Michael Thomas: Siege of Titan

Spartan thought carefully. So, if he had an accident in training, faced a court martial or for any reason messed up, he could potentially find himself being thrown into prison.

“Case dismissed!”

The Personal Defence Suit (PDS) is the standard set of clothing, camouflage and tactical armour in one comprehensive package for use by CMC Marines. It can be easily augmented with a zero gravity manoeuvring pack or sealed for operations in limited atmospheres. It is lightweight and covers the entire surface of the individual. In trials, the armour has sustained damage from thermal and kinetic energy weapons and been able to operate even after sustaining over fifty percent damage. Variants such as the Combat Engineer Suit (CES) feature thicker armour, powered tools and augmented strength for use in the sapper role.

Equipment of the Confederate Marine Corps

Spartan stood in the departure lounge, a large hall where about a hundred new recruits were waiting for their various boarding shuttles to arrive. At one end were a variety of displays, some showed boarding times others news and information. Spartan wandered over, watching several of the people operating the displays. Like most public access points there were no buttons or screens to touch, the entire system was body driven and much like the combat training simulators he had used. A woman in her early thirties was running through various news stories on a large display. Using her upper body and hands, she moved and slid the stories as though they were stacks of paper or video files to play. Next to her a man of a similar age scrolled through a list of flights and was looking more agitated as he went on. Something caught Spartan’s eye, it was live footage from the security feed. He looked down at the scrolling ticker text underneath about a suicide attack and it was coming from Proxima Prime.

“Oh shit! Have you seen this?” one of the recruits shouted.

Several more recruits wandered over to watch the details of the story. With a deft movement the woman enlarged the video and increased the volume. At the same time she slid over several more video feeds of the same event.

A man turned to Spartan. “Have you seen this shit? Apparently one of our compounds was hit last night.”

“I heard they took out the wall with a suicide bomber and then stormed the place. According to the feeds the entire garrison was wiped out,” said another.

Spartan looked at the video, saying nothing. The display showed a burning compound with a collapsed guard tower and several buildings still burning. Inside the base was an upturned armoured vehicle, one of the heavily protected transports used to ferry troops and supplies throughout the warzone. What really caught his attention wasn’t the casualties or even the damage. It was the small section saying over a hundred weapons had been stolen. Spartan thought to himself, with those kinds of weapons they could attack and expect to damage or destroy any structure, person or vehicle in the area.

As interest in the story faded the woman flipped to another one. It was about the offensive to take the Bone Mill, a nickname given to the rocky underground mining complex owned by the Metallurgical Research amp; Mining Company on the northern continent of Avagana. Since being overrun by the insurgency spearheaded by the Zealots, it had been turned into an impenetrable fortress. He watched the report for a while, interested in the detail of a conflict he’d never really given much thought to. According to the article the underground research was invaluable along with the rich mineral supplies and the difficulty of getting people that far underground. From what he could see it looked like an underground hell that seemed to eat up marines. Based on the fact that he would soon be shipped off for combat, it might be an idea if he did a little homework beforehand.

From the information on the screen it appeared nobody knew why they were so desperate to hold onto the huge underground mining facility. It had originally been dug almost a kilometre underground to mine many of the precious minerals buried there. The resources were valuable but that had never interested the Zealots in the past. A year ago it was still operated by the state mining company, then something happened. Nobody knew what, but in days most of the crew had been killed and the place was taken over by more than a hundred Zealot fighters. By the time the military arrived their numbers had swelled to thousands and they were already sealing the access points to the structure. It was if they were trying to protect something very important. No matter how many marines the Confederation sent in, they were always repulsed and suffering heavy casualties.

The mining plant was built on the most recently developed landmass on the planet. Also it was where many of the Zealots had moved to in the hope of work and to avoid contact with the more urbanised area of the planet. It hadn’t taken long for their extreme form of religion to burst into open revolt. When that was quickly crushed it turned it into the home of the insurgency. As well as scores of mines there were five major cities and hundreds of small towns and villages that had sprung up in the last ten years. In seven years the open countryside had become a wasteland with people staying in the urban areas to avoid moving in public where possible. Armoured convoys transported the workers and materials across the many roads and barely a day went by without hearing of another bomb attack on a major transportation route.

The Bone Mill had now taken on almost mythical proportions as the coalition had been besieging it for over ten months. The ticker said the total casualties in the battle had exceeded seven hundred and questions were being asked about the feasibility of securing such a formidable objective. With most of the access points blocked and thousands of metres of rubble making digging difficult, it fell to the marines and infantry to fight a slow, bloody battle as they claimed it one inch at a time.

He watched the screen a little while longer, there was an interview between two military experts about why the campaign was failing. The first, a woman in her thirties was looking agitated.

“Look, since the Zealots turned to terrorism we have been fighting a losing battle with extremists. Their numbers have increased each year, what are we doing to stop them?”

A man in his fifties wearing a smart brown suit grinned. “What are we doing? Well, since the start of the trouble the military has successfully repressed their capacity to wage war. They were only able to fight for a matter of weeks before they were contained and most of them were sent to the camps for trial.” The woman interrupted.

“Rubbish, if we’re doing so well then why can’t we take the one place they have decided to fight for? The Bone Mill has been holding us off for months and the attacks on transports and supplies moving into the area are increasing.”

“It is true the operation in the Avagana is challenging. But apart from insurgent bomb and suicide attacks we have the situation contained. When we finally take control of the facility the backbone of their resistance will be smashed and I can see the end of the emergency following shortly after.”

“This isn’t limited to just Avagana though, is it? We have had attacks in cities across Proxima Prime and the number of piracy and hijacking incidents off-world has increased. If you ask me I’d say the problem is spreading and at some point soon this local emergency could turn into a system-wide issue with long term implications,” she added.

Spartan was getting bored and decided to head to the viewing gallery. The war, emergency or policing action, whatever they were calling it now seemed more complicated. He could see that the Zealots were extremists and the signs of their attacks on civilians across the Confederation were well known. What he didn’t understand was exactly what the military were going to do about and more specifically, what they were going to want him to do about it.