Lessa’s eyes only slightly widened as she jerked the Kiss of Death to the right, almost throwing Noah off the tank. Noah scrambled for purchase. If he slid off, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back on. The Kiss of Death hit a bump, and that actually helped him, almost throwing him back to where he could stand.
Noah snapped off five rounds at a Peter who was at least 100 meters away, well beyond his range—or at least he tried to. After three rounds, his mag ejected. He couldn’t remember going through 100 rounds. He inserted his last mag, telling himself to have some fire discipline-which he totally ignored when two more Peters rushed the tank. He fired off ten rounds, which were probably wasted as the coax fired as well, dropping both of them.
With Noah on top of the tank, he was cut off from everything else. For all he knew, the Pytor Velikiy armor could have started a full-out assault on the rest of the company. As a result of being off the net, his war had come down to him standing on the Kiss of Death and trying to drop anyone who came near. In a way, it was a much cleaner way to fight, something on which he could focus. And because of that, his gut was telling him that things were coming to a head.
If a Marine unit were in a defensive position and about to be overrun, the commander would order the FPF, or Final Protective Fire to be initiated. What that meant was that every Marine, whether within the defensive position or outside it with the supporting fires, would let loose a holy hell in an attempt to crush the assault. It was “Danger Close,” and Marines could take casualties from friendly fire. There was a certain mindset when the FPF was ordered, a sense of now or never.
This wasn’t a defense, at least from the Pytor Velikiy side. This was an assault against a lone Marine tank, but somehow, Noah sensed that same now-or-never mindset. There seemed to be a degree of desperation among the Peters. They weren’t waiting until the Kiss of Death came close to spring their little traps. They were assaulting from farther out, but they were coming one after the other, they were coming in concert with each other. Noah kept firing, dropping some, missing others, doing what he could to keep them away from the tank.
And then he was out of darts. There was nothing more that he could do. He wondered if he should get off, but whatever happened to the Kiss of Death, he was along for the ride. He slid to a sitting position, almost crying out at the pain in his leg, and settled in as a spectator, watching to see what happened.
He could see at least six Peters from his vantage point, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. The Kiss of Death’s .50 cal fired upon two of them, looking like it hit one. But if Noah could see six, there had to be more on other sides of the tank. They were closing in.
And then, right in front of Noah, the glorious sight of the Ball Shot filled his field of vision as it crashed through a few of the remaining trees in the wash, guns ablazing. Tellie swung her tank around, 30 meters off the Kiss of Death’s right rear, while Cliff turned the turret to the rear, covering the Kiss of Death’s six. Together, both tanks surged forward, right into the heart of the Pytor Velikiy assault.
“Get some!” Noah shouted before simply resorting to unintelligible woops.
With the Night Witch providing covering fire, both tanks opened up with everything they had—and it worked. Finally, the Peters broke. They’d done amazingly well, but there was only so much a fighting force could take, and they’d reached their limit. Either on their own or by order of a commander who’d taken a hard bite of reality and initiated a retreat to save what he or she could of their fighting force—and Noah was willing to bet it was the latter—there was an immediate, if haphazard, retreat.
The Kiss of Death and the Ball Shot pursued to make sure the retreat was real before the lieutenant slowed down and stopped, willing to let the infantry withdraw.
Noah let out a sigh of relief. Somehow, they’d pulled through—and he’d pulled through. That feeling was tempered by the loss of Staff Sergeant Crimineli and maybe Jankowski as well.
The commander’s hatch opened up, and a grimy-faced Lieutenant Moore popped out her head.
“You still hitching a ride there, Sergeant?” she said, a huge smile on her face.
“Yes, ma’m. I got a little dinged up here,” Noah said, pointing at his leg, “and I’m a tanker. I don’t walk when I can ride.”
“Well, we’re heading back to the first sergeant. I think the skipper will be pissed if we just leave her there. You want to maybe ride inside with us?”
Sitting still on a range, it was one thing to have four Marines inside a crew compartment. Having four Marines inside while driving one, or more to the point, possibly fighting one was not only discouraged, but against regulations.
Noah didn’t even hesitate, though. He clambered over the turret to the commander’s cupula, and after the lieutenant hopped out, slid inside, trying to fit his long body into the tiny space between the TC and gunner.
“Sorry about the blood,” he told that lieutenant as she came back in and closed the hatch.
“That’s what we have steam cleaners, for, Noah,” she told him, then to Lessa, “head on back to the Night Witch.”
Noah wanted to ask the lieutenant what had happened. Why had the Ball Shot come forward? Was that on her orders? Or had the first sergeant sent it? Was anyone coming from the company? Was there a full assault on the company, for that matter?
But she was back on the comms, doing what lieutenants do. She didn’t need him interrupting her. He was feeling woozy, and he while he was very aware of his leg, he still refused to look at it. He tried to push himself farther away from the platoon commander and braced himself.
Riding four to a tank might not be too comfortable, but for him, it sure beat the alternative.
Chapter 21
“And how long will that take?” Noah asked Mr. Purile.
“Back at Archuleta? Two days, tops. Here? I’m guessing a week. We’ve got to do a lot of jury-rigging.”
Noah had been afraid that the Anvil was down for the count, so the fact that the armor tech could get her back up and running here on Novyy Ural was amazing. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t still antsy to get her back into service.
Not that I can ride anyway for another couple of days, he admitted to himself.
Noah had taken a dart right through the meaty part of his left thigh. It hadn’t hit anything vital, and he hadn’t had to be CASEVAC’d off planet. Doc had simply cleaned out the wound and given him a nano booster. The independent duty corpsman had given him a light duty chit for six days and braced his leg to keep it immobile, but Noah wasn’t going to stew on his cot with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. With Corporal Lewis assisting, he’d hobbled over to the ramp to check on his tank.
Frankly, he was surprised that she’d looked as good as she did. She’d only been recovered the evening before, but with the left-side tracks and the MGS removed, she didn’t look too damaged.
The mine had detonated directly under the front of the track with most of the slow-acting force pushing like a huge catapult, flipping the tank on its edge before it fell over. The body of the Anvil had suffered only a minor breach—minor in tank talk, not minor as far as Ski was concerned. The blast had turned parts of the Anvil’s armored skin into shrapnel, riddling the young Marine and almost tearing off his left arm. He’d been put into stasis and was already on his way back to the regional naval hospital on Shiva where it was expected that with eight to nine months in regen, he’d be as good as new.
Purile—“Pure Dick,” as he was known to the Marines due to the civilian’s often condescending attitude he displayed to the enlisted Marines—and his two-man team would simply weld a patch and then replace four of the road wheels and the track. “Easy-peasy,” he’d told Noah.
Surprisingly, at least to Noah, was that fact that it was the damage to the gun weapons turret that had taken the most damage. The Anvil was a tough old girl, but she wasn’t designed to be upside-down. The MGS had been driven into the docking ring when she fell over. The MGS
was a lost cause and would be sent back to division at Camp Tainio to see what could be salvaged. But the docking ring had been warped, and a new MGS couldn’t be installed as is. With the tight tolerances and connections, this would not be an easy fix, and Pure Dick was going to have to pull a miracle out of his ass to make the Anvil combat ready here on the planet.
“So, unless you have any further questions, Sergeant, I think I’ll get back to doing my job so you can get back to doing yours.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll just make myself comfortable.”
Pure Dick narrowed his eyebrows and frowned, but he didn’t say anything. Noah knew the tech didn’t want him there, but there wasn’t much he could say. A tank commander, even an acting tank commander, had every right to be there, observing. Most techs welcomed Marines getting their hands dirty, even for a Cat 3 repair, but Pure Dick wasn’t most techs. He was happy to leave the crews to Cat 1 and 2 maintenance—and he’d report a crew in an instant if he thought they were shirking their duties, but for Cat 3 or Cat 4 repairs, he was far more possessive of the process.
“You going to hang, Knight?” Noah asked.
“Nothing else to do, so yeah, if that’s OK,” his new driver said.
Nothing else to do but think, I know.
Knight Lewis had been the Ba-Boom’s driver, the only one to escape the tank when it was hit. Gunny Hattori, who was a short-timer whose retirement date had actually been a week ago, and Dirk del Moses, the Ba-Boom’s gunner, had been KIA in the blast. The Ba-Boom was destroyed, and no Pure Dick magic was going to change that. If she were deemed salvageable, she’d be going back to the factory refurbishment center. So, Lewis was without a home, and Noah was without a driver.
One thing was nagging at Noah, though, and he shouldn’t be hopping up on the Anvil.
“Knight, get up on her and, you know, sort of look inside.”
Lewis looked at Noah with a confused expression on his face for a moment, then he blanched. It took a moment, but he nodded, then walked over to the Anvil and pulled himself up. Pure Dick gave him a dirty look that the corporal ignored. He hesitated, then leaned over the MGS connector ring and into the tank. He leaned back, and Noah could see him let out a big breath of air. The corporal turned, then jumped off the tank and came up to him.
“Clean. Nothing there.”
The last time Noah had seen the inside of the tank, it had been covered in firefighting foam and the smell of burnt flesh. He’d been taken back before they’d extracted Ski, and he didn’t know when Staff Sergeant Cremineli’s remains had been removed. But he was pretty sure that no one had cleaned the Anvil in the field, and as far as he knew, there wouldn’t have been a reason for any Marine to have worked on her. That meant that Pure Dick, along with Gretch Frieslander and Pop Maud, had cleaned out the mess inside. The team had arrived with Alpha Company, so this was the sixth tank that had needed this type of cleaning.
Suddenly, Noah wasn’t as fed up with the head tech. That had to be pretty rough.
“So, Knight, tell me something about yourself,” Noah said, wanting to move on.
“Me? Not much to say, Sergeant.”
“There’s always something to say. You’re from Thomaston, right?”
“No, Tomas, not Thomaston.”
“Oh, Tomas? Like in—”
“No, not like that at all. That’s pure Hollybolly. It’s not so bad, believe me.”
“OK, so tell me, what’s it really like? I mean, we’re going to be getting pretty close, so you might as well spill.”
Lewis seemed to be mulling things over, then he shrugged, and with a smile, said, “Well, parts of Live or Die were sort of true, but all that shit about the Ghost Oath, that’s pure pig-piss. Never happens like that. I mean, when I was a sprout . . .”
Noah leaned back as Corporal Lewis began to tell his story.
********************
“But I don’t understand. I thought you said that was illegal,” Noah said, almost an hour later.
“Yeah, it is, but not really. I mean, no one does anything about it. We just, I mean, it’s fun, you know.”
“Doesn’t sound like fun to me,” Noah muttered.
Noah had asked Lewis about himself because he wanted to know more about him, and he thought the corporal needed to focus on something else rather than on the loss of his two crewmates. But Lewis had turned out to be a good storyteller, and Noah had become interested in the story itself.
Maybe I need to focus on something else, too.
And it had worked. He felt better, watching Pure Dick bitch and moan over the Anvil and listening to the adventures of a young Knight Lewis on Tomas. If half of what Lewis was telling was true, then the real Tomas was much more interesting than what was portrayed in the movie.
“It’s stupid, I know. But you have to consider it a rite of passage. Like humping Mount Motherfucker at Charles.”
“Ah . . . I guess you have a point at that. I hated doing it—”
“Everyone hates doing it.”
“But I was glad to have done it. Past tense.”
“You were glad to have done what, Sergeant Lysander?” a high-pitched voice asked from behind him.
Noah turned around to see a short gunnery sergeant standing there. It took him a second before he tried to jump up, saying, “Drill Instructor Chimond . . . uh, Sergeant Chimond.”
The gunny frowned, then looked down at the insignia on her collar and asked, “Have I been demoted, Sergeant.”
“Oh, shit, no. I mean, sorry. Gunnery Sergeant Chimond. I just didn’t expect to see you here. Did you just arrive with the mech company?”
“Yes, I came in with them. And you must be Corporal Lewis?” she asked.
“Yes, Gunny. Corporal Knight Lewis.”
“In case you couldn’t guess, I was Sergeant Lysander’s DI at Charles, what, five years ago, was it?”
“Yes, Dri . . . Gunny. Six years. I’m just . . . I’m just surprised to see you here. And thanks for looking me up.”
“Well, we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other, Sergeant.”
“Oh, yes. And we’re glad you guys are here. Tanks with no infantry is bad news. But with you here, now, that’s going to change things. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to sit and chat if we have time, to find out what you’ve been doing since Charles.”
“Oh, we’re going to have time, Sergeant,” she said, smiling as if she was enjoying an inside joke. “Starting now. What’s the status of Charlie-One-Four?”
“The Anvil? Oh, she’s taken a beating, but Pure Dick, I mean, Mr. Purile, the head tech, he thinks he can get her combat ready in six days.”
“Come show me,” she said, walking up to the Anvil.
Noah looked to Lewis, raising his eyebrows and shrugging his shoulders, then hobbled after the gunny.
Pure Dick was inside the open turret, back towards them as the three Marines reached the tank.
“Hey, Casper, you going to get this baby running, or is that more of your braggadocio?” the gunny asked.
Pure Dick turned around, disdain stamped on his face—until he saw who had spoken.
“Ivy, as I live and breathe, what brings you to this festering armpit of a planet?” he asked, a huge smile on his face as he pulled himself out of the tank and jumped down to hug the diminutive gunny.
“Orders, of course. Took me awhile to implement them, what with the company deployed. I had to hitch a ride with the Aardvarks to get out here.”
What? She “hitched a ride” with them?
Noah had assumed she was with the rifle company, but that would mean she wouldn’t have to hitch anything to get here. So, if she wasn’t with the Aardvark platoon, and she wasn’t with the rifle company, then she had to be assigned to Charlie. Noah had always assumed the gunny was infantry. She’d served with 2/3 during the Evolution and had fought on First Step, where his brother Ben had been killed. The gunny had even said that Ben and Yale Haerter had saved her platoon when they’d taken out the Armadill
o that had been rigged as a mobile bomb. Then, there was the Silver Star she’d worn as a corporal, and it was usually the grunts who earned that. She’d also gone through a long regen, and as Noah had learned the hard way, when tankers were killed, it usually was permanent with no hope of resurrection.
And there was only one gunny in Charlie who was waiting a replacement—or had been waiting a replacement until the Ba-Boom had been destroyed.
“Uh, Gunny,” he asked, interrupting a reunion that would normally have had his undivided attention, “are you, I mean, are you our new platoon sergeant?”
The gunny turned around, and her eyes clouded over.
“Yes. I should have arrived before you deployed, but the board was extended, so Gunny Hattori volunteered to stay on until I could arrive.”
Shit. And that cost him his life.
“He was a damned good man and a friend,” she said, her voice somber.
“Semper fi,” Noah, Lewis . . . and Mr. Purile said.
“But we march on, right? And as I don’t have a tank now, and you don’t have a commander, Lieutenant Moore’s assigned me to Charlie-One-Three. So, you two are my crew.”
Chapter 23
Chili made a weird squeaking sound by using his hand up against his cheek, as Gunny Chimond left the E-5’s tent where she’d just told Noah to meet her at the ramp at 1400.
“Cut it out, Chili,” Noah said. “That’s not copacetic.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have told me you guys called her ‘Chipmonk’ at Charles.”
“I never did. Only some people did,” Noah protested.
Chili was right, though. He should have kept his mouth shut, and he felt he’d betrayed the gunny. She’d been one of the few DI’s who’d taken an interest in him at boot camp. The other DI’s were all over Esther, who had been kicking ass there. They considered him the black sheep of the Lysander family, riding him hard. Chimond, who seemed to notice everything, had helped Noah get through the training.
Noah's Story: Marine Tanker (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 3) Page 15
