Sergeant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 2) (11 page)

“A month-and-a-half, but who’s counting?”

“I can’t take this!” Ryck protested.

“Yeah, you can. This is from me to you, brother.”

“I don’t
know what to say.”

“You can say thanks. And you can make sure I don’t grubbing faint out there. No viral
vids making the circuit of me passing out, OK?”

“Sure thing, and well, thanks. I think your blushing bride is waiting for her prince.” Ryck told him.

They hugged one more time before opening the door and stepping out to where the others were waiting.

“Enjoy your last few minutes of freedom, there,
Sergeant of Marines. Let’s go get this thing done,” Ryck said as he escorted his friend to change his life.

Pannington

Chapter
6

The Stork flared above the LZ, the ramp coming down to half a meter above the grass. Ryck was up as the light turned green, pushing forward to debark and deploy into a defensive position.

Ryck was nervous despite his previous combat experience. Over the last five years, he’d gotten used to his PICS. He hadn’t gone into a hot zone in skins and bones since Atacama, his very first operation. Still, he was a Marine, and every Marine was a rifleman. It was the man inside the PICS that wrecked havoc amongst his enemies, not the hardware itself.

He kept telling himself that.

He rushed out, immediately moved to his nine o’clock, and took a knee at the edge of the zone. Glancing down at his forearm, he saw avatars that told him the rest of the squad and the automatic weapons team from Weapons Platoon had deployed in textbook fashion. The LZ was not that big, maybe 40 meters across, so he could have just l
ifted his eyes, but old habits died hard, and even if the display was on his sleeve and not on his visor, he now trusted the electronics more than actual visuals.

For the zillionth time, he wished the Corps had not moved away from
the combat face shield he’d first used in recruit training. He didn’t’ believe the tests that concluded that having a face shield made each Marine ever-so-slightly less efficient and reactive. As a squad leader, having the displays in front of his eyes seemed more natural than having to look down at his forearm.

Ryck felt somewhat naked, but
with only a squad of mercenaries guarding the complex, this was not expected to be a serious action. Navy intel had told them Luminosity was going to be a cakewalk, too, though, and Ryck remembered how that had turned out.

The wind kicked up by the departing Stork died down, so Ryck told the squad to move out. They were to marry up with
Second Squad 200 meters to the northwest, clearing the zone for First. Sams’ squad would be in their PICS, but they would be acting as the heavy reserve. The point of main effort was Third and Second.

The squad formed into a wedge just inside the
treeline, then moved through the low canopy. Pannington had only been terraformed for 50 years, so the forest didn’t have any old growth. The tallest trees were perhaps 20 meters. A newly populated planet or not, there was a myriad of animal life, mostly birds, flitting about them as they moved to the link up.

Popo and the Lieutenant met him as they took position off Third’s right flank.

“Nothing new from the company,” Lt. Nidishchii’ told him. “Third Platoon has met up with the NIS agent, and they’ll be moving to the cargo bays on schedule. Second Platoon has landed at Parkerville and has deployed, making its presence known by inspecting the legitimate warehouses. We don’t have an exact location for the mercenaries, but intel thinks they will be deployed around the main entrance. Our guide is about five minutes out, and we’ve got 45 minutes to get to the emergency exit, breach it, and take the escape tunnels. No one, and that means
no one
, is to get through us.”

Ryck tried to catch any flicker of uncertainty in the lieutenant’s voice. The wiry Marine had been with the platoon for over a year now, and he’d been promoted to first lieutenant
. This was their second real action as platoon commander and squad leader.

Ryck didn’t know what to make of the lieutenant. He didn’t seem to have much of a personality one way or the other, but his reputation was stellar. Evidently, as an enlisted Marine, he’d built up quite a name for himself, earning two Silver Stars and a Purple Heart. He’d gotten an appointment to the Naval Academy, and came out a new second lieutenant.
During the last year, though, Ryck hadn’t seen anything noteworthy in his platoon commander. Nothing bad about him, but nothing noteworthy. He done OK on BHP Billiton B-19, but hadn’t really stepped out to match his rep, in Ryck’s humble opinion. Maybe Ryck would see something now that they were in the real deal.

The platoon commander’s voice was steady, no hint of uncertainty.
Ryck hoped his own voice didn’t reveal the uncertainty in his mind, though, uncertainty rooted not only because the squad was going in light and not in their PICS, but in the mission itself.

Golf Company’s mission was to take out an illegal warehouse complex, a hub of black-market trading. At the same time, Fox would be taking out another complex located deep underground on the larger of
Pannington’s two moons. Echo would “occupy” Robbinsville, the planetary capital, showing the flag with PICS Marines.

The assault on the SOG warehouse made sense. SOG was a terrorist gang who attacked and killed Federation citizens. This
mission was different, though. As far as he knew, the people running this operation were not terrorists. They did not kidnap and kill. Ryck knew that black-marketing was illegal. He’d downloaded a few vids without paying, of course, but didn’t everyone do that? That wasn’t wholesale commerce. He understood the need for the government to regulate commerce, to collect taxes. Some of those taxes paid for his salary, after all.

But why the Marines?
Since when had they become Commerce Cops? The Marine Corps’ mission was defense, not being policemen. The Federation Charter forbade armed Marines from even stepping foot on Earth, so strong was the concept that the Marine Corps was not an instrument to use against the general populace. Yet here they were, being cops.

All that was above Ryck’s pay grade—way above. He had a mission to accomplish, and he was going to get all his Marines through it and back home. That was a mission that he understood.

This was Ryck’s sixth combat op, seven if he counted the NEO
[16]
on Soreau. Of the six, this would be the third time he was going underground. He’d done a paper on the war in Vietnam back in the 20
th
Century, old time, and he’d been fascinated by the tunnel rats of the US, Australian, and Korean forces. It looked like he was turning into a modern version of them, though, and he wasn’t sure he really wanted to be. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but fighting underground could give anyone the jeebies.

Their guide, a local whose name was withheld, contacted the lieutenant. Three Marines from
Second went out to meet him, then escorted him back. He was wearing a ski-mask, which had to be hot in the muggy, late morning heat. With no name and a mask, Ryck did not get a warm and fuzzy about the man. Supposedly, he worked in the complex, but NIS had turned him (for what had to be a tidy sum.) He could just as well be leading them into a trap, though.

The two squads broke into columns. With Ryck’s squad 50 meters to the left of
Second, they made their way through the forest. A column was not a secure formation for a movement to contact, but it did allow for a smaller front to any observers. There were sensors guarding the exit and surrounding area, of course, but the Marines had been assured that they had been deactivated.

First Squad, in their PICS, would follow in trace, staying out of the complex itself while securing their rear. Any
belligerent who somehow made it past the other two squads would be picked up by them.

There was not much undergrowth, which surprised Ryck. Normally, with younger forests, thickets and other vegetation made movement difficult. Here, it was pretty clear. Evidently, many of the
different kinds of plant life which could fill the forest floor had either never been introduced, or more likely, given the biogenesis teams penchant for a full bio-diversity, they just hadn’t established themselves yet. Terraforming was not like engineering. Nature had a way of asserting itself despite centuries of mankind’s experience.

The two squads stopped 150 meters short of their objective to wait out the final 10 minutes. Ryck pulled up the map of the complex one more time on his display.
His mission was to follow Third through the exit, then take the right-branching tunnel. They would move forward to the next intersection, secure it, then sit and wait for the ants to come scurrying out.

There was no telling how accurate the map was, though. The best ground penetration sensors, both from space and from atmosphere drones, had only been able to discern the larger passages. NIS had acquired some hand-drawn maps as well, but who knew how accurate they were?

At five minutes to go-time, the boomboom team from Weapons Platoon crept forward, covered by one of Second’s fire teams. Sergeant Kyle led them as they placed their charge on the door. Ryck half-expected someone to come out shooting, but all remained quiet.

Second
Squad crept closer while the boomboom team retreated back. They would not be detonating the charge. It was slaved to the charges that Third Platoon would be placing on the cargo bays. Once armed, the charge would detonate at the same time as Third’s.

“Get ready,”
Ryck sent on the squad circuit needlessly.

His Marines would be watching the same
timer as he was. When it got to 10 seconds, he gathered his legs under him and got into a crouch, ready to move. At exactly zero, a muffled explosion sounded in front of him.

Second
Squad was up and moving before the smoke and dust had cleared. Ryck gave them ten seconds, then sent off Cpl Rey’s team. He followed next with the other two fire teams and the automatic weapons team in back of him.

Ryck should have waited another ten seconds. Rey’s team ran into the tail end of Popo’s squad, and they had to stop. Within a few heartbeats, though, the last Marine in Third was in and LCpl Keiji led the way for Second.

Sweat was already pouring down Ryck’s back, faster than his skins could wick it away. His PICS was temperature controlled. Skins were not, unless a heavy environmental pack was carried.

He scooted past the big steel door that hung ajar. The
boomboom boys knew their stuff. Just enough explosives had been used to breach the door, but not enough to destroy it.

The lieutenant had stopped at the Y in the main corridor. He was playing traffic cop, motioning Ryck’s squad off to the right. With Keiji on point, they moved quickly down their assigned corridor. A small room on the left slowed them down. The room was not on the map, but it had to be cleared. The room had
a half-dozen drums, and each one had to be checked to make sure it was empty. That took time, at least 30 seconds. They still had another 50 meters to go before they reached their objective. Ryck had Mendoza’s team cover Rey’s as First sprinted the last interval.

“We’re at Blue Whiskey,” Rey passed as he set his team.

Ryck jumped up and moved forward. The intersection was too small for his entire squad. The main corridor was about three meters across, the side corridor two. He had 15 Marines, the 13 in his squad and the two in the heavy machine gun team attached to him. He sent the machine gun team to join with Rey’s team, told Mendoza to cover the side corridor, and told Cpl Beady to cover their rear.

“We’ve got movement to our front,”
Keiji passed before the machine gun team could get their M449 deployed.

Ryck could see their renewed efforts to get the gun ready as other Marines took whatever cover they could find.

“Halt! Put your hands up!” someone, probably Prifit, shouted in front of Ryck.

A three round burst
sounded, at least one round winging past Ryck’s head as it ricocheted along the wall of the corridor. Ahead of him, Ryck could see shapes hitting the deck as the M449 opened up.

“Cease fire! Cease Fire! We surrender!” a
panicked voice called out.

“Push your weapon away from you, slowly. If you make one move, so help me, I’ll
ghost you right there,” Prifit called out.

Ryck was already moving. He slid past the M449 team, leaving them a field of fire in
case they had to open up again. Prifit and Keiji were standing in the middle of the corridor. Cpl Rey and Hartono were hugging the wall, but covering the 10 or so people lying on the ground 10 meters in front of them. One man was on his back, leg twisted under him, one hand still grasping his Lancet. His dead eyes stared at the ceiling while blood pooled rapidly to his side. Two more men in military-looking utilities were slowly, ever so slowly, pushing their own Lancets away from them.

Ryck touched
Keiji’s shoulder and motioned him to move to the side. They had to leave the middle of the corridor open in case the gun team needed to engage again.

“John, get your team up here,” he passed to Cpl Beady.

“That’s far enough, you two. Hands behind your head,” Prifit told the two living gunmen.

It took only seconds before Third Team was there. Ryck had Beady send two men, Holleran and Ling, to pick up the three Lancets, then slap zips on each of the prisoners. Once the last man had his hands secured behind his back, Ryck could finally turn down the stress a notch.

Shots rang out, momentarily bringing the stress back until Ryck realized they were sounding from off to the left of his Marines, out of their area. Second Squad sounded like they were in it, but within 20 or 30 seconds, the firing died away. The last shots sounded like M99 reports, not Lancets, though it was hard to tell with all the echoing.