Battle for New Detroit: Part 1
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So, a little backstory before the story, if you will.
Back when Tony was running Defiance Games, he had a forum there as well (some of you may remember it) and in that forum, I wrote a few stories pertaining to the UAMC in the alien Wars universe. the biggest, and only complete story I wrote for that universe was "Battle for New Detroit." This was before I had even started my Creative Writing degree (which I don't recommend- I have made FAR more money with my rudimentary CAD skills, and my associates in Machining, but I digress), and it shows.
The story was well recieved, even if only in that forum, and I had a ton of fun writing it. Later, I would begin revising it to fit within my own universe (it's my story afterall), but I kept the original, warts and all, for posterity.the story features the Hardsuits heavily, with the principle protagonists using them to battle Mercs. That's the main story, and I won't bore you with the details here. I'll just ask that if you want to offer criticism- please do. Like I said, it's raw and untouched as you'll read it. There are repetitious sentences, poor comma usage, bad grammar, on the nose dialog, yadda yadda.
I think, given the upcoming release of the Hardsuits, it's only right that I re-post this story again in it's entirety. Hopefully, It'll fly and not require TOO much editing for language. enjoy.
Chapter One
New Detroit was a desert world, orbiting a red dwarf star almost 200 light-years from Earth. The planets orbital period was just under fifteen days, and the planet completed a revolution once every sixteen point seven hours. Time was not counted in increments that made any sense here. A New Detroit day was 26 hours, a year was 30 orbits. The planet was small, about the size of Mars, but denser, having a gravitational pull closer to Earths. Its single colony, New Detroit, gave the planet its unofficial name. Officially it was known as Reignier 447, after its discoverer. New Detroit was a young American colony, and unlike more advanced colonies, was sparsely colonized. The land mass was mainly desert, with a few small oasis across its two major land masses. Most of the planet was desert. In fact over eighty percent of the planet was scrub desert. Its strong magnetic field, coupled with its high gravitational pull for such a small world and its distance from its star, made it extremely habitable however. The average temperature of new Detroit got no higher than three hundred Kelvin.
The colony of New Detroit was not overly large, by human standards. With a population of just over seventy thousand, it was about the size of a small city on Earth. Many of the Marines who were stationed here, were from the colony of Eldorado, the home of First Battalion, Eighth Marines. None of them were from New Detroit, though the Army 47th Engineer Company of the 32nd Engineer Battalion were transplants, having volunteered to colonize the planet, bringing their families with them. Life was rough on New Detroit, much like life in the real Detroit had been. But the colony was deemed safe, being far from any known colonies of the People’s Republic of China, or any of the European nations.
Even so, the Marines of Charlie Company had been dispatched from their lives on Eldorado, with their light strike Corvette Valley Forge to secure the colony from invasion until the Army could get a unit established for the worlds defense. When they had set down, there had been barely any structures for the Marines to live in. in fact, they had had to live in tents the first four months, until the Engineers arrived and began to build the structures of Camp Preston. At first, they set up a series of large tents which acted as the Marines armory, armored lockers having been flown down from the Valley Forge, having been constructed by the fabricator on the ship to the Marines specifications. It had been decided that once the actual armory was built, they would serve as the basis for the weapons lockers for it.
Still, the Marines stored their equipment in the large tent, though they now lived in pre-fabricated buildings that had arrived almost a month ago with the last freighter to arrive in system. Along with the buildings, and supplies that had arrived, another thousand settlers had arrived, and set up a small town just outside of Camp Preston. It had jokingly been called New Jacksonville, a throw off to the small city in North Carolina that bordered Camp Lejeune. The name had stuck, though in reality the small town was little more than a store, a barber shop, a small convenience store, and some homes. Soon after it had been established, the majority of the colonists had moved to New Detroit, or had settled somewhere nearby to start the process of setting up the farming apparatus that would eventually feed the planet. That had been five months ago. Five, long, hot, grueling months.
Corporal Donovan sat in the tent, and watched the diagnostic routine run on the HUD of his Hard Suit. Systems began to check out green as it scrolled its way through the diagnostic. Servos, environmental control, power, ammunition, weapons, ballistics, navigation all began to show up as working within normal parameters. Convinced that all was well, he stood and walked the suit out of the tent, and into the light of New Detroit’s M-class star. Arid wind whipped around him as he moved to join his platoon. He found them assembled near the chow hall, their armored suits camouflage scheme making them seem like tan and brown statues standing in even rows. He found his place amongst his peers, at the head of his team.
The Marines stood at loose parade rest, their suits seeming comfortable, their weapons hanging from their armored forms, the only glint coming ever so slightly from the armored, subdued visors. Donovan looked at the back of the suit in front of him, his HUD putting the “Hagerty-32094485” over it, as the internal communications suite, and inertial navigation system did their work to show him the position of every suit in the platoon. New Detroit had yet to put any GPS systems in orbit, and as such, the Marines were forced to rely on drones put out by the Corvette. The system worked very well, transmitting their position to within a few meters accuracy. Btu it was not perfect. Should the Corvette be knocked out, the drones would only run for about ten or so hours, and then they would begin to fall to the planet’s surface.
As such, the Marines didn’t rely on them for their primary navigation. The suits had a special system, known as the Inertial Navigator, which tracked the suits movements and referenced them against a known point. For the suits, that known point was the Civilian Invasion Shelters. Every suit had that point programmed in as zero, zero. It was always marked on the HUD, a small arrow pointing to it so the Marines knew where to go in the event of an emergency, and what to fight to protect. The general consensus being that if any enemy ever got between them and the Shelter, they had failed.
But everyone knew that would never happen. New Detroit was just too far removed from the front lines, its position being of little import. The only reason anyone would ever want to invade and take this ball of rock, was as a show of force, or because it happened to be far from even the most recent nests of Hudson's Bugs found in the human sphere of influence. Even the high mineral density of the world was not reason enough to risk an all-out war trying to invade it. It was the longstanding joke that One Eight was never supposed to see combat, hence all the non-combat assignments that they had received in recent years. They were just never going to get any.
The platoon was soon joined by another, as First Platoon marched together from their barracks on the other side of the small military installation, and formed in neat rows alongside Second Platoon. Soon, Third Platoon and Weapons joined the others, and the whole of Charlie Company was formed, awaiting their commander, and his inspection. Charlie company was the sole Marine unit on New Detroit. The only other unit was an Army engineer platoon that was busy building Camp Preston. Donovan could hear their construction equipment moving in the background as the Marine company waited for their commanding officer to arrive, and conduct the inspection of their armor and weapons.
After ten minutes of waiting, and whispering between the Marines, the company commander could finally be seen walking from the Armory tent, his armor being marked by the HUDs of each Marine as “Thompson-“ with an ever changing grid co-ordinate. His suit was lightly armed, his service rifle its only armament, hanging on its sling from his armor, rattling against it as he walked. He was a man of short stature, only one point six meters tall. If he were not wearing armor, his black skin would be evident, proof of his Kenyan heritage. He was a fair man to be sure, and one of the best Company Commanders many of the higher ups had ever served with.
Next to him was the Company Executive Officer, First Lieutenant Jacobs. He was a stern man, having grown up in a military family. His father was rumored to have earned the Medal of honor fighting the Germans on Rinn World, and he had strived to be like his father. Unfortunately for him, he had been caught in One Eight, and like almost everyone here, except Gunny Bates, had no combat experience. This didn’t stop him from saying things like, “Would you do that in combat?” He had no idea if they would or not. None of them, aside from Gunny Bates did.
Even First Sergeant Takahashi had no idea what she would do. She had originally been a Mechanic in the wing, specializing in VC-98’s. She had worked her way up the ranks, and eventually been promoted to First Sergeant. Now she found herself amongst Grunts. At first she had been intimidated by their reputation, the mean hearted beasts that cared not for other MOS’s inside the Marines, but had soon found her footing as a mother of the company. She had been accepted when she had stood beside one of her Marines as they had faced charges of misconduct. The charges had been outrageous, even by POG (Personnel Other than Grunt) standards. The Marine had been convicted, and sentenced to ninety days office hours, and she had been forced to swallow her defeat. But this had cemented her as a part of the company, and the Marines trusted her.
Gunnery Sergeant Bates faced the company and braced to attention. Bates, or Gunny Bates to the Marines of the company, was the only Marine with any combat experience. It was something that he secretly worried about every day. Not because he held himself in such high regards, but because in this day and age, with all the conflicts that the United States and their associated colonies in space were involved in, it was very rare to have a company that had only one combat tested leader. And that leader not even in a leadership billet. Bates position within the company could best be described as a glorified shipping clerk. Sure, he lead morning PT, and trained the NCO’s in their battlefield duties, giving classes, and assisting the platoon sergeants in the field, but he was outside the chain of command. In order for him to lead anyone in combat, the Captain, the XO, the First Sergeant, and every platoon commander would have to die first.
“Company.” Bates bellowed to the assembled Marines. “Ah-ten-huh!”
The company smartly and professionally snapped to attention as the company gunnery sergeants order was broadcast through the communications net to the fully armored Marines. Their armored legs slammed together, the echo of almost two hundred legs colliding being heard over the construction equipment working tirelessly behind the company, the soldiers were momentarily distracted as they looked over their shoulders. Gunny Bates smartly about faced, coming to stand at the position of attention facing away from the assembled company.
Takahashi marched smartly in front of him. Bate saluted, and rendered his report. Takahashi returned the salute, and instructed him to assume hi post. Bates then about faced again, and marched directly toward the company, coming to a stop behind them, then about faced again. Takahashi about faced, and the Captain Thompson came in front of her. And she saluted and rendered her report. He saluted, and ordered her to assume her post. She simply walked around behind him, and came to a stop behind and to the left of him.
“Company, open ranks. March.” Ordered Captain Thompson over the company comm net.
The Marines opened the dispersion of their ranks, so that an armored figure could easily walk down along their length. Soon after they had opened their dispersion, the captain, First sergeant, and company XO began walking amongst them, conducting the full blown inspection of their armor.
“Donovan.” Corporal Samantha Long said over a secure freq. “What do you want to do after this inspection?”
Donovan smiled behind his subdued visor, as he thought about the question. He knew what he wanted to do, but the question was what she wanted to do. One of the reasons he liked the First Sergeant was due to how she had handled the fraternization issue between him and Long. They had carried on an affair for almost four months before anyone became any the wiser. Unfortunately, the person who became the wiser was Gunny Bates. He had pushed for a battalion level Non Judicial Punishment, or NJP. He wanted the two reduced in rank from Lance Corporal to Private First Class. First Sergeant had stepped in, and decided that the two would be separated from each other by putting them in separate platoons. The company, but more importantly, the battalion Commander had agreed that it was a good alternative to reducing the two in rank, and required much less paperwork.
Donovan and Long hadn’t known at the time, but this maneuver had saved them a lot of time, and money. It had also allowed the careers of the two to continue unabated, as they had shown great promise to becoming leaders within the company. Soon after they had been promoted to corporal (on the same day, one right after the other), and then they had deployed to New Detroit. Since arriving on New Detroit, they had spent every available free hour together, visiting the small city they were here to defend, and enjoying their time immensely. Donovan was trying to work up the courage to ask Long to marry him. He knew that it would be an almost impossible thing to accomplish before they finished their enlistments, but at least the option would then be on the table.
“I don’t know.” Donovan replied. “I was thinking about going to Starkies.”
There was a pause as Long thought about that, or was inspected herself. Donovan used the opportunity to check the location of the Captain Thompson, as he was the one inspecting his platoon. He found that Thompson was only a few Marines down. He was just about to tell Long to hold a second, when his helmet was filled with static.
“All stations, all stations. Break. Break. Break. This is the Valley Forge.”
Every Marine was paying attention to their headsets now, the formal inspection completely forgotten. Donovan put the thoughts of a fun night in the back of his mind, and began to try and wrap his head around what he was hearing. Any transmission with, “Break. Break. Break.” meant that something very important was to follow. Generally it was only used in life and death emergencies, and Donovan had never heard it used in anything except training missions where a simulated enemy had dropped a simulated weapon of massed destruction. His blood turned ice cold at the next transmission.
“We have detected a Chinese Dreadnaught entering the system. At its current course and speed, we can expect it to enter New Detroit’s orbit in four hours. The Valley Forge will be sending the last of the Marine contingent aboard ship to the surface of the planet, and will then boost from orbit, and attempt to delay the Dreadnaught.”
Donovan noticed that they didn’t mention anything about trying to stop it. He recalled something about a Chinese Dreadnaught being about two thousand meters long, and carrying three battalions of reinforced infantry. He quickly brought up the information he needed as the Valley Forge continued.
“We have dispatched a communications drone to the nearest American World.” Donovan recognized the captain of the ships voice now. “With any luck, in four months there should be an American response. Until then we are on our own. We will delay them as long as we can, and then attempt to disengage to keep them from being able to use their Dreadnaught for orbital support. With any luck, maybe we will be able to disable it before it makes orbit. If not, and we are taken out of action, Captain Thompson, you are authorized to use any means necessary to hold the colony of New Detroit. This transmission has been sent to all units on planet, and the Colonial Mayor. Good luck, and God’s speed.”
The transmission cut off, and the company was left standing like statues in their quad. The construction equipment had stopped moving, only those who had not heard anything were still moving about, oblivious to what was coming. Donovan turned his head, the names of every Marine in his view shifting across his vision as he looked for Thompson. Gunny Bates was moving toward Thompson, as well as the XO, and First Sergeant. Their visors went up as they talked face to face. He could see the looks in their eyes, and knew that things were not good. He wondered what plan they were concocting to survive this catastrophe.
“I guess Starkies is off for the night, huh honey?” said Long over their private channel.
“I guess so.” Was all Donovan was able to say.
