Sergeant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 2)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  Ryck was confused as to what could have hit them. Nothing was picked up by the sensors as incoming, and their sensors should have identified any mines.

  The dust cleared, but Ryck couldn’t see much. Marines were moving back and forth in front of him, but Ryck was facing away from the direction he wanted to face, that towards Sullivan. Two more of the squad bent down to check Ryck, turning him onto his back.

  Ryck tried to take stock of himself as his PICS started coming back online. He’d banged his left arm pretty good, and he knew his tongue was bitten, but other than that, he seemed in one piece.

  Lips put his face shield against Ryck’s and shouted out “Are you OK?”

  Ryck could hear him clearly, but muffled, through his face shield, so he shouted back “Yeah. How about Sullivan?”

  As he yelled, he splattered blood across the inside of his face shield. It started to form into droplets and drip back down on his face. Instinctively, he tried to shift his body, and his PICS responded. It was coming back online. The display on his visor came to life—covered in blood splatters.

  “Sullivan’s out of action. Doc’s got him stable though, but his leg’s pretty fucked up. That blast twisted it like he was some sort of doll,” Tizzard Rey said, his shout coming both through his PICS and over the comms.

  “What the fuck was that?” Ryck asked. “How come we didn’t pick anything up?”

  “Don’t know yet. Sergeant Kyle is doing a scan,” Rey told him.

  Frank Kyle was the EOD team leader. He would have some basic analyzing tools in his PICS-E, but Ryck knew they had to keep moving, and Frank might not have time to do a full scan. Knowing just what had exploded might have to wait for the Navy Seabees to come down and determine what had hit them.

  Ryck slowly stood, checking all the readouts he could. He bent his knees and flexed his arms. He seemed to be moving OK, but he couldn’t check the actual readout figures. Much of his face shield display was obscured by the blood he’d spit out. For all the advances in battle suit technology, something as simple as blood inside was a big problem. He couldn’t just reach up and wipe it, after all. Not only did it block his view of some of his readouts, but it blocked some of the small micro-scans embedded in the face shield that read the eye commands used to activate the PICS’ various display functions.

  He turned to where PFC Sullivan had been and took his first steps to see if his PFC was OK.

  “Sergeant Lysander, you back online?” the lieutenant asked over the person-to-person circuit.

  “I think so, sir, but I can’t really tell. My display is sort of covered in blood. I’m OK, though,” he said, his words slightly slurred as his tongue was already swelling. “Can you wait one, though? I need to check on Sullivan.”

  The platoon commander said nothing else as Ryck arrived at where Sullivan was down, Doc Grbil working on him. The blast had wrenched the PFC’s right leg, actually bending it at the knee at about a 70-degree angle. The joints were the weakest part of a PICS, but still, that had to have been one hellacious blast. Luckily, the PICS leg had not completely detached, so Sullivan’s leg had not been amputated. The angle was gruesome, but Ryck thought a couple of months in regen would make him as good as new.

  “Yancy, how’re you hanging?” Ryck asked as he approached the Marine.

  The PFC’s face shield was on clear, and Ryck could see Sullivan’s face, a goofy-looking grin plastered across it.

  “Oh, copacetic, Sergeant. No pain at all. Doc’s hooked me up,” he said as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  “I’ve given him somamine,” Doc Grbil passed to Ryck on a person-to-person. “He’s not going to be feeling a thing.”

  Somamine was one of Pfizer’s newest painkillers. It worked by changing the pain impulses into something the brain recognized as a warm feeling of contentment. The science of it was beyond Ryck, but it was a favorite among the Marines. They called it “happyland.” It couldn’t be used for too long as it could permanently re-program the brain as to what was pain and what was pleasure, but it was very effective in situations such as this.

  “Is he going to be OK?” Ryck asked.

  “Yeah, he’ll be fine. He’s going to have to go through decon, though. The blast broke through his armor, and he got some of this toxic atmosphere that leaked in. I’ve gunked the break, and that should hold for now. As for his leg, it’ll probably take some surgery to repair the damage, then regen to heal it. I think a couple of months, tops.”

  “Sergeant Lysander, I can see your stats even if you can’t. All your readings are in the green. Are you effective? We’ve got to keep moving,” the lieutenant asked.

  “Uh, roger, sir, I’m still effective,” Ryck responded.

  He could hear the slight click that told him the platoon commander had switched back to the platoon net.

  “PFC Sullivan has been WIA’d but is in no danger. He will be picked up by G-One for a casevac. We’ve still got our mission, so move it out. We don’t know what ordinance was used against us, so until we identify it and devise countermeasure, watch your dispersion. Gee-Three-Six, out.”

  As Ryck turned to go back to his squad, he caught sight of Major Laurent standing 20 meters off to the side, clearly studying Sullivan. Ryck was suddenly washed over by a feeling of foreboding. Laurent was an observer, so he was bound to observe. Ryck couldn’t help but feel, though, that he might be too interested in a weakness in the Marine PICS.

  Within moments, as a team from First Platoon arrived to take charge of Sullivan, the platoon was back on the move. Ryck’s PICS was moving normally. His problem, though, was visibility. Back on Prophesy, when the PCDC declared bankruptcy and pulled out, the economy had shattered with many people finding themselves out of work. A number of people took to standing at intersections and washing the windows of hovers for a few credits. Ryck would have paid 100 credits at the moment if one of those men or women was there now and could reach inside his PICS to clean off the blood.

  The top of his face shield was clear. Ryck was using this section for visibility as he moved forward. This was where the anti-fogging vents were, though. In certain conditions, such as when out of direct sunlight in open space, the outside of the visor would be bitterly cold while the inside was kept warm. This could lead to fogging, so a simple vent system blew warmed air over the inside of the face shield. This was a basic, old-fashion method that worked surprisingly well.

  On a whim, Ryck activated it. He didn’t want to dry the blood where it was. That would make things worse. But he turned up the vent to its highest speed anyway. It worked. With the fan pumping out the air, it blew the droplets down the inside of the face shield to where it caught on the edge of where the face shield met armor. There were still streaks of blood which started to dry, but Ryck could see through his visor. More importantly, he could see his displays again.

  The lieutenant had told him his numbers were good, but Ryck ran a quick check anyway. Other than a still slightly elevated pulse rate, everything was normal. Less than five minutes had passed since the explosion, so that was probably adrenalin still coursing through his body that had shot up his heart rate.

  He ran a quick check on the rest of the squad. Sullivan’s avatar had turned to the light blue of a Marine out of the fight, but still alive. Everyone else had normal readings.

  This had been an unexpected delay, one that had cost the platoon a Marine, but the mission was still in place. Ryck forced his mind back on point, pushing the blast to the back of his mind.

  He expected another blast, though, all his senses on the alert. However, they made it to Phase Line Rat without further incident. This was the final phase line before the Final Coordination Line, the FCL. Rat was in defilade to the final objective, out of any direct fire weapons. From Rat, the EOD team moved forward, supported by First Squad. The boomboom boys and Second Squad crossed the FCL and moved carefully to a point about 100 meters from the disguised entrance to the hidden depot. Ryck watched through piggybacking Popo’s
visuals as Sgt Kyle unlimbered his DSD[11] and sent it trundling up to the doors. The small robot extended the first of its sensors, sending the readings back to Kyle. The EOD team leader shook his head, then deployed the drill, trying to take a core sample. The drill easily moved through the outer, rock-like covering, but when it hit the actual door beneath, it stopped its progress. The little robot’s front tracks lifted off the ground as it applied more pressure to the drill.

  Sgt Kyle stopped the drilling and deployed the laser. He had the DSD fire it where it had been drilling. Ryck remembered from his classes that the laser was not intended to penetrate but merely ablate off some of the surface so the robot’s spectrometer could get an analysis.

  Kyle shut down his DSD, and a moment later passed to Capt Davis on the command net “G6, these are some extremely hardened doors. They look to be a LTC variant and are around 3 meters thick. I don’t have anything in my bag of tricks to breach this. We can look to bypass the doors and go through the rock face itself, but there’s no telling yet how much rock we’ll have to blast through. Waiting further instructions, over.”

  There was a moment of silence, assuredly as the company and maybe battalion leadership discussed what Frank had told them.

  The nets crackled with Capt Davis’ voice, “Give me a degree of assuredness on that. What’s the chance that you can breach the doors.”

  “Uh, I’d say about zero to no chance. These things are massive. If you want me to blow our way in, we need to find a better spot to do it,” the EOD sergeant replied.

  “Roger that. I understand. Wait one, out,” the company commander passed.

  Only Ryck was able to access the command circuit, and he knew his Marines would wonder what was going on, so he passed, “There seems to be a problem. The doors at the entrance might be too big for the boomboom team. So we’re waiting for further word now.”

  “Shit, stand by to stand by. Typical shit,” Lips said.

  Lips had been a corporal selected to sergeant when he’d been busted back down to E3 for taking a swing at an MP while drunk. He might have been Ryck’s most capable Marine, but he did tend to exhibit a degree of cynicism. Ryck didn’t know if he blamed him for his cynicism, given his history. And this time, Ryck agreed with Lips’ sentiment.

  SOG knew they were there. Delaying the assault just gave them more time to prepare whatever they had planned for the Marines. Sgt Kyle and his team couldn’t get in, but there were other resources available to them.

  “Sergeant L,” PFC Stillwell asked on the P2P, “Is Yancy really going to be OK?”

  Ryck realized that Stillwell had never seen a Marine WIA’d. Most of his squad had never seen combat. Their operation on Soreau wasn’t combat, and it hadn’t prepared them for their first taste of fighting. They still hadn’t fired their weapons in anger, and to see one of their own taken down was a gut-check.

  Stillwell and Sullivan were also buddies, he knew. They’d gone through boot together, been assigned to Fox together, then transferred over to Golf together.

  “He’s barely hurt. Two months in regen, and he’ll be back good as new, Jeb,” he told the PFC.

  “Is it going to hurt? Regen, I mean. I mean, you’ve been there, and they say it hurts,” Stillwell went on.

  “It fucking sucks, to be honest. The itch is the worse ‘cause you can’t scratch it. And the Navy docs can’t give you anything for it. They say that can affect the healing. But Yancy’s a tough mother. He’ll handle it just fine.”

  Ryck was about to continue in that vein when the command circuit came alive.

  “All hands, get your men turned around and move back to your platoon rally points. The Navy’s going to drop a GD-1905,” Capt Davis passed. “The ship’s monitor is getting into position for the correct drop aspect. We’ve got four minutes, I repeat four minutes, before the drop.”

  Ryck looked at his display. The captain had lied. His display already read 3:47.

  “I want to see heels and asses, now!” the skipper ordered.

  Ryck didn’t wait for the lieutenant to pass it down.

  “We’ve got a Tungsicle coming, in 3:42 and counting. Everybody, form up now! Squad V, and move it back to Rally Point Isaacs. The captain wants heels and asses!”

  The Gravity Dropped-1905, the “Tungsicle,” was a simple four-meter long column of crystallized ceramic-covered tungsten. One end was pointed, the other flat. At 80 centimeters wide, it was a hefty 155,000 kg of unstoppable penetration power. It was too big for the monitor’s main railgun, so a modified railgun with far less power was mounted on the exterior of the monitor to get the weapon moving. It left the monitor at “only” 2000 mps. Ryck didn’t know the correct calculations for how fast it would be moving when it hit based on BHP Billiton B-19’s 1.2 G gravity well and 90% atmospheric density, but with a heavy sectional density and a low ballistic coefficient, it should still be at over 1,000 mps upon impact.

  That impact would be huge, in the giga-joule range. The crystallized ceramic coating not only kept the Tungsicle from burning up in the atmosphere as it fell, it also helped internalize the KE upon impact. The weapon was designed to penetrate into a target, not expend all that energy in a surface blast. However, that much energy could not be completely contained. There was going to be a pretty big bang when it hit, the equivalent to maybe 15 tons of TNT.

  Navy gunners had the motto Velocitas Eradico, or “I, who am speed, eradicate.” The Tungsicle put fact to that motto.

  The Marines were in full, if controlled flight. Ryck was proud to see that their formation was holding well, and that they were in line with the other squads. Rally Point Isaac was the platoon rally point, some 1550 meters away from the target and back towards the LZ, just past a flat-topped rocky outcropping. The original rally point was to the side of the hill, but as he watched his display, it was shifted to the back of the hill.

  The lieutenant’s on the ball, Ryck thought approvingly.

  The hill would give added protection to the Marines.

  On open terrain and at a flat out run, a Marine in a PICS could cover that much ground in a little mover a minute and a half. Over unknown terrain, Ryck thought two and a half minutes was more reasonable. That would give them a minute to take whatever cover they could get.

  “Khouri, keep up,” he sent on a P2P, almost automatically.

  Part of his mind was focused on running, on picking the right path. Another part of his mind, the analytical part, watched the 11 blue icons that represented his men. Watching the display could tend to reduce them to pieces of a game. They were not electrons, though. They were his men, his Marines, and he was responsible for them.

  His display read 1:03 when they reached the rally point. Ryck knew he had the far sector of their position, but his display helpfully highlighted just where his squad was supposed to be. His Marines fanned out, achieving good dispersion.

  “Everyone, down on the deck,” he told them.

  Ryck activated the gyro shutdown, then had to wait the five seconds before he could actually kneel first, then fall forward onto his face. His display looked brighter with the dark dirt as a background.

  Just as he was almost prone, he caught sight of his pet legionnaire. Major Laurent was kneeling, not lying flat on his face. Ryck wondered if that was by choice or if his R-3 could not switch off the aspect control of his combat suit. That was food for thought.

  Flat on the deck, Ryck contemplated sending off one of his two dragonflies. He wanted to watch the target. He’d seen vids of the Tungsicle, even of the larger ship-based Doric, but he’d never witnessed the real thing. As if reading his mind, the lieutenant slaved the recon team’s eyes to the entire platoon.

  “The second it hits, we are up and moving,” Lt. Nidishchii’ passed on the platoon circuit. “Treat the impact the same as if EOD had blown the doors. Everything else remains the same as planned.”

  There was a short pause, then the lieutenant came back on the circuit with, “SSgt Phantawisangtong has reminded me th
at there could be significant debris flying through the air. I will coordinate with the rest, but keep your heads down and don’t move until given the order.”

  Ryck watched the display count down: . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . .

  There was a brilliant flash that temporarily burned out the recon team’s feed and lit the sky above the platoon. Ryck was face down, but the light made it to his face shield.

  A moment later, the shock wave travelling through the ground hit beneath him, lifting him up 10 or 15 centimeters. Still another few moments later, the atmospheric shock wave rolled over them.

  “Keep down,” Ryck reminded his squad.

  The feed from recon stabilized. It showed the rock camouflage over the doors in rubble, the heavy metal of the doors revealing their size. A huge hole had been torn into the left side, leaving it twisted and glowing orange. Surprisingly, the right side was still up, even if canted outwards. Dust and smoke poured up into the sky while heavy pieces of debris fell between the recon team’s eyes and the target.

  A loud whump sounded behind Ryck as something fell from above. There was a small patter of tiny bits of debris, but only that one piece that had made the whump was heavy enough to have posed any danger.

  Ryck’s action icon on his display flashed green.

  “Up and at ‘em,” he passed to his men as he got up, reactivating his gyro stabilization system.

  The overall plan had been loaded into their AIs. These worked well as an initial plan, but the AIs had only limited capability to make corrections with regards to the rest of the force as the assault progressed. This broke down the initial plan during the fog of war and the Marines had to rely on their training and ability to react to events.

  Ryck didn’t need his display, though, to show him where to go. The dark column of smoke ahead of his was a beacon. This was the squad’s third time over the exact same ground, so they were able to cover it quickly. It was important to reach and enter the complex as soon as possible. Intel thought the initial chamber would be a warehouse or receiving station. At least two cloaked shuttles had arrived while the target had been under direct observation, and some large pieces of equipment as well as pallets of supplies had been offloaded and muled through the doors and into the complex. Anyone directly inside the doors would probably have been killed when the Tungsicle hit, but there were tunnels and other areas that had been identified, and any SOG deeper inside the facility could have survived. If the enemy was making their way to the first chamber, it would be better for the Marines if they beat the SOG there.