Lunar Assault: Mechanized Warfare on a Galactic Scale (Metal Legion Book 4) Read online

  Including both Republican-class Terran dreadnoughts, which loomed just behind the gate where they could best deploy their mass drivers against enemies coming through the wormhole.

  Every ship that traversed the wormholes needed to do so by precisely matching its rotation, velocity, and angle of approach so as to survive the unthinkable forces that warped the very fabric of space-time until two points practically became one.

  This meant that any ship emerging through a wormhole gate would do so with a specific and predictable trajectory, making them vulnerable to carefully positioned defensive assets.

  But the Illumination League’s founding charter pertaining to wormhole use outlawed the emplacing fixed assets, requiring that any sentinel platforms be capable of a minimum degree of motive power. To Jenkins, the reasons for that particular limitation had only grown clearer in recent weeks as he came to accept the truth of Jemmin’s hostility toward any and all non-Jemmin spacefaring races.

  Jemmin used the wormhole gates like a slaughterhouse uses a chute. Younger, less technologically advanced, and frankly less intelligent species were herded into the chutes, where they blindly proceeded into the kill box. Before they understood the danger, the hammer came down, and it was lights out for the unsuspecting younger race. Nobody knew how many times Jemmin had done this, but it seemed like a fairly refined system. Refinement required practice, and in this case, each practice session required a new, unsuspecting race to test its refinements on.

  Part of how Jemmin achieved this was by convincing everyone in the so-called ‘Illumination League’ to agree to certain ground rules in order to take advantage of FTL access via the Nexus and its myriad linked gates.

  Some of these ground rules greatly limited how effectively individual nations could secure their own interests at the wormhole gates. This was why the Arh’Kel scourge had been a constant thorn in the Terran Republic’s side: because IL law prevented Terrans from proactively defending themselves at the Nexus, where weapons fire was strictly forbidden, and it also limited just how heavily they could fortify their wormhole gates on the Terran side of the system.

  Therefore, optimal firing angles found just behind the rim of the wormhole gates were taken up by Terran dreadnoughts and their support ships standing sentinel. When Arh’Kel invasion fleets came through a gate, ninety percent of their ships were destroyed outright by Terran fire before they could adopt anything approaching a coordinated battle-ready posture. The rest would generally try to slip through and hit Terran interests as hard as possible, and those few survivors had wrought sheer havoc on the Terran Republic in the years leading up to Jenkins’ transfer to Armor Corps.

  And with eighty-one Zeen warships on an intercept course with the 8th Fleet elements standing guard at the wormhole gate, it seemed the Terran dreadnoughts were about to prove their worth yet again.

  The Sleipnir corvettes faltered just as they crossed into engagement range of the Bonhoeffer, and to Jenkins’ mild surprise they banked and assumed a flanking trajectory on the Zeen formation. They were already in firing range, but their weapons remained silent as they carefully maneuvered for an advantageous arc. Their course would loop them wide of the Zeen formation before dropping them into a slot on the Zeen’s stern quarter precisely as the Zeen warships were scheduled to reach engagement range of the 8th Fleet dreadnoughts.

  “This isn’t good,” Jenkins muttered.

  “We can’t give away anything more than we already have,” Li said darkly, and the Terran Armor Corps’ most senior officers watched in grim anticipation of what seemed inevitable: live fire exchanged by Zeen and Terran forces.

  Xi was busily scrambling through Elvira’s exterior, with her Wrench following close behind to update her on the mech’s various systems.

  “We’ve still got some issues around Five Leg,” Gordon explained as she came to inspect that particular limb’s hull joint. The welds were ragged, heavy, and downright ugly. “Not only does it look like ass, but we’re also at fifty percent integrity on the armor there,” Gordon continued as she ducked beneath the joint to visually inspect the chassis. “The joint itself is spotless, though. She’ll sprint just fine.”

  “Normally I’d be worried about these gaps,” Xi pointed to a few centimeter-wide openings in the hastily-welded casing, “especially on the Lunar surface where the regolith will destroy anything it works its way into.” She slid out from beneath the mech and nimbly regained her feet before finishing, “But there’s nothing normal about this deployment. You did good work, Gordon. I’m just sorry you had to do it alone.”

  Gordon smirked. “Oh, I wasn’t completely alone. Some of Rimmer’s people aren’t total bastards.”

  She snickered. “He must be slipping, then.”

  “Well played, Captain.” Gordon laughed.

  “How are the fifteens?” she asked, deftly clambering up Five Leg and standing atop Elvira’s roof. To her eyes, they looked well-greased, which was the single best indicator that they’d been gone over by a competent crew.

  “Ready to shred,” Gordon assured her. “I’ve already updated the targeting computer with Lunar variables and tested those figures in a few thousand simulations run on the Bonhoeffer’s computer. But the SRMs have got me a little worried,” he admitted as he hauled himself up beside where she crouched next to the port missile launcher. “I’ve already put the thickest grease I can muster on the main bearing’s exterior, but there’s no way it will last more than a few full rotations before that moon dust gets in there.”

  “And the polymers in the servos will get ground to powder by the regolith once it works its way in,” Xi agreed sourly, having hoped he would come up with some kind of brilliant solution to the problem. “Damn!”

  “Oh, come on, Captain,” Gordon said, sounding legitimately offended. “You don’t think I’d stop there, do you?”

  She gave him an expectant look. “Go on. Impress me.”

  He grinned before reaching into his pocket and producing what looked like a giant black garbage bag. “With any kind of atmo,” he explained, unfurling the bag and flapping it full of air, revealing it to be just large enough to envelop the entire SRM launcher, “this thing would come apart in the breeze of a rough fart. But with no atmospheric drag, it should last indefinitely…until you fire through it, of course.”

  She returned his grin and breathed a sigh of relief. “A garbage bag—I’ll be damned. Good work, Chief.”

  “I’ll have to replace them after every firing,” he explained, “which means I’ve got to perfect my moonwalking technique, and we’ll need to keep your cockpit continually isolated to protect against the regolith. You’ll also need to deactivate the auto-cycles to prevent unnecessary movement. But these should give us at least three, maybe four full uses before the regolith wrecks the alignment system. I’ve already gone over the process with the other crews whose launchers are of this design. We’re ready.”

  “We are,” Xi agreed before going about her last-minute preparations, mercifully unaware of the firestorm about to erupt at the wormhole gate.

  “8th Fleet is adopting a defensive posture,” Colonel Moon reported from the Sensor section. “The Martin Luther and Crimson Monsoon are scrambling fighters. I’m reading four hundred interceptors.”

  “That’s both carriers’ full complement.” Li grimaced. “And Admiral Wallace seems uninterested in discussing the matter further. He has denied our attempts to initiate a private uplink and ignores our open hails. Even the Vorr isn’t getting anywhere with him.”

  To Jenkins, it was like watching an asteroid impact in slow-motion. There was nothing he could do to stop what was about to happen, and he knew that on some level he was responsible for the blood that would soon be shed.

  The bitch of it was, he couldn’t see a viable alternative to the path he and his fellow Metalheads had chosen. Rather than reassuring or comforting him, that particular realization fueled his frustration and the glimmer of despair he felt while watching his fellow TA
F servicemen prepare to engage the Zeen.

  Colonel Moon nearly leapt out of his chair in Sensors, declaring, “Wormhole is online. I say again: NA2-Nexus wormhole is online.”

  A Jemmin warship emerged a few moments later over the gate’s event horizon.

  Jenkins said what they all thought. “Oh, shit.”

  3

  A Jemmin Gate-Crasher

  The first seconds, as with any engagement, were absolutely crucial to determining its outcome.

  If Admiral Wallace disbelieved Jenkins and Li, his focus would be centered on the approaching Zeen fleet and he would miss the chance to react appropriately to the Jemmin threat. After all, Terran humanity was not officially at war with Jemmin, and it was unlikely that details of the engagement on Shiva’s Wrath had been widely-disseminated among the TAF. As such, it would be nearly unthinkable for a Terran dreadnought to open fire on a newly-arrived Jemmin warship.

  If, however, Admiral Wallace did believe the Metal Legion’s report regarding the Jemmin threat, he would have kept his biggest guns focused on the kill box at the gate’s event horizon. Those opening seconds, as the Terrans had learned in the Arh’Kel conflict, were critical to determining victory or defeat in the face of a newly-arrived aggressor.

  When both the Marcus Aurelius and the Socrates unleashed their terrifying arsenals upon that warship, utterly annihilating it zero-point-four-six seconds after it had emerged from the event horizon, Jenkins realized that some of the previous posturing had been just that.

  Posturing.

  Jenkins’ respect for Admiral Wallace grew by leaps and bounds as the first Jemmin ship was followed by a second, then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth. Terran fighters swooped out of concealment behind the wormhole gate, stabbing railgun bolts into the Jemmin hulls before ducking back behind the safety of the wormhole’s superstructure and event horizon.

  Jemmin reactors failed in those opening seconds as the debris cloud unfurled in a glittering cone that sprang forth from the wormhole gate. Republican mass drivers fired again, and again, and again. With each delivered projectile, a dozen counter-thrusters fired in perfect unison to prevent the mighty warship from falling out of orientation, since the recoil of each shot increased the dreadnought’s acceleration in the direction opposite the target. These stabilizing jets, firing at equidistant points around the cylindrical dreadnought’s forward hull, gave the appearance of a ten-kilometer-long rifle’s muzzle suppressor flashing with each bolt. Several tons of gaseous plasma were ejected by the smaller mass drivers with each slug, and while they managed to keep their dreadnoughts’ keels on-target, the mighty Terran warships slowly but surely began to accelerate away from the wormhole gate.

  Ship after ship was scrubbed by merciless Terran fire, and a pause followed the sixth Jemmin warship’s appearance. For a moment, Jenkins’ mind leapt to the thought that maybe, just maybe, they had been wrong about the Jemmin conspiracy. Maybe those six ships had come on a mission of peace. Maybe Admiral Wallace had just slaughtered six ships full of Jemmin who had wanted nothing more than to help humanity.

  They were irrational thoughts to be sure, but they were in the forefront of his mind as the seventh Jemmin warship appeared.

  When it did, Jenkins’ fears were totally allayed.

  Unlike the first six Jemmin warships, which were uniform in size and identical in design to the one the Bonhoeffer had engaged at Shiva’s Wrath, this one was nearly as large (and apparently half-again as massive) as a Terran dreadnought. It had a bulbous, roughly egg-shaped hull and a mass profile suggesting it was almost solid. Hundreds of capital-grade weapons sprouted from its curved hull, each aimed back toward the wormhole gate’s rim. To Jenkins, this previously-unseen warship looked like the images of a porcupine he had seen as a child.

  And when the newcomer’s guns cleared, the devastation they wrought was every bit as terrifying as what Admiral Wallace had unleashed on the enemy dreadnought’s escorts.

  The Socrates suffered the worst of the enemy’s wrath, receiving hundreds of railgun strikes as dozens of laser beams carved deep rents into its nickel-iron hull. The Jemmin lasers swept across the mighty dreadnought’s hull in search of capital-grade weapon placements.

  Returning fire with aplomb, both the Socrates and Marcus Aurelius fired their mass drivers, sending multi-ton slugs hurtling toward the enemy ship, which they struck with terrifying force. Each strike knocked the enemy ship off-axis with enough force to turn any crew member within into pudding on the bulkheads. The shock-loads were unthinkable, and the rents the impacts tore in the Jemmin super-ship’s hull were a hundred meters long and a dozen meters deep.

  The Terran interceptors surged forward with a single purpose, streaking toward the enemy dreadnought with murderous intent. Jenkins felt a chill run down his spine as he considered the prospect of the Terran fighters unleashing their combined arsenals of four hundred one-megaton nukes against the enemy warship.

  Especially if they did so in such proximity to the wormhole gate.

  Nobody knew what would happen if a gate was destroyed. Some had theorized it would cause a rip in space-time that might destabilize any planetary bodies nearby, pulling them apart with a single ‘gravity ripple’ more intense than any found outside of a black hole. Others thought the gates would contain the energies of their destruction since such a failsafe would seem to be an obviously desirable design feature that should have been within the technical ability of any race capable of building the things in the first place.

  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on one’s perspective), the Terran fighters did not get the chance to test the gate’s limits with their nukes.

  Streaming out of the Jemmin dreadnought’s hull, hundreds of void fighters leapt out to oppose their Terran counterparts. Capital-grade weapons fire flew back and forth between the titanic warships, killing a handful of both Jemmin and Terran fighters as the flights of interceptors broke off and engaged in the most chaotic, expansive, and violent interceptor firefight in Terran history.

  Like most firefights, the majority of the losses occurred in the opening seconds. A hundred Terran fighters were killed in the initial exchange, and nearly as many Jemmin died in the same span. The surviving interceptors broke ever-farther apart, with each Terran pilot taking the opportunity to unleash his nuclear missile at the enemy dreadnought. Most of those missiles were sniped by Jemmin fighters, whose maneuverability and acceleration were quickly proven to be far superior to the Terrans’. Of those missiles that slipped through the interceptor screen, ninety percent were scrubbed by the dreadnought’s point-defense systems. A handful of megaton-strong impacts registered across the dreadnought’s hull, carving deep gashes in the enemy’s flanks, but their collective energies were far from decisive and only managed to knock a dozen or so weapons offline. Weapons that had targeted the ailing Socrates.

  The Socrates’ wounds grew steadily worse as unrelenting fire from the Jemmin dreadnought dug deeper and deeper into the handful of precise strike points. Jemmin capital lasers continued to scour the Socrates’ hull clear of secondary capital-grade weapons, slowly but surely weakening the mightiest war machine Terran humanity had ever constructed.

  The Socrates’ hull glowed fiery orange for a hundred meters surrounding each of its wounds, giving the appearance of blood welling up on a wounded beast’s hide. It was clear that, despite the Terran dreadnoughts’ game-changing mass drivers, the Jemmin warship would overcome the Socrates’ robust defenses.

  And it would happen sooner than any Terran could have thought possible.

  In reply to its would-be murderer’s efforts, the Socrates unleashed a storm of missiles from its bow-mounted heavily-armored launchers. A near-constant stream of missiles and torpedoes flew from the dying dreadnought, each one a Terran declaration every bit as clear and potent as the one written in the Republic’s founding documents. Amidst the missile storm, the Socrates delivered a final bolt from its mass driver system before that all-important central wea
pon fell ominously silent.

  Missiles were sniped by interceptors, but there were thousands of missiles against hundreds of fighters. At such close range, it was impossible for any countermeasure screen to intercept all of the inbound ordnance, which carried several gigatons of combined destructive force.

  The enemy dreadnought continued to pour fire into the dying Socrates, seeming to ignore the inbound torpedoes and missiles as its interceptors steadily reduced the number of inbound platforms. Just two hundred Terran fighters remained, but they took full advantage of their counterparts’ divided attention to devastating effect. Dozens of Jemmin fighters died each second, while twice as many Terran missiles were shot down by the survivors.

  But this was a simple numbers game. And even as the Socrates’ interior rippled with explosions that ejected geysers of material out its bow and stern, its dying breath fell upon the enemy dreadnought with the fury of a vengeful god.

  Dozens of ten-megaton missiles slammed into the enemy’s seven-kilometer-long hull in rapid succession, flashing with such intense radiance that the nearby interceptors’ drive systems were temporarily knocked offline. Several of these voidcraft, both Jemmin and Terran, collided with the ever-growing cloud of debris as they fell victim to the simplest laws of physics.

  But it was the twenty-five surviving fifty-megaton torpedoes that best delivered the Socrates’ final fury.

  With multiple explosions going off near-simultaneously, each torpedo’s destructive energies were carefully designed to deliver maximum devastation directly ahead of the weapon rather than omnidirectionally. Terran scientists had spent decades developing the most effective fusion-based ship-killer system possible.