Lieutenant Colonel (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 6) (18 page)

He tried to activate his combat molt, but his awkward position made it difficult.  It took a few tries before the back of his PICS split open, and still another 45 seconds until he was able to squeeze out, a big cicada emerging from its chrysalis.

“You OK, sir?” someone, probably Corporal Albert, grabbed him by the arm to help him stand.

Ryck felt guilty that he didn’t recognize the Marine, one of the two who had just saved his life.  He knew their names, had known their names, but he couldn’t put a face to those names. In their Ignomex suits, trackers and tankers didn’t wear name tags, and their small rank insignia were hard to see.

“Yeah, I think I’m OK,” Ryck said, “But what about Sergeant Çağlar?” 

The other of the two Marines was bending over the prone, unmoving figure of the sergeant, trying to activate the external combat molt.  Ryck’s heart fell, and he bolted forward.  He’d hoped that the cannon had just targeted him, but they had evidently been so close that the seeker had been able to engage them when both of them were in the line of fire.

“I can’t get the molt to work!” the Marine said when Ryck rushed up.  Ryck looked into Çağlar’s helmet.  A dazed, but alive sergeant stared back to him.  He gave Ryck a weak grin, then faded into semiconsciousness.  He was still breathing, though.

“Colonel!” Hecs voice blared out over his externals as the sergeant major ran forward to join them.  “You OK?”

“Get Çağlar out!” Ryck ordered.

Augmented by his PICS, the sergeant major wrenched the molt handle, and the PICS slowly started splitting.  Ryck tried to will it to speed up.

He finally spotted the small corporal’s chevrons on the Marine who’d been helping with Çağlar.  “Corporal Albert, get back to your trac and get a corpsman up here.  And the Alpha Command trac, too.  Now!”

As soon as they could, Ryck and Hodges pulled out the barely responsive sergeant from his dead PICS.  He was breathing and feebly protesting their help, but it was pretty obvious that he had taken more damage than Ryck had. 

“Where’s that corpsman?” Ryck shouted out.

“Colonel, brigade’s on the command net, asking for your status,” Hecs said over his externals.

Shit!  Do your grubbing job!
he scolded himself.

As much as he considered Çağlar almost as a son, it was not up to him to make sure the Marine was treated.  He had a battalion in combat—that was his responsibility.

“Tell the XO he’s got the battalion for the moment and not to let up.  And let brigade know I’m OK and will connect as soon as I can,” he told the sergeant major  “And where is the Alpha Command trac?  It’s taking too long!”

More Marines in PICS started arriving.  They couldn’t do much to help Çağlar in their fighting suits, and they were making the area a prime target.

“All of you, disperse.  Get back to your mission,” Ryck called out.  “Sergeant Major, you and Lance Corporal Luther stay here.  Everyone else, leave!”

Just then, the Alpha Command trac rumbled up.  Ryck ran to it, shouting out for the back ramp to be lowered.  Ryck rushed in as soon as he could, jumping up on the ramp while it was still lowering.

“You OK, sir?” Manny Quezon asked as Ryck ran in.

“I’m fine!” Ryck said as he pushed beyond the FSC to get to his console.  Reaching underneath the shelf, he pulled out his assault pack.  He didn’t bother with his bones, but put on his helmet, powering up his comms.  It took an agonizingly long 45 or 50 seconds before he was booted and had established a connection.

“Ryck, are you OK?” Bert’s voice immediately came over the P2P.

Ryck knew the brigade would have been watching, and as soon as Ryck booted, he would have appeared on everyone else’s displays.  As the brigade commander, Bert could override the many other calls that were flashing on Ryck’s face shield.

“I’m fine.  A little woozy, a little sore, but fine,” Ryck responded.

“Can you still command?” Bert asked.

Ryck didn’t even blink that Bert’s questions had less to do with him as a friend but rather with fighting the battalion.  He understood that was a commander’s duty, not worrying about an individual, friend or not.

“I’ve given command to Sandy for the moment, but I am fit to resume command.  I’m fine.”

There was a momentary pause.  Ryck could imagine Bert studying the bioreadouts that would be uploading onto the brigade net.  Ryck hadn’t taken a look at them himself yet, but he felt OK.

“Roger that.  Re-establish command, and let’s get this wrapped up.  We cannot proceed with Phase Two until Hester is secured.  Six out,” Bert passed.

With the brigade commander satisfied, Ryck immediately pulled up Sandy.  He noted he’d given up command to his XO only six minutes to go.  Six minutes might not seem like a long time, but a lot could happen even such a short period of combat.

“Sandy, I’m back. I am reassuming command.  What’s happened?”

“Roger that, sir,” Sandy responded, not bother wasting time asking as to Ryck’s condition. 

If Ryck were reassuming command, that would be enough for the XO, he knew.  There would be time enough for questions later.

“Two more positions have been neutralized.  We are taking no more fire.  Fox and Gold have linked up, and the two will link up with Echo within two or three minutes.  I’ve requested that 2/4 move forward to dig out any more seeker teams and start their BDA.
[17]
”

A Marine in a PICS was a formidable fighting machine, but the suits their limitations.  For many things, to include a thorough search of the battle area, Marines in their skins and bones were much more capable.

Marines in skins and bone.  Like Ryck (except he hadn’t inserted his bones yet).

He pulled his bones out of his assault pack while he passed to the XO, “OK, good job.  I want you keep in contact with 2/4.  Honcho the effort.  This is still our battle area.”

The XO had no real influence over 2/4, but this was still 2/3’s area of responsibility, so Ryck wanted someone from the battalion to ensure a smooth transition from one battalion to the other.

Ryck was inserting his bones into his skins while monitoring the fight when the long-awaited surrender was received. 

The Battle of Hester was over.

Chapter 27

“Ryck, I think you need to get over here,” Lieutenant Colonel Kent Allamien, the 2/4 battalion commander passed to Ryck on the P2P.

Ryck was with Proctor, Sandy, and Hecs, going over the preparations for Phase 2, the assault on the fort itself. Most of the battalion had already gotten out of their PICS and were prepping for their mission.

“What’s up, Kent?” Ryck asked.  “I’m kind of busy here now.”

Ryck toggled his fellow battalion commander’s position.  Kent was at the previously unidentified building where Ryck had intervened and authorized the tank fire mission.

“I don’t want to pass it over the net just yet, and I think you need to see this, first,” Kent told him.

“OK, give me ten.  I’ll be right over.”

What the hell does he want?
  Ryck wondered. 
It was a righteous mission.  Is there something unique about the plasma gun?

Kent’s battalion had been searching the battle area, collecting up the odd merc or two and doing the BDAs.  Ryck wasn’t sure why he needed to go see something at that building.  There was a lot to do before the next phase of the overall fight and not that much time to do it.

The other three Marines were watching Ryck, waiting to see why he’d interrupted Proctor Christophe as the Three went over the timeline.

“Sorry about that, Proctor.  I’ve got a call in from Lieutenant Colonel Allamien, and I need to go see something.  Let’s go with your timeline.  XO, honcho this for now while the sergeant major and I go see to whatever it is that we have to see.  We’ve got over three hours, so we should have time to get ready, but not enough to waste.”

Ryck and Hecs, followed by Lance Corporal Luther, who with Çağlar medivaced had taken over the unofficial security duties, stepped off to make their way to the building, some 400 meters away.

“Sams, come with us,” Ryck told the master guns as they passed him.

Ryck didn’t need Sams, but he hadn’t interacted with his old friend much, and as sort of a glorified company gunny, just at the battalion level, if whatever Kent needed them for was related to the merc weapons system, as he suspected, then Sams would be well suited to do whatever had to be done.

At about 100 meters out, one of Kent’s captains met the four Marines and escorted them into the building.  At least ten Marines were standing guard outside the two-story building, which seemed overkill.  Whatever 2/4 had discovered in the building was drawing some serious attention.  Still at a loss as to what that could be, Ryck entered through the front door, which was intact despite a good portion of the front wall simply being gone.

“Ryck, come upstairs.  The back stairs are mostly passable,” Kent said.

Ryck let the captain escort them to the back where a heavily damaged set of stairs led up.  If these were “mostly passable,” Ryck wondered what “mostly impassable” might look like.  He looked up the stairs, unsure that they could even climb up them.

But with a little sidestepping and hugging the wall at one point, they made their way up to the second floor.  A number of Marines were gathered on the far side of the building.  Ryck could see Kent, who was motioning him forward.

Ryck had to pick his way across the width of the building.  The floor had been pretty chewed up by the 75mm shell.  It had detonated on the ground floor, but the shrapnel had given the floor a Swiss cheese look.  Sections of the floor had simply disappeared, leaving open space between the two levels.

As Ryck got closer, the Marines parted, letting Ryck see the bodies of the fallen mercs.

Only they weren’t mercs.

The bodies of two women and three children lay in tangled messes of blood and body parts.  One little girl, who couldn’t have been more than three or four years old, had been cut in half.  Her face looked surprisingly serene.  Her legs and pelvis were nowhere to be seen.

Gorge rose up in Ryck’s throat as he struggled to swallow it back down.  He felt faint.

He had killed these five civilians, he immediately realized.  He had authorized the fire mission.  Him.  Ryck Lysander.  He had given the order for Wolfpack 5 to fire, and that had killed these people.

Ryck couldn’t tear his eyes off the little girl.  Luckily, the girl was not returning the stare.  Her eyes were mercifully closed.  One of the women, though, had only half a face, her one remaining eye open, looking accusingly at Ryck, who quickly averted his gaze, only to get trapped back on the little girl.  While his own Esther was older, seeing the little body raised a spike of fear for his daughter, and he didn’t want to think of her body broken and torn apart like this.

“We need to report this up, but I thought you needed to see this first, and maybe you want to make the report?” Kent asked Ryck.

“There wasn’t a merc position here?” Ryck asked, confused.

“No, there was.  On the lower deck.  A plasma gun and two mercs.  We think two mercs, that is.  The parts are sort of, well, in bits and pieces,” Kent told him.

That didn’t make him feel any better even if that made his decision for a fire mission the correct call. 

The correct call?
he thought bitterly, looking at the dead civilians. 
Try to tell that to them.

“You need to report this,” Hecs told him quietly.  “The mission was righteous, but we need to stay on top of this.”

“Fucking mercs, using civilians as shields,” Sams added bitterly.

Involving civilians in battles was strictly forbidden, and if this were such a case, then the Sylvington Brigade could get fined or even lose its charter.  Ryck couldn’t imagine any mercenary company risking that.  But there were five dead civilians there who would argue against that opinion—if they could speak any longer, that was.

Ryck gathered himself.  He thought he’d done the right thing, and trying to remember just what had transpired, he still felt his command had been justified.  But that was out of his hands, now.  There would be an inquiry, and the investigation team would make its recommendation directly to the commandant, and from there, it would go to the first minister himself.

“Colonel,” Ryck passed on the P2P.  When Bert picked up, he continued, “We’ve got a some collateral deaths at coordinates 44873 81293.”

There was a momentary pause, then Bert asked, “The undocumented building where you authorized the fire mission?”

“Yes, sir.  Five dead.  Two adult women and three minors.”

“Any mercenary dead?”

“Two and a destroyed plasma cannon,” Ryck answered back, his voice flat.

“Acknowledged.  Do not disturb the scene.  Pass that to Lieutenant Colonel Allamien, too.  Nothing gets touched.  I’ll inform the JAG to get an investigation team there.  For now, you’re running out of time for Phase 2, so you better get going.”

“Uh, should I pass, I mean, do I transfer command to Major Peltier-Aswad?”

“Why would you do that?” Bert asked, the puzzlement evident in his voice.

“Until the investigation, I mean,” Ryck answered.

“Was your order righteous?” Bert asked.

“Yes.  I mean I think so.  I had a Marine under fire, about to be KIAd.  I had to react.”

“Then it was righteous.  Everything is recorded, and an investigation team will be able to review what happened.  So for now, it was a valid mission, and you need to get the Fuzos ready.  Understood?”

“Yes, sir.  I just thought—”

“Just get your battalion ready.  Without your mission’s success, the entire operation could fail or turn into a protracted siege.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” Ryck said, a weight lifted off his shoulder.

“Ryck, get your head on straight. What’s done is done.  But I need you now, and you need to be back in the game.”

“Roger that.  I’ve got it,” Ryck said.  “Don’t worry about me.’

Ryck felt a surge of duty, the amorphous soup of feelings that create the need for a warrior to fight and not let his fellows down.  He would put everything into the coming battle, and after, if things didn’t work out in his favor with the investigation, then that was the way the cards fell.  He’d deal with it at that time, not now.

Ryck took one last look at the dead civilians, grieving for them and offering a silent apology before he forced his mind clear. 

He still had a battle to fight.