by Chris Hechtl
It was a simple thing, a running raid, perfect for armored troops. The squads oriented with their maps and then took off at a sprint right down the runway shooting up aircraft, gunships, vehicles, equipment, fuel tanks, and personnel as they went.
Their primary method of inflicting damage was the Lewes bomb. It was named after one of the founders of the British SAS. The improvised Horathian version created by Corporal Stirling and Sergeant Scornlan was a satchel charge. Each had to be placed on or flung at or under the shuttles and gunships. They were made out of five hundred grams of homemade or Horathian-grade plastic explosives, a couple grams of thermite, along with some heating and machine oil for incendiary purposes. It went off with a micro generator trigger. All the user had to do was to pull the wire and it spun up a tiny one-centimeter sized copper generator with a thirty-second delay before it sparked the ignition.
<)>^<)>/
Captain Falco rushed out of his quarters without his shirt on. He felt the rain hit him but something far worse hit him and made much more of an impact—the sights, sounds, and smells of his beautiful command going up in fireballs and smoke.
He saw a line of Bell Ichim gunships outside a hangar erupt in fireballs while others behind them in the hangars took FOD damage. “Damn it!” he snarled, then ducked and took fire as the rickety porch he was standing under took hits from the debris, then random hits from flying fiery debris.
Some of his pilots and air crews rushed out past him before he could stop them and were cut down by a gleeful black suit with a white skeleton painted on it. Captain Falco felt something tear into his shoulder and realized he'd taken a hit, then another sharp spike hit him in the back near his hips, this one most likely from shrapnel.
He saw the armored warrior turn to show him full profile. There was a glowing dick and balls on the bastard's hips. Sick, a part of his mind thought as the bastard primed a grenade and then made like a pitcher. He did the wind up and pitch. Falco saw the bomb bounce off the frame of the door jam and tried to yell and crawl, but it went off tearing the wooden barracks apart.
He felt something smash into his back and head in a white hot flare of pain and then knew nothing more.
<)>^<)>/
“Move! Move! Move your sorry asses! Go, go GO!” Staff Sergeant Don Jensen urged, waving the armored suits of his squad on. “We've got the fuckers!” he said as he turned and shot up a fuel truck. “Pour it on!”
His first few rounds were normal rounds that tore through the truck's aluminum sides easily, allowing air to get in but without any fire. But then he switched to incendiary rounds. These went through and ignited the half-filled truck with explosive results.
The explosion of the fuel truck sent fire racing along the fuel lines that it had been attached to. Some of those lines were connected to nearby shuttles and gunships that had been damaged by the fires but not in any way destroyed.
Computers in the birds detected the emergency and detached the fuel lines while also shutting the valves. They couldn't do anything about the spilled fuel, however, that pooled under their craft. That fuel caught fire and burned, causing an inferno that did almost as much damage.
<)>^<)>/
Sergeant Brutus snarled in impotent rage. It was his job to protect the spaceport, and he'd obviously failed in that duty. There remained one thing to do for the moment, stop the bastards before they did anymore damage. Revenge he thought briefly as he waved a blade-like hand to the troops on perimeter patrol. “Go after them!” he pointed, then moved in with them. His training in combat tactics was old; he'd spent a lot more time learning law enforcement and other skills for his chosen side profession.
It took him a moment to realize he was going after armored suits in his BDUs and MP combat dress. Probably not a wise thing considering all he had was his simian size and side arm. Since he was massive, he was also a massive target. Since he was issuing orders, he was a double target a small corner of his brain thought. He checked himself and found a series of places to take cover and leap frog towards the enemy as other Marines fired with small arms at the enemy.
To his dismay the suits shrugged them off and kept firing into the airships with only the occasional stop to return fire. Marines with a few heavy weapons hammered at a few of the suits, but the armored titan in the rear targeted each heavy weapon and took it out methodically.
“Get on them! Move people! Take cover and fire! Where are the drones?” Brutus demanded, looking over his shoulder and to the night sky just as something let go on the flight line. He winced as he felt the light and thermal bloom make his fur curl.
<)>^<)>/
The drones out on the outer perimeter split up. Some of the robotic craft remained to cover any possible future attack waves while a group of four others moved in to the base to try to cut off the enemy's retreat. However, as they got to the perimeter, programs lit off. They couldn't fire since they were over the Marine barracks, and there were some Marines in the way. Their hard Rules of Engagement prevented firing on the IFF of a friendly unit, nor did it allow them to fire near enough to draw attention and return fire on said subjects.
The computers in the drones stopped them and hesitated allowing two of the drones to be picked off by the suited warriors. The remaining two bobbed and weaved as they took cover.
<)>^<)>/
Private Pvesk had abandoned his post to get into the fight. He wasn't sure what he could do; all he had was his side arm and the jeep he'd appropriated from next to the tower. He ran between buildings looking for something, anything before he realized he and more importantly the jeep was a weapon. When he saw the suits pass by the slit between buildings, he gunned it and slammed into a suit just as it got into his crosshairs.
<)>^<)>/
Corporal Stirling had enough time to turn his head and move one arm before the jeep hit him head on. He was thrown over twenty meters into a burning gunship. One of his own people tossed something at the gunship as he started to recover. The blast went off tearing him and his suit apart.
<)>^<)>/
Lieutenant Sng saw Corporal Stirling go down and grimaced. “Watch your fire! Friendly fire!” he snarled. His men hesitated briefly before they went back to work a bit more circumspectly. He turned to the jeep. It had been torn up and had gotten halfway away from them. He saw it limp into the rainy night with its front end torn up. He zeroed in on it and fired on the thermal signature of the driver. The driver stiffened, then slumped behind the wheel.
He smiled briefly. Revenge he thought as he went back to overseeing the carnage.
<)>^<)>/
A second jeep-ramming attack was spotted as the driver revved his engine and tore up the strip at the suited warriors. Most of the armored suits got out of the way easily enough. But one female remained behind, playing chicken. At the last moment before impact, the private jumped up onto the hood of the jeep as it sped at her, making the jeep jerk and bounce on its suspension. She recovered quickly and then stomped through the windshield to crush the driver before she somersaulted off.
“Quit fracking around and get with the program!” the lieutenant snarled, waving her back into motion as the jeep went past. The driver was dead or dying but his foot was still on the pedal. It ran into a burning shuttle and disappeared.
<)>^<)>/
As they neared the end of the runway, the armored titans had run through most of their explosives and a good chunk of their ammo. They'd left burning wreckage in their wake.
They had two last cards to play though. “Remaining weapons except dazzlers on the barracks and engineering depot, then hustle ass out of here!” the lieutenant barked as he tossed his last Lewes pack and then followed it by a grenade. He pulled off the empty satchels and straps and tossed them away. “Lighten your load as you go. Keep moving!” he barked as a point defense laser shot his pack out of the sky. He swore as the grenade was also shot down.
“Change of plans!” he said as the defenses started to fire on him. Apparently, the Marines
had put more stock on protecting their troops over their hardware a distant corner of his mind thought as his people moved out. He saw a private get cut down by another armored suit. He turned.
“Move people! They've gotten to the morgue!” he growled.
“You heard the skipper!” Sergeant Jensen growled as he got his squad moving again. Two of his people stopped to provide cover fire as the rest got around the building and out of the engagement zone of the oncoming suits.
Lieutenant Sng realized it was time to go while the getting was good. He needed to get his people out with the minimum losses they'd so far sustained before the base defenders could fully mobilize. “Fall back as ordered! Move your ass, people! We're done here!” Lieutenant Sng snarled as he ripped off a full ammo clip at an oncoming suit. The suit shook like a rag doll, but the range and low caliber rounds did little damage. It seemed to recover and then return fire as he took off at a full sprint.
“Go! Go! Go!”
<)>^<)>/
As the Marine armor chased the suits out of the base, the two gunships deployed on the perimeter, arrowed in to take up the chase. They ripped into two of the running suits, destroying them before the suits broke up into individual tracks.
The gunships and drones on the perimeter could only follow and target one at a time. Lieutenant Sng tossed off flashbangs to distract the aircraft. The dazzlers went off momentarily blinding the airships sensors and sometimes their pilots.
The remaining suits managed to get into a small village along the river forcing the gunships to check fire for fear of inducing civilian casualties. The squads dropped into the river swollen with rainfall and disappeared.
<)>^<)>/
“So, the Marines aren't invincible,” Chuck said as he shook his head. The news of the raid had hit the planet's media like a firestorm.
“No one said they are. They are mortal. They've got better weapons and gear than the Horathians,” Bordou said.
“If you ask me, they are no better than the first invaders,” Chuck said with a sniff.
His wife turned to stare at him. “Are you kidding me? They haven't killed our people, they don't round them up, they aren't brutal, and they mostly leave us alone …”
“Yes, mostly,” Chuck said, pouncing on his wife's last words. He ducked away from her glower. “You know what I mean,” he muttered.
“Oh, shove it. These people are doing a hard job. They have to interact with us. That's a given. Their ranks are made up of the same people as us. More so,” Bordou said with a growl.
“Why are they here? Why do they care?” Chuck demanded. “Answer me that? What do they want? What price are we going to pay in the end?”
“Because that is their job. Now, if you don't mind, let the rest of us and especially the Marines mourn their dead.”
Chuck grunted but then looked away.
<)>^<)>/
Captain Zhukov nodded as he read the report from Lieutenant Sng. The lieutenant had gotten to the fallback with a good chunk of his forces. It had gone off well, but there had been a butcher's bill to contend with.
According to Rick Sng, he had four confirmed dead, four damaged, and two still MIA, most likely lost to the river for what looked like twelve gunships, twenty-five drones of various types, seven shuttles, and twenty-one vehicles destroyed or crippled. Plus, they'd inflicted dozens of dead and wounded, not to mention all the equipment and property that had been destroyed. All of the surviving suits had gone to ground and had successfully shaken off their pursuit. The suits had been on fumes when they'd gotten out of the river. They were lucky to have survived that part at all. Rick had pointed out that the river swelling with rainfall hadn't been a part of the planning.
But it had worked. In a raid of less than five minutes, they'd made a major dent in the enemy's air power, not to mention their morale. They'd known they'd been kissed he thought with a grim smile. Pity Stirling hadn't survived to see the end results.
At a pre-arranged time, he passed on his report to the general. It started with a microsecond data squeal, a copy of the same report from Lieutenant Sng, and then it was followed by a brief two-minute summary conversation a few minutes later.
It was clear from the beginning that the general was happy with the results but had held out hopes for more. He didn't seem alarmed by the breakage on their side.
Dimitri was of two minds about that part. Casualties were a part of war, he knew that. But losing six of his suits and having four more damaged wasn't good in his estimation. The suits didn't grow on trees. Sergeant Scornlan might be chomping at the bit to go out and retrieve them, especially the damaged ones, but he couldn't let him either.
For all intents and purposes, those suits were out of the war for the time being. Expendable assets.
“I still wish we'd gotten a clean sweep. If they'd had more time …,” the general groused, bringing the captain back to the here and now.
“There is only so much we can do, sir. I think they did good considering the butcher's bill. Everyone wants more, but we get what we get.”
“Can you do that at their main base?” the general demanded.
“No, sir. The suits we used in this raid were pre-positioned for it. They landed in the middle of nowhere. We can't get in without them seeing us coming too far out. They'd pick us off.”
“Understood. Well, tell your people good work.”
“Yes, sir.”
<)>^<)>/
Lieutenant Colonel Dana Harley shook her head as she checked the breakage. Destria had turned into a tougher nut than Hidoshi's World to crack; that was for certain. The spaceport had been a nightmare. The wreckage from Skywhale was strewn all over the place and into the nearby town.
She frowned as she scanned the file the ONI spook she'd picked up had pulled for her while researching the enemy. The Death's Head Brigade—the whole motif with death, the Death's Head, skulls, etc., was normal for pirates according to Lieutenant Liu, so nothing new there. There always was something about pirates and skulls. They all seemed to love the skull and crossbone imagery, the whole bad ass crap. This though, this was something more, and she was afraid to know if he was on the right track or not. If she was reading his raw extract and compiled Intel reports and even taking in some of the scarier stories, it meant something that she didn't like.
Her unit was up against one of the best the empire had to offer.
She shook her head. Liu was still struggling with the concept it seemed, and so was Dana for that matter. ONI had figured that the empire reserved their best and kept them close to the throne to protect the emperor. The emperor's personal guard she thought pensively. But apparently that wasn't true; they'd picked up enough hardware to let them know something else was going on.
She'd lost two entire squadrons in ambushes. One had been totaled by powered armor units in a hard-hitting ambush. The enemy hadn't taken anything except ammo, power packs, and food. Well, a few had taken grisly trophies, but they'd abandoned them when they had realized the heads had implants that could be tracked, she reminded herself with a grimace.
She was pretty sure Liu's data was right; they were a platoon of the Death's Head Brigade. Why they were out in the back of nowhere she didn't know. Experience? She shook her head. It didn't matter. What mattered now was how she dealt with it.
But if fighting them with their limited resources was like this on a minor colony world, it didn't bode well for the future when they invaded the empire itself she thought pensively as she examined the casualty reports again.
Chapter 46
General Busche stood in her favorite thinking pose as she contemplated the map board and then the mission board. The mission board was depressingly empty. She had two ops in the planning stages, and she had three possible evac orders in the future. But the topmost one was the active op that was now in play.
It had taken her a while to find a way to hit back. Sniping and the occasional bomb had helped her cause only slightly; the enemy was good and could and
frequently did find her snipers or bomb makers. Her people had learned the art of shoot once and scoot, but that too was tricky at best. Since she wouldn't authorize her limited military gear out of her sight, they had to use native hunting rifles with scopes. Which meant they had GSR, Gun Shot Residue, all over themselves.
And apparently the bastard Marines could sniff it out. She wasn't certain if it was a Neo thing or what. Whatever the case, she had run dry of snipers recently. And not many of her people had stepped up to volunteer to take on the job. She snorted to herself. She wondered why she thought with a slight shake of her head.
None had stepped up to do a mass shooting in months either. It seemed like her people were losing their stomach for the war. She didn't like that. She didn't like that nearly three-quarters of her ranks were now filled with natives of the damn mudball. Protodon was turning into her epitaph it seemed. Damned if she was going to die there. She had no intention of getting caught and torn apart by the Feds either. She'd rather go down fighting and take as many down with her as she could.
She owed the bastards that she thought acidly. That and more.
Her equipment wasn't the only thing getting thin. She felt like the noose was tightening around her neck. She'd lost a few people to the tsunamis. Others were deserting her cause. She hadn't had a positive recruiting month in nearly a year.
But this … this might help she thought. At the least it would make sure the bastards knew they'd been kissed. A strike at the heart of the natives where they were most vulnerable she thought.
She shook her head as she turned away from the mission board to the detailed maps and outline of the objectives. She was getting hard pressed; she admitted she'd made some mistakes. She had lost half of her remaining bases and had been forced to abandon one just ahead of the enemy last month. Hence the continuous thought of being in a noose or trapped.