“Evans, come here a sec,” he called out.
The EOD corporal walked over and asked, “What’s up?”
“I was just thinking, could we take those arty rounds and hoist them up in the trees over there? Then if they come, drop them on top of their heads?”
“Sure, I could rig something up. But we could do that with rocks, too. All it will do is piss them off.”
“But the 889 can take out an R-3. We saw that two days ago,” Ryck protested.
“Yes, and armed M889 round will destroy an R-3. An 887 would probably, too. But it takes 10 g’s of pressure after the breach initiates the sequence to arm one of them, and dropping one from five meters high just won’t do it. Sorry, Sergeant L, it just won’t work,” Evans told him.
“Oh, OK. I’m just trying to think out loud here.”
“Look, Sergeant L, me and Nance, we were talking this morning. You’ve done a great job here, and we think we’ve actually got a chance if it comes to that. None of us two would’ve come up with half of this. So no matter what happens, even if the worst, well, we, I would say all of us, we’re proud to be here with you.”
Ryck was floored. He’d been feeling like a failure for not coming up with anything better. If the others were counting on him, well God help them with that, but it made Ryck feel honored. If this was going to be his last day, at least he was with men he respected, men about whom he felt proud.
“I . . . it is me who is proud. All of you,” he said, speaking louder and addressing the rest of them. “All of you, I couldn’t wish for a better group of Marines, of brothers. I am proud to be here with you.”
There was a chorus of oohrahs from the Marines, from his Marines.
As if on cue, the alarm sounded from his PICS. Ryck ran over to it and clamored inside. The feed from one of the dragonflies was dead. Ryck ran back the recording, and just a few moments ago, it picked up the slightest movement in the trees before going dead. Ryck went back and froze it at the last second it was live, then had his AI enhance it. He couldn’t see anything concrete, but he didn’t have to. They were on their way.
“OK, Marines, enough of this mutual love fest. They’re on their way. Everyone into your positions, now!”
There was the slight, almost inaudible hum as his PICS powered up. Ryck checked his power level first: 14%. This was going to be it, whatever it turned out to be, with this particular PICS. He checked the other suits as the powered up. None were over 22%.
PFC Ling and Pvt Peretti stopped in front of him and saluted. Ryck brought his PICS to attention and returned he salute to the two Marines standing in front of him in their longjohns. They were not going to be in their PICS. They had volunteered to man the 25 mm. Each had a tarnkappe. A dead PICS had been dragged over in front of the gun, hopefully providing cover from any Legion sensors. In back of the gun, the two Marines were to hide under their tarnkappes, and when they had targets, they were to fire. Without their face shield displays, though, their AI’s could not get enough data points to form an image of the legionnaires, so they would have to wait until the legionnaire’s gun ports opened, spoiling their stealth profile. With the naked eye, though, even when under full stealth, the R-3’s gave enough hints so the two Marines should be able to pick up something.
If they made it out of the fight, Ryck would make sure Peretti regained some of his lost rank and Ling got a meritorious promotion as well. If anyone made it out of this, Ryck would fight for meritorious promotions.
The Marines had no surprises downrange, unless someone stepped on one of the mines. They just had to sit and wait. A surprisingly few number of vibration sensors sounded—Ryck hoped that meant that the legionnaire numbers were few.
From over 500 meters out, Ryck’s display started picking up readings. The AI’s quickly identified them as two R-3’s. There was no way they should be able to pick them up. That meant that either this was part of their cyberwarfare games, or more hopefully, that those two R-3’s were damaged. Even if that were the case, Ryck still didn’t know how many undamaged R-3’s were out there.
They were not coming in from the same direction, into the teeth, such as they were, of the defense. They were working from the flank, evidently trying to roll up the Marines. Ryck had guessed correctly, but that still didn’t ensure anything. He’d had two other contingencies depending on the legionnaire’s approach, but this way, none of the Marines had to move to alternate positions.
Keep it steady, he silently thought to his men.
The legionnaires didn’t stop their advance. Previously, their field piece had taken a deadly toll on the Marines, and if they had another, Ryck’s plan would be stillborn. However, nothing was fired, and as the legionnaires closed to within 300 meters, Ryck let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He now doubted they had another field piece.
Ryck’s AI picked up another R-3. It’s shielding was obviously in better condition, but not good enough. That was at least three legionnaires, by his count, all with some degree of damage, or at least degradation, to their suits.
Ryck watched his display closely, looking for any surprises. If the three in front were a feint, a force attacking from either side of them could be disastrous. With the legionnaire’s this close, the Marines could not move to their alternate positions without giving themselves away.
A few moments later, the first legionnaire opened fire, suddenly appearing on Ryck’s display. That was the fourth legionnaire identified. One of the previously noted legionnaire’s opened fire, too.
Steady! Ryck willed on the rest.
Nine seconds later, the PICS 20 meters to Ryck’s right front started to send up sparks before dying.
“Hell yeah!” he whispered excitedly to himself as the two more legionnaire’s opened fire, one, someone brand new.
Five legionnaires were in the attack, firing at Marine PICS unheeded. The current target lasted only five seconds before going up. That was longer than Ryck had hoped. That had been SSgt Hecs’ PICS, and it had been a miracle that they’d even been able to get the thing powered up. It had to have been leaking like a sieve, so the legionnaires couldn’t have missed it.
Within moments, seven legionnaires were advancing, firing their hadron guns. In quick succession, four empty PICS were fried. The Marines only had three more that they’d managed to power up, or at least make them seem to be powered up, and then the seven of them that had the Marines and Doc inside, so Ryck was relieved when the legionnaires quit firing. They’d finally noticed that no one was firing back.
Come on, baby, come one, he thought. Just a little closer.
Ryck watched them on his display. They had stopped about 50 meters out. He wished he could listen in, but he imagined them trying to figure out what was up, what trick the Marines had planned.
After a few moments, two of the legionnaires retreated, as if to provide security.
Grubbing shit! thought Ryck.
He wanted them together, checking out the apparently abandoned position.
Five of them did come forward. Ryck crouched in his fighting hole, waiting. They were on complete passive sensing. They couldn’t talk. Ryck knew there was no way the legionnaires could listen into one of their circuits, but the mere fact that there was a transmission would be enough to alert the legionnaires that not all of the PICS power emissions were from empty combat suits.
Come on guys, it’s up to you, he pleaded with Peretti and Ling.
He was tempted to open up a comms link. They were the ones to initiate the attack.
When the 25 mm gun opened up, despite expecting it, Ryck about jumped out of his skin. With more of a scramble than a leap, he was out of the extra deep fighting hole he had dug.
In an instant, he saw that two of the legionnaires were down, the rest darting out of the way. Ryck threw the toad he had ready at the legionnaire nearest him, not even 15 meters away. The toad struck the legionnaire on the shoulder before bouncing off.
What the . . . ?
They’d adapted. They knew what a toad was, and had applied some sort of lubrication, like what the Marines used on their gauntlets to handle the toads, to their R-3’s.
Their adjustment wasn’t perfect, however. To his left, a toad was burning a hole in the hip of another legionnaire. The R-3 started to split open as the legionnaire inside initiated an emergency molt.
Ryck’s alarms went off as a hadron beam touched him, but then the beam was gone.
The 25 mm continued its chatter, but unless the targets were already in the line of fire, it was hard to horse the thing around and aim it. One of the legionnaires leveled his arm at it, but instead of a beam, the muzzle of a KE gun appeared. It looked too big for the Legion version of the M77, so it was probably their 10 mm gun. The legionnaire fired a burst at Peretti and Ling, but then the guy took a direct hit from Cowboy, LCpl Manteo Silver, their last HGL gunner.
The legionnaire spun around, quicker than Ryck thought possible in a combat suit, and returned fire. Ryck started sprinting forward, but another hadron beam touched him, and he had to stop to throw his last toad. He missed the 20 meter throw, but the legionnaire saw the toad coming and stopped firing to get out of the way.
Meanwhile, the Cowboy and the legionnaire traded shots like old-time duelists until one of Cowboy’s grenades broke through, and the legionnaire fell back, smoke pouring from what used to be his belly.
Things were happening quickly, and it was hard to keep track of events. Ryck saw Ling jumping over the PICS that had been used to mask the 25 mm, his gloved hand holding one of Evan’s bullfrogs. In his longjohns, even the slightest touch of a hadron beam would kill him. Ryck wanted to tell him to get back, but Ling had taken matters into his own hand and had launched the bullfrog. Ryck couldn’t see where it landed or even who was the target.
Ryck tried to find another target when beside, him, LCpl Denny exploded, blood and PICS parts pelting Ryck. Ryck stared for a moment in shock. One moment, Denny was there, the next, he was in pieces. One of the legionnaires, one of the two who had retreated to provide security, had charged back into the fray. He had another KE gun deployed, but what did they Legion have on its R-3’s bigger than their 10 mm?
Anger flowed through Ryck. Denny was gone, just like that, and this mother grubbing fucker was to blame. The legionnaire had swung about to take another Marine under fire, and Ryck charged.
He had one weapon left, his plasma gun. His energy charge was at 9%. That had to be enough, he hoped with all his might. But he had to close the gap. He was too far away. He flipped off his attitude stabilizers to be able to coax the last bit of speed out of his tired PICS.
It took only seconds, but time slowed down. Twenty meters, fifteen. At 10, the legionnaire realized what was happening. He started to swing his gun around.
Too late mother fucker! Ryck thought with glee as he triggered his plasma gun.
And nothing happened.
Ryck’s PICS simply didn’t have enough power, which meant that without a weapon, Ryck was charging a fully armed legionnaire in an R-3.
By instinct, Ryck’s training kicked in. MacPruitt’s MCMA class flashed through his brain. He dropped down, almost to the ground as the legionnaire fired, the round going off over his head. From that position, he lunged forward as hard as he could as the legionnaire took a step back, another round going high.
Ryck hit the legionnaire in the chest with the force of a small tank. The R-3 had pretty powerful stabilizers of its own, and they increased power to keep the legionnaire upright, but they were not designed with a charging PICS in mind. Ryck and the legionnaire crashed to the ground, Ryck on top of his enemy.
“You mother fucker!” he screamed in almost inarticulate rage as he pulled back his gauntleted fist and smashed it into the legionnaire’s face shield.
The legionnaire tried to struggle, to throw Ryck off of him, but his own R-3’s attempts to right him back to his feet interfered with his efforts.
Ryck reared back and hit again, his mind losing itself in animalistic, single-minded violence.
“This is for Denny!” he screamed, hitting again.
“This is for Rey!” he shouted as he struck.
“This is for Hartono, for Priffit, for Khouri!”
Bam, bam bam. The face shield began to crack.
“Mendoza, Martin!”
The face shield shattered. As Ryck pulled his gauntleted hand back again, a ruddy, freckled face looked up at him, bloody and in sheer terror, mouth open to plead for his life. Ryck didn’t hesitate.
“And this is for my friend Sams!” he shouted, driving his fist through the face shield mount and through the head of Coltrain Meyers, pulverizing it. Hunks of brain matter, bone splinters, and blood spattered over him, covering his own face shield and blocking most of his view.
Ryck didn’t stop, again and again he struck, each time, going through the list of men, of brothers, who had fallen, not just here on this godforsaken planet, but since he’d been in the Corps.
Davis, Wan, Nbele, Smith, Peale, Popo--damn it all—Coudry, Rjils, Greuber , Dodson, even going back to recruit training with Yount and Hyunh. Stuyvestent , Bokaw. With each name, he pounded the legionnaire’s corpse.
“Sergeant L, Sergeant L, it’s over. You can stop,” a voice finally registered.
The voice had been yammering on for a while, an incessant whine, but it only then started to coalesce into something her recognized as human speech. Ryck finally paused in his assault and looked up. He tried to wipe some of the mess on his face shield, but mostly just pushed it around. He could see Ling standing there though, in his longjohns. Two Marines in PICS stood beside him, but Ryck’s face shield was too smeared to make out who they were.
“Huh?” he said in a daze.
“It’s over Sergeant L,” Ling told him, speaking slowly and clearly as if to a child.
“It’s over, and we won.”
Ryck rolled off the dead legionnaire and slowly got to his feet. Tears and snot were flowing down his face.
It’s over?
Ling said they’d won, but it sure the hell didn’t feel that way, that anyone had won.
Chapter 24
Ryck stared at Doc Grbil. The corpsman’s face had finally relaxed. It had been a rough hour, and watching Doc pass had been painful, but Ryck was numb. He had no more tears to shed.
The son-of-a-bitch didn’t need to have died. Three Marines had been killed in the final battle: Denny, Stamos, and Yuan. Peretti had been hit by shrapnel and suffered a serious head wound, and he needed stasis. One of the two surviving legionnaires, the one who had molted from his burning R-3, had also been seriously hurt with third-degree burns over a good portion of his body, and much of his flesh had been burnt away. Doc and the other legionnaire had also been wounded, but Doc assured Ryck that they would make it, and he needed to double up Peretti and the burned legionnaire in the last remaining ziplock. Despite his misgivings, Ryck gave the OK, not that Doc needed it on medical matters, where he could overrule Ryck if he so chose.
Several hours after the two were put into stasis, Doc had collapsed. He had hidden the extent of his wounds. His gut had been torn apart. He had to have known how serious his wounds were, that he had to get into stasis if he was going to have a chance to survive, but he hid that, giving up his own life to save a grubbing legionnaire. That was not a fair trade by any stretch of the imagination. The four Marines stood by helplessly as Doc suffered until he couldn’t take it anymore and agreed to a pain block. Doc’s last hour was better, if only in a relative sense. He took one final breath, then no more.
Ryck had boarded the Intrepid as part of a Marine company. Of that company, over the last few days, Second Platoon probably died abandoned in space. Third, First, part of Weapons platoon, along with company HQ, had launched for the planet’s surface. Only Third actually landed with the rest blown out of the sky. Of those who made it down, Ryck had managed to keep only three other Marines alive and unhurt. Four, if he was counted. Four Marines out
of an entire company.
A Marine company was nothing in the grand scheme of things. When entire ships the size of the Bismarck were lost, with thousands of sailors and Marines onboard, what was one company? Third Platoon had been trapped on Weyerhaeuser in their tiny slice of the war while hundreds of Navy ships slugged it out. He looked over at the legionnaire, Legionnaire de 1ere classe Khalid Ramzy. One of the 25 mm rounds had pierced his R-3, creasing his chest and cutting his pecs open. Doc had sprayed the gouge shut and told Ryck the wounded man would survive. The legionnaire had seen what Ryck had done to Coltrain, though, and now refused to look him in the eye. His fear was almost palpable.
The legionnaire’s fear was misplaced. Ryck’s anger was spent.. He knew Khalid was just someone trying to get by, just as Coltrain had been. He’d used the Legion to escape the corporate madhouse of Ellison, never imaging that someone with Ellison roots was going to smash his brains out on yet another corporate fiefdom.
Ryck regretted it now. If he could take it back, he would. But there were no mulligans in war.
Of the four Marines, only one PICS had any power left. They had only their small 2 mm Rugers. If the French sailors mounted an attack, Ryck wasn’t sure they could fend them off.
Ryck was tired. He gave Ling, who seemed to be a fountain of energy, the first watch. He lay down on the dirt and had drifted off to a dreamless sleep when Ling shook his arm, waking him.
“Sergeant L, we’ve got company,” Ling told him.
The other two Marines were groggily waking up when a huge shape passed over them, instantly wiping away any dregs of fatigue.
At first, Ryck thought the Intrepid had made finally returned and had sent down a shuttle to pick them up. That momentary flash of joy was dashed, though, when the make of the shuttle became clear. It was French.
“Shit,” Cpl St. Cyr simply said, succinctly reflecting all their feelings.
They looked to Ryck. If he told them to fight, he knew they would fight. But to what end? He’d probably get court-martialed when all this was over, but he wasn’t going to waste the three Marine’s life on a futile gesture.
Sergeant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 2) Page 24