Lieutenant Colonel (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 6) (4 page)

3/7 Rick laughed, and then said, “I know we were supposed to have a short debrief now, but I hear a steak calling my name.  They’re Bluebirds, a local fabricator, and they are pretty damned good.  What say we head on over to the field day and take care of this in the morning?”

Ryck looked over at the eager officers and SNCOs.  He could almost see them salivating.

“Well, since I don’t want to be the first Marine commander in 300 years to have a mutiny, I think for our own best interests, we’d better do that.  Let’s see what kind of hosts you ‘Black Devils’ are before we whip your butts in battleball.”

“I bet you a case of the brew of your choice that we take the game,” 3/7 Rick said.

“Ha! You’re on!”

LONESOME END

Chapter 7

Ryck watched his display timer count down to zero.  He didn’t need to say anything, but he was amped, so he passed “Move out!” on the command circuit. 

As before any battle, Ryck’s nerves were humming with anticipation.  He didn’t really feel fear per se, which was a non-survival trait if there ever was one, but it was always more of the thrill of the raw pitting of one against the other.   He’d played sports back in school on Prophesy, and this was the same eagerness to clash with the others.  Given the raised stakes, it wasn’t surprising to him that that everything was ramped up, though, and that the level of excitement was higher.

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.