All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) (40 page)

Chapter Nineteen      
 

      Ingrid awoke to the first sergeant kicking her feet.
 
It was still dark.
 
The home system’s star had yet to make its presence known.

      “Get up and get ready for company,” he hissed.

      She woke her crew and had them get in position.
 
Climbing into the tank commander’s seat, she fired up the thermal sights and scanned around her, seeing nothing as far out as the thermals scanned.
 
She listened to the command net and heard nothing, wondering just what the first sergeant meant.
 
She had been in such a hurry to get her crew ready for combat; perhaps she misunderstood.

      She was just about to climb out of the tank when she saw it through the gloom.
 
It was a black moving mass coming from the south and aimed at the corps support base directly below them.
 
She stuck her head back down in the turret as the radios came alive.
 
Artillery fire support requests started coming across the net from those without the automated capability.
 
The First Sergeant came up and told the company to fire up the engines.

      Ingrid gave her crew a quick synopsis of what was going on outside.
 
She told her charger, Private First Class Ramirez, to fill up all but one row of the rack with antipersonnel charges, and to put antitank charges in the top rack.
 
After sticking his head out his hatch and seeing the advancing mass, he went at his task with religious fervor.

Captain Kopinsky came up on the company frequency and said, “All Alpha elements, this is Alpha 6.
 
Prepare for direct fire mission, personnel in the open.
 
Range 5000 meters.
 
Fire at the front of the line initially.”

      Ramirez loaded the first charge and was prepared to load them as fast as possible after that.
 
He remembered a class in armor training about the AP charge, how it was propelled down the tube by magnetic attraction and was held together by a decaying positive charge, until that charge bled away.
 
It then released the Yestepkin energy into a 20-meter circle.
 
The range of the burst could be set based on the strength of the electron charge.
 
Five thousand meters was beyond max range, but things worked differently in combat sometimes than they did in the manuals.

      Ingrid aimed her laser rangefinder at the leading edge of the T’Kab swarm and set the charge for that range.
 
She heard the artillery forward observer repeating the request for fire as he input them into the fire control system, and then heard the whumps behind her and to the east.
 
The ground covered by the advancing swarm erupted, and Ingrid could see whole and pieces of T’Kab flying through the air.

      Captain Kopinsky radioed, “All Alpha elements, fire at will.
 
Concentrate on the leading edge.”

      Ingrid aimed her laser rangefinder at the leading edge again, reset the range on the charge and pulled the trigger.
 
A hole formed where twenty or more T’Kab soldiers had been.
 
She settled into a rhythm of laser, adjust range, and fire. She kept that up until the tank had fired twenty charges, then hit the barrel cooler switch to bring the barrel temperature down.
 
If it got too hot, there was always a danger of overheating and throwing the aim off.
 
The cooler did its job in under a minute.

      She fired another row of charges and looked at the advancing swarm through her binoculars.
 
The column wasn’t as thick as it had been.
 
The tank and artillery fire, plus automatic weapons fire from the support troops, was taking its toll.
 
A crimson glow from the sky turned into a fireball of plasma, landing in the middle of the swarm.
 
The fireball incinerated hundreds of T’Kab soldiers, and left a smoldering, blackened crater in the battlefield.
 
Two more came down in quick succession, but still the T’Kab came on.

      Flights of AG-122s came next.
 
Ingrid wondered if one of them was Brad, then put the thought out of her head as she kept firing, shredding the front line.
 
She saw the support command’s defensive line open fire on the swarm, so she switched her firing to further back in the mass of the T’Kab swarm.
 
Two plasma bombs went off in the middle of the formation, and still they came on.
 
She heard the infantry platoon open up on something behind them, and turned to look behind in time to yell for Ramirez to button up as a squad of T’Kab advanced on her position.

      She slewed her mini-turret with the Yestepkin heavy machine gun, set it for anti-personnel charges and opened fire.
 
She slewed left and right, shooting at anything that was shiny and moved.
 
She told Ramirez to open his hatch and guard the rear anytime he was not prepping charges.
 
Ramirez brought up the medium machine gun and mounted it to face the rear.
 
He no more powered it up than he blasted three T’Kab trying to sneak up.
 
Ingrid went back to firing on the swarm.

* * * * *

      Brad left Sheila on the rock pile and silently trailed the T’Kab patrol until they came to the edge of the forest and the valley.
 
They quickly dispersed and fell onto pre-dug positions with heavy missile launchers.
 
Brad pulled out his tablet, marked the spot and backtracked.
 
Paying attention to not stepping on branches, he almost walked into a T’Kab soldier that must have missed the formation and had to catch up.
 
Brad laced him from second thorax to head with his carbine then ran back into the woods.

      He made it back to Sheila and told her to sleep.
 
He would wake her in an hour.
 
He fired up the rescue radio and talked to the net controller, passing the coordinates to the T’Kab ambush site.

      Brad startled himself awake.
 
He must have dropped off, because the sun was high in the sky.
 
He looked over at Sheila and saw her curled up in the fetal position.
 
He wiped the sleep from his eyes and told her to get her stuff together and prepare to move out.
 
Sheila zipped her flight suit up, handed Brad some trail mix and a juice box, and they took a moment for breakfast.

      Brad led them north to avoid the missile launcher position and allow them to take advantage of a wooded creek bed that flowed down from the wooded highlands to the floor of the valley just east of their location.
 
He spent a long time scoping the area with his binoculars before they moved down into the creek bed.
 
Satisfied that if there had been a large T’Kab unit in the creek, he would have seen them by now, the two cautiously dropped down into the creek bed and followed it downhill into the valley.
 
Brad figured it was the best place to get picked up by the corps.
 

      They walked down the creek as silently as they could.
 
When the creek flattened out at the valley floor, they took a northern branch, whose southern bank had gouged away, providing a natural bunker facing away from the direction of 5th Corps fire.
 
To be doubly safe, he contacted the search and rescue detachment on the survival radio and reported their position in the creek bed and a sincere desire that no one would fire on them.
 
This was a different net controller than he had talked to earlier and more of a stickler for regulations.
 
He kept asking Brad to authenticate himself.
 
Brad could think of no way to do so and neither could the net controller, but his standard operational procedure said he had to receive authentication in any situation in which the downed party could have been compromised.

      Sheila laughed and said, “It’s too late.
 
I’ve been compromised lots of times.
 
Here, give me your tablet.”
 
She took his tablet, set it on a rock, and set the self-timer.
 
Then it took a picture of them and transmitted it to the net controller.
 
Sheila had her fight suit unzipped with the sleeves tied around her waist.
 

      The net controller came back on the air laughing.
 
“Okay, you’re authenticated.
 
I’ll pass your message to the Corps Fires Cell and tell them to make sure not to drop anything heavy on your heads.
 
I’ll send your picture along to give it a human face.”

      Chuckling the entire time, the net controller forwarded the picture of them shooting the bird at the camera and their location data.

      Brad put the survival radio away and asked, “Sheila, what would you have done if that hadn’t worked?”

      She chuckled and said, “Well, you and he would have gotten one hell of a show.”

      Brad did not understand what she meant right off, but as it dawned on him what she was suggesting he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Oh? Oh. Oh!”

* * * * *

      General Brown made one of his infrequent walking tours of the spaceport and looked at all of the entrenchments, bunkers, and tangle wire.
 
He asked to see the commander and the next higher commander.
 
Mary came out of her bunker with the general’s aide. “Lieutenant Colonel Chen, 1st Special Operations Capable Battalion, sir.
 
How may I help you, sir?”

      General Brown looked Mary up and down, then turned his attention to the battalion area and said, “Colonel, your area is a mess.
 
You look like you are ready for the whole bug army to march in here at any minute.
 
Where is your commander?”

      “General, mine is an independent battalion and directly under division troops.
 
Major General Allans is off the planet, on the Milton.
 
As far as my battalion area, I would have more defensive preparations than this, but all the divisions engineer assets got pulled away for a higher priority mission.
 
Sir, I’d like your opinion on something,” and she led him onto the roof of her bunker.

      The general followed her, paying more attention to her backside than anything else and then he looked up.
 
Stretched before him as far as the eye could see were black shiny carcasses being dumped into long trenches and covered over, and a new trench being dug.

      The general turned to Mary and said, “It seems there is an after action report I have yet to read.
 
Did your battalion do this?”

      She replied, “I had a lot of help, sir.”

      “How many did you lose?” 
       “Five KIA, including one of my medics.
 
He is being considered for the Medal of Honor.
 
That might be why you haven’t seen the after action report.
 
It was probably attached to the citation and endorsements by Major General Allans, Lieutenant General Tsien, and Vice Admiral Conover, and forwarded before you arrived and assumed overall command, sir.”

      “Do you still have a copy, Colonel?”

      “I do, sir.
 
I’ll forward it to you as soon as you leave, sir.”

      “Thank you, Colonel.
 
Carry on.”

* * * * *

      Major General Allans and Rear Admiral Diggs conferred on their pending subordination under the newly created 16th Assault Landing Task Force and the 8th Marine Expeditionary Force.      

      Rear Admiral Diggs commented, “The Milton will become flagship for the 16th, under a three-star to be named later.
 
I’m betting they’ll pluck Minacci off of Fleet staff.
 
I was his exec before.
 
He’ll be good at using us wisely.
 
I see a lot of planet hopping raids on major communications hubs.
 
If we can control the major cities and the routes between them, we control the world.
 
If we can jump ahead of the corps and secure the route of advance for them, we can subdue this planet.”

      Major General Allans said, “I don’t know who will command the 8th Marine Expeditionary Force.
 
I guess it could be Baines out of the School Command.
 
He’s good and a bit of an academic mind, I’ve been told. Whatever, it will put a layer between me and Brown and that’s a good thing.”

      “Are you having trouble with Brown?”

      “Who isn’t?
 
It’s rumored that Tsien came up with this marching through Georgia plan just to get out from under him.”

      “How is Tsien’s corps doing?
 
The reports suggest he is facing some steep resistance.”

      “He got hit by a swarm this morning.
 
Hit him on his flank and into his support group.
 
The battle was still going on when I came up.”