The Black Ships (29 page)

6 Kilometers from Olympus Mons
Objective

March 12
^th
, 2028

M
ärti jumped off the back ramp of the modified Osprey. The ride down
had been rough compared to the one that had taken them into Earth orbit. Mars’
sporadic electromagnetic activity posed a serious challenge for aircraft that
relied on the force to provide lift. He dropped to one knee as he looked around
him. His men were already spread out into an
all-around defense
,
dropping their backpacks in front of them for added cover as they scanned the
alien horizon for threats.

The Osprey lifted off without disturbing
the red Martian dust.
One advantage of an electromagnetic engine, I suppose.
Märti consulted the terrain-matching map on his wrist display. The small
outpost spotted on the way in had already been updated to the map. The staff on
the
Ares
were now working at a feverish pitch, ensuring that data on the
enemy was integrated as quickly as possible.

He keyed the battalion net. “Pickets.”
Within seconds, two men from each platoon began to work their way out from the
circle of men, fanning out from the main body. Each team used their own
judgment as to how far they should go. The general principle was to extend the
eyes and ears of the unit and so each pair stopped and dug in once they had
reached a decent vantage point.

“Sir,” Lt. Hoffstetter waved from the left
flank. “I don’t think that’s Bravo company over there.” He indicated a small
unit that sat in a similar circle two hundred meters in front of his platoon.
One of them was jogging over to the Swiss unit in a faster version of the
famous moon walk. The gravity here was more than double that of the moon.

The man stopped at the perimeter and
Leuzinger stepped out to talk, holding his visor to the visitor’s while they
arranged a channel change. “Battalion command channel, sir,” Leuzinger waved
the man through and returned his attention to his sector of the perimeter.
Märti approved. If those men were here because of a screw-up, it was better for
morale if the men didn’t hear the discussion.

The man had a camouflage pattern of red and
orange squares and an American flag on his shoulder embroidered in the same
colors as his uniform. A rank badge on his chest showed three upside down
chevrons with two rockers underneath. A pair of crossed rifles in the center
gave the final clue as to what branch of service this man belonged to.

“Gunnery Sergeant Simpson?” He read the
name on the man’s chest as he came to a stop. “One of us is in the wrong
place.”

 “That would be us, Major,” Simpson
answered dryly. “They must have put the rest of our company twenty clicks south
with the rest of 12 MEF. I’ve got six fire teams with me and our personal gear
but no mortars or heavy weapons.”

Märti considered that for a moment. He had
no time to straighten this out and he could definitely use these men. “Our
battalion reserve company is really nothing more than a slightly augmented
platoon,” he began, indicating his men with a wave. “You and your men will make
a welcome addition to our force.”

“
Will,
sir?” Simpson grinned at the
foregone conclusion. “Well, Major, I suppose it
is
your prerogative
under the circumstances and my boys are anxious to get to work.” He looked
around at the Swiss troops. “Your men look sharp enough but you don’t seem to
have much more than assault rifles and light anti-tank rockets.” He looked back
at Märti with obvious pride. “Meaning no disrespect, Major, but my two squads
probably carry double the firepower of this platoon, and we consider ourselves
under-armed.”

“You can see why I’m not sorry to find you
stranded out here. Our objective is the mine and with the plague, forces on the
ground are pretty thin. We’re the only troops allocated for this objective.”
Märti paused in thought for a moment before he brought up the next topic.
“Gunnery Sergeant, I’m aware that Marine NCO’s are accustomed to more
responsibility than their counterparts in other branches of service,” he began.

“Typically, sir.” Simpson’s reply was
guarded.

“Well, now that our reserve is closer to
company strength, I’ll have you take charge of our two sergeants and the men,
as well as advising the officers.” Märti knew enough about the marines to
realize that this man was a valuable asset. Using him in a lesser role than the
one to which he was accustomed would be a foolish waste.

He wasn’t sorry to see the added firepower
either. He knew the marines would be carrying a few of the updated M249
belt-fed machine guns as well as the newer magazine-fed M27 automatic rifles.
Six fire teams also meant that at least six of the rifles would be equipped
with M203 grenade launchers mounted under the barrels of their assault rifles.

“Thank you, sir,” Simpson nodded. “I’ll
shift my guys over to your battalion net.” He used his wrist pad to change over
to the channel that he had been using and spoke for only a few seconds before
switching back to the command net. “I’ve let them know what’s going on, sir.
They’re all on your battalion net now.”

Märti looked down and saw that his
battalion strength had gone up by 25 new signals. “Welcome to
Operation
Gold
Tooth
.” He held out his hand.

“
Gold Tooth
?” Simpson shook his head
as well as the major’s hand. “Who the hell comes up with these names?”

“You know the old saying,
if you lock a
hundred monkeys in a room with a hundred typewriters, sooner or later one of
them will start coming up with mission names.
” He shrugged at the marine.

“More likely you get a room full of dead
monkeys and crap all over the walls.” Simpson grinned. “Sounds like standard
mission planning to me. By the way, Major, it’s a discretionary thing but you
might prefer to refer to me as Gunny. My full rank takes to long too say when
we’re under fire.”

 Märti  nodded. “All right,
Gunny, let’s switch over to battalion and let the rest know that you’re joining
us,” he said and the two men changed their active channels. “This is Major Bohren;
we’ve joined forces with six fire teams from the 12
^th
Marine
Expeditionary Force under Gunnery Sergeant Simpson. They will be joining our
battalion reserve company and Gunnery Sergeant Simpson will act as lead NCO for
the company.”

He looked down at his display, both of his
forward companies showed ready. “Alpha and Bravo Companies, move out. Charlie
Company, keep pace as action dictates.” Captains Merkel and Ramser acknowledged
his order followed by Lieutenant Leuzinger who was assigned the reserve company.
Märti would be too busy to personally command the reserve and he now had a
highly experienced NCO to leaven the young lieutenant’s lack of combat
experience.

It was rough going. They were close to
Olympus Mons. At 22 kilometers in height, it was the largest volcano in the
entire solar system and the jagged rock sat in massive piles and ridges as far
as the eye could see. In many cases, that meant no more than a few hundred feet
from one crest to the next, with a jumbled, stony valley between. They had not
bothered to bring logistical vehicles as the terrain was simply too rough for
anything that didn’t walk or fly.

They moved by sections. One section would
take up positions among the boulders of a hill crest, ready to provide covering
fire. The other two sections of the platoon would then move forward across the
stony valley to the next crest, taking up new firing positions.

The rearward section would then move
forward past the covering positions and down into the next valley, followed by
one of the sections from the crest, always leaving one section of ten men ready
to provide fire as they leapfrogged their way forward.

The companies moved in similar fashion but
on a larger scale. Eventually, based on the terrain or the need to provide
relief to forward platoons, one of the two forward platoons would stop and the
reserve platoon would move up and take the lead. The halted platoon would then
bring up the rear as the new reserve.

After a few hours of this, Marti began
assessing the terrain with an eye towards setting up the first battalion
command post. Though the unit was making decent progress, the men would need a
place to recharge their air supplies. They would need food as well, not to
mention a way to heed the call of nature. Though the suits were designed to
handle liquid waste, no human engineer had yet devised a way to allow a soldier
to void his bowels while in a pressure suit.

At least, not an acceptable way…

He had just settled on a location, deep in
a hidden nook of a seventy-foot-deep valley, when one of the forward units
called in a contact. “Sir, this is Merkel. We found the wreckage of an Osprey
up here, passing it up to the coordination team as Foxtrot Four Alpha One. I
have a squad down there right now checking it out.”

Märti left the reserve company behind and
moved forward with his two-man security detail, stopping just below the top of
a crest to paint his CP location with the laser under his rifle barrel. In
orbit, a sensor array on the
Ares
identified the reflection from his
laser and added a modular shelter unit onto the Osprey flight schedule.

He set Alpha Company’s network to half
volume and overlaid it with the battalion net. He could hear the chatter
between the investigating squad and their company commander as he moved forward.
The downed Osprey had been carrying marines. 

Despite the lower gravity, the climb up to
where Merkel kneeled between the boulders left Märti slightly out of breath.
They had spent months in zero gravity so the low gravity of this planet wasn’t
as much of a treat as they had expected. Just as he was kneeling next to
Merkel, a single shot rang out followed closely by a flurry of gunfire and half
volume yelling on the Alpha Company net.

“Tactically naïve my
arsche
!” Merkel
grumbled. “They have the sense to use this as an ambush, don’t they?” A soldier
ten feet away from them had raised up to a firing position and was almost
instantly thrown back, shot in the head. “Get your heads down,” he roared.
“Goodpaster, get your mortars set up and start hammering that ridgeline,
proximity burst, parallel sheaf.”

Märti had only taken a quick look before
the shooting started but he knew that he ridge from which the enemy was firing
curved around to join the one that he and the men of Alpha Company were on. If
he could get his reserve to move in on the Human left, they could cross over
onto the reverse slope of the enemy-held ridge and work their way through the
enemy’s right flank.

“Hold them here,” he told Merkel over the
battalion net. He dropped back from the ridge and made his way over to the
left, bringing up his rifle to paint a spot further down the canyon.
“Leuzinger, bring the reserve forward on our left flank to the rally point I
just designated. I want you to roll up the enemy’s right while Alpha holds them
in place.”

He knew that doctrine called for the
reserve platoon of Alpha to carry out this maneuver but they still didn’t know
what sort of enemy they were dealing with yet. He decided to use the firepower
of the reserve company. Until he knew what kind of fighters they were up
against, he would opt for the heaviest force that he could bring to bear.

Leuzinger and his men poured over the ridge
behind Alpha’s leading platoons and moved to the spot where Märti’s laser had
painted a rally point into the fleet-wide network. He saw with satisfaction
that the young lieutenant was taking the time for a quick consultation with
Simpson. They quickly shook the men into three groups, each composed of two
marine fire teams and a squad of Swiss infantry.

The first such team took up positions among
the boulders of the ridge before waving the next team on, passing to the
left.  After a few moments, the first team relayed the signal from the
second and the third team moved past the positions of the first team.

Märti suddenly realized that the dull
thumping noise was the sound of mortars firing on the enemy. Even on Earth,
they had a more muted sound than heavy artillery but, here on Mars, the thin
atmosphere made them barely audible. He hoped the air bursts would keep the enemy’s
heads down until the flanking attack reached them.

“Mortars, shift right fifty meters, add ten
meters, concentrated sheaf.” Simpson’s terse voice called over the battalion
net. As soon as the mortar teams confirmed the order, Märti heard gunfire, louder
through the radio than the air.

With every man connected by the various
radio network layers, standard voice procedure went out the window as every man
spoke the way he would when fighting in a regular atmosphere. The current
attack was being coordinated on the battalion net but the men of the three
hastily-formed assault teams kept it on half volume and set their main circuit
to proximity mode to reduce distractions.

 “Mortars, cease fire. I say again,
all mortars cease fire,” Leuzinger ordered as he led his men on the final push.

Märti  looked down at the screen on
the inside of his wrist in surprise. Within ten minutes the enemy threat had
been cleared but it had seemed to take an hour. He joined Leuzinger and Simpson
as they herded four enemy prisoners into the valley where the downed Osprey
lay.