Dragon Two-Zero (Fury's Fire Book 1)

by William McCaskey

  Reaver coughed a laugh and shook his head. The image was clear in its message: this was going to be a long one. As the two Marines rounded the corner and neared one of the nurses’ stations, the lack of activity was telling; obviously, something else was going on within the wing and had called them all away. Reaver’s experience told him that the docs would throw a shit fit if he tried to check himself out, and he had no intention of actually getting permission to leave. When Harlequin paused by the station as if to wait, Reaver waved for him to follow; the Recon lance-corporal shut his mouth as he caught the look his Staff Sergeant threw at him as he started to say something.

  Nurses made it a point of not giving their charges uniforms, and Reaver figured it had been either Bull, Wolf, or both who brought the uniform in for him. They knew he would walk out when he was ready. Walk with a purpose and like you have every right to be somewhere and most of the time no one will question the legitimacy of your presence; Reaver relied on this truism as he proceeded through the hospital toward the exit.

  The two Marines made it all the way to the entrance hallway of the hospital before anyone intercepted them, and it played to their favor that the questioning authority was a Naval Corpsman so fresh-faced he was probably still wet behind the ears, but Reaver wasn't in the mood to check. The Corpsman had stood and demanded that the Marines sign out on the log; a simple glare and a refusal to slow his stride toward the exit cowed the Corpsman, who returned to his seat behind the desk where he had been sitting when Reaver and Harlequin had approached.

  Once outside the hospital walls and into the still darkness that matched the hours before dawn on any planet, Reaver slowed his stride a little, giving Harlequin the chance to move up beside him. “What the hell, Reaver? I thought you were checking out with the Doc." The sniper's voice was low, careful not to blue falcon his Staff Sergeant.

  Reaver glanced at the Corporal. “Name of the game, Harlequin. Docs dose you up, try to make you lazy. The warriors go AWOL from the ward and get back in the fight. Been happening for thousands of years; guaranteed there was some British Tommy or even a soldier for the German Kaiser that got hit during the war to end all wars who snuck out of a field hospital to get back into the fighting."

  Quinn’s response was not what the Recon Staff Sergeant expected. “When was the war to end all wars, and why in the fuck would they still call it that when it didn’t end all wars?" The tone of his voice showed his confusion at Reaver’s commentary.

  Reaver chuckled and motioned for Harlequin to take the lead and guide them to Lieutenant Davis’ sleeping quarters. The assault boat that brought down the hospital and other prefabs had landed south of Craxus, and from the lack of outgoing artillery fire and general organization of the base layout, Reaver had a feeling Craxus was in Alliance hands. That meant the Marines and Army would start working their way north while a holding force secured the supply lines. The assault boats would have landed in sequences to build the foundation of the base, the hulls slapping down to interlock and form the streets and walkways.

  Reaver did a mental cycle through the hard drive to remember what he could about Earth's military history. “The phrasing comes from trying to describe the First World War, though really the Second was nothing more than a continuation of the First, back on old Earth. Early nineteen hundreds. They called it the war to end all wars because it involved the major empirical powers at the time, most of their associated countries, and even managed to drag in the second major landmass and their isolated countries like the United States. The naive thought that after seeing an entire generation almost destroyed there would never be another war like it. In truth, most of the alliances forged became the same lines drawn in the Second and Third. Hell, the fact that Earth is the way it is today is probably because of the first two world wars, and definitely because of the Third."

  Harlequin stopped asking questions. He had learned that if you asked his Staff Sergeant a question, he would answer it if he knew. If he didn't, he sure as hell knew how to find it. Part of him wondered why the Staff Sergeant hadn't taken a commission like Lieutenant Davis had; maybe Bull would have the skinny on the Boss.

  Harlequin had been leading them past rows of prefabbed buildings, the purpose of which was almost impossible to ascertain in the pitch blackness of the early morning with the planet’s single moon already set and the sun yet to rise. The Marines rounded a corner to another row of buildings, Harlequin leading Reaver to the second one down on the right. A sharp rap of his knuckles on the door was answered from within by a muffled and unintelligible shout. Harlequin knocked again and spoke, raising his voice. “It's Corporal McKenzie, Sir. I've got Staff Sergeant Jacobs with me."

  At his shout, the door was yanked open, and Lieutenant Davis' head stuck out. “Get in here, Reaver. Corporal go tell your assistant squad leader the CO said to get Dragon Two up and geared, then didi mao your ass back here." The lieutenant held the door open for Reaver to slide inside while Harlequin took off at a jog toward the section of ground the Marines had claimed for their barracks area.

  As the door shut, Davis smacked the panel beside the door to bring the interior lights up to a dim glow, casting a shadow over the scowl on the lieutenant's face. “You want to tell me what in the hell you're doing here." The tone in his platoon leader's voice was one of expectation, not of interrogation.

  Now was not the time to bullshit and Reaver knew it, plus he respected the Lieutenant too much to pull one past him. With a shrug, he said, “Technically, I'm AWOL. If I waited for the Doc to sign off on my recovery, I would've been in there for at least another week. I've got better shit to do than sit on my ass; plus, it sounds like you've got something for me anyway."

  Davis shook his head. Reaver knew what the LT should do was march his recovering ass back to the medical center and put him under guard to ensure he sat it down and stayed for the entirety of his recovery.

  That was what he should do.

  But Reaver already knew that wasn’t going to happen based on the resigned headshake. What the LT was going to do was get Dragon Two out on a mission and deny any knowledge of Staff Sergeant Jacobs whereabouts, because that's what leaders did for stubborn Marines and Reaver had done it for Davis when he had been a corporal.

  The lieutenant walked to the folding metal campaign desk shoved into the corner opposite his rack and flipped up the cover; a wireframe hologram of the city and surrounding countryside snapped into existence. Zooming in on the cityscape, known enemy positions and engagements highlighted, along with areas secured by the Alliance. Tossing Reaver a command screen, Davis began filling him in. “About the time you were blowing up the shipyards—good work on that by the way—a flight of Hawks inserted an Army engineering company into the square we had initially secured to begin fortifying it to serve as a forward operating base within the city for follow-on operations. During the insertion, one of the Hawks was hit, and the pilots managed to put her down more or less in one piece a couple of klicks from the square. Pilots, crew, and most of the platoon made it back to the square. The platoon leader and radio operator didn't; they were taken captive.”

  Reaver cut in, figuring what was being asked of his team. “So, we're going back into the city and pulling them out. Why hasn't this been handled yet, this was four days ago?"

  Davis waved him off. “We got the RTO back, in pieces. Two human hands were dropped in the center of the square, a fully cordoned area, at some point in the night two days after they were taken. The finger bones in each hand had been shattered, Intel is figuring one at a time. A day later, a patrol into the north-eastern quarter of the city found the RTO's head impaled on a stake; his legs were found about eight hours later by another patrol, this time in the northwest near the harbor. Again, bones shattered, the legs were taken off above the knee and appeared cauterized, so they may have been taken while he was still alive. Six hours ago, they found the platoon leader's legs, same MO. Reports just came in of brief screams heard from a building in the northeaster
n quarter of Craxus. We've been taking accurate small arms fire from that sector, as well as indirect fire, mortars, and rockets, that sort of thing. Intel is saying the lieutenant is dead, and we'll find his head in the morning."

  When Davis paused, Reaver looked at him, and could read the glare in his eyes. “You don't agree, and you want to get him back before Intelligence is proved right." There was certainty to Reaver's statement; he agreed with his lieutenant.

  Davis nodded. “And I’m not the only one. You're taking Dragon Two into Craxus. That Lieutenant is alive, but not for much longer. The Renks in that part of the city, they aren't the clones and conscripts we dealt with on the first day. These are the Council’s Blades, secret police, special ops, bogeymen all rolled into one. He’s a junior officer, and they know it; they’re working him over to get under our guys' skin, and because they enjoy it. Sick fucks, the lot of them. Find the Lieutenant, get him out, and if you get a chance, fuck these assholes' world up."

  Reaver inclined his head then asked. “What about the prisoner we took? Did he get picked up with the team?"

  "Yeah, he got picked up. Hasn't said a word yet, though I'm sure by now he's seeing shit. Interrogators have got him on a sleep dep cycle; the fuck probably hasn't gotten more than ten minutes of sleep total."

  Reaver knew exactly what the lieutenant was talking about. Part of the process for qualifying and joining Recon, required training in resistance techniques, and the Interrogators were damn good at their job. Everyone reacted to sleep deprivation differently, but one constant was the hallucinations usually started between about the twenty-eight and thirty-six mark, and that was with feeding and hydration. Take those out of the picture and they came quicker, as your body tried to force you to rest. If the Renk officer was being fed, it wasn't good food, and they'd be giving him just enough water to keep him alive; probably the next couple days or so if he didn't start singing, they'd turn to one of the newer gadgets. The classics were always the most effective; wouldn't help Reaver or his squad in finding the captured lieutenant, however. Reaver eyed the map one more time to commit it to memory before pressing the tips of his fingers onto the corner edge of the table. The map would store to his prints so he could pull it back up to brief his squad. Making for the door, Reaver paused and turned when Lieutenant Davis called his name.

  "Reaver, you've got forty-eight hours to do your thing. Fury’s Fire is being replaced on the line, and her entire contingent is being rotated out. We’ve hit our eighteen-month mark, we've seen more action than any other boat in the fleet, and with all the shit that’s happened Command wants fresh minds in the fight."

  Reaver looked at his platoon leader, the skepticism showing plainly on his face. “I'll believe it when we drop anchor in a green zone, Boss."

  Davis nodded in agreement. “I know, but I'm giving you the time limit you've got. Also, Wolf is out of this one; she had some complications on the flight back from your last outing. Bull will fill you in on the details of what happened, but there’s something else. The investigation into Scarface’s death turned something up. Someone tampered with his Bat, and we think the sabotage got as far as the med-bays, or at least the supplies. Make sure Alice gets checked, and then re-checked, by different docs."

  Reaver rubbed at his eyes as his commander gave him this bit of news. “Shit. How the fuck did they get people onto the Fire?”

  “Not just the Fire, the entire fleet. I kicked the hornet’s nest when I went to higher about this. MI was apparently already digging into it, and the higher-ups came down on them hard for not disseminating. The Renks have never been this good; they’ve got somebody new, and they definitely didn’t want us here. Stay frosty.” Davis turned the lights off before pulling the door open. The base was under blackout restrictions, reducing the ability an enemy had of zeroing in on them.

  Reaver exited the lieutenant's hooch, the door clicked shut behind him, and he found Harlequin waiting for him. “C'mon Boss, Bull's waking the squad up and had your box delivered with the rest of our gear when they sent 'em all down." Setting off back down the street away from the hooch and even further from the medical center, Harlequin led the way to where Dragon Two bunked down.

  The area set aside for the enlisted Marines was on the northwestern edge of the base, nearest the coastline. Rather than hardside buildings, the Marines resided in squad tents, to maintain cohesion and ensure that Recon squads could be activated and deployed at a moment's notice. The tents were large enough to hold a full-strength squad along with all their gear and personal equipment, and, with each squad leader maintaining a code to unlock the rearming point, to maintain squad self-reliance and independence.

  When Reaver and Harlequin stepped through the inner door from the entry chamber, they found the remaining members of Dragon Two performing their weapon checks and inspecting their equipment. The interior lining of the tents and the use of an entry chamber separating the inner and outer doors allowed the Marines to speak normally and maintain their choice lighting level without violating the strictly enforced noise and light discipline protocols within a combat zone. A genius, obviously not a civilian, had figured out that allowing warriors to be themselves was easier than counseling and hitting them with non-judicial punishments that would degrade morale and effectiveness. Space Case was the first to look up, though the rest of the squad wasn't far behind in turning toward the entrance. Titan's lilting slang greeted them. “Jefe, they let you outta the drug house early?"

  Reaver chuckled. “Got bored, figured I'd come back and make your life miserable again." Turning to Bull, Reaver asked point blank. “What's the deal with Wolf, LT said she was out on this one?"

  Harlequin answered before Bull could respond. “Ride out was a bumpy one, and the Renks weren't too happy with us blowing up their artillery, so they were throwing shit at us. One came a little close for comfort. Concussion beat the shit out of the bird and threw us around inside. Doors were open, and Wolf was closest. Next thing we know, she's hunched over in her seat screaming in pain. One of the medics got her unfolded, and her entire crotch was soaked in blood. I've never seen pants come off as fast as he had hers off; dude was like a magician. Blood's pumping out of her cooter, and medic's trying to find a wound. Nothing, so he shoves a bandage roll into her, nails her arm for an IV, and starts pumping her full of saline, blood, and drugs to knock her out. Then he's telling flight control that he's got not one but two criticals and needs a second surgeon ready on the pad."

  "Fuck, Quinn, you want to be a little more respectful. That's a Marine you're talking about," Alice snapped at her fellow sniper. Alice was usually the quiet one, so the outburst told Reaver that there was more going on.

  Bull answered the questioning look in Reaver's eyes. “She'll pull through, but the surgery was rough. Docs are saying that her implant snapped from a concussive blast, and one of the pieces pierced her uterine wall. If the pilots hadn't already been bending the bird over to get you back to the hospital, she probably wouldn't have survived. As is, she's going to live, and she’ll have all her pieces back when she wakes up. Problem is, concussion shouldn’t have snapped it. Those things are designed to take a beating and damage nothing."

  Reaver swept his eyes over his squad. “You’re right, twice is enemy action. Investigation came back on Scar’s incident. Somebody fucked with his Bat; there’s suspicion they either got into med or tampered with the supplies, as well. The Renks got someone into us, and they hurt us. For now, we trust Recon and Recon only.” He turned his gaze to Alice. “Get your implant checked, then get it checked again. Two docs, two different places, and if something feels off, say something." Alice nodded, but the small tremble in her eyes told Reaver this had shaken her. She wouldn't say it, she sure as hell wouldn't wave off on going outside the wire again, but this had spooked her. The two Marines held each other's gaze for a moment, the sniper and her squad leader communicating silently until finally Alice inclined her head once again and Reaver broke his gaze from hers and let it
sweep across the rest of the squad.

  "Y'all know about the Lieutenant and RTO that got balled up by the Renks, and what happened to the RTO. We're going after the Lieutenant. Intel thinks he's dead, but the LT isn't convinced, and frankly neither am I. LT's gotten backing from higher, so we're going out. We've got forty-eight hours to find the Lieutenant and bring him back. Dead or alive, he's going home." Reaver walked over to the long metal folding table set up in the center of the tent, used for everything from the squad eating meals together, serving as a workstation for the gunsmiths to repair weapons, to the purpose it was fulfilling now as a place to display maps and reports in preparation for a mission. Pressing his fingers into the table’s edge, Reaver called up the display that Lieutenant Davis had shown him.

  A bird’s eye view of Craxus rose over the table from projectors in each corner. Bull leaned over to check the display and ensure they had the most up-to-date information. Hot zones grew and receded as the network filtered in engagement reports. The map display tightened in to focus on Craxus, and specifically on the area where the two Alliance soldiers had been abducted. “They got any idea where we're going to find this guy? Craxus isn't the largest city we've dealt with, but forty-eight hours ain't enough time to sweep the entire place."

  Reaver held up a hand to forestall any more questions. “Before we get down and dirty on planning, give me the skinny on what happened high-side. LT said something about the Navy clearing space but didn't go into details." Reaver looked to Space Case to answer him and fill in the blanks; he needed to keep Space engaged and working.

  Space Case took a few moments to begin talking, clearly understanding what Reaver was doing and appreciating it. Space Case was one of only a handful of Recon Marines that hadn't started out in the Marines; he had begun his enlistment as a naval security officer. After an investigation resulting in unraveling an attempt by the Renks to ferment a mutiny aboard the Battleship Rosalind, he had been given his choice of berthing and had requested a shot at joining Recon. The qualification and training course had been hell, and he had borne the brunt of numerous jokes for joining the department of the Navy that did the real work, but he had succeeded and wore his badge just as well as any other Recon Marine. His background gave him channels to get information from the fleet that most didn't possess, and the ability to interpret it. Reaver had discovered Space Case could figure what was going on high-side while slogging through the mud hardside even with limited data. For this report, he had had four days harvesting the grapevine of central command.