A Deep Sleep (Valhalla Book 1) (7 page)

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Danford heard the rounds, though he was already looking in that direction based upon data from the destroyer, passed through
Guadalcanal’s
data downlink. The hypersonic re-entry vehicles tore through the atmosphere and slammed into the surface. Enemy AA reached up for them but their interceptors, as maneuverable as they were, were trying engage a projectile traveling in excess of twenty thousand kph. Fewer than ten percent of the projectiles were intercepted and even those that were, their intrinsic velocity was mostly maintained and the single large projectile became a cloud of small projectiles. The intact projectiles slammed into the ground and imparted their kinetic energy to everything around them. Several of the projectiles hit directly on top of the enemy jammer, housed mostly in a below ground bunker. The projectiles were barely slowed by the high strength concrete and armor plating that protected the jammer. The uranium-tungsten round shed dust and that ignited as the projectile finally disintegrated inside the bunker, creating a fireball that consumed everything flammable and instantly roasted the unsuited soldiers and technicians inside.  At two of the sites, the rounds found the fusion reactors and breached their containment as they themselves were annihilated by the plasma. The three large fixed jammers died suddenly, two in a fiery nova, cratering the landscape permanently and throwing hundreds of tons of dirt and rock across the surface around them.

Almost instantly, the blanket coverage died. Danford received transponders immediately and the unit comms began to reconnect. There were still shifting areas of comm blackout, but none of the jammers were powerful enough to block the transponders, designed to operate in all but the worst jam environment. Danford also received more accurate estimates of enemy strength, nearly thirty-four hundred enemy troops. Either they had brought more strength out in the last ten minutes or the original estimation had been a great underestimation. Danford flipped to OT.

“Priority fires on previously established fire zones Bravo Two, Delta Six, and Foxtrot One. Let ‘em have it, sir.”

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Captain Ledger nodded sharply across her bridge at Tactical. “Fire.”

Guadalcanal
, already properly oriented, engaged with her bow guns, firing meter long projectiles at a rate of six per minute out of each of her six tubes. In under two minutes she had exhausted the ready magazines and her firing sequence paused.
Truk
did the same, along with their four escorts. The force fell silent and began to re-arm, a thirty second process. In all, they had launched two-hundred sixty projectiles. Each round was immediately in the atmosphere, their heat shields ablating away to protect the round underneath as they dove ever deeper into the atmosphere. The volume of enemy AA fire was heavier than last time, but the launchers themselves were being targeted. As the size of the strike became apparent, the AA fire slacked off noticeably as half the AA battery commanders order their units to cease fire and change firing position in an attempt to preserve themselves and their vehicles. Regardless of their decision, they shared the same fate. It only took eighteen seconds for the rounds to impact, creating more craters in the landscape. Some of the projectiles were shotguns, small charges near the back end of the projectile triggered at the right altitude to fracture the round along pre-planned fracture routes and then shredding lighter targets on the surface. These were set to low altitude-low dispersal patterns to decrease the likelihood of friendly fire. The shotguns were primarily intended for the anti-infantry, even powered armor was no match for the hypersonic fragments.

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Danford was watching his tactical display intently, looking for the effect of the strike. Several more of the smaller jammers went offline and large swaths of enemy forces were erased. Danford noticed, without surprise but still a great degree of sadness that at least a dozen marines had also been taken out. Lt Colonel Cain was still in hibernate mode, his HQ team had moved him into their bunker, a position nested in one of the pockets the marines had created after their lines had split. The strongest of these was a virtual fortress that Lt Diggs had created with his survivors from the shattered 3
rd
Company. They held a strong position of a twin peaked hill, with SAWs and mortars dotting both. A half dozen smaller areas existed, but they were less stable and enemy forces continually got close enough for hand to hand combat before their lines broke and they fell back. Losses on both sides were horrendous and mounting, now wasn’t the time for half measures.

“OT, we’re showing good effects down here. Switch fires to Alpha One and Alpha Two, Bravo Three, Echo all zones. I repeat, to Alpha One and Alpha Two, Bravo Three, Echo all zones.” Danford had just watched the enemy overrun the last position in the echo grid section and all the transponders were gone. There were probably some marines still alive in there, but Danford had to push the thought aside. He’d ask for forgiveness from them later, when they came to him as ghosts in his dreams. There were now nearly four hundred enemy infantry in that grid zone and they would be committed against the rest of his brothers and sisters, sooner rather than later.

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Captain Ledger closed her eyes slowly and let out a long breath before turning to a hesitant Tactical. He kept looking at the requested coordinates in shock, seeing that this wouldn’t be danger close. Danger close gave far too much distance between friendlies and the strike to be accurate. This would include blue-on-blue casualties and he would be pulling the trigger in a very literal sense.

“Tactical, you have a fire mission. There are Marines dying down there and a sight more will die than we’re going to kill if you do not move with celerity. So snap out of it and do your job. Rapid Fire, move it!” She snapped, channeling the sadness into a cold rage to motivate her hesitant crew.

“Aye sir, Rapid Fire on requested coordinates. Computer has the solution…firing.” Tactical sent the command to the gun crews and they began their firing routine again. Soon, the magazines were once again empty.

“Sir,
Farragut
and
Porter
are requesting permission to return to normal geostationary orbit. They have exhausted their orbit-ground magazines.” Comms reported quietly to Ledger. While Admiral Thompson was in charge of the entire group, she was technically detached for this mission. It seemed ridiculous, with the Admiral on the same ship but not commanding this mission, but he was technically still in overall control and she was delegated this job. Sometimes the Navy worked in strange ways.

The destroyers had small magazine stocks for this mission. It was assumed that any substantial volume of fire would be provided by the bigger ships, and that if you really needed a lot of firepower, nukes would be employed. If you employed too many kinetic strikes on a single planet in a short time, you might as well use nukes anyway. You’d do less net damage to the planet’s ecosystem.

“Granted, no sense in hanging out in this unstable position if they can’t contribute. Tell them to return to high orbit station until they receive further instructions.” Ledger thought about it for a second. “And order the cruisers to do the same. I want to save a little of their capacity and we’ve already saturated this zone pretty heavily. If they need the few additional launch rails from those two cruisers, we’re going to have bigger problems.” Ledger considered that. The final wave of rounds was impacting now. She would know soon enough if Captain Danford wanted another salvo brought down practically on top of his position.

This is the worst part of the job. Killing your own to win, but also to save the rest.

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“This is it Marines. Let’s go get ‘em!” Danford yelled into his comm. The last of the kinetic strikes was just impacting, having taken nearly two minutes from initial impact to final. Danford had the RASAT under Ramirez at the edge of his left flank. The enemy attack had originated from that flank and sliced into the marine lines. Danford wanted them to sever that connection as much as possible, maybe even penetrate deep enough to get to some of the small forward supply depots and destroy them. He could only imagine the ammunition situation. He’d received some scattered reports, mostly that mortar and rocket teams were running dry, but the SAWs had to be getting low as well. They were the only thing keeping the enemy at bay and they had to be burning through barrel rails and ammo quickly.

Danford had his entire company ready to charge, nothing held back except for a couple partial squads of walking wounded ‘holding’ the port. Lt Hanford’s company was going to provide a fire base to cover the maneuver, again composed of at least half who should be sitting in a casualty station and not on the line. They had no such luxuries today. Now was the time. Danford was up and moving, no leapfrog advance this time. Danford was going to close the four hundred meters as quickly as possible. He was already over half way and they had yet to receive substantial fire. Casualties were light and it looked as though the RASAT team was about to make contact. Their suits were slightly better than the standard units, but also at least twice as expensive. It gave them an advantage in every category; speed, acceleration, protection, carrying capacity, power, but were so expensive they could only be issued to the RASATs. That fact was one of the limiting factors on the number of RASAT teams deployed at any given time.

Danford had reached the edge of the enemy line, a pockmarked section of trench that had changed hands four or more times in the last three hours alone. He dove into the trench, narrowly avoiding a burst from an enemy marine. He rolled to a shooting position and raked the three PRC marines with deadly fire. They all dropped to the bottom of the trench dead just as more of his own leapt into the trench with him. The last man over the trench lip was a private and Danford was just turning to engage the next trench line when the private staggered. An enemy round had caught him high and pushed him back upwards, arresting his motion down into the trench. A follow-up burst hit him square in the visor, his entire head exploding into a red mist. The headless body finally fell into the trench. Danford continued to stare at it for another second, then turned back to the fight. Already a number of those in the trench with him were up and moving. He turned to the SAW team that had entered this trench.

“Get that thing up and firing. We need that covering fire.” Danford moved along the trench and advanced through a roughly transverse cross trench. Broken armor, its dead occupants still trapped inside, were strewn everywhere he looked. Behind him he heard the SAW start firing, raking the enemy position wherever they could be found.

Captain Danford popped his helmet seal as he stepped into the heavy-lift cargo transport shuttle, which had been converted into a makeshift armorer and maintenance unit. The heavy had taken a light hit from one of the enemy’s last AA vehicles on its way in. Luckily it hadn’t been heavily loaded, but until a maintenance crew could be brought down and space opened up for a replacement engine, she wasn’t getting back to orbit. Luckily the pilots had put the ungainly heavy shuttle down gently. Danford walked a few meters inside the shuttle and approached the chief armorer.

“Master Chief, I seem to have banged up my suit a little.” Danford grinned at the old Master Chief as he gestured to his left leg. The leg was covered in the sealant foam and had two different patches covering some of it. The foam was also covered in dirt and a little blood, tinging the foam brown and red.

“Seems that you did, sir. Also seems like you may have taken a hit along with the armor.” The master chief, dressed in a simple set of grey duty coveralls, bent down to examine the leg. He turned and yelled at one of his work crews. “Get one of the mobile racks over here and let’s get the Captain out of this thing. C’mon, move your asses!”

“Much appreciated Chief. Any chance I could have this ready by morning?” Danford watched the crew spring into action, a mobile rack already rolling his direction and crews pulling out various tools to open his suit. He popped the seals on his torso and arms, but the final disconnects would have to wait for the work crews. He could release them himself, but the armor panels would fall to the deck, potentially damaging the internal connections. A warm breeze blew through the shuttle, still cold on his sweaty skin. He’d been in the suit for two days now, not the longest he’d been in one, but still a considerable period of time.

“Well,” The Chief mulled it over. “I could probably get it at least better patched. Your ankle joint is okay but the knee is gone. I can put some hard patches to give you back suit integrity, but not brand new. If you want it fully repaired I need at least 12 hours.” He glanced at his watch. “So that’d be around noon tomorrow sir.”

“Noon it is. We’re rotated out for a while and I suspect that once I get over to medical they’re going to try and keep me locked up for at least a day.” Danford grinned again. An enemy combat blade had sliced into his leg from behind and bit into the calf muscle. It hadn’t been too deep, Danford had removed the offender’s head with a quick burst from his rifle before he even finished his stroke, but the damage had been done. Then later he’d taken a mortar fragment, maybe even from one of his own mortar teams, to the kneecap. That had probably cut up his leg a bit more but the suit stopped most of it.

The team had attached the rack to his back at this point and additional rotating arms were attached to the various independent parts of his armor. The team worked quickly and efficiently, clearly well practiced at this. It helped that Danford’s suit, other than the leg, wasn’t badly mangled. Those usually came off with a torch, a dicey proposition for all involved at the best of times, particularly for the occupant. As the chest panel came away and the legs were forced into the open position, Danford disconnected the plumbing and dropped out of his suit. The breeze chilled his entire naked body and he shivered slightly as he stood there to allow the on-call medic to bind his leg, listening to the medic cluck over the wound and chide him for not going directly to medical. He then took the set of coveralls, boxers, and boots offered by the last technician. He slipped into them quickly and stepped around to the back of his suit. A technician had a hardline plugged into a special port near the center of the suit’s shoulder region. He finished as Danford stepped up to him and handed him a second device first. Danford scanned it briefly, knowing it was simply a report of the damage to his suit, the armorer’s estimated repair, and that he had been informed of this. The electronic form also confirmed that he was accepting a copy of his suit’s AI and records from the last 2 days. He used his thumb and a retinal scan to sign the document. He handed the device back to the technician who then handed him a smaller device. Danford pocketed the device in a leg pocket on his overalls made for that purpose. With that he exited the heavy shuttle and headed towards medical. He ran a hand through his sandy hair, trying to shake off the feeling of being closed up in his suit. It always took his body a while to decompress. He knew it was mostly mental, but still annoying as hell.

The shuttle was situated at the edge of the base that they had established in the flatlands just outside of Haikou. After the climactic battle just to the south the enemy forces had been destroyed almost to a man. Only about one-thousand prisoners had been taken. Fleet had moved off, providing support for the rest of the action across the continent. From this base long range rocket units had been set up to launch on anything in a two hundred kilometer radius around the base. Two squadrons of atmospheric fighters had been brought down and unpacked, giving them the only airpower on the planet. A proper LZ had been established and company sized units were being assembled and moving off for the various hot zones. The whole of 2
nd
Regiment was now planet-side, including Colonel Summers. Components of 4
th
Regiment were beginning operations on the outlying islands and more remote locals, but resistance thus far had been more muted in those locations. More fleet assets had also arrived with 4
th
Regiment and there was now enough firepower in orbit to blast any enemy force that showed itself. The entire planet was now watched round the clock, full coverage of all landmasses and most of the oceans.

3
rd
Battalion was in reserve status, having taken it the hardest in the first two days. Of the roughly a thousand marines to arrive in system with 3
rd
Battalion, only twenty-five percent were uninjured. Another thirty percent were wounded, but forty-five percent had been killed in two days of fighting. Even with these terrible losses, they had inflicted crippling casualties. The enemy dead numbered at a point around forty-five hundred, though the nuclear exchange, orbital bombardment, and other actions had likely destroyed many more without a trace.

Danford stepped into the prefab structure that had been erected for the medical teams. As he walked in he was met by a nurse. “Captain Danford, sir?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“We’ve been expecting you sir, if you’ll follow me.” She turned on her heel and walked towards an empty bed. While technically only an ensign, inside medical his higher rank only conveyed a courtesy. He was supposed to follow all medically related requests, by tradition and custom if nothing else. All medical staff were officers, making it that much easier for the rank and file soldiers. When they did have to deal with a higher ranking officer, a more senior doctor could be brought in to deal with a more stubborn officer. Marines were all cut from the same cloth and so it took a marine to handle them. The entire medical staff was a marine unit, with every nurse and doctor having completed combat school and received at least the basic armored infantry training. Everyone could fight if need be, a useful quality for a force that often needed to drop into a region where there were no secure rear areas but always a lot of wounded.

“On call medic?” Danford asked the nurse.

“Yes, he was quite adamant that your leg be dealt with properly.” She turned to face him again. “Please remove your coveralls and sit on the edge of the bed.”

Danford complied and sat on the edge. The nurse quickly stripped away the bandage and examined the wound. There was a fresh trickle of blood but the wound wasn’t so large as to require a constant pressure bandage at this point. The nurse reached into a drawer and withdrew several items. She cleaned the wound with antiseptic and applied a small amount of a silvery gel. She then sprayed on a thick layer of liquid skin, sealing the gel and wound. She finished by rewrapping it all with bandages. The entire process took less than five minutes. As expected, the nurse demanded that he remain in the medical department until morning. They were always more cautious than required, particularly when there wasn’t any combat occurring. Danford was just preparing to launch into an argument when Colonel Summers saved him the trouble.

“Captain Danford, Colonel Summers requests your presence at 2300. HQ building Four, sir.” Colonel Summers aide, a young lieutenant, commed Danford directly. Reluctantly, the nurse allowed him to leave medical after seeing the electronic orders with Summers signature. Before he left, Danford stopped by the intensive care unit to inquire about Lt Colonel Cain. He found out that Cain was no longer in intensive care, but instead had already been shuttled up to one of the waiting hospital ships. His condition was still critical and he needed the more advanced equipment in orbit. He was already likely to lose both legs and an arm, promising a long regeneration and recovery process ahead of him.

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“Captain Danford, welcome.” Colonel Katrina Summers smiled slightly as Danford entered her briefing room. While not the most senior commander in system, she was the area commander and so was the highest ranking officer currently groundside.

“Thank you sir.” Danford noticed that all of the surviving senior commanders were present. Lt Diggs sat across the table, Lt Hanford sat with his right arm in a sling, and Colonel Summers’ aide Captain Franks. He didn’t see any officer from 4
th
Company, but then again that wasn’t surprising when he really considered it. 4
th
Company had been broadsided by one of the main enemy counterattacks. They had more than sixty percent killed and Danford didn’t think more than ten percent were uninjured. 5
th
Company wasn’t much better. He nodded to each in turn. The last person sitting at the table was Lieutenant Kim, though she looked entirely too pale and sat in her chair at an odd angle. He could just make out the bulges under her coveralls where she had been bandaged. By all right she should have been in a hospital bed recovering, but he could only imagine how much of a hardcase she had been until she’d gotten her way. RASAT operators were all like that.

“Now that everyone is here, let’s get started.” Colonel Summers walked to the head of the table as Danford took his seat. “First I want to express my pride in you and all of your men. You were all dropped into a real meat grinder and yet you still managed to come out on top. We lost a lot of good people over the last couple of days, but without your efforts, I doubt that any of us would be here and there’d be a lot less of those men and women out there still breathing.” Summers paused for a moment with a somber expression on her face.

“Getting down to business. The Battalion is in rough shape and we aren’t going to be seeing replacement troops for some time. We’re a long ways from friendly space and enough of our own worlds are under attack that this little expedition into enemy held space is already considered risky enough by the political types.” Summers rolled her eyes as she said this. “They have, in turn, put pressure on the top brass to pull us back to protect, or rather retake, Arcadiana. We got word thirty minutes ago that the planetary governor just capitulated. The planet is garrisoned by the five thousand marines of 12
th
Regiment, 1
st
Division, 2
nd
Army and are not subject to the governor’s control, thus they are expected to give the enemy one hell of a fight. Some of the planetary regulars might fight on as well, but they don’t have any power armor so I wouldn’t like to see that match-up.” Everyone at the table shook their heads at the thought of unpowered infantry fighting against an enemy likely consisting of entirely powered infantry and operating in an environment of enemy control of the orbitals unchallenged. Unpowered infantry could only hold out against powered infantry when they used mass firepower and massed troops were always massacred by orbital bombardment, particularly when the enemy was taking a world.

“So the punchline is, we’re going to have to be ready for anything. Since we’re already understrength I’m going to take this opportunity to reorganize. Additionally, our command structure has been chewed up, so some promotions are in order. First, Captain Danford, you will be my new battalion commander for 3
rd
Battalion. You’ll be quite a bit understrength for a battalion, but still more than enough to warrant these.” She slid a box across the table, reaching across to shake his hand. He shook her hand and then opened the box. Inside were a pair of silver oak leaves, promotion to Lt Colonel.

“Sir..I..” Danford started

“No, you do deserve it and you’ll take it because I need you to. You led a beautiful counterattack, took Haikou, and had the guts to do what had to be done once the rest of the battalion was overrun. I need you.” She looked at him intently and he slowly nodded his ascent.

“Excellent. Now then, Lt Diggs. I am merging 1
st
Company and 3
rd
Company to form a new 1
st
Company. You will take that and your promotion to Captain.” She held up a hand to preempt his argument. “Again gentlemen, I am not handing these out on a whim. You deserve them and I need you in these positions so accept that.” She smiled wickedly, they really couldn’t refuse.

“Lt Hanford, well, Captain Hanford, you will take 2
nd
Company. This will be the remaining battalion assets. Of those uninjured and the wounded who are expected to be ready in a day or two we have three hundred and eighty-four marines. That puts us with one-hundred fifty in each Company and there’ll be a seventy man heavy weapons company. The other twelve are in the HQ element with Lt Colonel Danford.” She turned to Lt Kim.