Marines (33 page)
A planetary assault is a very tightly planned and executed affair. Troopers are typically put on pre-assault intravenous feeding programs and injected with a cocktail of narcotics designed to increase reaction speeds and stamina.
When the powered infantry solider hits the ground on a target world, he or she has all the equipment and preparedness that technology, medicine, and training can provide.
The Western Alliance
Political & Economic Structure of the Western Alliance
The Western Alliance at the time of the Third Frontier War is a two-tiered federal republic governed by an entrenched political oligarchy. The Alliance president and ruling council are selected by the governing bodies of the component nation-states: The United States, Greater Canada, Great Britain, and Oceania. There are no general elections for these top-tier positions.
The United States is the largest and most important of the component nation-states, though all are similar in structure and governmental operation. Superficially a democratic republic, the U.S. is dominated by a semi-entrenched political class, which controls every aspect of the economy and the daily lives of citizens through an incomprehensible tangle of laws and regulations.
Although no official distinctions exist, American society in the 23rd century has three basic classes. The political class forms the highest strata, consisting of holders of political office, supervisory government employees, attorneys, and their families. Membership into the political class is theoretically available to any citizen, but in reality access to the political academies is controlled by the existing class members, whose sponsorship or patronage is required to gain entry. The corporate magnates, who run the major business enterprises, are associate members of the political class, and enjoy similar privileges.
The middle class consists of the educated workers and low-level government employees, who mostly reside in segregated sections of cities, such as the Manhattan Protected Zone of New York. The middle class enjoys relative safety from urban violence and is generally provided with sufficient food and entertainment to make life tolerable. The standard of living is, however, far below that enjoyed in the 20th and early 21st centuries, before the great debt repudiations of the mid-2000s.
Below the middle class are the vast numbers of the lower strata workers and unemployed. Consisting of the uneducated, those who have been cast out of the middle class, and out-of-favor minorities and religious groups, the Cogs, as they are known, scratch out a miserable existence the best they can. Living in violence-plagued cities outside the middle class zones, the Cogs work for minimal pay in large factories and basic materials plants. The Cog typically live in older, poorly maintained housing stock clustered outside the city centers where the more educated workers reside. With limited access to civic services and low medical priority ratings, the life expectancy of a Cog is less than half that of a member of the middle class.
The government maintains a large number of paramilitary organizations through which it enforces control over the population. Elections are held regularly but change very little. The two political parties determine who will run in what district, so generally there is only a single choice in each election. Voters may express displeasure by failing to vote for the designated candidate or by writing in an alternative, however anyone taking such action risks punitive sanctions, such as an unexplained reduction in one's medical priority rating.
The economy consists solely of large enterprises, run by the corporate magnates in cooperation with the government. There is little competition, and markets are allocated by government fiat. The system is an economic failure constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, but it is sustained by the wealth created by the space colonies and their exploitation of the mineralogical treasures of the new worlds.
Political and Economic Structure of Alliance Colony Worlds
The colony worlds of the Western Alliance have a radically different societal structure from that of the Alliance on Earth. The earliest colonists left Earth with almost no prospect of ever returning. The challenge of developing new worlds attracted independent and adventurous individuals, just the kind the government was happy to ship off to space.
The distances and travel times between colony worlds made it impractical for the central government to exert tight control over these remote, tiny populations, so they were left mostly on their own. As long as the expected resources flowed back to Earth, the colonies were allowed to govern themselves as they saw fit.
Most of these worlds adopted democratic governments of one sort or another, and the frontier in general had a spirit of egalitarianism that was long ago lost on Earth, if it had ever truly existed there.
Democracy on the rim was not perfect. Some of the worlds established enhanced levels of citizenship, usually preferencing those born on the world over those who emigrated from Earth. Others produced their own odious politicians not unlike those on Earth. But generally, the colonials were a rugged, self-reliant breed, resentful of the intrusive government they'd left behind, and highly resistant to the development of anything remotely similar on their new homeland.
When colonies were tiny and starships slow, this arrangement worked without any problems. But as the importance of the colonies increased and populations grew, the central government on Earth began to interfere more and more in day-to-day colonial affairs. The colonists resisted these attempts, and tensions slowly increased. The nearly constant warfare with the other powers kept this problem from becoming severe by focusing energies and resources on defeating the enemy. But the discontent remained, and it was increasing.
Also by Jay Allan
The Last Veteran (Shattered States I)
The Dragon's Banner
Coming Soon - The Sequel to Marines:
The Cost of Victory
Crimson Worlds Book II
(October 15, 2012)
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The Cost of Victory
Crimson Worlds II
Sneak Peak (Chapters 1-3)
Chapter 1
AS Cromwell
Alliance Grand Fleet Flagship
Gliese 250 System
There was a battle raging in space. Unimaginably far from Earth, around a massive space station orbiting a gas giant in a binary solar system, squadrons of ships fought each other in a desperate struggle.
In the combat command center of his battle-scarred flagship, Admiral Augustus Garret sat quietly and considered the Western Alliance fleet he commanded. Garret was young for such an assignment, but he was the hero of the Second Battle of Algol and had been in the forefront of a tremendous resurgence in Alliance fortunes after the disastrous defeats of the early war.
Like the rest of the officers busily working around him, Garret wore a tight-fitting pressure suit that allowed him to endure the G-forces he would experience during combat. The suit could also keep him alive if the hull was breached and the control center lost pressurization. That is, of course, if he wore the helmet lying next to his command chair, the one he had carelessly tossed aside.
The command center was cramped, like everything on a spaceship, and it was dominated by a massive screen, currently displaying the locations the 164 vessels of the fleet. There were 9 large blue ovals, each representing one of the capital ships under Garret's command. They were surrounded by clouds of smaller dots, the support ships and escorts of each battlegroup. On the extreme flank of the fleet was a cluster of small yellow dots, the ships of the allied PRC task group, mostly mid-sized cruisers and squadrons of small attack ships.
The Alliance capital ships were all large and powerful, but the three vessels of the new Yorktown class were something different, each a full two kilometers in length, bristling with weaponry and carrying 4 squadrons of heavy fighter-bombers. This would be the first battle for these behemoths, and Garret was counting on their firepower to make the difference in the battle now just beginning. He'd considered transferring his flag to one of the new ships, but he'd ridden the Cromwell since the victory at Second Algol, and he wasn't going to abandon her now.
Maneuvering a space fleet in battle, with the many variables and tremendous distances involved, was a giant game of anticipating the opponent's moves - a complex exercise in making educated guesses. Augustus Garret was a master of the art, having displayed an uncanny ability to predict his adversaries' intentions.
The system in dispute was Gliese 250, well over 100 light years from Earth, and the battle taking place was large - the biggest ever fought, in fact. Gliese was a vital Caliphate choke point that had been seized in a daring surprise attack when Erik Cain's marines boarded and captured the giant station. The system had been deep in Caliphate space until an Alliance survey team located a previously undiscovered warp gate, redrawing the strategic map in an instant. The new gate led directly from a major Alliance base to the Gliese system and provided an opportunity to launch a surprise attack on a vital sector the enemy had considered secure.
The capture of Gliese had allowed the Alliance to mount a series of follow-up campaigns against systems on the enemy's frontier, cutting off vital supply sources and dramatically changing the outlook of the war. The Alliance had been losing, but now they seized the initiative and won a series of unanswered victories.
The Caliphate's first attempt to retake the system had been repulsed, and now they and their CAC allies had assembled a massive combined fleet for a second attempt, one which was opposed by every naval unit the Alliance high command could scrape up.
The first group of invaders had come in fast, bursting through the warp gate on a carefully plotted vector that took them directly at their target, the hulking, kilometers long station. Their plan was to gut its defenses with the first task force and then fight the defending fleet with a second wave coming in twelve hours behind.
The enemy was coming through the warp gate from Alpha Cephei, which was approximately 80 light minutes from the station. The defenders had good intelligence from the scanners deployed near the gate, which transmitted their data at light speed back to the defending fleet, giving the Admiral a complete report on the enemy first wave seven hours before they entered combat range.
Unfortunately for the attackers, Admiral Garret had anticipated their strategy and positioned his ships for maximum effect. The Western Alliance fleet he commanded was large and powerful, but it was still smaller than the Caliphate-CAC force he faced, and he knew it would take every trick he had to win this fight. Conventional tactics called for meeting the invaders near the warp gate, seeking to hit the enemy before they had time to shake themselves into battle order. But no Alliance ships awaited the enemy as they emerged into Gliese space. Garret had his ships deployed back near the station, waiting. His strategy was to bleed the enemy as much as possible with his fixed defenses and then, with the odds hopefully more even, get right in their faces and fight it out to the death.
The minefields were the first thing the invaders discovered. Far thicker than the attackers anticipated, they were positioned perfectly along the path of the assaulting force. They savaged the incoming ships, which were moving at nearly 0.15c and could not apply enough thrust to evade the ECM-masked fields when they were finally detected.
The mines did not rely on a ship striking them directly, an occurrence of almost infinite improbability. Instead, they released up to 200 individual warheads, small high-thrust rockets blasted out in all directions and carrying individual payloads of up to 500 megatons, creating a large area effect. Even a near miss with one warhead could cause catastrophic damage to a target vessel. A direct hit would vaporize anything manmade.
The minefields tore apart the enemy first wave, mostly cruisers intended to strike the station as they passed, then decelerate to regroup. The attacking vessels plunged right through the most heavily mined sector, and hundreds of the devices were triggered, causing thousands of high-yield warheads to explode in the path of the enemy ships.
Garret watched the scanning reports closely. Ten, at least, of the enemy ships were destroyed outright, and 20 or more suffered significant damage. The force was depleted and disordered when they finally entered range of the station and launched a ragged salvo of missiles. The enemy fire, degraded by the damage from the minefield, was far less effective than Garret had feared, and his defensive countermeasures had been extremely effective. Launched at very high speeds and clearly targeted for the station, the missiles were on vectors Garret had predicted, which made them easy targets for the linked point defense arrays of his defending forces.
He had taken a chance, positioning his entire fleet nearly motionless, in direct support of the station. The resulting combined defense network was extremely potent against missile fire, but it left his ships out of position to engage enemy vessels directly. If the attackers had sent their capital ships in at moderate velocity, formed up for battle, Garret could have been at a disadvantage. But his instincts had been spot on. Missile after missile was intercepted, and in the end only three got close enough to harm the station - mostly surface damage and radiation penetration in outer compartments.