“Don’t compare me to him!”
“Then stop being a dick and get your head screwed back on.” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, exasperated. “I’ve been trying to connect with you, help you get through losing your best friend. And all you do is push me away.”
Rizer couldn’t disagree and felt guilty for his actions. You didn’t want to see her, but you didn’t say no to Leone. “Look, I’m sorry shit played out like that. It’s nothing personal. I, I just need to sort this out on my own, at least for right now.”
“I see. And I guess I’m supposed to wait around dutifully until you do?”
He bit his tongue a moment before replying, “I never said that.”
“Don’t sound like you care so much. Sign the pad already.”
He did, then turned to leave. “I’ll see you around, okay?”
“No, you won’t.” She had tears in her eyes. “You won’t be back. They always leave, just like I told you.”
***
Rizer walked like a zombie toward the barracks rec room for the mission briefing. The clock above the door read 0156. Jesus, what the fuck is it this time? Big, whatever it was; SSgt Len ordered the entire platoon to this briefing.
“Git some!” shouted one of the boots, followed by a bark from another and several shut-the-fuck-ups from the veterans.
“Some action finally!” said PFC Nixon. You’ve only been here five days!
Catalano announced, “Gonna shoot some motherfuckers today.”
“You do know they shoot back, right?” responded LCpl Hogue, third fire team leader.
“No way!” Bach said. “Thank God I’ve never been hit.” The salty ones laughed.
“One shot, one kill, that’s a hundred dead Vics in every mag, baby!” gushed Pena.
“All of you boots shut your sucks,” Rizer said. “Anybody can talk it—today we’ll see who can walk it. Pay attention and you might just live to see tomorrow.”
“I ain’t afraid of nothin’, corporal,” Pena said.
Rizer got in his face. “That’s because you’ve never seen nothin’! And until you have, you’ll keep this fucking thing closed.” He flicked Pena’s jaw with his index finger. “Is that clear?”
Pena stood there, good and cowed. “Aye, corporal!”
“Now file the fuck in; let’s go!” Rizer ordered.
The boots couldn’t move fast enough to please him. “Look at you,” Stiglitz said as he passed. “King Baltazar the Second!”
Though Rizer chuckled, the accusation needled him. Am I that bad? Was I as bad as they are? That stupid? He knew he had been, minus all the verbal chest-pounding; he’d kept his overconfidence to himself. Hagel and Bach had most resembled the new boots—now one was dead, the other a revenant cobbled together with prosthetics and a fatalistic attitude. But there was no telling the boots that. Some things—combat in particular—a man had to experience for himself.
They might be believers if they survive today.
SSgt Len arrived after they’d assembled. Lt Dupaul did not. He’ll sleep until we drop, can’t miss the show from the tactical operations center. Hope the TOC gives him a good view of a real Marine.
“Listen up. Today’s patrol is a search and destroy mission in the vicinity of the Excelsior, a mine and tridinium processing facility.” A holographic map appeared next to Len. “BM employees have reported numerous Vics in the area. We will sweep through and eliminate any we encounter.”
Shit!
The Excelsior plant and nearby worker’s camp were only thirty-eight klicks away. The enemy had never strayed so close to Shaw in force. Stiglitz mentioned their close proximity to Len.
The staff sergeant responded, “I’ve noticed. However intel doesn’t believe this is a concentrated enemy offensive. Pockets of insurgents and their Union advisors are growing bolder, coming closer as their numbers increase. Our job is to push them back.”
The command now admitted that there were small numbers of Union troops on Verdant. The galactic news feeds covered their presence, even interviewing them in the field. The Union continued to deny direct involvement, however, claiming the Union citizens on Verdant were volunteers or mercenaries hired by the insurgency and not GU army personnel.
SSgt Len continued with the scheme of maneuver, “First platoon will be working to our east.” A dim starting point and patrol route came up on the holo-map. “We will insert via Scorpions just to the south of Excelsior.” A brighter blip appeared with a path leading up from it. “Then we work our way north through the camp to the mine and processing plant, which we will secure if necessary. BM officials have heard nothing from Excelsior in over a day, so this is high priority.”
The boot Nixon raised his hand. “Staff sergeant, what’s BM?”
“Your employer, stupid,” said LCpl Hill from third team, eliciting a few laughs.
“Huh?” Nixon responded, ramping up the vets’ laughter.
“That’s enough,” Len briefly explained the unholy alliance between Babcock-Mauer Industries and the Corps.
“I don’t get it, staff sergeant,” said Harper, another boot PFC. “Do we work for them?”
Basically.
“You’re a Marine, son, and today you work for me. Doom Squad will lead. I’m with you today, Corporal Rizer.”
Rizer nodded. “Outstanding, staff sergeant. Sergeant Stiglitz finally got to you?”
“Finally?” Even the boots laughed at Len’s deadpan response; they’d been around long enough to get the measure of Stiglitz. He allowed the laughter for a few moments before saying, “Knock it off; we still have ground to cover. Let’s go over the finer points now.”
***
With the right front wheel blown askew by a mine, an empty yellow BM dump truck blocked the road leading to the Excelsior facility. No sign of the driver.
“God damn, look at that flock of chickens,” Hogue said over the radio.
In the vicinity of the Excelsior mining camp, avian silhouettes circled and dove in the distance against the first light of dawn. Feathered and scaled with toothy beaks, the Marines referred to the large carrion scavengers as hell chickens.
Dozens of circular warning dots appeared on Rizer’s HUD, an orange river of landmines flowing up the road into camp. “Those are just the ones we can sense, staff sergeant,” Scrap reported. “They may have planted more under sensor-scattering measures. It’ll take all morning to get up this road.”
While we stand around in the kill chute, waiting to get slaughtered.
Len was too shrewd to let that happen. “We’ll parallel the road through the jungle on the east side. Keep your distances between squads and teams. Get back on point, Scrap; let’s move.”
“This sacrificial lamb bit is getting old,” the bot muttered as he took point in front of Rizer and Len to probe.
“Pathetic! Complete lack of motivation!” Butler said as Scrap walked by. The assault bots also moved with first team.
“Just stay strong and stupid!” Scrap fired back.
Half a klick later, after he’d found no traps or mines, he halted the platoon. “A significant force has been here recently, staff sergeant.” He pointed around the area as first team took defensive postures. “There are footprints from at least a dozen men… some ration wrappers over there… and that area’s all beat to shit. Looks like they exited there.” He pointed toward an obvious trail hacked through the jungle undergrowth, leading east and away from the camp.
“Any lingering heat signatures?”
“Faint. They’ve been gone at least ten minutes, no more than twenty.”
Len took a moment to ponder their next move. Will he order us to follow the obvious trail? This was a search and destroy mission, after all. “Continue to camp. And keep your eyes out to the east.”
Rizer liked the call; he would have done the same. That trail probably led to an ambush. He’ll likely flank around to the east after we secure the town, try to hit
them from a different approach.
Doom lensed the mining camp from the jungle tree line a few minutes later. Several prefab buildings of different sizes sat in an oblong clearing roughly ninety meters by sixty. At the camp’s north end stood a cylindrical blue water tank about twenty meters high, where the hell chickens swooped and feasted on the bloated remains of several men hanged over the side, nooses around their necks. Other than the birds, sensors and visuals picked up no traces of anything living in the camp, yet over the next low hill, orange smoke belched from the stacks at the tridinium processing facility, the plant working at full capacity.
Weird. Rizer’s guts tightened in apprehension.
Scrap: NO EXPLOSIVES DETECTED.
Len broadcast his orders: FURY SECURE CLEARING WEST PERIMETER, EVIL EAST PERIMETER. DOOM AND GHOST SECURE CAMP.
The clearing had been logged out, as opposed to burned. Doom led Ghost as they double-timed to the camp through tall grass, lush and green. The road ran past the east side of camp, then onward over the hill to the plant. Len sent Ghost to clear two houses by the road; he led Doom into an open area about ten meters by fifteen in the center of camp, a rectangle with buildings on three sides. Third and fourth teams entered a long building on the right, while Len ordered first and second to clear the building on the left, which housed two work areas reached by low flights of wooden stairs. Second team moved for the left door; Len and Rizer led first team to the right.
A plastic sign hung next to the door. Someone had attempted to scribble out the words with a knife, nearly succeeding, but Rizer made out: BABCOCK-MAUER INDUSTRIES EXCELSIOR ADMINISTRATION.
They barged into the office, moving quickly as they cleared every corner and closet. Nothing, save for a few scattered spatters of blood. CHOW HALL OVER HERE SSGT, reported Cpl Calder on fourth team, ALL CLEAR.
COMPANY STORE CLEAR, came Leone’s text.
Ghost reported the houses empty, though they appeared lived in, as did the empty workers’ barracks the squads cleared next. They then searched a large equipment shed packed with tools and two-wheel loaders yet no personnel.
“They’re all at work over the hill,” Bach said as they departed the shed to stand before the water tank.
“This seems to be the hot spot around here.” Stiglitz gazed up at the chickens feasting on the four hanged men. Each wore a crudely painted sign around his neck: COMMERCIAL PIG; BM FATKAT; ALLIANCE INVADER; OOHRAH YOUR NEXT!
And you can’t tell your from you’re.
“Cute,” Bach said. “Optimistic fellows, our enemy.”
“We’ll see about that when we get over there.” Len pointed to the smokestacks.
Marine rifles and machineguns opened up at the eastern tree line.
We’ll see right now!
The platoon net came to life. “Engaging hostiles!” reported Sgt Flynn, Evil’s squad leader. “Platoon strength at least!” The tree line wasn’t far; many red enemy dots appeared on Rizer’s HUD, advancing toward Evil.
“More tangos over here!” called Cpl Barham of Fury Squad from the western tree line across the road. “Shitload of ’em!”
“Ghost, support Fury! Doom, cover Evil!” Len ordered.
Projectiles overshot Fury and Evil to fly into the camp, tearing at the prefab buildings and pinging off the thick steel water tank. Doom and Ghost took cover and started setting up their machineguns to provide supporting fire. First team positioned in the alley between the equipment shed and the rear of the barracks; second between the barracks and chow hall.
The alarming number of enemy dots multiplied on Rizer’s HUD.
“We need fire support!” Rizer said.
“Working on it,” Len responded. A moment later he added, “Shit! Nets are jammed!”
Bach got his light machinegun in position and fired; Butler and Victis joined in a moment later, the M-411’s fire a constant, throaty roar as they sent streams of crimson bolts down range.
“Eat this, scumbags!” Victis cried.
Rizer didn’t know if any of his rounds hit home as the bolts snapped into the dark tree line. The number of dots kept growing either way. Four casualties from Fury and Evil had already appeared on Rizer’s display.
A keening whistle sliced into his ears. “Incoming!”
Mortar rounds rained down, each spitting thousands of tungsten fragments in a twenty-five–meter arc. Most of them fell long, just to the north of camp. Ghost and Doom suffered no casualties, only a bit of inconvenience when one round detonated at the base of the water tank. Water roared through a tear in the steel.
“What the fuck!” Stiglitz shouted as his position flooded.
Rizer tried calling for fire directly on the net—perhaps Len’s comm was to blame—yet he too was unable to transmit through constant static and high-pitched squelches. He switched to a different net. Same thing. Only the squad and platoon proximity nets still functioned. Must be jamming us!
“Contact north, contact north!” Pena shouted, turning to fire on three enemy LAVs that had come over the hill from the plant. Supplied by the Union, the lightly armored, tri-axle vehicles were highly mobile and packed a nasty punch with their turret-mounted weapons.
We are fucked!
Rizer fired on them as they opened up with laser cannons. Two high-energy beams vaporized the walls of the equipment in an explosion of heat that drove Rizer, Pena, and Bach into cover on the dry side of the water tank.
As he laid into a still-invisible enemy, Victis crowed, “Vae Victis!” The next mortar salvo proved more accurate. It landed at his heels a moment later, silencing Victis forever and his minigun for the moment.
Butler, kneeling next to him, lost a leg in a shower of sparks before another tremendous explosion slammed him into the barracks wall. “Down!” he cried. “Fight on, Marines!”
“Evil, fall back to camp!” Len ordered. “Fury, hold the west line.”
Rizer figured he planned to bug out to the west if possible. With the southern road mined, the east enemy territory, and the LAVs to the north, it was the only possible escape route.
Mortars and laser blasts continued to tear the camp apart. LCPL HILL KIA. PFC NIXON KIA. A laser beam struck the water tank above Rizer’s head, tore another hole in it, but the water had already drained out.
The scene seemed surreal to Rizer as shells crashed all around them. Fragments whirred by, and an increasing volume of rounds snapped overhead. He found himself watching in detached fascination as the shock of the moment blurred his senses.
Madness!
Flattened on the deck, he spotted Victis’ minigun about five meters away. Ammo belts, along with a full metal crate of machinegun rounds, lay scattered around Butler, who sparked a few meters from Victis.
“Bach, get Butler’s ammo! I’ll take the minigun.”
“Right!” Bach remained miraculously uninjured for once.
Len noticed what Rizer was doing. “Bach, give me your MG! I’ll hold ’em off!”
Bach tossed Len the M-251 and a couple of belts. Rizer grabbed the minigun and darted over to join Len.
“No!” Len shouted. “Take the mini and get out! I’ve got your back!” He opened fire when the enemy appeared at the east tree line.
The insurgents picked off Evil Marines as they fled to the camp under heavy fire, yet the return fire from Len and Doom drew some of their rounds. Evil’s KIAs flashed so rapidly on Rizer’s HUD that he thought he was reading a stock ticker.
“Go!” Len ordered Rizer, followed by, “Doom, Ghost, Evil, pull back to west tree line and evac!”
“Dead! They’re all dead!” cried a boot from Evil, the only survivor of their retreat.
Rizer wanted to believe him, but the medic icons on the map display told him otherwise. Nothing could be done for the seriously wounded men out there. To remain here was suicide.
“Shut up; let’s go!” Leone grabbed the panicked kid’s arm and pulled him westward.
“Com
e on, staff sergeant!” Rizer said.
Len waved him off. “Go! That’s an order!”
They fell back. Bursts of cyan plasma zipped and cracked around them, tossing up fountains of dirt at their feet. Pena pitched over at Rizer’s side. PFC PENA KIA flashed on his visor. A plasma bolt had taken him out, leaving him with a smoking fist-size hole blown through his belly.
“Dammit!” Len blanched. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Rizer peered back one final time. Len lay prone in cover behind a ragged chunk of Victis’ body, laying into the enemy as they advanced into the field. It pained him to leave, and the fact there were wounded Marines still on the field tore at his guts.
Indecisive Rizer froze. Fuck his order; get up there! Don’t leave him to die alone!
Len’s head snapped back when a round took him in the visor, passing through and exiting in a gout of red and gray goop.
Rizer stared dumbfounded, his mind not accepting the reality he saw.
“He’s done, Rizer; let’s go!” Bach shouted into his face, snapping him out of the trance.
SSGT LEN KIA. You’re going home.
Rizer turned and fled.
He and Bach slogged through the morass at the base of the water tank to avoid laser fire from the north. Loaded down with the bulky minigun and its heavy ammo, neither could move very fast, despite the neural-muscular assistance of the suits. Behind the other Marines, Rizer and Bach lumbered forth from the camp. They ran, or tried to, in a zig-zag pattern to avoid fire as they crossed the short field to the tree line.
“How much ammo you got?” Bach asked.
Rizer glanced into the metal ammo crate attached to the gun. “Damn near the whole box!” The minigun and ammo weighed at least fifty kilos.
An explosion sounded from the north, when a Marine at the tree line took out an LAV with a rocket. It sat immobile and smoking in the road, while the crew bailed out. Rizer could see the remnants of second platoon hunkered down over there, fighting desperately. Half the Marines fired into the jungle, the others at the approaching LAVs.
He saw on his HUD that Stiglitz was still alive and radioed him on the platoon net.
War's Edge- Dead Heroes Page 37
