Lieutenant Colonel (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 6) Read online

  “Roger, that,” the gunny said.

  Of course he will, Ryck thought. That’s his mission. Stop telling the men how to do their jobs, Ryck!

  He instinctively turned around to look at the command trac 50 meters behind him where Gunny Kinongee would be monitoring his displays when there was a flash to his right and slightly behind him. A thin streak of fire reached out and hit the Armadillo, which erupted in a violent explosion. The commander’s hatch blew off to rise impossibly slow into the air before falling back to the earth.

  What the . . .

  A line of tracers flew in between Ryck and the burning Armadillo to impact not 30 meters away. Ryck brought up his own M77, but the Regis rocket gunner was already down, cut in two, his upper torso outside his spider hole.

  Six blue avatars turned to gray on his helmet display.

  There was another explosion about a klick or more away, and 14 avatars changed color. One of the Fox Company Armadillos had been hit.

  “All hands, out of the tracs! Combat offload!” Ryck shouted into the open net.

  “Now, now, now!” Captain Eric Koske was yelling into his company circuit.

  There was a burst of an Armadillo’s 25 mm chain gun, then another. Ryck could see blue avatars beginning to move away from the tracs when another Armadillo went up. Eight avatars went gray and two turned light blue.

  “Liam, get out now!” he passed on the P2P when he saw the Bravo Command’s Armadillo turn towards the fight.

  “We’re not near the fighting, and they need sup—” the XO started before being cut off.

  Five more avatars turned gray.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  “Gunny, what’s on your, ah, shit!” he said, looking at the burning hulk. Gunny Kinogee would not be answering.

  It was pretty obvious what had happened, though. Suicide mercs had hidden in spider holes with nothing that gave off an emission. With a basic masking cloak, it would have been difficult for the Marine sensors to pick them up. Then they’d popped up to engage the tracs with simple kinetic rockets. The Davises would have shrugged off the rockets, but the thin-skinned Armadillos were no match for them.

  “Six, what do you want us to do?” Sandy asked.

  Ryck hesitated only a moment before ordering, “Continue the assault and crush them!”

  He wanted to turn back to see what had happened, but he knew his position was forward, as was Sandy’s and Christophe’s. He checked his display, toggling names. Koske was light blue, probably out of action. Lieutenant Pulver was dead.

  “Sergeant Major, fall back. Clear this fucking area. I want every one of these grubbing assholes dug out. No one, and I mean no one gets back into the tracs, and that means the drivers and gunners, too. If I want them, I’m going to call them forward. When you’ve got things under control, turn it over to Lieutenant Minerva, if he’s OK. Got it?”

  “Roger that. I’ve got it. You go forward.”

  “I think they’re going to need another corpsman. Doc Tikilot’s one of the KIA. I don’t think Doc Douglas can handle it alone,” Sams cut in.

  “Take care of it, Sams,” Ryck said before turning around and locating Çağlar, the muzzle of the sergeant’s M77 sweeping the area, looking for a target.

  “Let’s go, Hans!” he ordered over his externals.

  He broke into the loping, ground-eating PICS trot until he was back in his trailing position in trace of Golf’s Third Platoon. Just up ahead of him, he could see the backs of several of the Marines as they marched forward.

  He had briefly considered holding up Golf and the tanks until Fox could get organized for a foot march, but he didn’t want the mercs to have more time to prepare. No, it was better to keep up the momentum.

  “Gunner, can you slave the Derne’s sensor sweeps to the Alpha Command?” Ryck passed back to Chief Warrant Officer 4 Barnhouse, who was back at the CP at the school.

  “Roger, that. Give me a minute or two,” the gunner responded.

  Without either command track, Ryck couldn’t slave off of them, so he needed the direct feeds from the Derne. He had to know what was ahead of him. For the moment, it was quiet, but as they advanced, something would break loose, and he wanted as much warning as possible.

  He fumed as he strode forward, waiting for the feed. The grubbing fuckers had used a very primitive tactic, and it had worked. The thin-skinned Armadillos, while providing some degree of protection against energy weapons, had fallen to not much more than cavemen with spears. They were nothing more than mobile coffins.

  “Mother fucking shit!” he yelled out, off the net and off his externals.

  Get it together, Ryck. Don’t let your anger consume you, he told himself, trying to will his heart rate down. Focus on the mission!

  A new icon appeared on his display. He blinked it on, and the array of orbital sensors appeared. There was a slight degree of overload, but it was worth it to be able to detect energy weapons powering up or any merc leaving his shielding.

  “Manny,” he called to Captain Quezon, his fire support coordinator. “I want the Storks to move forward to ACOA[8] 3. Guns free.”

  Moments later, the lead Stork crossed over in Cennet air space and took up their new CAS[9] position right over the Marines. If the pilots saw a target of opportunity, they would engage.

  As they got closer to the Regis positions, Ryck kept waiting for the other shoe to fall. They’d been hit twice now, one time pretty hard. So why the silence? What were they waiting for?

  At a klick out, Ryck was about to tell Christophe to fire a few tank rounds into the known merc positions when his display blossomed with blooms of energy. The mercs were ready to engage.

  He started to order “Fire,” when the net was flooded with commands, most of which were not needed. His Marines knew what to do. The Jolly Killer, one of the Davises from Second Platoon was the first to open up, and immediately, one of the energy blooms disappeared.

  Within moments, the fight was on. Energy beams reached out for the Marines as the Marines fought back with kinetics. Overhead, the Storks opened up with their buzz saw gatlings. They stayed out of the artillery corridor as the 155s started firing. Big sky, little bullet would lose its meaning if a friendly 155 round blew off a Stork’s tail assembly, so the big birds kept out of the way.

  The entire line of Marines picked up the pace, pushing forward. Marines in PICS started engaging targets as they acquired them. Several merc weapons systems were knocked out. Calls for fire were being sent from the Marines in contact as more targets were located.

  Ryck kept striding forward, monitoring the fight and feeling like he had to get more involved. He pushed that back down with effort. He had to watch the big picture and maneuver the battalion as a whole. He couldn’t get into the weeds to target individual merc weapons. That would keep him from performing his mission, and it would get in the way of the Marines in the front. They didn’t need him to be second guessing or overriding them.

  Still, he had his M77 ready to fire. He wanted to engage, he wanted to get some payback. What he didn’t have was a target, and he couldn’t actively seek one. He and Çağlar would fire only in self-defense. It grated at Ryck, but that was the way it had to be.

  To the north, Echo was receiving only scattered, light fire. The company was consolidating on the merc’s position without too many problems. It looked like the real fight was down here.

  One of the tanks, the Bitch, began to redline under the fire of two energy weapons. The Davises were tough as nails, but still, their shields could get overwhelmed given enough time and energy being poured into them. Despite his personal admonition to himself not to get into the weeds, he almost broke in before Lieutenant Browne ordered the tank to break off and veer out of the line of fire. Two other tanks concentrated their fire on the mercs, and both meson cannons were knocked out. The Bitch had been downgraded to 28% shielding, and that slowly began to rise back up as the tank’s AI did its thing.

  From the mountains to the east,
something big and long erupted from the hillside and flew straight at one of the Storks.

  Ryck turned to watch as all four Storks started evasion maneuvers, but the big missile locked onto one of the Storks and flew into it, exploding in a huge fire ball. Ryck’s heart was in this throat when the Stork came out of the fireball, wounded, but still airborne. As if choreographed, the other three Storks wheeled about and concentrated their 30 mm gatlings on the offending position. Two Storks added their ATG missiles to the mix, seemingly reducing half of the mountainside into gravel.

  The wounded Stork sank lower and lower, but managed to stay airborne.

  “Angel Three, what’s your status?” Manny Quezon asked over the net as Ryck’s AI repeated it for him.

  “Uh, we’re Foxtrot-Uniform.[10] We are no longer effective,” the pilot responded.

  “You are ordered Romeo-Tango-Bravo.[11] Can you make it?”

  “It’ll be tight, but if we have to, we’ll put her down where we can. Come pick us up on the rebound, OK?” the pilot asked.

  “Roger that. Good luck, out,” Manny said.

  “Six, I’m pulling the angels back to ACOA 2 until we know more of the threat,” Manny passed to Ryck.

  “Roger that. I’ve been monitoring. Have them ready to react if needed, though,” Ryck said.

  He took one more look at the crippled Stork making its way back before focusing on the forward edge of the fight. As he flipped his display back to default, LCpl McFadden’s avatar went gray, and Ryck toggled his AI to jump back ten seconds. When the visual’s jumped back, McFadden was under a plasma beam, and it was affecting his shields, but they shouldn’t have failed in that short amount of time. After seven more seconds, though, he was hit by what was probably a 32mm anti-armor round. With his shielding already compromised, the Marine never had a chance when the big round hit him.

  A 32mm round had to mean one thing. That was a Gentry-made Lancet 8, an old-tech kinetic cannon. Old tech or not, it was an effective and powerful weapon, and if it hit a target, the target was taken out more often than not.

  Flicking back to present, he had the AI trace the round’s POD, or point of origin. Christophe, or maybe Sandy, had already beaten him to the punch, however. Two tanks were converging to take out the Lancet 8. The Davises 75mm rail guns had a much bigger punch, and they had a higher cyclic rate of fire. The Lancet 8’s crew had no chance.

  With the forward edge of the assault moving into the merc position, the roles shifted. The tanks became the supporting unit while the PICS Marines became the points of main effort. A Davis was a great hunk of pure beasty firepower, but it was not effective for rooting out soldiers who did not want to be rooted out. That would take the PICS Marines first, and if need be, the Fox Company Marines, those who were still effective, in their skins and bones to go tunnel rat and dig out anyone still in the fight.

  It was within the enemy position that the tanks were most vulnerable, in fact. Mobility was a tank’s greatest asset, but there wasn’t much maneuvering to be done anymore. The tanks had turned into big pillboxes, and pillboxes could be targeted. On Acquisition, Ryck’s Raider company had taken out opposing armor by simply getting in too close for the armor’s weapons and using toads to burn right through the SOG tanks.

  The Davises were equipped with their four plasma self-defense guns, and they could create a ring of deadly plasma around them, but the range was very limited, and the plasma would kill any unprotected Marine around the tank and even damage a PICS. Those were definitely weapons of last resort when the barbarians were at the gate.

  One by one, opposing positions were neutralized. On Ryck’s displays, the dance of the avatars was almost mesmerizing. But each flicker of light meant someone—a son, a father, a husband—was being killed or wounded. Ryck realized that, but he would not let himself dwell on the actuality of blood being spilt. These men had made a conscious choice to fight for a wage. They had made a choice to fight Marines, to kill Marines. This was the consequence of those choices.

  Ryck and Çağlar passed a destroyed gun position. He couldn’t even tell exactly what kind of gun it had been, nor how many men had manned it. The amount of body parts that were mixed up within the wreckage and strewn for 15 meters outside were an indication that it was certainly more than one, but beyond that, Ryck couldn’t tell—nor really care. He didn’t even try to sidestep a severed leg in his path but stepped right on it. It wasn’t as if its prior owner could care anymore.

  “Sandy, bring up what’s left of Fox. I think we’re going to have to root out these freaks,” Ryck passed on the P2P.

  “Roger, Six. I’d give them an ETA of 45 mikes. They can get here quicker aboard the Armadillos if you want to mount them back up.”

  Ryck hesitated for a moment. Yes, they could cover the remaining distance in just five or ten minutes mounted. But had the Marines bypassed any other mercs who were waiting for an opportunity to emerge and attack? He doubted it, but was it worth the chance?

  “No, keep them dismounted. Have the tracs follow in trace and provide covering fire,” he said.

  It wasn’t as if they had to rush it. The mass firing had died out as the Marines poked and searched the area for any living mercs. A burst of fire, then an even louder and longer burst of return fire, though, highlighted that the fight was not won yet. The firing finally seemed to stop, and all the Marine avatars remained a healthy blue. As the battalion was not taking any casualties at the moment, Ryck decided that the Fox Marines could stay dismounted and just take a bit longer to reach the objective.

  “Colonel Lysander, this is Captain Kaʻanāʻanā. I thought you might like to know that we have received a most urgent protest as to our ‘invasion’ of Cennet.”

  Ryck couldn’t see Captain K, but he could imagine the man using his finger to air quote “invasion.”

  “Do we have any guidance from on high?” he asked, wondering if he was going to be ordered to stand down.

  “No, I just thought I would share that with you. We lost most of our observation up here when your command trac was hit, of course, but we know what’s transpired. And with that in mind, if you want to make sure that this particular mercenary unit never bothers us again, by whatever means, then I don’t think anyone will second guess you.”

  That took Ryck by surprise. First, that CAPT K was contacting him while the situation was still hot, and second, what he seemed to be proposing. Mercenaries were under the same constraints—and protections—as governmental troops, and if they surrendered, they were to be treated as per the treaties governing military operations. If the Federation was somehow authorizing that the St. Regis battalion be eliminated, then that was troubling. If this was a veiled order and he didn’t comply, then his career was effectively over at best, and at worst, well, that was better left unsaid.

  But was this message from the Federation? Ryck thought he had gotten to know CAPT K pretty well, and he liked the man, but could this be something other than a Federation directive? On the secure circuit, there would be no record nor witnesses to what the captain had just suggested. And had he even just suggested what Ryck had thought?

  This is fucked up, he told himself as he tried to come up with a response.

  “Six? Did you copy that?” Sandy’s voice overrode his line to CAPT K.

  “What was that, Sandy?” he asked, trying to bring his mind back to the fight.

  “The mercs, they’ve just surrendered. They’re asking us to cease firing,” Sandy told him.

  Captain K’s suggestion? Order? To make sure the mercs could never “bother” anyone again was foremost in his mind. He knew he could make up a reason to keep fighting, and his Marines would obey.

  “Should I give the order?” Sandy asked.

  Ryck had been thrown for a loop, and he wasn’t sure what the Federation expected of him. But what it boiled down to was what he should do.

  “Roger that, Three. Cease fire. But no one stands down. I want everyone on alert. Get Fox back in the tracs and
up here to process the prisoners, and I want a report ASAP on the status of our WIA.

  “This isn’t over yet, Sandy, but it will be, and we’re going to do it right.”

  Chapter 16

  “. . . Kinongee, Leif; Phyun, Thanh; Rizzio, Michael; Throckmorton, Clyde . . . ” the chaplain intoned, naming the Marines and sailor who had been on the Alpha Command trac.

  Ryck stood in the first row at parade rest, his head down. Directly in front of him was a line of boots, weapons, and helmets, one set for each of those who had been killed. The chaplain gave the names of each one of the 33 KIAs in the order in which they had fallen.

  “. . . Castleberry, Lawrence; Berchard, Crispus . . . ”

  Ryck sighed as he heard the Crispus’ name. The chaplain had reached the Marines from the Bravo Command trac.

  “. . .Gurnsey-Hollimer, Willis; Larry, Ted; Oppenheimer, Sean; Stilicho, Liam . . . ”

  A tear rolled down Ryck’s cheek, reaching the edge of his lip. Another tear joined it, and together, they dropped to the chapel floor as he watched it hit and break apart.

  As the chaplain went on, he thought about how many times he’d gone through a sending off ceremony. He should be used to it by now, but the reality was that each one got harder than the one before.

  “ . . . McFadden, Tejay. May they rest in peace.”

  From behind the chaplain, Corporal Annad Wilson stepped forward, bagpipes in hand. There was a pause, and then the mournful strains of “Amazing Grace” filled the chapel. As always, the music calmed Ryck. He wasn’t sure if it was the music itself or the bagpipes, but the hymn always had that effect on him.

  As the last note slowly faded away, the gathered Marines and sailors came to attention. Without another word, Ryck, followed by Hecs, turned, stepped into the center aisle, and marched out of the chapel. Each row, front to back, followed until the chapel was empty and the battalion was lined up on either side of the school parking lot where four trucks waited. Once the battalion was in position, Hecs nodded to where Sams stood by the vehicle bay.