A Deep Sleep (Valhalla Book 1) (3 page)

In Orbit Around Xi Beta Delta II

USS
Guadalcanal
(ASO-65)

Captain Ron “Viper” Danford had been in his suit for the last thirty minutes, waiting to be launched. Yesterday, they were all ensconced in their acceleration couches in the ‘seating’ area, the couches ready to ease the maneuvering load if
Guadalcanal
had entered combat as she entered Xi Beta Delta. It had been learned early in the war that relying on artificial gravity and inertial dampeners just got people killed. Too often they would be knocked out in combat, their effectiveness reduced. Even when they weren’t, trying to prevent any of the ship’s accelerations required massive power, something that was all too often in short supply during a battle. So instead, everyone not doing something was in the couches.

Now, Danford just wanted to be launched. He had already been fitted with his disposable heat shield and sprayed with a thermal ablative foam. He was also bolted to his open lander. The lander had its own heat shield, but that wouldn’t help Danford all the way down. The lander only dipped down into the atmosphere before launching its Marines into the atmosphere. The lander would then rise back to orbit and re-dock with
Guadalcanal
. Danford and the rest of the Marines in 3
rd
Battalion 2
nd
Regiment of the 1
st
Marine Division, 2
nd
Army were about to drop onto the only habitable planet in this system, Xi Beta Delta II. Of course, habitable was a relative term. The habitable region was limited to a collection of small islands near the southern pole. The equatorial regions were a collection of desert islands and a good sized continent. Inevitably, this was where the rare and valuable minerals and ores were located. Thus, while the majority of the population and support facilities were located on the southern pole’s island chain, there were substantial mining operations on the central continent. The wastes of the polar north were a collection of small islands locked in a massive ice cap, covering almost the entire top third of the planet. Most of the planet’s freshwater was locked in those ice caps.

Wherever men went and discovered something of value, more men travelled there to take it from them. When you stripped away the causes, the politics, it was just that simple. Danford didn’t think he was fighting an unjust war, that his actions were criminal, but that didn’t mean that he felt that his own side had the unquestioned moral high ground either. War was messy, best thing he could do is help it end quickly and with the least unnecessary bloodshed.

“Captain Danford, we are prepping for launch.” It was his suit AI. The unit had a sort of personality, though it was quite basic. It mostly ran his suit and some other functions to help him move the metric ton of high strength alloys and suit systems around with surprising agility.

“Very well.” He had never really gotten used to the machine, still responding to it even though it didn’t require such a response. Danford took a deep, slow breath, trying without success to calm his nerves. He was always nervous, afraid, right before a launch. He managed, somehow, to push that away by the time he hit dirt, but standing immobile in the launch bay always made him tense. He commed the rest of his company, “We’re getting ready for the drop, so I want everyone on their A-game. This is an enemy controlled world and has been since it was discovered. We have almost no idea what is down there. You’ve all seen the intel and know that our predictions of enemy force strength are just that, predictions. No matter what we face, there is no unit I’d rather have at my back for this drop.”

“Attention, 1
st
Company,” Lt Colonel Jack Cain, the battalion commander, was addressing Danford’s unit directly. “you are the first wave. You know your mission. We’re all coming down right behind you, so hold the line. This battalion is the best fighting force in known space and we will give them hell. Good luck Marines!”

Danford barely felt
Guadalcanal
spin sharply as she oriented herself to point tail first towards the planet. All along the midship, aft facing tubes ejected the landers holding him and his Marines, out into Xi Beta Delta II’s atmosphere.

Xi Beta Delta II

T + 1 hour

“I want that mortar firing in two-zero seconds, you got me?!” Staff Sergeant Caroline Gilson was furious. “If I have to come over there, I’ll shoot you sorry sons of bitches out of the damn mortars. At least then you might kill some of the enemy!”

“Yes Sergeant!” The emphatic response was all that Lance Corporal Franks spared for his furious sergeant. Gilson was one considered the battalion’s toughest sergeant. There were rumors, dutifully spread through the enlisted and passed from one platoon to the next about the fearsome sergeant. No doubt exaggerated in the telling, but it only served to increase her fearsome reputation within the division.

The mortar team had moved twice in the hour since they hit the dirt, not so much advancing as repositioning when the enemy started to zero in on their location. Normally, with the range the mortars had and in good cover, they could fire for some time before they were engaged with counter-battery fire, if they were engaged at all. This time, however, the LZ was barely a 4 km square and they were pressed from all sides. The enemy had allowed 1
st
company to land completely, and just as 2
nd
and 3
rd
company was launched, they hit the LZ from all directions. They were outnumbered at least 10-1 before the other two companies landed, but that still left them outnumbered at least 3-1. The enemy still seemed to be feeding in some reserves, so they may be even worse off. To make matters worse, the bastards had some tube artillery, heavier than the Marines could lug down from orbit. Their heavier guns were trapped on the transports until this LZ was at least marginally safer. For now, the majority of 3
rd
Battalion was on their own.

“Sergeant Gilson, I need you to detach a SAW and send it over to Corporal White’s position. The enemy has a bit more cover on their approach there and it looks like they know it. He’s got at least two platoons moving against him and his squad is down to 7 effectives.” Captain Danford’s voice was rock solid and without a hint of frustration or concern.

“Yes sir. They’ll be firing in three minutes sir.”

“Excellent Sergeant, carry on.” Danford would be thoroughly impressed if Gilson had that SAW moved and firing in three minutes. That team would have to move almost 200 meters across relatively open ground. What had made for an excellent LZ was a terrible place to try to dig in and hold against a superior foe. The original plan had been to land on this small plain and then advance quickly on the small coastal port as well as seizing a series of small hills that overlooked the port. This meant choosing an LZ close enough to the port for quick access, but also one large enough to land a substantial strike element. Now, the LZ was too small to land the whole battalion and stage a break-out attack against the forces trapping them, but was also too large of a flat plain to allow for the Marines to capture and hold decent defensive ground without stretching themselves too thin.

Sergeant Gilson flipped over to her platoon comm link, the one she had inherited when the lieutenant bought it on the landing, with a thought to her AI. “Alright, Reynolds, Meyers, pack up your SAW and get it moving over to Corporal White’s position. I want you set up on in the middle of that low stone wall, about two hundred and fifty meters from your current position.” Gilson highlighted the place and shot the update to their suits.

“Yes Sergeant, we’ll be firing in four minutes.” Reynolds, the senior of the privates, responded.

“Unacceptable Private. The Captain told me to get that gun operating in two minutes. If the Captain comes over here to chew my ass out I can guarantee you won’t like what I’ll do to you. Now get your lazy ass going and move that goddamned gun!”

“Yes Sergeant!” Reynolds had no idea how he was going to get his gun moved, but he was still more scared of the Sergeant. Plus, in a more abstract part of his brain he knew he couldn’t stand to let the Captain down.

“And Reynolds, if you get careless and get something shot off, it’d better kill you because if it doesn’t, you’ll wish it had. You got me?” Gilson’s voice had a cold edge. The anger was still present, but now it was more chilling than fiery.

“Yes Sergeant, we’ll be up in two minutes, nothing shot off.” Reynolds was technically pushing it, having already taken twenty seconds or so up to this point, but Gilson let him have it. She had shaved a bit off her estimate to the Captain anyway. She noticed, with some degree of satisfaction, that the pair had nearly packed their gun and were prepping to move out. The rated pack up for that gun was thirty five seconds. They had shaved almost seven off that.

T + 15 hrs

Captain Danford edged his head just out past the rocky outcropping he was in cover behind. His HQ bunker, such that it was, had been dug into the sandy soil just behind a low spine near the middle of the LZ. He crouched outside of it now, looking towards the small port town of Haikou. He wanted that position and he wanted it badly. The question was how to get to it without crippling losses. A direct frontal attack towards such an obvious object would be a killing ground. He could already imagine the PRC Marines opening up from positions of good cover with interlocking fields of fire. He needed a way to blow open their defenses or even a way to flank them.

“Captain, I am detecting additional units inbound from orbit. Trajectories suggest that these are at least one of the companies left on the transports from 3
rd
Battalion.” It was his AI again.

“What the hell, why are they dropping in on this LZ, the enemy has enough AA to rip half the wave to pieces.” Danford couldn’t believe that the Colonel had authorized a landing under these conditions.

“They are not projected to land in the current LZ. They are heading for a landing zone just over the horizon, approximately 30 km from our current position. I am estimating it to be near LZ X-ray.” The AI continued. “There are also a number of malfunctioning reentry vehicles and they are veering off course towards the ocean. I count thirty so far.”

Danford didn’t like the thought of losing those thirty Marines before they even touched dirt, but there was nothing he could do for them now. Orbital insertions were a dangerous business, though thirty was still a high casualty rate considering they had yet to be taken under fire from the enemy. His own troops had landed with just one fatal mishap. He thought about the X-ray LZ. That was the planned landing site if the enemy had been more obviously deployed, with greater strength in fortified positions around the port. Command wanted the port intact, or relatively, precluding a heavy orbital bombardment. The Marines would have to take it, but the plan was that they could use their heavier artillery to do so if the town was obviously fortified. The Navy had an entirely different definition of heavy artillery compared with what a ground force packed. With conventional weapons, it would take hours or days to truly level the port. With a straight kinetic strike, the fleet could do it in seconds.

It was a hike from any objective, but they would have been able to move in force against the enemy positions at their leisure. Unfortunately, the brass was under pressure to move quickly. The orbital defenses had been a tougher nut to crack than expected and in the next sector over, a three battle group PRC force just wiped out the orbital defenses around the planet Arcadiana and the smaller naval task force posted in that system. They were already on mission, too late to pull back now, but it was a pressing issue. The whole situation had those at the top concerned, which meant that the Marines had to get in and get this done, fast. They would likely be needed to augment the mission to retake the planet.

“Enemy guns are engaging the inbound reinforcement, light casualties thus far. Updated count on the malfunctioning drop pods, forty-three in total. Units are now below effective enemy AA, eighty KIA. Total force landing is three hundred and four effectives. Eighty KIA from enemy action and forty-three malfunctioning drop pods. That is a failure rate of 11.198%. This is substantially higher than the usual rate of 0.501%.” The AI could be annoying in its habits at times, and casualty rates discussed in its calm and monotone voice was one of those things for Danford.

“Very well.” Danford said tersely.
Don’t swear at the computer
. He told himself.

“Incoming transmission Captain.”

“Captain Danford, Lieutenant Diggs, Lieutenant Hanford. The rest of 3
rd
Battalion just landed. We will be moving to engage the enemy flank. Estimate we will engage in ten, that’s one-zero, minutes. We need you to prepare to attack in coordination with our movements. I’m sending you our attack axis. Let’s prepare a warm reception for our would-be ambushers.” Lieutenant Colonel Cain’s voice came over the comm, sounding for all the world like a thunder storm.

“All units, Code Trinity, I repeat, Code Trinity. Impact in one-zero seconds. Hug the dirt marines!” Colonel Katrina Summers, commander of 2
nd
Regiment, issued the warning over the comm, overriding any other communication currently on any line and delivering the warning to the entire force on the ground in a single instant. The enemy had just gone nuclear.