by Rolf Nelson
Breaking away from the surface and rising slightly above it with a distinct bow-up pitch and a port list, the glow about her faint and uneven, she lowered the ramp, sending a waterfall of seawater pouring out the aft end, creating a massive foaming wake behind her as she emptied the cargo bay.
Marine
Listing, yawing, pitched up, and looking like hell with hatches blasted away and holed, mangled and melted turrets, bent gun barrels, cratered tanks, and a distinctly darker lower half, Tajemnica came ashore and plowed a flat spot on the top of the hill before settling down on the gentle inland slope, sending men running away from her. Her captain and his friends smile widely at her arrival, while being shocked at her appearance, before they too run out of the way of the barely controlled flight. Seawater was still pouring down and out of hold, leaving some fish and other sea life flopping on the shore, while they walk up the ramp. Based on the amount of residual aquatic residents and seaweed it was clear the hold was full, or nearly so, for a while. One of the side doors creaked open, letting Quinn squeeze through and run toward them, cannonballing into a hug with his arms around Helton’s waist.
“Ship says sorry she’s late, the screens are mostly dead in here, only two drive cores work, Uncle Kwon’s tired of seafood, and you need to load up as fast as you can!” he rattled off without a pause, then gave the other two men a hug. “Hurry up!” he called as he sprinted off to kick a flopping squid off the decking and down the ramp.
One of the middeck windows opened and Quiritis’s voice came wafting down. “Glad to see you’re OK, love, but where’s the others?” Helton, seeing the motion of the window, looked towards it but still couldn’t hear more than ringing in his ears.
“Love you! I can’t hear yet!” he looked up, holding his hand to his ear in a cupping motion. “Long story. We’ll load up as fast as we can.” He turned to Kaminski to get things going, still talking loudly. “Get all the able-bodied to get the injured aboard. The dead we can send someone else to pick up later. Harbin, what’s the law on civilian and medical craft in a war zone?”
The First Sergeant led him up to the middeck and addressed a screen. “Taj, details and greetings can wait. Close artillery damaged his hearing, put into text on the screen whatever I say so Helton can read it.” He quickly laid out the basics of what had happened, then Helton lays out his thoughts and plan so they could work out details. Taj provided some quick corrections by way of informing them of the extensive damage and limited firepower available.
Done, Harbin headed back for the perimeter, collecting one of the captured radios before approaching the downed drone. He deliberately walked a ways out in front of it, standing near the now motionless body. He hefted the radio and made a show of examining the controls and making a minor adjustment, then he held up fingers to indicate frequency before he spoke.
“Someone sent an unmarked drone in to play skeet with. Don’t know if it belongs to the same people who sent men to die with this radio. If not, you might want to get together…. Battle’s over. You could have sent one guy with a white flag to find out what’s up, why we were not following your plan. But that doesn’t make for good video.” He motioned respectfully to the nearby body, and continued in a tired, fatalistic tone. “If you had, there would be nearly two hundred men still alive and healthy having a party here on the beach. Juliet and Kilo companies, 12/18, are gone. You can come and pick up the dead whenever you like….
“The fact is, we didn’t want to die uselessly, and the companies you sent against us didn’t either. They were picked up and imprisoned and sent to die for the cameras and PR. I’m not afraid to die for something worthwhile. Look up my resume. But throwing lives away pointlessly is another matter…. We have a few injured ourselves, and we’ll be taking all of them, our and theirs, into town. If you have medical help out there in your battalions, send it in, unarmed, and they’d be welcome. But try to stop us, try to mess with us again, or shell us in town, and you are in breach and we go on offense… and you really don’t want this Plataean mercenary who you shanghaied and stuck in conscript cammies holding a grudge and deciding now is the time for payback, and show my shiny new company how we do things. Because we won’t just wait to slaughter helpless conscripts.
“So, all you majors, lieutenant colonels, and REMFs watching this, I doubt you enjoyed it, but I hope you found watching a man die educational. I hope it’s not the last thing you learn.”
Chapter XII
Loading
While Harbin talked and Kaminski loaded, Helton headed for the bridge to get them up to speed and give Quiritis a quick kiss, while he got caught up on current events ship-side. They had to flood the cargo bay to reduce buoyancy enough to dive deep under the water and hide without having the drives cranked nearly up to full power, which they feared would be detectable even under nearly a thousand meters of water. They had taken a great deal of damage while fleeing the port, and while the ship was nominally flyable only two drive cores were operational, magazines were all but empty, the guns were questionable from the deep immersion, and a lot of systems had significant water damage. Quiritis was nearly hysterical, and even Taj was acting more than a little funny.
Taj’s privateer avatar had his arm in a sling, a peg-leg, hunchback, and multiple bandages. “Just a flesh wound, I tell you. I’ve had worse. But let me tell you, I don’t like having gumboots in the gun barrels, or billions of blue blistering barnacles in my bilge! I’m a starship! I shouldn’t even have a bilge! And here you’ve been running around to God knows where while letting me swim about playing Nautilus to Queri’s Nemo-ett, gradually watching systems go dark, then you show up in the middle of a battle-”
“I realize that soldiers are called marines for historical reasons, love,” Quiritis interrupted, “but that doesn’t mean I want to redecorate my home in seaweed, squid, and starfish enough to make a sea monster proud. I’m sick of the smell of salt water and seafood, and seeing things swim by the mid-deck windows was giving me nightmares! Why aren’t you looking at me, and why are you wearing a conscript field uniform?”
Helton scanned the words they were saying as Taj put them on the screen. He gave her a firm hug, then loudly explained, “still deaf from close artillery hits.”
Realizing how great a danger he’d really been in, Quiritis put aside her smaller concerns and got into the nitty-gritty of what the plan was.
Done with his broadcast, Harbin ran for the side-door on the now loaded and almost completely buttoned up ship. As expected, incoming artillery started hitting before the door was completely closed. Emerging from the inner hatch into the seaweed festooned cargo bay, he could feel the ship starting to lift, and hear the clangor of a few lucky shells scratching what was left of the paint. The conscripts ducked involuntarily at the sound, but the First Sergeant gave them a reassuring grin. “Don’t be fooled, men. She may not look like much, but there isn’t any place safer in the world right now.”
He motioned for Nesbit to follow him up the stairwell. Reaching middeck, he waved to a screen, upon which the partially-armored woman avatar appeared. “Taj, Duke Nesbit. Duke, Tajemnica, or Taj for short.” The squad leader nodded uncertainly to the avatar, who coolly nodded back. “Taj is a fully self-aware computer AI, sort of runs the ship.”
“A what?” his shock was obvious, though his expression rapidly transformed into one of wonder.
“You heard me. You can trust her. Looks like she needs a bit of repair work done. Duke here is a programmer, and squad leader of our techies, helped us out taking over a transport to get here. Knows his stuff. See what you can do for each other. I’ve got things to take care of.”
Tajemnica lifted off, the glow from the drive field wavering and uneven amid the exploding artillery shells, and slid over the bluff, down to the beach, and out into the water. Unlike her recent emergence, she dove gently, leaving barely any splash or foam to mark her descent into the depths.
Lieutenant Colonel Marks didn’t like being in the dark. He w
as learning a lot of things recently he didn’t like. And right now he didn’t like second-guessing himself because of that damnable Parade Company. They’d waltzed through his lines, and the city… and into the distance, where his sources were reporting they were being attacked with combined arms twenty kilometers the other side of the river, apparently by the battalion he was squaring off against. But that made even less sense than marching in a parade. And then the open freq monologue that implied many things, among them that his opponent was down at least three companies, and now would be the ideal time to counter-strike, which he’d already ordered, but… but… something just didn’t feel right. Why would they attack their own men? Simple AWOL could be hunted down later at a more convenient time. And mercenaries rarely went rogue without some major event to precipitate it, but they’d just arrived, and didn’t attack him when in a perfect position to do so, even though he had been assured by his chain of command they’d not been hired, and they had no idea who did.
The only thing that made any sense was to take advantage of the chaos and attack now, while they were occupied. An unknown enemy was engaging the enemy from the rear, and implying it would not be passive if attacked, and now they were being shelled. But it was almost too perfect. Was it a trap? Was his command lying to him about hiring mercs? Was the audio faked? Had his sources double-crossed him?
No! A thousand times no. In the absence of any other data, Occam’s razor said it was a rogue company fouling up his plans a little, and the other’s plans a lot. The attack was moving. Go in with conviction, and get it done.
Colonel Fischer was more agitated than he’d been in a long time. The crystal clear picture that had formed in his mind was getting more muddled by the minute. The shelling should have killed most of Parade Company, unless they had dug in deep, and even then the immediate follow-on assault was expected to get any remains. The fact that they lived, and at least for the moment appeared to have annihilated the two assaulting companies of conscripts would appear to prove that his recognition of the First Sergeant was correct. But the suddenly very talkative major in charge of the four conscript transports was reporting that it was only conscripts picked up in press gang sweeps on them, and the data seemed to back him up. Most had the normal thick record of everything from childhood vaccinations to most recent job application scores and transit movements, with the normal handful of sketchy fake records criminals had bought or developed on the sly that fell apart under close examination. Only one was nothing but a mass of placeholders and default values, and he’d been hauled aboard beaten to a pulp and unconscious. It sounded implausible on one hand, but the pictures showed a clearly damaged face. While Reel often worked with small units, he didn’t work alone, and this thing looked like Lag’s work coming out of the blue as it did, but he was nowhere to be seen or heard from since Dustbowl, and he couldn’t imagine how such a thing might have been a set-up. If it was, then all their ops might be compromised.
But… they’d clearly been shot down for real unless the sensor logs had been faked somehow, which seemed more than a little improbable. And now the unknown forces were reporting they’d be taking injured into town, and going on offense if attacked… but they’d walked in, no ships were on the scopes, and no heavy weapons were anywhere to be had in the area that were not accounted for. At worst, they’d have been able to resupply with ammo from Juliet and Kilo, because there was no way guys that strung out from getting hopped up for a long forced march as they’d been would have been co-opted. How much offense could a bunch of doughy and shell-shocked city conscripts possibly have, even with Reel in charge?
An icon on a screen flashed. He tapped it, bringing up a jerky and pixelated fly-by video stream of the coast. The dirt and smoke was still in the air as he watched, but one thing was clear. There wasn’t anyone moving. Most of the foxholes were empty, there was a line of very heavy casualties between twenty and a hundred meters out from a perimeter line of foxholes, and very few inside it. “Give me a body count.”
In another small screen window a visibly shaken Lieutenant Seven pops up. “Working on that now, Sir…. Preliminary is one five six dead, sir. Can’t use body temp yet to sort living from dead, so basing it on movement and dismemberment percentages, but not seeing anyone alive.”
“That can’t be right. That’s less than just J and K companies. They can’t have just disappeared. Artillery doesn’t vaporize them even with a direct hit. Count again.”
“Already working on it, Sir.”
He watched as the unsteady and low resolution images stream by and started counting them himself, knowing the much better imagery others were getting would be a much more accurate, but he felt compelled to do more than passively wait as one pass, then another, was made.
“One hundred fifty three, Sir. But that’s still only an estimate. Many of the parts… went together, they think, so they are summing separate parts and averaging.”
That wasn’t possible. That would mean more than a hundred men had vanished. “Go higher. Spread out the search area. Assume running speed, at least ten kph, widen the pattern. See if there is some passive thermal in orbit we can use without getting caught. Are there any other units that can get eyeballs on the ground that are monitor compliant any time soon?”
“Soonest is four hours, minimum, more likely eight, Sir.”
“That long?”
“There were two observers closer, but they appear to have been hit in the follow-up barrage. Gunnery was getting very sloppy near the end of it, Sir. A no shoot-area was confused for a new fire mission.”
Fischer winced and rubbed his temples. He’d opposed a Plataean unit once before in a war game simulation, where he’d had his ass handed to him back when he was a newly minted first lieutenant. He hoped that he’d learned more in the intervening years than they had, but right now he had no idea where they were, where they were going, who they really were, how much training they had, how many there were, what they were armed with, or what they intended.
Not a good base to plan a battle strategy from.
City Battle
Tajemnica emerged from the surf near the shore by town much more slowly than she had at the battle, rising gently from the waves like a leviathan from an old sailor’s tale, water parting gently to release her from the sea’s grip with only a modest splash of protest. The reaction from the few people on shore was not quite so sedate. With the sound of distant artillery mixing with the pounding surf, gunfire outside of town, rumors of soldiers infiltrating in the night, and suddenly hostile faces on the civilian-interface officers from both forces, people were edgy. Seeing the beat-up wreck of a warship appearing without warning heading straight for the city center was not a reassuring sight. It was perhaps scarier for all the damage that could be seen; a sleek and shiny warship bristling with weapons appears civilized and might be amenable to negotiation, but a battered beast like this was clearly about much more than idle threats and talk over tea. It was here to get things done, and it wasn’t going to be polite and ask twice.
While sending the few beach-goers fleeing, Tajemnica headed for the hospital complex building in the city center. On the bridge, Kwon was handling com while Quiritis piloted and issued a continuous stream of commentary about the current situation.
An admissions nurse appeared on the screen before Kwon, smiling the bland professional smile of the well trained, well educated, experienced, or well-medicated. “What is the nature of the emergency, sir?” she asked.
“Got about forty badly torn up soldiers. Blast damage, traumatic amputations, tourniquets, and lots of bullet holes everywhere. Get everyone capable of poking a finger in a hole to the roof. We’ll be there in a minute or so!”
“You can’t bring military casualties here!”
“We can, we are, and you’ll deal with them or they’ll die bleeding out over your head. Not our choice of time or place, but here we are. Get with the program or get out of the way and let me talk to someone more interested in saving l
ives than following protocol, and I’ll have the First Sergeant talk to you personally when we arrive!” After a brief huff of offense, she got with the program.
By the time Tajemnica was hovering above the rooftop landing pad and was lowering the ramp, doctors, staff, and gurneys were arriving on top to greet the bloody carnage that was waiting to march carefully down the ramp. Some of the able-bodied men carried the injured slung in the lightweight sleeping/casualty bags that all conscripts were issued in their packs, using four men to carry the severely injured. Two could helped each of the walking wounded as best they could. They were hustling the injured off and down into the building as quickly as possible when a siren went off and Taj’s voice informed them calmly “Artillery shells incoming. Counter-fire commencing.”
Some of the conscripts, more than a little jumpy from their recent experience, hit the deck plating or roof, dropping their charges in an effort to become one with the surface they were standing on. A handful froze, some run pell-mell for the door. Most pick up the pace and pray. Whether they prayed to God or just effective counter-fire was known only to them.
The barely audible sizzling of high-energy lasers snapped in the air, making hair stand on end as if in a thunderstorm. In the distance a tiny puff of smoke erupted, then another and another, each a little closer than the previous one, creating a dotted line of silent fluff in the air that would end as metal rain on the fields outside of town. A dotted line heading their way.
On the bridge Helton tried to determine who exactly was shooting at them, Quiritis tried to identify whose craft were inbound, and Kwon and Harbin tried to locate Allonia and Sharon.
“We crashed there,” Helton told Taj, pointing to a spot on the map displayed in front of him. “Coming in along this trajectory, impact came in from that general direction, coming down through us fairly steeply so it was well past apogee.”
