Revolt on Alpha 2 (Nick Walker, United Federation Marshal Book 8)

by John Bowers

  “They could at least bring in some robo-diggers!” Kopshevar muttered. “This is back breaking.”

  Actually it wasn’t. The ground had been plowed and the soil, though firm, was soft. It only took twenty or thirty minutes for each man to prepare a five-foot hole, each one ten to fifteen feet from the next. Other squads dug their own holes on either side of them.

  By the time they were done, Nick was sweating and more exhausted than ever. He hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in a week and it was catching up to him. He wiped his brow, drank some more tepid water, and dropped into his hole to catch his breath. He had dug it wide enough to sit down, which got him out of the suns for a few minutes. He crouched down and rested his back against the side of the hole.

  DuBose appeared above him, looking down.

  “You’re a fire team leader now, Walker. You need to see to your men.”

  “I never asked for that, Sergeant.”

  “You never asked to be born, either, but here you are.”

  “I have a request.”

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “Permission to shoot the corporal? I’ll do it when no one is looking.”

  “You mean the private? He isn’t a corporal anymore.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

  “Permission deferred. If you just have to do it, use a captured weapon. I don’t want the Star Police nosing around afterward.”

  DuBose turned and walked away, leaving Nick tingling with surprise. He had been half kidding, but DuBose sounded serious.

  Nick climbed out of his hole and checked the three men he was now responsible for. Kopshevar’s hole was to his left, and just about complete. Rudy was to his immediate right; his hole was only four feet deep and he seemed to be struggling. Avila was ten feet to Rudy’s right, and was almost done with his, muttering obscenities all the while.

  Rudy Aquino looked pretty near exhausted. Nick ordered him out of the hole and jumped in to take his place. Ten minutes later, he had dug it another foot deeper and widened it so Rudy could lie down. When he crawled out, Rudy, looking weak, smiled at him.

  “Thanks, Nick. I would never make it without you.”

  “Bullshit. You’re a fine Star Marine. Don’t ever sell yourself short.”

  “Where do we go when we need to take a shit?”

  “Use Avila’s foxhole.”

  Avila’s head popped up.

  “I heard that! Anybody takes a shit in my hole, I’ll make him eat it.”

  Rudy laughed. Nick didn’t. He stared at Avila with barely disguised animosity. It had been years since he’d disliked anyone as intensely as he did Avila.

  “Okay, when you guys get done, you’re free to take a nap. We’ll probably have to sleep in shifts after dark, so catch up while you can.”

  He returned to his own foxhole to follow his own advice.

  ***

  Two blocks from the western edge of town, Capt. Tim Seals sat in a corner booth of a small diner and studied his e-tablet map. A waitress asked if he wanted to order anything, but he declined—if his men couldn’t have decent food, then neither would he. But he did accept a glass of cold water. Like everyone else in his company, he was parched from the long march under twin suns.

  Echo had reached its assigned objective, Cutler Crossing. Orders would be forthcoming, but at the moment he didn’t know where they would go next. West, certainly, to link up with 1st Division, but by which route? He would wait and see.

  Since Goshen, they had moved three hundred miles across the southern end of the Trimmer Plain. To their south, the Alphalaya Mountains, faint but visible above the southern horizon, loomed ten thousand feet into the Centauri sky. To their west, broken only by the occasional creek or tree line, lay open farmland. The Star Marines were squeezing the continent from four directions and progress had been steady. The Freaks were good at delaying tactics, which included ambushes and hit-run strikes, but so far had been unable to stem the Star Marine tide. Seals was confident of victory, he just didn’t know how long it would take.

  What he did know, or thought he knew, was that the enemy was tracking his progress. They probably had agents scattered about, or as Lt. Jaeger had suggested, were using insect drones; however they did it, they rarely failed to take an opportunity to strike, and Seals was confident tonight would be no different. He would inspect the defensive positions before dark. Two of his four platoons were guarding the west end of town. He had placed 1st Platoon on the south side and 4th Platoon on the north. All were supported by machine guns from his Heavy Weapons platoon. His P-guns were set up in the middle of town, near the square. If the rebels came tonight—and they surely would—he was ready for them.

  Fifteen minutes later, he picked up his e-tablet and left the diner. It was time to inspect the troops.

  ***

  Nick slept for two hours. When he woke he felt like shit. His mouth was dry and tasted like the bottom of his boot. Cobwebs lingered in his head as he took another drink of water and swirled it around in his mouth before spitting it out. He took another drink and swallowed, but didn’t feel much better.

  He crawled out of the hole and looked around. Only one or two men were visible, the others still getting some rest. A glance at his watch showed him it was just after 1800 hours. Alpha Prime was low in the west, casting a blinding glare across the countryside. Alpha B had already set, but would never get more than thirty degrees below the horizon, which meant the night would not get completely dark. That was a good thing, since it offered some visibility in case of attack.

  He stood up and brushed dirt off his fatigues. He was adjusting his canteen belt when he heard, surprisingly, a female voice.

  “Excuse me?”

  Nick turned and looked behind him. Two women were approaching across the plowed field, their house shoes sinking into the soft dirt. Both were middle-aged, fifty or older, with puffy hairstyles and wearing loose, filmy dresses. As they approached, he noticed more women crossing the field from the street, heading for different foxholes. His eyebrows lifted as he waited to see what this was about.

  The two women approaching his foxhole were smiling in an apologetic fashion. Each was carrying a large picnic basket. They came right up to him and stopped. He got a whiff of cheap perfume.

  “I’m sorry,” one of them said. “I don’t know if this is allowed, or even proper, but…”

  “We thought you might be hungry,” the other lady said. “It’s awfully hot out here, and maybe you’d also like some cold lemonade.”

  They set the baskets down and knelt over them. Nick took a knee and watched, his surprise giving way to excitement. The first woman dug into her basket and pulled out a couple of delicious looking sandwiches. She handed them to him.

  “It isn’t much, but maybe it’s better than your army rations.”

  Nick didn’t bother to explain that he was a Star Marine and not “army”—it wouldn’t be polite. He took the sandwiches and looked at them, then took a bite. The bread was dark and thick, the meat was chopped Centauri Fowl, a domestic bird similar to a chicken. The spread contained a spice that delighted his palate, and he didn’t even try to keep the bliss off his face.

  The second woman handed him a plastic cup of lemonade…with ice! He took a swallow and felt a hundred percent better than he had one minute earlier.

  “My god, that’s good!” he breathed. “I must be dreaming. Surely I’ve been killed and gone to heaven. You ladies are angels!”

  He smiled. The ladies tittered with pleasure.

  “Like I said, it isn’t much, but there’s plenty of it. We all got together and decided that, since you boys are risking your lives to liberate us from the rebels, the least we can do is provide you with at least one decent meal.”

  “Ma’am, you have no idea how wonderful this is. Thank you so much.”

  “It’s the least we can do.” She looked around. “Where are the others? You’re not out here alone, are you?”

  Nick turned and lo
oked over his shoulder.

  “Rudy! Kopycat! Chow call!” He hesitated, then: “You, too, Avila.”

  Slowly, like sleeping cats who have been disturbed, the other men in the fire team poked their heads up, yawning and blinking, and crawled out of their holes. Once they saw Nick eating homemade sandwiches and drinking icy lemonade, they perked up and joined him. Rudy and Kopshevar were liberal with their praise of the food, and even Avila seemed to appreciate it.

  “This is the best food I’ve eaten since we left Terra,” he told the ladies, and charmed them with his smile. Nick was astonished that he had it in him.

  Up and down the defensive line, other pairs of ladies were also feeding the troops. Third Platoon had never had it so good. When all the sandwiches had been eaten and the lemonade drained, the ladies packed up the wrappers in their baskets.

  “If it’s all right,” one of them told Nick, “we’ll come back in the morning with coffee and eggs. We have cornbread, too.”

  “Oh, it’s definitely all right,” Nick told her. “I’m sure we’ll still be here.”

  “Good! We’ll be back, then.”

  “Do you put honey in your cornbread?”

  The women both looked blank.

  “No, but we can, if you like it that way.”

  “Oh, no, please don’t. I hate sweet cornbread. Cornbread isn’t supposed to be sweet.”

  Both women smiled in relief.

  “I like to serve it with melted butter, and if someone wants to put honey on it, it’s their choice.”

  “Perfect! I can’t wait. Thank you.”

  The ladies turned to leave, then turned back.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, we didn’t introduce ourselves. My name is Allison Harper, and this is Joan Shilling. We live next door to each other.”

  Nick shook hands with them both.

  “Glad to know you. I’m Nick Walker; this is Billy, that’s Rudy, and this one is Alvin, but we call him Kopycat.”

  Joan Shilling giggled.

  “Kopycat. I like that.”

  They started to walk away again, but Nick called after them.

  “Did you say you ladies live on this street?” He pointed at the houses at the edge of town.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Ma’am, we’re expecting a rebel attack sometime after dark. You might be advised to sleep somewhere else tonight. And tell your neighbors.”

  They both looked a little shocked, but nodded.

  “Thank you. We’ll do that, but we’ll still be back with your breakfast.”

  After the women left, Avila looked at Nick.

  “Cornbread? For breakfast?”

  “Hell, yeah. Cornbread with anything. Cornbread with caviar, cornbread with oysters…shit, I could eat cornbread three times a day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it.”

  “You’re weird, Walker. Fucking weird.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot. But here’s a secret, Avila, and I don’t tell just anyone this…”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t give a fuck.”

  Chapter 17

  As Nick had expected, the Star Marines slept in relays. Most of the men had grabbed a couple of hours in their foxholes before dark, but were still able to sleep when their turn came. Half slept and half remained alert, ready to sound the alarm at the first sign of trouble. Nick and Avila took the first four-hour watch while Rudy and Kopshevar sacked out.

  Nick lounged against the side of his hole, just his head and shoulders showing. By 2200 hours the night was as dark as it was going to get—Alpha Centauri B still glowed below the horizon, but cast little more light than a full moon on Terra. Once the suns set the air cooled dramatically, dropping down into the eighties Fahrenheit, which felt like an autumn breeze after the heat of the day.

  Nick gazed out across the plowed fields and wondered if the Freaks would be so stupid as to attack across such a wide-open field of fire. Judging from their past actions, they probably were; they loved fighting at night, and knew that keeping the Star Marines awake was in their best interest. They probably also knew that 3rd Division’s heavy artillery was out of range of Cutler Crossing. The advance had been rapid enough that the artillery had to move every few days. Moving the 77mm guns wasn’t that difficult, but the 205s were a different story. Respotting them could take two or three days every time they had to move.

  But their firepower was worth it.

  Nick hadn’t seen the defensive strategy for the entire town, but figured that Capt. Seals had placed at least part of a platoon on each side of town, since it would be a simple matter for the Freaks to attack from any direction. He didn’t worry about it—guarding the west end was enough to occupy his thinking.

  A few minutes after 2300, he checked his watch and yawned. One more hour until shift change, then he could get some sack time…or, some dirt time, since he would be sleeping in a foxhole. He reached for his canteen and took another slug. Seals had sent some men around with water canisters to replenish the canteens, and the stuff was still cool. He put the canteen away and considered crawling out of his hole. He needed to take a piss.

  Without warning, a flare popped two thousand feet over his head, followed by three more in rapid succession. Unlike flares in ancient wars, these were not attached to parachutes and didn’t descend. They were attached to tiny drones that circled the area, and could burn for up to thirty minutes.

  Nick’s pulse leaped. He pressed against the side of his hole, rifle ready, and peered across the flickering landscape. He didn’t see a thing.

  Nor did he hear the rebel artillery firing, but twenty seconds later he ducked as the signature shriek of incoming shells split the air. He cowered in the bottom of his hole and felt the impact as fifteen or twenty shells plunged into the fixed positions along the street behind him. Hot steel whined over his head. DuBose was shouting in his helmet speakers.

  “First Squad, on your toes! Keep your heads down, but prepare to defend your positions!”

  More heavy shells dropped out of the night sky alongside the street, blowing the fixed positions all to hell. Shrapnel sprayed the houses across the street, and a couple caught fire, but none of the houses received a direct hit. Nick raised his head again as the shrapnel died away. No more shells fell, which meant the enemy infantry must be close. He peered across the landscape and saw them, a mottled wave of black pants and white shirts running in a staggered line, maybe two hundred yards out.

  “Contact!” he shouted into his helmet mike. “Freaks coming this way!”

  To his right and left, machine guns from the Heavy Weapons platoon stuttered into action. Heavy .49 cal slugs streaked across the fields at a height of about three feet, tracers sweeping right and left. Nick held his fire, waiting for the enemy to get closer. DuBose was shouting in his ear, telling everyone to wait. When the enemy reached a hundred fifty yards, P-guns in the town square behind him began to cough in rapid-fire, shells sliding into the tubes from loading racks that enabled each tube to fire thirty rounds a minute. Nick heard the tubes thumping behind him, then saw the shells rip into the oncoming line, bright flashes of death that flung shrapnel in every direction. He saw twenty or thirty rebels fall, dimly heard their cries of pain, but the line came on. He braced his rifle against his shoulder and steadied himself.

  “Fifty yards!” DuBose was yelling. “Wait until they close to fifty yards!”

  The parabola guns continued to fire, and so did the machine guns, tracers dancing like fireflies. The rebel line stumbled, but kept coming. Nick heaved a deep breath and let it go, then took aim with his .291 cal rifle. He started to squeeze the trigger…

  A scream to his right caught his attention. He turned to look and was astonished at what he saw. Two hover vehicles streaked down the line of foxholes six feet above the ground. One was firing a tripod laser, the other a heavy machine gun. Nick ducked barely in time as bullets churned the ground around him; laser bolts danced across the ground right behind them, temporarily blinding h
im with their brilliant flash.

  How the hell did they spot us? They thought we were in the fixed positions!

  The machine guns. They spotted our machine gun fire.

  As the hovercraft passed over him, Nick looked up to see that they weren’t gunsleds at all, but like the incident near Minkler, just farm skimmers converted to carry heavy weapons. As such, they weren’t very fast, which meant they could be brought down.

  As if someone were reading his mind, he saw a streak of light at the far end of the defensive line—one of the heavy weapons guys, he guessed—and one of the sleds exploded. The enemy craft traveled another twenty yards before it plunged into the ground. The second craft skimmed away and turned toward the oncoming rebel line, where he lost it in the gloom below the horizon.

  Rifles up and down the line opened fire, jerking him back to the moment. Cursing himself for letting the skimmers distract him, he also opened fire. The rebels were just fifty yards away now, down by half, but still coming hard. With his heart pounding in his throat, he fired single rounds, one shot with each trigger pull. His aim was swift and sure, moving from one target to the next, pulling the trigger once every second. He saw rebels fall, heard some of them scream, but also saw their rifles flashing as they returned fire. They were running hard, gasping, desperate to hit the Star Marines before they were wiped out. Bullets kicked up the dirt around him, and he heard men yelling on both sides, some of them in pain.

  In spite of his fatalism, his pulse pounded with adrenaline. Sweat ran down his cheeks and dripped off his chin. His rifle clicked on an empty chamber and he slammed a fresh magazine into place, then stood upright and resumed firing. He could hear their footsteps now, their hoarse wheezing. He had dropped a dozen or more, and the machine guns had mowed down scores, but at least twenty were closing on his foxhole.

  It was surreal, like a stylized cartoon vid in slow motion. Stark, flickering flares; blazing machine guns; streaking tracers; swirling, acrid smoke; dark, colorless blood spewing into the air; shouting men; screaming men; brilliant lasers; black and white-clad men in a dead run; Star Marines in mottled camo standing their ground…