Chapter 20: De Motu Corporum XX
The Long Lunar Night, Part I
This is the 20th part of the webnovel “Principia — De Motu Corporum.” Click here to go to the previous chapter, or here to go to the beginning.
The Situation Room at the Martian embassy was abuzz with urgent activity at the Earthers’ sudden ultimatum. Every workstation had a countdown timer that mirrored the one hovering above the chart table in the center in ghostly holographic light.
“Field Commander to Union Hall,” Petrauskas reported over the radio, “The board is set. Knightfork available on your order. Standing by.”
“Sounds like the Breachers are in position to outflank the enemy,” Atlanticus analyzed, “Now, let’s make sure we don’t need to use them. Suggestions?”
“We have seven minutes,” Matsubara pondered, “Signals, get me the United Earth Prime Minister, diplomatic channel.”
“Negative, Ambassador,” the technician answered, “All Luna-to-Earth comms are DOS-blocked.”
“Denial of Service?” Marabe asked, “If they’re jamming our comms to Mars, that’s an act of war.”
“We still have the O-1 uplink, Colonel,” the technician clarified, “but all channels to Earth are offline.”
“Options?” Atlanticus asked.
“Peregrine could probably get around the blocks,” Jon mused, “Her big dish definitely has the gain — we can use her as a relay.”
“Do it,” ordered Atlanticus.
“Palantir, this is Isengard Niner,” Jon began.
“Easier done than said, Commander!” Peregrine replied enthusiastically, “Diplomatic Backchannel online!”
Jon groaned at Peregrine’s terrible pun. Even worse, that was the name she gave to the uplink.
“Earth Prime, this is Mars Consul,” Matsubara addressed, “Prime Minister Ayodele, please respond.”
“While we’re waiting for Earth to respond,” Jon said, “I recommend that we take the refugees in-”
“We’ve been over this,” Atlanticus interrupted, “It’ll only provoke the Earthers.”
“They’ve given us an ultimatum, Flag-O!” Jon countered, “I doubt there’s much more we could do to upset them!”
Atlanticus paused for a beat — an affectation cyphonts often picked up in order to sound less mechanical around humans. “Fair point, Commander,” she subtly chastised him, “but it will still reflect badly on Mars if it turns out that we did, in fact, take in terrorists over Earth’s objections.”
“So we take them in provisionally,” Jon argued, “I’m sure the ambassador can sell it to the Earthers as a temporary measure.”
“Perhaps,” Atlanticus mused, “I’ll tell Petrauskas to proceed.”
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
The standoff had everyone pushed to the breaking point. Even though the Earthers had specified a deadline due to pass in the next 31 seconds, there was no telling whether Earth would honor it or just attack early. All it would take was one anxious soldier to panic for there to be blood on the pavement.
Tallen bet that an Earther would break first. Martians tended to be more rational than them.
It appeared that Major Petrauskas was receiving new orders. Tallen mentally prepared himself for battle, but showed no outward sign of doing so to keep from spooking the Earthers.
25 seconds.
“Attention, Earth Forces,” Petrauskas projected, “It has been decided that the Mars Colonial Union will admit these people as refugees, pending the appropriate security checks. We will, of course, be open to returning those of them who fail to pass these screenings, but any attempt to prevent their entry to the Martian embassy will be considered an act of war and we will respond accordingly. Message ends.”
“All right, people, let’s move ’em out!” Tallen ordered, “Get the wounded and the children out first!”
At Tallen’s words, the medics started evacuating a dozen Selenites on stretchers and escorting a handful of children to the embassy gate, with the rest following in a not-so-orderly fashion.
“Trainee,” Tallen addressed Misty, “go help them get situated. They could use your kindness.”
“Aye, Chief,” Misty affirmed, and then attended to her new duties.
Tallen surveyed the Earthers’ firing line. Young men and women pointing guns at them from behind the trunks, the great armored vehicles behind them shuddering ever so slightly as their mighty engines were kept running, waiting for the moment to pounce and destroy. Everything hinged on what the Earth Forces commander was going to do next.
“Trilobite Niner to all units,” the Breacher lieutenant reported, “Enemy flanking force is moving to attack position.”
“Time’s up, Mars Forces,” the enemy commander declared, “Surrender the terrorists or be destroyed.”
That, right there, was the breaking point.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
“Commander, it’s time,” a technician in the situation room reported.
“Charge the Rydberg Field,” Atlanticus ordered, “Have mortar teams load flashbang rounds and target the enemy firebase. Fire on my command.”
“Mortar teams, standing by.”
“Prepare smoke rounds for second volley.”
“Second volley aye.”
“First volley, fire!”
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
“Incoming!” Petrauskas warned as the telltale thumps of mortar fire heralded the imminent deployment of explosive ordnance, “Fall back to extraction!”
Just before the last syllable left his lips, the shells landed on the treeline and exploded in searing light and thunderous bangs, blinding and deafening the Earthers who had been caught unprepared.
“Riposter!” one of the Earthers shouted in the hope that someone else heard his order to return fire. Those who weren’t incapacitated from the blindness, the tinnitus and ruptured eardrums, or the violent nausea and projectile vomiting from the Martian bombardment followed that order haphazardly, any semblance of unit cohesion broken in the chaos.
Bullets flattened themselves against ballistic shields, leaving depthless dents where they struck — the rounds that missed spread themselves over the embassy’s Rydberg Field hovering a millimeter off of the marscrete wall and turned to incandescent tears of molten lead, antimony, and copper that slowly ran down the frictionless surface to the ground.
The chaos turned to pandemonium when the tankers in the Earth Forces’ MCVs got their act together and began their counterattack. While the Jianyings started blasting away at the Martian rearguard, the Gorgo leveled its immense 155mm main gun — a weapon usually reserved for self-propelled artillery platforms — at the embassy walls and futilly attempted to penetrate the forcefield that protected it.
Fortunately, their gunners were still half-blind and concussed. Only the Gorgo hit anywhere near its target, and that was because the wall was impossible to miss at that range.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Atlanticus and Marabe watched the battlefield unfolding outside on the Situation Room monitor.
“Second volley, fire!” Atlanticus ordered.
“Second volley, fire!” the comms technician repeated, relaying the Flag Officer’s order to the mortar teams.
“Major,” Atlanticus warned Petrauskas over the radio, “You have 1–2–0 seconds, mark!”
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
The second mortar volley exploded on cue, engulfing the advancing Earther troops in thick clouds of black smoke spreading out from where the fragments landed.
“Get the osmium outta your boots!” Tallen roared, “It’s time to go!”
Petrauskas saw the armsman next to him take a bullet in the knee and fall to the ground. “Trilobite, we need a diversion!” Petrauskas ordered as he went back for her, “Chief! I need your help!”
Tallen bounded over in a feat of Herculean might while Petrauskas helped the stricken armsman to her feet. Instead of stopping, Tallen wrapped a trunk-like arm around her waist and slid for a moment before the treads on his boots found purchase on the pavement and, swinging around back the way he came, smoothly translated that momentum into the initial burst of power he needed to start his Homeric sprint back to the embassy gate, with Petrauskas lagging behind with his merely human running pace.
He barely felt the bullets striking his heroically muscular body as he ran. Pain was a luxury he could ill afford under these circumstances.
The eternity it took for him to cross the distance to the gate was actually a pretty short one according to his internal chronometer, which ticked the seconds away in nearly perfect intervals. He quickly handed his wounded charge off to waiting medics before heading back out for the Major.
His orders didn’t require him to go back for any more stragglers, but his sense of utilitarianism demanded that did. He had the ability to make a difference, so it followed that he should.
Besides, his decades of service to the Militia taught him that not all acts of insubordination were created equally. Petrauskas might forgive him for saving his life.
The staccato of gunfire was violently punctuated by an explosion and the groaning of fatigued steel as a flaming Jianying stumbled out of the ink-black smoke cloud and collapsed onto its side. The hail of bullets and shells waned as confusion reigned once more in the Earthers’ ranks and they began shooting at their attackers’ last known position. A few wisps of smoke extruded from the cloud like black gossamer tentacles as if something unseen had emerged, using the ataxia of the Earth commander’s maniples to cover its escape. The bluehats were going to spend the next minute-and-a-half groping through jet-black smoke searching for an attacker who had long since disengaged.
The Breachers’ diversion worked ingeniously, and now they were on their way to extraction.
It was a relatively simple matter for Tallen to reach Petrauskas and carry him back to the waiting embrace of the embassy gates. As soon as Petrauskas was back on his feet, he sprung into action.
“All units, do a headcount!” he barked, “Report missing and casualties immediately!”
The Breachers blurred back into view and the humanoid members removed their helmets, revealing one of them to be an android with glossy black exterior plating, and the other two to be nearly identical — Pashtun men in their 30s, one with a sparse beard and the other clean-shaven — who, given the relative rarity of identical twins and that such twins would almost certainly be assigned to different commands, Tallen assumed they were monozygotic clones — clones of each other, rather than from an adult donor.
“Trilobite team reporting, Major,” the shaven man reported as he saluted him, “Lieutenant Tawfiq commanding. All four members accounted for, no casualties.”
“All personnel present and accounted for,” Petrauskas declared after a moment, “Close it up! Mission accomplished!”
Tallen slumped against the wall and slid to the ground with an exhausted sigh. Mission accomplished. Music to his ears. It had been a long fucking day.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Sighs of relief pealed around the Situation Room as the last of the Martian troops reported in. They didn’t get out unscathed — about a dozen were wounded to varying degrees of severity — but they all returned alive, plus the refugees they were sent to retrieve.
“Save it for the cease-fire,” Marabe chastised gently, “We’re still at DEFCON-3.”
“Ambassador,” the comms technician said, “Call incoming from Earth Prime, diplomatic channel.”
“Now they want to talk!” Matsubara said in frustration before taking a moment to compose herself again, “Dozo.”
A two-dimensional screen was projected perpendicular to the chart table, displaying a bald, round-faced Nigerian man affecting circle-framed glasses and a goatee the color of the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro and wearing the formal short-sleeved dashiki and ceremonial okpu agu hat of his Igbo ancestry — Patience Ayodele, Prime Minister of United Earth. He looked like the grandfatherly sort of statesman who would conduct himself with the joviality of Mansa Musa were it not for the dire circumstances he found himself in.
“Your Excellency, Ambassador Matsubara,” Ayodele greeted her solemnly.
“Prime Minister Ayodele,” Matsubara returned just as gravely, “I apologize for skipping the formalities, but we simply don’t have the time. Right now, there’s an entire battalion of United Earth peacekeepers beating at our gates; attacking our soil, wounding our people. Furthermore, an EREC transport in the Asteroid Belt is on a course that will take it dangerously close to an MCM spacecraft conducting exercises in less than 2,500 seconds. We have just over a minute to de-escalate this situation before we find ourselves in a shooting war, over.”
Jon recognized that “over” as a necessary measure to avoid talking over each other when communicating with a two-and-a-half second time lag. It made for a convenient cue for the other person to start speaking so that it at least appeared to be a real-time conversation.
“You had better order your warship to alter course, Ambassador,” Ayodele warned, “because if it intercepts that Earth vessel unlawfully, our nearby cruiser will have to retaliate for your act of piracy, over.”
“The MCM does not commit piracy, Prime Minister,” Matsubara retorted, “Our spacecraft is running emissions-quiet — they won’t be able to power up their reactor and alter course in time. I can order them to stand down and alert the freighter and your cruiser to their presence if you do the same, but I can’t do anything as long as your troops keep trying to force their way inside our walls!”
Matsubara took a breath.
“We also have evidence of war crimes committed by United Earth peacekeepers here in Surveyor City,” she continued, “If you were to order your ship and your troops to withdraw, I might be able to convince my government to forgo pressing charges, in the interest of continued peace, over.”
“I will issue the order,” Ayodele answered, “but the peacekeepers will stay until we know the outcome of the encounter.”
“Agreed, Prime Minister,” Matsubara accidentally interrupted. Atlanticus issued the order to the comms technician while the diplomats continued their art.
“But let me be clear, Madame Ambassador,” Ayodele continued brusquely, “If either of our ships are attacked, hostilities will escalate. Earth Prime out.”
As the call ended, Jon looked back at the converging lines showing the orbital paths of the Venture Star, the Valentyn Glushko, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and sighed.
“I really hope they don’t test our patience anymore tonight,” he said.
“Amen to that, Commander,” Marabe assented.
Next Chapter: De Motu Corporum XXI
