“Ten seconds to drop. Nine…”
They’d trained for this, done visualization exercises, and taken some new meds that supposedly helped people who weren’t drop-rated, which would be about six in ten grunts in the battalion, and just about any MOS that didn’t start with 03. All of them were going to get their golden planet badge after this. Kinda cheapened the whole thing. Warp drops were supposed to be a rare, elite sort of thing.
Transition.
Not good. You always got a feeling of being in freefall when you did a drop, but this time it was like the LAV wasn’t just falling but also spinning in the dark. Claustrophobia and motion-sickness hit him at the same time, and he grunted while he tried to keep his breakfast right where it was. Upchucking in your helmet wasn’t fatal, just a total pain in the ass.
“Die, bitch,” the kid from the Zoo whispered in his ear. “Die, already.”
Emergence.
They landed hard. The LAV hit the ground with enough force to rattle everybody. Russell tasted blood in his mouth. He’d bitten his tongue pretty good, something that hadn’t happened to him since boot camp. The Suck struck again.
PFC Mendel wasn’t whooping anymore. “Oh, good Jesus. I done shit myself.”
“Too much information, man,” Grampa told him.
Russell figured that Mendel wouldn’t be the only drop virgin who’d have to fight with a full load in his pants. New drugs and better catapults or not, nobody did well on their first few drops. At least they’d made it, and that was what counted.
“Fuck,” Gonzo said. He’d recovered quickly enough to check the roster icons. We’re short one LAV.”
The little guy was right. Only fifteen vehicles had appeared on the LZ, instead of the TOE’s sixteen. It took him a second to find out who hadn’t made it. Second Platoon’s command car. That meant Lieutenant Berry and his C&C team were goners. That wasn’t all: one of their twelve Medium Tactical Vehicles hadn’t emerged, either. A big truck, and its load of beans and bullets, were floating in whatever hell awaited the MIWs. Charlie Company had taken worse losses than in most engagements he’d been in, and before the first shot had fired.
“Can’t believe I shit myself,” Mendel was grumbling.
“Keep your shit to yourself,” Russell said. Mendel shut up.
“We’re on the move in three mikes,” Sergeant Fuller said. “We’re staying buttoned up until we reach our first objective and linking up with Second Platoon. Lieutenant Chambal is taking over command for both platoons until Second gets a replacement.”
Russell nodded to himself. Chambal had been in charge of Third for a while. Ever since Lieutenant O’Malley turned out to be a chickenshit little bastard back on Parthenon. The Ell-Tee wasn’t a bad officer, and he’d improved over time. He’d be all right.
Even inside his armor and the LAV, he heard a distant roaring sound. Somebody’s arty was already in the game.
* * *
The Death Heads had performed six Fire Walls during the fleet action, and were all feeling pretty frazzled, but they were about to go back out into the fray yet again. Close Air Support this time. The ground-pounders were trying to storm heavily fortified positions, and the defenders outnumbered them, which from what she remembered from her Marine lessons was a big no-no. Her gunships and the fighters would have to take up the slack.
“Here’s our first mission,” Lisbeth Zhang told the squadron. “Looks like two battalions of armor are trying to concentrate along a line of hills. Lots of plasma air-defense artillery, and a few grav weapons heavy enough for anti-starship work. We’re going to earn our pay. Us and the War Eagle jockeys both. They’re hitting twelve other targets. We’ve got to break up those formations or the Marines down there are hosed.”
“Really sucks our battlewagons can’t just blast those suckers into smoking craters,” Preacher commented.
“That’d be nice, except it might piss off the Elder Races.”
Preacher shrugged. The phrase might as well mean ‘because it’s a sin.’ Nobody was sure where the line was drawn, exactly, only that you’d know you crossed it when your civilization was mysteriously obliterated. But pumping enough energy into a planet to drastically damage its ecosystem was one of them. No idea why that wasn’t okay but terraforming a planet and eradicating the original ecology in the process was fine. The Elder Races worked in mysterious ways.
They went into the Starless Path a few moments later. There was some Warpling activity around the edges, mostly finishing off several dozen Marines who’d gotten stranded during the large-scale warp drop on the Gimp planet. There was nothing Lisbeth or the others could do for them, other than listen for their pleas for help. Someone trapped inside a truck was screaming.
“They’re getting in! They’re getting in!”
Lisbeth gritted her teeth. Even if she could locate the truck driver, she couldn’t drag him out of warp. The poor bastard was in a deeper level of warp space, in the equivalent of quicksand. The most she’d manage to do would be to end up trapped by his side.
She caught a flare of energy coming from Grinner’s ship, and the screaming came to a sudden halt.
“I released him,” Genovisi said, anger and sorrow radiating from her like waves of heat. “I couldn’t save him, but I got close enough to put him out of his misery. The Warplings won’t be able to feed on his soul.”
“I should have thought of that. Good call, Grinner.”
They managed to do that small mercy for two other Marines before they emerged. It didn’t make anybody feel any better. They needed to figure out a way to do more.
The squadron appeared over a mountain range. Their sensors showed them the enemy forces on one side of the obstacle, advancing under the cover of several mobile area force fields. Tanks, self-propelled artillery and armored personnel carriers, all floating a few meters over the surface. The Death Heads plunged into the fray, moving at a stately fifty kph and blasting the column with graviton and plasma beams.
The local ETs fought back. Most of their vehicle-mounted weapons could engage airborne threats, and the five gunships were met with a storm of fire. Lisbeth kept an eye on the force field gauge while she serviced her targets. The shields had dropped by fifteen percent by the time the last tank in the formation had been torn apart and the surviving Obans were scattering in every direction, no longer a cohesive force. The Froggers had done better than some starships against the Death Heads, but their best hadn’t been good enough.
“All right, that takes care of this bunch,” she said. “Next.”
They’d broken two battalions. Unfortunately that was less than one percent of the enemy forces left on this sector of the planet.
It was going to be one of those days.
* * *
“Tangos ahead,” Sergeant Fuller called out. “Dug-in infantry and some anti-tank pieces, looks like. We’re gonna flank ‘em.”
Russell could hear the ripping-canvas sound of ALS-43s sending explosive munitions downrange at six hundred rounds per minute, about a hundred meters forward. They were moving through heavy jungle, so only the bright flashes of energy weapons were visible through the thick underbrush, and only as flickering lights. It looked like Fourth Platoon’s Hellcats were well and truly stuck in. The four-legged armored suits packed a lot of firepower in their highly-mobile frames, but they would need help, and that meant Russell and his buddies were going to hoof it through rough terrain. The LAVs were no use for now; they could hover over the canopy, but that would put them in clear view of any Eet with an energy weapon from miles around. For the time being, the vehicles would have to hang back while a platoon of engineers cleared a path for them.
A squad of grunts led the way; Russell and his Weapons section jogged behind them at a steady pace, Even with his suit carrying most of the hundred and fifty pounds of gear on his back, Russell began to feel the burn soon enough. Nothing too bad, just uncomfortable. Bad would be when they’d been at it for a few hours. Most combat ops consisted of runni
ng somewhere or huddling behind cover shooting at some half-glimpsed figures in the distance. What really tired you out was the knowledge it all could go to hell in an instant.
The jungle was smoldering in spots, and every other tree he jogged past was pockmarked with shrapnel, the ones that were still standing. Others had been knocked down or been turned into kindling. The company’s mortars had been busy prepping their path by lashing it with fragmentation bombs.
They soon ran into a small river. The infantrymen located a ford with their range finders and a fireteam waded in while the rest of the squad covered them. They’d almost made it to the other side when the Obans sprung their ambush.
The aliens had been hiding behind camo blankets, with their shields down so they couldn’t be detected by the Marines’ sensors. That meant they had just hunkered down and taken the mortar bombardment with nothing but body armor for protection. That took guts; Russell had to hand it to them. They also had lost a lot of people, because the volley that erupted from the far side of the river was ragged and fairly light, mostly hand-held lasers.
For the bastards on point, that was plenty bad enough.
One Marine got hit by three continuous beams. He was frantically ducking for cover when his shields failed with a colorful flash. Smoke began rising from his armored suit as the composite material was boiled away. PFC Green screamed and dropped in the water.
Russell didn’t have a target yet, but the grunts in front did. They lit up the enemy positions. Plasma rounds and 15mm grenades tore into the jungle. The lasers fell silent; Green was flopping about in the river, still screaming. One of the energy beams had cooked half his intestines. The Corpsmen who’d been following them moved forward to drag him back. His status icon was bright red. Better than the black that meant he’s dead, worry about him when it’s over, but not great, either.
They kept moving, passing the spot where the mortars had wiped out the better part of an enemy platoon. These tangos had hunched backs and no necks; their heads were below what passed for their shoulders. Their skin was purple with green mottling, with long slender arms and squat legs, better suited for leaping than running. In death, though, they looked like anybody else. Bloody and broken.
Up ahead, the hundred-mike-mikes were still at work, lashing enemy positions with more bombs. Russell’s imp projected a route for the flanking force; a swampy dip along the way would keep them out of sight from direct enemy fire. The Obans had deployed an artillery battery, but Marine fighters had already wrecked it. Score one for the flyboys. Russell reached the swamp; about three inches of water and muddy ground beneath, which didn’t make for an easy stroll. He kept moving. More of the local trees lined up both sides of the swamp; their roots reached into the water, and a Marine in front of him tripped on one and face-planted with a splash. Russell was saving his breath, so he didn’t laugh or make fun of the guy as he helped him up. Besides, everyone knew it could just as easily been any of them.
“Incoming!”
Crap. Hitting the dirt wouldn’t help out in the open. Russell hunched forward and kept going. Had to get through the dead ground as quickly as possible and hope their shields held. He heard overhead detonations, saw the watery ground froth under multiple impacts, and felt shrapnel splattering against his force field. A hundred percent charge became ninety, became eighty, and a shell went off right behind him. It was like getting hit by God’s own pillow. The impact spread and diffused against his shields, but if still slapped him forward as if he’d been shot out of a cannon. Water and mud blinded him. His suit’s seals held, though, so he didn’t even get wet.
“Come on, brah!” Gonzo said, helping him up.
“I’m good, I’m good,” Russell said. Shields were down to fifty-three percent, but all systems were green. The wet mud clung to him as he made it to one knee. Gonzo pulled him up the rest of the way. There weren’t any more explosions. Someone had taken care of the Eet mortar or grenade launcher or whatever.
“Move it, Marines!” Sergeant Fuller yelled. They got going, too busy to bother cursing FOS under their breath.
They reached their firing position a couple minutes later. The grunts in front had dealt with a squad of Froggers that had tried to make a stand there. A couple of them were moving the dead aliens out of the way. By the time Grampa set up their field gennie, Russell and Gonzo had their Widowmakers warmed up and targets selected: a buried bunker, only its gun port visible under a mass of rock, with overlapping shields that were glowing in bright colors as all kinds of explosive ordnance went off against it.
“On my mark,” Fuller said. A moment later: “Fire!”
Six beams of twisted space-time speared into the bunker, and Russell grinned as the enemy shields flared up, and then vanished. The bunker began to fall apart. A couple seconds later, one of the beams hit something major, and the whole installation brewed up. Flames shot out of every hole. All the tangos inside had been transformed into good dead tangos. The slog to get there, getting blown up and stuck in mud, it’d all been worth it just to watch that bunker burn.
Those were the moments he lived for.
Fourteen
“Bunker Three is down, sir. Bunker Four is still holding out.”
Fromm looked at the map. His company had cleared three gun emplacements, each smaller than a full-fledged Planetary Defense Base but still heavily armed and fortified. Two remained before this sector was cleared of bunkers, although there would still be hundreds of tangos to mop up afterwards. The 101st MEU was taking on a division’s worth of troops fighting from prepared positions. Even with air support from fighters and gunships, it was taking its toll.
He was down a platoon commander, gone before touching the ground.
“All right. Shift First to the east and have them take those heights here.” His imp marked the spot on the shared virtual map. “The LAVs and mortars can engage Bunker Five at long range while we concentrate for an assault on Bunker Four. How about calls for fire?”
“We can get one pass from a War Eagle squadron in thirty minutes. Nothing after that for another hour.”
Fromm did the math. Everybody was going to have to hustle, but the assault should go off in time for the fighters to do some good. Even with the new tech, the Marines’ heavy artillery couldn’t be warp-dropped. Their only support was from the fighters and gunships, and there were too many targets available. Until they cleared enough anti-shipping emplacements for shuttles to survive the trip groundside, the Marines would have to fight with what they had.
“Let’s confirm the request for air support, Hansen. Goldberg…”
First Sergeant Goldberg had gotten good at reading his mind. “We’ve run through twenty percent of our combat loads, sir. Mortars, it’s close to thirty percent. Losing that truck during the drop didn’t help. We’ll get everyone loaded up before the assault, though.”
They’d been on this rock for a whole seven hours, and they’d eaten through most of their alleged one-day supplies. The local troops were well dug-in, and taking them out took a lot of firepower. Without the new hardware they’d liberated at Xanadu, his company would have been rendered combat-ineffective by now. Only toys like those portable power-pack rechargers and the new heavy energy weapons had kept his people going, and they wouldn’t do so for much longer.
“Anything we can borrow, beg or steal from Battalion?”
The 101st headquarters company and four supply truck platoons were holding station in the rear, with its organic tank platoon acting as a mobile reserve. Those trucks were their entire logistical reserves until the Navy could start landing supplies the old-fashioned way.
“They told us to send them four of our trucks, and they’ll load ‘em with what they can spare. S-Maj Hollander knows what we need, but every company on the 101st is crying for more of everything, and they are trying to allocate things as best they can.”
Four truckloads wouldn’t replace what Charlie Company had expended so far. After they were done taking the next two objec
tives, Fromm’s Marines would be running around with one basic combat load. Plus maybe half of that left in reserve. They were going to run dry long before they ran out of targets.
“If we clear those two bunkers, we might get Fleet to start making deliveries,” he said, trying to sound more hopeful than he felt.
His specialty in college had been pre-Contact military history. The name ‘Market-Garden’ loomed large in his mind. Like the paratroopers of old, warp-dropped Marines could only fight so long before supporting forces – or in this case, supply runs – reached them. After that, very bad things started to happen. They were behind schedule. They should have cleared all five objectives by now, but the Obans were there in greater numbers than expected. Only air strikes had kept the Marines from being counter-attacked in force.
Goldberg nodded. “We can do our job, sir, as long as those Fleet pukes do theirs.”
* * *
Thermopylae shook like a rat in a terrier’s jaws.
Admiral Sondra Givens cleared her throat and fought the impulse to cough. The stench of electrical fires filled the fleet bridge despite the best efforts of its air scrubbers; at one point smoke had shrouded the CIC, restricting visibility and forcing everyone to make use of emergency oxygen masks until the conflagration, a mere two decks below them, had been brought under control. That had been a close one.
The ground fortresses were pounding her fleet. Without warp shields, one third of her forces would have been crippled or destroyed by now. And they were only facing half of the enemy emplacements; Third Fleet was maintaining station so that only the daytime side of Ugo-Two could engage it. Destroying those facilities, which filled a vast continental mass broken only by scattered land-locked seas and lakes, would be enough to let them proceed to the next warp point, but it would mean leaving a sizable portion of the planet’s industrial might intact. Ugo wasn’t the backwater everyone had expected. Her ships were engaging any targets they could with their secondary guns, but the uneven exchange was costing them.
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