Blood War 1: Last Stand of the Legion: Rift (6 page)

LYTEN SYSTEM

RIFT

ARMORED EXPEDITIONARY BRIGADE

HEADQUARTERS

OFFICE OF THE COMMANDER

Colonel Dasan Sand still remembered the feel of that young girl’s arms around his neck even after twenty-five years. He reached into the pocket of his utilities and pulled out the small blue handkerchief. He gently rubbed the old cloth between his fingers, letting the memory wash over him. It was worn and thin from use in places but he was never without it when he was on duty.  It represented all of the other young girls he was sworn to protect. It had driven him through his years of service. Now all of his work and his career and in his mind, the lives of those little girls, depended on the exercise tomorrow. He could only hope that the creation of the Armored Infantry was in time to meet the aliens on their own terms before they struck again.  After all the bureaucratic fights he was ready to prove its worth.

Dasan slipped the handkerchief back into his pocket and leaned back in his chair. He had finished the last of the reports from the company commanders before 
the exercise. It was hard to believe that it had been twenty-five years since The Patrol, as he had come to call it. It was The Patrol that had transformed him into the professional military man that he was today.

So many years, yet the memories were still fresh
, as if The Patrol were only yesterday. Twenty-five years of long patrols and lonely outposts, as well as prestigious postings at Legion Headquarters, but he could still feel the pain and misery of the Status Insult as if he had just recovered. Technology had changed immensely since then. Naval crews and Legionnaries no longer had to be put into Status for a wormhole passage. New ships, new metals, new engines, new everything, so much had changed yet the knowledge of what the aliens were capable of is what had driven him through the years.

His family had disowned him when he went career. They said it was to prevent any legal entanglement should something happen but he knew his brother wanted to protect what he felt was his by right. In addition
, Dasan had essentially given up a career as an officer for the cause of organizing the first infantry in the Legion in more than three hundred years. The Legion, like so many armies, was a bureaucracy with guns. It had all of the turf fighting, backstabbing and resistance to change that any government or corporate organization had in its ranks.  By fighting for change he had threatened many of his contemporaries and powerful officers through out the Legion.

For his vision Dasan had been passed over for promotion not just once but several times. He watched
classmates promoted to larger and important commands, men and women who had played by the rules and conformed to the accepted doctrine of the Legion. Officers with less vision and experience but who did not rock the boat. So he had paid a price for his vision. Yet he had no regrets because he was doing it for the little girl and all the others like her throughout the Confederation. He knew they were at risk as long as the Legion did not have a ground capability.

Those huge footprints in the dust haunted him. He knew the aliens would be back and they would come to stay with an army of ground troops. The Confederation had nothing to fight such an
invasion; it must have its own ground troops capable of fighting toe-to-toe with the aliens. He knew this as sure as he knew his own name. The only thing he did not know was how long he had before they returned.

The aliens knew that to take and hold a planet, you had to put feet on that ground. A totally destroyed planet was of no use to any one.  The fighters he had flown for so long were still needed
, but despite their versatility they could not occupy and hold a planet. The Legion had to have ground troops. During the past twenty-five years there had been an increasing need for infantry troops to quell colony rebellions and disputes as well as business wars among the great Corporate Houses. The Corporate Houses did not hesitate to use their Private Military Armies as they saw fit to settle disputes among themselves or force deals with unwilling systems or planets.

Everything changed
with the Confederation's Supreme Court's Bowman/Lewis vs. The Confederation of Independent Systems decision fifteen years ago. Corporations were now considered voting citizens of the Confederation with seats in the Senate, House and on the Security Council. The Confederation was a voluntary group of the twenty-three independent and sovereign habited systems. Most were former Sol developed systems who had gained their independence. Each System had their own form of government but acted together on interplanetary matters of economics and defense. With the Bowman/Lewis decision, the power shifted to the Corporation since they had thirty-one members, eight more than the independent systems. There were hundreds of other independent worlds occupied by humans they did not meet the criteria to join the Confederation. Most paid taxes for military protection and economic treaties with the Confederation. In the House of Representatives a Systems population and a Corporations' net worth determined the number of representatives. The numbers were almost even but the Corporations welded more power in some of the member systems simply by the amount of economic impact they had on that system. It was in the Senate where each System and Corporation had two representatives. So while the number of inhabited worlds and systems outnumbered the Corporations, the Corporations held enough votes to use the Confederation power to suit their needs. The bottom line was the Corporations began excreting their power and their goals through the Confederation. There had been private wars between Corporations as they expanded into new systems or fought over markets. Their Private Military's were used both as security forces and actual armies in these small wars. With the change in the Confederations legislative bodies came even more conflicts as the great Corporations began to use their voting power to settle disputes using the Confederation military and political power as leverage.

Since the Bowman decision they held a majority in all three Branches of the government
, not to mention their influence over the Secretary General. While a corporate representative could not be elected as the Security General, solutions to problems began to look more like solutions the corporations had used to settle their disputes with their Private Corporate Army's. Violence was used both covertly and overtly. To effectively counter this increasing power of the Corporations the Secretary General directed the Legion to develop a land counterbalance to this internal threat and as an instrument for peace keeping among the systems and planets. Violent planetary disputes were increasing as new habitable natural resource rich planets were dwindling.  

Initially Dasan
, with Sergeant Aijuba as his company First Sergeant organized a single company of volunteers from across the Legion. After Gaxola, Aijuba had become as obsessed with developing ground troops as Dasan. Her Wolf breeding kicked in and she was no longer satisfied with simply flying. Aijuba wanted the hand-to-hand combat she had been bred and trained for since childhood. Even when assignments kept them apart they kept in constant contact, studying and planning until the opportunity presented itself. So when the call came they were prepared.

Patterning their mission after the ancient Marine Corps of Sol they soon had a company that could project the power of Confederation in a very precise way
, without the collateral damage that the Legion's powerful ships brought to the table. Like ancient Marines his Legionnaires would be transported by ships and then did their fighting on the planet. Instead of oceans separating combatants, space was their ocean.

He patterned the training after the ancient American Marine Corps and the Royal Marine Commandos. With Aijuba's input of Wolf warrior training and its personal hand
-to-hand techniques famous throughout the known worlds as some of the most brutal, they had developed a training regimen that would have made the ancient Marines proud. He had used this heritage throughout the formation of the Legions new ground component. When they graduated their first Company of Infantry, he and Aijuba knew that they had produced Legionnaires capable of facing any challenge. 

The Confederation immediately used them in a dispute in the Ceti system between the government and the Von Fleet Corporation. The new infantry proved themselves more than capable of meeting the Private Corporate Army of Von Fleet and the other major corporations. In fact they decimated the PCA's when they chose to test the Legion's new infantry. Fighting for the Logo and money was no match for selected, disciplined and trained men and women of the Legion. Even the Corporations feared mixed breeds from the so
-called Free Zones and their Outlaw Worlds were no match for Dasan and the new Legion Company. After the major battle on Aylen in the Ross System the Corporations began to think twice about confronting the new Legionnaires.

Few had tried to test them since. They were used more and more by the Security Council as a police force to settle disputes or rebellions
, sometimes in conjunction with space assets but more and more just by themselves. With each battle or mission Dasan and Aijuba learned and adapted training, tactics, equipment and weapons. This increased use of the Legions new infantry created a vocal and powerful group of Legion commanders who were against the concept. They began to argue that the land forces broke all of the Legions traditions and did not belong within the Legion's organization. This resistance and outright hostility had grown over the years with the success of the new ground component.

Yet that did not stop the Confederation from using Dasan's company of infantry or recognizing how well they suited the Confederation's needs. They were found to be much more like a surgical instrument than the blunt
sledgehammer of spacecraft designed for wars against capital ships or entire planets. As the need increased additional companies were authorized and Dasan, with Sergeant Aijuba, selected and trained the new companies. Volunteers from all over the Legion filled their ranks with experienced officers and enlisted, until there were fourteen companies; enough to be organized into two full battalions of light infantry.

Through the years of development and expansion of the infantry's place in the Legions list of assets
, it became clear to Dasan that a larger and more powerful infantry was going to be needed. An armored infantry battalion would need to be organized if they were to eventually face the aliens. Armored infantry with the latest in weapons current technology could provide the kind of force projection the Confederation needed. These battalions would be able to both invade defended planets, and take and hold the ground.

The existing light infantry battalions could be follow
-on forces only after the Armored Infantry had secured a beachhead. The light infantry still had their place in quelling rebellions and fighting the Private Military Army units of the Great Corporations. The Great Interplanetary Corporations with their unlimited resources were investing in research and upgrades to the weapons of their PCA's. The Legion would need to respond if it were to continue to be the Security Council's peacekeepers. Dasan had used these upgrades by the Great Corporations to argue for armored infantry with the ships and equipment needed to support them in articles in the Warfighter, the Legion's professional magazine. This expansion of the infantry element of the Legion was argued among the enlisted ranks in the squad bays and among its highest-ranking commanders. The two warring factions within the Legion; the supporters of the new role and those who did not support it, had begun to affect the Legion itself.

The resistance to Dasan's new organization began to intensify until advocates for ground troops suddenly found themselves not being promoted when a promotion should have come. They found themselves shuttled to non-essential posts and to
naval units as liaisons. Things became so bad, that the situation came to the attention of the Secretary General. The Secretary General was a practical woman and she came to the conclusion that the hundreds of years of tradition of the Legion and its long cultural history, was not going to accept this new role. She needed the Legion and these new infantry troops so she solved this Gordian knot of a problem with a single swipe of her stylus.

She formed the Armored Expeditionary Brigade with Dasan as its Commander.   Dasan was promoted to a full colonel. Aijuba was promoted to Command Master Sergeant of the Brigade.  The Secretary General funded and authorized the formation of the first Armored Expeditionary Brigade
(AEB) as a test unit. It consisted of a command element, a ground combat element of a reinforced infantry Regiment, three battalions of 1200 Legionnaries each, an Aviation Combat Element, a Combat Engineer Element and a Special Naval Element consisting of a Special Boat Squadron, Logistics Section, Medical Section of Naval doctors and corpsmen, Special Construction Element and a Special Naval Gunfire Element.

The infantry candidates were drawn from the best of the light infantry companies and from
regular Legion unit volunteers vetted by Dasan and Aijuba. The naval elements were drawn from volunteers from across the fleet. It had taken many more applicants than Dasan had anticipated. The drop out/flunk out rate was over fifty percent; what made a good fighter pilot did not necessarily mean they made a good infantryman or woman. But they eventually found the men and women they needed for the battalion.