Ivor held his divisions in place and brought the 68th forward to line up next to the 52nd. The 30th Armored would follow the 68th in support. He really didn’t want three divisions entangled in the city, but if they met stiff resistance, it might be required. He waited on the Marines to get in position, then he would launch his divisions.
* * * * *
The 30th Armored Division feinted at the western roads into the city before dawn, to draw the attention of the city’s defenders away from the east. General Allans’ 3rd Assault Landing Division came down out of the sky in the largest single simultaneous space to ground landing in history. All twelve of the AS-600 and 36 AS-500 landed at one time east of the city. The Marines deployed into their blocking positions and the landers were on their way back into space in less than fifteen minutes. It was an impressive sight to see.
On cue, the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions advanced on the north and south sides, and the city was effectively surrounded. Today and tomorrow Ivor Tsien would rest his troops and the next morning he would assault the city. He wanted the defenders tired and on edge when they went in. Two days to worry and wonder what the humans are up to would affect the T’Kabs’ morale and their thinking, making them easier to defeat.
Lieutenant General Baines got Lieutenant General Tsien on the radio first thing next morning. He had been ordered to conduct extensive patrols to confuse the defenders on where the main attack was coming. Marine patrols had come up with something and he requested the corps commander’s presence on the north side.
Lieutenant General Tsien boarded his LT-10 transport ship with his G-3, G-2 and three bodyguards and flew to the location Wild Bill had specified. They landed a half-kilometer from the outskirts of the city and got out to be greeted by Lieutenant General Baines and introduced to the CG of the 1st Marine Division.
The division commander walked the party into his briefing tent, where five Marines were waiting. “John, tell them what you found or didn’t find.”
A staff sergeant, a little nervous in front of so many generals, went to the map and pointed out the patrol route he had taken.
“Sir, we entered the city and it was quiet, so quiet we expected to be ambushed at any second, but nothing happened. We made it to the cross street and still nothing. We walked down the edges of the street and still it was so quiet we expected to get lit up any second, but nothing. We turned north to leave and I just couldn’t leave like that with nothing to report. I turned south and we walked towards the city center, expecting to take fire any second, but the place is like a ghost town. We walked three blocks and could see the plaza in the distance through our night vision goggles.
“Sir, there is no one there. It’s spooky in there. I broke into a house to see what I could see and it was empty. It was fully furnished, just empty. Sir, I think the city is empty. I walked for a good five miles in there and didn’t see a single bug.”
LTG Tsien turned to his G-2 and G-3 and ordered heavy recon patrols into the city in the morning. It was time to see if the good sergeant’s instincts paid off.
* * * * *
Sergeant Solbrig stopped her tank when the column came to a halt and pointed the main gun outward. She took off her dust cloth, shook it out, wet it from her canteen and wrung it out. One of the constants of warfare was being tail end Charlie might be safer, but it definitely was dirtier. She wasn’t sure which one she preferred.
They marched within ten kilometers of the city and established their lager. A heavy division takes up a lot of ground when it stops for the night, much less ten divisions. Every five square meters for twenty kilometers out from the city had a vehicle parked on it. Ingrid’s was parked in the center of the company command post, with her gun facing the city. The rest they got while watching the rest of the corps pass by came in handy, as they reviewed local defense procedures.
She couldn’t see the city after dark. The T’Kab didn’t use street lights or any lights at night. She wondered if this was due to some night vision capability or just a cultural thing.
* * * * *
The Reserve Fleet Queen Commander was almost in position. She had maneuvered her reinforced fleet the long way around several systems, to come into her home world’s system opposite of where the invaders were oriented. She hoped that they would be just a little bit sloppy on all around security, and the rest was up to her.
She reviewed her fleet consist to see if there were any special tricks she could try. She had 48 combatants under her command: 3 battle cruisers, 15 missile cruisers, 3 gun cruisers, 12 destroyers, and 15 frigates.
The queen divided her force into a cruiser task force and a destroyer/frigate task force. She would use the destroyer/frigate task force to feint, get the bipeds’ attention, and draw some of their little ships away from their big ships. Next, she would deploy the cruisers to close and launch missiles, then follow the missiles and engage the biped’s ships with guns. With her plan formulated, she ordered her ships to halt where they were and signaled for a Captains’ Call.
When all captains arrived, she laid out her operations plan. She chose her two highest ranking queens and made one the cruiser task force queen commander. The other became the destroyer/frigate task force queen commander. She ordered the destroyer/frigate queen commander to draw out the enemy and lead them as far away as possible before accelerating to FTL and escaping. Once she had led the small ships away she was to make a wide circle and come in on the rear of the biped fleet, as they now would be oriented on the cruiser task force.
She then ordered the cruiser task force queen commander to pick her way stealthily through the local systems to a final FTL jump into the home world system. Once there, she was to close to missile range quickly, launch at 80 percent range, follow with guns, and close with them to make them not shoot for danger of hitting their own. Once the cruisers were in their midst, the surviving destroyers and frigates would come into their rear and kill as many ships as possible.
When the destroyers and frigates engaged, all would release their penetrators to concentrate on the large ships that launch the small ships. Her orders complete and understood, she sent them back to their ships to prepare for battle.
* * * * *
Ingrid woke up on the cold, hard ground in the dark and wondered how she could have been so tired as to not get out her sleeping pad, at least. She stank and her hair was stuck to her head and helmet. She climbed up on the tank and pulled her backpack out, which contained a change of clothes and her toiletries. She threw her carbine around her neck and walked south to where she had seen a small creek on their way into this site.
She found the creek and looked for a spot with some privacy screening bushes. In a moment she was in a circle of bushes that would screen her from all but the most determined voyeur, but in the pre-dawn dark, no one could see, anyway. She stripped down, entered the water, and rubbed her head with a bar of soap to get the grime out of her hair, then took a washcloth to the rest of her. She wasted no time and soon trudged back to camp, cleaner and a good bit less tired.
She climbed up on her tank and dropped her backpack in the bustle rack, then combed out her hair. The first sergeant came out of the company headquarters’ sleeping tent and saw Ingrid braiding her hair.
“When you get through fixing your hair, be so kind as to stand to.”
“Wilco, Top. I’ll get right on it.”
He looked up at her and shook his head, laughing, as he walked off to shake out the rest of the company. Ingrid fastened her braid and went looking for her crew. She found them curled up together in their sleeping bags in a group of three stout trees. She had been taught and always emphasized picking a sleeping spot away from the vehicles and amongst the biggest trees you could find. It was too easy in the dark of a crowded lager to get run over in your sleep otherwise. She kicked them all awake and waited until all were standing before she went back to the company command post in search of coffee. The company intel weenies always had coffee.
Stand to w
ent uneventfully and Ingrid got her crew to chow. When they returned, it was her turn and she came back to her tank to eat. Her new charger, PV2 Liz Yarov, came over. “Where did you find a place to bathe? I can go a few days, but when I start smelling myself, it’s time to clean up.”
Ingrid smiled and told her about the creek, but it was too light now for that. Even her screened off area would be too exposed for bathing. Maybe if they were here after dark she would go with her and stand guard. She asked Yarov where she was from and to tell her about herself.
“I’m from Kuybyshev in Old Russia. My father owns the biggest dairy farm in Siberia with 600 cows – cows that have to be milked every day, twice a day, and equipment that must be flushed out and sterilized after each use. That’s hard work and exhausting. I joined up right after I finished Gymnasium instead of going to a trade school or university.”
Ingrid’s driver, PFC Perkins, broke in. “Sarge, what’s so important about this city ahead?”
“Perkins, how the hell would I know? The general hasn’t called me to discuss strategy in simply ages. I heard the old man say it’s the bug equivalent to Chicago. It’s kind of the transportation hub on this side of the continent for spaceships, ground transport, and local air traffic. It has a huge spaceport somewhere off to the southwest of here. No telling what’s going to happen today.”
* * * * *
Alpha Troop, 2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, the cavalry troop from 1st Brigade, 52nd Mech, moved down the east road into the center of the city, in a company-sized reconnaissance by fire. Their orders were to shoot anything threatening. The troop commander was in the second vehicle in the column and was ready with pre-planned artillery along the route. The cavalry troop from 2nd Brigade was coming in on the southeast road and had similar guidance.
Neither met any resistance or saw any T’Kab on their way. They set up a 360-degree perimeter in the central plaza and felt reassured by the four ship flights of AG-122s flying overhead. Captain Ethan Thompson, Alpha Troop commanding officer, took his infantrymen and double-timed over to what had to be the city queen’s residence and birthing facility.
They cautiously entered the facility and, again, met no resistance. They conducted a floor-by-floor, room-by-room search and found nothing. The building was empty. Captain Thompson ordered his soldiers out of the building and back to the vehicles at double time. He contacted the brigade commander. “The queen’s residence is empty. There’s not so much as an old broken egg around. Sir, if they aren’t here, where are they?”
The brigade commander told him to look around some more and see if there were tunnels in basements or subway stations.
After talking to the captain, the 1st Brigade commander called Division and asked to speak to the commanding general.
“Sir, we found a ghost town, perfectly preserved, but nobody home. Even the queen’s residence is empty. My question is, where are they? I can’t tell if they are hiding or waiting. Unless the corps commander is in a hurry, I recommend we just wait a couple of days and keep the city bottled up. They gotta eat. If there is a population in there waiting to ambush us, let’s keep them guessing and hungry.”
* * * * *
Commander Gibbons watched from the observation lounge, as the other four Behemoths transited the gate to go to Shepard for the 30th Mobile Corps. The Behemoth herself was being reconfigured to accept the residents of three T’Kab ranches that were about to be liberated. The unfortunate ones would be sorted out by species and brought up to the Behemoth to be cleaned up, medically treated, and transported to a compound donated by the K’Rang on one of their main worlds. They were busily converting it to house the returnees until they could be acclimatized.
With the other big ladies gone, Commander Gibbons returned to supervising the conversion, which largely meant closing off airtight doors and securing them to keep the unfortunate ones from accessing other areas of the ship, and limiting any exposure with the crew for psychological and physical reasons.
* * * * *
Duke G’Rof was having a frustrating day. Some minor party members in the Council of Peers were holding up his authorization to move the entire K’Rang Fleet from the four military districts to G’Durin for eventual transport to the T’Kab world.
The minority party councilmen were filibustering to get the city limits extended out 100 kilometers, to make room for the deserving military members being appointed to the royalty. Duke G’Rof couldn’t help noticing that the 100 kilometer annexation would move several council members’ hunting lodges into the city limits, giving them preferred tax exempt status.
G’Rof had a battle to fight and these petty politicians were trying to reduce their tax burden. He had a seat on the Council and called on the speaker for recognition, then gave an impassioned ten-minute speech on the greater good and the surety that it was not the party’s intention to interfere in the military’s prosecution of the war with the T’Kab. The minority party leader replied that the matter would have been sorted out long before now, if the majority party had agreed to this simple annexation request.
The majority party quickly put together an amendment to the authorization bill granting the annexation request, but not the special taxation exemption, then quickly called the question. The authorization and the amendment passed with only three nays, by the members of the minority party with land in the annexed strip.
Duke G’Rof had his authorization.
* * * * *
Kelly’s communicator went off. It was Shadow Leader G’Fin of the Treaty Compliance Office, in his official notification mode. “I am Shadow Leader G’Fin, military aide to the Director of Treaty Compliance. I am calling to inform you on the movement of all of our ships away from their bases and outside their normal operating zone in accordance with Article X, paragraph three of the Treaty of G’Durin, as modified by Article XV paragraph seven (Wartime Rules). The entire K’Rang Fleet will depart their bases at J’Komu, G’Ret, S’Dil, and M’Reka and transit to G’Durin to transport through the ring ship in orbit above the planet to the T’Kab home system. The mission of the Fleet is to conduct punitive actions against the T’Kab as may be required.”
Kelly thanked the shadow leader and asked if he knew when the ships would arrive for transport. He did not, but would call Kelly when he had an estimated time of arrival.
* * * * *
One of Tammy’s squadrons was on strip alert for emergency support to the ground forces and Marines. She was in the middle of an inspection when she received an order to put another squadron on strip alert and the remainder on one-hour launch. She contacted base operations to pass on the Fragmentary Order and asked them to keep an eye out for the follow-up message with the full order. She picked the other A-100 squadron to go on strip alert and waited for the message to say which weapons load would go on the A-120s.
Tammy continued the inspection and ordered her A-100 to be prepped and armed with plasma bombs. If these two squadrons went, she was going with them. It was her prerogative as commander.
* * * * *
The Reserve Fleet queen commander was disappointed. Her scout reported there were only five of the large ships in orbit above the planet. She thought she had observed one of them from before receiving significant damage and retiring, probably to a repair base. She was nervous about where the other five might be. To avoid a potential trap, she backed her fleet away and waited for the situation to resolve itself. She was the last fleet and she could not afford to go blindly into battle against a superior foe without at least a better than a 50/50 chance of victory. If she attacked now and those large ships were able to come in support of the bipeds, all would be lost.
* * * * *
Lieutenant General Tsien ordered the 52nd and 68th Mechanized to move into the city and establish traffic control points. He would use those positions to conduct cordon and search missions to find the T’Kab. From his mobile command post vehicle, he watched his units spread out and occupy the city, then link up in the centr
al plaza. The two divisions quickly blocked off all major roads and key intersections. Next, the barricades went up to close off the roadways and provide cover for the infantry operating the roadblocks, but with no traffic, it only blocked their view of things happening around them.
The infantry established 360-degree security and waited for something to happen. It didn’t happen until the next morning at dawn.
* * * * *
In her underground shelter, the queen reviewed her plan. She had twenty swarms sequestered under the city, ready to jump out of the ground and retake it. Upon her command, they would pour out of their hide locations and kill every biped in sight. When the star was five degrees below the horizon, she would launch the attack.
Once she let her forces loose, there could be no turning back. She checked her clock and her star chart. When the two aligned, she touched antennae with her aides, who passed it on to two other who passed it on to two others and so on, until each swarm had been notified.
Swarms erupted from secret hatches all over town. Black living lava flowed over the streets, washing over everything in its path. Some roadblocks were overrun almost immediately; others fought on for a time and were overcome; others held off the swarms, which had exited the ground far enough from the roadblocks for the bipeds to react and beat back the attacks. The battle in the city within the first hour was a draw.
All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) Page 27