From: Beth Fulton <beth.fulton@m...>
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:44:36 +1100
Subject: [GZG] [GZG Fiction] The Fall of Orduna Recounted
G'day, Based on a series of requests I've decided to post the latest stories to all four gzg lists/groups. If this really aggravates you I'm deeply sorry and feel free to drop me a line and say so. I'm trying to work out a happy compromise that keeps the largest number of people happily content;) Beth > [quoted text omitted] New Guardian Times, Strait of Matakanka, December 17th, 2196 On the Swabian military maps it is simply Hill 27. The locals call the place Glorioso montón de tierra, or Virgin Mound. Just mentioning its name inevitably initiates a long chain of innuendos from any new comer or the young folk of the area, but its actually named for the 200m tall statue of the Virgin Mary which graces the top of the hill. It is the tallest free standing religious statue on Mars and it commands a view of the steppe surrounding Orduna for tens of kilometres in every direction. Miraculously the Kra'Vak left it standing and even more miraculously our artillery fire didn't fell it either; despite the entire area being carpeted in artillery fire for the three days preceding the crossing of the Strait of Matakanka. With the amount of shrapnel and scrap metal that has been dug into the churned soil on the hilltop it will be a wonder if any significant vegetation recolonises the area for years to come. But for all that there was only a network of scratches from the Virgin's knee down to indicate what she had endured. Orduna had started as a humble ravine town, the buildings built into the walls overlooking stream fed gardens. From these modest origins the town had grown into one of the most vibrant, though still not the largest of cities, in the Margaritifer Sector. At its peak, just as the Kra'Vak invaded, it stretched in a narrow band for nearly 50 kilometres along the ravines east of the Strait of Matakanka. It had contained the sector's main factories for farm machinery, as well as substantial metal works and a large chemical plant. The greatest fear of those approaching it across the strait from Ariza was that all of this had been turned to war-time production by the Kra'Vak. They were on tender hooks, expecting to see floods of tanks, guns, and other war materiels flowing from its gates. The lightning speed of the Kra'Vak invasion back in January of 2194 had caught the populace by surprise. This peaceful city had prided itself on the fact it had avoided being drawn into in the Basin Wars of the mid twenty-first century and the Solar Wars of the twenty-second century. Consequently, the bulk of the population was caught in the city when the battle got underway. The Kra'Vak began with air raids and then the first troops were dropped on the city's meshed roof, breaching it and dropping on to the CBD. Within minutes the area was aflame, reducing much of it to rubble. Panicked calls were broadcast planet wide, but with similar attacks made across the sector little could be done to save Orduna from the coming tsunami of alien invaders. With the centre of the city in flames, the editors of the local media had put together improvised broadcasts via the generator powered cryptic antenna of the much loved pirate station Orduna-Zeta. With the limited power available they broadcast basic defence plans, evacuation protocols and ended with a flash page that was a single banner headline "We Will Smash Them On Our Gates!" It was a heroic sentiment, but estimates are that over 40,000 had died even before the broadcast ended. While this was the only visual broadcast that was successfully transmitted after the attack began the reports that were sent out by audio only over the following three weeks provide a valuable record of the course of the fall of the city and the valiant defence the inhabitants put up. The first evacuations mobilised were those of the centre of the city where the attacks were thickest to that point. From their actions it is apparent that the Kra'Vak commanders quickly realised the punt boats and hover sleds evacuating the children and elderly from the centre of the ravine were shuttling in an improvised militia on their return. The Kra'Vak strafed and bombed every one of these transports they found as well as the landing areas. This not only destroyed the flow of reinforcements it also caused concentrated panic amongst the civilians flocking to the evacuation points. Thousands more died during this second stage of the Kra'Vak attack, but in a testament to the bravery of the people of Orduna the ferry traffic continued unabated until the river was so clogged with debris that only the GEV and grav routes were viable. . The worst was still to come however. The first elements of the main body of the Kra'Vak shock force breached Orduna in the northern residential suburb of Santiago. The mortars that had come in with the original paratroopers continued to pound the centre of the city into rubble, while the shock force advanced from the north. The citizenry was trapped in the very walls that had made the city such a habitable alcove in Mars' often hostile landscape. The fires started that day would continue to burn for weeks. By the dawn of the 6th of January 2194 the impromptu Orduna militia were fully engaged with enemy forces throughout the bulk of the city. The battle had begun in earnest. The rubble and the ruins of the city now cut the inhabitants a break. Used to the labyrinthine nature of the built up areas of the ravine floor and the air walks and subterranean pedestrian transport lines the militia had a much easier time than the invaders, whose vehicles were often stymied by the very destruction they had wrought. With even the smaller grav-tanks unable to manoeuvre rapidly, or with ease, through the debris choked streets, the speed of the advance slowed. Unfortunately while the invaders' advances were now being measured in metres not kilometres they did not stop. The Kra'Vak had already turned several key buildings at either end of the ravine into strongholds. As soon as any path used by the militia became known to the Kra'Vak it was levelled by artillery. The aliens evidently not perturbed by the massive destruction of infrastructure and resources. The hardy nature of the Martians came to the fore in this dire hour. The determined citizenry of Orduna made the Kra'Vak fight for possession of every house and building that remained (even partially) standing. Miniature, bird-sized, drone bombers were being used by the Kra'Vak to hammer the human strong points and with some effect, as they were inflicting numerous casualties. The survivors were bloodied but they merely shook of the plaster dust and found new hiding places to base the fight from. It was clear to the runners moving around the city that the Kra'Vak were taking horrendous losses by this point, but they continued to systematically level the city block by block nevertheless. For a short while, a matter of days, the farm machinery shop was turned into an armoured truck production line. The trucks were driven directly from the factory into battle. By the final day of this operation they were even crewed by the workers who built them. The Kra'Vak jamming of the airwaves was as successful in Orduna as elsewhere. Communication amongst the beleaguered forces was by runners for the most part. As in Stalingrad roughly two and a half centuries earlier "Every man had to be his own General." Positions that were by-passed fought on undirected until they were reinforced, re-supplied or exterminated. A reporter caught in just such a position sent out 24 hourly reports for seven weeks, before they finally ran out of food and more importantly, for them, ammunition. The last report was his open mike as they defended their position with converted scythes and long knives. They were over-run and killed. Another epic defensive battle was fought over the maglev station. The veteran, and much hailed commander of the Second Solar War, General Lech Pawodowski personally lead a platoon of 50 men in a spirited defence. He had retired to Mars after his release from captivity at the end of the Second Solar War. For as long as any of the young folk could remember he had simply been the old man who ran the tinker shop down on the esplanade; the old guy that took those needing direction in their lives under his wing. Now that he was back in the thick of things, his old martial persona was exposed with burning intensity. These were not the men who had fought so famously at his side for seventy days as they defended the last Eurasian bases on Lancelot. Instead they were a cobbled together force of fireman and police officers. Still the charismatic 86 year old again worked his magic and he and his soldiers frustrated the Kra'Vak in a room by room struggle that lasted for nearly three weeks. The depot eventually fell, but by all reports it was the most costly battle the Kra'Vak had in the entire city. Breaking through walls, using the ceiling space as crawl ways, and burrowing under the floor boards, Pawodowski's troops would yield one section of the building only to emerge ghost like somewhere else and start again. They became masters of exchanging fire down hallways, lobbing grenades between rooms, in what became known as depot tennis. The tongue in cheek reports of these actions bringing some levity to these dark days. Pawodowski 's men successfully inflicted as many casualties as possible on the alien enemy. Their courage contributed to their downfall however and after ten days the resistance force was reduced to ten men, one a DJ from the pirate radio station. With their rations exhausted and running critically low on ammunition half the compliment slipped out of the building, using the sewers, found sufficient supplies to maintain them for at least another week and made their way back through enemy lines to rejoin the fight, at least for a time. It is known that Pawodowski survived until the dying days of the struggle, but his eventual fate remains a mystery. Legend has it that he died in hand-to-hand combat with a horde of Kra'Vak in the final battle for the final room, but truth be told nobody knows. At about the time the men in the depot made their daring re-supply run the people of Orduna briefly challenged the Kra'Vak dominance of the air within the ravine city. The shattered dome roof was still partially intact and this made flying by anything but miniature planes incredibly difficult. One young, twenty-two year old took the challenge face on and adapted the frowned on teenage pursuit of base sledding into a military vehicle. Riding her sled over the faces of the buildings and up the dome pylons Orduna's Rose, as she became known, took to the airways over Orduna like its own personal airforce. She was reported as being equipped with a rifle or machine gun, though she also used improvised DFO's, like bricks. While her efforts were likely to have only provided morale boosting benefits for the human troops on the ground, rather than causing significant enemy casualties, for a brief time, just 72 hours, the Kra'Vak were not in uncontested control of the air. Sadly she was killed in a rather unique dogfight on January 15th 2194. The identity of this brave young lady remains a mystery. By this point in mid January the Kra'Vak controlled large parts of the city. With explosives of many kinds pouring into the city around the clock, the ravine resembled some wild scene conjured up from Dante's Inferno. The glow from the burning city could be seen at night by VRfighters and wet-navy ships fighting in the waters off the coast. One live sortie pilot that penetrated to within 20 kilometres of the city on the 14th of January said the gruesome pall of smoke and dust rising from the ravine city gave it the uncanny appearance of a gateway to Hell. Lead by the local librarian - who had been an amateur expert on the street fighting methods of Stalingrad, Baghdad, Houston, Montevideo, Dakka Base and Nova Turov - the local militia had made the Kra'Vak pay dearly for every block they took. To minimize the alien's advantage in raw firepower the citizenry of Orduna had been instructed to get as close as possible and try and catch the Kra'Vak up in dead-end alley way firefights or one sided mob ambushes. While the Kra'Vak were terrifying at close quarters it had been found this mob approaches were still more effective than fighting more conventionally, where artillery or airstrikes could be called in by the well supported Kra'Vak forces. Small unit actions and attrition of the enemy forces were the order of the day. Surely the Kra'Vak did not have endless supplies of troops to throw at this problem. With reports of the sustaining heavy losses, even as they made telling advances, throughout the sector they must run dry of reinforcements soon, surely. Unfortunately the Kra'Vak ability to provide new troops as the old ones were killed surpassed what anyone, particularly those with little military experience, could have anticipated. Moreover, while the Kra'Vak losses were seemingly enormous, the losses for the people of Orduna could only be described as staggering. Estimates run as high as 120,000 killed by the second week of the attack. Dead lay in the street and the stench was almost intolerable even through the rebreathers everyone was now forced to wear. And yet the worst was still to arrive. Some of the last reports that came from the city, dated 17th January 2194, showed the Kra'Vak in control of over 90 percent of the city; the shredded remnants of the militia struggling to maintain an ever more precarious toehold. They had descended into the sewers to contest the last large tracts of free ground in the city. Everyone had been reduced to a primitive level of existence after a fortnight of continuous artillery fire, bot directed saturation rail-gun fire and close quarter street fighting. The media men had begun signing off with the quip "Rat Division Alpha Over." Nothing living remained in the city but Kra'Vak and humans. The buildings were crumbling. The gardens had been destroyed and the livestock that had not perished had fled. Only the sentient races endured the torturous conflict. By the 18th the Kra'Vak controlled all of the heights of the city, as well as the surrounding hills and flat ground. The southern residential suburbs had fallen to them, as had the entire city north of the downtown area. The splintered human forces still held tiny pockets in the centre of the city and in the industrial zones of the southern branch of the main river, but all the potential production base this represented was in ruins. Even with these meagre holdings however, the militia forces still managed to thwart the invader's attempts at complete control for a further week, some pockets holding on for at least another three months (based on intermittent, undirected and broken radio signals). Probably the most famous of these last stands was by a group of largely Indian IT-workers. With a solid background in military sims they directed attacks on passing Kra'Vak convoys from their office building for nineteen days after the attack began. The location of the high rise office block amongst a series of lower storey shops and gardens just south of the downtown area meant it had sweeping views of all the approaches. Their nominal leader, Rajendraprasad Gunasekera, discovered fairly early on that fire from the roof of the building could be undertaken with relative impunity. The founder had been a survivor of the Great Californian quakes so the building was near indestructible and fortuitously of a design that meant that a ground-based tank was unable to elevate its barrel high enough to hit the roof directly, while levitating vehicles got strung up in the nest of support cables running from the building to its neighbours and the dome roof. Bristling with machine guns, mortars, and rifles that materialised from some unknown source, this group remained a hazard for Kra'Vak in the proximity. At least until the building was felled by an aerial bombing run on the 23rd. In the final battle for the main part of the city beginning on the 20th of January the Kra'Vak became increasingly brutal. They poured flammable liquids into the sewers and set them ablaze. On entering a building they ripped up the flooring and hurled charges into cellars and attics to root out hidden defenders. The city effectively fell on the 24th of January 2194, though the final squeaks from the human rats of Orduna was not heard until April 4th of that