Free Company- Red Zone

by D K Williamson

  “Stopping the APCs is why the Red Light survived,” Nelson said. “If Kent had failed, we’d be working somewhere else and some other unit would be moving into the company’s barracks.”

  Hicks stood and pointed. “Billy and the rest are back.”

  Sergeant Bellvue, Taro, and Harris joined the other members of the sniper team, Hicks passing Bellvue a cup of cold water from the cooler.

  “Well, it’s official. PV-two Pauley is now a ward of the Novaran authorities awaiting sentencing,” Bellvue said as he placed an empty ammo crate on its side and sat. “Criminal assault with intent.”

  “That didn’t take long,” Hicks said.

  “He pled to the charge. No trial, no witnesses called. It will allow him to remain a merc after he serves his sentence.”

  “What about Pauley’s pals?” Vincent asked with a glare.

  Bellvue laughed. “Well, since it seems they had no knowledge of what he was doing and you didn’t give them a chance to explain before you launched a major offensive outnumbered four-to-one, they got their asses chewed by Top for bumming around with the guy.”

  “Where did you learn fisticuffs anyway?” Hicks asked.

  “Grew up in a public housing skyriser in Arganterra,” Vincent replied with distaste. “You either fight or get rolled there. Best way to avoid fights is to make it clear that anyone who goes after you is going to get hurt.”

  Bellvue shook his head and smiled. “I think you broadcast the same message to everyone in the company. Holden said you and Healey are in the clear. The field exercise wraps up tomorrow afternoon. Permanent assignments will come shortly after we get back in barracks, but if you’ll pardon me for removing the drama for you, I told Holden all six of our new folks are good to go. You know where you’ll be.”

  “He was okay with me and Sam shadowing each other?” Vincent asked.

  “Terry’s more amendable to it than Hawkwood. He’s fine with Taro’s move into the team as well.” He paused to smile. “That’s why I went to the top sergeant for approval.”

  “Hawkwood brought in a lot of intel troopers he’s familiar with,” Taro said. “I was an extra piece they didn’t need.”

  “I’m stuck here then,” Nelson said. “I guess there’s a few perks to keeping Billy’s nose clean, we missed digging fighting positions and filling sandbags during the field exercises.”

  “Can I ask a possibly sensitive question, Sergeant Bellvue?” Vincent asked.

  “We’re team. Unless formality is needed, call me Billy. Ask.”

  “Does it get to you like they say?” Vincent asked.

  “I don’t know. What do they say gets to me?”

  “Killing. Seeing those you shoot through the optics. It’s—”

  “It’s bullshit, kid. I’ve heard it. It’s more personal since snipers can see the face of the person they’re dropping and all that. Pure, grade-A, undiluted, bullshit. Anyone that says such crap is full of it or shouldn’t be a sniper. You want personal, wait until the swords come out. You’ll be nose-to-nose, you’ll see murder in your opponent’s eyes and you’ll be able to smell on his breath what he had for breakfast.”

  Hicks laughed harshly. “If you do it right, you might see what he had for breakfast when it spills on your boots after you slice him open. That’s personal… too damned personal. That’s also one of the reasons I’m a sniper. I like long distance relationships.”

  “He’s spot on,” Bellvue said. “Looking at a target a klick away at ten times magnification is the same as eyeballing a target at a hundred meters. You can have a conversation with a guy a hundred steps away. You can’t at a thousand. You can hear a man die at a hundred. You can’t at a thousand. I ain’t sayin’ the sniper job is easy, but a line grunt has the roughest job there is.”

  Nelson snorted “Ah, that’s Billy’s perspective. You couldn’t pay me enough to take the sniper slot. Bad enough he drags me in as his shadow. I was born to pound ground. Grunt work suits me. Sniping suits him, but he takes a grunt’s approach to the job.”

  Billy smiled. “That might be the best thing anyone’s ever said about me.”

  Nelson laughed. “I called you a grunt. Come to think of it, there is no higher being than the lowly grunt so yeah, it was a compliment.”

  “Looks like you took a demotion then, Nelly,” Corporal Hicks said with a smile. “Welcome to the low side of the merc world.”

  Nelson groaned. “You just had to say something, didn’t you. Deploying with the sniper team…. You ruined my day.”

  “Since you’re covering Billy and not sniping, isn’t it still grunt work?” Sam offered.

  “Hmm, come to think of it… yeah. Grunts looking out for snipers. It’s not an infantry platoon, but I like the way you think. Be like Bellvue and Hicks here and keep a little of the grunt inside, okay?”

  “I’ll keep him straight,” Vincent said.

  Nelson smiled. “Do that, just don’t let any of their sniper taint get on you, kid.”

  . . .

  Briggs looked at his three remaining classmates still in the grunt ranks after Rivers’ defection to walkers and Sam and Vincent’s escape to the sniper team. Assigned to the same squad for the final day of the field exercise, they prepared for the concluding act: a simulated assault on improved positions and bunkers.

  “Sounds like this exercise might be fun,” he said.

  “Sounds like service school stuff,” a nearby trooper groused. “They didn’t have us do this crap at my last unit. I deployed with them four times and never once did we do any of this.”

  “It sounds like it’s a lot more elaborate than service school ranges,” Fran Smith said.

  “That’s because merc outfits pay big money to run through this thing,” another unhappy trooper said. “A waste of money if you ask me.”

  “Someone sold Hawkwood a bill of goods. Might’ve lined our pockets with that coin instead,” another offered.

  “Well, they didn’t line your pockets with anything but your contracted pay did they?” a salt-and-pepper haired sergeant assigned to lead the squad said. “This isn’t your old unit, it’s the Red Light. Hawkwood says we run the course, so we run it. His company, our duty. We’re doing all of this for a reason. With so many replacement personnel, we need the range time and the exercises to evaluate everyone. That includes you and me and everyone else who stayed in the unit. I’ll not have you half-stepping today. Weapons inspection in five minutes.”

  “They’re good to go, Sergeant Hooton. You eyeballed them last night. We didn’t sneak off and filth them up while everyone else was sleeping,” one of the irritated troopers said.

  Sergeant Hooton glared. “Weapons inspection, four and a half minutes.”

  . . .

  Sergeant Jackson brought Lunatic Red to a halt in the range position assigned to them as several armored vehicles rumbled past them on their way to positions farther down the line. To their right sat even more, positioned already like the walker.

  “Last day and it’s an easy one for you, rook,” Jackson said. “Long range engagement. You don’t want an easy day, right?”

  Rivers smiled. “Whether I do or not, I’m not getting one.”

  “You’re catching on. Say, what the hell is your first name?”

  “Myles, with a Y.”

  “Okay Myles with a Y, mine’s Boone or you can call me Jacks if you want. Most do. Here’s what I have for you. Near as I can tell there’re eight different vehicle types out here today not counting us. During lulls—and there will be quite a few—I’ll call the type, you tell me where they are and how many by scanning the screens. To keep you from cheating, the screens stay off until the drill commences. Got it?”

  “Got it, but I’m a little offended that you think I’d cheat.”

  “I’ve played enough games of chance with grunts to know for a fact your sort cheats, Myles with a Y.”

  “I thought I was a loader now. At least until you find someone better. Vehicle crew.”

&
nbsp; “Oh? Well let’s see if you meet the qualifications before we bestow such a title, yeah? One more task you need to perform while we’re here. You’ll be using the bolter and you best be fast. The simulations taught you the basics, but you’ll be sending actual shots downrange—if you’re fast enough. This range is not about volume of fire or load selection so you won’t be scrambling to swap rounds. Once the ninety is loaded, you get the bolter control in those mitts of yours. When the target comes up, we see who hits it first.”

  Rivers smiled. “Sounds like a blast. What about our neighbors? Won’t they notice our secret weapon up top?”

  “I doubt it. If sensors picked it up they’d think we had the missile defense system on or something. If you somehow do manage to beat me to the shot and actually hit it, all the bolter will do is punch a tiny hole. Not something anyone would see. Besides, most of the crews here see this light walker and laugh from inside their tracked and wheeled armored vehicles. That wee beam gun atop us is a toy to them. Hell, the tankers think our ninety is a pop gun.”

  “Am I supposed to trust you to be the judge of whose shot lands first?”

  Jackson laughed. “Heavens no! Never trust a walker jockey when it comes to contests. We’re collecting full data so we’ll see what the results are later.”

  “You’re sure the bolter’s zeroed?”

  “Doubt my tech-n-mech skills if you must, but don’t question Brownie’s. Remember, that baby is his doing. If he were here and knew about it, he’d be rooting for you. We’ll have him do the scoring.”

  “Fair enough. The bolter projection is a bit faster than a ninety-mike-mike round, right?”

  “Near the speed of light, so yes. Nice thinking, but it ain’t gonna help you, rook.”

  Myles laughed. “Maybe not, but I predict I’ll beat you at least twice.”

  “Twice? You’re living in a fantasy world.”

  “We’ll see, Sarge. If I do pull it off, you have to start trusting me.”

  “If you do, I’ll start lobbying to have you as permanent crew.”

  . . .

  The sniper team gathered for their last day before returning to the unit barracks in Nelson City. They quickly saw the range Bellvue took them to was certainly no long range facility.

  “We’re not shooting at anything farther than a hundred meters today,” Billy Bellvue said to his seven team members. “Most will be a helluva lot close than that.”

  “Un-ass the zone drills?” Hicks asked.

  “Exactly,” Bellvue said with a nod. “Our security-spotters get to show their stuff today.”

  “That’s like we-just-stepped-in-it peels and sliding retreats, right?” Nelson said.

  Bellvue nodded again. “Pretty much, but sometimes it’s just a sniper and his shadow doing it. We’ll drill with teams of two, four, and eight today.”

  “Pardon my ignorance, but I’ve never heard of any of these things,” Lyman Taro said. “I didn’t go through an infantry academy.”

  “Break contact drills. They’re basically ways to extricate a team from a superior opposing force,” Nelson said.

  “I know the concept, but never done it. Good thing we’re drilling it then, yes?”

  “It is,” Bellvue said. “The machine gun does the heavy lifting. The eleven millimeter rifles Matty and I carry and their slow rate of fire are not ideal for conventional infantry close combat so we have to lean on our spotters more than you or Healey do with your rifles.”

  “I’d imagine the seven millimeter sniper rifle serves as well as the infantry version, right?” Taro’s spotter said.

  “Pretty much provided you drop the magnification to the lower powers. What say we get to it.”

  The group bunched together as Bellvue began reading aloud from his data-receiver. “Break contact is a technique used by platoon or smaller sized elements to withdraw in an orderly fashion after encountering a superior enemy force.” He lowered the device and sighed. “That’s the manual’s description. Apt enough, but orderly and breaking contact rarely occurs in the same place and time. In our field of work, chaos rules. When coms are jammed and everything that can go wrong has, few things work like they state in manuals. We’re going to keep this as simple as possible and run three different drills: columnar, bounding, and sliding. We’ll keep at it until everyone understands it and feels comfortable doing it. The quicker we get a handle on it the quicker we can go back to laughing about not digging holes.”

  . . .

  Sergeant Hooton stopped next to the group of greeners bunched together near one of the company’s tracks. Looking at the display panel on his left forearm he said, “Five minutes until the course goes hot and we board the tracks. Remember, this is a platoon live fire exercise and it is part of the evaluation process, seasoned trooper or greener. Our course through the trench and bunker system is on your data panels. Familiarize yourselves with it now. It’ll cost us time if you don’t.”

  After a quick look at the course, Lee Brennan raised his head. “It looks like we will need to split the squad once or twice.”

  Hooton smiled at the greener. “That we will. There’s no jamming on the com channels so Senior Sergeant Forrester or myself will be directing the move for our squad. This is nothing you haven’t done before unless you’ve never had live mortar and vehicle mounted weapons support until now.”

  “We did,” Fran Smith said. “Twice.”

  “This is no different then. These exercises are fun if you enjoy shooting and blowing things up. Despite the simulated fire from the simulated enemy, you know full well it’s simulated even though they say this is the best one they’ve come up with so far. No incoming rounds, nobody next to you screaming or dying. Nothing can simulate real combat, but exercises like this can help. Use this to sharpen the edge a bit by taking it seriously. You might well see some seasoned troopers half-stepping, do not emulate them. Got me?”

  “Got it, Sarge,” most of the young troopers replied.

  “I have one more thing for you. You four will function as an infantry team. Which one of you wants the lead?”

  Briggs, Paulino, and Brennan quickly pointed at Smith and in unison said, “She does.”

  “Oh no, not me,” she replied. “Not on—”

  “Too late, Smith,” Hooton said with amusement. “You’ve been volunteered and out-voted. Gather your gear and get aboard. You’re Team-two. Second off. Got it?”

  “Got it, Sarge,” the three men said while Smith looked sullenly at the sergeant.

  As Sergeant Hooton walked away, Smith glared at her teammates.

  “Don’t be mad, Fran,” Brennan said. “You know you’re best suited for it.”

  Paulino nodded. “We’re being evaluated on this, remember? You’re our best shot at doing well.”

  “Sam or Briggsy here are at least as good as me.”

  “Not me. Sam, maybe,” Briggs replied. “In case you didn’t notice he’s not here. Besides, I have the machine gun. I will lay claim to being the best gunner here. Stop trying to squirm out of it and lead, Fran. We trust you.”

  Smith sighed loudly. “Fine. Let’s get aboard then.”

  . . .

  The rear ramps dropped with a thunk as the tracks came to a halt almost in unison. Troopers streamed off the tracks through lingering dust clouds and down an incline as the tracks’ machine gun and auto-grenade launcher turrets peppered the small hill ahead. The sharp coughing sound of mortars firing joined in followed soon after by the whump of the mortar rounds impacting and detonating, hurling showers of dirt at the top of the incline. As the infantry platoon entered the trench system, the hill came alive with the sound of small arms fire.

  Hooton’s squad had the rightmost approach which wound its way up the incline before it ended in a wire covered area that fronted a series of bunkers.

  The corporal who led the first infantry team in Hooton’s squad took them down the first trench in a crouch as pings and thuds of simulated hits at the upper edge of the trench sprinkle
d the entire squad with grit. Authentic enough to make even seasoned troopers wince, Hooton was impressed.

  Simulated grenade blasts thudded as they moved, loud enough to cause the earpieces on their helmets to occlude and the troopers to flinch.

  Rounding a corner, a three dimensional figure complete with rifle surprised the corporal who quickly fired a pair of shots that dropped the target. One of those that complained about the need to run the course, the corporal looked back at Sergeant Hooton and smiled.

  “Worth the price of admission I’d say,” he commented before continuing on.

  The squad made their way through the trench course, the experienced troopers viewing it as a challenge to overcome with their hard-won skills, the greeners seeking to show they were worthy to stand alongside them.

  “Coming up on a split in the trench, sergeant,” the corporal said over the com.

  “Take your team left. The squad MG team will go with you,” Hooton replied. “Team-two, you have the right.

  The corporal and Smith answered with, “Roger that.”

  “Briggsy, take the point,” Fran ordered as the squad split.

  As the machine gunner took the lead position, Hooton asked, “Why is Briggs out front?”

  “Because he’s is pretty damned good with a machine gun and despite his bulk has the reflexes of a fly. Our primary in service school told us an MG in close quarters is a monster if you have a gunner that can hack it. I think Briggsy can.”

  Hooton smiled. “Your primary was right. Let’s see if Private Briggs has the chops. Proceed.”

  Briggs moved at a moderate pace while walking with a smooth gait, machine gun stock pinched in his armpit, head down looking over the sights. Slowing at a corner, he and Smith cautiously cleared it before he took the lead again. Moments later a pair of three dimensional targets sprang from the walls ahead. Briggs shredded the nearest target before it fully locked open. Turning his weapon on the other target, he repeated the destruction.

  The team moved on until they reached a point that required them to suppress targets and engage multiple points with hand grenades. Rushing to the position, Fran directed her team.