-(o)-
I heard the sound of footfalls, but from behind this time. Soldiers, Coalition soldiers, running past.
Reinforcements. At last, I thought bitterly. Better late than... fuck it. I should have felt relieved, but all I felt was tiredness and anger.
A knot of troops trying get down the hill in front of my position stopped cold, they couldn’t go any farther, there were too many enemy dead piled up.
Someone peeked in the front of my hole. His eyes were red and inflamed, his face filthy. I thought I recognized him from one of the other platoons.
“This was the last of them, sarge,” he said. Norris, from 1st Platoon. I recognized his voice. “We heard the shooting and came as fast as we could. The general said your platoon had been wiped out.”
“General, look here!” someone yelled. It was the brown-nosing major from yesterday.
A crowd gathered around the wall of bodies in front of my hole. I climbed out and saw it wasn’t a wall, but a pile, a small hill. The pile stretched down the slope out past what shreds of wire remained from our barriers.
I didn’t understand why they came at us at this point on the hill, and why they kept coming. I decided I probably never would.
Norris handed me a canteen of water as I sat on the top of my fighting position.
“Your LT is dead. Smelled like he shit himself,” he said. Maybe I’d laugh at that one day. Bob would have laughed himself to tears if he knew.
“Platoon sergeant?” I asked.
He shook his head and sat down beside me.
Several of the general’s lackeys were pointing at me and yammering at the general.
She walked over and gave me what I was sure she thought was a winning smile. She offered me her hand. I ignored the gesture, disappointing an officer with a camera.
The general ignored my snub. Said she’d pin a medal on me herself, told me I should be proud. I asked her about Bob, torn apart, half buried in the grave we had dug for ourselves. The one-star told me Bob’s family would get his medal, that she’d send them a message telling them she and the Coalition appreciated his sacrifice.
“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled,” I replied. She didn’t notice the bitter sarcasm in my voice.
The general and her entourage walked to the piles of bodies. She was telling her sycophants about kill zones and the lay of the land.
I snorted and shook my head in disgust. I scooped a handful of dirt from the top of my hole.
My eyes burned and my ears still rang. I looked around, not many of us left alive, at least not from my platoon. I saw young Private Hollis dragging himself from his hole. The look on his face told me Shiner was dead. The hill looked like a volcano coming to life, smoke rising, reeking like being downwind from an industrial fire and a crematorium.
More officers congregated near the general and the enemy dead I had piled up, while the rest of the battalion swept the hill looking for living Pythans. The one-star was getting her picture taken by one of her sycophants who was playing photojournalist. I looked at the handful of dirt I held. Good soil, stopped everything they threw at us. I let the dirt flow through my fingers and wiped my hand on my pant leg. I picked up my e-tool. I bounced the weight of it in my hand and pondered on how much damage it could cause to an idiot’s head, general or otherwise.
-(o)-
Interlude
Once the Pythan advance into Coalition space had been checked, the Pythan tactics became clear. While solidifying their positions in occupied systems, they would perform raids on colony worlds in disputed systems in an effort to dilute Coalition forces.
In these contested systems, they launched quick strikes with troop transports dropping forces on lightly defended colony worlds. If those ground forces proved successful in establishing a foothold planetside, they would reinforce them and increase their presence in space around the planet.
That was where the first ground engagements would be fought, on colony worlds, with relatively small forces battling for survival and the fate of a planet.
The colony world of Planna was one such place.
. . .
Hero. A word that means many things. A word that can be used in many ways: as praise, as scorn, as a title, as a curse.
In war, many heroes, perhaps even most heroes, are never recognized, at least not officially. There can be a myriad of reasons these soldiers escape attention: soldiers who fought and died alone; soldiers whose deeds were known only to their comrades; soldiers at odds with their commanders, commanders who would never recommend them for an award; soldiers who saw medals as worthless or eschewed attention and didn’t give a damn about a worthless piece of metal signifying their deeds.
Some heroes are created for a purpose: to divert attention, to deflect blame, to promote a cause, to whitewash a debacle. Some might call them heroes of convenience.
Some who came to be lauded as heroes sought the title and the attention, glory hounds, as many line soldiers would call them. Detested and scorned by most soldiers because such a person would get them killed in their quest for recognition.
Some who came to be called as heroes found themselves in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and did the right thing, having the term applied to them inadvertently.
Many who came to be labeled as hero never thought of themselves as such, even after the act that brought the epithet to apply to them.
Hero. A word applied in so many ways, for so many reasons, legitimate or not.
For the soldiers of 4th Platoon, Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 133rd Regiment, First Brigade, of the 86th Division, it would have come as a surprise to them that a hero would emerge from their ranks at the end of battle, had they known beforehand.
Deployed to defend the colony planet, Planna—in the Conway system—from Pythan attack, 3rd Battalion had an advantage over units like those on Horton and Courane, they were not cut off or caught flatfooted by Pythan attack. A question remained though, was that enough? Could a hero in the right place make a difference?
…
A Hero Amongst Us
“Say again, over,” the radio blared in the soldier’s ear.
Another voice answered. “Big-Steel-Five-Niner, this is Orange-Four-Bravo. I repeat, bring it down on my pos. We have Pythan troops in our perimeter and are being overrun. Bring the artillery down on my position,” came the staticky reply. This second voice sounded fierce and grim. Automatic weapons fire could be heard in the background.
“Uh… roger, Orange-Four-Bravo. It’s your call. Stand by.”
“They are right on top of me. Fire for effect. Advise regiment. This is my final transmission, out.”
-(o)-
CFS Colony World, Planna
“Good afternoon,” Colonel David Vance said to the gathering of officers standing in a semi-circle in front of him. “As you are no doubt aware, the Pythans have achieved a landing to our north. We do not know the size of the force, but we estimate it to be approximately brigade strength. Their objective is almost certainly the landing port. It is up to this regiment to stop them.”
A hand went up, it belonged to a major, one of the battalion commanders.
“Sir, what about air defense? Word has it they knocked down a lot of Pythan landing craft.”
“If we believed all the claims being bandied about we wouldn’t be needed here because not a single landing ship made it to the ground intact,” the colonel answered. “We know that not to be true. We can confirm air defense dropped two. That’s it.”
A murmur of voices sounded among the officers.
“What about reinforcements, sir?” a voice in the back called out.
“Command is aware of the situation. Whether or not they decide to send troops is irrelevant, it will not matter today. Reinforcements will not arrive in time to help us at the landing port. What assets we have on planet right now is what we take to battle. We have to win with what we got.”
Once again, the officers buzzed with comments and questions.<
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“We are going to move north of the landing port and establish defensive positions at the likely avenues of approach,” COL Vance said. “The Pythans have heavy tree cover to help mask their movements, so drone surveillance will be of limited benefit to us. We have tube and rocket artillery assets available, so once we pin down where they are, we pound them and bury them.
“I want all battalion and company commanders to stay here for unit assignments. The rest of you get your troops ready to move. Dismissed.”
-(o)-
First Lieutenant Paul Sealy walked back to the company area, lagging behind the main group of platoon leaders of several different companies. Several others walked alone or in small groups. Sealy was not happy with his situation.
I didn’t take a commission to fight for some shithole like this, he thought. I wouldn’t have joined at all if law school had worked out. Fighting outnumbered four to one was not part of my life plan.
Sealy was the leader of 4th Platoon, Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 133rd Regiment, First Brigade, 86th Division. The Kicker Division, as the 86th was nicknamed, had dispersed its troops to several colony worlds, with the 133rd Regiment of the First Brigade deployed to Planna.
The regiment had been planetside for less than a standard week, spending most of that time setting up a bivouac site near the city of Brinkley, the colony’s only settlement large enough to be called such.
Even though they had been told a Pythan attack was possible, most of the troops were taken by surprise when it actually happened, perhaps none more than 1LT Sealy.
Sealy walked into 4th Platoon’s area.
“Sergeant Scales, get the men ready to move,” the lieutenant said to his platoon sergeant.
For the most part, Sealy let PSG Scales run the platoon. Sealy was a recent addition to the unit, pulled from a staff job to fill a vacancy in 4th Platoon. Scales was willing to give the lieutenant a little time in case he was still getting his feet under him. The sergeant’s instincts, honed by eighteen years in service, said something otherwise, and he was betting the lieutenant wasn’t going to amount to much. If that proved to be the case, it was fine with the sergeant, as long as the officer stayed out of the way.
“What’s the word, LT?” Scales asked.
“We are moving north of the landing port,” Sealy replied. “The Pythans are moving through the woods up there and we are going to be waiting for them.”
“What numbers we lookin’ at?”
“A brigade. Air defense didn’t do much to whittle that down.”
“That was the word making the rounds, and to be expected, sir. The AD units were set up to cover Brinkley, so they were taking some long, low-probability shots at the landing craft. It would’ve been nice if they had evened things up a little, but if we get dug in properly before the Pythans hit us, we’ll do okay.”
Sealy never understood how scuttlebutt spread so fast through the ranks, whether true or false, rumors nearly always outpaced the messenger.
“You’ve seen combat, sergeant?”
“Sixteen years ago in the Rump War, sir.”
“Anyone else in the platoon been in combat?”
“Nobody else in the company has, sir. It doesn’t matter much, truth be told. A shit ton of troops that are combat vets ain’t worth a tinker’s damn. It’s the quality of the soldier that counts, besides, sixty seconds after the fighting starts every damn one of these guys will be combat veterans,” he said gesturing at the platoon.
Sealy wondered if the sergeant knew how insane he seemed when he said that.
-(o)-
Sealy stood with the other platoon leaders and platoon sergeants from the company on one side of the large map table in the Bravo Company Headquarters as Captain Parker, the company commander, briefed them on their assignments.
“Bravo Company will be the end of the line on the regiment’s left flank here to the west,” he said tracing an arc on the map display, his finger ending at a point that showed heavy tree cover northwest of the landing port.
“The company’s primary mission is to hold this road from the north that leads to the landing port, with First, Second, and Third platoons dug in here,” Parker said pointing to a spot on the map that indicated their position would straddle the road well clear of where it exited the dense woods. “This open space will be our killing ground,” he said stabbing the map with his index finger hard enough to make a thump.
“Fourth Platoon will cover this trail 400 meters west of the road, and Fifth Platoon on this trail 200 meters west of that. Those trails are very narrow and incapable of supporting vehicle traffic because of the marshes that cover much of the low ground.”
Sealy looked on in horror at the position his platoon was tasked to hold. We are being hung out to dry, he thought.
“It is highly unlikely the Pythans will try and utilize those trails for any major troop movements. It would be difficult or impossible to move large numbers down such narrow paths, but if they try, artillery will be preplotted on the trails, ready to deal with such an eventuality. Any questions?”
“What artillery assets do we have available, sir?” one of the platoon leaders asked.
“We don’t know yet, but battalion says we’ll have artillery cards ready for each platoon before we move out. You’ll get more information when we get to our destination. We leave within the hour, so see to your platoons,” CPT Parker said.
Sealy looked to his platoon sergeant. “See that we are ready to move, sergeant. I need to speak with the captain.”
“You got it, LT.”
Sealy followed the company commander to a map on a nearby wall.
“Captain Parker, may I speak with you?”
“What do you need, lieutenant?”
“I would request that my platoon be at the road, sir. Sergeant Scales has seen combat and I think we would be better used—”
“I like your attitude, Sealy. Looking for action, that’s good. I placed your platoon where I did for a reason. I need a steady hand covering those two trails, just in case. You and Lieutenant Oakes in Fifth Platoon are those steady hands. This is going to be a long war. There will be plenty of time and opportunity for you to get in there and mix it up if it doesn’t happen today. See to your platoon, lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir,” Sealy said.
He walked from the HQ with a grimace, pushing past several soldiers. There has to be a way to get out of this suicide mission. But how?
“Lieutenant Sealy looked upset when he left, sir,” First Sergeant Hall said to Parker.
“He wants to be at the road, top. His stock has gone up a little by my estimation. Maybe war is what it will take to turn him into a decent officer.”
“If you say so, sir,” the first sergeant replied, his tone belying his skepticism.
1SG Hall shook his head as he walked away.
-(o)-
When he returned to the platoon area, Sealy saw that Scales had the platoon ready to move out.
“Are the men aware of our mission, Sergeant Scales?”
“Roger that, LT. Battalion distributed the platoon cards. Here are the frequency charts for the radio net, authentication codes, and topographic grid map of our area,” he said handing the items he mentioned to the lieutenant. “Here’s the arty cards with preplots. I marked those that apply to our area of operations.” Scales tapped the screen attached to his forearm. “Plug’em into your command screen and we’ll be good to go, sir.”
Sealy took the card from the sergeant, rankled at the propensity platoon sergeants had for leading the platoon leader.
“How do we get to our position, sergeant?”
“We’re marching, sir. It’s only four or five klicks. Trucks will bring up extra ammo, anti-personnel mines, concertina and razor wire, and the like.”
An hour later Bravo Company passed to the west of the landing port and made their way up the road to the position where 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Platoons would dig in. Nearly everything west was dense forest
covering hills and ridges, and little else.
“Oakes, Sealy, a word before you depart,” CPT Parker said as he waved the platoon leaders his way.
The two lieutenants joined their commander.
“Supply sent several motor mules to your positions with materiel. If there is anything else you need, get on the horn and let me know and I’ll see what I can do. Regiment thinks the Pythans will attempt a night attack at the center of our line tonight, so be sure your units are well emplaced before dark.”
The lieutenants answered, “Yes, sir,” almost simultaneously.
“Regiment tells me the Pythans like to probe and harass along the line to keep their opponents off balance. This is based on what we know of engagements on other colony worlds, so don’t be surprised if you take fire. If you do, assess the situation before you seek support. We don’t want to squander assets needlessly. They won’t be pushing a major attack through that mess of a forest, got me?”
Once again, the lieutenants’ affirmative replies were nearly simultaneous.
Sealy was relieved that his voice didn’t crack.
“Good luck, lieutenants. I know you’ll do a fine job.”
Oakes’ platoon took the lead down the two-track path that would get them to their assigned positions. The tire imprints of the motor mules were visible on the trail.
When they reached 4th Platoon’s position the other platoon continued on to their position save for Lieutenant Oakes, who stopped to speak with Sealy.
“We’ll be close enough to support one another if things get too sticky, but I think we’ll be okay,” Oakes said. “I’ll do a commo check with you when we are in position. Good luck, Sealy.” The lieutenants shook hands and Oakes left to rejoin his platoon.
Sealy looked at his troops, already moving the materiel that had been deposited on top of the ridge. Scales had the men carrying them down to a flat area approximately halfway down the side of the ridge.
Conflict: The Pythan War, Invasion Page 7