For once, command updates us on our prospective fate without much undue delay. Ten hours after we leave Gateway, Phalanx turns and burns for our scheduled deceleration. Twenty hours out of Gateway, we coast into a section of space that’s crowded with more warships than I’ve ever seen away from an anchorage together. The safety distance between each ship is five kilometers, and ships are bunched into little groups for as far as the hundred-kilometer tactical display in CIC can render units. I try to get a rough count of ship markers on the situational display in my stateroom but have to give up after three dozen, and I know that there are at least twenty more ships inbound from Earth in the queue behind us. Two-thirds of the markers are NAC or SRA units, and the last third is made up of units from just about every other spacefaring alliance on Earth: South America, Africa, Oceania, European Union. It looks like we weren’t the only ones mobilizing our reserve fleets and refurbishing scrapyard candidates.
“Now hear this,” comes over the ship’s 1MC. “This is Colonel Yamin. We have arrived at Fleet Assembly Point Echo. This is our jump-off point for the offensive. We will take our assigned place in the battle formation and prepare to commence combat operations. From this point on, be ready for battle, because the next combat-stations alert means there are Lankies in the neighborhood and we’re about to send live warheads downrange. From now until we return to Gateway, there will be no more drills. Every alarm will be real.”
Until we return to Gateway, I think. The station is old and worn-out and a pain in the ass to navigate on a busy day, but I find myself hoping that the optimism of Phalanx’s skipper isn’t misplaced, and that I get to curse out the idiot who designed the station at some point again in the near future as I walk Gateway’s scuffed and dirty corridors.
For lack of something better to do at the moment, I watch the display from CIC for a while. The mass of icons slowly moves on the situational globe as Phalanx maneuvers through the assembly area to whatever holding spot they assigned to us. I see that all the groupings of units are truly multinational and interalliance—SRA ships mingling with NAC ones, and Euro or African Commonwealth ships here and there. The capital ships are all NAC or SRA because no other spacefaring nation needs heavy units for extrasolar deployments. They have corvettes, light patrol boats, supply ships, and the occasional frigate or destroyer, all the space fleet needed for policing solar-system outposts and mining nodes. Right now, all those support units are welcome padding for our invasion fleet.
I tear myself loose from the icon ballet on my screen when the comms unit buzzes. I manage to pick up the receiver before the second buzz.
“SOCOM detachment, Lieutenant Grayson.”
“Lieutenant, Major Masoud. Report to briefing room Delta-505 at 0800. All hands, not just the officers. Bring everyone.”
“Aye, sir,” I acknowledge.
I hang up the receiver and get up to bring the word to the rest of the short SOCOM platoon milling around in the berth outside. Whatever our part in this offensive, we are starting now, and we are doing it with what’s on the board.
The briefing room in Grunt Country is more than big enough for the entire usual troop detachment of a Hammerhead cruiser, which is a full company. With the SOCOM detachment numbering little more than a squad, we have plenty of elbow room even with everyone present. When I walk in, Dmitry and his SRA comrades are already sitting in the first row, and I file into the row behind them to sit down at the far end. One by one, the rest of the detachment files in and takes seats in the first three rows: the Eurocorps lieutenant, the two Force Recon teams, and the Spaceborne Rescueman.
Major Masoud walks through the hatch at 0759. The Spaceborne Rescue master sergeant, who is sitting in the spot closest to the hatch, gets to his feet and shouts “Attention on deck!” before we can sort out the formality of rank seniority among us lieutenants. We all get up and stand to attention, even the SRA troopers.
“As you were,” the major says. “Take your seats.”
We sit down again and watch as he strides to the front of the briefing room and turns on the holoscreen that takes up the front bulkhead. He dims the lights in the room with a tap on the screen of the data pad in his hand. The holoscreen behind him displays a slowly rotating seal of the ship: NACS Phalanx CA-761.
“Good morning. Now that we are in the assembly area, I am cleared to brief you on what we are about to do. The name of this operation is Invictus.”
The image behind him changes from the ship seal to a shot of Mars. It’s not a still image, but rather a high-resolution surveillance feed. It’s clearly from the vantage point of an NAC warship because the corners of the feed show the familiar readouts of an optical-sensor array.
“It’s not a big secret that this is our target,” Major Masoud says. “That feed, by the way, is twelve hours old.”
We exchange glances and look back at the feed, and there’s some low murmuring in the room. Even considering the maximum magnification of our best optical arrays, the ship that took the footage must be suicidally close to Mars. There are at least half a dozen Lanky seed ships evident against the red-and-white background of the Martian planetary surface and its cloud cover.
“Who’s on station out there, sir?” I ask.
“NACS Cincinnati,” Major Masoud replies. “They have been observing the target zone for the last two weeks undetected.”
Cincinnati is the sister ship of NACS Indianapolis, the ship that Colonel Campbell flew into an approaching Lanky seed ship last year during the first incursion, enabling the dregs of Earth’s fleets to defeat the incursion and buying us the time to finish construction on the Orions and the battleships. With the destruction of Indy, Cincinnati is the last surviving member of her line, the newly designed orbital combat ship. The OCS is a small stealth unit designed for surveillance and orbital patrol. If Cincy has been keeping eyes on the Lankies for us all this time, she’s probably the most valuable ship left in the fleet despite her low tonnage and light armament.
“Situation,” the major continues, in his typical curt manner. “We are at Fleet Assembly Point Echo as part of the Multinational Joint Task Group. Mars is held by a sizable presence of Lankies, including twelve seed ships in orbit and several thousand Lankies in various settlement clusters on the surface. There are eight known emergency shelters with human survivors in need of relief and evacuation. In less than twelve hours, we will have completed our predeployment refueling, and we will depart for Mars in our assigned combat formation, Task Force Red.
“The mission of the Joint Task Group is the destruction of the Lanky fleet in orbit around Mars, the landing of combat troops on the surface, the evacuation of survivors from the still-active emergency shelters, and the elimination of the Lanky threat on Mars.”
“That’s all?” one of the SI Force Recon guys behind me whispers to the SI trooper next to him.
“Execution,” Major Masoud says. “The battle plan has six phases. It will be the longest and most complex spaceborne battle plan we’ve ever executed. Because we can no longer afford mass casualties, each of the phases are designed to allow aborting the rest of the plan and evacuation and retreat of remaining troops if the phase fails catastrophically.”