by Chris Hechtl
"Tempting."
"Ha ha. May the Spirits protect and guide you, Admiral."
"You too as well, Admiral."
Chapter 17
Captain White Wolf had taken some of the trainers, engineers, and recruiters in at Kathy's World, which had freed up some of the space in the convoy for herself and some of her militia volunteers. They had also stuffed each ship to the gills with volunteers. Everyone was eager to get off the smelly ships, even if it was into the middle of a war zone.
She had assembled two platoons of mixed troops with veteran marines like Sergeant McClintock to lead them. They had trained the troops en route using virtual reality goggles due to the lack of space. It wasn't enough, and everyone knew that.
To supplement them they had Captain Lyon's three Recon squads and hundreds of tons of gear waiting in orbit. Until they could secure the spaceport properly, the navy wasn't about to risk one of their shuttles again. Not after losing so many.
Captain White Wolf refused to be rushed as she assessed the situation on the ground. She detailed drones to survey areas and used her knowledge of her recent guerrilla war on Kathy's World to ferret out a few possible Horathian locations. She was careful to leave them alone. They might be traps, but that could work for her people if she played her cards right.
Her delay and her blunt daily reports to Colonel Forth and Admiral Irons led to the two senior officers to hold a private ansible consultation. The colonel called in over the ansible network. “We don't ordinarily do this, Captain, excuse me ‘Major’ but we're going to do it anyway.”
“Sir?”
“I'm uploading the codes now. Admiral Irons has signed off on it, and Admiral White shouldn't have any problems. Your courtesy frocking is no longer just a formality ‘Major.’ You are hereby promoted to the rank of major. You are in command of the invasion force as senior officer on site.”
“Sir,” she said startled.
“Hang back some more if you wish. You have my authorization to borrow from the marines from the ship's companies,” he stated. He sent her his authorization. “Admiral White may not be pleased about that. But he knows we need to get the ground under control.”
“Yes, sir.” The wolf's ears were flat back. She had never thought she'd make captain's rank let alone major. She shook her head numbly. They must be more desperate for help than she thought.
“There are two sleeper noncoms, and Captain JG Lyon on Xavier. All three have been recently promoted. Use them wisely. Like you, they are a finite wealth of knowledge and skill.”
“Aye aye, sir. They are already here, sir.”
“Good. I see your plan is to attrition the enemy since they have superior numbers and can hold the population hostage. To turn their own tactics against them. Approved. The frontal approach isn't working. A grid pattern search will take too much manpower.”
“Yes, sir. This Baroness General Busche is good, sir. She's got her people distributed in small squads in the bush and in the cities and towns. The ones in the cities and towns are holding hostages and have quislings around them for cover and support. They have only a battalion of Horathians but forty times that in quisling partisans. Ferreting them out is going to be rough.”
“And you most likely won't get them all with the forces you've got available. Once they start taking heavy losses, they'll go to ground.”
“Yes, sir. The biggest thing is to push them back away from the spaceport and then keep them back. Once we can assure our supply, we can move people and equipment in and out safely. But the capital is my keystone objective.”
“Get on that then. You have Gunny McClintock. I suggest you use him, his AI, and his armor wisely. He won't be with you for long.”
She nodded sagely. That she fully understood, though she wondered what other front they would shift the panther to.
“We're sending in additional SEAL, Recon, and a marine battalion as soon as we have additional shipping. They are prepping now. However, the major in charge ….”
White Wolf nodded. “Has me by date of rank, sir. I understand. Hopefully, I won't leave them as big a mess to clean up as there is now.”
“I'm glad you understand. Good hunting, Major,” the colonel stated.
“Thank you, sir. May Lady Luck's grace shine upon you,” she stated as he disconnected the channel.
---<>---<>---
Agnosta was indeed planning on sending in a SEAL and Recon team as well as the marine battalion commanded by Major Pendeckle, Jersey mused as he clicked the ansible disconnect. He sat back in his chair. That was a problem. They had Damocles and Bounty waiting, but the transport large enough to move the group wasn't there. Admiral White was hanging onto every piece of shipping he got so that was putting a crimp in their careful schedules.
Pendeckle was taking charge of 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, to be in on the ground first instead of waiting for the bulk of his brigade to move. He was fairly confident the one battalion would be enough to take the planet, but Jersey wasn't so sure, not after some of the reports he had read. And until his convoy got back to pick up 2nd Battalion, they would have to keep it together. At least they had some shorter logistic lines to Antigua, if they got the shipping they needed. So far the navy was hogging all the manufacturing and shipping resources, Jersey thought sourly.
Until the shipping issue was resolved, he had to keep them to training and preparations, which was fine. The 2nd was a good brigade; they could continue to train their own people while also training the other brigades that were starting to stand up.
He frowned thoughtfully. He could send in the SEALS and Recon teams in dribs and drabs or even on the destroyers. It wouldn't be the first time a Special Forces team had hot bunked or even racked out in an armory or boat bay. He played with his lip and then jotted a note out to explore that later if things didn't pick up soon.
What really bothered him was what a lot of the senior officers were expressing. The sleepers and … he exhaled noisily. There I go again, thinking in camps. They may be from a different generation but they are marines! He thought, shaking his head.
Everyone was concerned about the lack of rank and field experience. He knew that. Hell, the major did too. He wished Valenko was available, but the bear was neck deep handling the marines in Pyrax as the senior officer there. There was no time to recall him from Pyrax and then work him up to handle the battalion. The shock and adjustment would be a problem and so would the politics involved. He had no real reason to relieve Pendeckle for the job. The man was looking forward to it. He had Captain Myers and others to back him up. He shook his head. No, everyone would do their jobs where they were. Once he got them there, he thought sourly.
What they needed though wasn't just ground troops to go door to door. They needed support. They needed vehicles, mechs, drones, shuttles, and assault shuttles. Assault craft. Marine craft. He made another note to discuss that lack with Admiral Irons in their next scheduled conference. It was time for the corps to grow and branch out properly, not be stifled as it had been.
---<>---<>---
Major White Wolf examined the problem around the spaceport again. There were three interlocking fire bases left to form a perimeter around the spaceport with twenty marine troops and thirty-eight to forty militia volunteers in each base.
Each base also had a patched together squad of mechs and a battered squadron of drones left. Parts for them and the few remaining vehicles were hard to come by so scavenging was normal. Medical care was almost nonexistent, the navy doctors on the ships in orbit had to perform triage and treatment to any wounded from orbit through the mechs and remotes. The on-site corpsman had been killed. Nearly a third of the survivors had been wounded at one time or another. Many were still walking wounded when Captain, now Major White Wolf, had taken over. Everyone worked every day; sometimes around the clock if things got heated. The troops were exhausted and barely hanging on she thought.
A wounded patient had to be stabilized and survive long enough to get to a
base for treatment. If they survived they might be evacuated by shuttle on a shuttle delivery run. Those were irregular due to the frequent attacks on any aircraft.
One Skyhawk shuttle had crashed recently and was wreckage near the spaceport. Another had reportedly crashed on landing, and a third had been shot down by a SAM. They had to make the landings at night under the cover of darkness to keep the enemy guessing and to give the three remaining shuttle crews a chance at survival.
One native nurse and doctor had shown up at Alpha Base to lend a hand with the troops a week ago according to the log. Both were overworked and exhausted. The doctor had been a dentist of all things before the Horathians had shown up. He hadn't known much about trauma and emergency medicine, but he'd picked up a lot recently.
The wolf flicked her ears. There was a lot of that going around she thought. She had one Warhawk, the two Skyhawks remaining, plus one civilian shuttle she'd brought in. Oh how she regretted not having her assault shuttle! She shook her head. But what was done was done. They would have to make do with what they had on hand.
Having a squad of powered armor would be nice too she thought. Not just the one. Her eyes cut to Jethro's status. She frowned thoughtfully as she remembered his boarding of that destroyer. That pack he'd used ….
“Bast,” she said. The AI didn't respond. “Come on you little witch, I know you can hear me,” she growled, keying a text direct to the AI and then another to Jethro. Jethro immediately replied and sent a link to a virtual chat. She clicked on it and smiled slightly when his image appeared.
“Yes, Cap, I mean, Major?” Jethro said when the change in her header registered. “I um ….”
“I was just promoted by Colonel Forth. Get over it.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Jethro replied.
“I need to know about your armor.”
“I can't, um, ma'am; it's classified,” he warned.
“I know it's cadre armor so don't get your fur up,” she replied. “I'm not interested in that as much as your flight pack.”
“Ma'am?”
“Can it work in atmo?” She asked.
He blinked at her and then cocked his head. Slowly he nodded. “Yes, ma'am. I'd stick out though. My stealth doesn't work obviously.”
Bast sent him a text. He ignored it, eyes boring into the major's. He wanted to know what she intended for him to do. Probably something risky he thought cheerfully.
“You'd be a raven. And at night …,” her wolf smile widened enough to show teeth.
His eyes narrowed and his pupils slitted. Then he nodded again and flicked his ears. “Yes, ma'am.”
“Good. We're going to strip the marine complements from the other ships. We've got more reinforcements coming in a few days. I want to drop everyone at once. So, here's what we're going to do …,” she said, laying out her plan.
---<>---<>---
“I see one! A shuttle is coming in using the night and cloud cover to get in!” a lookout said, pointing to the scope.
Captain Allegra had placed lidar and radar arrays a kilometer away from them and on hilltops along the sight line to the main landing strip of the spaceport. A pair of decoy transmitters were lashed to the top of trees with explosives they had stolen from a mining site.
Squads were out in the hills and surrounding forest. They hated the wet mossy mess but loved using their toys to shoot down the enemy shuttles. Captain Allegra was just glad they had them. He brushed bark, sap, and bugs out of his hair and looked up with a scowl to the log roof above them. What a way to make a living.
“It's definitely lining up on Runway 2, sir. She's coming in hot like she's expecting to land,” the tech said, playing with the scope's controls to get a refined image.
“They think so. I don't. Get Squad 1 and 2 up,” Captain Allegra ordered, pointing to the two groups on his map. He pulled out a cigar, lit it, and then puffed a few times. The glow of the cigar warred with the lights coming from the dim screens. The smoke rose to the rafters above and filtered through the cracks. “They better damn well be up and ready in two minutes and not sleeping or screwing around. Two missiles, one from each squad. Just the two. Don't frack it up,” he growled.
“Yes, sir.”
“But put everyone else on alert. They might try to bring down a bunch of shuttles behind the first,” the captain ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
---<>---<>---
“I don't get why they designated us a wild weasel flight. We're not ferrets,” Petty Officer Sanders complained.
“Quit your bitchin and keep an eye on the instruments and your side of the bird,” his copilot said mildly, keying the engines. Contrary to everything they had been doing before this major wanted them to come down fat, dumb, and happy. Well, not too happy. They were towing a decoy they had lovingly rigged behind them on a tow cable. Power was fed through the wiring around the 500-meter-long cable to the decoy; it was putting out a massive here I am signal for the enemy radar and lidar to pick up. The signal was so powerful it bloated out the shuttle's own signature.
“I hope this works,” the chief murmured as she made the final turn to line up with the approach to the landing strip. An alarm immediately went off. Then the klaxon of a lidar hit howled.
Sanders didn't hesitate; he kicked the decoy loose then climbed for the sky. “See?” he demanded as he pulled back on the yoke with Chief Mancheta.
“Just shut up and give us more power.”
“SAM!” the PO grunted, seeing the rising missile out of the corner of his eye. Then it exploded in a shower of fireworks. “What the hell?” He turned to look over his shoulder. “I think we're safe. I'm not sure though. Maybe it was a dud?”
“Don't jinx it,” the chief replied.
---<>---<>---
The false landing pass by the Warhawk had gotten the Horathian lidar crew and two SAM units to unmask. Jethro had come in behind the shuttle, using her and his energy shields to handle reentry.
Once the lidar and SAMS lit off, he lit off his weapons. He snipered them from the air, which was a new experience. So was the SN-50X with the explosive smart rounds. The first rounds went into the rising missiles and tore them apart like tissue paper. Then he moved to point down. The lethal rain tore apart a lidar truck as well as two squads of infantry with shoulder launched missile pods.
Bast danced a targeting karat around the ground picking out targets for him to engage. Anyone who was out and about at night was a target of his retribution.
“That'll teach them to keep their head down.”
---<>---<>---
“Withdraw!” Captain Allegra howled, eyes wide in shock as he waved his people and directed them to get under cover. Whatever was hitting them was either beyond their range or was so stealthy they couldn't see it. He was taking far too many losses, more than the General had allowed for. He ran past a private and scooped up the rifle the terrorized man had dropped. He shoved it into the private's hands and kept going. “They've won this round,” he snarled.
---<>---<>---
“Got em, huh kid?” Captain Joshua Lyon asked as Jethro landed behind the shuttles. The major had wasted no time after he'd sniped the enemy SAM units. She'd had the other three shuttles on standby in orbit. They had dropped as soon as their window had opened and came down before he had landed. The panther had provided cover for them.
As soon as the troops and gear unloaded, the shuttles started to lift their boarding ramps and taxi for takeoff for the next load.
Jethro took his helmet off, ignoring Bast's protests and flicked his ears at the officer. Joshua chuckled. They had met only briefly in orbit, but they were already becoming friends. The captain had taken a Recon team with him and had arrived with Xavier a short time ago. Somehow he'd managed to convince the brass to allow him to take a pair of Recon squads from Agnosta to Antigua and from there had caught up with Xavier's convoy. They were jetlagged from all the travel but ready and eager to get to work. He wished them all the luck Lady Luck would bless them
with. They were going to get a baptism of fire Jethro thought, but he was fairly certain the squads were up for the challenge.
Jethro had been shocked to find out that the captain had briefly served with his ancestor, Tobias. He was proud of the Neocat and his achievements.
“Your grandpapi would be proud, kit. Just like him,” the captain said as he waved to his troops to move out. “Come on you apes! You wanna live forever? Get the lead out! We've got the LZ to secure before first light, then we're going to go knock on some doors!” he snarled waving them on to hurry them along.
“Are you real?” a shell shocked and battered private asked, staring at him as he came over from his post. Jethro turned to look at the marine. His IFF read as Bailey. Jethro nodded, flicking his ears once more. His eyes went to the perimeter and scanned on their own. Bast was obviously not happy about being exposed.
“Come on, move,” Sergeant Snorkle said from behind the private. “Don't mind him, sir; we're all sort of stunned and stuff,” the big husky sergeant said. He had a broad face and squad lifter body. His broad nose seemed flattened and misshaped from too many hits. “Glad you're here, Gunny,” he said simply as he hustled the gangly private off and back to his post.
The panther watched them go, concerned about PTSD. He didn't have a choice though; they needed every hand for the moment. He made a note to have all the troops counseled and given downtime when they could spare them.
“March to the sounds of the guns,” he murmured, putting his helmet back on. He looked over to his brother-in-law and nodded to the militia troops around the Neo leopard. “Keep your head down and watch each other's ass and you may survive this,” he said.
Chapter 18
Admiral Subert dealt with the picket ships and training. Junior Valdez's flight school was checked over, but he didn't find as many holes in the school's syllabus or lesson plans as he'd thought.