Stark's War

PROLOGUE
PART ONE
Operation Tranquility
PART TWO
Where No Larks Fly
PART THREE
Tell the Spartans

Once before, Americans had come here, riding to another world on primitive reaction rockets and a burst of national determination to be first across the final frontier. They came, staying briefly, exploring tiny patches of territory, and seeking knowledge. Then national will faltered and sought frontiers closer to home, frontiers less expensive, less risky, and less demanding. The Americans left a last time and did not return, leaving behind few traces that humanity had ever broken the bonds of its home world.

As the great Cold War that had dominated the last half of the twentieth century ended with an unexpected whimper and as economies around the world imploded during the post-Millennium Crash, America found itself the last superpower, economically and militarily supreme. Its corporations, backed by the most technologically advanced military in the world, dominated the Earth as no empire ever had before.

The Earth's riches foreclosed, other nations looked elsewhere. Many years after the Americans had left, others came, from other nations and alliances, seeking the material and scientific wealth offered by Earth's consort. They built research labs, mines, refineries, low-G manufacturing plants, and colonies for their workers that soon became small towns. After great investment, the wealth began coming home and enriching the colonizers.

America finally raised its gaze once more, staring up at the Heavens and realizing they were now owned by others. So America resolved to return, and claim what she felt was hers.

The assault boat
shuddered and jumped, a random pattern designed to foil fire-control systems but also annoying as all hell to the soldiers seated in their Armored Personnel Carrier. Regular motion could be expected and countered, but the wild jogs of the boat's course were always unanticipated. Sergeant Ethan Stark swore as a particularly violent jerk slammed him against the restraining harness. You never knew what waited at the end of a drop, but the drop itself always guaranteed bruises.

"Stand by for drop." The Lieutenant's voice rang through the comm circuit, piercing an otherwise oppressive silence. The dimly lit boxlike interior of an Armored Personnel Carrier was never a cheerful place to begin with, but going in for the initial assault ratcheted the tension a little higher. Stark closed his eyes, focusing inward.

"Drop!" Lieutenant Porter sang out, followed almost immediately by the ascending whine of the APC's lift units. They'd run drop simulations in lunar gravity conditions, and it was immediately obvious the real thing wasn't going right. The driver gunned the lift as the drop extended for tens of seconds too long, both of which meant problems.

Stark's eyes shot open, locking onto the Lieutenant where he sat rigid and silent with uncertainty. "Brace for impact!" Stark ordered his squad, barely getting the words out before the APC grounded with a teeth-jarring slam that wrested a volley of curses out of the waiting soldiers. With a sideways lurch, the APC shuddered back up and into motion.

The average grunt didn't rate an outside view, but Stark wasn't average. As a squad leader, he rated his own view, which was less a compliment than a recognition that Lieutenants could die or be disabled very quickly in combat, after which Sergeants had to be available for the brass to pass orders through.
Not that I'm going to let them keep me in the dark until then.
Stark toggled a communications switch, bypassing security thresholds to access the officers-only command circuit. Between the official view and his strictly unofficial pirate back door into the command circuit, Stark now knew as much as the Lieutenant—which, as usual, granted him no peace of mind whatsoever.

"Where the hell are we?" the Lieutenant complained. "My Tac can't get a fix."

"We're off your Tactical map preload." The laconic voice of the APC driver seemed deliberately modulated to enrage hyped-up ground soldiers. "Here's a dump."

The Lieutenant's gear took a few seconds to download the extra maps, seconds slightly elongated by Stark covertly tapping into the download to copy the maps into his own Tac, then Porter erupted in anger. "Damn! They dropped us twenty klicks off target!"

"Yeah," the APC driver came back agreeably. "And they dropped us way too high. Didn't seem to do any damage, though. I'm making best speed toward your drop-off point."

"Twenty klicks off and too high. And God only knows where the rest of my platoon is. Would it do any good to file a complaint?"

"Does it ever? I'd tell my own commander, but it looks like they dropped her so hard her vehicle lost comms." With that minimal comfort from the APC driver, silence settled over the circuit. Stark relaxed against his harness, studying the new maps, gut tense with anticipation. Sometimes you just waited. Twenty klicks would take a few minutes, even at best speed.

"Lieutenant?" The APC driver called again, considerably earlier than he should have to announce their arrival.

"Here," Porter responded, voice surly. "What's up?"

"Going to have to ground it. The power cells are overheating. They need a rest or they'll blow."

"I thought you said the APC didn't take any damage when we grounded."

"It didn't." The driver sounded aggrieved. "It's a design flaw. The cells overheat sometimes, and the only fix is to power down and let them rest."

"How far are we from the drop-off point?" The Lieutenant seemed torn between resigning himself to a totally screwed-up day or flying off the handle.

"Four klicks. Grounding now," the driver announced anxiously, maybe worried about the Lieutenant's reaction, or maybe just about his power cells.

"That's too far. What happens if you push the cells?"

"They blow."

"Can we ride that out if it happens? We have to stick to the Tactical plan," Porter insisted, "and the plan says we ride this vehicle to our assault positions."

Stark tensed, searching for the words necessary to convince the Lieutenant to follow the APC driver's advice, but the driver did the job for him.

"I wouldn't advise it, Lieutenant. You're sitting on the power cells, and if they blow they'll vent the blast into the troop compartment before the side relief panels pop. It's not supposed to happen that way, but it does. I've seen it, and it ain't pretty."

Lieutenant Porter paused, then replied in barely controlled tones, "I suppose that's another design flaw?"

"Lieutenant, I just drive them, I don't design the damn things. Are you gonna walk, or wait an hour for the cells to cool?"

"I don't know! Why the hell don't I have comms with anyone else right now?"

"I don't know, Lieutenant," the APC driver noted desperately. "Look, you either wait here or you walk. It's up to you."

"I need orders!"

Time to get this show on the road.
Stark loosened his harness slightly, leaning forward to tap the Lieutenant's armored knee while he tried to project innocent concern. "Lieutenant, we've stopped moving. Won't we get off time-line?"

"Off timeline?" Porter questioned, horrified. "Oh, God. Damn. We'll walk," he informed the APC driver brusquely.

Stark began preparing for action unobtrusively so the Lieutenant wouldn't notice he'd been listening in even as Porter shifted to command broadcast. "Okay, listen up, everybody. The APC's broke and we're still four klicks from our proper initial drop point. We'll have to leg it. Get them going, Sergeant."

"Yessir." Stark ignored the chorus of groans that rose over the squad circuit in the wake of the Lieutenant's announcement. "You heard the Lieutenant. Move it! By the numbers and looking good, or you'll drill 'til you drop next time we're in garrison."

The access gaped and the soldiers went through, failing with eerie slowness to hit the dust and scattered rocks below, diving into an unnecessary but instinctive roll, then rising to scatter into the widely dispersed formation veterans always adopted in hostile territory. Stark stood by the hatch, using one foot to add downward velocity to bodies who had jumped out assuming gravity would do all the work. The last soldier went through, flailing comically as if trying to pull himself down to the surface by grabbing nonexistent atmosphere; then Stark followed, feet first, pushing on the access rim to gain speed toward the surface.

Dust, puffing up in small clouds where armored military boots had landed, hanging in slow-falling fields of fine particles. Stark scanned the horizon, eyes switching restlessly between the enhanced visual of the rock-littered plain before him and the eerie glow of symbology on his Heads-Up-Display. Friendly troop positions, solid green markers against the map projected on the HUD, stood out alone, no threat markers visible near them—which didn't mean there weren't any threats hidden out there. "Chen! Billings! Get the hell away from each other. You're not on a damn date."

The symbols of those two individuals jerked obediently as the soldiers scrambled to put distance between them. "Squad deployed, Lieutenant."

"Good job," Porter replied absently. "I still can't raise anyone outside the Squad!" he added with rising worry apparent in his voice.

Stark switched his own display to remote, finding nothing there. Even on his authorized scan he should have been able to see the movements of the rest of their Platoon. His unofficial back door into the officer's command circuit should have allowed him to view any part of the battlefield. "I haven't got anyone else either, Lieutenant."

"We've got to abort. There's something wrong with our communications gear. There's got to be."

"Lieutenant, if the comm gear's screwed up, how come we've got full displays for the Squad?"

"I don't know! The enemy must be jamming the higher-level comm relays. How can we operate like this? There might be major attacks going down against the rest of the Brigade right now!"

Stark swiveled to view the horizon in all directions. "Wouldn't we pick up something like that on our own sensors, Lieutenant? There'd be stuff getting tossed high enough to see, ground tremors from explosions—"

"I know that!"

"And the Tactical timeline is still active." On Stark's HUD, the numbers counting down that timeline glowed yellow instead of the pleasant green that would have meant they were on the schedule laid out by the planners. Porter still hesitated. Stark used his back door to check the Lieutenant's actions, finding he was frantically scrolling through comm circuits in search of a link to his chain of command. "I think my timeline is shading orange, Lieutenant."

"Orange?" Porter took a deep breath, torn between the need to meet plan requirements and the need to be linked to higher authority.

"Yessir," Stark prompted. "I'm sure there's some red there. We're way behind timeline."

"Stop pushing me, Sergeant!"

"Yessir."
At least I'm not going to push hard enough for you to know I'm doing it.
Stark spoke with a carefully modulated mix of professional stiffness and apology. "I'm merely trying to keep the Lieutenant properly supported and informed."

"Sergeant, I. . ." Porter's voice trailed off, then sounded again with obvious concern. "The timeline
is
orange. What'll we do?"

"Operate independently, Lieutenant. We have the plan in our Tacs."

"Okay. Good idea, Sergeant. Follow the plan. Just let me input orders for the Squad. . .. Bloody hell," the Lieutenant cursed a moment later. "I can't update Tactical."

Stark called up his own planning sequence, frowning as it refused to accept ground plots for his unit. "Me neither, Lieutenant."

"Great. Wonderful," Porter added in a voice that suggested that neither word held sincerity. "There's an inhibit on our systems. They'll only take updates from Brigade level."

Stark checked for himself, stifling an angry comment. "They said they didn't want anyone screwing with the Tactical plan, remember, Lieutenant?"

"They should have told that to the idiots who dropped us twenty klicks off objective, the idiots who designed that APC, and the idiots who are probably going to start shooting at us before long, since our chance of surprise has gone totally to hell!" Porter subsided for a moment, his battle-armored figure facing toward lunar northwest. "Okay, Sergeant. Our original drop site is somewhere that way. Let's just hoof it until we get close enough for Tactical to give us guidance."