After about an hour, his AI said, “Incoming hypervelocity M-883 missiles, targeting Johnnie Walker and Campari. Impact in approximately 20 seconds.”
“Incoming!” Ryck screamed over the open circuit. “Take cover!”
Most of the Marines were already in their fighting positions, but a few, like Ryck, were standing outside. Ryck hoped they all made it in as he dove for his position, flying headfirst down the shaft. He didn’t reverse fast enough, and slammed into the bottom before he could right himself.
His AI had the specs up on his display. The M-883 was a 500kg rocket capable of 6,000 meters per second. It didn’t have a warhead but relied on the simple physics of mass times velocity to release huge amounts of energy. Only 22 centimeters across, it was a difficult target to hit, and even if intercepted and destroyed, the broken pieces of it would continue on and would wreck havoc on a ship.
On a ship!
T-486 was a huge mass of iron and nickel. As fast as the M-883 was, it wouldn’t break the planetoid apart. The Confeds were targeting the monitors. So sure was Ryck of this that he started back up the shaft, Çağlar shouting at him to stop.
The space above the shaft flared with a blinding white light—but T-486 remained quiet. Ryck cautiously flew up the shaft, Çağlar on his ass, until he had outside comms.
“We have lost contact with the monitor. All indications are that it has been taken offline. The monitor assigned to Campari has also, with a high degree of probability, been taken offline,” his AI reported.
A monitor was an extremely tough piece of gear, able to take a tremendous pounding. But the Confeds didn’t have to destroy it, only destroy its ability to fight. The missile-strike most likely damaged the monitor’s rail gun beyond internal repair, but more effectively, took out it’s AI and ability to process targets and take them under fire. Destroyed or simply unable to compute firing data, the bottom line was that Charlie Company no longer had the monitor providing support.
Ryck scanned his display, watching for anything that could indicate a threat. Even without the monitor, there were numerous Federation scanning assets keeping track of what was happening. There were unmanned active and passive scanners strategically placed around the system. Recon was out there, too, somewhere, watching and reporting.
Ryck knew something was coming, and it was almost a relief when one of the scanners picked up the threat, which his AI identified as a Confed ALC, an Atmospheric Landing Craft. The name was not important. The craft could maneuver in open space as well. What did matter was that it was a heavily armed, heavily armored, landing craft that could carry a century plus of Confed soldiers, or about 90 individuals.
Ryck would feel confident facing a century with Charlie Company—on an even playing field. But this was not even. The Confeds had the high ground, and they had an ALC that could stand off and wipe out the company.
“Çağlar, pass to the first sergeant that I want all hands inside their fighting positions,” Ryck told the PFC.
His ever-present shadow was still right below him, and Çağlar flew back down the shaft a couple of meters until he had a direct shot into the bunker. Ryck could hear him pass the order, but the metallic walls of the shaft blocked the first sergeant’s reply.
Ryck edged back up. He knew he shouldn’t be exposing himself like that, but he had to know what was going on. Almost 30 minutes later, the ALC arrived on station. It did not land, though, to disgorge an angry century. If it had, Ryck had been ready to scramble his company and get them up on the surface to enter the fray. The first thing the ALC did was to quickly take out each of the waiting rekis, to include the relays. The only way now to contact the platoons on the other side of T-486 was through the HECLA comms, a capability that Ryck hoped was unknown to the Confederation troops.
Less than ten minutes after that, an explosion erupted 70 meters away. Ryck didn’t need his AI to inform him that the ALC was bombarding them. Ryck edged back down the shaft and into the bunker.
Soldiers for centuries had been subject to long bombardments, but history showed that if those soldiers were dug in, a bombardment had little effect. It could break the will, as it had for the now disbanded Howard’s Defenders on Silver Light. The Legion subjected the mercenary company to a week of heavy bombardment. Not one merc was killed, but their will was broken, and they surrendered without a fight when the Legion landed.
But disciplined troops could emerge from a bombardment as a fighting force, as the Japanese soldiers had done at Iwo Jima during World War II. They had been subject to intensive naval gunfire and aerial bombardment, but when the US Marines landed, they emerged from their tunnels to engage the Marines.
Ryck trusted his Marines. They were the best soldiers known to man. He knew they would endure this, then kick ass when given the order.
Ryck briefed each commander over the HECLA comms. He wanted each platoon to be reminded that they were not alone, that the entire company was in this together, ready to provide support. Then he simply moved to stand beside the first sergeant and wait it out.
The bunker shook with every strike, but the ALC’s 30mm kinetic gun was having almost no impact on the company. The 30mm shell packed a huge wallop, and T-486 shuddered with each strike, but the planetoid, while small as celestial bodies went, was still a huge mass of iron and nickel. The Confederation gun wasn’t making a dent in the surface. What was a bigger threat was the ALC’s auxiliary hadron cannon that swept their positions. It wasn’t penetrating the bunkers and fighting holes either, but it was keeping the Marines bottled up. If they stuck their heads out, they could get burnt off.
It was not as if any of the Marines within Third Platoon had a weapon big enough to take out the heavily armored ALC, even if they could hit it, which would require getting out in the open and letting a targeting AI triangulate the ACL’s position. Getting out in the open was the key there, and a suicide mission.
“XO, still nothing there?” he asked on the HECLA line.
“No, sir. The sensors haven’t picked up anything either, at least as far as I’m getting.”
Just because there seemed to be only one ALC over them didn’t mean that was the case. Something had fired the missiles that had taken out the monitor, and that was too big of a job for a single ALC. If Ryck had been planning this assault, he would have hit all sides of T-486 at once. Not doing so left the craft vulnerable. There were several weapons in the inventory that could be effectively used against such a craft—the problem was that Ryck didn’t have any of those weapons.
The bunker flickered as the hadron beam passed over the entrance. The beam itself was not in the visible spectrum, but his AI informed him that the beam was interacting with the small amounts of phosphorous that was in the taenite. The interaction glowed like radiation was portrayed in the flicks, but evidently it was not dangerous.
Ryck dialed the code for Lt McAult, who was in a small bunker 150 meters away from Ryck, “You holding up OK?” he asked when the lieutenant responded.
“No joy, sir, no joy. But we’re fine. Just anxious to hit back. Sitting here, just absorbing this, it’s well, like—“
“I know. Same here,” Ryck cut in. “Look, I’m worried about that dead space we discussed. An ALC is a personnel lander, after all, and it could be here to put troops on the ground.” If there is any let-up, don’t want for me. Check it out. You understand?”
“Roger, sir, I understand. We’re on top of it.”
“Third is ready to go,” Ryck passed on the open circuit, which inside the bunker, meant only the other four men.
“How long do you think this is going to last?” Hecs asked, the first time he’d shown any degree of uncertainty for as long as Ryck could remember. Ryck realized that the claustrophobic nature of hiding in the tight space while lethal weapons kept them pinned down was getting to the first sergeant.
Ryck felt it too. He wanted to strike back. Sitting in the bunker like this went against every fiber of his very being.
So f
ar, not a single Marine had been hurt, and Ryck was not going to change that by ordering some stupid, hopeless counter-assault. The CO had ridden Ryck for not being as proactive as he should be, but even the CO would have to agree with his decision here. Keep everyone alive for what could be coming down the pike next. If that was the Inchon coming back, then the little ALC that was keeping the company pinned would have to retreat or be blasted from space.
That “little” ALC was big enough, however, to keep Charlie Company hiding in their holes like frightened rabbits, and that gnawed at Ryck. He was so consumed with that thought that he didn’t notice the change.
“Skipper, I think it’s stopped,” Hecs said.
Ryck looked around. The impacts had, in fact ceased.
“Çağlar,” check it out, but be damned careful, you hear?” Ryck told the PFC.
Çağlar nodded, then edged to the access shaft. He looked back at Ryck before starting up—and came back down in a hurry.
“We’ve got company, sir, lots of them. I think they’re setting up some sort of field gun, but it doesn’t look like a weapon,” the PFC said.
Not a weapon? Ryck wondered. What then?
He hesitated for only a moment, then moved to the shaft to go up himself.
“No, sir,” Çağlar said, moving to block him.
Ryck looked at his PFC, not believing what he’d heard. Yes, he, as the company commander, was not supposed to endanger himself needlessly. That still ate at his core. He was a Marine, nothing more, no better than any other Marine. But it had been drilled into his head that while he may be “worth” no more as an individual, he was more valuable as a commander than a single rifleman was. This was not to demean Private Schmuckatelli as a person, but it was Ryck’s training and experience that would keep Marines alive and ensure the mission’s success. This had been a hard concept for Ryck to accept, and he was only lukewarm on it. But he had to see what they faced if he was going to be able to use that experience and training effectively.
“Çağlar, I need to know what’s out there,” he said, trying to step around the big Marine.
“Yes, sir, but I’ve got it,” Çağlar said, tapping his face shield.
A moment later, Ryck’s face shield flashed with an incoming notification.
Ryck realized what that was, and accepted the incoming, wanting to slap the side of his helmet. Of course, Çağlar had done a face shield shot, recording everything he’d seen. And what he’d recorded suddenly filled his own face shield display as if he was looking out at the scene himself.
Çağlar had known that not everyone had to expose himself, and the fact that Ryck had forgotten was not a good omen. He had to remain sharp and focused.
He patted Çağlar on his shoulder in thanks, then studied the scene. It was only two seconds long, so Ryck froze it.
Approximately 200 meters out, at the start of one of Charlie’s dead spaces, there looked to be twenty or more Confederation troops. Four were on a weird contraption of which Ryck was unfamiliar. He blinked on a highlight and queried his AI.
“New Long Industries PR55C Field Fabricator with some modifications,” the AI informed him, then ran a list of specifics along the edge of his display.
Essentially, the PR55C was a fabricator that could be taken to a field location and fabricate machine parts needed to keep construction or mining equipment functioning. Why the Confederation troops were setting it up was beyond Ryck, but it couldn’t be good, and Ryck wanted to take it out before it could do whatever the Confederation soldiers wanted it to do.
But with the arrayed soldiers facing this group of fighting positions, as soon as one Marine tried to exit a shaft, he would be dead meat. The shafts were just not big enough to get more than one Marine at a time out, and even that was at a fairly slow pace. It was Horatio at the Bridge in reverse with the Etruscans keeping Horatio from exiting the bridge and taking the fight to them.
Ryck felt a slight shudder run through the bunker.
“Skipper, it’s the XO. The ALC is over their position and bombarding them,” Hecs said, the HECLA communicator in his hand.
Grubbing shit! They’re going to keep us bottled up and get troops down to dig us out, Ryck thought. Not a bad plan.
The question was what Ryck was going to do about it. No one in Third could get out to take it to the Confederation troops facing them without getting taken out themselves as they exited the shafts. He considered Second or Weapons. No one was facing them yet, but with the grubbing ALC overhead, if he ordered them out of their positions to break up the assault here, they would be easy pickings for the ALC.
“First Sergeant, ask Second if they are covered by that gubbing ALC, and I want Chomsky to see if we’ve got any comms from battalion. I need to know when the Inchon’s coming back,” Ryck ordered.
He quickly went through his options. If First weren’t under fire at the moment, he could order the PICS squad to assault. The ALC could take a PICS Marine out, but it was possible that some would get to this position, and even one or two could wreck havoc among the soldiers facing them.
He should have realized that an ALC, of all things, was not just going to orbit and fire at them. It was a personnel lander, after all. Of course, if he’d ordered the PICS squad into the assault earlier, then who would they assault? The ALC? There were no Confederation troops on the planetoid at the time.
But with the ALC over their position, that was a non-starter now. Ryck went through his options, and none were too good. All would result in a huge loss of Marines with only a limited chance of any tactical advantage. No option seemed good, and that left the status quo. The CO said Ryck was getting too cautious, and maybe he’d been right, but what else could he do?
“Lieutenant Chomsky says the ALC can fire on his position without moving. The orders from battalion still stand—hold our position. Nothing about the Inchon yet.”
“Any great ideas coming to you First Sergeant?” he asked Hecs, only partly in jest. “You, Sergeant Contradari?”
He really could use some input. Ryck had a bad feeling about that field fabricator. The Confederation troops would not have landed it and be protecting it unless they thought it could be of some use.
It seemed no matter what he did, it would turn out bad. Dark thoughts began to whisper in his mind about the unthinkable: surrender! Marines didn’t surrender. Sometimes they advanced in the other direction, as the saying went, but they never surrendered. Ryck didn’t want to waste a single Marine’s life, and if there was no possible way to prevail, anyone killed would have been a wasted life. His career would be over, and he probably would be court-martialed, but that might be the only realistic choice. Better his career than the needless death of even one Marine.
“Sir, it’s Lieutenant McAult,” Sgt Contradari said, holding the comms that the first sergeant had handed to him.
“Sir, something’s happening. The top of our shaft, it’s melting!”
Melting? What?
Then it hit him. The fabricator. It could take raw material and transform it into pretty much anything in its recipe banks. It couldn’t make roast beef out of iron, but it could process iron into steel and tools. Or taenite. Normally, a field fabricator crept over the raw materials, spitting out the desired product. Ryck pulled up Çağlar’s face shield shot again and saw the projector tube that had been jury-rigged to the front of the fabricator—the modifications his AI had mentioned. What they had managed to do was to propel forward the dissolution mechanism, the one that broke down raw materials into a usable form. It would be extremely inefficient, but it could breakdown the taenite around the lip of each fighting hole, sending what would act as molten taenite to drift to the bottom. They were making metal plugs to trap the Marines.
Ryck couldn’t allow that. He could immediately order a full assault, but if the enemy soldiers were even half competent, each shaft would be covered. It would be suicide.
There had to be another option. Ryck hoped something would happen that would g
ive him the opportunity he needed.
That something happened just seconds later. The space above T-486 flared bright white for a split-second, so bright that the light bounced its way down the shaft and illuminated the command bunker.
Ryck grabbed the comms and called Lt Chomsky.
“Sir, the ALC, it just blew up!” the excited lieutenant shouted before Ryck could even ask. “Something came fast and hit it, and my AI is trying to analyze it now!”
“It’s gone? Completely?”
“Yes, sir. There’s nothing left bigger than a fucking basketball!”
For all his worrying, Ryck didn’t hesitate as the plan came to form in his mind. He immediately switched to First Platoon.
“Jeff, get the PICS squad out immediately. I want them assaulting the enemy at my position before they can regroup. Follow with the rest of your platoon in support. Do you understand?”
“But sir, they’ll hit us as soon as we start coming up,” Jeff protested. “We’re under fire now.”
“No you’re not, Jeff. The ALC has been destroyed. You’re clear. Get moving now before the Confederation troops can regroup.
“Are you sure, sir?” Lieutenant de Madre asked, a tremor in his voice.
“Yes I’m sure, Lieutenant, and I don’t have time to argue. This is an order. “
“Aye-aye, sir,” the First Platoon commander said.
Ryck had already switched to McAult. “Mike, I want anyone who can to reach up and fire out of their fighting positions. I don’t care if they hit anything, so no use going completely exposed. Just hands and weapons. Keep the enemy occupied. First is coming to pull us out of this mess.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“Gershon,” he told his Second Platoon commander. “I’m ordering Jeff with his PICS into assaulting the Confeds who are on our asses here. I want you to swing around left on the z-axis, then converge on our position. Let the PICS take the brunt of the assault, but be ready to jump in if needed.”
Captain (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 4) Page 18