Eric Spears

Eric launched forward against the straps holding him in his chair as a migraine seared his skull.

Groaning Eric looked at his displays, a fall back so that he could see what was going on without having to reconnect to the VR immediately. He would need a few seconds to re-orient. A controlled disconnect was not painful but when all of his senses were mapped differently in a VR, having that disconnection occur rapidly caused disorientation and pain as his nerves and physical body reasserted itself over what he had been experiencing.

Sirens wailed and around him other Marines groaned. His displays were flashing red. Some kind of system error? It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust and then he saw the alerts flashing on his screen.

“All Marines Report to Battle Stations. System is under attack,” his display red and now the sirens made sense.

Was this part of the exercise?

“Rotten meat dog breath,” a Marine groaned nearby. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Eric looked around. Everyone was disconnected and nobody had experienced an easy disconnect.

Were enemy troops even now preparing to board Wolf Moon Station?

He was in a special operations room being used by the Operation Shadow Strike evaluators and it wasn’t his regular battle station which was about two kilometers away.

Information began scrolling across his link.

Lieutenant Wesley was polling Marines. Eric reported as armored, at a VR console and ready. It wasn’t his regular battle station but it should be sufficient. The Lieutenant acknowledged he was present and told Eric to report to the platoon VR ready room.

Shaking his head, Eric plugged back in and found himself alone in the platoon ready room. Plugging into station operations Eric had a read only view and didn’t even appear to the regular operations crew. The platoon ready room became ghostly around him while the station operations center became more real.

Around him the command staff of the station was busy at their consoles. Eric felt like a ghost as he watched.

“Seven hundred and four,” one Marine said. Eric’s eyes went to the main plot that showed Wolf Moon Station orbiting Everett. From deep space hundreds of angry red dots were moving toward the planet. Around the planet other green icons began flashing and if he looked closely he could see they were moving.

“Get their likely targets,” the station commander said. Hundreds of blue dots were spilling out of the stations around Everett.

“Emergency thrusters engaged,” another officer said.

“God help us,” the commander said as ‘brace for hard maneuvers in three seconds’ blared across every form of media in the station. Eric’s meat body was braced in an operations room couch but anyone who wasn’t at battlestations would be panicking about now. Another voice in the background counted down. When it reached zero Eric didn’t feel anything but he could see Wolf Moon Station was moving, sliding in orbit around to the backside of the planet. There were countless tan icons floating around Everett and few if any were moving. Tan were civilian vessels and Eric winced. The incoming icons showed arrival in sixty four minutes. Wolf Moon Station looked like it would barely make it behind Everett in time.

A ghost appeared next to him. Wade. There might be others but if they weren’t in a unit link he wouldn’t know and Wade was still linked to him through the Operation Shadow Strike network. Her friend Coleman also showed up.

“Looks bad,” Wade said.

“Yea,” Eric said.

“Is this a UE attempt to wipe out Everett?” Coleman asked. “If those are all nukes it will render home uninhabitable.”

“I hope not,” Wade said. “It looks like this cold war has just turned hot.”

“Don’t they love their children too? Do they think we won’t retaliate?” Coleman asked. There was ice in her voice, not whining, or crying. Eric knew exactly what she was thinking and thought about what his Uncle had told him. Had his uncle known? Was this why he wanted Eric away from the home system?

“Obviously not,” Wade said.

“How many people are going to die?” Wade asked grimly.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of drone fighters were pouring out of the military battle stations. Tight, focused cones started to originate from the fighters. It looked like fighters were beginning to fire everything they had to put up a wall of death for the torpedoes to slam into. Cones started originating from the space stations as well. Representations of tight patterns of pellets being fired on an intercept course with the incoming torpedo. The display made it look like the Republic weapons were painting patterns some distance in front of the incoming torpedo.

When the torpedoes got closer they would fracture, releasing the real payload, faster, more maneuverable missiles. The torpedo shell was simply a booster designed to accelerate the payload at higher speeds and it also provided feed back and control through tachyon links so remote operators could monitor and update their weapons, maybe change missile targeting data at the last minute. The smaller missiles were designed more for maneuverability and payload. The torpedo was usually highly vulnerable to kinetic kills and killing the torpedo was preferable to trying to target and destroy the three to fifty missiles the torpedo might carry.

Wolf Moon Station stopped trying to slide behind the planet and reversed course, moving to place itself between the torpedoes and the planet. Numerous batteries began firing, mostly sand casters, a good weapon for high velocity missiles and sometimes lasers. However, unlike sand which was made of silicon, the sand casters fired sand made of metal, yanked down the tube by powerful electromagnets and encased in a thin ceramic shell that broke apart shortly after launch.

Station operations faded out as the commander turned on privacy and Eric found himself in a shadow filled room with Wade, Coleman and a few others from the evaluator ops room.

“What was that about?” Wade asked.

“If a missile hits us, it will miss Everette,” another Marine said. Eric didn’t know his name but he was in the Operation Shadow Strike link.

“No,” said a really big Marine with a picture perfect high and tight haircut. “Most people are going to try and hide on the opposite side of the planet where the missiles will skim Everette’s gravity well and strike. Besides. We can keep firing at them from here.”

Others muttered. Eric wasn’t sure what to think. Would the station commander sacrifice all the Marines aboard Wolf Moon Station to try and protect Everette?

“Would the station commander sacrifice all of us the try and protect Everette?” Wade asked.

“In a heartbeat,” Coleman said. “I’ve heard a lot about Lieutenant Colonel Barrett. He wouldn’t hesitate. Which is why he probably dumped us from Station Ops. Doesn’t want us panicking.”

The Lieutenant appeared in the platoon ready room.

“Gotta go,” Eric said to Wade and Coleman before dropping the link. The platoon ready room solidified around him and it was just him and the Lieutenant.

The Lieutenant stared at Eric for a few moments.

A few other Marines appeared. They seemed quiet and somber. Eric wondered if they had heard about the incoming missiles and the station commander’s maneuver.

“Standby,” the Lieutenant said, his eyes were unfocused. He was probably linked to another VR room like Eric had been linked to the station ops. “We may be tasked with fighter interdiction to backup the spacers.”

The lieutenant’s eyes focused on Dawson.

“I’m going to drop and sedate you,” the Lieutenant said to Dawson. “I’ve queued you for medical. They will get to you as soon as they can.”

“Yes sir,” Dawson said and disappeared.

Eric glanced at Higgins who was nearby.

Higgins just nodded.

“What happened?” Eric asked.

“You don’t know?” Higgins said, looking at Eric in surprise.

Eric shook his head.

“Station maneuvers were sudden,” Higgins said. “A lot of people have been injured, some maybe dead.”

Staring at Higgins Eric didn’t know what to think. His body had been strapped in but obviously he was one of the rare ones.

“How bad?” Eric asked.

“Very,” Higgins replied and held up his wrist to look at it. “Hell, I have a broken wrist and I was lucky to get to a couch. I think I’m one of the lucky ones. Being in the VR does help dampen the pain though.”

“Dawson?” Eric asked.

Higgins shook his head.

“I don’t know,” Higgins said. “Wasn’t near her.”

“You still in Evaluations?” Lieutenant Bishop asked Eric.

“Yes sir,” Eric said and the Lieutenant nodded. He was about a kilometer away from the platoon ops center and he could feel that Wolf Moon Station was still accelerating or decelerating to where the commander wanted it.

“Okay,” the Lieutenant finally said. “Looks like we are going to ride this one out. Doesn’t look like there is a follow on force, just a strike against Everette from UE resources out near the Oort cloud. I’m getting reports that the UE’s launched several hundred missiles at Everette. Everette command thinks we should be able to get ninety eight to a hundred percent.”

“How much danger is the station in sir?” Higgins asked.

Lieutenant Wesley shrugged. It was a concern Eric had no doubt, but Everette was more important.

“Minimal,” Wesley said. “The incoming missiles have a high velocity and aren’t that maneuverable. They are moving too fast so they won’t be able to see our latest maneuvers, or adjust, besides, fleet is putting out so much flak it isn’t funny. It looks like they threw a whole beach at the enemy. I’m told we have expended approximately a tenth of our ammo to build that wall. If anything makes it through we may be tasked to help the Army with search and rescue.”

Higgins groaned.

“Army avatars are a pain,” Higgins muttered. “Some of their avatars are older than I am.”

The Lieutenant glanced at Higgins but otherwise ignored him. The Army avatar jocks preferred to use a ‘commander mode’ and not link directly with their avatars, so Army avatar technology was more basic and less refined than Marine avatar technology. Why spend resources when you don’t need to? The Army also like quantity over quality and they had thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of avatar caches around the planet in secret bunkers ready for a UE or Han invasion. Keeping that many avatars up to date and relevant was a big task, so again, simple won out.

“System net is broadcasting the battle,” the Lieutenant said and Eric received a link to the broadcast. Connecting, the platoon ready room faded to a faint ghost, and Eric found himself in a large open space. Everette floated majestically in the center. Tens of thousands of icons drifted around Everette. As he took it in more made sense. A wall had been created for the enemy missiles to slam into. They were only ten minutes out and more than half had been destroyed already. Another wall had been put up as well. The walls looked small but then the enemy missiles were moving at such a high velocity they couldn’t maneuver much. Eric knew the wall was actually more massive than the view showed. It was at least ten thousand kilometers in diameter, just in case. Literally nothing more than sand thrown into space. Even the smallest grain slamming into a torpedo would achieve a kinetic kill, vaporizing the torpedo and its lethal payload.

Everette was surrounded by a massive network of tachyon linked sensors. The ability to detect an incoming attack at a distance was the only thing that would save Everette and Eric wondered what else his Uncle was worried about.