Invasion: The complete three book set

by J. F. Holmes

  “Listen up! My name is Lieutenant Johanna Sanchez, Confederated Earth Forces, Special Operations Detachment A 352. The time has come, and we’re striking back all over the world.”

  They all stared at her in amazement. For the last decade, almost, they had known her as a high priced prostitute. Hell, some of them had even had her themselves. This was a little much.

  “Dave,” said one, talking to Sergeant Cofer, who was his neighbor, “what is all this about?”

  “Like the LT says, Joe. It’s time to hit back.”

  “And y’all …”

  “We don’t have time for this,” interrupted Sanchez. “Do you hear that gun and plasma fire? If we don’t beat them tonight, what do you think is going to happen? They’re going to flatten this town, and everyone in it.”

  “What about the orbitals?” asked an older man.

  “We’re hitting them tonight. Don’t ask me, I don’t know the details. We’re only concerned with here and now. Captain Ellison, isn’t it?”

  “You know damn well it is, Johanna,” he grinned, thinking of a few nights her had had with her. She gave him a wink and carried on.

  “You’re in charge of the town militia, now, Sir. Major Cliff has overall command. We need to get our shit together and hit those Invy bastards. It’s do or die time, gentlemen. You’re all restored to your last rank, get an armband and sort your shit out. You have five minutes, and then we’re moving out to hit the Green Militia Barracks.” She jumped down and started opening cases. The rest of the Special Operations team joined her, handing out M-6 carbines. Each was accompanied by a bandolier of pre-packaged forty round magazines, and a blue arm band with the CEF flag under the American flag.

  The explosions and gunfire continued, and they worked feverishly. When several dozen men had received weapons, she had them count off by numbers, forming three squads. The veterans quickly fell in, remembering their training and fueled by hatred, each led by one of the CEF operators.

  “OK, Captain Ellison, can you stay here, Sir, and organize the rest of the men into a Quick Reaction Force?” She handed him a squad radio, and turned it on. “There’s anti-armor weapons in there, we’re going to need an ambush on I-5 by Nisqually. There’s no ODA between here and there, and the Dragons will be screaming for help. Expect a relief column of several vehicles, possible air cover too.”

  “Can do, LT. It’s great to be back in the saddle again. Take care, and kick their ass!”

  “I’m all outta bubble gum, Sir!” said Sanchez with a grin, saluted, and motioned to each of the Sergeants leading a squad. “Alright, let’s move out! First squad on point, second follow, third set up a blocking position against anyone who might be coming to help the Greens. If they’re adults, kill them. If they’re kids, Taser ‘em.”

  They headed out into the darkness, lit by flashes of plasma from behind the village buildings. It was time to kill, and time to die.

  Chapter 65

  Like the maxim says, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Major Cliff sat with her back against the wall, pinned down by accurate plasma fire from inside the compound. Next to her, his leg peppered with shrapnel when a plasma bolt has destroyed the MK-19, sat Sergeant Dodson. There weren’t enough Invy alive now to take the fight to them, and no one ever said they were stupid. The Dragons were probably hunkered down waiting for an orbital strike, screw their troops.

  “Alpha,” she called again over the team radio. “SITREP, over.” No answer. She suspected that they had been taken out when the antimatter containment blew.

  “Delta, this is command,” she called, “we’re going to need the mortars.”

  “Roger that, we have two 60’s with us, and I’ve got about a dozen rounds HE. Be there in two mikes.”

  That was good. The mortars, dropped into the compound, would keep the Invy’s heads down while they assaulted the gate. That damn gate, though, was a killing funnel, and the walls were too thick to breech. The militia would provide covering fire, but she wasn’t going to ask them to go into that funnel.

  “Foxtrot, this is command, rally back. Alpha is down, need you here.”

  “On our way!” came back Blake’s voice on the radio, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Good man.

  Erik Blake paused at the sixth door he was about to open, one of the most ardent teachers who worked for the Invy. He was breathing heavily; the last house they had assaulted, one of the Green platoon sergeants, had descended into a full blown firefight. The traitor had, unsurprisingly, an “illegal” AK-74 with a ton of ammo, and he had hosed down the team as they had come through the door. The man had probably been alerted by the explosions outside, and was waiting for them. They had backed off, miraculously unhurt, and tried an entry again. That time, Carballo had taken a glancing round off his helmet, so Blake ordered them to pull back out.

  “MILLER!” Blake had yelled through the open doorway, “come out or we’ll burn the house down! Think about your wife and kids!” The answer was another full magazine blowing through the walls on either side of the doorway.

  Blake had told Sotelo to throw a smoke grenade through an upper floor window, and, as the red cloud billowed out, a woman and children could be heard screaming. Miller came charging down the stairs, weapon up at his shoulder, and Carballo had put three rounds into him.

  Now, with the firefight raging at the Invy compound, each house was going to be more and more dangerous to go into. Better a straight up battle against the Invy, instead of possibly killing women and children. They could always hang the teacher.

  Little needed to be said to his two team mates; just a standard gesture that meant Return To Base; both had heard the conversation over the now active team radios, and the ongoing conversation as Cliff directed two squads to her position. It was weird to be using radio again, and Blake felt an unnatural itch between his shoulders, waiting for the thunderbolt to drop from space. Not that he would know it.

  They moved cautiously through the streets, since people were awake now. Seeing their guns and uniforms, some actually cheered from their doorways, and the team made gestures for them to get back inside. Two blocks south of Cliff’s position, they came upon two Greens who stumbled out of a house. No doubt they were AWOL from the barracks, teenagers, really, not much older than his son, out hooking up with some girls. They stepped out with their backs to the three Special Operations soldiers, rifles held in their hands as they stared at the flashes of plasma and gunfire.

  Sotelo gave Blake a questioning look, and in answer, he lifted his rifle and fired, a two round burst into each. Both men went down, and, as the team rushed past, Blake put a round into the militiamen’s heads. A mercy, really. If they were still alive after the 3mm penetrators had run through them, there was no medical facilities to handle their wounds.

  “Foxtrot coming in!” called Blake over the radio, and waved his arm around the corner of the building. No need to get shot by his own troops.

  “Come up!” came the answer from Cliff. The three men advanced around the corner, to see a dozen men lined up on the side of the building. Each wore an older pair of night vision devices, and were wearing civilian clothes. Even as he came up, three men, led by Sergeant Cofer, ran back to get a clear angle of fire for the mortar they carried, without exposing them to plasma fire.

  Blake took a knee next to Cliff. “What’s the plan, Ma’am?” he asked, trying to catch his breath. He wasn’t twenty anymore. None of them were.

  “Mortars are going to lay suppressive fire into the courtyard. Me, Patton, and you three are going to loop around, get under the wall, and charge through the gate, while Dodson directs these guys to lay a base of fire. Between them and the mortars, it should give us breathing room to take the courtyard.”

  The SFC nodded. He honestly didn’t expect to live the night out, and he pushed thoughts of his son far back in his mind. Like someone once said, the way you get through the hell of combat is to realize that you were already dead.

  “OK, let’s do
this then,” she said, and stood, knees popping with the effort and the added weight of the armor.

  “Did you forget to bring your walker?” asked Blake as they jogged back down the street.

  She laughed and said, “Bite me, you ain’t so young yourself.”

  “I was just thinking that,” he answered.

  In their arrogance, the Invy hadn’t erected any watch towers, instead relying on cameras and other sensors to provide surveillance. Master Sergeant Cordell had, in his guise of a worker, disconnected them from their battery backup the night before, so they were clear to approach the only gate from the side.

  “You know, in some ways,” said Sotelo, “these guys are pretty damn stupid. Makes you wonder how they even beat us.”

  “Who the hell knows? We can be pretty arrogant ourselves, you know. Bunch ‘a towel heads fought us to a stalemate in Afghanistan for thirty years.”

  “You can’t say that!”

  “What?” asked Carballo.

  “Towelhead,” answered his partner.

  “Hey, I got mad respect for those towelheads. Wish I had some here to help us now.”

  Cliff held up her hand to silence them, and they crept slowly up to the gate. The plasma bolts had stopped firing, with no targets in sight. Behind them, the machine gun continued to hammer away at the Green barracks.

  “Execute!” called Cliff over the radio, and they heard the THUNK THUNK of the mortars being fired. Each soldier tensed, hoping none of the rounds landed short of the wall. Even before they hit, two more were in the air, then the launches were covered by the almost simultaneous CRACK CRACK of the rounds detonating. When that happened, the militia squad rolled out from behind the corner, and began to lay down a blistering barrage at one side of the twenty foot wide gate.

  The last mortar rounds detonated, and Cliff yelled, “GO!” She rolled around the edge of the wall, out into the court yard, laser sight slaved to her NVGs. The beam danced through the dust as she ran into hell.

  Chapter 68

  The sound of the mortars let Team Charlie know that things were reaching a head. The team leader grabbed the voice amplifier he had slung at his hip, and told his gunner to cease firing.

  “GREEN MILITIA!” he called, voice booming out, “THIS IS MASTER SERGEANT CORDELL, CONFEDERATED EARTH FORCES SPECIAL OPERATIONS! THROW YOUR WEAPONS OUT THE WINDOWS AND WE WILL LET YOU GO!” Honestly, as professional as he was, Cordell didn’t like killing, especially his fellow human beings. With their leadership taken out by Blake and his team, they really were just a bunch of young men who, under other circumstances, might have been his own soldiers. Might as well give them the chance. The answer was a smattering of shots that came nowhere near his position. Cordell didn’t have to give any orders to his machine gunner, who opened back up on the building.

  “All I’m saying,” yelled Sergeant Eddie Wood, over the hammering of another three round burst into a ground floor window of the barracks, “is that the alien invasion bullshit is just that!” His loader ignored him as she flipped open another can of ammo and joined up the belt, concentrating at the task at hand.

  “What do you think, Master Sergeant?” asked Wood, then tapped out another burst at a silhouette in a window that raised a rifle to fire.

  “I think,” said Master Sergeant Cordell, “that you should shut the hell up and do your job.” He paused to listen to the team radio, and then removed a grenade from his vest, slipping it into the launcher under his rifle.

  “No more screwing around, Eddie. Watch that doorway, and be ready to nail whoever comes out. Tanchack, you just feed that gun and don’t listen to his bullshit.”

  “Never do, big Sarge, never do,” she answered, and grinned at her gunner.

  Cordell knew the exact distance from their firing position to the barracks front door. He had welded shut the rear door, hardly ever used, the day before. Sometimes being ignored is almost better than being invisible.

  TONK. The black shape arched out and flew through a window in the second floor, and a few seconds later, bright, dazzling light erupted as the Willie Pete splashed out, followed by billowing smoke from the wooden floor catching fire. There were already dozens of bullet holes in the stone façade, and a dozen bodies lay on the ground in front of the door, caught in the first rush.

  There were a hundred things that Cordell would have done differently if he had designed the structure, including multiple entrances, bunkers, a direct connection to the Invy compound. Thing was, the Green weren’t real soldiers; they were thugs and bullies that the Invy used to keep the population in check. They reminded Cordell of some of the African militias he had fought it the long proxy war with China, before the Invasion. Before his home in Detroit had become a big hole in the ground, mixed with the ashes of his wife and kids.

  “GIT SOME!” yelled Sergeant Jessica Tanchack, letting the belt feed through her hands. She wasn’t a bloodthirsty person, but she had suffered plenty of abuse at the hands of the Green militia; just about every woman in town had. That, and, well, there was something about being in the middle of a fight and killing your enemy that just made a person’s blood boil. The big gun hammered out its song, a tongue of flame racing outwards. When they had engaged the Invy at the gate that had been one thing, like shooting pop up targets of strange shapes, but this was, well, magnificent, and she felt both horrible and ecstatic at the same time as the bodies fell.

  Cordell tapped on Woods’ leg, and the NCO stopped firing. There was a reason the machine gun had changed war forever at the beginning of the last century; it was very good at what it did, slaughtering your enemy. Not that the men who finally came running out of the burning building were the enemy anymore. The team let them stumble into the night, defeated. If they were smart, they would leave town. If they weren’t, well, civil wars are the ugliest of wars, and it would be the rope for most of them.

  Even as they ran, Lt. Sanchez arrived with a squad of CEF militia. Although she was, technically, a higher rank than Cordell, he had a dozen more years more experience than she did, and she knew it.

  “Jimmy,” she said to her squad leader, “search the barracks with these guys. Gather every weapon you can, and see if you can get into their armory before the whole place burns down.”

  “You got it, Ma’am,” he answered, and led the men in through the machine gun pocked front door, directly into the burning building.

  “Command, this is Charlie,” called Cordell over the radio. He had lost track of what was happening at the Invy compound, knowing that Major Cliff and Team Foxtrot were going in to secure it.

  “Charlie, this is Foxtrot. Command is down, and we need some help cracking these doors. We’re going to need something that goes bang, really loud.”

  “I’ve got what you need. Is Lauren KIA?” he asked, saying a silent prayer.

  “She might make it. Took a really deep stab wound in the gut from a Wolverine ripper claw. Doc is working on her, but she’s going to need blood.”

  “Roger, be there in a minute, the Greens are out of action.”

  Cordell turned to Sanchez, who had heard the whole conversation. She preempted him by saying, “I’ve got a whole town to pacify, Carl. You’ve got the experience. Just try to take one of the Dragons alive, the people need to see that they can be beaten, and they might make good hostages.”

  “Got it. Wood, Tanchack, let’s go. Leave the gun, the militia will take it. Bring the demo.”

  The three of them hustled down the street, turned the corner, and made their way to the gate. There were Wolverine bodies scattered all over the killing field, and Sergeant Dodson sat against the wall, bandaging his own leg. Beside him, covered in a poncho, was the body of Raj Havner. No one had been able to find any remains of the three NCO’s from Team Alpha. Inside the gate, Doc Cofer was bent over Major Cliff, working feverishly under the light of a head lamp, sewing something up in her gut. He sat back with a weary sigh, then started rummaging around in his medkit.

  “I’m gonna nee
d some A POS as soon as we can. I sutured up an artery, but she’s lost a lot of blood. We’ll worry about infection later, I’ve got nanos running, but they can only do so much with trauma.” The medic’s hands were dark with blood, and Cordell could see the strain on his face.

  “What happened?” he asked, to let him talk.

  “She tried to go hand to hand with a Hashut,” he answered. “Probably thought she was Zivcovic or something. Dumbass.”

  “No, she would only do what she had to do.” The older man leaned down and squeezed the unconscious woman’s hand, whispering, “Hang in there, Lauren.”

  At the armored door to the building, Blake, Carballo, Sotelo, Wood and Tanchack were discussing how they would clear the building. They had floor plans loaded into their hybrid NVG / Heads Up Displays, and the discussion dwelt on the unknown areas of the lower levels where the Dragons might be.

  “What do you think, Erik?” said Cordell as he came up.

  “Well, we know there’s four Dragons, but their fighting capabilities are unknown. We have a body count that shows at least six Wolverines still alive, their top guys.”

  Wood spoke up, saying, “I could talk to them, see if they want to surrender.”

  At that, Carballo snorted. “Get Wolverines to surrender? Shit, brother, even if they wanted to, that pack loyalty shit they’ve got ain’t going to let them, unless the Alpha Dog says so. And that’s the Dragons.”

  “Yeah, well, we can give it a shot. You speak it, so it’s on you, Wood. Just don’t give ‘em any of your government conspiracy bullshit,” said the Senior NCO.