“OK, then. I think we’re there,” Esther said as all eyes swiveled towards her. “Execute!”
Immediately, there was a flurry of activity around the clearing as orders were given. Bravo and Alpha were to commence their attack while Charlie came to a halt and reversed course. From orbit, the Mount Fuji increased her rate of fire, peppering the area from Pelican to the AA CP, clearing a path down the slope for the Marines.
It took a few minutes for the AA to realize what had happened as several large explosions, courtesy of the two combat engineers attached to Charlie who’d emplaced the mines as the company supposedly retreated, created huge holes in their lines. When Charlie Marines appeared in full assault mode, the AA in the lead units tried to backpedal, creating confusion within their still advancing forces.
While confusion took over near Charlie, it seemed as if Bravo and what was left of Alpha almost had a clear run. Two of the platoons swung to face east, forming a blocking force, and Lieutenant Gaspar’s PICS platoon, followed by Gunny Keating and Alpha, continued on to the target.
Noah could watch the displays, but he wanted an actual point of view, so he grabbed the lieutenant’s feed. He’d spent his first tour in PICS, and while he’d become a dedicated tanker, the big combat suits still filled him with awe. Lieutenant Gaspar ran his PICS over boulders and scrub pine, his HGL[44] seeking out a target.
But there wasn’t a target. There was nothing but more boulders, more scraggly trees. Noah’s heart fell. Before they initiated the assault, the Mount Fuji had raised the probability that the enemy CP was at that spot to 88%, which was extremely high given the circumstances. Eighty-eight percent was almost a certainty in terms of battlefield probabilities.
The assault started to peter out as the Marines searched for a target, and Noah thought the mission had failed when Sergeant Pawelczak sent an alert. Noah switched to his feed, and something in the rock face of a rise looked odd. The sergeant aimed his HGL and fired right into the face, and a hole the size of a hover opened up. He continued to fire round after round as he forced his PICS into the opening, and half crouched, ran down the short passage to a chamber—one filled with thirty or forty AA fighters, including a man with the bright gold epaulets of a First Commander.
Something clanged off of Pawelczak’s chest piece, and the sergeant fired off two of his shoulder rockets, demolishing a bank of control equipment along with three of the AA.
“You are now prisoners—”
Pawelczak’s feed went white for a split second, then dark. His avatar immediately went gray, as did Corporal Vixen’s.
“What happened?” several of the Alpha Command asked in confusion.
Noah switched back to the lieutenant and saw that the man was rushing to the CP, or to the hole that led to the CP and that now had smoke and dust pouring out and up. He started to go inside, but the way was blocked with rubble.
Noah didn’t know if the sergeant’s shoulder rockets had set off something or if the CP staff had suicided. Probably the latter, he realized, and the battalion had lost two more Marines as a result.
“OK, get your minds back to work. We’re not finished here,” Esther reminded everyone.
Captain Gill was already ordering Weisskopf and Gunny Keating back to company’s hasty line. Bravo was taking fire from AA fighters, and if Esther was going to try and concentrate the enemy, Bravo had not only to stand firm but hold off any other forces arriving from farther west. The Alpha Command had to be ready to support each of the battalion’s units.
“Colonel Lysander? The trucks in the valley, they’ve stopped,” Corporal Ikimura said.
“Where?” Esther asked then paused, her body going still.
Noah pulled up the overlay, and it took a moment before he realized that the trucks had stopped directly below them. They had a working dragonfly over the area, and Noah pulled up the feed. Down below, fighters were swarming out of the trucks and up the hill, right at them.
They were the target. Just as the Marines had just cut off the head of the snake, the snake was trying to return the favor. And by staying in one place, they’d made it easy for them.
Noah ran to the edge of the drop-off, trying to spot the attackers, his M90 at the ready. He couldn’t see anyone yet, but they’d be well within his range when they came into view.
“Incoming!” someone shouted, and Noah looked up just in time to see several small shapes hurtling at them.
Acting on instinct, he started to whirl when one of the rockets hit him just above the right elbow. The blow spun him around and sent him flat on his face. The shock wave and shrapnel from the rocket, which impacted and detonated just ten meters away, blasted right over him.
He was barely aware of more rockets as he tried to push himself up, only his right arm wasn’t gaining any purchase. Confused, he looked at his arm, and to his surprise, it was gone. He held up the stump in wonderment. When the rocket had hit him, his bones hardened, but they could only do so much. The blow shattered his humerus, and then like toothpaste from a tube, tore his arm off and out his sleeve.
“Sergeant Major, are you OK?” Lance Corporal Coffman’s voice reached him through a fog.
He held out his stump, still spurting bright red arterial blood, to the Marine and said, “The Three Musketeers, they just issued them to me. I’ve gone and lost them.”
His nanos kicked in, flooding his body with coagulants and meds to fight the shock, and the world shut off.
Chapter 23
Esther
Six . . . seven . . . eight rockets slammed into the small shelf, blanketing the area with shrapnel. Esther was hit several times as she hugged the ground, but her bones did their job and protected her. After the last impact, she raised her head, but dust obscured the area. Pulling up the personnel overlay, she saw—
“Noah!” she shouted, jumping to her feet.
Through the dust, she could see Noah, and too, too much blood. Lance Corporal Coffman reached him, and a moment later, her brother fell back.
“Colonel!” someone shouted, trying to capture her attention.
Before she could respond, Chief Higgins raced up to her and asked, “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Go help the sergeant major,” she said, pulling herself together.
As much as she wanted to rush to Noah, she had a job to do, and the senior corpsman could see to him.
She pulled up the overlay and saw that no one had been killed, thank goodness, but Noah and Sergeant DeMarco were WIA. Esther forced herself to get back into command mode. She knew what had happened. They were on a shelf-like plateau, basically a flat spot on the hillside at the base of a rock wall. The wall gave the CP cover from the west, but it was open to the north. Somehow, despite constant spoofing and shielding, they’d been picked up, and some sort of launcher was on the far side of the valley lobbing rockets at them.
She pulled up the enemy sitmap again, trying to see if the main AA force being pushed by Charlie presented a concentrated enough target to hit yet.
“Incoming!” someone shouted, and Esther hit the deck again.
Another eight rockets slammed into them. Esther hugged the ground again, waiting for the salvo to quit. The moment the last one detonated, she started to shout for Captain Peaslee, but the young officer was already rushing forward with five Marines, two with Hatchets on their shoulders.
“Creighton, can we—” she started on the P2P.
“Lieutenant Creighton is KIA,” her AI informed her.
“What?” she asked aloud before pulling back up the personnel overlay.
Creighton’s avatar was grayed out, KIA. Lieutenant Poul and Captain Tranh were WIA.
“Colonel, we need to pull back,” Major Kutzman told her, taking her by the arm as the Bravo Company squad, which had been providing security slightly downslope and to the east, rushed up and over the crest and onto the shelf. Sergeant Cushman pointed to Esther, and Corporal Spain and Lance Corporal Thuy rushed at her while the rest ran to join Capta
in Peaslee.
Esther almost balked at the obvious bodyguards, but she had more important things on her mind.
“Get everyone out of the line of fire,” she told the Three. “But we can’t cede this high ground to whoever is coming up here.”
There was a whoop from one of the Hatchet gunners with Peaslee.
“I think we got the launcher,” Peaslee passed on the command net.
As if objecting, a string of automatic fire swept the shelf, making Peaslee and his Marine dive for cover.
Esther let herself be led back 30 meters to just past the crown and out of direct fire, but that was about as far as she was going to go. She was relatively secure, and that was good enough.
She pulled up the Bravo Command net and passed, “Gunny Wisteria, Lieutenant Creighton’s KIA, so you’re the new naval gunfire liaison. Open the link to the Fujiyama and then link it to me.”
Gunny had some training with naval gunfire during Fire Support Coordinator training, but his experience was with Marine assets, not ships. With the Mount Fuji a major player—the major player—in her plans, she wanted to make sure there was no room for miscommunication. She and Lieutenant Creighton had come up with the timing, but with Creighton gone, she had to interject herself into the process.
Sorry about getting into the weeds, Noah, but in this case, I’ve got to do it, she silently told her brother.
“What’s the situation up there?” Major Frazier asked over the P2P.
“We took some hits, but we’re functional. What about you?”
“Still in contact, but I think some of the AA, at least, are breaking off.”
Esther considered that for a moment as automatic fire hit the edge of the shelf just above her, showering her with dirt clods. She could bring the XO and the militia forward, but that could leave their rear vulnerable. The forces opposing the XO and the militia might be falling back, but it wouldn’t be the first time a unit seemed to be breaking contact, then turned back and attacked when the defenders had relaxed their vigil. Even if she brought the militia forward, she doubted they’d arrive in time to make a difference. Whatever was going to happen would be within the hour. Any longer, either Bravo would get overrun or the 3,000-plus fighters would turn back and hit Charlie.
“Let’s keep the militia where it is for now,” she told him. “Uh, look, Mark, you know the plan. You need to make sure that we don’t delay with the Fujiyama. We need the AA to bunch up, but don’t let that keep you from pulling the trigger, or Jean Gill’s going to be left high and dry. She can only slow the AA; there’s no way she can stop them in their tracks.”
“I understand, that, ma’am, but you’ve got this now, right?”
“Yeah, for now, but we’ve got AA heading toward us, so, well, I just want to make sure.”
“Fall, back, Colonel. We can come up and provide security. No reason to get into a firefight.”
“I’m not sure we can. I’ve got four WIA who can’t move, five if you count Destiny. I’m surprised she’s still conscious.”
“Not to be callous, but leave them. You being there isn’t going to make one bit of difference. Take Sergeant Cushman’s squad and fall back to us, and I’ll send a platoon to meet you.”
What the XO was telling her was the book answer. Esther was not going to turn the tide of the battle with her Ruger. She could turn the battle with how she fought the battalion, and things were coming to a head within the next hour.
But she just couldn’t. She could not abandon the rest of the Alpha Command. The XO had the plan, and he could execute it, if it came to that.
“I’ll let you know if I have to displace,” she told him, cutting the contact.
She raised her head half a meter and looked over the shelf. On the far side, Peaslee was in full warrior mode, running the fight with the AA below them. Up against the rock face, Chief had Noah, Poul, Tranh, and DeMarco prone and out of most of the fire. He was bending over Poul, giving him an injection. Beside Noah, a body was ziplocked. Noah was now sitting, his M90 held in his left hand as he faced north.
“What’s their condition?” she asked Chief over the P2P.
He looked around, spotted her, gave a thumbs up, and replied, “Lieutenant Creighton’s got a pretty good shot at resurrection. Of the rest, Lieutenant Poul’s the worst. I’ve got him under now, but he needs to be CASVAC’d as soon as possible. The rest should recover, but they need medical care. Oh, and the Sergeant Major, he lost his arm.”
She ignored the gut shot from his words and said, “OK, thanks for the head’s up. We’ve got a huge evac list, so you do your best until we can get something here for them.”
She was relieved to hear about Creighton, but he looked awfully vulnerable in the ziplock. The stasis bag was not designed to offer ballistic protection, and they were still taking fire.
“Corporal Spain—Lee, right? I want you and Thuy to go get Lieutenant Creighton in the ziplock bag. Bring him back here.”
The corporal looked like he was going to protest, so she added, “I’ll be fine. Just go do it.”
She watched for a few moments as Spain and Thuy sprinted over to the WIA and Creighton. Chief seemed to take issue with him, but Spain pointed back at Esther, and Chief nodded. The Two Marines moved to pick up Creighton as Esther slid back to take stock of her Alpha Command. Major Kutzman, her right-hand man, was 20 meters away speaking over his comms. With Captain Tranh down, Top McCurry, with the Bravo Command, had taken over the S4—but the battalion pretty much had what they brought with them. The logistics would come to the forefront after the battle was decided, first and foremost getting their WIA out of there. Doc Siren had set up a temporary field hospital in a commercial hover back with the militia, but the numbers of WIA had her overwhelmed. Lieutenant Poul’s loss didn’t change much—the heavy comms load had been on the shoulders of Gunny Speckelstein, anyway, and he was with the XO in the Bravo Command. The big loss, at least for the next hour, was Lieutenant Creighton.
And Noah, she thought, her throat tightening.
She looked over at him again, and he seemed to be arguing with the Chief, using his M90 to jab the air. Knowing him, he wanted to fight while the Chief wanted to sedate him. Esther felt a surge of sisterly pride sweep though her.
A fusillade of fire echoed against the rock face. On the other side of the shelf, Captain Peaslee and his Marines were pouring fire down the hillside. Esther pulled up a feed from D6, the Dragonfly that was overhead. Forty or fifty AA infantry were on the slope, advancing relentlessly upwards. A small explosion, probably from a Marine grenade, sent one fighter tumbling back down, but the rest kept coming, using boulders and anything they could find as cover. A few of them were only about 20 meters from the shelf.
“Colonel, we’ve got more vehicles coming down the valley,” the Two passed.
Esther pulled up the Mount Fuji’s area view, then zoomed in on a line of PTY “Patty” armored personnel carriers running pell mell down the near side of the valley. She ran a quick query, and her AI informed her that together, they could be holding up to 300 fighters. She had a sinking feeling that she knew to where they were heading, and with the added force, there was no way the Alpha Command could hold on. Their only chance was to end the battle before they could reach her.
“Fred, what’s your situation?” she asked the Charlie Company commander, turning her attention way from the oncoming AA. “I can see the readouts, but what’s your gut telling you?”
“They’re still in retreat mode, but they’re getting more organized and putting up some resistance. I think they might be realizing it’s just one company chasing them, and I wouldn’t be surprised that if they’ve got some good leadership, they might turn back on us.”
One of her father’s favorite saying was never to underestimate the enemy, and Esther wasn’t about to now. Her plan had been to surprise the AA and force a retreat, but Kingery was right. It would only take a single man or woman of action to turn the force around. Esther couldn’t simpl
y assume that the AA leadership was incompetent. Someone could step up for the command that had been killed.
Which meant she couldn’t shift some ARG rounds to the slope below her. She had to keep up the pressure to keep the AA fleeing to the west, and she had to give the Mount Fuji time to switch the rail to the remaining Tungsicle. She couldn’t even shift the mortars—they couldn’t reach the northern slope. Captain Peaslee was going to have to handle the AA coming at them.
“Gunny Wisteria,” she said to her new naval gunfire liaison, bringing the XO into the loop as well, “I want the Fujiyama to begin the salvo to fix the AA in place, then make the switch to the Tungsicle. Keep up the pressure with the cannon, but make sure we’ve got the power reserves for the linked shot. Either I, or in my absence, the XO, will give the command to fire.”
“Roger that. I’m putting in the request now.”
“Jean,” she said, switching to the P2P with the Bravo Company commander, “Let me know if the pressure gets to be too great. Be ready to break contact downhill.”
“Roger that. We’re under moderate contact now, but it’s building.”
And it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
The 3,000 or so AA fleeing west had a massive amount of momentum. All Captain Gill could do was to delay them; she could not stop them. If the dam broke, she was to take Bravo and what was left of Alpha and get the hell out of the way.
“Be ready. It could be any minute now.”
“Colonel, the Patties will be below us in four minutes,” the Two passed, her voice heavy with effort.
Esther looked over to the Three just as the ground around him exploded with multiple impacts. The Major Kutzman rolled to his right, then scrambled to his feet to seek cover. For a split second, she thought Captain Peaslee had been overrun, but like her, the Three was in defilade to the other side of the shelf. Someone had gotten behind them from the southeast side.
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 120
