Captain (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 4) (21 page)

There had to be another option.  Ryck hoped something would happen that would give him the opportunity he needed.

That something happened just seconds later.  The space above T-486 flared bright white for a split-second, so bright that the light bounced its way down the shaft and illuminated the command bunker.

Ryck grabbed the comms and called Lt Chomsky.

“Sir, the ALC, it just blew up!” the excited lieutenant shouted before Ryck could even ask.  “Something came fast and hit it, and my AI is trying to analyze it now!”

“It’s gone?  Completely?”

“Yes, sir.  There’s nothing left bigger than a fucking basketball!”

For all his worrying, Ryck didn’t hesitate as the plan came to form in his mind.  He immediately switched to First Platoon.

“Jeff, get the PICS squad out immediately.  I want them assaulting the enemy at my position before they can regroup.  Follow with the rest of your platoon in support.  Do you understand?”

“But sir, they’ll hit us as soon as we start coming up,” Jeff protested.  “We’re under fire now.”

“No you’re not, Jeff.  The ALC has been destroyed.  You’re clear.  Get moving now before the Confederation troops can regroup.

“Are you sure, sir?” Lieutenant de Madre asked, a tremor in his voice.

“Yes I’m sure, Lieutenant, and I don’t have time to argue.  This is an order. “

“Aye-aye, sir,” the First Platoon commander said.

Ryck had already switched to McAult.  “Mike, I want anyone who can to reach up and fire out of their fighting positions.  I don’t care if they hit anything, so no use going completely exposed.  Just hands and weapons.  Keep the enemy occupied.  First is coming to pull us out of this mess.”

“Roger that, sir.”

“Gershon,” he told his Second Platoon commander.  “I’m ordering Jeff with his PICS into assaulting the Confeds who are on our asses here.  I want you to swing around left on the z-axis, then converge on our position.  Let the PICS take the brunt of the assault, but be ready to jump in if needed.”

That left Weapons.  “Ephraim, I want all your Marines out of their fighting holes.  Be ready to get back in if another unwelcome guest starts bombarding us, but be ready to move if I need you here.”

He’d contemplated sending at least the gun section forward, but Weapons was the farthest away, and he hoped that First would have won the field by then.  And if the Confederation had some nasty surprises, well, Weapons should be mostly intact to carry on the fight.

Ryck didn’t have time to second-guess himself.  This was happening now, and he was committed.

Çağlar
, after hearing Ryck give the order to Lt McAult, had flown back up the shaft and was reaching out, his M99 pointed in the general direction of the Confeds as he let loose a burst.  The platoon had a mixture of the 4mm flechette weapon and hadron beam projectors, but in a naked vacuum, both would be equally effective against EVA-type suits.  If one of
Çağlar
’s flechettes actually managed to find its mark, the Confed receiving it would be in a world of hurt.

Ryck kept waiting for First to kick off the assault.  Five minutes went by, then ten minutes.  Sgt Contradari relieved
Çağlar
in firing, then the first sergeant relieved Contradari.  Ryck was going crazy not knowing what was happening.

Ryck wouldn’t be able to hear the assault kick off, of course, in the vacuum of space, but he should be able to see flashes of light as they bounced off of the metal in the surface.  He edged below the first sergeant, wanting to get up high enough to pick up any comms.

He knew the PICS Marines would have to be assisted up the shafts by the other Marines given the low output of their propulsion packs.  But that should take only five minutes at most, and then it should take less than four or five minutes to make it to his position. 

It was 15 minutes, though, before he saw the first flashes of reflected light.  The first sergeant was just coming back down the shaft, so Ryck pushed past him and shot out to the surface.

Protocol be damned, he could not sit by while his Marines were in the shit.  Ryck carried an M99 as well, and he swung around to face the Confeds as his PICS squad swept forward, weapons blazing. 

Ryck was barely aware of the others popping out of his bunker and Marines from Third swarming out.  Ryck was flying forward, a meter or so off the surface, firing his weapon.  It looked as if the Confederation troops had been caught flat-footed.  They were still oriented toward Third Platoon, and several of them were still firing at the platoon while 13 Marines in PICS came stomping in from their flank.  At least one Marine fell limp, his momentum carrying him forward.  Ryck gave the Marine a quick glance, and a kinetic round of some sort hit the Marine again, pushing his body into a slow spin.

A 7.5mm rocket flew past Ryck just a meter or two ahead of him.  It had been fired from one of his PICS Marines. 

“Watch your displays!” Ryck shouted over the open circuit.  “We don’t need to be shooting at each other!”

The rocket, unaffected by gravity, flew in a straight line above the surface until the planetoid curved underneath it and in flew into open space.  Ryck knew it would keep going forever, its lethal warhead searching for a target.

Ryck could see the PICS Marines moving forward, their weapons blazing.  Despite the confusion, despite the fight, his critical eye noted the professional movement of the Marines as if this was a casual walk-through at the battalion’s training fields back home.  He felt a surge of pride as his Marines converged fearlessly on the enemy.

The field fabricator exploded in a shower of sparks, taking two Confed soldiers with it as the PICS’ heavier 8mm hypervelocity flechettes tore it—and the soldiers—apart.

Moments later, the surrender was shouted over the universal circuit.  Several Confeds were still fighting, and the Marines didn’t let up.  Neither did Ryck.  As long as the enemy was fighting, so was he.  He fired a burst at a soldier who was trying to fire around a large boulder at the advancing PICS Marines, and several flechettes found their mark.  The Confed soldier fell back and softly bounced off the rocks, his body floating away, but limp and motionless.

The surrender call was repeated, and this time, the surviving Confederation troopers stopped.  None exposed themselves more than they had to as a couple of Marines still fired until numerous “cease fires” filled the circuits.

Ryck was breathing hard, but not from exertion.  The assault had been a release, more mental than physical.  He flew up a few more meters so he could survey the scene.  More than half of the 20 or so Confed soldiers were down hard.  The Marines were not unscathed, however.  He could hear the calls for corpsmen on the open circuit. 

The Second Battle for T-486 was over, and once again, the Marines had taken the field of battle. The question Ryck had to ask himself was if there would be a third battle.

Chapter 32

Ryck swept the area,
Çağlar
in trace.  His display showed six light blue avatars and four gray.  Six Marines were WIA, three from Third Platoon whose hands were taken off when they lifted their weapons to fire on the Confeds. 

Three Marines, Sergeant Justin Ramikin, LCpl Terry Hyde-Organi, and PFC Chuck Playstatus, were dead, beyond hope of regen.  All three had been in Third Platoon and had been at the forefront of the supporting assault on the Confederation troops.

Ryck wondered if he should have left the assault to Sgt Ling’s squad in their PICS.  Not one of those Marines had been hurt.  He felt guilty, knowing that his decision had cost the Marine’s their lives.

Was it really necessary?  Did I fuck up?
He kept asking himself.

Ryck went to each fighting hole.  If a Marine had been hit and had fallen back or retreated into his fighting position, Ryck’s AI would not be receiving that Marine’s signal.  He could have left this to Lt McAult to report back to him, but he was too anxious, and while the gunny was processing the POWs and the lieutenants were sorting out their men, he and
Çağlar
were checking each hole.

“Skipper,” First Sergeant Hecs passed on a P2P.  “The POWs are secure, and Doc’s getting the last Marines and Confed WIAs treated.  Four are going into ziplocs and frozen.  What are you orders now?”

Ryck stopped and looked around, trying to spot his first sergeant.  He saw that Marines were going down into each hole, and he realized he was making a very poor use of his time.  The Marines would find any more wounded.  He needed to be leading, not guiltily searching for them himself.  Mistake or not, a sound tactical decision or not, what was done was done, and he had to get back into his leadership position.

“Platoon commanders,” he passed on the command circuit, “after Doc has everyone treated, I want each platoon back at its positions, but not inside the holes.  I want your Marines standing by and ready to take cover, but we can’t afford to get trapped again.”

He did a quick check of the status of oxygen among the Marines.  Most had about 16 hours left, but a few were down to 12.  Something had to be done about that.

“Look, we’re getting low on O2.  No more trips to the tiki hut.”

That was a rough call.  Being in the vacsuits for this long was not only mentally draining, but physically.  But each transition in and out, then in and out of the vacsuit, wasted small amounts of air—amounts they could not afford to waste. 

“Lieutenant McAult, how is your hole?  Is it still usable?” he asked his Third Platoon commander.

“Not really, sir.  That thing burned off a lot of slag, and that almost blocked us in.  We were barely able to squeeze by as it was.  Another three or four minutes, and I think we would be still there, stuck inside.”

That caused a shudder to sweep through Ryck.  The Pearson Drill that had made the positions, had been destroyed during the ALC’s bombardment.  Without that, the Marines had only some frogs
[23]
to try and burn through the slag and free the Marines, and just a touch of even a spark from a frog would burn right through a vacsuit and expose the Marine to the vacuum of space.  In the confined area of Mike’s command bunker, there was really no way a frog could have been used without hitting the Marines there.   But if they stayed in the bunker, they would suffocate as their O2 ran out.

“OK, I want you to double up where you can get some cover.  Everyone else, until further notice I don’t want anyone more than ten seconds away from their fighting position.  Go to it.”

“What about the XO,” Hecs asked him on the P2P.

“The XO?  I don’t know.  Just tag along with First, I guess,” Ryck said, dismissing Sandy from his thoughts. 

Executive Officers at the company level didn’t have much purpose in combat.  They were there to take over if the commander got taken out.

“Word is that he led the assault and got it moving when Lieutenant de Madre hesitated.”

“What?  No,” Ryck protested.  “I don’t believe it.”

“That’s what I hear from SSgt Grimes,” Hecs continued. 

That didn’t make any sense.  Sandy was a good Marine, a good organizer.  But a leader?  Jeff was a natural leader,  something that Ryck had witnessed too many times.

“You don’t give the XO enough credit,” Hecs said quietly.  “I don’t think you do him justice.”

The first sergeant cut the connection, and Ryck shook his head inside his helmet.  Grimes was wrong, he knew.  The staff sergeant wasn’t aware of all the factors.  Jeff had gotten the platoon moving, and that had broken the back of the enemy.

Chapter 33

An hour later, Ryck was discussing their O2 situation with the first sergeant when the open circuit blared with “Incoming personnel!”

It was a relayed message.  The ALC had taken out the relay rekis, so Ryck had had to station Marines around the perimeter of T-486 so that anything could get passed line-of-site.   He hated to leave Marines exposed like that, but he had to be able to receive all information on what was going on around them.  T-486 was slowly rotating, and at the moment, Ryck was on the far side of the planetoid from the rest of the battalion.

“Who is it, XO,” he asked Sandy on a P2P.

“He’s got our codes, and he’s coming straight in.  He just passed a message for you, sir.  He says ‘Shart is coming in for a visit.’  Do you know what that means?”

Grubbing right I do!

“Shart” was Sergeant—no, he had to be at least a staff sergeant by now—Flavius Gutierrez, a recon Marine from Ryck’s old team on GenAg 13 when they rescued the civilians during the Trinocular War.

“Yes, I do,” he passed.  “How’s he coming in?” he asked, opening up the P2P to Hecs as well.

“Flying in his vacsuit, I guess.  We’ve got his comms, but we can’t pick up anything yet.”

Recon did not use the standard vacsuit.  Their slate-grey vacsuits were designed for very long duration missions and had the most up-to-date stealth technology. 

“Who or what is ‘Shart,’ sir?” the XO asked.

“He was on my team in recon.  As soon as he arrives, send him over.”

“Roger that.”

“‘Shart?’” the first sergeant started.  “As in ‘shit and fa—”

“Right on your first guess, first sergeant,” Ryck interrupted.  “You don’t want to know.”

“Maybe not,” Hecs said with a chuckle.  Then more seriously, he continued, “You know what that means, right?”

Ryck had to hesitate for a second before it dawned on him.  “The ALC!” 

After the battle, Ryck had tried to piece together what had happened to the Confederation ALC.  His AI, which had more processing power than any of the other Marines, had not been able to identify what had struck the ALC, only that it had been moving fast.  Kinetic energy alone had destroyed the Confederation craft.  There were unarmed missiles in the Federation’s inventory which were essentially huge, very high-velocity bullets, but there hadn’t been any Federation ships in the system when the ALC was taken out.  Ryck and Hecs had discussed the possibility that the monitor had not been completely taken out and had fired off a GD-1905  that somehow hit the ALC, but the “GD” stood for “Gravity Dropped,” and the tungsicle needed gravity to generate the force it needed.  The side-mounted rail gun on the monitor could get it moving through space as well, but probably not at the velocity necessary to completely destroy the ALC, and even that would be dependent on the tungsicle being somehow guided to the moving target. 

If it wasn’t the monitor that had taken out the ALCL, it was something else, and with Shart showing up, it was pretty clear.  Somehow, the team had used their coffin, the small two-man reki, as a missile. 

The coffin was a very high-speed, low-drag, two-man version of the normal reki used by Marines.  It was heavily shielded with stealth technology, and it was fast—very fast.  A Marine or sailor in a normal vacsuit could not take the high Gs—up to 20 Gs—but the vacsuits used by recon teams could compensate for that.  It was conceivable that a coffin could get in close to an ACL, which frankly, would not have the vast array of sensors that a capital ship would have, then accelerate right into the ALC.

Ryck felt goosebumps as his thoughts took him to the next level.  The coffin would have to be guided, and only one Marine, Shart, was coming in.  Someone had been the guidance system for the coffin to hit the ALC.  Someone had sacrificed his life for the Marines in Charlie Company.

“Grubbing hell,” he said to himself, forgetting for a moment that he was still on the P2P with Hecs.

“RIP, brother,” the first sergeant said.

The two Marines started discussing the O2 situation again while they waited, but their thoughts wandered, and both went quiet as LCpl Griffith from First escorted a Marine in a dull-grey EVA up to them.

“Shart!” Ryck exclaimed, hugging his old teammate.

“Captain, good to see you, sir,” Shart responded on the open circuit.

That took Ryck aback.  He was “Toad” to his teammates.  Recon always used first names.  Then he realized that Shart and he were not longer teammates, and normal military etiquette took over, especially on an open circuit.

“Staff Sergeant Gutierrez, it’s been a long time,” Ryck said, switching to the more normal form of address.

“Still sergeant, sir,” Gutierrez said.  “I had a sort of issue on liberty on Vegas.”

If Shart had had an “incident” in Vegas, the hedonistic resort planet where almost anything went, it must have been pretty serious.

“My AI can’t connect to your P2P.  Can you connect to me?  And to First Sergeant
Phantawisangtong here.”

A moment later, the sergeant came onto the P2P, and Ryck saw Hecs on as well.

“Honored to meet you, first sergeant.  The skipper here, he told me and the rest a shitload about you.  More about your ‘King Tong” days than your combat together, I have to say.”

“I’d say the honor is mine, sergeant.  I take it you had a hand in taking out the ALC?’

“Uh, yeah,” he responded before pausing. 

Ryck could hear him take a few breaths before continuing.

“Me and Igor, that’s Lieutenant Albert, I mean, me and him were monitoring the situation, and we could see what was happening to you guys.  We don’t have any fucking weapons, you know,  ‘cepting our personal side-arms, First Sergeant, but when you was in the shit, Igor—the lieutenant—he said we had a weapon.  He meant our coffin.  He explained to me the math with time and acceleration and Newtons and shit.  I told him I would do it, but he said no.  It was his job.”

He paused again.  Ryck couldn’t see through the recon
vacsuit
’s face shield, but he could imagine Shart trying to control his emotions.

“I tried to fight him, but he said no.  So we came in close and waited, all power off and silent-like.  When the ALC swung our way, I got off, and the lieutenant, he aimed at that fucking ship and went to 20 Gs.  Ten seconds was all it took, and that ALCL never had no chance.  She lit up like fireworks.”

Ryck’s AI did some calculations.  At 20 Gs, for ten seconds, a 300 kg coffin and Marine together would have hit at more than a million Newtons.  Shart was right.  The ALC and crew “never had no chance.”

“So I came here.  I ain’t got no ride now, so I figured I’m better off here with you.”

Ryck never knew this Lieutenant Albert, but when they got out of here, he swore to himself that he would get to know more about the man and see that he was nominated for a Federation Nova.  Ryck and all of his 220 Marines probably owed their lives to him.

“Sergeant, we’re happy to have you, and we’re in your debt,” Hecs said.

“Not me, First Sergeant.  Igor.”

Ryck would talk more with Shart later, but he knew the best thing for the sergeant was to get him back on mission.

“What intel do you have.  Any word on the
Inchon
task force?  We’ve been in contact with our other two companies, but no one knows anything.”

“It’s not good, Skipper.   We’ve been upgraded in our comms, and the lieutenant, he had a hadron repeater with the major back on Zephyr Hadreson.  Before he, you know, they told him the
Inchon
was hurt, but still in the fight.  The
Kuala Lampur,
she’s gone, but three more ships have joined up, and the Navy and the Confederation are playing cat-and-mouse.  The ships have been ordered not to return until the fighting’s over.”

Three grubbing days, and they were playing cat-and-mouse?
  Ryck wondered in disgust.

Naval engagements just did not last that long in modern warfare.  Politics was raising its ugly head, and Ryck could smell its stink.  The problem with politics was that it would be the ground troops, the Marines—and the Confederation soldiers—who would pay the price.

“Thanks for the update.  That sucks, but it is what it is,” Ryck said.  “Do you need anything? Anything we can get you?”

“No, Skipper.  But if I can crash someplace for a few winks?  I’ve been on stims for so long that they’re losing their effects, and I could use a bit of downtime.”

“I’ve got you covered, Sergeant,” Hecs said.  “You can use the command bunker.”

Hecs took Shart over to show him the shaft, before coming back to Ryck.

“Not good news,” Hecs said. 

“Grubbing politics!” Ryck responded.  “Meanwhile, we sit here running out of O2.”

“Well, there is Blue Barrel,” Hecs said.

The two of them had been considering taking the company to Bravo’s Company’s objective, the HECLA ship.    It was a long, long way to go in a vacsuit, some 100 klicks, and neither the PICS nor the three Marines in ziplocks could not make it on their own.  There were just too many things that could go wrong, and the chances were that not every Marine would make it.  Preston had already been rotating his Marines across the 30 km from Campari to Blue Barrel, and one of his Marines had been hit by a piece of debris.  He’d barely been able to get to the ship in time to be pulled in by his squadmates and put into a ziplock.  Despite all the modern technology available, space was dangerous, not meant for the likes of man.

But man needed simple O2 to survive.  As the clock ticked down, Ryck would have to do something.  The vacsuits did not have great acceleration, but by going full out for ½ the way, then reverse for the second half of the distance, they should be able to make the trip in about 40 minutes.  Giving the company two hours, the trip could be made in a more controlled fashion. 

Ryck was counting on the fact that the task force knew how much O2 they had.  They would not abandon them to die.  No matter what political game they were playing, at least one ship would come to extract them.  He hoped.

If nothing showed up at the three-hour mark, he couldn’t wait any longer.  If he wanted his Marines to live, he would have to get them to the HECLA sorting ship.