RE: [FH] Breaking News - Chronicle of Operation Colossus 2-of-6

Road to Habb al Tal

I expected to have a few days in Nirgal, but we actually rolled out the
next day before first light. I was glad to be moving, but would've
appreciated the time to file some prep stories on the local mood first.
War zones are never convenient, however.

Our regimental convoy rolled overland using the corridors northeast from
Nirgal through Jebri to Habb al Tal. Strips on either side of the
corridors were heavily cut up, the red Martian earth showing through the
wheel tracks left by hundreds of vehicles which had passed this way
before us. Beyond those immediate scars and the long line of vehicles
stretching ahead and behind us, the rolling view of yellow-green Martian
scrub grass stretched to the horizon with little to break the monotony.
The crew of the tank (Ben, Irshad and Todd) amused themselves with cards
and LAN duels for much of the way, with Jose driving. Eventually though
they turned to gossip about the war. "Like the granddad and kid who
walked from the mines south of Pikalevo, the old guy screaming the kid
mute. All smeared up and looking like they're chased by demons. They'd
found their family gutted by the SAMs" 
There was a communal shaking of heads before Todd commented "The docs
say the old fellow will most likely be sedated for the rest of his life,
mind gone and lungs all torn up by exposure and the mine dust. He'll be
spitting blood until he's six foot under." 
Another pause before Ben, the eternal optimist noted "They say the kid
seems to be ok. He's got Mars in his blood that one." I presumed that
meant he's one of those hardy urchins engineered to find life on Mars a
lot easier than us Terran standards. The boys joked around a little, but
the general fear was still there. Through out history people have always
cast a dim light on the enemy, but there is no need to demonise the
opposition in this war, they really are monsters. I couldn't help but
sneak a glance at the back wall, where some larrikin, a lover of classic
movies, had pinned a flat from a "Predator" movie to the wall with a
dart. Uncannily close resemblance in my opinion, as if the director was
trying to subtly let us in on the secret.

As we sat to the south of Vinogradov waiting our turn to refuel, I
turned to musing about our final destination. Wars have always involved
dealing with innovation, getting used to new tactics and new ideas. Over
the last century, the discovery of FTL and the related breakthroughs in
the field of gravity control and true quantum computing have caused some
of the largest shake-ups in the execution of military confrontations.
Still many forces hadn't completely embraced these technologies. While
the OU had grav as standard, here I was trundling across Mars in a
wheeled tank. As you can imagine that was throwing up some thorny
issues. For one where would we end up? Would it be better to cut the
Krak off or try and shift them from their initial footholds and push
them back off planet? The alien forces already held Jalal at Jamsah,
Middleton, Osuga and much of Severns. Normally forcing their backs to
the ocean would be a good thing, keeping them penned in, but in this
conflict it was no advantage. The big Krak grav tanks meant that you
could push all you like and you'd just end up taking the battle out onto
the water. If you kept pushing you could shove them all the way across
the northern sea and just end up back on land on the other side of the
planet. Not a great situation to be in. Our commanders obviously knew
what they were after though and we were soon committed to the line in
the Arda Valles. I was getting a ring side seat for one of the biggest
military operations in history.

The first shots

I didn't have the most comprehensive view of the conflict, spending my
time in the back seat so I wouldn't be in the way (thereby hopefully
increasing our chances of making it through this shebang in one piece).
Nevertheless I'll do my best to outline what happened around us in the
Arda theatre. 

We spent much of the morning of the 7th of January sitting in an
impromptu camp on the southern lip of the Arda Valles. I tried visiting
with neighbouring crews, but the increasingly chill winds and sporadic
shelling of our line by Krak artillery meant that most were concerned
with keeping buttoned up, warm and ready to scoot if need be. More
artillery bombardment stretched through the afternoon and into the
morning, killing a few tanks but really only wearing down our nerves.
Eventually though a small degree of relief and retaliation came when
VTOL-borne commandos destroyed the Krak's main local ammo dump. This
caused a brief lull and was welcome respite for those of us up front. It
also gave the engineers a little time to sure up the lines of
fortifications now lining the southern side of the Valles.

By dawn of the 9th the lull was well and truly over, with both sides
bombarding the forward lines. Fighters were also being used to attack
the forward most units, though they were increasingly caught up in long
range dogfights amongst themselves. At least that meant they weren't
dropping DFO on us! Still the morning status reports showed the Krak
aerial raids had already knocked out several of our anti-air positions,
as well as more tank and artillery than we could really afford so early
on.

By the end of the Operation Colossus over 1.8 million human troops would
be committed to the battle and estimates at the Krak forces were as high
as a million. We didn't realise it would be such a large fight as we sat
there through the 9th. An early hint may have been a noon briefing,
which showed that in our area alone there were 3 divisions of 9
brigades, 5 of which were armoured, with three reserve brigades five
kilometres south and another division on the ridge behind that. Four
more infantry divisions were on the eastern edge of Vinvogradov, an
infantry and two armored divisions on Vinvogradov's northern flank, and
three more armored divisions on the plateau's western edge covering the
start of the corridor down to Pikalevo. In addition, a reinforced
brigade (with 200 tanks) under Colonel Rokossovsky was deployed on the
top of the plateau with orders to stop any forces which may try to
attack down from Pikalevo and along Vinvogradov's southern edge.
Overall, we had over 190,000 troops and 2400 tanks in the southern Arda,
backed by artillery. An intel plot showed 7 Krak divisions, five
armoured and two foot arrayed on the northern rim of the Valles,
directly across from our position. Their arrangement had their armour
sitting back at strategic depths, providing dynamic defensive cover,
whilst their foot troops were to the fore, dogging us with aggressive
forays across the Valles. For now though there was relatively little
real fighting in our sector, though reports were filtering in of much
stiffer clashes to the north around Shevchenko, Severns and San Juan.

In fact from our perspective little happened through until late evening
of the 9th, when we got word that Krak air strikes had destroyed two
thirds of the RNACAF VR Repeaters. VR fighters were to play little
further role in the ensuing warfare. 

At midnight we got word that a minor Krak force had tried to capture the
water plant at the old mining camp 10 kilometres to the east. Several
Krak grav tanks were also reported to have been sunk in a naval battle
off Al Jamsah. That was greeted with loud cheers and hand slapping. By
morning our elation was dispersed however, as we were greeted with the
first waves of Krak power armour advancing on our position under the
cover of creeping artillery fire. In response, we were told to advance
and somewhat to our amazement found ourselves quickly rolling over the
northern lip of the Valles and pushing up onto the plains behind.
Whether as a result of our successes or because of equally large alien
reversals elsewhere, the Krak command apparently abandoned hopes of a
simple ground attack, and began a renewed and intensified shelling of
the human forces instead.

The waters of Kolyma More

The afternoon of the 10th and much of the 11th passed in this way, we
were told to hold fast while the Euri's and Japanese carried out a
series of bloody assaults. The body count was pretty sickening, but you
could see the boys in our tank itching to get moving and out from under
the Krak artillery. The monotony was eventually broken when Ben managed
to hook into some live drone feeds of fierce fighting out on the waters
of the Kolyma More and Xonak Daryâ. For those more accustomed to tanks
on land and boats at sea these battles were a weird mix of grav tanks
and conventional naval vessels. Monster Krak MBTs mixing it up with
local hover skiffs and larger, sharp angled corvettes and destroyers
from the Europian, Anglian and Eurasian Martian Navies, normally
stationed in the ports along the edge of the Great Northern Sea. The
conflict in the Kolyma More is probably best described as a swirling
maelstrom, shifting and circling. I was getting seasick watching the
vessels pitching around, as if they were dogfighting on the water's
surface. It was only mildly better watching the missile approaches; I
started every time the clouds of pellets in the PDS shredded anything
getting close to the navy ships. The fight eventually spiralled out into
the deeper open water where the dedicated nature of the bigger naval
vessels finally came to the fore. With room to submerge easily, if
needed, they could use the watery depths as temporary refuge and
stalking cover. The deeper water also worked to sharpen Krak losses as
damaged tanks were quickly sucked into the surging and frigid water.
Ultimately the Krak broke off, withdrawing back to shore. 

The action on the Xonak Daryâ was of a very different nature, with Krak
tanks chasing off small amphibious landing craft which had been
resupplying Severns. The chase was a tense and bloody one; there was
even a couple of boarding actions. Aliens in combat or light power
armour making impossibly long leaps from speeding tanks or VTOLs to the
rear human boats. The prayers and exhortations were anything but silent
as we crowded around the comms projection, the hud vistas too scratchy
to watch for long. Hand to hand is never pretty, but on the back of
those little boats it seemed even more treacherous. Bodies alive and
dead, human and alien tumbled from the boats as they bounced further out
into the wind blown chop. Ben zoomed in on the action on one small boat
just as the aliens penetrated the cabin and despatched the pilot. The
brave lass had her own last laugh though, her dead weight veering the
vessel hard starboard into the shadowing Krak tank. The resulting
explosion filling the holographic diorama with painfully bright crimsons
before the op filters damped the colour set. As we skipped from
drone-cam to drone-cam we saw a few more human boats succumb, but the
bulk of the human vessels did eventually outrun the Krak, either to
fortified positions on the opposing shore or out to mother ships on the
Pyrrhae Sea. 

Clearing Chelny Hills

Todd had just broken out the nutri-sticks when Irshad was called out of
the tank. Apparently there was something command could only tell him in
person. The look on his face said he wasn't that impressed about risking
his hide outside with the odd Krak shell still going off, but he didn't
grouse. About 45 minutes later he was back and we were heading out.
Seems that while we were watching the oceanic shoot up there was a
debate back at HQ about whether we could make good on Euri advances and
push the Krak back off the approaches to Vinogradov and Arda altogether.
To my limited grasp of military wisdom it looked questionable; uphill
against a dug-in enemy. There was no avoiding it would be costly. The
extreme western end of the Arda, Chelny Hills, was still in Krak hands.
While called hills they were far from gentle rolling grassed topped
affairs. They featured such extreme terrain as rock escarpments rising
650 metres from the floor of the Valles. Irshad said the word was old
Colonel Eshkol was bitterly opposed to an assault on the Hills, but
General Matear was enthusiastic given what the Euri's had pulled off in
their "ancient kit held together with spit, cabbage gum and heavy
language". Either way we were on the move and even I had to admit that
there was some relief at the thought of actually doing something.

By the time we were at our start line we had joined up with the brigade
under "Ironside" Mandler and a local brigade drawn from Jaroslaw.
Sit-maps on the holo-board also showed two infantry brigades (marked by
small blue icons edged in green) in support to our rear. The sit-map
also had a string of bright red triangles across the terrain contours to
our front. The local section of the Krak invasion force; estimated at
50,000 strong grouped into the equivalent of 9 brigades, with sickening
amounts of artillery and armour in support; the outlines of individual
'Killjoys' on the drone shots underscoring how big those behemoths were.
You couldn't imagine a worse place to have a tank battle. The warped
terrain was made up of mountainous slopes crisscrossed by streams and
rutted gullys every few hundred metres. All of which ran west to east
across the line of attack. At first the assault took the direct
approach, but Jose (and the other drivers) soon called that to a halt as
we were all jarred within an inch of lethal bruising (or at least that's
how it felt). My butt and teeth were aching and if it weren't for my
polyclad overshirt I'd have had cuts on my shoulders and thighs where my
harness was biting hard. With no traversable road corridors through the
mess we were forced to channel along east-west zig-zags. We were
advancing, but with effectively uncovered flanks. The Krak grav meant
their movement wasn't as restricted and thankfully rows of Martian
willow meant they couldn't get clear fire lanes on our approach. One
advantage we did have came compliments of the Jaroslaw brigade. It was
peppered with ex-miners who were well acquainted with the mining and
settlement tunnels honeycombing the area.

We were well in to the 12th by the time we cleared the rise. The RNACAF,
which had been attacking Krak artillery along the Arda Valles for the
past week, was called in to attack the Krak positions above us. Whereas
the heavier, and well-protected artillery, had been mostly undamaged by
the bombing runs, the Krak ground forces above us were pulverised. I can
not say how grateful we were as we'd be attached to the forward assault
force, which had to follow a Jaroslaw through the tunnels and attack the
Krak positions literally from below. Its hard to imagine sweating on
Mars in a habi-controlled tank, but I certainly was after 15 minutes in
those tunnels. There was nothing but short sharp breathing as Jose
scrapped us through a couple of tight spots (Todd muttering jokingly
about paint jobs and wing mirrors) and then an explosion of profanity
and command as we ran into a Krak anchor force. The Krak fired to bring
the entire mountain down on our heads while Todd showed why this crew
keeps a pot of paint for kill rings; never thought I'd see sniper skill
in a tanker. We blasted through though and between us, the airforce
bombs and the poor guys playing decoy with a frontal assault, by
afternoon we had overrun the Krak lines. As nervy as I was going
underground, I can't imagine what it must have been like in that frontal
assault; chewed up by terrain and alien alike.

Command opted not to push the front further for now, but to fortify the
flanks of Vinogradov and the northern flanks of the Arda. So (on the
13th January) we set about digging in, napping and waiting for the next
move. Ben convinced me to play cards, "after all I already own your
apartment and that of your offspring for 3 generations, what could you
possibly have to lose?...". I couldn't keep it up for long though and I
ended up dozing off. I had been asleep a few hours when a shell burst
directly over the tank tossed me to the floor shaking me fully awake in
an instant. The Krak had mounted a massive counter-attack. While we held
our own, all but depleting our load-out over the next 6 hours, the
division to our east was not so fortunate. The Kraks down there burst up
the side of Vinogradov and advanced 20 km onto the plateau. My crew were
fixated on their own battle, but I used by HUD to watch the collapse to
our east. Watching the stealthed alien troops flow past was like
watching the ground heave. There must have been the equivalent of two
army corps in that attack. The violence of the Krak assault overcame the
Canadian division down there with relative ease. The remnants of the
division tried to counter-attack, but they were so weakened they were
easily repelled. The Kraks made chillingly effective use of some new
anti-tank-anti-air missile they'd pulled from their seemingly bottomless
arsenal.

As you can imagine, news of the slaughter of the 11th Canadian Division
did little for morale. Morale dropped even lower when HQ found it
necessary to commit our southern reserves to the fight in the southwest
Arda. From our perspective the brightest moment of the day was the news
of the capture of a Krak commander. We'd never get anything out of him
(her? it?), the brutes never lived long in captivity, but the sheer
satisfaction of knowing some human was up to the task of taking one of
those blood-thirsty beasts alive was immense. I knew the news reports
back home would be filled with imbedded accounts of the intense battles
that had been waging against the Kraks for the last few days. So when I
got my story upload clearance I left talk of the Krak thrust to others
and concentrated on how our forces had destroyed an entire Krak brigade
in the last 24 hours, destroying 102 Krak tanks, and how the commander
and 31 troops had been captured. 

<Continued in Part Three>