“Do what?”
“Hell, they’ve only got small arms. We bull rush them!”
“What if that barrier’s booby-trapped?” Sergeant Orinda, who’d just arrived, asked.
“Well, we’ll find out now, won’t we?” he said before passing on the net, “Second, clear a way in the middle and lay down some cover. But watch out for us, especially you grenadiers. I don’t need an Airy up my ass.”
“On three . . . one . . . two . . . three!”
Esther was already in the passage, so as the staff sergeant surged forward, she rode him like a dolphin on a bow wave, using his bulk to propel her forward. She screamed a wordless expression of anger as she ran, vaulting over a prone Marine to bound up to the barricade. The pirates had been firing out of small slits, just large enough for their rounds to pass through. Esther figured that some of the M99 hypervelocity darts must have made it through the slits based purely on the number of darts fired. As Marines rushed up on either side of her, she put the muzzle of her dunker right up against the slit and triggered the grenade. The blast knocked her on her ass as pellets ricocheted back, at least a couple hitting her. At 30 mm, the dunker was wider than the slit, but while some of the pellets hit the edge of the slit, some had to have gotten through. She thought—she hoped—she heard the cries of anguish coming from the other side.
She started to scramble up, but Marines had swarmed the barricade, pushing their M99 muzzles into the four slits and emptying hundreds of darts into the openings. There wasn’t room for Esther to worm her way in.
“Stand by for a breaching charge!” Staff Sergeant Ski yelled out as he slapped a 10 x 10 square charge at the base of the barricade.
Esther looked up in surprise, and Sergeant Quiero said, “But we weren’t allowed Cat-2 explosives!”
To limit damage to the Excavator King, the platoon had been restricted to their small arms. Esther had been surprised that the grenadiers had been allowed their Airies, but she figured that was a case of do first and ask permission later, especially if the rockets hadn’t been expressly forbidden.
“I really don’t give a shit now. Do you?”
“Uh, no Staff Sergeant.”
“OK, now. I’m arming this for ten seconds, so you all better get back. Fire in the hole!”
Esther joined the rush back. Three of the firing slits were quiet, and only from one did rounds continue to chase them. Even those rounds faltered as Staff Sergeant Ski, who was counting down, reached “four.”
“Stop! We surrender!” a voice called out.
“Too fucking late,” another Marine muttered as a blast filled the bridge, sending a cloud of smoke outwards for an instant before the cloud was sucked back into the gaping hole. Immediately, the ship’s alarms went off as the air rushed out.
“Seal the lieutenant’s face shield!” the platoon sergeant shouted.
A pirate, no more than a teenager, stumbled half out of the breach before falling, gasping for breath as he fought the rush of air evacuating the ship. His face was bloody, but it was obvious that the lack of oxygen was his biggest problem. Esther stared at the pirate, fascinated as he fought for life. She wondered how long it would take him to die. The ship might be small, but there was still a lot of air in her, and it would take a while to completely blow out.
“Quiero, take a team and check it out.”
Sergeant Quiero, along with four Marines, rushed forward. One of the Marines kicked the contorting pirate aside. The Marine carefully stepped through the hole in the barricade—the MR armor was great against projectiles, but not so great against a slow, steady tear, and he didn’t want to snag his EVA on the shredded metal.
Without much air left, the externals were worthless, so Sergeant Quiero passed on the net, “Five pirates. Three KIA. The breaching charge went all the way through the ship’s skin.”
“Doc, check on the lieutenant. You two,” he said, pointing at Esther and Eason, “slap some emergency hoods on that guy and the other WIA.”
Esther ran to the bulkhead and pulled off two emergency hoods from the bright orange canister while the staff sergeant started his report back to the ship. Giving one hood to Eason, she bypassed the barely moving pirate still lying in the breach and stepped behind the barricade. Sergeant Quiero pointed at one of the pirates, a middle-aged man who looked like he could be the local librarian. One of his legs was a bloody mess, and he was motionless. Alive or dead, she’d been told to put a hood on him, so that is what she did. She checked the O2 flow, then stood up and looked around. The space behind the barricade was only about two meters deep. Across from the breach, above a data readout desk, a 15 cm-wide hole reached to open space. This wasn’t a man-o-war, of course, so it didn’t need a heavy skin, but still, there was plenty of debris in space, and radiation could be a problem near any star, so she was surprised a mere breaching charge could penetrate the hull, especially after blowing through the barricade first.
Her eyes dropped to the three bodies at her feet. She thought she’d have felt something more significant upon seeing a casualty of war. But she didn’t feel much one way or the other.
“Hey, Boot. That was you firing your dunker through the firing port, right?” one of the Marines, a corporal, asked over the P2P.
Remembering falling back on her butt, she was tempted to say no, but the truth would out anyway, so she admitted it.
“Well, you zeroed this poor sucker,” the corporal said, nudging one of the bodies with his foot.
“How do you know it was me?”
“Look,” he said, using his foot to turn the body over.
Most of the pirate’s chest was gone, from the collar to the bottom of the sternum. A few bright pieces of white bone showed through the red mess.
“That’s not darts there. That there’s dunker pellets.”
“Really?” she asked, stepping forward for a closer look.
She knelt putting her face shield close to the mangled body.
He’s right. Those are pellet hits. I killed this guy!
Where she had been complacent before, now a surge of excitement threatened to make her scream out in victory. Only moments before, the dead pirates were just so many hunks of meat. But now, she had a connection with one. She’d taken his life. It was personal. Some people probably thought she should be somber, reflecting some deep philosophical insights on the fragility of life. She didn’t give a flying fuck on that. She was pumped, pure and simple.
Her father had been a student of history, and one of his favorite quotes had been from a 21st Century, Old Reckoning, US Marine general.
The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some assholes in the world who just need to be shot.
Esther had always thought the quote to be somewhat intriguing, but she’d never really put that much significance to it—until this moment. She was a blooded warrior now, she’d taken a life. This was a significant event, a rite of passage. Whatever self-doubts she’d had back on the Gallipoli had vanished in a puff of smoke. She was a combat Marine now.
She reached a gauntleted hand out and touched the bloody mess of what had been his chest. Bringing her finger to her EVA helmet, she touched her forehead, leaving a small red dot. “Blooding” like that was a trope in just about every military flick and novel ever made, but somehow, it felt right.
DX-4
Chapter 19
Noah
“Keep your alignment!” Staff Sergeant Primavera passed over the platoon net.
Noah’s PICS subdued the platoon sergeant’s voice to a normal level, but from the inflection, he could tell that the staff sergeant was screaming into his mic. Noah looked to his right and left. He was pretty much on line with the Marines on either side of him, so he didn’t think the staff sergeant was singling him out. Still, he cut back a tiny bit, shortening his stride.
He was just happy to be in his PICS and actually maneuvering. Wayfarer Station was not really set up for PICS training. A Marine
in a PICS was just too big for a good proportion of the station’s passages. Up until now, the only training Noah had received in his PICS was in the mobile RCET. Unlike the huge RCET at Camp Charles, there was no actual maneuver taking place. The chamber was barely four meters square, so when Noah “walked” his PICS, it was over a sliding platform. From inside his PICS, it seemed like he was moving forward—that was the party line, at least. In reality, it felt like he was stuck on a slippery pillow. The high-end imaging was fine, but Noah had played in more than a few immersion games where movement seemed more realistic.
This, though, this was grubbing wicked. It was better than he’d imagined. He felt invincible as he trotted at 50 KPH along with the rest of the platoon in the movement to contact. Ten klicks up ahead, a squad from Alpha was waiting for them, and Noah uncharacteristically wanted nothing more than to kick their sorry asses.
DX-4, or “Dixie,” was rapidly becoming Noah’s favorite planet in the Federation. Sure, it was only in Phase 3 of terraforming. Sure, it only had a 10.4% O2 level in the atmosphere. But the wide-open spaces and lack of much of a population made it a playground for not only the battalion, but for all Marine units in this sector of space. With fewer than 3,000 terraforming techs on the planet and probably fewer than 100 buildings, that left a lot of room for Marines to train as they would.
It wasn’t an easy slog for the foot infantry. The O2 level was the same as a simulated 5500 meters on Earth, which made it difficult to train, but not impossible. But for Marines in PICS or armor, that didn’t make any difference.
The O2 projectors scattered around the planet were completely off-limits as were various forests and newly established grasslands, but that still left millions of square kilometers where they could maneuver, fire their weapons, or do just about anything they wanted. The Marines had two expeditionary camps on the planet, and both were usually occupied with units training.
Some Marines new to PICS had problems with coordinating their displays with jockeying their PICS; that wasn’t a problem for Noah. Too much time gaming had at least prepared him for something worthwhile. He felt as if he’d been in a PICS all his life rather than his logged 10 hours actual, 14 simulated.
Thirty-nine PICS thundered over the rocky lowlands, a fighting force with more firepower than an Old Earth regiment. Noah was outfitted with the Combat Pack 1, which packed the least amount of punch, but “least” was relative. Pop him back in time to the Water Wars on Earth, and he could probably take on a tank company by himself.
On his display, he could see that Turtle and Tad were falling back, and sure enough, a moment later, the staff sergeant was on the comms again, yelping for them to catch back up. This far from the objective, it probably didn’t make much of a difference, but they were there for training, and it was good to eliminate bad habits. If a Marine fell back, then he or she would have more limited fields of fire due to the Marines in front of him or her. It took a lot to knock out a PICS, but getting a friendly fire rocket up the ass by another Marine in the team could pretty much do it.
At Phase Line Pork Chop, First Squad, along with the staff sergeant, pivoted on its axis, switched to a squad V, and headed off towards the gully to the left. They were the enveloping force, ready to sweep down whatever defense the Alpha Company Marines had set. Second and Third Squads were to conduct a frontal assault. If they could sweep over the Alpha Marines, all the better. But if not, they were to pin down the aggressors until First Squad could crush them.
This was a full force-on-force. The weapons they fired were under-powered, but they functioned as if they were in full combat mode. The individual AIs would shut down a PICS if it determined it had taken enough simulated damage that it would have been knocked out in real-life situation. That wasn’t going to happen to Noah, he vowed. He wasn’t quite comfortable with the frontal assault—it seemed too much like the infantry battles of the 19th Century wars in Europe. But as they got within range of the aggressor force’s weapons, they would begin team fire-and-maneuver, finally breaking down into individual fire-and-maneuver at about 500 meters out.
With First out of the line, the remaining two squads slowly spread out to keep the same frontage. They managed to shift surprisingly well, even without the staff sergeant haranguing them. Quickly, the range closed. At 6,000 meters, the Marines were within range of the opposing PICS armed with Combat Pack 2s, which had a HGL, firing a 20mm grenade instead of the Combat Pack 1’s M901 Hypervelocity Rifle. With one CP2 per fire team, there should be three of them facing the platoon. The lieutenant, however, had chosen an avenue of approach that wound its way through a wash. They were effectively in defilade to the objective and should be until they reached 1,500 meters out.
Noah felt a rise of excitement as they closed the distance. They were like a tsunami, unstoppable in their righteous quest. They would roll over the Alpha Marines like so many plastiboard cutouts. He could taste the victory!
And then an explosion sounded just off to Noah’s right. Immediately, the avatar for Turtle’s PICS grayed out. He was KIA.
Shocked, Noah glanced over to his friend who’d evidently just triggered a mine of some sort. Turtle’s PICS had come to the ready position and then stopped. He’d be stuck like that until after the battle when all the KIA Marines would be resurrected.
Without slowing down, Noah tried to scan the ground, but nothing was showing up. He hoped for a moment that the mine had been a one-off, but that hope was quashed when another explosion sounded to his left, and Sergeant Lewskorski was grayed out.
“Shift to Rose,” the lieutenant passed.
Evidently, their approach had been too predictable, and the Alpha Company squad had mined it. The lieutenant switched them to a different avenue of approach, out on the higher ground. The problem with that was that at 4,200 meters out, they were well within range of the aggressor’s weapons—but the aggressors were within range of their weapons, too.
The fire team on the far right climbed out of the wash, immediately went prone, and laid down covering fire for the rest of Second Squad as they rushed out. A PICS was not particularly suited to be prone—it was designed for closing with and destroying the enemy, and to go prone, the servo-gyro had to be cut-off. This was one area in which Noah hadn’t quite got down yet. Timing had to be perfect, both for going prone and rising back up. If the servo-gyro was cut too late, the “dive” to the prone would be more of a stumble and loss of momentum, and that could be lethal on the battlefield. Cutting it off too early left the Marine vulnerable to being knocked off his or her feet.
The wash was almost five meters deep. As Noah approached it, he flexed and jumped, hitting the assist. Once again, this required timing and finesse. Noah just wanted to clear the edge of the wash. Jumping too high made him a target. To his relief, he barely cleared the edge and was immediately running with the other three—no, two now with Turtle down—to get past Second Squad and turn back towards the objective.
His display was alight with weapons trails. The aggressors had them under fire, and they were firing back. His PICS AI gave him the near miss alarm, and Noah felt his heart jump, but the AI kept him in the fight.
Each PICS was in “LSD-mode.” It was almost impossible to hide a PICS from observation. But the fractured-array made it difficult to focus on an individual PICS, whether from eyesight or sensors. In his father’s day, a fractured-array merely “bent” the lights waves. Now, not only were the waves distorted, but 50 times a second, the array shifted, which sent spoofing images randomly up to five meters to either side. The enemy’s AIs were in a continual battle to anticipate where the PICS actually were as the Marines assaulted. Energy weapons could envelope the entire area, of course, but at this distance, even in the light atmosphere of DX-4, the beams would be too dissipated to damage a PICS. At this range, a PICS needed to be hit with a kinetic weapon to be taken out.
“Down in three. . .two. . .one!” Corporal Viejas passed.
Noah blinked his gyro release just as he laun
ched himself forward. He hit the dirt hard and bounced once, almost turning over. Thrusting out an arm, he managed to keep himself belly down. Immediately, he brought up his M901, looking for a target. He caught an energy bloom of a rocket being fired from a shoulder launcher, so he returned fire at the spot. Whether he hit anyone or not, he wouldn’t know until the debrief, but he at least hoped he was keeping someone’s head down.
He fired twice more before the corporal passed, “Up in three. . .two. . .one!”
Noah brought his knees up under him and with the little hitch-jump he’d been taught, pushed forward, blinking the servo-gyro just as he extended his legs. If he pushed up too low, the gyro would fail to catch, and he’d be out of control for a few moments. This was the first time he’d tried it while under pressure, and for a moment, he thought he screwed up, but with an almost palpable groaning, the servo-gyro managed to right him, and only a step behind the others, he was running forward again.
One after another, four fellow Marines were knocked out, which was more than Noah would have imagined. Twice more, Noah’s team went prone to give covering fire, and each time, Noah was smoother in both going down and getting back up. The distance was closing, and Noah’s AI was finally beginning to detect the enemy. At least two were KIA, and probably more. Any moment, Noah expected to see First Squad sweep in from the right, rolling through the aggressor position.
“Prepare for individual rushes,” the lieutenant passed.
Noah was in the middle of this team, so when they bounded forward, he didn’t have to worry as much as to where other Marines were. Now, about to shift to individual rushes, he had to be more cognizant of where he was with relationship to others. Each Marine’s AI should keep them from friendly fire, but that had been known to fail, and even without getting hit by one of his platoon, he could mask one and keep him or her from firing by being out of position.
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