LZ New Birth: New Carthage Republic

by J. R. Handley

  LZ New Birth

  New Carthage Republic

  J. R. HANDLEY

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  J. R. Handley Inc

  Virginia Beach, VA 23452

  Copyright © 2018 J. R. Handley Inc

  All rights reserved.

  OTHER BOOKS BY J. R. HANDLEY

  The Sleeping Legion Series

  The Demons of Kor-Lir

  The Legion Awakes

  Fortress Beta City

  Operation Breakout

  Insurgency: Spartika

  No Marine Left Behind

  Anthologies

  The Expanding Universe Vol. 3

  For a Few Credits More Book 7

  15 February 4808, Dagdan Federation Calendar

  LZ New Birth, Planet Gakawen, New Carthage Republic Territories

  4th PLT, Delta Co., 249th Legion, NCR

  Second Lieutenant Xavier Timor was thrilled with his new command, but his platoon of battle-hardened legionnaires wasn’t. They didn’t trust someone so green, and the officer he’d replaced had been well loved and respected. On this drop, Xavier would ride down with his 1st Squad while his small platoon staff would be spread out among the other squads on the various orbital dropships. Standard protocol required they split the staff to protect the integrity of the command element. Losing the entire staff to enemy cannon fire would severely hamper command and control in the critical early stages of the battle.

  He wasn’t happy to start his first combat engagement this way, but the New Carthage Legionnaires couldn’t just fly in, not when the enemy had seeded the planet with defensive cannons. They had to seize a drop zone first. No, this would be an orbital drop operation. Xavier would be leading 4th Platoon, Delta Company of the 249th Legion into the teeth of the enemy’s guns. By rights, he should still be a senior in the Dagdan Federation Officers Academy on New Carthage, but the Legion had been hit hard in the opening days of the war. In the end, the 249th Legion required warm bodies more than they needed cadets playing soldier. The Republic was desperate for junior officers, so they’d graduated his senior classes early. None of the one hundred twelve enlisted personnel were happy that these raw junior officers had been placed in command of the Legionnaires’ platoons.

  The junior enlisted personnel on Dropship 1-4-Delta were especially unhappy. Their ship had a standard configuration, which offered few amenities. Making room for their LT only made the situation worse. The tight seats and unforgiving straps meant the troops would have to hold their carbines between their legs. The squad grumbled as Xavier approached, seeming to forget that he had access to their comms channel.

  The gray orbital dropship that would serve as Xavier’s ride sat securely in its berth, waiting for the signal that would drop it onto Gakawen. Twenty-seven legionnaires packed themselves like sardines into its hold, leaving one extra seat for the platoon commander. They’d made a point of making sure that that seat was near the door, potentially exposing him to incoming fire on a contested landing. Xavier was waiting to board the dropship and close the door, telling himself that it would be good to let his troops get fresh air. They continued to have access to the NCRS Hannibal’s climate control systems until the door sealed. Like every troop transport he’d studied, this one tried to keep the troops comfortable until they were needed to attack contested planets.

  Pacing up and down the passageway outside his dropship, Xavier rechecked his watch. They’d be getting the go signal at any moment. He quickly checked his equipment and rank insignia before rejoining his command. As Xavier moved, the red five-minute-warning light strobed through the passageway. He turned his stride into a jog, afraid he’d miss his first combat mission. His training at the academy on New Carthage had been thorough, and he knew that this particular error would be a black mark on his entire career. Besides, he couldn’t let himself become the LT people mocked.

  Not wanting to look like some bumbling plebe, Xavier stiffened his spine and slowed his jog. He knew optics mattered, and he began to march onto the dropship. He made it with seconds to spare before the ramp closed and sealed him in with his men. Looking around, he found twenty-seven pairs of skeptical eyes staring at him.

  “Listen up. You don’t need me to tell you how important this mission is. If we don’t secure the landing zone and create a foothold, we can’t take this planet. We need to take out the Loyalists’ guns before the rest of the Legion can land, and we expect a stiff resistance. When the ramp drops, follow me. We secure the landing zone then the city. Trust your fellow legionnaires, and Gakawen will soon be under the banner of the New Carthage Republic. For Carthage!”

  The hold was silent. Xavier busied himself with strapping in and turning off his helmet’s speakers. Shifting in his seat, uncomfortable in the oppressive silence, Xavier tried to appear unfazed. Instead, he focused on the hodgepodge of armor his unit was wearing. It looked as if it had been borrowed from a museum, from the time of the Corsair Rebellion. Maybe even older than that. The legionnaires of Delta Company weren’t wearing void-capable combat armor on this drop; there wasn’t enough of it to go around. The Republic was too new to outfit everyone in the vacuum-sealed suits; they only had what they’d liberated from the Dagdan Federation. If his ship experienced catastrophic failure outside of the atmosphere, they’d all die.

  He didn’t know what he expected, but the ride down jarred every bone in his body. Even strapped in, he was thrown about as the ship broke orbit, while the pilot simultaneously jinked left and right to avoid being hit by enemy defensive cannons. Waves of nausea overwhelmed his senses, sending chills in icy rivulets down to his toes. Desperately trying to maintain his dignity, Xavier took slow, deep breaths. It didn’t help. He’d almost armed the illumination grenade that was attached to the front of his armor as he struggled to open the visor of his helmet—eager to prevent filling his armor with vomit. He missed puking into his helmet by seconds.

  Blargh.

  With his visor open, this time, he heard the legionnaires of 1st Squad openly laughing at him. Despite his best efforts, Xavier couldn’t keep his lunch in his stomach.

  Blargh.

  “Happens to all of us, sir. At least to the old biddies in the Ladies Auxiliary, anyway!” chirped Legionnaire First Class Terrye Toombs.

  “Now see here—” Xavier started to say before he bent forward to hack up the last of his meal. As the hold erupted into laughter again, Xavier wiped his mouth and replaced his helmet.

  “Least we don’t have to clean that up,” he said, adjusting his chin strap. “Leave that to the dang sailors!”

  The moment of levity was cut short by the pilot coming over the internal speakers.

  “Two minutes to dirtside,” the voice intoned.

  The pilot lied. A few seconds later, the craft thudded to the ground, and the ramp dropped. Xavier stumbled out to the open area around Ancion City. Scanning the sector, he saw that there was no enemy. None that he could see, anyway. Consummate professionals, 1st Squad secured their section of the perimeter and linked up with the rest of the platoon. Meanwhile, Xavier ran over to his comms specialist and started setting up communications with the remainder of the company. They’d been giv
en five hundred legionnaires to capture the city, but if the Loyalists resisted, it’d get ugly. Urban warfare was always a bloody and costly affair.

  Much to Xavier’s surprise, the initial landing occurred without contest. He hadn’t expected the drop shuttles to claim Ancion City as their own so quickly.

  “I can’t believe the cowards ran,” he said aloud. “They didn’t even try to fight.”

  “They didn’t run. They went to defend the guns, sir,” said Master Sergeant Zale Boswell.

  As the platoon sergeant spoke, the newly designed flag of the New Carthage Republic was raised in Ancion City. It fluttered in the breeze atop the abandoned civic building, defiant and proud. The bloodred boar’s head under a golden crescent moon sat on a midnight-black banner, a nod to the original colonists’ ties to old Terra. So many colony ships had landed since then that the link existed only in the historical record and in the banner of the new nation.

  ***

  In the two months after they’d secured the city, the legionnaires repurposed buildings as command centers and logistical warehouses. Ancion City endured a militaristic metamorphosis. Xavier imagined the consequences on the town’s psyche would outlive him. Once a bustling colony town, the city had been turned into a fortress after the eight weeks of military occupation. The daily grind of life during the conversion of the city into a fortified and reinforced base allowed Loyalist sympathizers to slip outside the city walls. The legionnaires fought against a steady stream of sabotage and insurgent tactics, forcing the garrison commander to become stricter with the locals. The city was locked down, fostering animosity and more acts of sabotage. The officers were worried. Clearly, anyone who could get out of the city could slip back in.

  The heightened and overzealous security consciousness led to steps that made the newly designated Fortress Ancion impregnable. Work crews dug defensive trenches outside the newly erected fortress walls, preventing the enemy from slipping into their lines. Essential supplies were stored in central locations, under heavy guard. Legionnaires built barracks from converted colony dorms, and the local bank was transformed into a brig. Every mode of transportation was seized by the military, cementing the transition of LZ New Birth into a fortress in fact and name.

  Xavier’s skills grew during the construction period, under the watchful eye of his platoon sergeant. He’d been able to shine with Master Sergeant Boswell’s advice and Xavier’s willingness to listen. His 4th Platoon set standards; their productivity pushed the rest of Delta Company to secure the city. He led from the front, and his once-pristine uniform grew as dirty and torn as those of the rest of his legionnaires. My instructors at the academy would’ve reamed my ass for this, he thought.

  Once the fortress walls were finished, Delta Company was moved into the exterior trenches. The entire time they worked, they endured the fire of the enemy guns. The Loyalists defended their orbital bombardment cannon with secondary ones designed to keep an enemy from getting too close. Despite the shelling, New Carthage legionnaires pushed out from their fortress. Fortress Ancion stood as a bastion to the legitimacy of the New Carthage Republic. They couldn’t abandon the town; it had to be held at all costs. Meanwhile, they had to silence those guns so the fleet could land the rest of their forces. It was a delicate balancing act, one that strained the capabilities of the understaffed battalion that had landed on Gakawen.

  During the process of extending the reach of the NCR, Delta Company was ordered to begin reinforcing and extending the trenches. They built them up during their guard shifts while expanding them out meter by meter. A combination of sandbags and fastkrete transformed the earthen trenches into permanent defensive works. They were sending a message: New Carthage was here to stay.

  Xavier squatted in one of the trenches that surrounded the fortress, hunkering down while the shelling continued. The dreary weather made the experience miserable. Rain rushed down the mountains and into the valley, deluging the trenches and clawing the earthen parapets into mud. The rain prevented the fastkrete from fully curing, so they had to rely more heavily on their sandbags. Junior legionnaires were tasked with continually digging out the muck washed down by the rain. The rain did manage to silence the guns, though the foul weather made it difficult to exploit that small victory.

  “My academy instructors forgot to tell us how miserable trenches were in this weather,” he told Boswell, who only grunted in reply.

  The guns had been silent for so long that Xavier and the rest of the company’s officers thought they’d been abandoned. Or maybe they only hoped that that was the case. Xavier and his platoon sergeant trooped the lines, inspecting the reinforcement and expansion project. When the guns started firing again, the legionnaires in the trenches began to hunker down, seeking cover. Forward progress halted, and all efforts were put to repairing sections as they became damaged.

  “We have to finish these trenches, or they could envelop us,” he told Boswell.

  The NCO grunted again before taking a drag from the cigar that bravely hung from his lips. Like the rest of the junior officers, at least those who were fresh out of the academy, Xavier had been rushed to the fleet. He was supposed to bolster the forces preparing to seize Gakawen. His noncoms treated him like a kid, but he wasn’t confident enough to address the situation and took the abuse. And the more he took, the more abuse his legionnaires dished out.

  “Time to grow a spine,” growled Boswell, pausing before adding the obligatory “sir.”

  When the legionnaires around him hooted and hollered, Xavier finally took a deep breath and began envisioning the plebes he loved to torment. I can do this, he told himself repeatedly.

  “Agreed. I was just taught to respect the old and infirm,” he replied, louder than was called for.

  “He told you, Sarge,” chortled one of the platoon’s chronic misfit legionnaires.

  “Thanks for volunteering, Hayes. You get to clean the shitter,” replied Boswell.

  Laughing to himself, Xavier suddenly felt more comfortable with his platoon. I can do this, he thought. With renewed confidence, Xavier began quietly listening to the mutterings of the NCOs he’d thought were beneath him. It shocked him to hear what they really thought, without the filter they usually used when addressing officers. They felt that the abundance of raw junior officers in command positions meant that critical tactical considerations were being missed. Xavier knew that he and the other young officers lacked the usual field training given to officers. He was also learning that his academy classroom instruction didn’t match the real world. The textbook wasn’t providing answers for every situation as he’d been taught, so he began to treat its “rules” like strongly worded suggestions.

  No stranger to discomfort, Xavier decided to wait out the weather. It was harder to ignore the renewed shelling, but he didn’t know what else to do. He shivered despite his best efforts. The cool predawn darkness seemed to soak into his bones and sapped his energy. He disregarded the relentless drumbeat of the pounding rain, hoping that the shelling would end soon. But it continued. The flash of the enemy guns pierced the darkness, making it difficult for him to maintain his night vision. The body armor his unit wore was out of date. It offered little to enhance the combat effectiveness of his soldiers, as it had no integrated HUD or enhanced optics. At moments like this, those deficiencies showed. His legionnaires couldn’t see the hills as he could in his cadet armor.

  While Xavier waited for a break in the weather, he continued to troop the line. He’d occasionally stop to speak to his soldiers, hoping to offer some encouragement. He worked every trick for encouraging his troops that he could remember from his time at the academy.

  The minutes turned into hours, and the sun rose. The shelling continued unabated, and the legionnaires’ field guns didn’t have the reach to respond. We’ve got to break this gridlock, or the assault on Gakawen is lost, he thought. Xavier began looking for a way to change the momentum. Someone’s got to do something—might as well be me, he told himself. He
was bored, and sitting around in Fortress Ancion wouldn’t fulfill the glorious destiny he had dreamed of while a cadet. He couldn’t gain fame through inaction and serving in an army of occupation.

  Typically, the Navy would’ve blasted the offending forces from orbit, but the Dagdan forces were hiding among the populace, and the New Carthage Republic needed the planet intact. While this was a tactical consideration for the Legion, it wasn’t one for Xavier. He would find a way to assault the objective, civilians be damned. All he needed was a way to cover his ass as he did so. And the objective was simple—just silence those infernal guns. They’d been wreaking havoc, sighting in with uncanny precision on the Carthaginian barracks. Whole squads had been lost in an instant while they slumbered. Xavier couldn’t let those bastards get away with killing his mates.

  He had to turn back the relentless tide of Dagdan shells. New Carthage needed a breakout. The enemy guns were slowly bracketing their buildings. Under those guns, Xavier made his decision. After a quick peek over the hastily created fastkrete parapets, he saw a thin corridor of opportunity. All he had to do was move his troops up the valley. What could be simpler? A hooking maneuver, flanking the enemy guns while taking fire. Luckily, the various Loyalist gun batteries had failed to correctly overlap their fields of fire. Xavier suspected it was because of the changes the Carthaginians had made to the terrain when they converted the city into a fortress. All of this rain washing out the valley hasn’t helped, either, Xavier thought. And that presented him an opportunity—the enemy had left open a narrow strip of land. It was just asking to be exploited.

  While Xavier evaluated his options, he took a moment to scan the region where Delta Company had established its outer perimeter. They were on the outskirts of Ancion City, attempting to expand their hold on their region. He knew that if they couldn’t hold the city and take out the orbital defense guns, they’d lose the planet. They would have to do this while under fire. Our leaders seem content to wait for them to go away while we’re holed up in this crappy trench. And then they want us to hide in bunkers while those rats shell us to oblivion, he thought angrily.