Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series

by C. J. Carella

  The camo nets covering all their prepared positions blocked all kinds of signals, everything from IR and radio to graviton waves. Nothing could get in or out, which meant the fighting holes could get mighty hot even with the air conditioners and heat sinks working overtime. But the enemy would end up in a much hotter spot once they made contact.

  To keep the camouflaged positions in touch with the rest of the battalion, the combat engineer platoon with the MEU had set a network of laser transmitters which sent out the take of observation points, drones and satellites. Being line-of-sight only, they couldn’t be easily tracked by the enemy. Russell used them to check on the drones checking on them. The little machines were flying over Charlie Company’s position, but all they were detecting was the local flora, a mix of local palm trees and gene-modified spruce oaks, with patches of competing grass species in between. There was no sign of Russell’s squad, or the rest of the company, spread out in a shallow C-formation, covering one third of the mile-wide prairie leading towards Davis’ Gap.

  The drones went by without spotting anything. Russell tried to check the situation up in orbit, but higher was keeping a tight lid on news about the space battle raging overhead. At night you got so see all kinds of flashes, which could mean many things, few of them good. When the battle was close enough to be visible from the ground, it meant the enemy was too close. The Vipers had arrived at Parthenon-Three two days ago, and they’d been slugging it out with Sixth Fleet and the local defenses ever since. The fact the ETs were still up there meant the good guys hadn’t won yet. Or were losing, which was another way to put it.

  He couldn’t blame the bosses for keeping things quiet. There’d been too many civvies on P-3 to evacuate – barely five million, mostly children, had managed to escape before the Vipers showed up – and if they heard too many bad news they might panic and make things worse. The local authorities had put as many people as they could in uniform, and organized the rest to assist in the defense of the planet, but too many pogues treated their four years of obligatory service as an extra-long round of summer camp, and any lessons they’d learned hadn’t sunk in. The local remfies had even elected a Federalist to the Senate, the kind of shit only the most coddled star systems and shithole states like Vermont ever did. Anybody who didn’t vote the straight Eagle Party ticket believed in a universe that wasn’t full of murderous ETs. Well, they’d learn soon enough.

  The visual feed from the drones disappeared, replaced by a FLASH message: LANDINGS IMMINENT. He switched to the observation posts’ visuals and watched a swarm of landing pods coming down from the sky.

  Since no living ET species other than humans could launch warp assaults, Starfarers had come up with their own techniques. The Vipers’ way was to send down thousands of pods, aimed at uninhabited areas protected by terrain features. Thousands of missiles were coming down as well, aimed at the closest Planetary Defense Bases and any city near them. The PDBs and other anti-air assets blasted the incoming with lasers, hypervelocity munitions and plasma bursts. A lot of pods were blown away, but the defensive fire had to concentrate on the missiles, because if enough of those hit, some might get through the defense shields and blow up some innocent civvies. ETs didn’t use nukes, but a few dozen plasma warhead impacts would be almost as lethal.

  The sky was full of descending contrails, along with scattered bursts of light and smoke as an ADA round hit a target. Somewhere to the rear, the 101st’s own air defense artillery guns got into the game: 12mm lasers swept their assigned sectors with thousands of high-intensity pulses. The targets had force fields, but a few bursts would chew through them. The poor bastards inside a pod hit by one of those would either die quickly if in the direct path of the beam or would get the chance to scream all the way down as the pod’s braking and steering engines died and they plummeted to the surface. Either way, they wouldn’t be a problem.

  A lot of pods ended up that way, but not enough. Vipers organized their drops expecting to lose as many as sixty or seventy percent of their troops on their way down. Their assault troopers were a gene-engineered sub-breed of their species, designed to be about as smart as a dog. An assault ship carried millions of embryos aboard, threw away the ones that died in warp transit, and force-grew the others in about eight hours. The vat-grown instant soldiers were ‘educated’ via direct neural cortex downloads and programmed to fight and follow the orders of a portable computer that was about as smart as the systems controlling your typical video game. Russell had played enough games to know that even a dumb system could beat you if it had enough firepower on its side.

  The contrails – hundreds of them – disappeared behind Kacey’s Ridge, a line of tall hills some twenty klicks away from Davis’ Gap. Russell’s imp did the math for him: thirty minutes for the Vipers to come out of their pods, assemble their vehicles – modular designs that used portions of the landing pods for many of their parts – and head out towards the valley, mostly on foot. Figure two hours to make it through the rough terrain. In a hundred and fifty minutes or so, things were going to get downright interesting.

  Things were going to get interesting for the ETs a lot sooner, of course.

  * * *

  Fromm watched the battle’s progress from his command vehicle, forcing himself not to squirm in his seat. The urge to be doing something was still there, but he was learning to control it.

  The first salvos from the 101st’s artillery hit the Vipers’ landing zone before most of the surviving pods had landed. Cameras built into the rounds showed several hits before the enemy deployed area force fields and blocked the rest of the incoming. The next barrage consisted of a combination of shield-busters and anti-personnel. That would whittle down the enemy force, but wouldn’t destroy it. The MEU had a full battery of multiple-launch rocket systems, plus an Army artillery brigade with four batteries of slightly antiquated but still fairly good 200mm howitzers. Twenty-eight guns could cover only so much ground, however, and their mortars and other long-range assets were being held back for the time being.

  “They’re estimating a reinforced brigade-size force is assembling behind those hills,” Lieutenant Hansen said as swarms of drones crested the obstacles and died in droves for a few seconds’ worth of visual footage. “About five thousand effectives, not counting casualties.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  The Vipers had tried to land close to a division’s worth of troops on this sector and they’d lost over half of them in the process. That translated to about three, maybe four thousand combat troops still able to fight out of the estimated five thousand; the Viper ground-assault formations were almost all teeth, with very little in the way of logistical ‘tail.’ And facing them was the Marine Expeditionary Unit, about a thousand combat troops, plus the Army’s arty brigade, and a local militia regiment, two thousand strong but providing only a couple of hundred fighting men, lightly armed and equipped. The artillery would help a lot of course, and the rest of the troops would take care of most of the Marines’ non-combat needs, but the fact remained that they’d be outnumbered three to one. The enemy would be short of artillery and combat vehicles, but Viper assault troopers were bred for strength, speed and endurance. They could advance on foot at a steady twenty miles an hour on anything like level terrain, close to thirty on roads. Artillery would slow them down, but their mobile field generators were better than American models, and that would minimize their casualties.

  Fromm shrugged. The greater tactical situation, let alone the strategic one, were not his problem. His problem was to ensure that the ambush he’d prepared was carried out as effectively as possible, followed by a retreat under fire towards their next defensive position, where Bravo Company would launch its own ambush. The plan was to lead the Vipers on a merry chase through the valley before throwing them out through a series of counterattacks, or, failing that, stopping them cold at the other end, the point beyond which the enemy could not pass, because that was where PDB-18 guarded the cities of New Burbank
and Henderson, with a combined population of three-million-plus civilians.

  He went over his assets automatically. His infantry and weapons platoons were all concealed and dug-in, including their combat vehicles. His own command vehicle was also under cover, a thousand meters back from the firing line, along with his Hellcats, which he was keeping as a mobile reserve. So far the battalion’s FDO was letting him keep control over his mortars, for what that was worth: most 100mm munitions wouldn’t punch through the Viper’s force fields, and the ones that could were in short supply. If he sent them in slowly enough to bypass the shields, they’d be easy meat for the swarm of fireflies the enemy would have floating over their heads, not to mention their swatters, which were already doing a number on the battalion’s fleet of recon drones. He’d hold off on using the mortars until the ETs were well and truly stuck in.

  As always, the hardest part was the waiting. He’d done everything he could do. Once again, he was playing defense, a role that went against his instincts. Fromm didn’t like having to wait on the other guy to make the first move.

  Although, come to think of it, his troops would be making the first move this once.

  * * *

  Vipers had eight multi-jointed limbs, arranged symmetrically around a long-tailed body similar to an alligator’s. The scaly bastards had originally been tree-climbers, so they had hands at the end of every set of arms/legs, although the lower two pairs weren’t good for playing the piano or similar fine control stuff. The ugly bastards moving towards Russell’s position were using their lower four limbs to trot at a good clip, occasionally using a couple of their other four arms to add a little extra speed or support while their long torsos twisted in an up-and-down fashion that was like nothing that’d ever evolved on Earth. Watching them move made Russell feel a little queasy. There was something wrong about the way the four to six leg-things worked.

  Well, pretty soon he’d be doing his damnedest to make sure they stopped moving. And his damnedest was usually pretty good.

  The ET assault troopers weren’t wearing body armor, although their scaly skins were tough enough to turn light shrapnel. They had force field harnesses that Woogle claimed were about fifteen percent better than what he was wearing, and their heads were completely encased in helmets that allowed them to breathe the local air without dropping dead. The power packs providing juice for their weapons, shields and breathing system were on their backs, and they were good for a week of combat ops. Fucking ETs always got the best toys.

  Toys like their 2mm laser rifles, which were better than Lamprey models, about as good as what the Ovals used. Russell had seen Oval lasers in operation back on Jasper-Five, and he’d gained a great deal of respect for them. He didn’t want to be on the receiving end of those. And the Vipers’ primary support weapons were even nastier: four-tube 30mm launch systems, each tube holding ten stacked rounds that could be shot individually or ripple-fired; the latter option meant forty guided explosives would sally forth in quick succession, each one perfectly capable of ruining a jarhead’s day or putting a big ding on a LAV. Taking down the alien rocketeers was their top priority.

  Russell watched the advancing ETs without having to poke his head up, courtesy of the dwindling swarm of drones overhead and the tiny eyeball-wires they’d placed ahead of their line. The little sensors sent their feeds via fiber-optic cables and were nearly undetectable. The alien horde was still over two klicks away, but he could see them coming as if they were at arm’s length.

  They weren’t coming in dumb like so many primmie barbs, either. They were doing a classic bounding overwatch advance, rushing from cover to cover and watching over the next batch coming forward. Their point men were well ahead of the main groups, and they were moving in an open order formation to minimize casualties when the fireworks started. Interspaced among them were little floating cars, open-topped and barely big enough for one or two ETs apiece. Some were gun platforms, heavy lasers or grav guns meant to take out tanks and IFVs with a couple of shots, but also good to dig out entrenched grunts. The other floaters were support units, projecting area force fields and sending out pressure waves that exerted as much pressure as an infantryman or vehicle would, designed to detonate any mines the Americans might have placed in their way. Gadgets like that were the main reason the battalion’s engineers hadn’t placed any mines in front of them. They had some behind the ambush, though, the kind that didn’t go boom when you stepped on them but went off when activated via a laser signal. The Vipers would be making their acquaintance soon enough.

  “Fucking arty’s hardly scratching ‘em,” Gonzo groused. Most explosions were going off overhead and bouncing off the big force shields acting like giant umbrellas for the ET horde coming their way. Here or there one shell made it through and knocked down a couple of bastards. The bad thing was, they often got back again and kept walking. Those personal shields were good.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Russell said. “We’ll scratch them plenty once we’re inside their field perimeter.”

  Which would happen when the ET lead troops, which marched outside the area field’s edge, had gone past the ambushers’ position, which would lead to all kinds of fun stuff. There were only two ways to deal with area force fields: you could overwhelm them with enough ordnance, or try to get inside them by walking past them or hiding until it moved past your position. The second way meant a short-range firefight, just as exciting as a knife fight inside an elevator.

  They’d set up the ambush accordingly, digging in on top of a natural ridge with a ravine on the left side and a steep trail on the right. The enemy point would have to take those paths unless they wanted to scale the nearly sheer wall from which Russell and the rest of First Squad waited to begin the dance. The rest of Charlie Company was similarly positioned and camouflaged, getting ready to hit the leading enemy formations from inside their force fields.

  The Vipers got closer, taking a few casualties, but not many, thanks to their damned force fields. Russell’s imp estimated it would take a good five or six hits with his Iwo’s 4mm plasma rounds to take out a tango. Even a 15mm grenade had a fifty-fifty kill chance. Only the twenty mike-mike in his IW-3a was a guaranteed one and done. Fuck. They’d gotten spoiled fighting primmies. This was going to be rough.

  “Dibs on the field gennie up front,” Gonzo said.

  Russell checked. “The assaultmen have tagged it already. Go for the missile guys.”

  “Copy that.”

  Off to Russell’s left, Nacle was softly humming some tune he didn’t recognize at first. After a few bars, it came to him: it was a Toby Keith song, an oldie from pre-Contact days, not that the old bastard’s style had changed much; he was pushing two-fifty and still playing large venues all over American space. And “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” was as applicable as it’d been back in olden times, even now when there were seventy-nine stars on the flag.

  Russell wasn’t a big flag-waver – he’d seen too much shit, done too much shit, to care much about that sort of thing – but the idea of those motherfuckers with their too-many legs and nauseating way of walking depopulating this planet just made the carnage he was about to unleash feel more than just enjoyable. It felt right. Righteous, even.

  He wondered what the witch-woman would have made of the thought. And he hoped she’d gotten to somewhere safe. Things had been too busy to try and get in touch with her, and he couldn’t find any way to reach her with his imp. This would be the first time he’d go into combat thinking about a woman. He hoped it wouldn’t get him killed.

  The tangos were less than a klick away. That put them in range of most of their weapon systems, but still on the wrong side of their force fields. Russell kept watching them as they came closer and closer. This was the kind of situation where you needed hardened combat veterans. All it would take to turn the ambush into a disaster would be one asshole opening fire too soon. Everybody on his fire team was steady. Staff Sergeant Dragunov had told a couple of the boots i
n the squad to remove their guns’ magazines, just in case, and the same had probably been done to a handful other guys in the company, but only a handful. The rest would keep their cool and fire when ordered to, because they knew that trusting their buddies and their officers was the only way they had a chance to make it out alive. It took a lot of work to create that sort of trust, and it didn’t take much to undo all of it, either.

  The lead Vipers got to within a hundred yards. Fifty. Twenty-five. He ignored the up-close tangos as they started going around their position, taking the path of least resistance, just as expected. There were other Marines further back, tasked with dealing with them.

  “Shit,” Gonzo muttered. “One of them is climbing the ridge.”

  “’S okay,” Russell said through gritted teeth. “I got ‘im.”

  He sent out his suggested solution to higher. Captain Fromm approved it and sent out an instant fragmentary order with the changes; the whole thing took ten seconds, long enough for the Viper to get halfway up the ridge. Russell would open up the festivities. That was an honor he would have happily declined.

  “Back away,” he told his buddies. “This is gonna be fucking danger close.”

  The edge of the area force field slid over their position just as the Viper scout made it to the top of the rock wall, which had turned out not to be sheer enough. The ugly motherfucker touched the camo netting and realized it didn’t feel anything like the stone surface it looked like.

  Russell shot him in the face with a 20mm plasma round.

  He’d had to do some fast reprogramming via his imp to get the warhead to go off at that range; the mini-missile usually wasn’t armed until it’d traveled a good five yards away from the muzzle; five inches was a tad close.