Marine Raiders: Strike Back (Blood War Book 2)

by Rod Carstens

  They watched as more and more hybrids were organizing and moving out of the entrance.

  "They massing for one of their frontal assaults like on Rift?" Nani asked.

  "Well, they moved up until they reached this line of dorms," Eron said, pointing to his display. "Then they stopped. I think you’re right, Sarge."

  "Fuck!"

  Nani knew she couldn’t stop a force much larger than what she could see now and more were pouring out of that entrance. She was going to need help. In the meantime, it was time to change the strategy. No more cleaning the dome. It was time to hold what she had until help arrived. When in danger, when in doubt, dig in and make them come to you. That was Aijuba Rule Number Twenty-nine.

  "First squad, listen up. We're going to make a stand in this row of dorms. Fire team leaders, get your people organized. Choose a defensible space and dig in! Blow some murder holes and somebody take down the next row of dorms. Let’s get a better field of fire."

  The fire teams immediately began to dig in and fortify the dorms for a defensive stand. The dorms in the next row suddenly went up in a series of blasts from grenades from the squad. The men and women in her fire teams began blowing murder holes in the walls at various heights so they could change positions. Others blew holes in the floor and were able to get into the foundation and set up positions under the dorm.

  Nani switched her frequency to the lieutenants’ command channel.

  "LT, we got more hybrids than we can manage pouring out of the entrance to the dome from the main facility tunnel. It looks like every swinging dick is armored infantry in addition to the techs. We’re digging in and going to make a stand, but it’s going to get dicey real quick unless we get some reinforcements."

  "Roger. Second squad is not finished yet. Third squad has their hands full with covering our rear. Do the best you can, and I’ll reinforce you ASAP."

  "Roger, LT. Make it sooner than later. We got more hybrids than we can handle."

  "Roger. I’ll advise Raider Six."

  "Roger. First squad out."

  "Here they come," Eron said and ran to a murder hole.

  Nani took up a position next to him. She glanced down at Hu. His fire team had set up at the far end of the dorm. He was directing them into positions and putting furniture against the wall to give a little more cover. Nani wished she had another scram. It would sure help clear a field of fire. The hybrids were pouring out of the dorms in the third row and around the ends. It was their typical all or nothing frontal assault, just as they’d done on Rift. They were depending on numbers to overcome the tactical advantage Nani's squad had. Mixed in with the armored infantry were hybrids with weapons but no armor. They couldn’t wait to armor up before they attacked.

  Stupid shits, Nani thought and blew one in half with a single three round burst from her 48. She moved her sights to an armored hybrid and took careful aim at its faceplate. She fired another three-round burst and the hybrid’s head disappeared.

  "Make your shots count!" Nani snapped over the squad's all hands frequency. The firing increased.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Exoplanet 1123.567

  Von Fleet Planet 701

  Task Force 53

  CC12 Tokyo

  Bridge

  Captain Ririsa Grogen was happy. It was the feeling she always got when she was in space at the helm of a good ship. She could feel the slight vibration of the ship’s drive under her feet. Artificial gravity always felt different somehow and added to the feeling of being on ship and under way. She leaned back in her chair and studied the readouts on the display floating in front of her chair. She sat in the captain’s chair of the Tokyo. Around her, men and women went about the business of guiding the huge cruiser through space. The only sounds were the muted voices of her bridge crew as they communicated with the rest of the ship. Ririsa was alone in the midst of the others on the bridge, as only the captain of a vessel could be. It was her ship and her command. For all intents and purposes, she was the human embodiment of that ship. Her will was the ship’s will. With this power came an equal amount of responsibility, and Ririsa knew the consequences of that responsibility all too well. She had been commander of the destroyer Cappella at Rift. The Cappella had been lost in the battle, and the loss of her first command and so many of her crew had changed her. It had hardened her.

  With rich brown hair pulled into the regulation ponytail and green eyes, she had been considered pretty, almost beautiful, at one time. After Rift, her face was no less attractive, but it was now hardened into a face that conveyed more strength than beauty. Her mouth had hardened into a firm line. The rumor among the crew was that the last time she had smiled had been in grade school. With a sharp tongue, she had demanded the best from her crew from the first day she had stepped onto the Tokyo while it was still in the docks. Ririsa had been seeing the Phoenix through her conversion from a battleship to the first carrier in the Confederation fleet in hundreds of years when Admiral Raurk had asked her to take command of Task Force 53. She wanted a battle-hardened commander on this first raid, and she had tapped Ririsa. Ririsa had spent the last few months overseeing the conversion with no time in space. She was glad for a break from the meetings with contractors and inspections. The Tokyo had been upgraded herself until she was a gun platform capable of protecting one of the new carriers or supporting a landing like this one. Her main mission was to protect the Tarawa and the Marines. Secondary was to support the Marines with her massive rails if naval gunfire was needed. It was a good ship on a good mission.

  Ririsa reached out to the floating display and changed the view to one of the task force as a whole. At the center of the display was the Tarawa. The Tarawa, her SOCs, and Marines were the heart of the task force. They were striking Xotoli territory for the first time. It gave Ririsa great satisfaction to be part of the first attack against the Xotoli. She doubted she would ever get over the loss of the Capella, but this was a start.

  Ririsa had been chosen as the captain of the Tokyo because of her actions at Rift. Her performance under the most difficult of circumstances had proven her abilities to command under fire. Ririsa changed the bridge’s display screen to a window view. Like the Capella, the Tokyo's bridge was at the stern of the ship over the new Von Fleet drives. The Tokyo stretched out in front of Ririsa in all of her complex and functional beauty. At least the Tokyo was beautiful to her. The hundreds of automatic point defense-directed energy weapons dotted the top deck, each standing ready to destroy any missile or fighter that came into the range. Dozens of .50 caliber chain rails and the Metal Storm with its four rotating barrels, giving it the capability of firing up to 250,000 rounds a minute, had been added to the defensive armament. Anti-fighter ECON missile launchers now studded the sides and top deck. Two sixteen-inch rails, one fore and one aft, now sat ready for both defensive and offensive use. Five-inch rail mounts had also been added to the centerline of the ship until hardly a foot of space on the Tokyo did not bristle with new weaponry.

  Even with all of these new automatic weapons, something still worried her. One of the main reasons the Capella was able to stay in the fight as long as she had, despite what would have been considered catastrophic damage, was the fact that many of her weapons could be manned by crews. As the Capella absorbed increasing damage, more and more of her systems went down. Despite losing the ships double and triple redundant systems she was able to stay in the fight with sailors manning the weapons. As good as they were, automatic systems needed power and guidance. Without one or the other, they were just useless chunks of metal on the ship. Ririsa had a feeling that the new design of the Tokyo would be tested today.

  Ririsa watched as maintenance bots crawled all over the top of the ship, maintaining the systems and repairing damage from space junk and micro meteors. They looked for all the world like four-legged spiders with two arms. They moved easily over the uneven surface of the ship as they constantly performed maintenance.

  Ririsa switched her display view
to the task force view and added the sensor display. The sensors coverage of each of the ships in the task force showed up as red spheres. All of these combined spheres created a large red sphere around the task force and Von Fleet 703. She changed her view so she could see the Tarawa's SOCs entering the atmosphere of the planet. The battle was in full swing now. She saw medical SOCs exiting 703 with the first of the casualties. If they had causalities already, things were not going right. The Tokyo was supposed to be a last resort for naval fire support, but she decided she didn't want to wait for that first call for help. She wanted her crews at full readiness. She reached over and touched the comm button to the combat information center twenty decks below.

  "Yes, Captain?"

  "Commander, let’s go to general quarters."

  "Aye, aye, ma'am."

  Ririsa leaned back in her chair. Here we go, she thought.

  "General quarters, general quarters. All hands man your battle stations. I repeat, general quarters. All hands man your battle stations. All pilots report to your ships. Flight personnel make all preparation for launch. General quarters, general quarters."

  The Tokyo only carried a squadron of twelve fighters for scouting and five were on patrol. She wanted the rest ready just in case. Men and women around Ririsa quickly moved to their battle stations. More personnel came to the bridge and manned their stations. Ririsa was pleased at the calm and orderly way they took their stations. A new petty officer came and took the helm. Ririsa glanced over and saw that it was Edlen Kilen. He had been her young helmsmen the day of Rift. She had watched him grow into a veteran in front of her eyes that day. He had stayed at his station, refusing to leave until she did. Next to her, he was one of the last off the Capella. He looked as if he had aged years just in the last few months since Rift. It was good to have him at the helm. He had volunteered for the mission when Ririsa was assigned as the task force commander. With a smirk, Ririsa said, "We gonna earn our pay today, Petty Officer?"

  "Damned straight."

  The bridge was silent for a moment as everyone waited for the usual sharp outburst from the captain. Instead she said, "Let's hope we don't have to work as hard as we did at Rift."

  Ririsa and the young helmsmen had had a similar exchange of words during the battle of Rift. She was glad he felt comfortable enough to repeat them now.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  The Tokyo increased speed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Xotoli Outpost

  Exoplanet 1123.567

  Von Fleet Planet 703

  Private Koy Berk

  Private Koy Berk slowly regained consciousness. All he could see out of his faceplate was snow. He was lying face down. He had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there. He lay still, letting his head clear. He’d gotten here slowly came back to him. His drop seat hadn’t worked in the SOC. He had been stuck in the ship over the drop zone. The pilots had been fighting for control of the ship as it was being buffeted by the winds and thrown around like a toy. Then the SOC had lost an engine. Without two engines, it was only a matter of time before the ship would crash. The ship was going down. He had to get out. Koy had begun to struggle against his drop seat. He had tried to unfasten the shoulder straps and seat belt, but the ship was being thrown around so violently he couldn't find the buckles. Finally, in desperation, he had simply torn himself free using his armor's strength enhancements. When he was free, he had thrown himself out of the open drop doors into the raging winds outside the ship and the rapidly nearing planet surface below. He had been blown around like a ragdoll as he fell. He had watched as the SOC had been thrown upward by the turbulence, then flipped on its back before crashing nose first into the surface of the planet in a huge explosion. Koy's arms and legs had windmilled as he fell toward the rocky surface. It had taken all his strength to get into the drop position so his retros could work. That was the last thing he remembered before he hit the ground thinking that this was a shitty way to die.

  On top of everything else, his retros hadn’t worked properly and he had landed badly, face first in the snow. Now his armor was blinking yellow inside his helmet. He tried to move and found he had to fight his armor instead of it helping him. Well, he wasn't dead, but the shit was very deep. This was what you got for volunteering, Koy thought to himself. It was also what you got when you lost your stripes for the third, no fourth, time. NONCOMs dropped first, and the other ranks followed. If he had been in his normal drop position, he would have been in the middle of the fighting, not in the middle of nowhere. Koy was an old hand. He’d had two tours as a legionnaire before he volunteered for Sand’s new infantry and then the Armored Infantry. He had been through Rift and made the cut to get into the Raiders. Not bad for a mongrel from the Autonomous Zone with no future except crime or the Von Fleet mines. But it had all lead to being in the middle of a field God knows how far from the rest of his unit and with his armor screwed up.

  He had been in the shit before and come out smelling like a rose, but this? This was different. He ran through a systems check on his armor, and all he could get working was the backup system. He would have his strength amplifiers, but not many of his other combat systems. He could move, but his armor wasn’t compromised so his air was good. He tried to move his legs, and both hurt like a bitch. His medical system readout was flashing on and off so he couldn't tell what his injuries were, but he could feel the nanos working on them. He was lying face down in the snow so he couldn't see shit. He was afraid to raise his head since he had no idea what was around him. Without his suit’s combat information system, he was blind, deaf, and lost. The nanos seemed to have finished with his leg injuries so he felt better. The medical system must have shot him up with some go juice.

  Okay, it was time to see how deep the shit really was. Koy planned his movements carefully before starting to move. He would roll up on his side, pull out his 48, and take a look around from the prone position; that way he would get a couple of shots off if he was in the middle of a bunch of hybrids. He counted down in his head, and then, on three, slowly eased up on his side, unsnapped his 48 and brought it up to his shoulder, and went prone. He was in the middle of a huge field. It was as flat as a board with a single outcropping of rock not far away and to his right. With the winds blowing the snow and ice, he couldn’t see far, and his suit’s infrared wasn't working so he flipped on the scope of his rifle’s infrared and scanned in front of him.

  At first, he could see nothing. Then he began to see red and green tracers off in the distance to his right, where he should have been dropped. He lay there for some time, slowly moving the scope along the horizon. That’s when he first got a glimpse of the group. There was a large group of hybrids in full armor just coming into view. They were spread out around something or things. They moved as if they were protecting what was in the middle of their formation. They were moving slowly toward an outcropping of black rock to his right. There were more hybrids on the rock behaving as if they were lookouts.

  What were these kaks doing? Koy thought.

  Then he saw it, or them, more correctly. They were huge! The hybrids in armor barely came up to their chests. That would make whatever those things were close to ten feet tall. They had very long arms and legs, yet they moved with the grace of an athlete despite their size. A small waist spread out in a V to a huge chest with a short, thick neck and a small head. Their armor was black with some white markings. They carried a weapon that looked like an overgrown rail. It was huge and had a belt of rounds that seemed to be fed from a container on their backs. They moved like … what did it remind him of? Yeah, that's it. They moved like old Von Fleet security types, like they owned the world and nothing could touch them. The hybrids scurried around them as if they were doing their bidding.

  "Holy jumping shit! Those are Xotoli!" Koy said to himself.

  He looked at his video recording for his suit display; it was red. With an armored hand, he banged his helmet. “Come on, dammit! Work!” He banged his helmet again.
After the second smack, the video recording went green. Koy started to record what he was seeing.

  “So that’s what you fucks look like. Big skinny corporation cops.”

  They continued to move closer to Koy and, as they did, their helmets became clearer through the blowing snow. If the Xotoli helmets fit them as closely as Koy’s fit him, these guys were some bug uglies. The helmet essentially looked like a skull covered with armor. God, those things were big. If they were half as strong as they looked, it was going to be hell bringing one of them down.

  Koy lay still, letting the snow accumulate on top of his body, hoping he looked like just another mound of snow. His armor was recording these images, and he could see the file increasing in size. He needed to get this to the guys with rank so they could figure out whatever it was they needed to know. All he knew was he wanted a bigger weapon to take that kak on one-on-one, but you go with what you've got. He flipped his rifle on and felt the reassuring hum of the batteries warming the coils. The reticle popped up in his scope and he put it on the head of the nearest Xotoli. Now what, Koy? The minute he shot this fuck all his buddies were going to pull him apart with their bare hands. Maybe he should try and slip back to the unit with this video.

  Yeah, right. He was in the middle of bad guy country with a suit that was on the blink and no backup. The video he was getting was all right, but through the blowing snow and ice, not to mention the darkness, it wouldn’t show much. He needed to get closer, but if he moved, all of the hybrids around the Xotoli would go nuts. If he waited them out, there was no guarantee he could get this video up the command chain. There were no good answers. He lay there, watching the group move toward the outcropping,

  Koy had no illusions about who he was. He was a drinker and a brawler. He loved to drink and fight, and that was why he’d joined the legion. It was also why he could never keep any rank: he was always finding a reason to fight. He knew he would reach retirement soon, and they wouldn’t rejuvenate him so he couldn't reenlist, not with his file. So he would retire to what? Being a drunken brawler in the back alleys of some city? When he was a legionnaire, it was one thing; as a civilian it was another. He could become a pirate or criminal back in the Autonomous Zones. That would keep him busy, but he had changed since joining the legion. He had learned there was something bigger that was worth fighting for in this universe. If this wasn't it, then he didn't know what was. The thought of one those big fucking Xotoli walking down a street somewhere among a bunch of civilians gave him the chills. He may not be much, but he was made to fight things like this. So, Private Koy, what do you do?