An explosion sent dirt flying 100 meters to the front. They’d been being peppered with small mortar rounds fired from inside the city where the enemy rightly assumed that the Jerry-John wouldn’t engage them. New Antalya was a Cennet city, and the government didn’t want it destroyed, and a few harassing rounds weren’t enough to trigger a massive response. Of course, what was “harassing” to an entire unit was not so harassing when you were the Marine being hit.
“I think I have a target,” Chili passed.
Several of the task force’s tanks had fired already, but only one target ended up being an actual vehicle. The rest had been ghosts, figments of the Ataturk spoofing programs. With technology so readily available, even a small power such as the Ataturk military could afford equipment and AIs that could spoof even the best that the Federation had to offer.
“I’m sending it up,” Sergeant Cremineli passed.
Less than 15 seconds later, Chili was given the OK. The infantry was told to hit the deck, the servos whined, and a few seconds later, the crack of the round reached Noah. He eagerly watched the impact, but it was only a small geyser of dirt instead of an explosion. They’d been spoofed.
Noah frowned, shaking out his left hand. His hand had been smashed, breaking several bones when the hatch had closed on it, but after going through his nano-scrub and being fitted with support servo-glove, he’d been given the OK to remain on full duty. Back at Camp Archuleta, he’d have been put into a week’s worth of regen, but even if the current mission was not the most threatening to a Marine task force, there just wasn’t anyone else to assign to the Anvil, and it was better for him to drive than for the tank to go out with only a two-man crew.
There was an immediate blare of an activation alarm, and Noah’s heart jumped. He swerved to the direction indicated, presenting the stronger front of the tank to the enemy when Staff Sergeant Mauser-Lopez, in the Ball-Shot, passed, “Threat destroyed,” as the alarm stopped its raucous blaring.
“Thanks, Sergeant Crawford,” he continued. “That was a little too close for comfort.”
“The grunts cut the guy down,” he passed, this time on the platoon circuit. “He just popped up out of nowhere with a Mantis on his shoulder. Never saw him until too late. There was no way we could’ve taken him out in time, but the grunts cut the fucker in half.”
A Mantis was a man-packed anti-armor missile with a pretty big punch. Presenting the front of a Davis to the missile probably would save the tank, but a hit on the sides or the rear could disable a Davis or even destroy one. The Ball-Shot was pretty lucky that the grunts around him had reacted as quickly as they had.
“You heard Staff Sergeant Mauser-Lopez. The threat is out there, so keep your eyes open,” the lieutenant passed. “But make sure your IA’s are at max discrimination. We’ve got our infantry friends all around us.”
The Intercepting Armor was one of the base components of the Davis’ Armor Protection System. Consisting of automated detection systems that identified incoming threats and shot out small shape rounds from one of eight gimbals, it was not very effective against an enemy tank or artillery round, but it could knock out an anti-armor missile or deflect an anti-armor grenade. Out in the open, the target acquisition discrimination was set low, and the IA’s would probably fire at a passing bird. With the grunts in such close proximity, the discrimination was set high, but that meant some real threats might be ignored.
Noah had just swung back around to continue the advance when one of the Aardvarks went up in a huge explosion. Noah couldn’t see it through his blocks, but he could see the column of black smoke reach up to the sky. Noah’s display did not indicate living, wounded, or dead Marines, but with a sinking feeling, he was pretty sure that the three crew members were dead. The blast had been so massive that it had to have been a mine. Noah automatically dropped his glance to the bottom of this display where the forward probes weren’t registering anything. The waves being blasted into the ground as they advanced indicated nothing, but the Anvil’s probes were the same as that on the Aardvarks, and they evidently hadn’t done much good. A Davis had far more protection than an Aardvark, but from the size of the blast, Noah didn’t think that mattered much. The fact that the grunts had just walked the ground didn’t matter, either. Anti-armor mines ignored dismounted infantry.
As if the detonation of the mine was a signal, four separate blooms of plasma reached out from previously concealed positions two klicks and still farther away. The power levels and range rendered the streams ineffective against tanks, and for a moment, Noah wondered why they had exposed themselves, but he was thinking armor, not combined arms. The energy weapons were not targeting the armor but the infantry. Strip away the grunts, and the tanks would be far more vulnerable to man-packed weapons such as the Mantis.
Noah kept a steady advance as Chili, along with probably every other tank in the lead two platoons, fired. From above, the avenging angel of the Jerry-John reached out to smote the plasma cannons. Within seconds of their firing, all four of the robo-cannons were silenced, but not before several Marines had been hit.
Noah drove the Anvil into a wash, momentarily blocking its view of the battlefield.
“Watch your nose,” Staff Sergeant Cremineli said as he pivoted slightly to take the edge of the wash head on.
Just shut up, already! he thought as he gunned the power.
Just as the Anvil powered up, there was a loud clang right in front of Noah, and his hatch split open with a six-centimeter gash. The breach alarm sounded.
“I told you to watch your nose!” the TC shouted.
Noah’s Number 3 block was a spider web of occluded palladiglass, and he could stick his finger out of the gash in the hatch itself.
Holy crap! he thought as he touched the gash.
“You OK?” Sergeant Cremineli asked, bending forward from his seat to look at him.
“I’m fine, but we’ve got a breech.”
They’d been buttoned up on orders from the lieutenant, which gave them the most protection. Now with a breech, they were more vulnerable, particularly from powerful-enough energy weapons. The static field around the Anvil would not be as effective in shunting aside an energy blast, and some energy could enter the tank at the gash—just a few centimeters from Noah’s head—not good for the Anvil, and particularly not good for Noah.
He gulped, took a deep breath, and checked the readouts. The IA’s had deployed, but not the PRA, the Plasma Reactive Armor, which covered 94% of the Anvil’s skin. Noah’s vision blocks and the hatch were not encased in PRA, and whatever hit them had creased his hatch. The Anvil was still battle-ready, even if a bit more vulnerable, but it had been an extremely close call.
“Target, armor, direct front, 3,000 meters,” Chili said.
“Engage,” the TC responded.
The whine of the railgun’s capacitors sounded different with the gash in his turret, as did the crack of the round as it left the muzzle. Noah realized that that could just be his hyped-up imagination, but as he’d never heard firing with his driver’s hatch open, he couldn’t be sure.
Chili fired twice more over the next minute as Noah tried to give him the best shot while keeping the grunts around him out of harm’s way. A railgun round could easily burst an eardrum of someone nearby the muzzle, and while the grunts were all in full battle rattle, to include their helmets, it was still a good practice to keep them far away from the muzzle and the trajectory of the rounds.
Noah was concentrating on just driving the tank, not really watching the battle unfold as rounds, missiles, and the Jerry-John’s energy beams crisscrossed the landscape. The Anvil took one more hit, but the PRA defeated whatever had targeted them. And suddenly, almost as if turning off a switch, the furious firefight was over. The Ataturk forces had withdrawn on carefully planned routes, out of any of the advancing Federation force’s lines of fire. The Jerry-John kept pounding away, and a few of the Federation’s surviving battle drones took a few shots, but the direct-fir
e weapons fell silent.
Noah flipped up the overall battle screen. Fourteen Ataturk weapons systems had been destroyed: twelve unmanned gun systems and two Teresas. On the Federation side, one Davis and two Aardvarks had been put out of action, six grunts had been hit, probably by fire aimed at the Federation Armor, and two Davises were down for mechanical reasons. The surviving Ataturk armor was in full retreat, bolting for the city. Technically, Noah knew the short battle was a victory for the Marines, but he thought the cost was too high. Fighting Gen 7 armor, he’d have thought the victory would be more lopsided.
With the enemy running, Noah’s instincts screamed to jump into the chase to stop them before they reached New Antalya, only a klick or two away from them. But he knew the command would be more deliberate. The retreat of the Ataturk armor could just be a ruse to pull the Marines into a trap, and even if it wasn’t, there could be plenty of surprises in front of them, from mines to hidden hunter-killer teams. Despite the 2,500 horses in the Anvil, Noah would be constrained to the walking pace of the infantry.
Twice, artillery fired out at the advancing Marines from inside the city, and both times, the Jerry-John took it out regardless of collateral damage to the surrounding buildings. The Cennet rep up on the ship was probably apoplectic, but there was no way the colonel was going to risk Marines for a few buildings.
A blast sounded 100 meters to Noah’s left.
“Hit a mine. No significant damage, and we’re still up,” the lieutenant passed.
“Watch out for mines,” Sergeant Cremineli passed to him immediately after that.
No shit, Sergeant. I guess Lessa wasn’t doing that?
Noah was becoming less and less enamored with his TC. He might have been right when Noah had gotten his hatch almost blown off, but the guy’s constant warnings and stating the obvious were beginning to grate on him.
Two more tanks and an Aardvark hit mines before they reached the wrinkle in the landscape that formed a shallow ridge stretching out across the valley floor 1,500 meters from the outskirts of the city. One of the tanks lost a track, but neither of the other two vehicles were put out of action.
Noah edged the Anvil up to the top of the small ridge.
“More,” Chili said as he looked down the barrel from the inside.
He had the gun depressed, and between the two of them, they wanted to get as much of the Anvil as they could behind the ridge while still allowing the sergeant to fire the 75mm gun. To make sure the gun was clear, the sergeant had opened the breach and was looking down the barrel. If he could see dirt, then any round fired would hit it.
“More . . . more . . . halt!”
There was a clamor behind Noah, and he turned to see Staff Sergeant Cremineli push himself into the gunner’s seat. Chili was crouching beside him, a frustrated expression on his face. From his vantage, Noah couldn’t see what the TC was doing, but he was sure the staff sergeant was checking the bore to make sure the gunner had done it right and that the sergeant wasn’t happy about that lack of trust. Staff Sergeant Cremineli had only been promoted the month before Noah had arrived, so only two months ago, he and Chili had both been the same rank, and that had to grate on Chili as well.
Noah didn’t get any orders to move the tank, so he knew Chili had positioned the Anvil correctly. From his lower position in the tank, all he could see was the dirt in front of him, so he switched to his display so he could watch the infantry and Aardvarks as they advanced to the city itself. For the moment, there wasn’t much he could do except monitor the display. Any fighting by the Anvil at this position would be by Chili—unless the staff sergeant took over control of the main gun. Noah wouldn’t put it past him. He was the main gunner for the .50 cal, which could reach into the city, but Noah thought he might want to take over as the Anvil’s gunner.
A shadow crossed over Noah, and he looked up to see the staff sergeant standing just outside his driver’s hatch. The TC knelt, then stuck a finger inside the gash in the turret. Noah had to suppress a strong inclination to smack the two fingers that were waving in his face.
The staff sergeant motioned for him to open the hatch.
“There’s no way we’re going to fix that ourselves. I’ll put in a call for a reaction team,” he said before walking back on top of the tank to his hatch.
Which was not a surprise to Noah. They’d been trained on how to work on the tanks, and there was a lot they could do with ingenuity and elbow grease, but repairing a break in the armor didn’t fall under that category. This was a Class 4 repair, and while the reaction team might be able to slap on a temporary patch, Class 4 repairs had to be done at a full facility. The Anvil wouldn’t get completely repaired until they were back at Archuleta.
Noah turned back to his display. He didn’t have the more sophisticated surveillance capabilities that the gunner and TC had, and he couldn’t even scan the city with his naked eyes to spot anything, so this was the best he could do. The advancing mechanized infantry quickly closed the distance to the city. Half of the grunts disembarked as they reached the outer edge while the rest remained in their APCs. Noah had never been straight-legged infantry. He had been a PICS Marine, and he would have fought in the city in the armored combat suits. That made sense to him. It made sense for straight-legged infantry to get out of the Aardvarks as soon as they reached the built-up area. It didn’t make sense to him for the infantry to stay buttoned up inside an Aardvark within the city itself. He’d felt vulnerable at Glen’s Landing in the Anvil, and an Aardvark was far more vulnerable. It might have most of the same APS as a Davis, but the basic bodies of the two vehicles were completely different.
Fighting was sporadic, though, as the infantry advanced. Noah tried to follow along, but he was losing concentration, and eventually, the long days were catching up to him. He started nodding, catching himself a few times as his head jerked too far down, but weariness overcame him, and he fell fast asleep, only to be woken when the Anvil’s 75mm fired.
Noah jerked back awake, hands reaching for his yokes, ready to attack or retreat.
“I can’t tell if I got him,” Chili was saying. “His firing position is gone, but he might have pulled back before I engaged.”
Noah looked at his display, then keyed in the weapons feed, jumping back 30 seconds. He could see the gunner zoom into a steeple, barely visible between the other intervening buildings. Chili manually tweaked the aiming point, then fired.
The 75mm round was quick, very quick, but still, gravity and other forces acted upon it. The range to the steeple was 5214 meters, and the space between the other buildings was extremely narrow. Just the slightest wind could push the round right into one of those buildings. But as Noah watched, the trace of the round was clearly visible as it threaded itself between the two buildings and struck the steeple with a decent-sized explosion.
“If the sniper retreated, at least you denied him that firing position,” Staff Sergeant Cremineli said.
And Noah realized what had happened. Normally, religious buildings and artifacts were to be left alone, but if a sniper was using one as a firing point on the Marines, the religious purpose of the structure was meaningless. With the positioning of the buildings, it was probable that the Anvil was the only tank with a possible shot, so they’d received the mission. Chili had fired an HE round to take out the sniper. A 90mm HE would have carried a bigger punch, but at over 5,000 meters, that was at the very edge of the bigger gun’s range.
Noah rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. The TC hadn’t noticed that he’d fallen asleep. It hadn’t mattered in this specific case, but that was no excuse. If he’d been called upon to move the Anvil, he wouldn’t have been able to react immediately. He shook his head, then slapped his face, admonishing himself to stay awake.
Twenty minutes later, the Ataturk commander contacted the colonel. He was ready to surrender. The Anvil remained in position—once a surrender was offered and accepted, breaking it was considered a war crime, but it had happened before, so the tw
o forward tank platoons remained in place with Second Platoon displacing into the city. The rather sparse Ataturk forces were throwing down their arms and surrendering, and the Cennet militia moved through the Federation lines to start processing the prisoners.
The Marines searched the city, and by nightfall, Colonel Bhekizizwe declared the city secure.
The war wasn’t over, but the Marines had given Cennet the upper hand again for the negotiations. With no orders to pursue the Ataturk forces over the border, the Marines settled in for what could be a lengthy occupation of the city.
Chapter 8
“Hey, you got any of that peach crumble left?” Chili asked.
“Peach crumble, he says,” Noah muttered as he rolled over and pulled the packet of stasis dessert from his pack.
The only reason he even had it was that they had to police up their trash and he couldn’t just dump it on the ground. The peach crumble was a gloppy mess of sugar and cinnamon fabricated by industrial units somewhere. As far as Noah was concerned, it was a waste of a perfectly good field stasis pack. Supposedly given out as treats for the Marines, Noah wouldn’t eat them, as Chili well knew.
He tossed the packet to Chili who snagged in out of the air, eagerly tearing open the top and using his fingers, the same grubby fingers that hadn’t seen a shower in three weeks and which had been working on the Anvil, to reach in and pull out the orange goop. He put his peach-laden fingers in his mouth, pulling them out slowly and savoring the crumble left behind.
That’s one way to clean your hand, I guess, Noah thought as he closed his eyes, trying to drift off into a nap.
“Don’t know why you won’t eat the P-Crumb. It’s good shit,” Chili said. “All the more for me, I guess,”
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 58