Resilience (Warner's World Book 6) (52 page)

“You got it.”

Chapter 4. Audacity over Slenthsl 0000, 29 October

Down on G deck 1
^st
Lt Nick Hope and his platoon sergeant Feris Borman were digesting their new orders. They were standing around the holo in the big briefing room along with LCmd Reggie Hollows, the Commando company commander, and Commander Benny Johnson, OPS for 3
^rd
Bde.

“That’s a long walk from DZ Charlie and not much cover” said Nick to Gordon.

“Yeah but there’s too much risk of detection if we drop you closer” said Gordon. “It’s all open ground. Thankfully it’ll be dark.”

A few minutes later, Nick and Feris stopped asking questions. Reggie asked Nick “so what do you think?”

Nick looked at his boss and could see that she’d already made up her mind. This was Reggie’s first commando company command. Since it was formed three months ago the unit has yet to be actively engaged and Nick knew she was keen to prove her company’s mettle.

“My guys are up for it” responded Nick. “They’re kitting up as we speak.” Nick looked to Feris and asked “Anything?” Feris shook his head. Nick turned back to Reggie. “We’re good!”

Reggie was pleased with the response. She acknowledged it with a nod and turned her head to Gordon.

“Remember” said Gordon “after 0200 you’re on your own till after the first lift lands. Just designate and keep your heads low. No need to engage. OK?”

“Got it” said Nick with a confident nod.

As Gordon headed back up to A deck he felt good that Nick Hope would be in charge. He was one of his most capable platoon commanders. By rights he should have been a company XO by now but the commandoes had their own rank structure where roles were one notch higher than in a line company.

He knew that Nick had seen action before, albeit not against a rogan enemy. He wasn’t a cocky fellow like many other commandoes, but he was confident in his abilities and of his platoon. ‘No he’ll do fine’ said Gordon to himself.

Fifteen minutes later after the platoon briefing had finished, Nick let Feris do what he does best, organise the platoon. While Feris was martialling his troops, Nick took the opportunity to claim one of the small briefing rooms to finish off an email to his wife, Lizzy. He’d been trying to write for days now, ever since he received an email from his sister Clare. And for days now he just could not believe what Clare had said was true.

He’d been telling himself that Clare was mistaken but only now, with the pressure of a real op underway, did he finally countenance that maybe his wife was cheating on him. The image that had dogged him ever since he lifted off from Polaris was Lizzy bent over in a rage yelling abuse at him about him deserting her yet again. That was a week before he shipped out.

‘You promised me’ she had cried ‘two years you said.’ But no explaining about the fact that there was a war on would convince her that he had no say in his transfer from Benning Special Forces school to an operational unit.

He had felt guilty but deep down he had been glad. As he had told his former CO (commanding officer) ‘I didn’t join special forces to be a desk jockey.’ He viewed being an instructor as only one step up from a desk jockey. But he had accepted the posting to placate Lizzy.

They had made love the night before he shipped out but as he said his goodbye the next day he knew that things were not the same between them. He had been writing to Lizzy every few days since. His last email from her was back over Chelora and he knew the mail was still coming in, just not from her.

“Hey boss, we’re ready” hailed Feris.

Nick let out a sigh, closed his console and grabbed his rifle. “I’m coming.”

Chapter 5. Whiskey 3 to Slenthsl 0030, 29 October

The stick of three warthogs eased out of their respective bays into a dark vacuum. Cloaked, they headed in single file for waypoint Alpha, where they would split up and individually head to their respective DZs. Nick was going in with Team Charlie to DZ Charlie. Feris was going in with Team Bravo to DZ Bravo and Sgt Ange Bao was leading her Team Alpha to DZ Alpha.

It had been SOP when splitting the platoon to multiple objectives to always assign Alpha to the first objective and so on. Other platoons mixed it up but Feris, always a little superstitious about such things, insisted doing it this way. Nick was not superstitious at all but he let Feris have his way on this.

He and Feris had served together before, when Nick was just a one pipper and Feris a team leader. He liked Feris a lot and had successfully argued for him to be his platoon sergeant when they were both assigned to 3 Commando just a few months ago.

Nick checked the time. Twenty one minutes to go. He glanced at Sgt Ron Dilby, leader of Charlie team, and the rest of the troops in the warthog. Everyone seemed calm as though it was just your usual training exercise. But Nick knew they would all be a little nervous. He knew he was. He gave Ron a nod and Ron nodded back.

Nick eased his helmeted head back against the seat. He knew they had already passed into enemy missile range and if detected could be destroyed at any minute but he also knew there was little he could do about that. Like many soldiers he was a bit of a fatalist. If it happened, it happened.

Other commanders he had served under would use this time in descent to either give a little pep talk to the troops or to go through the plan one more time. Nick knew that his troops knew what to do. They had trained and exercised for just this type of mission dozens of time since departing Polaris. He was not one to nag or repeat himself when it came to directions. Neither was he one for geeing up the troops. He could motivate soldiers and with his tongue if he had to. But he preferred to lead by example and right now he thought the best example was a calm demeanour. So he closed his eyes.

But his mind turned to Lizzy and he knew that was not good. So to give his mind another focus he decided to review his plan once again. He could have brought out his console from the side pocket on his left leg but instead he opted to use his heads up display (HUD) on his helmet’s visor. This way the troops in the shuttle wouldn’t start wondering what he was doing. He tapped the control on his helmet to make the visor go opaque. He was now inside a dark space and his troops would think he was catching some z’s.

With his hands folded in his lap, he peeled the cover flap off on the top of his left glove, revealing the touch surface. His right thumb peeled away the flap at the bottom of his right forefinger. Now he was able to move the pointer on the HUD by moving his right forefinger over the touchpad. He could have used voice but that would be worse than bringing out his console.

He brought up the targeting display and interrogated his fire assets. The listing was all based on stored data. The amber coloured symbols for each of the fire assets told him they were offline and wouldn’t become online till he activated his comms link. But he could still assign the assets and work up a fire plan. Once he went online any preassigned fire asset not now available would be highlighted in red and a warning message would appear advising him of this.

He could see from the listing that he had access to missiles from the group’s ships along with those from the Audacity’s air group and the squadrons from the three caps. He checked the preliminary fire tasks on each of the objectives and confirmed that the munitions load out was suitable for ground attack. Currently they were set for non-hardened targets. He could change this with a simple tap to engage hardened targets and this would result in the missile configuration being changed on the firing platform. It would all be handled automatically and take only a few seconds to reconfigure.

The bombardment zone (BZ) was set for a rectangle measuring 1 x 1 km. This was standard for a human fighter squadron hastily deployed onto a fighter base. But a lot would depend on the layout of the base. He could reshape the BZ by dragging and reshaping its polygon. If the rogan here have developed the base to the point where the fighters were dispersed over a large area and in hardened shelters, then he would most likely create multiple bombardment tasks.

But for now he was content with the current settings.

“Waypoint Alpha in one. ETA to objective 5 minutes” hailed the pilot.

“Roger that” hailed Nick. He dismissed the HUD and tapped the helmet control to make his visor transparent again. “Five minutes everyone” he called out.

Ron Dilby got to his feet and went down the line for his last minute check on each member in his team. He gave a whack to the shoulder of his quanto gunner after some verbal exchange with him. Nick could see from the grin on the gunner’s face that it was a friendly wack.

“Two minutes” hailed the pilot into the main cabin. The cabin lights went out and there was an automatic collective tensing from those within. They were at their most vulnerable now. The craft was slowing dramatically but smoothly.

The green light came on a fraction before they touched down. “Go, go, go” announced the pilot and Ron pushed his quanto gunner out and then followed suit. The other six of Alpha team were out the hatch in short order. Nick was pleased. He was last out.

With his thermals on he could see they were in a slight depression in an otherwise flat area. As the warthog ascended using its vertical thrusters the foot high long grass was blown flat to the ground. As the craft switched to its horizontal thrusters, the grass blew strongly with the thrust. The warthog though was gone within a few seconds and the almost reed like grass reverted to its near vertical positioning, making it impossible for Nick to see through it. He got to his knee and could see everyone was doing so too.

He oriented himself. The carrot at the top of his visor told him he needed to turn half left to be heading towards the objective. He got Ron’s attention and pointed to the objective. Ron nodded and then pushed out his point trooper and they moved off in silence.

Initially as they made their way across open ground in the dark they were moving at a walking pace of around 3 kph. But once they found a narrow animal track that was heading roughly in the same direction Ron quickened the pace. He knew they needed to cover the six clicks to the base perimeter as quick as possible to allow them adequate time to recce the base.

Forty minutes later Feris hailed “We’re ready. But we need to fire up.”

“OK, you’ll have to wait.”

A few minutes later Ange’s scratchy, almost high pitched voice hailed him “Alpha ready skipper. We need to fire up too.”

“OK, OK we’re going as fast as we can” replied Nick.

As Nick kept putting one foot in front of the other, he gave a quick scan of their fire plans. ‘Hardened targets all of them’ he said to himself and he knew odds on that his would be hardened too. For hardened targets you need to confirm the loc with an active radar sweep to ensure maximum accuracy. ‘Blast’ he mumbled to himself for he knew that meant all three groups would have to coord their active sweep. He also knew that odds on the enemy would detect them. That meant they had to high tail it and exfil asap. He checked the timings in the plan. ‘Shit the exfil window’s closing fast.’

“Need to pick up the pace Ron” he hailed.

“We go much faster and someone going to roll an ankle in this shit” advised Ron. The original animal track had petered out ten minutes ago and they were humping it cross country again. Nick didn’t have to wait long though to notice an increase in pace as the troops ahead of him stretched out a little more. It wasn’t yet a trot but it was about as fast a walk as Nick’s legs could maintain.

Ten minutes later Ron called for a short breather. Nick came forward to be next to him. Ron was super fit but even he was breathing hard. Nick and he both collapsed to sit on the ground. The others did likewise save for one trooper who remained on his knee on watch. Nick lifted his visor and Ron followed suit.

In a low voice Nick said “Can’t be far now. Did you see those lights?”

“Yeah” said Ron, his breathing getting a little easier. “Still no ground based radar.”

“Doesn’t seem right does it?”

Ron shook his head. “According to the map the perimeter should be only two clicks. Put up a probe then?”

Nick pondered for a moment. There were risks launching one of their small probes. If it’s discovered then he knew the rogan would send out patrols. “Nah, too risky. But it’s too flat here to get good observations or detections. If those fighters are in shelters, and all the others have been, we’ll get nothing.”

“There’s a slight rise to our left” advised Ron. “It’s just a metre and half but that could serve.”

“OK you stay here. I’ll take Locky with me.”

Ron nodded and hailed Cpl David ‘Locky’ Jones to come forward. Locky was a nuggetty looking fellow out of a suit and looked even more so in one. “Boss” he said in a low voice as he bent over.

“The skipper’s going for a little recce over to that rise. You’re his shotgun” said Ron.

“No wuckens” said Locky in his Australian accent. He straightened up and followed Nick.

They walked for about five minutes. The rise wasn’t much to speak of and would never classify as a hill or knoll but when Nick looked around a smile came to his face. He zoomed his visor on where the lights were off in the distance. The lights were from a stationary vehicle. He zoomed to max res and could now make out the opened entrance to a shelter. It was dug into the ground with an arching roof and surrounded by a u-shaped berm. He had no hope of seeing what was inside but he would lay his next month’s salary that it was a fighter. He would need to find the others but he could do that while Ron deployed the rest of the team.

“Ron” he hailed in a low voice “It’s good. Bring the team up.” To Locky he hailed “The teams coming.”

“Right oh skipper. I’ll try to restrain myself” said Locky with his usual wry humour.

Ten minutes later Ron came along side after having deployed his team into a defensive formation. “What have you got?” he hailed.

“Uploading now” hailed Nick and Ron’s visor updated with all the spots Nick had added to the database.