Battle Group Epsilon

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

April 28 2184, 15:59 Hours (Standard Solar Time)
Aboard USNI MAKO C17368 in Lunar LPO

Grabowski found himself in an all too familiar setting. The shit had hit the fan with a great slapping sound and its ponderous odor was suffocating. He was short on friends. Freemen had been uneasy since the poker game and he hadn't spoken to Foster since that night. And currently the only thing between him and certain death was a hunk of government metal half an inch thick in some spots.
His teeth rattled like a pocket full of loose change. The MAKO's nose cannon unleashed on some unseen target. The vibration worsened as missiles swirled from the dropship's side pods.
"This is going to be a hot landing, marines," Foster said over the intercom. "Get ready to hit the ground running." More like hit the loading bay running. Grabowski hated boarding actions. One wrong shot fired and they were all f***ed. There was enough to think about without having to worry about explosive decompression.
"You heard the lady," the Sarge said. "Be ready for anything."
He was going to make a joke but he couldn't think of one. Instead he held on and waited for the clang as their drop ship made contact with the Germania and the pop of the pressure equalizer.
The restraints unlocked and released the marines. Grabowski grabbed his rifle and headed for the door. After a few seconds it slid open with an angry hiss.
Grabowski and the rest of second platoon immediately activated their thermal imagers. The lights were off in this section of the base. Sparks spouted out from damaged electrical conduits. Gas geysered out of a ruptured pipe. As he moved out and brought alpha team online, Grabowski noticed something more. There were bodies on the grown. They showed up on his imager as orange blobs sprawled across the hall but even as he watched they cooled to red. All of them had Naval ID implants.
Grabowski looked back at the Sarge. The squad leader gave him the hand signal to move forward. The control center for one of the base's half dozen cannons was up ahead. They had to secure it.
It was just another bullshit mission. There was no reason to secure the weapons systems. The Fist of Jupiter's weapons were superior to theirs anyways. It would be easier to disable the weapon with lasers than commandeering the controls. The only reason the FoJ would board the Germania was for Intel.
He stepped cautiously around the bodies of slain USNI soldiers. No, they weren't soldiers. They were technicians, data analysts, and cooks. They were office pogues and desk jockey's but not soldiers. They had all signed up to be apart of the USNI, just like Grabowski had, but he had known he would see combat. He had anticipated it. He did not know any of the dead that he moved around, but seeing them made him equal parts sad and furious. He quelled the sadness; there was not room enough for it.
Grabowski checked his datapad. Just another hundred meters to the control center. The Sarge stopped them just before reaching it.
"Sierra One Six," he said over his head piece. "This is Bravo One Three, over."
"Roger that Bravo One Three," Towers said. "What is your position? Over."
"We are just outside of Control Center Four."
"Good," Towers said. "Secure the area. Lock down the room and prep the room for demo. Blow up the damn controls if you have to; just keep the Fist of Jupiter from getting their hands on them. Sierra One Six out."
The Sarge nodded. They reached the door to the room. Grabowski hit the round control button to open the door. It flared red but nothing happened. He hit it again, this time much harder. The door did not open.
"Shit," he whispered. The door had a small viewing porthole. He crouched low and peeked through. He couldn't see a damn thing. It was too dark but he couldn't see any heat signatures.
"What's the hold up?" the Sarge asked.
"Door's locked."
The Sarge turned around and signaled for Mac to come over. "Help me cut open this door." She took out her welder and began cutting from one corner. The Sarge started from another. Grabowski turned around and kept his eyes down the hallway they had come from.
All of a sudden there was the sound of thunder and Mac screamed out in pain. Grabowski turned around. The Sarge didn't scream. He never had the chance. Smoke drifted from the melted edges of the locked door where a hole the size of a dinner plate had been blown through it. Whatever had made the hole had hit the Sarge. His right arm was missing just above the elbow. A large portion of his torso was missing as well. Blood and gore surrounded the Sarge's body as Mac tossed and turned in pain. There were third degree burns along her upper arm and shoulder.
"Holy Shit!" Chavez cried out.
Grabowski dove forward and grabbed her good arm, dragging her out of the way of the door.
There was no time to act and even less time to think. Whatever weapon had killed the Sarge could fire again at any time. Grabowski grabbed a grenade from his belt. He pulled the pin and let it cook for two seconds. He threw it through the hole in the door and ducked beside it. The fragmentation grenade exploded almost as soon as he tossed it in. When he heard the blast he stood back up and fired his pulse rifle through the door. The guttural automatic fired was so loud that he didn't realize he was screaming until the clip was empty.
He turned to Chavez and Freemen. "Give me support fire!" They jumped up and traded off firing through the door. Grabowski grabbed a demo pack from Mac's vest and prepped it at the corners of the door.
"Get cover," he yelled. The squad scuttled around the corner of a T intersection. Grabowski hit the detonator. He was no expert on demolitions. After setting off the demo charge however, it occurred that whatever the appropriate amount of explosives was to blow through five inches of steel was considerably less than the amount he had used.
His hearing was immediately gone. The generic church bells began ringing in his head as he cringed lower to the ground against the intense heat. The blast singed the hair of his arms and neck and blistered his skin.
Once the initial disorientation had passed he stood up on his shaking legs. "Come on," he called.
Second squad stood up and followed him around the corner back to the Control Center. Anything combustible in the hallway was on fire. Pieces of molten metal were strewn all down the corridor. Where the door had once been was now what appeared like the entrance to a subterranean cavern.
Grabowski was the first to enter the Control Center. There were the remains of at least one enemy lying on the floor a few meters away. They were not his concern though. The pair operating the pulse laser turret were. He fired four bursts at them. They dropped and the weapon was left unmanned. The rest of the squad assaulted through. They checked for survivors and collected weapons. There were no survivors.
There were computer terminals all over the room. Most of their screens showed only black, their operating components had been peppered with shrapnel. Several were still illuminated though. And they all displayed the same image. A simple countdown. There were thirty eight seconds left when Grabowski found it.
"What the hell?" What was the countdown for? Had they set one of station's nuclear reactors to self destruct? No, that couldn't be possible. The controls for the reactors were proprietary to only their individual control rooms.
Twenty seven seconds remaining.
Of course, it was obvious. It was a countdown to the only thing the terminals controlled; the firing of one of the cannons. What was it firing at? It didn't matter; the FoJ had come here for this reason. Whatever it was, he had to stop not soon but immediately.
Twenty seconds.
"Freemen, get over here." Grabowski leaned over and tried to access the terminal. The screen was locked onto the countdown however. There was no control queue or even a f***ing logon.
"What is it?"
"This cannon is going to fire. How do we stop it?"
His friend bent down and took a look. He entered several commands into the keyboard but in the end had no more luck than Grabowski.
Five seconds.
Grabowski grabbed Freemen by the back and yanked him out of the way. The corporal leveled his pulse rifle off at the monitor. He blew it to pieces. Glass and complex circuitry exploded out the back. Besides a fleeting moment of satisfaction, it was all but useless.
The cannon fired.
The remaining monitors changed their images to that of one of the Germania's exterior cameras. The squad didn't need to look at the screens though. They had a front row seat through the room's generous observation window.
The massive slug moved like lightning but with greater determination. Grabowski hoped for the faintest of hopes that it would miss its intended target. It was not an unreasonable hope. With four hundred thousand kilometers in the way, anything could happen. Unfortunately, the Fist of Jupiter soldiers had done their job well. The round hit dead on.
The Alamo's main stabilization thrusters took the brunt of the strike. The USNI's chief naval base shuttered under the impact as atmosphere and debris erupted out of it. To Grabowski it looked like a man gasping for air after having the wind knocked out of him.
The sheer impact alone would have likely been enough to push the station out of its orbit. Without its thrusters to adjust course however, there was nothing anyone could do.
Grabowski dropped his M36. The weapon clattered against the steel floor as he watched the end of the world. It lasted for several minutes and in all that time he did not blink even once.
The Alamo lost altitude quickly. Heat built around the edges as it entered Earth's atmosphere. Fire soon cradled the space base. It crashed somewhere in the Siberian wilderness.
The Alamo was the largest manmade object in space ever made. It was many times larger than even the biggest space colony. That was not to mention the ten fusion reactors that powered it or its arsenal of nuclear ordinance. It hit with the force of a meteor. The vast forests of the former Russia vanished. Dust and nuclear debris radiated outward from the crash site.

Grabowski was not a religious man. His father had dragged him to church every Sunday when he was growing up but he had never enjoyed it. He wasn't opposed to god, he was simply neutral. There wasn't enough evidence for either side. As he watched the fires rage and the darkness spread though, he prayed. He remembered the old prayers that he had learned and whispered them to life. He prayed for those that had died today. He prayed for those that would die soon. Above all though, he prayed for the living.
"Sierra One Six to Bravo One Three, do you copy. Over." It was Towers. "Bravo One Three, are you there?"
Grabowski clicked the mic. "Yeah," he said. Then he was reminded of military protocol. "This is Bravo One Three, over."
Lieutenant Towers must have understood that there had been a change in command for he hesitated a moment. "Bravo One Three, get your squad out of there ASAP for immediate evacuation. We're going home."
Grabowski wondered where that might be.


The room was silent. The instant the cannon had fired, everyone had stopped what they had been doing and watched. The destruction that the video feed showed was haunting. Chang shivered.
The man that stood beside him said something.
"What?" Chang asked.
"Twelve billion," the man said. "That was the population of the Earth this morning. Twelve billion."
Chang shook his head. He could no longer see any landmass. He could see the firestorm that engulfed most of Northern Asia but clouds covered the rest of the planet. China was gone. His homeland, over five thousand years of culture, and he had never even been there. He had planned to take leave next year and go for a few weeks. He was going to see the fishing village his father had grown up in.
"What do you think it is now?" Chang asked but he already knew.
The man didn't answer. He didn't move. No one did, they just stood and stared until the Captain told them they had been given the command to leave.

His bridge was captivated to the forward view screen. For that matter, the entire fleet was mesmerized. All fighting had stopped shortly after the Alamo had begun losing altitude. And why shouldn't they be awestruck? They were witnessing the very thing that humanity had feared since the concept's inception.
Lieutenant Hill clenched his fists in anger. The strained muscles in his arms began to tremble. Rivera cried silently at her station. The tears splattered against her workstation as she stared vacantly at the monitor. Lieutenant Baldwin held Walker's hand in his own, defying military protocol. What did it matter now? It was the end of the world. Sheffield decided it would be okay to afford them this one small leniency.
Sheffield's monitor flashed red. There was an encrypted transmission being sent directly to his terminal. The source was unknown. He put in his earpiece and uploaded the communication.
Static immediately filled his screen but it soon subsided to show Fleet Admiral McDermott. Blood covered most of his face from a gash in his temple. "The battle is over," he said looking right into the camera. Right at Sheffield's eyes. "Earth is gone." He had never seen his superior like this before. The man paused for a long time. He didn't know what to say. "Get your Battle Group out of here Sheffield. I'm sending you the coordinates now. The battle is over but this war is not. It's just beginning." Sheffield wondered if the Fleet Admiral had suffered a concussion. Perhaps he was delirious.
"We're not out of it Sheffield. Get out of here and live to fight another day. There's always Hope." McDermott shook his head. "It's up to you Sheffield, you'll understand soon." With that the Fleet Admiral was gone.
The video snapped off and Sheffield was puzzled. Surly his superior had gone mad. Sheffield was an optimist but what hope was there? The Earth was gone along with most of its inhabitants. In the course of a day, the human species had just entered the endangered species list. They had to focus on just surviving.

Sheffield opened the coordinates. He didn't recognize them. Where was McDermott sending him? He did a quick mathematical summation. They took him some seven hundred million kilometers from the closest population center. He took an involuntary step back at this realization. There weren't even research posts that far away.
Had the Admiral typed in the wrong coordinates? He plugged them into the navigational database. He looked at the charts. No. They put him right inline with the orbit of Saturn. Why would they go to Saturn? He time shifted the model to account for how long it would take his ships to arrive. The Admiral had typed the coordinates perfectly. It would take them several months to get there. With that in consideration, he would be precisely at one of the gas giant's moons. They were going to Titan.
He had no idea what the Admiral was doing sending them there or what he meant by saying ‘you'll understand soon'. He was still a soldier though and there was still a chain of command.
He sent word out to all of the remaining ships in the proximity of Luna. Whether they belonged to Epsilon or not he commanded them to form up and retreat. Those ships that were undamaged covered the retreat of the rest. There were not many ships suitable for this task Sheffield realized.
He began issuing orders and soon the tactical aura of the bridge returned. The safeties were unlocked from all remaining missile tubes and the main cannon began charging. Funny as hell, the whole time Sheffield could not think of anything else except for a line from a very old poem. And fired the shot heard round the world.

Grabowski walked down the hallway toward Foster's room. He stopped. What was he even going to say to her? It wasn't his damn they hadn't spoken in a week. She was just another broad. Even as he thought those words though, they rang hollow in his mind.
He turned around back to the stairwell but stopped again. He spun around and walked with determination to Foster's door. What the hell was wrong with him? Mac was in sickbay, the Sarge had nearly been cut in half by a f***ing laser, not to mention he had failed to stop the apocalypse and all he could think about was her.
He shook his head and knocked on her door. He immediately took one step intent on leaving but checked himself. The door slid open. Her eyes were bloodshot and her hair was disheveled but she was beautiful.
She stared at him, waiting for him to speak. What would he say? Would he tell her that he loved her? No, he couldn't do that, he didn't love anyone. Love never did anyone any good. In the end you just got hurt. Girls, his father, even his f***ing dog Copper that had been hit by a car when he was eight.
But he did miss her and he might have even cared about her and now that the Earth was history, the phrase "There's plenty of fish in the sea," wasn't completely accurate.
"I'm sorry," he said at last. And he was.
Foster must have seen that as sufficient. She reached out and pulled him inside her room. There was no speaking. There was no fooling around. The two got in her bed and Foster curled up inside his arms. She cried and he pulled her tight, occasionally rubbing her back.

Something happened then, something that had not happened in a long time. Grabowski tried to remember when he had last cried. He had not cried when the Sarge had time, he had only acted. He had not cried when he had joined the Colonial Marines and fought numerous battles. He had only endured. He had not cried when he had told his father that he didn't want to be a doctor like him or when he had been kicked out of his house shortly thereafter. He had only survived.
It had been when Copper had died. He had come home from school to find his dog on the side of the road. Grabowski laughed thought he was only sleeping. That was until he saw the animal back bent in an unnatural direction. A pair of splintered ribs protruded from the soft belly he had often rubbed. Copper had been hit by a car and discarded along the side of the road like a f***ing soda can. He cried all afternoon. He didn't understand why anyone would do something like that to Copper. He cried all the way until his father returned home. His father slapped him hard across the face and told him that he was a man and that men didn't cry.

He cried now though. They were not uncontrollable, body wracking sobs like Foster's but they were tears none the less. He cried because Foster had been right. He did love her. He had loved his father too. The man had been a bastard, there was no denying that but he had a softer side too. No matter how shitty things had been with him, Grabowski had always assumed there would be time. There would be time enough for apologizes and long suppressed feelings. His father had practiced medicine in Manhattan. Perhaps he had managed to escape the nuclear fallout and the suffocating dust storms. Perhaps he had somehow escaped Earth in time. Grabowski knew though. He was just another discarded soda can.

He had been a loner for longer than he could remember. Even before he had been kicked out, he had never really felt like he belonged there. As he held Foster crying in his arms though, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt like he was home.