Star Force: Mettle (SF9) Read online

  The shot echoed loudly and was followed by two more misses as the security officer ducked back inside the control room as his counterpart jumped to his feet, drawing his own stinger pistol.

  “Man down, three tangos,” Mike said, his jaw clenching with anger as he hid around the corner.

  “Firearms?” Harry asked, taking up position on the opposite side of the doorway.

  “Small caliber. They got Michelle with a knife.”

  The sound of approaching footsteps became audible and the two guards exchanged glances, then nods, after which Harry bent at the knee and jumped sideways into the hallway, firing off several charged stingers as soon as he cleared the doorjamb.

  Two splotches of energy-laced blue paint hit the knife-wielding man in the chest and knocked him unconscious, while three others shots hit the two men behind him, numbing body parts and causing one to drop his weapon while the other responded with a shot over Harry’s head that hit a console down the hall, shattering the viewscreen into dozens of slowly falling pieces.

  Another two quick shots from Mike pin-wheeling around the doorjamb and into view finished off the wounded two, dropping them to the floor only to reveal the presence of several more Chinese men coming up the hallway behind them, who immediately started firing once their own men were down and no longer blocking their aim.

  Harry scrambled back across the floor and inside the control room as Mike sent a few wild shots down the hallway to slow the approaching troops. He stayed there, ducking in and out of sight while Harry rushed across the small room to get to the comm panel.

  “Hurry,” Mike said in between the echoing ‘booms’ of the gunfire. His return stinger shots made an inaudible ‘puff’ in response, taking down one more man before Mike caught a round in the shoulder, spinning his gun arm around and knocking him back into the room. His pistol flew from his grip and bounced against the doorjamb, ricocheting down beneath his feet.

  “I’m hit!”

  “Flag sent,” Harry said, grabbing the pistol from the floor and slipping it back into Mike’s other hand as he took up an ambush position. Mike pulled back as well, blood leaking from his shoulder and lips where he had accidentally bit his tongue when the round hit.

  “As many as we can,” Mike instructed, his tone grim as he aimed at the open doorway from an angle off to the right.

  Harry nodded from the left, taking his meaning as the intensity and number of approaching footsteps increased. As soon as he saw the first inkling of the dirt brown Chinese uniforms he started firing as fast as he could pull the trigger on his pistol…

  “Commander, we have a code 0 flag!”

  Sheridan’s head immediately came up and he tossed the datapad he’d been working on aside. “Where?”

  “Sector 217, site 7…mining complex.”

  “That’s Chinese,” one of the other control room staff commented.

  The commander of Star Force security forces on Luna turned his head to face the communications officer. “Get me a comlink ASAP.”

  “Got another! Same zone, site 4…no wait, make that three. Site 3 as well.”

  “Get me sector command now!” Sheridan demanded, looking over the ops officer’s shoulder as more flags in zone 217 began popping up.

  “Commander?” the man asked, pointing to a spot on the map that showed sector 205 with tiny flashing red dots beginning to appear also.

  “Damn it,” he said, returning to his seat when the comm officer pointed, indicating that the line was active.

  “What’s going on?” he asked as soon as he slid back into his central station.

  “I don’t know,” the sector security Chief said with a confused/worried look on his face. “We can’t reach any of the sites by comm, so we’re trying to…oh god,” he broke off, his face going white.

  “What is it?”

  “Security camera, one that’s still live from site 7.”

  Sheridan snapped his fingers and one of his staffers pulled up an identical feed and shot it over to his auxiliary monitor inside of three seconds flat, where he was able to see the final seconds of combat as the two guards on station were defending the mining site’s control room as a wave of armed Chinese soldiers flooded inside, tripping over the bodies of their own as they overwhelmed the guards through sheer numbers. Both Star Force officers were shot at point blank range numerous times, then one of the soldiers lifted his pistol and shot out the camera.

  “Where are they coming from?” Sheridan asked.

  “I don’t know,” the Chief said, exasperated…then an alarm sounded somewhere in the 217 control room. “Lock it down, now!”

  “Report!” Sheridan insisted, but he had to wait several more seconds as a flurry of activity was happening on the other side of the comm.

  “We have a security breach at the spaceport,” the Chief reported. “I think they came in through the tram. We’ve sealed off the upper levels and are deploying countering forces, but they’ve got numbers. How many I don’t know, but more than us,” he said, breaking off to give a few more hasty orders.

  “Bunker up,” Sheridan ordered as soon as the Chief’s face returned to the screen. “We’ll get reinforcements to you as soon as we can. You have to hold out until then.”

  The Chief shook his head. “You don’t understand. They’ve slipped an army in under our noses. I don’t think we’ve got enough security personnel on Luna to handle this,” he said, then his head suddenly turned to the side as he received another report. “Looks like they’re shooting everyone on sight, our people and the civilians…” he said as a muted explosion was audible in the distance behind him. “What was that?!”

  “Lock yourselves in,” Sheridan suggested. “Buy me as much time as you can.”

  “We’ll try, but they’ve got explosives. They just blew through a security door on level six. Sorry Commander, but I have to cut this conversation short. Monitor our feeds while you can,” the Chief said, disappearing from view.

  Sheridan pounded the armrest of his chair then turned to his staff. “I want reports from every sector and put them all on alert and immediate lockdown until further notice!”

  “Commander, all Chinese lease sectors are reporting flags now.”

  “It’s a damn invasion,” he said angrily as he stood up. “Are we safe here?”

  The local security Chief for sector 001 nodded, taking his eyes away from her terminal for a brief moment. “All points have reported in clear, and I’ve ordered additional men to the tram stations.”

  “I need the barracks emptied,” Sheridan ordered. “Full combat gear, and get them moving out through secure sectors. We need to establish a containment perimeter and find out where the hell those troops are coming from.”

  “Radar contacts are negative, only scheduled landings,” one of the staffers reported.

  “Are there landings at all in the besieged sectors?”

  “A few, but not all.”

  Sheridan chewed on his lip as he thought hard. “Get a message to our warships in orbit, warn them of trouble and see if they can shed any light on the source of these troops…then get me a comlink to Atlantis, Archon command.”

  “I’m here, sir,” Marshal said, rubbing his bleary eyes at the 2am wakeup call. On the other end of the vidlink was Archon Jason-025’s face, the Knight’s most senior commander, so whatever this was about it had to be important.

  “I need you and your team to gear up immediately,” Jason said, his voice icily tight, which Marshal picked up on immediately.

  “What for?”

  “Combat,” Jason said, letting the word hang in the air until Marshal was fully awake.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, running possible scenarios through his mind as his adrenaline began to pump. He and five other Knights had been undergoing Lunar gravity training for the past month and were due for another two weeks before cycling back down to Earth. Given their position he didn’t see many possibilities for deployment, unless another ship had been attacked a
nd they needed a boarding party to deal with the situation.

  “Somehow the Chinese have smuggled an invasion force onto Luna. They’ve launched an attack on all their leased sectors, plus an additional two adjacent ones, moving through the tram system, we think. Our security forces have been overrun in most of the engagement zones. I need your team to assist in evac and containment until we can arrive with reinforcements from Earth. Slow them down and buy as much time for me as you can. Clear?”

  “Crystal, sir.”

  “Go.”

  Marshal jumped up out of his seat and ran/lurched his way back to the barracks and whacked Henderson on the gut in bed, waking him up in a jolt. “Everyone up, now!”

  Less than an hour after the initial call came through Paul and the others arrived back inside Atlantis in full armor through their private transit system, exiting back in their original quarters block which put them nearest the topside runways where four hastily prepped dropships waited, two the small-sized Sparrow-class and two the midsized Eagle-class.

  Davis, surprisingly, was waiting at the transit hub for them. “I know you’re in a rush, but fill me in,” he said as he began walking quickly alongside Paul and the other Archons, all wearing their red combat armor and making them appear every bit as powerful as the Director knew they were.

  “Security forces have held several sectors long enough to redeploy forces from elsewhere to reinforce the lines, which have two major engagement zones as of 20 minutes ago. There are six Knights in play, but at best they can only delay the Chinese advance. Somehow they’ve managed to land hundreds of troops inside their lease zones and are pushing out from there. We’re headed up to deal with this personally.”

  “How many are you taking?”

  “All of us,” Paul said, passing through the doorway to the stairs and heading single file down to the block exit into the public areas of the city.

  “700?” Davis asked from behind him as he struggled to keep pace going down the steps.

  “No, the newbs are staying here. We’re handling this with our original teams. We can’t afford any mistakes.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “We’re making this up as we go…just get the civilians out of the way.”

  Davis nodded. “Good luck,” he offered, stopping a few steps outside their quarters block as the line of armored superhumans marched single file through the city in full view of the milling civilians, who scattered like ants out of their way. Davis watched the broken line walk by, offering nods of support until all 100 of the trailblazers had passed, weapons and equipment sacks in hand, then he followed them as the ceremonial 101st member, grabbing the next available elevator after them and heading up to his office to start cancelling and redirecting the Lunar cruises and tourist traffic.

  By the time he got to his office the first of the dropships was taxiing onto the runway, which he was able to watch lift off into the sky like a giant insect…one of the Eagles, he guessed, based on the size. Three more followed in quick succession, then disappeared from view just as fast, climbing hard to reach maximum altitude as rapidly as possible before they released the spacecraft they carried which would carry his military commanders up to Star Force’s chain of starports ringing the planet in low orbit, from which he assumed they’d already commandeered waiting or nearby starships to ferry them out to the moon.

  Speaking of which, he’d better check on those arrangements…and make new ones if they hadn’t already planned that far ahead.

  Davis spun his chair around and pulled up his network access and began tracking transponders in orbit and searching through deployment orders. Any time he could save the trailblazers would be of the utmost importance, because even at the best speeds it was going to take them hours to get to the fighting…and there was no knowing how the situation was going to develop in the interim.

  3

  March 15, 2060

  After a massive deceleration burn that left the Cougar-class starship’s fuel reserves near depletion, the Archons arrived at Lunar starport #3 in just over 10 hours after lifting off from Atlantis, whereupon they commandeered ten waiting dropships, seven of which had been redirected to the starport specifically for their use.

  Paul and the 2s boarded the 5th dropship and detached from the ‘Tie bomber’ style starport, with the pilot thrusting them away at maximum speed while avoiding the others as they hastily departed, each angling down to the moon for different landing zones. The 2s’ landing zone was the relatively secure sector 107, which was currently the front line in the invasion force moving out from the Chinese-leased and captured sector 109. At present, this particular part of the invasion force had secured four adjacent sectors and was working on 107 as their 5th, but the entrenched security forces in that sector’s spaceport were doing a good job of thwarting their advance past the tram station level.

  As the 2s’ spherical dropship, reminiscent of the similarly named landing craft in Battletech, thrusted against the orbital drift and began dropping down to the airless surface of Luna their fellow Trailblazer teams were spreading out to 9 other sectors that were currently contested or adjacent to contested areas. The Chinese assault had begun in their 7 leased sectors and had expanded out to a total of 13 held with an additional 5 contested, all being assaulted through the tram system.

  The surface of Luna began to grow fast, as evidenced from the viewscreens inside the dropship, with Paul and the others strapped into their seats in full gear, with their equipment packs likewise belted in to the seats adjacent to them. Given that they didn’t know how long this engagement was going to take or where they would eventually end up, they were bringing a full load of accessories ranging from explosives to foodstuffs so that they could remain mobile and move as fast and far as they could fight their way into enemy lines.

  The view of the moon seemed as natural as ever, without so much as a single wink of light out of place…but Paul knew that was because all of the fighting was taking place indoors, connected through the spider web-like buried tunnels that were now just starting to become visible from their vantage point high above the surface. Each of the lines was a pair of half buried tubes, one stacked on top of the other and unpressurized, containing the monorail lines that spanned the dozens of kilometers between sites within each sector, radiating out like spokes on a wheel…as well as the hundreds of kilometers between each sector’s central spaceport.

  Given the long travel distances between sites, the trams that ran through the tunnels were essentially small spaceships in that they contained their own magnetic propulsion units, continually recharged by power lines running the length of the tubes, but also capable of running on backup power sufficient enough to get them to their destination point before depletion.

  At each terminal was an automated docking system that couldn’t be locked down, so as to not strand and potentially kill any travelers because of a computer glitch, power outage, or in this case a hostile takeover. The docking system operated inside the spaceport and was capable of switching a car from one track to another while operating on power solely supplied by the tram. Once inside the pressurized zone, there was a small foyer that led to each facility’s security doors, which is where the stoppage should have occurred when the Chinese attacked.

  It was unclear how they had gained access to the spaceports prior to the simultaneous attacks, but the more recent expansion into the adjacent sectors was being accomplished through the use of cutting torches and explosives, which were able to bypass the security doors with a lot of effort and time, which has slowed the Chinese advance considerably without completely stopping it. Had the enemy only been equipped with handguns they never would have been able to gain any ground beyond those facilities taken during their surprise attack, but unfortunately they had come well prepared for the assault.

  The 2s’ landing zone was going to be the main spaceport in sector 107, though there were a few auxiliaries at dedicated sites. Those were still secure, given that the Chin
ese had to go through the spaceport to access the secondary intra-sector tram lines, so Paul and the others were going to be put down as close to the front lines as possible, with the kick of the deceleration burn underscoring that fact as the spin of the surface on the viewscreens began to slow, with the first glimpse of their target spaceport coming into view over the horizon.

  The pilot of the dropship made his approach at twice the normal speed, but had no trouble with the final braking maneuver, bringing the ship into a controlled hover over the spaceport before extending the landing gear and lowering down onto one of twelve pads, each of which was ringed by a support pylon from which extended one of several docking umbilicals that could reach any point on the circumference of the dropship.

  The closest one extended out, adjusted laterally a bit, then attached, matched atmospheres with a tiny hiss/puff, and opened up to allow the 2s access into the spaceport, with Jason leading the way.

  Paul grabbed his equipment pack and attached it onto the back of his armor, snapping it into place as he mentally adjusted to the light gravity and followed the others into the spaceport, passing through a small airlock at the far end of the umbilical before setting foot inside, whereupon they were met by one clearly shaken security guard.

  “Thank God you’re here,” she said, sweat streaking her face. “They just took another level.”

  Jason pointed her forward as he began to walk past her and she didn’t immediately follow, but she quickly took his cue and ran a few steps to catch up.

  “How many are there?” Jason asked through his helmet’s external speakers, giving his voice a slightly mechanical sound. His face was hidden behind an equally red reflective faceplate, with the rest of his body also obscured from view, given the fact that the armor was rated for short term vacuum excursions and completely sealed, with an atmospheric snorkel to bring in outside air for normal respiration with an automatic cutoff valve and backup oxygen tank should the environment suddenly lose pressure.