Fields of Fire (Frontlines Book 5)

by Marko Kloos

  “Once the Orion salvo has destroyed the bulk of the Lanky fleet, two battleships, Arkhangelsk and Agincourt, will advance and engage any surviving seed ships in close combat.”

  Behind the major, the display shows a bunch of little starship icons firing a few dozen missiles at the orange lozenge shapes representing Lanky seed ships. Most of the orange icons blink out of existence when the Orion volley arrives. Then two of the friendly icons, one blue and one green, close the distance and wipe the few remaining orange icons from the map.

  “Phase Two is where the SOCOM teams come in, so pay close attention,” Major Masoud continues with a wry little smile. “The cruisers will advance behind the battleships and deploy their embarked SOCOM pathfinder teams via bio-pod to the designated landing zones on the surface of Mars. There are eight landing zones, each color-coded to the task force assigned to assault it. Our landing zone, as you may be able to guess, is Red Beach. You will land, deploy, secure the perimeter, and then get to work feeding targeting data to the cruisers overhead. You will prepare the landing zone for the follow-up forces by directing orbital bombardment and close-air support.”

  This part of the plan is the most conventional thing I’ve heard so far. It’s what we are trained to do, of course, and exactly the sort of mission we’ve been craving. But the preconditions for us to even launch down to the landing zone are insanely ambitious considering our military prowess against the Lankies up to this point.

  “In Phase Three, the carriers and their escorts will advance. The cruisers will make holes in the Lanky minefields and then resupply their magazines on the fly from the munition ships. The carriers will then launch their infantry contingents. Each landing zone has one carrier task force assigned to it. The assault will land in two waves—one in Phase Three, one in Phase Four. Each wave will land a full regiment into each landing zone, for a total commitment of four divisions of infantry.”

  “Whoa,” I say involuntarily, and most of the troops in the room echo that sentiment in some form. We have never landed four divisions of troops in a single operation—the entire Spaceborne Infantry arm only had three divisions at full strength before the Lankies cut us down to size. In just two waves, we will land over twenty thousand combat troops on the surface. In the Earth-based wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, twenty thousand troops were a nonremarkable concentration of force on the strategic scale of their respective conflicts. For the space-based colonial infantry engagements we’re geared and trained to fight, four divisions are an overwhelming logistical and tactical challenge to move and coordinate.

  “Phase Four will be the landing of the second wave, securing of the landing beaches and their expansion, and the rescue of the surviving personnel on Mars from their holdout shelters. Once the survivors are evacuated and the beaches secured, we move on to Phase Five, which will be the expansion and linking of the invasion beaches.

  “Finally, in Phase Six we will mop up the remaining Lanky resistance and eliminate their strongholds and infrastructure via aerial and orbital bombardment. Once the mop-up is complete, we will evacuate the bulk of our combat forces and leave the remaining cleanup business to an orbital garrison force.”

  Everything I just heard is so bold in scope that it ought to be ludicrous. But nobody around me is laughing or even chuckling. All the troops are listening to Major Masoud’s briefing with dead-serious faces.

  “In a moment, I will go over Phase Two in detail because that is our main bread and butter,” Major Masoud says. “Questions or comments so far?”

  For a moment, nobody says anything. Then Dmitry clears his throat, and every pair of eyes in the room looks at him.

  “Is grand plan,” he says. “Plan that great, can only be two outcomes. Will be best success in all of history, or complete disaster.”

  Major Masoud looks at the SRA sergeant for a few seconds and then nods. “I agree, Senior Sergeant. We will succeed completely, or fail completely. I don’t have to tell any of you what is going to happen if we limp home defeated, with a few broken ships and a handful of troops. So let’s go through the briefing for Phase Two and do our part to make sure that it does not come to that.”

  The in-depth briefing for Phase Two lasts another hour and a half. Not only is this operation by far the boldest we’ve ever planned, but even the SOCOM tasks are completely out of the ordinary. Because we didn’t have the time to integrate all the communications networks between the two alliances, we will have integrated units from top to bottom. Each task force has a mix of SRA and NAC ships, each infantry brigade has both NAC and SRA regiments in it, and our SOCOM teams are dropping with mixed personnel as well. For us, that means our two SI Force Recon teams will be joined by an SRA team, and I am dropping into battle teamed up with Dmitry. Our job is to direct the close-air support and orbital strikes, and having a combat controller from each alliance in the same landing zone means that we’ll be able to talk to whatever unit is overhead, whether it’s an SRA or an NAC bird. We are taking decades of established doctrines and habits, and we are throwing them right out the window, winging it as we go.

  “Jump-off time is within the next twelve hours,” Major Masoud says when we’ve gone through all the briefing points thoroughly and nobody has any more questions or comments. “If the assault makes it to Phase Two, we will be fully committed, whether or not the rest of the task group moves on to Phase Three and beyond. If things go wrong once the pods are on the ground, there will be no return. But that should be nothing new to any of you.”

  He looks at the assembled ragtag group of podheads, sixteen of us from three different alliances and four different services. Major Masoud has always looked hard and craggy, but it seems to me that he has aged a few years since I saw him last on Arcadia, a little less than two months ago. He reaches for his data pad and turns off the screen behind him.

  “There will be no drills until we suit up,” he says. “Use the time at your discretion. It may be the last quiet time you get. Dismissed.”

  The SI troopers and the Spaceborne Rescueman get up and leave the briefing room, talking among themselves as they walk out. After a few moments, Dmitry and his four SRA comrades follow suit, exchanging words in Russian that’s beyond my limited vocabulary. I get out of my seat and walk up to Major Masoud, who is shutting down the briefing console.

  “Something on your mind, Lieutenant?” he asks when he turns and sees me standing in front of his little podium.

  “Are you dropping with us, sir?”

  “That’s a negative.” His expression looks almost pained for just a second. “I am the senior SOCOM officer in Task Force Red. Once you are all on the surface, I’ll be coordinating your efforts with those of the other teams from Phalanx’s CIC.”

  “On Arcadia, you told me we’d see each other on Mars,” I say.

  “Yes, I know. And I requested to drop with the team. But the general staff had other ideas. Trust me, Lieutenant, there’s nothing I’d rather do than to launch with the Phase Two pathfinders.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That is so, Lieutenant. And you know it’s true, because you’d make the same pick if you had a choice.” He powers down the console and picks up his data pad. “No podhead will choose to die in a CIC, looking at a holotable instead of side by side with his comrades on the ground. That’s a punishment, not a privilege. Whatever you may think of me, Lieutenant Grayson, I know that you don’t consider me a chickenshit console jockey.”

  I have to grin despite the anger I still feel at Major Masoud over Arcadia. “No, sir. You’re a ruthless bastard, but you’re not a chickenshit console jockey.”

  He looks at me with that unreadable, frosty expression of his, and I briefly wonder whether I’ll get to spend the time to launch in the brig for insubordination.

  “I can live with that assessment,” he says. Then he nods toward the briefing room hatch. “Catch up with your team and enjoy what time we have left, Lieutenant. I hear that the Russians may have brought som
e liquid refreshments along. I also have it on good authority that nobody in this Fleet is going to enforce the dry-ship rules for the next few days. Dismissed,” he says again, in a tone that tells me I’ve used up my one free chit to speak my mind.

  “Aye-aye, sir,” I say. Sometimes you just have to know when not to press your luck.

  CHAPTER 11

  PHASE ONE

  “General quarters, general quarters. All hands, man your combat stations. Set material condition Zebra throughout the ship. This is not a drill.”

  When the general-quarters alert sounds over the 1MC, I’m already in my underarmor ballistic liner, which I put on after getting out of my bunk in full anticipation of our imminent deployment. Now I step over to my gear locker and start the ritual of putting on my HEBA suit. The task is made a little more difficult this morning because I haven’t put on a bug suit in a hurry in almost two years, and because I have a pretty fierce hangover from the night before. The Russians brought their personal kit bags over from their carrier, but those bags weren’t filled with personal gear. Instead, they each brought half a dozen bottles of what they call “engineering vodka,” and the entire SOCOM detachment took the liberty to sample the stuff over the last few days of transit. At one point last night, Major Masoud stuck his head into the SOCOM compartment, but instead of chewing us out for drinking alcohol on a fleet ship in flagrant violation of the regs, he stepped in and had a liberally sized sample as well.

  I don’t have a picture of Halley taped to my locker to touch before going into battle like a fighter pilot in some old Network show. I don’t even bother to get my PDP out to send her a message. She’s in Task Force Purple, too far away in this assembly area to get near-field comms, and she wouldn’t have time to read it because she’s probably gearing up for her own general-quarters alert right now. But I know she’s thinking of me right now, just as I am thinking of her, without any totems needed to remind us of each other.

  I step out of my stateroom and walk over to the common area, where most of the SOCOM detachment are already assembled in their respective battle suits. It’s still strange to see the angular SRA hardshell with its mottled camo pattern mixed in with the Fleet and SRA camo patterns. For the last half decade, I only ever got to see people wearing that armor through the targeting optic of my rifle. Dmitry looks over at me and says something to the SRA troops next to him, and they chuckle.

  “I know, I know,” I say when I’ve closed the gap. “Big imperialist insect.”

  “No, no. Is fine armor. Makes you look like fierce, strong warrior. Very fearsome.”

  “Just wait until we’re on the ground,” I say, resisting the temptation to demonstrate the polychromatic-camouflage feature right here in the berthing area. The bug suits used to be highly restricted—we weren’t even supposed to take them along on missions against SRA settlements so they couldn’t capture one and try to reverse engineer it—so Dmitry and his comrades have no idea what this superexpensive piece of butt-ugly attire can do on the battlefield.

  Of the ten NAC personnel in the group, I’m the only one in a HEBA suit. The Spaceborne Rescue sergeant is wearing standard Fleet battle armor, and the two SI Force Recon teams are in their own branch’s hardshell. The Euro lieutenant sticks out almost as much as the SRA troops. His armor looks lighter and more flexible than either the SRA or NAC suits, and his helmet almost looks dainty next to the big, faceted things the SRA marines have tucked under their arms.

  Behind us, the hatch to the berthing module opens, and Major Masoud steps into the room. He is wearing armor and carrying a helmet as well.

  “Attention on deck!” I shout, and everyone snaps to.

  Major Masoud nods curtly. “As you were,” he says. He looks over the small group of SOCOM specialists and Alliance personnel and smiles his thin-lipped smile. “I wish I had ten times as many troops for this. But I know you will do. Weapons issue and suit check at the armory at 0800. Then it’s off to Pod Country. If anyone needs to make final arrangements or send any last messages, now is the time.”

  We gather at the armory to take on our weapons and ammunition loadout for the mission. I’m surprised to see that Phalanx’s armory has SRA weapons on the racks, because when Dmitry and the SRA team step up to the window, they receive their own standard rifles, not our M-90 or M-95 heavy anti-Lanky weapons. The Sino-Russian guns have a lot in common with ours—we took some design and function cues off their rifles when we designed our own—but the ammo isn’t interchangeable, and I figured they’d issue them our guns to keep resupply simple.

  When it’s my turn at the window, I take a pistol out of habit, even though the tiny little fléchettes from the M109 service handgun are useless against Lankies. Then I receive an M-95 autoloading rifle that looks so new that it probably still has factory grease in the action. I plug the rifle into my suit and let the computer in the gun talk to the one in my armor. There’s a calibrating target on the far bulkhead in the armory, and we all take turns sighting in our weapons. My helmet visor displays the targeting reticle of the rifle on the calibrating target and reads the output from the laser mounted parallel to the barrel, and it takes just a few seconds for the armor’s data unit to calculate the ballistic trajectory from this specific weapon seamlessly from point-blank range to a thousand meters, adjusted for Mars gravity and atmosphere.

  We are just finished with the weapons issue and filling up our magazine pouches when the 1MC comes to life overhead again.

  “All hands, this is Colonel Yamin. Listen up.”

  We all interrupt our activities to pay attention to Phalanx’s skipper.

  “We have reached the forward edge of the battle area with Task Force Red. Mars isn’t far, we have the first Lanky targets in our Orion missile envelope, and we will be in combat soon. This is not the first time this ship has gone up against the Lankies, which is not something that many Fleet units can claim. I have the utmost faith that this ship and her crew will complete her assigned mission, and that Phalanx will bring us home when this is all over.”

  Colonel Yamin pauses for a moment, and the area in front of the armory is as quiet as can be except for the soft, delayed translation I can hear from the earpieces of the SRA team.

  “I have been ordered to share a message before we go into battle. As of this moment, every ship in this task group is playing a similar announcement from the leader of its alliance or commonwealth. All hands, stand by for the president of the North American Commonwealth.”

  There’s another short pause on the 1MC, and then a new voice comes on, one I’ve heard before both in Network news footage and in person, on the hangar deck of NACS Regulus during Colonel Campbell’s posthumous Medal of Honor ceremony a few months ago. It’s the voice of a woman speaking with a faint southern drawl that reminds me of most of the pilots I’ve ever known.

  “Men and women of the Commonwealth Defense Corps, and members of our allied forces,” she says. “I’m not very good at profound speeches. I am an old fighter pilot, and our communications tended toward brevity unless we got drunk in the O Club together after missions. But I would not be a very good president if I did not see you off with the best wishes of the rest of us, those who have no choice but to wait for the outcome of a battle that depends entirely on you all.

  “Sitting here in this office, knowing what you are about to face and not being able to be up there with you is the hardest thing I’ve had to do since taking this job. There’s very little I wouldn’t give for a shot at a seat in a Shrike cockpit right now, sitting in the docking clamp and waiting to take the fight to the enemy. And make no mistake: you, all of you, regardless of the nationality patch on your armor, are fighting the true enemy. You are going into battle against the worst threat we as a species have ever faced, the threat we should have been preparing for all these years instead of killing each other. You are about to fight the most important battle in the history of the planet, and you are going to bring us back from the brink of extermination.

&nbs
p; “Be assured that everybody looking to the stars tonight wishes you strength, courage, and skill in battle. I join them in this even though I know that you already have all those things in abundance. It’s an honor and a privilege to be your commander in chief, and I know that you will do us all proud.

  “And as an attack-bird jock, let me add just one more thing. If this is the day you get to claim that seat at the table in Valhalla, make sure you arrive there with your magazine pouches and ammo racks empty, and a pile of dead Lankies behind you. Good hunting.”

  We don’t break out into wild cheers like the ragtag resistance forces in some corny military movie on the Networks. Instead, we just grin at each other, and some of the troops nod approvingly.

  “Top shit, that speech,” the Spaceborne Rescueman says next to me, and continues filling his magazine pouches.

  “We make it back, she has my vote,” I say.

  In almost two years of garrison duty and standard drop-ship deployments, I had almost forgotten just how small a ballistic bio-pod actually is. The thing itself is fairly large on the outside, but a lot of that size is shielding and barrel sabot. The pod has an irregular surface to mimic a natural piece of celestial debris, but it needs to be launched from the ordnance tube of a cruiser, so there’s a sabot liner wrapped around the pod that separates from the pod as soon as it’s out of the launch tube. The walls of the pod are also pretty thick, to survive the thermal stress of atmospheric entry, so the actual passenger compartment is much smaller than the overall size of the pod would suggest. Whenever I step up to an open bio-pod right before deployment, I am uncomfortably reminded of their resemblance to coffins.