Stark's Crusade (3 page)

The first armored car's gun mount was still tumbling in languid flight against the bright stars above when the nearest squad of Milheim's infantry targeted its companion. At close range, the infantry weapons punched through the light armor of the enemy vehicle, riddling it with penetrations. The armored car staggered under the barrage, then ceased firing, its gun mount locked in place, before grounding and sliding to a prolonged halt, atmosphere venting from a dozen holes. A single surviving crew member spilled out, arms upraised in surrender.

The surprised enemy ground troops targeted Lamont's tanks.
Not a great choice,
Stark thought,
but the only chance they've got is to take out that armor fast. Not that they'll be able to do that with Milheim's infantry hitting them.
A single enemy anti-armor round detonated just short of its target as the tank's point defenses scored a just-in-time hit. Then the enemy anti-armor teams started dropping as Milheim's soldiers hit them with a blizzard of fire. Belatedly, the enemy infantry tried to shift targets to hit the other ground fighters, but then the tanks began flaying them with their own secondary armament. A brief scattering of fire from the enemy forces tapered off into nothing, then the enemy began broadcasting surrender messages as individual soldiers stood, dropping their weapons and raising their hands.

"Commander Stark, we got a problem," Milheim reported.

"What's that?"

"I got a coupla platoons of enemy soldiers surrendering here."

"So what's the problem?"

"Do we want 'em?"

"Hell, no." The cargo shuttles had been fully loaded and wouldn't need any extra bodies weighing them down on the way back.

"I didn't think so. What do I do with 'em?"

Stark glanced at Vic, who triggered her own circuit. "Milheim, this is Reynolds. Tell the enemy to leave their weapons and run. Anybody who's slow in doing either gets shot."

"Roger. Oh, man."

"Now what?"

"Got word from one of my squads. There's some American techs here. Private contractors, I think. Do we bring 'em back?"

"Link me to that squad." Stark switched controls swiftly, bringing up vid of the view from another soldier's battle armor. Visible before him were two figures in surface suits, armored only enough to protect them from the lunar environment. Some sort of corporate logo made bright splashes on the left breasts of their suits, looking weirdly out of place against the black, white, and gray of the lunar surface. "They look like civs," he remarked to Reynolds. "What do you think? They might know some stuff we could use."

"They might. But, Ethan, there's a chance we'll lose a shuttle on the way back. We don't want these guys to be on that shuttle, because if they are, we get blamed for causing the deaths of other Americans. American civs, no less. So far, our hands are clean. Let's keep it that way."

"Yeah. Good call, Vic. Milheim? Let 'em go. And tell 'em to run like hell. I don't want them around when we blow away everything on that field."

"You're the boss."

"Hey!" another soldier called over the command circuit. 'This is Corporal Yuin. I'm at that big pile of junk to lunar southeast of the landing field. Everybody stop throwing bullets this way!"

Stark tagged Yuin's symbol. "What's the problem, Corporal?"

"The problem is this junk ain't beans and blankets! Sir. It's ordnance. Live ammo. Tons of it. And it ain't covered by anything but some sort of metallic tarp."

"It's on the surface? Almost unprotected? Geez. Thanks, Corporal." Stark pulled back, glaring around the command center. "Have I got a combat engineer in here anywhere?"

Sergeant Tran, responsible for running the command center since the death of his predecessor, Sergeant Tanaka, pivoted and pointed to where one watchstander was raising her hand. Solid and squarish in her build, she almost resembled a bulldozer herself. "Right here, sir."

"We got a big pile of munitions on the surface. You heard that?"

"Yessir."

"Is that as stupid as I think it is? Won't the stuff blow if one of those micrometeorites hits the pile?"

"Not likely, sir. The explosives they use these days are really stable. They'll only blow if the detonator goes off. So maybe if the little rock hit a detonator dead on, maybe then something would blow. That reinforced tarp they're using would stop the small stuff, or at least slow it enough to reduce the chance of an explosion. I wouldn't do it, but you could get away with storing stuff on the surface for a while like that if you didn't have enough covered storage on hand."

Vic leaned forward. "How do we blow it if the explosives are stable?"

"Oh, that's easy. Just plant the explosive charges. They'll make the right kind of bang to set off the detonators and then everything else." The combat engineer paused. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that spot when the charges go off. That's gonna be a helluva blast."

"I bet," Stark acknowledged."Thanks, Corporal. Milheim, tell your people to plant their charges anywhere on that pile and get me hell out of there. Lamont!"

"Yo." The tanker sounded like he was having the time of his life.

"We got munitions lying around in the area I'm highlighting. Got it? Anything big might set them off, so make sure your people don't throw any heavy stuff in there. We don't need anybody blowing the place halfway back to Earth before we leave."

"That stuff's all ammo? Roger. I got an interdict for that area on all my tanks' fire control systems now. If anybody tries to override it, I'll fire them out of my main cannon."

Stark looked over at Reynolds. "They left tons of ammo just lying on the surface? Are they nuts?"

"More likely they filled the local magazines with other munitions and haven't found a place for this stuff, yet, like the corporal said."

"So what if a big rock fell on it?"

"I assume they were planning on hitting any big rocks with the landing field defenses. That would deflect them, anyway."

"Yeah, right. Probably onto the heads of some poor foot soldiers. Where the hell have our former bosses been keeping all this ordnance? We always ran into shortages before." Before, when they'd been obeying their officers' orders through the apparently endless lunar war. Before they'd mutinied and cut themselves off from a system that never seemed to have enough money for bullets or spare parts, but could always afford to send them somewhere where they needed every bullet and part they could get and then some.

Vic shrugged. "Some of it's probably from the strategic reserve stockpiles. It's been long enough since we mutinied for the powers that be to have ramped up ammunition production, though."

"I guess. But they always claimed they couldn't afford lots of ammo. So how're those powers that be paying for the stuff?"

"Ethan? What's the rule about questions?"

Stark smiled despite his tension. " 'Never ask a question you don't wanna know the answer to,' " he quoted. "You'd think I was a new recruit." He focused back on the battle scene. "Okay. See anything else to worry about?"

She shook her head. "You've been doing a good job of spotting problems so far."

"Uh-huh. But you're still a better tactical thinker than me." Stark nodded at the display and the scattered symbology on it. "What do you think?"

"I think that if we get hit right now we'd be toast. Our forces are too spread out."

"They gotta be spread out to reach all the targets we want to destroy."

"I know, but—Ethan." Vic pointed a single finger toward her display, the digit jumping across several threat readings. "We're starting to take more fire from the warehouse area. Aimed fire."

"Aimed." Somebody who wasn't panicking, somebody who was keeping under cover. "Some more of that reaction force?"

"No. Reinforcements."

"How can you be sure of that? If we bug out early we might not destroy every target we want to nail."

Reynolds eyed him narrowly, her finger stabbing at the display once more. "The way that reaction force came out, you could tell they were risking everything on a quick hit. And nobody provided covering fire for them when we hit back. These are new. And there could be a company, or a battalion, right behind these guys. Those ridges over that way screen the approach from our sensors so we can't view this area to be sure."

"We knew that. But—"

"But nothing, Ethan. If you were going to hit our forces on that field, how would plan your approach?"

Stark stared at the display, his face growing grim. "Yeah. Behind the screening terrain. Lamont's tanks and that company of infantry are still there. Could they handle anything that comes for a few minutes?"

"Hell, Ethan, you know as well as I do that it'd depend on what comes! If a bunch of armor and mech infantry comes over that ridge behind an artillery barrage . . ."

"Okay. You're right." Stark blinked, then took another look at his display, deliberately pulling back the scale so he could see beyond the landing field.
I'm getting too caught up in this. Lots of fun, breaking stuff and watching the enemy run.
"Thanks, Vic. Milheim, Lamont, it's getting hot out there."

"Roger," Milheim agreed. " I don't like what's going down by those warehouses. We've achieved most of our objectives. I suggest we get the hell out of Dodge."

"There's still time to hit the remaining objectives," Lamont argued. "We can handle things for a few more minutes."

Stark hesitated, weighing what he saw, what he felt, with what his commanders on the scene were saying.
My guts tell me what the right answer is. Maybe I'm just over-cautious, but. . .
"No. The remaining objectives aren't worth the risk. Get your people back to the shuttles. It's time to leave."

"My tanks can finish the job then bring up the rear. . ." Lamont began.

"Negative. Begin withdrawal now. Expedite." Stark started to call out more detailed instructions, then caught himself.
I told 'em what to do. Now, just watch. Tell 'em if there's a problem.

"Yessir, yessir, three bags full."

The scattered blue symbols paused in their motion as commands flew to every soldier and vehicle, then began rapidly falling back toward the shuttles. They left behind myriad symbols blinking with threat warnings, explosive charges planted on almost every piece of equipment around the landing field. As the Americans retreated, the fire from the warehouse area grew in intensity, lashing at soldiers trying to hasten back to their shuttles. Heavy shells began falling around them as well, as the enemy finally shifted batteries normally aimed beyond the front to target the field to their rear. "Milheim," Vic commanded. "Put some fire down on those warehouses. Make those shooters keep their heads down. Lamont, can your tanks take out any of that incoming artillery?"

"If the firing angle's right," Lamont responded. "But I'm starting to run low on ammo."

Stark brought up the ammunition status of the tanks, grimacing as he noted how much the armor had already fired off. He briefly wondered about the chances of scrounging more ammo from the massive stockpile to one side of the landing field, and just as quickly discarded the idea.
The way it always works is the stuff we wanted would be on the bottom of the pile. And I don't want my people messing around that mountain of explosives while the enemy drops shells on them.
"Understand. But if you apes don't leave now, all the ammo in the world won't do you any good."

"Okay, we'll keep shooting until we're jacked back into the shuttles. Hope that doesn't make them sailors nervous."

Stark grinned.
Those sailors are probably already plenty nervous because of the artillery dropping around them.
"Who's monitoring the shuttles?" he called to the watchstanders. "How are they?"

"Ready to boost," a private reported. "No damage except some surface scratches from shrapnel."

Stark switched scans again restlessly. The fire from the warehouse area kept growing heavier. So far, no direct cannon fire had advertised the presence of enemy armor, but that had to be close. Blue symbology clustered around the shuttles as the ground troops returned to their transports. Stark fought down an instinctive impulse to order the soldiers to disperse, knowing a concentration of targets was impossible to avoid if Milheim's infantry wanted to board the ships rapidly. The clusters of symbology shrank quickly as the soldiers raced aboard, replaced by tick marks alongside the shuttle symbols indicating numbers onboard.
Go! Go! Go! Get the hell out of there!

"Got something going on over here," Vic noted. "Shuttle Bravo, what's the holdup?"

"Got a jam in the cargo loading hoist," the shuttle pilot reported. "Trying to clear."

"How long? How long to clear the jam?"

"Dunno. Could be five seconds, could be five minutes. Or longer. This gear is a real bitch sometimes."

Vic looked over at Stark, who shook his head wordlessly. "Shuttle Bravo, forget the armor. Get the tank crew on board with the infantry."

"Roger. Understand I leave the tank and get all personnel on board." It was hard to tell whether the pilot felt relieved or frustrated at having to dump the armored vehicle.

Sergeant Lamont's voice didn't leave any doubt, however. "Stark! You can't leave one of my hogs behind!"

"We don't have any choice," Stark answered. "We can't afford the delay." As if to emphasize his words, enemy soldiers finally began spilling onto the field, evading forward in a last-ditch attempt to disable one or more of the shuttles. "Can't you put that tank on auto or somethin' to help hold those guys off?"

"Yeah." Lamont sounded as if he'd lost a friend. "Okay, I'm putting it on an auto-defend/destruct sequence. It'll raise hell until we take off and then self-detonate its fuel, air, and ammo supplies. Sorry, man." The last words seemed addressed to the forlorn tank as it shot away from the shuttle and began throwing rounds into the advancing enemy ranks.

The last of Stark's infantry tumbled into their shuttles, firing until their weapons were blocked by closing hatches. "All tanks secured!" Moments later, the shuttles blasted upward in a ragged volley, chased by futile shots from the ground. Lamont's abandoned tank ripped off a blistering barrage, staggering as a couple of antitank rounds impacted in the empty crew compartment, then blew apart in a series of blasts that sent shrapnel flying across the landing field and high overhead. Stark, trying not to think about how important every piece of armor was to his forces, watched the projected paths of some of the debris as it flew upward, then snorted a brief, tense laugh. "Looks like Lamont put one of his tanks into low lunar orbit."