Burning Bridges

ShatteredStar

Another scrawled signature and the admiral slid another vitualpaper across the screen of his desktop, pushing the report to the far corner, where he would not have to look at it. Signing off on the deaths of several dozen pilots was a difficult enough task without dwelling on it afterward.

The Tarazedi Alliance had made the mistake of transferring too many of its best pilots off Europa, a moon that had few defenses. IceBox was on Earth assisting the TDF, Ignatz was missing on Mercury, but alive (he managed to send brief squawks on his Myrmidon’s radio on occasion; extracting him was impossible, however, considering the Cybrid beehive he was hiding in), EagleEye was assisting the new Human Alliance on Mars from the Inner System Defense Centre...

The Cybrids had attacked and decimated an Imperial garrison about a hundred kilometers west of the TA's surface facilities, and were preparing their forces for an assault. While it was highly unlikely they could breach the TA's undersea base, they could do massive damage on the surface, destroy much valuable equipment, and take more lives.

The admiral looked up as the door chimed. "Enter," he said softly.

Perihelion, the TA's Falcon division leader, wordlessly handed the admiral a datasliver.

"Who this time?"

"Fulgore, Cyrax, Denizen, Kane, and about fifteen new folks," Perihelion said in the lowest Tarazedi dialect.

The admiral slid the datasliver into the port on the desk, watched the virtualpapers slide from the top of the desk to array themselves before his eyes.

"Training reports," the admiral noted. "Herc maintenance logs. Cargo manifests. Dead friends. All in a day's paperwork."

Perihelion bowed his head. "I am sorry, sir."

"I know, I know. I am just frustrated."

"We--"

Perihelion was interrupted by a harsh whistle from the room's speaker. "Admiral ShatteredStar, Commodore Perihelion, to the Command Center at once!" a voice called.

"Now what," Perihelion growled. The admiral sighed, rose from his chair, turned off the desk. The virtual papers vanished but they would be there when he returned...

They entered the lift, descended the fifteen levels from the admiral's office on the sea floor to the main junction a hundred meters under Europa's rock, and from there boarded the lift to the command cavern one kilometer below that.

They rode in silence, having little to say, Tarazedi customs-- and their own personalities-- frowning on pointless chatter. They waited for the numbers on the lift's display terminal to reach [-1400, 770, -1410], the coordinates for the command chamber, then opened the doors.

The admiral raised an eyebrow at the chaos-- and the noise-- filling the chamber. The disk-shaped room with its banks of computer stations was filled with people perched on the edges of chairs, hollering into their head sets, snapping orders at those of lower ranks, typing and tapping on the consoles feverishly. The officer in charge, Typhoid, noticed the doors open, called out "Admiral on the--" before ShatteredStar waved him to silence.

The din lessened but did not cease. ShatteredStar extended a hand toward Typhoid, who nodded and pitched a spare headset at him. He caught it, put it on, activated it. "Shut up and report," he said quietly in English. "Typhoid, take Surface Comm and relay to me, Peri, get over to Bay 4 and prepare your people."

Typhoid nodded once, Perihelion muttered "Joy," and left the room.

The admiral listened as a report came through. The surface facilities were indeed under attack, and had withdrawn to a crater nearby, dug in, and were now trying to hold off the Cybrid force.

Jager, a reprogrammed Cybrid with an abrasive personality, was leading the fight. ShatteredStar winced as his swearing crackled over the communications channel. "Fight well, Jager," he said. "Help comes."

"Stupid idiots, if you ask me," Jager growled. ”If they had any goddamned sense at all they'd leave us here and save their own--"

"Can it, Jager."

"Yes sir," he said sarcastically.

"Perihelion. We're surfacing."

"Noted. Typhoid, status of perimeter defense?"

"Bad. They've destroyed a lot of the turrets on the northeast side and are currently trashing our comm array."

"ShatteredStar to HercCenter 2."

"HercCenter 2 acknowledging, we got a mess up here sir--"

"Evacuate, surface route, save pilots and vehicles let them have the empty bays."

"Yes sir, we are launching, will evacuate to Altair Linea and await instructions."

"You do that. I'll tell you when to come back and mess up some glitches. Out. Typhoid, as soon as they are clear, seal us off." Typhoid nodded once, turned to his console. The TA headquarters were built underground beneath Europa's sea floor, and fifty kilometers of water separated it from the solid ice crust. A single tunnel/lift connected the main entrance with the facilities on the ice.

"They are clear."

"Do it."

The main viewscreen split in half, one side displaying the dark ocean outside, and the tunnel/lift disappearing in the distance in the murky water. The other displayed the white ice of the surface, with the fortress that was the TA headquarters' surface defense.

Clusters of Hercs sprinted away from the walls and tangled structures, as fires ignited and quickly burned out in the vacuum. Jupiter in crescent gleamed off the metallic hulls of Cybrid vehicle formations. ShatteredStar narrowed his eyes as he counted the Executioners, row after row, in a crescent arc demolishing the base. He waited until the TA's black, red, and gold Hercs had retreated to a safe distance on the opposite side of the base, then turned to Typhoid. "Now."

The base disappeared, replaced by a white fireball. Cybrid Hercs melted in place and crashed to the ice, melted through the ice to freeze in little craters several meters deep. The ice under the base vaporized, and a huge plume of steam, kilometers high, vomited into the black sky. The charred and blackened fragments of the base sank into the wide puddle that was all that remained of the area. The Cybrids too close sank as well, leaking like sieves from the hulling they received from the radiation.

The TA Hercs escaped, those few that had been close enough to sink were undamaged and would be recovered later on the sea floor.

The hole boiled and bubbled as the water boiled into space and froze simultaneously. A coat of ice formed quickly, far thinner than it had been but still strong enough to carry Hercs.

Of the TA surface base, not a trace remained. The camera on the hill two kilometers away remained, watching over the barren ice where the Hercs walked.

"Phase one complete," Typhoid said dryly.

"No kidding. Drop the tunnel."

Slowly, the massive structure tipped, its base crunching on the sea floor, the superstructure disintegrating piece by piece as the explosive charges along its length blew.

Two minutes later, a tremor and a muffled boom passed through the command center, as the wreckage finally stuck the seabed. "Perihelion. Nice light show. We're bursting our bubble."

ShatteredStar nodded, waved his hand in a control pattern the command center’s computer camera read. The main screen shifted to an image of the Falcon division's Hercs and Eagle division's tanks floating upward through the ocean, and the jagged base of the icy crust slowly drifting into view.

A torpedo exploded from the lead Herc, Perihelion's star-speckled red-and-black Apocalypse, in a trail of bubbles, and arced upward. The camera switched off for a moment, then returned with a white fireball above the Hercs. The vehicles tumbled like giant bathtub toys until their gyros recovered from the shock, and continued floating upward. The tactical nuke had blown a neat hole in the ice, and the Hercs surfaced just as the first new ice froze over the hole. Sending some reactor energy to the hull freed the vehicles from the ice. Falcon and Eagle divisions, Tarazedi Alliance Headquarters Defense, greeted the faint sun and gleaming Jupiter in the sky and prepared to do battle with the Cybrids.

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