You just might be getting your baptism of fire, Ski.
“What I think doesn’t matter. All I know is that I’ve been trained, just like you, and we’re more than capable of handling whatever we’re ordered to do.”
“Cut the gabbing,” Staff Sergeant Cremineli shouted back. “I’m trying to monitor what’s happening.”
Unlike with Jankowski, the nervousness was evident in the TC’s voice.
Noah could see Jankowski, who at 1.6 meters tall was easily able to turn around and look up at him. He waved his hand, indicating for the Marine to keep it quiet, but he added a smile.
If the staff sergeant would just wear his helmet, the other two Marines could shout at each other without interfering, but he preferred the ear bud, just as he preferred riding with an open hatch. Noah had long ago decided that the staff sergeant had a touch of claustrophobia, something that was at odds with serving in a tank, and something easily treated. But he hesitated to say anything. He wasn’t a corpsman, and what he knew about mental issues is just what he’d seen on the holos.
He had a feeling that Chili might have told the first sergeant, however. It could be a coincidence that the first sergeant had positioned the Night Witch as the Anvil’s wingman, but Noah was not a big believer in coincidences, particularly when the first sergeant was concerned.
Noah was pretty sure that events on the ground were progressing towards if not past the point of no return, and this was the real thing, though. Over the last three days, negotiations had begun to tilt towards Novyy Ural, which made sense as it was the Peters who had invaded the planet, not the other way around. Intel had warned them that with the tide turning against them, the Peters might try to strengthen their hand to improve their position. Now, every drone, every piece of surveillance was streaming in data that showed the Peters on the move.
Noah didn’t think it was a feint.
Behind the platoon, the rest of the company, joined by what was left of Alpha, was buttoned up and deployed, guns facing the Peters. The Peter armor was formidable as a planetary armor, but Noah was fairly confident that when taken together with the extensive mining the attached four-man engineering team had accomplished, even the 19 Marine tanks should be able to blunt the advance of the Pytor Velikiy mech. What worried Noah more was the large numbers of infantry that were moving through the marshy wetlands along the sea two klicks to the north. They were somewhat safe from anything the Marines could throw at them while in the wetlands, but as they emerged onto the higher ground, the Marines could intercept them—not that they should, Noah thought. Tanks against infantry at close quarters rarely turned out well for tanks.
In two more days, the mechanized infantry company, which included a platoon of PICS Marines, would be on planet, and Noah would feel much better with them taking on the Peter infantry. But now was now, and the Marines had what they had. Noah had a sinking feeling that First Platoon would be ordered to meet the Peter infantry and stop them.
He was right. Less than three minutes later, the order was passed.
Noah shook his head—this wasn’t a good idea. He ran a quick diagnostic on his rail gun, which hadn’t changed one whit since the last one he’d run 30 minutes ago. His gun and targeting systems were at 100%. He did yet another inventory of his loadout. One of the big advantages of having the railgun module on was that it could carry a lot of rounds. The 90mm, which in many ways was more versatile, was more limited in numbers carried. It may have a jacketless round, with the “shell” being part of the propellant, but a Davis could only carry 40 of the rounds vice the 150 railgun rounds in the standard anti-armor Mix 1. The Anvil had been loaded with Mix 3, which was 90 inert anti-armor rounds and 40 of the longer HE rounds, for a total combat load of 130.
The platoon re-oriented and drove off in a staggered column, pushing the speed to get into position. The lieutenant was ignoring the wetlands. The stands of coastal scrub were tall enough to cut visibility and dense enough to provide cover for the infantry, and for the tanks to enter the morass to try and meet them would be a costly mistake. Instead, she wanted to block off the higher ground, where trees and brush didn’t make for great tank territory, but the ground itself provided for better maneuverability. Noah hoped that the imposing presence of five Marine Davises would give the Pytor Velikiy infantry pause.
“Check your Hashers, Ski,” Noah said.
“Roger dat.”
Noah had a feeling that the four APCD’s would come into play. These were the final line of defense, so-to-speak, against infantry. Noah had the coax M104 alongside his main gun, and the staff sergeant had the .50 cal, which left monitoring the APCD’s to the driver.
“You on low disc now?”
“At one.”
With no friendly forces around them, the APCD’s could be set at the lowest discrimination level. Anything out there that came within 40 meters would be engaged.
The forward Peter naval infantry had reached the edge of the wetlands. They had to know that the platoon was a klick away and closing, and Noah had hoped they would halt and hunker down, but they kept coming. It seemed they were serious.
But so was the platoon.
The lieutenant shifted them into a wedge, which gave them far more mutually supportive fires. Normally, this meant the Anvil would be the last tank on the right, but with the first sergeant and the Night Witch with them, she took the position just outside that of the Anvil.
“Watch the trees!” Staff Sergeant Cremineli shouted as Jankowski blasted through a small group of 5-meter tall trees.
Noah rolled his eyes, switched to the P2P, and then said, “If you button up, you won’t be bothered by the little stuff, Staff Sergeant.”
“I’ll worry about that, Sergeant. I’m not going to burn when Jankowski hits a mine.”
Noah almost added that the TC was becoming a liability. With his hatch open, the Anvil was not a secured platform. An energy shot of some sort could flow inside the tank through the hatch and cook all three of them. Part of him wanted to scramble over and pull his TC inside, but he held back.
They were closing to within 300 meters when an energy flare lit up his display. Noah immediately saw that it was a small rocket of some sort, too small to take out a tank, but he zeroed in his sensors to try and pick up who fired it. He heard the staff sergeant scramble back into the Anvil as the rocket hit the Kiss of Death.
“Hell, they got one of my Hashers,” the lieutenant passed.
Noah pulled up the platoon commander’s tank, and sure enough, there was a red “X” right where the right front Hasher should be.
Staff Sergeant Cremineli started firing the .50 cal, which sounded louder than it would if they were buttoned up. Noah looked at the Anvil’s diagram, and he saw that the TC hadn’t buttoned up, only gone to the open-protected mode.
Better than nothing, Noah thought. With only a ten-centimeter opening, the almost-closed hatch provided decent cover, even if it still left a route for energy fire to enter the tank. But for kinetics, it would take a pretty lucky shot to make it through the gap.
More small energy flares lit up his display. A moment later, one of the rockets hit the Anvil with a loud crack that rang the crew compartment.
“Lost my Hasher,” Jankowski said, his voice rising.
“They’re frigging targeting the Hashers!” Noah said as several more were knocked out among the platoon’s tanks. “What’s going on with the IA?”
And he immediately knew the answer. The Interactive Amor analyzed the incoming rockets, but it was deeming them as “not a threat.” And while there wasn’t any way one of the small rockets could manage to pierce a Davises armor, it was evidently enough to take out the Hashers.
Noah tried to spot a target as the five tanks closed the distance. One of the advantages of armor was that it tended to cow infantry, to break their will to fight. As a grunt, Noah had gone force-on-force against a Mamba platoon, and he’d been thoroughly impressed with them. He couldn’t imagine what it would be l
ike to face a platoon of Davises. He was sure the Peters would break.
But they didn’t. The five tanks were putting out a tremendous amount of fire, but salvo after salvo of mini-rockets were fired, and more and more Hashers were knocked off line. The Anvil had lost both of her front Hashers, and Noah felt more vulnerable as they ploughed through the forest.
He had HE loaded for the railgun, but he didn’t have a target. He could see the heat signatures of bodies on this firing display, and he sent streams of fire from the coax to engage them, but he wasn’t sure he was having much effect. The fight was breaking up into individual actions.
And then the ill-fated Ba-Boom exploded. One moment, she was just to the Anvil’s left front, and the next, she was a ball of flame. Noah caught a glimpse of a body scramble out to fall on the ground, but then they were past, with him on the coax and the staff sergeant on the .50 pouring fire into the brush ahead. Noah still didn’t have any good targets, but his suppression fire should make them keep their heads down.
And then he did see someone, a short, stocky Peter, running right at them, a limpet in his hand.
Noah depressed the coax to its max and fired off a stream of fire, at least one round taking off the top of the Peter’s head.
Jankowski kept driving forward as if to pound the soldier into the dirt when Noah shouted, “Hard left!”
“What the hell?” Staff Sergeant Cremineli shouted as the Anvil’s driver obeyed Noah, slinging the big tank around and presenting its more vulnerable side armor to the enemy.
Noah heard the TC’s hatch open, then the relatively muted shots of a Marine Ruger. Noah bent down to look out of his side port, and he could see his tank commander firing his handgun down to where the Peter was.
“Back on course!” he shouted.
“Button up!” Noah shouted back just as whatever the dead Peter had been carrying detonated. A blinding flash momentarily blinded him, but the Anvil barely rocked. The blast had been ten meters away, and the Anvil’s sloping armor had deflected the shock wave. If Jankowski had kept driving forward and the mine or whatever detonated underneath them, Noah was sure things would have been different.
Staff Sergeant Cremineli flopped back into his seat, and Noah felt his anger boil over. TC or not, popping out like that to shoot what had almost certainly been a dead Peter—and ordering Jankowksi to turn to the right and putting the Anvil in danger—was more than he could take.
“Stay the hell buttoned up, Cremineli,” he shouted, bending around to pull on the TC’s arm.
He was going to give the staff sergeant an earful, and he’d expected the staff sergeant to resist, but he easily pulled him over—at least what was left of him. From the base of the neck on down, most of the staff sergeant was in good shape. But that was all there was. Staff Sergeant Cremineli’s head was gone.
“I’m taking command of the Anvil,” Noah passed on the platoon net, letting go of the staff sergeant’s body.
“What?” Jankowksi asked. “We dint get hit.”
“The staff sergeant’s gone. Keep driving. You’ve got the .50 cal, too.”
It was difficult to be very effective on the .50 from the driver’s hole, but any rounds going out was better than nothing.
“Sergeant Lysander, what’s your situation?” the lieutenant passed on the P2P.
“Operational. No damage.”
“And Staff Sergeant Cremineli?”
“KIA. No chance at resurrection.”
There was a pause, then, “Are you combat ready?”
“Affirmative. I’ve got the Anvil.”
“Roger that. Then fight her.”
Noah took another glance at what he could see of the staff sergeant’s body. When Noah had released it, the body had flopped to the right, and if he didn’t look too closely, it looked almost normal, as if the staff sergeant had just slumped over taking a nap. Noah felt dizzy, as if he was watching from afar.
“Screw it,” Noah said, slewing his main gun around. He’d just told the lieutenant that he was the Anvil’s commander, so it was time to command. He didn’t have any confirmed targets, but he knew more infantry were emerging from the wetlands, and he wanted to show them who they were messing with. He sighted forward best he could, then fired the railgun, sending the HE round 200 meters before it hit a tree and detonated. In quick succession, he fired four more, each one clearing the way for the next to go further. Noah didn’t know if he actually hit anyone, but the display was impressive, and he hoped it would disrupt the Peters.
“Did you activate the command display?” the first sergeant asked on the P2P.
Shit, no I didn’t.
With Noah taking over as TC, the AI opened up the command display to him, but as he was also the gunner, the AI needed his active OK—it wouldn’t do much good if it interrupted him as he was about to fire.
He accepted the display, but on a split screen. Suddenly, far more data appeared. He tried to take it all in, and that ended up with him doing nothing for fifteen seconds as Jankowski drove the Anvil forward.
“I’ve got it now, First Sergeant. Thanks.”
“Keep your head in the game, Lysander. You can do it.”
The Anvil’s IA deployed, and a bright flash lit up the air 30 meters to their front. The Peters had launched something bigger at them, something the AI deemed a threat. Noah would read the analysis later to see what it was, but for now, that fact that it had been neutralized was good enough for him.
There was a good-sized explosion off to the Anvil’s left side, right where the Ball Shot was, but she kept going. The Ball Shot’s avatar remained a bright blue on the command display.
The lieutenant in the Kiss of Death reached their objective, a raised hill that looked on the overhead views on his display to offer reasonable fields of fire. As he pulled in, he could see it did, but only out to about 150 meters. A small swale cut diagonally across the slope, and a line of 10-meter trees jutted up from it to effectively conceal what was just over the other side. Jankowski pulled the Anvil up along the Kiss of Death’s right side, 20 meters away. Immediately, the dreaded put-put-put of a Morrison was picked up, and the Anvil’s alarm blared. The Morrison was the poor man’s anti-armor rocket. Cheap to make and easy to operate, it was the mainstay of both militias as well as terrorist organizations. It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t as advanced as anything major anti-armor weapon in the Marine Corp’s inventory, but if it hit a Davis, the Davis would be dead. The Morrison packed a huge punch.
“Orient and then take the 104 and engage that grubbing sucker,” Noah yelled at Jankowski.
His driver swung the Anvil slightly to the right to present a frontal aspect. A Davis’ armor was strongest to the front, so if they were hit, that gave them the best chance at survival.
Noah took control of the .50 and immediately opened up, sending a stream of rounds to try and knock the missile out of the air. A nice HE blast with the railgun would serve him better, but already, the Morrison was too close for that. Streams of fire crisscrossed from the tanks to the left, adding to the curtain of darts and rounds. The Morrison was also fairly well armored, so the darts wouldn’t be that effective, but anything could happen. The Anvil’s IA deployed again, and less than 15 meters away, according to his display, the Morrison exploded. A stream of plasma erupted from the missile body—the missile might have been knocked down, but in a last, wrenching spasm, the warhead detonated. With momentum behind it, the plasma splashed against the front of the Anvil.
Noah was momentarily blinded by the flare, and a sudden acrid smell filled the crew compartment. Immediately, the fire control foam filled the compartment to Noah’s right, from where the TC sat. Some of it splashed on him in the gunner’s turret.
“Are we OK?” Jankowski asked, panic in his voice.
Noah took a look at the diagnostics. The .50 cal was out of synch-mesh, and most of the forward IA pods were out hard, but the Anvil was still up and running.
“We’re OK!” he shouted.
/> The detonation of the warhead had been too far out, and instead of plasma burning into the crew compartment, it had splashed across the front, spreading the damage. The Anvil would need time in a shop, but she was still functional.
Noah sniffed, confused for a second, then he almost threw up. The smell that was assaulting his nose was the burnt body of Staff Sergeant Cremineli. Noah had forgotten that the commander’s hatch was still open, and some of the plasma had splashed through, hitting the body. The fire control system had immediately sprung into action, but enough of the staff sergeant’s body had already burnt to fill the Anvil with the smell.
Noah listened with half-an-ear to the command net as the lieutenant argued with the skipper for support, support that didn’t seem to be forthcoming. The Peter mech was probing their lines, but not pushing hard. The skipper’s concern was that if he pulled a platoon out to support First, then that would initiate a full Pytor Velikiy assault.
A red flashing triangle appeared on Noah’s fire-control display. Noah immediately hosed down the target with the .50 cal without bothering to identify it. He’d have problems hitting anything at long ranges with the synch-mesh out, but at this close range, he could manage. Something was being pushed into position in the tree line, and that was enough for him. There were flashes of his rounds hitting something, and the triangle on his display disappeared.
With that target taken out, Noah tried to hear what the skipper was saying while still scanning for more targets at the same time. He wondered how the lieutenant managed it: communicating with higher headquarters, commanding the platoon, and fighting the Kiss of Death.
“Keep pumping out rounds, Ski,” he told his driver as he realized the M104 had become silent.
“I don’t have a target.”
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 65
