by J. N. Chaney
Rev switched to the channel, which showed more detail of the enemy situation. More red dots were popping up as drones, orbital surveillance, and ground-mounted sensors started to pick up massive numbers of people coming out of buildings and the sewage system to converge on the spaceport. Several crossed the FEBA as they advanced.
“You owe us,” Hussein told Tomiko.
“Eat me.”
More mortar rounds hit, but only the last two felt inside the bunker. One of the Marine arty platoons opened up counter-battery fire with their bigger and much more capable 150s. If the Angel shit mortar teams hadn’t repositioned already, they were in for a rude awakening.
But with the arty firing, the Marines were officially committed. There would be no backing down now.
Rev switched back to visual mode, but he left the Channel Six feed live in the bottom right of his display. He could have it fed directly into his occipital lobe, but that always made it seem more vivid and harder to focus on anything else.
“And here comes our air,” Nix said as Marine Buzzards swept in, taking the advancing Children of Angels under fire. Traditionally, Marine and Navy air were referred to as “angels” by ground troops, but with “Angel shits” in use, that had been abandoned.
According to the Ops Order, these initial passes were not so much to stop them but rather to funnel them into the teeth of the defense. Glancing at the Channel Six feed, it seemed to be working. The body of attackers flowed away from the planes, bunching together.
“Idiots,” Yazzie said.
But even idiots had teeth. A ground-to-air missile reached out from the buildings at too short a range for one of the Buzzards to avoid. The chopper’s defenses intercepted the missile, making it detonate short, but it was still too close. The plane veered off to the right, taking it away from the city as it trailed smoke.
The Buzzard was a tough airframe, and it would probably land safely out in the countryside. Hopefully, a SAR team could get there before any roving band of Angel shits did.
Arty was tearing them up, but still, they advanced. Rev tried to think of them only as the enemy, but visions of broken bodies littering the streets kept intruding in his mind.
Just quit, already. You’ve lost.
But they kept coming. It might be admirable if it wasn’t so misguided and sad.
Rev checked the enemy disposition when there was a flash high over the defenses, and the feed cut off. Rev knew immediately what it was.
“You still with me, Punch?” was his first, immediate reaction.
He felt a surge of relief. “How about comms?”
“What’s my status?”
Around him, Marines were ejecting the mag-rifles’ powerpacks, letting them fall to the ground. New powerpacks were removed from the shielded magazines and inserted. Rev checked his weapon as the LEDs cycled to green.
“I knew it was too good to last,” Tomiko said as she checked her weapon.
They’d been getting spoiled with all their electronics capabilities. An EMP wasn’t that advanced of a weapon, however, so it hadn’t been a case of if they would be used, only when.
“Get ready, and make sure you listen up,” the staff sergeant said.
And he was right, of course. The EMP was the Children of Angels’ signal. With a shout, they started pouring into the killing fields.
“Look at that idiot,” Strap said.
Leading the charge was a male figure, holding a white flag, but not the flag of surrender. Rev zoomed in. The flag was a battle standard, white with two gold angel wings in the center. The guy’s mouth was open as he screamed and waved the flag, looking like an old painting of the French Revolution.
Somehow, though, while Children of Angels fell around him, he continued untouched, trying to rally his fellow traitors.
“How far is he going to get?” Yazzie asked.
One hundred meters, a hundred-fifty, he charged until finally he stumbled and fell face-first onto the ground, the flag flipping end-over-end until the butt of the pole hit the dirt—and for a moment, it looked like it would somehow stick that way as if planted. But slowly, it tilted over and fell.
And as if that was a signal, the heavens opened up, cutting a swath through those who’d made it that far. High in orbit, a Navy gunship opened up with one of its terra-joule cannons. Even after sublimation in the atmosphere, the beam struck like Thor’s hammer, disintegrating bodies into their component atoms.
The gunship was supporting Marine operations in six cities, one cannon for each regiment. Even with the one, the results were horrifying. The cannon was not suited for rooting out small groups of enemies, but after being bunched up by mines, arty, and air, they were being slaughtered.
But still, they came.
“Damn,” Yazzie said quietly.
Throughout the course of the war with the Centaurs, human armies relied on massive numbers to overwhelm the better-armed and equipped enemy. This time, the Marines were the ones fighting off the hordes. And if the Children of Angels reached the bunkers, Rev thought they might have a chance, something he hadn’t really considered up until that moment watching them advance.
He should have. He was almost taken out by that bodyguard on the snatch mission, and he’d just seen them take out a Marine Buzzard. It never served to underestimate a motivated and dedicated enemy.
“Why do they keep coming?” Tomiko asked with none of her usual in-your-face bravado.
“Religion,” the staff sergeant answered. “They’re fanatics. And remember our briefs. Dying is a shortcut to the next level. They want that.”
But maybe not all were ready for that promotion. As the gunboat devastated the charging Angel shits, first a few, then more and more of them started turning back. With Channel Six knocked out, Rev couldn’t tell how many, but he could see it with his naked eyes.
“They’re breaking,” he said.
“Stand by,” the staff sergeant said, only to have someone in the Command Post repeat the same two words over the speaker.
Without comms, the landline system was the primary means of communication. And if that was cut, then there were audio and visual signals. Fighting the Centaurs, the Marines had gotten pretty good at this.
Rev checked his M-49 again. His charge LED still shined a steady green, his magazine full with 1240 darts. He felt the familiar surge of adrenaline flow through him.
“Are you pumping me up, Punch?” he asked for the first time.
Can Punch lie?
Rev shrugged it off. He’d long suspected that Punch was more than what he’d been told, and that his battle buddy controlled more of him than he expected. But it really didn’t matter now.
“Assault Elements One, Three, Five, and Seven, advance,” came the calm voice over the speaker.
“You heard her,” Staff Sergeant Delacrie said. “Let’s go!”
The team piled out of the back of the bunker, joining other Marines as they started the counterattack.
Not everyone. The second bunker over was a gaping, blackened hole. Rev tore his gaze away, hoping that whoever was in there got out.
With the brunt of the attack blunted and the Angel shits in disarray, now it was time to crush them, to break their will. And if they didn’t break, to kill them.
The gunboat continued the onslaught, sweeping the way clear. The artillery walked their fire forward as a thousand Marines, half of the regiment’s strength, rushed the perimeter.
A few brave souls resisted the urge to flee, standing tall and delivering fire into the charging Marines. Brave, but foolish. They were cut down in their tracks.
This wasn’t just a mad rush by the Marines. Each squad, each team, had a mission. Some were already stopping, providing a base of fire. Lots of snipers were becoming HOGs as they picked
off those Angel shits who were trying to rally the rest.
Third Team, First Raider Platoon had an assigned objective, a single block 950 meters from the spaceport’s main gate. Second Team had the block to the south, the Frisians in Fourth had the block to the north.
Normally, the Marines would advance, block by block, clearing each one, but the commanding officer wanted to maximize shock value before the surviving Angel shits could start to regroup. They would run or be killed. Nothing else. So, the platoon followed in trace of Hotel Company as squads peeled off to clear closer blocks.
Meanwhile, a squadron of Buzzards that had been circling well away from the city (and out of the EMP range—Rev guessed maybe the command knew what they were doing after all) would be lifting more Marines into blocking positions at the edge of the city. There weren’t enough Marines to form an airtight cordon, but they should be able to trap most of the Children of Angels who’d been part of the assault.
Rev and the rest of the team passed the front gates and kept pushing. With Marines to their flanks and more ahead, they could move quickly. The signs of battle were evident. While the gunboat had vaporized many of the Children of Angels in the kill zone, leaving the terminal and other structures damaged, but intact, arty and air had wreaked havoc once in the city proper. The first squads of Hotel didn’t have much to clear. Rubble, bodies, and parts of bodies littered the way. A few sullen wounded glared if they had the energy, or stared blankly at the passing Marines. They were stripped of any weapons, zip-tied, and left where they lay. They’d be picked up later and treated if they managed to stay alive that long. From the looks of it, some wouldn’t.
That might not seem in step with the Titan Accords with regards to the treatment of combatants, but as the Staff Judge Advocate said during the Ops Order, the Angel shits were traitors to humanity and not protected by the accords. Rev didn’t know if he bought that. It sounded too pat to him. But he was getting more inured to the killing of other humans, and he really couldn’t muster up much sympathy for them.
In another century, they’d be killed outright. Now, they’d be brainwiped at worst, serve time at best.
Just ahead of the team, some of the Hotel Marines came under fire and took cover the best they could among the rubble or those walls still standing before returning fire.
“Suppressing fire!” Staff Sergeant Delacrie shouted, emptying his magazine up ahead and to the left.
Rev tried to acquire a target, but they didn’t have an angle. Unless the staff sergeant had a break in the building, neither had he, and he’d just wasted a mag.
The infantry was already maneuvering into the buildings when Delacrie shouted “Advance,” waving his arm like an Old-Earth WWI soldier going over the top.
Nix snagged the staff sergeant by the arm as he tried to run past, then pulled the team leader in close. Rev couldn’t hear what Nix said, but it seemed to have an effect. The staff sergeant turned around, and with a lot less enthusiasm, told them to hold tight.
Third Team was acting as infantry, but they were still in their PAL-5’s not the heavier PAL-3s of the Hotel Marines. In this situation, under small arms fire, it was better to stick to their orders and let them take care of things. Trying to improvise had a better chance of friendly fire than of helping out. If they needed the Raiders to flank someone, they’d ask.
The firefight ahead lasted less than a minute. A squad went into the block while the rest of the column continued its push west down Wisteria Street, their avenue of advance.
“Move out,” the staff sergeant ordered.
Once again, they were on the move, pushing the surviving Children of Angels in front of them. There was sporadic, but ineffective incoming fire, but the Marines never faltered. Up ahead, the traitors would run up against the blocking forces. No one knew for sure what they’d do then, but meekly giving up was probably out of the question. They weren’t called fanatics for nothing.
The team didn’t need the sound of battle in front of them to know where they needed to be. Bodies littered the way like bread crumbs, leading the Marines forward. Rev tried not to look at them—instead, he scanned the heights. He’d seen what an enemy sniper could do, and that kept him focused.
“That’s our objective,” the staff sergeant called out.
The building—or half a building now—was a smoldering ruin. Something big had hit it. If anyone had been inside, they were no longer among the living.
Still, the team cleared what was left according to SOP. They’d gone too far to get killed doing something stupid. The battle was clearly going their way, but even a dying dog can apply a lethal bite.
“Take whatever position you can,” the team leader ordered.
Not very precise, but with the damage to the building, it would do. Rev took a position behind a chunk of still-standing wall with Tomiko on one side, Yazzie on the other. Ahead of them should be the bulk of the Children of Angel survivors, and it was their job to keep them fixed in place there.
Not just the team’s job. The infantry who had peeled away from the axis of advance had turned, paralleling the axis, but a hundred, two hundred, three hundred or more meters in. As they came alongside the Raider teams, the far units curved inward until they met up with the blocking force, a purse seine trapping the fish inside.
But they didn’t tighten the net. That wasn’t the infantry’s job. Four green flares shot into the air, and two minutes later, the mech companies ran past, their heavy tread making bits of wall fall around him.
“Should have surrendered,” Rev muttered as he watched the mechanical warriors rush to clean out the scum.
The fighting intensified while Marine Buzzards buzzed overhead like angry hornets. On a gun run, one of them veered suddenly away, ducking low. Rev wondered what that was about when the air crackled with energy from the Navy gunboat in orbit, and a moment later, a familiar blast sounded from just a few blocks away.
“A fucking tin-ass!” Tomiko said, looking at Rev, her eyes wide.
“Are you sure?” Yazzie asked.
“We’ve heard it before, Rev and me. That sure as shit was one.” She looked to Rev for confirmation.
“Punch?”
Rev knew the answer in his heart, but he wanted confirmation, too.
“I think it was.”
“Holy shit. If the tin-asses are here . . .” Yazzie said.
Yeah, that’s going to have consequences.
After the Centaur detonated, it didn’t take long. The Marines weren’t trying to dig the Angel shits out. They were crushing them where they hid. Less than an hour after the mech Marines thundered in, four orange flares shot into the sky.
The Battle for Natividad was over.
Which, of course, was jumping the gun. Their back was broken, and for all intents and purposes, the battle was won. But not everyone had been trapped. Not everyone had been captured or killed.
And then there was that little matter of the Centaur. No official word had reached them, but the brass had to be going batshit crazy trying to figure out if there were any more of them in the city. The fact that the Children of Angels and the Centaurs might have been working together brought a whole new layer to the situation.
The fighting in the trap might be over, but there was still a lot of city left. Along with most of the ground units, Third Team spent the rest of the day clearing buildings. There wasn’t much to clear, but they gathered up five prisoners. Four were wounded, and one was a young boy of fourteen or fifteen. He’d been hiding inside a closet, and he fell on his knees in front of Nix when he was pulled out, begging the sergeant not to kill him. The boy was zip-tied to a fence post and left for the MPs or CRA to sweep up.
Another was barely alive, both legs and her lower left arm gone. Doc Paul did what he could to stabilize her, but like the boy, the woman was left for the MPs. Doc wasn’t too happy about it, but orders were orders
.
A runner finally reached them with orders to return to the spaceport for food and rest. No one was going to argue that. They passed through a devastated city, ironically more damaged than the Centaur-held cities Rev had seen. Mankind had this kind of destruction down pat.
About six hundred meters from the spaceport, just across Harpin Boulevard, an infantry Marine stepped out in front of them. Another stood to the side.
“This area’s been cleared.”
“Just passing through,” Yazzie, who was on point, said. “Heading back for chow.”
“No shit?” the Marine said. “Must be nice. We’re going to be stuck here for a while.”
“Why’s that?” Rev asked as he moved to join Yazzie.
“We’ve got a tank down ahead, and the head shed thinks some Angel shit’s going to try and take it.”
Which was a logical precaution, Rev thought, despite the Marine’s tone.
“So, we good to pass through?” Rev asked.
“We’re supposed to secure the street, but hell, yeah, you can pass.” He turned and yelled down the street, “Marines, coming through.”
Rev looked back to the staff sergeant, then motioned the team forward. He was curious to see what happened to the tank. Was it just a breakdown, or had the Children of Angels scored a kill? But he couldn’t see anything, which was weird. How could he miss a Marine tank?
And he almost walked right past it. There was what looked like a sinkhole on one of the side streets, and he could just see the top of the tank. He moved closer, and . . .
“Oh, crap!”
He turned and stopped the team, then motioned Tomiko forward.
“What do you . . . oh, I can’t believe this!”
“Hey, Bundy, what are you doing down there?”
A familiar face looked up, saw them, and rolled his eyes. “Oh, great, just what I need now.”
“Really, what happened?” Rev pressed, trying to hold back from laughing. A damaged tank wasn’t a laughing matter, but after the battle, after a long day of clearing buildings, it just struck him as funny.
“The bastards excavated under the road but left the surface alone. The grunts walked right over it, but . . .”