Marines (18 page)

By the time I put on my dress blues for graduation we were ready to start some limited offensives.  The ranks had been replenished, and the officer corps was about to be reinforced by the 180 new lieutenants in my class, with another cadre going through accelerated training six months behind us. 

Losses had been heavy in five years of war, and most of us would command units consisting primarily of new recruits.  This was a major change from my first assault, when I was the only recruit in my squad, and my fire team leader could spare a veteran private to assign as my babysitter.  I'd be lucky if the squads in my platoon had one or two seasoned privates each.  The squad leaders, while combat veterans all, would probably be making their first drop as SLs, and they'd need to keep a close eye on all the rookies filling their ranks.

I gave a lot of thought to how I would handle my platoon given these realities.  My troops had performed well during Achilles and also on Columbia, but I would have to command raw troops differently.  Having veterans like Jax was a huge help to executing any strategy, but I'd be very unlikely to have anyone like that in my new platoon. 

Jax himself was otherwise occupied.  He'd survived Columbia more or less intact, and started at the Academy while I was still growing new legs.  He graduated six months before me, and as I was polishing my gear for commencement he was already off somewhere leading his own platoon.

So through no fault of my own, Jax had leapfrogged me and gotten his commission before I got mine.  There are few talents more helpful to a soldier than one for getting missed by the enemy.  It was one I'd had for a long time, but it failed me on Columbia.

I didn't realize that I was about to make a jump of my own, and a totally unexpected one at that.  I was surprised enough when the commandant  invited me to dinner, and I almost spit out my brandy when he gave me the news.  I was graduating first in my class and being decorated twice - for Achilles and Columbia. 

That wasn't all.  I wasn't going to get my lieutenancy after all.  Based on my performance at the Academy and my experience commanding troops in the field they were graduating me as a captain.  My first platoon wasn't going to be a platoon at all.  I was going back to command my old company.  There weren't going to be too many familiar faces, but nevertheless, I was going home.

Chapter Eight

AS Bearclaw

Task Force Delta-Omega

Gliese 250 system

"Quiet, Hector...I'm trying to think."

I'm not sure what possessed me to give my suit's AI a name, but that's what everyone else suggested, so I just did it.  I have to admit it was a bit more intuitive than calling it PNOV3168, which was the designation it had when I got it.  As to why I chose the name of a doomed Trojan hero killed by Achilles, when I myself had survived our own Achilles, your guess is as good as mine.

"I am simply trying to provide you with the information flow required to make informed decisions"  The reply was predictable.  Hector had a very calm and slightly hushed tone of voice, sort of what you'd expect from a therapist.  It was hard to get used to; the trooper AIs had a very robotic sounding voice, and they didn't have all that much to say anyway.

The new officer AIs were the state of the art in quasi-sentient computers, and the designers had decided that giving them a soothing, human-sounding voice and an active personality would reduce stress on officers in the field.  I can't speak to the psychology of the officer corps in general, but the damned thing creeped me out.  And it talked too much.

"Hector, shut up!  If I need something I'll ask for it!"  Can you feel a machine sulking or was it just my imagination?

Graduation had been amazing, not just because I was first in my class and was decorated twice, but also because of one extra surprise.  Doctor Sarah somehow managed to be there.  I don't know how she did it.  We'd stayed in touch while I was at the Academy, but war in space is not conducive to scheduling personal get-togethers. 

Even better, she had three extra days, and I had two weeks of leave, so we got to spend some time together, some time where she wasn't my doctor and I wasn’t her patient.  It was amazing, but three days went all too quickly, and the parting was hard.  The war was still not going all that well, and I was heading back into the meat grinder.  It was a real possibility we'd never see each other again, and we were both all too aware of that fact.  But duty called for both of us, and we had to answer.

Now I was back in the fray, and I had my hands full.  Commanding a company was overwhelming.  I'd led a couple dozen troops before in some very desperate circumstances.  But the force under my command now was almost incomprehensible.  I had 140 troops, including a heavy weapons detachment and a cache of nuclear warheads.  I had more firepower at my beck and call than an army commander in the Unification Wars.  I had four other officers under me, each of them as fresh out of the Academy as I was.

Over 100 of the men and women of my company were on either their first or second mission.  I managed to fill most of the squad leader slots with experienced sergeants, but there was no question about it; we were a green company.  They were well trained, all of them.  But training and experience are two different things.  When things started to deviate from the plan it was the veterans who held a unit together.  During Achilles, and later on Columbia, I'd seen it happen.  This time I wasn't at all sure we had enough seasoned troopers to pull us through if things got really sticky.

The mission had me worried.  I would have preferred a straight out planetary assault, but that's not what we'd drawn.  We were in the Gliese 250 system, and we'd snuck in through a newly discovered warp gate on the far side of the primary star.  Gliese 250 was a binary system with a couple of gas giants and nothing much of value except its location and its collection of gravitational anomalies, otherwise known as warp gates.  The system was a major choke point for the Caliphate, with six (now seven) warp gates, four leading to Caliphate systems and two out to barely explored areas on the Rim.  The seventh, the one we'd found, connected the Gliese system with 12 Ophiuchi, which was our main outer base.

With no decent real estate in the system for a colony, the Caliphate had constructed a massive space station to serve as a refueling depot and transit facility.  I can't even imagine what it cost them to build something this size with no in-system population or even a rocky planet for ores, but Gliese was a hugely important nexus for them, and they needed something that could handle the traffic coming through. 

The system was buried well within their territory, or so they thought, and the station was only lightly armed.  Our deep survey of the 12 Ophiuchi system redrew the strategic map in an instant, and it gave us a highway right into the heart of a major Caliphate sector.  Once they became aware of the new warp gate, Gliese 250 was also potential launch point for a Caliphate invasion of 12 Ophiuchi and our systems beyond.  In our hands it was a dagger thrust right into a previously secure sector.

The war had slowed to a stalemate as both sides licked their wounds and struggled to replace lost ships and soldiers.  But now we had a chance to launch a major surprise attack and throw them back on the defensive.  Step one - take that station.

We wanted it intact, so the idea of just sending in a battlegroup to blast it to rubble wasn't an option.  Instead, the plan was to knock out its defensive array with a pinpoint bombardment and then board the thing.  My company was supporting two teams of SEALs, who were going to do a deep space entry and secure a docking portal.  After that, my men and women would swarm onto the station and take it deck by deck.

Intelligence had provided us with a fairly detailed analysis on the specifications and capabilities of the station.  It was a white metal cylinder about ten kilometers long and two wide, and it slowly rotated along its central axis, producing artificial gravity for the outward sections.  It's otherwise smooth surface was dotted with long, slender protrusions - umbilicals for docking spaceships.  The station could handle at least twenty large vessels docked at one time, but when we hit it there were only three freighters and no warships.

It orbited the outer gas giant, a massive world twice the size of Jupiter, and we were able to mask our approach by coming in from the far side of the planet.  Our entry point was clear across the system from any of the known warp gates, so there was no sensor grid to detect our arrival.  Shielded by the magnetic field of the enormous planet, our squadron whipped around in orbit and got off the first shot, knocking out the station's sensors and main batteries. 

We had four ships - two heavy cruisers and two fast assault ships.  After they blinded the station and knocked out its weapons, the cruisers, Washington and Chicago, took up a defensive position in case any inbound enemy ships turned up.  Then it was up to us.

The Bearclaw launched two assault shuttles carrying the SEAL teams while half my people buttoned up into the other two.  The rest of the company was on the Wolverine, suited up and loaded onto two of her four shuttles.  There was another company of reserve troops on the Wolverine, scheduled to board after my people and garrison the station after we'd captured it.

I was bolted in place in my assault shuttle, but my suit was powered up, and my AI was locked into the ship's battle computers, so I was able to follow the SEALs as they began the assault.  Their shuttles stopped and hovered just a few hundred meters from the target, and the bays opened and released the SEALs into space.  These guys were trained for insertions from space, and they were some of the craziest sons of bitches I'd ever met. 

The SEAL armor was bigger and bulkier than ours, with propulsion systems to allow them to maneuver in space.  I had Hector project an image of the teams approaching the station, and I watched as the first of them manipulated their thrusters to make contact with the station without slamming into it.  I was impressed by the fine control these guys had, as SEAL after SEAL impacted gently and went right to work.

The first team's mission was to blow a precision hole in the station's hull to get inside and defend that position while the second team fitted a portable docking collar that would allow our shuttles to connect and offload my people, so we could take the place deck by deck.

The SEALs worked quickly and confidently, and within five minutes they'd set their charges and pulled back to what the computers insisted (but I doubted) was a safe location on the hull.  Thirty seconds later the Bearclaw's computer triggered the series of charges, ripping a neat, nearly circular four meter hole in the station's hull.  A few seconds later the SEALs were climbing over the lip and disappearing inside.

The second team was approaching the station, almost in position.  Six of them had hold of the docking collar, and they skillfully guided it into position around the gash in the hull.  Setting the collar took a little more time than placing the charges, and it was about fifteen minutes before our shuttles got the go-ahead to begin the approach.

The SEALs inside didn't run into any resistance at first.  The area beyond the insertion hole was now vacuum, so any security personnel on the station would have to suit up before they could try to respond.  By the time they got organized and attacked the foothold, our first shuttle was inbound, and the SEALs only had to hold out for ten minutes or so.

Although outnumbered, the team was well-trained and equipped, and they were able to beat back two assaults with relative ease and minor losses.  Before the third attack came my people were swarming aboard and launching our own assault that wiped out the entire security force threatening the landing area. 

My first shuttle had landed in vacuum conditions, but after we'd secured the area we took the time to pressurize the now-sealed off section.  The second group came aboard in a much more orderly manner, and I organized my sections to move out and begin to secure the station.

The area we were in was a storage facility, large and connected to what we believed to be several main arteries through the station.  We'd entered through the "top" of the station, and we were close to the axis, where there was low gravity.  Our intel was far from complete, and battleops had given me discretion on how to proceed.  I sent one section through what I believed to be a maintenance conduit with instructions to find and take control of the main power plant.  They had our best guess as to where it was, and I sent my most experienced junior officer, Lieutenant Frost, to command.  Frost had been in Achilles too, and afterward he fought at Sandoval, which wasn't the bloodbath Columbia had been but was no walk in the park either.

The SEALs were too heavily armored to move quickly through the station, so I ordered them to stay and defend the landing area and act as a mobile reserve.  They didn't like staying behind, or they didn't like taking orders from me.  Or maybe both.  But they were pros, and they were under my command, so they followed orders.

I took the rest of the company up through was appeared to be the main transport tube to the surface areas.  The entrance to the tube was 60 meters above our position, but in this gravity all we had to do was jump and be careful not to smash too hard into the ceiling.  It took about ten minutes to get everyone through the hatch.  We had a couple of people jump too enthusiastically and inflict some light damage to their suits, but no major problems.

There was a single large tube, which lift cars normally traversed, flanked by two smaller passageways with metal ladders.  I figured they'd have shut down the lifts, so we split into two groups and started to climb up the ladder.  Every fifty meters or so we'd get to a landing with hatches leading to other storage and work areas.  We ran into a few maintenance bots and a couple station workers, but no organized resistance. 

As we got higher, the climbing got a bit tougher, though of course it was not really very difficult in armor.  The gravity increased the closer we got to the surface, and now you could really fall if you lost your grip, and maybe take out a bunch of your comrades as you did.  I reminded everyone three times - or maybe four - to be careful.  The decks got much closer together as well, and now there were landings every ten meters.  When we got to the level we thought housed the main data center we got into our first real firefight.