“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 Bravo Command has debarked. We’re on foot,” Major Frazier passed to her, something she didn’t have time to process at the moment.
She spun around, looking down the slope. Three AA fighters, in their distinctive floppy hats, were charging up the slope. One was still firing his P40 at Major Kutzman, but the other two, armed with Gekos, were focused on Esther and were trying to close the distance.
The Geko was a very short-range carbine that fired a .52 caliber round tipped with a tiny shape charge. It was a close-in self-defense weapon, designed to defeat all known personal armor—including the Marines’ skins and bone.
Shit! she thought as she fumbled for her Ruger which hadn’t left her holster since she’d stepped foot on the planet.
The fighters were within range, and the first was bringing up his Geko when a someone came rushing by, knocking Esther aside. A quick burst cut down one of the fighters, but the second shifted his aim and fired.
The heavy round hit Corporal Spain in mid-chest, the shape-charge burning through his bones, a small flash of fire and blood exiting through the armor on his back. He dropped face first in front of Esther, sliding down towards the AA gunman.
The fighter took an instant too long to look at Spain, and that was all the time Esther needed. She took him out with two quick rounds.
“Give me your Ruger,” someone shouted beside her.
Esther looked up as Noah grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back up over the edge of the slope and into the flat shelf.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes drawn to his missing arm.
“Told the Doc to give me a BOOST. I’m good for a couple of hours. Give me your Ruger,” he repeated.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t fire this very well one-handed,” he said, letting his slung M90 slide off his shoulder.
He looked like a maniac, his eyes, glowing, and Esther didn’t know if she should trust his judgement. BOOST affected people differently, and it was a huge drain on the human body. Coupled with his shock and the anti-shock meds, Esther didn’t even know the consequences, which she imagined could cause a complete shutdown, even death. But what was done was done, and he was right. He couldn’t manage the M90 well, and she could. Without a word, she took the carbine and handed him her handgun.
The rest of the Alpha Command who’d taken shelter over the edge were scrambling back. Lance Corporal Thuy was pulling Lieutenant Creighton’s body with him.
“Captain Peaslee!” Major Kutzman was shouting, and Esther put their defense out of her mind for the moment.
“What’s the status of the Fujiyama?” she asked Gunny Wisteria.
“Doing switch-out now. Estimated time until ready is a little over two minutes.”
“Stand by,” she told him as she brought up the battle overlay.
Bravo was in heavier contact. She had her AI run an analysis, and from the volume of fire, at least 1,000 AA fighters were bunching up in front of the company. Captain Gill couldn’t hold out much longer. To the east of her, Charlie was still pushing, but the push had slowed down. The situation wasn’t perfect, but she was afraid it wasn’t going to get any better.
“Mount Fuji,” she passed. “Fire when the rail is loaded. Confirm.”
“Confirmed. Will let you know when the G-1905 is fired.”
An explosion broke off chips from the rock face, sending them raining down on them. The AA on the south-eastern slope evidently had grenade launchers. As they climbed a little higher on the slope and had a better angle, those grenades would start impacting among them.
Then something the XO had said hit her.
Bravo Command debarked?
“Mark, why did you debark your command trac?
“I sent the Lusty Sara forward.”
“Why?” she asked as she pulled up the vehicle overlay for the first time during the battle.
And it immediately became clear. The Lusty Sara had reached the bend and was heading west, straight towards the oncoming Patties.
“Are you getting this?” she asked Noah. “Check the vehicle overlay.”
“I—” started the Major before Esther told him she could see why he’d sent it forward.
The Lusty Sara fired once, and the lead Tabitha, which was slowing down to debark its troops, erupted in a fireball.
“Get some, Sara!” Noah said with remarkable enthusiasm for someone who’d just had an arm torn off.
Esther turned to her brother, surprised that he sounded so, well, normal.
The Lusty Sara, still rushing forward, fired again, and the second Patty was destroyed. The rest of the vehicles came to haphazard stops, their nice column disrupted, and that made them easier targets. Within ten seconds, three more Patties were destroyed, and the rest were trying to turn around and retreat.
Esther wanted to watch, but while the threat from the Patties was broken, things were still getting dicey on the shelf, and the Tungsicle hadn’t been launched yet.
Five AA fighters rushed over the lip and into the shelf, weapons firing. Esther fired Noah’s M90 and maybe hit one as Captain Peaslee and three Marines rushed back to close the gap in their perimeter. The five were cut down, but not before one of Peaslee’s Marines fell as well.
“GD-1905 launched. Impact in 247 seconds,” the sailor on the other side of their comms said.
Esther immediately forwarded that to all hands. The remaining PICS Marines, with their added protection, were to stay and try to hold the AA in place, but the straight-leg infantry had to get cover. Bravo and Alpha’s Marines were to get downslope as far as possible before going to ground, and Charlie’s Marines were to retreat for 200 seconds before doing the same. Particularly for the more exposed Charlie Marines, this was danger close.
“It’s done,” she told Noah. “Now we have to wait to see what we’ve trapped.”
“If the AA lets us,” Noah said as another burst of concentrated Marine fire echoed against the rock face.
Noah had led Esther back towards the WIA, Chief, and Lance Corporal Coffman. This gave her a full view of the small plateau they were on. Now that the Tungsicle had been launched, she had time to really look around her.
Including the remaining members of the Alpha Command, they had Captain Peaslee and ten of his security element, eight Marines from Sergeant Cushman’s squad, and Chief Higgins. Facing them was an unknown, but certainly larger number of AA fighters.
What was going to happen with regards to the bigger picture had already been put into motion, and it would proceed or not even without her input. She could be killed, and Major Frazier would take command. That didn’t mean she didn’t care, of course. What had been until now a more pragmatic outlook on the battle had changed, and her warrior spirit was rising. If the AA wanted to take them out, she was going to make them pay dearly in the attempt.
She lampreyed into Captain
Peaslee’s limited command net.
“ . . . right below you. We’re tossing grenades, and when they detonate, I want you three to pop up and light them up. No more than three seconds, though. I don’t want you exposed longer than that.”
Esther knew the problem with grenades and slope. In the battle on Mount Zeus on Elysium, her teams’ grenades were somewhat ineffectual as the bounded past or fell short of the enemy before detonating.
Peaslee and two Marines rose to their knees and tossed their grenades over the edge. Esther barely heard the detonations when they went off three seconds later, but four Marines, led Sergeant Tyre, jumped up and blasted away downhill before falling back.
“One hundred seconds until impact,” Gunny Wisteria passed.
More rifle grenades hit the rock face, and Esther instinctively ducked as rubble rained on them.
“Chief, should we move them?” Esther asked, pointing at the WIA.
“Except for Lieutenant Creighton, I’d rather keep them here, but as for him,” he said, pointing at the lieutenant’s ziplocked body, “I don’t know where would be any better.”
Esther pulled up the main battle display with enemy and friendly positions highlighted, the count-down timer tucked in the corner. She could see the non-PICS Marines retreating, but it looked like the enemy was on the move as well. A force of what looked to be almost 200 was pushing at the thinned Bravo lines, possibly sensing most of the Marine’s withdrawal. Two PICS Marines—Corporal Hickson and Lance Corporal Dennis Bird—were standing firm, expending enormous firepower to hold the AA back. The AA were returning the fire, however, and Hickson’s PICS was redlining while Bird had lost his HGL.
“Gunny Wisteria, I want mortars to put rounds here,” she said, indicating a position 100 meters in front of the two Marines. “And now.”
It might be too late, but hitting the main body as they were doing at the moment might be moot once the Tungsicle impacted, and Corporal Hickson could use all the help they could provide.
There was a huge blast at the edge of the shelf taking two Marines out. A moment later, half-a-dozen fighters appeared, scrambling over the rubble, firing wildly while the Marines picked them off. Noah stepped in front of Esther as rounds impacted on either side of her. She joined Noah in firing at the AA, dropping at least one of the attackers. As soon as the last one of the initial wave fell, another dozen came over the edge. The fighters seemed to be focused straight ahead, which put Esther and the WIA in their crosshairs. Esther, Chief, and Noah fired back while Captain Peaslee and two Marines rushed from the side, dropping fighter after fighter. PFC Vanmeter, rushing forward with the captain, was hit with a Geko round in the leg and went down.
One of the last AA fighters had a grenade, and as he pulled his arm back to throw, Peaslee or one of the other’s dropped him. The grenade fell to the side towards the captain and up against Vanmeter. Esther started to shout out, but with a pivot, Captain Peaslee picked up the grenade and gave it a shovel pass to clear the shelf—except that it detonated centimeters past his fingertips, shredding the captain’s arm and face. The force of the blast sent him over backwards, and Esther didn’t have to check his avatar to know that he was gone.
“Thirty seconds,” Gunny Wisteria passed.
“Keep fighting!” Major Kutzman passed over the Alpha Command net, beating Esther to the punch.
Down below the rock face, they were pretty well protected from the Tungsicle, and if they starting kissing the dirt, the AA assaulting them would rush the shelf. They had to keep fighting.
Two AA fighters emerged through the hole created with Peaslee down. One of them saw Esther and charged, Geko held up and ready. Before he’d covered three steps, she shot him in the chest, then as the second came to a halt and tried to engage her, Vanmeter, still on the ground and in obvious pain, took him out with a string of darts.
“ . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . impact!” Gunny Wisteria passed as a huge flash of light lit up the area, so bright Esther could swear she could see the bones—her actual bones, not the armor inserts—in her hands. The shockwave hit a moment later, knocking off some rather large boulders in the rock face to come crashing down among them. Four seconds later, the boom reached them as it rolled out.
Esther felt as if the air had been sucked from her, but she quickly blinked up the battlefield display again. The Mount Fuji’s scanners were almost useless when trying to pierce the 100 megajoules of death that were now sweeping the area between Charlie and Bravo. The ship couldn’t keep that up for more than five or six seconds, though, and the moment the twinned cannons ceased firing, Esther’s display lit up with data.
She immediately noted 21 friendly WIA and one KIA. Pushing that aside for the moment, she tried to analyze the enemy situation. The Tungsicle had hit right in the center of the largest concentration of fighters, and death and destruction radiated out from the impact site. The ship’s powerful AI was trying to calculate the casualty rate, but it looked to be upwards of 75% with numbers over 3,000.
“It’s not over, Ess,” Noah reminded her.
“You look like shit, Noah. Sit down, at least.”
“I’m still high on BOOST, Ess, we’ve still got bad guys with ill intentions, and they were just as protected as we were,” he said, tilting his head to indicate the AA just downhill of them.
Which was true. Esther was hoping that losing their command, losing so many of their comrades above would take the fight out of them. It was true that there were still 6,000 or more of the fighters in the area, but the losses so far had to have been a huge, huge shock. They could either decide to fight on or simply break contact.
Unfortunately, they decided to fight on. There was a roar of anger, and then the sounds of what had to be chants reached them.
Noah jumped up and ran to where Captain Pealee’s body lay in the dirt. He immediately started to take charge, shifting Marines’ positions to cover the gaps.
Oh, hell, Noah. You’re hyped up on BOOST, she thought as she chased him down.
BOOST pushed past pain, it pushed past shock, but it could affect rationality, and her brother was not in shape to command his home holo, much less Marines in combat.
“Major Kutzman!” she shouted as she ran after her brother, “Take the southeast. They’re still coming!”
She reached Noah, who was exposing himself to the AA below as he fired one well-aimed shot after the other, grabbed him by the shoulder, and said, “Stick by my side.”
She could hear battle cries from below as she and Noah hastily started rearranging their positions. She told Corporal Ikimura and Sergeant Bore to start tossing grenades, more to remind the AA below that there were Marines on top waiting for them than anything else.
She almost ordered Captain Kingery to send a platoon her way, but she still didn’t know what the company faced. Sure, lots of AA had died up there, but even if 3,000 had been killed, at 75%, that could mean there was still 1,000 fighters on the high ground, and if they were as angry and looking for revenge as the AA facing the Alpha Command, he’d need every available Marine. Even if she had sent the order, she doubted a platoon could get there in time to be of use.
“Thank God the Lusty Sara took out that Patty column,” Noah muttered as he dropped an AA fighter who was scrambling over the edge of the shelf. “That makes this easy-peasy.”
Esther tried not to roll her eyes. They might hold the high ground, but they were still outnumbered by some pretty pissed off fighters.
“Yeah, Noah, ‘easy-peasy.’”
“OK, Marines,” she passed, turning away from Noah, “They’re angry, and angry fighters are not good fighters. Keep your heads on your shoulders, and we’ll throw them back to join their brothers and sisters in whatever hell spawned them.”
And the assault began.
With disciplined fire, the Marines wiped out almost all of the first wave, but that contracted the Marines’ fields of fire and left a corridor, if it could be called that, where
the first dozen fighters reached the shelf. The next fighter appeared 20 meters in front of her, Geko held high as he screamed out in wordless rage. He should have fired instead of screamed. Esther raised her M90, but Noah beat her to it, and the man fell back and disappeared from sight. And then there were more targets for her—many more.
She engaged at least six fighters when she felt a hand tugging at her waist. She spun around, but it was Noah, trying to pull out another mag for her Ruger, which was on the deck at his feet. She popped out all four mags, put one of them in the handgun for him, and left him with the other three.
With a few of her Marines falling, more gaps were appearing in the perimeter, and more AA fighters were reaching the shelf, then spreading out. Fighting had devolved into hand-to-hand combat in places, and the Marines weren’t always coming out on top. She caught a glimpse of Chief, standing over the wounded while blasting an AA almost in half with his Grayson combat shotgun before falling to a fighter who came up behind him. Esther shot that fighter and dropped him.
As soon as she fired, she felt more than saw one of the fighters aim a grenade launcher at her. A launcher was not designed to hit a person, but at this range, he could hardly miss, and her bones wouldn’t do much against a point-blank detonation. Noah shoved her out of the way and faced the fighter calmly, as if on the pistol range back on base. Whether it was the sight of a one-armed Marine standing resolutely in front of him or if he just had buck fever, the fighter somehow pulled his shot high, sending the grenade bouncing off the very top of Noah’s shoulder. Her brother faltered a moment, raised his upper lip in a sneer, and took out the fighter with two well-aimed shots.
“You’re still in the fight, Ess,” he said as he helped her back up.
One after another, Marines were falling, always taking out more of the Azaad Andolanalph, but falling nonetheless. They had broken down into small groups, no longer fighting as a unit, and because of that, Esther knew they’d lost.
Blood United (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 5) Page 23
