Noah's Story: Marine Tanker (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 3)

by Jonathan Brazee

  “This is only temporary, Corporal, so don’t piss yourself. I’m only the temporary tank commander, so when we get a new one, I’m back to gunner, Sergeant Shearer’s back to driver, and that means you’re out on your ass, understand?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” the corporal shouted, throwing his pack on the ground and jumping on the Anvil. “What do you want me to do now?”

  Noah swiped the next checklist to the corporal’s PA and said, “Get working on that. Like I said, we’ve got less than two hours to be ready.”

  SAINT GALLEN

  Chapter 37

  “Please, folks. Keep behind the yellow tape,” Noah said for the hundredth time today.

  “When are you going to do something,” someone yelled from the crowd.

  What do you want me to do? Fire on the city? Jeesh!

  Noah had been pretty excited to get a last, actual mission. Now he almost regretted it. This was far from what he’d expected or in what he and his crew were trained. They’d been on the ground for ten days now, simply sitting and watching while throngs of family, gawkers, and newsies had invaded the city proper. The gawkers were there to witness, the newsies to record, but the families ate at Noah, and there was nothing he could do to help them.

  The terrorists held the old walled city. Noah still didn’t quite understand why the walls had even been built. They might have been a tourist draw over the last few centuries, but at the moment, they provided pretty good protection for the terrorists and a pretty good jail cell for the hostages.

  With a population of 250,000, Wallenstadt was much larger than just the walled city and sprawled along the Rhein where it flowed into the Lake Bodensee. The city, the lake, and the river, framed by snow-capped mountains, was truly beautiful, but it had lost its allure earlier on as the platoon essentially parked and watched, 200 meters from the walls. Noah had felt a little exposed at first, but the terrorists hadn’t shown any anti-tank capability so far—in fact, they had shown no aggression so far. Their demands were simple: kill the Capys on the planet, and they would release the hostages and surrender.

  Judging from the placards and augmented chants from the crowd, it sounded like most of the people thought that was a reasonable price. Just this morning, effigies of Capys appeared, hanging from handmade gallows.

  “Hey, Marine! You in the tank. I want you to talk to my sister,” a middle-aged man shouted, stepping under the yellow tape and holding out his PA.

  “Please, sir, you need to step back,” Noah answered as one of the FCDC troopers came over to manage the situation.

  “My sister! She’s in there!” the man shouted.

  Somewhat to Noah’s surprise, the Homo Primes, as the terrorists referred to themselves, allowed for full communications with the outside. No PA’s had been confiscated. That’s how he knew that just over that wall, not 30 meters in, over 2,000 of them were being held in a church. He knew that there were fewer than 30 guards on them. If it weren’t for the walls, the 30 guards couldn’t hold back their captives should they make a break for it. But the damned wall, 19 meters of unbroken plasticrete, stamped to look like stone, was as good as a jail cell’s bars.

  There were two ships in geosynchronous orbit over the city, scanners peeling back the inner city, layer by layer. Thousands, probably millions of nanodrones had been sent over the walls. The FCDC commander, a full two-star general who’d arrived to take over the operation, had an excellent picture of what was going on inside the city. What he didn’t have was a way to rescue the hostages without thousands of them being killed. So, the negotiators negotiated, but for show, not with the expectation of a breakthrough. This was turning into a major clusterfuck and huge public relations disaster—not to mention the 15,000 lives at stake.

  “I’m coming in,” Gunny Chimond passed on the net.

  With the mass of people, it took them more than a few minutes to move to the sides and let the Boudicca II through. A trooper cut the tape, then waved the gunny forward. Corporal Giscard-Suez, the driver, neatly brought the Boudicca II alongside the Anvil.

  The crowd was chanting again, so Noah passed on the net, “Nothing much new, except for the Capy effigies.”

  “Saw them coming in. Tension is rising. No aggression towards us, though?”

  “Nothing. Just the usual, I mean. They want us to do something.”

  “I want us to do something, Noah. I understand them. But if that’s all, consider yourself relieved.”

  “Roger that, and see you in twelve,” he passed, then to WB, “Let’s take her back—and we’re going through Whoville.”

  “Shit,” Llanzo muttered.

  Noah let it slide. They weren’t physically doing much, but the mental stress was taking its toll. He knew Llanzo just wanted to get back and out of the Anvil, and the direct route to the stadium was Victory Boulevard. “Whoville” was the name the Marines had anointed on the area to the north of Victory, a warren of small, winding streets and alleys. Noah would never want to enter a maze like that under combat conditions, but this wasn’t exactly combat, and WB, as he and Llanzo had taken to calling Corporal White Bear, was still an untested variable, and while he’d performed fine so far, Noah wanted to fit in all the driving time he could for the corporal.

  “Got it, Sergeant,” the driver said, his voice full of eagerness.

  Noah had to smile. It wasn’t so long ago that he couldn’t wait to drive the Anvil. Now it was WB’s turn.

  “OK, here’s your route, Corporal,” he said, sending over a convoluted route with more than a few tight turns and a switchback. “Don’t touch a single building.”

  “No problem, TC. I’ve got it.”

  Lessa gave Noah an unobtrusive wave from the Boudicca II’s gunner’s turret as they drove past the trooper, who was still holding the tape for them. It took several minutes for WB to creep the Anvil through the press of people, but finally, they left the people and the foreboding height of the wall behind.

  Chapter 38

  Noah tuned out the crowd as he dug his spoon into what was left of his Canadian Cobbler, scraping out the last tiny bits clinging to the bottom of the packet. It hadn’t been that long ago that he was making the dessert for Miriam, trying to lessen the blow of having to postpone their wedding. Now, he was a married man with two kids and another on the way. He’d changed a lot since then, and not just as a family man.

  Like with this cobbler, for starters.

  Noah, as a dedicated foodie, tended to sneer at fab food, but here he was, rummaging like a rat in trash to dig out every last morsel. He’d been surprised to see the dessert on the rotating menu, and he’d tasted it with more than a little trepidation, but it was actually delicious, and Noah tried to trade with his crew when either of them received it and he didn’t. Llanzo always told him to get bent, but WB usually traded, probably to try and get on his good side more than he wanted whatever dessert Noah had received in his meal packet. Noah felt a little guilty about using his rank for that—but not too much.

  He'd never have even been eating in the Anvil back when he first joined the crew. Staff Sergeant Cremineli wouldn’t allow it. But he was the commander now, even if temporarily, so he made the rules now. He wouldn’t let Llanzo or WB toss their packets out of the tank, especially given all the eyes on them every moment that they were on station, but the Anvil was their home, and it seemed ridiculous to implement rules that had no effect on their combat readiness.

  His food habits were minor, though, not too important in the grand scheme of things. He’d changed much more as a Marine. He’d originally enlisted more out of a sense of duty to his father’s memory, in part, he knew, because he’d always wanted his father’s approval. Over the course of his first tour, however, he’d started to love the Corps, to relish being part of the brotherhood. Going to tanks had been an exciting continuation of the journey. Now, as he was approaching the end of his enlistment, things had changed. The luster of being a Marine had faded.

  That’s not really it, he corr
ected himself. Be honest with yourself.

  His situation had changed, not the Corps. The deployments, while he actually enjoyed them, were hell on family life. Miriam had long gone past resigned acceptance and now actively resented the time he spent away. And Noah hated it, too, in that regard. Growing up, he’d sworn that he’d never be like his father, an absentee figure to be revered, but who wasn’t there for birthdays and school plays, for football games and holidays. Noah looked at the pictures of Chance and Hannah, downloaded and printed out only a week ago, that he’d affixed alongside his TC display. What was he missing as they grew?

  The bottom line was that he still loved being a Marine—he just feared what kind of father that made him.

  He burped, then folded up the cobbler packet and put it in the trash bag that he’d hung from the hatch release lever before he checked the time.

  Five more hours, he thought, disappointed that more time hadn’t passed.

  This mission was becoming excruciating to bear. They did nothing but sit, staring up at the wall. Just over it, Federation citizens were in dire straits, but they couldn’t do anything about it. The gouge was that the FCDC general, now assisted by a Marine full bird, had several plans ready to conduct a rescue, but he couldn’t get the OK. Meanwhile, the hostages, having been held for almost four weeks now, kept up communications with the outside.

  He swiveled around to look at the crowd. The numbers of looky-loos had dwindled, but the hardcore observers, the family members, were there day in and day out. Noah had gotten to know many of them.

  Sasson de Vries was one of the more vocal of them. Early on in the mission, he’d offered his PA and challenged Noah to speak with his sister, who was being held right in the church just over the wall. Sometimes, the terrorist guards would escort a hostage or two up the steeple in full sight of the crowd, like dangling bait, and just three days ago, his sister had been one of them.

  While Sasson demanded action, he understood the situation. Noah had spoken with him on a few occasions, and he understood the man’s position. If Esther were being held, he’d be going crazy as well. The Marines were supposed to defend people like Sasson, like his sister Julia, yet they were doing nothing for the 15,000 of them inside the walls.

  Noah didn’t have an answer, though. If they just assaulted, hostages would be slaughtered. But they couldn’t just sit like this forever. Something had to break out, one way or the other. Until then, though, he and his crew would just have to wait.

  Chapter 39

  The crowd was in an uproar, with more people streaming to the area. The FCDC troopers were having a difficult time holding them back. The Spec 5 in charge had asked Noah to swing a gun around to simply point at the crowd, but he’d refused. The crowd wasn’t the enemy, and he was not going to treat them as such.

  He understood their anger. Half-an-hour before, the terrorists had lined up five hostages on the city wall and executed them with the warning that more would be killed unless their demands were met. That had been outside the main gate into the walled city, on the opposite side from where they were, but the holos had immediately hit the undernet.

  Already, people were marching on the Capy refuge, and FCDC troops were scrambling to intercept them. Here, at their section of the wall, the troopers were nervous. A block to the north, the lieutenant was conferring with the FCDC sergeant first class. He’d already recalled the Boudicca II and the Ball Shot, but for the moment, the Anvil and six troopers were all that separated a hundred or more angry and scared civilians from the city walls.

  The holos had made Noah sick—sick and angry. The end game was approaching, and he’d be damned if he’d just sit and watch it unfold. He wasn’t sure what the Federation forces could do, but they had to do something.

  Whatever the general had planned, though, in such a contingency, did not involve either tank company. They were there only for show, which pissed Noah off. If it came to a rescue attempt, two Mamba platoons, which had arrived two weeks ago, and a mechanized company aboard Aardvarks would support the FCDC troops who were to be lifted over the walls with their own aircraft as well as Navy and Marine Albatrosses. The intent would be to swarm the terrorists and rescue as many of the hostages as they could before they were executed. Estimates that up to two-thirds of them would die had kept the Federation from launching an assault, but now with hostages being executed, that could change the command’s mind.

  From what little had been passed to the Marines, Noah thought the plan, despite the huge number of projected casualties, was about as good as could be developed. When he looked at the overhead images, though, he could see that there was no way to land an Albatross or one of the FCDC V-33’s anywhere near the church over the wall. Just over two thousand hostages were being held inside, and with nowhere for aircraft to land, and with no gate in the wall, those 2,000 wouldn’t have much of a chance should a massacre commence. FCDC BlackOps or Marine Recon could jump in, but not with the numbers to protect that many people until they could be escorted to safety.

  With 15,000 hostages, 2,000 might not seem as important, but to the people behind him, they were. And to Noah, after staring at the church steeple for five weeks, after seeing 20 or 30 being paraded around the steeple, these were “his” hostages. He felt attached to them.

  “Charlie-One-Four, Charlie-One-Two, divert to London,” the lieutenant passed on the platoon circuit.

  “London” was the Capy refuge. If the lieutenant was ordering the Boudicca II and the Ball-Shot there, things must be getting hotter.

  “It’s just us now, guys,” he told his crewmates. “Keep your heads up.”

  For what? I sure don’t know.

  He found out less than 20 minutes later when the simple words “Pink Dragon” were passed over the general net.

  “We’ve got an alert!” Noah said as he triggered the activation.

  Noah didn’t know what “Pink Dragon meant, and neither would anyone else hearing it. The Anvil’s AI compared it to an ever-shifting quantum cipher, and the actual command was displayed. The rescue was on.

  A quick glance revealed that Plan B was being put into action. Noah scanned first to the subordinate units, but nothing had changed for them. First Platoon, now minus two tanks, were to protect the civilian crowd and to take action as needed to protect hostages who managed to reach their position as well as apprehend or kill and terrorists trying to escape.

  “It’s on,” he told Llanzo and WB.

  “About fucking time,” Llanzo said.

  “Nothing’s changed for us. Keep the friendlies out of the way, rescue any hostages who make it over the wall, and if any of the terrorists make a break for it—”

  “Drop their asses,” Llanzo said. “With fucking pleasure.”

  According to the operations order, it would take 15 minutes before Federation Forces were crossing the city walls. That was a lot of time should the terrorists get wind of it and start their killing spree. Noah looked behind him at the crowd, and part of him wanted to tell them the rescue was one, but the risk was too great. A spy in the crowd, or even an overeager relative giving hope to those inside could result in a bloodbath.

  He swung back, hiding his face so that no one watching could pick anything up from him. As usual, his vision focused on the steeple. It was so close, but still, with the wall, it might as well have been a hundred klicks away. If it wasn’t there, the hostages could make a break for it once things went south. Noah had asked the lieutenant why combat engineers couldn’t just blow the wall if it came to that, and the answer was first that the plasticrete was designed to withstand standard explosives, diverting the force of the explosions to the sides. A slowly detonating explosive as was used in mines could work if it had enough power at the point of attack, almost pushing a hole in the wall, but Intel was pretty sure the church had been wired with sympathetic explosives that would detonate when another charge, even a slow, earth-moving-type charge, detonated within range, and the wall would be within that range. The li
eutenant said that if they had a medieval-type siege catapult, they could batter the wall in with huge rocks, but that was just wishful thinking.

  The irony was not lost on Noah. Here they were, essentially laying siege to the modern version of a medieval walled city, and they needed a medieval weapon to break the siege.

  “Ten minutes, guys,” he said.

  He considered ordering the crew to button up, but that could alert the crowd that something was up. His nerves were getting tighter and tighter, but he tried to act calm, at least. It was hard, though, when he realized that in a few short minutes, thousands of hostages could die.

  “Check your load,” he told Llanzo.

  “HE, Sergeant, same as always.”

  “I can see the readout, same as you. I want a visual.”

  He heard a grunt, then the thunk of the autoloader being opened.

  “HE, visually checked.”

  “Roger that.”

  Noah understood why the 75 mm railgun round and the Mad Mike would be useless against the wall, but the 90mm HE was a slower-acting round, even if “slower” was relative. He didn’t want to initiate a sympathetic detonation of charges placed inside the church, but if all other hope was lost, it might be better than nothing. Besides, the Anvil’s main gun, along with the coax, were locked onto the church’s steeple. He could imagine a terrorist climbing it to fire on the crowd, and if that happened, he’d blast the sucker into his component atoms.

  Noah kept looking down at the clock on his display. The timer under the GMT LED was slowly ticking down. For the last 30 seconds, he didn’t lift his head. As it hit zero, changing from red to green, Noah half-expected to hear something, anything, but H-hour indicated the aircraft crossing the LOD, which was almost 20 klicks away. The ground forces wouldn’t move until the aircraft passed PL Brown.

  Five hundred FCDC troops and almost 200 Marines were about to enter the inner city, but behind him, a few of the relatives were barely chanting with most of them taking a break. The newsies were mostly lounging under their tents as well, editing their human interest stories, which were about all they’d had since the start of the emergency. He wanted to shout out, to get them on their feet, but he held his tongue.