Two Worlds – Chapter 304

Benjamin Gold

Location: Orbit, Earth, United Commonwealth of Colonies

The holo-tank was a nightmare. Ben and his team were tracking thousands of contacts…no…tens of thousands of contacts. On top of that, priority was being assigned to certain contracts that was turning the mass exodus of earth into a traffic jam of epic proportions. Ben had seen clusterfucks before. He’d even been a part of some, but he was positive he would never see anything like this ever again.

<And I’m just dealing with the few hundred contacts heading for Jack Frost.> He did not envy the astrogation control tasked with getting this makeshift refugee fleet organized.

Like a master pianist, Ben moved his hand through the holo-tank, assigning priorities, shifting incoming comms requests to the comms station, and assigning flight patterns for the Spyders, shuttles, and private yachts inbound to his battleship. He looked over and saw the wince as a PO2 at the comms station got another screamer.

Ben had no idea what was going on down on Earth, but obviously anyone with a ship that could break orbit was doing that. The problem he was quickly realizing was that many of the rich and famous preferred to have sub-light skiffs they could cruise around the system. Sure, more than likely they had FTL capable boats as well, but he knew from experience that it was much cheaper to dock your boat at Mars, where there was less traffic, it was cheaper, and the strict population controls kept another catastrophe like the overpopulation of earth from happening again.

At the moment, having a boat a hundred million miles away, with an unknown enemy fleet between you and it, the tax rates for luxury ships seemed like a comical secondary thought. For Ben, and the crew of Snowman, it meant everyone with a few million bucks to rub together thought they deserved special treatment.

The comms section had been in more than one screaming match with these rich assholes who thought they’d be able to park their little toys in the shuttle bay and take them to Alpha Centauri. The bay, and every other nook and cranny of the ship, was going to be loaded down with people, so that was an obvious no go.

<But try telling that to a third-generation trust fund kid with blue in his eyes who thinks that world is all about him and his precious twentieth century sports paraphernalia that just has to come to Centauri.> Ben rolled his eyes.He was more than aware that he was of the same trust fund kid breed, but he was in the CIC working his ass off to get people off the planet; not complaining and wasting precious time.

He turned back to the holo-tank and continued to do his job for a few more minutes until a high-pitched shrill went through the CIC. The lights dimmed red, and his holo-tank updated with multiple new contacts.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he didn’t bother to keep the thought to himself. “One-two unidentified contacts sunward at one-eight-one degrees, four hundred million kilometers and holding position.” He was calling out the enemy disposition when the lighting returned to normal. “New contacts identified as friendly, the Midas carrier group from Gold Technologies.” He breathed a sigh of relief. He couldn’t deal with another set of problems.

“Commodore Zahn sends his compliments,” the comms officer announced. “And requests orders for how he can best assist the evacuation.”

The comms officer was just relaying what was going on so the XO had situational awareness. Any orders from Snowman would come from the skipper on the bridge, but in this case, some admiral in charge of the makeshift fleet would let George Zahn know the best way him and his small group could help.

<How the hell did he even get here so fast.> Granted, Ben didn’t have any idea where the good Commodore was before this, but it was a little curious that word had gone out to the carrier group, when the rest of the fleet couldn’t even make contact with Mars.

“Gold, get down to the flight deck now!” the XO’s order cut through his thought process.

“Sir?” Ben asked.

“I don’t have time to say things twice, Gold. Get there now.” The XO was already moving on, and Ben was already on his shit list, so he got up and handed control over to his CPO.

He passed the marines guarding the CIC and took the lift to the deck with the flight deck. He passed more marines leading groups of well-dressed men and women down the corridors on his way. He heard them complaining that they were already filling up all the auditoriums and rec facilities. They’d be packed nut to butt all the way to Centauri.

If Ben thought the corridors were clogged, he was unprepared for the flight deck. People stood in squares as the quartermaster department worked at a frantic pace to move them out and new shuttles in. Ben saw an obviously wealthy couple yelling at a LT who was supervising their yacht being pushed out through the shield. The gray-haired man threatening a lawsuit, and the exhausted LT replying that the man could shut up and join the line or go down with his ship.

Now that Ben was down here, he had no idea what he was doing. He tried to stay out of the way of the organized chaos, but there was no out of the way anymore. Several deckhands gave him the stink eye, despite his gold stripes, and he couldn’t blame them. He stood there awkwardly for a few minutes until his IOR beeped with an incoming message. Everything became clear as a shuttle cleared the force field less than thirty seconds later. The admiral’s stars on the side and the transponders had the deck crew nearly in an apoplectic fit.

Ben immediately jogged over as the shuttle pivoted in the air to come down with its ramp facing the rear of the deck. Ben’s presence seemed to help the crewman, who went about their procedures for securing the ship, and left everything else to Ben.

As the ramp dropped, he assumed the position of attention and gave a crisp salute as a woman with five gold stripes descended the ramp.

“Lieutenant Commander Gold at your service, ma’am.” He dropped it when Admiral Berg gave him a quick, casual wave of her hand.

“I need to get to your flag bridge, and get me your skippers comms code,” she ordered, and he obeyed.

He didn’t know what the Chief of Naval Intelligence was doing on his boat, but it probably meant Snowman had just become one of the most important ships in the fleet. That gave him an idea. He sent a message to back to his team in the CIC to keep a look out for a number of ships, and if he spotted them, to get them routed to Jack Frost. It was against regs, but in the chaos he doubted anyone would notice or care.

He played guide and took the ADM to the flag bridge where the skipper was waiting for them. Whether the man was happy to see the woman or not, he didn’t show it, and Ben didn’t stay around long enough to find out. With a wave he was dismissed, and he got back to the CIC.

 

***

 

Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: North American Eastern Seaboard, Earth, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“Heads up, everyone. It’s showtime!” The LT’s voice cut through the mundane nothingness that had been Coop’s existence since his squadron’s Spyder dropped him in the middle of nowhere. Well, not technically in the middle of nowhere.

There were two squads of reservist grunts charged with manning the TACCOM/STRATNET node buried underneath a hill behind him. The SSG in charge of the twenty men nearly shit his pants when Coop’s MOUNT was rolled out of the back of the bird. Up until then, they’d been guarding a piece of tech that wasn’t working. Now, they were an integral part of the atmospheric air defense plan. Which meant they now had a big bullseye painted on their heads.

They’d run a pair of cables out to his MOUNT and attached them to external data points Coop hadn’t even been trained on yet. That gave him a hardline to the Commonwealth’s main defensive mainframe, and how he learned everything was fucked because they’d been hacked. He saw messages from tech experts saying that wasn’t the case, but when the enemy got inside your system and made them a giant clusterfuck, Coop considered that a hack.

“TACCOM is showing three hundred inbound. I say again, we’ve got three-zero-zero enemy atmospheric craft entering the stratosphere. Designated Echo-One to Echo Three-Zero-Zero.”

The eastern seaboard of the former United States was almost twenty thousand kilometers, which meant if the enemy evenly spaced their drops the ships would be more than sixty kilometers apart. Since that plan was tactically retarded, Coop guessed they would bunch up in strategic locations, probably near big metropolises, where they could establish a beachhead. It was his job to make sure that didn’t happen.

It was only about fifty kilometers from the stratosphere to the surface, but the enemy was fighting the atmosphere and coming in on an east-west arch. His MOUNT’s AI calculated all of the data and highlighted a field of fire in red that he was responsible for. It started as a small part of the horizon in the distance the quickly widened as the enemy ships got closer.

“Staff Sergeant, you and your boys ready?” Coop sent to the NCO who’d turned into his ammo bitch.

“Yes, sir,” the man still didn’t sound happy about it, but it was the only thing he could do that made him useful.

“All units, engage at will,” the LT ordered.

His MOUNT’s vision magnified so his area of responsibility looked like it was right in front of him. His armored chest cavity popped open and his mini-missiles stuck their high-explosive heads out. At the appropriate moment, he fired them all. Dozens of missiles streamed out toward the incoming targets as the sky began to erupt. It was like someone had paid for a massive firework show that started at one point in the sky and works its way across. With all the MOUNTs protecting the coast, they had several missiles for each inbound target, but Coop doubted they’d get through. These bastards had destroyed Mars, he doubted they’d be able to put a dent in there…

{Target’s engaged,} his AI spoke in his head as his own missiles popped off with his own contribution to the show. {Battle damage assessment processing.} The explosions continued across the sky as more missiles joined the fray and the enemy drew closer. {One-eight enemy confirmed destroyed.}

<What?> Coop couldn’t believe his ears, but he didn’t have time to dwell.

His next-gen magnetic accelerator was already tracking across the sky. He would feel the hum as the weapon powered up, followed by a jerk as it fired. He left it to the AI as the armor’s mechanism reloaded the single shot weapon and he scanned for another target. It located a boxy blob, hummed, and fired. The enemy ships were getting closer and closer, and there was no way he’d be able to take them all out before they were on top of him.

His armor blared with an incoming fire warning as he shot off a third round and blew another blob out of the sky. Bolts of energy lanced around his position; one striking his shield and depleting it by half. The SSG was already running for his life, but a blast caught him, vaporizing him and turning his to ash.

<Shit,> Coop cursed as he moved to avoid more incoming fire from more ships bearing down on him. <Shoot, move, and communicate.> His accelerator hummed and fired as he moved.

He was about to pivot and bring his shot-range graviton cannon to bear on the enemy, when he felt his foot snag on something.

“Motherfucker!” Coop swore as his MOUNT’s servo whined to keep him upright. It failed, but he was able to get his hands out in front of himself, so his two cannons didn’t get buried in the dirt, but it didn’t stop the enemy’s fire from stitching its way across his shoulders, back, ass, and legs.

Red warnings blared and then everything went black. “Endex,” the LT called as the simulation ended. Coop’s vision returned to the world where is armor was on its hands and knees.

He quickly got to his feet, and ignored the laughter of the grunts that had gathered to run the exercise. He gave them a finger as he dialed into the after action report being led by the LT. This was the unit’s third exercise in half as many days, and none had gone well. However, this was the first time he’d tripped over the conduits attaching him to the information systems; systems that still didn’t work.

He knew what his comment to the LT was going to be. Ditch the stupid cables and let them engage the enemy on their own. The enemy would be able to cut whatever limited comms the friendly units in the area had anyway once they landed. They should all get used to fighting on their own.

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