Alliance (The United Federation Marine Corps' Grub Wars Book 1)

by Jonathan Brazee

  “But you know more about Klethos tactics than anyone here, Colonel,” Sky said, surprised to hear he wasn’t on the working group either.

  “If you can call that they do tactics, you mean,” he said. “And if you don’t mind, you can call me Bill. I know that technically you’re my senior, me being but a lowly O5, but seeing as we keep bumping into each other, it might be easier.”

  Knowing how anal the Marines could be about rank, she looked at the colonel in surprise, but his big smile told her he was not quite as hidebound as some officers could be.

  “Sure, Bill. That would be nice.”

  He cocked his head at her and raised his eyebrows in a question.

  “Oh, and you can call me Skylar. Or Sky, as my friends call me.”

  “Sky it is, then. Well, seeing as how we didn’t get picked for the big leagues, I think I could use a good cup of espresso. The Confed Staff NCO’s got a hold of a D’Longhi machine, and I’ve been hankering to see if it’s as good as they say. If I had you with me running interference, I bet they’d allow let a Federation Marine have a cup. What say you?”

  Sky had been running on empty for the last 20 hours, but she felt that she should be doing something. She was here to decipher the Dictymorphs, after all, not the Klethos, and she’d been neglecting that. But as she looked at the Lieutenant . . . at Bill, with a bad-boy twinkle in his eyes, she thought screw it.

  “What say me? I say lead on, Bill. Let’s see if we can sweet talk them into a cup.”

  Chapter 14

  Hondo

  “So, we’re not getting new Klucks?” Lance Corporal Roosevelt Jesus River Molina asked.

  “We lost seven of them. Only Boudica made it out, Rosy,” Hondo said.

  “Still, we lost . . .” the big Marine started before trailing off.

  “We lost seven of us, you mean,” Loren said quietly. “And now we’re being brought up to speed.”

  “Well, yeah, I guess.”

  “The word is that the Klucks are going to be kept to their own units. That’s what the sergeant says,” Hondo told them.

  “I mean, I don’t give a shit, but they did kill that second Grub. Just kept up the assault until the thing collapsed,” Loren said. “So why take them away now?”

  “The rumor is that we’re holding them down, you know. Like we keep them from going ballistic on the Grubs.”

  “Isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do for the last five months? I mean, keep them in check and teach them how to fight as units?” she persisted.

  “That’s what we’ve been doing, yeah. But you saw them, Loren. It was like they were sleepwalking. I don’t know. Maybe they’re right. Maybe the Klucks have got to do their own thing,” Hondo said.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I do know that I don’t like the newbies coming in,” she whispered, glancing to the new Marines stowing their gear at the far end of their squadbay. “I’d have rather merged with Second Squad.”

  Hondo understood her point. He didn’t know the new Marines who’d only just been assigned to the squad that morning. He knew, and more importantly, trusted the Marines from Second. They’d gone through the shit together.

  “So, you’re gonna have one squad with all combat vets and two all-newbie squads? Yeah, right, that’s a sterling idea,” Rosy said.

  “Oh, I know. I’m just saying.”

  Hondo looked over at the newbies from where the three of them—four if he counted BK asleep in the rack beside him—were huddled. The three privates looked young, very young. But there was a PFC and a lance corporal as well. They were all probably good Marines, but he just didn’t know that yet, and a good leader knew his people.

  Hondo had to be a good leader, now. Corporal Yetter was taking over First, and he’d be getting only the newbies to fill out the team. Hondo was taking over Second Team, and along with BK, would be receiving two of them.

  He wasn’t sure how much training time they’d have, but one thing was a certainty. Sometime in the near future, he’d have to lead his team into combat.

  He hoped he’d be ready.

  Chapter 15

  Skylar

  “I think you’re missing the point, Lars,” Sky said. “The mirror shields are not a weapon. I understand what you’re saying about the Roman scutum being used offensively, but do you really think a Dictymorph is going to fall to one? No, L’Teesha’s right. We’ve seen that there is still a degree of reflectance in the taraline—”

  “But not the dielectric mirrors,” he interrupted.

  “No, not the dielectric. But we’re not here to discuss what doesn’t work, but rather what does. And the taraline mirrors were able to reflect back a significant portion of the tendrils.”

  Sky and eight others were at the children’s table, discussing shielding, while the adults in the larger conference room were working on offensive weapons. Her brief brush with notoriety with her theory on the Klethos had long faded, and she was back to peon level. She wasn’t sure why she was even here. She was a xenopsychologist, not a physicist. Lars Skagt, with his specialty in ancient weapons, was like a bulldog with his shield theory. Sky now knew more about scutums, clipeus, and how the umbo, the metal bosses on the scutums, were used to pound on opponents than she’d ever thought she’d know.

  Which had no relevance to the issue. The Legionnaires who’d been carrying the different types of mirror shields had been test cases, guinea pigs, as it were, just as the Confederation troops with their synchrotron particle beam projectors. They were testing theory, not practical weapons.

  Didn’t matter to the poor Confed soldiers. They’re all just as dead one way or the other.

  She shook her head to get back on track. Lars was driving everyone crazy, a super-specialist trying to find relevance. L’Teesha Durrant-Kubrick, a quiet, but brilliant theoretical engineer, had the data to back up the partial effectiveness of the taraline mirrors, something that hadn’t been given much credence before the test.

  Battle, not test, Sky. People died.

  As brilliant as L’Teesha was, she had the aggressiveness of a one-day-old kitten, and she was letting Lars walk all over her. Sky, even without a background in the field, wasn’t going to let that happen. Lives of the soldiers mattered more than professional ego.

  “Not all of the tendrils, though,” Lars continued.

  “Something is better than nothing, Doctor Skagt. If we can increase the soldiers’ survival by even ten seconds, that could be enough to use the pikes and kill one of the things. The key here is the taraline, not the shield,” Shy said in her best professor-voice.

  “But the scutums can do that. They can give the soldiers the time, too,” he insisted.

  “Look, Skagt,” she said, standing as frustration took over. “Until the Dictymorph reaches right around it. And with one hand holding a shield, one hand on a pike, how does a soldier use another weapon, huh? If you’d seen a Dictymorph up close, if you’d felt death closing in on you, then you’d understand.”

  Which wasn’t quite fair. Lars had never been offered a chance to make a landing, so she didn’t know if he would have volunteered or not. Everyone knew she’d been on the ground during the first battle, and she was going to take any advantage she had if it moved the effort forward.

  “No, we are not here to discuss shields. Our takeaway from this is going to be to recommend polished taraline plating to be attached to combat suits, just as Doctor Durrant-Kubrick suggested. L’Teesha, I assume you can write that up?”

  “Yes, I already have it,” she said with a look of gratitude in her eyes.

  “OK, then. Item 2002 is finished. We’ve got five more items on the list for today and two hours to get through them. So, Item 2003, the effects of heat. Enos, I think this is yours. If you would begin?”

  Sky was not in charge of the meeting. She was barely more than an observer given the items on the agenda, and wished she was back in the lab working on any one of six or seven projects on her to-do list. But if it took someone to ri
de herd on the others, then she was going to step up into the saddle.

  Chapter 16

  Hondo

  “You look like the Silent Knight,” BK said, laughing at him.

  Hondo put his opened right gauntlet over his heart, the slowly rotated his hand away, giving his heart to the people, just at the Silent Knight did after every act of derring-do.

  He did sort of look like the Hollybolly hero of a dozen or so flicks, his armor a shiny, reflective silver. They all looked like him. A PICS was a war machine, designed to close with and kill the enemy. It was not designed as a target. Besides passive stealth measure, it had active jamming, even to human eyes. The fractured array could interfere with an observer’s ability to process what he or she saw. An enemy might know the PICS was there but couldn’t pinpoint it.

  Now, most of his PICS’ exterior surface was covered in bright taraline surfaces that angled in unexpected shapes. The scientists swore that these mirrors would reflect at least a portion of the Grub’s weaponry, giving them up to twenty seconds of protection instead of the five seconds a regular PICS gave him.

  His thought drifted back to K-1003 for a moment. With twenty seconds, maybe Brute would have been able to break free. Maybe he would, and Sam would still be alive.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  He shook his head as if to shake out those thoughts. He couldn’t dwell on the past.

  Private Fiona Xeras, his new team rifleman, pivoted on her left foot, turning a complete 360, then strutted down the front of the armory as if on the catwalk. Hondo stifled a laugh. Somehow, in her PICS, she captured the caricature of the runway model.

  “Can it, Xeras,” BK said. “We don’t have time for your grab-assing. We still need to get down to the range and get up-checked.”

  BK didn’t seem to like the private, and she rode her pretty hard. Hondo didn’t know if that was because Xeras had filled Sam’s billet as rifleman or if there was something more involved. Hondo was new to this leadership thing, and as BK hadn’t stepped over the line with anything yet, he’d let it slide so far. He’d love to talk with Yetter or Mbangwa about it, to pick their brains, but he didn’t want to seem as if he couldn’t handle anything so minor. He knew, though, that he’d have to talk to BK about it at some point.

  “Let’s get going. Time’s tight,” he told the other three.

  His PICS felt subtly different than his original combat suit, even before the new armor plating. Now, the difference was magnified. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what was different, but just as two pairs of jeans, both the same size, felt different then he put them on, so did his new PICS differ from his old one.

  Range 401 was about 500 meters behind the armory. It was a cold range, meaning no live fire. CWO4 Donaldson was sending another Marine through his paces while Staff Sergeant Jardine monitored the readouts.

  The two Marines looked exhausted. They’d been at is since zero-dark-thirty, and now it was almost evening chow time. Hondo doubted they’d left the range all day other than to take a piss break. The Marine being tested completed the vertical jump, coming back down a little hard, but within reason. The gunner looked at the staff sergeant who gave him a thumbs up. He gave the Marine a slap on the hip, and pointed off the range.

  “Hell, we’ve got eight in front of us. I know we’re going to miss chow,” BK said.

  “They’ll keep it. Gunny promised,” Hondo reminded her.

  “We’ll see,” she said, not sounding too optimistic.

  As far as Hondo was concerned, if Gunny Harris said chow was going to remain open for them, then that was set in stone. The gunny stood all of 1.7 meters in his socks, but nobody wanted to get on his bad side, and that included the civilian mess staff.

  Hondo reached out and grabbed BK by the shoulder, twisting her so he could see her back. She knocked his arm away.

  “How’re you going to put your good luck charm on with the mirrors?” he asked.

  BK was on the superstitious side, and she’d put a small four-leaf clover patch on the back shoulder of her PICS. That PICS was abandoned back on K-1003 when she’d molted, and she hadn’t yet put one on her new PICS. Hondo figured that was because she’d been waiting for her new PICS to get up-armored.

  “Don’t think I’m gonna do it,” she said.

  “What? But that’s your good luck charm,” he protested.

  “Didn’t bring good luck before, huh?” she muttered.

  “You came back in one piece,” he said. “You’ve got to remember that.”

  She didn’t reply, and the two friends stood in silence while waiting their turn. When they reached the front of the queue, Hondo watched Xeras, BK, and PFC Sunrise Valúlfur go through their paces before he stepped up to the chief warrant officer.

  The gunner scanned his PICS’ id, did a circuit reading, then told Hondo to bend over, followed by standing on each leg separately, running in place, running in a circle, jumping over the simulated creek, and a dozen other exercises. The PICS handled well, nothing much out of the ordinary. After he completed the vertical jump for height, the gunner looked back to Jardine.

  The more detailed analysis must have been fine because he said, “OK, Lance Corporal McKeever. You’re good to go. I’m up-checking you.”

  Hondo joined his three waiting Marines, then together, they jogged back to the armory to get out of their suits and to the messhall. They could have walked, but despite the Gunny’s promises, there was no use tempting fate when chow was concerned.

  Chapter 17

  Hondo

  “Look at those fuckers,” BK said as if she couldn’t believe it.

  Hondo sure couldn’t.

  Images of rioting filled the screen while an on-site reporter described what was going on. It was pretty obvious, though. The mob was decrying the war, decrying violence, and rioting to prove their point that violence was a bad thing. Behind the reporter, a young man and woman emerged from the broken window of a storefront, carrying a large box between them.

  “Take a look at that. Yeah, stealing a holoprojector is a good way to protest the war,” Loren said, wrinkling her face in disgust.

  “Don’t they know that if we don’t stop the Grubs, they’ll be coming for us next?”

  “Yeah, in a hundred years, so it doesn’t matter now, right?” Hondo said.

  He didn’t understand it, either. He’d thought that all of humanity was behind the effort. Over the last month, 22,000 new fighters, mostly from the Big 3, but also from smaller governments, had arrived on the planet for training.

  Yet every day, as the non-rates watched the news, more and more protests were cropping up. This one was on Syble-3, right in the heart of the Confederation.

  The reporter snagged a man and asked him why he was protesting.

  “It just ain’t right, man. Us and the Klethos together? I mean, look at them. They’re Satan’s spawn, and it don’t take no genius to figure that one out.”

  “Surely you mean that figuratively.”

  “Yeah, I figure it, and you should, too. I mean, lookit, them Klethos, they killed out 17 species. Seventeen! They woulda done in the Capys too, if we hadn’t stepped in.”

  “Who’s this idiot?” BK asked.

  “And now, they tried for more’n a hundred years to get us, too. Only we’re too strong for them, so they’re trying something new.”

  “We were too ‘strong’ for the Klethos?” the reporter asked, incredulity creeping into his normal reporter-neutral voice.

  “He’s right in that, at least,” Rosy said.

  Hondo wasn’t so sure about that. The Klethos showed little tactical skill, but they still could neutralize human weaponry. As the man said, they’d killed off 17 other races, and they didn’t do that by being pushovers.

  “Yeah. I saw on the holovid that we’ve got more planets now than we did when we first ran into them. How can we do that if we aren’t winning with the gladiators? Just make a million gladiators, and we’d wipe the Klethos out of the galaxy
.”

  “So, sir, be that as it may, why are you protesting now? It isn’t the Klethos we’re fighting.”

  “No, it ain’t. But maybe it should be. How do we know these Dicty-things are the bad guys?”

  “They just killed 845 Confederation soldiers, for one thing.”

  “Because we attacked, them. I seen the holovids. And if they really are the bad guys, then maybe we shouldn’t draw a target on our backs. Now, they’ll come gunning for us.”

  The reporter looked stunned, as if he couldn’t believe what the man had said.

  “Well, thank you, sir, for taking the time to talk to us.”

  “No problem,” he said, then looked right into the holocorder, leaned in, and said, “All of you out there, you’ve got to get your head out of your asses. This ain’t our fight.”

  He raised his hand in a fist, his fore and little finger raised.

  “There you have it. One citizen’s views on the war with the Dictymorphs,” the reporter said.

  “Do you think his views are widespread?” the anchor asked.

  “It’s hard to say. All I know is that is the general feeling of those here, the ones doing the rioting.”

  “It will be interesting seeing what the UAM Grand Council will say about it now. There is only a week left for the continuing resolution,” the anchor said. “Keep an eye on the situation for us on Syble-3, Harold, but stay safe.”

  The image shifted to the anchor back in the studio on FRL Station.

  “With all the unrest that is spreading throughout human space, just what is the Grand Council thinking now. We’ve got five distinguished guests here to discuss—”

  “There,” BK said, turning off the feed. “I’m about done with that kind of shit. Fucking Confeds, anyway.”

  Hondo didn’t bother to mention that there were protests on Federation worlds as well. BK had taken Sam’s death hard, and he thought she at least partly blamed the Confederation battalion for that.