Posted: 2004-05-23 03:39am
by Shroom Man 777
May 11, 2567
Location: Uncharted nebula.
Situation: One hour before the hyperspace jump to the UFPP controlled system
There was a brilliant soundless flash of white light and blue crackling tendrils of energy as a massive 1.2-kilometer vessel dropped from hyperspace. Its surface was composed of grayish neo-steel armor under a hull-hugging shield. The ship was an angular and boxy, resembling a bunch of bricks composed of cold hard metal and bristling with weapons. The ship gave the impression of rugged toughness; it was a warship and looked every bit like one. It was designed to be intimidating, not pretty. Its rear third was slightly thicker than the rest of its body, as it had four massive ion drives and it held the ship’s anti-matter and fusion reactors. The boundary between the rear and the rest of the ship was marked by an armored conning tower, it contained inside it, among many things, sensors, communications and navigational equipment. Mounted on optimal locations all over the hull were numerous missiles/torpedo launching blisters, laser arrays and plasma cannon and railgun turrets; on its dorsal and bottom side were its most powerful weapons, massive particle cannon turrets and mass drivers which launched bomber sized projectiles at relativistic speeds. It also had a compliment of strategic missiles which would only be used in the most desperate of times. The ship had the USE flag painted on its side along with the words ‘USS Iron Fist’. The Iron Fist was a Vindicator class carrier, among the most prolific of the USE’s carrier type ships and often labeled as a ‘light carrier’ because of the presence of a few larger and more powerful carrier-type warships.
Right behind the Iron Fist was the Braveheart. It was an Assailant class, a large destroyer 900 meters in length. It was heavily armed; its weapons were nearly on par with that of the Vindicator class carriers, which was quite considerable considering their size disparity. But for that, its compliment of fighters was very minimal, in contrast with the Iron Fist’s numerous fighter wings. The Braveheart shared the Iron Fist’s general look, except that it was thinner and sleeker, more of a barracuda than a shark.
The warships were immediately overwhelmed by the nebula and blanketed by clouds of gasses and particles. They were shrouded and nearly invisible from the naked eye. Aside from the things normally present in nebulas, the space was empty. Nonetheless several SF/A-44 Peregrines and SF-40 White Sharks were instantly deployed from the bowels of the Iron Fist. The fighters arranged themselves according to their types and patrolled the space around the warships.
The Peregrine was the staple high performance fighter of the USE navy and among the most dangerous. It was like a dagger, long, sleek and built to excel in both atmospheric and space combat, hence its similarities to the pioneering 21st century fighters. It was a strike fighter, designed to attack enemy ships and enemy ground forces while being able change mission priorities and engage enemy fighters with a flip of a button. The Peregrine’s anti-spacecraft/aircraft weaponry were located inside what looked like a normal aircraft’s air intake nozzles, these nozzles are actually missile accelerators (or railguns/mass drivers) which fired missiles as if they bullets, hence decreasing the missile’s overall size and fuel consumption and eliminating the need for a missile to propel itself all the way to its target (this also boosts missile range significantly). It also had bomb bays which housed bombs and torpedoes. Its close range weaponry was a series of fast shooting rail guns, housed just behind the cockpit, and plasma cannons located in front of the cockpit. The Peregrine’s wings were of modest length and under each wing was a set of boxy yet aerodynamic missile launchers and afterburners.
The Shark was sleek and was built for speed, though it was far bulkier than the Peregrine, being three times larger than the smaller fighter. The Shark’s shape was generally the same, though the cockpit was tiny compared to the nose, which housed 8 cannons of the ballistic and plasma variety. The bomb bay, now entirely housing torpedoes and anti-fighter/ship missiles, was far larger. The wings stretched further, as the burners and missile containers were double that of the Peregrine’s and far deadlier. Being larger than the Peregrine, the Shark’s missile accelerators were also more powerful, giving the Shark longer range. The White Shark was another staple of the Navy; it was a defender, escorting ships, fighters, bombers and corvettes. It was capable of engaging multiple bogeys at the same time and from a great distance. The White Shark’s armaments were expensive and extremely long ranged. The Shark was almost three decades old, but with its recent upgrades, it was still able to engage the latest fighters and come out on top.
Four fighters passed by the Iron Fist’s conning tower, they were White Sharks in a diamond formation.
“So, Ace, why did you ever bother getting Dalton anyway?” Alpha One asked quickly. Alpha One was leading the formation and he was the wing commander. “That little monkey is obese and keeps on eating all our donuts! I say we dump him in an airlock when we’re done with this mission!”
“Shut up, Jeremy! That’s my monkey! Nobody gets to spank my monkey and you sure as hell won’t dump my ape into an airlock! Dalton’s not fat, he’s pudgy. He’s cute, you bastard!” Ace Pace, Alpha Four, replied in irritation. He was at the rear of the formation. Dalton was Ace’s best friend. He found the little monkey a few years back on Alpha Centauri B and decided to bring him to the Iron Fist. The monkey was small and so it was accepted, but ever since gaining access to the pilots’ donut supply, Dalton nearly quadrupled in size in the last few years.
“He’s not cute. He’s a smelly little fur ball who keeps on pissing everywhere. I think you’re just keeping him because you can’t get a girlfriend, so you’re using him as your little sex toy you sick disgusting loon!” Jeremy said, amusing himself.
“I think Dalton’s cute,” Alpha Two, a female, commented playfully. She was Jeremy’s girlfriend and was Dalton’s favorite playmate, hence her defense of the poor monkey.
“I hate them monkeys, we ought to barbecue that little rat!” Alpha Three ranted through the comm. link with a generic red neck voice.
“Bob, do you hicks eat monkeys over there in Texas?” asked Jeremy with obnoxious intent, shifting his sights from the monkey to the redneck.
“No way! What kind of sick monkey molesting freak do you think-“
“I’m detecting something dropping off from hyperspace!” Alpha Two said in an urgent tone. Everybody stopped their idle banter and quickly disengaged their auto-pilots and armed their weaponry. If it was a UFPP ship, a patrol or an entire armada, they would be ready for them.
“Jean, what is it?” Jeremy asked. His voice was calm, but a bit edgy.
“I can’t tell,” the woman replied.
“Alpha squad, do not engage,” a radioman from the Iron Fist ordered. “They’re one of us.”
The flash was larger than the entry of both the Iron Fist and the Braveheart as several capital ships and their escorts suddenly lumbered into view. There were four Assailant class destroyers, the Prosecutor, Slayer, Brawler and Executioner; two Vindicator class carriers, the Vigilant and the Ominous; and in the middle of the battle group were two Triumphant class cruisers, the Price of Freedom and the Majestic. The cruisers were 100 meters shorter than the carriers, but they were thick and large. They were armed to the teeth with all sorts of armaments, the same type as those found on the Assailants and Vindicators but in larger quantities. A single Triumphant could outgun two Vindicators. And like the destroyers, the Triumphant class’ fighter compliment was dwarfed by that of the Vindicator, the cruisers only had one and a half of the fighter capacity of the Assailant destroyers.
The new arrivals were on yellow alert, just like the Braveheart and Iron Fist. All of their crews were readying all the systems, checking and double checking everything and making sure absolutely nothing would go wrong. Combat was just minutes away. Everyone was tense; everyone had a duty to do. Everybody except the marines. They had nothing to do now aside from getting ready for their deployment into the UFPP planet, which was still at least an hour away. John and the other lieutenants had received their mission briefing from Colonel Armstrong some time ago and were to brief their squads. Since it was yellow alert, the recreation room was empty, so John decided to hold his briefing there, where the seats were comfortable. He glanced at the holoscreen and noted that corvettes had filled the space between the Iron Fist and the battle group. The ships had emerged from hyperspace just a few minutes ago and the commander of the ships was definitely talking with Captain Armstrong. In a while they would hyperjump to the UFPP’s system and all hell would break loose. Better get the briefing started, he thought, shaking his head at the idea of spending what could be the last hour of his life in the recreation room waiting for all of his troops to assemble. “So, is everybody here?”
“No, sir,” Joshua answered after counting the people present in the room. “There’s a handful missing.”
“What a crock of shit,” John said wearily before downing his cup of coffee. He had decided to fashion his briefing after yesterday’s meeting, so he ordered Brent to haul some of the tables in a U formation. It had been ten minutes since Brent had finished moving the tables, ten minutes since the briefing was supposed to begin. John was getting impatient. The ships could hyperjump into the UFPP system at any time. “What are they doing that’s so fucking important anyway?!”
“I heard they were going to the chaplain,” Carla, the medic, replied. She was a slender girl, 5’5 feet tall. She used to be a school nurse before joining the marines. John raised an eyebrow; she saw it and was slightly offended by his reaction. “Sir, is there anything wrong with what I said?”
“No,” John said. He decided to change topic before further pissing the woman off. “Josh, is Bouviere coming along for the mission?”
“Yes.”
“Damn!” Bouviere was generally disliked by the squad. The man was an ex-con who went through neural resocialization. The process mellowed him down, but he was still a punk and suffered from a few personality disorders, probably because of the half assed resoc job. John suspected him of distributing illegal substances, but he just couldn’t nail the creep. John’s thoughts were interrupted as the room’s doors hissed open and Bouviere walked in along with six other marines.
“Hello, chief,” Jedd said as everyone took a seat.
“You’re all ten minutes late you bunch of clowns,” John said jokingly, he avoided the profanities; he’d save them for later when people were dying left and right and when he would be an inch away from loosing a limb. “Anyway, let’s get started. Josh, is everyone here?”
Joshua noted that all the seats had been filled. He nodded his head.
John looked around him and noticed that Bouviere was just three chairs away from him. He decided to ignore the prick and press on with the meeting. “Okay, let me relay what Colonel Fowler has told me. After our ships woops the UFPP ships and clear the way to the planet, we will be dropped in and the tanks will spear head the assault to the UFPP city.”
John had placed a silver hologram projector on the table. It was as big as a dinner plate and projected a large three dimensional hologram of the UFPP city. It was a detailed representation, depicting all the buildings of the city. Most of them were small; there were a lot of two storey buildings, a few five storey buildings, scores of one storey buildings, an area filled with large buildings which could’ve been administrative, the northern side of the building had factories, massive complexes with pipes and giant smoke stocks. They were all composed of multiple colors, each color having a specific meaning. There were scores of dark red sections a few miles from the city’s western side; they were the UFPP military presence. There were a few light red portions near the dark red sections, representing the meager Gamma-Sigma forces.
”Um, sir, does the planet only have one city?” Private First Class Todd McLooney, Jedd’s younger brother, asked, wondering if that city was the only place of habitation in the entire planet.
“Yes. But there are a few large towns, or small cities around the planet. This city is the largest and is the main base of operations. Now don’t ask questions until I say that you can,” John glanced at Todd with a pissed off look, shutting him up. “Now after the tanks secure a portion of the city, we along with other squads are inserted into the outskirts of the city by dropships. We will be in Rangers and will make our way across this route here…”
He typed a few buttons on a paper thin key pad and several streets were highlighted in bright green, they were connected and formed a simple route which was.
“…and we are to meet with two agents who have infiltrated the planet and have been providing us with key intelligence. They have been there for quite some time as the USE has been on the UFPP’s trail for years. We will find a run down one storey brick walled house spray painted with the words ‘YER MOM’ and one of us will have to shout out a specific question which the agents will reply to with a specific answer,” John stopped for a while and looked at the men who were waiting for him to continue. John sighed and carried on. “One of us will have to shout out loud ‘Dale, that looks so cute. Can I suck it?’ to which the agents will reply to by saying ‘Bite me!’ We don’t know what they look like so we can only identify them by that manner.”
The marines were chuckling and some were laughing their asses off. John grabbed a large silver colored briefcase and placed it on the table with a large thud, causing the men to shut up. “And after identifying them, we will hand them this. I don’t know what is in it and it can only be opened with a five gigabyte code. After handing them these, we will go to the extraction point here,” the holographic map showed them a flat area just outside the city, right behind the area which the tanks are supposed to secure. “And the agents will be extracted. After that, we will assist in capturing the city.”
John stopped to clear his throat and drink some water and to let the men absorb what he laid down. “This mission won’t be easy. It will be urban warfare and the UFPP forces are very competent. We will be facing battle droids, a little of the Gamma-Sigma’s forces, tanks, combat vehicles, heavy power armor units, gunships, and artillery and mobile suits. Our route will be blocked by stiff resistance, they’ll try to slow us down in any way possible since they know we’re tough sons of bitches and once they see our little convoy, the forces not occupied with our main offensive will try their best to stop us.”
Holographic images of various UFPP droids, vehicles and tanks were projected as he layed down the composition of the UFPP forces. John inputted some instructions on the key pad and scores of buildings and streets lit up. By now the hologram resembled a Christmas tree. “These are the optimum locations for the enemy to set up their defenses in reaction to our main force’s assault. When they realize that our convoy is coming in from an unexpected angle, they will react like so,” red spots dotted the area where the route, highlighted by green, was. “I’m inputting these potential enemy locations into your suits, so if you want to know where the enemies could be, your wrist computer will display a tactical map on your full screen HUDs. And with that, I’ve covered just about everything. Any questions?”
One soldier raised his hand. John nodded at him. “What’s in the brief-“
“I don’t know.” John snapped. “Next question. Make it a good one.”
Joshua raised his hand which had a pen in it. John nodded at him knowing that his question would be decent, at least. “You mentioned ‘mobile suits’. It’s not a commonly used term. I remember reading it in an article once though I didn’t know what it meant. So, what is this ‘mobile suit’?”
“It’s a combat walker, though the people at Maibatsu call it a mobile suit. They’re a wee bit larger than normal combat walkers, they’re fairly common in UFPP controlled areas though I don’t know why anybody would use a combat walker or a mobile suit or whatever,” John said, his voice filled with disdain for the ‘mobile suits’, a concept the USE military once tested and rejected due to its complication and impracticality and inferiority to what was already being fielded. Other nations had a few combat walkers which were used only in urban warfare scenarios where they suffered more losses than that of other combat vehicles and tanks. The UFPP had the most number of walkers, probably because some of the largest corporations in the UFPP were Japanese and they had a strange fixation with the walkers. “These mobile suits won’t be too hard to knock out. They stick out like a sore thumb, a two storey tall sore thumb which will be easy pickings for gunships, tanks, artillery, Rangers, anti-tank missiles and everything else. The Gamma-Sigma fielded combat walkers in Daron and we whooped their furry asses. These mobile suits won’t be any tougher.”
“I see.” Josh said.
“Anymore questions?” John asked. There were none. “So I guess we’re done then. Meet me at the launch bays in an hour, even if the space battle is still in progress. Class dismissed.”
With that, John got off his table and exited the room. He passed by several pretty looked girls in skin tight uniforms and with their hair dyed in odd colors, like the girls from the OrGazmo commercials. He smiled at them and they smiled back, filling his head with all kinds of naughty thoughts. Mmm…nylons, John thought before nearly bumping into a robot hauling a crate twice its size. “Watch it lug nuts!”
“Sorry,” the robot responded in a dull monotone.
“Miserable good for nothing-“ he hadn’t the chance to mumble profanities as he bumped into someone and fell right on his ass. John was ready to yell a foul string of profanities so venomous that children would soil their pants but then he noted that the person he bumped was a particularly good looking lady. John did a double take and instantly scanned her. She had short brown hair, a fair complexion and was slender and she wasn’t busty but not a toothpick either. She was wearing a blouse and a skirt which ended right above her knees, which gave John a good idea of how her legs looked like and made him think her cute little a-
“I’m so sorry!” the lady hastily apologized, interrupting John’s train of delicious thoughts as she gathered her datasheets which now cluttered the floor. Datasheets were thick transparent plastic sheets which carried information, some of the cheaper ones were used as newspapers, they could contain a lot of written text, and the expensive ones could contain entire encyclopedias. John had several volumes of the Encyclopedia Galactica all compiled into a handful of datasheets, he also had a datasheet filled with ‘picture files’. “I’m very sorry, are you okay? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Um…” John was never good with women, especially when caught with his pants down, metaphorically speaking of course. “Yeah, I’m okay, how about you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Can I…uh…help you with those?” John grabbed a sheet then stopped to eye her up as she picked up the sheets. She moved her head to look at him and he quickly resumed gathering the fallen datasheets. John had a lot of practice; he knew how to avoid being caught.
“I was really careless,” the lady said. She had a cute, sweet face and a lock of hair was out of place, it obscured a small part of her face, making her look even hotter.
“No, it’s my fault,” John said, wondering why he never found this gem before. He stared at her as she gathered the remaining datasheets. He found the last sheet and grabbed it and handed her what little he gathered. “Here.”
“Thanks,” she smiled. Oh my God, John thought as he analyzed and compared that smile to everything he had seen in real life, holoscreens, datasheets and paper. She was ethereal. Concentrating enough will power to avoid staring at her was the hardest feat he had done in his career as a marine. God!
“You’re welcome,” John said, smiling like an idiot. Give her your name, you idiot, his brain told the rest of him. Good idea. “My name’s John Baylor, I’m a lieutenant of the marines.”
“Oh!” she said. She was still smiling and so was John. John started believing in a God. It was good karma. Finally, all his pain and suffering and slobbing around was rewarded with this glorious gift from the heavens! It was destiny! Whatever it was, it was great! “My name’s Selphie Alistair, I’m Captain Armstrong’s secretary.
“Cool. Tell the good captain I said hi,” John thought for a while, pondering on the possibilities of her going out with the captain. Nah, the captain was old and gigantic and like some sort of gorilla or Neanderthal, a smart ape but Selphie didn’t look like the captain’s type. John gave a mental sigh in relief and was proud of his critical analysis skills.
“Sure. Hey, it’s been nice meeting you but Captain Armstrong wanted these to be on his desk twenty minutes ago and he’s a little stressed now since we’re about to y’know, go into combat. So I guess I’ll be seeing ya,” she flashed him that fantastic smile and walked away, giving John a great view of her rear.
“Yeah, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Alistair,” John said. He wondered if he should’ve called her Selphie, but then they just met…God, life as a marine was awesome. He was acting like a teenage boy for Christ’s sake.
“Just call me Selphie,” she said as she disappeared into a room.
John was about to say something but stopped himself as she was already gone. What a day, he thought as he recapped what had just happened and wondered where he was going to spend the rest of his free time.
Half an hour later, the White Shark and Peregrine fighters went back to their launch bays and the pilots took a short nervous break, mingling with the marines and other personnel, they did not talk too much as the ships were in red alert and most of their crews were in battle stations. The ships along with their corvette escorts positioned themselves to face one direction and then they began accelerating forward, going from zero to near light speeds in a short moment. Then there was another burst of power from the ships’ engines as the hyperdrive kicked in and the ships raced straight into oblivion. The ships disappeared from real space and went into hyperspace, streaking through the stars at speeds beyond light and heading straight towards the UFPP territory. War was soon to begin. The blood of many was to be spilled. The hammer was about to fall.
