The Vanguard Emerges (Maraukian War Book 2)

by Michael Chatfield

  Mark checked that the targets were split between everyone. The NIAIs calculated the amount needed for each target before going ahead.

  “Let’s show the arty boys what a real barrage is like. Fire.” The last word was quiet and deadly as the mono-blades they carried as halos formed around everyone on the channel, including the Bellonas, as anything around them was thrown away by the force of their LBM launchers.

  “We’re picking up odd readings in your area,” Yousef said a few minutes later.

  Mark picked himself up from the ground as his launcher sealed itself in his back again. “Just doing what fire support can’t.” Mark noticed Sarah was broadcasting it on open frequency. Good, hopefully they’ll learn something.

  The Bellonas’ LBMs hit first by virtue of their increased mass and the LBM’s engines. From kilometers away, Mark could see the missile as it reached the top of it’s arc and pointed towards the ground, The engines kicked in again, increasing the spped of the missile rapidly. Cracking and booming noise like rumbling thunder followed in the path of the LBM it’s speedwas too fast to follow.

  The assault barge more than five hundred meters long seemed to detonate as the LBM slammed into it with full force, the LBM’s warhead converting into plasma, increasing the wave of destruction.

  It was as if the hammer of god had descended upon them, leaving those watching breathless.

  The LBMs were too fast and far away for the Maraukians to hit. Then, when they crashed down, they hit like Thor’s own hammer and their essential kinetic nature meant they couldn’t destroy it as it returned back to the planet with a vengeance.

  Try to top that one, arty boys, Mark dared them as he pulled off his helmet to retrieve his tin of dip. He was flicking it as Sarah updated his HUD.

  “I told you to stop chewing.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  “C’mon, adds to the flavor,” Mark laughed, opening the tin and takinga pinch, placing it inside his lip.

  Ava let out a disgusted noise but stopped trying to fight an unwinnable battle.

  He grabbed his helmet. Feeling a little better, the asine banter calming his nerves.

  “Let’s go show them what the Vanguard legion can do.”

  “Vanguard legion?” Mark asked.

  “Well, you know how you think of us as the Vanguard?”

  “Mhmm...”

  “Well, we all agree: we can only rely on one another—as we’ve seen—and we lead the way. Making anyone who stays in our way pay the price.”

  That’s my second, he thought proudly. “I’m guessing this isn’t official?”

  “Of course not. I asked the others and they agreed we need a name for this ragtag group we’ve thrown together.”

  “Very true. All right, let’s go show them what the Vanguard can do. Vanguard Legion is too wordy.”

  Mark spat on the ground and pulled on his helmet once again the nanites rushing to integrate him fully with the armor again.

  “Sarah, queue LBMs from the forges. Remove the artillery’s needs from it.”

  “Already done, Mark.”

  “Read my mind.”

  “Precisely,” Sarah said matter-of-factly but still with humor in it.

  Mark grinned as she brought up a map on his screen again as the surviving Maraukians now stumbled away from their landing craft and onto Indalia soil.

  There had been ten barges when they’d entered the system. The space legion’s forces had taken out two barges’ worth. The Vanguard had taken out a further half of a barge’s worth.

  That still left seven and a half barges’ worth of Maraukians.

  Any chatter on the net went silent as everyone watched the symbols of the Maraukian force as they deployed en masse and turned for the wall.

  There were four clear groupings of Maraukians, two on the far left flank, pushing for the center of the wall. The biggest concentration was coming directly at the center of the line and the damned secondary wall with a three-kilometer-wide gap in it. The fourth was on the mid-right flank, charging right at the center as if knowing there was a split between the two mountain ridges there and a hole at the end of it.

  “Shit,” Mark and Ava said at the same time as Legate Yousef came on the line.

  “I told you!” Mark said in quiet fury as the Maraukians advanced. It’d be five hours before they got to the mouth of the pass. Thankfully, the original mountain range they were supposed to build on was covered by the wall to its left flank and was too steep for the Maraukians to climb.

  “Mark, I need you to get into the pass and hold it.”

  “Until you make the wall that was supposed to be started weeks ago.”

  Mark reined his anger in. It wasn’t this man’s fault. There’d been simply too many balls up in the air; they’d both been juggling to look over what the sector commanders thought was right.

  “Sorry, Yousef. Just annoyed is all.”

  “Understandable.” Yousef paused, letting out a breath , calming his anger and gathering himself.

  “I’m going to need damned support, though,” Mark continued.

  “I can’t guarantee anything, especially after you just shamed the artillery like that.”

  “If I don’t hae it, then you’re going to lose this section of wall. I’m not going to put my people into a no win situation for nothing.”

  “I’ll work on it.”Yousef promised.

  “Thank you,” Mark ground out. He flicked up his tactical map and moved symbols on the map, repositioning his forces in the gap.

  “Evan, get me all of the LBMs and supplies produced by the forge,” Mark said on a side channel.

  “Sir.” Evan took his contubernium, flying off on their Thunderbolts, accelerating fast and low to the forge.

  “It’s going to take some time for my people to get into position and create any kind of position we can hold.”

  “Understood,” Yousef said warily.

  “I’m going to need an unlock on anti-matter weaponry.”

  “Mark! You know the planetary committee will never okay the use of anti-matter weaponry.”

  “Let me put it another way. Either I get to use it or you can fight from your own damned walls.”

  “Mark!” A deadly rumble entered Yousef’s voice.

  “Oh, ha, wait—you don’t have a fucking wall!”

  “What about LBMs?” Yousef said, anger still in his voice.

  “We fired them all because your damned artillery was pussyfooting around. By the time my people get back with replacement LBMs, they’ll be two kilometers inside the pass and will take away any option of pulling back.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes, sir. Shit.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you, sir, and could you lean on those artillery folks to fuck the ammo and let her rip? Or I’ll start making LBM launchers slaved to myself and stop any production of their shells as useless as they are waiting to be fired.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Watch me,” Mark growled. “If they aren’t helping me, then they’re a damned waste of resources that I won’t be spending anything on.”

  “That’s a chargeable offense, Mark!” Yousef’s voice cut strips off him.

  “Legate Yousef, I will keep my people alive as best as I can with the resources I have. Screw the damned charges. I’ll deal with them—if I’m alive after all of this. Get. The. Anti-matter cleared and the artillery doing their job. Sir.” He cut the channel, gnashing his teeth.

  “Sarah, make it look like we’re staying still to them.”

  “Done.”

  He didn’t want to tip his hand that his people were already moving to get into the pass. The Bellonas were in the process of pulling in their stabilizers and picking up the trooper legionnaires not inside one of the transports they’d acquired from the Indalias, mostly air-cars left behind in the towers they were told to demolish. It made for an odd sight as family transports, school buses, an
d a few sport versions zipped behind the Bellonas that picked up speed in a most unnatural way.

  The forty-five-thousand-ton tanks tore up the ground as their power plants pushed them to their top speeds of two hundred kilometers per hour.

  At the rear, followed a group of ancient armored badgers. The massive armored transports had had their guns stripped for the wall but they still had their five-foot-thick armor and multiple-storied wheels. The Phantoms flew around the formation with their frames on. They firmly believed in the two thoughts that there was no such thing as too much ammunition, or overkill.

  At the rear, a contubernium split into their separate fireteams and picked up two big gray sleds, which were armorite fabbers, and flew them to where the wall should be as fast as their Thunderbolts could travel.

  The ground shook with the sounds of tracks, air blades, orders, and the odd humming of the gravity drives of the Phantoms. Thousands of men and women were on the move to do what they did best: show the Maraukians a wall of hurt and hit back.

  Mark looked at Ava for a second beside him as he floated into the air. With her following, they leveled out, pushing their Thunderbolts’ grav engines as they raced around the back of the black armorite wall toward the open pass.

  Chapter 18

  Eastern Defensive Line 317

  Indalia, Otarvi System

  6/3555

  Daniel Reckhi—or Dodger to everyone, including his own subordinates—was not feeling invincible. He might’ve if the wall that was supposed to be behind him covering the left flank was more than just a thought only now being put together by every armorite fabber he could lay his hands on.

  Instead, he, like his men, was digging a damned trench before the jungle line.

  “Jarek, why can’t we just use cratering charges?” a merger asked over the net to the grumbles of agreement of his fellow diggers.

  “What? A little bit of digging’s got you complaining! Your widdle arms going to fall off from doing some hard work?” Jarek said in a tone you’d use to talk to a newborn, or a dog. Or a seven-hundred-pound gorilla that was tired of digging through rock.

  Dodger was actually rethinking his idea of not using cratering charges. It was hard going, digging. Though it was more of cutting into the mountain and heaving the resulting blocks out of the hole they made. Cratering charge might have been the right way to go, he admitted to himself but also firmly stopped himself from telling people to use their charges.

  Once an officer made a decision, he’d damned well made it, even if he didn’t like carrying it out himself. He turned his attention back to the conversation over the net, wondering how his effective second-in-command would deal with the little upstart. Need more running, then we’ll see them complain about tough work. Dodger grinned at the idea.

  “No, but Jarek…” His tone took on a wheedling note.

  “This isn’t the normal fucking legion. This is the fucking Vanguard legion. We lead from the front. We do tough shit, so shut it and carry on, merger!” Jarek’s tone hardened like steel and rose to his instructor’s tone, firmly reprimanding the upstart who hadn’t let go of his complaints the first time.

  “If you have any further comments, I will happily address them but don’t be surprised if I plant my boot with its gravity field fully turned up in your rear!”

  Dodger grinned at this particularly interesting threat. Unlike the original suits that had had one main gravity engine, they had modified their suits to have them throughout their limbs, taking away stability issues when using the Thunderbolt platform and when flying at increased speeds. Now they could make individual gravity fields in their limbs, mainly their fists and feet, either making objects come closer or be repelled. This modification had also replaced the magnetic clamps in their boots, meaning they could walk over anything and still be connected to any kind of surface, be it the side of a mountain or the hull of a spaceship.

  In one day of testing the new system, the simulator couldn’t properly understand the physics involved so they’d had to perform a more…practical test. Where Dodger, the man with the feet, cranked up the gravity field in his left boot, cranked up the negative gravity field in his right and caused a soccer ball to explode—an armorite soccer ball.

  Dodger had later used the trick to send his recruits sprawling across the base. They quickly learned to control their own gravity field to both stop themselves hitting the ground—which, although severe and left more than one recruit looking as if they deserved a week in medical—was taken in stride as they cut off their nerve endings and let the nanites get to work. Two birds with one stone, Dodger thought happily to himself as his men were quickly digging into the ground.

  “How’s it going over there, Legate Nerva?” Dodger asked on a private channel. He zoomed in on the troopers line four kilometers back; they were also digging in but with cratering charges and excavators, which spewed chewed-up stone from the holes. They were physically unable of cutting and then removing the blocks Dodger’s men were easily throwing around as if they weighed a fifth of the three hundred pounds each block roughly was.

  “We’ve got our repulsors lined up, ready and linked to their gunners’ HUDs. We’re nearly done here. I’ll inform you when we are. Yourself?”

  “Just about there. Some people aren’t too happy to be digging in.”

  “You’re actually digging?” the legate said in surprise.

  “Of course. Don’t rely on no cratering charges here, no sirree!” Dodger scanned the troopers’ trenches, his NIAI helpfully highlighting the legate with his helmet’s visor lifted and binoculars to his face as he scanned the line.

  “Damn. Every time I see you mergers, you’re up to something crazy that I would think impossible before.”

  “Thank you, Legate,” Dodger said proudly.

  “We’ll get back to letting the machines work for us. Nerva out.” The connection ended.

  Dodger expanded his trench toward his neighbors as he reflected on the makeup of the Vanguard legion.

  Technically, the three legates and Ortiz, head of the legates, outranked Mark and his mergers but the legates were more on a level playing field with Dodger and Ava. No one could doubt that Mark was in charge of the whole thing, even if four of his people were actually higher ranks than him.

  Though, for the troopers, it was relatively easy for them to swell their ranks: just a quick medical injection, some forge-made improved armor and weapons, plus a want to give the Maraukians what for in close. A merger took time to train to get used to merging, their new bodies, and now, it seemed, their chosen craft. Whether it be with the tankers and their Bellona or with the merge legionnaires and their Pluto armor. They were a much rarer breed. With the dropout for the Phantoms being around one in eighty, one century of them was the equivalent of approximately thirteen legions. Though he’d be damned if his men didn’t hit Maraukians as if they were twenty legions! Or his name wasn’t Daniel Torvectus Reckhi!

  Chapter 19

  Eastern Defensive Line 317

  Indalia, Otarvi System

  6/3555

  “Get me the committee,” Yousef said inside of his helmet. As his NIAI obeyed, a small screen displayed the ten heads of the committee that oversaw Indalia.

  “Legatus, to what do we owe the pleasure?” The head of the committee sounded as if he had much more important people to talk to than a mere legate in charge of his planet’s defenses. Yousef had seen the readings on the chairman’s residence, seeing the acceleration rails for a small shuttle thanks to Mark’s liberal coating of the planet in sensors. This same rail system had been put on standby as soon as the Maraukians had landed. At least someone will survive from this planet, just wish it wasn’t that fat blob. Yousef reined in his displeasure at the chairman’s lack of regard for a healthy weight.

  His billowing clothes tried to hide the layers of fat underneath that the man had allowed to accumulate instead of taking a BMI reduction to keep him within safe boundaries. No matter what culture or time,
there would always be a few who liked and enjoyed foods beyond what Yousef could imagine.

  Sure, he’d eat a steak with as much relish as the next man, but he didn’t understand stuffing himself to the extremes the chairman had taken.

  He looked around the council room carefully. “Mark has requested an unlock on anti-matter weaponry.”

  The committee changed from civil to yelling in seconds. It took all Yousef could muster to not roll his eyes and sigh, remembering that his face was being transmitted via the trusty Mars communications suite inside his helmet.

  “This committee will not give any force the clearance to use anti-matter weaponry!” The chairman stared and yelled his other members into silence.

  “That does not explain why his forces aren’t moving to engage the enemy. I am told by the central sector wall commander that he hasn’t moved to protect an unforeseen hole in our wall.” The chairman’s fist hit the desk in front of him.

  Yousef breathed, controlling the rage inside him. At least we now know who told the central sector commander to build near the city. Going to have to replace him.

  “Mark will not move his troops to defend the wall without anti-matter weaponry being available for use. Without it, he will not be able to clear a position and defend the hole in the wall.”

  The chairman seemed to fume at this. “We are not at his beck and call! He will do as he is told and ordered by you!”

  “Sir, he is the commander on the ground. I can—”

  “You have been given your orders, Legate. Unless you don’t think you can carry them out,” the chairman said with a smug smile.

  “I don’t think I can.” Yousef was not going to support this move. “I will resign now, if it pleases the committee.”

  The gloating smug faces fell as he called their bluff. They knew he was the one keeping the wall together, no matter their meddling.

  “As you should. But do you think it shows a fault in your character if you leave your men on the field of battle before you’re about to be swarmed by Maraukians?”