Standing Together

Book 2 of the Shotgun Mike series

A Novel of the British War of Independence

MJ Dougherty

Copyright © Antimony 2013

Published by Antimony Sun at Smashwords

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About the Author

Martin J Dougherty has been at times an engineer, a teacher, a sports coach, a games designer, a defence analyst and, of course, a writer. His published works range from strategic reports for the arms trade to a self-defence manual and a handbook for teachers.

Martin currently works as line editor for a games company, and is heavily involved in the creation of roleplaying games and supplements. He also pursues a career in the arms trade as a freelance analyst, where he specialises in high-technology weapon systems and asymmetric warfare.

Martin’s interests include military history and malt scotch. He also trains regularly in the martial arts and is coach to the University of Sunderland fencing team. He lives in the northeast of England with his wife Helen and three unruly cats.

To the few…

Foreword

There are two types of weapon or combat technique; fire and shock.

Fire weapons – including air bombardment, artillery, archery and rifle fire – cause casualties to the enemy, grinding down his will to fight, but only rarely are they decisive. Shock action, such as the cavalry or bayonet charge, armoured or mek assault, is generally decisive. That is to say, shock action can stun an enemy and break him in an instant.

Of course, it is necessary to ensure a broken enemy stays that way. In ancient times battlefield casualties were relatively light on both sides until one force broke. Then the slaughter began. Pursuit of a broken enemy, to prevent him from reforming and to inflict further damage while he is helpless, is vital.

As the age of armoured warfare dawned, exploitation became more important than pursuit. The difference is subtle but important. Pursuit is all about chasing the broken units and killing them. Exploitation is about breaking through the remnants of an enemy force and destroying rear-area objectives such as headquarters, supply facilities, unready forces believing they are safe behind the line, and so forth. Pursuit is about destroying front-line troops, while exploitation is about destroying the enemy’s ability to fight on whether the troops exist or not.

The first armoured exploitation was carried out in 1917 by the British Whippet tank Musical Box, armed with a machinegun. Its lone rampage behind the German lines caused immense damage and far greater morale effects.

By 2087, armoured exploitation by warmeks and ground vehicles has reached its zenith. It is a war-winner, and the goal of every mek general is to break through the forces facing him to rampage in the enemy rear. The days of an unreliable vehicle with a single antipersonnel weapon exploiting a few kilometres are gone. Now a warmek can take immense firepower hundreds of kilometres into the enemy rear, and stay there almost indefinitely. A lone mek needs considerable resources just to find it, and even more to bring it down. Scattered meks can tie down large enemy forces. In numbers, they can destroy vital installations and cause crippling damage.

Thus achieving, preventing or containing a breakthrough is pivotal to the strategies of the Armageddon War. However, there are two ways to achieve victory. Attacks can be made on the enemy’s means, or on his will.

The ‘means’ is his armed forces, supplies and other military tools. Destroying or neutralising them prevents the enemy from taking any action. But the will is just as important. Without the will to fight, no amount of troops or weapons are worth anything.

There are many ways to wear down an enemy’s will to fight. Destroying his field forces is one, but often victory can be achieved when relatively little of the enemy’s means has been destroyed. Will can be ground down by fire weapons or techniques such as rear-area partisan activity, or shattered by shocks like the loss of a critical leader or objective. Over time, the will can be recovered if there is a reason for increased hope or if a period of intense threat passes.

To a great extent, the War of British Independence was a clash of wills between Elizabeth Sinclaire and General Jean Lavalle, and between the Free British people and the EuroForce troops sent to quell their bid for secession. As the war dragged on, desperation set in and other circumstances began to influence the situation. Instead of grinding at one another’s will with fire, both sides eventually resorted to shock action, gambling their future on the chance of a knockout blow.

Victory was thus not merely a matter of whose means were more powerful, though that was a significant factor. Final victory was a question of whose will was stronger; of who was able to resist steady grinding and sudden shocks the longest.

In March and April 2087, the balance tipped in the direction of the stronger will.

It was not so much a question of who won, as of who managed to avoid losing for longest.

Introduction

It is 2087, and the world is in flames.

The European Federation is at war with the United States of America, while lesser conflicts flare and simmer in other corners of the world. The powerful economies of the Far East, united into the so-called Tiger Combine, flex their muscles and seek domination. The mighty multinational corporations transcend the boundaries of states as they pursue their own agendas. Conflict between nations and corporations is resolved by all means available. Economic pressure, covert operations, manipulation of populations through the media – and outright war.

In 2087, the weapon of choice is the warmek, a towering humanoid monster capable of taking the firepower of a tank unit any place an infantryman can go. Backed up by conventional units, warmeks clash around the globe, and normally the only counter to a warmek is another mek.

Thus warmeks are big business, and the mek firms wield tremendous power. As Earth shudders in the throes of what will come to be known as the Armageddon War, the arms firms are probably the only ones who will prosper.

The Armageddon War was born of many causes; the Earth of 2087 is a troubled place. But the flashpoint was an island state off the coast of Europe, unimportant in geographic terms but a powerful economy, one of the Big Four of the European Federation.

Britain.

Tired of the gradual erosion of national identity by French and German dominated Euro-bureaucracy, the people of Britain voted in a new government, one determined to secede from the European Federation. The EF blocked the move, of course, so British Secession went ahead unilaterally.

The EF sent its EuroForce troops to bring Britain back into the fold, and met a storm of opposition. The initial battles were bloody in the extreme, but the EF advance was held back for a time. A minor but vital US intervention resulted in a state of war between the EF and the US.

EuroForce was pushed back out of Britain twice, but each time they came back stronger. Finally, under the effective command team of General Louis Calvert and his field commander General Jean Lavalle, EuroForce broke the back of British resistance.

As Euro forces rampaged across southern England, US units deployed to assist were overrun or forced to surrender. Organised British resistance all but collapsed as covert operations units struck at key command & control installations, and assassinated figures who might be a rallying point for the British people. British resistance almost collapsed.

But only almost.

Somehow the shattered remnants of the British forces, which themselves were part of EuroForce, managed to beat a fighting retreat northwards. They held out long enough for a new defensive line to be created, a shaky chain of defended conurbations and hurried emplacements stretching from Manchester to the Humber Estuary. Defended by militia and forces cobbled together from the remnants of British EuroForce units, the Humber Line was expected to hold out for a few days at most.

It stopped the Euros cold.

When the European field forces under General Lavalle confidently assaulted the weak Humber Line, they met fanatical resistance from its defenders, backed by the very last formed British units which had been held in reserve in the north against this dire day.

After a week of bloody fighting, the Europeans fell back to their start positions. They had made gains, bent the line in places and even penetrated it here and there. But they had not broken it.

Euro command decided that it was time for a change at the top. Calvert kept his overall command but Lavalle was relieved by his rival, the Polish-born Karl Tanikeszk. A period of reorganisation and preparation ensued, punctuated by low-intensity raids and bombardment. The defence of the Humber had bought Free Britain a short respite.

The best hope for Britain was American intervention, but the US had problems of its own and was unwilling to come to the aid of an ally that seemed already beaten. If the British could win a decisive victory, perhaps US forces might be deployed in time to prevent conquest.

With the provisional Free British government bottled up in Manchester and unable to do more than coordinate the local defence, Lady Elizabeth Sinclaire, a distant Royal relative, took it upon herself to do something about the situation. Her tool was a disgraced mek officer, ‘Shotgun’ Mike Halsey.

Halsey was to be the instrument of British salvation; a sacrificial hero to gain the stunning victory Sinclaire needed. His mission was barely possible: to penetrate deep into European territory and steal the plans for the coming European assault on the Humber Line.

But the Europeans had other ideas. The mission was compromised by Halsey’s great rival, Andrew Palmer, and was used to plant false information in the minds of the British commanders. Thus even as General Alexandria Rice led her brilliant counterattack, hurling back the Euro forces and killing General Tanikeszk, EuroForce meks were landing on the East coast of England.

This was Lavalle’s masterstroke. His raiding force, led by the traitor Palmer, was to destroy Britain’s last major mek factory. Meanwhile, Lavalle would land in Britain in time to halt the counteroffensive and regain his lost glory.

The Euro plan almost succeeded. Lavalle was able to turn back the Rice Counteroffensive with heavy losses, and was confirmed as commander of Euro forces in northern Britain. As reinforcements trickled in from Europe, Lavalle launched attack after attack, expecting to break the Humber Line at any moment.

But hope remained for Free Britain. The vital mek factory remained intact, thanks to a last-ditch defence led by Shotgun Mike Halsey and his allies. In the wake of their – marginal – victory, Sinclaire invited Halsey to form a Special Combat Group answering only to her.

In March 2087, the force was incomplete and underequipped, but with Lavalle pushing daily against the Humber Line and the Free British defenders hanging on by their fingernails, it was obvious that it would soon be plunged back into the fray.

Lavalle and Sinclaire both needed the same thing: a single decisive victory. The fate of Free Britain hung in the balance: could Sinclaire trigger American intervention, or would Lavalle bring the rebel island back into the European Federation?

Prologue: North-Central Conurb, England

6th March 2087

Kranz was the first to go down.

The German mek officer shouldn’t have been involved in the assault, and certainly should not have volunteered for point duty. He’d only just returned to duty after being injured in the first minutes of the Rice Counteroffensive, and he wasn’t up to speed yet. It didn’t matter now. He’d detected the ambush.

After a fashion.

Kranz’ voice gasped something over the unit comm, then went silent as the ground exploded around the feet of his Werner. Emplaced charges chopped the light warmek off at the knees and sent it spinning to the rubble-strewn ground.

The explosion was the signal for all hell to break loose. The lead elements of the assault force were swept with a hail of light weapons fire, infantry anti-mek rockets and a few cannon shells from dug-in armoured vehicles. Fire slashed in from three sides, from the ruined buildings and from rifle pits dug in what had been grass verges and suburban lawns. The lead elements fired back, pushing forward rather than pausing to take out the infantry on their flanks. That was the task of the follow-up force.

General Jean Lavalle, commander of the EuroForce mek forces deployed to break the Humber Line, was part of that follow-on force. His huge Charlemagne Comms/Command mek attracted more than its share of fire, but the massive war machine shrugged off the metal sleet and returned fire, singling out heavy weapons positions for destruction by the Charlemagne’s 200mm railgun. The massive mek was not really equipped for anti-personnel operations, but the railgun was destructive enough to shatter a whole building, so it really didn’t matter if the infantry inside were hit or not.

Lavalle piloted his mek forward, stepping carefully over the fallen Werner. Its pilot hadn’t tried to escape from his machine. He might be dead, unconscious or staying put inside the armoured cockpit until the combat died down a little. Maybe he’d survive – again – or maybe not. Lavalle hoped he’d make it. His force was short of both meks and pilots. Every survivor was a blessing, even one as unlucky as Kranz.

As the assault rolled onwards, the skyline darkened with smoke. Other spearhead units were making progress through the northern suburbs of what had been the city of Leeds. Artillery and air attacks had been softening up Free British positions for several days, but not in this sector. The plan had been to indicate an avenue of assault by preparation, then go in on an unexpected vector after a brief but savage bombardment.

So far, everything had gone according to plan. Resistance was fairly light, consisting mainly of small infantry belts like this one, backed by armoured vehicles and those improvised anti-mek weapons the British kept coming up with. They’d taken to bolting rocket packs or light artillery pieces to anything that had a motor, and the sheer number of these one-shot wonders – few survived to fire again – meant that some, inevitably, would manage to kill a mek.

There were other threats, too. Ever since some madman had managed to prove the Individual Close Assault concept by somehow getting close to a warmek in the middle of a battle, climbing up it and planting charges, there seemed to be no shortage of volunteers to try to recreate the feat.

As Lavalle’s mek rang from a 100mm impact and blasted the firing vehicle – an artillery piece welded to a truck chassis – into flaming wreckage, a figure burst from the rubble, racing towards the giant war machine with a bulky satchel charge in its arms. The figure hurdled the rubble, swerving to evade antipersonnel fire. Lavalle’s moustache twitched as he grinned in admiration for this lunatic’s complete lack of common sense. He had no antipersonnel weapons, of course. Another mek could have sprayed the impudent infantryman with machinegun or 20mm fire, but not a Charlemagne.

‘C’est Magnifique, mais c’est ne pas le guerre!’ Lavalle quoted, aiming his railgun somewhere near the charging infantryman. ‘Or as the English would say…’

Lavalle triggered the rail gun. Its 200mm projectile, accelerated by an electromagnetic field to a significant fraction of the speed of light, flashed past the infantryman, its atmospheric shockwave turning his body – and his explosive burden – into crimson vapour.

‘… Fat chance, pal!’ Lavalle finished, tracking to an autocannon position and shattering it with two quick shots.

The advance continued. They were close to their target now, though the difficulty in controlling an assault in the suburban streets of Leeds meant that it was turning into a soldier’s battle, one that would be won or lost by the actions of squads and pilots rather than the direction of high command. Lavalle firmly believed that all battles went that way after the opening stages. His function as commander was over. He’d made the plan, sent the attack units in and fed reinforcements into the axes that seemed most promising. Now he, too, was just another solider.

But not just any soldier, not Jean Lavalle. No, he was The Last Hussar, foremost warrior of France. His thick black moustache and long hair, worn in ‘light cavalry’ braids, gave him the air of a Napoleonic cavalryman. The sabre he carried even in the cockpit had belonged to a famous French cavalryman, who had led the Horse Grenadiers of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard to shatter the enemies of France so long ago.

Now Lavalle would do the same. Just ahead was a field logistics depot, pivotal to the British defence of the Humber Line. It was all but undefended, its covering mek force drawn off by diversionary attacks. It was wide open. And this time – THIS TIME! – Lavalle would break the Humber Line.

The infantry position fell away behind, and the ground opened up ahead. The assault force crossed what had been a major road and tore up the shell-pocked turf of a park. A line of small apartment blocks rose just ahead, and behind them….

Lavalle pushed his throttles forward, accelerating his heavy mek into a reckless run across the churned-up ground. He styled himself a light horseman, but this was heavy cavalry work; the headlong, ground-shaking charge into enemy positions. Ahead, infantrymen were abandoning the final defence line, fleeing between the buildings as the mek force raced towards their target.

A thin scattering of fire rose from the buildings and a few stubborn infantry positions. The assault force, seventeen meks ranging from light scouts to behemoths like Lavalle’s Charlemagne, hosed the buildings down in a contemptuous hail of fire. Lavalle grinned, a savage, killing smile. His railgun blew the corner off a three-storey apartment building and sent rubble spinning into the air.

A Feuersturm missed its footing and stumbled, crashing to the ground. Lavalle snarled a curse into the unit comm and pushed his mek even faster, trying to overtake the light meks leading the way. His personal bodyguard, Pauline Chartershaugh, tried to keep pace with her reckless commander but her slower Maximilian was gradually left behind.

Lavalle aimed his mek between two of the apartment buildings, following a Gunther. The lighter mek suddenly tried to stop, its huge articulated feet skidding on the grassy area between the buildings. Its autocannon stuttered, blasting at something Lavalle couldn’t see.

Lavalle’s Charlemagne had been running faster than the Gunther could go, even at top speed, and there was no way to avoid a collision. Lavalle grunted as he was flung against his seat harness but the Charlemagne simply smashed the lighter mek aside, sending it crunching through the outer wall of a building, and stumbled on, emerging from the apartment-block line as Lavalle fought for control.

Beyond the buildings was a sea of rubble, bulldozed into hasty defensive positions. Rubble bunkers and sangars housed infantry support weapons and protected a line of towed light artillery pieces. The field guns were museum pieces, or hastily-created copies of weapons that’d been retired in the late 20th-century, but there were a hell of a lot of them.

And they were firing.

The artillery fired over open sights at point-blank range as the mek force surged recklessly from between the buildings. Infantry weapons and autocannon mounted on light wheeled armoured cars opened up, followed by missiles from tracked mek-destroyers. Lavalle’s mek shuddered under multiple impacts as he reflexively walked his railgun along the staggered gun line. Two, three of the antique field guns disappeared under the relativistic impact, then a fourth. Ready ammunition detonated, shattering nearby infantry positions.

But the remaining crews stuck to their guns, frantically reloading as the mek force plunged forward. Every pilot in the assault force knew that they had to overrun the battery before the crews could reload. Manual shell handling would take time; time the gunners didn’t have. The assault force thundered onward, blazing away with every weapon the fifteen remaining meks could bring to bear.

Fourteen… a mek destroyer scored a direct hit on a Werner’s cockpit. Thirteen… another Werner went. Lavalle couldn’t see why.

And then the guns spoke again.

Eleven meks reached the gun line. The last artillery piece fought to the muzzle, firing directly into Lavalle’s mek as he charged into the position. Gun and crew crunched underfoot as the giant mek stomped through the rubble sangar, railgun hammering at an armoured car that’d moved off to the left for a flanking shot.

This, Lavalle thought with elation, is how meks should fight! The rapid advance accompanied by overwhelming firepower. Meks should not be wasted in endless sniping in the urban jungle; they must be freed to manoeuvre and charge!

The armoured car exploded spectacularly, and Lavalle walked his weapon on to a mek-destroyer trying to reverse into the cover of a ruined apartment. It, too, shattered, its heavy steel glacis plate penetrated like butter by the 200mm railgun. The awesome overpressure generated inside the armoured vehicle blew the hatches open, but Lavalle knew that nothing of the crew would emerge from them.

Except as steam.

Ahead was the logistics facility. Nine meks plunged on, Chartershaugh’s Maximilian closing up to protect her general’s flank as he began raking the ammunition and supply stockpiles with his railgun. Chartershaugh added her heavy laser to the destruction, causing a major fire.

Lavalle’s Threat Warning blared, but he was so engrossed in destroying the base that the first missiles that hit his mek came as a complete surprise. His head snapped up, braids flying, as he realised that he was under serious attack.

‘Hostiles two o’clock!’ Lavalle snarled into the unit comm. ‘All units, engage!’

The general turned his mek to face these new attackers, bringing his missile pack on-line. A gaggle of light meks was rushing into the cleared area from the east. The diversionary attack had not been a total success, then. The hostiles were familiar designs; Gunthers and Werners for the most part. These were new-built meks, unfinished and untried, thrown into battle as they came off the lines at the Liberty mek Corporation works on Teeside – a plant that by rights should now be toxic rubble.

Even as the first two British meks went down, Lavalle realised that this must be the Final Reserve; the last formed mek force available. And that meant…

‘Rice!’ Lavalle screamed into the comm as the British general’s command mek lumbered on to the field of battle. And what a mek! General Rice was piloting a Monarch these days; a warmek fully twice the size of Lavalle’s own and bigger even that the Maximilian his bodyguard had chosen. Lavalle had no idea where Rice had got it from but that wasn’t important. He had to kill it before it took out half his force. It looked like the Monarch had been through a few fights lately, and not been properly repaired. But it was still a fearsome opponent.

The Monarch levelled its immense 400mm railgun and fired, hitting a Gunther in the torso. Barely slowed, the projectile came out the back of the light mek, scattering debris that did significant damage to a nearby Feuersturm before ploughing a deep furrow in the rubble.

‘All units!’ Lavalle snapped into the comm. ‘Slave your launchers to me!’

The Monarch fired again and missed, demolishing an apartment building behind Lavalle. Ready lights came on. He dropped the targeting pipper on the Monarch and let fly with his own missiles, delighting in the sensation of power as the combined missile and rocket launch capability of the entire force blasted out at his command. The air was thick with rocket trails as the huge salvo tore across the open space and crashed through the Monarch’s defences. ECM, interceptor fire and the randomness of combat depleted the salvo; rockets and missiles flying wild or shot from the sky. But more than two-thirds of the warheads found a mark on the Monarch. It vanished in a cloud of armour fragments and smoke.

Lavalle whooped, but the British mek emerged from the smoke a second later, leg-mounted gatling lasers slashing across the battlefield. The huge mek’s left arm was buckled, limiting the rail gun’s field of fire, and there were rents in the behemoth’s armour here and there. Yet it advanced, closing the range even as late-arriving missiles chewed away more armour.

Lavalle angled his mek off to the flank as the surviving Feuersturm put all three of its cannon shells into the same point on the Monarch’s torso. A second later the Feuersturm became a fireball as General Rice twisted her mek to bring the damaged rail gun to bear.

‘All units! Concentrate on the enemy command mek!’ Lavalle ordered, but it was obvious that his force was overmatched. He had to get out of the Monarch’s way before it destroyed his mek. He kept angling off to the flank, trying for a shot at the side or rear where the armour was thinner. His rail gun stayed on target the whole time, slamming kinetic-kill projectiles into his much bigger opponent. But Lavalle had already made a decision. He needed help here; it was time to commit his last reserves. Two quick stud-touches on the main communication panel sent the pre-prepared messages he needed, and then it was just a matter of staying alive until the situation improved or he could withdraw.

Seconds passed, and two more of Lavalle’s meks died. Then the missile salvo he’d called for came screaming in from the support batteries. Most of it was aimed at the logistics base, using a handoff targeting lock to blanket the munitions stockpiles with large high-explosive and fuel-air warheads. A smaller salvo of missiles locked on to the Monarch and its supports. The warheads had been selected before the mission, to cover any sudden emergency. There had been no time to reselect payloads, so the Monarch was blanketed by a mix of anti-mek, cluster bomb, incendiary and anti-laser aerosol/smoke warheads. As it re-emerged from the holocaust, battered but unbowed, Lavalle’s second message took effect. Meks from the third echelon of the assault began to filter between the apartment buildings. Despite a few exclamations of dismay over the comnet at what they were facing – Lavalle made a mental note to speak to his pilots about their lack of radio discipline – they advanced, pouring fire into the battered British force.

Faced with such a weight of metal, not even a brute like the Monarch could last long. The lighter meks were all either down or withdrawing as General Rice put herself in the way of the assault force to cover her people. The Monarch stood its ground, taking a hideous volume of fire, for thirty long seconds, during which time Rice killed two more meks and crippled another, then backed away into the cover of the buildings.

Just as she was about to lose sight of the Charlemagne, Rice twisted her crippled mek to bring the immense railgun to bear on Lavalle’s mek. He sidestepped frantically, but too late. He could see the railgun’s coils glow, then the Charlemagne juddered as the colossal 400mm projectile took its main communications antenna off.

Lavalle’s eyes bulged in utter terror as he realised how close Rice’s shot had come to scoring a direct hit on his cockpit. He marvelled at her skill and sheer chutzpah. Outnumbered twenty to one and piloting a badly damaged mek, she’d taken the time to make a final shot at her opposite number. She’d had to twist the mek around awkwardly and raise the weapon using only its shoulder – the elbow joint was a ragged mess of metal – but despite that she’d not only fired on Lavalle, she’d gone for a headshot!

And she’d damn nearly got him.

Lavalle tapped a comms stud. The antenna was gone, but at this distance induction through the mek’s hull would suffice. ‘All units,’ he said very carefully. ‘Complete destruction of the objective and withdraw.’

They’d done what they came to do, though at huge cost. The Humber Line had lost at least one important supply base. All he had to do was keep on chipping away and sooner or later the defences would collapse. And then the mobile war would begin; he’d pursue and harry the British, refusing to give them a chance to regain their balance until they surrendered or he pushed them into the sea.

That wouldn’t take long. According to information Lavalle’s headquarters had received just before the operation started, significant reinforcements would be available soon. Victory was within his grasp at last!

But right now he was just glad to have survived. Lavalle killed the transmission and let the tension break over him. It wouldn’t do anything for morale if the assault force knew that their unstoppable, dashing leader was giggling hysterically in relief at not being splashed across