Merkiaari Wars: 02 - What Price Honour

by Mark E. Cooper

  “I must ask for the codes granting you nuclear release authority.”

  “Of course,” she murmured. “Keyboard entry.”

  “Preparing to copy, Admiral.”

  Meyers quickly typed a string of text and transmitted it. She knew the codes were correct and active. As always, the codes for this and other contingencies had been given to her upon taking command of the task force. She waited while Liz carefully checked and matched the relevant portions of the code to her own command codes.

  “Authorisation is accepted, Admiral. I estimate the operation will commence at nineteen-hundred. I will contact you with an update when I know more.”

  “Get it done, Liz.”

  Captain Alston nodded. “Sutherland out.”

  * * *

  Camp Charlie Epsilon

  “They’re making their run now,” Commander Heinemann said, one hand cupping his ear and listening to his comm intently. He had a direct link to Sutherland, and through her to the fighters making the attack on the Merkiaari approaching Charlie Epsilon.

  Burgton nodded. They were too far away to see the results of the attack except via satellite, but he had little doubt it would succeed. Zeus was hardly what one would call a subtle weapon system. Meyers had surprised him with her willingness to deploy it—surprised and pleased. Very few naval officers would have the guts to deploy even micro nukes like Zeus within a planetary atmosphere, even when the situation so obviously warranted it, for fear of retribution from their superiors. Meyers would have her judgment closely questioned when all this was over. If he had anything to do with it, she would come through unscathed.

  “I have Major Papandreou on the line,” Flowers said raising a hand from out of the shadows to attract attention. “He has disengaged and is on the way.”

  Burgton nodded. “Good. ETA?”

  “It’s going to be tight, George. He estimates over an hour for his Marines—even longer for the natives.”

  That didn’t surprise him. “Tell him to expedite, but to keep his Shan forces consolidated with his mechs. They won’t do us any good arriving in penny packets.”

  The Marines were all equipped with mechs to give them a chance against the Merkiaari, but mechs were clumsy things and nowhere near as fast as a viper. It would take Papandreou an hour or more to cover a distance that a viper could cover in a tenth the time. Shan were quick, but they couldn’t hope to maintain a run for the entire distance—not and still fight when they got here. They would hold Papandreou back, but their presence would multiply the Marines’ strength a thousand fold.

  He crossed the bunker to the map table and began making plans for a second line of defence. If things went as he expected, they would need it. He called Flowers over to explain what he had in mind.

  “Let’s look at splitting Alpha and Bravo, Dan, we can—”

  He didn’t have time to finish his plans. The last thing he saw before his processor took over and shunted him into oblivion, was the huge tree trunks of the bunker roof caving in on top of him.

  * * *

  The ground erupted showering Gina with dirt. Another explosion followed and another, cutting Shan warriors down left and right. Everyone was screaming, even the Merkiaari. A huge trooper jumped down into her trench, which was chin high on her, but on him it barely reached his chest. She fired into his belly, reversed her rifle to smash his jaw as he crumpled forward, reversed it again and blew his brains out. Before he toppled dead to the ground, she was climbing over him trying to reach Gordon.

  “Hail Mary full of grace, hail Mary full of grace,” Gordon chanted with a grin of fear and pain on his face as he fired on full auto into the uncountable Merki troopers.

  Racks of missiles erupted into the air and rained upon the gravsleds where they ducked and dived with their pulsers raving. Her people scrambled to reload the artillery, and fire on the Merki troops running and dying amid the minefields. Hundreds of AARs were firing constantly from all over the camp. Tracers zipping through the air scythed the enemy down literally cutting them in half. Automatic grenade launchers were firing so fast that their ammunition hoppers were in danger of running dry before they could be reloaded. The barrels of sentry guns, set to kill anything in front of them, were glowing red hot and threatening to melt as they swung back and forth killing Merki troopers by the score. There were Shan cowering, screaming, frothing at the mouth. Shan warriors dying upon the ground half buried in mud and bodies. Warriors grappling with Merkiaari still biting and clawing as they took their enemies down into death with them. There were lines of Shan standing side by side with vipers or Marines as they were overrun. Blood ran like a river along the bottom of the trenches. Bodies and pieces of bodies rained from the sky. Bodies buried by explosions and trampling feet, were launched skyward again when another round of explosions dotted the camp.

  “Zack!” Gina screamed over the noise but he didn’t hear her. He didn’t seem to know that he was dying.

  She fired another burst over the top of the trench. She jacked a grenade and fired it. Then again and again until the launcher locked open on an empty chamber. She didn’t have time to reload. She reached Gordon and grabbed him. In a blur of speed, he rounded on her still chanting his prayer, and pulled the trigger. She froze. The barrel of his weapon looked like a howitzer in that moment. Gordon fired again and she realised she was still alive. Unbelievably, he was out of ammo.

  She struck the rifle aside and grabbed him. “You crazy fuck, it’s me!” She threw him onto his back.

  “What… what…?” Gordon panted. He was still in melee mode (boosted to the max) and didn’t seem to know where he was. He reached for his pistol, but a crunching punch to the jaw woke him up a little. “Ow! Christ Gina, what the hell did you do that for?”

  “That was for scaring the shit out of me, now let me fix this.”

  She ripped open his pants and clamped a hand over the arterial bleed in his thigh. His bots needed a little help to deal with this. They could heal anything given time, but long before they got a handle on the wound, Gordon would have dropped into hibernation. If he had been paying attention, he could have ordered his processor out of melee mode back into combat or even maintenance mode, long enough to seal off the vessel until it could be fixed, but no, he was too busy killing Merkiaari!

  A viper’s natural inclination to heal damage was suppressed in melee mode, its resources shunted away from maintenance in favour of combat. That’s why monitoring diagnostics was so important. Being forced into hibernation for essential repairs in the middle of a battle would be a death sentence. That was one reason she didn’t like using it. Melee mode felt almost godlike, and it skewed her reasoning. It was too easy to ignore natural caution while boosted to that degree. She preferred combat mode and allowed her processor to repair damage on the fly. Sergeant Rutledge had taught them that most vipers felt that way, and only ever used melee mode as a last resort. If she hadn’t been checking on her people’s stats and noticed that Gordon wasn’t dealing with the problem… but she had been checking.

  She grabbed one of the aerosols out of her medikit and sealed the wound in plastic. She watched as his blood pressure formed a bubble in the plastic, but it held. There were no leaks. She grabbed the nano-injector.

  “How many times have I told you to watch your goddamned diagnostics?” she grumbled as she pumped the bots into him directly over the wound as Lieutenant Hymas had taught them. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a dozen times. You have got to watch your goddamned diagnostics.”

  Gordon looked sick. “I didn’t even notice.”

  “Keep an eye on it,” she said packing her kit and stowing it back in its place on her webbing. “I mean it, Zack. If you puncture the seal before the artery is fixed, I’ll kill you.”

  Gordon grinned weakly but a second later his eyes popped wide in alarm, “Behind—”

  Gina spun snatching her knife free as she turned and plunged it into the Merki female’s belly. She sawed upward probing for the
monster’s heart then pulled it out in a gout of blood that covered her from head to foot. The female toppled, dead before she hit the ground.

  “—you,” Gordon finished shouting.

  “It’s bloody dangerous around here,” she muttered wiping her knife clean on her thigh. She grabbed her rifle. Gordon was already reloading his. She took a moment to load her grenade launcher. “You okay here on your own?”

  “No,” he muttered as he popped up to fire at a gravsled.

  Gina didn’t hear him as she jogged away.

  It was a miracle they had managed to hold out so long, she mused as she ran in a crouch along the zigzagging trench connecting the dugouts for the sentry guns with the fighting pits. Her people were too busy to notice her passing behind them. The enemy had been repulsed no less than three times already with massive casualties. Their gravsleds no longer attempted to draw near the camp. They didn’t dare. The evidence they were no match for viper gunnery lay smashed and broken all over the landscape. The remaining sleds were reduced to sniping at the camp’s defenders from a distance. Not that distance meant safety, far from it, but it was at least a little safer for them. The sentry guns were set to kill anything in front of them within a certain radius of their positions. The same with the grenade launchers and mortars. They were set to provide area denial to the Merki ground troops, but they would still attempt to knock down a gravsled if it came within their area of responsibility. Such kills were rare now, but they hadn’t been at the start of the action, as evidenced by the still burning wreckage of so many vehicles.

  As the battle progressed, she had felt the need to reassure herself with direct observations of what her sensors and TacNet were telling her. It wasn’t logical, she knew that, but that was how she felt. She justified her need with the knowledge that is was good for the morale of her troops having her appear to fight with them. Maybe it was a holdover from her time in the Corps. Whatever the reason, she was still most comfortable fighting side by side with her troops. Being a captain, even one temporarily raised to the position, didn’t change that. With a viper’s abilities, she could indulge herself without guilt. With instant access to comm, TacNet, and sensors, she didn’t have to remain at a fixed CP to give her orders. Anywhere would do. From the frontline trench was her preference.

  “How goes it, James?” she said slipping into position beside him. She tried to ignore the number of dead Shan warriors and enemy corpses heaped around him, and added her fire to his. The Merkiaari just kept coming. “James?”

  James glanced at her then back to what he was doing. The lost and empty look in his eyes sent a shiver down her spine. He was looking more and more like those he led. The warriors fighting with him had lost everything and everyone they loved. They had seen so much death that it almost seemed to fill them up until there was no room for anything but killing. No hope left, just the grim determination to make the enemy pay dearly for their deaths.

  James popped up and fired both his beamers repeatedly. “I heard our fighters heading north a little while ago,” he said without inflection. “The Merkiaari didn’t knock them all down. Maybe we should tell the Admiral to bomb the camp now.”

  “It’s not time for that yet,” she said emptying her grenade launcher at the enemy lines. Bombing the camp would kill a lot of the enemy, but it would kill all of the defenders too. “We’re not that desperate yet.”

  Gina sank down behind the cover afforded her by the trench to reload. There were empty munitions boxes scattered all over the place, but she found one that still had a few grenades left in it buried beneath the others. While she hurriedly reloaded her rifle, she sent an urgent message over TacNet requesting fresh supplies be sent to James’ sector. The acknowledgement flashed upon her display a moment later.

  She stood to rejoin James, and picked off a few troopers that were getting a little close. Some of the sentry guns had fallen silent now, either destroyed by enemy fire or out of ammunition. The Merkiaari were too close to overrunning them to risk sending a squad to reload those guns. That meant there was a gaping hole in the defence of James’ sector with nothing to plug it with but bodies. She quickly accessed her comm and reinforced the line with vipers taken from other areas. Changing channels, she informed the General that she expected a major Merkiaari push here very soon.

  There was no acknowledgement.

  She ducked as a gravsled opened up on her but too late. “AEiii,” she screamed as something buzsawed through her shoulder and her right cheek.

  Her mouth filled with blood and diagnostics flashed a warning to her display, but the damage was not too bad. It was bloody and it hurt, but she wouldn’t die or anything close. Her processor automatically began repairing the damage. A warrior next to James wasn’t so lucky. He was blasted back to fall amid the corpses of his people, dead before he landed. James blinked at the alien blood running down his face and continued firing. Gina spat blood and dirt, raised her rifle to her injured shoulder and squeezed the trigger.

  * * *

  Approaching Charlie Epsilon

  Major Papandreou of the 7th Marines cursed the bad luck that had dogged his heels on this march. He had just been informed that yet another mech was out of commission. The road to Charlie Epsilon was littered with equipment and broken mechs. Marines numbering in excess of two platoons were already dismounted due to mechanical failure, and they had a way to go yet.

  Something streaked by him and into the underbrush. He muttered under his breath and lowered his AAR. With thousands of Shan along on this march, it was little wonder the local wildlife was running scared. He had been informed that this entire area was some kind of nature preserve. They were called Sanctuaries, but there was nothing safe about this one now.

  Charlie Epsilon was maybe ten klicks ahead as the crow flies. Even surrounded by hills and trees, he could tell Burgton was already engaged. The air was leaden and smoke hung thickly just beyond a line of hills ahead. He couldn’t see much—the occasional rocket contrail was about it.

  “Dragon this is Sword, come in Dragon.”

  “Dragon copies,” he replied. Sword was the call sign given to his forward most element. His recon platoon.

  “I have the objective in sight, sir, but I think we’re too late. I can make out Merkiaari already within the perimeter.”

  Dammit! “Can you estimate numbers?”

  “Too many to count, sir… maybe a couple of hundred in the camp? I dunno for sure. I can still see some fighting. The defenders have pulled back to make a stand at the CP. I don’t think we can get there in time… oh shit!”

  He listened to the open comm line. “Sword? Answer dammit!”

  “Wait one.”

  Papandreou fumed for a few seconds then turned his thoughts to the coming battle. If Burgton and his people were already dead, he would be a fool to lead his men into the trap that Charlie Epsilon had become. On the other hand, vipers were tough bastards. If anyone could survive being overrun by Merkiaari, Burgton was that one. He throttled his mech into a lumbering run. He needed to see the situation with his own eyes before making a decision.

  “Dragon this is Sword. I have a situation here. The goddamn Shan are advancing independently. They’re charging straight in. I can’t hold ‘em!”

  Papandreou checked his sensors. It was worse than Sword had reported. “Hold your position. Repeat, hold your position.”

  “Copy.”

  He checked his sensors again. Shan warriors were pulling ahead of his mechs. Not just those accompanying Sword, but all of them. All over the map, thousands upon thousands of them dropped to all fours and streaked away. He stared at his display in disbelieving silence. They were advancing upon Charlie Epsilon at a flat out run. They would engage the enemy scattered and unsupported. He could feel a disaster looming. He had only two options. Advance at flank speed in foolhardy support of the crazy bastards, or retreat and leave them to die.

  “Oh shit…” Papandreou whispered, making his decision. He opened a channel. �
�Throttle up Marines!”

  Papandreou and his Marines charged into battle.

  * * *

  Camp Charlie Epsilon

  Repairs complete.

  Diagnostics: Unit fit for duty.

  Deactivate beacon… Done.

  Initiate reactivation sequence…

  Gina awoke covered in soil and debris not sure where she was or what had happened. Her chest hurt… no it didn’t. It was just the memory of pain. Her hand wandered over her armour and paused at the hole it discovered. She probed through it and felt smooth skin. Her uniform ended in a burnt and tattered hole that matched her armour in its shape, but her body was whole. Healed? Her chrono said that she had lost time. How much time? Hours at least. She lay quiet looking up at the sky and listening to the silence. Why was it so quiet, was she deaf? Not according to her diagnostics. According to her processor, she was one hundred percent operational.

  She frowned and tried to remember what she was doing. She had fought beside James and his people for a time but had moved on to Cragg… was that right? She didn’t have time to consult her log, but she thought that was right. The time legend on her display was telling her hours had gone by since then. Long enough for reinforcements to join them? Possibly, but where the hell were they?

  She staggered erect pulling her rifle free of the mud as she did. For as far as she could easily see, there were Merki corpses lying in heaps. It was as if a bunch of hills had reared up out of the ground. The landscape was utterly different to what it had been. Craters dotted the ground. Trees and smashed vehicles still burned and smoke hung thickly upon the leaden air.