by John Bowers
He was one hell of a Star Marine.
Nick couldn’t stop the tears that slid down his cheeks, nor did he want to.
Nor did he want to stop the rage that boiled up from the depths of his soul. Shaking again, this time from fury, he rose and started across the street to the opposite alley. Without a thought that he might be exposing himself to more enemy fire, he walked into the gloom and located the man who had killed Rudy, who he himself had downed with a blind shot. He found him lying on his side, still breathing, gasping against the pain. Blood was leaking out of him. With his combat boot, Nick turned him onto his back and glared down at him.
His rifle lay several feet away.
And he was a Ruke.
He lay gasping, staring up at Nick with dark eyes that nevertheless glittered in the flash from the 205s. Nick thought he saw fear, but wasn’t sure…and didn’t care. He stepped on the man’s right wrist, pinning it to the ground, the hand extended.
He fired a round into the hand.
The Ruke screamed.
Nick stepped over him and pinned the other wrist.
He blew that hand off, too.
He took a step back, then kicked the man in the crotch as hard as he could.
The Ruke was already screaming, but now his body jerked and vomit bubbled up out of his throat.
Nick took another step back and shot him through each kneecap.
Then he blew off each foot.
Breathing hard, out of his mind with grief and rage, he picked up the Ruke’s rifle and popped the clip, then smashed the barrel repeatedly on the ground until the muzzle warped. He threw the rifle toward a rubbish bin and turned back to the wounded Rukranian. For a moment he was tempted to put him out of his misery, but didn’t want to let him off so easily. He leaned over him and spat in his face.
“I hope you drown in your own puke!” he snarled. “Fucking Ruke!”
Still shaking with rage, still not satisfied, he turned and stalked back down the alley, across the street, and stood over the three prisoners they had taken a few minutes earlier. The wounded Ruke leaning against the fence was awake again. He peered up at Nick with pain-glazed eyes, tried to speak, but couldn’t.
“You said I wouldn’t kill you,” Nick told him. “Remember that?”
The man nodded weakly.
“Da.”
Without a word, Nick pulled the Ruke’s own pistol out of his belt, turned to the two injured rebels, and shot each one through the forehead. They fell over without a sound. He turned back to the Ruke.
“You sure about that?”
The wounded man’s brow furrowed, and Nick was sure he saw fear this time. He pointed the pistol at him.
“Have you ever seen a Yancy West vid?”
“Da. Everybody…see Yancy West. He is…big star at home.”
“Good. Then you understand what I’m talking about. What does Yancy West always say when he nails the bad guy?”
The Ruke grinned, as if at a pleasant memory.
“Audee…” He coughed, spraying blood over Nick’s boots. “Audee…Adios…”
“That’s right. Adios, motherfucker!”
Nick shot him right between the eyes.
Trimmer Springs
Chapter 32
Ultimately, the rebel counterattack on Monroe Falls failed.
In spite of the shock the attack caused, and the nearly three thousand rebel troops who took part, it was training that made the difference. Besieged on every side, the Star Marines took heavy losses and fell back when they had to, but still held their ground. Fighting by squads, platoons, fire teams, and sometimes individually, they whittled away at the attackers until the rebels ran out of steam. Heavy artillery from the 205 batteries threw a curtain of fire around the town that the rebels could not cross, and any reinforcements that might have made a difference never arrived.
Daylight revealed that much of the downtown area was either flattened or on fire. Fire suppression units couldn’t operate until the fighting stopped and entire city blocks were lost. The dawn brought a reassessment of the situation. The rebels had lost too many men to press their advantage; they couldn’t retreat due to Federation artillery, so they had only two choices—surrender or die. The Star Marines, shaken but still the best fighting force in the galaxy, took back the offensive. Street by street, block by block—and sometimes building by building—they rooted out the rebels. It took two days. When it was finally over, seven hundred rebels had surrendered and more than two thousand were dead.
Star Marine losses were also high. Every single company was decimated and a number of officers were killed, including:
Lt. Col. Dietrich;
1st Lt. Oehlschlaeger;
Lt. Tran Li.
Echo Company suffered forty percent losses. Six men were killed in Nick’s squad:
Pfc. “CC” Clark;
Pvt. Wayne Juhl;
Cpl. Antoine Zimba;
Pvt. Jerry Akers;
Pvt. George Custer;
Pvt. Rudy Aquino.
Avila and Wilson were wounded and evacuated.
Second Battalion, after receiving replacements a few weeks earlier, had numbered around seven hundred men. A single night’s fighting in Monroe Falls reduced that number to just over four hundred.
Capt. Bruce Gordon, Foxtrot’s commanding officer, credited the plasma grenade Nick had thrown with saving his company, which had already taken seventy percent losses. The grenade had killed more than ninety enemy troops and wounded over a hundred. No one knew who had thrown it and every survivor from that side of town was questioned. Nick finally stepped forward and settled the matter.
Rudy Aquino had thrown the grenade, saving Foxtrot from total annihilation.
He would receive the Galaxy Cross.
Posthumously.
One other medal would be awarded for the defense of Monroe Falls. When Echo Company fell back in disarray from the high school campus, one man stayed behind to cover their retreat. Pvt. George Custer from 1st Squad picked up the Squad Automatic Weapon after CC Clark was killed; operating solo, without an assistant, he moved from cover to cover, spraying the Freaks from the darkness. No one ever knew how many he killed, but his rear-guard action allowed Echo to escape and take up more tenable positions deeper inside the town. Custer also received a posthumous Galaxy Cross; his feat would be forever remembered in Star Marine annals as…
Custer’s Last Stand.
***
Monroe Falls had far-reaching repercussions. Federation strategy would have to be revisited, but more important was the effect on Terra. The public had been following the war, and aside from a small, fringe core of left-wing anti-war fanatics, most citizens took pride in the progress the Star Marines were making. The Federation Congress had determined that the revolution was nothing more than a local uprising that didn’t require a full military response. To save money and perhaps gain votes, they had withheld Federation armor and air power; the string of victories on Alpha 2 had seemed to justify their decision, as the Star Marines were winning without the additional support.
Monroe Falls changed that.
When the news became public that half of 2nd Battalion had been killed or wounded, and the supporting Fed Infantry unit wiped out to the last man, the planet was shocked. Further revelations that Federation troops were fighting without air and armor created public outrage. Repeated requests from the fighting units for reinforcements and support had been ignored, but the wave of public protest could not be.
As a result, 2nd Star Marine Division, which had already sent one regiment as replacements, was mobilized and shipped out to Alpha Centauri. Three brigades of Federation armor, including hovertanks and supporting units, were also sent. Two more Fed Infantry divisions, the 8th and 9th, were dispatched to reinforce.
But that was it. No air power was sent, with the excuse that it would be far too expensive to establish and maintain fighter bases, with all the requisite support equipment and personnel, to finish a war tha
t was “nearly over anyway”. In all, an additional thirty-five thousand troops joined the fight against the Rebel Coalition.
The fledgling Federation Space Force was allowed to send six gunships to patrol the orbit of Alpha 2 and interdict the supply of arms from off-planet. The rebels would now have to fight with what they had.
But Federation forces were still outnumbered.
The colonial government of Alpha Centauri 2 came to the rescue. The Colonial Defense Force (CDF) had been badly mauled by the insurgents when the uprising first started. Only twenty thousand strong, they had fought valiantly, but could not stop the rebel tide. When they were relieved by the Fed Infantry, they had barely eleven thousand men left, and many of those were demoralized.
Now, with the Coalition on the defensive and the Star Marines in need of help, the CDF rejoined the fight. They’d had most of a year to rebuild and retrain, and added an additional twenty thousand volunteers to their ranks. Placed under Federation command, the CDF soldiers actually had more to lose than either the Star Marines or the Fed Infantry—they were fighting for their own planet. Their training was inferior by Star Marine standards, but they had plenty of heart and were used to garrison and defend captured territory, leaving the Star Marines free to carry the attack forward.
Thus reinforced, Federation Command revised the offensive strategy. The attempt to capture Trimmer Springs was once again suspended until rebel units in the south could be destroyed or neutralized. As winter settled over North Continent, the battle in the south continued, but forces in the north dug in and held.
Second Battalion began to receive a steady trickle of replacements from North American boot camps, but it took three months to get them back to full strength.
One Year Later
Tuesday, 18 November, 0436
Von Treger’s Farm – Trimmer Plain, Alpha Centauri 2
The net had finally closed around the Rebel Coalition.
Over the past nine months, Federation forces closing in from every direction had squeezed their defenses right up against the homeland, which consisted of several thousand square miles of farmland southwest of Trimmer Springs. With the exception of Trimmer Springs itself, every single city, town, village and hamlet occupied by rebel forces had been liberated. Alpha 2 had celebrated its first annual Star Marine Day in September, and bookies were taking bets on how much longer the Coalition could hold out.
On 16 November, the pressure had reached the point that rebel forces pulled out of Trimmer Springs without a fight, sparing it from certain destruction. Elements of 31st Star Marines rolled into the town, to the jubilation of the local residents, who lived next door to the rebels but had little in common with them.
Thirty-third Star Marines had been reunited as a fighting unit, bringing all the battalions together in one place. Once the south had been secured, they returned to the attack, now joined by units from 1st and 2nd Divisions. For the last three months they had been pushing against ever tighter rebel defenses, and had finally reached the sacred homeland itself. All that remained now was to steamroll over the last few miles of entrenched rebel positions. No one knew how many men the rebels could still muster, but they had to be scraping the bottom of the tank.
The Federation was already demanding a Coalition surrender, but so far without result.
***
Echo Company was in the lead again, with 3rd Platoon in front.
Nick Walker was on point.
Nick was tired. It had been a long goddamn war, and he was sick of it. They had been here eighteen months now and, of the men in his squad who deployed with him, only Sgt. DuBose and Alvin Kopshevar remained.
Billy Avila, though not one of the originals, had returned from hospital a few weeks earlier. Nick still considered him an asshole, but he was good in a fight and had no compunction about killing.
The battlefield landscape had changed. They were done with assaulting towns and worrying about innocent civilians. Now they were in enemy country, and the only civilians they faced were Freaks. The fighting was now farm to farm, searching barns and sheds and multi-story farmhouses for the enemy. The biggest danger was crossing vast open fields of wheat and vegetables, which were often sewn with mines, and sudden downpours of deadly artillery, which the Freaks still had in great supply.
Replacements had brought Echo back to full strength, two hundred men, but once they launched the final thrust into the enemy homeland, more than thirty had been lost. Attrition continued day by day, and the “old” men—those who had landed at Camarrel eighteen months before—were feeling the pressure. Rumors of negotiations spread like hellfire, but so far nothing had materialized. It was demoralizing; the fighting couldn’t last much longer, and nobody wanted to be the last man to die in a war that was all but over.
Nick Walker, fatalistic from the start, was beginning to think he might actually survive.
Echo pushed across another field toward a distant farm, this one featuring an apple orchard that at least offered a little cover from enemy fire. But beyond the orchard lay a cabbage field, which offered no protection at all. The barn and farmhouse were visible four hundred yards ahead, and Nick had no doubt the defenders were hunkered down there, watching and waiting. Anyone crossing that cabbage patch was likely to come under intense laser and machine gun fire.
Nick reached the edge of the orchard and dropped to one knee, holding up a closed fist to signal a halt. Behind him, the thirty-one men of 3rd Platoon, in a staggered skirmish line, followed suit.
DuBose came forward and knelt beside Nick.
“How does it look?”
“Pretty much like all the others, and that’s what I don’t like. Every farm we’ve hit so far has been defended, so I’m thinking we P-gun the shit out of this place before we cross that field. I figure any civilians are already gone or down in their hidey holes, so there’s no point in trying to spare the farm.”
DuBose agreed and got on his command channel. With a few terse words, he requested fire support and passed on the map coordinates. Less than a minute later, the first salvo of parabola gun shells whistled out of the sky and erupted in and around the farm buildings. The barn splintered and burst into flame, two equipment sheds were destroyed, and soon the house itself was blazing.
Shells, over thirty a minute, continued falling for ninety seconds; when they stopped, very little was left. The Star Marines watched for another few minutes as flames leaped into the sky. The barn collapsed. Nick cringed when he heard the screams of terrified horses inside the barn, and when it collapsed he saw two of them, their bodies blazing, charge out of the inferno in a desperate attempt to escape. One had a broken leg and made only a few yards before it collapsed; the other continued to run until a Star Marine, from two hundred yards, brought it down with a single shot to the head. It fell, thrashing and smoking, and finally lay still.
Nick lowered his head and gritted his teeth. This was the worst part of warfare—the suffering of innocents.
DuBose laid a hand on his shoulder.
“I think we can move now. You ready?”
Nick nodded and got to his feet. He gave the signal to advance and 3rd Platoon emerged from the orchard.
It was getting dark as they crossed the cabbage field. Alpha Prime had already set and Centauri B, which had set thirty minutes earlier, was lingering just below the horizon. At this time of year it wouldn’t get much lower, and its glow would prevent the night from getting completely dark.
The P-guns had done their job. The platoon reached the farm without encountering any fire; when they arrived, they discovered fourteen rebels, both dead and wounded, scattered around their weapons. Even so, they treated the situation as still hostile. Second Squad advanced in overwatch formation and set up a defensive perimeter on the west side of the property. Four men from 3rd Squad dragged the rebel bodies to an open area and searched them while three others checked the rebel wounded. Lt. Jaeger called for an HVM to evacuate them.
Nick and his squad probed th
e ruins for threats.
“Check for civilians!” DuBose ordered. “They usually have some kind of shelter nearby, so let’s find it. I don’t want any surprises.”
The men spread out and circled the farmhouse, a beautiful three-story structure that was now fully engulfed in flame. The intense heat kept them from getting too close, and in any case, the thing was going to collapse at any minute. Nick squinted against the heat as he checked the area near the well, looking for what in the North American Midwest would be called a storm shelter. Almost every rebel farm they had captured had one somewhere on the property, frequently covered by sod to mask its existence.
“Found it!” someone called out, and Nick turned to look. DuBose and Kopshevar were trotting toward a spot fifty yards from the house where one of the replacements was kicking sod off a pair of double wooden doors set flush in the ground.
“Okay,” DuBose ordered, “everybody stand back. We don’t know what’s down there, so be ready—but be careful. They’re probably civilians.”
“Fuck ‘em,” Kopshevar said. “They’re fucking Freaks!”
Nick arrived just as DuBose pounded on the double doors with the butt of his rifle.
“You, in the shelter! Federation Star Marines! Lay down your weapons and come out with your hands up! You have ten seconds or you’ll get a grenade! Come out NOW!”
DuBose stepped back, his rifle aimed at the door. Everyone stood ready to open fire if the occupants below turned out to be rebel soldiers. Pulses ran high.
Ten seconds passed, then fifteen. Nothing happened.
With a grimace, DuBose pounded on the door again.
“Last chance, goddammit! Come out now, or we’ll kill every last one of you!”
Nick braced himself, legs three feet apart, feet planted. This part was always nerve-wracking, because you never knew who was down in the hole. Twice in the past they had encountered armed resistance, and one Star Marine had been wounded. He sucked a deep breath and waited.
