Gladiator (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 1) Read online

  WOMEN OF THE UNITED FEDERATION MARINES

  GLADIATOR

  Colonel Jonathan P. Brazee

  USMCR (Ret)

  Copyright © 2016 Jonathan Brazee

  A Semper Fi Press Book

  Copyright © 2016 Jonathan Brazee

  Illustration © 2016 Jessica TC Lee

  ISBN-13: 978-0692608395 (Semper Fi Press)

  ISBN-10: 0692608397

  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. And again, thanks for Sherry Dixon for editing the book. A special shout out goes to my cover artist, the award-winning Jessica Tung Chi Lee. I simply loved the painting she created for the book. You can see more of her work at: http://www.jessicatcl.com/news.html.

  Original Art by Jessica TC Lee

  Cover layout by Steven Novak

  WYXY

  Chapter 1

  “Don’t fuck up, boot!” Wythe told Lance Corporal Tamara Veal, United Federation Marine Corps.

  “I’m not a boot, Wythe!” Tamara said. “I’m senior to you by two months!”

  “I never saw no CMM on your Charlies. Iffen you got no combat, you’re a boot.”

  “Lay off her, Jessup, or she’ll have you for breakfast,” Corporal Killington “Killer” Wheng, their team leader said.

  “I’m just saying, Corporal. You never know how someone’s gonna act when the shit hits the fan,” Wythe said as he settled back into his web-seat. “And I need to know she’s gonna have our six, you know.”

  “She will, so leave it,” Corporal Wheng said.

  Tamara looked across to where her squad leader, Sergeant Vinter, sat, staring at her. Only half Tamara’s size, she never-the-less sent shivers down Tamara’s spine. Tamara couldn’t read into the glare that was in her squad leader’s eyes, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  As much as Jessup Wythe could be a pain in the ass, he was right. Tamara, even with three years in the Corps, had never been with an operational unit. Not only did she not have a CMM, or Combat Mission Medal, which was awarded to any Marine or sailor who saw combat, her uniform chest was bare of any ribbons. Even PFC Korf, sitting on her right, with his nine months since boot, had a CMM.

  Tamara’s handicap was not only that she was big and strong, but she was a skilled shot putter and discus thrower. Not skilled enough to make the Federation Olympic team, but more than enough to catch the eye of the Marine Corps Athletic Division.

  The Marine Corps loved sports, whether that was battleball played between units or organized sports such as rugby or basketball played against civilian, Navy, or other government teams. Competition was in the Corps’ DNA, and the MCAD was always on the lookout for prospects.

  Tamara had been the Orinoco planetary junior shot put champion while in school, and that had been enough to flag her. When it became apparent that she was going to graduate from boot camp, she’d been approached by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Versase, two-time Olympic weight-lifting champion and director of MCAD, and recruited to the Marine Corps track team. After boot and her 12-week School of Infantry course, instead of going straight to the fleet, she joined the team and began training.

  Tamara looked the part. Almost two meters tall, 90 kg, and blessed with superb balance and reflexes, she had immediately done well in low-level competitions. But Orinoco was not the largest planet in the Federation, and there were many, many great athletes who wanted a spot on the Olympic team. After eight months of intensive training, Tamara managed to take the bronze in the discus, her supposedly weaker event, at the Universal Military Games in New Mumbai in the Confederation, and was ranked number four in the Federation. At the next Military Games, she finished a disappointing tenth in the discus and eighteenth in the shot put.

  She blamed a nagging thigh injury on the finish, but deep inside, she knew she had simply lost the drive. Gunny India, her coach, evidently recognized it as well, and after six more months without improvement, she was dropped from the team. The Marine Corps loved champions, but it did not love also-rans, at least in athletics.

  That was two months earlier, and since then, she had received new orders and reported to the Second Battalion, Third Marines, the “Fuzos.” And now, she was on a Stork, on an actual mission—and she was scared.

  It wasn’t the fear of death (which was there, but somewhat of an afterthought). Since being dropped from the track team, her feeling of self-worth had been less than ideal. She hadn’t been good enough for the track team, so what made her think she’d be good enough for her new team, the infantry?

  She was afraid of failure, pure and simple, and Wythe wasn’t helping out. She looked again at Sergeant Vinter, hoping against hope for a hint of encouragement. Vinter was a salty dog, with five stars on her CMM and a Battlefield Commendation 2, so she’d been there and done that, and a simple nod from her would have boosted Tamara’s self-confidence. But while the sergeant had undoubtedly heard Wythe, she’d said nothing.

  Get it together! she told herself. You’re a lean, green, fighting machine, and you’re going to kick ass!

  She repeated the mantra, psyching herself up, a technique she’d used in hundreds of competitions. The technique hadn’t done her much good in her last year with the track team, but maybe there was a little life left in it. It couldn’t hurt.

  The Stork suddenly banked hard left. With full battle rattle, the Marines couldn’t strap in with the normal seat harness, something that made no sense to Tamara (didn’t Marines always go into a fight in full battle rattle?), so the simple lap belt kept them in their seats as the Stork maneuvered. But with 90 kg of Tamara and 60 kgs of warfighting gear, that put a lot of pressure on her gut, and she had to kick out both of her feet to brace herself.

  The 70 kg Wythe saw that and smirked, making sure Tamara could see his disdain. It was only then that she noticed that every other Marine, even the two new privates—real boots—had already put their legs out to brace themselves.

  Great! That makes me look simply cosmic!

  The Stork pulled hard right, and the force shifted 180, but now the back of her seat supported her. The force grew as the big bird corkscrewed in, which minimized its vulnerability to enemy ground fire or missiles. This wasn’t the first time that Tamara had been in a Stork during this maneuver, but this was the first time there had actually been bad guys on the ground who’d like to blow her ride out of the sky.

  She’d heard the term “asshole puckering” before, but now she truly understood just how accurate and descriptive the term really was. At any moment, she expected the alarms indicating incoming fire to go off, but miraculously, the corkscrewing ceased as the Stork straightened up to flare in for the landing.

  “Check your safeties,” Staff Sergeant Abdálle, the platoon sergeant passed on the platoon circuit, “and prepare to debark.”

  Tamara had checked hers about a hundred times during the flight, but she dutifully looked down at her M99A3, the latest and greatest in the venerable M99 assault rifles. Marines had bee
n shot by fellow Marines before during combat debarks, and each Marine lost to friendly fire, particularly stupid and avoidable friendly fire, was one less fighter for the mission and either death or regen for the victim. Tamara’s safety was on, but overthinking it, Tamara flipped it off, then flipped it back on. The dim green indicator light confirmed the safety circuit was on and functioning.

  The Stork hit the deck with a hard bounce. Tamara joined the rest of the Marines and the platoon’s three corpsmen in releasing their seatbelts and standing, turning to face aft. The ramp was already down, and the two guides were stepping off.

  The battalion had been practicing MEEP, or Minimal Electronic Emissions Protocol, the newest pet project out of Tarawa. The old salts roundly derided it. The Corps had only recently implemented the new PCS, the Personal Combat System, a few years back, and with the many improvements it offered to command and control and the dissemination of information, all being tremendous assets in the modern battlefield, the Corps was now advocating going back to the middle ages with hand and arm signals.

  The two guides turned to face the rest of the platoon, and like traffic cops, each held out an arm pointing to the direction each line of Marines was to take.

  Pushing up against Korf, Tamara shuffled forward a meter or so until Korf was able to step out. Tamara followed, ducking under the overhead at the end of the ramp to step onto the grass of the football field that was serving as the Golf Company’s LZ.[1]

  Enemy soil! I’m on enemy soil! Tamara thought excitedly as she wheeled to follow Korf.

  Except that it wasn’t really enemy soil, she knew. Wyxy was a Federation planet. It was the SevRevs who were the enemy, and the Marines had been called in to eliminate the group and return the planet to the control, or lack thereof, of the planet’s advisory group. Without a central government, without even a nominal police force, the particularly individualistic population of the planet had been easy pickings for the SevRevs. Since the Wyxies couldn’t protect themselves, it was up to the Federation—read the Marines—to step in and restore the planet to its rightful tenants (“tenants,” not anything so crass as “owners”).

  If it had been anyone other than the SevRevs, the planet might have been left to the wolves. The planet was only nominally in the Federation, and their trade with the rest of the Federation hardly made up for the cost of sending a Navy task force and a Marine battalion to restore order. But the Seventh Revelation had been a growing thorn in the side of human space. Apocalyptic groups have risen and fallen throughout history, but the SevRevs employed a particularly violent form of attempting to bring on the End of Days. Coupling their desire to bring about total chaos with their seemingly zero fear of death, they’d conducted some extremely horrific attacks on planets across human space. Wyxy might be low man on the totem pole on the list of Federation worlds, but the SevRevs were a virus that had to be stomped out before it infected anyone else.

  Like just about everyone else in human space, Tamara had seen the holos of the SevRev executions, and she had been horrified at the obscenely creative methods they had come up with. She knew the SevRevs intended to shock humanity, and it worked. So on an overarching level, Tamara knew this was a righteous mission, one that had to be accomplished. But on a personal level, it didn’t matter if the enemy were the SevRevs or anyone else; Tamara was going into combat for the first time, and she had to perform her duty to the best of her abilities.

  Running right on Korf’s ass, Tamara reached the football field’s retaining walls. She raised her head to scan the empty seats. A recon team had already duck-egged into the stadium several hours before and reported it secure, but there existed some inert explosives that could escape normal detection, and the battalion had been warned to keep alert.

  Two more flights of Storks landed on the field, debarking Fox and the battalion headquarters.

  “Korf, eyes front,” she hissed, feeling proud that she’d been able to take charge over the junior Marine.

  With the Storks landing behind them, PFC Korf had glanced back at them instead of scanning the stadium seating area to their front.

  “There’s nothing there,” he muttered, but he swiveled around to observe the seats.

  Within 12 minutes of landing, the two line companies were ready to move out. Fox was to lead the assault on the Farmer’s Market, where the SevRevs had more than 500 Wyxy hostages. Golf Company was the support element for the assault. Echo and Weapons had established blocking positions beyond the market to cut off any avenue of retreat, not that anyone thought it would get to that. The SevRevs had never before shown signs of retreating in order to play another day. In previous incidents with both the Brotherhood and the Confederation, the SevRevs had fought to the end, trying to inflict maximum casualties. But the battalion CO was not relying on past actions. This was the first major SevRev action within Federation space, and the CO was in the better-safe-than-sorry camp. Her orders had been to eliminate—not defeat—the SevRev forces, and as the sergeant major had briefed them on the ship, that meant every swinging dick of them was to be killed. A message was going to be sent, not to the SevRevs, as they were probably lost causes, but to anyone thinking of joining them.

  Join the SevRevs and die.

  The SevRev philosophy was self-defeating. They expected the End of Days and were willing, even eager, to die. But that meant they had to have new recruits. Given enough time, all the current SevRevs would be gone; without new recruits, they would disappear into the dustbin of history.

  In fits and starts, the two companies got up and began to exit the stadium. Tamara could see all the friendlies on her face shield display, but with MEEP in place, no verbal orders were passed. So it was more of a ripple effect as the hand and arm signals to get moving were passed down the lines.

  Corporal Hinmein in Second Squad, who always knew everything in the entire universe and liked to let everyone else know it, was sure that using MEEP against what was really an unsophisticated enemy was intended as a dress rehearsal. Tamara thought that the corporal might not be that far off. The SevRevs probably had little in the way of electronic warfare capabilities, nor could they be expected to be much of a threat to a Marine battalion, so this mission could be MEEP baby steps, a field trial and validation of the process.

  Tamara wasn’t sure she wanted to be part of a field trial, and if the SevRevs proved to have any tricks up their collective sleeves, she hoped the CO would pull the plug on the MEEP and switch to full electronic command and control.

  The four columns of Marines snaking out of the stadium moved in fits and starts, accordioning with the point moving quickly, the main body starting and stopping. Tamara’s squad was the second to the last squad in her column, and she seemed to spend most of her time either stopped and right on Korf’s ass or almost sprinting to catch up with him. She worried every time they were bunched up. It had been driven into her head at both recruit training and School of Infantry that bunching up meant death and dispersion was paramount. Since she had no real operational experience, she had to rely on her school training for her fieldcraft. She couldn’t very well just break out of the column, however, to gain tactical dispersion.

  Supposedly, the area was being cleared as they conducted the movement to contact. The two companies were advancing in a misshapen arrow formation, which was a wedge clearing the area and followed by the four columns. This was the second least secure formation after simple columns, but it allowed for a fairly quick movement and covered a narrower front. It provided very little lateral security, though, and as they moved through the city, Tamara was busy watching each building and each road for the enemy. There were people out and about, both on the roads and in the buildings, watching them. Most seemed happy to see the Marines, and more than a few were shouting out greetings. There was even a Federation banner hanging from one window while a man and young girl leaned out waving small flags as they watched the Marines march by.

  Tamara knew the reputation of the Wyxies, that they barely to
lerated the Federation and resented paying any taxes. But the SevRevs had some 500 hostages in the neighboring village, and they had already killed another couple of hundred people, so it seemed as if the 30,000 or so remaining people who lived in the main town had suddenly become true patriots.

  To last all of a week after we leave, Tamara told herself, ever the cynic.

  While everyone she saw seemed welcoming at best, merely curious at worst, it would be easy for a SevRev to hide among the town’s populace, ready to fire upon them. The battalion was going in light with in their skins and bones, their field uniforms with the armor inserts. The armor inserts, the “bones,” would instantaneously harden against projectiles, dispersing the force, but there were quite a few energy weapons that were more than a match for them. Heck, a few explosives could tear Marines apart, or if emplaced well, could bring down buildings to bury Marines in the rubble.

  It would have been nice to have a couple of PICS platoons with the heavy combat suits providing a far greater punch. Rumor had it, though, that with Wyxy sensibilities, the PICS Marines would have been “too militaristic.” Tamara was way, way down in the pecking order, far from the goings on at the battalion head-shed, but from the scuttlebutt, the CO had been royally pissed at the restriction.

  Tamara’s unease at passing through the town proved to be unwarranted. Either Intel or recon had been correct. The town itself was clear of SevRevs; at least no one had engaged the two companies as they moved forward. Within one-and-a-half klicks, they were leaving the main built-up area and moving into the fields surrounding the town.

  “What the hell is that smell?” Wythe asked.

  Tamara had to laugh, but it was Korf who answered, “It’s chicken shit, Lance Corporal! You never smelt it before?”