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

  He wasn’t ignoring the personal danger. He’d lost Marines in his command before, more than he wanted to remember. He’d been wounded pretty badly as well, requiring two long regens. But those were factors that hit him after the battle. Prior to enemy contact, he was brimming with the desire to close with and engage the enemy, to prove that he was the better man, that his Marines were the better warriors. It made him feel more alive than anything else, which was ironic in that he was putting himself where he could very reasonably get killed.

  He didn’t expect that date with the Reaper would happen today, though. He was entering combat, and people were going to die. He just didn’t think it would be his Marines. This technically was a real mission, but it might as well have been a live-fire training exercise.

  The Yuri Front was a separatist group wanting to pull away from Mountain Home and form its own government, taking control of a good portion of the rare earth deposits that were the base of revenue for both Mountain Home and the Kingdom of Altoona, the two governments on Lonesome End. Understandably, the government of Mountain Home was not too keen on the Yuri Front splitting off, taking with it the source of 60 percent of its revenues. Altoona, not wanting to encourage any separatist movements that could spill over to its own territory, supported Mountain Home, and the Federation supported both governments. The Yuri Front was declared a terrorist organization with the Federation citing a riot that had broken out during in a clash between the Mountain Home constabulary and Yuri Front protestors.

  With help from the FCDC, most of the Front members had been rounded up and incarcerated, but a small force of about 100 die-hard militants had seized the 200-year-old Temple of Light, which had historical significance to both Mountain Home and Altoona. The temple was on top of Mt. Hollyoak, a small, but prominent hill that gave it full coverage of the narrow Gypsy Pass, the crossroads and main route from the mines to both governments’ economic zones. By emplacing five bunkers in the hill below the temple, the Front effectively controlled the pass, and neither government had the force to evict the small, dug-in force.

  The Federation had the force, of course. One small frigate could easily take out the bunkers. The presence of the temple did pose some limitations, though. A tungsicle or the frigate’s kinetic cannons could destroy the entire hill, taking the temple with it. But a frigate’s muon cannon could be surgically employed to neutralize each bunker in turn.

  However, this also gave the Federation a unique opportunity to test the Marines’ new assault battalions. A regular infantry battalion, with air and armor support, should easily be able to take out five bunkers, but the powers that be wanted to see how an assault battalion would fare. It was a relatively easy target, but one that could have a sharp bite if the battalion screwed up.

  Frankly, Ryck was surprised things had gotten this far. Once the separatists knew they faced a Marine battalion, Ryck thought they would have surrendered. On Juris 2, 3/7 had a similar mission handed to them, but as soon as the Black Devils landed, their potential opponents immediately gave up. Evidently, the Yuri Front was made of sterner stuff.

  Sterner, but stupider.

  Ryck didn’t want to kill some simple separatists. They were not a threat to the Federation as a whole nor to the citizens of Mountain Home or Altoona. But his orders were to secure the temple and the hill, and if the separatists fired on his Marines, that was their mistake. Ryck not feeling fear before a battle may not be a Darwinian survival trait, but taking on the Marines was more of a suicidal trait, one that could only end up with one outcome.

  Ryck felt good as he walked forward in his PICS. He’d taken Rick Ashton’s advice and deep-sixed the Armadillo-C. Well, that wasn’t accurate. The Armadillo was still with them, it just followed in trace with only the crew inside. His Alpha Command was in their PICS where they could better fight the battle. The PICS had just about the same C4 capabilities as the Armadillo-C was supposed to have, and the PICS’ C4 actually worked. The only area in which the Armadillo-C was significantly upgraded was in the supporting arms, and Ryck had considered putting Captain Quezon, his fire support coordinator in the C, but in the end, he decided that the better mobility a PICS offered outweighed the more robust comms gear in the C.

  Thirty meters to his right, the Beserker smashed through a small, crooked tree that had managed to eke its way through the dry soil and take root. The Berserker was the Number 3 Davis in Lieutenant Chris “Dunderdunk” Browne’s First Platoon. Sergeant Andreas Bergstrøm, one of the craziest Marines in the battalion, was the tank commander, and the “Dunderdunk Thunder,” as the platoon had taken to referring to itself, was spearheading the fixing force. Ryck had thought that Captain Proctor Christophe would have kept his command tank near the battalion headquarters, but Armor Company commander had chosen to be part of the enveloping force coming in from the north.

  This assault was not going to be recorded in the annals of amazing tactical innovations. The battalion had an overwhelming advantage in personnel, weapons, and maneuverability, so not much in the way of subterfuge was needed to ensure a victory. Still, Ryck didn’t like having the fixing force simply march right up into the teeth of the defenses, but the operations order had been vetted by both the regimental staff and the division G3, and it was obvious that they wanted to evaluate the battalion in a basic assault. Ryck was not too concerned, however. The Yuri Front’s Borosivitch meson cannons were the top-of-the-line—70 years ago. Most militaries had gone away from them as they took enormous amounts of power, they generated huge amounts of heat that had to be radiated off, and the beams scattered and dissipated in the atmosphere fairly quickly. That generation of meson beam weapon was only practical in an atmosphere for a point defense—such as a fort or bunker. And while they could not be simply reflected away like a laser-based weapon, countermeasures had been developed quite early on. The Davises could absorb the shots without a problem at distance, and even close up, it would take some extended fire to break through the tanks’ shielding. Even the PICS would be fairly safe from the cannons, although Ryck wouldn’t volunteer to stand in front of one at point blank range for any extended length of time.

  Fox Company, in their skins and bones, would be vulnerable to the guns, but they would not get anywhere within range until the five guns had been knocked out.

  Ryck resisted looking up. He knew this entire operation was being observed and recorded by the FS Tremaine in orbit overhead. He didn’t like the brass hovering over his shoulder, but he just forced the thought from his mind and focused on the bunkers up ahead.

  The valley leading up to Mt. Hollyoak was perfect armor terrain: relatively flat with only minor terrain features. The western approach was out of direct fire until it came around a finger at about 800 meters. On the negative side, the finger created a chokepoint that restricted movement and created a fairly narrow frontage. It would be a tight fit for Echo Company and the three tanks that were moving with them, and that could cause problems if the Yuri Front had any surprises in store for them. If Ryck had been defending Mt. Hollyoak, he would have mined the chokepoint and had it covered with every supporting fire he could control, but he’d been assured that the front was not that sophisticated nor well-equipped.

  The basic plan was pretty simple. Echo and a three-tank section from First Platoon would approach the bunkers from the west and fix the attention of three of the bunkers, engaging from 800 meters out and in to about 500 meters. The Borisovitches shouldn’t have any effect on PICS until about 200 meters, so this was a pretty good cushion, and at 500 meters, the Davises should have a field day knocking out the bunkers.

  Then, Captain Christopher Attleman’s Golf Company, in PICS, and the remaining tanks, which had been air-lifted to one of Mountain Home’s mines, would come down from the mountains in the north and hit the bunkers from that direction. Fox, Weapons, and the arty section in their skins and bones, were the clearing force. They would clear and secure the bunker complex once the Borisovitches had been neutralized.


  A vital component of the new assault battalion concept was missing: air. The battalion had a flight of Storks, the C87-C version, which was a normal Stork with heavier armament. They weren’t Navy Experions, but they packed a pretty good punch, especially against lighter-armed opponents. If, God forbid, the Federation and a better-armed force like the Brotherhood ever went to war, however, the story might be different.

  The Storks, though, had been banned from the mission with the excuse that they could damage the temple. Ryck just wished the powers that be could just have been open about the real reasoning. This was a test of the closer integration between armor and infantry.

  Ryck, Sams, Çağlar, and Staff Sergeant Carson Wyatt, from the comms shop, travelled together in trace of Echo and the tank section. Ryck knew he was probably crowding Captain Bayarsaikhan’s ass, but he wanted to be able to observe what was happening as soon as they got within line-of-sight of the bunkers. Çağlar wasn’t particularly happy about it, but Ryck assured his sergeant that if they began to take fire, with the Berserker in front of them, they could move in back of it and let the big beast shield them.

  “Echo crossing Phase Line Mango,” Genghis passed on the command circuit.

  Ryck’s AI had already highlighted that on his display, but as there was no transmission silence for the assault, it didn’t hurt to pass that along. Just ahead of him, the Berserker spun slightly on its axis and then headed off directly toward the bunker. Almost immediately, a beam of blue-white light hit the tank, broke up, and spread over the chassis, small lightning bolts shooting off.

  In the vacuum of space, beam weapons were invisible. In an atmosphere, though, the ionization of the beam glowed a blue-white. The Berserker, like all Davis tanks, had a pretty robust shielding. A naval vessel had the power to overwhelm a tank’s shielding, and there were some modern field guns that shot shells that carried the beam generator through the air to burst next to a tank, but the older generation of ground-based particle beam weapons just weren’t up to the task.

  One side bolt shot toward Ryck, and even in a PICS, he instinctively ducked. The small bolt had nowhere near enough energy to do him any harm, though, and he looked around to see if anyone had seen him. Luckily, all of Echo was in front of him, and Fox was mounted in Armadillos behind him.

  The beam lasted for about five seconds before turning off. The cannon had to recharge. It could fire again in another five or ten seconds, depending on the power source and if it used flywheels and the like to keep a full charge handy.

  Three more strides and Ryck was around the finger, in full view of Mt Hollyoak. It looked pretty small to him, and not very impressive. The bunker staring him down, despite the outdated weapons, did, though. It was much bigger than he’d imagined, and he wasn’t sure how the Yuri Front could have built them in the middle of a well-travelled route while the Mountain Home government just let them. Granted, the Front hadn’t had to do much work in the interior as that had already been part of the temple complex, but five bunkers and supporting generators?

  Echo Company didn’t hesitate, moving forward as inexorably as the rising tide. A second Yuri Front bunker opened up with a similar lack of effectiveness. The gunners would have done better to try and take out a Marine in a PICS, but they were understandably focused on the Davises.

  The warrior in Ryck wanted to return fire. It went against his grain to just march forward while pulse after pulse of energy beams reached out to them. But the bunkers were being hit with constant messages, telling separatists to surrender. It had to disconcert them to see their big guns have no effect on the oncoming Marines, and Ryck hoped they’d see reason and give it up.

  Ryck toggled his visor to infrared. The trace of the blue-white meson beam switched to a bright scarlet, but that was not what he was looking for. The deeper red plumes erupting from the sides of the mountain as if from volcanic vents were his targets. The Borisovitches were creating huge amounts of waste heat, and these were being vented to the outside. A couple of rounds from the Davises, and those vents would be blocked. Within a few minutes, the bunkers would be untenable, cooked. He still thought this was a good plan, a sound, tactical plan that would minimize loss of life. However, the plan had been “duly considered” and rejected. The excuse was that the heat could cause damage to the spaces under the temple, rendering the entire complex unsafe. Ryck wasn’t buying that. He figured it was more in line with making a dramatic statement.

  He toggled back to normal vision as Echo came to a halt exactly 500 meters from the closest bunker.

  “Six, do we have permission to fire?” Sergeant Bergstrøm asked on the command circuit.

  Ryck hesitated, hoping that the separatists would come to their senses. Normally, the battalion CO would not be the one to give that order, but regiment wanted him to have final control over the situation.

  He could picture the Mountain Home Secretary of Security, who was aboard the Tremaine as an observer, urging him on to give the command. That wasn’t quite fair, though, he realized. More than a few of the Marine brass would be watching, waiting for the grand coordinated assault to unfold so they could analyze ad infinitum what went wrong and what mistakes had been made. Ryck didn’t give a rat’s ass about that, though. What happened next was up to those opposing his battalion. As if in response to his thoughts, another beam of energy reached out, bathing the Berserker.

  Well, I guess that is their vote, he thought.

  “One round, Wolfpack-3. Fire at will,” he passed.

  Almost immediately, the Berserker opened fire with its 75mm main gun. At 500 meters, the 4kg inert shell hit the bunker almost instantaneously, easily piercing the bunker’s armor. A burst of white-hot fire exploded outward as the stored energy was released. No one inside the bunker could have survived.

  Ryck had personal control over initiating the first round. Once that was fired, though, it was open turrets, and Phase 2 of the assault would commence, with command decentralized as normal. The Three would handle the battalion-wide coordination, but the overall fight was down to the NCO level.

  But Wolfpack-2, which was facing the second bunker, didn’t immediately open up. Ryck knew the tank gunner was locked onto the bunker, ready to fire, but the spectacular results that Wolfpack-3 had achieved, with bolts of lightning still shooting up into the air, and the cessation of any outgoing fire from the second bunker, had stayed the gunner’s finger. This was not a good trait for a Marine, but Ryck understood it.

  “All hands, hold your fire unless fired upon,” Ryck passed on the open circuit.

  He knew LtCol Lin Herrera, the G3 rep on the Tremaine would be going into a conniption fit over the halt, but Ryck was the commander on the ground, and he had to command as he deemed fit, not what division wanted. He knew he’d have Colonel Dove’s support, and the colonel was his direct commander, not someone in G3.

  He couldn’t stall the assault indefinitely, though. He just wanted to give the separatists a moment to digest how easily their bunker had been taken out. He’d give them a minute or so, then re-commence.

  It took only 30 seconds. The surrender was broadcast on a dozen or more frequencies. Ryck felt a surge of relief—mostly. A part of him, a part of which he was not proud, still wanted to mix it up. He’d been excited, ready to go, and this was an abrupt and decided let down. Not one Marine had been scratched, and the mission was accomplished (maybe not to what Herrera wanted to see, but the separatists had surrendered), and that was something any commander wanted.

  So why was he vaguely disappointed?

  The separatists may have signaled surrender, but that didn’t mean the danger was over. For any of the established militaries, a surrender was an oath, a bond. But for non-professionals, especially extremists of any ilk, surrenders had been used as ploys before. If someone were willing to suicide to take out an enemy, the niceties of modern battlefield culture would hardly be a deterrent.

  Maj Juventus was already on the comms, broadcasting for the separatists to power down th
eir remaining Borisovitches. Ryck watched his display waiting for them to comply. Two of the remaining guns immediately powered down, but two, including the one still aimed at his Marines, remained powered up.

  “Surrendering force, I say again, power down your weapons. If you do not, we will not accept your surrender and take immediate action,” Stig passed.

  One of the remaining guns began to power down, but the last one defiantly remained powered-up and capable of firing. Ryck needed to get Fox up to the objective to clear it, and he wasn’t going to do that until all of the Borisovitches were down. Old weapons technology or not, they would really spoil the day of any unarmored Marine.

  “Sir, what do I do if it doesn’t power down?” Stig Juventus asked Ryck over the P2P.

  “Come on, major. You know what to do. If the crew won’t power down, we have to take it out. Give them one more chance, then let Wolfpack-2 do its thing,” Ryck said, keying in the comms so the XO could listen in.

  “Roger that, sir. I’ve got it,” Stig said.

  “Remaining bunker, you have 30 seconds to power down or you will . . .oh, you’re doing it now. OK,” Stig said as the last gun started the power-down process.

  Ryck rolled his eyes. That hardly sounded professional.

  “Tell them to exit the bunker complex in our direction, and without any weapons,” Ryck prompted his S3 on the P2P.

  This was standard operating procedure, SOP, and Juventus shouldn’t need any guidance. He could pull it up on his display and just follow along the delineated steps.

  “And Echo?” Ryck prompted.