Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series

by C. J. Carella

  The alien super-tank wasn’t just prancing around in the open, either. It was gliding at a steady sixty miles an hour, taking a few potshots at the retreating Hellcats while it used dips in elevation and other terrain features to reduce its profile. It didn’t have a turret; its guns were spaced evenly among its three sides, each weapon pod covering a field of fire a hundred and twenty degrees wide. One of its secondaries opened up on a Hellcat that had ducked behind a boulder, and a stream of railgun slugs chewed through the granite like a monsoon hitting a spun sugar confection. The ‘cat ran for its life, barely outrunning the long burst and finding safety behind a hill.

  Russell turned off the drone feed; the Dragon had its own swatters and was knocking out the little robotic cameras by the cartload, so the view was beginning to deteriorate. He focused on his sight picture and assigned target. Five rounds rapid of 20mm armor-piercing might scratch the super-tank’s paint job, but the purpose of his shots was to drain a little bit of power from the force fields protecting the beast’s armored skin. He waited for the orders to fire.

  Artillery came first, a time-on-target barrage. The ADA systems on the super-tank and its Turtle escorts destroyed many of the shells, but plenty others broke through the area force field and struck both the Dragon and its escorts with multiple plasma penetrators. All four lightly-protected tankettes went up in flames; the behemoth’s own shields flickered but held.

  His aiming icon blinked green and he fired his five-round stonk as fast as he could cycle the launcher’s action. His shots were lost amidst a couple hundred guns of assorted varieties. A myriad beam and physical impacts turned the normally near-invisible outline of super-tank’s force field into a colorful bubble and wreathed it in flames before it collapsed.

  Nacle opened up with his Alsie a moment later as a second set of gunners took advantage of the shield’s failure, striking the Dragon’s hull just as another time-on-target artillery volley hit, every shell going off at the same time. Self-forging armor-piercers and plasma penetrators smashed into the ambulatory three-sided pyramid. A dozen molten spears hammered its top structure and made it ring so loudly Russell could hear the impacts over the other sounds of battle.

  The Viper death-machine continued advancing and returned fire before anybody could asses what damage the Marines had inflicted on it.

  A heavy railgun position six klicks back was devoured by a graviton blast that shaved off the top of the hill where it’d been emplaced. The poor Army bastards manning that weapon never knew what hit them. A Hellcat that had lingered too long to empty its missile load took a direct hit from another main gun and simply ceased to exist, swallowed by the twisting beam of compressed space-time. A sheaf of mortars bombs went off over Charlie Co’s firing positions; its area force fields held, for the time being at least.

  Every LAV available, twelve vehicles total, raised their hulls just enough for their main guns to clear cover and opened up. Russell and everyone with a ready weapon were instructed to fire at the same time.

  The brutal exchange that followed was like a high-tech version of a knife fight: the loser might end up in the morgue, but the winner would be lucky to end up in the emergency room. Or maybe it was like a beamer duel at five yards: nobody walked away from one of those.

  Something made the ground heave up under Russell’s feet. A moment later the rocky hill he’d been firing from settled down a good six or seven inches lower than it’d been a moment before. A grav-cannon hit, Russell figured. The Viper gunner had aimed low and killed a chunk of hill. A slightly higher angle would have ended with him and the whole squad getting spaghettified along the beam’s path. The thought was lost amidst the frenzy of shooting and reloading and shooting again. Portions of the Dragon’s armor were deforming under the rain of gravitons, plasma, hypervelocity rockets and a dozen other munition or energy types; molten craters formed as sections of its ultra-dense alloy splashed away, revealing cracks in the crystalline matrix of its hull’s second layer. The LAVs’ graviton guns were beginning to blast their way in, but only by exposing themselves.

  The Dragon shifted aim. Only two of its main guns were able to bear, but each of them scored a hit. An assault vehicle’s turret disappeared in a flash of light; another LAV was struck by a glancing shot that knocked out its shields and blotted out one of its (luckily empty) missile launchers. The outpour of fire slackened off. Some gunners were ducking for cover and refusing to follow their aiming directives; others had died at their posts. Either way, they weren’t shooting anymore.

  Fucker wouldn’t die. It just wouldn’t…

  The end was anticlimactic. The Dragon seemed to shudder, and one of its three weapon pods burst open from the inside; a power pack or some explosive ordnance must have gone off, Russell guessed. The super-tank’s three-hundred-ton hulk hit the ground like a dropped anvil and stopped fighting or moving. The Americans kept shooting at the lifeless pyramid for several seconds until the barked orders to check fire finally sunk in.

  Russell sipped some electrolyte-rich flavored water from the integral straw in his helmet. He wanted to raise his visor but there were too many fires raging nearby, spewing all kinds of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. Better let the filters do their jobs.

  “Can’t believe we killed it,” Nacle said. The barrel of his ALS-43 was hot enough to make the air shimmer around it.

  “Can’t believe it didn’t kill us first,” Russell said. All of us, that is, he corrected himself mentally. There were plenty of black status icons among the three platoons that had engaged the monster and the Army elements that had joined in the fun. And most of the Viper infantry was still in play; they weren’t coming out of their hidey-holes, not after their big daddy had bought it, but sooner or later an AI or a vehicle pilot with normal brains would assume command and herd them forward.

  The order to fall back and leave this section of the valley came in before the tangos did anything. Which meant the enemy had pushed through somewhere else and was threatening one of their flanks.

  The Marines were getting steamrolled. Slowly, and it was costing the aliens plenty, but all that mattered was the fact they no longer could hold their ground against the enemy.

  * * *

  “Danger close!”

  Ducking for cover inside a LAV was a mostly futile gesture; the best you could do was make sure you were strapped down tightly enough you didn’t bounce inside the armored confines of the compartment like dice in a bucket. Fromm still lowered his head when he heard the warning. A moment later, the shockwave from multiple fuel-air explosives reached the speeding vehicles of Charlie Company.

  The massive blasts were aimed at the leading edge of the Viper advance, their spread designed to allow the Marine rear guard to break contact as it fled east. Some of the explosions were close enough to knock out one of Charlie’s area force fields and stagger Fromm’s command vehicle. The drone feed showed that several Hellcats had been bowled over as well. They all managed to land on their feet and keep running, however. That was a relief, because stopping to pick up anybody forced to ditch out of their suit was likely suicide for everyone concerned.

  The Vipers had lost most of their heavy armor during their push towards Davistown, but at least two of their Dragons remained, versus a single surviving Marine MBT-5 and a company of antiquated Army Buford tanks that had been rushed forward to help out. Both sides were losing their heavies at a horrendous rate.

  About the only good news so far was that the local enemy force’s heavy artillery had been mostly destroyed inside their cargo dropships. That stroke of bad luck forced the Vipers to rely mostly on direct-fire weapons and their mortars; the advantage in artillery was probably the only reason the ETs were still bottled up in the valley.

  Other places hadn’t been so lucky. Eight Planetary Defense Bases were down, along with three entire MEUs – some two thousand Marines were confirmed KIA – plus tens of thousands militia and Army personnel. Civilians losses had passed the million mark. The primary
installations still remained, however, including PDB-18. If it was overrun, that would be pretty much it. The Vipers would be able to fly over most of Parthenon-Three’s eastern hemisphere, shifting troops at will and overwhelming the other half of the planet. At that point, even if Sixth Fleet came back and expelled the aliens, the system would be nearly useless as a staging base. You needed cities, factories and the people to man them to provide support for a fleet, not a collection of lifeless craters filled with molten slag.

  The total wipeout of the 73rd, 81st and 87th MEUs loomed large in Fromm’s mind. No battalion-sized Marine unit had ever been exterminated before, even during the darkest days of the First Intergalactic War, when the Corps had conducted planetary assaults with troops largely outfitted with pre-Contact weapons and equipment. This battle would go down in historical annals alongside Frozen Chosin and Guadalcanal. He was beginning to fear it might end up listed alongside Little Bighorn as well.

  Battalion outlined new orders for Charlie Company as the last echoes of the massive artillery barrage faded in the distance. Meet with Army mobile elements on the southern edge of Forge Valley; refit and resupply, then threaten the enemy’s flank as it advanced towards its final objective. If necessary, the troops could retreat through Miller’s Stream, following the river out of the valley. Such a retreat could only be authorized by the battalion commander, and Fromm had a feeling Brighton wouldn’t issue any such orders. This was a stand or die – or stand and die – situation. A Viper breakthrough at Miller’s Crossing would doom PDB-18 and tip the balance beyond recovery. Fromm would be expected to spend every last man and round under his command trying to slow down the attack.

  Fromm went over his remaining assets. He had about a dozen Hellcats left, along with just enough LAVs for the seventy or so effectives left in the company: the rest were all casualties, either too badly injured to fight or killed in action. His troops had managed to recover most of the latter’s bodies, but too many of them had left their bones somewhere in this damned valley. He shook his head, fighting sorrow and exhaustion. There was no time for either.

  The Army units he’d be joining forces with were a logistics platoon with plenty of spare ammo, and a motorized weapons company. Fromm went over their TOE: four assault platoons, each fielding four High Mobility Multi-Purpose Ground-Effect Vehicles, better known as ‘Hunters.’ Hunters had less than a third the force field strength and one fifth the armor of his LAVs, but their 25mm railguns and HAW missile launchers provided almost as much firepower. Mobility-wise, the hovercraft could keep up with the Marine vehicles over level terrain, but couldn’t climb over large obstacles or hover above ten yards off the ground, not that the ability to fly was all that useful in the face of Starfarer weapons that could engage anything peeking over the horizon from ungodly distances.

  On paper, the weapons company would more than double Fromm’s firepower. A quick check showed the company commander was a retired Marine who’d mustered out as an O-2 and had made captain in the Army some six months ago, so at least there’d be no arguments as to who was in command. There was a smattering of former Marine NCOs in the unit, but other than that the Army formation was a typical mix of mostly non-warp-rated locals doing their obligatory service and a core of long-term servicemen. Given the lack of hostile natives or even dangerous fauna on Parthenon-Three, all the combat experience of those troops would be virtual, except for a few of the former Marines. A very few: four non-coms had actually fought in earnest. None of the officers had. Going up against hardened Starfarer troops in a battle of maneuver would be one hell of a way to pop their cherry.

  All in a day’s work, Fromm thought as he raised US Army Captain Bradford Kruger, who was about to get his first taste of combat.

  * * *

  Four little Indians had become three, then two, and finally, after Lieutenant Morrell and Butcher and Bolt bought it, just one. Fimbul Winter stood alone against the barbarian hordes at the gate. Well, not completely alone, but Staff Sergeant Konrad Zimmer and his crew sure felt pretty damn lonely.

  Nobody was singing. They were all too tired and wrung-out for that.

  “Gunnery Pack One is up to fifty percent,” Mira said, startling Zimmer from his half-dozing state. He blinked stupidly at her for a moment. “We’ve got twenty-five war shots available, Zim.”

  “Okay, thanks.” That meant the Winter could stop hiding from the Vipers and come out to play again. The retreat towards Miller’s Crossing was threatening to become a rout. A lot of the Guard units were being a mite too enthusiastic about their change of location, and some of the Army pukes that were supposed to hold the rear weren’t holding shit. Not everybody, granted. The tank company that was currently slugging it out with the aliens while their tank recharged its power pack was a case in point. Captain Ryan was one tough bastard, and he was fighting his under-gunned and thin-skinned Bufords for all they were worth. The seventy-ton hover-tanks were only slightly more survivable than a LAV and their 90mm lasers couldn’t score one-shot kills on the Turtles or even a field genny, but those nine – down from their original fourteen – tanks, some odds-and-ends and Fimbul Winter were the only things standing between two retreating American divisions, or what was left of them, and an alien division or maybe an entire corps.

  The Vipers that had wiped out PDB-12 had force-marched the three hundred miles separating them from Forge Valley in an impressive three days and reinforced the third wave of landing pods and dropships, which were making it down with relative impunity now that only two PDBs could engage them on their final descent. It all added up to a really bad day in a really bad week.

  Zimmer shook his head. The important thing was, they’d reloaded half a power pack and were ready to fight. Time to observe and orient. The Winter was nominally under the command of Captain Ryan, but the Army tank commander had left him alone for the most part. As long as he didn’t seem to be malingering, he was free to do what he wanted. And he wanted to get a piece of Echo Tango.

  The current battle was being fought along I-10, which this far west was a graded gravel road two lanes wide cutting through a wooded plain except where it sneaked between medium-sized hills. The Army’s Alpha Company, 11th Cavalry Regiment was blocking the road, alongside a Marine platoon and a reinforced company of National Guard infantry scrapped together from three different brigades. The combined armor force had tricked a battalion of Viper infantry into yet another ambush, during which the Fimbul Winter had shot out its full battle load and had had to retreat to recharge while the Bufords chased the decimated survivors back – and run into one of the two Dragons left in the valley. Three dead tanks and a hasty retreat later, the American forces were waiting for the inevitable alien follow-up attack. It looked like the ETs were rallying around their big tank and a single force field generator. A few drone glimpses indicated the force massing behind some hills to the west was at least as big as the one they’d beaten off, not counting the alien super-tank. And the good guys weren’t getting much artillery support; there’d been a breakthrough in the south and all available indirect fire assets were being diverted to contain it.

  Ryan’s plan was to take out the Dragon before falling back towards Davistown, where the combined US forces were consolidating in a final bid to deny the valley to the invaders. Fimbul Winter would play a decisive role in the operation.

  “Good,” Mira Rodriguez said when he’d relayed their marching orders. “I want to paint one of those fuckers on our kill gallery.”

  They’d already stenciled eight Turtles and two partial Dragons on the Winter’s hull, but they hadn’t gotten a full kill on one of the super-tanks. Lieutenant Morrel’s B & B had fired the decisive shots and that’s where the full icon drawings had been, until a Viper mobile gun had returned the favor. It’d been the damaged spot; they’d put a patch on it, but a slight discoloration had shown the alien where to shoot, and the patch hadn’t been as strong as undamaged armor. The Winter had immolated the ET gun crew a moment later, but revenge wouldn’
t bring the dead back.

  “Target is in range,” Zimmer said. They were turret-down at the moment, but a few crunchies were keeping an eye on the approaching enemy forces. Their laser-transmitted video showed him the Dragon, flanked by infantry. An area field generator was trailing the massive armored vehicle, but a squad of engineers had prepared for it. “It’s a go.”

  The engineers opened up the festivities with a bang.

  Mines were great defensive weapons, but Starfarer tech had made them largely useless via systems that could defeat most pressure, sensor and comm-activated devices. The daisy-chained devices buried under the gravel road relied on pre-Contact hand-mixed explosives, wrapped in camo blankets and carefully buried and concealed. Two sets of fiber-optic cables leading to the explosive experts’ positions would be use to detonate the shaped charge. A lot of work had been involved, although the mines didn’t have enough power to penetrate the Dragon’s force field.

  The field genny following the super-tank wasn’t as well-protected, however, which made it the target of choice.

  Five explosions went off once the floating platform reached the designated point. Only one of the charges was close enough to inflict damage, but that did the job. The genny’s compromised power plant transformed it into an even bigger bomb, which devoured a couple of luckless Viper companies in its blast radius.

  Army and Marine infantry volley-fired two dozen anti-armor missiles as several LAVs and the Winter rose up from behind cover and took the Dragon under fire. Its shield, already partially drained by the massive explosion behind it, failed in a spectacular shower of sparks.

  “Hit!” Mira announced as she cycled the gun’s capacitor for a follow-up shot. The 250mm grav-cannon could normally fire twelve shots per minute, but if you goosed its controls and didn’t mind putting a little stress on the barrel and firing system – increasing the risk of catastrophic failure sometime down the line – you could put a second shot on target in under two seconds. She fired again while the echoes of the first impact on the Dragon’s armor were still reverberating over the hills like a nearby thunderstorm.