by Unknown
There were more than a few choked sobs, and noisy retches behind her. No one could be blamed. It was a nightmare. The wanton cruelty of it all made no sense to her. Why did the Storians hate them so badly? What was the slaughter supposed to prove?
Against her will, a deep, throbbing hatred began to rise to the fore. She was beyond any sense of anger. This was rage. If this act had been done with the intentions of frightening, or demoralizing the marines, it was a lost one. Instead, they had been incensed. Every one of the young troopers were all the more determined to beat the Storians back.
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The hike spanned four blocks before opening to the wide expanse of small farms and patches of trees where the enemy was expected to be waiting. Minerva scanned the terrain as carefully as she was able, trying to take everything in. It was beautiful, so much greener than her desert hometown ever would be. Cottage-like houses, large red barns, sectioned pastures dotted with woods. That beauty concealed innumerable dangers.
The Huey-shuttle flew out ahead of them, gaining some altitude, and banking from one end to the other. It did not fire on anything, so as yet, the Storians had declined to make their presence known. Minerva slowed her pace slightly, and the platoons did likewise. The tension began to mount.
They walked perhaps another mile without so much as a hint of enemy activity. Minerva began to actually allow herself to feel some hope. Maybe the Storians had cleared out after all.
No, she thought, if that were the case, the gunship would have easily spotted them out on the highway further out.
The quiet was only testament to the fact that this was an ambush they were walking in to. Her nerves steeled themselves, expecting all hell to break loose at any moment. She stole a glance back to reassure herself that she was not alone. The lines of marines and tanks looked impressive. Her mind flashed back to high school, where in history class they had studied about the Roman legions on the march. She wondered how many times through history armies had been on the march in just such a fashion. Now, she was a part of one. How had her life changed so drastically?
C-Company reached an area where to Minerva’s left was a flowered meadow backdropped by a thick patch of young trees and brush. To her right was a fair-sized family farm. A waist-high stone fence extended across a horse pasture from south to north, where a couple of skinny mares watched the procession with passive interest, their tails flapping at clouds of flies. About five acres out was an old
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house with a wrap-around porch, shadowed by a huge red barn. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows laced with bright, golden light. Nearer to the shoulder of the highway was a long chicken coop with close to fifty fat hens clucking about, oblivious to the dangers that lurked.
She sensed rather than heard subtle activity from behind, and looked back again to see that Ford was moving A-Company out into the pasture, spreading the platoons out into a wide firing line behind the stone wall. This unnerved her somewhat. It meant that he expected trouble, and soon, if he was already setting up a defensive position.
Growing more ill-at-ease by the second, Minerva motioned for the tank to move up closer. As it lumbered slowly forward, she turned, happening to glance in the direction of that red barn. Its double doors were open, a dark, crooked maw filled with shadow. The setting sun threw golden rays of light through cracks in the aged boards of the western wall, silhouetting something large, and hulkish within. Could be a combine, or a big thrashing machine. She nearly dismissed it, but some small voice in the back of her mind began clamoring alarm bells.
Minerva paused in her stride, and held up a closed fist.
The tank lurched to a stop, and the entire column of marines halted, waiting. Their eyes fixed on her arm. Down the line, section leaders made the same gesture, passing on the signal that something might not be right.
The silence was broken only by the lazy chugging of the tank engines.
She splayed her fingers wide. Instantly, all 300 troopers squatted, rifles coming up to the ready. Minerva slowly eased down to one knee, mentally willing her visor to enhance the image, and zoom in for a better view.
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Her eyes bulged. Unable to even draw a breath through the bulge in her throat, she forced herself to shout.
“Tank!”
The Storian tank fired its main gun as her lips formed the word. There was a bright flash from the barn, followed a micro-instant later by the plasma shell smashing squarely into her escort unit, a mere forty feet away from her. The explosion was terrific; a hollow, metallic CLANG blew the turret completely off. The concussion slapped Minerva right off her knees, sending her skidding face-down across the blacktop.
Small-arms fire erupted from the copse of trees to her right, sending the marines diving for cover in the opposite ditch. Her head buzzing from the shock of the concussion, Minerva rolled over onto her back. Her view was of a sea of plasma bolts flying scant inches above her like a swarm of angry bees. The tank was spewing flame and thick, black smoke, the heat of it so intense that she could actually feel it through her armor.
Dazed, she returned to her stomach, and belly-crawled toward the ditch. The Storians were beginning to rain mortars down across the highway and the opposite side of the pasture. The rounds were banging sharply, throwing great gouts of earth and asphalt into the air all around her. As Minerva reached the ditch, and was snaking down into it, one of the explosives struck the chicken coop, sending wood, fire, and feathers out in a huge fan. The concussion crashed into her, slamming her body back against the edge of the drainage ditch.
Growing increasingly dazed and confused, she curled up into a ball, holding her arms over head. The gunship added its engine noise to the din of the battle, coming in low and fast, its forward guns blazing. Spent plasma casings rained down over her, clattering and bouncing like hot hail. She reached down and picked one up, examining it in a stupor as if it were the most fascinating thing she’d
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ever seen. She also realized that she’d lost her rifle in the confusion.
Looking down the gulley, Minerva watched her fellow marines fighting desperately, risking rising far enough to shoot back over the highway. Many were falling as rounds punched into their upper bodies as they did so. Through the fog in her mind, Minerva knew that safety lie in that direction, back from the way they had come. She began to crawl on hands and knees while plasma buzzed above her shoulders.
The second tank was motoring forward from Alpha Company’s position, its side guns roaring in both directions. It parked less than twenty feet from her right, looming over her. The turret spun and homed on the barn where the Storian unit was still taking shots at them. Its main gun went off, the muzzle wash smashing Minerva down in yet another concussion wave, this time so hard that her helmet visor spider-webbed against the ground beneath her.
Minerva’s terror was by then bordering hysteria. She was battered and half out of her mind, knowing only that she needed to get out of there. In her confusion, she actually stood and began to stagger like a drunken woman, the flood of plasma rounds somehow missing her as she stumbled on.
The Storians began unleashing shoulder-fired rockets, which managed to disable the tank. The series of hits were nothing compared to when its ordinance cooked off. Another earth-shattering blast hammered against Minerva’s back, throwing her through the air.
Tumbling, rolling, coming to a stop on something strangely giving. She pushed herself to a sitting position, seeing that she was mired in the gore that had once been a human being. It was all over her. She began to scream.
“Carreno!” A familiar voice was bellowing over her helmet
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pick-up. “Get the hell out of there! C-Company fall back!”
Her mind searched for the source of that voice, trying to put a name to it, but it so difficult with all of the noise around her. Shooting, yelling, explosions. Stuff was raining down from the air. Some of it was dirt. Too much of it blood.
Ford
.
Sergeant Major Ford. That was his voice.
She realized that he was shouting at her. She was the company commander, and these were her people getting butchered around her while she just sat there. Minerva shook her head, attempting to clear it. Risking a peek above the ridge of the ditch, she could see that the Storians were attempting to flank them on the left. Both of the tanks were burning heaps, and the one remaining unit was holding way back by A-Company, near the stone wall where the new defensive line had been established.
Rather than fall back to safety, she made another decision. She knew that if they were successfully out-flanked, the Storians would be able to possibly overrun that still-fragile line. Reinforcements had not arrived yet.
“Second Platoon, move to your left, and try to cross the highway!” She ordered. “First Platoon, covering fire!”
Their rifle fire merged in a better fan, punctuated by their 60-watt gunners. She was disillusioned by how little of her 1st platoon actually remained, but they were managing to lay down a fairly sufficient sheet of cover. To her relief, the third tank was inching up, adding the power of its side guns to theirs. Keeping low, 2nd Platoon began leap-frogging across the highway, creating another defensive line on the other side.
“Minerva! For Christ’s sake, get out of there!”
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That was Mark. He was worried about her, but there was no time to think about that. Ford was already directing his mortar teams to walk rounds across the tree line ahead of her, providing yet another layer of support in holding the Storians back.
Amell came scrabbling toward her, carrying a rifle in one hand while lugging her own 60-watt in the other. Her visor was up, revealing dirt and blood-smudged white fur.
“I noticed you needed one of these,” the Attayan joked, handing the AR-44 to her.
Minerva accepted it, not even noticing the blood smudged on it.
“We need to hold back this flanking maneuver until Bravo Company can reach us!”
Amell nodded her agreement, setting her 60-watt on the lip of the ditch, and chattering out rounds.
That was when an RPG struck behind them, throwing a wave of earth across their backs. Minerva turned to see where it had come from. The barn was a burning pile of debris, and there was no other area of cover between them and the farmhouse. To accentuate her suspicions, another rocket lanced out from a second-story window, streaking toward them to detonate yet closer. The sniper was zeroing in on them.
Minerva keyed her comm-link, “Ground One to Helo. Can we get some ordinance on that house to our nine-o-clock, over?”
The gun ship had made a wide arc just prior to her calling it, and banked around after a moment. It unleashed a burst of rockets, which plowed into the house, sending it up in a fury of flame. Minerva took an instant to hope that an innocent family hadn’t been trapped in there, but just as quickly doubted it. After seeing the carnage while passing through the residential district, she had a good
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idea that if anyone had been in there, they were dead long before.
The helo was turning its attention back to the Storians across the highway when another RPG shot upward from the tree line, slamming into its underbelly. Flame blew from the gunship’s side doors, and it began to spiral downward---right toward Minerva’s position.
“Oh, crap!” Amell shouted, immediately bolting into a run, leaving her 60-watt behind. Minerva was on her heels, running at a crouch, bracing herself for the explosion that was sure to come.
The helo hit the asphalt and began to roll, slowing off pieces of metal as it came, crashing into the ditch and exploding. Debris peppered Minerva’s back plate as the shock wave tried to knock her down, but she somehow managed to keep running.
Storian rounds came at them in a withering storm, chopping into marines left and right as they picked up and began to retreat. A Storian armored vehicle emerged from the brush, a Bushmaster machine gun mounted to its top. The horrific rounds began thundering through the remnants of C-Company’s platoons. Mortars zeroed in on them, blowing huge gaps in the line, creating a bank of choking dust that blinded all as they tried to flee.
Minerva became separated from Amell, but occasionally encountered a fellow marine in the cloud that was illuminated by the furious blue flashes of plasma. Troopers were falling, staggering; receiving indescribable wounds. Blood erupted in a fountain from a kid’s neck ahead of her as a round knocked him sideways. She paused long enough to slip a hand under his arm to help him up, and a mortar went off near enough to blow her onto her butt, not even feeling the shrapnel that had penetrated her leg plates. Staggering back to her feet, she again tried to help the kid up, but he was dead-weight. Taking the time to actually look down, she recoiled in horror. All that remained of him was his chest, head, and one arm.
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Panicking again, she resumed her flight for the relative safety of the fallback point, not even aware that she was shrieking. An eternity later, Minerva emerged from the clouds of dust and smoke, seeing that she was nearer to the stone wall than she had realized. A-Company was pouring covering fire for the tattered remainder of her own company, which was trickling out of the haze a few at a time, many assisting others who had been wounded.
Fortunately, the Storians were not giving chase, instead content to hang back where their own defensive line was the strongest. The incoming fire began to slacken, then petered out altogether, leaving a numbing quiet that was just as disturbing as the noise of battle had been. Black smoke billowed overhead.
Bravo Company had been able to better move into position by then, and their tank was providing hellacious cover fire over the heads of retreating C-Company. Minerva stumbled the last few yards, at last achieving the stone wall, and collapsed behind it onto her knees. She could scarcely draw a breath, and her legs felt like rubber. She had wet herself, and only then realized that blood was making her legs feel greasy. Hot pain began to throb from her thighs where the shrapnel had shot through the armored plating. She shoved away a Corpsman when he tried to help her, preferring to be left alone.
Minerva pulled her helmet off, gasping for air. Trembling. Unable to form a cohesive thought. The war had become too close. Too real. She wanted nothing more at that moment than to be home again, back in Winslow with her parents. She buried her face in her hands, and wept, uncaring that the damned GNN cameraman was filming her.
She just wanted to be little again.
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Night had fallen, and all remained silent, though it was a tense and tentative peace.
The fragile forward line remained at the stone wall of the horse pasture, with only two company’s worth of marines present to hold it. The single remaining tank sat idle on the highway, its crew ever on the alert. Most of Company C had been evacuated to the beachhead for medical treatment, and replacements were being culled together, but had yet to arrive.
A sliver of moon hung low in the early evening sky, bedded among a field of familiar stars. A few thin wisps of clouds crept across the horizon, their tops laced in Luna’s silvery light. Crickets and tree frogs peeped. Hushed talk and occasional laughter drifted from the darkness that hugged the field. Some were dining on their ration packs, other who could napped. Mostly, it was just gazing off into the night, watching for hints of enemy activity.
Minerva sat with her knees drawn up, bundled in the arms of her beloved, allowing herself to be cuddled like a child. Her battered nerves were still coming down from their forced limits. The tears and trembling had finally stopped. One of the corpsmen had tended to her leg wounds, and now she took comfort in the strange dullness that followed, where her emotions felt numbed as if by Novocain. She wished that she could hear Mark’s heartbeat, as she had when lying next to him so long ago while in transit from the Attayan System, but his armor robbed her of that. When he occasionally stroked her hair, or kissed her forehead, it made up for it, though. At least for the moment, she felt safe in his embrace.
A familiar
, massively-built figure approached in the dim light, the red tip of a cigar glowing from the person’s mouth. Sergeant Major Ford paused before them, and squatted down near enough that she could see his face. He removed the stub from his mouth, and fixed her with a stare that was both concerned, and serious. His eyes were soft, though, and filled with genuine worry.
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“How you holdin’ up?”
Minerva sighed, and nodded, “Better.”
He did not break eye contact. His specialty was the ability to see all the way inside to one’s soul, seeing the true self in there. He did it this time without being judgmental.
“You did good today.”
She let out a sound of disbelief, “The hell I did. I fell apart out there.”
“Of course you did,” he told her, tapping the ash from the tip of his cigar. “Look at yourself. You’re barely eighteen, first time away from home, and doing the best you can in a goddamned combat zone. There are men and women twice your age having nervous breakdowns of their own right now.”
Minerva was not so easily convinced, “Difference is, I’m a company commander. People died out there because I couldn’t keep my cool.”
“A lot more didn’t die, because of that flanking maneuver you caught,” Ford insisted firmly. “You did the best you could with what you had, Carreno. You held that line until the wounded could be pulled out. You did exactly the one thing you were supposed to do.”
Her tears began to fall again, and she hitched back a sob.
“What is it?” Ford asked.
“After I got back,” she replied thickly, “I was glad that I hadn’t been among those that were killed. I was glad that I made it. I feel so damned guilty for that!”
Ford nodded, nonplussed. He took a leisurely drag from his smoke, and let it roil lazily from his nostrils, “How does that make
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you any different from the rest of us?”
Minerva blinked, confused, “Huh?”
“Don’t you think that myself, or anyone else still out here tonight doesn’t share those same emotions?”