The gunner was furiously trying to reload another electrostatically-jacketed round. If this had been an auto-fire gun, Ryck would be dead. But this was a single-shot gun, probably to make it more portable. Whatever the reason, Ryck was able to close the distance.
The gun was the first priority, so Ryck slapped one of the bullfrogs on it as he jumped over the gun. He collided with the gunner, who had just started to deploy his personal weapon. Stupid move. If he had done that sooner, depending on what weapon he had, he might have been able to stop Ryck before he reached the man. Instead, the collision with Ryck sent the man flying. Ryck just had to reach over to put a toad on the man’s chest. He turned to the one with the damaged arm, who had started to run around his downed buddy. He grabbed another toad just as the screams of the first legionnaire reached him over the man’s speakers. The first man heard the screams too, and before Ryck could react, he turned and took off. Ryck threw the toad, but he misjudged the lead, and he missed the man by centimeters. He started to give chase, but it was obvious that among other strengths, the R-3 was also faster. Ryck gave up after less than seconds.
The circuit was alive with messages. It was only then that Ryck paused to give himself an update. What he saw made his heart fall. He could see that 14 Marines had been greyed out, another eight were light blue. In less than five minutes, 14 Marines had died. He couldn’t take time to identify each one.
He ran back to the lieutenant. The platoon commander was down, one leg gone mid-thigh, the other canted at an awkward angle. The bulk of his PICS was intact, and it had started treatment. He was out cold, but alive. Ryck looked back at the now-destroyed gun. Depending on the type of round, the fuze may not have had time to arm, but the sheer velocity of it was enough to cut down the lieutenant.
There was no time to tend him. He had to get back to the fight. He started running forward when he realized that the fighting was slowing down. The legionnaires were pulling back!
There was an explosion as one of them ran too close to one of Evan’s mines, but Ryck couldn’t tell the amount of damage the mine might have inflicted. Several legionnaires appeared in front of him. Ryck tossed two of his toads. One missed, but the other struck one of the legionnaires on the lower leg. Both fired at Ryck as they passed, and his alarms went off, but they were not going to stop to keep Ryck under fire.
Ryck turned to see the toad ignite, and the legionnaire started kicking out. A chunk of his R-3 went flying, taking the toad with it. The man went to one knee, then got back up and limped off. Ryck watched all of this from less than 40 meters away without interference.
The battle was over, and Ryck went back to survey the carnage. It was more than he expected. Even when faced by a better-armed force, he had expected to come out victorious. And even if the Marines had “won,” if they had carried the field, it was a Pyrrhic victory. Fourteen Marines were dead, including Sams. Sams! From his own squad, Cpl Rey and Cpl Mendoza, Hartono and Martin were dead. With Khouri and Stillwell from earlier, Ryck had six KIA just today. Add Prifit, and he’d lost seven Marines, seven friends. Cpl Winsted and Keiji were down, but alive, but Ryck didn’t know how bad they were.
Only Ling, Holleran, and Peretti were combat effective. With Ryck, only four men, just a fire team, were left.
Ryck vomited in his PICS. He gut heaved until there was nothing left.
“Sgt L, what are your orders?”
Ryck managed to look up, vomit dripping from his chin. Cpl St. Cyr was on a P2P with him.
“What?” he asked stupidly.
“What are your orders? You’ve got the platoon now.”
He’d been so concerned with his squad that he’d barely noticed the rest. SSgt Hecs was light blue. HM2 Grbil had the same rank as Ryck, but as a Marine, command fell to him. He was the senior man. He did a quick check. Including the four of them from Third Squad, he had eight Marines and a corpsman. Nine Federation fighting men to hold off a larger Legion force.
He didn’t know what to do.
Chapter 22
“So, what do we do about them? Both are probably going to die unless they get into stasis,” Doc asked him.
Ryck looked at the two legionnaires. One was missing an arm and was thankfully unconscious. The other was terribly burned, from the shoulder down through his chest and into his gut and hip. Ryck could see organs exposed in amongst the blackened flesh. The smell was overpowering, and it threatened to make Ryck vomit again. The legionnaire was conscious, and he stared blankly up at Ryck.
Using the toads had been Ryck’s idea, and it had seemed so logical at the time. Now he was seeing the effects, what it meant on a personal level.
“You can’t do anything else for them?” he asked Doc, who was waiting for a decision.
“Not really. I’ve cleaned around the damage, but they need help, fast. Especially Gary here,” he pointed at the burned legionnaire. “Sorry man, but you should know,” he said directly to the man.
Shit, Gary? He knows the guy’s name? Ryck thought.
“He’s got a falling hemoglobin count, renal failure, and is going into dehydration. The pain is manageable because the nerves have been burnt, but I can’t keep his fluids going. He needs intensive care and a long bout of regen, and he needs to get in stasis now,” Doc went on, addressing Ryck again.
“And we’ve got only those last two ziplocks?”
“Yeah, that’s it. We never, I mean, before . . .” the corpsman started.
“Not your fault. You’ve took your combat issue. If you hadn’t split them up and put those in the bottom of your hole, all of them would have been fried,” Ryck assured him.
Before the battle, Doc had broken up his kit, putting half in the bottom of a fighting hole, the other half he carried. When he rushed out to pull back LCpl Dodson in the middle of the fight, he’d been taken under fire. He’d been under the hadron beam for about five seconds, enough for his PICS to survive, but it had fried the ziplocks in his pack. Only the ziplocks he’d had in the hole, out of the reach of energy beams, had survived the battle.
Ryck stopped to survey the scene in front of him. Ling and Denny, the Marine who’d been on OP duty and so had missed the fight, were in their PICS and providing security. Cpl St. Cyr was supervising the Peretti and PFC Stamos, one of the surviving Second Squad Marines, in the gathering of the dead legionnaires. Despite the low energy levels in everyone’s PICS, the lifting required strength, so the two Marines were in their combat suits. Six legionnaires were lined up to the right of the platoon flank. There were five more, including the one Ryck had killed back at their field piece, left to gather.
On their left flank, 14 Marines were laid out. Cpl Rjils, who had survived the fight, had died before he could get into stasis. Ryck knew Doc blamed himself for that, but LCpl Truth in Means had been just as badly off, and Doc picked Truth in Means first.
In back of the lines, just over the slight crest, eight Marines were in ziplocks, stasis units on. Ryck turned to look at them. Each Marine had his longjohns cut away, and some showed signs of Doc’s field treatment. The lieutenant was in the third ziplock, one leg gone, the other in a pressure bandage. He looked small in the bag, not like the warrior he’d proven himself to be. Ryck knew that could have been him in that ziplock just as easily.
SSgt Hecs had most of his left shoulder gone, as well as the arm. The white bandages stood out in stark contrast to his dark skin. Two of the Marines looked undamaged, but the other five showed obvious scars from the fight. They reminded Ryck of photos he’d seen of fetuses in the womb--fetuses who’d been roughed up, that was.
Two Marines were walking wounded, which was somewhat rare. In modern warfare, anything that could take out a PICS usually took out the Marine inside as well. Stefan Wilz’ PICS had started to fail, the shielding on the arm giving out just as the hadron beam quit. Stefan’s arm had been immediately paralyzed, but the last gasps of the rest of his PICS shielding had protected his vital organs. His arm was going to have to come off and be regene
d, but he wasn’t in pain and could function for the near term.
Wilz’ fellow First Squad Marine, LCpl Cashew, had taken a huge blow to the head that the PICS had withstood, but even with the cradling, his head had bounced back and forth, giving him a concussion. He was groggy and had a headache, but he could manage.
Two legionnaires were also seriously hurt and had been recovered by the Marines, and Doc wanted to know if they should use their last two precious ziplocks to save their lives.
“On the Marie’s Best, you went into the ziplock with John. Can you do that here?” Ryck asked.
Doc stood back and looked at the two men.
“How much do you weigh, Gary?” he asked the legionnaire.
“Seventy-eight,” the man mumbled.
“And let’s say another 80 kg for this guy? Yeah, that should be within limits,” Doc said.
“OK, we can’t let these guys die, so just put them both in one, and that leaves one for us,” Ryck said, coming to a decision.
One for 11 men, he reminded himself.
“Roger. I’ll get on it,” Doc said.
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it,” the legionnaire, Gary, said to Ryck, his words slurred, but clear.
Ryck didn’t want the guy’s thanks. He just hoped that he hadn’t put the rest of the Marines in danger.
He went back to where his PICS stood in silence. He’d managed to clean up most of the vomit, but the inside of the suit still smelled. He was down to 22% on his PICS. There wasn’t much he could do about that. He could change out his coldpack, though. A suit that overheated was combat ineffective just as much as one that had been fried. This was his last coldpack, but with the casualties, that wasn’t something he had to worry about. There were more than enough coldpacks available now for all the surviving Marines. That macabre thought threatened to take over, and Ryck had to force his mind back to the task at hand.
His M77, though was a total loss. That was what had been hit during the battle, and something had actually broken the barrel, making it hang at an odd angle. Even if he could find a way to reload, that rifle was not going to be firing again.
He could putter around his PICS, but his real task was to decide what to do now. He could strengthen the defenses the best he could. He could move men to somewhere else and try to keep out of contact. Or he could take the fight to the legionnaires.
He knew what Sams would have done. Sams would have rushed into the attack. He couldn’t help but glance to where Sams’ body was lying on the ground. He wanted to go over there to tell him the joke was over, to just get up and get back to business. Irreverent Sams, ladies’ man, and one hell of a Marine. More than that, Sams was his friend.
Frankly, Ryck wasn’t sure what was the correct action. Honoring Sams’ wishes could get them all killed. Maybe attacking was the right course of action, but maybe not. His lack of intel was frustrating. He had to know how many legionnaires were combat effective.
Ryck knew for certain that twelve legionnaires had been killed: 11 here and one back near the French sailors. Two more were ziplocked and out of the fight. At least three more had been hurt, and Ling had reported seeing another three being helped out of the area. So there were possibly 20 out of the fight, but at a minimum, 14. But how many had they started with? The lieutenant had guessed they’d had close to the Marines’ own 32 before the last fight. That meant they could have anywhere from 12 to 18 left. Ryck had nine effectives and two walking wounded left to face them.
“Lieutenant Nidishchii’, Capitaine de corvette Benyamina is offering a temporary cease-fire in order to take care of our dead and wounded. If you agree to this, please respond,” came over Ryck’s PICS’ speaker.
Ryck had powered down most of his energy-eating functions, but the comms had been left open.
Capitaine de corvette? That was the Navy equivalent to a Marine major or Federation lieutenant commander. That was probably the correct rank for a gunboat captain, but why was the Navy getting involved? They were out of the fight as far as Ryck knew.
He reached his PICS and toggled the mic. He almost gave his rank and name then thought better of it.
“You’ve reach the Federation Marines. What are you proposing?” he sent.
“During today’s . . . ” there was a pause, “ . . . conflict, 13 legionnaires did not return. We proposed a three-hour truce so we both can recover our fallen. We are open to your terms, of course.”
Ryck looked around at their position. Doc caught his eye and began pointing towards their wounded. They had placed the WIA in back of the slight crest of the high ground in an attempt to keep them out of the line of any energy weapons fire. Just one touch, though, and the ziplocks would fail, the stasis fields with them.
“Wait one, Legion,” Ryck said.
“What do you think?” he passed on the open circuit to the rest of the Marines.
“If we can get the WIAs out of the line of fire, I’m all for it,” Doc responded.
“Vic?” Ryck asked Cpl St. Cyr.
“It’s your call, but if they’re sincere, we can use the break and take care of our people,” the corporal answered.
Aye, there’s the rub, Ryck thought. Is this a trick?
In all this dealings with the Legion, they had acted honorably, even if they were at times arrogant. Ryck made his decision quickly. He went back onto the frequency the Legion had used.
“We agree in principle. We have eleven Legion dead here, two severely wounded and in stasis. You are welcome to come get them. We want to move our own WIA to a safe location out of the way of any potential areas of conflict,” he said, stressing the same word the legionnaire on the other side had used.
“You have two of our wounded? May we know their names and condition?”
Ryck knew he only was required to give the names of enemy prisoners to the Red Cross, but he didn’t hesitate.
“One answers to Gary. He was severely burnt. He was conscious before going into stasis, but he’s in pretty serious condition. We don’t have the name of the second man. He suffered a traumatic amputation of his arm and is in stasis now as well.”
There was a pause, then, “We thank you for the care of our wounded. Will you be moving your own wounded to the same location as the rest of your wounded?”
Shit! They knew where the others were.
Ryck would’ve liked to get all of the WIAs together, but there wasn’t any way he could move eight Marines and two legionnaires that distance with the men he had. That didn’t even take into account the dead.
“That’s a negative. Are you able to take a grid coordinate?” he asked.
Grid coordinates were just arbitrary points, and there was no guarantee that the French used the same ones as the Federation.
“Yes, we can,” came the reply.
Ryck picked out a point about 700 meters off the left flank of their position and sent the coordinates. He couldn’t transport the wounded far, but he didn’t want to give the French any opportunity to view their defenses. And if the French agreed to his next condition, that would close off one potential avenue of approach.
“We will have your wounded and dead at this position in two hours. We require that there is no maneuver on your side until that time. You may approach with whatever size unit you need to retrieve your men, but no shielding will be engaged. The truce will remain for two hours after that. We will be leaving our own casualties at that spot, so after you withdraw, this area, bounded by the coordinates I sent, will remain a no-fire zone. I am sure you can appreciate the effects of energy weapons on our medical stasis units.”
Ryck waited until the response came.
“We agree with your terms but wonder on the position. We think it might be close to your present position and possibly within range of collateral fire.”
They realized what Ryck intended, he knew.
Tough shit, take it or leave it.
“We have the ability to honor a no-fire zone. I am assuming you have the same ability. This is
the area which we have designated,” he said.
There was another pause, then the voice came back, “Very well. We agree to your terms. It is now 0245 Paris Time. We will be at your coordinates as 0445. Merci.”
Ryck switched to the platoon circuit and passed, “OK, you heard that. We’ve got a four-hour truce. Everyone, into your PICS. We’ve got a lot to do and not much time.”
He organized the platoon into work details. A PICS had the strength to carry all of their wounded but not the grip. To keep integrity on the ziplocks, to keep the life-saving bags from getting damaged, each Marine could carry only one ziplocked Marine at a time. With Doc trailing like a mother hen, each of the other eight healthy Marines picked up one of the WIAs and followed Ryck, who had the two legionnaires, to the spot he’d picked. It was just a coordinate chosen at random, nothing special from the map, and when they arrived, it looked no different than any other stretch of forest. Once the set down the WIAs, Ryck left Doc and Cashew with the wounded and jogged his Marines back to their position.
He half-expected that the legionnaires would have taken over the position while they were gone, but it was quiet. Each Marine, including Wilz, took the dead man’s handle
[28] on the back of those PICS that still had them, or if they didn’t, on anything they could grab, and lifted their dead comrades to carry them to the no fire zone. They had to help Wilz hoist Cpl Franks to his shoulder, but once up, the one-armed Marine had no problem. It took two trips, but all the Marines had been moved. Ryck looked at the time. They had an hour left.
The legionnaires, with sleeker armor on their R-3s had less to grab onto, and several times, the dead legionnaires were dropped, but once again with two trips, each legionnaire was carried to the spot.
Ryck took a look at his Marines. They were a grubby lot, the fighting marring their PICS. Ling and Denny looked the best of them, and Denny had the greatest charge on his PICS, so Ryck told both of them, along with Cashew, to stay. He gave Sgt St. Cyr his orders. He concluded with what St. Cyr should do if this was a Legion trap.
Sergeant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 2) Page 22