by John Lumpkin
The Chinese sent much of their air power to attack the drop zones; these were intercepted by fighters launched from the orbiting aircraft carriers Hornet and Wasp. The furious air battle that followed was something of a high-casualty draw, but, in some cases, Chinese attack drones broke through and destroyed several Marine drop pods as they were landing.
Two large screening forces landed next, placed to prevent the Chinese from sending reinforcements north from Cottonwood and west from Cypress. Elements of the 3rd MESAB landed on the eastern Sycamore-Cypress road; they would also serve as a useful threat to keep the Chinese forces near Sycamore looking over their shoulder for an attack from that flank. And to the south, the 204th Guards Drop Assault Brigade, of the Russian army’s famed Kosmos-Desantnye Voiska corps, landed not far from where Rand and the others had once hopped a train to go north.
The sea west of Sycamore was still another battle site. A third orbiting drone carrier, who cargo belong to the United States Navy, seeded a fleet of hunter-killer submersible drones into the ocean. They battled with Chinese drones of similar design, and the survivors sought the large drone control ships and cruise missile submarines that could bombard the American troops from under the sea, safe from any attacks from orbit.
It took four days, but ultimately the Marines, backed up by uninterrupted bombardment from Diaz, Texas, Maryland and the rest, established a sufficiently large lodgement that the Army could conduct its drop.
Harkins headed off to join one of the Marine units working its way north, leaving Neil and the other survivors from the Eagle disaster near the center of American-controlled territory, waiting for a launch to take them back to orbit. But nearly all the traffic was headed in the other direction: He watched some of the landings from a tent beside Lake Standish, a reservoir and recreational spot before the war. Great blue parachutes dotted the sky to his south, and the rumble of retrorockets filled his ears.
So much stuff. Falling from space were robotic rocket artillery pods for long-range bombardment, rapid power transfer vehicles to recharge other vehicles, mobile fab units to build spare parts while on the move, trucks, skytrucks and tilt-turbofan assault transports, LAVs, auto sentry drones, and even a battalion of tanks, the last comprising a truly stunning amount of mass to transport from Earth. And another Army brigade had yet to drop.
When they get here, maybe I can finally requisition a new handheld, Neil thought. His had been lost in the crash; the Marines had given him an off-the-shelf commercial one from their stores, but he couldn’t access his classified accounts or messages on it.
“You Mercer?”
Neil turned and saw a lean and muscular female first lieutenant wearing a Special Forces tab, waiting for his response. Beside him was another Special Forces operator, a staff sergeant.
“Lieutenant jaygee Neil Mercer, at your service.”
“I’m Lieutenant Silva, and this is Staff Sergeant Ruiz. You’re to come with me.”
Her manner annoyed him. Special Forces or no, she was of equal rank, so he could offer a challenge. “I’m waiting for a lift back to my ship. On whose orders?”
“Brigadier General Grogan.”
“And what’s the mission?”
She sneered for a half-second, and then sighed. “General Grogan is having some problems with an old colleague of yours, name of Captain Castillo, who is in command of the largest body of – ”
“Rand? What’s happened to Rand?”
Silva looked uncomfortable. “He’s refused an order from General Grogan, and his people are backing him up. The general is aware you two went to school together and staged a successful rescue operation on this planet last year. He hopes you can talk some sense into him. We need his help on a mission.”
“What’s the mission?”
“We’re going into Sycamore to free high-value prisoners before the Hans can move them off the continent.”
Neil nodded. Either something’s wrong with Rand, or something’s wrong with the mission. I need to help the guy.
They flew north on a skytruck, staying beneath the ridgelines of the wide valley. Ahead of them were the front lines. Neil was kitted up: an M7 carbine, chameleon armor, and a dragoon suit. While Silva rode forward in the cab, Neil sat in the back with Ruiz, who said he had been fighting alongside Rand for a while.
“Captain Castillo’s a good CO, on the whole, a little lax on discipline, maybe. But he’s lost too many people – almost his entire artillery platoon, then most of his team of guerrillas near Cottonwood, and then he watched a couple hundred more die when the Hans hit our main base in the mountains. He figured out what the Hans were up to before they hit our base, but the commander didn’t listen, and a lot of good warriors didn’t make it out. He takes every death personally, and he thinks his people have suffered enough, and he’s trying to prevent more casualties.”
Neil remembered Rand’s near-breakdown over the death of one of his guerrillas during the prison raid in Cottonwood. “He’s gun-shy?”
“Up until Grogan arrived I’d say he was just extremely careful.”
“And now?”
“Look, I’m only talking to you because the captain spoke highly of you, and said you’d fought together,” Ruiz said. “He’s right in that the unit has already been pushed way beyond any reasonable limits, and it’s remained a coherent fighting force. He gets a lot of credit for that. But I also know General Grogan. He’s an asshole, but he gets the job done. Captain Castillo and the rest of the survivors know the ways into Sycamore better than anyone, and he wants them to show Silva and the rest the way in.”
The pilot’s Tennessee drawl cut off Neil’s reply. “End of the line,” he transmitted. “This isn’t an assault bird, and beyond here Mister Han could be lurking about.”
The skytruck set down near a burning farmhouse. Silva, Ruiz and Neil gathered their gear and exited, and the skytruck rose and raced away south.
In front of them was the blackened wreckage of a Grizzly main battle tank. We’ve never lost one of those to enemy fire before now, Neil thought, noting it had died with its main gun pointing north. He couldn’t tell if the crew had been able to escape.
They donned their walker gear and moved north along the main road, passing a busy mobile hospital, a battery of empty rocket artillery pods, and several lines of Chinese prisoners trudging south. Around them, great swaths of foliage had been blackened by laser strikes.
“Are we going to have to pass through the front lines?” Neil asked, trying not to sound concerned.
“No,” Ruiz said. “Not sure we could if we had to. This terrain is brutal for our guys, with the Chinese putting snipers and missile teams up on the ridges every klick or so. But we’ve pushed far enough north that our little turnoff to get to Condor should be safe.”
“Advance is slowing down, though,” Silva commented. “We can’t get any air or space directly over Sycamore, in part because of those damn Stoats, and in part because we need constant coverage from orbit over the front line. Pretty soon, the ships in orbit will be in range of Sycamore’s defenses, Space Force, and we’ll have to change our tactics because your admiral isn’t going to risk any more of them.”
They jogged along in silence. Neil marveled at the craggy peaks towering above the valley, a product of Kuan Yin’s .88 gravities. Twice they were stopped at checkpoints. American attack drones shot overhead, and they heard the distant rumble of lasers slicing down from orbit. They passed several Chinese bodies, crumpled in a ditch beside the road. Then they passed some dead Marines. Neil recognized their dragon-and-knife patch. First Battalion, Fourth Marines, he thought sadly. We’re close enough to the front that the cleanup teams haven’t been here yet. All the bodies looked small, somehow.
“All right, here’s our exit, boys,” Silva said, pointing to a deep saddle in the mountains to their east. “It’s offroad from here.”
They reached the saddle three hours later; from there, they could see the front, still well off to their north. The ma
in road was empty save for some blackened and motionless Chinese LAVs. Palls of smoke rose in a dozen places from the trees, and the staccato pops of various small arms were audible, even at this distance. Somewhere below them, the main gun of a Grizzly barked fire, and Neil saw an orange flare signaling the destruction of an enemy infantry carrier. The sound of the explosion arrived a moment later.
A pair of ground-attack drones roared in low from the south, and Neil waited with some anticipation for the great eruptions of smoke and fire beneath them, but something caused them to abort the run without dropping their ordnance. A Chinese air defense laser sliced through them both, and they crashed into a hillside.
“Stupid waste of hardware,” Silva commented. “Someone fucked up down there.”
They arrived at Condor after a two-day hike in their walker gear. Neil saw neither Grogan nor Rand immediately – both were asleep, he was told. Instead, Ruiz took him to meet with Sergeant Hal Aguirre, Rand’s right hand, according to Ruiz.
“We met, you know,” Aguirre said.
Neil snapped his fingers. “You and … and … a woman private, you were part of Rand’s old platoon, and you went with the Aussies during the raid on the jail, right?”
“That’s right. The private’s named Lopez.”
“Is she here?”
Aguirre grimaced briefly, and Neil could tell he struck a nerve. “Hans took her prisoner a while back.”
“I’m sorry, Sergeant.”
“It’s all right, sir. If she’s alive, we’ll get her out,” Aguirre said, his wounded expression betraying the bravado in his voice.
Neil nodded, unable to think of a reply that wouldn’t sound forced. “So they brought me here to talk Rand into bringing you guys out on a mission to Sycamore.”
“I heard. You’re not going to be popular among a lot of Rand’s people,” Aguirre said.
“I figured,” Neil said. “Hope you know I’m not in the general’s camp just because he ordered me to come here.”
Aguirre grunted and looked past Neil’s shoulder.
“General Grogan will see you,” Silva said.
Neil mused that the general wouldn’t be all that impressive out of his battledress uniform, maybe a little leaner and more muscular than the average guy in line behind you at the store.
His eyes aren’t so average, though. They’re made of ice.
“I’m not accustomed to junior officers doing anything but following my orders,” Grogan said. “But for this mission to be successful, I need full cooperation from Captain Castillo and his people. Your job is to bring him on board. You fail, I’m arresting him.”
“Yes, sir.” This guy would have arrested him already under normal circumstances. Why hasn’t he?
Because you don’t arrest the leader of the resistance, a guy who didn’t surrender, a guy who has been fighting on his own for two years. You give him a medal.
Rand had not lost his easy grin, but his lankiness had given way to something slighter: He was nearly skin-and-bones. Ruiz and Aguirre and the others were definitely thinner than the average trooper, but they were getting enough calories. Rand’s doing this to himself.
He embraced Neil and lifted him off the ground.
“Buddy,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”
“You know I’m here to manipulate you into doing what the general wants, right?”
“Yeah, but I’m glad to see you all the same,” he said. “Reminds me there are more worlds than this one, I guess. This wasn’t how we expected it to turn out, was it? I was supposed to sit in a hole and watch football for eight years, and you were going to be charming the clothes off colonials who hang out near the spaceports.”
Neil grinned and shook his head. Same old Rand. “In retrospect, given our personality types, maybe we should have switched jobs.”
Rand said, “You’re not kidding. You know how hard it is to get laid while leading a guerrilla war? You’d think it would be attractive, but I’ve been in a drought longer than yours was back at school. You turned that around, I hope?”
“She’s up in orbit right now.”
“On your ship?”
Neil nodded.
Rand said, “I’m not sure I could handle something with another person on the front lines, to tell the truth. How do you live with the … fear?”
“Being afraid sometimes beats being alone all the time, I guess.”
Rand looked thoughtful. “So. How are you going to manipulate me into doing what the general wants?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” Neil said. “What would work best on you?”
Rand snorted. After a long moment, he said, “I’m in the right, here, aren’t I, Neil? My people have been on the run for two years, watching friends vanish or get killed. They deserve to be pulled back, and Grogan can win his battles without us.”
Agree with him and I sound manipulative; disagree and I lose him. “Rand, I really don’t know. You’re right; in a just world you guys would be sent to the rear. But Grogan seems to think that your help will ultimately save more lives than it risks.”
Rand was silent for a while. “Damn,” he said, finally. “Worlds other than this one, and people other than mine. I’ll … I’ll talk to the general.”
“That’s good, because he said he’s sending me out, regardless of what you did,” Neil said. “And I’d prefer we go together.”
Rand looked shocked. “He’s sending out a Space Force intel weenie on a ground assault? No offense, but what the fuck for?”
Neil said, “Allegedly to call in all the orbital strikes that we can’t call in because of the defenses ringing Sycamore. In truth, I’m not sure, but I think it was meant to be a message to you.”
Rand shook his head. “Not a message. If it was a threat, he’d have made it to me, and relented if I did what he wanted. Because he ordered you … it’s retribution. He’s teaching me a lesson by putting you in the line of fire. Guy deserves a bullet to his brain, if you ask me.”
Neil wondered if he was joking.
Rev Grogan’s head was bullet-free when he briefed them four days later.
“The purpose of this raid is to free several high-level military and civilian officials who have been held at Sycamore since the initial Chinese attack and our first attempt to retake it,” he said. Relevant mugshots appeared on everyone’s handheld. “We have information the Chinese are planning to move them to Fengsheng continent via submarine before our forces get close. The prisoners include Territorial Governor Solomon Rivera, Major General Hyram Chalk of the Army National Guard, Chief Terraforming Officer Selena Jimenez, and Lynnette Pallas, CFO of the Pallas Mining Company. “Governor Rivera is of particular importance; he is a friend of the c-in-c, who has taken a personal interest in his recovery. We also think several high-level Space Force officers from the Eagle task force may be here.”
“Why didn’t they move them off-planet already?” asked a Ranger captain. “They’ve had plenty of time.”
“They’ve used several of them in propaganda pieces here on the planet aimed at getting civilians and guerrilla forces to surrender, so we’re assuming that’s why they’ve kept them around,” Grogan said. “Lately, the government and military personnel have been interrogated to learn our strategy for retaking the continent. They are being kept in the Goodnight Hotel on the city’s northeastern side, along the spaceport road and not far from the POW detention camp.”
“What about the rest of the POWs?” Rand asked.
Grogan stared at the back of the room. “We don’t have the resources to free them at this time. Unlike the VIPs, China can’t move them, so we’ll liberate them when the main body of our forces reaches the city.”
They traveled in ad hoc platoons, each with one squad of Rand’s guerillas and two of Grogan’s Green Berets and Rangers. They moved on separate paths through the mountains to a rally point several kilometers from Sycamore’s eastern edge.
Formations of thirty soldiers tromping through the wilderness in powe
red armor aren’t terribly stealthy, but the PLA’s attention was focused on the main American forces to its south and east. Silva’s unit shot down a curious drone, but no follow-up attack came; the Chinese, Neil figured, either didn’t have the resources to investigate further, or they must have written off the encounter as a sideshow.
He and Rand traveled with Grogan’s group until they reached the rally point, where Grogan and his staff set up a command post, and a heavy weapons platoon emplaced mortars and point-defense lasers. At nightfall, everyone else, some 300 Green Berets, Rangers and guerrillas, under the command of a linebacker-sized Ranger lieutenant colonel named Hellastrae, moved toward the city.
As they grew close, some of the troopers threw small reconnaissance drones into the air, stopping only watch them take flight under their own power. Once aloft, they confirmed what the microsatellites were observing: They had indeed achieved a measure of surprise; the Chinese heavy infantry battalion defending the city was off to the south, but it was starting to move in their direction. For now, only the Chinese MPs and some other scattered forces were inside the city itself.
The drones also saw a now-familiar pattern of small launchers spaced out in an open field – a large Stoat launch site, situated on some sports fields south of the city, with hundreds of rockets pointed skyward.
“Mission’s changed,” General Grogan transmitted when they were five klicks from the edge of the city. “Army forces south of Sycamore have achieved a breakthrough along the main axis of attack and need orbital strikes to support it, but they are coming in range of the city’s anti-spacecraft defenses. New primary target is that missile launch site. Lieutenant Colonel Hellastrae will take his troops and destroy it. Captain Castillo, your unit will continue with the mission to free the prisoners.”
“Folks, let’s gather,” Hellastrae transmitted to the officers, including Neil. Several officers griped about splitting their forces, leaving them with insufficient firepower to do either job well. The colonel silently counted to sixty, in accordance with his long-held, private theory that allowing his subordinates one minute of complaining allowed them to identify key problems while also achieving a useful measure of catharsis. Any more than that, though, was just bitching.
