by John Bowers
Lt. Jaeger, Nick’s platoon commander, belatedly joined them.
“Is it safe to move forward?” he asked.
“No.” Seals shook his head. “But we didn’t come here for the security, so let’s move out. Walker, you still on point?”
“Yes, sir. I got it.”
“All right then, let’s get going.”
*
As Nick got to his feet again, he heard a rapid series of thumps from the direction of Firebase Papa. Within seconds he saw flashes ahead of him as parabola gun shells began to rain down on the enemy position. The shells were coming fast, hitting hard, and after a few seconds, the laser fire stopped as rebel gunners ducked for cover.
Nick moved out at a half trot, not really running but moving faster than before. Men behind him caught up and spread out on his flanks, forty-one of them, each with a grim determination to get this done. The ground ahead was level, with occasional obstacles and dips in the ground.
Fifty yards short of the objective, 3rd Platoon stopped, waiting to hear from 1st and 2nd Platoons when they were in position. Nick peered through the gloom and could now clearly see the mound that was, as far as he could tell, the rebel position. It looked like an earthen fort, hastily prepared, with walls perhaps twelve feet high. Shells were still hitting it in a steady drumbeat; now and then he could hear shouts, cries, a few screams. The rebels had taken cover but the barrage was intense.
Nick wiped a sleeve across his eyes to remove the sweat. He didn’t like this feeling, a sort of dull dread that left him cold. He had trained for this over the past two years, but until this moment the idea of combat and possible death had been something for the future. Now, his future had arrived.
No one told him to, but he drew his bayonet from his belt and fitted it onto the muzzle of his rifle, locked it with a twist, and wiped his face again. He watched the shells hitting the rebel position with the sure knowledge that, when the shelling stopped, Echo was going in.
Seals’ voice came over his helmet comm.
“Echo, insert your IR contacts. When the shelling stops, they’re going to shut down the drone flares. The enemy already knows we’re here, so there’s no point going in blind.”
That was good news. Nick quickly dug into his pocket and inserted a contact lens into his left eye, which would allow him to see enemy heat sigs when the shelling stopped. The downside was that he could no longer watch the barrage because, thanks to the overhead UV flare, his left eye could see nothing except a bright green glare. His right eye remained free of contacts to prevent him losing all vision due to heat sources.
After a wait of three or four minutes, 1st and 2nd Platoons reported they were in position. Seals got on his comm again, coordinating with Firebase Papa and the other companies. Suddenly, the green glare in Nick’s left eye was gone. He gripped his rifle tighter and swallowed down his adrenaline. This was the moment.
“Echo Company, move forward. Converge on the base and, when the P-guns stop, get over the side. Move out!”
Nick’s entire body went numb. He got to his feet and started forward.
Okay, Walker, here we go. You’ve known from the beginning that you’re not going to survive this, so it doesn’t matter if you die tonight or tomorrow—get the job done!
His entire platoon was running. P-gun shells were still dropping, but that was good—it would keep the enemy’s head down until they got closer. He just prayed that no minefields had been laid across the next forty yards of real estate.
For the next six or seven minutes, time stood still. With a fatalism he had never experienced, he became an automated Star Marine. His body did what it had trained to do, but his mind was now detached; he watched the action like a spectator in a holo-theater. Running, panting, he and two hundred other men charged the position from three angles. The shelling stopped when they were ten yards out; without hesitation, they hit the earthen wall at a dead run and ran halfway up the sloping side before gravity pulled back at them. Nick grappled at sandbags with his left hand as he heaved himself toward the twelve-foot crest. Chemical smoke stung his nostrils and he fought the urge to sneeze, but kept going. Coils of concertina wire had been ripped by the shelling, but strands of it ripped at his shirt as he crawled through it.
The rebel “base” was little more than a trench network surrounded by earthworks. The network was anchored by bunkers—seven that he could see—and half a dozen elevated gun positions. The entire affair was perhaps sixty yards across. The ground inside was peppered with shell craters, smoke still rising from some of them. Nick saw perhaps a dozen dead and injured rebels, but no one was shooting at him. He landed on his feet inside the perimeter and made for the nearest bunker. Kopshevar was right behind him and Aquino was on his left.
To his right he heard the chatter of automatic rifles, but didn’t look. His own objective was right in front of him. He pulled a canister grenade off his belt with his left hand, then he was up against the side of the bunker, which was built of thick logs cemented together. He pulled the pin on the grenade—
Four men charged out of the bunker, but they hardly looked like soldiers—they wore white shirts and flat black hats, but were packing serious hardware. The first one looked a little dazed; he stumbled on his way out, but the three behind him were alert and opened fire on Star Marines twenty yards away. They didn’t see Nick behind them and he fired his first rounds in combat. He swept the four with his .291 cal and felt nothing as he saw them drop. The moment they were down, he flung the grenade through the entrance to the bunker and dropped to a crouch against the outside wall.
“Fire in the hole!” he shouted. Aquino and Kopshevar ducked beside him.
Nick heard shouts inside the bunker; the canister grenade—a fragmentation grenade on steroids—erupted with a muffled thump and the screams that followed were truly hideous. Without hesitation, Nick leaped to his feet and charged through the doorway, down a short flight of steps, and was suddenly in the midst of the enemy. He opened fire, swinging his rifle in an arc as he swept the interior, but it was hardly necessary.
Some thirty men had been inside the bunker, but the grenade had taken most of them out. Nick, when he remembered it later, was appalled at the carnage before him. Men had been shredded, the walls were awash with blood, and even the survivors were horribly wounded. But in the heat of his first combat, he shot everything that moved, until ten seconds after he entered, he was the only living soul in the bunker.
He jogged back up the steps to meet Aquino and Kopshevar, who looked at him with wide eyes.
“All dead,” he told them, and turned to look for his next objective.
But it was already over. Echo Company from the east and Hotel from the south had swarmed the outpost and penetrated every single bunker in less than a minute. Smoke poured out the doors of some of the bunkers, the trenches were littered with rebel dead, and no one was left to kill.
Minkler
Chapter 5
Nick stood in the flickering darkness after the battle, still numb but starting to shake. He stared with a sense of unreality at the four men he had killed outside the bunker. They were human beings who had been alive just minutes ago. He knew this because he had seen them flee the bunker, and then he killed them.
He had never killed anyone before.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.
The shakes hit him hard. He’d never experienced that, either, except once when he had narrowly missed having a surface car accident; it had happened so fast he didn’t have time to be scared, but the adrenaline overflow caught up with him afterward until he was barely able to walk. That’s how it was now.
He sat down on a mound of dirt, still staring at the bodies. This had also happened quickly—one minute he was getting ready to throw a grenade, the next instant four men charged out of the bunker. He’d fired by reflex, cutting them down before they even saw him. It was weird—one moment they were alive, active, vibrant—the next, they looked like marionettes with the st
rings cut. They just dropped, like androids with the power turned off. Staring at them, he half expected them to get up, like actors on a holo-vid set, but they would never get up again.
Death.
It was almost funny, that a person could come to such a sudden end after decades of life, that something as simple as a bullet could wreak such devastation. Not funny at all, actually, but…
Terrifying.
“You okay, Walker?”
Nick looked up. Sgt. DuBose was standing over him, blood on his face.
“Yeah. I think so. What about you? Are you hit?”
“Naw, this is rebel blood. We didn’t lose anybody. I think one guy from Hotel took a round in the leg, but it missed the artery. He’ll be fine.”
“What happens now?”
“Just sit tight. We’ll be getting orders, so don’t wander off.”
DuBose walked away. Nick heaved a deep breath to stop the shakes, but it didn’t help. He gripped his rifle to hopefully prevent anyone from noticing, but everyone around him seemed too preoccupied to worry about him.
Four hundred men, Echo and Hotel companies, wandered around the area. The ground inside the fort was uneven, pitted with shell craters, and one of the trenches had caved in. The darkness was erased by a flaming bunker that raged out of control; Nick hoped no explosives were stored inside. Most of the rebel dead were still inside the bunkers, but several men were policing bodies, stacking them inside a trench for later disposal. Half a dozen rebel wounded had been placed against one of the gun positions where two corpsmen worked on them.
Nick’s nose wrinkled from a combination of toxic smells, including smoke from the burning bunker, lingering chemical residue from P-gun shells, and burning hair. He sneezed, then pinched his nose with thumb and forefinger and blew it into the dirt—a snot rocket. He wiped his fingers on a handkerchief and shook his head slowly, trying to reestablish his priorities.
This had been his first battle, and he had survived. Now every action, every thought, every word spoken around him seemed magnified. He was acutely aware of things, like the first time he had smoked cannabis; every detail seemed important, and he felt obliged to pay attention, if for no other reason than to remember this moment in the future.
If he had a future.
The atmosphere in the fort felt like an accident scene…or maybe a crime scene. People had died here, and it was a big deal, but no one was treating it that way. Most of the Star Marines around him were quiet, as if contemplating what they had seen and done, but a few others seemed giddy, almost drunk, giggling insanely at nothing funny. Stress. Each man handled it his own way.
Back in boot camp, Nick had realized that combat on Alpha Centauri was a very real possibility, and resigned himself to the notion that he might not survive. That he probably wouldn’t survive. It was the easiest way to control the dread that accompanied any thought of future combat. They had even drilled that into him, that “you are already dead, so just do your job and don’t worry about it”. It worked, worked so well that he started to believe it. He dedicated himself to becoming the best Star Marine that money could buy; if he was going to die, he would take a lot of rebels with him.
And tonight he had taken about three dozen…and survived. Tomorrow he would take some more, and a few more every day until his own number popped up. Every rebel he killed was one who would never kill a Star Marine. Now that he had actually pulled the trigger and done the deed, it would be easier next time.
He would keep it up as long as he could.
*
The Star Marines had committed overkill. Four companies had approached the base and two had assaulted it. That turned out to be more than sufficient—Foxtrot and Golf Companies had turned back and returned to Papa.
The rebel base was pocked and pitted with shell craters. The ground was soaked in blood and the bunkers were drenched. Finding a place for four hundred men to sit down was a challenge, and a place to sleep was out of the question. As his shakes dissipated and weariness overtook him, Nick used his trenching tool to clear away some questionable dirt beside the outer wall where he had entered the base and sat down with his back to the wall. Kopshevar and Rudy Aquino joined him.
Aquino was still wired.
“Man, that was the scariest thing I ever did, man. I was scared shitless. How about you, Nick?”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“I still can’t believe we didn’t lose no one. There was two hundred of those fuckers, and they only wounded one man? We must be charmed, don’t you think?”
“I would like to think so, but I think we were just lucky. This time, anyway.”
“I would call it good planning,” Kopshevar said. For once, his demeanor was serious. “The officers did a good job.”
“We still lost sixteen men in the minefield,” Nick replied.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t our company.”
“It could just as easily have been us. Count your blessings.”
“I’ve never been so scared in my life!” Rudy chattered. “I’m still shaking.”
Nick pressed his helmet back against the earthen wall.
“Close your eyes, Rudy. Get some sleep while you can. I got a feeling tomorrow is going to be a lot worse.”
“Oh, man, don’t say that, Nick! Please don’t say that.”
“Okay, I won’t say it again. But get some sleep.”
Aquino and Kopshevar leaned back and tried to relax. How successful they were, Nick never knew. Within three minutes he was out like a light.
Wednesday, 16 May, 0435 (CC)
The Rebel Base – Camarrel, Alpha Centauri 2
The Star Marines managed to sleep a little more than four hours before the officers rousted them. They ate a cold breakfast from the rations they had brought with them. Nick had a can of cold beans and sausage. It wasn’t exactly gourmet, but considering the circumstances it tasted pretty damn good. A kitchen transport from Firebase Papa delivered forty gallons of hot coffee, enough for each man to drink his fill. As Alpha Prime began to rise in the east, the men of Echo Company, somewhat refreshed by a few hours’ sleep, milled about, ready for action.
It wasn’t long in coming.
*
“Echo, listen up!”
Capt. Seals gathered his platoons near the western wall of the enclosure. He waited until most of them were standing in a semi-circle around him.
“Good job last night, men. It turned out better than anyone could have hoped. The Freaks have six bases in this area and, with the help of the Infantry, we took out two of them. The nearest one to the south got plastered by the 205s and the rebels abandoned it, which leaves three. Two of those are in Quebec’s sector, so they’re not our problem, but the last of the six is a bit farther west, about sixteen miles out at a little place called Minkler. That’s where the Freaks have their biggest batteries, and Camarrel won’t be safe until we take them out.
“For the moment, the Freaks are on the run. Satellites and gunsleds have spotted groups of them scattered all over the area west of here, probably making their way to Minkler. We’re going to get there first, take out Minkler, and cut off the stragglers.
“HVs are going to pick us up at Firebase Papa in one hour, so we have to hoof it back over there and get ready for them. When we get there, check your equipment, make sure you have plenty of ammo, and stand by to load.”
Seals swept them with his gaze and offered them his boyish grin.
“But first, let me say that I am damn proud of all of you. You made me look good.”
His grin faded.
“One more thing.” He took a deep breath and swept them with his gaze again. “You all got your feet wet last night. It wasn’t much of a battle, but it was the real thing, and that counts. But now the rebels know for sure that we’re here, and that we mean business. They’ll be ready for us next time, if we give them the chance, and from everything I’ve heard, they are not a joke. They don’t look much like soldiers, but if they kill you, you’ll be de
ad just the same. Don’t take them for granted.
“Up until now they’ve had things pretty much their own way. They completely butt-fucked the Colonial Defense Force and they held their own against the Fed Infantry. Right now they probably feel pretty good about themselves, but that’s about to change.
“We took a handful of prisoners last night, but today we won’t be taking any. That will not be our standard procedure, but we’re going to send them a message at Minkler. No prisoners! Got that? Not a single one.”
Nick heard the words and felt his gut squirm. Before he could come to his senses, his hand was in the air.
“Captain?”
“What is it, Walker?”
“Sir…can I ask why? I mean, what the hell?”
Seals nodded with a grim expression.
“I know what you’re thinking, but there’s a very good reason for it. The Freaks think they’re invincible. The CDF couldn’t stop them and neither could the Infantry, but now they’re facing the Star Marines. We want to make an impression on them, introduce them to the fear of God. We’re going to massacre the poor bastards, and then let a few get away so they can spread the word. We have a long campaign ahead of us; we want the Freaks to piss razor blades every time they hear, or even think, the words ‘Star Marines’. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir, but…”
“Go ahead, Walker. But what?”
“It could backfire, sir. If they’re really dedicated to their cause, they might double down on atrocities, and if they take prisoners, they might decide to retaliate in kind.”
“There is that risk. I’m sure some of them will react exactly that way, but we are gambling that the majority of them don’t even want to be in this war at all. Hopefully we can encourage them to lay down their guns and go home.”
Nick frowned, but didn’t reply. Seals noticed.
“For what it’s worth, I didn’t give this order, I’m just passing it on. But I do concur with it, so that’s what we’re going to do. If you want to sit this one out, let me know.”
