No Price Too High (Warp Marine Corps Book 2)

by C. J. Carella

  “Nope. Just nope.”

  “I’m just not sure keeping the fighters in the Corps is a good idea, though. Much as I love the gun club, they might need their own branch of service.”

  “Anything’s better than bringing back the Air Farce,” Lisbeth said. “Now, turning the fighters over to the Navy makes some sense, and that’s probably what will end up happening. They are going to deploy from Navy ships, after all. But so do the Marines, either from shuttles or warp catapults, shudder, groan,” she finished mock-grimly.

  Fernando’ laugh at her last comment was a bit shaky. They’d all experienced more warp jumps in training than most Marines did in their entire careers, and the experience hadn’t improved one iota with practice, even with the newest batch of Mélange keeping them sane and alive through the process.

  “So anyways,” she went on. “Given that Marines are meant to conduct offensive operations off naval vessels, I would argue that there should have never been a Naval Air Force in the first place; it should have been the Marines’ show from the get-go. Well, except maybe for Search and Rescue or flying big wigs around or whatever. But the fighters and bombers should have always been under Marine control. Screw the bubbleheads.”

  “That’s funny, coming from a former bubblehead.”

  “Bah, I say. The Navy didn’t want me, and being a Marine suits me fine. Well, being Marine pilot, that is. I did my share of ground-pounding shit, and the 03s can keep that job. But I like being the skipper of my own little warship. If I screw up, the only one who pays the price will be little old me, instead of…”

  They appeared around her from one heartbeat to the next, the dead crewmembers and passengers of the Wildcat and the Bengal Tiger, and she was able to see each of their faces as they started mutely at her.

  “Oh, shit. I see them,” Fernando said.

  That had been happening with growing frequency. Shared flashbacks. Most of the pilots weren’t reporting the increasing number of incidents, and the ones who did had been dismissed as the product of ‘highly suggestive states.’ They weren’t affecting anyone’s performance, and at the moment that was all that mattered.

  “Yeah. Not a pretty sight, are they?” Lisbeth said. The sight didn’t scare her, or even upset her all that much. She mostly felt sad. And guilty. She was past being afraid of ghosts.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Fernando told her. He turned to the staring dead. “It wasn’t her fault.”

  One by one, the ghosts nodded and vanished.

  “Did you see that?” Lisbeth gasped. That was new, getting a reaction from the spirits.

  “They heard me. You saw that, didn’t you? They heard me.”

  “And they agreed with you. I think. Pretty fucking responsive, for a shared hallucination.”

  “Ave Maria,” Fernando said. He crossed himself. “Makes me wish I’d paid more attention during Sunday school.”

  “You’re Catholic, aren’t you?”

  “Yep. You?”

  “Nothing. Not really an atheist. Just don’t give a crap either way. You live and you die, and whether or not there’s some big old beardo watching you from on high doesn’t matter until after you’re dead. In my humble opinion. At least, that’s what I used to believe.”

  “Yeah. Well, maybe you should start praying.”

  “Yeah.”

  The next morning, they heard the news. They were going to war. Just a few weeks after qualifying, without even a shakedown cruise under their belt, and they were going to war. Things were so bad they were throwing them into the fray, fresh out of R&D. She thought she was ready for the real thing, but it would have been nice to get a little more practice before rolling hot.

  Maybe she should start praying.

  * * *

  Rear Admiral Leroy Burke watched the ships of Carrier Strike Group One and was nearly overwhelmed by a disturbing mixture of pride and terror.

  Born in the rough streets of Chicago, Leroy had managed to claw his way out, helped along by his implacable mother, who had made all kinds of sacrifices to provide him with an education at a charter school. He’d made it to college and become a naval officer and eventually a Navy pilot. He’d flown missions all over the world, survived through several close calls, and risen through the ranks. It’d been a long road, from Tailhook to US Central Command, with even a stint with the Blue Angels along the way. He’d killed and watched good men die, had learned many harsh lessons, and taught many more.

  The day the aliens had come he’d been the captain of the USS Nimitz, cruising alongside the rest of CSG-11 in the Indian Ocean when the impossible news began to pour in. His fleet had gone to DEFCON-TWO just before cities all over the world began to burn. The supercarrier and the rest of the group had scrambled their fighters, but there was no enemy to engage, nothing anybody could do as half the world was massacred by an enemy only glimpsed through telescopes and the doomed International Space Station in the brief moments before it was contemptuously swatted from orbit by the unknown attackers.

  The shock of discovering that the most formidable surface force on the planet was utterly helpless had been bad enough. The disjointed reports of death and destruction that filtered in as the fleet wandered around aimlessly as it waited for orders had been much worse. Leroy’s wife and children had survived – Kitsap Base was spared from the horror of the fire domes – but his mother and everyone in Chicago had not. Those losses, combined with witnessing the darkest period in the planet’s history, had scarred him for life.

  America had survived, for some values of America. Leroy, like most men and women in uniform, had followed the new President’s lead. CSG-11 had headed back to North America, to help the survivors of the attack. Less than half of the US pre-Contact population had survived, and millions more perished in the aftermath, particularly the elderly and infirm. Disease and civil unrest had been almost as deadly, and Leroy had the dubious honor of being the first US carrier commander in history to order air strikes over American soil, targeted at fellow Americans.

  Eventually, the nation pulled itself together, although it was a different country in many ways. Leroy and most of the military were too busy to dwell on the political changes, however. The enemy that had nearly exterminated humanity was still out there, and the US Armed Forces had to undergo a systematic transformation to deal with it. The Navy ceased to exist as a seaborne service, and became the Space Navy. The change affected everyone, from the lowest Seamen – soon to be renamed Spacers – to the topmost admirals.

  Most people believed the slang term for Navy personnel – bubblehead – came from the NASA-designed helmets that became part of their uniform during the early phases of the post-Contact space program, and to some degree that belief was true. But the term had existed before then, and was used among military circles long before the general public saw the first generation of Navy spacers. Submarine crews were called bubbleheads, and sub commanders quickly dominated the early Space Navy. It made perfect sense: submariners were used to dealing with self-contained vessels surrounded on all sides by a hostile environment. When the first American starships were built, the highly-coveted command assignments went to bubbleheads.

  The Old Navy balked, but President Hewer had no patience for what he considered petty concerns. Seniority be dammed; the admirals who didn’t get with the program were encouraged to retire, their only other option being to be fired outright. Most realized the wisdom in letting the bubbleheads lead the way, and changed with the times.

  Leroy managed. He spent years without a ship of his own, after the heartbreaking task of overseeing the breaking up of the Nimitz, her power plant and other parts used for crude spaceships that went to other captains. His first space command, well over a decade later, was the USS Whipple, a cheap, light frigate that later would be reclassified as a corvette, tiny compared with the Nimitz, let alone the ships of the line the Space Navy was beginning to sail. Those were tough times: the Puppies’ technical advice notwithstanding, they’d all had to
learn by doing, and the inevitable mistakes that ensued cost lives.

  His tenure on the Whipple taught him a great deal as he was faced with hazards and complications he’d never encountered at sea. And by the time he learned how to handle them, new technologies came into play: warp shields, which were something other Starfarers had never used in recorded history, and like all new things, they came with their share of unintended consequences.

  Over half of Leroy’s pre-Contact fellow captains were even less fortunate and died in combat, fell prey to accidents, or vanished in warp transit, never to be heard of again. The Navy’s old guard was essentially wiped out during Earth’s first interstellar conflict. The bubbleheads, to the surprise of no one, had the highest survival rates. After the Risshah were dealt with, he retired, spent thirty-five rather boring years in the private sector, and rejoined the service for another war, this time against the so-called Gremlins.

  He’d always regretted the realities that spelled the end of small craft in combat. Against weapons that could span tens of thousands of miles in a fraction of a second, only mass and armor provided security. Fighter had gone the way of the horse-borne warrior, relics with no place in the present. Until now.

  Twenty-six ships prepared for departure. Five light carriers that were little more than refitted Marine Assault Ships, each fielding two squadrons of twelve War Eagles each. Their pilots averaged a hundred hours and forty warp jumps. The guidelines he’d helped craft required at least two hundred and fifty hours and a hundred jumps before being considered fit for combat operations, but circumstances had forced everyone to cut corners. Besides the carriers, the group consisted of eight Aegis-class destroyers, most of their armament dedicated to point defense, and twelve logistics ships. The support vessels had just arrived, diverted from Seventh Fleet to allow the strike group to sail into combat.

  Leroy was on the bridge of the flotilla’s flagship, a converted battlecruiser that had been stripped of her main guns but retaining her armor and heavy force fields; she held five War Eagle squadrons. They’d planned to name her the Enterprise, but the group commander had fought hard to get his way, spending every favor he had left for the privilege of naming his ship.

  The USS Nimitz sailed towards her baptism of fire. Admiral Leroy Burke set aside his fears and doubts and savored this moment.

  “We are cleared for departure, sir.”

  “To all Strike Group Elements: Engage.”

  Parthenon-Three, 165 AFC

  Charlie Company left the narrow pass for resupply and a new mission. Which from the looks of it would be a redeployment from the frying pan into the fire.

  The job of blocking the pass was now in the hands of the Volunteers’ Regiment, along with an ad hoc company of private contractors cobbled up from the ranks of several New Burbank corporations’ security teams. As usual, the mercs had a large number of combat vets among their ranks, and they’d been issued enough heavy weapons to put that experience to good use. Alongside militiamen who were literally defending their homes and families, they should be able to hold off any further enemy incursion. Fighting from fixed positions along a narrow front that couldn’t be flanked was as easy as it got, combat-wise. Charlie Company couldn’t be spared for the easy jobs.

  They’d had two quiet days. The Vipers on the ground had moved back to their landing zone. Their ships had pulled away from P-3’s orbit and were refitting and resupplying in deep space. Sixth Fleet was playing games with them, feinting via warp jumps that forced the enemy to deploy for combat. Hopefully that would buy them a couple more days, but sooner or later they’d be back.

  On the ground, two assault troop divisions and tanks had chased the 101st’s other two companies and their Army attachments halfway through the valley, taking heavy losses, before pulling back to Davis’ Gap and assuming a defensive posture. Alpha and Bravo had been glad to see them go and were regrouping in the neighborhood of Davistown. The push into the valley and the doomed attempt at outflanking their defenses appeared to have been part of a reconnaissance in force rather than the main thrust they’d been feared. The western half Forge Valley had become a no-man’s land of sorts. The aliens were waiting for further reinforcements while securing their staging area.

  Fromm’s company was going to head west and poke that hornets’ nest.

  “Do you understand your orders, Captain?” Colonel Brighton asked him.

  “Yes, sir. Take command of a task force comprising Charlie Company, the BLT’s armor platoon and Bravo’s Mobile Infantry platoon. Advance towards Davis’ Gap. Ascertain enemy dispositions there and provide forward observer support for artillery attacks. Attempt to provoke an enemy sortie and lead it into a series of ambushes, with the goal of weakening the landing zone holding force.”

  The ideal goal would be the destruction of the landing zone, but they didn’t have forces for a fight a set-piece battle against the better part of a corps. This sortie would be risky, but weakening the enemy was worth it, as long as the cost wasn’t too high. And making the other bastard react to your actions was central to the Corps’ doctrine.

  “We can’t afford any serious losses, Captain, which is the reason I’m sending you. I know you will make sure you preserve your command.” The other two company commanders, Jimenez and Bradford, were a little too enthusiastic; Fromm had seen that during the previous week’s engagements. This mission required a good sense for when it was time to run away; stay in place too long and the Vipers would overrun and destroy his unit.

  “Don’t get caught in a pitched battle. Sting ‘em and break contact, rinse and repeat. If they chase you all the way into the valley’s central ridge, where we can give them a good pounding, all well and good. If not, we’ll at least give them a bloody nose. All the fabbers in New Burbank are working three shifts, so we’ve got plenty of ammo. Burn as much of it as you want, but spare the men.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  More troops were mobilizing at New Burbank. A city of two million, where all of its adults had undergone at least four years of military service, could easily put together several divisions’ worth of troops, but easily did not mean rapidly. Not to mention those improvised divisions would be lightly equipped and shaky as hell, far worse than the regulars or even the militia. When those units faced Viper assault troops, it wouldn’t be pretty.

  They needed to buy time, and disorganizing and damaging the enemy forces on the ground would make things harder for the ETs when their reinforcements arrived. It was a gamble, and a reinforced company was just strong enough to do some damage, and small enough that its loss wouldn’t cripple the defense effort.

  All he had to do was accomplish the mission with acceptable losses. Acceptable, that is, to everyone except the human beings that would be left bleeding and broken on the field.

  Trade Nexus Eleven, 165 AFC

  “Got dispatches about the war,” Guillermo Hamilton said as he walked into the station house.

  The local nest of spies – spies preferred the term ‘intelligence officers’ but Heather preferred the plain unvarnished truth, at least inside her head – looked like any mundane office would, both befitting their cover as traders and because most of what they did was in effect office work: their time was spent reading, analyzing and collating information. She gratefully accepted the imp-to-imp download and settled down to catch up on the big picture. Guillermo didn’t look happy, so the news was probably all bad. He’d finally begun to act like his old confident self, after weeks of being a nervous wreck following the sanctioning of the GACS-1138 and its crew. Expecting the other shoe to drop, she supposed.

  She herself hadn’t lost any sleep over it. She’d helped prosecute and kill an enemy Sierra, just as a tactical officer on a warship would have. Those crewmen had been enemies and they’d been disposed of accordingly. The methods had been more underhanded than in a naval battle, but dead was dead.

  And if things continued the way they were, dead was what she, Guillermo, everyone in the US and
very likely every human in the galaxy would soon be.

  The news was indeed bad. Terribad, even; her mother had been fond of using that made-up word and it fit the situation to a t. Fighting a three-front war was never easy, and developments on all three theaters made it clear just how desperate things were becoming.

  On the Galactic Imperium front, things were still relatively quiet. The Imperials didn’t have direct access to human space, and were currently negotiating passage with the polities in between, using a combination of bribes and threats. Their methods were working. According to the dispatch, the Crabs had geeked and granted full access to their former enemies. The Imperials would be in a position to threaten half a dozen American systems sometime in the next two or three months. Fourth Fleet, the force tasked to defend that region of the galaxy, was fairly strong, but it probably wouldn’t be strong enough. The war might be lost right then and there.

  The Lampreys had gotten beaten like a drum twice in a row, first at Paulus and then Melendez, but the US allies who were in the best position to exploit those defeats were dragging their feet. The Wyrms had delayed their expected – and promised – offensive and there were hints that they might be considering making a separate peace. Which would be awkward for everyone concerned, most particularly the Allied Task Force, a collection of US, GACS and Puppy volunteer ships currently operating in Wyrm space. If the Wyrms stabbed the US in the back, the war was as good as lost.

  And finally, the Vipers’ push into human space had netted them Heinlein System and they were well on their way to overruning Parthenon. After which the war would be… well, one got the picture. Three point-failure sources, all with damn good chances of failure. No self-respecting gambler would play those odds.