“We are now at one G,” Captain Lee’s voice said over the platoon channel. “I imagine this is a bit of a shock after three days of zero G! Better brace yourselves. From here on out, this is going to get rough. Hang on to your eyeballs!”
And then the pressure grew swiftly very bad indeed….
SUNDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2040
Général de Brigade Paul-Armand
Larouche
UNS Guerrière, Tsiolkovsky Base
2357 hours GMT
Général Larouche clasped his hands at his back as he stared at the big bridge monitor. He’d been expecting an attack for a long time…and even forewarned, there’d been pathetically little that he could do to prepare. At least three enemy wheeled vehicles were approaching across the crater plain from the west, just visible, now, to the ship’s radar. That couldn’t be the entirety of the enemy force; they would not be moving against Tsiolkovsky now unless they felt themselves ready.
The transport downed fourteen hours ago must have been part of a larger invasion fleet, setting down these vehicles somewhere to the west and making the final approach on the surface, where the antimatter weapon couldn’t reach them. Larouche had warned his superiors of the possibility of an overland assault, but his reports had been ignored.
Fools. Idiots and fools!
“Colonel d’André?” he said, turning slightly. “Is Shuhadaku still on-line?” The name was still clumsy in his mouth. He’d been told that it was a Sumerian phrase that meant something like “Supreme Strong Bright Weapon,” as good a description as any he’d heard for the terrifying power of the antimatter beam.
“Yes, my General,” d’André replied. “Antimatter reactor on-line, conventional nuclear plant on-line at eighty percent.” When Larouche did not reply immediately, d’André added, “Shall we open fire on the targets approaching from the west, sir?”
Larouche gestured at the screen. “The image is being relayed from a remote camera on the mountain,” he said. “Unfortunately, the central peak is blocking our fire.”
“We have ground troops outside, sir,” d’André said. “They can engage at any time.”
“No. Save them.” At a range of over ninety kilometers, the enemy had swept twelve men armed with H&K Laserkarabiner LK-36 lasers from the peak in something less than forty seconds. It would serve no purpose to waste more men firing at a target they could not stop.
But there would be a part for them to play soon, if he kept them in reserve now.
In fact, the UN position at Tsiolkovsky was now in serious trouble. With the loss of their main radar, UN forces had lost both their primary deep-space eyes, and the fire control for the Shuhadaku system. That meant that the enemy ground vehicles could get very close indeed before the antimatter cannon could be turned against them; worse, as soon as the beam weapon was fired at one of the enemy vehicles, the others would know exactly where to fire to knock Shuhadaku out of operation.
If Larouche wanted to save the antimatter weapon for the main American assault, which he was sure was yet to come, he would have to kill the ground vehicles by more conventional means.
“There appear to be only three enemy vehicles, sir,” d’André reported. “There must be more of them, some-where.”
“There must be, indeed,” Larouche replied. He sighed. “We are about to reap the yield of our leaders’ hubris, my friend.”
“Sir?”
“Never mind.” Quietly, he added, “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord…have mercy.”
Born and raised in the tiny village of Echallon, high in the mountains not far from Geneva and the Swiss border, Paul-Armand Larouche had wanted to be a priest. He’d already been attending the seminary at Bourg-en-Bresse for a year when his father, then a colonel in the French Army, had ordered him to transfer to St. Michael’s Military Academy or be cut off from the family.
The battle with his father had been raging for five years already by that time, and Paul-Armand thought he’d had what it took to outstubborn the man, who seemed obsessed with France’s past militant glories and her future as leader of the European union , and through the EU, the United Nations. In the end, the old man had won.
His father had died in 2023, but by that time Paul-Armand’s military career had been firmly set. He’d married, settled down as much as any military man could do so, and continued up the rungs of advancement and honor.
But he still knew, deep in his heart, that he would have been happier as a parish priest in some small town in his beloved mountains of Jura and Ain. Especially now, when he could muster no sympathy, no understanding at all for his superiors’ decision.