“One KIA. No hope of regen. One WIA. Their vacsuits don’t isolate limbs like ours do, and I’d like to get him out of his and into a ziplock,” he told Ryck.
“Is he going to make it?” Ryck asked.
“If we get him in a ziplock, yes, sir, I think so.”
“Gunny, before any of our guys use the tiki hut, Doc’s going to take in one of the Confederation soldiers,” he passed on the command circuit.
PICS were big, huge machines, yet Ryck swore he could see a few Marines slump as they heard him. Ryck rolled his eyes. They’d been in them for less than an hour, and another five minutes was going to kill them? Ryck would rather be in a PICS than his vacsuit. He’d always felt more comfortable in the far more capable piece of gear.
He looked around the planetoid, at least as far as was in his line of sight. Not a single Marine had been hurt, much less killed. Despite the monitor pounding the rock, only one Confederation solder had been killed with another wounded, and after seeing the Confederation fighting positions, Ryck thought that shot had been a lucky one.
The remainder of the soldiers were standing off to the side, having given their parole. None of them were hurt and would all be released soon. There were also five HECLA engineers that Ryck had not known about. They’d been dropping exploratory cores when the Confederation troops had arrived.
Their drill had given Ryck an idea. He did not know how long they would be stuck on the rock, but the Confederation troops had withstood some serious fire, and their fighting positions were rudimentary. With that big null-G drill, Ryck could make the rock into a fortress. It would probably all be for naught, but a busy Marine was a happy Marine—at least that was what they said. Having been a private, Ryck didn’t know if he really agreed with that.
He’d gotten together with the head engineer, who had readily agreed to help the Marines. Now he and the XO were supervising the drilling of fighting holes and even a few bunkers around the planetoid. Ryck had listened in on them, and both of their voices threatened Ryck’s ears with their combined excitement. Ryck switched circuits and left them to their mission.
Unlike Kakurega, and even to an extent the rescue of the Julianna’s Dream, this had been a righteous mission. The Confederation had invaded Federation space and held Federation citizens. The Marines had responded. Several Marines from Bravo had been WIA taking the sorting ship, and 12 soldiers had been hurt, but the only KIA had been the soldier on T-486. A wrong had been righted without too much in the way of casualties.
The lack of casualties had been surprising. If the Confederation soldiers had fought harder or longer, the casualty list would have been much longer. The Marines were in vacsuit, after all, fighting in a vacuum. But the Confederate troops had surrendered pretty quickly, saving lives on both sides. This was probably Ryck’s last mission as a company commander, and he was fine with that.
Chapter 30
Ryck looked around the chamber in awe.
“We’re 14 meters deep, sir, and that’s mostly taenite above us,” the XO said excitedly.
Ryck had lost all connectivity as he flew down the shaft, but his AI had terabytes of stored data. He quickly looked up “tayonite” (which the AI recognized from the context) and saw that taenite was a hard, dense magnetic alloy of iron and nickel. On earth, it was found around meteorite impact sites, but in the reaches of space, it was a fairly common, if still valuable, metal deposit.
When Ryck had told the XO to honcho the building of the fighting holes, he had envisioned straight tubes into which Marines could drop for cover. He had no idea that the drill could turn corners and open up areas. This chamber, this bunker now, could easily hold half a dozen Marines, and was connected to the surface through a shaft just wide enough for a Marine in a vacsuit to fly up and down. With T-486’s miniscule gravity, the EVA would have no problem getting back to the surface.
“How many of these do you have done?” he asked the XO.
“We’ve got enough here for Third Platoon, and Second Platoon on the other side. Give us another two hours, and the Pearson Drill will have the rest hacked out. Setting it up for each shaft is what takes the time. Chuck, that’s Chief Engineer Chuck Haley, carved this out in less than five minutes.”
Ryck reached out and touched the wall. His vacsuit would protect him from burns, but the temperature was cold. If the drill had just recently made this bunker, Ryck would have thought that it would still be hot.
“And get this, sir!” the XO said.
He pulled an external jack from his sleeve and hooked it into a small hand-held device.
“Taco-Charlie-Two, this is Six Alpha. Do you read me?” he asked
All of the metal surrounding them would effectively block all comms, Ryck knew, so he wondered what the XO was trying to prove.
“Six Alpha, this is Two-Actual. I read you,” Gershon Chomsky’s voice came over Ryck’s speakers.
“See? This is HECLA’s gear. Chuck told me it makes use of T-486’s core as sort of an old fashion communications cable. The planetoid itself conducts the signals. Our comms won’t work with it. I’ve already asked. But he’s got eight of these, and they’re ours for the taking.”
How those things functioned was beyond Ryck, but all he needed to do was know that they did—and he had eight of them.
“Good job, Sandy. I’m impressed. OK, this is what I want you to do. For First Platoon, we’re going to need the shaft big enough for the PICS. I want half in one bunker, half in another. See if you can manhandle them down by hand. I don’t want to get Sgt Ling’s squad back in and out more than we have to. And get the tiki hut near the shaft of one of those bunkers. Where are you putting Weapons?”
“Right there, sir,” the XO said, pointing down through the rock floor of the bunker and off at an angle.
At the same time, he sent Ryck a diagram showing the planetoid and each fighting hole and bunker. Next came the fields of fire based on those positions. There were some gaps on T-486’s surface, but once out past about 20 meters, the entirety of space around it was covered by Marine weapons.
Ryck didn’t want to stay below too long, out of comms with battalion, so he and the XO flew up the shaft and back out onto the surface. His EVA automatically darkened his visor in the bright light. Without an atmosphere to diffuse the light, the light was sharp and white, so the surface was either illuminated very brightly or was lost in shadows. The vacsuits’ sensors were not as sophisticated as those of a PICS, and visuals were the prime method of spotting an enemy. With the gaps in the Marines fields of fire, if there were a counterattack and troops reached the surface, the shadows could give them a degree of concealment. Ryck tried to think how he could eliminate that weakness.
Not that he expected to have to confront Confederation troops. With the Federation in control of the Telchine Belt, the reasonable thing for the Confederation to do would be to come to the negotiating table. The Federation would deny that it had gone into Confederation space to rescue the Julianna’s Dream, and the Confederation would insist that it was merely reinforcing its claim to the Cygni B System.
LCDR Pillsbury, back on the Inchon, had briefed them that most of this was for show. Most other governments would know they’d been in Confederation space, but most would agree that HECLA’s facilities, which had been operational for over 20 years, gave the Federation the stronger standing there. A draw, and things would reset back to the starting line. Maybe not a draw for the family of the dead Confederation soldier, but a draw in the overall scheme of things as governments went.
“First Sergeant, can you read me?” Ryck sent via a P2P. There was no answer. The relay rekis would have reached him if he were on the surface, so he must be checking out the fighting positions, too.
“PFC Çağlar, please track down the first sergeant and bring him here,” he told his shadow.
He wasn’t sure why he still needed a body guard, but orders were orders. Çağlar was developing into a good Marine, but it was a relief not to have him hoverin
g over him for a few minutes.
Ryck checked his watch. The XO said the HECLA engineer would be done in another two hours. Ryck would get his men into their positions, but then what? They might be sitting on this rock for days in their vacsuits, and he had to think of something else to keep them alert. He wondered if he could rotate a couple of rekis back to the Inchon for short breaks of real food and showers. He’d have to ask the CO.
Now that the Marines had prevailed, they had to revert to what military men going back to the Babylonians and before had to master: waiting.
Chapter 31
Ryck stunk. His nose had mostly adjusted, blocking the bulk of his ripe aroma, but it could still register the stink of living inside a vacsuit for two days. The suit’s cleaning nanos processed his body wastes, but his skin itched, and he felt grimy. A hot shower aboard the Inchon sounded like paradise. Unfortunately, that would have to wait.
As with chow, officers went last. And with only 2/3 of the company having gotten out of their vacsuits for 30 minutes each in the tiki hut, Ryck didn’t think he’d get his chance before they were back on the Inchon.
He’d even let the POWs have their 30 minutes. To Ryck’s mild surprise, the POWs hadn’t been picked up by the Navy. He guessed no one thought they had any intel. This was not real warfare—it was a political game, and the POWs were just bargaining chips. They’d get back to their cohort soon enough.
Ryck had placed them in one of the bunkers the HECLA engineer had dug, then pretty much left them alone. He hadn’t even bothered to put a guard on them after their senior man had given him their parole.
Political maneuvering or not, Ryck had to get the company back on the ship in another 40 hours or so. Despite the very efficient scrubbers in the vacsuits, they would start running out of O2 right about then. Scrubbing the air took out CO2, but it did not produce additional oxygen. That has to be added to each vacsuit every 20-24 hours, and after two more charges, the Marines would be out.
Weapons and Bravo were at least in a ship, albeit a very crowded ship with close to 400 Marines in the two companies. They were on full combat alert, but they didn’t have to live in their vacsuits. The CO had let Ryck know that before the company started running out of O2, if the mission was still on, he was going to have the two companies relieve Charlie and Alpha.
“You about ready to get out of these vacsuits, Skipper?” Hecs asked, coming up from behind to stand next to him.
Ryck instinctively turned to look at the first sergeant, and when he twisted his head, his left ear brushed the speaker inside his helmet. He’d done that a lot over the last two days, and his ear was sore. It was a minor inconvenience, but annoying just the same. A very simple med-nano injection could heal the ear in a few minutes, but no one had ever designed a simple injection port in the suits, an obvious need. When he got his turn in the tiki hut, if he got it, he’d ask Doc for a booster.
“You’ve got that right, First Sergeant,” he told Hecs over the P2P. “I’m getting rather rank in here.”
The Two Marines looked over the rocky landscape of T-486. Within 200 meters of him, there were over 40 Marines, but he couldn’t see even one. Some would be resting, but the security watches would be just below the surface inside the shafts.
Ryck was just about to say something when his alarms went off.
“Confederation of Free States ships have just entered the system,” his AI intoned while the figures flashed and ran on his screen.
“Threat Condition 1, I repeat, Threat Condition 1,” Hecs shouted over the command circuit as he sprinted for the command bunker.
Ryck let him go. Even with the relay rekis sitting above them, with the Marines in the fighting holes, comms was spotty, and Ryck knew that Hecs would be grabbing the HECLA communicator to send the message to all hands.
Ryck tried to make sense of what was flashing on his display. Two, no now three Confederation ships had flared from bubble space into the system, still a long ways out, but closer than they’d shown the capability in the past. One was immediately identified as the R-23, a battle cruiser, which put it on par with a Federation cruiser. The next two were destroyers. Another ship, a corvette, appeared on his display. On paper, at least, the four ships outgunned the Federation task force. The Inchon was the newest class of Federation ship, but it was not a battle cruiser, like the old Ark Royal. Its systems were more advanced, but it did not have the pure firepower of the older ships.
It was almost 30 seconds before Charlie Company was put on Threat Condition 1 by battalion. Hecs had beat them to it. Ryck guessed the ship had more pressing concerns, but the delay left Ryck feeling slightly exposed.
The first sergeant popped his head out of the command bunker shaft and gave Ryck a thumbs up before disappearing out of sight again. The word had gotten out to all hands.
Ryck could see the tops of vacsuit helmets and the muzzles of weapons as Marines looked out of their fighting holes. It reminded him of the ancient kids game the twins has just started playing, Whack-a-Mole. The image bothered him. He hoped the analogy would not play through. He wondered for a moment if he should get his Marines out of the positions, to keep them more mobile, but he realized that would make them very exposed on this small rock.
The display on his face shield flickered ever so slightly, something Ryck had noticed when he was assaulted with multiple Flash-A messages. His AI had to listen to the messages before prioritizing them for Ryck to hear. Ryck would have thought that a simple manual override would be a nice tool to have. He wanted any battalion comms first, then he could worry about any other Flash-A’s.
His AI fed him a task force message first. The three ships were pulling out of the system to re-group. Ryck’s heart fell. They were being abandoned. Ryck had almost expected it when the initial report came in. That was a formidable task force the Confederation had sent, and the Navy commanders liked to go into battle in formations and with maneuver plans, not spread out over a star system.
At least the two Gryffyn monitors, the ones providing support to Charlie and Alpha, would remain on station. Without the gunners aboard the Inchon controlling them, though, they would revert to AI control, and in another stupid way to set them up, Ryck had no way to contact the monitor to request specific support.
Unless the Inchon and her escorts could drive away the Confederation ships, the Marines could be swept up like trash alongside the road. Ryck couldn’t stomach the possibility of having to surrender his company, but in the political maneuverings that were taking place and the jockeying for an advantage, he couldn’t see sacrificing Marines for a checkmark on a negotiating list.
It would have been nice to have the Ark Royal after all, but Ryck just hoped the Inchon would be able to take control back over the system.
The second message, this one from battalion, started immediately after the first and was limited to the command circuit. It would be going to the four company commanders and any senior staff not on the Inchon. “All commanders, this is Taco-Six-Alpha. The task force is pulling out in hopes the Confederation ships will follow. They will return. Your orders are to hold fast until then. The CO will be attempting a cast momentarily and will rendezvous at Blue Barrel. If he does not reestablish contact, I will assume command and issue orders as the opportunity allows. Taco-Six-Alpha, out.”
Ryck involuntarily looked up as if he could see the Inchon leaving the system. The XO’s comment about the CO not reestablishing contact was necessary. If the CO was going to attempt a cast from the Inchon while it was maneuvering for bubble space, he was taking a huge risk. If the ship entered bubble space before he cast in a shuttle or reki, he would be lost forever. While theoretically a reki or shuttle could launch as the ship gained speed, in reality, even before it was ready to enter bubble space, things tended to happen—bad things. No one knew exactly why, even if theories abounded. The bottom line was that in a reki, the CO had probably less than a 50/50 chance of a successful cast. In a shuttle, a little bit more.
Ryc
k needed to brief his men, so he flew to the command bunker shaft. Sgt Contradari was in the shaft, watching Ryck approach. There was no room for two men in the shaft at the same time, so Contradari came out, letting Ryck in.
Ryck briefed the first sergeant, Doc Kitoma, Çağlar, and the HECLA chief engineer, then picked up the HECLA communicator. Within a few moments, he had all his commanders on the phone, the XO listening in with Jeff and the gunny listening in with Ephraim.
With the Inchon task force gone, they had no Navy support, so Ryck’s greatest concern was a spaceborne naval attack. He wanted all his Marines in their fighting positions where they would have the most cover.
Ryck had been without Navy support on Weyerhaeuser 23, but that had been because their ship, the FS Intrepid, had been caught up in the battle. This time, the task force had fled the scene, and that was a lonely feeling.
This wasn’t the first time Marines had been in this situation over the centuries. Back in 1942, Old Reckoning, the United States Marines had landed on the island of Guadalcanal. The Navy, fearful of Japanese air and sea power, fled the scene before the Marine’s supplies could even be offloaded. Four months later, the Marines were on the verge of starvation, but they fought on, often with equipment taken from their enemy. They would not surrender despite the odds stacked against them, and three months after that, when the US Navy had returned, the island was secured. Ryck had studied the battle as part of his history studies for his degree, and he’d been fascinated with the battle and the valor shown by the Marines. He’d wondered how he would have reacted had he been serving then. Now that he was in a similar situation, he hoped he would not be tested in the same way. He hoped the Inchon task force would return soon.
Ryck waited with his Marines, wondering what was going on out in the reaches of space. He waited for word from the CO, to hear that he had taken command of the situation. He waited for the Confeds to make a move. One thing was for sure—he hated waiting and would rather be instigating action instead of having it thrust at him.
Captain (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 4) Page 17
