“Not good news,” Hecs said.
“Grubbing politics!” Ryck responded. “Meanwhile, we sit here running out of O2.”
“Well, there is Blue Barrel,” Hecs said.
The two of them had been considering taking the company to Bravo’s Company’s objective, the HECLA ship. It was a long, long way to go in a vacsuit, some 100 klicks, and neither the PICS nor the three Marines in ziplocks could not make it on their own. There were just too many things that could go wrong, and the chances were that not every Marine would make it. Preston had already been rotating his Marines across the 30 km from Campari to Blue Barrel, and one of his Marines had been hit by a piece of debris. He’d barely been able to get to the ship in time to be pulled in by his squadmates and put into a ziplock. Despite all the modern technology available, space was dangerous, not meant for the likes of man.
But man needed simple O2 to survive. As the clock ticked down, Ryck would have to do something. The vacsuits did not have great acceleration, but by going full out for ½ the way, then reverse for the second half of the distance, they should be able to make the trip in about 40 minutes. Giving the company two hours, the trip could be made in a more controlled fashion.
Ryck was counting on the fact that the task force knew how much O2 they had. They would not abandon them to die. No matter what political game they were playing, at least one ship would come to extract them. He hoped.
If nothing showed up at the three-hour mark, he couldn’t wait any longer. If he wanted his Marines to live, he would have to get them to the HECLA sorting ship.
Chapter 34
“Taco-All-Stations, Blue Barrel is under imminent attack. I repeat, Blue Barrel is under imminent attack by a Confederation cohort.”
Ryck immediately hit the open circuit with, “Charlie Company, assume defense posture bravo.”
Half of his Marines should be scrambling for their fighting holes, the other half staying near, but outside on the surface.
By mutual agreement, chatter between the four companies had been kept to a minimum. Even if their transmissions were scrambled, the mere fact that there were transmissions provided the enemy with intelligence that could be analyzed. But this was a game-changer.
Ryck blinked to the battalion command circuit. Without the battalion command center on the net, and with the CO probably dead, the circuit had become a private circuit for the four company commanders.
“. . . on our scans. No ships,” Preston was saying. “I think they’ve been hiding in wait before launching.”
A flood of information poured into Ryck’s AI, and he tried to make sense of it all. A cohort of Confeds had jumped Alpha’s Second Platoon as it was approaching the HECLA ship. All hands showed as grey—all KIA. Just like that, 34 Marines and a sailor were dead. The cohort was now advancing on Blue Barrel, using the scattered rocks as cover as they moved closer.
A cohort was about 500 soldiers, and facing them were about 350 Marines from Bravo and Weapons, holed up in the sorting ship, and now only 150 or so Marines from Alpha about 20 klicks away. In space, 20 klicks was nothing, just a milischosh. The Marine’s side arms would reach that far in the vacuum. But in an asteroid belt, and the Marines in only vacsuits, that was a long ways.
“Any sign of more Confeds?” Ryck interjected.
“None that we can pick up,” Donte responded. “But we never picked up these guys, either. We’re not equipped with sophisticated scanners, and they’ve evidently upped their cloaking game.”
For the same reason the ALC had not been able to detect Lt Albert in his coffin, the Marines had not detected the lurking cohort. They just didn’t have the sophisticated scanning capabilities necessary to do so. If the Inchon had been on station, Ryck doubted the Confeds could have remained undetected despite any improvements in cloaking technology. But the Inchon was gone, so it was a moot point.
The question was if there were more Confed troops still hiding out there.
“Donte, how long do you have?” Ryck asked.
“I don’t know. I think they’ll hit us in about 20. We’re already getting potshots taken at us, but until they emerge from the tailings field, we can’t do much about them, and they can’t really launch into anything, either.”
“Any sign of heavy weapons?” Ryck asked.
An incoming image hit Ryck’s display. It was a 20mm ballista, as the Confederation called their canons. The specs were listed, but Ryck was familiar with it. Deadly on land, in space, it was bulky, but packed a tremendous wallop. How they had kept that thing cloaked was something Federation analysts would want to now, but in the here and now, it was a huge threat to Bravo and Weapons.
Donte, as tactical commander at Blue Barrel and acting battalion commander with the CO missing, had to decide if he should abandon the small cover offered by the ship, or get everyone out and try to break up the assault.
“I’m coming,” Preston said. “We’re going to take out that ballista before it’s set up. I think we can intercept their path.”
Ryck could see as his AI started to fill in enemy positions that at least two centuries were maneuvering to block that move. Preston would have a hard time fighting through them, and Donte didn’t have much time to get his Marines deployed and ready to meet the remaining Confeds. If Preston could take out the ballista, then Donte’s best bet was to remain on the HECLA ship, which would offer protection against small arms. If the ballista were able to deploy, though, the ship could be a death trap.
“Charlie is coming, too,” Ryck said, keying in the company command circuit.
“You’re too far out,” Donte said. “Too dangerous, and anyway, the fight will be over before you could get here. We can handle this.”
“Not if that ballista opens up. And what if there are more of them? No, we’re almost out of O2, anyway, so we’re on our way. Watch for us at your 45 degrees Z, 80 degrees Y. We don’t need you opening up on us.”
Ryck was circling one finger above his shoulder as he spoke, telling Hecs to round up the Marines for a quick movement. The first sergeant rushed to comply.
“It’s, that’s dangerous, man,” Donte said. “If there is another cohort hiding out there, you’ll be caught dead to rights.”
“If there’s another cohort out there and they take you guys, we’re next. Besides, look at their disposition. They don’t expect us, either. They’re massing to meet Preston.”
“He’s right,” Jasper said, quiet until now. “Get your ass moving, Ryck, and I’ll buy you a beer when all this is over.”
“Done and done,” Ryck said.
Ryck started to blink the company command circuit open to get things moving, but he heard Donte’s, “Go with God, my brother, go with God.”
Chapter 35
Only ten minutes later, the company was lifting off T-486, their home for the last three days. Each PICS Marine had two Marines in vacsuits, one on each arm, basically ferrying them to the battle. Three Marines had Marines in ziplocks attached to their backs. The POWs had given their paroles for the next 12 hours. After that, they could use their comms to effect their own rescue.
They had no weapons, but Ryck hadn’t wanted to leave them comms, either. What if they told the cohort moving into attack Blue Barrel? He had their parole, but not everyone followed honor and integrity. In the end, though, Ryck had no choice. By international treaty, signed by both the Federation and the Confederation of Free States, he could not abandon them without the means to communicate for their rescue. Moral issues aside, Ryck was not going to be a war criminal.
It was eerie to watch his company lift off in silence from T-486. A few years back, a flick had come out about the end of days. When the final battle between good and evil was decided, the souls of the dead left their earthly bodies to rise up to heaven. His Marines lifting off the planetoid looked surprisingly like that scene. The connection to those people in the flick being dead gave Ryck the shivers. He was not superstitious, but his psyche didn’t like the comparison.
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They flew in a transmission blackout. Their vacsuits didn’t have cloaking capabilities, but there was no use in simply announcing their presence. Ryck knew that silently flying along for 40 minutes could play hell with his Marines. It was claustrophobic enough for many Marines simply to be in their vacsuits out in the reaches of space. Not to be able to communicate or even see each other’s faces would make them feel more isolated, and an isolated Marine could stew in his own thoughts and feel the fingers of fear nibbling at his brain. Marines needed to be kept active, but there was no way for Ryck to do that.
He glanced over to his right. Twenty meters away, Çağlar flew along, motionless. Not really motionless, of course—they were flying through space at a good clip now. But he wasn’t moving his arms or legs, and he wasn’t moving in relation to Ryck. Ryck was not given to the claustrophobia some Marines felt when EVAing, but he felt a small spark of comfort knowing his PFC was there with him.
He had his AI monitoring both the battalion command circuit and the open circuit. He kept expecting to hear that the Confeds had launched on Blue Barrel. But it was Preston and Alpha who initiated major contact. The two opposing sides—a depleted Alpha and two Confed centuries-- clashed and started exchanging fire with each other among the asteroid field. Ryck shrunk the battle display and moved it to the top of his face shield, noting when each blue avatar shifted to light blue or gray. Too many were making that shift too soon.
Charlie Company reached its halfway point and reversed their thrust. He was beginning to hope that he could arrive and take out the ballista before it could fire, but still five minutes out, the Confed weapon opened up. The first shot missed, but the second one scored a direct hit on the HECLA ship.
Thirty seconds later, as the ballista scored a couple more hits, beams of light reached out to touch the Charlie Marines. Four avatars turned gray.
Federation beam energy weapons did not display light in the visible spectrum, but Confederation weapons were designed for that. It supposedly helped the gunners deploy their weapons, but Ryck thought it was stupid. It gave every Marine a point of origin for that weapon, and within seconds, over a hundred Marines opened fire on the small rock from which the Confeds had fired. One more beam reached out before they all went silent.
The Confeds knew they were there, so transmission silence was lifted.
“First, drop your PICS and with the rest, swing farther left and loop up and curve back on the ballista,” Ryck ordered.
“Left,” “up,” and “down” didn’t have much meaning in space, but with their AIs linked, directions were relative to the company center and showed up on every Marine’s face shield display.
They were still moving fast as they entered the tailings field. This was a dense rubble pile of the tailings, or the unwanted refuse expelled from the sorting ship. The field was almost four kilometers across, and Ryck immediately saw why it had taken the Confeds so long to get their ballista up and firing. This was some dense shit.
A Marine went light blue—not from enemy fire, but from slamming into a rock the size of a truck. Their relative speed was still too much.
Then fire started reaching through the rubble toward them. Ryck saw explosions of kinetic rounds on the tailings, and flashes from energy weapons as they hit the rocks. One beam flashed between Ryck and Çağlar.
As Ryck watched his display, his AI started filling in more of the enemy. They were shifting to meet the company. And that was causing a gap on the far left side.
“Jeff, push further out, past most of the tailings. I see a gap opening, and I want you to exploit it. Come in from behind and take out that grubbing ballista,” he passed on the command net.
“Uh, sir, we’re taking heavy fire. I don’t think we can make it over there,” Jeff passed back.
Confused, Ryck looked closer at his display. His AI might not have every enemy position located, but it could account for every weapon, kinetic or energy, fired. First was under no heavier fire than any other platoon. Only one Marine in First had even been hit yet. But Jeff was hesitating, even veering off while the rest of the company was pushing forward.
As their reverse thrust slowed them all down enough to start taking cover and bounding from rock to rock, First slowed to a halt.
“Jeff,” he said, switching to the P2P. “What’s going on? I need you moving now! We need that ballista out of action.”
“Yes, sir, I understand. But we’re pinned down. I almost got shot right now!” the excited lieutenant almost wailed.
Ryck was shocked.
What the grubbing hell was going on?
He was about to repeat the order when the XO came on the First Platoon command net with, “First, form on me. We’re the PME,
[24] and we’re going to kick some Confed ass.”
Ryck watched as the XO, who’d been moving with First, peeled off to the left and up. There was a cheer over the net as the Marines in First quickly followed, blue avatars making a loop at the edge of Ryck’s display.
Ryck was shocked—and ashamed. How could he have been so blind? Jeff was personable, an Alpha back at camp, but it looked like he was a coward. It was the XO, the small-statured, quiet lstLt Sandy Peltier-Aswad, who had taken over to lead the assault. And judging by the cheer that had filled the transmission, the Marines in the platoon had been well aware of it and were overjoyed to be let loose, to do what Marines do.
The XO had the assault, and Ryck had to let him take it. There were more Confeds massing in front of the rest of the company, and Ryck had to deal with that. He pulled up behind a 50 meter-wide rock and checked his display. He had about 150 effectives left in the rest of the company. Opposing him was about the same number of Confederation troops. He was wracking his brain for a similar scenario he’d studied of conducted in training, and nothing came up. There had to be some tactical maneuver he could do to swing the battle to his favor.
But anything he ordered, any tactical sleight of hand, could swing the attention of the enemy to the XO and First Platoon. He knew that sometimes, soldiers just had to slug it out and rely on who was the biggest mother fucker on the battlefield. This was one of those times.
He was about to order an all-out assault when he remembered, almost too late, Sgt Ling and his squad. He’d told Jeff to jettison them as they would have slowed the platoon down. He looked at his display, and there they were, some 600 meters away.
“Sergeant Ling,” he passed on a P2P. “You ready to earn your pay?”
“Sure am, Skipper.”
“Get your metal asses over here. Stay out of sight if you can, but get here quick,” he continued, sending a position to display. “We’re going over the top, and you’re going to lead us.”
“Ooh-rah, Skipper. We’ll be there in a moment.”
Six hundred meters of vacuum would take a PICS more than a moment, but that gave Ryck time to brief his commanders. He kept an eye on First as they maneuvered up and in back of the ballista team. They would have to make their way through the mass of rubble, but hopefully, Ryck and the rest of Charlie would occupy the Confeds long enough so that none of them could reinforce the ballista security.
Several more Marine’s avatars grayed out while Ling brought his squad into position. He acknowledged that he was ready, and Ryck gave the simple order to all hands, “Go!”
As Ryck and Çağlar flew over the rock behind which they had taken cover, the enemy fires intensified. More avatars grayed out in those first few seconds before the fired let up. Sgt Ling and his PICS Marines were in full attack mode, their heavier weapons like scythes among the Confeds. Ryck could almost see the hesitation among the enemy soldiers as they greeted this unexpected force. A number of enemy avatars started to fall back as if realizing that they could simply outrun the PICS to safety. The rest seemed to dig in to fight back, but their momentum was gone. The Charlie Company Marines were in among them, screaming like banshees over one of the universal open circuits. Ryck hadn’t ordered that, but it was a good idea.
Ryck tried to fight while at the same time monitoring First Platoon. They were in the tailings, moving slowly. Eight Marines were down, either WIA or KIA, but they kept advancing. His AI didn’t have a good grasp of the Confed soldiers, but many seemed to be falling.
Ryck saw movement out in front of him while he was focusing on the display and almost blew away LCpl Pratt before he realized what he was doing. He couldn’t fight and keep command, so he put his M99 on safe and pulled Çağlar in a little closer for his personal security.
Ryck wanted to tell the XO to shift to his right, but he knew the XO was on the scene and needed to concentrate. He didn’t need Ryck to try and take over the fight, commanding from afar.
“We’re through the line, sir,” Çağlar was telling him over the P2P.
Ryck looked around, then on his screen. The big PFC was right. Charlie has assaulted right through the Confeds. Mike McAult was turning back and mopping up small pockets of the enemy.
Ryck pulled to a halt and intently watched his display. He was about to order Second to swing around to support First when the blue avatars reached the big avatar for the ballista. The platoon didn’t have a weapon big enough to destroy the big gun, but they had Ryck’s signature piece of gear, the frog. The XO reported putting four of them on the ballista, and ten seconds later, they were busily burning the canon into inoperability. The XO had done it.
The canon had devastated the ship, blasting huge holes into it. Large numbers of Bravo and Weapons Company Marines had poured out of the ship to meet the main line of Confed soldiers, and a fierce fight had broken out. Large numbers of Marines had fallen.
“Donte, what’s your status?” Ryck asked on the battalion command circuit. There was no answer, and Ryck figured Donte had his hands full. “We’re coming in,” he passed on both the command and the Bravo circuit. “Watch for us.”
“Gershon, leave one squad as security to watch our back. XO, angle down to meet us. Everyone else, form on the PICS and let’s roll up the Confeds facing Bravo.”
Captain (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 4) Page 20