Star Force: Escalation (SF12) Read online

  “Instead, we’re here to escort you off this station. We’ll give you time to pack up whatever personal belongings you may have, then we will provide you with free transportation to wherever you wish within in the star system. Although I cannot guarantee anything, our recruitment office has authorized me to tell you that they will consider applications of highly skilled miners displaced during these confiscations as top priority during the next expansion phase of our belt mining operations, which is due to begin in less than three months.”

  “Wait a second!” one of the miners said, the ramifications sinking in. “How many confiscations are you talking about?”

  “Many,” she answered without giving a specific number…which she didn’t have. “All of Germany’s mining assets in this region, as well as those belonging to several other countries are being confiscated. You will not be returning here, so please take your time and begin gathering up everything of value to you. We will allow several hours for this.”

  “In the mean time, our people will be taking control of station operations. Please make this transition as seamless as possible.”

  “We still have people out in the field,” someone blurted out amongst the crowd.

  The Star Force rep nodded. “We have ships intercepting them now. You’ll all be leaving the belt on the same starship.”

  “What about their stuff?”

  The rep hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “I hadn’t thought about that. You’re saying the crews of the excavation ships have quarters here?”

  “Some do.”

  “Who among you is trustworthy enough to collect their things?” she asked openly.

  The miners turned amongst themselves in a quiet debate, then a few volunteers raised their hands, often after their fellow miners pointed them out.

  “Good. You men collect, pack, and label their belongings and I promise we’ll get them to the owners. In addition, Star Force will be providing each of you with a small stipend in exchange for the inconvenience and abruptness of this relocation. When you arrive back at the starport register for an account and the funds will be transferred.”

  That aroused a few sideways glances from the crowd, and some of the harsher expressions softened a bit.

  “Time is short,” she continued. “If there are no pertinent questions, please proceed to your quarters and begin packing. If there are any unforeseen problems, let me know and I’ll do my best to accommodate you. If any of you are thinking about causing trouble or sabotaging the station, you get to deal with him,” she said, pointing across her chest up at the towering, white armored Knight. “And he doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

  The eyes of the miners tracked up and to the left as one, then they fell to the floor as they resigned themselves to the fact that they were going to have to leave. When the rep didn’t say anything further, the back of the crowd began walking off and slowly the atrium emptied, making room for the Star Force replacement crew to move in and begin securing the vital systems.

  Elsewhere in the national mining zones, a task force of 18 Star Force warships led by the battleship Mortal Kombat held position 20 kilometers off of one of the British mining relay stations, where a third of the ore they mined was gathered and sorted prior to be transported back to the factory stations in close proximity to the ‘inhabited’ section of the belt, where most of the factories and other stations were clustered around the Star Force starports.

  Two British warships and six of their cargo ships were floating near the station as Captain Brandai politely ordered them to surrender the facility, the cargo ships, and gave the frigate/corvette pair 20 minutes to withdrawal or they would forfeit the warships as well. The following fifteen minutes of silence were patiently waited out while the British naval Captains contacted their regional commander to ask for instructions, knowing full well that even two of the Star Force ships would be more than a match for them, let alone 17 and one of their enormous battleships.

  To keep them from getting any notion that they could stall further, once 19 minutes expired on the clock, Brandai ordered two of his corvettes to slowly begin breaking formation and heading in towards the British warships. Before they could get within weapons range the British warships turned off, albeit very slowly, and began withdrawing from the station.

  Back behind the warship formation some 1000 kilometers off there was a smaller group of SRs which moved forward as soon as the British warships left, delivering the boarding parties that secured both the station and the cargo ships, as well as carrying the replacement personnel that would either be taking over operations or beginning to decommission and lock down the facilities.

  The British crews were transferred over to the SRs and eventually flown back to the regional starport where they were met by many other captured British personnel being forcibly removed from the asteroid belt. The same was true of the Japanese, Americans, Germans, and the West Africans, which had only two weeks ago thrown in with the Americans and participated in the taking of a Japanese Martian territory, though all members of the differing sides were kept apart from each other in the starport, as well as being transported away on different inter-planetary starships.

  All across the belt mining zones Star Force task forces of significant strength began sweeping up the facilities and ships owned by the warring factions, with the British warfleet wisely backing down and not forcing a confrontation…not that they had a choice. Roger had enough firepower deployed in each task force to dismiss any notion of them being able to achieve a victory, and they knew well the permanent ban lurking on the horizon should they actually attack a Star Force ship.

  Given the option of losing their mining operations or losing their mining operations and getting the economic death sentence slapped on them to boot, calmer heads won out and the British fleet opted to withdraw from the national zones entirely, heading off into the uncharted regions of the belt where the Corporate Alliance had established themselves, which gave them the option of refueling and returning to Earth or Mars, where the rest of their fleet was badly outnumbered in the ongoing war.

  Had the Japanese not come to their aid, the Americans would have overwhelmed their other defense ships while their main battle force was marooned in the belt, since Star Force was refusing them access to the inter-planetary starship ferries that had carried them there. As it was, it would take them a long time to cross the doldrums, even after they refueled, but when they did return to ‘civilized’ space the naval war was going to swing in their favor, unless some dramatic turn of events occurred in the meantime. Currently the ongoing engagements were even handed, with neither side making considerable gains, rather they were trading off small victories and losses with no grandiose, game changing battle yet being fought.

  And there wouldn’t be, as far as the British and Japanese had planned. They had agreed to keep their fleets on the move, defending their orbital facilities and surface territories with a series of hit and run attacks and not letting the Americans draw them into any large scale conflicts…at least until the main British fleet returned, at which time they were going to take the fight directly to them. If and when they achieved naval superiority, then a Lunar assault was a possibility and currently on their co-operative planning board.

  Meanwhile the Americans chased them around Earth while pounding them mercilessly on Mars, expanding their ground campaign with an assault into the Japanese territories. None of the countries were seriously concerned with Star Force’s actions in the belt, figured that with the minimum 25 year ban on services already in effect that they had little to lose. Even the British, after getting over the initial shock and hubris of being driven off, privately acknowledged that they’d expected some sort of reprisal from Star Force and took it in stride knowing that so long as they didn’t militarily engage the mega corporation they could patch up their relationship later…after they settled up with the Americans and their allies.

  Over the next month two more countries would add their limited mi
litary resources on the British/Japanese side, incurring identical Star Force bans without seeming to care. India cited the necessity of supporting their British brothers over economic concerns while the South Africans upped their well known rivalry against West Africa with a counterattack on their Martian territories while the West Africans were busy hitting the Japanese.

  That brought the World War III nation count up to 7, with dozens of other countries sitting on the fence, wondering whether it would be in their national interests to defy Star Force in the hopes of gaining the material and territorial wealth that was being touted as the ‘bounty’ for the winning side.

  As serious as the nations were about fighting and killing each other in space, not a single shot was fired on Earth. It had become an unspoken agreement that Earth was off limits, and any fighting to be done would happen in space…thus insulating the home countries from the personal effects of war and turning the whole conflict into a massive game, with national pride and fervor rising to an all time high and people checking the news feeds every night for more updates and footage, eclipsing even the most popular entertainment channels in terms of ratings, with everyone eager to see the fight taken to their rivals from the comfort of their living room couches.

  Those citizens living in space, however, were of a different mind, being right in the crossfire and fearing for their lives. The images that the Japanese publicized of their nuking the American shipyards horrified those people living on stations in Earth orbit, with many packing up and leaving to head back to Earth while entrepreneurs took their place, coming up from the surface for the chance of prosperity if they were lucky enough to avoid the fighting.

  The outcries of the orbital population fell on deaf ears back home. Whatever voting bloc effect they could have in upcoming elections was overwhelmed by an average of 93% popular support for the war on Earth, across all the involved nations.

  Space battle had become the new international sport, and everyone wanted in on it.

  4

  April 8, 2108

  Free floating through space, 18 pressure-suited Americans slowly drifted down to the surface of Deimos from the cruiser USS Iowa that sat in blockade formation along with four other smaller warships in a lazy orbit around the smaller of Mars’ two native asteroids. It sat at an altitude of 23,400 km and orbited the planet once every 1.2 days, making it the further and smaller of the pair. Phobos was its larger brother, orbiting Mars every 7.6 hours at a much closer altitude of 9,400 km, and home to several Star Force mining operations while Deimos had been designated as a national mining acquisition.

  The bidding process for the lumpy, 12 km wide rock had been extensive, with Australia and Japan eventually winning out the territorial rights to half the asteroid by completing a number of prerequisite infrastructure projects in the Mars micro-system. The Australian half sported five independent mining sites along with a surface-based storage depot, though with the 0.3% gravity all the Deimos projects operated as though they were zero g endeavors. The depot even had a small gravity disc built into it for the operational staff and mining habitats.

  Long, flexible monorail lines connected the surface sites, precluding the need for dropships to move cargo from site to site. As in most endeavors, the Australians had copied Star Force procedures as much as possible, making their Deimos mining operation the envy of the other nations, both for securing the rights to half the rock as well as it being conveniently located within Mars orbit and furnishing a steady supply of construction materials, part of which the Australians floated on the local market, turning a tidy profit in the process.

  The Japanese half of Deimos looked completely different, with only one mining site…but this operation was less interested in harvesting materials as it was in hollowing out a portion of the rock to build a secure, rock-armored base inside. Construction was still ongoing, but from the surface all that was visible were a set of large bay doors imbedded a few meters below ground level and several surrounding dots where elevator shafts carried excess material out for disposal as the mining crews continued to expand their hollow.

  That excess material, some of it valuable, was collected by periodic dropship traffic while passengers to and from the base passed through the main doors. If one looked at a schematic of the site, the full forward half was a space station surrounded by and built into the rock, with the lower portion being null, unpressurized space lit by flood lamps as the Japanese crews scraped out more and more rock all the while adding additional levels to the underside of the base.

  Given that Japan was in a state of war, the bay doors remained closed around the clock, making for an impregnable base within the Mars micro-system that the Americans otherwise had full run over. The limited Japanese and British war fleets around Mars had either already been defeated in battle, run off to higher orbits, or were taking up defensive positions around infrastructure, keeping away from the Americans as they blockaded the planet against cargo shipments from their enemies while allowing all other nations unfettered access…to avoid drawing Star Force’s intervention.

  Several orbital factories had already been seized by the Americans, with the rest appearing to be easy pickings if and when they chose to claim them. The same couldn’t be said for Earth orbit, where the Americans were on their heels having to deal with the combined British/Japanese fleet, but around Mars the Americans held supreme, with their enemies unable to redeploy a portion of their fleets to counter them, given that they could no longer purchase transit from Star Force and taking the slow route meant weeks, if not months of travel time while the battles around Earth raged on.

  The end result was that the battle for Mars was going to be fought by the forces that had originally been deployed there, which saw the Americans with a decided naval advantage.

  The one thorn in their side was the Deimos base, which they couldn’t board or attack directly. The bay doors were incredibly thick, designed for military defense and, if damaged the right way, could seize up and prevent anyone from coming in or out without cutting your way through…which meant the Americans had to find another way inside.

  After weeks of planning and heated discussion, it was decided that Seal Team 12 would assault the elevators and attempt a backdoor insertion into the underside of the base, though no detailed blueprints were available. They would have to find a way inside, secure the bay door controls, and allow the main invasion force’s shuttles to board the station with conventional troops.

  The trouble was, with the war already having escalated to the fevered pitch it was running at, the Japs had pulled back most of their Martian combat personnel to the Deimos base, along with a lot of their technical workforce, meaning that the asteroid was going to be full of personnel and troops for the Seals to fight through.

  To maximize their chances, the very visible American fleet would be firing off some small missile attacks on the bay door just as the Seals were reaching the surface, hopefully undetected, drawing the Japs’ attention up to the doors as the probable invasion point, rather than looking down underneath their feet for an attack.

  The 18 Seals adjusted their trajectory via thruster packs to come down gently on top of three of the five octagonal platforms that contained an elevator shaft in the center and two robotic arm terminals along opposing edges to hoist crates of material aside, a few of which were still sitting on the platforms, waiting to be picked up by ships that were no longer coming, thanks to the American blockade. The car-sized crates stayed put thanks to the minimal gravity, but could have been pushed aside by hand if any of the Americans could have found a decent foothold for leverage.

  A team of six landed at each of the target pads spaced around the perimeter of the base, two of which found the elevators positioned at the top of the shafts level with the pad. The other was retracted down into the deep, dark pit, meaning that one team of Seals had to float down to the bottom while the others rode down.

  It turned out not to be an issue, as all three teams arrived within 30
seconds of one other onto similar loading platforms carved into the walls of a gigantic cave, all of whose equipment was shut down and stowed in neat racks.

  Dozens of service craft, alongside cargo sleds with capture nets and small rail lines crisscrossing the open spaces made for a chaotic, but awe inspiring sight in the dim light coming from only two functioning flood lights. The rest were deactivated, like all of the mining equipment, apparently due to the fact that without being able to send or receive supplies there was no point in hollowing out the 700m wide chasm any further.

  Happy to remain undetected, the Seals thrusted across the wide empty space towards the ceiling of metal that made up the underside of the Japanese base. It wasn’t smooth in the least, but had various blocky sections sticking out, along with support struts that had recently been added making the whole assemblage look prickly and a bit sloppy. The search for an entry airlock took them a while, but eventually they found the route that the miners took to get back inside the base, nestled up against one end of the structure. It was a temporary airlock that appeared to have been moved around whenever they decided to add on to that section of the structure...and based on the number of scrape marks on the surface, it had been bounced around by mechanical claws quite a bit.

  The first of the Seals cycled through quietly, leaving his thruster pack outside and entering with only his pressure suit and sidearm, which was a cut down assault rifle best suited for close quartered indoor combat, conditions that most of this war had been fought under. Realizing the need to adjust to the new battlefield, the American weapon designers had come up with the M-46C adjustable fire ‘hand rifle,’ so designated because it was designed to be fired one handed.

  It was put to its first use as the fourth Seal entered the station and sounds of weapons fire drifted back his way as the leading scouts encountered the first bit of resistance. That was bad, he knew, keeping his M-46 close by as he quickly stripped off his pressure suit and rolled it up into a ball and secured it with the attached bungee. He let it drift down to the ‘floor’ next to the other three pressure suits as the fifth man came through, knowing it was far too risky to fight in the cumbersome exoskeleton, for even the tiniest of tears would render the gear inoperable in vacuum.