Sergeant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 2)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  “One last thing. Forget about every war flick you’ve seen. When our ships actually start shooting, they are not going to be firing from a few kilometers away. They won’t be able to see each other with the naked eye. They’ll still be tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of kilometers apart. When we boarded the Marie’s Best, remember, the Ark was over 15,000 km away, and it was only that close so we wouldn’t take forever getting there on rekis.

  “Lieutenant, that’s all I’ve got, I think. Is there anything else I should say?”

  “No, good job, Sergeant. I think that was helpful,” he replied.

  As Ryck move back to his seat, he realized that the platoon commander hadn’t only been looking for a field expedient class in naval warfare. He’d wanted to break the tension that had been building since the Marines had gathered around the slowly evolving display.

  Sams had his hand in a fist, and was slowly rotating in back and forth around his nose as Ryck walked up.

  “Fuck you, too, Sams. It ain’t brown-nosing unless you volunteer. I was just following orders.”

  “If you say so,” Sams said as he and Popo laughed.

  Even Cpl Rey was smirking.

  “I can’t do anything about these negats,” Ryck said, pointing at his two fellow sergeants, “but I’ve got power over you, Corporal of Marines. I’ve seen corporals stand fire watch, and who knows, that might be a good idea.”

  At that, more Marines broke out into laughter. If the lieutenant really had been trying to break the tension, then the trash talk and laughter showed he had succeeded.

  It was a temporary respite, though. There was a battle building, and after a few more jabs back and forth, the Marines slowly settled down and focused their attention back on the display.

  After about twenty minutes during which the blue and red icons inched together, a voice came over the feed.

  “Sailors and Marines, this is Lieutenant Commander Huang, the task force PAO.

  [21] As we close in with the rebel fleet, Admiral Starling has given me permission to narrate what is happening, so even those on ships not actively engaged will be able to follow the battle to our inevitable victory.”

  That perked Ryck up. He was cynical enough to think that the “narration” was more aimed at furthering the admiral’s ambitions after the battle, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy being more in the know.

  The PAO started with more comments on history in the making without giving out very many details. Ryck started to tune the officer out, instead, watching as the Bismarck and the two frigates Monty and Decatur adjusted their track to close in on the Jean d’Arc.

  The Bismarck was one of the most capable ships in the Navy, but Ryck thought it slightly odd that it looked to be the admiral’s tip of the spear. Both the Ark Royal and the Chakri Naruebet were, on paper, at least, more than a match for the Jean d’Arc, and the task force’s three cruisers were at about par with the French flagship. Sending in two cruisers would put fewer men at risk while still projecting enough firepower for a victory. Sending in two cruisers and a couple of frigates or destroyers would be extra insurance in case Admiral DeMornay had a few tricks up her sleeve. It probably wouldn’t make any difference, though, as the Bismarck could handle herself. The cynic in Ryck rose once again as he realized that a personal victory would stand the admiral in much better stead than if he’d just ordered other ships into the fray.

  Technically, he wasn’t the captain of the Bismarck and wouldn’t actually be fighting her. The Bismarck’s captain would be giving the tactical orders. Admiral Starling was the task force commander, in charge of the overall picture. But the public wouldn’t make that distinction.

  The PAO’s voice rose in excitement, bringing Ryck back to the battle. First blood had been drawn, and not by the Bismarck. Two frigates, the Madras and the Tehran, had fixed a French corvette’s position and fired their big plasma guns. The corvette’s shields had collapsed within seconds, imploding the ship.

  The Marines in the lounge cheered, drowning out the excited PAO. Ryck cheered, too. In the back of his mind, he knew over 200 men and women had just been wiped out, but on the holo display, they were just electrons.

  One concern had been whether energy or kinetic weapons would be more effective. Ship defenses had improved dramatically since the War of the Far Reaches, and while tests and calculations had been continuously made, things could be different in real combat.

  Kinetic weapons were harder to bring on target, being slower than energy weapons, and smaller ships could carry only so many of them, and the rounds or missiles could be shot down or deflected. They packed a big punch, though, much bigger than an energy weapon. There were also a very wide array of kinetic weapons from which to choose, ranging from point defense auto-cannons to huge megaton warhead missiles.

  Energy weapons acquired targets easier, and in the vacuum of space, had very long effective ranges. However, they were easier to shield against and usually took awhile to break through defenses. The speed at which the French corvette was destroyed, though, boded well for the use of Federation energy weapons, especially as the frigates used plasma guns. Several of the ships in the task force, to include each of the cruisers, had the more effective hadron cannons, and the Bismarck had the Navy’s newest energy weapon, the terajoule P2-Meson Cannon.

  All three energy weapons had about the same degree of effectiveness in knocking out a target once they hit it. The plasma, which fired in near-continuous pulses, was bulkier and more of an energy hog as it required an electromagnetic “jacket” to keep the plasma charge from dispersing as it traveled through space. Hadron cannons bypassed the inverse square law, so they didn’t need a jacket. They focused an unbroken beam on the target. The cannon itself, which was actually a type of projector, was smaller and more efficient than a plasma gun, but it built up charges on the hull of the ship firing it, which interfered with cloaking and sensors. The new meson cannon, never before fired in actual combat, was the most efficient and could theoretically be fired without pause, as long as the ship’s engines could supply the juice.

  During their class on ship-borne weapons systems, Ryck thought it bass-’ackwards that the smaller ships had the larger, energy-hogging weapons while the huge capital ships tended to have the smaller, more efficient guns. He thought a small corvette, maybe only 50 meters long, armed with one meson cannon, would be one über-nasty weapon.

  Within minutes, the FS Pretoria, one of the cruisers, launched two SCAT missiles. They passed through where the display indicated a large French ship of some kind was, but there were no detonations. The Pretoria’s target acquisition AI had been spoofed.

  Things in the battlespace were quiet for a few moments as the red and blue icons did a slow ballet in the display. Then the Pretoria’s sister ship, the Cairo, launched another SCAT. The SCAT flew at over 20,000 km per second, so the Marines on the Ark Royal could actually see its icon move. Three, four, five seconds. Then the display flashed to represent an explosion. The Marines cheered again, but the SCAT had not detonated on a French ship. It had been destroyed by a French anti-missile battery.

  The French ship had knocked out the SCAT, but by firing its weapons, the ship had given up its position. Within moments, three Navy ships concentrated their weapons, two firing plasma guns and one firing a hadron cannon, on where their AIs calculated the French ship to be. After ten seconds of intense fire, the French ship went up.

  The PAO was going crazy, announcing the battle as if it was a football game.

  “Did you see that? Did you see it? Oh my God, we’re kicking ass!” he shouted, forgetting his officer-like decorum.

  They all had seen it. Actually, they had seen a representation of it. Humans could not see energy weapon beams, could not watch a SCAT fly across space. The display AI created representations of the beams, missiles, and explosions so human viewers could make sense of what was happening.

  The excitement level in the lounge was high, but then for almost
20 minutes, nothing much happened. The blue icons maneuvered smoothly in the display; the red icons jumped here and there as the AIs calculate new probable positions.

  From a spot without a red icon, a beam of light flashed to envelope the Madras, one of the two frigates that had drawn first blood. Firing had given up data points to the French, and the cloaked ship had opened up on the Federation frigate from less than 50,000 kilometers away, almost spitting distance in space battles.

  The AIs calculated with a 76% probability that the French ship was the Giraud, a cruiser. This ship was more than a match for the Madras, and as the fire locked on the frigate, Marines in the lounge stood up yelling for another ship to come help.

  The Madras couldn’t even escape to bubble space. The enveloping energy being thrown at it made generating the bubble space field impossible.

  In the same way that the Madras had given away its positional data by firing, the Giraud’s firing pinpointed its position as well. Beams of energy and at least two SCATs reached out to the French ship. It was a race to see whose shields would last the longest. The Giraud had the stronger shields, but it had at least four Federation ships focused on it. Just as the Madras’ shields started to redline, the French ship imploded.

  Another cheer rang out in the lounge. It had been a close thing, though. The Madras’ icon shifted to a light blue. She was alive, but no longer effective.

  Three French ships destroyed, one Federation ship out-of-action. Ryck wondered how many French ships were actually out there. The French Navy had 98 capital ships—only 95 now—and another 20 from their allies, bringing their total fleet to 115. The Federation had almost 600. TF-207 had 41 ships, and there were seven other task forces aggressively patrolling Federation space at the moment. How many of the French fleet were opposing the task force? The display showed nine ships left, but it had shown eleven prior to the first engagement. The Giraud had never registered on the display. What other ships were there lurking, unseen?

  The Federation had the numbers, but when the French-allied forces made the strategic decision not to protect any French or allied planets, their Navy had the initiative. The Federation was forced to protect all Federation territory. The French could consolidate their forces and engage when and where at their choosing.

  “Now they’re gonna pay,” Sams said as the Bismarck maneuvered closer to the Jean d’Arc, which looked to be swinging up to engage. The Monty and Decatur were pulling back, leaving the field of battle to the two flagships, which had closed to just under a million klicks.

  This is medieval, Ryck thought. Since when do flagships square off like jousting knights? It just isn’t done this way.

  He was fascinated, though. It may not have been what was taught in any military tactics book, but two giants lumbering at each other was something of note.

  Of course, “lumbering” was not an apt description. They were closing at extremely high rates of speed. Ryck kept watching for the Monty and Decatur to pounce, thinking that made the most sense. They kept station, though.

  The PAO was excited, obviously thrilled to be part of an epic clash. He started speaking quicker, trying to describe what he was feeling. What he wasn’t doing was offering any concrete info that the Marines couldn’t already see from the display.

  At 800,000 klicks, the Bismarck reached out with its meson cannon. It splashed the Jean d’Arc, which kept coming at the Federation battleship. The display didn’t show the soft orange glow it gave to active enemy shields, but the French ship kept coming, so she was still in the fight.

  Ryck would have thrown in a few missiles, maybe the huge HYNA-3’s that battleships and dreadnaughts carried, but he thought the ship’s commander might want to register the first-ever kill with a meson cannon. It might be a footnote in history, but Ryck was more in the better-safe-than-sorry camp.

  “How come the froggie isn’t firing back?” Cpl Mendoza asked.

  Good question, Ryck thought.

  The two ships kept closing and the Jean d’Arc had yet to fire anything.

  She couldn’t have already been crippled, could she?

  The seconds ticked away as the ships came closer together.

  Was she going to try and ram the Bismarck? Ryck wondered.

  That didn’t make any sense. If she tried, the Bismarck had the kinetic weapons that would not only stop her, but also blow her apart into tiny little pieces.

  And then it was over.

  The energy signature of the French ship disappeared. She was dead.

  It was easier for Ryck to think in terms of the entire ship. “She” was dead. Not that over 8,000 men and women were dead. They were the enemy, but the sheer numbers of casualties were staggering. That was the same as two full regiments of Marines, gone, just like that.

  The lounge erupted into cheers as LCDR Huang shouted himself hoarse over the comms. It hadn’t been the epic battle that it might have been, but from both a tactical and strategic standpoint, it had been a major victory.

  Something caught his attention, and he listened into the PAO.

  “ . . . so with that in mind, Admiral Starling has ordered the Bismarck to match trajectories with the rebel flagship. If in fact our sensors are correct and the ship was not totally destroyed, we will rescue any survivors and stabilize the wreck for salvage.”

  That was a new wrinkle. The “survivor” comment was a throwaway for public consumption. Unless someone was in a heavily shielded, self-contained capsule, they could not have survived the bombardment of the meson beam. However, energy weapons did not in and of themselves destroy ships. When a ship imploded or exploded, it was because of the rupture of its own fields, weapons, and energy supply. A ship could actually shut completely down to avoid that, but, of course, that would kill the crew and leave the crewless ship defenseless against a KE weapon. More than a few times, though, ships “killed” were left basically intact and could be salvaged. At least 14 Federation ships had once been acquired that way, either in the War of the Far Reaches of through anti-piracy actions.

  “Shit, those 1/9 mothers are going to cash in!” SSgt Groton shouted out.

  IF the Jean d’Arc was intact, or partially intact, and IF she was salvageable, not only would that be a huge propaganda victory, but each member of the Ark Royal crew would get a prize bonus, and that included the onboard Marines.

  The Marines erupted into chatter, mostly expressing disgust at their lack of luck. Not only was 2/9 out of the action, it would not share any prize money their 1/9 brethren would receive.

  The battle was not over, but there was a subtle shift in the disposition of the icons in the display as the remaining red icons began to leave the battlespace. The Chakri Naruebet moved to intercept one French ship, opening fire as the Bismarck was still matching trajectory with the carcass of the Jean d’Arc. Even 3/9 was getting in on the action, despite the fact that the AIs could not confirm the kill to give the Federation cruiser.

  On the Bismarck, 1/9 would be getting ready for an EVA. Additional readings had indicated that the Jean d’Arc was probably in small pieces. There just wasn’t enough there do indicate an intact ship. But it had not exploded, so there could still be good intel to be gathered. The Marines and a Navy boarding team were still on. Dreams of huge prize money were shattered, but there was still the potential for a nice bonus.

  The “battle” such as it was, was on the far side of the battlespace from the Ark Royal. After an hour, the ship downgraded to Battle Stations Charlie. A few of the Marines trickled out to get some chow, but most stayed, watching the display.

  The Bismarck positioned itself 40,000 km off the Jean d’Arc. The two ships were motionless in relative terms, but like the entire task force, were hurtling through space at tremendous speeds. LCDR Huang signed off, giving way to a JG, as the 1/9 Marines loaded their rekis, and with a Gryphon monitor and several Experion fighters in support, started the long journey to the French ship. Forty-thousand klicks were nothing to a warship, but to a reki, that was an hour-l
ong journey. Forty-thousand klicks was also the by-the-manual minimum safe distance for a warship to maintain when approaching another. The Ark Royal had gotten closer to the Marie’s Best, but that had been a civilian ship. The Jean d’Arc was a warship, and if she somehow blew, either by design or by accident, the stand-off safe distance was greater.

  The Jean d’Arc didn’t blow. What it actually did, though, was confusing. Just as the Marines started their journey, there was a flicker on the display as sensors detected some sort of energy emissions.

  A warning icon flashed, and the JG stopped mid-sentence. Ryck knew the meson cannon as well as other weapons would be trained on the Jean d’Arc, but he knew the meson cannon would need approximately five seconds to activate the electron and positron collisions that resulted in the mesons. More importantly to him, the Marines were outside the ship, now almost 500 km away, between the Bismarck with its meson cannon and the French ship.

  Time seemed to slow down, but it was actually fewer than the five seconds needed to fire the meson cannon when a number of yellow streaks took off from the Jean d’Arc.

  Immediately after that, the Bismarck opened up.

  Ryck jumped up, his heart in his throat as the small blue icons for the rekis immediately faded to grey. The embarked Marines had no chance. The meson beam had swept through them. A battalion of his fellow Marines had just been killed, something that seemed unimaginable.

  Ryck was numb as he watched the yellow icons rushed to the Bismarck at a blazing speed, undeterred by the meson cannon. The icons switched from the yellow of an unknown object to the orange of a KE weapon of some sort a second after the Bismarck fired, but the meson beam had no effect on them. Another two seconds, and the battleship’s point-defense auto-cannons opened up, their stream of railgun projected depleted uranium rounds making a ribbon on the display as the rounds rushed out to meet the incoming weapons. The yellow icons split up into nine separate— rounds? Missiles?—as the AIs analyzed the readings. Six of the French weapons were knocked off their course by the intense fire, but three made it through the Bismarck’s defenses and pierced the shields, slamming into the battleship.