“OK, folks,” Jojo said at last, “Time to surface. We’ve bothered the sharks enough for today.”
The air suit didn’t have private circuits, but she leaned into Jim’s face, breaking into his bubble.
“This was amazing, Jim. Thank you for suggesting it.”
She gave him a quick peck, then pulled back as he tried to return the kiss with more enthusiasm.
“Surface now, you two,” Jojo said, sounding stern.
Feeling like a schoolgirl caught beneath the bleachers with her boyfriend, Esther laughed as she rose, but not before Jim reached through her curtain to pinch her bikini-clad butt. Joining the 30-Meter Deep Club was sounding better and better.
There’ll be time for that, Jimmy-boy, she thought. Jojo’s watching.
They had four hours before their next dive, and their room was only 30 meters from the beach. The two could be in the cabana within a minute of getting ashore.
The sun was barely over the eastern horizon as they climbed out of the water and onto the old-fashion dive boat, complete with bamboo outriggers to each side. Marine divers came out of the water wet, so it felt strange to be sitting chatting with the other two divers, excitedly relating each shark sighting, but completely dry. Maybe there was something to be said for civilian dive equipment after all.
The quiet electric hydrojet (can’t have anything loud enough or creating vibrations that could bother the sharks) pushed the boat quickly to the shore. The four divers agreed to meet for breakfast at the in-house resort restaurant, the ancient Craic House (where the tocino was supposed to be delicious, at least according to what Noah had told her before she left).
Kayee was waiting for them as they left the beach; waiting for Esther, that is.
Hell, what have I done now? Kissing your husband scares the sharks?
“Colonel Lysander, I’ve a message for you. You’re to get on your PA immediately. The official one.”
As always, Esther was traveling with both her personal PA and her Marine Corps-issued PA. She may be on leave, and probably the only leave she’d have while in command of the battalion, but a commander commanded 24-7. That responsibility never took leave. She was supposed to keep the Marine Corps PA with her at all times, but no electronic devices were allowed at Monad Shoal.
She glanced at Jim. He smiled, but she could see the sudden scrunching of his eyebrows, a sure sign of stress with him.
“You go find out what they want, Ess. I’ll get a table at the Craic for us. Tocino, right? Isn’t that what Noah said?”
“Yeah, that was it. Don’t worry, Jim. It’s probably some routine stuff that needs my OK. I’ll see you there in a few,” she said, leaning to give him another soft kiss on his cheek.
The rooms were old-style cabanas, not luxurious, but still romantic, what with the ocean breezes, swaying palm trees, and blue water just steps away. Esther entered, opened the safe, and took out the PA. She let it read her right eye, and a stream of messages appeared on the display. She read the highest priority message, then slowly lowered the PA as she stared at the wall, a small brown gecko capturing her attention as it bobbed its head up and down.
She stood like that for a few moments, then with a sigh, acknowledged the message. Stepping back outside, she walked over the sand to the Craic House where Jim was chatting with Dierdre and Morgan, their fellow divers. He was laughing at something one of them had said, but Esther knew it was forced.
She caught his eye and motioned him to join her. She could see his entire posture drop for a second before he forced a broad smile on his face as he bounded over to her. Jim was cleared for Level 4 messages, of course, so she simply opened up the recall.
They’d been on the island for less than a day, and now the battalion, just back from deployment, was being recalled. The message didn’t say why, only gave her an itinerary back to Last Stop. A water taxi was being sent to pick her up with an ETA in 18 minutes (even the Federation military had to obey the UAM strictures on travel on Malapascua). She was to be taken to the Cebu mainland at Daayanbatan where a shuttle would take her to the Clark Spaceport for further transport back to Last Stop.
“OK, let’s go,” Jim said, turning to go back to the cabana.
She grabbed his arm and stopped him, saying, “You don’t have to go. Your leave is still in place. You stay and enjoy yourself.”
“I only enjoy myself when I do these with you. You know that, right?”
She smiled, then gave him a little punch on his upper arm.
“You are so full of it, Jim Aylsworth, but I love you all the more for it.”
“We saw the threshers, anyway, and that’s what we came for. One more thing checked off our bucket list.”
Your bucket list, Jimmy-boy, but yes.
“Besides, we’ve got 18 minutes. Two minutes to pack, then sixteen to, well . . . ?”
“Oh, that’s all you can think of, Colonel Aylsworth?”
“Unless you don’t want—”
“Move your ass, Jimmy-boy!” Esther said, darting forward to the cabana. “Time’s a-wasting!”
LAST STOP
Chapter 20
Noah
“Seems like I was just leaving you off here,” Noah said as Esther came through immigration and out to the passenger pick-up.
“Don’t remind me,” Esther said with a sour expression on her face.
“Did you at least stare death in the face?”
“If you mean, did I dive with the sharks, then yes. I got the recall right after coming out of the water.”
“And you’re alive, so I guess that’s a good thing, right?”
“You’ve got such a way with words,” she said as he loaded her bag into the trunk of his Fiat-Westerly Avo. She got into the passenger seat, and as Noah pulled out, asked, “What’re our numbers?”
“We’re at 76%. The XO’s arriving in two hours, and all of the company commanders are already on board. We’ve got six Marines and a corpsman who’ve not acknowledged the recall. I’ve got local authorities tracking them all down.”
“So, I couldn’t pick much up on the transit. Do you have anything more for me?”
Noah hesitated for a moment. His Avo was not a secure space, and much of what he knew was classified.
He didn’t think anyone had bugged his old hover, though, so he said, “It’s our old friends The Brotherhood sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“The Brotherhood? They’re getting to be a pain in the ass, Noah, I swear. They’re not acting like allies against the Klethos, you know.”
Noah did know. When the war with the Klethos had broken out, there had been a groundswell of unity among humanity. It was us against them. But as the war settled into a type of routine, partisanship started to rear its head again. Sure, humanity lost some planets, but they’d regained some and even taken over a few that had been Capy worlds before the Klethos took them. Even when they lost a human world, the UAM Relocation Bureau had the evacuation down to a science. When Kloster was lost, with over 12 billion inhabitants, the UAM managed to remove every man, woman, and child within the allotted three weeks.
The result of this was that the war with the Klethos had almost become routine, a part of the landscape, and without a dire threat, the unity started to pull apart. And as far as the Federation was concerned, The Brotherhood had been the main instigator of friction. For supposed allies, two powers that had never fought a war against each other, The Brotherhood had become a major irritant to the Federation.
“So, what are they doing now?”
“What do you know of Nayi Bharat?” Noah asked her.
“Nayi Bharat? Not much. I mean, I know they’re a Hindi world, Class B, I think I remember. They had a referendum a few years back to leave the Federation, but that failed big time. So, what’s happening there now?”
“Well, it seems that the Azaad Andolan party, which initiated the referendum, is not taking their defeat lightly. They’ve evolved into an armed faction that has pro
mised to take over the planet by force, if necessary.”
“And . . . ?”
“And they are well-armed. Mostly Gentry weapons—”
“I swear, we should shut down that planet’s arms factories,” Esther muttered.
Noah ignored the comment and continued, “As I was saying, they’ve got Gentry weapons and are better armed than the local militia.”
“Since you mentioned The Brotherhood, I’m to assume that they’re involved with this?”
“Looks like they’re funding the AA, as the Azaad Andolan is referring to its military arm, even providing ships to deliver the arms.”
“So, let the UAM handle this. That’s what they’re there for, after all,” Esther said.
“I don’t think we can afford to wait, and neither does the council. Last week, an FCDC company and a militia regiment were overrun by the AA forces. Intel thinks the AA are going to make a stab at taking Raipur, which is a major industrialized city. We’re supposed to stop that.”
“So, these AA overran a local regiment and an FCDC company, and we’re supposed to go in and stop them?”
“That’s basically it in a nutshell, Ess. The powers that be think that if we bloody their noses, we can freeze them in their tracks until the UAM gets off their collective asses and shut off the arms pipeline.”
“So, we’re not supposed to pacify a planet with . . . how many people?”
“About one-point-two billion. And no. Just stop the advance on Jaipur.”
“Well, thank God for small favors. They don’t expect the impossible, just the improbable.”
“Semper fi, do or die,” Noah said.
“Yeah, right. It’s the ‘die’ part that concerns me. This has all the hallmarks of a shit sandwich.” She paused a moment, looking out of the hover’s window as they got on the expressway to the base. “And we’re back on the Fujiyama?”
“Roger that. She’s the sector’s Navy secondary alert force.”
The Navy and Marines had been designating returning deployment forces as secondary alert forces for almost 15 years now. On the one hand, it made sense. The ship and Marines units had been certified, and they were used to working together. On the other hand, there was a degree of deployment fatigue that set in after so much time in space, and their abruptly canceled leave had not been nearly enough to rejuvenate the Marines and sailors nor conduct first level maintenance on their gear. Noah had been working hard on that while most of the battalion had started on leave, and they were not in too bad shape, but the Mount Fuji was much more maintenance-intensive, and there was no way that the ship was at 100%.
At least the aircon finally works.
“When do we embark?”
“Four days.”
“Four freaking days? Oh, I’m so glad they’re giving us so much time,” she said, sarcasm heavy in her voice.
Noah didn’t reply. He knew his sister, and as she became quiet, he knew her brain was going 100 kilometers per hour as she went over what she had to do to get the battalion ready. Four days really wasn’t reasonable, but that is what they had, and they’d get it done. Marines have been doing that for centuries, and some things never changed.
NAYI BHARAT
Chapter 21
Esther
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil—because I’m the fiercest mother-fucker in the valley,” Esther muttered the centuries-old adage as she followed the battalion’s progress.
Major Kurtzman looked up at her in surprise, then quickly went back to his display as if he hadn’t heard her. She was in a foul mood, and everyone around her knew it.
The operations order she and the Three had developed took advantage of her battalion’s strengths of mobility and fire support, something she thought they needed in facing over 10,000 Azaad Andolan fighters. Her intent had been to focus her battalion’s power to strike and crush specific and limited units, then retreat before the mass of enemy could react before doing it all over again. She didn’t have numerical superiority, but she could have localized numerical superiority if she could choose the time and place of contact.
As a courtesy, Esther had to brief the local government and militia, and they hadn’t liked the plan at all. They wanted to reassure the local populace that things were well in hand, and they wanted a militia presence with the Marines. A complaint had gone up through the Federation Administrator all the way to Earth, and the word had come down from on high. Esther was to comply with Nayi Bharat requests for a more obvious and visible operations plan.
So now, First Battalion, Eight Marines, was marching up the oddly-named Mary Anne Valley, and the AA knew exactly where it was. The battalion had given up the ability to maneuver to choose the time and place of contact.
Jaipur was located at the end of a huge box canyon under which was an almost unlimited supply of geothermal power. There was one major avenue in and out of the city, and that was through the valley. Like Romans leaving the Eternal City to fight the Gauls, the battalion had formed up and marched out, led by a militia company. There had even been a band to play as they passed the provincial center.
Immediately after leaving the city, she had moved the militia to the rear of the column, telling the commander in no uncertain terms that he was to stay out of the way of the Marines. With Charlie Company leading, and the battalion stretched out over a klick, she pushed the pace past the first chokepoint and where she could bring up Alpha Company and move in a modified wedge with two companies up, one back, and the headquarters in the middle. The militia company trailed the battalion and was designated as a reserve force, but Esther didn’t plan to engage them unless absolutely necessary.
Colonel Falstaff had been given the unenviable task of telling Esther that her original operations order had to be shit-canned, and he used the phrase “meeting engagement” to describe how the forces would initiate contact. Esther could tell that he didn’t believe that any more than she did. The AA would not be marching down the valley to meet the battalion head on. They would ambush the battalion, pure and simple. Esther would commence the coming fight by walking into the opposing commander’s kill zone.
All Esther could do was to try and foresee where that kill zone would be and where the ambush would be sprung. She had a fleet of drones spread out before the battalion, and overhead, the Mount Fuji was scanning. And there were people in the mountains on either side of her—lots of people. The rocky terrain precluded nice firm numbers, but the Azaad Andolan couldn’t evade all of the scanners. Lieutenant Commander Nunez-Kline, the Mount Fuji’s Intel officer, didn’t think the numbers the battalion was passing were enough to be a threat, and Esther tended to agree. They were still close to Jaipur, and if the AA sprang an ambush now, the remaining militia in the city were close enough to come join the fight. Still, she hated to let any enemy get behind her. She had the entire area targeted, and once the fight began, she’d requested that the Mount Fuji rain death on the hills. She might not have the mobility she’d originally envisioned, but the Mount Fuji was still a powerful resource.
Esther stared at her screen, trying to will it to reveal the AA’s ambush site. The battalion’s combat AI kept popping up locations, giving probabilities, but nothing struck a chord with her. Displays, even the best of them, just didn’t give the same representation as real life.
“Major Kutzman, I’m stepping outside. You run it from in here.”
She activated her helmet’s display field and stepped between the members of the Alpha Command as they sat at their stations and out the back hatch. The Hot Shot slowly lumbered on at a walking pace.
It felt good to be out of the confines of the armored personnel carrier. She’d never felt comfortable inside armor, even the PICS. To her, an Aardvark only represented a target. The enemy spent hundreds of thousands of credits on weapons to take out armor, but as a grunt, a dart or round cost a credit each. By pure economics, that meant they were spending more on armor than on infantry, so that
would be their targets.
Intellectually, she knew that logic was faulty, but emotionally, she felt more comfortable on foot. But that wasn’t the reason she debarked the command vehicle. She wanted to get a better feel for the terrain, to decide where she would set an ambush if the shoe were on the other foot.
Moments after her boots hit the deck, two of Captain Gill’s Bravo Company Marines stepped forward to flank her. A squad had been positioned around the trac to provide close-in security.
“Corporal Spain, how about you and Lance Corporal Thuy step back a few paces. You’re making it pretty obvious, don’t you think.”
“Oh, sorry ma’am,” Spain said, falling back and drifting to the side.
Should have brought out a rifle, she thought.
Even without the two Marines on either side of her, if she was spotted, and without a rifle of some sort, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out she was a prime target. The nearest high ground was less than a klick away, and that was well within a sniper’s range, even if that sniper hadn’t any specified training. She put that thought out of her head and started studying the terrain, referring to her map display, then taking a look at the real thing.
“You OK, Ess?” Noah asked over the P2P.
“Sure. No problem.”
“I see you’re on foot. Any good reason for that?”
Esther swung around and searched, finally seeing Noah walking behind the Hot Shot, about 50 meters back.
“I needed to get the lay of the land.”
“Well, get it quick. You’re kind of a prime target out there.”
“So’s the Aardvark. A big one.”
She heard him sigh, then he cut the connection. Putting him out of her mind, she went back to her terrain study, trying to put herself into the mind of the AA commander. A good ambush location had a kill zone that could be completely covered with fire and provided cover and concealment for the ambushers. There were several likely locations along the way, but the more obvious, the least likely they’d be chosen. Then, there was the arty back in Jaipur. The militia had a battery-minus of old, but reliable Harrison 105’s. The Marines were still barely within the reach of the guns and would be for a little more distance. The ambushers would want to be on the defilade side of the city where the arty couldn’t touch them.
Blood United (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 5) Page 18
