Dragon Two-Zero (Fury's Fire Book 1)

by William McCaskey

  Wolf weighed her words carefully, knowing instinctively that she was treading on thin ice. She took a deep breath before speaking; her voice was even, but the desire to know the truth was evident in her tone. “I heard Drassick cost almost the full contingent of Marines aboard the Resolute; that the LT's brother was part of one of the Recon teams sent down to scope the scene and got balled up. Scuttlebutt was that the Drassick CEO was playing both sides and trying to keep more for himself. Did you really toss him out a window?"

  The silence between the two Marines grew until Wolf began to believe that her squad leader was simply going to ignore the questions. "Nikolai, the LT's brother's name was Nikolai.”

  Another long pause had Wolf thinking about the countless post-mission reports she would happily wipe from her mind, some she wrote, some she had read from other Recon operations, and the one she was going to write about that village. When the Staff Sergeant started speaking again, she listened hard.

  “We'd been hunting the ringleaders when his team hit the booby trap. Killed the breach man and the rest of the lead team in the entryway to the Governor’s office building. We marked the location for their tags to be recovered and went in after the fucks. Hundred and twelfth floor was the CEO's office. We lost two platoons from a booby trap on the roof, so we hiked it up. Found the big man in his office, two of the Party leaders with him. Breach man took a shredder round through his throat. CEO started screaming that they were holding him hostage. Guess he forgot he was the only one holding a rail-shot in his hand. The Party leaders were taken into custody, a little banged up but alive. CEO followed his chair out the window. Shame really, it was a nice chair."

  Wolf was stunned; the Renks were masters of propaganda, but for a CEO to throw in his prospects with the PSPU was almost unheard of. The Alliance allowed CEO's to run their planets as they saw fit as long as the employees received an honest wage and safety standards were met. Some worlds ran under dictatorships, where others operated more democratically; the overruling authority lay in the Alliance’s hands though. Treating your employees like shit was bad for business and, at the least, resulted in embargoes; at the most, extreme action from the Fleet. It was what made the Alliance so powerful: capitalism in its purest form.

  "What happened to the employees?" Wolf asked. Usually, the answer was removing the head of the Company; rarely did the fleet resort to burning a planet.

  Reaver shrugged as if the results of the fleet’s actions on Drassick didn't matter to him. “They held elections, told the outgoing CEO's family to get off the planet, and got back to work. Majority of them hadn't realized the Renks were influencing the riots; they had gone with it cause of shitty conditions. It was a faction of them that had alerted Alliance to the problems. Factories were churning out product two weeks after we left, business as usual."

  Wolf paused for a moment, then asked the question Reaver had left unanswered. “Nikolai’s team? They were yours, weren't they?"

  Reaver's head finally turned so he could look full at her. With his visor pushed up his helmet rode low, covering his forehead and ending just above his eyebrows. None of his light brown hair was visible from beneath his helmet. Wolf knew Reaver had had his hair cut into a high and tight prior to their rendezvous with the Carolina; it was a ritual she had noticed he kept to, cutting it down before every drop. His eyes were dark blue, black when the light struck them at the right angle. They hid his thoughts as well as the stern line his thin lips cut into the tanned skin of his face, which he was more apt to wear than a smile. For the first time, Wolf could see the swirl of emotions in her Staff Sergeant's eyes. A good leader cared about their soldiers, and the answer to her question was evident before he even opened his mouth to respond. “Yeah, they were mine; and I got them home. At least I kept that promise." Silence descended between the two noncommissioned officers, Wolf chewing on what she had learned about her squad leader.

  As Wolf kept her thoughts to herself, Reaver shifted his concentration back to his security. Before Wolf could come up with a way to change the subject, Reaver beat her to it. “Got family, Wolf?"

  Wolf nodded and smiled as her thoughts turned to her wife and daughter. “Married for four years. She's an engineer. We've got a little girl, two years old in a month and already walking. Scary how fast they grow up. What about you, Boss? Married? Kids?

  Reaver shook his head. “Was married, but she didn't like being alone. Decided my bank account would make up for three years of my being gone every six to eight months. Since the divorce, most time I've spent hardside has been on drops. We never got around to having kids. Thank God for small miracles."

  Wolf chuckled softly. “No shit, small miracles. At least you aren't still on the hook to that bitch."

  Reaver grunted his agreement. “Go get some sleep, Wolf. I got a feeling tomorrow is gonna be a long one."

  Wolf slapped her squad leader on the shoulder and smoothly rose from the prone to her knees. A quick brush of her hands down the front of her uniform removed the largest pieces of dirt and foliage, then Wolf stood and made her way toward where she had laid out her bedroll. Laying out on top of the material, Wolf laced her fingers behind her head and looked up at the forest canopy. She slowed her breathing and her eyes began to drift shut. The last thought before sleep claimed her was that as much as she hoped Reaver was wrong about tomorrow, something told her that her squad leader was on to something.

  The hours passed uneventfully until the last watch had passed, the sun had set, and the squad of Marines was preparing to cover the final stretch of distance between them and their primary objective. With packs shouldered and the area swept clear to ensure no sign remained of the Marines' presence, Reaver and the six Marines who had made the shift from outside the bramble wall stood in the same spot where they had arrived. With the use of his command screen, Reaver ensured his squad shifted at the same time, reappearing where they had disappeared from hours prior. The lines burned into the forest floor by electrical feedback were gone, erased by the return shift. By the time Alice had crawled from the hole used to gain passage through the wall, the rest of the squad was ready to move out. Bull handed the sniper her pack, which she shouldered easily. With the squad reassembled Reaver gave the move out hand sign, and Harlequin, who was now on point, led the way through the night-dark forest.

  The depths of the forest would have been a dim twilight eve at the sun's highest point, the dense canopy preventing all but the most persistent glow to penetrate to the forest floor. The night was the blue-black of a cloud-covered new moon, the thick trunks of the trees seeming to absorb any glimmer of star or moonlight that snuck through a break in the foliage, visible to un-enhanced eyesight only at the last moment before smacking into one. It was through this darkness that the Marines preferred to move; the retractable visors of their helmets enabled different modes of vision, including dark sight filters, which increased what the wearer could see inversely proportional to the light present. With dark sight activated, the squad could find its way through the darkest areas as efficiently as during daylight hours.

  Reaver kept his squad marching through moonset. Water pouches self-contained in the shoulder straps of the Marines' combat vests were refilled at discovered streams; they drained the entire before refilling it, and the internal filtering system went to work. The most efficient place to store water was in their bodies. The scent of salt on the wind hinted at the nearness of the ocean and the Marines' destination. Craxus was located on the southwestern coast, and where the northernmost cities focused on fishing and whaling, the southern climes leaned more toward subaquatic hydroponic farms. In the pre-dawn light, Space Case was the first to spot a signature of Craxus, the silhouettes of the cranes at the city docks rising high enough to be visible even before the buildings in the city proper.

  Space Case signaled the halt, and Reaver and the rest of the Marines hunkered down in a draw, keeping the body of a hill between them and the city. While Reaver, Wolf, and Bull met and decided on a pl
an of action, the remainder of the squad formed a ring around them to pull security. Sunrise was no more than an hour away, and the squad needed to establish a communications and fallback position. Wolf and Bravo team would handle that side of operations while Reaver would lead Alpha team down to take a closer look at the city. Reaver called Bard over and motioned for him to set up the comms-box. As soon as the radio was operational and a secure signal had been confirmed, Reaver plugged in his auxiliary communications cable and opened a line to Fury’s Fire. "Fury’s Fire, Dragon Two-Zero."

  The radio was silent long enough that Reaver was about to resend his transmission when the radio crackled to life, and the operator's voice came through his earbud. “Dragon Two-Zero, Fury’s Fire. Confirm Montresor."

  As the operator cut his signal, Reaver was ready with the confirmation reply. “Nemo me impune lacessit."

  The time between the end of Reaver's reply and the click of the operator coming back online was significantly longer than the time it had taken Reaver to remember the correct response; apparently, the Lieutenant wasn’t right next to the operator. Eventually, the voice of Lieutenant Davis came across the airwaves. “Dragon Two-Zero, Dragon Six. Your crew in place?"

  "Just about. We have eyes on the objective, and we'll be stepping off for a peek at nightfall." Reaver answered his lieutenant, waiting for the opportunity to find out if the other Recon teams had found anything else.

  It's often remarked as uncanny, the ability for leaders to pick up on the information their subordinates want to know; those who know understand that it's only the leaders who have been there and genuinely put their troops first that can preempt a question with an answer. Call it insight, call it the bond shared between warriors, call it what you will, the officers and noncommissioned officers of Marine Recon shared it. "Keep your eyes open, Reaver. The silence of that rock is getting deafening up here. A few more outlying villages have been found in similar states to what you saw, and still no sign of..." The signal dropped unexpectedly. An echoing crash, like the clap of thunder directly over a house, caught each Marine off guard, and the accompanying shockwave sent them tumbling to the ground.

  "Madre di Dios!" The exclamation from Titan turned the entire squad's attention to where he was looking, and the low mushroom cloud rising from the direction of the city.

  "Up the hill!" Reaver commanded, his voice loud enough for his squad to hear him without the sub-vocal mics. No time to push a button. A cloud like that meant all bets were off and the likelihood of enemy in the area had skyrocketed. Reaver knew he needed to get eyes on the city to see what had transpired so he could give the lieutenant an accurate picture. The Marines scurried up the hill, stopping just below the crest. Staying low and moving slowly to avoid drawing any potential observers' attention, eight pairs of eyes peered over the hill and down to the inferno that had once been a cityscape. Reaver's breath caught in his throat as the extent of the firestorm before him came into focus; the city burned as well as the ocean. The positions of the hydroponic farms could be picked out by the jets of flame erupting from the water’s surface, though the flames quickly extinguished, replaced by a rapidly spreading sheet of steam that in short order hid miles of ocean under a blanket of white haze.

  The bud in Reaver's ear squealed painfully before settling into a loud static hiss. Lieutenant Davis's voice could barely be deciphered below the static, difficult to make out but understandable. “...drops incoming. Reaver, if you can read me, prep for contact. The Renks ambushed the fleet. We're seeing massive spikes of troops already on the ground, and they are launching landers. Somehow, they got us. We'll try to get help to you...shit's hitting the fan here. Stay alive, no more rubies..." The radio cut out again, and this time the signal light blinked off.

  Chapter Ten

  "No more rubies." The Lieutenant's last words before the connection dropped. It wasn't uncommon for Recon to become a family tradition, and there were plenty of brothers and sisters serving in different teams; but with an operation of this scale, you could almost guarantee some of those siblings were hardside at this rock, probably closer to the other than they had been in years. These thoughts lingered in Reaver's mind as he and the Marines of his squad picked their way through the smoldering ruins of Craxus.

  Since losing contact with the fleet overhead, Bard had managed to patch the Recon squad into a makeshift communications net spanning the entire continent. Using each squad, spread across the continent to establish observation posts and develop intel for follow-on missions, as relay and signal bounce points, the Recon Marines were able to get an idea of what was happening on both on the ground and in space.

  The team had learned of the death of the cruiser, Heaven's Hammer, along with nearly three-quarters of her task force. Reports had come in that teams on the east coast had spotted the silhouette of the cruiser in the upper atmosphere. Every team had turned the volume of the GUARD channel a bit higher to keep an ear for recovery signals from the lifeboats.

  Teams in the other three cities had already reported hard contact with enemy forces, while the teams seeded throughout the interior of the planet's primary landmass confirmed Lieutenant Davis's garbled report of energy blooms and heat signatures appearing from nowhere. Somehow the Renks had managed to hide the existence of their forces from orbital scans. There were too many questions bouncing in each Marine’s skull about how had they managed it, why were they here, what did they stand to gain? So, Recon did what their predecessors on old Earth had done when confusion reigned: attack. When in doubt, attack. For Reaver and his Marines, that meant keeping their heads down and finding their enemy before they found them.

  Harlequin was on point, discovering pathways through the twisted jungle of graphcrete rubble and graphsteel debris torn from the surrounding buildings and littering the road with the ease of one raised on one of the few massive city-planets. They avoided the main thoroughfare; the path was more cluttered, but the hope was to slip past any unseen observers. The Marines' new objective, set by Reaver and the squad leaders of other Recon teams operating in the area, lay beyond the northern border wall of Craxus. Establishing a base of operations would give the Marines a place to launch their own attacks, as well as secure a landing area for the incoming Hawks and assault boats.

  The growing tang of salt in their mouths and nostrils with the rising sound of waves crashing told them their chosen path was winding them closer to the docks. While around them the crackling of smoldering fires mixed with the smell of charred wood and the sulphuric scent of melted graphsteel support beams set their nerves on edge, the random pops of electrical machinery short-circuiting frayed them further.

  The crashing of the waves almost hid the round's snap as it tore through the sound barrier. Almost. The Marines dove for cover, huddling behind collapsed pieces of wall while Reaver and Alice ducked into a relatively intact doorway. Still the most forward element of the squad, Harlequin slid his hands quickly over his body then grabbed at his crotch, checking for a hit, a strained chuckle escaping his lips when he realized he hadn't been struck. "So, umm sniper," he called out to his squadmates behind him.

  "No shit, Quinn. Where the fuck is he?" Titan snapped from behind his own cover, a hunk of graphcrete that looked as though it had been punched from one of the surrounding buildings by a giant fist.

  Harlequin slid along the backside of the rubble he crouched behind, laying his rifle down in front of him and slipping his arms from the straps of his rucksack as he moved. He let the bag drop to the ground for better mobility. Placing his hands, palms down, near the left base of the rubble, Harlequin took two breaths then leaned forward, bracing himself as his shoulders moved past his hands and his head cleared the left side of the debris he was using as cover. A peek, no longer than three seconds, and his head darted back into cover; a quick shift and he was facing the debris in a low squat with his hands pressed against the rubble itself. This time he stood up, enough for his eyes to top the debris and give him a clear field of view. Again
, he exposed himself no more than three seconds, though this time a round snapped over his head as he dropped back behind cover. The whistle of the round cutting through the space where his head had been moments prior was audible to the Recon sniper, as the crack of the shot impacting and ricocheting from the rubble where Bard and Wolf huddled was audible to the rest of the squad.

  Harlequin secured his rifle and glared at the rubble he crouched behind as if trying to pierce through to get a visual on the enemy sniper. Making a check to ensure his comms equipment hadn't been damaged, then switching to the squad frequency, Harlequin thumbed the push-to-talk switch embedded in the stock of his rifle slightly above the natural thumb rest of his firing hand and spoke into the transmitters set into the collar of his combat shirt. "Flash was about three hundred meters down the alley, building just beyond the next crossroad, left side. Looks like fifth or sixth floor. No shot from here. Bull, want to give him something to take his mind off us?"

  Releasing the switch, Harlequin smiled to himself. If Bull was the trigger puller on this, then the squad would be able to move easily past this chokepoint. Granted, that was if this fuck hadn't called for backup, but Quinn didn't want to give that worry any power.

  As Harlequin finished calling out the sniper's position, Bull shifted his pack from his shoulders and let it fall to the ground beside him. Bull's size granted him a marked advantage in the weapons he could operate, and Recon gave him the opportunity to play with the best toys. His go-to choice for this mission had been his standard Ogre with round-select drum magazines. Most often used on light armored transport vehicles as an all-purpose defense weapon, the assault cannon had the capability of allowing its operator to select and fire a variety of specialty rounds, depending on the situation and target, all without the trigger puller having to change magazines. Bull loaded his own magazines and had worked with Alice to modify his cannon for use as an individual weapon; the shortened barrel limited its range to just under eight hundred meters. The modified stock, trigger housing, and close combat optics increased his control and accuracy. When necessary, bipod legs could be swung out from beneath the barrel's heat shield to stabilize the weapon.