by CN Stoesen
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Free Fall
Chapter 1: Boarding Party
Chapter 2: Staff Meeting
Chapter 3: Drop Ships
Chapter 4: Boarders Away
Chapter 5: Wreck and Ruin
Chapter 6: Debriefing
Chapter 7: Plans
Chapter 8: Discoveries
Chapter 9: Interrogations
Chapter 10: Planning
Chapter 11: Interview
Chapter 12: Aftermath
Free Fall
The Series
Counter Strike:
A Story of the New Glasgow War
Book Two of the New Glasgow War Series
By CN Stoesen
October 18, 2017
Version 1.01
Copyright © 2017 CN Stoesen
All rights reserved.
Cover By Aaron Miller of Miller Design & Marketing
Dedication
Thank you so much to my wife and son for their love and support. I couldn't hope for a better family. After all, they put up with my nonsense constantly. And thanks to the Sprinters. Y'all are just inspirational.
Free Fall
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Chapter 1: Boarding Party
Duncan scanned the room. Her team was in position. All were in their light armor and behind cover. To her right was Jenkin's group. Three men, two with rifles and Gordo the heavy gunner. They stacked up in the corridor.
The lights flashed over the docking door as the enemy ship sealed the bridge between the two ships and flooded the connection tube with atmosphere. Lights changed from a blinking red, to a stable yellow and finally green.
The doors parted on the Q-Ship. Duncan could make out that the legs that were emerging from behind the rising door were unarmored. So far, the intel was correct. They should be able to pull this off.
She sighted down her rifle and as soon as the chests of the Federated Union of Planets (FUP) navy sailors were visible; she opened fire. Ten shots fired and all four men were on the ground. Jenkin's had his team sprinting into the airlock across to the enemy ship.
Duncan waved her men forward to join in the assault. As far as she could tell, the enemy didn't get out a warning before they fell. In a few seconds they had passed the tube and were in the FUP patrol ship. Jenkin's team headed for the bridge. She was to lead her group to the engine room.
One thing they practiced with was using chalk to mark out their progress. Jenkin's marked the corridor with an arrow for the direction his team had taken. It conveyed exactly what he did without an electronic transmission the enemy could pick up.
Duncan went the opposite direction from the arrow mark. The ship was a small escort vessel that was being used for inspections. As such, the design was rather straight forward. There was only one deck. The bridge was in the front of the patrol craft with the engine room in the rear. In between were the various crew quarters and functions needed to run the warship.
As they sprinted down the hall, a door opened to the left and an officer stepped out into the corridor. Duncan swung the butt of her rifle up into the forehead of the man and slammed him back into the room he exited. She kept running past towards her objective.
There was a distant booming sound from behind them. That was probably Jenkin's team breaching the bridge. Ahead was a secure door for the engine room and engineering section. The closed hatch presented a problem. They only had a few seconds to get in before she estimated that the enemy would realize that they were under attack.
On a hunch, she tried the hatch button. It was a long shot but if the crew was lazy; it was possible they weren't securing the doors inside their ship as per regulation. Long boring patrols lead to lax security.
The door opened with an audible hiss. This would cost them. Duncan and her team rushed into the room with weapons out. Upon seeing armed marines in their ship, the men surrendered. This was one contingency they hadn't practiced. The assumption was that the enemy would fight for the ship. This crew just gave up. Duncan's teams were ill prepared for prisoners.
In a supply cabinet, Corporal LaCroix found a bundle of cable ties and secured the prisoners. Duncan covered him while Private Emerson searched out for anyone hiding.
Her communication unit pinged, and she heard Jenkin's voice, "Bridge secure. We have prisoners."
"Good job. We do too."
She switched frequencies to the Q-Ship, "Command, this is Duncan. We have secured the enemy vessel."
They took ten men captive in the engine room. There were an additional seven on the bridge taken by Jenkin's team. One man on the bridge suffered burns from the explosion that broke open the door. The only casualties were the four sailors of the boarding party they killed on entering the ship and the officer that Duncan had given a concussion to in the hallway.
They secured the prisoners and took them off onto the Q-Ship. Fortunately, there was a sizable brig available to accommodate captives. The damage sustained to the escort ship was minimal. The broken bridge doors weren't a problem. They were easy to repair. There was no damage to the engine room and the whole crew was accounted for.
The Q-Ship sent out its spoofed messages so that the FUP navy received what it thought it should receive during a boarding. The Q-Ship left the area on its original course and the captured ship followed a few minutes later. Then, on schedule, the transponder for the escort vessel was removed and the ship disappeared. She looped back and re-joined the small New Glasgow fleet in the asteroid belt.
Chapter 2: Staff Meeting
The success of their first outing was remarkable. When the Q-Ship returned to the base, they reviewed how the mission was conducted. Before they tried this again, they needed to plan for contingencies. Specifically, if the FUP was on to what they had done.
Duncan's marines returned to a grueling training schedule and moved the new recruits through their program while waiting on reports to come back from ships sent out to see what the FUP response would be.
A search conducted for the missing Union ship that lasted for a week. The FUP was tight on resources and couldn't waste time looking for a single small vessel lost in space. In the scheme of things, it was an acceptable loss to them.
The intelligence they received back was that after the ship stopped sending out a transponder code, the FUP boarding and search parties were better armed but still didn't have a marine accompaniment. Two weeks later, the FUP patrols had returned to their normal routine.
Duncan figured that they could get away with the same trick another time before the FUP would actually change their plans. What they needed to do, was to capture a larger vessel than a long-range patrol craft or escort ship. Possibly one of the destroyers assigned to the system. But those decisions were above her pay grade.
The next staff meeting back on the asteroid base was proving to be interesting. Major Dunfries was there as was Lieutenant Commander Rothfuss. But there were other senior officers present that Duncan didn't know. One had the rank of an admiral but his uniform wasn't of the New Glasgow Navy.
Rothfuss took to the podium first.
"I would like to introduce to you Admiral Antonio Sanchez de la Vaca of the New Caledonian Militia. The system of New Caledonia has been very helpful to our cause. They've been bringing supplies and equipment through the blockade for several years now. Without their support, New Glasgow would have surrendered long ago.
"The admiral has brought some important news to us. There are three other systems, like ours, that are in revolt against the FUP. Two
of those systems are under a blockade by the FUP and the other was just invaded by an FUP naval squadron. These planets have the same demands as we do, full representation within the FUP or independence."
He glanced around at the faces in the room. He saw he had their attention but was uncertain how they were reacting to his announcement.
"As you may know, New Caledonia is a full member of the FUP. Their navy can't stand up to the might of the FUP any more than we can. But with coordination and help from them, we may force a political resolution in our favor. The efforts of our Q-Ship Saint Mary of Valencia have already increased our strength. Our next foray we will try to have multiple vessels participating."
He paused to assess the mood of the crowd. The ship captains were leaning in to see if they would be among those sent out. The marines looked eager.
"The attempt will be to utilize the captured craft as a small trading vessel registered to the Dzerzhinsky Oblast Corporation. They are a large mining conglomerate within the FUP. We're working on a trade deal with them to open mines here in the asteroid belt. They also are asking the Union permission as well to cover their bases no matter who wins our little war."
The men and women in the briefing chuckled at this. Duncan looked up the corporation on her tablet. What she read baffled her. The company was named after an old earth intelligence officer for a communist country. Why would a business choose such a name was beyond her?
Rothfuss continued, "We have outfitted the captured vessel with a false outer hull. It should pass a cursory inspection as the newly installed transponder on her will reflect a small commercial freighter that it is pretending to be. If the FUP were to board her, they'll know the ship isn't what she claims to be. Or the vessel comes under attack, the false hull can be jettisoned to allow the vessel's weapons to fire. It's a one-time trick.
"The third vessel involved will be one of our escort destroyers. It is the current capitol ship of our fleet. They will ambush an FUP patrol craft in system by giving out a distress beacon of a civilian vessel. If they can lure in one of the smaller vessels, they will attempt to engage it and capture it."
The meeting then moved on to the specifics of the operations. The ship rendezvous points were in a different section of the asteroid belt. When each craft finished their mission, they would rally back at the same point. From there, they would determine if they were followed before returning to base. The campaign would take several months and had the potential to do considerable damage to the FUP Naval presence in the system.
When the meeting broke up, the various command teams met to go over their portion of the plan. Duncan placed Jenkins in charge of the Marines that would be aboard the captured ship. Kettles would lead the group on the escort destroyer and Duncan assigned herself to the teams aboard the Q-Ship. She would take three groups of the new recruits. That left DuBois's unit. They would remain back at base and continue training. It differed slightly from what they had originally planned.
Duncan joined the teams in the dining room for a farewell dinner before they departed for their respective commands. It was a good send off. Her old squad leaders had been promoted to second lieutenants and were platoon commanders in their own right. Duncan was their company commander. All around her were new faces of the trainees she had been working with.
Gordo was now a squad leader. His squad was made up entirely of trainees. Two of them were frightened of the large ex-heavy gunner. The rest looked to him as if he were a god of war. They tried to emulate him as much as they were able. As their commander it was annoying as it was endearing.
Duncan didn't intervene. Instead she let things carry themselves out, trusting Gordo to not let it get out of hand.
Chapter 3: Drop Ships
Hopeless. That was the one word that Major Renee Dietler had for his command crew. The problem was that the rest of the battalion wasn't any better. He rubbed his eyes and rolled his neck to relieve some of the stress.
The exercise they were taking part in was a battalion level drop onto a hostile planet. Dietler actually liked these training exercises until being assigned to the 1477th Mechanized Battalion. This group was all raw recruits. The officers and senior enlisted personnel had sketchy backgrounds but were at least competent on the other evolutions they had done. The men were another story.
Half of his battalion had failed both the weapons range and the maneuver course the first time through. This was well below the standards for the FUP ground forces. Several of the mech crews had to take the tests multiple times before his unit was qualified for this exercise.
The one bright spot of the Battalion was the attached infantry company. They were just average. On the whole, the battalion was a disaster. Maintenance crews were no better. They seemed to be the bottom of their class in each case. There have been several injuries that occurred because people weren't familiar enough with their tools.
Here he was, sitting in his command chair of his mech with his crew. Tommy Frank was his driver, and the kid was nervous. Dietler could see him sweating and shaking. Imura Tsunica controlled the mech's weapons. Imura seemed more stable than Tommy. Dietler remembered his first drop. He was scared then but nothing like this.
The engines on the egg carton warmed up. The unofficial name of the simulator still made him smile. To simulate a combat drop, the navy developed a ship the troops called the egg carton. Since the drop ships were egg-shaped and twelve of them fit into the carrier, the name fit. The carton had an engine on each end. The bow of the ship had the pilot section. The vessel allowed them to rise out of a planet's atmosphere and then be released. It was far cheaper and easier to load than a troop transport.
He remembered the first time he was introduced to the ugly craft. It was inevitable that someone made a lame joke about dropping the eggs or some nonsense like that. What alarmed him was that his troops didn't make those jokes. That lack of humor had him concerned.
Dietler's drop ship had room for twelve mechs. This amounted to a full company of walkers plus his command vehicle. In addition, there was room for twenty infantry men. That provided the mechs with two squads and some command elements of one platoon.
Each battalion had an assigned a company of ground troops for close support. There wasn't enough space for all of them aboard the drop ships. Instead, the rest would travel to the surface in an assault shuttle as would some of the battalion command elements. For some odd reason, he never heard a word of complaint from those that weren't involved in a drop.
This deployment would have three drop ships involved, his entire battalion. The egg carton could carry several battalions for larger exercises. But this was to be a small drop.
Dietler's battalion was formed by three companies at eleven mechs apiece. Each drop ship had one of the battalion officers or the sergeant major in addition to the infantry. The base of the drop ship was the widest portion and where the walkers resided. There were four doors that would fall open upon landing and the mechs would walk out from.
He kept his fingers crossed that the pilots would be able to do a simple evolution like walking out of a drop ship. It should go smoothly. He wished he could believe it.
Above the walkers was space for infantry. They too had outside hatches and would fast rope down the side of the drop ship or could take the elevator down and walk out of the mech bay depending on conditions. The top of the vessel was the command capsule. It was the smallest with only room for the two-man crew to pilot it.
Each drop ship carried enough fuel for the landing and to re-enter orbit. It was good to know with a bad landing zone; they had the ability to get away. In his years of service, he had yet to meet anyone to ride one up off of a planet.
The egg carton lifted off. Dietler checked to make sure that everyone was in their harnesses. That they verified their emergency oxygen supplies before calling for a status from the other personnel in his command. For the first time, an exercise was going as it should. Yet he felt that the other shoe was yet to drop.
His mech team sat in silence on the ride up. Outside of their view screen, there were lights set up on the wall. The light changed from Red to Yellow. They had attained their correct altitude.
"All right men, now the excitement begins. Get ready." Dietler said all of this in a cheerful tone. He was happy. This training will only improve his men's abilities.
The light in front of them changed again to green. They received three beeps over their communication circuit and the drop ship fell from the egg carton.
From the cockpit of the drop ship, the pilot spoke to Dietler, "We have released. Thirty seconds to landing."
He didn't need to be told that. But still he replied, "Roger."
A high pitched squeal of fright came from the driver as the free fall pushed them against their harnesses. Dietler counted in his head and when he reached twenty, the engines of the drop ship burst to life to slow their descent. They could have waited until there was only five seconds left in the drop to kick on the engines but that was reserved for a deployment into an unknown or hot landing zone.
The engines threw their bodies down against the seat. He heard Imura make a noise as the jot knocked the breath out of him. Tommy made a much wetter and disgusting sound followed by a sob. Dietler wasn't too surprised but when the smell caught up to him, it caused him to blink rapidly. They touched down after that.
The doors opened outward. Their mech was to be the third walker out of their door. He watched as the first platoon mech, number 1477101 step out. It fumbled the step and the rear leg caught on the doorway. In the pilot's anxiety to get out of the drop ship, he attempted to force his way through rather than lifting the leg higher. The result was the mech pitching over and falling face first on the door to slide down into the dirt below.
The second mech cleared the door and Dietler ordered his driver to go. Tommy was still shaking but complied. When they stepped up to the doorway, they found the second mech lying on its side half buried in the soft grass of the field. It had fallen off the side of the ramp to avoid the first fallen walker.