Stark's Crusade

PART ONE
The Use of the Battle
PART TWO
Friction
PART THREE
Ends and Means

"Why should I care what a mutinous mob has to say? Why should I care what
you
have to say?"

Sergeant Ethan Stark, acting commander of the rebellious American military forces on the Moon, held his temper with an effort. "General, you command the enemy forces occupying part of the lunar surface outside our perimeter. I command the units defending the American Colony. We're not a mob. I am attempting to—"

"If you wish to surrender, I would entertain the possibility."

"We won't surrender. Not to you. Not to anybody. You've agreed to let the part of the Moon's surface under your direct control be used as a staging area for supplies and ammunition to be used against us. We can't permit that."

"You threaten me? You actually dare to threaten me?"

"I'm just telling you we won't allow preparations for an attack against us to proceed without taking action."

Stark's latest words seemed to amuse the enemy general. "I see. So you are just offering friendly advice? Why should I pay more attention to you than to the representatives of the U.S. government? They are paying us handsomely for the use of our facilities. What can you offer in exchange for my turning down such an opportunity?"

"I'm not offering you anything."

"Nothing? You bargain poorly. Perhaps you are, what is the American expression, 'out of your league?' "

"My soldiers are the best combatants on the lunar surface. We're a helluva lot better at playing the game up here than your forces are, General, and we've proved that more than once." The smile vanished from his opponent's face. "Stirring up a hornet's nest isn't in your best interests. You'd be wise to listen to what I'm telling you."

"Listen to you? Or you will do . . . what? You think I am interested in your 'advice'? Advice from a mob with no offensive capability?"

"I repeat; we're not a mob. Maybe we're not taking orders from authorities on Earth right now, but we're still a fully functioning military organization, we're still dedicated to defending the American citizens in the Colony here, and I assure you that we have the ability to launch attacks anywhere, at any time, in support of that mission."

"Of course you can. Attack our defenses, your fighting spirit against our entrenched weapons and soldiers. Just as your friends did. What was it called? The Third Division? Before we ground them into the dust? Have you managed to recover all of their bodies yet?"

Stark's vision hazed red with anger as the enemy commander mocked the deaths of thousands. Third Division had been effectively destroyed during the ill-planned and poorly led offensive that had triggered the mutiny by Stark and the other noncommissioned officers on the Moon. The disaster had been the final straw after decades of poor leadership on Earth and years of seemingly endless war on the lunar surface, the final straw for soldiers who believed they could no longer trust in anyone but themselves.
I risked everything to try to save some of the apes in Third Division, and I'm not gonna listen to some smug, pompous ass make fun of their sacrifice.

Stark raised one hand, as if pointing a weapon, then plunged it down to break the communications circuit. The enemy General's image vanished, leaving Stark's command center momentarily silent.

Sergeant Vic Reynolds, Stark's friend and chief of staff, kept her eyes on the screen for a moment after it went dark, then glanced over at Stark. "Let's kick his teeth in."

"Yeah. Let's do that."

Shapes moved against the endless night of space. Blunt objects carrying people and cargo, the convoy of shuttles hung in a ragged formation while a pair of escorting warships herded them toward the lunar landing field awaiting their arrival. There were wolves among the stars, hiding in the dark in wait for fat, easy targets like the supply shuttles.

Alarms sounded as sensor arrays on the warships tracked objects rising from the Moon's surface toward the convoy. The armed shuttles of Stark's tiny Navy lunged at the convoy, even as the warship escorts moved to intercept the threat. New stars winked into life against the blackness, as fire and counterfire blazed between the combatants.

Around Stark, the watchstanders in the command center in the American headquarters complex on the lunar surface worked quietly and efficiently, organizing and feeding information to the huge displays dominating the room. Colored symbols crawled across those displays like geometric insects; red for enemy, blue for friendly. Threat symbology, representing weapons, darted around the larger shapes, which marked warships and shuttles, the spacecraft seeming slow and cumbersome compared with the flight of their weapons. Stark had to remind himself that those spacecraft could move at speeds measured in miles per second, a concept almost too alien for a ground soldier to grasp.

"Commander Stark?" One of the watchstanders highlighted text scrolling in one corner of the big headquarters display. "We're picking up communications from the warships on the common merchant frequency."

Stark squinted to read the words. "Charlie Foxtrot Bravo Two? What's that mean?"

"It's from the Convoy Tactical Signals Code, sir. I guess they haven't changed it. The signal means 'All convoy units remain in formation.' The warships have repeated the message several times."

Stark looked back at the display, where vectors for the supply shuttles continued to shoot off in various directions. "It doesn't look like the convoy is paying much attention."

"No, sir. The warships sound kinda upset."

"According to Chief Wiseman, they shouldn't have expected anything else. It's exactly what she told us would happen."

Weapons burst, creating expanding clusters of heat and debris, while the dueling warships tossed out countermeasures designed to fool radar, infrared, and any other means of targeting them. Stark's search systems lost contact with the fleeing supply shuttles, their vectors fading into estimated tracks as a sector of the forever-night over the Moon grew temporarily opaque to ground-based sensors.

Despite their overwhelming advantage in firepower, the escorting warships hung back, forming a defensive shield for the now-scattered convoy, content to hurl volleys whenever one of Stark's armed shuttles swung toward them.

"Chief Wiseman," Stark called his fleet commander. In response to his communication, a window automatically opened in one corner of Stark's display, showing the face of Chief Petty Officer Wiseman on the command deck of her armed shuttle. "What're those warships doing?"

"Exactly what I expected them to do. They're protecting those supply shuttles. The warships don't know exactly where all the convoy shuttles are anymore, but they're trying to stay between me and them."

"Couldn't the warships defend the convoy better by coming at your shuttles and hitting them hard? You couldn't hold your ground against that. They'd drive you away for sure."

"Hey, Commander, leave the Navy stuff to experts. That's why I'm in charge of your fleet, right? Listen close, mud crawler. Those warships aren't charging after me because of something called physics. You ever study naval tactics?"

"I saw a lot of old vids when I was a kid. You know, slave galleys and sailing ships and stuff. I wouldn't expect that to have anything to do with what you're doing."

"Wrong. We're playing by the same rules up here as those oar-powered galleys did. It's all about limited propulsion resources and momentum. These ships, even my shuttles; are big. Lots of mass. We accelerate slow, relative to things like our weapons, and once we get going in one direction we can't shift to a new course by turning on a dime. Mass don't like changing direction, and unlike ships back on the World, we don't even have water to turn against."

Wiseman tapped some controls, bringing up a small 3-D panel in one corner of the comm screen. "See? Here's the convoy, coming out of one of the Earth's orbital facilities, making a standard approach to the Moon. Standard because it requires the best combination of least fuel and least time." A broad arrow extended outward from the World, curving as it intercepted the Moon's own orbit. "Physics tells those shuttles they need to follow this path to get to their objective on the Moon. We know physics, too, so we know the path they're gonna take."

A short red arrow arced up from the Moon, aiming to intercept the shuttles. "We've got what you'd call a window up here, an area above the Moon guarded by our anti-orbital defenses. We pop out that window and make a move at the convoy. The warships try to keep us from getting close enough to nail any of the convoy shuttles, but the shuttles are scattering anyway because they're a bunch of civs hired to haul loads and none of them want to get shot at. Meanwhile, everybody and their friend throws out various junk designed to keep enemies from tracking a target, like the little doppelganger decoys that pick up emissions from other ships in the area and mimic them. It'll all disperse or deactivate eventually, but for now we've confused the traffic control situation up here something awful. Anybody monitoring this location will be seeing some stuff that ain't there, and not be able to see some stuff that is there."

Stark confirmed Wiseman's statement by checking the confused tangle of symbols on the headquarters display, then studied the 3-D panel again. "Great. But that still doesn't explain why those warships don't just charge at you. You'd have to run, then."

Wiseman grinned. "There's more than one direction to run. We could accelerate straight past them. Risky, but getting hits on us during a high-speed pass would be real hard. So, sure, those warships could come after us, but if even one of my shuttles gets past them, those warships will have the devil's own time turning and accelerating back in the other direction to try to catch it. We'd be in among the convoy's supply shuttles for sure before the warships got back."

Vic Reynolds, standing near Stark, nodded. "So you're saying the warships have some probability of winning, but prefer the certainty of not losing."

"Well, that's their job, ain't it? Killing my shuttles would be fun, but those warships ain't on a hunter-killer sweep. So they're just gonna hold me off and make sure I don't get to the supply shuttles they're charged with protecting. In the process of doing that, though, they've lost track of those supply shuttles in the mess of combat and countermeasures we're generating up here."

"Just like you said they would." During the planning for the operation, Wiseman had been confident.
You want to raid the enemy? Fine. You can't shoot your way in. The only way through their defenses is by confusing 'em and foolin' 'em. Give me an incoming convoy, and I'll screw the situation around so bad the enemy won't know which end is up.
"So you think this diversion is working?"