No Price Too High (Warp Marine Corps Book 2)

by C. J. Carella

  The battle for Parthenon had a personal element for her as well. Peter Fromm was stationed there. He could be dead already.

  And there is nothing to do about that, she chided herself. So concentrate on the things you can affect.

  She had plenty of things to do. Honest Septima kept sending a steady stream of information from the Imperium, some of which had a great deal of potential, provided the Powers-that-Be chose to do something about it. The combined power of the Tripartite Galactic Alliance was very alarming to other Starfarer polities, who rightfully worried about becoming the next target in line once humans were dealt with. Many of them, including the Vehelians, were having second thoughts about their neutrality.

  A victory at Parthenon might just show the rest of the galaxy that the US wasn’t doomed, and that might be enough to gain humanity some new allies. Or even some old ones; the Puppies were getting close to going all-in instead of merely providing funds and materiel, along with a trickle of ‘volunteers.’ But it was going to take something decisive, in a fight where survival would be close enough to a miracle to call it one.

  Hope. Willful self-deception.

  It was at moments like this when she wished she could believe in something that might listen to her prayers.

  Parthenon-Three, 165 AFC

  “They’ve been busy,” Russell commented as he took in the sights.

  About a mile from his prone position on top of a ridge, the Viper landing zone sprawled between three large hills, tall enough to make the position a tough artillery target. Multiple area force fields, set up in successive layers, made it even tougher. The Viper remfies that had been left behind on the LZ while the alien grunts got their heads handed to them hadn’t been sitting on their alligator-like asses; they’d set up a damn good defensive perimeter, not only shields but also fast-firing lasers capable of destroying hundreds of supersonic artillery shells.

  Part of Charlie’s company’s mission had been to find some good arty targets. From the looks of it, the cannon-cockers might as well save themselves the trouble and the ammunition. At least until Charlie started stirring that hornets’ nest and lured some ETs out of their safe zone. That was part of their mission, too.

  Russell crawled back down the slope. He’d used his helmet passive sensors and a laser-transmitter to send his observations over to the rest of the squad, which in turn would send it to the company CO. They were being cagey; the Vipers could detect normal gravity-wave communications like nobody’s business, and they’d gotten some artillery of their own, mostly tubby 89mm mortars firing from a 20-shot rotary launcher that would plaster any comm emissions within seconds of spotting them. Their bombs packed about as much punch as the Marines’ hundred-mike-mikes, or maybe a little more, not that anybody in the task force wanted to find out exactly how big a boom they made.

  “All right, the dance is about to start,” Staff Sergeant Dragunov announced on the squad’s channel. “Keep your heads down until I give the word. You know the drill.”

  That they did. Hit ‘em hard and fast, and then skedaddle back into their waiting LAV for a quick drive to their next rally point. They couldn’t afford to get into a serious fight with the ETs, who could steamroll the company in a matter of minutes if they cornered it somewhere. There was a fine line between conducting an effective ambush and making a glorious last stand, and Charlie Company was going to be tap-dancing all over it.

  They had no drones doing recon for them – too easy for the Vipers to spot, which would spoil the surprise – so Russell didn’t get to see the tank platoon they’d brought along poke their turrets over a couple of hills about three klicks away and give the alien LZ three rounds of rapid fire with their main guns. The sound of twelve blasts from the Normies’ 250mm graviton guns echoed through the entire canyon like the drums of an angry god. He didn’t need visuals to imagine what it would be like on the other end of those shots. Even multiple energy shields couldn’t stop a dozen aimed blasts; at least two or three would get through and hit something or someone. The duller roar of a power plant explosion followed up the volley, and smoke billowed out towards the sky, visible even from the reverse slope where First Squad of Third Platoon waited for its turn to join in the fun.

  “That’s gotta hurt,” he said.

  “I bet,” Nacle agreed. Gonzo wasn’t around to come up with something funny in response; the little guy was still in the rear getting patched up, the lucky S.O.B. Nacle had turned out to have a good handle on the ALS-43, but Russell still missed his buddy. Hopefully his fire team would be made whole after they came back from this field trip.

  “Here they come,” Dragunov said. “Get ready.”

  The Vipers were reacting to the attack, although not as quickly as Marines would. The crackle of heavy lasers and their own grav cannon broke out in the aftermath of the big explosion. The return fire might have even been fast enough to hit some of the tanks, but Russell doubted it, not that he would find out one way or another until they played the tapes during the after-action report. The aliens’ infantry couldn’t hope to catch the Stormin’ Normies, so they’d have to send their vehicles after them while their mortars pounded the tanks’ former positions, where they’d hit nothing but rocks. The tank platoon had taken off at flank speed as soon as they’d delivered their graviton greeting to the ETs, and were racing towards their next firing position.

  And before the Vipers could catch up with the Normies, they’d be getting a new surprise.

  “They’re in the kill box,” the squad commander said. “Move it!”

  First and Third Platoons scrambled up the slope towards their firing positions on top of a ridge overlooking the path the enemy Turtles were taking in pursuit of the MBT-5s that had blasted their encampment. Russell got his first good look at the Viper combat vehicles through the aiming point of his helmet sensors: they sort of looked like an egg lying on its side with a straw poking out of its front, narrower end. Not much to look at, other than the fact that their shields were about as good as their own LAVs, and their 120mm railgun fired a steady stream of hypervelocity sabot-discarding darts that could peck through a mountain if given enough time, and would do the job just fine on any tank or infantry fighting vehicle that stuck out in the open for too long.

  The enemy was sending a dozen of the floating eggs forward. They stuck close to the ground because to rise too high risked being acquired by the heavy guns of the closest planetary defense base and earning a shot from an anti-starship weapon as a door prize. They were moving as fast as Normies or LAVs, maybe a little faster, something to keep in mind when it was their turn to run from the damn things.

  At the moment, they weren’t looking to run from them, though.

  Russell’s targeting carat came to rest on the lead vehicle; he waited patiently while the rest of the designated hitters had zeroed in on the same target. As soon as the aiming symbol turned green, he opened up, sending a 20mm micro-missile towards the alien death-machine. His shot hit home, along with three LML-10 armor-piercing rockets and a long burst from Nacle’s ALS-43. The multiple, near-simultaneous impacts breached the Turtle’s shield, and one of the missiles pierced the tough but thin shell of the flying egg, cracking it and scrambling the living crap out of anybody inside. The tankette’s crew consisted of a driver and a gunner, and both of them were probably evenly spread around the interior of their vehicle as its fast hover turned into an ungainly roll on the ground, bouncing off it several times before hitting a boulder and coming to a full stop. Greasy smoke poured out of a hole on its side. No big ka-boom ensued; the aliens built ‘em tough.

  “Not tough enough, though,” Russell muttered as he ducked for cover; he knew what would happen enxt.

  The two platoons’ combined fire had accounted for three enemy vehicles; a fourth one looked a little bit wobbly. Before the aliens could react, Charlie Company’s three 100mm mortars dropped thirty thermobaric bomblets over the enemy formation. Each shell sprayed a cloud of atomized fuel two hundred yards wid
e and ignited it.

  Light and overpressure washed over Russell despite being behind cover and nearly a klick away. He ignored the sensations; he didn’t need Dragunov’s yelling “Move, move, move!” to know it was time to go. The fuel-air explosions were unlikely to kill the enemy vehicles; force fields and sealed armor were the most effective counters against thermobaric detonations. But they made for a hell of a distraction.

  Even so, the enemy vehicles lashed the ridge with their railguns and coaxial lasers. Rock and dirt came apart as multiple shots shaved a good foot off the top of the hill. Even with portable force fields, the Marines wouldn’t have made it through that storm of fire unscathed. Which was why they weren’t there anymore.

  Russell slid down the hill, letting gravity do most of the work as he and First Squad moved towards their getaway vehicle. Even though his ears were ringing a little from the massive explosions, he could hear the lesser blasts of grav guns and missiles from Second Platoon’s LAVs as they took the Vipers tank company under fire from yet another ambush position, five hundred meters further back. Just as the hatch of the infantry carrier swung shut with all of First Squad inside, without any casualties for a change, Russell heard yet another boom. At least one more Viper mini-tank had bought it.

  And this was just the beginning of the party they’d planned for the aliens.

  * * *

  “Target!” Staff Sergeant Konrad Zimmer shouted as he highlighted a Viper tank emerging from behind a hill.

  “On the way!” PFC Mira Rodriguez yelled back. A graviton bolt speared the ET vehicle sometime between the second and third word of the standard response. Nothing with less than starship-grade shields and armor could take a direct hit from the Norman’s main gun. The Viper’s light tank fluoresced brightly for a brief instant before shattering like a dropped glass vase.

  “Hit!” she said, and started humming the chorus from ‘Valhalla Is Burning’ by Gotterdammerung.

  A couple seconds later: “Hit!” A force field generator this time. It was frantically darting for cover, but Mira caught it with time to spare, the shot going through two layers of shielding before blowing a hole through its thin outer armor. The bulbous vehicle’s floating motion ended abruptly as it dropped like a rock, although it didn’t blow up.

  “Give him another,” Zimmer ordered. The gennie might still be salvageable; no sense giving the tangos a chance to fix it later.

  “On the way.” No force fields attenuated the second shot, and the generator’s power plant let go, the strange matter inside it reacting with the environment to produce a detonation that shook their two-hundred-ton tank from a mile away.

  “I felt that,” PFC Jessie Graves commented from the driver’s compartment.

  “We’ll reap your souls!” Mira sang. “We’ll drink your BLOOD!”

  “Back up!” Zimmer told Jessie as the tank’s threat designator sent an alarm. “Hull-down!”

  “Hull-down, aye.”

  The tank darted behind a ridge, exposing only its turret. Jessie finished the move as quickly as he could, but a Viper self-propelled gun tagged them a couple of times, its 25mm laser beam making their frontal force field spark in a furious multitude of colors.

  “Target!” Zimmer called out, marking the energy cannon.

  “Hit!” Scratch one self-prop gun.

  The platoon broke contact behind a hill while Charlie Company plastered the Vipers’ vanguard with more mortar-delivered thermobaric goodness, just like Mama used to make. That was good, because Fimbul Winter’s gunnery pack was just about empty and the brief lull in combat would allow its internal stores to cycle a new 50-shot pack into the base of the gun. Their second and last 50-shot pack, as a matter of fact. After you fired all hundred 250mm death-rays in your twin power packs, you needed to head back home and replace them, or wait three hours for the tank’s gluon power plant to recharge one of them. Either way, you’d been busy enough to deserve a break.

  Damn, this is beginning to feel like work.

  They’d been playing tag with the Vipers for a good four hours, poking them, making them chase the tanks into ambushes set up by the Marine crunchies, and when the aliens were taken care of, going out and doing it all over again. The canyon separating the alien landing zone from Forge Valley was filled with corpses and busted vehicles. Mostly alien, although a fire team from Charlie Company had zigged when they were supposed to zag and eaten a laser volley that hadn’t left enough of the four poor bastards to bury. Other than that, though, the Marines had things go mostly their way, and a Turtle company and half a battalion of infantry had gone to whatever second-rate Valhalla they deserved. Fimbul Winter and her crew had accounted for a good many of the dead.

  But the Echo Tangos were getting smarter. A second mini-tank company with a regiment of infantry and self-propelled guns in support was on the job now, and their mobile artillery was making ambushes a lot riskier. Those guns were meant to engage fortifications, but they made fairly effective tank destroyers. Butcher and Bolt, the platoon’s lead tank, had taken a direct hit when a heavy laser got through her shields, and there was a still-glowing crater the size of a dinner plate on its front armor. Its normal 500mm thickness was down to maybe three or four inches on that spot. The next Viper gunner who took a shot at the Normie would make that crater its aiming point. The B & B needed to RTB and get that hole patched, pronto, or her crew would end up on the express train to Valhalla.

  With more enemy troops pouring into the hills, the chances that one of their units would end up getting cut off and surrounded were going up fast. Assuming the task force’s commander’s head wasn’t up his ass, he should see that soon.

  “We’re breaking contact and returning to base,” Lieutenant Eddie Morrell said through their imps. “The Viper fleet is coming back. A second wave of landings is likely.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Reap their souls,” Mira sang softly, but her heart clearly wasn’t in it anymore.

  They’d all known more ETs were due to arrive; the force they’d been harassing was clearly set up to receive reinforcements. Chances were they would drop enough troops to stop screwing around and finish the job. The casualties the Marines had inflicted had done very little to change the odds.

  “We’ll just have to kill more,” Zimmer said, trying to sound confident and just barely pulling it off.

  Fourteen

  Parthenon-Three, 165 AFC

  “The replacements are here, sir,” First Sergeant Goldberg said. “We got four guys from Logistics and one from the engineers, all of them former ‘03s who switched MOS their second time around. “I’ve worked out where to put ‘em, pending your approval.”

  Fromm went over the files. The new troops had been moved from non-combat positions in the 101st support units to take the place of the company’s dead and maimed. A moment’s bad luck had cost him five men, an entire fire team, and he wouldn’t have the time to write emails to their families until after the battle for Parthenon-Three was over, not that any mail was moving off-planet at the moment. Between these losses and the casualties suffered during the fight for the southern pass, he was down a squad’s worth of troops and getting enough replacements to fill less than half those empty slots.

  “It all looks good to me,” he said, knowing it wasn’t good. Newcomers wouldn’t be welcomed with open arms by soldiers who had lost their buddies. Goldberg had shuffled people around to reform the destroyed fire team and used the replacements to fill in the vacancies he’d created in the process. Each newbie would be paired up with two to four regulars, which would hopefully minimize the inevitable disruption and loss of effectiveness. They’d be seeing combat soon, and combat had a way of increasing unit cohesion – assuming all its members survived, of course.

  Under ordinary circumstances, he would have preferred to wait on replacing his losses until current operations were over, but given how desperate the situation was, those extra warm bodies might make the difference between losing more men, or pr
eserving his command. They were spread very thin as it was, and the main event had yet to begin.

  The Viper fleet had received reinforcements, including ten more planetary assault ships, and was advancing on Parthenon-Three at a leisurely sub-light pace, daring the Navy to come back and try to stop them. Sixth Fleet wasn’t taking the bait; it hadn’t been reinforced yet, and the outcome of a second round of fighting would risk its total destruction. Which meant the enemy would soon launch a massive ground attack, possibly with orbital support. ETA for the invaders was less than two hours. Fromm had been lucky the news had arrived in time for his company to break off from the running fight and head back to their FOB. Being caught on his own when the second wave landed would have been unfortunate.

  “Anything else, Sergeant?”

  “Lieutenant O’Malley, sir.”

  “I know.” Third Platoon’s commander continued to be the weakest link in the company. He’d gone from leaning on his platoon sergeant to basically dumping the running of the unit on Gunny Wendell’s shoulders. Since most of the weapons platoon had been spread out to support the infantry elements of Charlie Company, O’Malley’s lack of initiative hadn’t been obvious at first, but his handling of the mortars section had made it clear that his promises to mend his ways had been a big load of Bravo Sierra. The supporting fire had been sluggish; Gunny Wendell had been out with the rest of the units, leaving O’Malley in charge, and the lieutenant seemed to be unable to stop dithering at the worst possible times.

  Goldberg waited quietly, letting him make up his mind.

  “All right,” Fromm finally said. “I’m having O’Malley reassigned to act as our liaison with the militia. Lieutenant Hansen will take over Third Platoon.” Which would leave him without an XO, but he would do better without a second in command than Third Platoon under an officer that couldn’t act in a decisive manner. After this was over, he would make sure O’Malley’s days in the Corps were numbered. But for now, he probably wouldn’t do a lot of harm lording over the militia regiment providing support for his Marines.