What do you expect, sending amateurs against real soldiers? he thought bitterly. We never had a chance.
He’d always known that, he’d already accepted that, but there had still been the tiniest bit of hope, especially when the merc assault had seemingly stalled.
Well, time to take out as many as I can, he told himself.
The sounds of fighting reached him, getting louder and louder the closer it got. He knew that with each moment, more of his militia, his friends, were dying.
With the berm facing downhill, he could see to Barry and Felipe’s hole while still protected from the assault force. He wanted to shout to the two of them that he had them covered, but his throat was too dry. Nothing came out except for a croak.
He couldn’t even see the mercs when Barry and Felipe shuddered and fell as a buzzsaw of rounds hit them. They never even got off a shot of their own.
It was probably less than fifteen seconds later when a figure dashed up, then dove to the ground. Jasper crouched lower, and when the next merc ran into view, probably intending to bound past his fellow merc, Jasper fired.
This time, he hit the man square in the neck, and the merc dropped like a sack of fertilizer.
“Heck, yeah!” Jasper shouted.
He realized he had only a few more moments to live, but he was damned sure he was going to revel in sending at least one of the bastards to hell first.
From where the first merc had hit the dirt, an arm flung up. Jasper barely saw the dark ball fly towards him. He ducked back into the hole as an explosion, not a meter away rocked him, dirt cascading down the walls of the foxhole.
Jasper immediately jumped up, ready to take the merc under fire when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He started to turn, barely catching sight of three mercs who had just flanked him raising their squat, ugly Gescard bullpups to take aim. Jasper started to wheel about, but he knew there was no way he could fire before their bullpups spit a stream of .42 caliber rounds to send him to his grave.
“YAAA—” he started to scream before his entire world erupted into a maelstrom of heat, noise, and confusion before all went dark.
Chapter 2
Mountie
“You are clear, Mountie. Kick some ass for Mutt!” Skeets passed.
Lieutenant Castor “Mountie” Klocek, United Federation Navy, inverted his Basilisk and dove at the center of mass of the Tenner positions. Without known locals in the area, he was weapons free, and his BD-42 was one hell of a weapon. He was going to make the fuckers pay and pay dearly.
Mutt, Lieutenant Pasqual Morthensen-Gable, was his bunkmate and friend, and only two minutes before, the mercs had shot him down with a Piper GTA missile. The Basilisk, known affectionately as a “Lizard” by its pilots, was a heavy bird, able to take an amazing pounding, but the Piper was up to the task. Luckily, they were so expensive that most merc units could only afford one. For them, a fight came down to a cost-benefit analysis, and spending for more missiles wasn’t a good business decision when the hope was that even the threat of one would keep enemy air away.
But the war with the Tenners wasn’t some local dust-up. This was total warfare, only the second such war since the formation of the Federation. In this situation, the bean counters simply could not be allowed to dictate tactics. Unfortunately for the mercs—and fortunately for the Federation forces—that is exactly what happened, and they wouldn’t have anything else that could threaten him.
They would try, though. Mountie’s Threat Reader kept up a stream of alerts as the mercs 3,000 meters below threw whatever they had up at him. Nothing mattered. Between his repeller fields and the heavy armor plating on his ugly ride, nothing got through.
Lizard jocks took a perverse pride in their planes’ appearance, and the ugly label was lovingly embraced. They may be low man on the Navy pilot totem pole, but the Marines sure liked having them around. A Lizard jock could walk into any Marine club and be sure of more than a few free drinks—something they tried to take advantage of whenever they could.
With a free approach, Mountie brought his Lizard almost straight down. The BD-42 could be released at any approach, but for the maximum attenuation of the blast wave, its trajectory should be perpendicular to the ground.
Mountie wanted the satisfaction of a manual pickle, but his Attack AI could better calculate the optimal release height given the terrain features and ground cover. He wanted to inflict maximum hurt to the bastards, so he was in AI mode. He’d keep his plane in the cone and react to anything unexpected, but the AI would pickle the bomb.
Still, he had to exact some revenge himself. He had only 56 of his 30mm rounds left, the rest having been expended on his flight’s primary target. Relying on his HDMS[1], he zoomed in on a field gun. With a flick of the safety lever, he triggered his Forsythe vulcan and sent the 56 rounds downrange in less than half a second. His seat vibrated with the “Forsythe Buzz,” but for a far too short duration.
He watched until the rounds hit the target, flashes visible where the depleted uranium rounds hit metal. He knew the field gun normally had a three-man crew, and he was pretty sure he’d just zeroed all three. Mountie felt pure, unadulterated joy in the thought.
His HDMS flashed amber. Mountie could still take over, but he let the AI keep control. After three flashes, it turned to red. His Lizard was a heavy plane, but it lurched as the BD-42 released as if happy to have gotten rid of the burden. Mountie thumbed his cursor to pull “Pretty Gabby” into a sharp oblique climb, out of the path of his 42’s shock wave. It wasn’t really too serious of a concern, but it was SOP, and frankly, Mountie enjoyed pushing his plane to its limit. He watched the timer count down, and right on cue, a bright flash lit up the air from behind, filling his cockpit with white light.
“BDA: I’m getting all four pieces destroyed and damaged vehicles out to 150 meters. Probable Casualty Reading of. . .looks like 83% to 120, 67% to 180. . .hell, Mountie, you frigging nailed the bastards. Good shooting,” Skeet passed from where he circled 9,000 meters above the target.
Mountie felt a surge of both relief and dark satisfaction. Relief because with Skeets on angel post, Mutt would normally have been coming in on his run in case the target had not been destroyed. Satisfaction that without Mutt behind him, he’d at least issued a serious payback to the Tenner mercs. It wouldn’t bring Mutt back, but at least it was something.
“Roger that,” he passed onto Skeets. “And I’m winchester;[2] the cupboard is bare.”
“Understood. We’re returning to home to get replenished. Come up to nine angels and we’ll head out.”
Mountie checked his readouts. He was still 20 minutes to bingo,[3] but without any munitions, there wasn’t any reason to stay on station. The sooner he could get back, the sooner he could return to the fight. He slowly brought up his Lizard on a wide, sweeping climb until he reached 9,000 meters, coming in on Skeets’ seven. Together, the two headed back to the expeditionary airfield at Philips Landing where they would refuel and receive another combat load of munitions.
Mountie tried to keep his thoughts off Mutt, but the more he tried, the more he remained fixated. Mutt was his wingman, and not just in their Lizards. For the last two years, as the squadron’s only bachelors, they’d had more than a lifetime of escapades that bordered on court-martial-worthy—if they’d ever been caught and some tight-ass promotion-hungry commander had wanted to level charges. But except for more than a few weekends assigned as the squadron watch officer, they’d escaped their adventures with their careers intact.
Only now, it didn’t matter. Mutt would never be using his pilot’s wings and ready wit to try and seduce some young honeywa at their latest port of call. Anger seethed inside Mountie, and dropping the BD-42 wasn’t enough. He had to do more.
The sky above him was crystal clear, with towering vertical columns of clouds that would normally make flying a joy as he wove his way through them on Skeet’s tail. But all he wanted to do was to get back, refuel and reload, and retur
n to the fight.
“Victor Flight, stand by for mission,” came over Mountie’s comms.
“Roger,” Skeets responded.
Skeets was the flight commander, so he’d be doing the talking.
“Victor Flight, we’ve got a militia unit in trouble, and the six wants to know if you can render support.”
“What’s the Nine-Line?”
“Don’t have one. All we know is that a militia platoon is being overrun by a Tenner unit of unknown size and strength.”
“Unknown? What the hell good does that do me? Can you patch me through to their commander?”
“Negative on that. The call came through the local commercial comms circuit from the wife of one of the militiamen. The fight is on Koltan’s Hill—”
“How the hell am I supposed to know where that is?” Skeets interrupted.
“Roger that. The crest is at CZ85563498, overlay blue. Friendlies are arrayed at the top.”
“Patch me through to this wife,” Skeets said as Mountie inputted the coordinates on his HMDS.
Thirty-five klicks at our 330, Mountie noted. Three minutes if we break off now. Still more than enough fuel to make it back.
“Negative on that. The wife said she’s entering a cave, and we’ve lost contact.”
“You copying this, Mountie?” Skeets asked on the flight circuit.
“Sure am.”
“No Nine-Line, no comms on the ground, and some ‘wife” calling for help and can’t be reached?”
Mountie knew what his flight leader was thinking. This could be a Tenner trap. On the other hand, it rang true to him.
“If it’s legit, they need us. If it isn’t, we can break off.”
Skeets was quiet for all of five seconds before he passed, “Yeah, I’ve got to chance it. I’ll meet you back at the airfield.”
“No, Skeets, I’m coming with you.”
“You’re winchester. What good are you going to do?”
“More targets for them. I’m going in first.”
There was dead silence as Skeets keyed out his comms. If Mountie took his Lizard in, he’d just be there as a flak magnet. He couldn’t take any offensive action. And if this new merc unit still had their Piper, he could get shot out of the sky for nothing. Only it wouldn’t be for nothing. That would clear the approach for Skeets.
Mountie waited five, then ten seconds before Skeets opened his comms with squadron ops.
“Roger on the mission. We’re on it.”
Mountie didn’t even wait for the order. He punched the coordinates into the navcomp, then thumbed the cursor to bring his big bird on course for this Curtain or Kollan or whatever-it-was Hill. It was 38 klicks away now, and he peered through the slight haze below, trying to spot the hill where the blue blinking triangle on his visor indicated it should be. Below him, trees stretched to the horizon, but the hills looked like mere bumps and not worthy of the term.
Doesn’t matter. I’ve got you locked in, he told himself.
He didn’t know if the merc unit had a Piper, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He punched in a Delta approach, letting his AI take over. The random and arbitrary approach was crap for putting bombs on target, but since he was winchester, that didn’t matter. A Delta approach was pure hell on a pilot, but it was better than eating a Piper up the ass.
He started clenching his stomach, grunting as the G’s hit. This wasn’t the steady G’s of a prolonged turn but rather the jerky push and shove as the Pretty Gabby juked and jived her way to the target. Mountie blinked up the avatar for the countermeasure release, but he knew his AI would release them at the first sign of fire coming his way.
He tried to focus on the target hill in front of him, but with his head bouncing around his flight helmet like a ping pong ball, that was not an easy task. But he could follow the numbers as they counted down on his visor display.
At three klicks, Mountie overrode his AI, releasing the first volley of flares. If there were a Piper gunner down there, he’d sure just made a good target of himself. Flares gave off intensive heat which could fool a heat-seeking warhead, but the Piper used an alternating active plasma pulse and passive atmospheric-disturbance system. The pulse could be spoofed, but doing so would open up his bird to AD guidance.
Suddenly, the top of the hill came into his view. In a flash, he could see a line of fighting holes. He could also eyeball the signs of fighting, even the shapes of men running across the crest. Whether they were friendly or enemy, he couldn’t tell, but that didn’t make any difference to him. He wasn’t dropping ordnance.
“Skeets, we’ve got a line of fighting holes along the military crest. There are at least 15 to 20 targets out in the open, and I’m guessing they’re mercs,” he passed to his flight leader.
He pushed his cursor to overfly the crest. His Lizard kept jerking as it maneuvered, but he knew his navcomp would take him in full view of both forces as he buzzed them.
Unless the mercs had anything to say about it. His alarms went off, his visor flashing red. He felt more than saw his ghosts vomit out of his Lizard’s belly ports in an attempt to spoof the Piper which was reaching up into the sky.
Mountie pulled his bird into a hard right as he climbed, hoping to outrun the missile long enough to dive back down under it. The Piper had a big punch, but his Lizard had a tighter turning radius—if he could get some air below him and some speed behind him. Too slow when he doubled back, and he’d stall.
The Piper’s approach avatar showed a narrowing gap between them. He had to keep the missile far enough away until he could perform a Dykstra Turn.
Come on, girl, give me more!
But the Piper was closing too quickly.
Fuck it, Mountie told himself. It’s now or never.
His Lizard had not achieved the speed necessary for a Dykstra Turn, but in another two seconds, it would be too late. He thumbed the cursor all the way to the right and forward, pushing the nose of his bird down and over. She shuddered as she fought physics, her wings struggling to provide lift while turning tighter than her stated specs allowed. Mountie’s eyes were locked on his HDMS as the Piper altered course, turning to keep on his ass—and drifting outside of his arc.
“I’m going to do it!” he shouted.
And then the Piper blew up. Its targeting brain could calculate that it couldn’t turn inside Mountie’s Lizard, so it detonated at its closest approach, about 40 meters off Mountie’s eight o’clock.
There was a thunk as a jolt pushed past the shuddering of his Lizard. Mountie held his breath as alarms pounded at him. He was still airborne and not an expanding ball of flame, which was a win as far as he was concerned.
His airspeed was dropping, and Mountie tried to dive to recover some of it. His tail end started to crab to the left. On his HDMS, a schematic of his Lizard appeared. Mountie didn’t need the tail end to be highlighted in red. His left vertical stabilizer was gone, and only 25% of his right remained. His AI was making a valiant effort to bring her down gently, but it wasn’t going to work. Mountie and his plane were going to crash into the trees below.
Well, hell, was all he could think as the ground rushed up to him.
With more than a little reluctance, Mountie hit the eject. A thousand mules kicked him in the chest and shoulders as he shot up and away from the wreck of his Lizard. Another jerk on his harness about castrated him as his chute opened and caught the air. He looked up to see the glorious sight of a full, intact canopy.
As he looked back down, he could see the top of the hill that had to be their target. It was covered in a rising cloud of smoke and dust.
“Good shooting, Skeets,” he said just before he plunged into the trees.
Something hit him hard in the back, and he jerked to a stop as his chute caught in the branches of a tree. He hung there upside-down, wondering how that was even possible, when a loud crack sounded over him. He jerked once, twice, then fell, bouncing off another branch before hitting the dirt with a resounding thud.
Mountie groaned, afraid of taking stock of his battered body. He didn’t want to know if he was broken or not.
Gingerly, he stretched out his right arm, then his left. Both seemed to follow his commands. With another groan, he shifted his legs around so he was sitting upright. His right leg was on fire, but there weren’t any bones protruding, at least. There, alone and under a tree in the forests of Nieuwe Utrecht, he tried to take stock of his situation.
“What the hell do I do now?”
Chapter 3
JJ
“You ready?” Sergeant Gary Go asked JJ as he looked nervously back into the trees where the recon team waited.
Lance Corporal Javier Julio Gregory Portillo, United Federation Marine Corps, checked his demo vest one more time. He had prepared the six Bunson charges, inserting the detonator caps, which the sergeant had calculated was more than enough to bring down the small bridge. The problem wasn’t with the charges, but rather emplacing them.
JJ didn’t know if Bridge 2203 even had a name. About 30 meters long, it didn’t look like much, but its strategic value was becoming obvious, so much so that Go-man and JJ had been attached to a recon team to take it out. As it spanned a deep chasm and was the only bridge for 20 klicks upstream and almost 47 klicks downstream, blowing the bridge would be a huge blow to the Tenner ability to move troops. The fly in the ointment was that the bridge was deep into bad-guy territory, hence the need for the recon team to escort the two combat engineer Marines to the objective.
JJ took a moment to glance over the railing of the bridge to the creek some 80 meters below him. He wasn’t normally afraid of heights, but he felt his nerves were a rational reaction to the situation.
“Ready, Sergeant,” he said before stepping over the rail, and onto a narrow ledge.
He leaned back, clutching the rail, looking straight ahead into the distance.
“OK, I’ve got you,” Sergeant “Go-man” Go, said. “Let get on it.”
Behind Enemy Lines: A United Federation Marine Corps Novel Page 2