“Shunt me the names of our people,” Vaughn said. “I want to see who’s hurt.”
“Naero Maeris, Kesha Aztec, Moses Fay. Deb Steiner, Bessa Jackson, Acer Adams, Baylor Scott, Trisha Marshall, and Michael Borelli. All floaters in tow. None of them can help themselves.”
“That’s what we’re here for. All right, people. We’re far enough away from the front lines. Fly low and fast under the cover of the buildings and let’s reach that aid station. Keep the wounded together in our shield pod perimeter. I want scans, eyes and ear, people. Maintain three 360 degree security all the way. No surprises.”
Yet even as they sped on, a knot of thirty Ejjai skirmishers exploded out of a nearby building to attack the small band.
“Fly through that building for cover and keep going if we can. Protect the wounded!” Vaughn roared.
They vectored through the building noted, adjusting shields and providing cover fire all the way. Even as they passed within, a storm of enemy fire peppered their unit shield and the face of the building.
A Marine fighter dipped down and blasted the exposed pocket of skirmishers with air bursts of explosive, anti-personnel ordnance.
Nearby supporting units rushed in to take over, a sortie of two Marine fireteams sweeping in to finish the job. They shot any remaining Ejjai to pieces, and sent them spinning, burning, and exploding to the ground.
A few seconds later, Vaughn and the others finally reached the aid station. Medteks rose up to meet them in order to get the wounded onto the present, linked medbeds as quickly as possible.
The last thing Naero recalled before the medbed-induced coma took over was the medteks cutting off and removing the rest of her armor and weapons. Her nanosuit they dissolved in a hurry. She felt cold and vulnerable.
We’re going to make it, N. We’re here. Your medical people are very competent. They will save us.
A female Spacer medtek smiled down at her and touched her shoulder. “Don’t worry, MCL Maeris. Your mates got you here. You’re in our hands, now. We’ll take over from here and get you fixed up. You just rest.”
*
When Naero came to, she was covered in regen paks and bandages, still held immobile on her medbed.
A few medical fixers bobbed around, monitoring the facility and the area. Naero looked around, struggling just to lift her head.
All of our friends are here, N. Everyone who made it here is still alive. Although many, just like us, were pretty bad off.
I can’t be on my back like this, Om.
Stop complaining. The more we rest, the faster we regenerate.
She told the doctors and medteks the same thing.
All of them laughed at her. “You damn fool. You and these others are lucky to be alive. Enjoy your stay with us for a few days. We’ll get you back to the front lines soon enough. Crazy MCLs.”
By the end of the next day, all nine of them from 36, in that shielded nanohut for recovery, were already going stir crazy.
They knew how these things went. In three to five day’s time, the action on Chodan-3 would most likely be over. That would be about the time they could go back to the unit.
Although the sounds of battle continued to recede into the distance around them, it still sounded pretty furious, and probably was.
But there was no doubt that it was now further away, and they would probably sit out the rest of this action, whether they liked it or not.
The nine of them still couldn’t move around much yet, but they could talk at each from where they rested, lying more or less fixed to their medbeds. Stasis fields kept them locked down. Those precautions were on purpose, to keep them from getting up and moving around, and possibly re-injuring themselves or someone else.
Elite troops were sometimes the worst at assessing their conditions.
Hence the stasis fields.
“Hey, N,” Trisha asked. “Where did you get hit?”
“All over, I think. Blast and shrapnel effects in numerous places. No broken bones, but lots of small blast fractures that are healing up inside. My armor and my shields saved my life, but they were practically shredded right off of me. Some of you are much the same, I assume?”
Moses, Deb, Bessa, and Baylor piped up in the affirmative, more or less the same as her–ragged and blown up.
Kesha Aztec called out. “I’m regrowing three fingers on my shooting hand, damn it. So I might be here a bit longer, guys. Anybody else missing any parts?”
Trisha cut them off. “I can barely see Mike over there. From this angle, it looks like the slashers took off that ugly growth sticking up on his neck. But our luck, it’ll probably grow back. Because it’s non-essential. Hairy warts like that are stubborn and hard to get rid of.”
All of them laughed, including Mike. “Yeah, laugh it up, Trish. You only wish you had a mug as pretty as mine. And for everyone’s info, I’ve still got my damn head. Think about it, geniuses. How else could I talk back at you goons?”
“Hey, Mike,” Moses told him. “We all know your brains aren’t in your skull anyway.”
Deb laughed. “Mike, we all thought you were maybe a ventriloquist or something. Your lips always move, but the sound seems to keep coming from out of your ass.” More raucous laughter.
“Yeah, yeah, you bunch of comedians. If you must know, I did get my legs all mangled up. But the medteks were able to save them. I gotta go through a partial regen to repair the nerves, ligaments, and joints. Then I’m going to kick all of your asses!”
“Oooh, big talk!” Kesha said.
“You couldn’t do any of that before,” Moses noted. “They giving you an extra leg or something?”
Bessa cut in and added, “So, I guess for now, you don’t have a leg to stand on.”
Everyone cracked up again.
“Boo! That was so bad, Jackson.”
“Bessa, I swear, when I do get out of here…”
“Yeah, sure. What you gonna do? You gonna hobble at me or something? Well scuttle my way and bring it, crab-boy.”
More bursts of laughter.
Trish sighed. “Well, guys. I might be here the longest, I’m thinking. They had to take my left arm at the elbow, and my left leg at the knee.”
Kesha tried to sound hopeful. “I like the new regen process; they say it’s only two weeks now, and a few days of hypertherapy to learn to re-use it.”
“And it doesn’t stink as bad. I’ll drink to that,” Trish said.
“She’s right,” Moses added. “Don’t you worry. I got my right arm shot off two months ago. I was back on the line in less than three weeks. Three weeks!”
“Wait a minute,” Naero said. “There’s a system we haven’t heard from yet. Is he out cold or something? Where’s that loudmouth sonovabitch Adams? Somebody kick Acer or hit him with a rock and wake him up. What’s his goddam story?”
They waited for a moment.
Acer Adams spoke out hesitantly. “Oh, I’m here, guys. I’m just resting and listening to all the jolly fun.”
“Well, you’re being awfully damn quiet about it,” Mike said. “That’s not like you at all. So spill. What the hell happened to you? You get a hangnail or something?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s…it’s a serious injury. I nearly died.”
Kesha gasped. “Haisha! Oh my gosh. Holy krap–Acer got his balls shot off!”
“No, no, no…my boys are still here. Thank goodness.”
Now Bessa gasped this time.
Acer cut her off. “No, don’t worry, ladies, the heavy artillery is still there, too.”
“Oh, come on, Acer. Just tell us,” Naero insisted.
Adams took a breath. “I got my ass shot off.”
After another pause, the other eight of them exploded with laughter.
“It’s not funny, guys. Did you ever lose your ass?”
“In a dice game, once,” Baylor noted.
They all roared even harder.
Finally it grew quiet again.
Acer spok
e up. “I think I may have to kill all of you, once I get out of here.”
They couldn’t stop laughing after that.
“You’re killing us right now,” Trisha said. “By getting us to laugh ourselves to death.”
“Get the medteks,” Moses said. “I think I’ve torn my wounds open.”
“No, wait. Wait. Quiet down, you morons. Be serious. Acer, look, tell us the truth. All of us got our asses shot off. It’s just a figure of speech, right? Tell us true.”
“Naero, I wish it was. My ass is completely gone.”
They exploded with laughter again.
“Oh, and it was so purty, too!” Bessa said.
“Stop. Stop!” Trisha said. “My head’s going to explode!”
“This isn’t funny, guys. I have no ass!”
“Mercy! I can’t breathe!” Kesha warned them.
“Well,” Moses said, “I guess you’ll be sitting around for a while in the regen tanks…re-developing you cheekiness.”
“You won’t be needing those assless chaps of yours anymore for Dance Night.”
“Hey–how would we know?”
Another explosion of mirth.
Baylor couldn’t stop laughing. “And picture this, guys. Somewhere out there–Acer’s ass is just hanging out some place, just swinging or flapping in the wind. Or maybe it’s just lying there, sizzling like two, juicy ham steaks on a griddle.”
“No, no,” Deb shouted. “Then a hungry slasher will stroll by, and say, ‘Oh, my. Why what is this?’ Then that snack-hungry bitch will slap those two pieces of fried assmeat together, and have herself a nice, dandy little hairy ham sandwich. Maybe with a little mayo, and a dash of mustard.”
“I think I smell bacon,” Moses said.
“I am going to hurt you,” Acer fumed. “All of you.”
Later that night, when they were just drifting off to sleep, all someone had to do was whisper, “Mmm…bacon!”
Then it all started up again. The bad jokes and the silliness just kept going.
“Hey, I went to pat Acer on the butt, and missed! It was like there was nothing there.”
“Acer’s going to be more careful at night, now.”
“Why is that?”
“Because, it’ll be darker. There won’t be a full moon out for quite a while.”
25
Wenga-1 was another winter world, but at least the atmosphere was breathable.
Currently, most of the planet was enveloped in various blizzard hurricanes, whirling and whipping across the endless plains and fields of snow and ice. Entire fleets were grounded in their starports for months.
Visibility was nil, nada, nacha. Scans were disrupted by the weather, the magnetic effects of the planet, and the metallics and particles in the swirling snow itself and the atmosphere.
This was winter in the northern hemisphere. Anyone would have to be insane to execute any kind of invasion under such conditions on a world such as this.
But the Ejjai invaders were never know for their sanity.
Besides, the population on Wenga-1 of 4.5 billion were all trapped in fixed locations, in nice, little, heavily shielded domes and pyramids.
How very convenient.
The Ejjai invaders spread their battle groups across the surface in groundtanks, armored personnel carriers modified and shielded for the harsh winter conditions. With the high winds, it was impractical to use anything that floated or flew. That left out gravtanks, gunships, and even starfighters.
But it brought back the use of something else.
A real blast from the past.
Megatanks.
Megatanks were gigantic tanks with guns as big as starship spinal guns, and secondary batteries larger than the regular artillery pieces that most armies deployed in battle.
They were vulnerable to air power and orbital naval fire, but in an environment such as this, they were nearly invulnerable except to direct assault.
With twenty battle groups in system, the invaders had ten megatanks onworld, and they were currently unstoppable.
The megatanks attacked in pairs to support each other. They pulled right up to dome and pyramid cites, wore their shields down, and blasted the locals into submission. Then the invaders inserted troops and a number of the mini-meatships to clean out the bodies and any survivors.
They moved methodically from one location to the next, wiping out everything in their path.
After all, they had all winter in order to do so.
Bravo devised their plan of attack and went at the enemy with modified ground tanks and meks.
The MCLs got in close enough to board the megatanks with insertion teams, and assaulted their crews and forces from within.
Shetanna and the Marines used a new form of combat armor that didn’t so much rely on stealth, but focused on providing extra protection against the very real secondary threat: the intense cold and bitter high winds.
The battles for Wenga-1 turned brutal and up-close, at short range and poor visibility in the terrible weather, on a world where scanners were all but useless.
At times the visibility was so poor that the opposing units did not know where each other was until they actually started to slam and crash into each other, separating just enough to fire right on top of one another. Or they went after each other hand-to-hand or with blades.
Both enemy and friendly units even got crushed under the treads of the rumbling megatanks.
Corporal Reyes Keller from 1st Platoon, Squad 2, Fireteam 3 perished when he was struck by an enemy tank, became lost in the snow for a time, and then froze to death from his armor being cracked open like an egg, all in the course of a major battle.
Ops usually lasted from a few hours to one or two days. With determination and enough firepower, a megatank could eventually be worn down and blasted to scrap, from within and without.
But it was quickly discovered that MCLs and boarding teams could treat them like grounded starships, and destroy them much quicker from within. They killed off their crews and leaders, moved them away from the civilian cities, and blew up their power cores and ordnance, causing near atomic-level explosions.
The enemy countered by driving their last remaining megatanks right into the heart of the capital gigacity, the largest of them all.
Blowing up those four megatanks would do the enemy’s job for them. The resulting blasts would lay waste to nearly the entire area.
That forced Bravo to attempt to use direct assaults, not to destroy, but the attempt to capture each of the megatanks, neutralize their crews, and remove them from the gigacity to a location where they could be safely destroyed.
Shetanna led the attack on one of the four megatanks, backed up by two thousand Marines, including Company 36.
They swarmed over the megatank like ants, fighting at first with all the Ejjai external troops and defenses. To anyone witnessing such an assault, it was indeed very much like insects clashing on a hill of metal with the addition of roaring guns and cannons.
Each of the enemy super vehicles kept blazing away at the stranded local population, tearing the gigacity open further, dealing death and destruction each second.
They had to be stopped.
Shettana didn’t even need to blast or cut open a hatch. That would just alert the invaders to her insertion point. She used her Mystic abilities to transport straight inside and went to work where the enemy least expected her to strike.
By the time the slashers realized they did have a dangerous intruder, Shetanna had dozens or scores of other hatches and access panels open and marked for Bravo Marines to pour through and slug it out with the troops inside.
While the Marines did what they did best, Shetanna continued on, making her way either to the power plant or the bridge. In this case, they couldn’t disable the megatanks until they got them back outside of the gigacity, so the best option was to take out the megatank leadership and ops.
The problem was reduced to fighting in very tight, close quarters wi
th the enemy, but the Marines were already highly trained and used to doing that very thing on starships.
Shetanna could cut the Ejjai down quickly enough, but then their bodies would often block the way as well, among the confusing networks of tunnels and corridors.
Explosives and microbombs simply made too big of a mess, and brought about a greater risk of igniting fires that would grow out of control and lead to even larger explosions.
Om cooked something new up with the fixers and presented them to Naero. Try these new microbombs, N. Immolation and incineration charges.
She hit the Ejjai with them. The invaders burst into flames and shrieked, reduced to ash and charred bits of bone and melted equipment. Problem solved. No piles of dead bodies blocking tight passages.
That’s the ticket, Om. Keep ’em coming!
All the while, Bravo Marines shot their way deeper and deeper into the core of the megatanks.
Om had the fixers send them all more of the new incineration microbombs and grenades.
Naero was closest to the bridge, while the Marines seized vital areas such as the engine rooms and power cores, keeping the enemy from disabling them or blowing up the megatank themselves.
“I’m going on to seize the bridge,” she told 36. “If you can get control, move the megatanks out of the gigacity. Stop those guns from firing!”
Naero studied the layouts Om fed her and transported straight up, while the megatank she was in started clanking back the way it came. But half of its guns were still firing.
The enemy command crew attacked immediately when she appeared on the bridge like a ghost, and Shetanna was quickly the center of yet another intense firefight.
She raced upside down across the low ceiling, slicing and cutting the Ejjai heads and helmets open.
The bodies simply dropped to the ground. Plenty of elbow room on the bridge now.
After she cut the megatank captain in half, she jumped down into the fire control station. Using teknomancy, she quickly overrode the megatank sec codes.
In seconds, she poured heavy fire at the other three megatanks even while her tank retreated.
In short order, all three of the other megatanks stopped firing on the gigacity, and poured fire at the renegade megatank. Then more guns on the others went silent, and they began to withdraw. The last enemy tank that could still fire pursued the megatank that Nero was in and continued their duel. Soon both ginormous war machines were on fire, blazing and dueling away at one another.
Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade Page 25
