EMPIRE: Intervention (EMPIRE SERIES Book 13)

by Richard F. Weyand

  Sergeant Major Brennan Dempsey was acutely aware of the size of the M15 from his position on the ground. The tank came up over the hill alongside him, in sight of its objective, and fired its seven-inch main gun. He watched as the shot cleanly missed the target, a hardened bunker three miles away, overflying it and impacting well downrange.

  “What the fuck, Sir? Lieutenant Halvorson, how can you miss a building at three miles?”

  “Sorry, Sergeant Major. Jankowski wanted to give it a shot without the automatic firing system. I thought I’d humor him, but he seems to have lost his touch.”

  “I’ll say. If I might suggest we stick to protocols, Sir?”

  The big gun fired again, and the high-explosive-penetrator (HEP) round hit the hardened building square in the middle of the facing wall. The resulting explosion blew out the armored doors of the bunker, and the ceiling of the building sagged and then caved in.

  “There ya go. That’s more like it, Sir.”

  Of course, this was all happening in VR, in an Imperial Marines battlefield simulator. There was no way Dempsey would still be on his feet after being that close to the big gun of an M15 being fired. Even once, much less twice. The overwhelming shock and noise of the weapon were attenuated in the simulation for Dempsey’s observer role.

  Dempsey reset the simulation for the next crew. Halvorson’s M15 disappeared and the bunker was once more intact.

  “Next!”

  “How is the training coming along, Sergeant Major?” Major Dunleavy asked.

  “Pretty well, Sir,” Dempsey said. “There are some rough edges, but it’s to be expected. It’s been several years for some of them. We’re getting them smoothed out, though.”

  “Good. We have maybe another two weeks before we ship out to the CZ, Sergeant Major, and we need to be ready to go.”

  “We’ll be ready, Sir. We’re not that far off as it is right now.”

  “Good. Very good. Oh, and the colonel and his staff will be showing up tomorrow.”

  “The XO, Sir?”

  “Yes. Colonel Jensen.”

  “I think he’ll be pleased, Sir. And the CO?”

  “General Turley will meet us at the CZ, Sergeant Major. We don’t need to worry about her being ready to go.”

  “No, Sir. Not if half of what I’ve heard about her is for real.”

  “Oh, it is, Sergeant Major. It is.”

  “You sound so sure, Sir.”

  “I was at Groton, Sergeant Major.”

  “Ah. I see, Sir. I do indeed.”

  The freighter from Malchis to Alexa was being loaded. Of course, it was in orbit, and the containers it would carry were being brought up from the ground with cargo shuttles.

  “Only four containers, Shuttle 34?” the load master of the ICV Gregory Barrett asked.

  “Yeah, I think they’re full o’ bricks or somethin’,” the shuttle pilot answered. “And they’re eighteen-foot width, not twelve. It’s all we could do to get ‘em off the ground.”

  The loadmaster checked the bills of lading.

  “Ah, I see. One-and-a-half wide and overweight. Shit, this is gonna take forever.”

  “Nah. We got a bunch o’ shuttles on this job. And we got some other stuff ain’t so heavy. We’ll be bringin’ them up in bigger transfers. We figgered you wanted the heavier stuff first, closer to the spine.”

  “OK. Yeah, the heavy stuff goes on first. All right, bring it on in.”

  “Roger.”

  The shuttle edged toward the empty freighter, a long spinal structure around which the containerized cargo would be latched. He made contact, and a small shudder passed through the cargo ship. One of the Gregory Barrett’s load crew engaged the ship’s latches to the containers, and the load master crossed off the matching container numbers on his load list.

  What the load master didn’t know was the bills of lading did not match what was actually in the containers.

  The last items loaded on the Gregory Barrett were two dozen armored assault shuttles. They came up static, as cargo under the big cargo shuttles, and latched to the outer layer of containers already latched aboard. The assault shuttles were stacked two high and two wide under the big cargo shuttles, but it still took half a dozen cargo shuttles to bring them all up.

  With the last of the load latched aboard, and the crew returned from shore leave, the Gregory Barrett began to accelerate out of orbit and toward the Malchis hypergate.

  It was two weeks’ spacing to Alexa.

  Lyle Boardman was on the site of the proposed new dam with Lucas Joubert, the engineer from the infrastructure department. The secret police were there as well, of course. Also present was a surveying team from the infrastructure department.

  “OK, so I sent you the layout of the encampment we need for the construction workers, right?” Boardman asked Joubert.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And you guys got it?” Boardman asked the surveyors.

  “Yes, sir. Rather a large encampment.”

  “Well, it takes a lot o’ guys to build something like this, and they’re all big guys. They don’t like to be all crowded in. And you got all the earthmoving equipment and bulldozers and the motor pool and the fuel containers and all that shit, too.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Yeah,” Boardman said. “Every project, it’s the same thing. So we got enough room to fit all that in on that spot over there?”

  Boardman swept his arm out to a flat spot on the other side of the valley, what would be the far shore of the reservoir once it was filled.

  “Actually, no,” the lead surveyor said. “We maybe could shoehorn it in, but I think it would be tough, and there’s lots of room for accidents if you have the heavy equipment moving around that close to the workers.”

  “Huh. Well, shit.”

  Boardman knew all this, but he wanted them to suggest to him what he really wanted.

  “We were thinking,” the lead surveyor continued. “Wouldn’t it be better to locate the encampment down there?”

  “In the valley below the dam?”

  “Yes. Plenty of room there.”

  “Well, it can’t be too close to the site,” Boardman said. “Rock slide or something as the dam goes up, we don’t want any o’ that hitting the camp.”

  “Understood. We were thinking a half-mile from the base of the dam. That also gives the camp easier access to the highway there.”

  Boardman pretended to consider. Access to the highway directly into the capital was exactly what he wanted.

  “Well, OK. I guess that’ll work out. And no problem for room?”

  “Not at all. Easy.”

  “All right,” Boardman said. “Lay it out, and set your corner markers. We got a couple weeks before people start showing up, so you don’t need to turn on the RF units yet.”

  “Oh, we can turn them on once we have them set. They’re good for two months.”

  “All right.”

  Boardman turned to Joubert.

  “That all sounds good to me.”

  Joubert nodded and turned to the surveyors.

  “Very well. You can go ahead and lay it out.”

  “Yes, sir. Figure a week. Maybe less.”

  Darrel Thompson was sitting in his living room in suburban Monroe pretending to read a book. He was actually logged into the Imperial Marines training simulator for something called the M-Pack-5, using the access code distributed by his contact within the resistance, who went by the moniker Samuel Adams.

  The kit looked like a duffel bag. Thompson opened it with a zipper down the side to find that what he thought was a duffel bag was torso armor, turned inside out to retain the contents of the pockets on the inside. Mimicking the recorded instructor in front of him, he unzipped the arm, leg, and neck holes, then stepped into it and zipped it up the front with the zipper he originally used to open it. He tightened up the adjusters on the sides and crotch, the overlapping edges of the unit sliding over each other at the seams, and foun
d himself completely enveloped in lightweight reactive armor from crotch to neck.

  Well, that was slick.

  In the pockets Thompson found six magazines arrayed as three on a side, diagonally, down the front, a large tactical knife in a built-in sheath and a one-quart bottle of water on his left side under the arm, and one of those ten-in-one pocket tools and an array of pill bottles and med supplies down the right side under the arm, including pain-killers, stims, compress and elastic wrap, and a small field tourniquet. Everything was secured in place with a safety strap to keep it from bouncing or squirming out while moving around. On the back were two large pockets containing a jacket on the left and a rain poncho on the right.

  Inside the ersatz duffel bag, there was a ruck sack, a helmet, and a short-barreled rifle, which the instructor called an SBR. At the very back, the helmet had a tiny RF Identify-Friend-or-Foe (IFF) unit, and the instructor cautioned Thompson to pull the pin on it to activate it before entering an ‘active area.’ While infantry forces would mostly rely on visual identification, aerial and mechanized forces would rely on IFF geolocation transmissions to reduce friendly-fire casualties.

  Under the watchful gaze of the recorded instructor, Thompson unloaded the ruck sack and laid out the items on the ground. Another eight loaded magazines. Ten-packets of ‘low-residue meals.’ Ten packets of energy bars. Two sets of extra socks, T-shirts, and underwear, vacuum-packed in tear-open bags. Two sets of Marine MCUs, also vacuum-packed in tear-open bags. A one-inch pad, eighteen by thirty-six inches, for one’s torso and head when sleeping on the ground. A zippered miscellany pack included items such as a rudimentary cleaning kit for the SBR – including a bore snake, combination gun oil and cleaner, and a vacuum-packed set of wipes – a small notepad and two pens, a small spool of thin, tough nylon cord, and a roll of strapping tape. At the bottom of the ruck were five additional one-quart water bottles, accessible through an access in either side of the pack. Take loaded ones out one side, the instructor cautioned, and put empties back in the other, sliding them across as they were used.

  Following the instructor’s directions, Thompson repacked the ruck and moved on to the SBR. The instructor walked him through field stripping and reassembling the rifle, and waited patiently while Thompson performed the task multiple times until he met the time requirement. The instructor then walked him through loading and unloading the weapon. Finally, the simulation included range time, and Thompson practiced until he met the simulation’s proficiency requirement both with and without the electronic sighting aid.

  When Thompson logged out of VR, the sudden transition to the sheer mundanity of sitting on the sofa in his living room hit him like a brick.

  He had chafed under the Mieland regime’s gradually tightening security grip and gradually deteriorating economic conditions for years. He had signed up with the resistance and been told to keep his head down and bide his time.

  The time, it seemed, had finally come.

  Paul Gulliver was meeting with Minister Land’s staff in charge of training and scheduling.

  “Security Minister Land requested we train the management personnel first, and then train the lower-ranking personnel in later sessions,” Gulliver said.

  “That would be our preference also. It’s typically the way we have done things in the past, and people expect it,” the training director said.

  “Excellent,” Gulliver said. “It’s always easier if you can operate within people’s expectations. Now, as to location. The equipment itself will be delivered to the spaceport. We don’t want to be doing major shuttle operations in a highly populated area. That’s asking for trouble.”

  “That’s also as expected.”

  “Good. Now with the materials and equipment all at the spaceport, it will be easiest to conduct the training somewhere nearby. Preferably very close. What facilities do you have near the spaceport we can use?”

  Gulliver had already surveyed the facilities near the spaceport, so he had his preference. In particular, there was a big warehouse near the spaceport that would be perfect. It wasn’t being used because freight traffic had fallen as economic investment had dried up. Now to see if he could get them to suggest it.

  “Anticipating the question, we have looked at what facilities near the spaceport are available or could be made available. There are several large warehouses there that are currently open to our use. Would a warehouse be suitable for the lecture portions of the training?”

  “Well,” Gulliver said, pretending to consider. “How many people are we talking about here? For the senior management of the field personnel.”

  “Taking the general of field operations, his staff, and officers down to and including major, we’re looking at about a thousand personnel all together on the operations side. Is that too many for the first class?”

  “Let’s see. That’s perhaps forty seats across in 25 rows, right? That would probably be OK. We would have to split that up for any hands-on training, so we should probably have smaller classes for the lower-ranking personnel, but I think for overview training for the officers that would work. Particularly if the venue is large enough.”

  “Which brings us back to that empty warehouse,” the training director said.

  “And where is it again, in terms of the spaceport?”

  “It’s, um, right here,” The training director said, pointing at the map. Pointing, in fact, to the warehouse Gulliver had selected earlier.

  “Yes, I think that would work out. Let’s go ahead and plan on that, and you can start setting it up for the classes.”

  “Very well, Mr. Gulliver. And thank you for being so amenable with the planning.”

  “Oh, no problem at all. Glad to help.”

  “All right, you guys, listen up! Tomorrow first thing we break camp and pack it all up. We’re gonna set it all up again somewhere’s else, so do a good job of it, ‘cause you’re gonna be the guys unloadin’ it. So rack out now, ‘cause it’s up early and at it until we’re done.”

  There was some grumbling, but everybody headed off for early rack after mess. They’d all been here before, and nobody wanted to be dragging at the beginning of the day. They all knew they’d be dragging by the end.

  The camp came down even faster than it went up. Equipment was stowed in cases and loaded into the containers, still in the locations where they had been spotted weeks earlier. Tents came down, were folded, stakes and ropes packed up and loaded.

  With the full personnel complement the base supported at hand, they made quick work of it. By 16:00, personnel were being loaded onto shuttles for the trip up to the Julian-bound IPS Nebula Dreams. By 19:00, the last shuttle had lifted off.

  The next day, cargo shuttles began ferrying containers from the encampment site up to the Julian-bound freighter ICV William Kemp waiting in orbit. By nightfall, all the containers had been lifted off.

  The grassy plain several hundred miles from Alexa’s capital city of Central was empty once again.

  A similar grassy plain several hundred miles in a different direction from Central was also empty once again.

  Passenger liners and freighters in orbit were maneuvering for their run into the Alexa hypergate.

  As the IPS Nebula Dreams prepared to leave orbit, Colonel Henry Jensen, executive officer of the Julian Brigade, received the battle plan from his commanding officer, Brigadier General Ann Turley, already on-site at their destination.

  In Transit

  With just eight hours left to go before they entered hyperspace, Colonel Jensen sent General Turley’s battle plan to her headquarters staff and her battalion commanders and their executive officers. He scheduled a staff meeting for two hours hence, to give them all time to look the plans over.

  It also gave him and the headquarters staff time to briefly look the plans over, and to prepare for the meeting. The meeting itself would be in VR, because the general herself would be giving the initial briefing.

  Brigadier General Ann Turley and Command Se
rgeant Major Kyle Gordon appeared in the small lecture room simulation just before the scheduled time. Though of average height, Turley looked small standing next to Gordon. Both were wearing MCUs, and no one missed the little black star on the lapels of her MCU blouse. Small as she looked, this was her room and everybody knew it.

  Colonel Jensen, who had had several meetings in VR with Turley and Gordon before they had left Alexa for Julian, went up to shake their hands, then he and Gordon took their seats in the front row.

  “All right, everybody. Let’s get started.”

  The side conversations quieted, and Turley started the briefing by bringing up her first display graphic on the wall behind her.

  “This is our deployment zone. The colony planet Julian. It has a tyrannical government that has destroyed the economy and instituted police-state tactics to remain in power well beyond its electoral mandate. Given its population growth and its falling production numbers, it is edging toward economic collapse and famine. A number of powerful people want that not to happen, and that is why we are involved.

  “The population has an active resistance movement, which is much larger than the government thinks it is. We should have about ten thousand pick-up infantry from them. They will be poorly trained yet highly motivated. They’ve had access to the Imperial Marines training simulator for the M-Pack-5 kits for a few weeks, and have been instructed to drill on those.”

  The display changed, and Turley continued.

  “Our initial deployment positions are shown here. Group A will include our Aviation Battalion, Aerial Recon Battalion, and Communications Battalion. Group B will include our Heavy and Light Mechanized Battalions and our Headquarters Group.

  “The operation has been divided into three phases: a passive phase, an active phase, and a support phase. For the passive phase, Group A will ostensibly be preparing for training the locals in the use of the equipment we brought along. Group A will set up their encampment, followed by preparing their equipment and their support assets. We’re gonna set ourselves up right out in front of God and everybody, pretending it’s for the training exercises to follow.