For another ten hours under emergency acceleration the Star pulled away from Juwel and the incoming Darshik ships. Jackson ordered his active sensors shut down and then, once the ship dipped behind the Class II gas giant they’d been flying towards, he killed the mains and ordered the ship to go dark. Once they were coasting along with most of their primary flight systems and sensors shut down he began rotating his crew out for rest, telling Commander Simmons to come relieve him in six hours so he could grab a quick nap and be ready.
What he didn’t tell his crew was that this big, looping maneuver was just to buy him some time to think. If the 508th wasn’t there, and not likely to show up, their chances of successfully getting down to Juwel and deploying their cargo shrank from just slim down to none. He was beginning to get a better picture of the Darshik strategy for holding the system as their sensors were able to pick up ship numbers and deployment, but that didn’t do him a hell of a lot of good since the Star was underpowered, outgunned, and not built to take the punishment a destroyer was.
As he wracked his brain trying to find some way to pull the ships away from Juwel long enough for him approach, decel, and launch he had to remind himself once again that the “legend” of Captain Jackson Wolfe was in reality a string of dumb luck and coincidence. In his mind he was little more than a decently competent ship captain, but against the odds he was looking at he didn’t see any gambit that would move the pieces as he needed them. All they had to do was keep one ship parked over Juwel and he was effectively blocked. He wouldn’t risk the complete loss of ship and crew on something that had no hope of success, and the Star was at her most vulnerable during launch operations.
“Coms, call down to Lieutenant Commander Sharpe and have him meet me in my office,” Jackson said, standing up and stretching. “Then call the XO and tell him I’m regretfully cutting his rack time short and he needs to report to the bridge.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” the com officer said. Jackson had to look twice to see that it actually wasn’t a com officer manning the station. A young enlisted spacer had the headset on and was carrying out his orders. The Star was so short-staffed that Commander Simmons had to get creative to provide complete coverage when Jackson ordered split-twelve watches. She didn’t even look old enough to be in the service and it reminded him that real lives were at stake whatever he decided.
He waited impatiently for his XO to come up and relieve him, simultaneously anxious to leave yet dreading the dry technical details he was going to have to drag out of his Chief Engineer. Sharpe had done well with his braking maneuver that kept them from carrying their transition velocity all the way to Juwel, and Jackson wondered what other sort of outside-the-box thinking the lieutenant commander might have up his sleeve. He would give the Marines and civilians on Juwel his one best shot to get his cargo on the ground, but after that he had to be realistic about their chances of survival if he stayed. One slow ship against at least six cruisers, probably more, wasn’t a fight he could win. If they couldn’t come up with a workable strategy within the next day he’d have no choice but to head for a jump point and pull back into uncontested space.
Sergeant Willy Barton was in a clean uniform, outfitted with fresh kit, and generally felt quite good about life all things considered. He was bouncing in the passenger seat of a Tracker, a four-seat all-terrain vehicle that had survived the initial drop from the assault carrier. If it wasn’t for the fact he’d been assigned to a four-man team to ride out and hunt for the larger Darshik troop movements they surmised must be out there it would feel like any other training day.
Corporal Castillo had been put in another identical vehicle and the young civvy kid, Emil, had been left back at base. Barton had admired his guts when he insisted on going out, but there was no need for him now. They had secure tiles with maps and local data, independent navigation equipment, and enough Marines to fill the vehicles with trained shooters and techs. Major Baer had been tasked with finding larger enemy formations to not only track them but mark them for a possible orbital bombardment from the assault carrier that was inbound with reinforcements.
The plan had been absurdly simple: drive east and see if they bumped into anything. The mission was more of an intel gathering exercise since Colonel Rucker had no real way to move enough Marines quickly enough to put up any sort of resistance that would be more than just symbolic. Instead he was having a handful of teams track and report while he tried to mobilize his entire force and send it south to Neuberlin in what amounted to a race with the Darshik with the disadvantage of having to use smaller, less direct roadways.
Barton felt like they should have been on the march to the capital as soon as they realized the main Darshik force was not where they should have been; it was the only next logical target. But sergeants do not tell majors and colonels what they should be doing. The capital at least made sense in a campaign where little else did. The Darshik were aliens, sure, but there had to be some goal to landing a few thousand troops other than just marching around and shooting up the countryside while refusing to meet the Terran forces in numbers greater than a patrol. Although just a lowly ground pounder, even he could tell there was something significant they were missing.
“What’s that up there?” a lance corporal manning the gun turret called, pointing ahead and slightly to the left of them.
“Smoke,” Barton said, trying to differentiate what was smoke and what was the low-hanging early morning fog. “I think.”
“You want to check it out?” the corporal driving asked, letting the vehicle roll to a stop. “We have plenty of juice to get to that highway and back again even with a detour.” To emphasize his point he tapped a forefinger on the dash readout that displayed the remaining charge on the primary and backup batteries.
“Fuck it.” Barton shrugged. “We’re here to look for signs of the enemy, not just practice our land nav skills. Take that side road ahead and then we’ll cut across the field and make our final approach on foot.”
“You’re the boss,” the corporal said, nodding as he jammed the accelerator down hard enough to make the motors whine in protest as the vehicle clawed for traction on the gravel road.
They made it close enough to smell the smoke of something burning that wasn’t wood before they had to stop and reconfigure the vehicle to travel further. The driver flipped a few switches and the Tracker rose up to provide better clearance.
There was a soft hiss as the multiple air bladders in the tires depressurized so that the wheels provided a larger contact patch to the ground and the weight of the vehicle was supported by the tire's internal composite ribs. The process took less than a minute and soon they were barreling across an open field, the active suspension absorbing the bumps and ruts so completely all they felt inside was a gentle swaying.
“Oh no,” Barton said softly as they got closer and the smell became more pronounced. And familiar. “Just drive up as close as you can.”
When the Tracker cleared the last treeline and rolled up to a small town the corporal pulled back onto the road, not bothering to reconfigure the running gear, and drove down what looked like an idyllic main street scene … save for the pile of human bodies still smoldering in the main intersection, the smoke curling off and wafting up into the fog.
“What the—” the driver broke off, leaning over the steering wheel, his eyes wide. “I don’t see any weapons lying around … these were non-combatants. They’ve never done this before.”
“Stay sharp,” Barton warned, pulling his weapon out of the rack in front of him and covering out the passenger side. “Stop here. Let’s dismount and do a quick check around.”
“This could be an ambush, Sarge.” The lance corporal slid down into the seat under the gun turret before hopping out.
“I think they’d have hit us already if it was,” Barton shook his head. “We’re a four-man in a single vehicle that wasn’t very quiet about approaching. Corporal Greenwood, call this in to Command and tell them we’re deviat
ing to investigate. Our schedule shouldn’t slip much.”
Greenwood stayed in the driver’s seat as the others cautiously scanned the street lined with squat, single-story buildings, most of them storefronts. Barton tried to ignore the pile of bodies barely one hundred meters ahead of him as well as the sickly smell of burning flesh.
“We’re good, Sarge,” Greenwood climbed out and grabbed his weapon, clipping it onto the lanyard attached to his body armor. “The major wants us to be thorough but quick.”
“Typical officer contradiction of terms,” the gunner muttered as he moved forward with the rest of them.
Resisting the urge to gag, Barton could tell that the pile of human bodies were indeed all non-combatants, civilian, and likely all the residents of the small town’s main street. So far in the campaign the Darshik had ignored or bypassed anybody that wasn’t actively shooting at them, even to the point of leaving people behind their advancing lines. So why the brutal change of tactics?
“This was quick and dirty,” Corporal Greenwood said, his face a stony mask. "They piled them up, tossed on some fuel and lit it, but there wasn’t enough to actually burn the bodies completely … just smolder and smoke a lot.”
“You think it was meant to be seen?” Barton asked.
“Not sure,” Greenwood said. “I’m thinking more that this was an impulse decision by the alien fucks that did this and they couldn’t find enough flammable liquid to burn two hundred bodies.”
“Mark the location on the map and sync it with Command,” Barton said. “We can’t do anything for these people right now. We’ll have to send someone back after us to properly bury or burn them. Let’s do a quick walk through the main section of town here and then get rolling.”
The Darshik weapons didn’t do much visible damage when they struck something solid like the Terran kinetic rounds did, but the evidence was everywhere once someone knew what they were looking at. Tiny little scorch marks peppered the buildings and had broken out glass windows in what must have been a simply terrifying ordeal for the citizens as they were rounded up and slaughtered. Barton clenched his jaw as he remembered the Marines had been issuing “do not resist” orders to civilians since the Darshik had shown no inclination to harm them up to this point. These people likely didn’t even try to fight back, assuming the aliens would just pass through town like they had been up north. After a brief look around they climbed back into the Tracker, their mood dark.
“You think we’d be able to catch up with them?” Greenwood asked as he flipped the vehicle’s main power back on.
“Not the mission,” Barton said tightly. “Believe me … I know how you feel, but we can’t compromise our section of this patrol because we’re out looking for some payback.”
“Whatever you say, Sarge,” Greenwood said with a snort. “I know that if I was—” the rest of his comment was cut short by the Tracker’s com lighting up.
“Go for Barton.”
“Where are you, Sergeant?” the voice of Major Baer came over the speakers.
“Still in the town of … Potsdam, sir,” Barton said as Greenwood held the map up on the tile for him to see. “We’re just now moving on. Nothing to report outside of what Corporal Greenwood called in earlier.”
“We’ve heard from Sergeant Werner’s patrol and they’ve come across two more settlements in the same condition. All the residents dead, in a pile, and some effort made to burn them … thousands of dead so far,” Baer went on. “We have to assume these aren’t random atrocities but a new enemy tactic. Tell every civilian you see to flee westward or to fight back however they can, but get your asses out to that highway and get the intel we need. You are not to stop at any other towns and investigate no matter what you see. Clear?”
“Clear, sir,” Barton said, the bile rising in his throat as he thought of the body count the aliens were racking up in such a short time while the Terran Federation Marine Corps drove around and looked at things, not lifting a fucking finger to take the fight back to the enemy.
“Get on it, Sergeant. Command out.”
“You were saying, Corporal?” Barton asked as he flicked the com off.
“Nothing, Sarge,” Greenwood said as he turned the Tracker in a tight loop, his face now more somber than angry. “I wasn’t saying nothing.”
“Let’s just get this done,” Barton sighed. “The sooner we get back, the sooner we’re on the march south to kick the shit out of the … things … that did this.”
“Ooh rah, Sarge,” their gunner said without any enthusiasm.
13
“We have an update from the Marines on the ground via our satellite relay, sir,” Lieutenant Epsen said, the fatigue his voice indicating how tired the whole crew must be.
“Give me the highlights, Lieutenant,” Jackson said. “I’ll read the full report later.”
“They’re requesting an update on when we’re making another attempt to launch our shuttles,” Epsen began.
“Obviously,” Simmons snorted. Jackson let it go and made a hand motion over his head for Epsen to continue.
“Colonel Rucker has decided to move his entire force south to counter the suspected redeployment of the Darshik ground forces to the capital of … Neuberlin,” the com officer went on, stumbling over the strange, ancient European word. “They also are reporting that the Darshik have changed tactics. They’re apparently killing everyone, civilians included, in every town they come across, piling the bodies up in the middle of towns, and lighting them on fire.”
“What in the hell?” Jackson actually turned in his seat to give his officer an incredulous stare.
“That’s a summary of what it says, sir,” Epsen said apologetically. “The accompanying imagery is … graphic.”
“So far the Darshik had been ignoring civilian non-combatants,” Simmons said quietly.
“We always thought that was because they landed such an inadequate force for a planetary invasion that they couldn’t risk having the populace turn on them,” Jackson said, pulling up the full contents of the transmission at his terminal. “If they bypassed towns and settlements then the civilians would be more inclined to stay out of it and allow them to maintain a numerical advantage over the Marines deployed there.” He caught the questioning look his XO gave him.
“I had a couple long conversations with Brigadier General Ortiz before we departed New Sierra,” Jackson explained. “I wanted a crash course on the tactics of ground warfare since we’d be directly supporting them.”
“Wasn’t General Ortiz the same—”
“That’s right, Commander,” Jackson smiled tightly. “Back when he was just Major Ortiz he was the detachment commander for the Marines aboard both the Blue Jacket and the Ares. It’s been everything CENTCOM can do to keep him from finding a way out here to take command of the ground campaign himself.”
Jackson forced himself to go through the video and image data transmitted up from the Marines on the surface of Juwel. Graphic had been an understatement. There was little doubt that the bodies had been piled up and burned as a message, but what was it? Why resort to these sorts of atrocities when so far the human defenders hadn’t even mounted much in the way of a counteroffensive?
He slid the images off his display with a disgusted swipe and brought up his own personnel roster. He sifted down until he found who he wanted and quickly read through the officer’s service record before nodding to himself.
“Coms, have Lieutenant Colonel Beck report to the bridge please,” he said.
“Aye, sir.”
“Sir, Captain Osso is the commander of the Star’s Marine detachment,” Simmons said, clearly confused.
“And you feel I’m unaware of this?” Jackson asked, managing to keep a straight face.
“No, sir!” Simmons said quickly. “I mean … yes, sir, of course you’re aware of it. It’s just that Lieutenant Colonel Beck isn’t officially attached to this command.”
“I know he’s officially listed as cargo, but I
think that he’ll be inclined to help us out all the same,” Jackson said, not bothering to clarify his reasoning to Simmons any further. The XO realized that once Jackson had gone back to his terminal the conversation was over.
Just over fifteen minutes later Jackson heard the Marine at the hatchway issue a challenge and a rough, gravelly voice identify himself as Beck. Jackson stood just as the Marine officer stopped at the threshold of the hatchway.
“Permission to come onto the bridge, Captain,” Beck said, standing at attention. He was short in stature and the smooth, youthful face did not go with the harsh voice that emanated from it. He was wearing a set of combat fatigues that were well-worn but still within regulation and he could see that they were damp in places with sweat. Apparently he’d caught the lieutenant colonel in the middle of a training session or a workout. Jackson liked that he hadn’t changed once he’d been summoned, just dropped what he was doing and followed orders.
“Granted,” Jackson nodded to him. “Your service record says that you were top of your class at the Yamato War College.” Since he hadn’t asked a question the Marine officer didn’t provide an answer, just stood at the ready waiting for a request to be made.
“We have some new intel from the surface of Juwel and I’d like your opinion of it. Apparently the Darshik have adopted a new tactic … one that has me more than a little concerned.”
“I’ll do my best to provide any insight I can, sir,” Beck said doubtfully. “But this is the closest to the enemy I’ve ever been and we’re still in the tin can waiting to be put ashore.”
“I’m hoping it’s that detachment that might provide a new insight or at least a fresh perspective,” Jackson said. “Colonel Rucker seems to be at a loss as to why the sudden shift in strategy. If you’ll just head to that station back there I’ll have Ensign Dole provide you with all the pertinent files.’
“Aye aye, sir,” the Marine said and walked quickly to one of the three configurable work stations that could be set up to perform a variety of tasks when needed. Soon Beck was logged in and reading through all the firsthand accounts from the Marines on the ground.
Iron & Blood: Book Two of The Expansion Wars Trilogy Page 12