Luna Bellum

As the war rages across the surface of the Earth and even the skies themselves burn, the fires reach even higher, to places no man has ever bled before…

This article continues where a previous story left off. To read the previous one, click here.

The Surprise at Calais

In the aftermath of the aetherial confrontation over Calais, the limited garrison at the French colony Cassini Station on Lune found itself in disarray almost as severe as what they had inflicted on the British Royal Navy. The surviving Courbet vessels, France, Jean Bart, and Paris, forced to retreat back to the moon after their surprise interference in the invasion, had proven the fortuitousness of their retrofitted upgrades in what was quite possibly the most extreme test possible. While too small in numbers to have significantly altered the course of the battle beyond what had already been achieved by their surprise arrival, the faster, smaller aetherships had proven capable of outmaneuvering the much larger British warships.

This was, however, not much cause for celebration. Colonel Méliès, commander of the Cassini Station garrison, was already confronted with a broad array of problems related to the shifting political and military priorities of the Earth, as well as in the midst of refitting the colony itself with much needed defensive upgrades - upgrades that, as part of the installation process, had required dismantling existing infrastructure. Orbital gun arrays laid disassembled or operating on temporary power lines; oxygen supplies were being carefully directed between the necessary stations to avoid wasting it on empty modules; the small defensive fleet either obsolete or docked in the midst of retrofitting; and most critically, the radio extender array that allowed contact with the Earth was inoperable - a “temporary inconvenience” that had now, through the negligence of the Moon by French commanders, become the operational standard for the past month. While contact with his fleets was still possible, there was no word from Paris, nor any way to send word to Paris.

Méliès could understand the state of affairs that had led to his predicament well enough. The moon, after all, had been disregarded as a developmental dead end with the emergence of the Jump Gates, and having little to offer in resources it had been left to operate mainly as a secondary shipyard for the French Navy - a place to construct aetherships away from the hotbeds of the Earth itself. The dispersal of France’s colonies by the Internationale further exacerbated this state of separation - while Cassini and other French projects on Lune were minor, it was still a colony, and its role in the order of the New French Republic was an ambiguity that would not be resolved anytime soon. As the situation on the Earth developed, the meetings between the colonel and the governor, as well as the provisional agents of the Commissariat, grew more and more frequent, though any answers grew more and more distant. Now that Lune had quite by accident made itself relevant to the Great War, Colonel Méliès needed to develop a plan.

The British, in the meantime, were also developing a plan of their own after the surprise foiling attacks that came, as far as G.R.A.I.L. was concerned, quite literally out of nowhere, as the French had not been the only ones to disregard Cassini’s role in their war efforts. Concluding that the initial ambush had been a mistake, G.R.A.I.L. and the Royal Navy determined that an intentional attack could not be permitted, regardless of any other considerations towards its potential effectiveness. As one admiral had put it, if they “left the monkey in the tree,” it would soon go from “throwing old fruit to throwing rocks”. Uncertain of the actual strength of the French garrison, a large portion of the Royal Navy was diverted to deal with the Cassini Station, the orders from G.R.A.I.L. calling for a “total extermination” that would take no chances of needing a second excursion.

Playing the Bluff

Realizing that French High Command had problems of its own with the simultaneous incursions of the British and Imperials on their home territory, and that any response would be token at best, Colonel Méliès decided to independently press the advantage of British confusion. Cut off from the French intelligence networks, the colonel shrewdly concluded that the British response to the surprise interference of the small lunar fleet would be swift and brutal, a crushing blow meant to humiliate just as much as it would be meant to restore the Royal Navy’s pride. Through the reports of the crews and captains of the Courbet vessels that had participated in the brief attack, Méliès was unable to determine the size of the force arrayed above Calais, but was certain that whatever was diverted to Lune would be a significant portion of that force. After all, the British had no idea what was up here, or how well armed they were.

Recognizing the immense advantage of the intelligence that he held, Colonel Méliès rapidly set into motion an ambitious plan to play the Royal Navy’s blindness to his advantage. Having little time to prepare defenses, he concentrated the meager assets of the garrison into a central point, which would force the British to engage him in a narrow window and foil their advantage of numbers and firepower. In the shipyards, he had the guns intended for upgrading old warships deployed on the surface as improvised emplacements, and those ships that were capable of operating were grouped into harrying fleets, meant to strike and harass the Royal Navy from their flanks and force them to pursue in wild directions. While the outer reaches of the still under construction defense infrastructure was far from completion, he ordered the installations to be “deliberately rushed” - nonfunctioning, but having the appearance of defenses that would need to be engaged with.

With no way of knowing how quickly or in what number the British would arrive, the Republican Guard at Cassini carried out their tasks with a paranoid fervency, eyes always drifting to the sky. Most of the men had never seen combat, either recruited from the already meager population of steel workers and engineers working in the colony or being deployed to the remote base as punishment for some minor infraction or another. Realizing the importance of maintaining the fragile state of morale in the face of what was almost certain doom, Colonel Méliès took to the lines personally, donning the same utilitarian space suits as the rest of his soldiers and helping them in the frantic undertaking of turning a barren rock into a defensible position. Though little could be done to ease the sense that they would all die here, the constant sight of the Earth, and the knowledge that they would die shoulder to shoulder in common cause, was enough to instill a spark of defiant courage in the green ranks of the Lunar Guard.

On June 11th, 1940, less than a month after the French began to work on their defenses, the first British ships began to slowly drift into view. The Lunar Guard scrambled to their stations and the Navy fired up their engines, as the French garrison prepared for another first in human history - the first battle to take place on Earth’s own moon.

A Clumsy Rehearsal

The bluff, much to the surprise of even Colonel Méliès, was an overwhelming success almost immediately. The Royal Navy, used to being able to rely on the vast intelligence networks and calculations of G.R.A.I.L. to guide them, faced an unknown foe on an unknown surface and hesitated. Seeing the numerous defensive installations scattered around Cassini Station, the fleet almost immediately scattered itself, wasting ammunition and time firing its weapons and launching landing parties to destroy and seize inoperable weapons and empty scaffolds. These scattered ships themselves became the targets of the French Navy, its light ships deftly skirmishing with the larger British vessels much as the Courbet vessels had learned over Calais, forcing overextensions from escorts. The Royal Navy had not properly organized itself, having anticipated a direct fight with a smaller foe, and as their ships scattered wide, the admirals struggled to retain control over their fleets, losing dozens of vessels to skirmishers and navigational errors as they searched for the real French garrison, many of the landing parties searching in vain through false tunnels for potential bunkers. Though they still struggled to chase down the harrying fleets, the impression among the Royal Navy began to form that the French had abandoned the moon entirely.

The Lunar Guard, at Colonel Méliès’ orders, held their fire, allowing the disarray in the aether to take its course as the Royal Navy drew closer to their citadel. When he finally gave the order to fire, all hell broke loose.

Unleashing devastating fire at what was effectively point-blank range, the orbital guns ripped through the first British battleships with merciless precision, ruthlessly punishing the Royal Navy as they finally began to reorient themselves to the new threat. The return fire was limited, both by the obstruction of other ships and the general state of panic as they attempted to retreat to safer distances. These opening volleys, though successful, did not inspire much cause for celebration in the Lunar Guard, who quickly realized that they were confronting numbers beyond even their most pessimistic estimates. As soon as a ship was sundered, another would drift into its place, and after the first tense minutes of the battle unfolded, the British finally began to answer the French in kind. Having retreated to safer distances, the orbital guns struggled to penetrate the belly armor of British aetherships, and the British fire, once it zeroed in on the emplacements, was decisive. Méliès had correctly anticipated, however, that the narrow focus of his defense would in turn force a narrow focus of attack, and soon the Royal Navy began launching landing parties - hoping to broaden their approach and encircle the French.

This, as it turned out, was one of the most disastrous attacks ever launched in the celebrated history of the Royal Navy.

As the Merlin capsules impacted the surface of the moon, it became immediately apparent that Tommybots, already merely serviceable as soldiers, were utterly unfit for zero-atmosphere combat and low-gravity conditions. As soon as they stepped off of the metal surfaces of the capsule’s doors into the dusty ground, their navigational capabilities utterly crumbled. What were normally acceptable errors like bumping into one another or stumbling over uneven ground ended up sending several of the intrepid invaders bounding helplessly into the distance or landing in positions they could not extricate themselves from. The crews of the light Gareth drop tanks, while more capable of handling the lunar surface, found that the autopiloting modules of their vehicles were likewise extremely ill-suited to the theater, and the human operators were forced to multitask in a desperate effort to maintain control of their vehicles as the French “Coccinelle” tankettes, regarded as an obsolete weapon of desperation on Earth, easily outmatched them both in experience and maneuverability.

The energy rifles of the Republican Guard, often derided by the veterans of combat on the Earth for their numerous shortcomings, were incredibly suited to the theater of lunar battle. Already having a somewhat lessened recoil that improved the accuracy of energy fire, the vacuum of the barren moon meant that the bolts fired by these rifles would not dissipate their heat as quickly - dramatically increasing the range and penetration of weapons traditionally regarded as useless against the British tommybots. In some cases, these weapons even managed to penetrate the light armor of Gareth tanks, an unfathomable difference in performance that blindsided the already confused British attackers.

While the human operators of the SAS Orbital Dragoons found better success in their landings, without the anticipated support of their tanks and the Tommybots, even the most elite of the Royal Navy found themselves trapped and outnumbered by green French militiamen, and to top off the humiliation of the lunar invasion’s failure, many of these elite soldiers were taken prisoner by those same welders and painters who only learned to operate a rifle a few scant hours ago.

An Exercise in Futility

Having prisoners in hand and having thoroughly outplayed the Royal Navy, Colonel Méliès took advantage of this opportunity to negotiate a temporary ceasefire with the British to allow them to fall back and regroup, and negotiate for the return of their dragoons. This time of course was also advantageous to the French, allowing them to likewise regroup, repair, and ready themselves for an inevitable second attack. Though the bluff had succeeded, the British now knew what was arrayed against them, and would be able to devise a more useful plan of attack.

The Royal Navy, however, was not so optimistic. Already foiled convincingly by a far inferior force of ground troops, it was abundantly clear that they would not be able to complete their mission of “total extermination” with the assets at their disposal. The landing parties were utterly unfit for fighting on the moon, as had been demonstrated at great expense, and while they would be able to eventually secure the aetherial advantage from the meager French Navy, an inability to secure the ground meant that they would only be able to conduct bombardment missions, over and over, in hope of eventually forcing a surrender - this assuming that, somehow, the French would just stop tunnelling.

The mission that was meant to avenge the Royal Navy’s pride had culminated in an even greater humiliation. While their victory would eventually come, it would not be with the fanfare and glory of a crushing battle, but with the slow, strangling death of a siege. The moon would not fall in a day, but over the course of several agonizing months of methodical, systematic bombings, constantly retreading the same ground in a futile attempt to squash out gnats from orbit. The British had all the time to do this they could ever need, supplied by their uninterrupted connection to the Empire’s colonies on the Earth, but every day the fleet spent bombing craters into the surface of the moon was a day that the Royal Navy wasted its manpower and ammunition on a relatively unimportant piece of reflective rock.

When the deadline for the ceasefire passed a week later, on June 18th, the British did not leave. But they did not open fire, either. The French and the British simply stared across the void of the aether at one another, the inevitable continuation known to both sides, but neither willing to commence this futile struggle right away. Four hours of tense silence passed, before finally the Battle of the Moon commenced anew.

The Speck In His Eye

While the extender relay for Lune was out of commission, its already stalled replacement now all but canceled by the constant presence of the Royal Navy, the moon was an open sight to the whole world. As the battle raged on in its early hours, a young boy on a grassy hilltop in Washington Township, Ohio, became one of the first witnesses on Earth to a battle on the Moon. Young Neil Armstrong, having bought a telescope after a month of mowing lawns and intending to spot Cassini Station, instead caught sight of the opening volleys of the British Navy and the makings of human history. A few phone calls later, nearly every observatory on Earth was packed with curious observers and reporters and military personnel all struggling to catch sight of the battle. Hillsides in Europe, America, and even as far as Russia were crowded with amateur astronomers and their telescopes hoping to catch a peek at the battle unfolding above them.

French propagandists, buoyed by what appeared to be the successful defense, or at least some sort of standoff, by what was known to be a tiny garrison, were quick to utilize this event to uplift the waning morale of the French people in the face of so many defeats and setbacks in Europe. Though no contact could yet be made with Méliès, on Earth his face was on the front page of every newspaper and magazine from New York to Shanghai, and the lack of any contact was not enough to dissuade all manner of bold claims made about his faceoff against the Royal Navy. Even the British were unable to fully suppress the story of Méliès, and while their telling of his defense was much less flattering, he nevertheless became a frequent subject of somewhat taboo conversation in the parlors of London.

“In the ever watchful eye of the British Protectorate,” stated one article, “Méliès has become a very troublesome speck.”