Marines (11 page)

I looked over, and at first I couldn't see anything.  But then I could make out the figures moving forward in the darkness.  I cranked up my visor to amp 20 and told my AI to clean up the blurry image as much as possible.

It was infantry, all right.  Not powered infantry, just troops wearing simple body armor.  Probably militia.  Hundreds of them.  Charging the ridgeline off to the right of my position.

And dying.  Dying in huge swaths as our troops raked their lines with fire.  Their armor, weight constrained by the need to carry the load under their own power, was no match for the high velocity fire of our nuclear-powered mag-rifles.  Our shots tore them to pieces.  I even saw a couple who virtually disintegrated as they walked into multiple fields of fire.

They returned fire, of course, but their guns didn't have the atomic power source ours did, and they needed pretty much a perfect shot to penetrate our armor.  Still, I suspected some of their shots were finding their mark.

I had my six troopers deployed to receive an attack, and we were just waiting for the enemy to reach our fire zone when I got the fallback order from Sergeant Barrick.  So whatever damage the enemy had managed to do, they must have taken out Lieutenant Gianni.

"Alright, let's move.  We're pulling out.  Odds fall back 500 meters, evens cover."  I was the second in line, so I stood fast and took some very long range potshots at the approaching militia while the odds followed my order and scrambled down the ridge.

"Ok, evens.  Let's go.  One thousand meters. Now!"  The other two evens and I raced down the ridge, stopping when we reached the edge of the town and turning to give cover to the odds.

I wanted us back in the town as quickly as possible, so we wouldn't be withdrawing under serious fire from the militia.  But the squads on each flank were lagging us, so once I got everyone back to the edge of the complex I formed a firing line so we could provide support as they pulled back.

The squad on our left made it back just after we did, but it was clear that the troops on our right had been heavily engaged along the ridgeline and were having a tough time breaking off.  I was just about the request permission to move back up and try to flank the militia attacking them when the recall signal came.

It was code white recall, which was a directive to withdraw immediately to the extraction area.  I knew what to do from training, but I'd never actually experienced a code white command.  It wasn't a rout.  Not quite.  But it was close enough.

"Alright troops, we've got a priority withdrawal order.  Code white.  We're going to move back through the town, using those buildings as cover just like we did on the way up."

We snaked our way through the town, single file at ten meter intervals.  We lost Tonnelle, who got hit by an enemy sniper just as we passed the main section of the refinery.  My readouts said he was dead, but I sent the rest of the troops on ahead and crawled back to check.  Yeah.  Dead. 

I knew that sniper was still active, so I stayed low and hugged the buildings as I worked my way back to the outskirts of the town and into the trench line we'd assaulted just a few hours before.  Jax was there along with one of his men, Russell.  The two of them were the only ones who made it back from team two, and they'd had to abandon the auto-gun.

The battle computers running command and control continually adjusted the communications echelons to account for casualties and automatically routed messages accordingly.  Apparently we'd lost enough officers to bump me onto the main command channel.

"Attention all command personnel, this is Colonel Wight provisionally commanding Strike Force Achilles.  This is a priority one evacuation.  We have hostile naval forces inbound from the Vesta warp gate.  The fleet is bugging out before it can be engaged by superior enemy forces.  You have 30, that's three zero, minutes to get your troops back to the staging area.  Command control will download specific location to your AIs.  Get your troops there on time, because in 60 minutes the last shuttle is launching, and anyone left here is SOL."

Colonel Wight?  She must have been six places down on the command chart.  Seven, my AI reminded me without my asking.  So things hadn't been any easier on the high command than they'd been on the rest of us.  Actually, I found out later it was mostly communications failures that put her in temporary command.  General Everest was killed, and Brigadier Simonsen was wounded, but most of the rest of the top echelons made it through.

The colonel's voice continued, firm but strained.  "Reports indicate that the enemy is putting pressure on us at all points.  It looks like the hostile ground forces knew the relief was coming.  We hurt them pretty badly, and it doesn't look like they have a lot of strength left, but it's probably going to be a fighting withdrawal for us.  If we left rear guards they'd never make it back in time to evac, so we're just going to fall back as quickly as we can, fighting the whole way.  Do the best you can, and let's get home."

As soon as she finished, my AI chimed in and advised that I'd received our specific rally coordinates.  They automatically popped up on my holo display.  Hmmm, not far from where we set out a couple days ago.  I got my little band up and out of the trench and across the field we'd advanced over a few hours before.  We were lucky again, and we didn't see much enemy fire.  The troops on our right - well, actually our left I guess, since our front had changed 180 degrees - seemed to be taking the brunt of the attack. 

I kept checking my chronometer and the distance to the extraction point.  We were OK, barely, but we didn't have any time to waste, so I didn't even pause at the original trench line.  We just hopped over and headed back the way we'd advanced to the front.

The ground was torn up even worse than it had been a couple days before, and even in armor we lost time as we scrambled in and out of craters filled with neck-deep water and muck.  The strength amplification of the armor let you power your way through the mud, but it didn't stop you from sinking in with every step.

Twice I had to halt the group so we could turn and engage enemy militia who had caught up to firing range.  Both times we hosed them down with heavy fire and they broke and ran.  It didn't cost us much time, but every minute counted.  I knew those deadlines were real.  If the fleet was really in danger they weren't going to risk it to pick up the shattered remnants of a strikeforce.  It was brutal mathematics - marines were cheaper and easier to replace than battleships.  They'd stay as long as they could...and not a minute longer.

I was surprised that we'd managed to retreat back to the staging area without losing anyone.  I'd been waiting for the enemy to hit us hard.  If they'd have launched a major attack while we were all retreating, none of us would have gotten off-planet.  But the truth is we had just about won the land battle when the recall orders came.  The enemy wasn't hitting us while we retreated because they didn't have anything left to hit us with.  For all the missteps and enormously heavy casualties, Achilles was failing because we couldn't hold the space above the planet, not because we couldn't take the ground. 

The rally area was a confused mess, with units straggling in from all directions and being loaded on whatever ship was available.  Our group got hustled onto a tank landing shuttle that launched a few minutes after the hatches slammed shut behind us. 

It was a rough ride to orbit.  The ship wasn't built to hold infantry, and we were just hanging on however we could.  The hold was silent.  We all knew what a disaster the operation had been, and while none of us knew exactly how this affected the overall war, we had a pretty good idea it was bad.

We were right.  It was bad.  But I don't think any of us realized just how bad.

Chapter Five

AS Gettysburg

En route to Eta Cassiopeiae system

I was one of the 14.72% of the ground troops in Operation Achilles to return unwounded. 

Technically speaking, I didn't exactly return because the Guadalcanal wasn't as lucky as I was.  She'd taken a hit to her power plant during the initial approach, and she was still undergoing emergency repairs when the withdraw order was issued.  There was no way she could outrun the enemy fleet on partial power, so she offloaded all non-essential personnel and formed part of the delaying force, holding off the attackers long enough to evacuate most of the surviving ground forces.

The way I heard it, the old girl wrote quite a final chapter for herself, taking out two enemy cruisers and damaging a third before she got caught in converging salvoes and was blown apart by a dozen missile hits.

I'd been on the Guadalcanal for three years, and it was surreal to think that she was gone.  Captain Beck, Flight Chief Johnson, even that short little tech who used to play cards with us...I can't even remember his name.  All dead.

But those losses seemed distant, theoretical, not quite real.  We had plenty of empty places right in our own family.  My battalion had landed with 532 effectives.  There were 74 of us now.

The major was dead.  Lieutenant Calvin was the only officer still fit for duty, so he took command of the battalion, a promotion tempered by the fact that he commanded only 24 more troops than he did when he'd led his platoon down to the surface just over a week before.

Captain Fletcher was wounded.  I'd been bumped to sergeant the day after we embarked, and I was in temporary command of the company...all 18 of us.  Getting missed has always been a good way to advance through the ranks.

We were loaded onto the Gettysburg with various remnants of a dozen other units.  It was a different world. The Guadalcanal had been a fast assault ship designed to carry a company of ground troops and their supplies.  She'd carried about 60 naval personnel in addition to the 140 or so ground troops.

Gettysburg was a heavy invasion ship, carrying a full battalion along with a flight of atmospheric fighters, combat vehicles, and enough supplies for a sustained campaign.  At least when fully loaded she did.  Over a kilometer long, she was ten times the tonnage of the Guadalcanal.

But now she was carrying 198 troops, the remnants of 3 full assault battalions, along with a vastly depleted store of supplies and two surviving fighters - one hers and one from another carrier.

The fleet managed to escape with serious but not crippling losses, and once we were through the warp gate the massive assemblage started to break up, as assets were redeployed to meet various crises in different sectors.

And there were plenty of threats to deal with.  We were on the run, and the enemy knew it.  We'd stripped everything bare to mount Achilles, and now the enemy was trying to exploit our weakness.

It was obvious things were pretty bad, but we really knew the situation was desperate when we were rushed to the Eta Cassiopeiae system without any rest or even resupply.  Eta Cassiopeiae was vital to us, a nexus with 5 warp gates, three leading to other crucial Alliance systems.  Columbia, the second planet, was a key colony and base, and the moons of the fifth and sixth worlds were mineralogical treasure troves. 

If they were rushing exhausted fragments of units there without refit, they were expecting the enemy to attack.  Soon.  So the troops got 48 hours to recover from the Slaughter Pen, while the 2 lieutenants and 6 sergeants available to command them worked out a provisional table of organization and discussed the best training regimen to get them fit for combat again in short order.

I ended up with 23 troops plus myself, divided into four normal fire teams and one three man group with a portable missile launcher, normally a company-level heavy weapon.

The ship was less than half full, so there was plenty of room in the gym and training facilities.  We put everyone on double workout sessions, which caused a lot of grumbling.  But it also kept everyone busy, without too much time to think - either about where we had been or where we were going.

Just like the Guadalcanal, the Gettysburg's training areas were near the exterior of the ship where the artificial gravity was close to Earth-normal.  The deep interior of the vessel, which was close to a zero gravity environment, was dedicated to storage and vital systems.

A spaceship is far from roomy, even with half the normal number of troops present, so it was just as well to keep everyone busy whenever possible.  Our expedited itinerary meant lots of extra time strapped into our acceleration couches with nothing to do but think and try to breath while you were being slowly crushed.  So, when the troops were out of the couches, I was just as happy to have them working up a sweat as crawling off somewhere to brood on defeat.

Eta Cassiopeiae was three transits from Tau Ceti, and it took us about 6 weeks of maneuvering between warp gates before we emerged at our destination and another ten days to reach the inner system and enter orbit around Columbia.

Since we were reinforcing a world we already held, and not mounting an attack, we were spared the rough ride of a planetary assault.  It was a good thing too, because there wasn't a single Gordon lander left on the Gettysburg.  We ferried down in the two available shuttles, about 50 men at a time, landing at the spaceport just outside the capital city of Weston.

Columbia was a beautiful planet, mostly covered by one giant ocean and dotted with numerous small archipelagos.  The single major continent, where 95% of the population lived, was a small oval chunk of ground just 500 kilometers north to south and less than 300 east to west.  Situated in the temperate northern polar zone, its climate was almost perfect. 

The small island chains, mostly located closer to the equatorial zone, were sparsely inhabited by a hardy breed of colonists who braved the intense heat to produce a variety of valuable products from the Columbian sea, including several useful drugs obtained from the native fish.

It was good to get off of a spaceship and have my feet touch the ground without someone shooting at me, a pleasure that was tempered by the knowledge that while we weren't attacking, we were almost certainly a target.