Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series

by C. J. Carella

  “Hard Corps. We live for this shit,” he said, trying to lighten things up with some gung-ho bullshit.

  Deborah smiled.

  “We’ll talk. After.”

  They did what they did best, and for a while nothing else mattered.

  Thirteen

  Imperial Star Province Ugo, 169 AFC

  Admiral Sondra Givens watched the Imperium fleet waiting to meet hers with undisguised pity.

  So this is what the bottom of the barrel looks like.

  Calling the collection of frigates, antiquated battleships and converted merchantmen forming a battle wall around the only inhabited world in the system a fleet was insulting. Even augmented with a hundred or so towed platforms and an still-unknown number of STL fighters, it represented about thirty percent the fighting power of the force she had defeated at Kezz. There were some indications that the land-based defenses were formidable, but initial sensor scans hadn’t revealed them.

  Ugo System was the birthplace of the Obans, one of the Founding Races. One would think that would qualify the red-dwarf star and its accompanying planets for core system status, but one would be wrong. The Obans had spread out beyond their homeworld fairly quickly, being among the scant handful of civilizations that had developed FTL drives independently. They’d held a thriving star empire for about three centuries before running into the Kreck-Denn Alliance. Two centuries and three wars later, the three species had formed the Galactic Imperium. Long before then, Ugo had become a backwater, a place of little more than historical value, and hosting only five percent of the overall Oban population. The system was poor in resources, and climate change in Ugo-Two had covered most of the planet’s surface with inhospitable deserts and arid terrain. The Obans’ preferred marshlands had mostly dried up, and the expense necessary to reverse the ecological changes had been deemed too high to be worthwhile.

  Must be nice to have so much real estate available you can abandon your original system, Sondra thought. Humanity, hemmed in by larger polities, was doing its best to exploit every inch of Sol System. The plan was to turn Mars and Venus into fully Earth-like worlds, more than doubling the system’s carrying capacity.

  She doubted the Obans would be happy to lose their birthplace, however. At the very least, the blow to the prestige of the Founding Races would be severe. The fact that this was the best the Imperium had been able to cobble together to defend the system showed how bad things were. The Gimps were using most of their remaining mobile forces to hunt down Kerensky’s renegade fleet, now that they had apparently bottled it up at the end of a previously-unknown system.

  It’d be nice if they can take care of him. Save me the trouble of bringing him to heel.

  The truth was, she had little desire to fight the mutineers. Except for the occasional pirate hunt, no human fleet had faced another. The Pan-Asians were trade rivals, but the discrepancy of forces was so lopsided in the US’ favor that the GACS would be insane to try anything. Ships had gone rogue before, but the Navy had never faced mutiny on that scale before. If the aliens dealt with the Black Ships, they would be doing her a huge favor.

  For the time being, however, she had to deal with this fight. Victory here would place Third Fleet a mere three transits away from Primus System. All she had to do was beat those cast-offs and their fighter swarm. The trip there had been almost uneventful: each of the five warp transits between Kezz and Ugo had led to partially-evacuated worlds. Third Fleet had bombed a few cities and blown up every space facility of military value, but for the most part kept going, leaving millions of live Gimps behind. Primus was where the war would be decided, and she’d been relieved to get this far without another fight.

  “Still can’t confirm numbers and disposition of Foxtrot-class assets, ma’am. The towed platforms give us an estimate of their numbers, but they are maintaining commo silence and running on stealth mode.”

  “We know how many their towed stations can support, and some of those converted freighters look like their version of carrier vessels. We’ll assume the worst.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The worst was four thousand converted shuttles. Even the relatively paltry facilities in Ugo Province could easily build and crew that number of boats, for all the good it would do them, assuming Lieutenant Colonel Zhang’s mousetrap worked,.

  “Engage.”

  Transition.

  It could be her imagination, but Sondra felt a looming presence nearby, something far worse than a warp hallucination. Given the reports of vast hordes of Warplings keeping watch over her ships, she feared her imagination was, if anything, understating things.

  Emergence.

  Third Fleet reentered normal space at three light seconds and began firing at extreme range moments later. A converted Gimp super-freighter was the first ship to die: larger than a dreadnought but with a fraction of its armor and internal compartmentalization, its souped-up shields weren’t enough against hits from a quartet of high-yield graviton cannon. Three other vessels were torn apart within seconds. Five more were torn apart by the time the enemy finally began to react.

  “Missile launches detected. Five hundred thirty-eight thousand vampires inbound.”

  “Send the gunships in.”

  Zhang’s Death Heads went into action. The five gunboats emerged one light-second from the enemy wall of battle. The lure worked: the Gimps’ STL fighters came out of stealth and unleashed their disruptors on the squadron. By the hundreds, they shot up the gunships, with no effect; although their bizarre hybrid force fields looked like warp shields, they were immune to the disruptors. And by the hundreds, the Foxtrot crews died as the Mind-Killers struck back. The tiny icons vanished from the holotank almost as quickly as they appeared. Warships joined in with conventional attacks, but the heaviest surviving ship’s main guns weren’t powerful enough to damage the gunships. The handful that might have posed a threat were being pounded into scrap by Third Fleet’s own heavy-hitters.

  “Three thousand five hundred Foxtrots are drifting in space.” The converted shuttles’ four-man crews would be all dead, catatonic or utterly insane. Mind-Killers were a hell of a weapon when used against system-bound sophonts. “That seems to be all of them, ma’am.”

  “Initiate Wall of Fire.”

  The Death Head Squadron disappeared into warp and returned a minute later with a massive wave of flame. The light-seconds wide conflagration temporarily blocked the sight of the Sun-Blotter missile swarm rushing towards her ships. This was the first time the gunboats had been able to perform a by-the-book evolution, and never mind that the book had been written a mere few weeks before. Time to see if the Sun-Blotter could handle a close encounter with an actual sun.

  It took some time for the fleet’s sensor departments to make sense of the intense light show. Sondra realized she was holding her breath, and forced herself to exhale. It wasn’t as if her ships couldn’t handle a Sun-Blotter or three on their own, although it would be nice if…

  “Twenty-seven thousand vampires remain.”

  A cheer ran through the fleet bridge. The Wall had worked. The tithe that had survived the plasma wave front would be picked off by point defense long before it reached any targets. Meanwhile, the heavy guns continued to reap enemy ships. A dozen Sierras were down, along with thirty-odd barges. No new Foxtrots appeared, which meant her ships could maintain course under the full protection of their warp shields.

  Third Fleet continued its advance. Three more missile launches were met with plasma waves and accurate point defense. By the time the American force had closed to two light seconds, half of the enemy ships were gone, including anything larger than a large cruiser. The frigates and corvettes that remained would only provide some gunnery practice for her spacers. The towed platforms had been obliterated, along with Ugo-Two’s handful of orbital fortresses. Which left…

  “We’re being acquired by ground-based defenses. Multiple facilities are coming on-line.”

  You could hide a lot of power
plant signatures from anything but an active graviton sweep simply by placing them underground, and stealth force fields would deal with active scans. Hundreds of points of light appeared on the darkened surface of Ugo-Two. Thousands.

  The Thermopylae staggered under a hit that struck at a gap between her warp shields. A swatch of ablative armor dozens of meters wide was vaporized, along with the hardened plating beneath it. No major hull breaches, she noted at a glance, but a point defense turret and the nine people manning it were gone, mangled into gruesomely twisted metal and flesh by the graviton beam.

  Superheavy guns. Lots of them. Not as powerful as the weapons her flagship carried, but she couldn’t use those on a planetary surface, and they could use theirs with impunity.

  Intelligence reports indicated that the Obans had fortified their home planet heavily, but it was believed most of those installations had been deactivated over time. It appeared those estimates had been wrong. There were more artillery emplacements on the planet than she’d ever seen before. The power requirements for that many weapons seemed impossible to meet. She ran a few quick data inquiries even as the fleet maneuvered to minimize exposure to ground fire.

  Geothermal plants. Ugo-Two had a very active under-crust. In the past, it had led to a great deal of volcanic activity and several major disasters. The Obans had tapped into those vast reservoirs of flowing magma and used them as a source of energy. A heat-to-power converter was cheaper to build and maintain than a gluon power plant, and required a lot fewer exotic materials. Those massive guns – most of them were fifty-inchers or larger – were drawing their energy from the heart of the planet itself.

  “We have to silence those guns,” Sondra said, knowing what that would mean. What it would cost.

  Those weapon emplacements covered most warp gateways in the system, including the one leading towards Primus. Until they were destroyed, nothing could venture any deeper into Imperium space without getting pounded by those cannon. A warship might survive such treatment, but the equally indispensable support ships would not. The temptation to just let loose with all her heavy weaponry was strong: she could blast those facilities into dust, as long as she didn’t mind unleashing megatons of energy into the atmosphere. Which would violate the rules the Elder Races had set over all Starfarers, and doom her species.

  She was going to have to commit her ground forces to get the job done.

  Third Fleet pulled back while she began drafting a new set of orders. General McWhirter wasn’t going to be happy, but he would make sure they were implemented. Third Fleet’s fighters and the gunships would help a lot, along with some limited orbital bombardment, but it was going to be up to the jarheads to go down there and take those emplacements.

  And she didn’t know if they could do the job.

  * * *

  “Jesus wept,” First Sergeant Goldberg said as he went over the new OPORD.

  “Even strain, Sergeant,” Fromm said.

  “I know we’ve practiced this a few times, but only at battalion level, sir,” Lieutenant Hansen said. “The logistics…”

  “Are going to suck, yes, until we clear enough enemy bases to allow for shuttle resupply.”

  Goldberg looked like he was about to throw up. It wasn’t fear that was making the senior non-com sick, it was the near-impossible job they’d been given.

  “Better get started. Kickoff is in four hours.”

  Third Fleet was about to launch the largest warp insertion in the history of the Corps: twelve MEUs in total, about four brigades’ worth of troops. Fromm would have gladly forgone the honor of being part of it. Mostly because this also had the makings of a disaster of historic proportions.

  He felt the Mattis tremble slightly under his feet as he began passing on the operational orders to his platoon commanders. The assault ship was taking fire despite being well in the rear of the formation, which had withdrawn to over three light-seconds from the planet. At those ranges, the chances of a hit inflicting meaningful damage were slim. He ignored the vibrations and concentrated on his job. The next few hours were going to be an all hands on deck evolution, as vehicles and cargo that had been packed for shuttle transport were unloaded and prepped for an unprecedented warp drop. One using improvised, experimental systems.

  The shuttle loading bays would be used as impromptu assembly points. Regular warp catapults were accessible to light infantry only, since only infantrymen and whatever they could lug on their backs could be launched in that manner. Their new Kraxan techno-toys had changed that, but assault ships hadn’t been redesigned to exploit those advantages. Instead, they were going to use their recently-issued portable catapults to send vehicles and their crews down to Ugo-Two, along with as many supplies as they could manage.

  There were three problems with this. First, initial testing had shown that launching vehicles via warp catapults had higher loss rates than infantry drops. From the looks of it, if anybody aboard one of the transiting vehicles lost his mental grip during the drop, the entire vehicle and crew would be stranded in warp. KIA, in other words. MIW if you wanted to be technical, not that anybody who’d gone Missing In Warp had ever come back. They were going to take losses anywhere between one to three percent just getting there.

  The second issue was less important, in terms of accomplishing the mission. They would have to use almost every portable catapult in their inventory. Which meant getting back was going to be slow at best, impossible at worst, and would mean leaving any heavy equipment behind. Since standard warp drops were usually one-way trips, it wasn’t a big deal. Once enough landing zones were cleared, shuttles would be able to bring more supplies and equipment down, and eventually take everyone home. Everyone still alive, that was.

  The third and final one was, as Hansen had mentioned, logistics. The Mattis was going to drop the better part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit, including its attached supply units, but even with those trucks loaded up and after strapping everything they could onto every vehicle on the drop, it was going to be a ‘bring your own shit’ party. There weren’t enough warp-rated personnel to bring more supplies via catapult, since each drop would need to be crewed. The few catapults they’d be able to set on the planet could take a trickle of ‘mule drivers’ back to the ships for another supply drop, but not enough to keep up with expenditures. At most, another ten to twenty percent additional supplies could be dropped before additional warp drops were deemed too risky to continue.

  The Marines would land with enough ordnance and consumables for twenty-four hours of sustained operations. Allegedly. In Fromm’s experience, they’d start running low on some stuff in as little as ten hours, and be high and dry within fifteen. Until they could silence enough enemy emplacements to allow for shuttle resupply, that would be all they had.

  In a way, dropping heavy like this made things worse. Yes, he would be glad for the extra firepower and mobility having Light Assault Vehicles and tanks along, but those vehicles and weapons all needed supplies, even the ones powered by internal gluon plants. But they needed to take out at least two hundred fortified hardpoints on the ground to clear a landing zone, and there was no way that light infantry could do the job. There was evidence that an entire Oban Army Group was entrenched around the planetary defense bases.

  Less than twenty thousand Marines were about to assault a dug-in force of a quarter of a million ETs.

  * * *

  “Heavy drop! Fucking heavy drop, y’all. Oorah!”

  Russell’s disgusted glare didn’t make an impression on PFC Mendel. The gun bunny was too excited about making a drop inside a Light Assault vehicle to care about what anybody else thought. He whooped in triumph while he peered through the sights of the troop-carrier’s top turret.

  “Can’t believe they could fit a Stormin’ Norman inside one of those warp rings,” Gonzo said, ignoring the racket.

  “They’re modular. They can configure them to fit anything smaller than a shuttle. A tank will make it. Barely.”

  He
didn’t add that most of those Schwarzkopf tank drivers would be making their second or third drops ever, and their first time inside a vehicle. Tanks and LAVs weren’t starships. You weren’t supposed to catapult them through warp. Even now that they had all that ancient alien super-tech Russell and his buddies had looted from a creepy dead planet, this was crazy. Nobody wanted to think about it, but none of the Marines’ vehicles had been designed for a warp drop. This kind of improvised shit had a way to come around and bite your ass off.

  “Anybody here fought the Froggers?” Grampa asked, using the common nickname for the Obans.

  Nobody piped in. Russell wasn’t surprised. The Gimps didn’t have a border with the US; there’d never been a reason for them to start shooting each other. Not until the ETs had decided humans needed killing. Fucking tangos.

  “Light-gee world,” the old guy went on. He always got chatty when things looked bad. “Point-eight Earth normal. Atmo’s breathable, at least with our med-imps. Supposed to be pretty hot.”

  “Everywhere we land gets pretty hot after we start busting caps,” Gonzo said.

  Hot and humid or cold and dry, it all felt pretty much the same inside combat armor, especially when taking off your helmet was an easy way to commit suicide. Russell didn’t say that, either. Everybody knew it, and if Grampa felt better tallying off figures, that was fine by him. Better than Nacle getting preachy or prayerful. Poor guy. Russell still kinda missed him.

  “Their bases are all buried deep and surrounded by bunkers. Gonna be a bitch digging them up.”

  “That’s why they pay us the big bucks, Grampa.”

  “Silence in the ranks, fuck-nuggets!” Sergeant Fuller broke in. “We’re off in three mikes.”

  Three minutes until kick-off. Not a lot of time to make things right with Jesus, if one was a faithful man. Russell spent most of the quiet time thinking about Deborah. He wanted to make a life with her even after the war was over. Maybe they could go back to Parthenon-Three and he could provide security for her fortune-teller business. Maybe do a little strong-arm stuff on the side. The idea made him chuckle.