Mountie felt at home in his Lizard, master of his domain. But down on the ground like a Marine, with only a Prokov with which he was only passably familiar, he was out of his element—and extremely uncomfortable.
He took in a deep breath of air. The smell of expended ordnance and smoke was getting stronger as the slope started to rise. He was fairly confident he was heading to the hill, but he was not confident at all that his route to the hill was clear of Tenner mercs.
But I don’t have much in the way of options, now, do I?
As he’d tried to gather his thoughts after landing, he could hear Skeets circling the area, trying to spot him. But with no beacon, Skeets had to assume the worse, and as he’d already been close to bingo, he’d been forced to depart.
Should have punched out sooner, he told himself. Skeets might have spotted me in the air.
But what was done was done, and Mountie was now marching through the forest, trying to recall his SERE training. It has been years, maybe decades since a Navy pilot had had to put that kind of training to use, and a young Ensign Klocek hadn’t paid that much attention to the training, only doing enough to pass the course and not much more. He was a pilot, not a mudpuppy.
He wished now that he’d been just a little more attentive to the course.
Mountie came to an opening in the trees. Taking cover behind a decent-sized trunk, he searched the other side for signs of the enemy. He knew he should go around, but the sun was going down, and the thought of wandering around in the dark was frightening. No, he had to make contact with the villagers.
Taking a deep breath, he sprinted across the opening, expecting to be taken under fire at any moment. Somehow, he made it across and almost dove into the welcoming embrace of the trees on the other side. His lungs heaved as he sucked in the air, bent over at the waist. If someone rushed him now, he’d be helpless. He realized that he’d have been better off not to making a headlong sprint like that.
It took a few moments, but the growing shadows spurred him forward. The slope started rising as the smell of battle intensified. Flying high above the ground, Mountie had never been around that smell. In countless training missions, he’d dropped enough ordnance to level a city, but he’d never experienced it at a visceral level. And among the aroma of smoke and explosives, there was something else that triggered something deep within his brain, something that had probably been there before man became man. He didn’t want to dwell on it, but he knew without seeing that it was death. Men had died up there, and he was walking into it.
He reached the edge of the trees to a wide-open expanse of the hill. Below him, the local highway ran alongside a stream. Halfway up the hill, a shattered piece of war gear lay spread out over four or five meters, wisps of smoke still slowly rising in the still air. And up above him was the military crest. Even from where he was, a good 150 meters away, he could see how chewed-up the area looked.
Mountie looked to the sky in an attempt to figure out how much of the waning light was left. He knew the planet was slightly smaller than Earth (or his home planet of Hobart’s World) and had a quicker rotation, but his mind was too tired to try and do the calculations. The sun was barely a speck disappearing below the horizon, so he knew daylight was limited.
For a moment Mountie considered turning and fading back into the trees to try and hide out until the situation on the planet stabilized, but the thought was not too attractive. He wasn’t a loner by nature.
And if he got to the top to find mercs there?
The mercs follow the Harbin Accords, right? he reasoned with himself, even as a sense of shame hit him as he thought about being a POW.
That was almost enough to change his mind, but if the mercs were on the hilltop, they were being extremely quiet, and that didn’t seem likely. No, he had to at least check out what happened, and hopefully, he could find someone up there who could take him to the other villagers.
Before he could second-guess himself, he marched out from under the trees and into the open. He made no attempt at stealth as he climbed the slope. He wanted to be seen so some militiaman wouldn’t take a potshot at him.
Just before the military crest, he almost stepped on a body, or rather, what was left of one. Mountie had never seen a dead body before, and this one was rather mangled. It was clad in mostly civilian clothing, a camouflaged blouse with a blue armband the only nod to having a uniform. A military-style Olsen Hyper lay shattered by the man’s side.
The remains had almost been driven into the torn-up dirt, and Mountie knew that no merc weapon had done that. The militiaman might have been dead before Skeets had lit up the hill with his BD-42, but that was what had mangled the body. Mountie hoped the man had already been dead. Skeets had been trying to save them, not kill them.
Mountie felt he should do something about the body. That was what civilized people did, right? But he knew he had to try to find survivors. With a sense of sadness, he stepped passed the body and climbed the last couple of meters to where the fighting holes were dug, and into a scene out of Dante.
As a flight student, he’d seen the results of various types of ordnance carried by his plane. He’d known the immense power a Basilisk could unleash. But walking the ground was different. His feet stumbled in the furrowed soil as he looked at the devastation. Bodies were scattered, but most looked to be Tenner mercs. He glanced into a fighting hole and saw two bodies, militiamen. The bodies were mostly whole, nothing like those of the mercs.
The pilot mind in him calculated lines of force, and he knew that Skeets had come in low before pickling his load. At that angle, men above ground would have been extremely vulnerable to the BD-42 while those in the fighting holes would have had a reasonable amount of protection. This had been a danger close mission, but Skeets had done the best he could to take out the bad guys while giving the good guys a fighting chance.
At least I got the message out to Skeets, Mountie thought. I just hope some of the militia survived.
It wasn’t looking good, though. A couple of fighting positions were empty, but most had dead militia in them. Only a few had signs of BD-42 wounds, so most had probably been killed before Skeets had been able to make his run.
Darkness closed in as he walked down the line of fighting positions. He pulled out his Vibrotorch, bezelled it to beam, and looked inside each foxhole. The last position in the line was empty with three dead mercs and what looked to be another dead militia out in the open. Mounties hopes of finding a survivor was fading, but he hadn’t checked the entire line, so he doubled back past the holes he’d already checked to get to the rest.
It was more of the same: dead bodies or empty fighting positions. That was until he rounded a curve. Ahead of him, in the darkness, it looked like a man was sitting, back towards him, with another man’s head in his lap. Mountie couldn’t tell of either or both of them were alive, and he couldn’t even see if they were militia or mercs. With his Prokov aimed at them, he bezelled his light to fan-mode and lit the two up.
Mountie could immediately see that both men were locals, and that the prone man was long dead. Much of his side was gone, the organs taking on the sheen of drying meat, and his head was canted back loosely on his neck. The sitting man, though, was alive, even if he wasn’t moving.
“Sir?” Mountie asked, unsure of what to do.
The man slowly looked up, turning his head slightly as if confused. Mountie lowered his handgun and took a step forward when the man suddenly leaped to his feet, drawing an old rifle of some sort and holding it dead on Mountie, the muzzle never wavering.
Mountie froze, dropped the torch, and shouted, “Don’t shoot!”
“Who are you?” the old man asked.
There was enough ambient light from the two moons to see that the man looked confused and tired, but the muzzle of the rifle looked huge to Mountie as it was locked onto his chest.
“Lieutenant Caster Klocek, United Federation Navy, sir. I’m here to help you.”
He wasn’t qui
te sure how he was supposed to help the militiaman, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“Navy? Federation? You a pilot, I’m guessing? And did you do all of this?” the man asked, one hand waving to encompass the area, the other holding the rifle steady.
Mountie briefly considered trying to raise his Prokov and firing off a shot, but he didn’t think he could fire before the old man dropped him, and even if he did fire, he wasn’t sure he’d hit the man over the 15 meters or so.
And then there was the little fact that they were on the same side.
“Not me, but my flight leader. We got the call from someone on a phone that you needed help.”
The man suddenly perked up.
“You got yourself a call? Like on a PA?”
“Yes, sir. On a PA.”
“I bet it was my Keela who made that call. Sounds like her,” the man said quietly.
Mountie didn’t know if he was speaking to him or to himself, so he didn’t respond. But nervous energy bade him speak again.
“I’m sorry if any of your friends were hurt my flight leader’s run. I saw. . . well, I saw a few of your bodies.”
“Oh, no doubt they were dead already anyways. Or about to be,” the man said before he lowered his rifle. “I guess you’re not to blame, so no reason for me to shoot you.”
Mountie let out a huge breath, then holstered his Prokov. He didn’t want to give the man any reason to reconsider.
The man turned to look into the fighting position at his feet.
“That’s my boy in there,” he said, his voice calm and sounding almost matter-of-factly. “I can’t take care of everyone, but I can take care of him and Asante here, at least for now.”
Without another word, he took the dead man’s legs and pulled him to the edge of the hole and dumped him in. Kneeling, he started pushing dirt into the hole with his hands.
Mountie rushed forward and knelt on the other side to push in more dirt. In the hole, laying in a jumble against each other, was the man who’d just been pushed in and another young man. Darkness hid most of their features. The old militiaman shoved another push of dirt that fell with a dead sound as it hit the bodies.
It took almost 20 minutes of shoving. Mountie knew there had to be a shovel somewhere. The holes had not been dug with bare hands, after all, but he didn’t want to interrupt the old man. Together and wordlessly, the two labored to get the men mostly covered.
Finally, the old man stopped. He sat up straighter and said, “Jasper van Ruiker. I thank you kindly for your assistance.”
He stood up, slung his rifle across his shoulder, and started walking.
“Where’re you going?” Mountie asked as he picked up the old UKI that one of the dead men had been using. “Can you take me to your village? I have to contact someone to come get me.”
“No village left, I’m thinking. No power, at least. So, that won’t help you. And as to where I’m going, I’m off to find my wife.”
Mountie watched Jasper start to trudge up the last 20 meters to the top of the hill. If the village was gone, then it was on to Plan B. But he didn’t have a Plan B. He didn’t want to be alone in an unfamiliar land, and if this Jasper found his wife, then that was as good a start as anything.
“Wait!” he called out as he rushed to catch up with Jasper. “Can I come with you?”
He pulled up alongside the militiaman and started matching his pace.
When Jasper didn’t say anything, he simply announced, “I’m coming with you.”
Jasper grunted, but didn’t object.
Mountie took that as a yes.
Chapter 6
JJ
“OK, I think we’re out of range,” Sergeant Go said, taking a knee. “Cover our six while I report in.”
JJ nodded, turned, and took a knee as well, M90 at the ready. With the bridge down, he didn’t think anyone was going to be coming up their rear like that, but he’d do as he was told.
“Platoon headquarters,” the sergeant said into his throat mic.
They’d been on the team circuit, and to reach the company, the sergeant’s AI had to sync in with the frequency-hopping combat nets. In peacetime training, the random hopping paradigm caused far more headaches and downed comms than they were worth and was roundly hated by the Marines in the field. Except this wasn’t training. This was the real deal, the first full-fledged combat the Corps had faced in over 15 years.
It took Sergeant Go’s AI a good 20 seconds to mesh with the battalion combat net—an eternity in AI-time. But once in, it was an almost instantaneous connection to the Engineer Platoon’s circuit.
“This is Badger-Three. We accomplished our mission but have lost our escorts. Request—” the sergeant started before being cut off. “Fucking comms!” he shouted as JJ spun back around to look at him.
“Yeah, comms are out. I had the staff sergeant on the hook when this piece of shit squealed, then nothing but static. I’m about . . . squealing? Oh, shit! Run, Portillo, run!”
Sergeant Go immediately jumped up and started sprinting. JJ didn’t understand why, but when a sergeant tells a Marine to run, he does it. He pelted after the sergeant as they covered 100 meters, 200 meters. His heart was pounding, but not from the dash as much as a surge of adrenaline. He wanted to ask what was going on, his imagination running wild. Then, behind him, a loud explosion sounded. He turned to look over his shoulder to see dirt just starting to fall back to earth—right at about where they’d just stopped.
Sergeant Go started to slow down, pulling to the side of the road and into the trees before he stopped.
“How did you know that was going to happen?” JJ asked as he pulled up beside him.
“The threat brief? On the Kildeere?”
JJ shook his head.
“You were there. In the mess decks? That Navy JG? When he told us about the jamming and targeting?”
JJ vaguely remembered some lieutenant junior grade in an impossibly creased uniform drone on about some of the mercs’ jamming capabilities, but not much. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Hell, Portillo. They brief us for a reason, you know. Like, to keep us alive?
“Not that you’d remember your best girl’s birthday, but he told us that the mercs listen for comms, and then they jam them before sending a little welcome to light our asses. Only, when they jam us, our comms tend to squeal.”
“But aren’t we encrypted?” JJ asked. “Didn’t they tell us no one can break that?”
“They don’t need to know what we’re saying. All they need to know is that someone is transmitting. And if we aren’t one of them, then they’ll know that and send over some arty.”
JJ looked back again. A cloud of black smoke was rising into the air. He didn’t know what had been fired at them, but from the looks of things, it was pretty lethal.
Sergeant Go grabbed JJ’s shoulder and spun him back. He reached up and turned off JJ’s comms.
“Until we know what’s going on, we’re off the net, understand?”
“Roger that,” JJ said, totally cowed.
He hadn’t paid attention to the brief, and that could have cost him his life. Without Sergeant Go there, he’d probably be dead by now. As a lance corporal, he tended to let others make the decisions. He just did what he was told. But he knew Marines were so effective because anyone could step up into the breach if needed. Take out the officer, the SNCO took over. Take out the SNCO, then the NCO led. And if the NCO was zeroed, the rifleman did what he had to do in order to accomplish the mission.
JJ had joined a peacetime Corps. It had been his road to life as a free citizen. He’d never really taken his job seriously—it was do his time, then get out and find a job. But now, this was the real deal. The Federation needed him, and he was not going to shirk his duties. Whatever Sergeant Go needed done, he’d be the one to do it.
He looked to the Sergeant, who was taking off his engineer vest. The man had just saved his life. He’d never been in combat either, but he had
the wherewithal to adjust. A touch of hero-worship bubbled up within JJ.
“Let’s get a full count of what we have,” the sergeant said as he started to lay out the various charges, ammo magazines, and grenades he had. “Then we’re heading north. Battalion should be about 70 klicks away by now, and it looks like we’re going to have to hump it.”
“Aye-aye, Sergeant,” JJ said as he slid off his vest and started taking an inventory.
Like all recruits, he’d completed the Crucible’s final 75 klick hump. This would be behind enemy lines and with only the two of them, but he wasn’t concerned. He knew Sergeant Go would get them through it.
Chapter 7
Jasper
Jasper had lived in Donkerbroek for all of his adult life, brought as an indentured at the age of 17 to work on one of Mr. Gorashein’s many scattered holdings, then staying on after buying out his contract to start his own algae farm. He’d recognize it day or night—at least he thought he would. What he saw now was someplace different. The village had been leveled. Something big had demolished the center of the village, buildings and rubble flattened and fanned out from a single spot. Jasper didn’t know what could do that kind of damage, but it had to be something powerful.
Further out from the center of the devastation, some odd walls stood, then partial buildings. On the outskirts of town, a few homes stood. Harold Cochran’s beautiful house looked to have withstood the initial blast only to fall to fire afterwards. The flickering flames clung to life, illuminating the immediate vicinity.
The Brotherhood of Servants way station, right on the highway and with its low, unadorned shape, seemed to be about the only building inside the village left untouched. Donkerbroek wasn’t big enough to have a manned posting; the brothers came by once a month to resupply the small refuge for travelers who might not have the funds for the Rustig Stroom Inn, the town’s only hotel.
The smell was intense—the acrid sting of some sort of explosives, the penetrating miasma of fire and smoke—but what was missing was the stench of death, something that before yesterday, Jasper hadn’t ever thought to be able to recognize. Dockerbroek was gone, but it looked like the people hadn’t been there when it was destroyed. And that gave Jasper hope.
Behind Enemy Lines: A United Federation Marine Corps Novel Page 5