Colonel (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 7)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  TRI-30

  Chapter 16

  “Let’s take a walkabout, Hans,” Ryck said, looking out over the mass of men in the Brandenburg’s huge Hangar C where they had been gathering for the last hour. Lines of Marines had just started filing into the four adjacent armories to get into their PICS. Even with four lines, however, it was going to take a while for the brigade staff’s turn.

  Unlike officers going last for chow, in this case, going last was a good deal. With at least another hour to go, Ryck could feel the air on his skin for a while longer yet and more importantly, take one last piss and shit before it was recycling tubes and gel diapers for the duration. Going last was a good deal, for once.

  With Çağlar in tow, Ryck walked up to a group of Golf Company Marines.

  “Ooh-rah, sir,” several of the Marines chorused as Ryck joined them.

  “Sergeant Winston, long time. How’s Eugenia?” Ryck asked.

  “Great sir. I mean, I don’t know right now, of course, but she was keeping up her mom and dad when I left. At least now I can get a good night’s sleep,” the sergeant said as the Marines around him broke out into laughter.

  A month before Ryck’s little incident in Portugal, Ryck had attended Eugenia’s christening. He got invited to many such family events, and he tried his hardest to make it to each one. Some officers thought it was a bad idea, but to Ryck, if one of his Marines or sailors thought enough to invite him to something they felt was that important, then Ryck should make every effort to honor that request.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get you back soon enough to you can enjoy having your sleep interrupted every night,” Ryck said to more laughter.

  Ryck spotted Captain Derrick St. Armis hurrying up, eyes locked on him. St. Armis was the new Golf Company commander, and he was kind of a kiss ass, to be blunt. Ryck wanted to have a little time away from staff and just mix and mingle with the men without their officers around. Although he was a colonel, in his mind, Ryck still thought of himself as a sergeant, and he missed that time in his career. He’d felt a close, personal connection with his Marines then, something that had trickled away a little more with each promotion. He knew that was probably why he’d collected his posse, to try and keep as many of those relationships as he could.

  “Reverse, march,” he whispered to Çağlar, as he parted with, “You’ll have to bring her around the CP when we get back, Sergeant. You gents keep your heads down, you hear?”

  Deftly avoiding St. Armis, Ryck and Çağlar moved into the line of Armadillos. Ryck still wasn’t a fan of the big tracs, but that wasn’t the fault of their crews. The Marines were proud their vehicles, and Ryck let them know he was counting on them.

  For the next hour, Ryck and Çağlar made the rounds. Hecs was doing the same thing, and they met up together with the Echo Company Marines, all of whom were already in their PICS. Unlike when St. Armis tried to join him, Ryck welcomed a few words with Captain Bayarsaikhan when the company commander joined them. It might not have been fair, but he’d known Genghis longer than any other Marine excepting for Hecs. They’d been recruits together, and that was a special bond.

  Ryck spotted newly pinned Captain Delbert looking lost as he watched the Marines prepare to debark.

  “Talk to you later,” he told Hecs and Genghis.

  “Whitney, you ready for this?” he asked Delbert.

  The captain hurriedly said, “Yes, sir! I’ve got it.”

  Ryck wasn’t too sure. Delbert had on his railroad tracks for less than a month, and now, as the battalion assistant operations officer, he was tasked with being the liaison back aboard the ship. It might seem like a thankless job, but it was vital to the Marines planetside.

  “I know you want to be with us, but Major Peltier-Aswad and I agree that you’re the man for the job. We need you to keep those squids in shape, right?”

  Delbert barely cracked a smile, but he dutifully nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Look, in all seriousness, the Navy’s our brothers-in-arms, but, and this is a big but, their first priority is to their ships. If a threat comes up, protecting the ships will outweigh a measly brigade on the surface. I’ve been there before when the Navy bugged out, and I don’t want to do that again. If the shit hits the fan somehow, you need to make sure we’re covered, understand?”

  “Yes, sir. I understand. But I’m just a captain—” he started.

  “Just a captain? What the fuck, Whitney? I don’t care what your rank is, you’re a Marine, and that’s what matters. And I expect you to perform your duties as a Marine, private, captain, or grubbing commandant,” Ryck said, a speck of spit flying out of his mouth as his emotions got the best of him.

  “I’m only a captain?” Saint Pete’s ass! Is he really up to the task? Ryck wondered.

  “Of course, sir. I mean, yes, sir. I’ll do what needs to be done,” Delbert sputtered out.

  “I think we’re up,” Çağlar told Ryck, interrupting the two Marines.

  “What? Oh, yeah, sure. We’d better get going then,” he answered. “Pay attention to what I told you, Captain. I know we can count on you.”

  Ryck slapped Delbert on the shoulder, then he and Çağlar joined the back of the line at the mounting station, and within moments, entered their respective on-decks.

  Staff Sergeant David Kyser didn’t take Ryck’s scan, even if it was still SOP[12] to scan each Marine’s implant, and instead merely punched Ryck’s code into the retriever. Within moments, Ryck’s PICS came up from the bowels of the ship somewhere and was hooked up to the rack. Kyser eyeballed the readouts before putting his thumb on the accept button.

  Kyser was an Ellison native, where Ryck’s parents had been born and from where they had emigrated to Prosperity. Very, very few Ellison natives ever enlisted into the service. The population had pretty long memories, and the massacre during the strikes 50-plus years earlier had left the Ellisonians carrying a long grudge.

  “Here you go, sir,” Kyser said, bending Ryck’s PICS slightly at the waist.

  Getting into a PICS had always been somewhat of a circus contortion. Each Marine had to bend down, raise his arms, and then slide up into the chrysalis, twisting in a 180 to squirm into position. Ryck gave Çağlar, who was standing in the next on-deck, a thumbs up as he raised his arms and started to slide in—and gasped as a lance of fire shot down from his right shoulder.

  What the fuck?

  “Shit, Kyser, what did you do to my PICS?” Ryck said, looking back and down over his shoulder, half in and half out of his combat suit.

  “What do you mean, sir?” the staff sergeant asked, bending down to peer up past Ryck’s legs and up to his face.

  “Oh, nothing. Forget it,” Ryck said sourly as he gingerly lowered the arm slightly and started to worm his way into position.

  It wasn’t Kyser or his PICS, Ryck knew. His shoulder was still giving him problems ever since his stupid golf injury. He’d taken two nano-boosts, and the shoulder would be OK for a couple of days, but then the pain would come back. It was normally more of an ache, but the awkward position required to mount his PICS had probably torn something loose again.

  Ryck ignored the throbbing as he slid into position and ran his check. His suit was at 100%, not that he’d expected anything different. Kyser was good at his job, perhaps even better than CWO3 Yalur, the armory chief. The staff sergeant, who had been awarded a BC3 at the battle for the fort on Freemantle, had a way with the suits. Sams said the guy was born with a direct cranial interface and didn’t need the PICS’ synaptic probes to access a suit’s data.

  “Battle Pack 1, check,” Ryck said. “Readouts, check.”

  It would have been strange if Kyser had given him anything other and a BP1, but procedures were procedures, and Ryck went down his checklist with power, combat load, and comms.

  The entire check took less than 15 seconds, and Kyser gave him a slap on the chest and a “System confirmed. You are green, sir.”

  Ryck turned just as Çağlar lumbere
d up. A PICS was a PICS, and they all had the same external dimensions, but somehow, even mounted up, the sergeant gave the impression of bulk.

  Ryck motioned for Çağlar to follow as they returned to the hangar, passing the Combat Cargo Manifest Petty Officer who had scanned them in. Ryck pulled up a quick data dump; only nine men had not yet been manifested, five of them being the four armorers and CWO3 Yalur. They would be the last five men to get into their PICS and be certified as combat ready.

  Getting men in their PICS was only one small part of a Ship-to-Surface operation. Captain Knowles, with Top Egan as his Combat Control SNCO, were in charge of the myriad of aspects of getting the brigade off the ship and safely on the ground, something Ryck didn’t envy. But still, Ryck was the commander and responsible for all aspects of the operation, so he pulled up the AWSAT, or Assault Wave and Serial Assignment Table one more time and married it with the Debarkation Timeline Checklist. The AWSAT designated when and on which craft all personnel and equipment would be embarked and was the plan on what was supposed to happen, while the DTC was what was actually taking place. Miraculously, the two were marrying up so far. Knowles, Egan, and Lieutenant Commander Hyunh, the ship’s Embarkation Officer, seemed to have their shit together.

  Things were a little more organized than they had been earlier as the initial wave of Marines were now being directed to their debark stations. Ten storks were already positioned, and each one would take 20 PICS Marines from Fox Company in the “dangle” mode, with an open cargo bay. Ryck loved doing the dangle, his PICS’ shoulders clamped into the harness and nothing but open space “beneath” his feet. But that was for the combat Marines, those who were to secure the LZ. Ryck would follow like most of rest in the ship’s shuttles.

  It was going to take at least four hours to get the Marines on the ground where they would marry up with the Outback and New Budapest companies. Ryck had 2/3, along with its tanks and Armadillos, a full arty company, and a platoon of engineers as the core of the Federation force. With the Brotherhood not playing, the Marines were by far the most robust unit in the task force. Both the Outback and New Budapest companies were light infantry, although the New Budapest company had their wicked little Kígyó anti-armor missiles, which might prove to be handy.

  Kígyó meant “snake” in Hungarian, the planet’s ancestral language, and Ryck had been a company commander in 1/11, whose patron was Mexico’s Fuerza de Infantería de Marina. The battalion’s logo had the Mexican eagle with a snake in its claws, and Ryck hoped that the symbology would not hold true, and if it came to it, the Kígyó would defeat the bird-like Klethos.

  The Confederation century, the Greater France and Purgatory companies, and the Wayward Station detachment would land some 80 klicks to the north. Jorge, who had cross-decked five hours before, would be acting as Ryck’s representative with that group. He wouldn’t technically be in command given the political maneuverings going on, but for all intents and purposes, he was running the show up north. He’d never commanded Marines in combat, and now, if push came to shove, his first “command” would be with foreign troops.

  Both landings would be a good 200 kilometers from the existing front lines between the Klethos and the Trinoculars. No one knew how close was too close before drawing a possible reaction, but as the Klethos had shown no sign of having transportation assets (disregarding their getting to the planet in the first place), Ryck was fairly confident that both forces would be able to land unopposed.

  Despite the very conservative distance, in Ryck’s mind, the first wave of the assault would consist of Fox company and a single Davis (a single tank maxed out a Stork’s lifting capability in Earth-range atmospheres). The initial landing force would be covered by Navy Experion fighters, Marine Ospreys, and both a monitor and the FS Smithfield, a cruiser. The second wave would not be released until the LZ was secured. Carl has assured Ryck that the LZ was still safely in capy hands, but Ryck wanted human confirmation for that before the shuttles crossed the LOD and commenced their descent.

  Ryck made his way behind the line of Davises. The nine tanks were a welcome security blanket. Ryck was even glad for the Armadillos. He’d hated them on Gaziantep and Freemantle, but the Klethos had shown no signs of having anything that could stand up to them.

  As he and Çağlar approached their shuttle, ten Marines in the Golf Company marshaling station were on line doing the “Surrey Slide.” The PICS Marine on the far right was the “director,” moving his PICS in a sliding step, bending at the knees and rising back up, his arms moving in set patterns. Before he stopped, the Marine next to him repeated the same move, and so on down the line. All ten Marines were moving in the same pattern, but one after the other, like a physical version of a singing round.

  A new-join from 3/12 had brought the dance to the battalion, and it had taken off over the last two months. Some of the officers and SNCOs, including Hecs, didn’t approve, but to Ryck, anything that expanded a Marine’s ability to maneuver in his PICS was a good idea. Sandy agreed with Ryck, and it was ultimately Sandy’s call.

  Ryck and Sandy angled off to go around the end of the line to get to their embark station. The tenth Marine was just starting his steps as the two passed him, and Ryck couldn’t help it. He spun around with one foot as a pivot, the other outstretched, something he’d worked on after watching the Drum Corps PICS Marines do that back on Sierra Dorado during 1/11’s Patron Day celebration. He came down a little heavily with a resounding crash, now the 11th Marine in line. He immediately started the same series of moves he’d seen the others do. Slide, bend, head down, push up with arms to the right before snapping them to the left and coming into a muscle beach pose. He held the pose before spinning around, almost hitting Çağlar before continuing.

  There had been a moment of silence before the watching Marines burst into cheers over their externals. All of them had their displays, and all knew that it was him who had joined the line. His speakers muted the burst of noise, but Ryck saw one of the unprotected sailors raise his hands to his ears in an attempt to block off the amplified cheers.

  “Not bad,” Sams said on the P2P. “You been practicing that?”

  Ryck isolated Sams on his display, saw he was 15 meters to his seven o’clock, and raised a mechanical middle finger behind him in Sam’s direction.

  “Ah, you wound me, sir!” Sams said with a laugh.

  “You just wish you had moves like me,” Ryck replied.

  His little display had been fun, and the Marines had seemed to enjoy it, but it aggravated his shoulder again.

  Hell, it was worth it, he thought, a smile creeping over his face.

  A few moments later, he and Çağlar were moving into their marshalling station. Çağlar checked them in with the stick leader as Marines from Fox started hooking into their Storks. Ryck connected with Jorge for an update. The CS Duluth was not as big as the Brandenburg, nor did any of those forces have a Stork equivalent, so the entire force would land via shuttles. The initial drop for the two forces would be coordinated, but it would take them two hours longer to get all the men and women on the planet.

  Ryck felt the familiar rise of excitement as his display counted down to L-Hour. He didn’t need to pull up his bioreadouts to know his pulse had quickened, his blood pressure had risen. Idly, he wondered who was monitoring him and what they would think of his vitals. He’d never considered something like that early in his career, but if he, as the task force commander could pull up the vitals of any Federation Marine or sailor in his command, he’d slowly come to the realization that he would also be monitored by someone. It didn’t bother him, though—mostly. He sometimes wondered if that unknown watcher deemed him lacking, what would they do? Not that he expected that.

  A Navy gunners mate escorted Carl and his two shadows to the marshalling station. The three capys simply stood there, not just the two normally silent ones, but Carl as well.

  They can’t tell who I am in a PICS, Ryck realized.

  He didn’t know
if that little piece of knowledge would ever come in handy, but it was worth noting.

  “Carl, are you ready for this,” Ryck asked.

  The Trinocular liaison turned to Ryck and said, “Yes, Ryck Lysander. We are ready.”

  With the Marines in their PICS, they dwarfed the shorter, stouter capys. Ryck had asked if they had any sort of armor or combat suits, but he was told they didn’t. Ryck got the feeling that the concept was strange to the capys. Which was strange to Ryck in and of itself. Surely combat armor was a natural progression, and if the capys had space-going ships and energy-generated personal shielding, the idea of physical shielding or armor was no great leap.

  Well, the human forces had a varied range of combat suits. LtCol Demornay, the Greater France liaison, stood out with his smooth, almost white suit, and Major Pohlmeyer’s Confederation combat suit was a bristling mass of protuberances and weapons. The New Budapest company didn’t even come to the party with combat suits. The New Budapest Army had a poor-man’s combat suit in their inventory, but the company attached to the task force was one of their elite but lightly-armed Ranger companies.

  “First wave, launch,” the ship’s launch officer ordered the Storks as Ryck’s display hit zero, breaking him out of his reverie.

  One-by-one, each of the first ten Storks lifted up and started forward, their sides shimmering as they pierced the hangar bay shield. Navy deck hands used their little mules to lift the next ten Storks, each already loaded with Marines, to their respective lift points. If necessary, a Stork could have taken off from their previous spots, but the Navy, ever safety conscious, preferred to move craft within crowded cargo bays. The deck hands were pretty quick, too. Ryck had never gotten over how odd it looked to see a single blue-clad sailor simply lifting an entire Stork and quickly walking it across the deck. Within two minutes, the second wave was ready, and the launch officer started to send them out.