Chapter 15: Terra

POW CAMP 2 1-14-05

Thirty-nine year old Sergeant Sandra MacEwen looked out at the barbed wire as the five men digging the grave for Captain Vickie Tamping, the young Canadian woman who was taken on Space Dock Two leading a small unit of guerrillas against the American forces. She had been wounded when she was brought in and they never gave her any of the advanced medical they had captured. Sandra's eyes floated over the three thousand wooden crosses and cringed as she remembered the first few days here when the guards raped and murdered sixteen hundred of the youngest members. Of the eighty-six hundred people of the camp twenty-two hundred had been under the age of eighteen.

"You bastards'd better run. When Admiral Thompson gets here, he is going to feed you all to the T'Lari."

"Now Miss MacEwen, if he did show up here, then you bet he will be joining all of you in here."

Turning, Sandra looked into the eyes of the sixty-eight year old two-star general who was in charge of this hellhole. Her blood boiled at how she wanted to wipe that smirk off his face but knew she didn't dare. The last person who had attacked him had gotten two hundred others killed.

"Oh, he is coming back. And when he gets here, he will free all of us and every single one of you bastards will stand trial for crimes against humanity."

"No I don't think so, now rejoin your work detail. Unless you want some special attention from Bruno and Hercules," he said as he raised an eyebrow.

Shuddering Sandra turned and went back to her duty, continuing to scrub the big pots. She watched as the bastard walked away.

"Sandra don't let him get to you, it will only focus his attention on you," Lieutenant Samantha Salem said as she rinsed off one of the huge pots.

"I know Samantha, but I sure would like to introduce him to those two fucking dogs and see how loud he screams," Sandra said as she shoved her hands into the cold water.

"Like I said, he will get his. At least he did not make you have to fly those bastards to the docks. Oh how I wish I could have warned them," Samantha said as tears ran down her face.

Corporal Isis Hathaway walked across the compound with a tray of plates from the guard's barracks. Excitement was bubbling in her as she stopped at the trash bin. She scraped each of the plates and placed them in the hot water the guards received for their dishes.

"Pssst," she said to get her friend's attention.

Sam turned her head, and saw their friend Isis and walked over, "More plates?"

"Hi, Sam. Yeah, wish those bastards would all eat at the same time. They would all get food poisoning. But I have other news."

"Oh? What is it?" Sam asked as she dipped her hands into the hot water and grabbed the first plate.

"Yeah," Isis said as she looked around and lowered her voice, and continued, "I overheard the guards talking. They say that the fleet is back, and there has been a big battle out near Pluto. That's all I know, for now. We have to be ready."

"We will be. Fucking bastards are not as smart as they think. All we need to do is get a few of the guard's weapons and war will happen."

"What about the bomb?" Sandra asked.

"Well, if it's real, I believe that bastard would detonate it. So we need to take him out first."

"Sounds good to me, when do we go?" Sandra said as she looked around, and snapped out, "Shhh."

They went quiet as they watched a group of guards come towards them, with weapons at the ready. In the lead was Sergeant William Deerfield, a former inmate at Leavenworth penitentiary, pardoned by the president and turned into guards at the camps. William watched the three women, an evil sneer to his lips as he came to a stop in front of them

"Ladies, hands behind your backs. You have a little date with the commander," he watched the shock go through their faces and he continued, "I see you are surprised, well this is our prison. Now move."

All three women put their hands behind their backs and they were led off to the commandant's office while everyone watched from their barracks.

Outside of POW CAMP 1-3; 1-14-05

Lydia Chang lifted the telephoto lens and started snapping pictures of the POW camps and the horrors she had been watching. She was over seven miles away under a gillie suite on the side of the small mountain. Each picture was instantly downloaded in to the datapad beside her.

Snapping away she watched as one woman was being whipped with what looked like a bullwhip. Her arms held her up and she was just hanging there in the ice-cold weather. She could see her skin was turning blue from the elements. Beside her on another set of poles hung the remains of a man they had executed with a bullet to the back of the head, when he stopped responding to the whip.

Turning the lens, she started photographing every face she could, prisoner and guard alike. She watched as three women were taken to what she now knew was the commandants office. With quick snaps of their faces, she reached over and did an id scan on the datapad and less than a minute later, she knew each of the women.

Out by one gate, ten men were digging holes in the ground to bury the dead in. As she watched, one of the men went down to his knees and was barely moving. A guard said something to the man, but he didn't move so he came up and slammed his rifle into the back of his head. Blood sprayed everywhere and he collapsed. He was still breathing as the guard rolled the man into the grave and snapped an order to several of the prisoners.

"Oh my God, they are going to bury him alive," Lydia said.

"Nothing we can do about it Samantha, just take the pictures for the Admiral. That's all we came for," replied Gunny-Sergeant Hugo Gaston.

Wiping her eyes she replied, "I know ... I know, damn it. Come on, Admiral, get back here. We need you fast."

Lifting the camera once more, she started snapping more pictures of each of the guards in the burial detail. There would be photo evidence for this atrocity, for the War Crimes Tribunal that The Hague had said they would run. She just prayed that it was true, because the bastards needed to be brought to justice.

Hearing a noise, she looked up as an Omega class cargo shuttle went over and set down on the landing pad. The doors opened and prisoners were herded off the ship. Men, women and children were separated and shoved through the gates of the individual camps.

"Fuck, those are American citizens, not Federation," Hugo said as he took in the civilian clothes and one wearing a patch that said Washington Militia.

"What do you mean Hugo?" As Lydia started taking more pictures of the new arrivals and then she said, "My God some of them are just babies, we need to rescue them," as she took a picture of a young woman holding an infant in her arms.

"I know, and those Mechs running patrol don't help. I just wish we could find their base. It must be ten to twenty miles away or else we would have seen some sign of it."

"Unless its underground and they go off in different directions everyday, so tracking them is a bitch."

"True, I wonder if canyon base is watching this."

"No way to know, so you keep taking pictures and I will keep an eye out."

"Okay," Lydia said.

Portland Oregon; 1-14-05

Martin MacGruder was on the roof of a skyscraper in downtown Portland Oregon. Already half the city was in flames from the bombardment that was slamming into the skyscrapers. Lifting his glasses, he could see the ten enemy Mechs coming towards the city and then one stopped as it stepped on the five thousand pounds of buried plastic. The explosion hurled the Mech up into the air and it crashed down onto the roadbed. Both legs were shattered and one arm was missing.

"Got the sucker," Martin said.

"Yeah, but what about the rest of them?" Shirley MacGruder asked.

"They are almost there now," Martin said as he focused on the advancing American forces.

Shirley picked up the microphone and watched her husband as he stood there with his hand up.

"NOW!" Martin said as his hand came down.

"NOW!" Shirley shouted into the radio. Across town, thirty captured M1A2s opened fire and ten rounds slammed into the first Mech blowing it apart as two hundred LAW's and Dragon anti-tank missiles flew from hidden bunkers and slammed into the remaining eight Mechs. The two Bengals shrugged off the missiles and continued advancing, but the lancers exploded into ruin as their shields failed. Three pilots rocketed from their exploding Mechs and were ripped apart by heavy machine gun fire.

American Forces

Lieutenant Anthony Rickers adjusted his Mechs power and brought the shields back up to thirty percent as he targeted the first two MBTS and fired.

One tank blew up, but he missed the second when it ducked behind a ruined school building and it exploded. His companion Mech caught two more tanks and they blew up before they could go three feet. Then the remaining twenty-seven Abrams fired and the two Mechs came apart under the heavy rounds.

Governor Charles Field of Oregon watched the miniature battle on the monitor and then turned to the other showing the USS Enterprise off the coast as she launched another air strike on his beautiful state. The F-18s quickly joined together and headed towards the city.

"Where they heading?" Charles asked.

"Looks like the airport again. They are trying to find our last two A-10s. Shall we engage them?"

"With those pieces of crap the army built? You will be lucky to hit them..." Charles said as he sighed and continued, "Go ahead, you might as well get some use out of them before they are blown to bits."

Across town, ten M1097 Avenger air defense vehicles sat waiting. Their eighty stinger missiles were ready to launch against any threat.

Captain Vick Hollow of the Oregon National Guard watched on the radar screen as the sixty plus aircraft came sweeping in. "Prepare to open fire."

"Yes, Sir, ready to fire."

"I have ten intruders coming in at mach 2, computer ids them as F-18s."

"As soon as they are in range, start launching."

"Launching," replied the radar technician.

Down by the airport the ten air-defense vehicles came to a stop. Their dual launchers tilted and started tracking. As they got a lock, they started salvoing missiles at their targets two at a time. After launching four missiles each, the vehicles darted for a secondary firing position as thirty more F-18s came streaking in and pounded their old positions. In their new hides, the Avenger's launched the rest of their missiles at the new swarm of fighter-bombers. Of the original ten fighters, four were brought down while the remaining six dumped raw jet fuel into their afterburners and took off. The suppression attack lost fourteen fighters, as the Avenger's went dry and took off as fast as their engines could carry them. The remaining sixteen Navy fighters swept in, destroyed five of the vehicles, and then headed back to sea as National Guard units picked up nine of the downed fighter crews and took them to the local jail.

Federation Captain Sandra Conklin walked through the deep ocean, she was at fourteen hundred feet and the pressure on her force field was enormous as she trudged through thick sand. She had passed a sunken freighter that had been rusting on the bottom for god knows how long, and several aircraft that looked like they had crashed here. They had been flown from Arizona, and brought up the coast under the water and dumped two miles off shore. Then the Mech lander had taken off for her medical run up the Columbia River to the city. Her Mech staggered as she stepped in another sinkhole and she fired her retrorockets to keep herself upright. Her Death Stalker Mech righted itself and she continued on. Up ahead, off the coast of Oregon, was the American Carrier USS Enterprise. Her three-man unit of Mechs were going to disable her. She was on her sensors cruising at thirteen knots and heading directly for them. They could hear the thud as the planes landed.

"Conner, O'Bannon, I want you two to land on the fight deck. See if you can kick those planes over the side, and tear up her catapults. I am going for her rudders."

"You got it boss.

"Okay cousin, we will toss some cookies off her flight deck."

"Cookies?" Sandra asked and then shook her head at her cousin Beth O'Bannon.

"Yep, going to dunk them, just as I would a cookie in milk, figure that way the Navy gets to keep their planes, but they are not going anywhere. I may be in the Federation, but that's my money that built those planes."

"Okay, cousin, whatever you want to do, just do it."

"Well, we could just sink her. But like you said, she's American property, not the President's. Sure wish the fleet would get its ass to earth."

While her cousin was talking, Sandra was watching the American battle group get closer. The first ship to go by was an American submarine as it looked for targets. "Here she comes, fire jump jets in three ... two ... one ... fire," Sandra said.

The huge jet packs fired and the three Mechs traveled up to the surface at three hundred mph. Coming to a stop under the giant ship, Sandra activated her lasers, sliced the first of the four giant rudders off, and watched them drop into the depths. While she was wrecking the ship's navigational capabilities, her companions flew up and landed on the bow of the huge ship leaving indents on the flight deck as their one hundred tons landed with such force the bow literally dipped into the seas.

Captain Charles Hunter looked out the cockpit window and was waiting for the signal to launch when all of a sudden, something slammed down in front of him and his plane literally bounced off the catapult. Seeing the huge machine in front of him, he pulled the trigger of the 20 mm M61 Vulcan Gatling gun and held the trigger down as two hundred rounds slammed into the robot.

"What the fuck is this thing?" he shouted into the mic as he unloaded his ammo into it. Letting up on the button he blinked in surprise as he saw the massive weapons in its arm pointing at him and then it fired one round.

American Forces

In another part of town, forty-seven hundred people were huddled inside the gymnasium and outbuildings of the Lincoln High School as missiles came down on the town. The building shook from the pounding the city was taking from cruise missiles and high explosive bombs.