The War for Profit Series Omnibus

by Gideon Fleisher

  Two drop boats came and landed on the improvised landing strip. Cargo trucks moved forward and loaded supplies off the drop boats and then the ambulances moved in and loaded injured troops onto the drop boats. Then the drop boats took off, back to the transport ship we had in orbit. Another boat landed. Eighteen skimmers came out of it and made their way to the support vehicles and parked facing out, filling in the wide gaps between my platoon’s three tanks. The skimmer crews parked their vehicles hull-down. One crewmember dismounted from each skimmer, left the driver and gunner on guard. The eighteen skimmer commanders made their way to Major D’s track.

  The IFVs and tanks then moved back and formed a larger defensive circle around the support vehicles. I had no doubt in my mind that the Indigs had seen the boats, they’re hard to miss.

  Captain Blythe called me, “Let’s go meet the new guys.”

  “Roger.” I left Parks and Caldwell in the tank and walked with Captain Blythe and Corporal Williams to the command track. The new arrivals stood in a formation, three ranks of nine, and their leader center-front. They were all male, tall, broad shouldered and square-faced, stomach in, chest out. Their uniforms were pants and long-sleeve shirts, the sleeves rolled up squarely centered on the biceps. The coloring was green and brown digital splotches with a little gray here and there. They wore combat vests that wouldn’t stop a pointy stick but served to bear the load of their ammunition. Grenades, blocks of propellant for their caseless rounds, tubes of projectiles. They carried bull-pup machine pistols, hitched to their combat vests with tactical slings. As we approached, the Marine Lieutenant in front of the formation said to Captain Blythe, “Who the fuck are you?”

  Blythe reached out with his left hand and rubbed his thumb over the pin-on Lieutenant rank on the Marine’s right collar. “I’m your superior officer; now who the fuck are you?”

  “We’re Marines.”

  Captain Blythe put his hands on his hips. “Marines come from the ocean. You come from space. You should call yourselves ‘Cosmos.’ ”

  “You only fight on the ground. You should call yourselves ‘Dirt Bags.’ ”

  Major D stepped between them. “Break it up. Okay, fall out in a half-circle here in front of me.”

  Me and Blythe and Williams stepped back. The Marine Lieutenant executed an about face and gave the command, “Fall out, right here,” and pointed at the ground three meters in front of Major D. They did, their postures relaxed but in loose lines that could still be called a formation. Major Deskavich and the B and C commanders joined us.

  D surveyed the crowd. “Okay, we’ve been joined by part of the ship’s security detachment. I understand there will be some cultural conflict but the benefits outweigh that. Lieutenant, come on up and introduce yourself.”

  The Marine Lieutenant nearly body-slammed Major D, trying to take his spot, but checked himself just in time and stood to D’s left and looked at the group, blank-faced as his gaze swiveled past his Marines and then his face looked as though he’d just seen a pile of burning monkey crap as he looked at the mercenaries.

  “I’m Lieutenant James Rock of the Third Recon Platoon of the Ninth Rifles of the Second Battalion, Second to None, of Brigade Five, Hard Chargers, Ninth Division of MARFARORBITAL Three South, Hoo Rah! We….”

  He launched into a diatribe of quotes that seemed to have their origins in Sun Tsu’s ‘Art of War.’ I suppose he was finally tired of talking after two minutes.

  He ended with, “…the Spirit will always defeat the Sword.”

  Major D said, “Thank you for that enthusiastic introduction of yourself.”

  The Marine stepped away and joined his fellows.

  Major D said, “They will serve as our primary reconnaissance, replacing the Scouts. I invite everyone here before me to move through the chow line and sit together and get acquainted.” He looked the Marine Lieutenant dead in the eyes. “That’s an order.”

  We went to the chuck wagon and were handed roast beefalo sandwiches and mugs of fruit punch. I sat with four Marines. One said to me, “Okay. Suppose you look over a hill and see the enemy and there are a hundred of them. You’re alone and have one ration and a knife and an entrenching tool. There are only five rounds left in your MP 1066. What do you do?”

  I pointed at his weapon. “That’s an MP 1066?”

  He nodded. “What do you do?”

  I still didn’t have enough information to answer the question. What was the mission, the terms of the contract, all sorts of things were missing. No way to answer, really.

  The Marine next to me slapped me on the back, “You decide how many prisoners you should take!”

  They laughed, I smiled. Munched my sandwich. They said more Marine stuff and I nodded and smiled from time to time. They seemed to like me, as long as I didn’t say anything. I felt more at ease with the Indig scouts and wondered what Coyote was up to.

  Finally a Marine asked me a direct question, “Throw down over?”

  I didn’t understand so I just grunted.

  He smiled and my group stood and we returned our trays and mugs to the chuck wagon. On my way back toward my tank I saw Captain Blythe.

  “Hey, Sir. Enjoy lunch with the Marines?” I walked along with him.

  “Not really. But they’re going to be out scouting for us so I guess I won’t see much of them.”

  “I liked the real Scouts better.”

  He shrugged. “These aren’t Scouts. They’re recon. Big difference.”

  “Cosmos. That was pretty funny, Sir.”

  “Well, they are from space, and they hang out on spacecraft. Not like the old saltwater Marines on Navy ships. The space fleet grew out of the old Terran Aerospace Force. Whole different culture.”

  “Fleet troops. I guess they know their business.”

  Captain Blythe split off to walk towards his tank. “They sure know how to run their mouths.”

  I hooked a hard left and walked along behind the Marine skimmers toward my tank. Their gun was a swivel-mounted, belt-fed ten millimeter slug thrower mounted in the cargo area. The armor was thin and the non-ballistic windscreens were folded down flat. A great vehicle for those with a mission to observe and report. Not at all like our skimmers, with full crew protection behind medium armor and a medium laser cannon in a turret and a Gauss machine gun ball-mounted in the front hull for the vehicle commander to operate. God help the Marines if they picked a fight with Indigs in powered battle armor.

  I saw that the Marines had Eliminator shotguns available, stowed in brackets inside their skimmers. Guess they’d be okay. I climbed back up in my tank and waited for the move order I knew would come soon.

  Chapter Twelve

  We moved, the tanks of HQ and C and B in a wedge to the front, my platoon at the rear, two hundred meters back. The Marines spread out ahead and to the sides and zipped all around, up and down and in behind the areas outside our main body. I saw that the drivers also held their weapons at the ready and drove the vehicles with their feet. Foot pedal controls, that was a useful feature. It looked more like they were having a great time playing with their toys than performing a serious mission. Which makes sense, they don’t get out much, cooped up on spacecraft most of their careers.

  We travelled seventy klicks North and came across a blue line that had clear, fast-moving water half a meter deep in most places, clear water dancing over and around rocks and boulders. It looked like the creek was what was left of a glacier that had cut a U-shaped channel about five klicks wide. A broad flood plain formed where the creek made a turn West about three klicks East of our crossing point and then turned South about three klicks to the West of that. There were several breaks in the walls of the valley. The task force crossed where the creek ran East-West and halted in a dried-up tributary creek, high ground all around. Service Company sent its water tanker trucks to suck up fresh water from the creek and my platoon took up a position on the high ground South of the creek to provide security for them. The Marines left the valley and s
kimmered around the high ground while the task force took a break in place.

  I popped my hatch and looked over at ORF-2. Captain Blythe was stretched out on his back on the flat area behind the turret of his tank, feet propped up on the bustle rack. I looked into the valley and saw the six Command Post Carries hitching up the flak guns with tow bars, to help them move through the rough terrain ahead. The two remaining flak guns hitched up to recovery vehicles. The chuck wagons didn’t set up. No hot chow today. I managed to get a line-of-sight laser comms link with the TOC and snatched all the latest traffic into my buffer and went through it. I gathered that the plan was to take a ten hour break and then continue North for another fifty klicks to get to the Northwest corner of the beefalo herd and then push the herd closer to the safe zone. Push the herd into the safe zone, to make it easier to keep the Indigs in the safe zone as well.

  Comms got real squirrely and then an Indig drone flew right over my tank from behind. I gave it a three second burst from my cupola gun--about seventy five rounds--and then it blew apart. I thought I’d got it but when I reviewed my gun camera footage it was obvious the cook serving as gunner in A-13 had shot it down using his main gun on charge three. A Marine skimmer rode back into the task force center at top speed, its speaker blaring, “Indigs! Indigs!”

  The rest of the Marine skimmers returned and they formed up as a platoon on the West side of the parked task force vehicles. Two tank platoons from Charlie moved to provide closer security so the water trucks could get back into the main body. The trucks got away fine but then on a low hill to the Northeast of Charlie’s third platoon, a company-sized group of armored dismounts began firing. My platoon gave suppressing fire from three klicks away. Well, it started out more like a turkey shoot, but there were a lot of them and soon they wised up and went to ground where they were hard to hit. 3-Charlie (Third Platoon, Charlie tank Company) decided to charge the indigs and made them retreat to another low hilltop two klicks North-northwest of their old position. 2-Charlie attacked the Indig flank while 3-C made a charge, a coordinated attack that sent the Indigs running as fast as their powered battle armor would allow. And that was pretty fast; I didn’t see that group again. While that was going on, 1-Charlie’s three tanks plus the Charlie command tank moved Southwest one kilometer to better defensive ground, another low hill top. There, 1-C was attacked on three sides by indigs in powered armor, three groups of about thirty each. The Charlie Infantry Company dismounted and formed a skirmish line and moved up and broke the attack against 1-C, then moved past 1-C to form a defensive skirmish line. Then 1-C moved two klicks West-northwest along the ridge line in pursuit but was ordered back to C Infantry’s position by Major D.

  Major D and the Service Company and the command post carriers and the Alpha and Bravo Infantry Companies and the Bravo tanks all moved to the north about two klicks and occupied a ridge line that ran Southeast to Northwest, where it ended in a cone-shaped hill.

  1-C and the C infantry were attacked again, unable to break contact. One of their tanks reported losing power.

  Finally my platoon got a call to action. I monitored comms and heard D say, “Hey Blythe, I got a job for you.”

  Captain Blythe said, “Send it.”

  D said, “Go around back to the East and find out why these Indigs are attacking. They must want to prevent us from finding something important. I want you to find out what that is.”

  Blythe said, “Roger. Gotcha.”

  “Task Force Six out.”

  We pulled forward and down the steep slope ahead of us and then crossed the stream and turned right to follow its course. Four klicks later the stream curved to the North and then Northwest. We followed it up, travelled twelve klicks but didn’t see anything. Captain Blythe decided to follow a dried-up intermittent stream bed that ran mostly West, to get back closer to the main body. We approached the cone-shaped hill and saw a dozen Indig light tanks and a hundred Indig dismounts massing on the Northwest side of the conical hill, preparing to come around the hill and attack the main body.

  We halted at a range of six hundred meters. Blythe said, “Targets!”

  Park’s first shot was on target but didn’t seem to bother the Indig tank he shot. In the previous battle a few days ago near the Indig village, charge three had been more than enough to dispose of an Indig light tank. But not today. The other two gunners upped their charge to six and their targets blew apart. The Indig tanks turned to face us and they hit us. But their guns weren’t powerful enough to get through our frontal armor. Parks decided to go with charge eight, not wanting to embarrass himself again. He flattened two more Indig tanks. They backed off the ridge to get out of our field of fire.

  I then popped my hatch and went to work on the dismounts. The cupola gun was only marginally effective against their armor at that range so I took a shot at them with my Eliminator shotgun. I didn’t expect much, but it was a large group and they were running towards us. I chambered an Armor Piercing round, took careful aim and fired. The projectile popped out of the gun and then its rocket motor engaged and flew flat and true, accelerating right up to the moment the projectile impacted an Indig. The round was designed to penetrate armor and then explode. It did. The remaining propellant of the projectile splattered on impact, adding a ball of fire to the exploding Indig, bits of flaming goo sticking to the Indigs near him. I pumped and fired twice more and then they were upon us. I closed my hatch and fired the cupola gun from inside. I raked Blythe’s tank, he raked A-13 and A-13 used its cupola gun to scratch the Indigs off my tank. Caldwell pivot steered so the Indigs on all sides would be exposed, and Parks swung the turret to the rear and used the main gun to push them and the coax rail gun to shoot them, to keep the Indigs out of our engine compartment.

  But with all those measures, we knew it wouldn’t be long. Let some good infantry get within arm’s length of your tank and your life expectancy gets real short real fast. Loud explosions rocked my tank. Was this the end? I shoved three AP rounds into my shotgun, chambered one, loaded one more. I was about to pop my hatch and see if I could take four more Indigs to hell with me. Then I heard Blythe on comms: “Proceed southwest at best speed.”

  Caldwell took off. The number of explosions increased. Tripled. But they were behind us now. Friendly mortar fire. I popped my hatch and looked back. The Indigs were obscured from view by the dust kicked up by the mortar barrage. I told Caldwell to slow down and follow Blythe. He led us into the defensive perimeter of the main body. We parked facing out, to the Northwest, to watch the area we had just come from.

  1-C and C Infantry were re-enforced by the Marine recon platoon. They held their line and waited. The flack guns were in the main body perimeter, but it took them a while to un-hitch and set up. They gave supporting fire to 1-C and C infantry and the Marine recon platoon. The flak guns fired from their slightly higher ridge, six hundred meters across the valley to a slightly lower ridge. Cut the indigs in half; the Indigs withdrew. They turned and fled, really. Major D ordered 1-C and its support to come inside the main body and take positions in the Southern edge of the perimeter. They moved slow, towing the tank that had lost power. One big, happy task force on a piece of easily defended terrain.

  I sat in my hatch and peered out. Nothing to shoot at. Captain Blythe dismounted and came over, climbed up on my tank. He said, “Take charge until I get back. I’m going to the key leader meeting.”

  “Yessir.” I gave a half-ass salute that he didn’t return. He smiled at me and then climbed off my tank and went to the meeting. Sure, he could have just sent me a free text. Hell, he could have just gone to the meeting without saying a word to me. I know I’m in charge when he’s gone. But he wanted to see the expression on my face. Look me in the eyes when he made it absolutely clear I was no longer the Battalion Bad Guy and I was no longer invited to the big meetings. I was now just another Sergeant in charge of a tank, a tank in his platoon. Yes, he smiled; the look on my face must have been exactly what he wanted to see.
/>   Chapter Thirteen

  Captain Blythe returned from the meeting and went straight to his tank and sat in his cupola. He set our comms to platoon push on short-range ultrasonic and said, “I hope you’re not hungry because we’re skipping chow.”

  The other tanks reformed their wedge and moved down the Northeast side of the ridge. The Service Company was now in two parallel columns headed by Command Post Carriers towing flak guns, with IFVs on either side in two more columns. Recovery vehicles now towed two tanks that had lost power and two IFVs towed flak guns. The pace was slow, about twenty kilometers per hour. We swung around and followed two hundred meters behind. The Task Force took a right and followed the creek and then left the creek bed to head South and moved across open grassland. ORF-2 was to my right front with its turret to the right and A-13 was to my left front with its turret to the left and I rode fifty meters behind with my turret turned to the rear.

  I called Blythe, “Hey Sir, how’d the meeting go?”

  “Well, since you asked. It was short.”

  “Any good news?”

  “No. Maybe. Depends on what you call good news.”

  “Well? Sir?”

  I heard a switch in the background, checked my comms. Blythe had changed the settings so that he now spoke with the entire platoon, but the platoon only. “We had eighteen injured but no deaths. Enemy deaths are estimated at near fifty, maybe more. By the rules of battle, because we held the field after the fight; we won.”

  I said, “That’s good news.”

  “But…” Blythe trailed off.

  Caldwell said, “We were lucky. Thank God for mortars.”

  The gunner in A-13, the cook, said, “One more tank kill and I’m an ACE. Armored Combat Expert.”

  Blythe said, “You did well. When we stop you can paint some kill rings on your gun tube. Now, about those tanks. You may have noticed they were a little harder to kill this time.”