"Terrorist cells," said Horishito with disgust. "Don't you just love..."
"Quiet," barked Lon. "I want to see this."
"In order to facilitate the capture of Eden, we will land more one hundred thousand combat troops in an area approximately three hundred kilometers due east of the city. As you are aware from previous briefings, the rouge elements that have taken over the Martian Planetary Guard may be in possession of some artillery weapons. Landing at this distance will keep us well out of the range of these weapons and allow us to assemble are troops in safety."
The special forces troops in the room all broke out into contemptuous laughter at this statement.
"Wait 'til you see how safe you are, Mr. Wrath," Horishito called out to the room.
"Oh yes," yelled Bennington, a member of Lon's squad who was sitting at the next table. "We'll be out there to say a nice big hello to you when you get there."
Cheers erupted from nearly everyone present in the bar, the staff included. Shouts of encouragement were offered, as well as more than one obscene epitaph to Wrath himself. Meanwhile, the briefing went on, with the general revealing which four cities his troops were going to be landing outside of and the approximate numbers that were going to be deployed at each site. Though he did not reveal exactly where the landing areas were going to be, he did indicate which general direction from the individual cities.
It was agreed that the WestHem populace probably had their minds put a bit at rest by the briefing. They probably enjoyed knowing just what sort of composition their forces would attack with and what the strategic thinking behind it was. So from the WestHem point of view, the release of this information was probably deemed a good idea.
General Jackson and Colonel Bright also thought that the briefing was a success as well. Intelligence analysts recorded the entire thing and set immediately to work analyzing it. And though the possibility that this was disinformation being used to deliberately mislead the MPG was acknowledged, a number of troops were shifted from several cities as a result of what was learned.
August 3, 2146
Deep space, near the orbit of Venus
The captain of the Barracuda — the third of the Martian crewed Owls lying in wait — had released the torpedo at the perfect angle to his target, a one in a hundred shot that managed to approach perfectly through small gaps in the sensor coverage. Not so much as a single bit of artifact appeared on any screen until the torpedo detonated forty kilometers from its target. Without any kind of warning whatsoever, there was the double flash of a thermonuclear detonation and Clydesdale — a Panama class transport — was vaporized. Another 20,000 marines were taken out of the coming fight.
Twenty minutes later, just as the frantic search efforts for the ship that had fired the torpedo were getting into swing, the second torpedo was detected 10,000 kilometers from Elephant, another Panama class. The anti-missile lasers were brought to bear on it and one finally managed a lucky shot, nicking the forward edge of the weapon at a distance of 92 kilometers. Not enough energy penetrated to disable the warhead so the automatic firing mechanism was triggered instead. The weapon flashed and lashed Elephant with an EMP, ripping several holes in her hull, damaging both of her engines, and causing explosions and fires that killed nearly four thousand marines and naval personnel on board. The ship was effectively disabled for good, forcing the offload of its surviving personnel onto three other Panamas. All of the heavy equipment on board was lost since there was no way to offload it in transport and there would be no way to slow the ship down once it arrived at its destination.
Barracuda herself, though she made an almost perfect attack and a textbook egress from the firing area, was nevertheless detected by a flight of A-22s on a search sweep. Within minutes, six more A-22s were swarming her and a Seattle class ship was moving in fast. She put up a valiant fight, destroying three of the A-22s with her lasers before being battered mercilessly with return fire. Her hull was breached in six places, including the bridge, killing more than half of the crew before the Seattle closed to firing range and used her more powerful lasers to explode the propellant tanks and obliterate the shattered wreck. All hands were lost on Barracuda but her mission would be marked down as a rousing success nonetheless.
About four hours later Admiral Jules appeared at the live briefing to announce that another two suicide attacks by Martian terrorists had taken place, destroying one ship and damaging another.
August 10, 2146
Deep space, just outside the orbit of Mars
The armada was now well into its deceleration burn. Every surviving ship had turned its rear end towards Mars, which was now visible as a bright red orb glowing in space, and was running its fusion engines at .25G. This time Admiral Jules and the rest of the command staff were actually expecting an attack to occur. By now word that four of the Owls that had been docked at TNB were now missing had reached them from naval intelligence. Since they had encountered only three of the Owls at this point in time, it stood to reason that they just might encounter the fourth as well. And the deceleration burn was the perfect time for such an encounter from the enemy's point of view. With the ships on acceleration in the opposite direction, their sensors had a difficult time detecting objects approaching from directly in their path. The plasma from the engines tended to scramble outgoing radar signals and mask infrared hits.
Hammerhead, the fourth of the Owls, obligingly made herself known right during this period. Since the armada was now moving at less than half the speed that it had during most of the trip, she was forced to employ a different attack tactic. Instead of simply sitting still in relation to the targets, she had accelerated as they'd approached, bringing her own velocity to forty kilometers per second directly towards the target ships. This maintained a closing speed of nearly seventy kilometers per second, which would allow for a speedy escape after the weapon release.
Hammerhead released her first torpedo 350,000 kilometers from Pacaderm. It was yet another near-perfect release, with the weapon approaching in the clutter from the plasma and closing to less than 6000 kilometers before being detected. There was barely enough time for the anti-missile systems to come on line and begin putting up a defense before the weapon reached forty kilometers and detonated, erasing yet another Panama class and another 20,000 marines.
Hammerhead's second torpedo, which was aimed at Mammoth, did not fair quite as well. It was detected more than 60,000 kilometers out by flight of A-22s making a sweep of the area in response to the attack on Pacaderm. Once detected by the attack ship the torpedo became easy fodder. It was dispatched by two close range shots from the A-22s heavy lasers, which exploded the rocket fuel and fragmented the warhead itself into millions of tiny pieces.
Hammerhead herself was detected by another flight of A-22s ninety minutes later. Since by that time the tail end of the armada was already passing them by, only one other flight was in position to go on the offensive against her. The four A-22s made firing runs at her from two different directions, scoring two shots amidships and one direct hit on the engine room. However, Hammerhead proved a formidable enemy. She destroyed two of the A-22s and forced the other two to withdraw, one with heavy damage that required the crew to eject and be picked up by a rescue ship. Hammerhead herself suffered two hull breaches, lost one engine, and a significant propellant leak in her tanks. Sixteen crewmembers were killed and eleven were injured. Despite the damage, the remaining crew was able to seal the holes in the ship, plug the leak, and get the ship turned around for a deceleration burn.