MagTech Suit Up

  The Dark Planet

  TOC

  The planning was over they now had all of the targets designated and everyone knew their job, they were ready to head for the enemy base. They were the largest force Delta Faction had ever launched. Three large attack vessels, Ship, and ten Bashers loaded in their bays all converged on the outer edge of the solar system. They had four squads of commandoes, the Red One team, ten newly trained recruits, and the crews of the ships all ready to fight, and all well versed on their mission responsibilities. It would still take them almost two days to reach the base, during that time every member of the attacking force would go over their part of the attack backward and forwards until they knew it by heart and the system had it mapped out as well.

  After a long but uneventful trip across the solar system and beyond, they arrived a few thousand miles away from the base. Everyone had taken ten hours of down time, they had all slept and decompressed before the mission, they still had two hours before the start time of the attack. Everyone took the opportunity to eat and do last minute equipment checks, the flight crews changed out shifts so the pilots would be fresh for combat. The pilots and copilots of the Bashers all ate and got ready to deploy their ships so they were ready as well. The commanders all came together in the war room to evaluate the status of the enemy before they attacked. They were happy to see that the enemy ships were in almost the same exact spot they had been when the targets were designated. Surveillance showed that the troops were still asleep in their barracks and only the skeleton crews of the night shifts were on duty, everything was according to plan.

  Emma, Gordon, and Alex were on the Marauder, they were setup to provide tech support were needed. They had a little less than an hour before the battle was going to start. You know, Emma said, something has been bothering me and I couldn’t put my finger on it until just now. You know how the new torpedoes use the bubble to basically dissolve the hull or wall before they hit, she asked rhetorically? Both Gordon and Alex affirmed their understanding of this. So I was just thinking that it would be better, especially with the walls of buildings, if we had a way to know the exact thickness to adjust the bubble depth, she said, there has to be a way to run a spell that acts like sonar and can tell the thickness. Ship heard the conversation and said that it could create one that would work, but it would make a slight sound when it took the measure. Emma said, that she would like to change the interface so when the bubble was getting ready to deploy it would take a measure and then adjust accordingly.

  Ship created the spell and they flashed it into the system and reset all the stored designations to use the new method. They would take the information stored already in the system and adjust it so the intent of the setting was carried out when the command was executed. The reason it was important was because, the plan was laid out so that for every building that was targeted they would use just the right amount of torpedoes, so that when they hit they filled the entire structure with white phosphorous. That meant the torpedoes had to stop just inside so the first stage would fill the room when the second stage helped spread it out over the area. The sound that would be made just prior to the missile hitting the target was not going to be a problem, the five hundred milliseconds delay they had, did not give the enemy enough time to react.

  It was just a few more minutes before the attack was scheduled to start. All the ships started moving toward the planet slowly. Two Bashers went out on either side of the planet and made their way to the other side to take up their positions. There was no reaction from the base or the ships orbiting it. The rest of the ships moved into position. Ten minutes until they started, everyone did one final check of their systems and prepared for the attack. Green light from all teams, the battle could start at any time they were ready, a countdown showed in their HUD displayed as the clock counted down from one minute.

  Time seemed to slow down, and it felt like a life time had passed before the first attacks started. Julie was in Basher One, she was assigned one of the larger barracks as her first target. One of the weapons crew members had setup four torpedoes to hit the building, one for each entrance front and back and two for the middle. Eight more were targeted for each of the eight gun emplacements within range of the barracks. The execute command was given the interface launched the torpedoes, the other three crew members had targeted a launch platform nearby. All the torpedoes hit their targets, the building and the platform exploded into hot fiery destruction. The small guns had targeted the cockpits of the small attack ships, the new missiles hit two at a time obliterating the ships. The next valley of torpedoes from all four crew members slammed into the platform, as they hit, Julie was banking the ship heading for the next target area. All over the base explosions flashed out into space as the last of the oxygen burned off from the torpedo strikes.

  At the same time Julie’s crew were launching their first torpedoes, the ship that alpha team was on was taking out the largest enemy ship in orbit, and some gun emplacements on the base. In the first valley of torpedoes from the attack force, all of the ships, barracks, launch platforms, and most of the gun emplacements were taken out. The platforms usually received another valley just to be sure. Next to go were all the command and control areas and the remainder of the gun emplacements. Next for this phase were several reactors throughout the base. The attack was going well, they had just about finished off all of the exterior defenses and they had killed a large portion of the enemy forces that were in the barracks. They wrapped up the rest of the targets for phase one and started transitioning to phase two.

  Phase two was the deployment of obstacles throughout the base including several of the new guns. They wanted to channel the remaining enemy forces into designated kill zones that they had planned ambushes for. While the first obstacles were being deployed small robot teams started dropping into the more remote areas and taking out small groups of the enemy. Included in this was the dungeon that Agent Kim was being held in. During the reconnaissance they had identified him and even though they were not sure why he was being tortured they were not going to let him survive. The only issue they had with it, was that they were almost doing him a favor in killing him, considering his role in the attacks on Saturn Station 12. They had done facial scans of the other prisoners as well and had not found any friendly faces, so they all got rescued from their torture by the sweet release of death. They could only imagine what atrocities they must have committed to be punished by such a brutal group as what Gamma Faction had become, but it must have been bad. The idea that they may have been punished for failure in regard to the last few battles against their team had come up as well, but that implied they had something to do with the killing of the innocent civilians so that didn’t help their cause either.

  In the end they were not spared the fate that everyone on the base was going to receive. This was the ultimate form of negotiation, resolution through eradication. Through the years Delta Faction had tried unsuccessfully to coexist with Gamma Faction and as recent events had shown it had become imposable. Therefore, they were only left with this one option. Gamma Faction would not stop being a danger to humanity unless they stopped them. In order to do that they had to destroy their ability to wage war on the Alliance, on Delta Faction, and on the innocents that had suffered from Gamma Faction attacks.

  With that unwavering resolve to finish the mission, they continued to move through the objectives in phase two. A few of the guns had started firing on enemy troops that were trying to regroup for a counter attack. Though at this point they were more interested in trying to find a place to hide. Several groups were pinned down by the guns, thus presenting targets of opportunity. While they were busy trying to figure out how to attack the gun emplacement. David and his team dropped robots in behind them and took them out. When the last enemy fell the guns stopped firing and waited for more troops to pass their way.

  The last obstacles were put in place, that mea
nt it was time to move into phase three. The teams started dropping in their robots to carry out attacks on the larger groups of enemy troops. David helped get the enemy moving in the direction they wanted them to by dropping explosives in on them until they started moving the right way. Once the crowd was moving it was easy for the robots to keep them moving with a few well-placed explosive balls. They continued to drive them down their corridor into the waiting ambush. By that point the enemy troops had been significantly reduced so the waiting robots did not have much trouble destroying them.

  While the battle continued to rage inside the base the Bashers and other ships continued to hit targets from orbit. The base was starting to look like a series of craters. Infrastructure, control towers, and communications areas were all targeted. The whole base was on emergency power now, since all the reactors had been hit. The only remaining power source was geo-thermal and that was hardly enough to keep the emergency lights working throughout the base.

  Mordeck had woken to the sound of destruction as the first torpedoes had hit the barracks and gun emplacements. He had drank to excess the night before as was his custom. While he was trapped in the human vessel, he was effected by the same things that effected humans. His head was splitting and the sound of the explosions was not helping. He had been having a dream in which he saw his death, so the sound of the attack made him realize that he may be killed if he stayed on the base. As much as he hated his existence in this plain if he did not do everything possible to try and survive he would be doomed to live with whatever damage was done to the vessel, including any mortal wounds that he might sustain. It was the curse of the universal laws that governed all things, and tried to dissuade higher beings from doing exactly what he had done. Therefore, he was forced to try to escape, he made his way to his secret escape pod. It would jettison into space and look like space debris until the enemy forces had left, then he could go to a nearby asteroid were he had a ship waiting to take him away from the base. He would find a place to hold up and start to rebuild his forces.

  He was almost to the pod when the first attacks on the larger groups had started, he watched from a secret passage while his forces were destroyed by unknown cloaked forces. He thought that the force attacking his base must be huge to be able to fight their way into the base this far and still be able to take out such a large force. Since he had seen reports of fighting all over the base before he started his escape, he thought they must be a very large force indeed. He assumed that they were attacking from large ships that were using smaller ships to dock and deployed their troops on to the base.

  Seeing that they were cloaked troops made him very angry, since he had not been able to find out about the obvious massive buildup of Delta Faction until it was too late. He still could not understand how they could have such a large force at their disposal, but he would have plenty of time to think about it as he floated in space the next few days waiting for the battle to be over. He thought for sure it would take them that long to completely destroy his base. In his mind they must have lost at least some of their ships in the initial attack and would require more support ships to help fight the battle and provide aid to the wounded. He had no way of knowing just how many troops had already been killed and how much of his base had already been destroyed as well.

  He finally was able to make his way to the escape pod and jettisoned it into space on the dark side of the planet. By design he was able to hide the launch with an explosion that did not alert the attacking forces to its appearance, it just looked like another explosion on the planet’s surface. The pod blended in with the other debris around the planet from the other ships that had been destroyed earlier. He would just simply float in space and wait to make his escape. It was cowardly but he had no choice, he could not stand against such a superior force. Besides that was why he had so many troops on this base in the first place, they were there to make sure he could make his escape if need be. They stopped having any other practical purpose as soon as he had to abandon his plans for the attack on Earth. They would have been used as cannon fodder anyway, they may as well be put to that use now.

  Inside the base the battle continued, the enemy forces continued to be whittled down by the well-executed attacks on the last defenders. If they knew their leader had already fled they may have tried to surrender. However, since they thought he was still around and might punish them for such a cowardly act, they continued to fight. It was just as well because they most likely would not have excepted their surrender. Nowhere in their plan was there a provision for prisoners. Gamma Faction had left too much destruction in their wake, for mercy to be shown now. The old saying they had made their bed now they had to lay in it, was the prevailing attitude.

  They transitioned to phase three of the plan, the three scout ships landed on the planet and the Red Team Squads disembarked and began to fan out and take up their positions throughout the base. It was slow going from the spaceports because of all the debris in the corridors that lead to their mission objectives. Robots continued to engage the enemy while the teams made their way in. Their path through the base had already been cleared but they remained vigilant and occasionally had to take out an enemy that had managed to evade the attack up until that point. They did not really have anything to worry about the enemy could not see them, but they could see the enemy. More often than not, the enemy did not even know they were there until they were getting hit by the explosive shards.

  Finally they made it to their designated area and started engaging the larger groups that remained. As always their prior planning and advanced weaponry proved too much for the enemy forces and they were able to destroy them all. The objectives had mostly been fulfilled, and were becoming few and far between so they started taking out adhoc targets of opportunity where they presented themselves.

  The battle continued there was only small pockets of resistance left, mostly in well defended areas that made it hard to get robots into position to flush the enemy out of them. Luckily, that was not the only play in the book. David started dropping explosives down on top of them and the survivors were forced to come out into the waiting robots. After that there was a lull in the fighting and the teams took the opportunity to send drones in to look for anymore hidden troops. Multi-spectral analysis revealed a few groups hiding in passageways and corridors that they did not have in their model. The information was added and the SF teams took care of the situation with their signature shard to the head tactic. Another pass through didn’t find anyone left within the base. They started sweeping the base for intel, and placing explosives on all support structures. They literally were not going to leave anything behind when they left.

  Ironically, it took them longer to check the entire base for intel and set their explosives than it took for the entire battle to take place. It was late evening by the time they determined they found everything they were going to find and that all of the explosives had been set. All the teams pulled out and made their way to the waiting ships and returned to orbit. The drones did one more pass and confirmed all targets had been eliminated. All obstacles including the guns were dismissed and the execute command was given. Several explosions ripped through the remainder of the base and all the ships opened fire randomly hitting anything that looked even remotely like it was still intact.

  All the explosions including the many reactors from earlier in the battle had finally taken their toll, massive quakes shook the ruins of the base as the planet started to erupt lava from several fissures steaming from the reactor points of explosion. They could honestly say they had destroyed the enemy base completely. There was no way they could use it again for anything. The ships pulled away from the planet a few thousand miles away. They reloaded the Bashers and started back to home base.

  Everyone was tired they had a full day of battle and needed some rest and food to recharge. The bridge crews switched out their shift so fresh pilots would take them
home. The teams came together in their common rooms and ate and generally talked and started to process the events of the day. The commanders had come over to the Marauder to have an after action meeting with David’s team. After they were sure that most everyone had a chance to eat and relax a bit they setup a virtual meeting drawing everyone into the large virtual space.

  They congratulated everyone on a job well done and thanked them for their efforts to achieve their goal. Then they told them all to get some rest and decompress while they returned to Saturn Region. With that out of the way the SF Commander returned to his ship but the RT Commander remained on Ship since that was where he stayed normally during missions. He had his own state room near David’s and the rest of the Red One team. The ships that they designed for the squads had been setup with state rooms with two to a room, which was better than the ship that the SF team used. Other than the Commander and the Squad Leaders, since they had two squads onboard they had sleeping bays. It was still fairly comfortable, especially compared to their old ship. They were not complaining, they had finally achieved a goal that Delta Faction had wanted to do for some time now. Once they realized there was no way to bring Gamma Faction back to the fold they had resigned themselves to having to take them out. After a few hours of celebration most everyone went to bed to get some sleep after such a hard day.

  There would be plenty of time to celebrate in the weeks to come they had broken the back of Gamma Faction, even if there were still agents out there, they would be severally limited in what they could do without their leadership and home base to support them. Ship was not quite as optimistic about the outcome, it was fairly certain that the creature calling itself Jonas was not among the casualties of the base. It was certain that today’s attack had severally disrupted its plans but it would still be out there gathering its strength and waiting to make its come back. For now the Faction and humanity was safe from it, but sometime in the future they would have to face it again.