Lieutenant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 3) Read online

  THE UNITED FEDERATION MARINE CORPS

  BOOK 3: LIEUTENANT

  Colonel Jonathan P. Brazee

  USMCR (Ret)

  Copyright © 2014 Jonathan Brazee

  Semper Fi Press

  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. I want to thank Tom Rogers, my content editor, and John Baker, my copy editor, for catching my many typos and mistakes. Any remaining typos and inaccuracies are solely my fault.

  Original Cover Art by Panicha Kasemsukkaphat

  “Push right, Third!” Second Lieutenant (T) Ryck Lysander keyed over the platoon circuit. “I want you to anchor us up against that rock face. Don’t let anyone flank us.”

  “Roger that,” Sgt Bonnyman, his Third Squad leader responded.

  Ryck watched his visor display as the avatars representing the Marines in the squad slowly started to spread out. Ryck couldn’t afford to get his men too dispersed, but he thought the threat of getting flanked took priority.

  Ryck’s primary background was in the Marine Corps PICS, the Personal Integrated Combat System, and those combat suits had far more information processed and available to him. In his skins and bones,[1] the helmet visor display was fairly detailed, but it didn’t seem as responsive to his commands as his PICS display. He had to make a greater effort to focus his eyes on whatever he wanted to pull up, and that somehow took him away from the battle. He wasn’t looking at the real world past the display readouts.

  Ryck needed the direct visuals. It had been bad enough as a squad leader, processing all the data being fed him. Now, with three squads and the company commander feeding him information, it was all he could do to process the information and lead the platoon at the same time. By focusing on his readouts, he felt he was losing touch with what was actually happening on the ground.

  “One-Six, we have lost air support. Your requested mission has been denied,” the company commander passed over the command net.

  Mother grubbing shit! Ryck thought. How in St. Chuck’s hell am I supposed to hold them off now?

  “Roger,” he passed instead, trying to keep his voice steady.

  In front of his platoon’s position, a reported mechanized company of the Canolian militia was massing. If they made it to the LZ,[2] where the rest of the company was evacuating the civilians, they could make mincemeat of the shuttles, stranding civilians and Marines alike. Ryck’s mission was to buy the company time, at least another 45 minutes, keeping the Canolians out of range of the LZ. Ryck didn’t think the Canolian commander was going to give him that time.

  Ryck had called for an air strike against the oncoming forces, but that had been denied for some unfathomable reason. Without air, Ryck’s anti-armor capabilities were limited.

  The platoon had six Banshee missiles, something newly acquired from the Legion. Ryck knew their lethality from a personal perspective. He had lost three Marines to them during the battle with the Legion on Weyerhaeuser. But friends became enemies and then friends again, and experiencing their effectiveness first-hand, the Marines had bought them, renaming them from the French “Gazelle” to the Marine “Banshee.” The six missiles would be effective against anything the Canolians could throw at them.

  After that, it was more of a crapshoot. He had nine Marines with the M72, an 18mm grenade launcher. Although not as powerful as the PICS-mounted 20mm HGL, it should be able to take out anything lighter than a full tank or “Patty,” the PTY Armored Combat Vehicle. The attached heavy gun team with their M76 bunker buster should be able to handle any Patties, but Ryck had only one team. He had to place them where he thought they could best employ their weapon, but that didn’t mean the Canolians would cooperate and approach where Ryck had thought they would.

  As far as the rest of the grunts, himself included, he didn’t think their M99’s would have much effect on any of the expected armored vehicles. The high-velocity darts were extremely effective against dismounted troops and even normal vehicles, but the armor available to the Canolians would be proof against them.

  For the hundredth time, Ryck wished he had requested another heavy gun team, or even some of the extra Harpy missiles, the less capable man-packed missile the Banshee had replaced. But when he’d been sent out on his blocking mission, no one had expected the Canolians to have armor assets. Navy intel had screwed up again, and this time, Ryck’s platoon was going to pay the price.

  Still, with four “Tamika” tanks and four Patties facing the platoon, he should technically have the firepower to hold them off—if he could emplace his forces correctly.

  He checked the map readout once again. He’d emplaced the heavy gun team just to the west of the center where the natural draw and surrounding rocks might funnel the advancing armor. The Banshee gunners, with the weapon’s longer range, were spread out over the 900 meter platoon front. Nine hundred meters would be nothing to a PICS platoon, but to ground troops, that was a pretty big frontage.

  The far right flank worried him. There was a small, but real avenue of approach there, one that a Patty might be able to use. He had only one Banshee gunner on that flank, and if more than one Patty came up that way, it could be disastrous.

  Ryck wracked his brain to come up with a solution. In his infantry officers classes, he was taught to use a hierarchy of supporting arms. Space assets could pound threatening armor from hundreds of kilometers away. Air would take over from about 30 kilometers out. Artillery was next, from 15 km out, and only then, would the infantry-based weapons engage the enemy from 3,000 meters right up to the defensive lines. That was great on paper, but Ryck had no space support, no air, and no arty. It was up to his infantry Marines to stop the Canolian advance.

  Ryck wondered if he could somehow block the far right avenue of approach. He had no engineer assets, but it wouldn’t be hard to at least knock down a few trees to impede the Patties.

  “Cpl Halliday, take your team out and cut three or four of the biggest trees that you can find amongst the rocks. Make sure they fall across the open area between the trees and the cliff face,” he sent to the Second Fire Team leader from Third Platoon.

  “I don’t have any axes or demo,” the fire team leader responded.

  “Just use your M99’s,” Ryck told him, knowing the darts would have little problem chewing through the trunks.

  As the fire team left the line, he tried to blink up the orbital feed again. No go. It was still down. He wondered how close the Canolians were. Looking down at the dragonfly mini-drone in its case, he decided he couldn’t wait any longer. He had to know.

  The dragonfly was the same as what he’d used when in his PICS. This one didn’t deploy from his combat suit’s arm, but rather out of a small carrying case. Ryck pulled it out, initiated the connection, and then let the small drone take off. It was quickly out of sight as it raced out in front of the platoon. Ryck blinked the feed from the far right of his face shield to bring it to a more center position.

  The feed showed the drone flying over the rock-strewn slope, copses of trees scattered about
. At the base of the slope, the trees got thicker. The trees would channelize the enemy armor, and it was along those paths through the trees that Ryck would have targeted the arty and air if he had them. He had briefly considered stationing a few ambush teams in the trees, but the weapons the platoon had at its disposal had minimum arming distances, and the proximity of trees might not give them those distances. A Banshee missile is a pretty potent weapon, but if its warhead hadn’t armed, it would just make a bang and clatter as it bounced off the Canolian armor.

  At 3,800 meters out, a puff of black smoke rose from the trees. The Canolian vehicles were Gentry-made. Gentry was part of the Congress of Free Worlds, a semi-independent coalition outside of the reach of the Federation but dependent on Federation planets to buy its products. Gentry specialized in sturdy, dependable, low-cost weaponry. The vehicles the Canolians bought had decent armor given their low price, but they used old fashioned diesel engines, no different than so many 20th Century tanks. Hundreds of years had passed since then, but the old tech was reliable and economical for carbon-rich worlds. The Marines didn’t use diesel fuel for anything, but it wasn’t how the engines were powered that concerned Ryck—it was the 90mm cannon on the Tamikas and the short-barreled 50mm chain gun on the Patties that worried him. These were pretty basic weapons in the grand scheme of things, but even a stone axe could kill a Marine if it hit him on the head.

  Ryck zoomed in on his tree-cutting fire team. With the Canolians fewer than 4,000 meters out, he couldn’t leave them exposed.

  “Cpl Halliday, what’s your status?”

  “We have one tree down,” the fire team leader responded over the P2P.[3]

  Shit, that’s slow, Ryck thought.

  “How long to cut down a tree?” he subvocalized into his throat mic.

  “Ten minutes for trunks up to 50 centimeters in diameter,” his AI responded.

  Ryck knew he should have checked that before he sent out the fire team. One tree wasn’t much of an obstacle, nor would two be. The forest would slow down the advance, but he wasn’t sure if the team could get another tree down before the Canolians arrived. He couldn’t take the chance.

  “Corporal Halliday, return to your positions,” he ordered.

  He turned his attention back to the dragonfly feed. The drone was at treetop height, its little AI guiding it to where it could observe an opening along the main path. Despite the distance and the fact that it was only an image, Ryck jumped as the first Tamika emerged from the dark forest into the sunlight. It looked huge. Ryck knew it was nowhere close to a match to the Marines’ M1 Davis, but Ryck didn’t have a Davis in his back pocket, so the Tamika looked pretty impressive.

  The left side of the tank’s tracks stopped for a moment as the other side kept going, lurching the tank around the bend in the path and in a new direction. The left tracks started up again as the tank kept advancing. Another Tamika came out of the trees and into the opening. Two more followed, and to Ryck’s relief the next vehicle was a Patty. There were only four Tamikas.

  ONLY! Ryck thought to himself sarcastically. Yeah, there are ONLY 27 billion people in the slums of GFA, too.

  After two more Patties, something else lumbered into view, something that made Ryck’s heart drop. It took a moment for his AI to identify the actual vehicle model, but Ryck immediately recognized the gun design protruding from the turret.

  His AI flashed the designation on his display: TNY-P Tank Destroyer, codenamed “Tonya.”

  Ryck ignored all the specs that flashed on his screen. He focused on the gun, which gave the Tonya the “P” designation. The blue rings along the barrel gave it away. This was a plasma gun.

  Plasma energy weapons have the inherent liability of dispersion in atmosphere. However, more than 150 years ago, CWO5 Terrance Sukerson came up with the idea to put a plasma charge into an artillery shell which would carry the charge through the air to the target, where the charge would be detonated.

  As its name implies, a tank destroyer was designed simply to destroy tanks. To Marines in skins and bones, even a touch of the charge would be fatal. He scrolled through the data until he found the information he was looking for: with an eight kilojoule shell, it had an ECR

  [4] of 23 meters for unshielded ground troops. Even if they’d been issued the new personal shields—which of course, they hadn’t—the shields wouldn’t stand up to that much power.

  Ryck looked around at his platoon line. He’d had them all dig in, and that would protect them to a degree. But while Ryck didn’t know what type of fuzes the plasma rounds had, a fuze that could detect when it was over fighting holes was very old tech.

  “All hands, listen up,” he passed on the platoon circuit. “We have a new threat. In addition to the armor you were already told about, they have a Tonya-P. The ‘P,’ as you know, means it’s a plasma gun. Your fighting holes will give you some protection, but all Banshee, M72, and M76 teams, this is your prime target.”

  He belatedly switched the feed to the entire platoon, rewinding it 15 seconds so they could see the Tonya emerge. After a few moments, he fast-forwarded it so the platoon could watch the feed in real time.

  Ryck only had one dragonfly. He was tempted to direct it to follow the lead element, but he wanted to see the entirety of the force opposing him. He counted the four Tamikas, four Patties, the one Tonya, four lightly armored trucks, and two command vehicles. He tried to calculate the militia being carried. The Patty, according to his AI, carried a squad of 13 men. That meant a platoon+ if the Canolians were organized in the same manner as the Marines. The trucks, though, could easily carry 30-40 men each.

  If the platoon could neutralize the armor, then Ryck wouldn’t be as concerned about the trucks and militiamen. Ryck’s platoon was dug in, and he couldn’t imagine any militia having the same degree of discipline and tactical ability as the Marines. The platoon’s M99’s would tear the militiamen to pieces. The problem was the armor.

  Ryck re-directed the dragonfly to head back up to the head of the column. The lead vehicle was about 2,600 meters away with the drone hovering above it when the dragonfly suddenly quit broadcasting.

  What now? Ryck asked himself as he tried to reconnect with his forward eyes.

  Nothing doing. His dragonfly had been knocked out. It wasn’t a complete disaster, though. The Canolians most likely knew where the platoon was, and Ryck would have eyeballs on them soon enough. Already, his AI was beginning to pick up noise and electromagnetic signatures and translating that to probable vehicles and positions on his display. As they got closer, the platoon’s AIs would have more data points, and the order of battle would become clearer.

  To the rear of their lines, another 300 meters back, Ryck had some alternate positions dug. If it got too rough, he could order the platoon to fall back to those positions. That would give the high ground to the enemy, but it would also highlight any vehicles as they crested the pass. The AI’s best-guess positions on the enemy, though, had them getting closer. If Ryck did decide to fall back, he’d have to do it before the armor arrived. They would be sitting ducks if they tried to fall back while under fire.

  It was almost too late for that. Ryck could hear the approaching Canolians, and a few tree tops swung violently as vehicles hit them from below. The AIs were firming up their projections.

  “Get ready, here they come,” Ryck passed needlessly.

  Each Marine was getting the same feedback from the linked AIs. They could see the avatars just as easily as he could.

  The trees started opening up at about 800 meters away, just as the slope started to rise. Ryck strained to see the first Tamika, but it wasn’t he who made the initial spot. From the left flank, from LCpl Finich’s position, one of the Banshee’s took off. The telltale bop, bop, bop of the guidance rockets sounded in the three seconds it took the missile to cover the 800 meters, then an explosion rocked their front, just out of Ryck’s view. He could see the flames shooting up, though, over the intervening trees.

  Hell
yes! he shouted to himself.

  “One-six, one confirmed kill of the lead tank,” Cpl Yurong, the First Squad’s Second Fire Team leader passed.

  The Canolians broke out from the trees and spread out over the slope. Two more Banshee’s took off, but instead of hitting two separate targets, they both converged on the same Tamika.

  Shit!

  “First Squad, all anti-armor to the left 300 meters, Second, the middle 300 meters, and Third, the right” he passed as the third Tamika opened up on the platoon’s position.

  The AIs should have been coordinating, making sure two missile gunners were not targeting the same vehicle, but even without the armor emerging at about the boundary between First and Second, Ryck should have made their targeting priorities more clear.

  “LCpl Dowell, your target is the Tonya. I repeat, the Tonya. Do not fire on anything else. Do you understand?” he passed to one of his remaining Banshee missile gunners.

  “Roger,” came Dowell’s flat voice.

  The second remaining Tamika rushed into view, moving quickly to the right. Another Banshee took off, but just before impact, it exploded in a shower of sparks. Ryck thought the missile had hit, but the tank emerged from the smoke unscathed, its 90mm canon firing.

  Just like that, Barnum and Lumsden’s icons went grey. The two Marines had taken a direct hit. Ryck wanted to stand up to look, to see if they were really KIA, but he had to focus on what was happening.

  The Bunker Buster was not a long-range weapon, and the team had to wait until a target was within about 400 meters. Ryck had guessed right, and they were in position to take out either of the two remaining Tamikas, but they couldn’t fire yet.

  “Wait, Corporal Zakharchuk, they’re still too far out,” he said, even if he hadn’t seen the M-76’s tracker engage.

  Ryck knew that the Weapons Platoon heavy gun team leader understood that if he was tracking the Canolians, they would see that and most likely target him, but Ryck figured it didn’t hurt to remind him.