First Command

First Command

By J.S. Hawn

Dear Readers,

This is a new, revised and edited edition of First Command. Having published this book and received a wide variety of constructive feedback, I managed to secure an editor and have re-released the book. I hope you’ll enjoy this more grammatically correct edition. This was my first novel and I’ve learned from this experience. Moving forward, all of my works will be thoroughly edited. Please give me a read and leave me a review. Thank you all.  

Acknowledgements

It’s true that when you finally finish a book you don't have one person to thank, you have a dozen. First, thank you to mom and dad for always being supportive of my writing hobby. Thank you to all my grandparents to whom this book is dedicated. Without your wisdom, I would be much less of a person. Thanks also to all three of my siblings who have always stood by me. Thank you to my darling wife for believing in me, and putting up with me. Also, special thanks to Alex, Alisar, and Amanda my triple AAA alpha readers. Finally, a special thank you to Amanda my talented cover artist. See more of Amanda's work at:
http://amandacavazosweems.com
. As always, thank you to anyone I missed among my friends and my family.

Dedication

Dedicated with love to

Mom and Dad

For your patience and guidance this wouldn't be possible without you.

Dedicated with love to

Pop and Mimi

Always with love and affection, thank you for your wisdom and good humor.

A Special Dedication to

Chloe

For being strong and wise enough to bring happiness and love to a writer's life, without you I’m a shadow of myself.

Dedicated to

The Siblings- Jake, Cami, and Laney

I owe you guys everything.

Dedicated In Loving Memory to

Granddad and Grandbee

Gone from this world, you're always with the angels and with us in our hearts.

Honorable Mention

Thanks Puddin and Rudy Tom-

Two of the best dogs a boy could have

(Rudy Tom would be most displeased if not mentioned by name)

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter VI

Epilogue

Dramatis Persona

Additional Information

About the Author

Prologue

New Helsinki, Solarian Republic

The Barrens, Outside New Oslo Landing

January 20th 841 A.E. (2802) 15:00 Local time

The creature was hideous; two inches long with bulging eyes, narrow wings, and a barbed rear appendage with which it could impale its hapless prey normally smaller insects and drain them of their fluids. When the barb was thrust into a larger creature, its venom was not enough to paralyze but burned like a hot poker for a few seconds then left the spot where the unfortunate victim had been stung numb for hours. Locals called the horrendous insectoid abominations- devil flies.  Not for the first time Lance Corporal Robert Dubois, 1st Squad 2nd Platoon F Company 4th Battalion 3rd New Helsinki Brigade Solarian National Police Interior Troops, cursed his misfortune as he swatted yet another of the flying abominations from his forearm, but not before it could jam its barb home. The Barrens, as the locals called them, were a blasted insect infested jungle three days inland from the small port town of New Oslo less than a hundred miles east of the main Insurgent stronghold in the Southwest Highlands. It was called The Barrens because, despite being a rain forest, the soil was shit for farming and no tangible mineral resources had ever been found there. Personally Dubois, who had been a native of the shining city of New Lagos on Charlemagne in the Colonial Confederacy, was of the opinion the whole thing should be torched and turned into scorching desert. Dubois once again cursed that rotten cousin of his Pierre who had been something in the New Lagos underworld, at least until the Gendarmes had gotten wise to him. Dubois had scooted across the border and enlisted in the Solarian Interior Troops rather than join his cousin in a penal colony. Sure the Republic’s justice system was far harsher than the Confederacy’s, but a twenty-year stint in the Troops and Dubois would be a free man with Solarian Citizenship, a pension, and access to a host of veteran’s benefits, including small business loans. Dubois dreamed daily of settling on a Solarian client or colony world, or maybe the capital world herself, and opening an authentic Charlemagne Cafe. Solarians had public houses and bars in abundance, but one could not compete with the cultured experience of a Charlemagne Cafe.

Only ten years left on his stint then it was onto easy street. First, of course, Dubois would have to survive this damnable jungle. Several days before some local trappers had reported insurgent activity in the Barrens, which was worrisome. New Helsinki had been under Solarian dominion for the better part of fifteen years and had endured insurgency the whole time by holdouts from the old regime.

Over the last year, though, the insurgents had been getting bolder and better armed; home made explosives and obsolete Thaos Dominion weapons had given way to modern explosives and old Terran Union weapons. Somehow the bastards were gaining manpower too. F Company had been dispatched for reconnaissance in force into the Barrens, and for three days had endured nothing but mud, insects, and all manner of disgusting creatures. Only three more days of this and then they’d be back at camp and Dubois back in the arms of his New Helsinki girlfriend.

As F Company made their way into a small clearing, Dubois, the point man, stepped on a well-concealed napalm mine, surplus of the now defunct Terran Federal Army. The mine was a daisy chain device one central trigger connected to eight warheads no bigger than a man’s fist buried in a circle roughly fifteen feet across. When tripped the canisters were launched three feet into the air before exploding into a ball of flame, spraying hell fire for ten yards in all directions. Napalm mines were terror weapons pure and simple, and soldiers’ unfortunate enough to be caught in their blast died in one of the worst ways possible. Six men, including poor Dubois, ran screaming into the brush their clothes and skin aflame, before bullets fired by their own comrades relieved them of their torment. The mine’s detonation was a signal for the thirty-odd Insurgents, most veterans of the now disbanded New Helsinkin Army, who laid hunkered in the thick brush on either side of the Solarian Company, to open fire.

The Solarian Company realizing what was happening immediately reacted. Solarian Interior Troops were not true soldiers. They were something far less savory, paramilitaries whose training and doctrine was dedicated solely to the suppression of rebellion and sedition against the Republic. F Company had seen many a hard fought jungle action before and as such reacted as only veterans did. They fell back clustering around their commander’s position and taking refuge on a small knoll where trees were thick. Although they outnumbered their foe 3 to 1, they did not try to counter attack. A favored strategy of guerrilla warriors, since the bygone days when men fought wars on a single world, was to lure a formation into counter attacking then cut it to pieces as its men inevitably became strung out and isolated by the terrain.  Instead of lunging wildly toward their foes, the Interior Troopers maintained a steady barrage of fire from their rifles, and light machine guns supported by grenades when a target of opportunity presented itself.  The company CO following doctrine meanwhile, called in an airstrike. Twenty miles away, two Interior Troop ‘Piranha’ Gunships flying combat air patrol vectored toward the company’s position. The Piranhas were dual blade drive VTOLS armed with missiles, chain guns, rockets, and dumb bombs - ugly machines of death and destruction, which could make any square mile of the forsaken jungle a barren desert. Less than two minutes after vectoring toward F Company, the Piranhas’ pilots sighted the orange smoke the Solarians had popped to mark their position. Their gunners made ready and the pilots dropped to five hundred feet for their attack run. This was exactly what the insurgents had been waiting for. Another group of rebel fighters lay five hundred yards from the main fighting. They had allowed the Solarian patrol to bypass them knowing the Solarian Air support would most likely come from the south the direction of the Solarian firebase. Six men armed with surface to air missiles still stamped with Terran Federal Army markings, rose from their hiding spots and fired just as the Piranhas dropped in altitude. By any standards of modern warfare, it was practically point blank range. The gunships’ onboard computer reacted faster than any human could.  Missile defense lasers whined to life spitting concentrated burst of energy toward the approaching death, but it was too late. One gunship went down immediately bursting into flames and plunging straight into ground below. Its three man crew dead before they knew what had happened. The other gunship was luckier. Its pilot banked at the last minute, two of the missiles heading for it were vaporized by the gunships point defense lasers, and the third detonated less than ten feet behind the gunship as a laser touched off its warhead. The tail controls were damaged and the gunner shredded by shrapnel, and both the pilot and copilot were also wounded with shrapnel penetrating their backs. Some how the pilot managed to stay aloft and turn toward the firebase, he would make it if just.

The firefight lasted through the rest of the day until, with night falling, the insurgents gathered their fallen comrades’ weapons and slipped away into the gathering gloom.