Stark’s Crusade Read online

  Stark’s Crusade

  John G. Hemry

  Ace mass-market edition / March 2002

  Copyright © 2002 by John G. Hemry.

  Cover art by Michael Herring.

  ISBN: 0-441-00915-8

  To the many fine military and civilian personnel I had the honor of working with over the years, and especially to those such as Master Chief Milam, Commander Barchi, and Mike Fitzmorris who are no longer with us.

  For S., as always.

  CONTENTS

  Part One The Use of the Battle

  Part Two Friction

  Part Three Ends And Means

  Part One

  The Use of the Battle

  Why should I care what a mutinous mob has to say? Why should I care what you have to say?”

  Sergeant Ethan Stark, acting commander of the rebellious American military forces on the Moon, held his temper with an effort. “General, you command the enemy forces occupying part of the lunar surface outside our perimeter. I command the units defending the American Colony. We’re not a mob. I am attempting to—”

  “If you wish to surrender, I would entertain the possibility.”

  “We won’t surrender. Not to you. Not to anybody. You’ve agreed to let the part of the Moon’s surface under your direct control be used as a staging area for supplies and ammunition to be used against us. We can’t permit that.”

  “You threaten me? You actually dare to threaten me?”

  “I’m just telling you we won’t allow preparations for an attack against us to proceed without taking action.”

  Stark’s latest words seemed to amuse the enemy general. “I see. So you are just offering friendly advice? Why should I pay more attention to you than to the representatives of the U.S. government? They are paying us handsomely for the use of our facilities. What can you offer in exchange for my turning down such an opportunity?”

  “I’m not offering you anything.”

  “Nothing? You bargain poorly. Perhaps you are, what is the American expression, out of your league?”

  “My soldiers are the best combatants on the lunar surface. We’re a helluva lot better at playing the game up here than your forces are, General, and we’ve proved that more than once.” The smile vanished from his opponent’s face. “Stirring up a hornet’s nest isn’t in your best interests. You’d be wise to listen to what I’m telling you.”

  “Listen to you? Or you will do… what? You think I am interested in your ‘advice’? Advice from a mob with no offensive capability?”

  “I repeat; we’re not a mob. Maybe we’re not taking orders from authorities on Earth right now, but we’re still a fully functioning military organization, we’re still dedicated to defending the American citizens in the Colony here, and I assure you that we have the ability to launch attacks anywhere, at any time, in support of that mission.”

  “Of course you can. Attack our defenses, your fighting spirit against our entrenched weapons and soldiers. Just as your friends did. What was it called? The Third Division? Before we ground them into the dust? Have you managed to recover all of their bodies yet?”

  Stark’s vision hazed red with anger as the enemy commander mocked the deaths of thousands. Third Division had been effectively destroyed during the ill-planned and poorly led offensive that had triggered the mutiny by Stark and the other noncommissioned officers on the Moon. The disaster had been the final straw after decades of poor leadership on Earth and years of seemingly endless war on the lunar surface, the final straw for soldiers who believed they could no longer trust in anyone but themselves. I risked everything to try to save some of the apes in Third Division, and I’m not gonna listen to some smug, pompous ass make fun of their sacrifice.

  Stark raised one hand, as if pointing a weapon, then plunged it down to break the communications circuit. The enemy General’s image vanished, leaving Stark’s command center momentarily silent.

  Sergeant Vic Reynolds, Stark’s friend and chief of staff, kept her eyes on the screen for a moment after it went dark, then glanced over at Stark. “Let’s kick his teeth in.”

  “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

  Shapes moved against the endless night of space. Blunt objects carrying people and cargo, the convoy of shuttles hung in a ragged formation while a pair of escorting warships herded them toward the lunar landing field awaiting their arrival. There were wolves among the stars, hiding in the dark in wait for fat, easy targets like the supply shuttles.

  Alarms sounded as sensor arrays on the warships tracked objects rising from the Moon’s surface toward the convoy. The armed shuttles of Stark’s tiny Navy lunged at the convoy, even as the warship escorts moved to intercept the threat. New stars winked into life against the blackness, as fire and counterfire blazed between the combatants.

  Around Stark, the watchstanders in the command center in the American headquarters complex on the lunar surface worked quietly and efficiently, organizing and feeding information to the huge displays dominating the room. Colored symbols crawled across those displays like geometric insects; red for enemy, blue for friendly. Threat symbology, representing weapons, darted around the larger shapes, which marked warships and shuttles, the spacecraft seeming slow and cumbersome compared with the flight of their weapons. Stark had to remind himself that those spacecraft could move at speeds measured in miles per second, a concept almost too alien for a ground soldier to grasp.

  “Commander Stark?” One of the watchstanders highlighted text scrolling in one corner of the big headquarters display. “We’re picking up communications from the warships on the common merchant frequency.”

  Stark squinted to read the words. “Charlie Foxtrot Bravo Two? What’s that mean?”

  “It’s from the Convoy Tactical Signals Code, sir. I guess they haven’t changed it. The signal means ‘All convoy units remain in formation.’ The warships have repeated the message several times.”

  Stark looked back at the display, where vectors for the supply shuttles continued to shoot off in various directions. “It doesn’t look like the convoy is paying much attention.”

  “No, sir. The warships sound kinda upset.”

  “According to Chief Wiseman, they shouldn’t have expected anything else. It’s exactly what she told us would happen.”

  Weapons burst, creating expanding clusters of heat and debris, while the dueling warships tossed out countermeasures designed to fool radar, infrared, and any other means of targeting them. Stark’s search systems lost contact with the fleeing supply shuttles, their vectors fading into estimated tracks as a sector of the forever-night over the Moon grew temporarily opaque to ground-based sensors.

  Despite their overwhelming advantage in firepower, the escorting warships hung back, forming a defensive shield for the now-scattered convoy, content to hurl volleys whenever one of Stark’s armed shuttles swung toward them.

  “Chief Wiseman,” Stark called his fleet commander. In response to his communication, a window automatically opened in one corner of Stark’s display, showing the face of Chief Petty Officer Wiseman on the command deck of her armed shuttle. “What’re those warships doing?”

  “Exactly what I expected them to do. They’re protecting those supply shuttles. The warships don’t know exactly where all the convoy shuttles are anymore, but they’re trying to stay between me and them.”

  “Couldn’t the warships defend the convoy better by coming at your shuttles and hitting them hard? You couldn’t hold your ground against that. They’d drive you away for sure.”

  “Hey, Commander, leave the Navy stuff to experts. That’s why I’m in charge of your fleet, right? Listen close, mud crawler. Those warships aren’t charging after me because of something called physics. You ever study naval tactics?
”

  “I saw a lot of old vids when I was a kid. You know, slave galleys and sailing ships and stuff. I wouldn’t expect that to have anything to do with what you’re doing.”

  “Wrong. We’re playing by the same rules up here as those oar-powered galleys did. It’s all about limited propulsion resources and momentum. These ships, even my shuttles, are big. Lots of mass. We accelerate slow, relative to things like our weapons, and once we get going in one direction we can’t shift to a new course by turning on a dime. Mass don’t like changing direction, and unlike ships back on the World, we don’t even have water to turn against.”

  Wiseman tapped some controls, bringing up a small 3-D panel in one corner of the comm screen. “See? Here’s the convoy, coming out of one of the Earth’s orbital facilities, making a standard approach to the Moon. Standard because it requires the best combination of least fuel and least time.” A broad arrow extended outward from the World, curving as it intercepted the Moon’s own orbit. “Physics tells those shuttles they need to follow this path to get to their objective on the Moon. We know physics, too, so we know the path they’re gonna take.”

  A short red arrow arced up from the Moon, aiming to intercept the shuttles. “We’ve got what you’d call a window up here, an area above the Moon guarded by our antiorbital defenses. We pop out that window and make a move at the convoy. The warships try to keep us from getting close enough to nail any of the convoy shuttles, but the shuttles are scattering anyway because they’re a bunch of civs hired to haul loads and none of them want to get shot at. Meanwhile, everybody and their friend throws out various junk designed to keep enemies from tracking a target, like the little doppelgänger decoys that pick up emissions from other ships in the area and mimic them. It’ll all disperse or deactivate eventually, but for now we’ve confused the traffic control situation up here something awful. Anybody monitoring this location will be seeing some stuff that ain’t there, and not be able to see some stuff that is there.”

  Stark confirmed Wiseman’s statement by checking the confused tangle of symbols on the headquarters display, then studied the 3-D panel again. “Great. But that still doesn’t explain why those warships don’t just charge at you. You’d have to run, then.”

  Wiseman grinned. “There’s more than one direction to run. We could accelerate straight past them. Risky, but getting hits on us during a high-speed pass would be real hard. So, sure, those warships could come after us, but if even one of my shuttles gets past them, those warships will have the devil’s own time turning and accelerating back in the other direction to try to catch it. We’d be in among the convoy’s supply shuttles for sure before the warships got back.”

  Vic Reynolds, standing near Stark, nodded. “So you’re saying the warships have some probability of winning, but prefer the certainty of not losing.”

  “Well, that’s their job, ain’t it? Killing my shuttles would be fun, but those warships ain’t on a hunter-killer sweep. So they’re just gonna hold me toff and make sure I don’t get to the supply shuttles they’re charged with protecting. In the process of doing that, though, they’ve lost track of those supply shuttles in the mess of combat and countermeasures we’re generating up here.”

  “Just like you said they would.” During the planning for the operation, Wiseman had been confident. You want to raid the enemy? Fine. You can’t shoot your way in. The only way through their defenses is by confusing ‘em and foolin’ ‘em. Give me an incoming convoy, and I’ll screw the situation around so bad the enemy won’t know which end is up. “So you think this diversion is working?”

  “We’re gonna find out for sure any time now. One thing’s for certain, we’ve generated so much ‘noise’ up here that anything being quiet is gonna be a lot harder to spot until it clears this area. Keep your fingers crossed.”

  Out of the confused tangle of dueling countermeasures and battle debris, four supply shuttles fell toward the lunar surface, broadcasting urgent pleas for sanctuary on the enemy landing field nearest their trajectories. One of Wiseman’s armed shuttles made an abortive lunge in their direction, quickly shying off as enemy surface defenses locked on and prepared to engage once the armed shuttle came within range. The supply shuttles dropped swiftly, tracked by surface defenses that remained silent as the unarmed supply craft braked hard to make emergency landings on the field.

  Lunar dust drifted in fine, slowly falling clouds across the spaceport. Landing fields were regularly swept for dust, but the fine particles always reappeared, drifting down from space or dislodged by the actions of humans nearby. Against the solid black shadows and glaring white of sunlight on the lunar surface, the gray shades of dust hung like a thin, pallid fog.

  Now, as always, it hindered the vision of the multispectrum sensors trying to identify the supply shuttles. “Unidentified shuttles,” someone called. “Provide your ship identification codes and landing field authorization.”

  “What?” The supply shuttle pilot responding had a ragged, frightened edge to his voice, speaking too rapidly as he continued. “Didn’t copy. Say again. Who is this?”

  “This is the landing field controller. I need your ship identification codes. Provide them immediately. Where was your scheduled landing destination?”

  “Uh, uh… I think, uh, right here. Yeah. This field. We were supposed to land here.”

  “Negative, shuttle. We have no deliveries scheduled today. Identify yourself and your authorized destination immediately.”

  “Right here, I tell you! Hey, we almost got blown to pieces and just barely made it down, and you’re giving us a hard time! Give us a break! Just let us off-load our cargo so we can get the hell out of this war zone and back to near-Earth orbit where it’s safe!”

  “Shuttle, do not off-load cargo onto this field without authorization. We have no heavy transport available to receive your loads.”

  “Don’t need it, pal. Our cargo can move on its own. Beginning off-load now.” Moments later, cargo bays gaped open on the shuttles and began disgorging armored figures.

  “What’s going on? Who are those people?”

  “Our cargo, buddy! Like I told you.”

  “We have no… are those soldiers? Are you off-loading soldiers?”

  “Yeah. That’s our cargo. Deliver here. That’s what my flight plan says.” As the pilot and landing field controller debated, the soldiers swiftly formed into parade ranks and started marching across the field, their formations appearing almost tiny against the dead, gray expanse of the landing field. Almost unnoticed behind them, the shuttles began disgorging four huge black shapes.

  “I don’t have any delivery notification for soldiers! Get them back on those shuttles!”

  “Uh-uh. No way. I almost got killed delivering them, and you want me to take them back? Look, my orders say to drop these military goons off for, uh, security duties here. You got something special worth guarding?”

  “We have a considerable quantity of supplies the Americans are staging here for their offensive against their rebellious colony. But no one notified us they were sending… what is that?” The first of the black shapes swung majestically out from beneath the shuttle that had delivered it. Nonreflective surfaces only hinted at the massive armored shape as it surged forward across the field in the wake of the soldiers. “Is that a tank?”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s what the delivery order says.”

  Send some of my armor along, Sergeant Lamont had urged.

  That’s crazy, Sergeant Reynolds had rebutted him. You don’t send heavy armor on raids.

  Yeah. Everybody knows that. So nobody’ll expect it, right? How much anti-armor weaponry is on ready-alert in a rear area? Most likely none. And if you’re dropping big cargo shuttles on the field, they can each carry one of my hogs in their heavy lift slings. Total surprise. Bet ya I can raise a lot of hell before anybody can react.

  It might work, Stark had admitted. But you’re still crazy.

  Nah. I’m a tanker.

 
; “Stop them! Stop the tanks and the soldiers. Everybody cease movement. I need to clear this.”

  “Hey.” Sergeant Lamont, in the lead tank, joined the conversation. “I can’t leave my gear just sitting out in the open.” Stark, tracking the vehicle’s progress through the command and control link, shifted his perspective to view the world through the tank commander’s display, watching as the armored vehicle’s sensors automatically located and tagged defenses and communications points around the landing field. Though Stark had never been inside a tank, he’d viewed the outside world many times from the inside of an Armored Personnel Carrier, and the smooth scrolling past of the barren landscape was just like that from an outside viewer on an APC. “My orders say to deploy my tanks around this field,” Lamont continued.

  “I’ve never seen such orders!”

  “Well, then, you oughta check with the landing field controller.”

  “This is the landing field controller!”

  “Then you must have a copy of our orders.”

  “There are no such orders on file. Who issued them?”

  “They came from your boss.”

  “My—?” The controller hesitated as Lamont’s tanks and the infantry moved closer to the edges of the landing field. “What’s the Landing Authority Authorization Order Code?”

  “The Landing Authority Authorization Order Code?”

  “Yes. The LAAOC.”

  “Uh, lemme see. Where is that?”

  “In the order header! If you military people don’t stop moving immediately I’ll… I’ll tell our security forces to stop you!”

  “Hey, hey, calm down.”

  Stark looked over at Reynolds, who was smiling in admiration despite the tension in her eyes. “Lamont can stall like nobody’s business,” Stark noted. “But he’s pushing it, Vic. We need to shoot first or that infantry might get chewed up by the landing field defenses.”

  “You’re right, especially with our troops marching in close order so nobody’ll think they’re attacking until it’s too late. Do we tell Lamont to open fire?”