Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (49 page)

He was not particularly concerned about being in the wrong place.  Things always went wrong.  As Sergeant Maimon was fond of saying, “Any damn fool can get things done when everything goes right.  The real test is when things go balls up.”  Sergeant Maimon made sure that in the Long Range Recon training exercises, things constantly went wrong.   Men and women who could not improvise and achieve the mission did not last long.

A telltale flashed in the corner of his HUD, alerting him that the Colonel was trying to reach him.  He blinked twice to connect.

“Status?” asked Colonel Dov Tamari.  Colonel Tamari was riding in the carrier
Rabat,
monitoring the battle.

“Missed our assigned destination and are now trying to find the bridge.  Do you know which way we should be going?”

Colonel Tamari shook his head.  “All the teams are out of position.  As soon as you get a location fix, spread the word.”

“Always glad to help the Royal Fleet Marines find their way,” Rafael deadpanned.

Colonel Tamari snorted rudely.  “Also, don’t forget to drop repeaters; it is just a matter of time before they start jamming you.”

“Yes, sir.”  Rafael signed off and made his way to the front of the column.  His platoon leader, Lieutenant Bina Shalvey was just behind the point men, Nur and Amali.  Nur was a little older and very steady.  Amali had the reputation for the fastest reflexes in the Company, but sometimes was prone to be a little too quick.  Just as he reached them, a man stepped into the passageway, turned and gawked at them, then crumbled to the ground with a  neat hole in his forehead.

Rafael stifled a curse.  He pushed behind Private Amali, confirmed the man was dead – not much doubt about it with his brains splattered on the wall – and then turned to Amali, forcing himself to keep his voice even.

“Private, I want you to question this man and find out where the Combat Command Center is,” he ordered.

Private Amali scrunched her face in confusion.  “But sir, he’s dead!”

Rafael stuck his face close to hers.  “That’s right, Private, that’s why I told you we wanted a live prisoner, because it is
considerably
harder to interrogate a dead one!”

Private Amali looked abashed.  “Yes, sir.  Sorry, sir.”

“You are Long Range Reconnaissance, Private,” he reminded her.  “You are more than your trigger finger.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ten minutes later they bagged a prisoner.  A smiling Private Amali hauled the man off the floor by his collar and presented him to Captain Eitan.  The man was in a uniform that suggested he worked in one of the support services, like Environmental or Engineering.  He glared at them defiantly.  Rafael nodded to Sergeant Maimon, who stuck a spray injector against the prisoner’s neck and injected him with a fast acting tell-all drug.  In a moment the pupils in his eyes dilated and the muscles in his face relaxed and softened.  He looked for all the world like he was about to take a nap.  He smiled a goofy smile. 

Rafael leaned closer and smiled warmly.  “Hi, my name’s Raf, what’s yours?”

Ten minutes after that they had a map.  Engineering was, not surprisingly, at the rear of the ship near the engines, Life Support was on the fifth deck in the center of the ship, the bridge was on the thirtieth deck about one quarter of the way back from the bow, and the Combat Center was a mere two decks above where they were standing.

Rafael uploaded it to the four companies.  Colonel Tamari immediately issued orders:  “Listen up!  Fleet Marines are closest to Engineering, so they get that.  First Company gets the bridge, Second takes the Combat Center and Third Company is in reserve.  Be advised that prisoners have told us there are five hundred – repeat, five hundred – Dominion Security Forces on board.  We have recovered the kraits and will be sending you reinforcements as soon as we can.  Execute!”

Five hundred security forces?
Eitan thought in disbelief.
God’s Balls!
“Second Company!  Our target is the Combat Command Center.  It is two decks above us on Deck Fifteen.  Move out!”

Alpha and Charlie platoons were still a couple of hundred yards out, moving as quickly as they could through the narrow corridors,  Nur and Amali led the Bravo Platoon up a series of  stairs, guns raised to their shoulders.  The stairs felt like a death trap.  Hell, Rafael thought, the stairs
were
a death trap. 

At the top of the stairs was another corridor, disappearing left and right in a gentle curve.  Rafael signaled to Colonel Tamari with a location check and sent a large, glowing question mark.  A moment later Tamari replied, “Left, I think.”  Rafael signaled to Nur and Amali to go left.     They had barely taken two steps when a grenade came hurling along the outer wall, slid to a stop sixty feet away and blew up.  The narrow corridor channeled the force of the explosion and everyone in the front was knocked off their feet.  Two men didn’t get up. The soldiers behind them laid down suppressing fire to discourage the Dominion Security Forces from charging in.  Instead, another grenade arched out.  Everyone hastily retreated and the grenade blew up harmlessly.

Rafael looked at his watch; time was slipping away.  “Bina,” he said softly to the platoon lieutenant, “take out that blocking force.  I’m going to try to guide the other platoons to come at this from another side.”  Lieutenant Shalvey nodded briskly and turned to the soldiers strung out in a long line behind her.  “Alpha Squad, take the corridor in the other direction and tell me what you find.  Bravo Squad, send a wasp down there to see what they’ve got.  Move it!”

One of the sergeants reached into a pocket and took out a small box, a little larger than a jeweler’s box.  He opened it and took out a tiny reconnaissance drone, activated it through his combat helmet and sent it flying down the corridor and around the bend.  The display from the wasp drone projected onto Rafael’s and Lieutenant Shalvey’s HUDs.  Forty feet back from the turn in the corridor four men sat with a tripod-mounted energy weapon of some sort.  Two of the enemy were crouched down behind clear ballistic shields.

“That gun looks nasty enough, don’t it?” the sergeant commented.

Shalvey sighed.  It was never easy.  “Okay, soft balls, set them for four seconds.  Three second spread, two and two.”

Moments later two softball-sized spheres raced down the corridor, followed the curve through the bend and then sped toward the four enemy defenders.  It took the defenders a second to spot them in the dim corridor light, but they opened up with everything.  The tripod gun turned out to be a heavy pulse laser.  They successfully shot the first two soft balls, but the second two following closely on their heels got through and blew up, spraying the defenders with shrapnel.  The two defenders behind the ballistic shields were knocked down by the blast concussion against their shields, but not taken out of the fight.

“Two more,” Shalvey ordered.  This time, as soon as the defenders saw the explosives rolling towards them, they retreated out of sight and Shalvey moved her platoon forward.  The corridor gradually bent in a fixed curve and every hundred feet or so they ran into more defenders, with more and more at each barricade.

By this time Rafael had guided the other two platoons onto Deck Fifteen, coming at the Combat Command Center from the other side of the ship.  They quickly met up with Shalvey’s third squad, and then promptly ran into a large, well-defended barricade bristling with Dominion Security Forces armed with energy weapons.

Wasps buzzed back and forth and soon the visual picture was complete.  Rafael and his troops held the western half of the circle while the Dominion forces held the other half.  Somewhere in that half, there was an entrance into the Combat Command Center, but punching through to it would cost most of Rafael’s Second Company to do it and could take hours.  And in the meantime, the damn Ducks were sending up reinforcements.  Rafael could almost hear the clock ticking in his head.

Rafael studied the map on his HUD, then went over and put his hand flat against the bulkhead.  Sergeant Maimon stood beside him.  “What do you think, sir?” the older man asked.

“Sergeant Maimon,” Rafael replied, white teeth flashing in a grin, “I think it’s time to blow things up.”

Scanners showed the bulkhead was four inches thick and they detected numerous electronic emissions and voices on the other side.  It took twenty minutes to set the charges, then the platoon withdrew as far as they could around the bend and lay flat.  Everyone sealed their helmets and turned the external audio off.

Sergeant Maimon pressed the trigger.  The cutting charge relied more on heat than actual explosive force.  There was a distinct, high-pitched ‘
crump
’ followed by a hissing sizzle sound like drops of cold water hitting a hot frying pan, then a seven foot high, ten foot wide section of the bulkhead shuddered and sagged, then fell backwards into the room.

No sooner had it hit the floor than Shalvey’s platoon was up and running through the opening.  One brave soul pulled a pistol and began to fire, only to be dropped by Amali with a crisp shot to the center of his forehead.  Two others ran frantically to the main entrance, intending to slap the “Emergency Open” button and let in help from the security guards on the outside.

“Freeze!” Nur bellowed.  One skidded to a halt and lived; the other desperately reached for the button and fell to Nur’s sonic rifle.

“Everybody down on the floor!  Down!  Anybody still standing will be shot!” shouted Lieutenant Shalvey.  The fifteen surviving Combat Command crew lowered themselves to the floor.  Refuge soldiers quickly swarmed over them, securing their hands and patting them down for weapons.  Rafael Eitan ducked in long enough to make sure things were under control, then called Colonel Tamari.

“This is Jumper One Actual.  The Combat Command Center is ours, for now at least,” he told the Colonel.  “Can you get those tech boffins over here right away?  We expect a counter-attack any moment.”

“ETA ten minutes,” Tamari replied.  “Kraits are loaded and have been hovering near you.”

“Tell our favorite Ensign to make sure she puts them in the Command Center.  Tell her we have a beacon broadcasting on the emergency frequency.  Also, we need reinforcements and Marvins, as many as you can give us,” Rafael said.

“Reinforcements will come by transporter, but we’ll need to send shuttles with the Marvins.”

“Understood.  If you can get close enough, we could use some Bee Keepers.”  Bee Keepers were the operators for the wasp drones.  Rafael wanted reconnaissance drones saturating the entire area around the Command Center.

“Already in the works, Jumper One.”

“Jumper One out.”  Rafael closed the circuit.  Sergeant Maimon stood beside him.  “Word is that we took Engineering,” the Sergeant said, “but the Ducks have already launched a counter-attack.  Marines say they’re holding, but as sure as my Aunt Edna died a virgin, they’ll be screaming for help pretty soon.”

Rafael frowned, checking the disposition of his forces on the HUD.  Then he called the other two Refuge Company Commanders.  The news was ugly.

“Raf?  We are getting our asses kicked here.”  Kris Green was commander of First Company.  She was shouting over the sound of fighting and she sounded angry.  “We almost reached Environmental when we ran head-on into a Duck DID reinforced company.  They’ve got bots and all sorts of nasty shit.”

“What’s your status, Kris?”

“Twenty – two zero – dead.  Thirty walking wounded.”  She paused.  “I had to leave three of the more seriously wounded behind.  The bastards just killed them.  We are retreating down the main corridor to the shuttle bay we started at, but they are pushing us hard.  The bots are very hard to kill.  Also, the Ducks keep flanking us and popping up behind us.  I think they are going up a floor and running until they are behind us, then just taking a stairway down.  I have sent troops to probe ahead of us.”

The word from Third Company was equally grim.  “We are trying to get to Combat Command to help you,” Ahmed Hameed of Third Company told him.  He was breathless and panting.  “We’re coming fast, but they’ve got a bunch of bots with flame throwers and cannon chasing us.  We’re on Deck Ten now and I’m moving up to Twelve to try to shake them off.”

“I can certainly use you, Ahmed, what’s your ETA?”

“Fifteen or twenty minutes,” Hameed panted.  Rafael checked his HUD and queried Third Company’s casualty status.  He blinked when he saw the results.  He shook his head; that had to be wrong.

“Ahmed, Caesar says you have a fifty percent casualty rate.  Is that right?”

“These damn bots are chewing us up, Raf.  Sixty dead or missing.  Many wounded.  Getting low on ammo and batteries.  No more wasps so we can’t scout out our route to you.”

Rafael thought frantically.  The platoon he was embedded with had come along an open passageway on Deck Thirteen, lined with heavy equipment and high catwalks to allow maintenance on the machinery.  It would make a nice spot for snipers.

“Ahmed, listen.  Go all the way up to Thirteen, then come straight towards the Combat Command Center.  Be advised there are Ducks wandering around up here but they are mostly preoccupied with us right now.  I am sending someone to help you on Thirteen, so ID your targets before you fire.  Jumper One, out.”

Rafael looked around to see who he could send.  His eyes fell on Amali and Nur.  “Amali, Nur! Grab five guys, go down to Thirteen and get in position on the catwalks to cover Third Company as they come in.  You’re shooting bots, so take the heavy plasma rifles.  Watch your rear and watch your flanks; the Ducks know this ship a hell of a lot better than we do.  Go!”