Chapter 16: It Begins

Bridge
MSS Footlong, Earth Orbit
Monday, January 5, 2150

“It’s starting, Skipper.”

Bud Long nodded at his exec, Sherry Whitesauce. “Well, it’s not like it’s a surprise. They’ve been broadcasting it for the last four years.”

“Yeah, but now it’s real.”

“Now it’s real,” he agreed.

Footlong was an Improved Owl, what the crews were calling I-Owls, the result of a rebuilding and modernization program that had rebuilt all the Owls captured at Triad Naval Base during the Revolution. Footlong had originally been the WHSS Spearfish, a standard Owl produced by Ares Incorporated in Earth orbit using metals mined on Mars. Now, though she looked superficially like an Owl, she had been completely rebuilt. New sensors, new stealth coatings and thermal dispersers, more powerful engines and larger fuel tanks, and a rearrangement of the internal compartments to create a dedicated MPG Intelligence office - the I-Owls were almost a new class of ship. The only stealth ships better were the designs still on the drafting computers back at Triad.

It had taken six months to rebuild Footlong at the new Phobos Shipyard. The designs and improvements had been found in the WestHem Navy computers but had never been implemented because of cost-cutting requirements by the corporations which ran the Navy. The Martian Navy had no such constraints and the Squadron Commander, Commodore Ingram, had immediately ordered a program developed. He had a deadline, the end of 2149, so that all nine of the remaining Owls would be rebuilt in time for the next war. Footlong had been rebuilt in late 2148 after returning from a surveillance mission in Earth orbit.

Long flipped a switch. “Buddy to all crew. In case you haven’t figured it out already, Martian Justice is officially underway. Our orders are to remain on station and continue our surveillance and reconnaissance mission. That’s what we are going to do. If you are religious, feel free to say two prayers, a prayer for our compatriots back home as they fight this war, and a prayer for the souls of the Earthlings they are going to kill. By the time we get home, we’ll have won the war. What we have done here and what we are doing here will help. Keep it up. Buddy out.”

Long flipped a second switch. “Jerry, is all this going out to Triad?”

Jerry Softbottom, the specialist in charge of the MPG intel department, replied. “Pretty much. All the stuff we are seeing on the Internet is streaming back to Mars, as is. The WestHem theory is that they are going to scare us into surrendering. The reality is that they are using the broadcasts to boost their ratings and ad revenues. What we are doing is reading their movement orders and sending summaries back as coded microbursts buried in the regular traffic.”

“What’s the latest on that?”

“What you’ve been seeing on InfoGroup. They broadcast the last of the Marines marching in review, then being loaded onto C-12s and launched to Departure. They’ve been speechifying more than a Martian politician on Election Day, but they finally got them loaded and launched. Once they have the last of the Marines on board the Panamas, they are going to head out.”

“I hear you about the speeches. Even Laura Whiting, bless her heart, was known to go a little overboard at times.”

“Watch it, Buddy. Half the crew worships her for getting them out of the ghetto. Even though you’re right,” Jerry laughed.

Buddy looked around the bridge as several people grinned. One of them was his navigator, Lieutenant Mickey Mucker, who was smiling but wagging a finger at him. Unlike the rest of his officers, she was vermin-born, one of the first Martian officers who hadn’t been a member of the WestHem Navy at the time of the Revolution. He smiled and wagged a finger back at her.

“Let me know when anything interesting happens,” he said. “I want to know when the convoy breaks orbit.”

“Understood.”

The convoy was forming in geosynchronous orbit over South America. There were simply too many ships to form and stay in the lower orbit that Departure City was in. On the plus side, however, without all the food ships docking at Departure to unload Martian produce there was plenty of room to dock the Panamas and load them. An endless stream of C-12s had been launching from WestHem and carrying divisions and corps of Marines up to the assault transports. After loading, a Panama would leave Departure and join the convoy, and an empty Panama would take its place.

Four hours later, Buddy was informed the convoy was doing its final formation and launch. The engines were lighting off and the various elements were taking position. At the center of the convoy was a cylinder of forty Panamas, five each in a pentagon formation, with eight ranks forming the cylinder. Other support ships and fuel tankers were in the center of the cylinder. Around the cylinder, four wings of Californias were in position, thirty-two fully manned and armed superdreadnoughts, each with four wings of fighter and attack craft, each of eighteen craft each, plus shuttles and other small craft, for over twenty-five hundred deadly small craft. Flying ahead of the convoy and surrounding the flanks were a dozen Owls and two dozen Seattles.

It was a formidable package, that was certain. Facing the invasion fleet was the Martian Navy. Nine I-Owls, eight Seattles, and most of the fighter and attack wings of three California groups plus the fighter and attack wings that had been based at Triad Naval Base when it was captured, perhaps fifteen hundred A-12, F-22, and AA-71 fighter and attack craft total.

It hardly seemed fair - to WestHem.

Flag Bridge
WHSS Nevada, Earth Orbit
Monday, January 5, 2150

Shelley Turner turned to Admiral James Westover. She was the Senior Adviser to Executive Council Chairperson Henry Tillerman; he was the admiral commanding the invasion fleet. They were on the bridge of the California-class Nevada, flagship of the fleet. Turner was the most senior of the civilian advisers the Executive Council had assigned to accompany Martian Justice and make sure the military and naval leaders toed the line the corporations had laid out. The most telling proof of her authority was when she ordered Admiral Turner to install a chair on the flag bridge next to his, with all the same controls and communications links.

“Admiral, are we ready?”

“Yes, Miss Turner.”

“Then let us proceed.”

He nodded and flipped a switch on his chair. “Comms, give me a fleetwide channel.” He waited a few seconds until a green light came on in a corner of his monitor. “Officers, sailors, and Marines of Operation Martian Justice. We are about to launch a great crusade to take back our Martian colonies. There can be no hesitancy or fear, only a desire to rescue our citizens from the communist terrorists holding them captive. On my command, we launch. Execute ... Now!” He had delayed the Execute command so that it occurred exactly at 1900 Eastern Standard Time. That way InfoGroup and the other WestHem Internet providers could milk the launch for all they could.

She smiled and stood up, to head to her cabin and prepare for the interviews the embedded journalists needed. “Thank you, Admiral. Also, please, in the future don’t call me Miss Turner. I am to be addressed as Senior Adviser.”

“My apologies, Senior Adviser.”

“Thank you.”

She left the bridge and Westover wondered just how bad this was going to get.

Bridge
MSS Footlong, Earth Orbit
Monday, January 5, 2150

“Tactical, give me the present position of the convoy?” Bud Long said.

“They are now at full power for the slowest elements of the convoy, the Panamas and the two Pegasus-class tankers. Their tail elements are just passing three-hundred-fifty thousand kilometers from Earth,” Lieutenant Harley Jones replied.

“When the tail passes four-hundred thousand, I want to go to General Quarters.”

“Yes, sir.”

It wasn’t long before the accelerating convoy was passing four-hundred thousand kilometers, the internationally acknowledged maximum orbit of the Moon around the Earth. Bud ordered, “General Quarters. This is not a drill. Prepare for action.” This was something drilled repeatedly on Martian vessels, and everybody was in biosuits and at their combat positions inside of four minutes.

Lieutenant Commander Whitesauce, said, “General Quarters, sir.”

“Where’s the drone?”

“Over Kansas, moving north in polar orbit six hours behind us.”

“I want it coming down over the Arctic. How long to make that happen?”

“Ten minutes, sir. Fifteen, max.”

Long nodded. “Start the clock. At nine minutes I want the drone to send the signal. Then I want to deorbit it and send it into the Arctic.”

Sherry nodded and checked her display. She said, “Nine for the signal, ten minutes and thirteen seconds for the deorbit burn. Yes, sir.” She passed the orders to the communications and tactical officers.

A nine-minute clock appeared on the monitor and began counting down. When it hit zero, Long calmly said, “Send the signal. Prepare for possible response.”

As the Footlong orbited Earth on its surveillance mission, she dropped off several dozen small ‘packages’ every time she was near Departure. The small stealth-coated metal objects had small chemical rocket motors and a simple control system, with only passive sensors for guidance. Since she had left most of her nuclear torpedoes back at Triad, each torpedo tube could carry over a dozen of the packages. The packages homed in on the closest convoy ships to Departure, attaching themselves with a magnetic limpet. Once attached, they sent a burst transmission specifying the type of ship they attached to. Only then did a return burst transmission activate or deactivate the package.

Each package was a five-kiloton nuclear mine.

Captain Long wanted to detonate any active mines beyond the orbit of the Moon. Even though the blast radius of such a small warhead was relatively small, in the crowded Earth-Moon orbits there was the potential for catastrophic secondary effects. Most of the mines never intercepted a target, or the targets they did intercept were civilian vessels. Those that attached to the wrong target, or never attached, were deactivated. The loose mines burned up when deorbiting over the South Pacific. The ones on civilian vessels could be removed by the maintenance crews which would soon be swarming over every ship and space station orbiting Earth.

However, three mines did attach to convoy ships. WHSS Monitor, a Seattle-class anti-stealth ship, had been at Departure for maintenance on its secondary engines when a mine floated by as it moved out of space dock. Also tagged was WHSS Ganymede, a freighter carrying supplies for when the Marines landed on Mars. The real prize was WHSS Bactrian, a Panama-class transport carrying twenty-thousand Marines and twelve-hundred Navy personnel. It took just under one-and-a-half seconds for the signal to travel from the drone to reach the convoy. For safety’s sake, Footlong had launched a stealthed drone six hours behind its polar orbit. Footlong would send a signal to the drone, which would send a more powerful signal to the mines before deorbiting and burning up in the atmosphere.

The results were more than the crew of Footlong, or even the Martian Naval Command who sent them, could have ever imagined. While a five-kiloton nuclear mine was tiny compared to the two-hundred megaton thermonuclear warheads carried by the torpedoes the I-Owls carried, those torpedoes detonated at ranges of fifty to sixty kilometers. A five-kiloton nuclear explosion in direct contact with a ship, even the largest ship, was more than sufficient to vaporize most of the ship and utterly destroy whatever was left.

Monitor simply disappeared, vaporized and shredded into tiny fragments. The mine that destroyed Ganymede attached to the rear half of the freighter, wiping out everything from the engines up through the middle of the ship, and tearing the rest of the ship into pieces. Bactrian was even worse. The mine had attached itself to the midpoint of the Panama-class transport, and when the signal was received, it cut the ship in half, destroying the central third of the ship and shattering the rest, dumping the oxygen and irradiating anybody left alive.