In his 18 years as a Marine, Ryck had never failed to complete a mission, even if the one on G.K. Nutrition Six had cost him most of his Marines. This was the first time he’d failed to do so, and that felt like a defeat. The fact that everyone had been picked up except for Yancy Lee was indicative that it wasn’t any of their faults, but would the higher-ups see it that way?
One thing that struck Ryck was that Siomai had only joined the company a little over a month ago, which was why he went into the mission as a singleton. And Piggy, Sgt Joffrey Nunci, had joined only a month-and-a-half ago, and the Alliance cops had evidently seemed surprised to haul him in with his team. They didn’t even know who he was, and they had to threaten to keep him as an “undocumented detainee” until the embassy gave up his identity.
However the Alliance had nabbed them, it was obvious to Ryck that their knowledge of the battalion and the mission was no more recent than just prior to Piggy’s arrival. And from what he was able to glean by the questions asked of him, the Marines of three of the companies had been arrested as well. Ryck didn’t know yet which company had managed to complete the mission nor why it had when the other three had not.
Ryck looked over at the landline in the room. He wished he could use that to call Hannah and tell her he was back. She had to be worried. This had supposed to have been a routine training exercise that had been scheduled to end over a week ago. He didn’t see why they were on a comms lock-down. It wasn’t as if letting family know they had arrived safely would affect the debriefs or any consequences of their failure, after all.
“So, sir, what do you think?” Sandy said, taking the empty seat beside him. “It’s pretty obvious that this was screwed up before we even left, right?”
“You would think so,” Ryck said non-committedly.
“I mean, nothing was our fault, so they can’t hold us responsible.”
Sams, listening in, snorted his disbelief that Sandy could be so naive.
“Colonel Asherton,” Ryck said succinctly.
Sandy grimaced and sat back as Ryck brought that sad piece of Marine Corps history. During the War of the Far Reaches, Colonel Derek Asherton had led a special task force against a Fordham forward installation on an unnamed asteroid in the Pellas system. He was able to take the installation with minimum casualties, but without any naval support (which fled the system), he’d been a sitting duck when the Fordites mounted a large-scale counter-attack. Outmanned by four-to-one, without heavy weapons, and running out of ammunition, the Marines had suffered 75% casualties before the colonel surrendered to the inevitable.
With the combat deaths of some 2,600 Marines, this was the single largest loss of Marines—other than those on entire ships that were lost—during the entire war. The defeat had been a huge propaganda victory for the enemy.
After the peace, the surviving Marines had been repatriated. Col Asherton, who had lost a hand in the fighting and was in poor health, was immediately arrested and court-martialed. He was found guilty of a laundry list of charges and sentenced to death. Three days after arriving back in Federation space, Colonel Derek Asherton, United Federation Marine Corps, was executed.
This dark piece of Marine Corps history had one important lesson: the Federation does not suffer defeat lightly. The fact that Asherton’s Marines fought valiantly and effectively until they no longer had the means to fight was inconsequential. No sane tactician could have expected the task force to defeat the Fordites given the situation, but the Federation expected its Marines to succeed no matter the odds.
And Ryck was very well aware of that lesson. He knew his Marines had done nothing wrong, but sometimes, the Federation demanded scapegoats, and even Ryck’s hero status might not be enough to keep him off the sacrificial altar.
Ryck just wished that a decision would be made and made soon. The wait was killing him. But when the hatch to the briefing room finally opened and Bert and Colonel Lipper-Mendoza came in, accompanied by the OpsO and the SJA, Ryck almost wished they’d had more time. It wasn’t until Bert caught his eye and gave him a slow wink that Ryck began to relax.
The officers were followed by the rest of the company, which made the huge conference room seem small. It was standing room only. Completely out of context of the situation, Ryck wondered if they should have built a larger secure room on the camp for briefings of company-size or larger groups.
When everyone was in place as best they could squeeze in, the group commander cleared his throat and said, “I’m sorry for what you’ve all been through. But we, as Marines, had to cross every T and dot every I in our investigation. There could be no accusations that we covered up anything on our side, and we’ve had FCDC and DIS[15] looking over our shoulders every step of the way.
“The Three will give you a little more information, but I wanted you to hear it from not only me, but from General McDonough as well. None of you are accountable for what happened, and the Corps is not going to let any of you take the blame for failures in the DIS, is what it looks like. To put it more directly, General McDonough said ‘No fucking way in hell.’”
Ryck felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders. He knew they’d done nothing wrong, that it was the operation itself had been compromised. But with the interior politics within the Federation, facts weren’t always considered when fingers started getting pointed.
“Colonel Gladsen, you’ve got it,” the group commander told the group OpsO as he took the seat at the head table previously occupied by Ryck.
“Marines of Bravo Company, as the colonel said, no one is blaming you for what happened on Livingston. I can let you know now that of the four companies sent on the mission, only Alpha on Indigo Freehold completed the mission.”
That made some degree of sense to Ryck. Of the four planets to which Marines had been sent, Indigo Freehold was somewhat of an outlier in the Alliance. Fiercely independent, it was barely a government in good standing within the Alliance, and it was not surprising that it may not have shared the same degree of cooperation with the other planets with regards to intelligence. Some in the Alliance had managed to gather Federation intelligence on Marine operations, but that Intel was not shared with everyone.
“Delta is inbound now from Tienjing, and we’re going to go through the same procedure with them. Alpha and Charlie are in the barracks now.”
Barracks? Ryck wondered.
“So here’s the good news. You are all under lock-down,” he said as a murmuring broke out among the Marines of Bravo.
“I know, I know. It sucks ass smoke. But it is what it is. You will be under lock-down with armed guards at the entrance to the barracks.”
The murmuring got a little louder.
“Please, hear me out, men. This is an opportunity for us, one we are going to snatch. It was no coincidence that your recent mission was to the Alliance. This was a test run. We’ve got good intel that there are several Alliance governments that have been not only allowing SOG to operate from within their space, but are cooperating with them.”
Ryck wasn’t easily shocked, but this news was more than merely surprising. How could any sane government cooperate with the SOG?
But then his rational mind churned the facts. The Alliance did not have a sphere of space as did the Federation, the Brotherhood, and the Confederation. It was more like Greater France with scattered planets throughout human space. Some Alliance planets were within both what was considered Federation and Confederation space, and others were on the fringes of human space, beyond the soft “borders” of control by the bigger governments. And while the Big Three were true governments in the classical sense of the term, the Alliance was more of a cooperative of like-minded, but independent planets, for security and economic reasons.
Yet, with few exceptions, the SOG had not hit Alliance targets. With their relatively weaker defenses, that did not make too much sense—unless they had some sort of arrangement with the SOG. And the few piracies of Alliance vessels could be smoke screens or against Alliance ta
rgets for planets that were not as cooperative with some sort of agreement.
A sudden thought struck him, and he asked, “Did that intel come from the Ferret, sir?”
The surprised look on the Three’s face as he scrambled for an answer confirmed Ryck’s suspicion.
“Uh, I can’t confirm where the intel originated, just that it has been vetted at highest levels,” the colonel stammered out.
An image of Michiko MacCailín, her abused, naked body lying on the metal table in the jail on Kakurega, waiting for the Propoxinal that would break down her mind, inserted itself in Ryck’s thoughts. Propoxinal, when used by a skilled interrogator, could reveal the victim’s deepest secrets, and the FCDC chief warrant officer about to interrogate her most certainly was skilled. Propoxinal could pull out information, but it also had the side-effect of destroying most of what made a person who he or she was. MacCailín had been a uniformed enemy, a POW, so Ryck had stepped in and blocked its use on her. He wasn’t going to allow anyone to break an interstellar treaty on a prisoner captured by the Marines. The Ferret, on the other hand, was a pirate, and Propoxinal was legal for use on the SOG. The Ferret probably revealed the Intel that implicated the Alliance, and now, she’d be a slobbering, mindless vegetable in some deep, dark hole of a prison cell somewhere—that is, if she hadn’t simply been put down and recycled into fertilizer by now.
Ryck didn’t feel any regrets. Screw her!
“Now we are aware of Alliance operatives or Federation traitors, and in that sense, your mission was a success,” the OpsO continued as he went back on track.
It doesn’t feel like a grubbing success, Ryck thought.
“And we intend to use that knowledge. The commandant had a meeting with the Chairman himself, and our next mission is known by only a very few at the highest levels. We are going to take it to the SOG’s home base.”
There was a loud chorus of oo-rahs from the gathered Marines. They’d been embarrassed, and this would give them a chance to hit back at the source of that embarrassment.
“Now the bad thing is that all of you are to be discharged from the Marines,” he told them as the oo-rahs died down.
There was dead silence for a moment as they took that in before erupting into protests.
“Hold it down! This is not permanent. This is part of the plan. You are all to be given dishonorable discharges and receive sentences at Joffrey,” he continued, naming the federal prison on Halycon’s moon.
He had to raise his voice to be heard over the protests, “We need to give the appearance that the battalion has been disbanded as an experiment gone bad, and we have to have a reason for all of you to leave Tarawa. We still don’t know how deep the Alliance operatives are embedded, but we have to assume that we are under observation.”
Discharged from the Corps. What the hell’s up with that? Ryck wondered, totally shocked.
He didn’t like this one bit, and he realized that with them out of the Corps, the Federation had just created deniability should whatever op they had dreamed up go bad. The Marines, or ex-Marines, as hard as that was to fathom, would be hung out to dry on their own.
“We’re working out the plan now, but it entails the entire battalion going duck-egging it onto their home planet from a commercial vessel. The Confederation will be sending a full cohort of Exploratores to take out an SOG base on the planet’s moon.”
“Uh, sir, the Confederation? I thought you said this op was only known by those at the highest levels,” Ryck interrupted.
“Yes, that’s right, Major. But, we don’t want to be going at this alone. If we succeed, I mean, after we succeed, it would be best if there were more than one government involved.”
“But the Confeds, sir?”
“We didn’t have a lot of choice there. It can’t be Brotherhood, for obvious reasons. And Greater France doesn’t have large mission-capable special ops, while the independents don’t carry the same political weight.”
It was not surprising that the Brotherhood was off the table. They had cooperated with the Federation in interdiction of the previous home planet of the SOG, but they had since come out and said they would ever destroy another planet, and it was likely they would protest an armed incursion onto an Alliance planet.
But the grubbing Confeds? Ryck wondered.
“We’ve been assured that the Confederation will limit this to the highest levels as well,” the Three went on. “Security will be tight as a flea’s ass for this. The Alliance will not know you are coming.”
Like on the last op, Ryck thought sourly.
Like you, the cohort will no longer be part of the Confed military, but rather as a mercenary, or more specifically, a bounty hunting company.
It clicked into place. If a military force invaded a prime planet, it was an act of war. However, a bounty hunting company had free rein in tracking down warranted criminals in several of the human governments, the Alliance included. This gave the Federation the legal excuse for taking it to the SOG, even on an Alliance planet.
“As I said, you will be duck-egging it in, then forming up for several conventional assaults,” the colonel continued. “We are working on the details now, and you’ll be receiving the ops order within a day or so. We expect for you to embark in five days, so there’s isn’t much prep time, and you cannot be seen rehearsing the plan we develop. But the general had the utmost confidence in your abilities.
“Any questions for now? I may not have the answers, but fire away.”
“What about our families, sir? Do they know what is going on?”
The Three grimaced, then said, “Due to the nature of our subterfuge, we really cannot tell them what’s going on. They each have been contacted through official channels, told you have returned, but that you are being held on base for unspecified reasons. I don’t have to remind anyone that while you are on lock-down, there are to be no communications with your families.”
There were more mutters at that. Ryck felt a spark of anger rise within him. Hannah might know he was back and in one piece, but she was not a dumb woman. She could put the pieces together, and that was that he’d failed his mission. She knew history as well and would have Colonel Asherton’s fate on her mind. Ryck would not disobey orders and try and contact her, but he didn’t have to like it.
The Group Commander stood back up and addressed the group. “This is a vital mission, one that might be able to crush this scourge once and for all. You all got hosed, to put it bluntly. But that gives us the opportunity to make something out of it. So let’s buckle down and get this done. When you are back, we’ll worry then about setting things right with family and friends as well as circular-filing your discharges and getting things back to normal. You with me?”
There was another chorus of “ooh-rahs,” but it didn’t sound as enthusiastic as usual to Ryck. If the group commander noticed that as well, he didn’t make an issue of it.
“So now, men, you’re going to file out and onto the waiting busses. They’ll take you to the barracks where hot chow is waiting. Sorry about the guards, but appearances, right? Get fed, cleaned up, then rest up. You’ll need it,” the Three said.
Ryck and his men got up as the command party left, then started to file out of the room and building. Three hovers were waiting for them, as were about ten armed FCDC guards. That grated on him, to be guarded by FCDC. If one of those grubbing fuckdicks even looked at him sidewise, Ryck didn’t know if he’d be able to hold back. But he managed to get on the bus for the short ride to the barracks without incident.
Ryck was relieved that his men were not in any trouble, but they could be jumping out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire.
Chapter 29
Five days later, the Marines from the three companies had to change into prison oranges and submit to being handcuffed—a truly mortifying experience. It was even worse when they were marched out by the FCDC and guards and into the waiting prison buses. The marshaling yard was by the gate, and outside, Ryck c
ould see a couple dozen Marines somberly watching them.
The fuckdick guards were probably not brought into the situation, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves. More than a few Marines were “helped” along by the guards with hits to the back of their legs with the fuckdicks’ batons. It took a huge strength of will not to charge them, handcuffed or not.
Bert Nidischii’ and his staff were also in the orange jumpsuits. At first, that surprised Ryck, but on reflection, it wasn’t too much a stretch to think that the Federation would also arrest the commanding officer who so poorly trained his men that they failed in their mission.
The drive to the military spaceport took only 15 minutes, but that was a long 15 minutes. As the buses neared the commissary, Rycks heart almost broke when he saw two young women with pull out palastiboard signs. One read “Kipster, I believe in you! Love, Keesha.” The other read “Yves Tarrentino, I’m hiring a lawyer. Keep the faith. Love You! Angie.”
As soon as he saw the signs, he heard a groan from behind him as Kipster, SSgt Omar Arroyo, saw his wife.
“Darken the windows!” one of the guards shouted out to the driver.
Craning his head around, Ryck could see an MP rushing the two women before the windows turned black. This may all be a charade, he thought, but it was causing a great deal of grief. He wondered how Hannah was taking it, or if the kids were aware. Word had obviously leaked out, which was undoubtedly what the Federation wanted, and if people knew, their children would know too, and kids could be mean. Ben was still too young, but the twins were in school, and they could be targeted for abuse by others.
They arrived at the spaceport and skipped the terminal, the hover buses floating right to the tarmac where two shuttles waited. It would take the shuttles two trips to get everyone up to the waiting ship.
Major (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 5) Page 15
