Star Force: Escalation (SF12) Read online

  “This is Archon Ryan-096, commander of the Star Force ground troops you are currently flying to engage.”

  “How the hell are they…?” she mumbled, wondering how they got through the encryption.

  “We’re not here to kill you,” Ryan assured them. “We’re here to remove you from the planet and confiscate this base…along with all the other American, Japanese, British, German, West African, South African, and Indian territories on Mars. All those parties involved in this war are being kicked off the planet and back to Earth, we’re just starting with you because you’re the best. If we have to fight you for this base, our victory will encourage others to surrender without a fight, but I’d prefer we didn’t have to.”

  Julia glanced at her rangefinder as the miles clicked off, wondering how far out the approaching walkers could target them.

  “I know you have your orders, and that General Marvin doesn’t intend to surrender, but consider this carefully in the few minutes you have before you get within weapons range. We will have possession of this base by the end of the day, one way or another. The question is, will you live to see tomorrow? We will, I promise you. You have no idea the kind of trouble you’re flying into right now, and there is no chance for you to win, but you can still survive. Our objective is to secure the base and either remove you from the planet or escort you off if you leave voluntarily. That can be achieved without your deaths.”

  “If you choose to blindly follow orders, I can’t make any promises for your survival. Our mechs aren’t equipped with nonlethal weapons like our ground troops usually carry, so it will be difficult to disable your flyers, and even if we do, you’ll drop to the ground and probably crack your atmospheric seals, leaving you with Mars’ inhospitable atmosphere to deal with, even if you are wearing pressure suits. If you survive the weapons fire and the crash, manage to pull yourself out of your cockpits and escape any internal explosions, you’ll have a limited oxygen supply, assuming you didn’t suffer any tears in your suit.”

  “You’ll be kilometers away from your base, and your only hope of rescue before running out of oxygen will be us, and as you’re about to see we’re not set up for a rescue mission, this is an assault force. We’ll be bringing in people soon afterwards for that sort of thing, but not while there is still weapons fire in the area, meaning you’ll have to wait, assuming we can find you out here, which will be damn near impossible if that storm veers off its current track a bit.”

  “You might think you’ll be better off with a clean hit and dead before you hit the ground, and that might end up your fate. Our gunners are good, but hitting moving targets is always problematic. We’ll take you captive if we can, but I can offer no promises. If you fire on us we will defend ourselves, as ferociously as necessary.”

  Ryan paused for a moment to let all that sink in.

  “Your other option, the wise one in case you’re short on brains at the moment, is to disregard your orders and not fire on us. Our combat computers are tracking you now, but none of you are tagged as targets. Only when you open fire will you be so tagged, so as long as you don’t pull that trigger, we won’t shoot at you, even if you’re buzzing around our mechs at point blank range.”

  “My people’s fire discipline is good, as is our armor, so they’re not going to spook. Hold your fire and you won’t be fired upon. Within a few hours we can have you on a dropship headed for orbit and a trip back to Earth as our guests, not our enemies.”

  “The same goes for the tank pilots in the base, but I’m only talking to you now. Not even your General is hearing this transmission. Just me to you pilots. We’re Star Force. Our mandate is to protect Earth and its colonies, which includes each and every one of you. We’re not your enemy.”

  “If you’re worried about the ramifications of disobeying orders when you get back to Earth, we can fix that. We can offer you asylum, both physically and financially. We’ll find a place for you to work for us or an ally, so the only thing you have to consider right now is your life and your future. Attack us as you have planned and I’d say you’ve got no better than a 50/50 chance of surviving when we shoot you out of the sky, with even worse odds after you hit the ground.”

  “Hold your fire and take control of your future. Don’t leave it up to chance. Your country has made a lot of bad decisions in this war…you shouldn’t have to pay for them with your lives. Up until now you’ve had to follow orders, but now the decision is entirely up to you.”

  “If you choose to go through with this attack and find yourself regretting it as your fellow pilots start going down left and right, go to ground and power down. We’ll accept that as a sign of your surrender.”

  “It’s decision time, fellas. I recommend you choose to live. Either way, we’ll be meeting each other in a handful of seconds. Think it over,” he said, cutting the comm override which was replaced by the urgent chatter coming from the command center, demanding to know why the pilots weren’t responding.

  They cut them off somehow, Julia thought, swallowing hard as she stared ahead at the huge pair of walkers leading the Star Force formation. A moment later their designated waypoint was reached and the formation of frogs turned to the right to begin their long sweep around to set up their flanking run on the target walker.

  “What the hell am I doing?” she whispered to herself, making sure her finger wasn’t on the comm transmit button.

  “Space it out high/low,” her squadron commander instructed. “Go in by twos at max speed and watch for return fire.”

  “This isn’t right,” she said, complying with the order and pairing up with the closest frog next to her as the glob-like formation stretched out into a long thin line that quickly restacked, narrowing the gaps as they came out of their turn, finally lining up for a direct run on the mechanical behemoth…which wasn’t even bothering to turn towards them. Nor were any of the smaller ones, Julia noticed, her stomach sinking inside of her. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  The first few frogs fired off their missiles in huge, smoking waves, emptying their small racks then pulling up and flying over the AT-AT. Most of the missiles didn’t make it through, thanks to a small anti-missile laser turret on the ‘hump’ of the walker, but some of them did, detonating against the side and obscuring the impact point in a rolling explosion as more and more missiles poured in on top of them.

  The frogs in front of Julia let their missiles fly…or rather the one in front of her did. The one to port didn’t fire, then they both pulled up, opening up Julia’s firing line.

  She flew through the spot they exited, her finger gently pressing on her A-22’s firing trigger…but there it froze, and before she knew it the side of the walker was filling her canopy and she had to pull up, never having fired.

  Her frog missed the aft end of the walker by a few dozen meters, flying her out across the center of the Star Force formation with dozens of smaller walkers beneath her and the second big one just off to her left. It continued to move onward unphased, but the smaller ones broke formation and lit up the sky with their own missile launches, targeting the frogs flying overhead.

  Julia went evasive immediately, with the frog ahead of her going down as an invisible hand reached up and swatted the aft port engine off the A-22. It began to spin around out of control as it fell to ground, with the pilot frantically trying to stabilize the flight path on only three engines.

  Several other frogs were also hit by the invisible lasers, while more took missile hits, mostly to their exterior engines, and began falling out of the sky like flies. Somehow Julia made it through to the south side of the Star Force formation, with the wall of sand a few miles in front of her rising up high into the sky, bracketing the back side of the battle.

  Julia swung her frog around, unsure what to do with most of her squadron down and constant, panic-stricken calls for help coming across her headset as the rest of her fellow pilots were coming under attack. Her turn brought her around parallel to the walkers, but she didn’t
move to make another strafing run. Her hand gently pulled back her throttle and the frog coasted to a stop midair as her heart made a spirited attempt at beating its way out of her chest.

  She watched the rest of the frogs get shot down and fall into the path of the smaller walkers, one even hit a ‘chicken walker’ on impact, knocking it to the ground and pinning it underneath the crash heap.

  A handful of other frogs made it through the weaponsfire and circled around to make another pass…but none of them did, nor did they open fire with their guns. They just seemed to fly around, unsure what to do, then Julia saw one go to ground…not crashing, but setting down on the Martian dirt to the South of the walkers. Soon the others did likewise and Julia decided to follow their lead, reducing power and dropping her flyer in altitude. She extended the landing gear and felt the jolt of impact shake her to the bone…then she realized she’d set down gently enough, it was the adrenaline mixing with fear that was making her jumpy.

  Julia pulled her shaky hands away from the controls, afraid she was going to hit something without meaning to.

  “Pilot, what the hell are you doing?” a voice yelled into her headset, startling her again, but she ripped the connecting jack out of her helmet before it could say anything more. The comm tether retracted itself back into the frog’s control board as she sat in silence, uncontrollable tears rolling down her face where she couldn’t swipe at them inside her pressure suit.

  In front of her a couple of kilometers away on the horizon, the Star Force walkers wove their way around the crash debris and moved on, ignoring her and the other pilots that had gone to ground as they promised and moving on towards the military base. A second group had recently emerged out of the storm and was catching up from behind, centered on another one of the four-legged giants.

  Before they got there, one of the Humanoid mechs in the first group doubled back to the pinned walker. It used its robotic hands to drag the A-22 off the top, then the Star Force mech underneath drew up its chicken-like legs and twisted about in an unusual manner that brought its center of gravity back into alignment. A moment later it stood up and walked off, slowly accelerating into a run to catch back up with the formation.

  The Humanoid mech stayed behind and flipped the crushed A-22 right side up, then dug its metallic fingers into the cockpit, eliciting a wave of horror in Julia as it crushed the pilot inside. She choked on a surge of vomit, but managed to keep it down, wondering which one of her fellow pilots had just been murdered.

  The mech threw the cockpit cover aside, then to Julia’s dismay the pilot climbed out of what was left of the cockpit and waved his thanks at the mech for unpinning him. The mech made a clumsy imitation of the gesture and left the pilot alone, turning about and running up to the back of the ever forward moving formation.

  Horror turning to relief, Julia powered up her frog and took off again, flying over to the downed pilot before the second group of walkers caught up. She landed fifty meters away, kicking up a small dust cloud of her own, then depressurized her cockpit. Her pressure suit swelled a bit, but maintained her personal atmospheric pressure as she keyed the canopy to open.

  As the other pilot walked towards her Julia unstrapped and turned around in her seat, leaning over the back and pulling out a pack of survival gear…pitching it outside along with several other pieces of mobile equipment located in a small nook behind her seat. When it was all gone she pulled a small latch on the back panel, lowering a compact second seat to the floor.

  When she turned around she waved the other pilot forward, then reached down and helped pull him up the short drop until he got his foot in a small crevice on the frog’s hull. He clapped her thankfully on the back, then wiggled into the emergency passenger seat as she strapped in and lowered the canopy back into place. A moment later she had the internal atmosphere regenerated and, after double checking the pressure, pulled her helmet off.

  The other pilot did likewise, allowing them to talk as Julia raised the frog back up off the ground as the second group of walkers came within 500 meters, flying off back south towards where the rest of the survivors were clustered.

  “I owe you one, Jules,” the man said gratefully.

  “I thought he’d crushed you.”

  “Me too, until I realized he was breaking my canopy free,” he said with mixed feelings. “You got any weapons left?”

  “I didn’t fire,” she admitted, circling in the air above the others as she watched the leading walkers moving closer and closer towards the base.

  “Damn it,” he swore angrily. “That’s just what they wanted. If everyone had fired we’d have been able to…”

  “To what?” she yelled, louder than she’d wanted to.

  “To take that thing down,” he snapped back.

  “If I’d fired I would have been shot down too, and you’d still be stuck on the ground.”

  The pilot held back another comment, visibly trying to control his emotions. “Can you at least get a look at the other side. See how much damage we did?”

  “You want me to fly over them again?” she asked in dismay.

  “Just shoot the gap in between, like you did to come get me.”

  “Fine…but then we’re going to ground,” she said, adjusting her flight angle and picking up speed. She did as he asked, shooting the gap between walker formations and came up around to the front on the far side, the same side they’d attacked from.

  When they got their first clear look at the walker they saw large, black craters in the otherwise grey armor splattered across the center, making it look like someone had fired at it with a giant paintball gun…but none of the craters connected to the interior, and as messed up as the armor looked it had successfully held up to the assault.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said, staring at the craters. “All those missiles and we didn’t even hit meat.”

  “I think they’ve got a flack turret on top,” Julia said, pointing. “I thought I saw some of the missiles come up short.”

  “Still…”

  “Seen enough?” she asked, still shaken by what had just happened.

  He looked at the back of her head and the short ponytail that held her brown hair. “Yeah,” he said, regretfully. “Yeah. Where are we going?”

  “Nowhere for now,” she said, flying off a bit further before coming to a hover and beginning to land.

  “Then what?” he asked, the anger momentarily gone.

  “Then…I don’t know. Wait till the second group passes, then search for survivors I guess.”

  “Thanks, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome,” was all she could think to say. So many of her fellow pilots had just died, and it was all she could do to keep her mind distracted from that fact.

  8

  General Marvin’s face blanched, his stare locked on the wall screen so that he didn’t notice his XO glaring at him until he spoke.

  “Signal our surrender,” he urged.

  Marvin’s anger turned from the enemy to the Brigadier General. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “We can’t stop that!” the slightly taller man yelled, pointing at the walkers on the screen that continued to creep ever closer. “They’ve offered an amicable surrender…take it!”

  “If they want this base, General, then we’re going to make them take it,” Marvin declared, turning away from the man’s stern face. “Tell all our units in the field to target the walkers’ heads when they become visible over the wall. Mass fire.”

  Marvin walked a few steps forward, studying the tactical situation and the base schematics, then glanced back at his XO. “The fire from the smaller walkers will be blocked, so we’ll only have to deal with the big ones. If we concentrate firepower on the heads, we may be able to disable their primary weapons. If we can, I think we can hold out.”

  “If that’s the plan, I recommend shutting the gate.”

  Marvin nodded at his staff, relaying his XO’s suggestion without animosity. Most of the others
, he figured, felt the same way, but he knew they weren’t totally outmatched. The base layout was to their advantage.

  “Recall all surviving frogs,” he added. “I want them rearmed and standing by to assist the tanks if and when the enemy breaches the wall.”

  “Sir, we haven’t been able to reach any of the A-22s since the attack,” a staffer reported.

  Marvin frowned. “Are they jamming our communications?”

  “I still have contact with the tanks,” he pointed out.

  Marvin’s hand swept across the tabletop battlefield display. “I have icons on the map, why can’t we contact them?”

  “They’re not moving,” his XO pointed out, walking up to the map opposite Marvin.

  “They can’t all have damaged comm gear…” the General said, then took his XO’s meaning. “Give me a headset, now!”

  One of staffers jogged over to his position and handed him the tiny wire-like device. “Put me through on the frogs’ frequency only.”

  The comm tech gave him a thumbs up.

  “This is General Marvin. Any surviving A-22s, you are ordered to report in immediately, acknowledge.”

  Silence was the only reply he received.

  “Repeat. This is General Marvin. Any surviving A-22s report in now, damn it! That’s a direct order!”

  “Go to hell…sir,” one of the pilots responded.

  “Identify yourself!” Marvin demanded, but that was the last word he was going to get from the survivors. “Who was that?”

  “Charlie Seven,” the comm tech replied.

  “Charlie Seven, get your ass back to the airfield now!”

  Silence answered the General again.

  “They’re surrendering,” his XO pointed out quietly.

  Marvin took off his headset and threw it down on top of the map table as the little glowing tank icons repositioned themselves inside the west wall. He leaned forward, looking down at their movements but not seeing them, his anger coloring his thoughts. He didn’t say anything for a long time afterwards, merely waiting for Star Force to come to them before the next round of the engagement would begin.