Lieutenant Colonel (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 6) Page 15

  Friendly fire had been the bane of armies since time immemorial. The enemy was usually doing a good enough job at killing men, so friendly fire could turn the tide of battle. Most Federation energy weapons had fail-safes preventing them from firing at friendly forces without a specific override. However, this was not the case with most kinetic weapons, and the main weapons for this assault were the tanks’ 75mm rail guns, the tracs 25mm chain guns, and the PICS with either Weapons Pack 1 with the M77 hypervelocity rifles or Weapons Pack 2 with the M249 20mm grenade launcher—and each PICS had the 7.5mm rocket magazine on its shoulder. Each of these was operator aimed, and none of the rounds had FFD, or Friend-Foe Discrimination. So it was up to a commander to keep his forces out of each other’s line of fire.

  Ahead of him, Golf was heavily engaged, Echo only slightly less so. Captains Attleman and Bayarsaikhan had the platoons in their companies maneuvering well, each company with one platoon providing cover at any given time as the other two and the tanks advanced. The coordination looked good. Maybe all those hours in training were paying off. As the Marines reached the town proper, though, such precise coordination would be difficult as the fight broke down into squads and fire teams.

  Ryck monitored the fight, bouncing back and forth. He felt like he should be doing something, not just bringing up the rear of Golf. He ached to start giving orders, but at this level, the fight was out of his hands, and he knew he had to let the commanders command. Ryck could change missions and issue the broad strokes, but he was not even a company commander anymore, much less a sergeant fighting his squad.

  As if on cue concerning seniors and subordinates, Bert passed “Things are looking good, Ryck,” on the P2P.

  “Roger that. I’m getting antsy, though, about what the Sylvingtons are planning. They seem pretty, well, complacent. Any intel from their chatter?” Ryck asked.

  “I’d get that to you immediately if we had it. As you know, their transport left them there, so this company (minus) is probably there for the duration. They’re making a statement, but I still agree with Jose de Faldo. They will resist, but surrender before it gets too intense. The Sylvingtons aren’t known for wasting men and they are known for taking the long view.” Bert said.

  An energy beam hit Ryck, lighting up his display, and cutting off the comms. Ryck juked to the left and behind a small rise that kept the lower half of his PICS out of the line of fire. He was ready to put his PICS prone, if need be, but the beam passed on. He did a quick check of his readouts as comms returned.

  “Sorry about that, Ryck. Let me get out of your hair so you can fight. Six out,” Bert said as the comms reconnected.

  Ryck didn’t bother answering. That short bolt had knocked him down to 92%. He toggled shield strength for the entire battalion, then narrowed that down for Golf, Echo, and the tank platoons. A graph appeared on his display, showing the status of every Marine and tank. The Davises were fine, all over 90%. Their shields were much more robust, and even if they were being targeted more often, none of the Sylvington weapons shown so far seemed to be that effective.

  But is the tanks’ shielding really that effective? They shouldn’t be, he wondered.

  “Give me an enemy targeting pattern,” he ordered his AI.

  Almost immediately, a diagram showing incoming beams, their strength, and their targets popped up. It took Ryck a moment to put it in perspective, but it was very obvious. The Sylvington weapons were targeting PICS, not tanks. It seemed as if they were ceding the field of battle to the Davises in order to take out PICS Marines.

  He started to call Proctor, but then he bypassed him to reach Lieutenant Skip Wells, the Armadillo platoon commander. He wanted to make sure there was no disconnect. He keyed in Sandy and Proctor, though, to keep them abreast.

  “Dogpound Six, I want you to bring your platoons forward. Use your judgment as you reach Rommel,” he said, referring to the phase line that indicated the leading edge of the town. “I don’t want you where you can’t maneuver, but I want your chain guns engaging. If any trac gets below 50%, I want it pulled back. Any sign of orchestrated crew-served kinetics, I want you to pull back as well.”

  “Roger that. Advancing now.”

  The Armadillo platoon had been well back in trace of the line companies, ready to provide support, but not heavily engaged yet. After the initial two cannons, the Sylvington mercs had only exhibited energy weapons, and the tracs’ shields were the same as on the tanks. It was to kinetic weapons that they had proved so vulnerable on Gaziantep. Ryck wanted to see if with them in the mix, would the mercs change their targeting. He wasn’t sure just why he wanted that. Something was nibbling away at his subconscious, but he couldn’t quite grasp just what that was yet.”

  He cut off with Dogpound Six and continued with Proctor, “Keep an eye on them and get them out if it becomes too hot.”

  Ryck renewed his movement forward. He kept only half an eye on his own personal battle space, trusting Çağlar to keep him safe. He kept giving his AI different parameters and studying the results, trying to see a pattern emerge.

  “Target destroyed,” Wolfpack 3—Sergeant Bergstrøm in the Berserker--said as Ryck’s AI deemed it vital enough to relay to Ryck.

  Ryck took a quick glance. The Berserker had fired a round at a 15-megajoule meson beam gun, taking it out. Two red enemy avatars still shined brightly at the gun position, though. Even in armor, with the tank’s 75mm gun, the two mercs should not have survived.

  One blue avatar suddenly grayed out. LCpl Tenny Fortan, in Golf, had been overwhelmed by two guns. Ryck checked the figures. He had gone from 72% to KIA in less than eight seconds.

  “Keep on top of the shield strengths!” he passed on the open circuit.

  The NCOs knew this. The SCNOs knew this. The officers knew this, but Ryck couldn’t help it, and reminding them didn’t hurt. When fighting against kinetic weapons, the damage was done instantaneously, and there was a mix of KIA and WIAs. With land-combat against energy weapons, it tended to be either a KIA or an unharmed Marine. In space, a plasma weapon, in particular, could slice off limbs, and even on the ground, against lightly shielded Marines in their skins and bones, the beams could result in WIAs. But in more heavily shielded PICS (or tanks or tracs), the beams tended to work to overwhelm the target, and when that line was crossed, that usually caused catastrophic failures. While a PICS could keep a Marine unharmed under fire, when it failed, due to an energy weapon, it usually meant that Marine was KIA and usually with only a limited chance at resurrection.

  Ryck turned his attention back to the two red avatars at the destroyed Sylvington gun position. They were still steady with normal readings. Something wasn’t right. He could see that two Marines were engaging the targets with their M77s, but seemingly without effect. The 8mm hypervelocity darts should have been tearing the mercs up.

  “Echo-Six,” he passed to Genghis. “Cease firing on 1453. I want eyeballs inside, and report back to me. Careful for a trap, though.”

  “Roger that Six. Give me a moment,” the Echo Company commander said.

  Ryck turned his attention to Golf’s movement forward. No Marine’s shielding was below 40%, but some numbers were falling fast.

  An explosion sounded less than 40 meters in front of Ryck, a huge gout of smoke and debris shooting into the sky. At the same moment, Sergeant Illushyn’s avatar went light blue.

  “Use your ground penetration sonar!” Staff Sergeant Guzman, Golf’s Second Platoon commander, screamed out over the net.

  While Ryck was concerned about energy weapons, the Sylvington mercs had emplaced simple mines, and one had taken out one of his Marines.

  Ryck hastily turned on his ground-penetrating sonar. It took extra power, and that diminished the strength of the shielding, but Ryck really didn’t want to get taken out by something as basic as a mine.

  “Dogpound-Six, take note of the mines. I want full countermeasures,” he passed on the P2P.

  While a Davis might be able to withstand
many of the commonly employed mines, Ryck really wasn’t sure an Armadillo could. The same mine that had just rendered Illushyn WIA might be enough for a catastrophic kill on a trac.

  “Six, I’ve got two Marines at the position. There are no mercs there, but the avatars are still showing,” Genghis passed on the P2P.

  Ryck toggled one of the two Marine avatars located at the position. Within a moment, he was looking through Corporal Weston’s cam. It took only a second to see that the wrecked gun had been remotely or AI-controlled. There hadn’t been a merc crew on the gun. The avatars might be still showing mercs there, but there would be two small transponders somewhere in the mess, transmitting recorded bios.

  They’ve been spoofing us! he realized.

  If this was widespread, then there were far fewer mercs in the town than they had previously suspected. There had to be some in order to control the civilians, but it looked like most of the opposition weapons were not manned.

  Automated or even remotely controlled weapons were almost always easier to defeat. However, that meant the Marines could not expect an early surrender. The weapons systems would have already been written off by the mercs, so there was no reason not to keeping fighting them until the Marines destroyed every last one of them.

  “Command-Three, it looks like most, if not all of the weapons are unmanned. At least some of the enemy avatars are spoofing,” Ryck passed up to Lieutenant Colonel Jiminez.

  Ryck knew that Bert would hear this as well, but this needed to go to the brigade operations officer first. He wished he could just level the town, but the civilians made that impossible. Ryck just hated the idea of losing more Marines to pieces of unmanned equipment. Plasma guns had no protection under the articles of conflict, so Ryck wanted to use any means to destroy them.

  “Understood, Fuzo-Six. We’ll try to get this analyzed. I will revert as soon as I have something,” the Three passed.

  Comms procedures had regularly changed during Ryck’s time in the Marines. For this mission, each of the battalions was given a call sign relating to their patron. With all the counter-surveillance measures and scrambling in place, Ryck wasn’t sure why the bother, but he wasn’t going to even think about that now while his Marines were engaged.

  He made a quick check of Sergeant Illushyn. Doc Gandy was with him, and while the specifics of the injuries weren’t noted yet, Doc had given him a triage status of Class Two, which was non-life-threatening, but serious enough for an immediate medivac. Ryck reflexively grimaced as he realized Illushyn would probably be facing a pretty long regen, something in which Ryck had gone through twice.

  “It looks like some of the weapons systems are unmanned, so we are going to have to dig them out,” Ryck passed on the battalion command circuit. “I want max coordination on this.

  “Hog, that means I don’t think you’ll be getting many runners. I get the feeling that once the guns are out, any mercs will surrender. Keep alert, though. They have a habit of not doing what we expect. But what I want you to do is carefully move some Marines forward if you think you can take out any positions. We don’t know yet how much in depth they are. Stay out of the direct line of Golf and Echo’s fire as possible, but jump on any targets of opportunity,” Ryck passed on the P2P after keying in Proctor as well.

  “Roger. I think we can help,” Captain McAult responded.

  Ryck and Çağlar crossed over Rommel and into the city. Ryck hesitated for a moment. He didn’t really have to enter the town in order to command. Still something drew Ryck forward.

  Proctor Christophe had held up about 50 meters to his left and in back of a 15-meter-tall rock. On either side of him, most of the Alpha Command was dispersed, with only Manny Quezon in the command trac. He’d left Lieutenant Wormack, the Naval Gunfire Liaison officer off the trac. The Navy lieutenant had been given a crash course in PICS operations and left to follow in trace with strict order not to cross into the town. He didn’t want both Wormack and Quezon together in the command trac. In case of an emergency, either one could take over for the other. It would have been easier for Quezon to be in his PICS, but with naval gunfire more restricted, Ryck put the fire support coordinator in the command trac with its more detailed and capable C4.

  “Proctor, I’m going to move forward to 1128. I think that will give me good visuals over most of the town,” he passed on the P2P.

  1128 was a three-story office building on the near side of the town. Golf’s First Platoon had already swept it, and it was clear. If the stairwells could support the weight of two PICS, he thought that maybe he and Çağlar could make their way up to the roof so they could observe what was in view. Displays were great, but nothing had the impact of simple visuals. And Ryck was suffering through a touch of information overload. His helmet display was an amazing piece of tech, but like any information system, he had to know what to ask to get the information he needed. His AI helped, but is still boiled down to him asking for the correct information and then being able to interpret it correctly. Ryck thought that by being able to look out over a good portion of the small town, he would better be able to focus on what was transpiring out there.

  “Do you want me to go forward?” Proctor asked. “Maybe you should keep back, sir.”

  Ryck laughed, then said, “No, you’ve got yourself a good position there, it looks like, and you know the ops order better than I do. You wrote, it, right? No, I’ve got Çağlar here, and we’ll be fine. Golf has already swept through the area, so we’re safe.”

  “I can get corral some of the H & S Marines to form a security detail,” the Three persisted.

  The battalion Headquarters and Service Company was the home to the many Marines who provided command, administrative, and logistical support. Ryck was a member of the company, along with the armorers, the admin clerks, the chaplain, the battalion aide station, and all the rest of the Marines and sailors who were necessary to keep a battalion operating. But each Marine or sailor, be they the motor transport SNCO, a corpsman, or a PICS technician, were also riflemen, and when the battalion went into a fight, so did they. And now Proctor wanted to form a small team from them to provide Ryck security.

  Ryck didn’t want his actions to change the way the battalion fought. On the other hand, he thought being able to see the town would be beneficial, and he didn’t want to wait until a team was formed. The fight would bypass the area.

  “No, I’m fine. I’ve got two tracs in back of me, and all of Golf in front of me. You focus on the fight and quit worrying about me.”

  Ryck turned around and spotted one of the two tracs that were in back of him. The other one obviously was not as close as he had told Proctor. Well, one was enough, and Golf had already cleared the area.

  “Let’s go, Hans. I want to see if we can get to the top of 1128,” Ryck told Çağlar. “Keep your eyes open,” he added.

  The building was only 40 meters in front of them. It didn’t look particularly sturdy, and Ryck wondered if it could support the weight of the two Marines in their PICS.

  It has too, he told himself. They must have building codes here.

  From off to his right, a big gun opened up from a position on the right hill. Almost immediately, several tanks opened up as well, silencing the gun. A few Marines had been degraded, but there was no major damage done.

  It all seemed like a waste of resources, something Sylvington was not noted for. The company was up to something; Ryck just hadn’t quite figured out what that was, though.

  When entering a building, it was always better to make an entrance rather than using an existing door, and a Marine in a PICS was more than capable of breaking through walls. This was friendly property, however, and while Ryck had no problem blowing up a building from which they were taking fire, this wasn’t the case here, and Ryck would undoubtedly have to fill out reams of paperwork explaining why he had to break down the wall on Widow Smith’s office for orphans and the destitute.

  With Ryck covering, Çağlar reached out and turned the d
oorknob. To his surprise, the double doors swung open. Çağlar ducked in first, followed by Ryck, who was careful not to hit the jamb. Ryck entered an obvious reception area. It was somewhat barren, and Ryck had the impression that this was the home of various almost-rans. An LED display was behind the receptionist’s desk, listing the 20 or so offices in the building. Names of accountants, lawyers, a dentist, a couple of engineers, and a Psyche Suppressor, whatever that was, and their offices still shone brightly.

  Ryck took a look at the elevator, but two Marines in PICS took up a lot of space, and it really wasn’t a good idea to be potentially trapped.

  “You OK, sir?” Proctor asked on the P2P.

  “I’m fine, don’t worry. You keep your mind on the mission,” Ryck answered.

  A lone stairway at the end of the hall would be their only possible egress to the roof. It looked OK, but Ryck couldn’t be sure until one of them actually tried it. He had to make a decision. The fight for the town was still going on, even if the firing had become more sporadic. Either Sylvington was running out of weapons or the Marines were being lulled into a false sense of impending victory.

  “Let’s give it a shot,” Ryck told Çağlar, not willing to just give up on it.

  “I’ve got it,” Çağlar said, carefully placing one big foot on the stairs.

  They didn’t even creak. The sergeant quickly went up the first flight of stairs to the second floor.

  “Looks good, sir.”

  “I’m coming up,” Ryck said as he stepped on the stairs as well.

  It was a fairly tight fit in a PICS, but within a moment, Ryck had joined Çağlar on the second floor. For all of Ryck’s concern, the stairs were a non-issue. Çağlar went up the next flight.

  “I’m at the top now,” Çağlar said.

  There was a crashing sound, then the sergeant passed, “I’m on the roof. The hatch was a little tight, so I kind of had to push my way through it.”