Sergeant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 2) (24 page)

The next day, the Marines spent time preparing their position. The hadron comms had been with the skipper, so the platoon had nothing with which to communicate with a ship out of planetary orbit. But the lieutenant assigned LCpl Vargas out of First Squad to monitor all the ground-to-orbit frequencies. When the
Intrepid
returned, the platoon commander wanted to know immediately.

The lieutenant, SSgt Hecs, Ryck, Sams, and Cpl St. Cyr, the new Second Squad leader, met several times in a mini-war council, going over their options to take the fight to the enemy. It was during one of these that a mass of explosions sounded off to their southwest, possibly 30 km away. The firing kept up for almost two minutes before dying off. Ryck knew there were no Marines there—Justice and the WIA were almost 40 km away
to the northeast, and they were the only other Federation forces on the planet. He turned to ask the lieutenant what was going on, but the platoon commander was high-fiving SSgt Hecs.

“And that, sir, is how it’s done,” SSgt Hecs said.

“What was that?” Ryck asked.

“Oh, our good platoon sergeant set up a little decoy last night. It seems like it’s not only the French who can spoof.”

“And it looks like you owe me 20, sir,” SSgt Hecs said.

“Duly noted, there, Staff Sergeant
Phantawisangtong.”

The lieutenant got down in the dirt and pushed out a quick 20 pushups.

Ryck hadn’t even realized the platoon sergeant had slipped out during the night. If that was 30 km away, then that was 60 km back and forth, quite a trip even in a PICS.

About 30 minutes after the “attack,” a voice came over several frequencies at once
. The Marines outside of their PICS heard the message over the external speakers of the active PICS.

“Federation Marines, let’s avoid any further bloodshed. First Lieutenant
Nidishchii’” the voice went on, stumbling a bit over the name, “we are offering you our full guarantee of humane treatment if you surrender your force to us. No one will be hurt, and all needing it will receive medical care. The war is almost over, so let’s sit it out. That was a nice feint you pulled, but we have your position locked now. You and your 32 surviving Marines have no air support, no supporting arms, and without those, I am sure you can do the math. You really don’t have much chance against a larger Legion force. We outnumber you and outgun you.”

There was an explosion of protest from the Marines
.

“No need for an immediate reply. No one
is doubting your courage. Lieutenant, you have proven your courage time and time again, and several of your men, notably Staff Sergeant Phantawisangtong,” the voice said, making even more havoc over the name, “Sergeants Samuelson and Sergeant Lysander, Lance Corporal Westminster, Lance Corporal Laste Holleran, and Private First Class Ling, are well known in the Legion, so this is not a matter of whose balls are the biggest. Most of you have even been of service to the Legion, and you have our gratitude. This is a matter of simply living without needless bloodshed.”

While the voice was going on, SSgt Hecs had
wormed into the back of his PICS, and the voice was cut off. He wormed back out and went up to the lieutenant.

Ryck, Sams, and several others came as well.

“How do they know my name,” Ling asked with a worried tone to his voice.

SSgt Hecs held up his hand, forestalling him,
then looking up to the lieutenant.

“Well, that’s a nice
ni hao,” the lieutenant said to them. “Interesting in what they gave away.”

“Sir?”
Sams asked.

“Well, first, they were specific on us being 32 Marines, and they mentioned every Marine in the platoon who’s been awarded a BCS-1 or higher. What does that tell you?” he asked the group.

“Well, Westminster was KIA from the crash,” Ryck said.

“Yes, and they have not taken into account that we have
seven WIA still alive, and no mention was made of Cpl Evans and HM2 Grbil. Grbil’s been decorated, so it they knew about him, they would have mentioned him. What they have is partial intel, and they are guessing the rest. You could have found out most of that from our battalion facebook.
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By telling us too much, they are revealing their limitations.”

“They don’t have more men than us, either, right sir?” SSgt Hecs said.

“I doubt it. We know they lost one and probably two others. If you count the Navy sailors, then yes, they probably have more, but as far as legionnaires, I am guess we are about even-strengthed.”

“But they’ve got R-3s, and we don’t have air now,” Vargas said.

“True, but I don’t think the R-3 is really that great. I took one out yesterday, and I’m still here, right? And if we make them come to us, maybe we can even out the odds.”

“So do we answer?” asked SSgt Hecs.

“Can we get a mic out here, out of the helmet?” he asked.

“Sure, no problem,” Cpl Evans said.

He took a length of ignition wire, then crawled half-way inside his own PICS. A moment later, he emerged, holding the small chin mic in his hand, the wire trailing from it back to inside the PICS. He handed it to the lieutenant.

“Turn back on the broadcast,” he told SSgt Hecs.

Since SSgt Hecs had overridden the broadcast from his PICS-C, he had to turn it back on from either his or the lieutenants. He squirmed up inside the back of his, and a few moments, the French voice came back on.

“ .
. . too long before we will be forced to take offensive action.”

“Our French friends, if I may interrupt, I do have a response for you. This is First Lieutenant
Nidishchii’, UFMC.”

The voice stopped for a moment, then said, “Uh, yes, Lieutenant. Please go on.”

Every Marine and Doc Grbil had stopped what they were doing and stared at the lieutenant. Slowly, the lieutenant lowered the mic to his ass, and after a moment, let out a tremendous fart, amplified to its max.

There was dead silence before the Marines erupted into howls of laughter, “
oohrahs,” and “get some, Lieutenant!”

Ryck, trying to control his laughter, looked to Sams and said, “The lieutenant’s got no fire, Sams?”

“Steve, when we attacked the SOG back on Billiton, they used a mine to take out one of my Marines,” Ryck told their EOD Marine.

“Yeah,
Yancy Sullivan. I remember,” Cpl Evans replied.

“What was the result of the investigation, something about them using wood and an organic explosive?”

“Yeah, the mine body was wood, of all things. For the explosive, they used simple fertilizer. A pressure plate was the trigger. Yancy was pretty unlucky. He stepped right on it.”

“Is that something we could do here?” Ryck asked.

“Oh, wow. I don’t know. I could if we were back at battalion, no sweat. It wouldn’t be as good as one of our issued mines, but it would work. This is real old technology.”

“If it was that old, how did it work against us?”

“Because we aren’t looking for wood with our PICS. We’re looking for all the latest and greatest weapons, not bows and arrows or leather slings,” Evans said.

“Do you think it’s possible, though?”

“Well, I can take the M887 round casing. They’re an organic pulp. Shouldn’t be too hard to make a mine casing from them. I can probably come up with something to put inside. All my igniters, though, the legionnaires would be able to pick them up and jam them. I might be able to rig up a pressure plate, but the chances that someone would actually step on it are about nil. The SOG set up over 50, and only one was triggered. So I’m not sure how we could set them off. A wire is out of the question. I guess we could attach a string or something and try and make it manual, but they could probably see it, and I’m not sure any string would be strong enough to activate any sort of trigger I could come up with. I think we would need a timer of some sort, to activate. Yeah, that would do it. We could activate a timer with a string, for say, a 20 or 30 or whatever second detonation we want. Yeah, that would work!” he said, his voice getting a little excited as he spoke.

“You mean, like a watch?”

“No, that wouldn’t work. Watches are electronic, no moving parts. It would have to be a mechanical timer of some sort, and we don’t have any,” Evans said, sounding deflated.

Ryck sighed,
then took the Rolex off his wrist. This was Joshua’s gift to him, intended to be a lifetime treasure. He knew his friend would understand, though.

“Like this?” he asked, holding out the hand-made timepiece.

“Ooh, that’s psycho,” Cpl Evans said as he reached out to take it. “Yeah, that’ll work, but man, that’s a shame. This is one beautiful watch.”

“Let’s do it. As soon as you get the smoke pots up, I want this done. I’ll brief the lieutenant, and we’ll tell you where we want it.”

“No problem, Sergeant L. I’ll get on it.”

Ryck really, really loved that watch, but not as much as he valued the lives of the Marines around him.

We’ve got movement,” LCpl Denny sent back on the landline they had rigged from the OP back to the lieutenant’s foxhole.

They had set up simple vibration detectors, something very difficult to pick up on a scanner until it was too late
and had already been activated, and the landline was pretty much impossible to jam. It could be cut, but that was about it. Between the two sources, the platoon knew the Legion was on the march.

“OK, cover up and wait this out. Do not try to come back,” the lieutenant passed.

Ryck sent a quick message out on the squad circuit, “Here they come, from the north.”

They had decided
if the legionnaires were going to attack, they would come from that direction. It was the most logical avenue of approach, and for that reason alone, Ryck would have picked something different. But the legionnaires evidently had a lot of confidence in their abilities. Ryck hoped that confidence was misplaced.

Unless this was yet anoth
er spoof, the Marines were well-arrayed for the incoming assault. They had prepared alternate positions, but the main ones were in a slight horseshoe around the crest of the high ground. If it had been a real hill, that position would not have worked. But by varying the depth of each fighting hole, each Marine had a clear field of fire down below them. Clear except for the trees, that was. They’d knocked down a few, but if too many were down, the legionnaires would simply bypass the area and attack from the flanks where it would be harder to mass fire on them.

The M229 was emplaced towards the right of the line, where a subtle amount of tree removal gave it just a hair more of a field of fire. On the left side of the line, the shuttle’s 2
50mm gun had been lashed onto a tree trunk they had knocked over. Ryck didn’t give the gun much credit. There were no working sights, much less a target acquisition control, so it would be blindly firing forward, but at least it was something.

Modern warfare was not supposed to be like this anymore. It was fluid actions across a battlefield with interlocking support and assaults. Marines just didn’t go on the defense, either. Sams, for one, had been advocating taking the fight to the legionnaires, not sitting and waiting for the enemy to come to them.

Marines didn’t go into the defense, but it had been decades since they had faced a force even equal to them.

The lieutenant merely said
“Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.”

Ryck recognized that from Sun Tzu, and while he didn’t think it really fit the situation, it seemed weighty enough to shut up Sams.

“Get the pots going,” the lieutenant told Evans.

Evans in turn told
Pvt Holderstead, who’d been made his assistant. The private jumped out of his fighting hole and ran forward to the line of makeshift smoke pots Evans had managed to rig up. One smack on the top of each pot and it ignited, sending grey smoke out which rose a meter or so off the ground as it slowly spread. Cpl Evans had tried to explain that it wasn’t actually smoke, but it acted like smoke and looked like smoke, so to the rest of the Marines, smoke it was.

It might seem counterintuitive to send out any agent, smoke or not, that blocked visuals when an assault was expected. However, Ryck knew that the legionnaires would
not be low-crawling up to their positions, and the lieutenant’s reason for the smoke seemed sound. Only time would tell if the lieutenant was right.

The Marines coul
dn’t tell how many legionnaires they faced. Their vibration sensors did not indicate direction, so there was no way for the AIs to triangulate and make an estimate. There had to be over 20, but probably fewer than 40. That was a pretty big range.

When the legionnaires were at 200 meters, Ryck felt his excitement rise. There might have been a touch of fear in there, too, but nothing overriding. He tried to see through the trees,
but the legionnaires were still too far away to spot. His sensors were picking up nothing. They probably would continue to pick up nothing until the legionnaires’ weapons ports opened, breaking the stealth profile of the R-3’s.

Then he saw it, the slightest swirl in the smoke some 120 meters away. The fire team assigned to the M229 saw it as well. In direct fire mode, the gun
opened up. A split second later, the anti-armor round impacted, and a R-3 flashed into view as it was blown back.

The battle was on.
More swirls in the smoke appeared as unseen legionnaires rushed forward. The M229 fired again, but the round exploded against a tree.

Cpl Evans had laid out ten
of his issued mines, but as expected, the legionnaires were able to detect them. They sidestepped them, three coming together and heading right towards Evan’s field expedient mine. Ryck reached down and pulled the string, an unraveled piece of Evan’s longjohns. His Rolex started its 10-second count down.

The M229 opened
up once more, and it looked like it took another legionnaire out. Then all sensors went crazy as the legionnaires opened fire. The first casualty was the M229 team. Something big hit them, and a column of flames lit up the area.

The fractured array shielding should have made the first shots fired at the
Marines miss them, but the artillery piece itself didn’t have the shielding, and once it fired, it gave up the gun team’s position.

With the sensors locking in on the legionnaires, the displays started placing them
, and the Marines started to get visuals on them as well. One of the three legionnaires being funneled into the blast area of Evan’s filed expedient mine stopped, probably to fire, but the other two kept advancing. The timing couldn’t have been better. The mine erupted, a slow, powerful blast that lifted the two legionnaires into the air at least 20 meters before sending them crashing back down.

Another Gazelle fired, but it went over Cpl Rey’s head to impact on the trees well behind the Marines. Immediately, at least 20 rockets were fired at the point of launch for the missile. Ryck couldn’t tell if they hit anything, but no more Gazelles were fired.

To his left, the shuttle’s 25mm gun opened up. It was not aimed, but it created a stream of fire a meter and a half above the ground. A few trees had been strategically knocked down, so the gun was able to cover the entire platoon front. At least one legionnaire was hit, although Ryck couldn’t tell if it was a lethal strike or not. A number of hadron beams reached out to it, too many for Ryck’s display to number, and ten seconds later, the gun stopped firing.

The legionnaires had something else, something bigger. From way back, there was a blast, followed by an explosion not 10 meters from Ryck. Khouri and Stillwell’s icons went grey.

“Khouri, you OK?” he asked, knowing he wouldn’t get a response.

The lieutenant was shouting orders over the circuit, trying to get frontage covered as Marines were knocked out. Ryck fired his re
maining rockets at the far weapon, whatever it was. The moment it fired, though, it was withdrawn behind a tree, and all of Ryck’s rockets impacted on the trees between them. Ryck knew it would take timing and luck to take the weapon out with a rocket. It fired again, but the same trees that protected it gave it a limited field of fire of its own, and it nicked a tree, enough to throw the round off target. It impacted into the dirt in front of one of Second Squad’s position, showering the Marines with clods of dirt.

Martin’s icon went grey. There hadn’t been an explosion, so a hadron beam must have gotten him. Three of Ryck’s squad
were already gone. Ryck couldn’t keep track, of the entire battlefield, but he only knew of three legionnaires down.

The legionnaire
s’ headlong rush had stopped. They had thought to run over the Marines, but the defensive fire was too heavy. However, using the trees as protection, they started a war of attrition. Their big gun, whatever it was, kept pounding away, taking out five Marines from First from the center of the line.

Ryck kept watching the ammo counts of his squad dwindle. Hartono fired his plasma gun, but the distance, coupled with the smoke which lingered, dissipated the beam, and if it hit anyone,
the legionnaire’s armor was more than able to withstand it. To make matters worse, Hartono’s power supply dropped to 38% after firing.

“Hartono, no more P-guns.
We’re too far. That goes for everyone, only at point-blank range!” he passed.

Ryck leveled his M-77 and chewed up a tree in back of which a legionnaire stood. It was only 50 cm across, so it couldn’t give the legionnaire complete cover, but it offered a degree of protection. Ryck’s 8mm darts quickly chewed through the wood, dropping the tree, and the legionnaire ran to the next one. Ryck knew his darts hit him, but they didn’t slow the man down.

Keiji scored another hit on a legionnaire 80 meters away. This was the second hit at the same spot, and it blew off the arm of the R-3.

“The arms are not as strong as the torso,” Ryck passed on the platoon circuit. “Try for that!”

“You heard him,” the lieutenant followed up. “Aim for the extremities.”

With the Marine
s firing, it was difficult for the legionnaire’s to hold their hadron guns on target long enough to take out a Marine. The effect was cumulative, though, if they could hit the Marines often enough in a short period of time. Twice now, Ryck had been hit, but each time for only seconds before answering fire made the legionnaire firing at him break off to take cover. His shielding was down to 82%, though.

Their most ef
fective remaining weapon was their HGL. There were only six Marines, though, with functional HGLs, and they were running low on ammo. When those rounds ran out, there wasn’t much that would keep the legionnaires from concentrating their hadron guns on them. Ryck didn’t know how many charges the hadron guns had, but they could fire much, much longer than the Marines’ plasma guns.

“Lieutenant, Keiji and Holleran are down to a 10% load each. Do you think it’s time?”
Ryck asked?

“They’re still too far away,” the lieutenant replied. “Too much time exposed.”

Another explosion sounded down the line, and two more icons went grey.

“I’ve got two more down,” Cpl St. Cyr
passed, his voice fast and excited. “We’re getting slammed.”

The lieutenant had put Second Squad in the middle, thinking the two squads with more experienced squad leaders could help support him. Instead
, the squad had been taking the brunt of the fire.

“Lieutenant, we didn’t figure they’d have some sort of big gun, and it’s going to eat us up. Maybe we’ve just got to go for it?” SSgt Hecs said.

There was a pause, then the lieutenant answered, “Maybe you’re right. OK, Third, tell your two HGL gunners to cease fire. First, tell one of yours. Maybe they’ll think they are out of ammo and advance. The rest of you, you know the plan. Get ready. I’ll give the command, but it will be soon.

This is crazy
, Ryck thought,
but who the hell knows?

Standing pat was a sure path to defeat, he knew.
In previous engagements over the last 50 years, the Marines always had the technological advantage. But this time, the difference in energy weapons was the deciding factor. The R-3 might not be as good as they thought, but the hadron gun was light years ahead of the Marines’ P-guns.

Ryck took out his six toads. Ryck was perhaps the only living Marine who had ever taken out an enemy with a toad. They were not designed for fighting but rather burning through things
, but watching Evans burn the Gazelle launcher and Prifit’s PICS had convinced Ryck that they would burn through the R-3 armor. After getting a close-up look at it, Ryck couldn’t believe the R-3 armor itself was stronger than the PICS LTC
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armor.

Cpl Evans had given him two of his much more powerful bullfrogs. Now all Ryck had to do was to somehow get them on the legionnaires. Both the toads and bullfrogs were sticky lumps of synthetic
pyro, and once put on something, they stuck, so even tossing them at a legionnaire would work. But it was a fair bet that a legionnaire wouldn’t just stand there and play catch.

Ryck coated his right gauntlet with the sil
icon spray that would keep the little hellfires from sticking to his hand. He was ready. Another icon, this one in First Squad, went grey.

“You ready, Ryck?” the lieutenant asked. “I think you’ll appreciate this.”

Ryck wondered what his platoon commander meant.

“
Come on you sons-o’-bitches! Do you want to live forever?” the lieutenant shouted as en masse, the bulk of the platoon got out of their fighting holes and charge forward.

Despite himself, Ryck laughed out loud as he left the slight safety of his hole. They were going “over the top,” so what better quote? Dan Daly would be proud. And just as in Belleau Wood so many years ago, the Marines answered the call.

Immediately, hadron beams lanced out at them. If the legionnaires had been surprised at the charge, the certainly recovered quickly. Ryck was aware of the beam, aware of his shields going down, but he pushed forward. He angled to where Evans had set up his own mines, where the legionnaires were avoiding. Then he angled back. He had to get close. It took him only five seconds once under fire to close the distance, and suddenly, there not five meters in front of him, was a legionnaire, stepping backwards, gunport open, and covering him with fire.