Lieutenant Colonel (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 6) (9 page)

“Yes, sir, but it’s no big deal.  Just a scratch, really,” Ryck said.

“But you need to get it taken care of.”

“I will sir, but after we get you out of here,” Ryck said.

“Sir, he’s right,” Agent Wyatt or Wimat or something like that said.  “We need to move now.”

“Are we still in danger?” the prime minister asked. 

Ryck looked at his PA.  The ship’s surveillance was reporting the three St. Regis tubes were destroyed, and there was no movement of St. Regis ground troops.

“It doesn’t look like it, sir.  The Regis arty is destroyed, and we don’t see any movement from them.  But Agent, uh, your agent here is right.  We need to get you out of here.  It’s too dangerous,” Ryck said.

“And what are you going to do about them.  I mean, they attacked us!” the prime minister said, outrage beginning to seep into his voice as he brain began to make sense of it all.

“Sir, I’ll be reporting back to fleet, and along with the Marine command, I am sure we will get orders.  But for the moment, unless we are attacked, we are not authorized to cross the border,” Captain K said as he walked up.

“But we
were
attacked!” the PM sputtered, his voice getting louder and more strident.

“Yes, sir, we were.  And we responded, destroying the gun section that fired upon us.  Don’t worry, sir, something will be done,” the captain said.

“Well, I’m sure IGA will have something to say about that,” the PM said, slightly quieter, but not sounding very mollified.

He turned around as the hatch on the
Beserker
opened as Sergeant
Bergstrøm poked his head out.  The PM only then noticed the tank’s 75 mm gun that was looking decidedly off-kilter as heat waves radiated up through the air.  At the base of the gun, the liquid nitrogen nozzles sputtered and fizzed.

“I knew it,” Bergstrøm muttered before noticing the men standing around his vehicle.

So now I knew who was firing beyond the cyclic rate
, Ryck thought.

He checked his PA for a readout and whistled.  The chances of a tank knocking out an incoming arty round were pretty small, but somehow, Bergstrøm and his crew had destroyed two of the six rounds the Regis battalion had gotten off.  With that kind of success, Ryck wouldn’t care if he burnt out the entire tank.

The PM sniffed, his face wrinkling up as the heavy ionization odor hit him. 

What happened here?” he asked.

Sergeant Bergstrøm started to answer, but Ryck held up his hand.  “What we have here, sir, is the
Beserker
.  Bergstrøm’s
Beserker
.  Sergeant Bergstrøm is the tank commander, and somehow, he and his crew knocked out two of the six rounds launched at us.  What you smell, though, is the
Berserker
’s main gun.  I’m not sure how up-to-speed you are on rail guns, but the round is so fast that the guns build up a tremendous amount of heat, turning the inside of the tube into plasma, the same thing as what’s fired by a plasma cannon.  We’ve got nitrogen jets to cool the tube after each round, but that takes almost ten seconds before the gun is ready again.  I’m gobsmacked how he was able to bypass the cyclic rate, something I intend to find out later, but this sergeant might have saved our asses.  A lot of our asses.”

“Well, I’m impressed.  Thank you, Sergeant,” the PM said, finally sounding calm again.

“Sir, I think you need to come here,” Hecs passed to Ryck through his PA. 

The exterior speakers were on, so the others looked at Ryck with interest.

Ryck turned to spot Hecs and others standing some 30 meters away.  At their feet was a body.  Ryck’s heart fell. 

“Excuse me, sir.  We’ve got a casualty,” Ryck said, leaving the group.

But the group didn’t leave him.  With the prime minister following him, his entourage had no choice but to tag along as well.  Ryck’s ass was throbbing, but he tried not to limp as he crossed over the open area.  The body had on an IGA shirt, he could see, but the face and head were a pulpy mess. 

“Who is it?” he asked Hecs as he joined the group.

“He wouldn’t lie down.  He just stood there, and then his head was hit when the building blew,” one of the IGA men said when he spotted the prime minister.

“It’s Stevens,” Hecs told him.  “They managed to take out the president of the company operations here.”

All lives were equal to their loved ones.  But the reality was that some lives were more equal than others.  And in Ataturk, Nicholas Stevens was about as VIP as it got.

If Ryck had thought that this stupid incident would be ignored as far as the Marines went and left to the diplomats, given the lack of friendly injuries and the destruction of the Regis tubes,  those thoughts has dissipated like a mist in the breeze.  IGA was not going to allow it.

The Fuzos would be going on the offensive.

Chapter 15

“Keep the feed going,” Colonel Miller said from back on Tarawa.

It was 0200 at headquarters, but the regimental commander and his staff, along with members of the division staff, had gathered to observe the assault. Gunner Barnhouse had hooked up one of the battalion’s hadron
communicators on Ryck’s command Armadillo-C, complete with visuals.  Ryck was the ground commander, and the assault was his to fight, but still, Colonel Miller was his commanding officer, and if the colonel made a suggestion during the assault, Ryck would be smart to at least consider it. 

It wasn’t as if the CO was a combat neophyte, either.  He’d been a staff sergeant before getting commissioned, and he had two more battle stars than Ryck.  Ryck was more decorated, but the CO had seen combat more times.

“Roger that, sir,” Ryck said.  “We’re about ready to cross the LOD
[7]
, so I’ll sign off now.”

Good luck, not that you need it.  Make us proud, though,” the colonel said before Ryck turned off his externals.

Gunner Barnhouse had offered to hook up a link between Ryck and the regimental CO over the hadron comms, but that was the last thing Ryck wanted.  The thought of the colonel being on a direct link with him in his PICS was a sobering proposition.  No, let them observe, but let Ryck fight the battle.

“You sure you don’t want a ride, sir?” Corporal Throckmorton asked with a smile from the back ramp of the command Armadillo. 

“Not on your life!” Sams answered for Ryck.  “You keep that belching beast in back of us.”

“Ah, Top, I’ve gotten better.  It’s a pretty smooth ride now,” Throckmorton said, patting the side of the Armadillo proudly.

The corporal was right.  It was a better ride now.  The company technical rep and Captain Christophe’s maintenance platoon had made some adjustments, and maybe Throckmorton had gained some skill.  If he had to now, Ryck thought he could conduct a fight from inside of the thing. 

But he didn’t have to, and Ryck was glad for that.  While the trac was better than before, Ryck still thought the PICS were the superior platform for him as a commander. 

“What about you, Colonel?  Plenty of room inside now,” Throckmorton said.

With only Throckmorton, LCpl Rizzio, the trac’s gunner, Gunny Kinongee, the systems chief, and Navy Lieutenant Phyun, the
Derne’s
forward controller, there was plenty of room.  Which was not a good thing.  With more bodies inside, it was easier for the passengers to brace themselves.  Ryck didn’t envy Phyun, but that was where the lieutenant had the best comms with the ship.

“Thanks, but I’m good,” he answered. 

“Well, sir, I know that.  But if you change your mind and need a lift, we’re here, no charge.”

Throckmorton was kind of a smart-ass, and that could get him in trouble at times.  But Ryck was somewhat partial to smart-asses.  He thought they had spirit and would be good in a fight.  So he tended to let a bit of bravado slide.

“Yeah, I’ll remember that corporal,” he said.  “If you see me standing there with my thumb out, stop and pick me up.”

Ryck checked his display for the 20
th
time, and more to occupy the final five minutes than anything else, strode back to the Bravo Command Armadillo.  The back ramp was still down, letting in the air.  The Armadillo was fully atmosphere controlled, but nothing beat fresh air.  And with an almost 20% oxygen content (courtesy of the ongoing terraforming fine-tuning), Gaziantep’s air seemed particularly invigorating.

“Everybody ready?” he asked over his externals as he looked inside.

The XO gave him a thumbs up and said, “Roger that.  Ready for a nice ride eating your dust, sir.”

“With all the high-speed, low-drag filters you have on this thing?  Not a speck of dust will make it into your luxurious ride,” Ryck said with a laugh.

The Bravo Command vehicle had the XO, Wharton Po, Lt(jg) Willis Gurnsey-Hollimer from the
Derne
and the assistant naval gunfire support officer, Captain Ted Larry, the assistant S4, Gunny Uliker for arty and air fire support, and Captain Crispus Berchard, Sandy’s assistant Three.  (Sergeant Major Suzuki had been in the Bravo command after Ryck took over, but Hecs had some serious motion sickness issues, so he was PICS-mounted instead).  If something happened to Ryck and his command group, these were the Marines who would carry on the battle.  Ryck was confident in their abilities.  They were well-trained, and Liam Stilicho was one hell of an officer.  Ryck intended to recommend Liam for an accelerated promotion and give him an enthusiastic recommendation for future command.  The accelerated promotion would probably get squashed—they almost all did—but the fact that the recommendation was in his file would stand him in good stead with the command board.

“Just keep your head down, sir.  Otherwise, we might actually have to do something,” Gunny Uliker said, “instead of just taking a nap in here.”

“If you can take a nap in this bouncing tin can, Gunny, you are more than welcome to,” Ryck said to more laughter.

Ryck heard the laughter through his pick-up mics, and this was the laughter of confident men.  This was not the nervous laughter of men unsure of what will happen and of what they might have to do. 

“See you on the backside, men.  Semper fi,” Ryck said as he backed off the ramp.

“
Braço às armas feito
, Colonel!” a voice shouted from inside.  “Fuzos!” came from at least two more voices.

Ryck turned up the power on his externals and repeated the call.  “Fuzos!”

All around him, through the net and over hundreds of externals, shouts of “Fuzos!” echoed his call.

“I’ll be getting to my position,” Sams said.  “You better get over there to your mother hen.  He’s about ready to have a conniption.”

Ryck smiled as he looked over to where Çağlar was waiting anxiously for him.  As Ryck walked up, he could see the sergeant relax, even if he was in his PICS.

“Jeeze, Hans, relax.  We haven’t even crossed the LOD.  I think I’m pretty safe here.”

“They heard the cheer, sir.  I know it.”

“And?  Do you thing that will make a difference?” Ryck asked as he checked his helmet displays one more time.

The cheer was bravado, sure.  But the St. Regis battalion knew that something was up anyways.  They had surveillance on them.  It made no difference if they heard—that they heard, not if.  Maybe it would strike a little bit of anxiety, fear even, into their hearts?

No grubbing chance of that
, he thought. 
This is a St. Regis unit.

At one time, the St. Regis Brigade, or St. Regis Army, as it was called then, was the finest, most capable mercenary unit in human space.  Its units were called in when only the best would do, and even the Federation Marines and Brotherhood Host had mixed it up with them.  That was before their ill-fated fear memory extinction program.

Right out of the scifi books and flicks, the Saint Regis leadership decided to create a “super soldier,” capable and fearless.  Working in secret, they genmodded a number of capabilities into their soldiers, some of which bordered if not trampled right into illegality.  That was not their main mistake, though.  It was the extinction of fear.

Fear research was hundreds of years old.  Some of the early attempts to control fear centered around the “Zombie Parasite,”
Toxoplasma gondii
.  This was the protozoa that infected mice and rats and manipulated them to not showing fear of cats, thereby allowing the cats to easily catch and eat them where the parasites could then reproduce. Some quirk in their evolution made the guts of cats the
only
place they could reproduce, and this was how they ensured they had that opportunity.  While this line of research initially showed some promise, modifications to the parasite had resulted in only mixed success with humans.

Going in a different direction, the Saint Regis researchers decided that they needed to block the stimuli that resulted in fear.  The theory for this had been published hundreds of years ago, but no one had ever tried to treat normal, functional people in this way.  By microinfusing the synthetic protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin-C into the medial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala, they were not only able to block the initial formation of the fear memory consolidation, but it wiped out all past systems consolidation of fear.  In short, they created soldiers who could think and react rationally, but who had no fear.

They marched out their new soldiers with great fanfare and the associated angst and accusations from the rest of humanity.  Their test run was a small border dispute between Allehadra and New Tel Aviv on Proclyn 4.  The small volunteer Allenadra militia seemed doomed as two St. Regis battalions marched on their outpost.  To immense surprise, the St. Regis battalions were wiped out, almost to a man.  By fewer than 300 civilian-turned-soldiers.

It was the lack of fear, which, of course, had evolved over millions of years as a survival mechanism, that had been the deciding factor in the fight.  Without fear, the mercenaries were lambs at the slaughter.  Two more campaigns confirmed that this was a disaster.  The mercenaries’ research was examined by experts by every government and banned.   The Saint Regis Army was broken, and it never recovered. 

The Saint Regis Army case study was taught in almost every military school throughout humanity.  Ryck’s NOTC class had spent two entire days on it back in Annapolis.

Now, the much smaller Saint Regis Brigade was a second or third-tier unit, but even 40 years after the fact, there was a degree of recklessness within their units, as if they were trying to prove themselves and claw their way back to the top.

This was important for the Marines in the Fuzos to realize.  Where other merc units might stand down after fulfilling the basic terms of their contracts, the Regis units often fought much further, occasionally to the last man.  With their assault about to commence, the Marines could not count on the St. Regis mercs to surrender once the course of the battle became evident.

Ryck watched as the battalion’s dragonflies and hummingbirds launched, the small surveillance drones augmenting the much more powerful space borne surveillance.  The little drones, although more vulnerable, could fly into buildings, if need be, and that was a capability that Ryck valued.  The drone’s launch signaled that the assault was imminent, and that brought Ryck’s focus back on the mission.

Ryck’s display counted down the last few seconds.  As the timer reached zero, the first line of tanks and PICS Marines stepped across the LOD.  The assault was on.

As on Lonesome End, this assault was not going to go down in history as innovative tactics.  With the river meandering through the valley and the general high degree of visibility, coupled with the St. Regis battalion’s own surveillance measures, there was not too much of an opportunity for maneuver and surprise.  No, this was going to be one of those punch- in-the-face-type assaults.  If the Marines, using their coordinated combined arms, could punch harder, the battle would be won.  It just came down to who were the toughest fuckers in the valley, and Ryck was totally confident that it was the Fuzos.

Golf, with both tanks platoons, was leading the main assault.  Genghis’ Echo Company was to cross the border and fix that merc company in place, keeping it from coming south to support the rest of the battalion.  After long consultations with Sandy and Genghis, a platoon (minus) would be out of their PICS and in two Armadillos.  Ryck hated taking away almost 20 PICS, but the Armadillos 25mm chain guns could cover part of that loss of firepower, and Echo might need Marines in skins and bones to handle prisoners or root out any mercs from underground positions. He had considered giving Echo a tank or two, but Christophe argued against splitting up his platoons, asserting that they were trained to operate in support of each other.

Fox was to be mounted in the remaining Armadillos and follow in trace of Golf.  The Fox Marines would almost certainly be needed when the battalion overran the St. Regis positions.

Ryck waited for two minutes before his Alpha Command stepped off.  The command was not moving in a condensed formation.  The nine of them were spread out over 300 meters.  His shadow, Çağlar, was only 20 meters to Ryck’s left, but the rest of the command group was in a very wide staggered column.  With their C4 synched together, Ryck didn’t need each person standing off his shoulder.  Dispersion was one of the first lessons recruits were taught back at Camp Charles, and it was just as valid for colonels and majors as it was for privates.

Only the armor and infantry were moving forward.  The 155 section was some five klicks behind them, and the four Storks were in a circular orbit well within Ataturk territory.  The guns were back because the range to the Regis forces was so close that they wouldn’t have to displace.  The Storks, though, were a different issue.  Ryck had wanted them following the rest of the Marines to provide close air support if needed.  However, the Federation minder had nixed that.  Not even General Meintenbach’s appeal had gained any traction.  An incursion by air assets was considered too much of a provocative act.

“What the fuck?” Sams had asked when the staff had been briefed, giving voice to what every Marine was thinking.  “And a battalion of infantry and ten fucking tanks isn’t provocative?”