“Outstanding,” Naero said. “Thanks, Clan Cherokee. Your Clan has really came through for us on this one.”
Corporal Cherokee saluted Naero in the confines of the hidden bunker, noting suddenly that she was an MCL. “Thank you, sir. What’s your current sitrep? Once we get everyone linked back up with Command, we can coordinate and keep forging ahead.”
“Valmont can tell you. He’s running Squad 2. I’m just along for the fun. Sergeant?”
“Our original plan was to link up with the two forward platoons ahead of us on her two o’clock, on the right flank. From there we would assist assaulting the enemy’s forward gun emplacements and clear a path for a mek unit penetration drive on to the troop ships still unloading more invader forces.”
“All right. Let me link up and coordinate that with HQ. They’ll advise us how to proceed.”
Meko spoke rapidly into her modified helmet away. She exchanged info back and forth, answering questions for a few minutes.
An enemy artillery barrage walked in to the left and front of them on the enemy’s own positions, less than one hundred meters away.
Meko smiled again. “The slashers think they’re pounding us with that slop.”
Cherokee listened a minute longer to the orders coming down. “Sergeant, proceed to these coordinates and prepare a six wave grenade and rocket attack on these enemy elements. All other Marine units not directly involved are pulling back to regroup, leaving decoy holos behind.”
In the resulting confusion, Alliance arty fell right on top of 36. Felix Blooding in Squad 3 took a direct hit and was vaporized.
Meko got on the links and called off the barrage before they all died.
Suddenly the enemy positions up front vanished in a massive wall of fire that was blinding even in daylight.
“What the hell was that?” Shetanna demanded.
Om jumped in. The enemy had rings of cloaked space mines concealed among their forward positions, waiting for us to overwhelm them and trigger those traps.
Meko started explaining the same thing a few seconds later. “Luckily, we pulled most of our people back right before they detonated. Now push the attack forward. Those mines are all gone.”
The enemy was willing to blow up their own units in order to cause more Marine casualties.
Bravo maneuvered under the cover of the dust clouds raised by those mines and large explosions and used advanced optics and scanners to pinpoint the enemy and put them down.
Meko and the Cherokee code talkers helped put the defenders and the Alliance back on top, and secure Delker-7 with much decreased confusion and loss of life for everyone.
Everyone but the bewildered invaders.
36 brought in what little they could find and retrieve of Felix Blooding. Mostly just melted fragments of his combat armor. But at least it was something–some part of him to put into his casualty bag along with an empty parts suit of his armor. They always tried to included pieces of broken weapons from the vanquished foes that had been put down, as trophies to the dead Marine’s valor.
They marched Felix’s remains in and said the right and proper words for him, as it should be. His mates mourned his loss. Yet another of their fellow ghosts would no longer fight directly beside them in the black.
Two days later at Blooding’s wake, anyone who was from Clan Cherokee was also praised as a hero on what just happened to be Sixthday and Binge Night.
As a general rule, most of the native clans did not drink or get drunk out of personal choice and preference. But they feasted, and laughed, and danced and sang with the best of them, and celebrated another hard-won Bravo victory all the same. And their special role in that triumph.
Naero had great respect for the native, or tribal Clans, as they sometimes called themselves. And many of them respected her, her warrior parents, and her Clan. She loved sparring with them. She could never resist a sparring match with her native Clan friends, especially with their love of knife fighting, which matched her own to the point of both art and obsession.
She would sit among them at times, as they spoke about their ways and Clan customs which had evolved along with them as Spacers. Naero’s family and her Clan had no links to the native Clans, and so the tribal Clan ways were exotic and fascinating to her mind. She had always been interested in other cultures and peoples. Just like her explorer parents.
Those who were worthy of respect should be given it. The native Clans who had survived for more than six centuries were a big part of the traditions and social variety that was scattered among the Forty-nine Free Spacer Clans as a whole. They had proven themselves time and time again as warriors, brothers and sisters of wisdom, and superb friends and allies.
The honor which they possessed was beyond question, and stood as a noble example to all the Clans, and to the enduring spirit all free peoples everywhere.
19
Tolon-10 was a winter world of cold, snow, and ice–even at the equator. The poles on that world were so cold as to be uninhabitable. The planet’s population of only three hundred million miners and research developers were scattered across the equator and the tropics in shielded domes that were just ripe for invader picking, not unlike eggs in an open nest or low-hanging fruit.
By the time Bravo arrived onworld, late to the scene, half of the mostly Pietto population was already dead and processed–just frozen blocks of meat in storage on the enemy meatships.
The other half of the population remained under siege, holed up in a handful of mountain fortresses of stone, ice, and snow at the edges of the tropics.
Those mountains were littered with hundreds of thousands of frozen, dead civilians: Piettos, humans, and Ejjai.
Many of them were locked in eternal combat now. Others had simply been overcome by the harsh elements and their failed, emergency environment suits. A simple, crack, rent, or hole in such flimsy Corps suits could spell frozen death to the wearer in a matter of minutes under wartime flight and combat conditions.
Such emergency or rescue suits were never designed for long term use or combat.
With the fighting remaining fierce and constant, the invaders had not had time to collect all of those frozen bodies.
Bravo Command jumped down to punch through the enemy deathring blockade and relieve the defenders at last.
Down below, the bulk of the Marines were already slugging it out and degrading the enemy massed battle units.
Up above, the Ejjai kept up their assaults on the defenders, fighting and killing as quickly and as efficiently as could be done, no matter how the battle turned out below and on those mountains.
Shetanna and Company 36 were the lead elements of five hundred Spacer Marines–just one of several relief units being sent in to crack the siege and break through to the defenders.
They started by smashing into the attackers along a stretch of key supply lines leading up from base camp to base camp, all the way up to the front battle lines of the mountain siege.
Once they hit the enemy hard and caused confusion, they began their campaign to trounce the enemy combat lines, systematically destroying invader ships and vehicles.
Shetanna ripped into any sticking points that 36 got hung up on with the enemy, from the top down.
She had her work cut out for her. Scarlet blazing katanas hissed and crackled in the near-blinding snow. She took out officers, troops, gunship pilots, and tank commanders.
Several thousand Ejjai reinforcements swept up the mountainside, weapons flaring.
Bravo was already barely holding the mountain.
Shetanna called the next op. “Everyone up and out on my mark. Get ready to move. Mark! Tell the defenders to button up.”
Tentacles of Chaos energy lashed out, crisscrossing the mountain and the advancing enemies in an energy net.
Then Naero hit the mountain rock and snow shelves with more than half of her ordnance.
And a tremendous blast of explosive Cosmic lightning.
The Ejjai shrieked as the
massive resulting avalanche swept them off the face of the mountain and the planet.
The remainder of the enemy attempted to make a run for it.
Bravo and Shetanna were already waiting for them by then.
A little mop-up near the top. Then, it took hours to convince the locals that the fighting was actually over, and that they could come down.
After so much loss, their world was finally secure once more.
The next Fourthday and the accompanying Book Night had Naero feeling a bit edgy and uncomfortable. She had picked out a steamy romance, with Chime’s help of course. But the steamy parts proved a little too suggestive and invigorating to Naero’s mind.
There was always a deep part of her that was incredibly lonely, and felt the intense need for love and everything that came with that.
But she sighed. Would she ever find a man–a lover who was her equal? Who was all that she could wish for?
And like her parents, they could stand beside each other and face and fight whatever came at them. Together.
Would she ever know such a love?
Naero sighed very deeply. He certainly wasn’t going to be found between the pages of some soft-core, nearporn bodice ripper, however cleverly penned by the author.
She couldn’t read anymore without having to face down the strong urge to go take an embarrassingly long mist shower, as many of the Marines did. And she wasn’t about to take a tumble with goons like Acer or Decker, who just lived to bang the lonely and the troubled into meaningless, empty release.
Goddam it. She wanted to be loved. Like what her parents had for each other. Naero wanted that at times more than she wanted to keep breathing. Nothing else was even going to come close for her. And she wasn’t ready to settle for anything less.
Naero loved her Marines, but just not in that sensual way. She liked a lot of them very much and had great respect for them. But even men like Lakota and Jonny were more like her brothers–not potential lovers. There was no attraction there. No spark.
Naero wondered deep within herself when she would ever meet a man that she would feel that fire for.
She found Chime later with two bottles of cold Spacer Poteen sweating next to her, as the booknut just finished what she called a rousing medieval style fantasy novel, part of one of her favorite series. It had been written nearly six centuries before, by an ancient Earth author.
Naero returned her book to the plascrate and nodded at the Spacer poteen bottles. Another of their friends, Peter Cooper, came along, eager to get that exact book in the same series. Chime went on for a time about how much he was going to enjoy it, without giving any spoilers.
“What’s the booze for, Chime?” Naero asked, when Pete was gone.
Chime grinned and licked her lips. “For you and me, babycakes. I decided on no sex for me tonight. So I was waiting for you to come around. Sit and get plastered with me. I’ll guzzle mine. You guzzle yours. Deal?”
Suddenly, Naero felt an intense kinship with her looney friend.
They proceeded to do just what Chime had suggested.
“N, what’s wrong with me?”
“You’re mental, Chime.”
“I know, I know. Batshit loopy. But I’m fun. I’m funny…fricking hysterical. Not a bad looker. I clean up well. And I’m pretty good in the sack…I think. Although I don’t get much practice at that, with these dumb apes. Why can’t I find some guy to worship me as the goddess I am? That’s all I ask for. Is that too much?”
Naero giggled and finished her bottle first.
Chime bent her pretty brown eyes and glared at her. “You’re not supposed to laugh, actually. This’s the part where you’re supposed to be supportive, dammit. Say something like: ‘Sure thing, Chime. You deserve some good looking stud to worship you and love you until you both pass out. Sure thing.’”
“You’ll find him, Chime. You’ll find all of that and more.”
“Great. I knew I would. So what the hell’s taking that jerk so long?”
Chime polished her bottle off and then promptly fell asleep, looking radiant as usual and snoring in Naero’s lap.
A while later, when she recovered enough to be able to walk herself, Naero put her friend to bed, and turned in herself.
Yet Naero could tell, as she looked around at 36. All of their world hopping was starting to get to them all, and break them all down.
20
Naero had never seen the Ejjai fight so fiercely.
Company 36 moved in on the Marchant-4 main starport, in the capital gigacity of Tharis. The Marines quickly captured four starliners, disrupting their power cores with new Intel disrupting charges specifically designed for zapping and temporarily disabling enemy ships and securing Alliance vessels that the foe attempted to utilize.
Around the gigacity capital itself, Bravo Command performed a perfect encirclement and containment strategy, moving and maneuvering leaping units in precise, lightning-fast ops. They popped and dropped slasher units left and right on the way in, carving the invader up and consuming the pieces.
Fixers took out most of the demo charges and booby traps on the starliners.
They also neutralized an additional nerve gas cosmicide device, with Om’s assistance via Naero.
Shetanna trashed a squad of enemy gravtanks as they swiveled their turret guns to fire upon the vulnerable starliners.
What the hell was inside of those vessels that the enemy was protecting so fiercely?
She and the Bravo boarding teams raided the first liner they came to up close.
Shetanna transported into the bridge cockpits, cutting down the Ejjai crew. Even as the enemy tried to activate grenades and fusion charges. She sliced through their wrists firsts, if she had to. When that crew was dead, she popped over to the next two cockpits and did the same thing.
In the fourth, she was a second too slow.
She fled as the fourth starliner cockpit exploded and cooked off.
On all four rescued starliners, Marines popped out the inflating nanoslides and started tossing stunned kids out and down to the tarmac.
Om warned her. N, that last starliner with the burning cockpit is going to go nova in less than three minutes.
“Bravo!” Shetanna commanded. “Speed things up. Get your asses out of there. That last liner is going to blow.”
Sergeant Maria Bucci answered back. “We can’t, N. The whole ship is stuffed full of stunned kids–thousands of them. Foam sprayers are on the way to suppress the fires.”
“There isn’t enough time, Maria,” Naero said. “I’m on my way; I’m returning to assist.”
Shetanna needed to come up with some kind of solution.
She floated above the burning liner. The flames spread rapidly.
First she sheared off the entire front burning section with a Cosmic slicing wave.
That took a lot of Cosmic juice, but if that part blew up, it could still take out the rest of the starliner and maybe even damage the others.
Om, please, dig deep. Help me place layered Cosmic blast shields all around the part that’s about to blow. We’ve got to contain the explosion.
N, it’s too late. We can’t.
I don’t want to hear it, Om. Help me! Just do it. Knock us out if you have to. There are four liners filled with kids and our Marines who are counting on us.
The blast ignited less than ten seconds later.
When Naero came to, everything around her seemed to be on fire. Chime Fox from Fireteam 3 dragged Naero’s scorched and battered suit of combat armor with her still in it, out of immediate harm’s way.
“I got you, N,” Chime told her.
“The liners?”
“Scorched, but secure. Between your shields and the foam trucks, we just barely kept it all from going critical and from engulfing everything in this sector in flames and explosions.”
Naero gulped in air.
“The fires will be out a few minutes,” Chime said. “What do we do then?”
Naero s
hook her still-fuzzy head, and blinked. “What are you talking about, Chime?”
“These stunned kids. What the hell do we do with all of these stunned kids, in the middle of a frickin’ battlefield? There are thousands of them.”
Naero tried to clear her head and ponder that problem for a moment. “Have the fixers refit the remaining three starliners, enough to get them up and running. Fly ’em out. Get those kids the hell away from here.”
Chime protested. “But we just disabled them all to get the enemy from getting away with them!”
“The fixers can do it.”
N, actually, only the first two of them are flyable. That leaves 4,631 kids age seven to eight months in imminent danger.
Naero checked the combat grid. Om was right. Incoming enemy attacks. Ground assault ships and gravtanks waves inbound.
The starliners were sitting ducks for the enemy to fire upon and destroy on sight. Naero had no doubts about that.
Om, how many Marines do we have on hand in this forward area?
Around six thousand, N.
She spoke out lout. “Get with HQ. We can do this fast. Line up the Marines. Get the two fixable ships the hell out of here. Then, on the damaged ships, each Marine grabs and carries one kid. Strap them on, use slings–haisha–use glue if we have to. But we’re getting out, and we’re taking those helpless kids with us, even if we have to fight our way out.”
Chime called back. “Major Luna has confirmed the op and shift in objective. We grab the kids and race toward these coordinates to a safe zone.”
“What’s there, Chime?”
“A secure staging area for evac refugees. There are about twenty thousand civies there, waiting for a ride out of here. They’ve agreed to help care for the kids if we can get them there safely.”
“Tell them to be waiting,” Naero said. She pulled her pulse carbine off her back where it waited. She locked and loaded.
She might be out of Cosmic juice for the day, but she could still fight.
All the while, the Marines filed into and out of the ruined starliners to grab kids and secure them. The two rigged starliners that could fly were already limping away into the sky, in the opposite direction of the fighting.
Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade Page 21