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

  The room wasn’t empty, though. One more civilian was remaining. The man, in his blue pinstriped suit that probably cost more than Ryck’s monthly pay, ran a hand back through his perfectly coifed blonde hair and stepped forward.

  “Colonel Lysander, I’m Franklin Dunlop, the project manager with Trieste Group,” he said, offering Ryck a business chip, then quickly passing more out to the rest of the Marines.

  At least he hadn’t FDs, or force downloaded, his contact information as was the current fad but gave out an old-fashioned chip that would interrogate his PA and ask permission to be downloaded.

  Ryck looked down at the chip. It was pretty top-of-the-line, he had to admit. It probably cost his company 50 or 60 credits apiece, and he’d just handed out 11 of them like they were candy.

  “Thank you, Mr. Dunlop, but we’re trying to have a meeting here. You heard the general. We’ve got a lot to do and not much time to do it,” Ryck said.

  “I understand, Colonel, but this will only take a moment,” the man said before continuing, ignoring Ryck’s polite attempt to cut him off. “I know you are all happy with your current assignment. Who wouldn’t be, I’d ask you? Anyone would kill to be in your position, right?

  “But you won’t always be in this billet, and when that happens, I want you to remember Trieste. We need good men like you.”

  Dunlop was speaking as if he meant all the Marines at the table, but his eyes were locked on Ryck. This message was for him.

  It wasn’t anything new. After being awarded the Nova, more than a few companies, including Trieste, had contacted him, offering him future jobs or positions on boards. They didn’t want Ryck Lysander; they wanted the Federation Nova-holder Lysander.

  “Trieste kinda screwed the bitch on the Pyrolis, ya and O.F. Data, didn’t ya?” Gunner Barnhouse asked as several others tried to hold back laughs.

  “New system, Gunner. They all have bugs,” Dunlop said nonplussed.

  “Bugs the size of dinosaurs, maybe. But we could be in the shit next week, and we ken’t fight nohow with this piece of stinkin’ shit.”

  “That’s why we have redundancies. If the Pyrolis goes down, then the UKK-44 can be activated,” Dunlop said, still calm and collected, and speaking as if he were trying to explain to a child why Santa Claus did not come two days in a row. “That’s proven tech.”

  The man’s pretty cool under fire, I’ll give him that, Ryck thought.

  “And on a personal level, fixing these bugs is a good thing. We’ve got over 40 people here, all on time-and-a-half and per diem. This kind of thing is an opportunity for those smart enough to grab it.”

  OK, that blew it, Ryck thought, any positive impressions of the man vanishing like a puff of smoke.

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Dunlop. We’ve got your contact, but we’ve really got to get rolling. So if you would excuse us?” Ryck said, his tone brooking no nonsense.

  “Sure, colonel. Just keep us in mind when the time comes.”

  With that, Dunlop turned and sauntered out of the room, brimming with confidence.

  “Shit,” someone muttered quietly, but loud enough for the rest of the Marines to hear.

  Ryck shook his head. It took all kinds to keep the ball rolling, not just those in uniforms, he knew. He just didn’t have to respect them. Marines he understood. Civilians? Not so much.

  “Well, with that over, let’s get back to business. Captain Christophe, let’s get the schedule for the contact team. I don’t want anything delayed because we’re not ready. We escaped the general’s broadsides this morning, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Most of the fixes were out of the battalion’s hands, and all of this should have been rectified before going live, but it was what it was, and the “Fuzos” would do what it took to become combat ready.

  KRATCHURI 3

  Chapter 6

  “Holy shit, Colonel! This is copacetic to the max,” Sams passed on the P2P, joy simply exploding from him.

  “You’ve got that right. I don’t know how practical this is, but hell, this is grubbing great!” Ryck responded.

  He looked up from his militarized Poseidon Aquasled at the battalion spread out over two kilometers and skimming over the surface of the ocean at close to 70 KPH. People paid to do this on resort worlds, and here it was his job. He was getting paid, not paying, for the experience.

  The APS-1—“Amphibious Personnel Sled” officially and “Awesome Party Sled” by the Marines who had just been introduced to them—was essentially the same Poseidon Aquasled the civilians used for fun. Gone were the eye-blindingly bright color schemes, and each sled had been modified with universal weapons mounts and comms, but the sleds were essentially the same rich man’s toys that most people could only rent for an hour or two while on vacation. Now, each Marine in the battalion had his own sled. Ryck still hated the Armadillos, but who could hate these?

  Despite the aquatic origins of the Marines, from the very first Roman Adiutrix Legions and up through the US and other Marines in the 22nd Century, once mankind left the bounds of Earth, the aquatic nature of various marine corps fell by the wayside. Marines still fought with the Navy, but space-to-shore replaced ocean-going ship-to-shore operations. The Navy and Marines were great in space and on land—on an ocean, not so much.

  But planets had varying degrees of ocean-going presences. After the debacle on Dallamay, where a fleet of fishermen had confounded the FCDC, strategists started re-examining this. The mortified FCDC had to buy a fleet of Sefina coastal cutters from the Brotherhood as a stop-gap measure to meet the capability requirement.

  Opponents argued that the Navy could have blasted all the fishing boats out of the water with ease. But the FCDC was trying to break an illegal strike, not destroy an industry. Ryck had no love lost for the FCDC, but it had hardly been their fault that they had no capability to stop, board, and arrest large numbers of people who were aboard aquatic vessels.

  That had been almost 20 years ago, and meanwhile, the Navy and Marine think-tanks slowly argued and compromised on how to best address this capability shortfall. The Navy had come up with their new Osprey, a mid-sized armed transport that could land, float, and take off from water. It was not particularly maneuverable, but it served the purpose against a lightly or unarmed opponent.

  The Marines came up with the commercial aquasled, and not knowing just what to do with them, they were dumped on the two new assault battalions. Ryck had his doubts as to their efficacy against an entrenched, well-armed opponent, but the pure fun factor was a welcome change from the grind of the last three months. Morale was as high as it had been since Ryck took command.

  Ryck’s issue face shield gave a 30-second warning for reaching PL Tuna. The fact that the current SOP had Marines in their skins and bones was an added plus. That was one less thing for the Marines to learn in order to employ the aquasleds. It could be even more foolproof with all the sleds slaved to a single AI, but for this exercise, each sled was controlled by its rider. Marines did not like to give up control as a rule, and this was a training exercise where they were supposed to gain the skills needed to use the sleds.

  When they reached the phase line, each rank of aquasleds disappeared under the water in unison—pretty much in unison, that is. Ryck was in the third rank, and as his display lit up with the command, he hit the submerge button, and the sled dove beneath the waves. One moment, he was skimming along the surface, the wind in his hair. The next moment, he was zipping along underwater, a bubble of air surrounding him.

  Ryck had snorkeled before, but that was nothing compared to this. The bubble of air, which was Poseidon’s proprietary technology, gave him crystal clear vision, and he could pick out three or maybe four sleds in each direction before the rest got lost in the murk. Çağlar was just off to his port side, and the sergeant gave Ryck a thumbs up, a huge smile on his face.

  The speed underwater was just as impressive at 50 KPH. Several shadows of fish scooted out of the way in panic from the unf
amiliar shapes zipping by. Kratchuri 3 was not a fishing world, but as part of the terraforming process, fish had been introduced as a matter of course.

  Ryck kept his eyes on the sled’s geographic display. There was essentially no interface between Ryck’s eyes and the water, but water, even crystal clear water, still had visibility limitations. Ryck could imagine slamming up against some undersea spire at 50 KPH. There was a collision/failure rescue function on each sled, but still, that was something he didn’t want to experience. Their course into the beach had been carefully selected so there were no obstacles, but fuck-ups happen.

  The underwater leg was about 30 minutes long, and despite himself, Ryck got a little bored. There wasn’t much to see other than those Marines on either side of him, and the sensation of speed was not the same as on the surface. He was glad when his command display showed Fox Company hitting the beach. Less than a minute later, Ryck’s rank was rising in the water, the bottom sensors taking over. As he broke the surface of the water, Ryck steered the sled up on the beach and beside two other empty sleds.

  Driving, if that was the word, the sled while trying to maintain control of the battlespace was more difficult than he’d thought it would be. But as he rolled off the sled and onto the sand, things started clicking into place. The Fox Marines had already pushed up over a 100 meters into the sawgrass. Beyond them, Ryck could see the aggressor force beating a hasty retreat. This assault had been carefully choreographed, and the aggressors were nothing more than something on which to focus his Marines’ attention.

  As a commander, Ryck tried to determine what would have happened had this been an actual assault. He didn’t like what he saw. They had landed over a broad expanse of beach with a gentle, even slope. It looked like the old films he’d seen of the landing on Omaha Beach during WWII on Earth. The sleds were fun, but they could not transport a PICS Marine or heavier weapons. With modern weapons facing them, the carnage on the beach would have been heavy. A crew-served energy gun would scythe right through them. No, for such an assault to have a chance, the Navy would have to be providing supporting fire, both from space and from atmospheric craft.

  Ryck started going through other possibilities in his mind when a siren blared from the bleachers at the far north end of the beach. The exercise was over. Faux cheers ran through the battalion’s Marines as they celebrated their “win.”

  “Commanders, gather your Marines and get them marching to the assembly area. Then join me at the bleachers,” he passed on the command circuit.

  3/7 was hosting the battalion for a field day complete with steaks, some sort of sausage that was a local favorite, beer, and the prerequisite battleball game. This was their turf, so it was up to them to put up the food and drink.

  Tarawa was the “home” to the Marine Corps, and it had more than its share of great training ranges, both on the planet and in the system. What it did not have was much in the way of an ocean. Kratchuri, home to the Third Marine Division, was almost two-thirds water, so when it came time for 2/3 to learn how to use the aquasleds, it made sense to send the battalion to the planet. There were closer planets with oceans, but this also allowed for a pollination of ideas between the two new assault battalions.

  A healthy rivalry was growing between the two battalions, but if their first four days on the planet were any indication, there was also a bond of brotherhood growing. The “Fuzos” and the “Black Devils” were bonding over their shared status. And with 10 December coming up in a week, the battalion would be guests at the “Black Devil’s” patron birthday celebration. 2/3’s own patron, the Portuguese Corpo de Fuzileiros, might be “senior” to the Royal Netherland’s Korps Mariniers—1618 to the Korps Mariniers’ 1665 Old Reckoning founding—but both battalions considered their adopted lineage to be among the most storied.

  Ryck made his way to the bleacher area and spotted Lieutenant Colonel Richard Ashton, his counterpart with 3/7. His staff and commanders had observed the assault from the bleachers along with a major from Ryck’s own First Division’s training shop and more than a few staff from Third Marine Division. Only one of the 3/7 companies had been needed to play the bad guys, so the rest of the battalion had gathered on the low dunes around the bleachers. Most of them were walking in the direction of the field day, but the staff was waiting for his staff.

  “Rick,” Ryck said, leaving it at that.

  “Ryck,” the 3/7 battalion commander simply said in return.

  Ryck had known Rick back at NOTC, but they had not been particularly close. Over the last few days, they had become much closer, and their simple Rick/Ryck greetings had become something of an inside joke between the two.

  “So, what did you think of our babies?” 3/7 Rick asked.

  “Lots of fun, but I’m not convinced as to their practicality. If this had been a real assault, your Kilo Company could have kicked us right back off the beach. Without supporting arms, unless it is a clandestine insert, I don’t have a warm and fuzzy about them.”

  3/7 Rick looked over at his Three, Major Mort Rhee and nodded as if saying “See, I told you so.”

  He looked back at Ryck and said, “That pretty much falls in line with what we think. The Marines love them, and they could be useful for inserts, but that’s about it. General Zutten has visions of grand amphibious assaults, but . . .”

  “But you don’t, and you want us to back you on that,” Ryck said.

  Major General Zutten was Third Divisions CG, and he had a reputation as someone who charged ahead at a full gallop at all times.

  “Well, I wouldn’t put it like that. You need to make your own reports,” 3/7 Rick said.

  “No, don’t worry about that. We need to work together and be honest brokers. If we both feel the same way, then we’ve got to let our higher-ups know. They’re relying on us,” Ryck said.

  “Well, yeah. That’s true. But I—we—are glad that we seem to be on the same page with this.”

  “Speaking of opinions, we’ve been all aquasleds here. But what’s your gut on the Armadillos? I read after-action reports, but man-to-man, what do you think?” Ryck asked his fellow battalion commander.

  “Hate them,” 3/7 Rick said without hesitation. “At any decent speed, the Marines arrive too beat up to be effective, and as far as the Armadillo-C, forget it. Unless it’s at a standstill, it’s unworkable. Even at a standstill, the C4 is a joke. I’m shit-canning the C if we have a real-time mission.”

  “Shit-canning the C? But our command is really pushing them,” Ryck said.

  “And so is ours. Oh, both Cs will be along for the ride. The Alpha Command C will just be empty unless we’re halted. On the move, we’ll be in PICS. Better mobility and better C4, or at least more usable. The Bravo Command will travel in their C, but it’ll kangaroo up, then stop and monitor, then kangaroo up again.”

  The sergeant major and the XO had moved up alongside Ryck to listen, and when LtCol Ashton said that, they exchanged looks that Ryck couldn’t decipher. Both Marines were in the Bravo Command group, and if Ryck copied what 3/7 was doing, the two would still be stuck inside the Armadillos.

  “I’m not sure that our command will let us do that. They are putting beaucoup resources into them, and they’ll be monitoring all of our training.”

  “Listen, Ryck,” 3/7 Rick said, his voice low as he put an arm around Ryck’s shoulder, pulling him in close. “We’ll train with them, and if the situation arises that we need them, then we’ll use them. But if it comes to the shit, I’m going to do what it takes to complete the mission, and I can’t command getting mauled in the back of that metal monstrosity while having no comms. I just can’t do it. No, if the bullets are flying for real, we’ll be in PICS.

  “You need to keep your brass happy, and with you being right there under the big flagpole, I imagine you’ve got more stars crowding around you than you can shake a stick at.”

  Ryck had to smile at that. 3/7 Rick had it right. It seemed that there were more VIPs at some of their evolutions
than battalion Marines.

  “But you are the commanding officer. You need to do what you know is right. And if they don’t like it, they can fire you ass later, but at least you did right by your Marines and the mission.”

  Ryck looked at 3/7 Rick with newfound respect. Of course he was right. Ryck was the commanding officer, and swarming general’s aside, the battalion was Ryck’s responsibility. Not General Meintenbach’s. Not Colonel Dove’s. His. Lieutenant Colonel Ryck Lysander’s.

  Ryck would keep working with the Armadillos to try and make them more effective. But unless there were big changes, if they got a mission, Ryck would do what he had to do, the brass and all the corporate weenies be damned. The “Fuzos” would not be guinea pigs if things got real.

  Just then, the wind shifted, and the heady aroma of grilling steaks hit them hard. Every single Marine standing there looked up in unison.

  3/7 Rick laughed, and then said, “I know we were supposed to have a short debrief now, but I hear a steak calling my name. They’re Bluebirds, a local fabricator, and they are pretty damned good. What say we head on over to the field day and take care of this in the morning?”

  Ryck looked over at the eager officers and SNCOs. He could almost see them salivating.

  “Well, since I don’t want to be the first Marine commander in 300 years to have a mutiny, I think for our own best interests, we’d better do that. Let’s see what kind of hosts you ‘Black Devils’ are before we whip your butts in battleball.”

  “I bet you a case of the brew of your choice that we take the game,” 3/7 Rick said.

  “Ha! You’re on!”

  LONESOME END

  Chapter 7

  Ryck watched his display timer count down to zero. He didn’t need to say anything, but he was amped, so he passed “Move out!” on the command circuit.

  As before any battle, Ryck’s nerves were humming with anticipation. He didn’t really feel fear per se, which was a non-survival trait if there ever was one, but it was always more of the thrill of the raw pitting of one against the other. He’d played sports back in school on Prophesy, and this was the same eagerness to clash with the others. Given the raised stakes, it wasn’t surprising to him that that everything was ramped up, though, and that the level of excitement was higher.