Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade

by Mason Elliott

  Walker ignited his energy gauntlets.

  It was always surprising how fast a man of his great size could move.

  The Ejjai freaks stopped laughing when they saw death charging straight at them with those gigantic glowing fists.

  They attempted to run.

  They did not make it very far.

  14

  When read on a data pad, the the ill-fated mission on Bodis-2 should have been a cake walk. The sitrep was almost a joke. Yet there was plenty of bizarre trouble from the get-go.

  Some missions and ops were just snakebit. There was no denying it. No way around that fact.

  First of all, Bodis-2 had a population of only less than two hundred thousand divided up equally between five dome cities, all on the same west coast of the same continent.

  The mostly Joshua Tech and Mining Consortium people there were seeking rare minerals, crystals, and other materials that were only found on that system in sufficient quantities.

  Yet the history of the short-lived colony was one of nearly constant accidents and mishaps that seemed to occur there with an alarming, out of the ordinary frequency.

  Naero herself sensed something odd about the planet and its strange energy fields even on approach. Bodis-2 gave off incredibly goofy Cosmic vibes.

  Could un-luck and misfortune be quantified, or concentrated in one place? Was such a thing even possible?

  The enemy had had trouble trying to attack it, as well. Half of their invasion fleet got caught in a bizarre magnetic storm that swept by, and crash landed on the surface, with great loss of life.

  Half of Bravo’s work was already done for them, even before they arrived in system.

  Estimates ranged between five thousand or fewer actual invader troops hiding somewhere on the surface, and they had no way to summon others, now that the Alliance and Spacer navies had arrived.

  Shetanna and the Marines simply needed to locate the Ejjai and help eliminate them.

  But the defenders soon found themselves plagued by numerous problems as well.

  Even during the drop zone landing, there was trouble. All of this, despite the fact that their deployment went completely unopposed by the enemy.

  Bravo still lost more dropship transports and suffered more injuries than in many other ops where they had gone in hot–under enemy fire with guns blazing.

  First, the primary command transport with Major Luna and half of her command staff didn’t even make it out of the launch bay hangar during the drop. One of their engines burst into flame without warning, and the fire threatened the power core before finally being extinguished.

  Major Luna and her staff suffered one person killed–Corporal Darren Taylor in the initial explosion and fire within the hangar. Many others suffered smoke inhalation damage and several minor injuries. XO Viho Cheyenne and third-in-command Captain Samson Konrad departed in a second dropship, as was SOP, to take over the op down below onworld.

  But the strange magnetic storm effects plaguing the planet suddenly returned without warning, and left half of the ships of the 127th and 863rd naval fleets disrupted, most of their warships floating helpless around Bodis-2.

  Cheyenne and Konrad and their teams were soon floating helpless up in the big black also, waiting for rescue and retrieval.

  The only junior grade command officer who made the actual drop turned out to be Second Leftenant Holly Mitsubishi, no direct relation to Naero’s Mystic comrade, Hashiko. Holly assumed command, although technically, Naero outranked her.

  Bodis-2 was a stupid little temperate rock, with some mildly active vulcanism. There were weird particulates in the mildly toxic atmosphere that made it unbreathable. Strange energy readings and odd levels that defied analysis or description were also present.

  Correction. One could breathe the atmosphere and survive it, once exposed, but doing so made people loopy. Exposure caused people to flip out, hallucinate, and dive off cliffs or fall into the equally tainted rivers.

  Everything on Bodis-2 seemed tainted with these drug-like, narcotic effects. The animal life seemed more or less immune to such effects, but they could at times behave in weird ways as well.

  All forces remained under strict orders to stay buttoned up, as if they were fighting in a toxic and caustic atmosphere. All safety precautions and protocols had to be observed.

  But their problems and mishaps only seemed to mount from that point on. 2nd Platoon leader Anaconda Wilde slipped and fell backwards off of a loading platform and fractured her neck slightly. Enough for her to get put on a medbed and await evac, along with a growing list of several others with equally unfortunate and bizarre injuries.

  Whip Konrad, for once, said he had a good feeling about this op. He wasn’t going to die.

  Then a mining ore hauler ploughed into him. He could have been killed, but his crushed armor saved him and sent him to the medical ship for the first time in his actual Marine career.

  Moses Fay’s heads-up display went nuts and started playing movie vids only in fast forward mode. He couldn’t unseal, and had to be led back to the dropship by teks as if he were blind.

  The teks had their hands full with all sorts of malfunctions and problems. Along with the dropships acting up, almost every E-19 pulse rifle–only the standard primary weapon of the Spacer Marines–powered down and would only come back up in training mode.

  Yeah, that was going to be a big help in combat.

  Several Marines, such as Trevor Lakota and Michael Borelli, grew a bit concerned when their G-1, HE microgrenades started blinking as if activated.

  The Marines scrambled to toss the grenades a safe distance away, but nothing happened. The platoons tested some of their grenades, but only half of those went off as they should.

  Corporal Choti Donovan was on point with a patrol when suddenly her entire suit of stealth armor disrupted and zapped her into unconsciousness.

  At first they thought she had struck or triggered some kind of enemy stun mine.

  But a quick diagnostic said that her suit had shorted out when she took a leak. Despite the fact that the nanomaterials of those suits were specifically designed and engineered to process human waste internally. They functioned so efficiently that they were rarely even questioned. The fact that one had malfunctioned was in itself amazing.

  Reports reached them from a few other Marines who got zapped when they tried to pee.

  Kerrel Apache’s gravwing had her bouncing up and down until she deactivated it. Mystaria Romanov complained that her comlink merely echoed and repeated everything she tried to say. She couldn’t receive or hear anything.

  Clive Luna–no direct relation to the major–said that his suit was filled with the overpowering scents of fresh flowers, nearly choking him. Everyone else told him to shut the hell up and go on smelling his damn flowers and quit complaining. There were far worse odors to be trapped inside one’s suit with.

  Corporal Kerrington’s leg armor froze up and would not move. He floated back to the drop point to wait in line to see the teks.

  Branton Taylor fell into a steep ravine and fractured his right foot.

  Maurice James kept blinking into stealth mode and vanishing for no reason. Julian Kothari’s suit, on the other hand, kept changing from one bright, flashy color to the next.

  As these various concerns, incidents, and mishaps continued unabated, Naero called a halt to their advance.

  “Everyone stand down, maintain security as best we can, and perform a level-1 diagnostic check on all of their gear–both armor and weapons. If you can’t check your stuff, have someone else run one for you. We can’t fight like this.”

  It was maddening. And they couldn’t bring fixers down to the planet’s surface for fear of them going haywire as well.

  Running the diagnostics took well over an hour, and left their effective fighting force at about fifty percent efficiency.

  Half of them couldn’t fight. Fewer than three thousand troops were battle ready.

  When there
was time, Naero tried to help the remaining officers assess their status and form a plan of action.

  They still had a primary mission: locate and eliminate the enemy forces on Bodis-2.

  Om, can you give us any help? Om? Are you there?

  No answers. Haisha. Even Om was down.

  What the hell was it with this freaky place?

  The remains of the strike force bounced around on the surface for several hours, more of them dropping like proverbial flies all the while.

  And they had yet to spot the enemy or fire a single shot in anger.

  Word finally reach them. “Call off the attack and search,” Leftenant Mitsubishi ordered. “The enemy has been found and has already been neutralized.”

  Naero couldn’t believe it. Who or what had done so? She needed to find out.

  She got the coordinates to help check it out.

  Five thousand foes lay scattered and dead across the sands, many of them at the bottoms of steep cliffs and ravines.

  Mitsubishi looked as if she couldn’t believe the reports. “For some reason, they all opened their battle suits up and went bonkers after breathing in the local narcotics in the air,” Mitsubishi said. “Then most of them attempted to fly without their gravwings.”

  Naero almost got down on her knees. “Sir, I beg of you. Get all of us the hell out of here as soon as possible,” Naero said. “This planet is the most snakebit place I have ever seen. The sooner everyone is off this whacked-out rock, the better.”

  Bravo departed Bodis-2 and fled that location with all haste and dispatch.

  No one ever wanted to see or hear from that crazy world again.

  Fourthday was another Chat Night, and all of the oddities of Bodis-2 were a big point of various discussions, at first.

  Then the usual stuff and the mundane took over. Jason Ahmed’s and his wife Karyn’s daughter Dara had her second birthday.

  Everyone shared vids of their kids and families and lovers. Any Marine who didn’t like stuff like that could go somewhere else.

  Jessy Ramsey was married to a tek named Thaedel Wang, and they had twin boys, age three, Thomas and Frederick. Miriam Decker was married to Melody Kim, and they had a one-year-old daughter named Yvonne. Mystaria Romanov and her medtek husband Mark Daniels just had the birth of their daughter Alexandra by a surrogate mother. Some female Marines on duty chose that option during their tours.

  Actually, Naero didn’t mind watching vids of happy people one bit.

  It actually worked to help hold off the nightmares of countless dead civies, staring up from various battlefields.

  Later that evening, Naero gravitated toward her gentle friends, Chime and Jonny Fox, and their quiet, easy-going ways. They weren’t usually all hyper, or full of crap, or on the make like some of the jarheads were.

  Chime sat there between them, smiling and laughing softly to herself as she read one of her books. Until she dozed off and fell asleep peacefully on Naero’s or Jonny’s shoulder with her thumb still marking her page.

  Naero thought that her odd friend Chime was a pretty young Spacer, but she was definitely the most beautiful when she was asleep that way. There was a quality to her finely fashioned face that made her look fresh and at ease, and not either wily or distracted as she often appeared when she was awake. But she also looked childlike and vulnerable.

  No wonder Jonny, her cousin, always felt protective toward her, and asked others in her squad to look out for Chime. But Naero came to learn that all of the Marines had each other’s backs. Each was willing to lay down their life for their sisters and brothers.

  And that fact ennobled the lot of them, whether they were fools, or dreamers, annoying twits, horndogs, or rat bastards on their own. In combat, there was never any question of that great and mighty fact. Everyone could count on it, and that was an extremely good and powerful thing.

  Jonny sipped Jett with Naero and droned on a bit longer. He liked to talk about his future plans for himself, Chime, and their greatgran, after the High Crusade was won and over.

  “Do you know what I’m gonna name my ship, N?”

  Naero flashed him a smile. “Tell me Jonny.”

  “Gonna name her The Green Fox. And I’m gonna christen her with a big bottle of Jett. My first ship, like all Spacers want.”

  “You gonna join one of the booms, Jonny Fox? Gonna go off and explore?”

  “Nope. Don’t want any of that. Plenty of others to do all of that, and more power to them. I just want to set myself up with a nice, safe, comfortable milk run. I don’t care where it is, just as long as it’s peaceful and quiet. I’ve had enough excitement being a Marine to last me…forever. Maybe even find me a sweet little wife…and just maybe, some kids someday for greatgran to fuss over before she makes the next journey.”

  “Even for you, Jonny Fox? A wife, and even kids, someday?”

  Jonny sighed and smiled. “Stranger things have happened. Even so.”

  15

  General Walker’s Marines from Bravo Command maneuvered into position under the cover of darkness using their stealth gear.

  Naero agreed to slip in ahead and bait the trap, in her battlefield role as Shetanna–The Dark Angel of Death.

  Get ready, Om. The show’s about to start.

  I will need some time to prepare, concentrate, and focus enough of our energies in reserve, before you deplete them all again.

  Just get ready and keep us ready. I’m going to set our game plan in motion.

  I will do all that I can to assist. Call upon me when you require me. Good hunting, Naero.

  Thanks, Om.

  The invaders would do anything to have a chance to destroy or capture her.

  She was, in fact, the actual, literal bait, and the trap was being set for an entire invasion force of Ejjai elite that ravaged the Corps border world of Tholos-4.

  No local planetary army, military, or militia had been able to stand before the horrific onslaught of the alien invaders.

  The Ejjai hammered the local landers into submission with advanced artillery, orbital bombardment from Ejjai fleets, and close assault gunships and gravtanks.

  Then the terrifying collection process began, and all the living, wounded, and dead were hurled into the shrieking, whining processing blades of the robotic meatships.

  The horrible sounds of the meatships warred with the screams of their countless victims.

  Given time, Ejjai mass cloning factories and robotic ship- and weapon-building factories would also be established onworld.

  The murdering bastards had already wiped three major cities and their mixed populations off the surface of the hapless planet, before Naero and the Marines could even deploy onworld.

  The enemy left those lost cities little more than red, blackened, burning scars and stains that could be viewed from orbit.

  Nothing left alive.

  Ejjai hyaenanoids loved carrion.

  Every man, woman, and child of any kind, species, or age that the enemy captured was routinely tortured, killed, and processed into rotting ration blocks in the horrific, robotic meatships of the invading aliens. That included any sentients, pets, livestock–anything and everything that was meat.

  The meatblock rations were frozen only to keep them from breaking down and decaying completely.

  Hatred was too gentle a word for what most humans felt for the Ejjai invaders and their extreme methods. Spacers, landers, and each of the other known races that encountered the Ejjai quickly learned to feel the same way.

  This vile, uplifted, intrusive, and opportunistic species needed to be completely exterminated wherever it was encountered.

  The invaders proved that they were incapable of coexisting with any other living things.

  The Ejjai could only dominate, torture, and destroy all life that they encountered, anything they could sink their teeth and claws into. Uplifting them, and giving them advanced weapons and starships had only turned them into a galactic abomination, an interstellar menace, a virulen
t plague.

  An utter nightmare.

  One that needed to end for the poor people of Tholos-4.

  Naero and her Marine allies were there to see to that.

  It was amusing that the Ejjai always saw themselves as invincible, the supreme warriors.

  Shetanna and Bravo Command quickly intended to disavow the foe of such jaded notions, time and time again.

  The Marines of Bravo Command were the textbook picture of professional warriors. A legend among all the known systems.

  Naero loved serving with the elite of the elite. Together they made a fantastic team.

  Even the Ejjai had learned grudgingly to fear them from their initial engagements, and the proof was there.

  Every invader force that came up against Bravo Command had been completely wiped out–in record time. And then Bravo quietly packed up and headed on to the next world, ready to do it all over again.

  The enemy struggled to halt the Spacer advance and throw it back.

  They tried everything they could think of.

  Increased enemy numbers.

  Different tactics.

  New weapons–traps and tricks of many different kinds.

  The Ejjai generals turned themselves inside out trying to find a solution–a way to achieve victory against the Spacer advance.

  Bravo Command slipped in and ruined the invader’s sick, twisted party every single time.

  And Shetanna, The Dark Angel of Death, continued to use all of her amazing, Mystic powers and abilities to help the Marines keep up the pressure and drive the enemy to terror, madness, and distraction.

  General Walker worked closely with Spacer Intel, always making sure his leathernecks had the latest hi-tek toys, weapons, and armor that came online.

  As a result, they landed an entire Marine division on Tholos-4 and slipped into position, without the enemy even knowing they were there yet.

  By the time the Spacer Fleets swept in to destroy the enemy naval forces, Bravo Command would already be implementing their plan to put the foe down hard and fast on the ground.

  Three Marine infantry regiments, one artillery regiment, plus specialized units of meks, armor, and air-to-ground support.