First Strike

by Christopher Nuttall

  By 2030, as humans reckon time, the Hegemony had swallowed up nearly three hundred star systems and two client races. However, three major powers now bordered their space – and were arming frantically on the assumption that one of them would be targeted by the Funks next. Further expansion would be much more difficult...and if the pace of conquest slowed, the social strains in the Hegemony might rip it apart. With that in mind, the Funks decided to target the human race. What could such a puny race do to threaten them?

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  For more great books, go to www.henchmanpress.com !

  From the publisher of First Strike comes the story of an expendable counterinsurgency force, holding down the dirtiest parts of America’s interstellar empire: the United States Foreign Legion…

  Pantaleo had been right. The next village, and the ones after that, had had warning; there were less people and far less loot. Mullins had been given five and a half ounces of silver and an eighth-ounce of gold in the first village; over the next six days and five villages, plus about twenty freestanding farms, he got about a third of that again. According to a glimpse he’d had of the lieutenant’s map, they seemed to be moving in a rough loop.

  Now, as they prepared to leave a larger village – this one had two bars, and every drop of drinkable alcohol had been looted from both – he guessed that the two platoons, and the CG company with them, were no further than about twenty miles from Firebase 292.

  “I thought we were supposed to be out here for two weeks,” he said to Garza as they smoked.

  “Supposed to be. Man can only carry so much,” the sergeant replied. “Look at `em.”

  In this village, the local Colonial Guard troops had taken almost everything that wasn’t nailed down and a fair amount of stuff that was, regardless of its value. Over the course of the trip they’d acquired a few animals – two horses and several mules, one of which pulled a two-wheeled cart. Those, the Mutt four-wheelers and more than a dozen wheelbarrows were piled high with loot. The CGs’ packs and the animals’ saddlebags were stuffed to capacity.

  “So we go back to 292, let them dump the stuff, and come back out?” Mullins asked.

  “That’s about right,” said Garza. He glanced at his watch. “We’ve been ready to go for ten minutes. What the hell’s keeping `em?”

  Colonial Guard Captain Moore jabbed again at the map.

  “Look, moron,” he snarled at Junior Lieutenant Schmidt of the Legion. “This road takes us to within a fucking mile of the base, and there’s a trail from there.”

  “No, captain. We are not taking the road.”

  “Look, Mr. Schmidt,” said Moore’s XO. He was either playing good-cop or legitimately trying to be reasonable; Lieutenant Croft had seen that these two could get a pretty decent good-cop-bad-cop routine going with suspected secessionists. “The road follows pretty closely along the route we’d take anyway. If we use it, we’ll reach 292 well before nightfall.”

  “Or we won’t get there at all,” said Schmidt flatly.

  Croft glanced over his shoulder. They were about a hundred yards outside the village, at the head of the column. But it really wouldn’t do for any of the locals to hear this conversation.

  Probably be better if the enlisteds didn’t hear it either, but that wasn’t really avoidable.

  “Look, you idiots,” Schmidt said. “The Buddies know where we’re going. Even if none of them were plotting our course on a map, they’re not stupid. They know perfectly well that your men only steal kitchen sinks when they don’t plan to be carrying `em for very long.”

  That’s probably an exaggeration, thought Croft. In that he hadn’t seen CG men hauling away any sinks, but he hadn’t been everywhere at once. They’d stripped everything else bare; he’d seen easily a dozen men festooned with pans, pots and mugs that they’d tied onto their belts and pack-straps.

  The last village had been bad, when word had gotten around that they were almost back at 292. This place had been categorically plundered to the extent of curtains and lightbulbs; the deacon had loudly complained that his Bible had been stolen, as had all his hymn books, pew cushions, stationery and the weathercock on his steeple.

  “We’re not going to make very good time off-road,” said Moore’s XO. “In fact, we’re probably not going to get those Mutts or the wagon anywhere. The men are pretty encumbered too.”

  “So have them ditch some of it,” Schmidt said. “They must be carrying sixty or eighty pounds, each. And most of the stuff on the vehicles isn’t worth the fuel cost of flying it back to Roanoke.”

  The captain shook his head.

  “No, lieutenant. No. I’ve tolerated enough of this crap from you; we’re going to use the road and we’re moving out now. You can come with us or not.”

  He turned to his first sergeant.

  “Spread the word. We move out.”

  Schmidt gestured for Croft and Robles to follow him.

  “That man is an idiot,” he spat. “More concerned about his cut of the taxes than his own fucking survival. Warn your men that there’s a good chance we’ll be walking into something. Robles, put one of your fire-teams on point. Everyone else is to walk with weapons loaded and ready. Croft, detail one of your teams to outrider – a pair of men on each side at about twenty-five yards.”

  “Can’t we just call in helicopters and fly out?” asked Croft.

  “No; Moore would never go along. It’d look bad on his efficiency report. We could fly ourselves out, but orders are to stick with these fuckups. I don’t like it either.”

  They encountered the first roadblock about a mile in; three large trees had been felled and moved to block the road. At the first sight of it, Lieutenant Croft had shouted for everyone to get ready for action – as though, Mullins thought, we’re not already. Second Squad had looped around the roadblock, Mullins’ finger tense on his trigger and ready to blow away anything that moved.

  Except that whoever had cut the trees down was long-gone. They got busy clearing the block, which was hard axe-work and took a few minutes. Because of how narrow the road was, and the dense second-growth trees on either side, it was impossible to simply roll the long tree-trunks aside; the part blocking the road had to be cut away and it rolled aside.

  The second one occurred half a mile later and was the same. By the fifth, everyone was thoroughly pissed off.

  “They’re fucking with us,” Murray growled. “Cowards.”

  “If they’re fucking with us,” Garza said, “it means they’re around. Keep a lookout for booby traps and IEDs.”

  They were moving at snail-speed because of the overloaded CGs, who tripped and stumbled and cursed constantly. This road had, before the Insurrection, been two paved lanes; now it was barely wide enough to get a Mutt through. The forest for about ten feet on each side was second-growth, although after thirty years it was hard to tell the difference. Flakes of old tarmac were occasionally visible here and there, and a well-built, somewhat-maintained steel bridge crossed one stream.

  On the other side was another fallen tree.

  Tom Lee had been in the tree since an hour after dawn, twenty-five feet up and completely invisible. His ghillie suit was made from the same thin, flat needles as this particular subtype of tree, gathered last night. It would take another few hours for them to even begin to change color.

  He was motionless, even his breathing slow and subdued. He’d grown up in these woods, spent all of his thirty-two years here. Hunting and trapping required knowledge and discipline, and Lee had both. The three uncles who’d raised him – after the Fed motherfuckers had murdered his father outside Godfrey’s Landing – had taught him well.

  “One,” Lee mouthed, so silently that he himself couldn’t hear it. On his lower lip was a Chinese-made subvocal transmitter, part of a shipment of goodies that had arrived about a month ago. The Chinks weren’t so bad; they’d never butchered anyone on New Virginia. So far as Lee knew, now was the first time anyone had used any of this stuff for real. They were
supposed to wait, but everyone had agreed: these looting fuckers needed to pay.

  “Looks like all of `em,” he said. “Moving slow. Not being so careful with the trees any more.”

  “Roger, One,” came the reply through another Chink gift, a receiver that had required surgical attachment to his eardrum. “We’re ready.”

  Roadblock number thirteen occurred around the twelve-mile mark, as the road through the forest curved along a fairly gentle slope. By now the tree-trunks across their path were no longer scary, or particularly irritating; they were just boring. The four point guys had been given axes, and were already hacking away at it when the rest of the column arrived.

  “Tell Fourth we’ve got another damn block,” Lieutenant Schmidt told his radio man. That man already had his handset out.

  Lieutenant Croft turned to Sergeant Williams and said something that Mullins couldn’t hear. Williams nodded and began to walk down towards the end of the platoon. A few of the more gung-ho Colonial Guard, local troops, had mixed in with them; those guys were now leaning against trees or squatting; a couple of them lit cigarettes.

  Not such a bad idea, Mullins thought, and reached for his own pack.

  That was when the tree-trunk exploded.

  Explosions everywhere - ahead and behind. The blast wave of the exploding trunk, twenty feet in front of Mullins, knocked him reeling backwards. The air was suddenly full of woodchips and sawdust. He stumbled, flailing his arms and rolling, landed awkwardly on his side as a fusiliade of gunshots rang out from left and right.

  Almost instantaneously later, a ripping-cloth sound that Mullins recognized from training: machine-guns.

  Something wet and sticky – and slightly salty-tasting – was all over Mullins’ face. Somehow his eyes had been spared, although they stung. They stung like absolute hell but he forced them open anyway, rolling over onto his front and bringing up his gun.

  We’ve been ambushed. We’re in an ambush. They stuffed the trunk with explosives.

  More explosions. More gunfire from down the length of the line. Somebody began to scream.

  Bullets tore the air above Mullins’ head.

  Lieutenant Croft lay face-down, about ten feet away. His radio man, Lujan, had been thrown onto his back. There was nothing left of Lujan’s face above the mouth – nothing but a bloody crater the size of a grapefruit.

  “Run!” screamed one of the CGs, dropping his pack. “For the love of God, run!”

  That man turned, and a second later jerked spastically half a dozen times as the machine-gun riddled him. Another CG went down screaming.

  A deafening explosion not too far towards the rear. Clay and dust fountained up from the center of the road, CG bodies and backpacks amidst it.

  Oh, God. I am going to die, Mullins thought with surprising clarity. He hugged the ground.

  Lieutenant Croft was moving, alive but apparently injured. Garza was nowhere to be seen. Pantaleo had been somewhere behind. Most of Third Platoon lay sprawled on the road. A few guys were crawling towards the downhill side.

  The machine-gun traversed over them again. It was on the left, the higher side of the slope the road ran along. The muzzle-flash gave away its location. More muzzle-flashes from individual rifles. The fuckers were lying flat – or, given that they’d obviously had the time to set up an explosives-stuffed tree trunk and a machine-gun position, probably dug in.

  Somebody opened fire anyway. It might have been Guzman, the other private in Mullins’ fire team. Others followed his lead.

  They’re dug in and camouflaged.We’re firing from exposed ground.

  The screaming didn’t stop. Somehow he was able to think clearly despite it:

  We’re in deep shit. They’ve got us from both sides and we have no cover. And my platoon looks to be cut off.

  We’re not all that far from base. Maybe we can get support from them.

  Who was calling in that support? Somebody had to. But Lujan was dead, and Lieutenant Croft was either stunned or wounded or probably both.

  Schmidt and his radio man.

  Mullins raised his head, glanced in the direction of where he’d seen them last. A bullet whicked past his head, so close he felt the displaced air. A huge blond body that had to be the company XO lay not far from the roadblock, his belly ripped open and his head shattered. Next to that body, equally motionless and sprawled on his back, was Schmidt’s radio man.

  Oh, shit. The commander’s dead, the platoon leader’s wounded, and both radio guys are dead.

  He remembered something from weapons training. Officers were meant to be a sniper’s first priority. Radio men were up there, too. Buddy must have read the same field manual.

  Someone’s got to call in support.

  And nobody else seemed to be. They were shooting or shouting or moving for cover. Useful things to do – right now. For now. Someone had to think tactically.

  Before he knew what he was doing, he was wriggling as fast as possible towards Lujan’s corpse.

  I don’t even know how to use one of these fucking things!

  It was a radio – how damn complex could it be?

  He reached the corpse, rolled it over and picked up the handset. On the handle between the ear- and mouth-piece was an LCD display like the one on his wristwatch; right now it read 51.79. There were eight small rectangular buttons, four above and four below the display. The ones above it were simply numbered ‘1’ through ‘4’. The ones below had icons: fast-back, back, forward, fast-forward. Like audio editing software, he thought. Only these buttons probably controlled the radio’s frequency.

  Which one?

  Whatever it was presently set to – whichever 51.79 was. He pressed the thing to his face, pressed his face into the dirt.

  “Mayday!” he shouted into the mouthpiece. “Mayday mayday mayday! This is One-forty-four Bravo Three and we need fire support right now!”

  Nothing. No response. For one, two, three long seconds he waited in the hope that someone might pick up at the other end.

  It’s a dead channel. Or it’s company or something and they killed Fourth’s radio man as well.

  He wriggled sideways, trying to use Lujan’s body as some kind of cover. Still no response.

  It must be the company frequency, he thought. It made no sense for it to be anything else – that would be the frequency Lieutenant Croft would use to communicate with Fourth Platoon and Lieutenant Schmidt. Schmidt and his radio man were dead. There was no reason to assume that Lieutenant Robles and his radio man hadn’t been singled out, too.

  I don’t know the other frequencies!

  He took the phone away from his ear, prepared to dial randomly until he found something. Didn’t matter if Buddy was listening: the ones here knew he needed fire support. Besides, weren’t these radio channels supposed to be digitally encrypted?

  Those four buttons above the display. The audio-editing software he’d played with in college – and encountered a couple of times since – had movement-control. It also had bookmarks, preset locations.

  He hit ‘1’. The display didn’t change from 51.79. Desperately he jabbed ‘2’. The display became 39.72.

  “Mayday!” he snapped. “Mayday! This is One-forty-four Bravo Three and we need help now! Is anybody there?”

  A horrible moment of waiting: is nobody on this channel, either? Or is the radio broken?

  Then a calm voice responded:

  “Bravo Three, this is Two-Ninety-Two Rocky. What can we do for you?”

  Fort 292. What the fuck does Rocky mean?

  “We need fire support, Two-Ninety-Two Rocky. We need artillery and air and anything else you have, and we need it right now.”

  “Roger that, Bravo Three. Where d’you want it?”

  Oh, shit.

  They were supposed to be about eight or nine miles from 292. Somewhere to the south. Beyond that, he had no clue.

  The lieutenant had a map. Mullins raised his face from the dirt and saw Lieutenant Croft a few feet away, o
n his belly reloading his rifle. One side of his face was covered in flowing blood.

  “Sir! Where the hell are we, sir?”

  The platoon leader turned. Saw the handset Mullins was holding. Glanced at something pinned to his collar, then yanked it loose – ripping away a piece of fabric with it – and tossed it at Mullins.

  It was a plastic reader about the size of a matchbox. It showed two nine-digit numbers, one above the other.

  “That’s where we are. Get us help!” the lieutenant shouted.

  Mullins buried his face to the ground and put the handset to his head again.

  “…Three, are you there?” Two-Ninety-Two Rocky was demanding.

  “I’m here,” said Mullins. “Got co-ordinates. These are our co-ordinates, where we are, not where we want the artillery to go. OK?”

  “Roger. You want fire all around or what? Where’s Buddy?”

  “Look to be on all sides and ahead – that’s north – of us. Here’s the co-ordinates.”

  Mullins read them off.

  “Roger that, Bravo Three. Just to confirm, you said”- Two-Ninety-Two Rocky read back the numbers Mullins had given – “right?”

  “Correct,” Mullins snapped.

  “You’re out of range of our eighty-ones, but the good news is that we’ve also got half a dozen one-fifty-fives.”

  “Good. When? We’re being torn to pieces here!”

  “Things take time to turn around, amigo. You’ll have your fire within ten minutes.”

  “We could all be dead in ten minutes! Can’t you give it to us sooner?”

  “Bravo Three, we’ll try to make it five, but no promises. Suggest you try ninety-one thirty-five if you’re that desperate. We’ll get those shells on the way ASAP. Try ninety-one thirty-five and get back to me when those shells come down so you can give us fire direction, OK?”