Behind Enemy Lines: A United Federation Marine Corps Novel Read online

  A UNITED FEDERATION MARINE CORPS NOVEL

  BEHIND ENEMY LINES

  Colonel Jonathan P. Brazee

  USMCR (Ret)

  Copyright © 2017 Jonathan Brazee

  A Semper Fi Press Book

  Copyright © 2017 Jonathan Brazee

  ISBN-10: 1-945743-09-3 (Semper Fi Press)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-945743-09-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Acknowledgements:

  I want to thank all those who took the time to pre-read this book, catching my mistakes in both content and typing. Thanks to best-editor1 for her editing and to Alex McArdell for the cover art. You can see more of Alex’s work at: https://www.behance.net/AlexMcArdell.

  Original cover art by Alex McArdell

  Cover graphics by Steven Novak

  DONKERBROEK

  NIEUWE UTRECHT

  Chapter 1

  Jasper

  Jasper van Ruiker gripped the old UKI assault rifle tightly as he stared into the darkness. His thumb fell to the safety which he flipped off, then back on again. He risked a glance to where Ida’s boy, Greg—no, that’s Sergeant Brusse now, he had to remind himself—stood chest deep in his fighting hole. Greg . . . the sergeant . . . had warned them all to keep their weapons on safe until they had a target.

  Sergeant or not, Jasper flipped the selection lever to fire mode. He didn’t want to waste even a microsecond when the Tenners assaulted.

  I’m too old for this shit, he thought for the thousandth time.

  Two weeks earlier, Jasper was harvesting his algae, only his fourth season as a freeman and independent farmer. The new DT-445 Blue was performing better than he’d dreamed, and he and Keela had thought their future was finally secured. He’d never imagined that future would find him in a foxhole, clutching a rifle he’d never even fired, and with only nine rounds to face a Tenner mercenary unit.

  He wished he could call Keela, but Maarten, now the lieutenant, had taken all their PAs. “Security” he’d used as an excuse. Jasper didn’t know much about fighting and even less about security, but he didn’t think a call to his wife would change the course of the coming battle. So, little Amee’s PA was now burning a hole in his pocket. His five-year-old granddaughter surprisingly hadn’t complained when Keela had taken it from her and slipped it into his pocket last night.

  Jasper had been conscripted into the Donkerbroek Militia only five days earlier, but even without training, even without experience, he knew that the 28 of them stood no chance against the professional mercs who were approaching, PA call or not.

  “Do you think they’re still coming?” Ito, asked in a whisper.

  Ito was an outsider, only six years arrived in the village, and Jasper had never reached out to him and his family to make them feel welcomed. But since they were now sharing a fighting hole, things had changed.

  “Aye-yah, lad, I think they are,” Jasper answered.

  “Why are we even fighting? I mean, I don’t like the Tenners, but what have they ever done to me? And where is the Federation? Why do they leach us with taxes if they aren’t going to protect us?” Ito asked.

  “Quiet!” Sergeant Brusse hissed as Ito’s voice started to rise in his excitement.

  Ito had a point, though, and it was something Jasper had been wondering about ever since the Tenners—the Freedom Consortium troops—had landed on the planet. As a former indentured, or Class 4 employee, Jasper had no love lost for any of the big corporations. They took it to the plebes every chance they had. But they’d been operating in the Far Reaches with relative impunity for a century, and it was only now that the Federation was trying to rein them in.

  The politics of it all were beyond Jasper’s knowledge or interest. He knew that the fledgling Brotherhood of Servants and some of the independents had their fingers in the mess, but it was the corporations that were the prime players. Their nickname of “Tenners” was based on the ten corporations that initially formed their consortium. And that was about the extent of his knowledge of the situation. Politics might impact his life and that of his family, but he couldn’t affect anything at that level, so like most others at the bottom of the social ladder, he was a mouse who scurried around at his own business while ignoring the rumblings of the elephants as they jockeyed for position.

  What Jasper did know was that as a freeman, he paid 32% of his income last year in Federation taxes, taxes that were supposed to support the Navy and Marines, among other things. So why was he standing in a fighting hole in the middle of the night, holding a rifle, then? He wasn’t a frigging Marine. He was a farmer, providing organics for the fabricators that supported all of human space. Hell, Donbury Ag had been his single largest customer, and they were one of the ten founding corporations of the Freedom Consortium. So, he was fighting for the Federation, who took his income in taxes, against the company that bought his algae. All of this made his head ache.

  Maarten, mayor of the village and now lieutenant and commander of the militia, had argued vociferously for loyalty to the Federation, and the rest, albeit some with far less enthusiasm, had agreed. Every adult in the village had reaffirmed their fealty to the Federation. That was before the Tenner mercs had landed, however. Now, there was no turning back.

  Some 7,000 mercs had invaded Nieuwe Utrecht, more than enough to take over the sparsely populated planet. If every freeman and indentured joined the various militias, they could create a 50,000-man force, but no one doubted that the well-trained and well-armed merc force could slice through the militias like butter, and even the Marine battalion that had landed wouldn’t be enough to hold them off.

  But that was the big picture. What mattered to Jasper now was on a much smaller scale. Led by Maarten, the 28 of them were dug in on the crest of Koltan’s Hill where they could control the Blue Trail Highway. If the Tenners wanted to take Donkerbroek, they’d need to kick the 28 of them off the hill first. And they were coming. The call from Wieksloot before it fell was sobering. At least 200 mercs, an entire company, had destroyed most of the town and were now heading north on the highway.

  “Why do they want us, anyway? We’re not rich,” Ito whispered.

  “Doesn’t matter much why, Ito. They’re here, and if you want to protect Kara and your girls, you need to fight. You heard what they did to Wieksloot.”

  The report had been fragmentary, which wasn’t surprising given the situation, but the mercs had pretty much leveled the larger town. Civilian casualties had been extremely high.

  Political leanings aside, that was the reason Jasper was standing in the fighting hole. Keela was with Carrie Brusse, leading the rest of the women and children back to the Pirate’s Cave. Among them were his three grandchildren. Along with their mother—his daughter-in-law, Radiant—they were five of the seven most important people in his life.

  He looked to his left, but he couldn’t see where his son, Christiaan, was waiting to face the mercs. He’d come to grips with the fact that neither he nor Christiaan would survive, and he had no idea what was the status of Karianne, his daughter, who worked in the capital, but he�
��d do what he could to keep his grandkids alive. The Tenner mercs would know of the cave, of course. But Jasper was hopeful that they wouldn’t bother tramping around the woods and hills to track down non-combatants.

  “I know,” Ito said quietly.

  There wasn’t much more that Jasper could add. They were all going to die, he knew, and he didn’t feel like lying to bolster Ito’s confidence.

  I should have kissed Keela one more time, he thought.

  But with her rushing to gather the children and him rushing to his position, they’d somehow missed connecting. And now it was too late.

  Jasper had accepted his fate. He was far less frightened than he would have thought he would be. More than anything, he was sad. There was so much he was going to miss in his family’s life, but this was the gift he was trying to give them. If the militia could delay the mercs even for a few minutes, that would give the rest of the village more time to get deep into the cave.

  “Oh, shit, here they come!” Ito said, panic rising in his voice.

  Jasper snapped back to the present. Down on the highway below, maybe 700 meters away, a combat robot was trundling towards them, clearly visible under the light of the twin moons.

  The Tenners sure like their tech, he thought as he watched the robot get closer.

  Another 30 meters behind the robot, three soldiers advanced, weapons at the ready.

  Jasper looked down his UKI’s sights. The soldiers were still too far out of range for him, but he wanted to be ready. The plan was to wait until the mercs crossed Brown Bridge over Rustig Stroom, the stream that ran along the highway and through the village. At about 200 meters below them, Jasper thought he should be able to take out at least one of the bastards before they got to him.

  That plan was stillborn. The robot suddenly stopped in the middle of the highway. Jasper could see something on top of it spin, then without warning, a stream of lights reached up to them. For a moment, Jasper was confused, and all he could think of was fireflies. Then the rounds started impacting with ferocious intent. Sergeant Brusse stood up mouth open to shout when the top of his head exploded, and he fell back into his foxhole.

  “Oh, my God!” Ito shouted before turning to scramble out of the fighting hole. Jasper tried to grab him, to pull him back.

  “Your girls, Ito. You’ve got to fight!”

  Ito was kicking for all he was worth, and Jasper lost his grasp. Ito stood up and started to run, making all of one step before most of everything above his hips simply disappeared. A coppery mist fell on Jasper, coating his face.

  “You . . . I . . .” he started, staring at the body.

  Another round slammed into the dirt half a meter to his side, sending up clods that pelted him. Jasper turned around and ducked into his hole, breathing heavily. He’d been ready to die, but now, this was real. Fear started to creep over him.

  He took several deep breaths.

  “Come on, Jasper van Ruiker! No time for cowards!”

  With an extreme effort of will, he stood up, swinging his rifle to take the mercs under fire, only to immediately duck back. He’d barely a split-second, but that had been long enough to see they were still too far away. With only nine rounds, he wasn’t going to waste them on impossible shots.

  “Stay down until they’re closer!” someone shouted, coming to the same conclusion.

  Jasper could barely hear whoever had shouted, given the hammering of the gun from below. He tried to sink lower into the dirt at the bottom of his hole as the merc combat robot tore up the hillside. Scrunched up like that, Amee’s PA dug into his thigh.

  Screw it. They know where we are.

  He pushed out his leg the best he could and fished out the pink Li’l Bunny PA. He only hesitated a moment before keying in Keela. His wife answered after the first chime.

  “Are you OK?” she asked, her voicing high and strident the way it always was when she was stressed.

  “Aye-yah,” he said automatically, before he corrected, “Uh, no. Ito’s dead. Tried to run. And the Tenners are down on the highway.”

  “I can hear the firing,” Keela said. “It’s . . . there’s a lot of it.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the switchback. I’m bringing up the rear with Marta. Five more minutes, I think.”

  Jasper breathed a sigh of relief.

  More like ten from the switchback. But still, if we can hold the mercs off for a few more minutes, maybe they can make it.

  With Keela were over 70 women and children, and if she was in the rear of the group, he hoped people were already pouring into the cave.

  “Can you . . . I mean, is there any way you can hold out?” Keela asked.

  “I love, you. You’ve been the best thing in my life,” Jasper said, avoiding the obvious answer.

  Even if they tried to retreat, the mercs weren’t going to let them get away. And surrender wasn’t an option with them, not if what they heard from Wieksloot was true.

  Jasper heard a gasp on the other end, then, “I love you, too.”

  The robot below them quit firing, the silence almost deafening. Jasper didn’t know if it had been cut off or if it had simply run out of rounds. He craned his head around, but couldn’t bring himself to pop up to see.

  “Get ready!” someone shouted from down the line.

  “Look, Keela, I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait!”

  “I love you,” he said, tears forming as he cut off the PA, dropping it to the bottom of the fighting hole as he turned around, facing downhill.

  “Not yet! Wait for my command,” the voice cried out.

  It sounded like Jan ter Horst, which struck Jasper as odd. Jan was the town drunk, straight out of a Hollybolly casting. Jasper couldn’t imagine him taking over the defense. But without any better option, Jasper was going to obey the commands.

  The horrendous tsunami of fire had ceased, but rounds still impacted around them, angry bees looking for a target. Jasper figured it was controlled fire from the mercs themselves, and he knew that if he popped out of his hole, he’d be targeted. Still, the urge was strong to do just that. If he was about to die, he wanted to see his killers. Crouching in the foxhole only heightened his anxiety.

  Time barely crept on, but when Jan yelled “Now! Kill the bastards!” it seemed too soon.

  “Kus mijn kloten!” Jasper shouted, borrowing his grandfather’s favorite profanity, as he rose up, rifle ready.

  Downslope, at least 30 Tenner mercs were heading towards them, clad in their hardshell armor. Jasper didn’t even know if his .30 cal round would penetrate the armor chest pieces, but he had to try.

  He aimed in at the nearest merc and fired. He had no idea if he hit the soldier, but he felt a thrill when the merc dove for the ground.

  “Take that you—” he started before a heavy fusillade of fire reached out to them from the far side of the highway, and he had to duck back down.

  Jasper had thought that the 30 mercs he’d seen were possibly the only ones in the fight, forgetting what Maarten, reading from a downloaded manual, had said about supporting fires or something like that. The 30 mercs were the assault force, but the bulk of the force would be supporting them.

  Sporadic fire from the militia reached down from their positions, but not enough. Jasper took another deep breath and popped back up, snapping off another shot. He was sure he hadn’t come close to anyone, but hopefully, it would have helped slow them down.

  But he couldn’t do that too many times. He had seven rounds left, so he had to make sure each one counted.

  Someone down the line started screaming in pain—and he kept on screaming. Jasper closed his eyes. That was one of his friends dying an awful death, and he didn’t even know who it was. The screaming was getting to him, sapping his will. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t honorable, but he wished someone would just put the wounded man out of his misery. If it were him in that position, he’d hope that a friend would grant him that release.

  The return fire
from their positions was petering out, and that should give the mercs more confidence, so Jasper popped up once again—and was shocked to see a merc not 20 meters below him, rushing up the hill. Instinctively, Jasper fired off two shots. The first glanced off the merc’s chest plate, but the second shattered the man’s face shield. Jasper felt a thrill run through him as the man fell, rolling back down the hill. That thrill was only partially mollified when the merc gathered himself and scrambled for the cover of a depression in the ground. Jasper may not have killed the man, but he sure as hell had gotten the merc’s attention!

  The mercs on the slope could not get their weapons to bear on them. Maarten, for all his lack of experience, had selected a good position in that regard. The mercs all the way at the bottom of the hill, though, the ones pouring fire onto them, had better angles. Jasper wanted to take them under fire, but he didn’t really have anyone he could spot.

  The ground just below Jasper suddenly erupted in a mini-volcano of dirt and a loud explosion that set Jasper’s ears ringing. He realized that mercs had to be using mortars on them. He was amazed that he was still alive, and he had to give credit once again to Maarten’s positioning of them.

  A sudden increase of fire from the east end of the line reached him. He wheeled to his left, oblivious to the fact that he was exposing himself. He couldn’t see anything—the curve of the hill blocked his view.

  “Christiaan!” he shouted.

  His son was on that end of the line, opposite his own position, and it sounded like the entire Tenner Army had suddenly appeared over there.

  He didn’t need to be an Academy graduate to know what was happening. While the mercs below them had grabbed their attention and the ones in the tree line down by the stream kept them pinned, another force had flanked them. And now they’d roll right up their defensive line.