Commandant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 8) (9 page)

“Well, Governor, this has been a rather interesting, and can I say, welcome call.  If you will excuse me, I’ll get on the hook with the admiral.  If you’ll stand by, I’ll try to get back to you within the half hour.”

“Fair enough, General.  I’ll be waiting.  Let’s hope we can come to an accommodation,” she said before cutting the connection.

Ryck lowered his green phone screen to look up at the other four Marines.

“Holy fucking shit,” Sams said.  “That Lemon geek is going to cum in his pants when he hears this.  Propitious Interstellar?  Who’d have thunk it?”

“Not to mention someone to refute the propaganda,” Bert said dryly.

“Yeah, but PI?” Sams said, a huge smile on his face.  “Holy fucking shit!”

“Well, gentlemen, my dad used to say it was not polite to keep a lady waiting, so I’m going to the vault and make the call to the admiral.  Why don’t the four of you wait here, and Jorge, get ready to ask General Copperwait and our pet economist to come back in here to get caught up on what just happened,” Ryck said, standing up.

“Vivian, I’m on my way to the vault.  I want to speak with the admiral,” Ryck said as he passed through his outer office.  “Good things are happening,” he added, unable to resist.

Sams, in his indubitable manner, had once again nailed it.

“Holy fucking shit” was right.

Chapter 13

Ryck stared at the holo that was projected above the main conference table in the MCCC, or the Marine Corps Command Center.  The MCCC was the heart and soul of Marine Corps combat operations, but this time, no Marines were involved in the upcoming battle. 

It had been two weeks since Ryck returned to Tarawa, and the schism between the old Council and the provisional government had not broken out into fighting—yet.  With the Brotherhood spearheading a combined effort to keep what would be a civil war from breaking out and getting more UAM proclamations passed that limited the use of ship-to-ground weaponry, both the loyalists and evolutionaries had been hesitant to initiate hostilities.  That had been fine with Ryck.  He didn’t even know yet just who was in their camp, and it was hard to plan a course of action without knowing the extent of both the friendly forces and the “enemy,” as much as Ryck still had a problem with that term for the Federation loyalists.

That lack of action was about to come to an end.  The Federation had sent a small task force of 14 ships, none larger than a frigate, to take out the GT-3 Hub, which was the nexus of most of the communications for the broad swatch of planets that seemed to be coalescing with the Evolution forces.  The loss of GT-3 would not be a death blow.  There were always workarounds, from hadron communicators to convoluted routings, but this would mean comms would be degraded, and that could make a difference in any conflict.  So Admiral Chandanasiri had dispatched a 20-ship task force, with two cruisers in the lead, to defend it.  Conscious that the attack could be a feint, he kept most of his ships around
Prometheus Station
and Tarawa.  A scattering of ships was dispatched to several planets that had weighed in on the Evolution cause, more for show than for any militarily strategic decision.

His task force should be able to fend off the Federation task force, but the Federation did not have to defeat the Evolution ships.  It just had to get one missile through them to take out the station.

Ryck thought back to the last time he’d watched a naval battle, while on the
FS Ark Royal
during the war with Greater France.  During that battle, the Greater France spoofing and Admiral
DeMornay’s battle plan had carried the day, with the dreadnaught
FS Bismark
being destroyed by the smaller and technically less-capable
Jean d’Arc
.  This time, it was Third Fleet ships against First Fleet, and so the holo was an accurate depiction of the ships as they maneuvered.  During the battle with the Greater France navy, Ryck had been a mere spectator to the fight, and now, even though he was the commandant, nothing had changed.  He could watch, but he had no input into the fight.  Even being able to watch it was a courtesy, relayed to him through a Navy corvette in orbit over his headquarters.

As Ryck watched the slowly moving avatars, a small bloom of light appeared beside the
FS Dundee
.  The loyalist ship had fired a torpedo, and the fight was on.

“That’s it then.  It’s war,” Bert said.

The torpedo was quickly knocked out by several provisional government ships, but the damage was done—not to GT-3, but as Bert said, this was now a shooting war.  Any hope of a negotiated settlement had almost disappeared, not that Ryck had expected anything different.  But to expect fighting was different from having it thrust at you.

At least they started it,
Ryck thought to himself. 
History can’t accuse me of that.

For the next 20 minutes, the loyalist ships feinted and maneuvered, keeping at the edge of the defending ship’s range.  Ryck kept expecting the more robust Third Fleet task force to charge and scatter the attackers, but they held fast in a geometrically designed formation.  Ryck thought that was too passive, but it seemed to be working for the moment.  None of the loyalist volleys managed to pierce the shield of ships, and two of the attacking ships had to withdraw due to damage.

Ryck was beginning to hope that the loyalists would withdraw with no loss of ships and possibly no loss of life when half of the loyalist ships darted forward, shields on high as they charged at the heart of the Third Fleet ships. 

Ryck stood up, hand on the table as he watched the fight unfold.  Rear Admiral Housa shifted his cruiser’s fire to concentrate on the lead attackers, and Ryck could see the shield strength on the attackers degrade by the second under the withering energy weapons.  The
FS Dundee
, the same ship that had fired the first volley, took the brunt of the evolutionary fire, and suddenly, her shields collapsed, and the ship was vaporized.

There was a collective gasp around the room as the ship, with over 200 men aboard, ceased to exist.

At the same moment, the loyalist ships not in the attack split into three axes, each arching around and firing what had to be their full load of hyper-velocity torpedoes.  Under pressure from the initial assault force, only a handful of the evolutionary ships were able to switch over to the new threat.  It only took those ships a few seconds to target the incoming torpedoes, but that was a few seconds too long.  One Gangee torpedo, a small, 8cm wide inert missile, boosted to .42 of light speed, made it through the defending fire to hit and pierce GT-3.  The torpedo only massed 35 kg, but the energy released upon impact was over 4,000,000 Newtons, and that was enough to destroy the hub.  There was no catastrophic, slow-motion explosion common in the Hollybolly flicks.  There was a large flash of light as the missile hit and parts of the hub were instantly vaporized, but the missile itself punched completely through the hub.  The damage inside the hub, however, was extensive.  GT-3 was dead.

The attacking loyalist ships immediately broke off the engagement to scatter.  Admiral Housa chose to let them go.  The loyalists had lost a ship and had two more damaged.  Not a single evolutionary ship had been lost.  But the loyalists had won.

Ryck slowly sat back down before he looked at the gathered men around him, men now looking to him expectantly.

“Well, gentlemen, we knew it was coming.  Now the genie is loose, and the only way to get him back in the bottle is to defeat the Council.  And that is just what I plan on doing.”

Chapter 14

“Gunny, please get Colonel Edison,” Ryck told
Çağlar.  “We might as well get this done.”

Hans Çağlar tried to withhold a grimace as he rose and left the room.

“He don’t like our pet fuckdick none,” Sams remarked as the hatch closed.

“Would you?” Hecs asked, throwing a pen across the table, hitting Sams in the chest.  “He’s always felt it was his job to protect the general, and now we’ve got an FCDC officer in charge of that?  I don’t blame him.”

Ryck simply shook his head at their bickering, which had lately risen in intensity. Jorge caught Ryck’s glance and rolled his eyes.  The two of them had spoken about the two senior SNCO’s.  Hecs and Sams had known each other for a long time, but a small schism had begun to develop between them.  Jorge thought that it could be because neither had a real job.  Sams was on a temporary recall to active duty, assigned at-large to the office to the commandant.  Hecs had been slated for assignment in Brussels at the Government Center, which was still technically his billet, but as going to Earth was more than a little problematic at the moment, he’d been pitching his tent in Ryck’s office as well.  Jorge also thought that with Ryck’s ascension to the position of commandant, Hecs felt he should have been made the Sergeant Major of the Marines Corps.

If that were the case, then Hecs would have a long wait, Ryck had decided.  He and Hecs went back to when Ryck was in recruit training, and Hecs was firmly in Ryck’s posse, but that didn’t mean that Ryck was going to boot out Sergeant Major Ito just to stroke Hecs’ ego.  Plus, Nils Ito was doing a bang-up job as the point man in building up the newly expanded recruit training program at Camp Charles as well as preparing for the introduction of female recruits—which was part of the promise Ryck had made to Michiko MacCailín.

With Ito an hour away, Ryck had hoped that Hecs and Sams could provide a sane enlisted point of view to the daily issues that cropped up, but if they were going to be having kitten fights, one—or both—of them would have to go.  Ryck had a government to run, and he didn’t have time to play daddy to the two older men.

Çağlar came back into the office with Colonel Nils Edison in tow.  Edison was a career FCDC officer and had been in command of the barracks on Tarawa.  Given the Marine Corps presence on the planet, the barracks had been small at fewer than 300 troopers.  But when it came time to choose sides, Edison had brought over all but 16 of his men to join the provisional government.  This was the highest percentage of any FCDC unit, where less than six percent Federation-wide had joined the cause.

Anxious to show that all were welcome in the evolutionary movement, Edison was given a key position in Ryck’s headquarters.  Given the nature of the FCDC, the troopers were put in charge of security.  At Bert’s insistence, Marines were also part of the detachment, but Colonel Edison was the public face of security detachment.

“Colonel, please take a seat,” Ryck said.  “And thank you for coming.

“I want to give you a head’s up.  In three weeks, more or less, I will be attending a conference off-planet, along with Admiral Chandanasiri, the CAC, and various heads of states.  There will also be neutral observers.”

“You are going off-planet, sir?” Edison asked.

I just said that,
Ryck thought, but he said, “Yes.  I’ll give you the location later, but I need you to start planning the movement.  The Third Fleet will be officially hosting, so overall security is their responsibility, but I will be going with approximately a dozen or so Marines, and Governor Franzetti will hitch a ride with us.  Our transport will arrive six hours before we embark so you won’t have much liaison time.”

“Sir, is this a good idea?”

“We can’t cower on our bases, Colonel.  We’re asking the civilians heads of state to stick their necks inside the noose, so to speak, and we have to make a show of confidence and power.  So yes, it is a good idea.”

“I understand, sir, but I have to go on the record as opposing this.  It’s hard enough to guarantee your safety here, but going to some planet?  And I don’t even know where?  I’m afraid the risk is too high,” the colonel said, worry evident in his voice.

“I can appreciate that, but that’s how it’s going down.”

“Can I, at least, ask where and when?”

“I’m afraid not, Colonel,” Ryck said, then quickly adding when he saw a cloud take over the colonel’s face, “I don’t know the details myself, and I won’t know until our ride appears.  This is highly classified, as you can imagine, and I don’t yet have the need to know.”

That seemed to mollify the colonel. 

He wrinkled his brow, and then said, “Roger, sir.  I’ll put something together that we can implement at short notice.  I still think the risk is too great, but I’ll soldier on and get it done.”

“Thank you, Colonel.  I have full confidence in you.”

“Well, Colonel, I imagine you’ll want to get cracking,” Jorge said, standing up and indicating the meeting, short as it was, was over.  “Let me escort you out.  And if you need anything, I’ll be your point of contact for this.”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Hans,” Sams said as Jorge and the colonel left.  “You’re still the chief bottle-washer and personal bodyguard for the general here.  That there, with the fuckdicks, that’s just politics.”

“Not just politics, Top,” Ryck said to Sams.  “The FCDC troops have shown us nothing but loyalty, and we are doing this for all citizens, not just those who’re lucky enough to be on planets following our lead.”

Sams seemed to want to say something, and a few years back, he probably would have.  But as a consequence of Ryck becoming commandant, even Sams had tempered his irreverent nature.  He just nodded and said nothing more.

“But he’s right, Gunny.  I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have at my side,” Ryck told Çağlar.

And that wasn’t a line of BS.  The big Marine, who rarely spoke more than a few words at a time, had a presence about him that calmed Ryck.  And with Hannah and the twins still incommunicado and prisoners on Earth, with the stress of trying to run a government and a war, Ryck needed all the calming he could get.