Homeworld: A Military Science Fiction Novel (10 page)

Option Three

Rachel sat in the Brightside’s cupola as Melzer hit the accelerator. The huge tank roared down the ramp, careening to the right as soon as it hit the road below.

The tank’s external sensors instantly locked in on Flint’s squads. Rachel activated the auto-waypoint on the navigation system. That was working complements of the Coalition fleet in orbit and the heavily armored satellites they had launched into high geosynchronous orbit around Mars.

Behind her armored death bringer, the Flame Slinger and the Knight followed the Brightside as the tanks spread into an open spearhead formation. This was Rachel’s particular favorite formation for the armored fighting vehicles under her command as it allowed them to bring the most firepower to bear into a small area so that any defenders they encountered would not only be overwhelmed, they would be decorating the surrounding countryside with their entrails. An enemy’s entrails always looked better on the outside than they did on the inside.

Unlike the Brightside, the Flame Slinger and the Knight wore the minor surface scars they had earned in their last engagement. Though nothing more than dings from where small arms fire had splashed into the armor, it had still marred their paint jobs. Rachel guessed she would just have to take the cost of repainting them out of the hide of any Mar’s Defense Forces who were unintelligent enough to come across their path.

The Brightside was still a pristine, gleaming monster of death. She was one of the Coalition’s new Mark IV models. For all intent and purposes, she was straight off the showroom floor. Melzer had even joked about its "new tank smell."

For whatever reason, the brass back at HQ had yanked Rachel’s tested and true old friend, The Monger, from her, and issued her and Melzer the Brightside.

While this shiny new piece of technology had all the features of the Mark III, she was accustomed to, it also sported a far more advanced sensor array as well as two side-mounted surface to air missile pods. That would undoubtedly come in handy and finally give them a better way of saying hello to whatever atmospheric fighters the Mars Defense Force had at their disposal.

Rachel still couldn’t help disapproving of HQ’s decision. Shaking down new equipment in combat was always risky business. You never knew which system would fail at a critical moment or which new fancy pants gizmo would just fail to work at all. That and her new seat was not as comfortable as her old one.

Rachel really longed to take whatever pompous overdressed dickhead of an officer who had made the call by his short hairs and slowly slice off his manhood with a dull, jagged edged blade. Which is why, Rachel thought, tankers rarely if ever saw an officer who made such decisions.

The, so far working, new advanced sensor array showed her that Flint and his men had made planet fall well ahead of her armor units, and were currently making good speed, for ground pounders, and were significantly closer to their target site.

That wouldn’t stop her tanks from reaching it first. On paper, The Brightside could pull a max speed of 70 KPH for a sustained period. Rachel guessed that Melzer would probably add another 5 to 10 KPH to that.

It took a person with nerves of steel to power a one hundred and twenty metric ton tank through the center of a major urban environment, that or someone who was just plain psychotic enough to enjoy it. Luckily, with Melzer at the controls, she was blessed with the latter.

Of course, they were in hostile territory and moving through roadways and streets littered with abandoned civilian vehicles. As talented a driver as Melzer thought he was, and Rachel knew he was, she still knew he couldn’t work miracles and getting through the tight spots would be made even more difficult with the new side mounted surface to air missile pods HQ had blessed them with. Rachel could only hope Melzer remembered they were there. She did not want to think about what the force of ramming a skyscraper with one would do to the Coalition’s new toy and she could not afford being put out of commission.

“ETA in two mikes,” Melzer informed her.

“Yep,” thought Rachel, “Even if Flint’s men were running at full speed heedless of any resistance they may encounter, they would never beat the speed of the two minutes it would take her slightly understaffed tank platoon to reach the target zone.”

Then it hit her that something was wrong. She had heard Melzer too clearly. Rachel cocked her head, stopped, and really listened to the noise of the tank, noting that the tank’s automatic defenses were silent. Usually, this far into a mission there were telltale pings from the impacts of wasted small arms fire.

Rachel tapped the casing of the vid of the new sensor array as no sensor alarms had sounded to alert her to detected incoming artillery, guided missiles, or even infantry carried AT-8 shoulder fired rockets.

In fact, there was not even the subtle thud of a rock thrown by a civilian with a bigger set of balls than common sense.

There was nothing.

So there were three options. One, either Mars’ Defense Forces were concentrated elsewhere, or two, the planet had been taken completely off guard by the Coalition Fleet’s rapid deployment of ground assault units, or three, there was something going on that Rachel didn’t know about and Rachel liked to know about everything.

Rachel sighted, with her right eye, through the Brightside’s main gun. Locking onto their designated target, she zoomed in the view. “I’ll be buggered,” she muttered over the open com channel before she could stop herself.

Their target was a bloody, fragging hospital, and a massive one at that.

“Hold your fire!” she ordered the other two tanks as her mind searched for some semblance of a rational reason that such a place would be their objective.

Then option three became clear to her.

Their orders were to simply secure the location and hold it, pending further orders. Command was likely planning on using the hospital and those inside as some kind of giant collective of hostages against the Provincial Mars Government.

If the Mars government cared at all about its citizens, a place like this would go a long way in terms of driving them into a quick surrender.

“It’s a fragging hospital? What the hell do we do now?” she heard Michael ask over the com.

“Grow a pair kid!” Herc snarled. “Don’t matter what it is, we do what we do best, boy. We freaking level it.”

“No,” Rachel ordered firmly. “Our orders are just to secure it until Flint and his boys arrive. Michael, you take the left. Herc, I want you to take the right flank.

"I want intersecting fields of fire covering the building’s rear. Hold your positions and only fire to prevent anyone trying to escape the area. If you can control yourselves, try to keep from killing them; just get them to high tail their asses back into the hospital."

"What about you?" Herc asked over the com.

"I’ll be busy letting the folks inside know we’re here.”

Rachel switched from the com to the Brightside’s 110 decibel exterior speakers as she said, “Citizens of Mars, this building is now under Coalition control. Anyone attempting to leave or enter this area will be terminated on sight. This is your only warning. I highly suggest you cooperate.”

To ensure that she and those inside the hospital were speaking the same language, she let loose a few hundred rounds from the Brightside’s tri-barreled machine gun, spraying the steps leading up to the hospital’s main entrance with a blanket of hot lead. Rachel released the trigger and hoped those inside its walls got the point and weren’t stupid enough to defy her.

If someone wanted to kill her, she had no problem returning the favor. If someone higher up the command chain ordered her to kill someone, she might not like it, depending on the situation but she would follow the order. However, leveling a hospital filled with those who represented no danger to her or those under her command, she would most definitely find distasteful.

Pounding the Pavement

Flint dove and rolled for cover behind the twisted hunk of an overturned hover car, the panicked driver of which had pushed too hard and flipped it trying to make an impossible turn, as a lunatic civilian with an automatic shotgun sent a stream of rounds in his direction from the second floor window of an office complex. Flint could hear the man yelling over the repeated blasts of the shotgun, “How do you like the taste of buckshot?”

Venke who had been running behind him and to his right was down on his back, but if that lunatic up there was really firing buckshot at Coalition body armor while standing in the open, then he clearly didn’t know how crazy he was

Sbezzo, the Designated Marksman from First Squad, turned the man’s head into pulp with a single, hurried, but well placed shot.

Flint couldn’t help but laugh at the shear insanity of that lunatic as Venke stood to his feet placing his hands on the scars to his armor that the projectiles had left. What chance could that whack job have really thought he had against his two squads of trained killers?

“Got him sir,” Sbezzo’s voice crackled in his earpiece.

“I ain’t blind,” Flint snapped. “Keep moving, men! Rachel and her toys are waiting on us and the days are not getting any longer.”

“I got something for her alright when we get there,” Stevens chuckled as he grabbed his crotch.

“Stevens, cut the chatter,” Flint raged, turning to glance at the tall black haired brute behind him. “I need you focused on the task at hand. You can think and play with your dick later.”

As Flint and his two squads rounded the next corner, The Brightside came into view. The tank sat not far up ahead of them, her guns trained on what looked to be the biggest fragging hospital Flint had ever seen.

Even though he could not see them, he had no doubt that the Flame Slinger and the Knight were close by as well.

“About time you bunch of sorry assed ground pounders got here,” Rachel cut into his squad’s com link.

“Your orders, ma’am?” Flint responded with a grin.

“Get in there and sit tight on the prisoners. We need them alive, and Herc’s already scragged nearly a dozen of them that were too dumb to try to make a run for it.”

“Roger that. You heard her, gents,” Flint laughed. “We got ourselves some babysitting to do.”

Resistance

Governor Tone rubbed his hand over his fifty two year old bald scalp. His eyes were sunken and tired, with the look of a man who knew he was defeated, but refused to yield.

The vid screen continued to rattle off the extensive list of units and bases Mars had already lost to the enemy.

The Coalition fighters that accompanied the enemy dropships and transports planetside had not returned to their carriers. Instead, it appeared, they were also capable of atmospheric maneuvers and had formed attack groups of their own going after Mars’ primary military bases and spaceports.

As the Martian forces scrambled to deal with the Coalition’s ground assault, the fighters they were able to launch were no match for the Coalition’s superior numbers.

Governor Tone, who had already had his staff evacuated to a provisional H.Q. in case he died, had been expecting an orbital bombardment to soften them up and had been fully prepared for it. However, the Coalition fleet’s bold move of leaping into a direct engagement had caught them with their heads stuck in the ground.

The unexpected attack of the ground forces accompanied by the escort fighters had hamstrung them and had given the Coalition total control of Mars’ red skies.

More than half of Mars’ available troops were nothing more than volunteer militia men and women, most had shown up at the recruitment office less than three weeks ago when it became apparent that the Coalition was going to try for Mars.

The Governor spared a tired smile at that. Almost two thirds of the civilian populace had turned out to volunteer. Some of the volunteers weren’t even old enough to hold a driver’s license while others had to find their teeth in the morning.

There could be no doubt that the citizens he governed were loyal to the Earth Republic, but more than that, they were a hard headed stubborn lot who were not going to let a little thing like a full fledged armada of Coalition forces move in and take what was theirs.

Tone sighed again at the thought that most of the world’s fully trained soldiers were gone, called away long ago to the former frontlines of the war near the outer colonies.

While they certainly had enough heart and were willing to fight to the end, the militia forces were probably no match for the highly experienced Coalition troops. No, these were bloodthirsty combat hardened warriors they were facing. The Coalition’s ground forces had been running this same type of battle scenario over and over again along the armada’s route towards Earth.

The Governor’s one consolation in sending his people into a bloodbath in which they would surely not survive is that these combat hardened Coalition warriors had never seen an enraged Martian wife armed only with a frying pan when her sot of a husband had stumbled home from the tavern too late.

Not only were the Coalition ground units wreaking havoc and laying entire cities to waste, the damage they were doing to the rest of the civilian populace that had not volunteered to take hold of an antiquated rifle and fight for their home world was unfathomable. Those they did not outright massacre were being taken hostage. Tone could only assume that the hostages were meant to soften the resolve of the resisting Mars Defense Force and force an early surrender.

As of right now, the four best and largest medical facilities on the planet were in enemy hands, and the Coalition had sent him a voice only transmission threatening to reduce them and those inside, patients and staff alike, to nothing but cinder and ash if Tone didn’t offer the Coalition a full and unconditional surrender within the next hour.

With Mars’ forces were already so badly beaten and scattered, any kind of consolidated effort to take back the facilities with minimal loss of life was simply out of the question.

Governor Tone’s previous personal pleas to Earth Command for assistance had fallen on deaf ears. Earth Republic Fleet Command had not even tried to hold the Coalition fleet here. The rational side of Tone’s mind new why. The Earth Republic Fleet that had fled from Martian orbit had done as much damage as they could and then turned for the home world where they would be needed for the last stand of the Earth Republic.

Still, he didn’t have to like it. He unscrewed and took a small swig from a fine silver flask that had been a gift to him from an old friend, the Supreme Commander of the Mars Defense Forces Burton Wolfe whose Battle Fortress he had watched disintegrate just before it had managed to Null out. With a calm and steady hand, he set the flask down on his clear plastisteel desk right next to where the barrel of his old P-115 was leaning. The thirty-year-old weapon was cleaned, loaded and ready to serve in its last battle.

No, it would not be said that Governor Jean Tone would surrender to the hell be damned Coalition without dying in pile of empty shell casings and a smoking firearm falling from his hands.

He owed it to the people he governed.

He owed it to the civilians massacred already and those about to be.

He owed it to the brave boys and girls and the old men and women who had reported to the recruiting stations to be handed whatever weapon was left in the arsenal and as much ammo as they could carry.

Finally, he owed it to the Earth Republic and to what they represented.

A man should be free to choose his own path in life be he a saint or a sinner or as most of us poor sods are, a bit of both.

What did the Coalition offer? They offered nothing but an aptitude test and an assignment regardless of the individual’s preference.

“To the Coalition, a person was just a biological machine to be used as effectively and efficiently as possible. He’d be damned if he’d live long enough to let his people suffer under that,” reflected Governor Tone as he continued to scan the vid that filled the surface of his desk, as rapid reports from all parts of the planet continued to file in.

Tone slammed his fist against the unyielding surface of his desk for not the first time today. As Provincial Governor, he knew that all E.R.F. ships on the line, along with Mars’ own had been recalled to defend Earth herself by direct order of the Commander in Chief himself.

Hoping for Earth Command to send an Earth Republic Fleet to fight its way back into the system and deploy ground units in support of Mars’ own was pure lunacy but Tone had to try.

It was his duty to do so.

He keyed the command code for a secure and direct line to the President of the Earth Republic, Benedict "Ben" Stripling.

Tone bumped his desk with his fist in irritation as the system fought through the jamming technology of the Coalition armada in orbit, but seconds later, the unshaven face of the President filled his desk’s vid display.

Tone noticed he looked paler than usual and his usually perfectly groomed midnight black hair was slightly tousled and the Windsor knot of his blue tie was loosened.

“Governor,” Stripling said in a voice that sounded nothing like the cool confidence he had exuded at the last election.

“Ben, I don’t have much time, so forgive me if I skip the formalities, but we’re being slaughtered down here like pigs at market. Do you have anything you can send us to assist? At this point a group of Back Country Scouts with bows and arrows would help!”

“Gover…”the president cleared his throat, “Governor Tone, I regret to inform you that all of the Earth Republic Command’s resources have been recalled to defend Earth. The Fleet Admirals have assured me that there is nothing in the vicinity that can be spared for the defense of Mars. I cannot tell you how sorry I am to have to say that to you, Jean.”

This time the Governor slammed both his fist down on the table as he stood in an irrational rage. “Well I can begin to tell you how bloody well sorry I am to hear it!” Tone roared.

At that moment, General Stirling acting Supreme Commander of the Mars Defense Forces, burst through the double doors of the Governor’s office.

Without preamble, he said in a steady voice, “That’s it, sir. We just lost contact with the 8th. They were our last standing regular regiment. Conventional warfare is now out of the question but the irregular units have been ordered to begin the use of guerilla tactics and pull back from targets that will obviously be bombarded. Most have been ordered deep into the underground water supply systems in the hopes that they will better weather the coming Kinetic Impacts. I highly suggest we leave now for our provisional H.Q.”

Governor Tone snatched up his old rifle and hit the bolt release before looking down at the vid one last time.

“It’s all up to you now, Ben. Heavens preserve us, you better damn well fight as hard as we are about to,” Tone said as he closed the channel and keyed the code for the installation’s computers to fry themselves before running, his rifle at low ready out of the office behind General Stirling.

The cold, hard reality was that Mars was on her own and expendable in the eyes of Earth Republic Command when the home world was at risk. Somewhere deep within him, Tone knew they were right but he didn’t have to like it.