by Isaac Stone
“At ease,” Tulpa informed them once they reached the Force position. “You guys can fall out and get some chow from the mess tent. Remember to decontaminate before you go inside.
While Bey and Tulpa went to confer with the Force colonel in charge of the assault, the rest of the Ninth found the mess bunker. They went into it. The tent had a small decontamination area they had to pass across before being allowed inside. Once through decontamination, the Volunteers lined up to get some food. The mess tent was filled with regular Force who starred at them with a strange kind of respect. Apparently Volunteers were usually just cannon fodder, and the Ninth had enjoyed an uncommonly successful day one thus far.
Harlo seated himself at one table with Jack and a few of the other men from his squad when a young guy from the Force came over and greeted him. “I hear you guys went through a lot of shit out there,” he told him.
“More than I could ever have believed,” Harlo told him. He extended a hand and introduced himself.
“Julio,” the man returned the introduction while he shook his hand. “What kind of numbers to you have?” He was the color of tanned leather and at least ten pounds underweight for his size.
“We’re down to one thirty five of the three hundred that made planetfall this morning.”
“Wow,” the guy exclaimed. “Just wow. I can’t believe what you’ve been through. We’ve had our load of crap too, but we’re raised to expect it.”
On of Julio’s comrades called to him and he had to leave. “Nice chatting with you,” he told Harlo, “I’ll see you guys on the battle field.”
“Nice to get a little respect,” Jack observed.
“Yeah, but at what price?” Harlo returned.
Chapter 25
The moment Harlo put his fork down, the lights inside the mess hall began to flash red. The flash was joined by a pulsating alarm and everyone jumped up from their table, strapped loose armor down and sealed their helmets into place. It was time to go into battle again.
The Volunteers joined the other troops outside the mess hall a few minutes later. Everyone was forming up around their NCO’s and, of course, Bey and Tulpa were already there.
“Coffee break over gentlemen, Bey announced. “Two minutes ago, the Z-boys busted out of their shell and spilled over our side of the trench. We need to send them back if we want to take that fortress. We hold the trench; the right flank can push back. Let’s go!”
Harlo ran along with the rest of them, once more excited beyond measure. He held his rail gun in front and ran down the side of the trench with everyone else. They reached the bottom to find an entire division of ZR troops spilling over from the top.
“Hold the line!” Tulpa screamed and they began to fire directly at the advancing ZR troops as the red armored warriors came down the side at them.
Harlo took one out with a shot to the head, then another in the torso, after that he lost count of how many he killed. This time the high point was not the best position to hold as the ZR troops were forced to show themselves every time they wanted to shoot down into the trench. Other Force troops stood on the Olympia side of the trench and returned fire from behind barricades.
There was a lull in the fighting and Harlo, gun aimed at any movement on the trench, thought it might be coming to a halt. The sun was headed down from the sky and he prayed the final assault might be ready. In another second, he expected an order to go over the wall and attack the fortress on its side of the trench.
“Everybody retreat!” Bey yelled over the transmitter. “We have this spot under control. Command says we are needed topside. Back up the hill!”
Confused, Harlo followed the forms of Tulpa and Bey as they ran back up the hill from where they’d come.
Harlo stopped at the top of the trench to catch his breath, once he was sure no one would shoot at him from the other side. He ran to catch up with everyone else, who’d formed around Bey near a field tent.
“I’ll make this quick,” Bey told them. “The Z-boys pulled back. I thought that was a good thing until I found out why they needed us up there. Turns out the salties are back. I guess the ZR promised them something nice because there are twenty APC’s headed in our direction from where we last saw the gunbikes. The Force will hold here and its up to us to keep the heat off our boys here. Now let’s move, we have a job to do.” He began to walk in the direction they’d came with the Volunteers behind him in diminished formation.
They tramped across five hundred yards of blasted dirt until the Volunteers were ordered to halt behind a concrete barricade. In the distance they could see the Sultanate APC’s advance. They were similar in make to the ones used by the Olympian Force Syndicates, but hugged the ground lower and moved quick across the dirt and sand. Shells rained down on them from the Force artillery. Every so often, the ground would explode with a thunderclap from a plasma charge on the sand. Still, they came forward and rushed to meet the Olympian troops who were in the midst of reforming.
One APC was struck by a round from an Olympia gun and exploded. Harlo shivered as he watched it veer out of control and fall into a crater left over from another barrage. Then a plasma round landed in front of another Sultanate APC, which caused it to turn black from the intense heat generated by the charge. The stricken APC slowed to a stop and began to burn. Harlo realized this could have happened to him. It could still happen. Never before had he known the feeling of sheer luck.
Still the vehicles continued to advance. Even without binoculars, Harlo could peer over the barricade and see the colors of the United Sultanates of Arabia on the side of the APC’s as they continued to move foreward. Occasionally, one would fire back at the Olympian artillery and score a hit. When that happed, the ground shook on their side of the barricade. He wondered how long before one of those rounds would land on them.
By now, the entire field was littered with burning and blackened APC’s. It appeared to him only half of the original force in the attack survived. Yet they still came forward at full speed.
“Like hounds of hell,” he heard one of the Volunteers mumble.
Two of the APC’s rolled up fifty yards from them. Harlo watched Bey turn around to do a quick head count. He waited for them to stop and the doors open.
Just as on the Olympian APC’s, the rear door snapped open and armored troops poured out of them. They wore green armor and fired in the direction of the Volunteers. Harlo noticed how skilled and bold they were, men who leaped out of their only protection in a field of fire.
“Now!” Bey commanded. “Show ‘em what we got!”
Every single one of the Volunteers jostled for a position on the barricade and began to return fire at the Sultanate troops. Harlo took out one man who tried to run to the safety of an APC, but wasn’t fast enough. The Sultanate troops had neglected to check the barricade for movement and paid dearly. Although they were outnumbered, the Volunteers had the advantage of the concrete barricade to shoot from behind. Huge chunks of concrete were blasted out of the wall from the enemy rail guns, but it still gave Harlo and the other volunteers protection.
Then Bey took a hit.
One minute, he stood at the barricade and barked orders to the Volunteers. Suddenly, a rail gun bullet hit the part of the barricade right where he stood. It blew off chunk of rock and shattered itself into shrapnel. One piece of shrapnel found an opening in Bey’s suit armor. He fell over with piece of metal that protruded from the gap between his chest plate and shoulder armor.
“Jesus Christ, Sarge is down!” one of the Volunteers yelled and ran to him. He was joined by one of the medics in the Ninth.
“Get your ass back on that line!” Bey yelled at him from the ground. “We’ve already lost one man besides me, now get up there and support the rest of the Legion!”
As the medic worked on Bey, Harlo saw the Sultanate troops rally and return to their APC’s. Minutes later, the doors to the vehicles were sealed and the six-wheeled battlewagons were moving in the other direction. Across
the expanse of burning metal, he saw the remaining APC’s roar away from the Olympian lines, dodging the shells as they went.
“Guess their commander needed them for something else,” Harlo commented as they vanished in the Marian sunset, the mad charge having left the Ninth with more casualties and no closer to even reaching the fortress, much less capturing it. Harlo was beginning to understand just how difficult it was to mount an effective assault on the fortress, considering the relentless chaos of the battle zone before it. No side was winning this war.
Bey was bleeding out fast. The medic did what he could, but he was forced to call for a field ambulance. There was no way they could get him to a medical station by themselves in time.
“Don’t the rest of you dogs worry about me,” he coughed. By now, the medic had removed his helmet.
“Tulpa!” he yelled to the corporal. The small man ran to his side.
“What, boss?” he asked.
“Try not to kill too many people,” he said. “And watch out for these puppies.” He coughed again as the medic desperately tried to stop the blood flow.
“Hell, what do I have to worry about?” Bey laughed. He said a few words in Turkish and turned to one side.
“At least Salina and the kids will get the bonus,” where his final words.
And then Bey died.
Chapter 26
They watched Bey taken away by the meat wagon.
It was called, officially, the mobile recovery unit, but everyone knew it as the meat wagon. When it was obvious the wounded wasn’t going to make it, they sent an enclosed vehicle to take the remains back to the base for identification and tagging. One of the things the base could do was tell who was still alive after a battle. The suits themselves had life monitors inside which were coordinated with the disc everyone wore for identification. If all the life signs went flat after a certain period of time, the soldier was considered KIA. The telematics were coordinated tight to make sure no one was designated a corpse by accident.
The stood in silence and watched him be taken off the field.
“Well isn’t this a fine way to end our first day on Mars,” someone finally said. “Our sergeant dead. Now what are we going to do?” He looked at the ground.
“Who said anything about the day ending?” Tulpa spoke up. “I just got word from Command. I’ve been given a field command and we are supposed to press the attack.”
“Attack on what?” Jack spoke. “I thought the salties ran off to fight another day?”
“The defense around the fortress is understaffed because they pushed too hard on us,” Tulpa explained. “They want us to go join up with the nearest Force division and take that place.”
He noticed the lack of enthusiasm in the Volunteers.
“Okay,” Tulpa explained, “Let me give it to you straight. I don’t really care what you do, but I want to be with the men who take that fortress. You can stay here and find another division and I’ll make up something later about loss of communications. I’ve cut the feed to Command so they’re not going to hear what I say. I didn’t come this far to let someone else take credit for seizing that fortress. It was all Bey wanted to do. Goddamit, I’m going to do it if I have to go there myself.” He turned and began to walk in the direction of the Blue Lotus Fortress.
First one Volunteer followed him. It was Jack. Then Harlo decided there was no reason to sit here and miss the adventure of a lifetime, beat getting shelled. Soon, the entire Ninth was tramping along behind Tulpa.
He might be a little crazy, Harlo thought to himself, but right now, that’s just what we need.
In fifteen minutes, they’d merged into a group of Force that was ready to storm the trench on the other side. Tulpa walked up to an officer he saw watching the movement of the enemy across from them. Tulpa explained they were all that remained of the Ninth Legion and wanted to get in on the action.
“Ninth, huh?” the officer asked him. He turned and looked at the Volunteers as they stood in formation. “Guess we can use you. This is going to be rough and I know it’s only your first day.”
“They like it rough,” Tulpa told him, grinning through his helmet. “Why don’t you put us in the vanguard? We just lost our sergeant and I know he’d want to be there.”
“Fine,” the officer told him. “You can go over by….” His words were cut short by a flare that lit up the battlefield.
“Sweet Jesus, that’s the sign!” the officer yelled, “Time to move, go find a spot!” He ran off to join his own brigade.
“You heard him,” Tulpa yelled at the Volunteers behind him, “Time to party!”
Tulpa ran to the trench where the combined units of the Force Army were swarming over the top. The rest of the Legion followed him and tried hard to keep up. It was plain to them that he wanted to be the first one in, no matter what. Harlo felt his legs burn and his chest pump as he ran with his rail gun out front.
They almost fell down into the trench. Minutes later, they were climbing up it to reach the final space to the Blue Lotus Fortress. So far, no one had shot at the Volunteers from the other side, but it wouldn’t last much longer. Harlo fought his way through the press of Force soldiers who pushed their way up the hill until they were at the top of the final trench. There was no wire on either side as the plasma strikes had taken them out.
Fifty yards from the walls of the fortress, the plasma cannons on the battlements began to fire.
The defenders of Blue Lotus were taken by surprise by the sudden rush of Olympians. The attack on the fortress surged in their direction. The ZR soldiers barely had enough time to charge the cannons. When the cannons were fully charged, they began to rain balls of deadly plasma on the men below.
Harlo saw a ball hurled down to his right. The plasma ball exploded with a roar as it hit the ground. Men were thrown into the air and those at the center of the blastswere incinerated right away. The blast cratered the landscape, which was free from most signs of the barrage of war. He turned and avoided another plasma charge as it came down in front of him and detonated.
No ZR men were on the ground in front of them. They’d been recalled the moment the ZR Command found out a push was on the way.
The walls weren’t far from the trench as the Olympians poured out of it. After the initial shock of the plasma cannons wore off everyone, the Volunteers held formation and followed Tulpa to the wall. A few minutes after they made contact with the wall of the fortress, the plasma no longer rained down. Harlo couldn’t figure out why until he heard cracks and pings behind them from the other side of the trench. He turned around to see a whole company of Force sharpshooters shoot at the cannon crews on top of the battlements. Once a few of them went down, the rest of the fortress defenders vanished from the top of the walls. No longer would they mount the cannons and fire down at the Olympians who were at the walls.
“How are we supposed to get up there?” Jack asked Tulpa as they stood in front of the stone surface. He noticed their ranks were down to thirty men.
“The old fashioned way,” Tulpa told him. “We climb.”
Tulpa unslung the bag he’d carried with him and dumped the contents on the ground. They consisted of pitons, carabiners and, most important, syndetic rope. He picked up a piton and began to pound it into the wall.
“Anyone else ever do this?” he asked the group. “I know you all learned to climb up a wall with rope in basic training, so let’s get moving.”
One of the Volunteers stepped forward and raised a hand. He had a set of skis on his shoulder patch. “Boscoe, he introduced himself, “I grew up in Colorado in the mountains. I used to do a lot of climbing.”
Tulpa through him a piton and hammer. “Then start pounding them in place,” he told him. Sooner or later the regular Force will find a way inside this place.” He turned in the direction of the rest of the Legion. “I don’t want to hear any complaints about a door,” he scowled. “The door is on the other side of the fort. Right now, the Force is piling up a huge
charge to blow it open. I want to be inside before they get the honor.”
“We also have a faster way if anyone wants to use it,” Tulpa informed them. He picked up a small round object from the pile. It had a curved hook on the end.
In one motion, he fired the hook over the wall while the coiled rope it was attached to trailed out on the ground. After it vanished over the other side of the wall, Tulpa gave the hook a few seconds and tugged on it.
“Solid,” he announced. “But not so solid that someone might find and pull it loose. So, who wants to come up with me and Boscoe? Who wants to try the hook?”
Four men stepped forward and looked at the rope that snaked up the side of the four-story building. One tugged on it and began to climb up the side by himself. Soon, another man joined him.
“We can’t let them show us up,” he said to Boscoe. Tulpa reached up to pound in another piton. He knotted the rope through the eyehole in the piton and used it to pull himself off the ground.
Minutes later, Boscoe followed what he did and both men snaked up the building. The four men who used the grappling hook were already at the second story by the time Tulpa cleared the first. Harlo followed him in behind and kept his rifle loose in case he needed to use it. He expected anytime someone inside the fortress would see them and open up with a machine gun.
Harlo was trapped between his own dislike of high places and his need to get to the top. Nothing seemed to bother Tulpa who appeared to love the deadly position they were in at the moment. Harlo looked down and noticed the rest of the Legion was on the walls and making their way to the top. Should someone spot them from the ground and be on the ZR side, they would be dead in an instant.
