside an environmental suit for ten minutes felt their skin begin to blister, and after a half hour they’d need a severe course of anti-cancer treatment. After an hour, only the most advanced medical systems could save them. The Colonials exploited the terror and chaos sown by their nanite barrage with brutal efficiency. An armored spearhead lead by battle tanks, mechanized battle suits, a scaled up version of the heavy Testudo, followed by heavy infantry crashed into the disorganized Solarian line. Hover tanks on grav-repulsors floated over minefields and tank traps, their rail guns blasting Solarian positions. Close behind Colonial Infantry followed, while the Solarians did their best to fight back. AT rockets and guns smashed into Colonial armor while machine guns chewed up infantry. Hundreds of Solarians soldiers, their suits torn by Shredders, stayed at their stations even as their skin blistered and burned. It was heroic, but it wasn't enough. Not even close to enough. With their communications fried, the Solarian defense was sloppy and badly coordinated, while the Colonials were operating in synch. In less than an hour, they had cut through the outer defenses and were closing on the city itself.

From his fortified bunker, the 12th Division commander General Oshin watched on a holo table the Colonials progress toward their ultimate objective, the cable tether and the huge supply depot surrounding it. Scarva hosted three such orbital elevator nodes, but this one was the most important. It connected to
Athero
Naval Station the primary dockyards for the Solarian fleet in the system. The other two cables served to tether a pair of auxiliary stations that combined lacked the dock space and drydocks of
Athero.
If the cable was cut,
Athero
would have to be abandoned. Oshin saw two potential outcomes of this engagement. The Colonials would be beaten back that much was assured. Already reinforcements were rushing to Tumbledown Town, but they wouldn't arrive with enough force before the Colonials reached the Elevator base station and destroyed it. If they got in range of the Cable itself, they could either try to force Oshin to release it or they could cut it. If they cut it the cable would snap and the bottom section would fall, potentially destroying the entire city, while
Athero
dragged the remainder away as centrifugal force sent the station speeding out of orbit. If Oshin activated the emergency release,
Athero
would still be sent zooming out of orbit and it would still have to be abandoned, at least temporarily until a complex and costly salvage operation could be mounted. Since salvaging the station at some time in the future would only cost time and money rather than lives, it was perhaps the less costly option.

Oshin made up his mind, “Prepare to release the cable.”

The sequence was remarkably easy, a series of commands were entered into one console in the cable’s traffic control center. Word was sent to the people on the station to get to the lifeboats, and the elevators themselves were mercifully all grounded at the base station or the space station, having been locked down when the enemy first entered the system.

“Execute,” came the command. With that, two technicians turned their keys simultaneously and hit the release lever.

At the anchor point the cable’s terrestrial end point, the cable was held in perfect alignment suspended in the air by a complex system of magnets. As the kill switch was hit, the magnets shut off and in orbit above the
Athero,
freed from its earth bound, began to drift away. The centrifugal force of its trajectory sending it on a seemly sedate course millions of miles an hour out of Scarva’s orbit. Behind it the cable came, harmlessly pulled away from the ground. Far below seeing the cable beginning to rise skyward, the Colonials began their withdrawal, but not before another barrage of heavy ordnance. These, mostly incendiary, fell on the supply depot around the cable’s base. Tumbledown Town’s fire suppression systems would keep the flames contained, but not before millions of tons of supplies were destroyed. Though tactically the battle of Chaucer's Gap was a draw, strategically it was a Colonial victory. Tumbledown Town was badly damaged. The supply warehouses had been devastated by Colonial artillery or airstrikes. Those supplies had been stockpiled over the course of years, and could not be readily replaced without a massive effort from Solaria. Their destruction would paralyze Solarian operations across the entire sector for months, and probably cause shortages for an extended period of time after. What was more, the Solarians had prudently chosen to untether the orbital cable themselves. Although this had saved Tumbledown Town and Scarva extensive devastation that could have been caused by the cable falling out of orbit, it also neutralized the primary Solarian dockyard for the system.
Athero
was billions of metric tons. The laws of physics dictated that such a vast construct had too much mass to be slowed or stopped once it was set in motion. To salvage the great station would take months of work. First work barges would need to intercept it, then massive engines would need to be bolted to it and a fleet of tugs secured to it in order to slow it down to the point where it could be brought back into something like a controlled orbit. Even then it would be months before the cable could be resecured, if at all.
Athero’s
uncoupling combined with the destruction of its accompanying supply stockpile would put the 3rd Fleet on a defensive footing for the foreseeable future, allowing the Colonials to dictate the course of the war’s opening moves. The Colonials having accomplished their goal began their retreat in earnest, but they didn't get away cleanly. One of their planetary assault ships was crippled and forced down by a well timed barrage of OD hypervelocity missiles, while another was torn asunder by a direct hit from a skyscraper sized OD battery. With the destruction of three of its planetary assault ships combined with the casualties from the battle, the Colonials had lost 18,000 of the 24,000 ground troops. It was a bloodbath by any standard. The Colonial fleet did not get off easily either. Covering the retreat of their terrestrial forces cost them another battlewagon and a carrier along with half a dozen smaller ships. When at last the Solarian fleet broke off pursuit, it was clear that the 3rd fleet had lost far fewer ships than the Colonials, but it was a hollow victory. Wearily, Vice Admiral Meyers began to compose a status report to Solarian Fleet Headquarters for the immediate attention of Chief of Naval Operation 1st Admiral Douglas Whitaker copying it to Commander-in-Chief of the Solarian Navy Admiral of the Fleet, Marcus Ho.

Chapter X

New Helsinki System, Solarian Republic

October 31st 844 AE

While Meyers drafted her memorandum and the reinforcements she’d dispatched proceeded with all haste toward New Helsinki, the second battle fought for that system was about to be joined. The insurgency that had plagued New Helsinki since its occupation by the Solarians was long over, having lost all credibility with the citizenry and its own fighters when they had tried to retake the planet through the use of nuclear warheads. The Solarian Governor-General and the New Helsinki Parliament had relocated temporarily to the greatly expanded ocean platform that anchored the New Helsinki orbital elevator, while the Old Capital of Haggerdam was slowly and gruelingly decontaminated and rebuilt. The experience of the Bloody Uprising, as it was being called, had firmly burned loyalty to the Solarian Republic into the very DNA of the majority of the New Helsinki population. In the months following the uprising, applications to join the Interior Troops, or the other armed services by New Helsinkians had quadrupled. The New Helsinki Auxiliary Defense Forces had been upgraded and expanded now numbering  close to 3 million strong made ready to defend their homeworld. Unfortunately even with ODB weapon systems, huge armies could still be crippled by an enemy achieving orbital supremacy. So the Solarian Task Force prepared to make its stand. It would be a bloody one despite two Task Force under Rear Admiral Kittredge speeding toward them with all haste. It would be nearly 64 hours before he arrived, and at least 72 before he could do something. Until then, the Task Force under Rear Admiral Adam Li was on its own. A squadron in the navy was a flexible term, but in the Solarian fleet it usually meant three to four ships operating as a unit. The New Helsinki Task Force had at its disposal two
Singking
class battleships, four cruisers all of the older
Defiant
class, and eight
Olympian
class destroyers along with its air wing.  Rear Admiral Li kept his face expressionless as he watched his foe multiply on the Lidar display. The Colonials had gambled by throwing everything they had into an all out offensive leaving nothing in reserve and it was working. The main Task Force of the 3rd Fleet was in no position to launch an offensive, and a force of more than 45 Colonial warships was closing on the Solarian force which numbered 14. Among the Colonial ships were four
Bombard
class Armored Cruisers that were called pocket battleships, along with three battleships and two carriers backed up by a swarms of fighters and bombers, as well as six cruisers who profiles were unfamiliar to Li’s lidar operators. What was more, at least a score of light ships that had been tagged as frigates, destroyers and light cruisers, several of which were also of unknown profile, were burning like mad for New Helsinki’s other wormways. Raiders no doubt off to seek death and destruction wherever they could.  Li set his jaw and gave the order to prepare action stations. The Solarian Navy was known for many things and one of those was its refusal to break or yield in the face of even overwhelming odds. Li and his Task Force were outmatched, but they held a few advantages. For one, they were in orbit around a heavily fortified world and could call on ODB support while the Colonials would have to endure it. For another, the orbital station upon which the elevator was anchored that had been christened
Treos
station, after the Solarian Interior Troops Brigadier who had perished in the Haggerdam bombing, was outfitted with several rail guns, plasma batteries, and torpedo tubes. It was for all intents and purposes an orbital fort. Li had brought his task force in close to the station to take advantage of its defensive armaments, and also prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Looking to the Lidar screens again, Li could see that more Colonials were coming through the wormway. Transports, hundreds of them, it was a full scale invasion. Despite having destroyed the ring on the New Helsinki side, the ring on the Novi Toulouse side was no doubt working overtime to keep the wormway stable. If for some reason the invasion failed, the Colonials could destroy the ring on the Novi Toulouse side and destabilize the wormway for weeks even months, preventing a counter attack.