by J. N. Chaney
But Rev wanted to know, too. Hussein had been on his mind ever since they left the planet. Technically, they’d still be on comms silence as they’d boarded the Navy boat, but the lieutenant probably figured a fifteen-meter-long boat trumped the possibility that he might give away their position to the Centaurs, and he’d tried to raise Hussein on a tight beam, but there had been no answer.
“OK, then,” Tomiko said, smoothing back her hair. “How much of the regiment got off? Of all three regiments?”
“The brass would have an extract all planned out,” Kel said. “If this was turning south on us, I’m betting most of us got off. We’ll return to Nguyen, gather ourselves, and come back and do it right next time.”
“Damn right,” Tanu said.
Rev looked over at the staff sergeant to see her reaction to that. She always seemed to have the most complete grasp of the situation among the team members. Her face was an impassive mask, and he didn’t know if that was good or bad.
“I don’t know. I just got me a bad feeling about all of this,” Sergeant Nix said. “Remember Julia’s World?”
“That was then, this is now,” the gunny snapped.
Rev knew that Julia’s World had been a bad defeat, but he didn’t know the details.
“Remind me to ask you about that,” he subvocalized.
“Look. We don’t know shit now, and I don’t see us high enough on the food scale for the Task Force Commanding General to stop everything to give us a call and tell us what happened,” the gunny said.
“So, I suggest we quit guessing and getting ourselves all riled up.” He pulled out a ratty set of cards from his holster. “Knock On, anyone?”
Knock On was the gunny’s favorite game. Rev thought it was a little lame, but the gunny was right. Anything to occupy the mind was better than sitting around, wondering how bad things were. They were alive, ready to fight another day.
Besides, it couldn’t be that bad, right?
25
It could be that bad. Even worse.
Rev stood at attention as the division CG left the fieldhouse, in a state of shock. As soon as the hatch closed behind him, the regiment—what little there was left—broke out into a dull roar.
The Gryphons had landed 2,406 and six Marines and sailors, and 540 were extracted. It had been a slaughter.
The CO and the sergeant major had been among those killed when the Centaurs counterattacked. Granted, on a personal level, they were just two more Marines among the losses, but each survivor felt the blow.
It had been obvious that things had gone bad from the moment they’d gotten back to Camp Nguyen. There just weren’t the numbers of Marines around. But there had been the hope that they were just waiting for more ships to return.
The camp was under a blackout, so even after getting to their barracks, no one knew what had happened. Eight hours after returning, Hussein Černý walked into the barracks, the one bright spot in a dim homecoming. But he had nothing more of a picture than they had.
Like Rev, he’d been inserted to the west of their AO, their Area of Operations. Unlike Rev, he couldn’t make it over the intervening range. He just managed to reach the sapper RP on that side of the range when the recall came.
The team was lucky. Rev was the only WIA. Second Team lost two Marines, and First never made it off the planet. Rev hoped that they were still there, hiding out until the Marines could return, but he realized that was just wishful thinking. He didn’t want to think that his fellow Raiders, the ones he’d joked with, eaten with, just such a short time ago, were dead.
And the Gryphons, despite the losses, had come out better than the other two regiments. The Bucks were almost wiped out, and the Lancers hadn’t fared much better. The division had been gutted. It was no longer a viable fighting force.
The CG had wanted to brief them face-to-face, and he looked like a broken man as he did so. He didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he promised to be transparent and timely once he found out.
“I didn’t think it was that bad,” Tomiko said. “I mean, when I saw how few were mustered here now, I knew it wasn’t good, but . . .”
Which was exactly how Rev felt. He thought he had been mentally braced, but he hadn’t imagined the depth of the loss. He felt like he’d been gut-punched.
“Rev! Miko!”a familiar voice called out.
The two turned in unison to see Bundy and Ten pushing their way over to them.
The four Marines hugged and slapped each other on their backs, happy to have at least some good news.
“Damn, I’m glad to see you!” Bundy said. “I was afraid for the worst.”
He looked down at the healing chamber on Rev’s foot and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“A Centaur shot his sabaton off, just before he ghosted the fucker,” Tomiko said. “Our lieutenant already put him in for a PN.”
“A Platinum Nova? No freaking shit? You’re going to have to tell us about that,” Ten said.
“But you guys, what happened to you? What can you tell us? We were out of the loop out there in the boonies.”
“We were hoping you can tell us. We never made it to the ground,” Bundy said. “Fyr’s platoon never made it, either. I saw him on the way over.”
That meant at least five of them had survived.
“What about Udu? She’s mech, too.” Rev asked.
“We haven’t seen her, but I don’t think any armor made it down,” Bundy said, shrugging.
“Pelletier, Reiser, back to the barracks. Lieutenant Smith wants a meeting. You can talk to your buddies later.”
“Are we still confined to the barracks, Gunny?” Rev asked.
“No outside comms, and no one’s getting off base for now, but the regimental area is OK.”
Rev turned to Bundy and Ten and said, “Look, let’s meet up at the club tonight. Just get there when you can. And tell everyone else to meet . . . uh, whoever else made it, to be there, too.”
He didn’t want to bring up that Cricket and Yancey were infantry, and that’s who took the brunt of the casualties.
“Got it,” Ten said. “If you beat us, grab a table.”
“So good to see you,” Bundy said, giving Rev, then Tomiko a hug.
“You’ve got that right,” Rev said.
“Let’s quit the jaw-jacking and go,” the gunny said.
After losing a full team, Rev knew this wasn’t going to be a pleasant meeting, but still, he was happy that at least some of their crew had survived. He was fearful for the others, but at this point, any good news would be welcome.
“You’ve got the next pitcher,” Rev told Yancey. “Just because you’re drunk doesn’t mean you get out of it.”
“I’ll buy if you fly,” Yancey said. “If your little foot boo-boo will let you hobble that far.”
“I’ve got it,” Bundy said, getting up a little unsteadily from the table. “But he’s right. You’re paying.”
The crew—the whole crew—had made the little reunion. Yancey was in a hoverchair. He’d been partially fried, his left side from his knee to his shoulder paralyzed, and he was leaving in the morning for the Naval Hospital at the capital for a nerve transplant and a few months of accelerated regeneration. He was probably breaking all sorts of rules, drinking not the least of them, but if the doctors didn’t want him to go out, the clinic shouldn’t have given him the hover chair.
With so many losses, it was nothing short of a miracle that they had all survived. All of their original crew, minus Krissy, but everyone who had taken the oath to meet when their commitment was up, was there, drinking in companionship, in celebration that they had made it, and in sorrow for all those who hadn’t.
Rev hadn’t been drunk since the night he’d spent with Mr. Oliva and the other vets, and he was making up for lost time now. Everyone was.
Rev had come close to getting ghosted, too close. Yancey had been even luckier—without the heavier infantry combat suit, he woul
d have bought it as well. Orpheus’ platoon had been part of the flank security, and lucky for him, the Centaur counterattack had come from the other side.
Udu’s mech company had landed outside the city. She immediately lost half of her squad to a Centaur buzzball, but the recall had sounded before the rest of her unit started their advance.
Bundy, Fyr, and Ten never made it down. They’d been loaded and ready to go, but that was as far as it had gone.
But it wasn’t just the original crew who had joined in the drink-fest. Hundreds of Marines were crowded inside the club, doing their best to drain it dry. And Rafer, Giselle, and Cali had joined them.
With both Rafer and Giselle, their recon teams never got into contact. Cali Hu, however, sat quietly along the bench seat, downing one beer after another. Cali was a Drop Marine, and the word was they’d taken huge casualties. Rev had been tempted to ask her about it, but it was obvious she wasn’t in the talking mood.
“If that’s true, it sucks about the CG,” Fyr said.
“Sometimes the shit rolls uphill. Top me off,” Udu said, holding out her glass.
They still didn’t know much of what was going on, but a lance corporal from Fyr’s company had just told them that both generals, the division CG and the task force commander, had been fired.
“Serves the assholes right,” Cali muttered, the first thing she’d said in at least forty-five minutes.
Rev didn’t know what to think about that. Was it really their fault? Did the task force commander implement a bad plan? Did the CG, who wasn’t even on the mission, have any input at all?
He took a long swallow of beer. All that stuff was way, way, way over his pay grade. This wasn’t the night to be thinking about that, about the future. This was a night to drink with his friends and forget.
“I think Pikachu’s drunk,” Tomiko said, giving out a loud belch. “The bitch can’t hold her booze.”
What? Was that even possible?
“Hey, wake up. Can you get drunk?”
“Shit, you do get drunk, then. Are you enjoying it?”
Rev stood up, swayed, and caught the edge of the table to hold him upright. “Marines, I’ve got our new mission. Miko here says her AI is drunk, and I just confirmed that it’s possible. So, for the rest of the night, no more Preacher Rolls, no more stars getting fired. We’ve got one mission, and one mission only. Get our AI’s stinking drunk!”
There was a round of cheers, and Rev drained his glass. He grabbed the pitcher from Bundy as he returned to the table and filled it up again. He had a lot of drinking to do.
The order had been given, and a Marine always completed the mission.
26
“I don’t want no Lancers here,” Tanu said with a scowl.
“I think you missed the point. There aren’t any Lancers anymore,” Tomiko said. “They’ve been disbanded, at least for now.”
“But they were Lancers,” Tanu persisted. “And I don’t trust no Anastasians.”
“We have a couple buddies who went to Kamachi for armor training, and they said they were treated pretty well,” Rev said.
“Where’s your loyalty?” Tanu asked.
To the Union and humanity, Rev wanted to say. But he held off. Tanu was just blowing off steam. Things were in disarray at the moment, with the provincial regiments in flux.
The Gryphons had taken huge casualties on Preacher Rolls, but they’d suffered the least within the division. Sixth Marines, the Bucks, had been essentially wiped out. The only survivors were those who had been held back at Camp Falcon for whatever reason or were left aboard the ships. Rumor had it that there were fewer than fifty of them.
Fourth Marines, the Lancers, had suffered grievously as well, but more than four hundred had been extracted back to Camp Kamachi.
The Big Corps, what the provincial Marines called the regular Marine headquarters at the Perseus Union capital on New Mars, had decided to consolidate the surviving Marines into a single regiment. With most of the survivors being Gryphons, the new unit would retain the Safe Harbor Provincial 8th Infantry Regiment colors and organization.
Even with the consolidation, there weren’t enough Marines to fill the Table of Organization, and there were rumblings that the entire Provincial Marine concept was about to be scrapped. After nine years of war with the Centaurs, there wasn’t much difference between the provincial regiments and the regular Marine regiments anymore. Hell, there were plenty of older salts who had served in the regular Corps before the war and had come back home to Safe Harbor, joining the provincials. Gunny Thapa, for one. Colonel Orlo, the regimental commander, was regular Marines.
The previous regimental commander, that was. Along with the other two regimental commanders, he’d been killed on Preacher Rolls. The 48th Support Battalion XO, a major, was the acting regimental commander until a new colonel took over. Rumor was that the Phantom-of-the-Opera-faced Colonel Destafney, their recruit training CO, was going to take over.
And it wasn’t just Colonel Orlo who’d been killed. The entire alpha command had been lost. That included Charlie Company’s CO, Captain Formica. Lieutenant Smith moved up to take over the company, and Lieutenant Omestori, with the Raiders for only a few weeks now, was now dual-hatted as both the team leader and new platoon commander.
“It’s not that you’ve got any choice, Tanu,” Sergeant Nix said. “It is what it is. And we’re going to welcome whoever comes over. We’re short an entire team, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Nix had taken the loss of First Team pretty hard. His cousin had been with First Team.
“Are we at least staying here at Nguyen?” Kel asked. “Is there any firm word on that?”
“Nothing yet. Falcon had better training facilities,” Nix said.
Rev hoped they wouldn’t have to move. Falcon might as well have been on another planet, for all he was concerned. He’d never even been to Kamachi, over in Anastasia, and that was a twenty-minute flight away. Falcon was halfway around the planet.
It was ironic, he’d long realized, that on Safe Harbor, Rev had never been more than fifty kilometers from his home, but he’d traveled light years away to Preacher Rolls.
“I don’t care who the hell joins us,” Hussein said. “If they’ll help us kick Centaur ass, I’m all for it.”
With that, Rev was in full agreement. No one was particularly happy with having to integrate with the Lancers, but Tanu aside, it wasn’t because they didn’t trust their fellow Marines. The transition meant that they’d have to go through intensive training together before they were combat-ready, training that would take time.
And if there was one common desire at the moment, it was that every Marine wanted to get back out there as soon as possible and kill Centaurs.
They had a debt to pay.
“This is messed up,” Deen LaPete said as they watched the Frisian soldiers stand in formation, each with their war kit on the ground in front of them.
“You’ve got that right,” Rev muttered.
All three teams were gathered across the commons, watching the new arrivals. It had been four months since the reorganization, four months in which the new Fifth Team—the gunny was convinced it was bad luck to designate the former Lancer team as First Team—had integrated itself into the platoon.
Integrating the Raider teams had been one thing. Deen, for example, had been in Rev and Tomiko’s DC class, and she was good people. So were the rest of the team, for that matter. Rev would have no issue with going into combat with them right now.
But this—this was different. A Host commando team? Or a flight, as they called it, for some unknown reason. The Frisians were the long-time adversaries and sometimes enemies of the Union. Yes, now all humans were on the same side, but Rev didn’t trust the Frisians as fa
r as he could throw them. They were never going to be the Union’s friends. As soon as the war with the Centaurs was over, it would be back to the same rivalries that had existed for the last five centuries. All of the issues that had existed before were still there—they were just temporarily shelved for the moment while humanity faced a bigger threat.
The Raiders watched as the yellow-master, the equivalent of between a Marine sergeant and staff sergeant, inspected the flight. He had to know that a hundred eyes were on him, and he made a show of what he was doing. His soldiers made a show, too, standing at a ramrod-straight position of attention, then displaying their gear in turn with movements that would make the Marine Corps Silent Drill Team jealous.
“How the hell are we going to work with them?” Hussein asked Rev.
“Hell if I know, Hus-man.”
Rev and Tomiko were now PFCs, getting their promotion shortly after their return to Nguyen. But with Rev’s recommendation for the Platinum Nova, which was a poorly kept secret, he’d gained more than a bit of street cred. Hussein, in particular, seemed to gravitate to him on questions about the Marine Corps.
Rev didn’t really have the answers, and he knew he’d been just damned lucky with the Centaur, but a part of him basked in his new rep. He looked forward to going out in Swansea with it around his throat. He no longer had any feelings for Mia, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of showing off in front of her.
PN awardees were supposed to be humble and all of that, and he wouldn’t do anything to besmirch the award, but . . .
Besides, it was rumored that the PN was a lady magnet, surpassing even his dress blues. He intended to find out if that was true.
But at the moment, with the Host flight invading their turf, the medal was the furthest thing from his mind.
“Think they’re spies?” Hussein asked.
“Of course, they’re spies,” Staff Sergeant Montrez said.
