Major (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 5) (21 page)

“Uh, Ryck, we’ve got a situation here,” Bert said, coming back onto the P2P.  “I’m going to have to cut—”

As if on cue, Bert’s transmission cut off.  Ryck started to shake his head at the comms when a huge, low roar sounded off in the direction of the main objective.  The ground shook, knocking Baby Girl and the standing kids off their feet.  Ryck stumbled but remained standing as he switched to the command circuit.

“Bert, do you read me?” he shouted into his mic.

Çağlar
appeared at the door, looking anxiously for Ryck, relief evident when he saw him.  He took several steps toward him when behind the corporal Ryck saw the glaring girl, the one with the baby, get up.  He didn’t know what specifically caught his attention, but there was something purposeful about her movement that sent his warrior’s senses screaming.

“Down!” he shouted, diving to the side to get a clear shot. 
Çağlar, facing him, dove in the opposite direction, but Baby Girl was getting to his feet, and Gas spun to look at Ryck, weapon ready. 

That took his eyes off the kids, off the girl as she closed the gap between them.  Ryck brought his weapon, his thumb automatically
flipping the safety.  Only this was the Gentry-made Rimsky, not his familiar M77.  His thumb pushed at the wrong spot, and he had to look and acquire it.  It took only a fraction of a second, but that was enough.  As he brought his weapon back to bear and pulled the trigger, several images seared themselves into his brain.

The girl, a half-smile on her face, a small baby’s arm reaching up for her chin, just as Esther’s used to reach up and touch his five-o’clock shadow when she was a baby.

Gas, seeing Ryck’s aim and starting to wheel around, bringing up his own weapon.

The first of his darts piercing the girl’s robe low on her thigh.

The fireball as the girl exploded, enveloping Gas, Baby Girl, and the SOG kids who were sitting up against the wall.

A wave of heat swept over Ryck and
Çağlar.  Something sharp and hot hit his shoulder, but his bones instantly hardening and limiting the damage.  Çağlar, a few feet closer, grunted in pain.  He swung up a hand to cover his butt.

His ears ringing, he looked inside the school.  The teacher was inside, swinging an energy weapon of some sort, laughing like a maniac.  Another boy, holding some sort of device, started to the door, but before Ryck could switch targets, he was cut down by his teacher’s gun.

“Down, Sams,” Ryck calmly said to Sams, who was moving to the door.

Sams halted just as the teacher swung the beam in a wild arc, the beam momentarily firing outside the building over Ryck’s head and evidently catching Sams in a side lobe.  Sams shouted out his anger as Ryck sighted his weapon and put a line of darts into the teacher’s chest.

“Hans, you OK?” Ryck asked.

“Yeah, but he got my ass.  Hurts like a mother fuck,” he said, swearing for the first time in Ryck’s presence.

“It was a girl,” Ryck told him, not certain why that seemed important at the moment.

“Damn bones don’t fit right with these utilities,” Çağlar said.

The focus that had taken over him for a few moments started to fade.  Warrior mode had kicked in, but now he had to get back to commanding.  He had no comms with Bert, and he had a very bad feeling about that.  He shook his head a few times, clearing his thoughts.

“Sams, you effective?” he asked.

“Yeah, and thanks.  Another few centimeters, and I would have been cooked. Singed me good, though.”

“You and Çağlar get in there, see who’s alive and seal the grubbing vault now.  No one else comes out.”

He looked up to see Captain Lee, along with several other Marines, rushing forward.

“What happened, sir?” he asked breathlessly.

“What happened was an ambush.  The kids were part of it.  I’ve got a feeling that it’s just Alpha and us now.”

“Sir?”

“Go check your men.  I don’t know who’s OK in there,” Ryck said, using his thumb to indicate inside the school.

They sky was just beginning to show a hint of the system’s star, and color started to register again.  There was too much red showing, splashed up against the school’s light green walls.

Several people were on the company net, trying to get information. As a result, nothing was getting passed. 

Ryck was about to order them all to keep quiet when the override took over, and Captain Hester said, “Skipper, I think we’ve found that Patty.  It’s coming right at us with a platoon of armored pirates.  I think they’re in Nizzies.  What do you want us to do?”

A platoon of Nizzies and a Patty?
 

Granted, the NZ-S Armored Combat Systems were no match for a PICS Marine, but Hester didn’t have enough effective missiles or HGLs to take out a platoon of them and a Patty.

“Pull back.  Do not engage.  We’ll link up and concentrate our forces,” he ordered.

Through the trees, the sound of distant firing reached Ryck.

“Uh, Skipper, no can do.  We just engaged.  I’ve got two teams in the shit, and the rest of us will be in it momentarily.  With all due respect, I’ve got a fight to run,” he said, cutting off his transmission. 

“All hands, on me!” he passed on the command circuit as he started running back toward First Platoon’s position. 

He doubted he could reach the platoon in time to do any good, but as three of the platoon’s avatars suddenly grayed out on his reticule, he knew he had to try.

Chapter 33

Ryck dropped to a walk as the last blue avatar, that belonging to Staff Sergeant Manut “Tater” Odoyo, grayed out.  First Platoon, the entire platoon, was gone.  Twenty-five Marines, his Marines, were dead.  Only two Marines, Sgt Nolan and Lieutenant Siripon were still alive, their avatars showing the light blue of being WIA.

The last 10 minutes had been torture as they ran through the forest with Ryck taking his hip-pocket battle plans and trying to come up with a course of action on the run.  He followed the comms, so he had a general, if disjointed idea of what was happening.  Each time an avatar went light blue or gray was a knife to his heart.  He felt helpless, and he knew his mad dash was risky.  But he couldn’t just stand by while his men were slaughtered.

Now, though, it was too late.  His Marines couldn’t be saved, and while his rage demanded a release, he still had over 70 Marines and sailors under his command, and simply rushing into a fight with a force of unknown size and strength was a recipe for disaster. 

Time to get professional, Ryck!  Pull it together!
he told himself, concentrating on steadying his breathing and calming down. 

He could use his anger as motivation, but he couldn’t let emotions dictate the battle.

A single shot sounded a klick or so ahead, and Lieutenant Siripon’s avatar grayed out.

“Mother fuck!” Sams shouted out from a few meters to Ryck’s left.  “Skipper!”

Renewed rage filled Ryck, and he wanted to lash out.  The SOG had just executed Siripon, “Chuckles.”  The fuckers had just sealed their fate, but that didn’t change the tactical situation.  They would pay dearly, but on the Marines’ terms, not theirs.

He came to a halt and passed, “Commanders, set security and then on me.”

Beside him, the usually emotionless Çağlar glowered with anger.  He said nothing, though, as he moved to put himself between Ryck and where First had fought and died.

Ryck tried to gather his thoughts while his two platoon commanders and company staff came up to him.  He’d left Captain Lee back at the schoolroom to care for the wounded and secure the building, so that left him with Third and Fourth.  Just ahead of them was what Hester had described as a platoon of armored pirates and a Patty. Ryck wished he had even a squad of PICS Marines.   He knew they’d make short work of pirates in freaking Nizzies, no matter how many there were.  But he had no PICS.  His Marines might be the best in the Corps, but they were not set up to fight armor.  He needed an infantry company for that.

“Here’s the situation,” Ryck started, even if they all understood just what was happening.  “Charlie and Delta, along with the battalion headquarters, were caught up in some sort of explosion inside the complex.  We have no comms with them and have to assume they are KIA.  Alpha is essentially in good shape, and Major Halverson is bringing them forward.  They will be linking up at the schoolhouse in about an hour.  First Platoon is gone.”

“Fucking SOG pigs!” Capt O’Leary shouted out.

Ryck ignored the outburst and went on.  “There’s nothing we can do about that now but extract revenge.  But we have to do this right.  We can’t go in there pounding our chests and screaming for a fight.  They’ve got armor, and we don’t. 

“So for the moment, we are going to advance cautiously, and I mean that.  I want to scour the scene and get whatever Intel we can.  We’ve still got two Marines alive, Popper and Creep, and we’re going to get them and bring them back to the link up with Alpha.

“I’m the senior effective Marine, so I’ve taken command of the battalion, and together with Alpha, we’re going to come up with a plan to take it to the SOG and make them pay.  Have no doubt about it, they will pay!

“Sandy, I want a modified wedge, looping in from the east away from the road.  If there is any sign of the SOG, we stop.  Do not engage unless we are attacked. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.  Got it,” Sandy acknowledged.

“OK, let’s move it out.”

Within minutes, the company was back on the move, but in a controlled formation rather than the pell-mell sprint of before.  Ryck went over a list of equipment he wished he had with him.  PICS, of course.  More Banshees.  An M249 Field gun.  A dragonfly, for God’s sake!  How hard would it have been to fit in some dragonflies with them into the duck eggs?  With the little drones, and least he’d be able to see what was up ahead.

He was proud to be a Raider, and he knew his men were the best there were, but this mission should have gone to a fully-equipped infantry battalion.  He knew politics had been involved.  The Raider mission needed to be validated, and that would happen even if the mission was not the correct one.  And as always when politics got involved, it was the grunt on the ground who paid the price.

Moving cautiously, it took another 40 minutes before Sandy passed back, “We’re at the site.  No enemy, no live enemy, that is, here.”

His voice was subdued, almost cracking.  Ryck acknowledged, then increased his pace to see for himself.

He almost stumbled on a pair of legs, still connected at the pelvis. He couldn’t see the rest of the body.  He took a deep breath and continued to where Sandy and Gunny Van der Flught were waiting for him.  Beyond them, the hulk of the Patty was smoking, and Ryck could see a number of destroyed Lizzies among his dead Marines.

Sandy very calmly said, “First took out the Patty and 16 of the armored pirates.”

“Sixteen and the Patty?” Ryck asked, astounded.

First must have fought like supermen, to be able to take out so many.  Ryck wasn’t sure how they’d done it with only two missiles and their combat load of grenades.

“They fucking kicked ass,” the gunny said.

Ryck’s momentary elation immediately faded as he caught sight of Corporal Francis Bumante, “Dumbo,” lying on his back, his sightless eyes staring at the morning sky.  Dumbo was a new father, his baby girl born while the company was on Livingston.  Ariel was her name.  He’d never even seen her, and now, she would never see her father, never know her.

“Sir, you need to see this,” Sandy said, interrupting his chain of thought. 

Sandy was obviously trying to keep it together, and he could be losing that battle.  The scene before them was horrible, and Ryck wondered, with a sense of dread, what could be worse than this?

He followed Sandy and the gunny to the base of a large tree.  What he saw there didn’t make sense at first, and it took him a moment to put it together.  It was Creep, Sergeant Smith, still in the ziplock.  But the clear material was not puffing out slightly as normal.  It had collapsed closer to his body.  His body.  Not his head.  Creep’s head had been hacked off, stripped of the ziplock, and placed on the body’s crotch, facing whoever would come upon it.

For the first time in his career, a career that had seen untold violence and death, Ryck lost it.  He lurched to the side and vomited, spasms wracking his body.  He heard someone else joining him, but he wasn’t able to raise his head and see who.  He felt hands on his shoulders, and as the retching stopped, Çağlar raised him back to a standing position.  He glanced back at Creep, rage replacing horror.

“They fucking executed him!’ he said, stating the obvious.

A few steps to his right, Sandy also stood up from his bent-over position, wiping vomit from his mouth with his forearm.  He’d been trying to hold it in, but when Ryck let loose, that was too much for him, and he’d lost it, too.

Embarrassed, Ryck wondered about his reaction.  He’d seen worse.  Maybe it was the surprise of it.  As a zipsicle, in stasis, Creep hadn’t registered anymore as a WIA on his reticule, so when they’d beheaded him, he hadn’t registered as a KIA, either.  Or maybe it was the cold-blooded nature of his death.

Any little embarrassment, though, meant nothing given the situation.  He took a swig of water from his pack, swished it around his mouth, and spit it out.  He took one deep breath, then called for the XO.

“It looks like the bastards destroyed every reticule, at least that I can see.  I want a thorough search to see if any survived.  I want to see what happened.  And check on Nolan.”

Doc’s already on him.  He’s getting ziplocked as we speak?”

“And his condition?”

“He’ll make it.  Lots of regen, though.  He lost both legs and a good chunk of his guts.  He was blown right into a tree when he got hit, and that saved him.  The idiots never thought to look up.”

Never looked up?
  Ryck wondered as he filed away that piece of information.

“I want the dead gathered up and put in one place.  We’ll leave them here for now, but we’ll take them with us when we leave,” he told the XO.  “Have the first sergeant take care of that. 

“I really need you to step up, Ford.  I’m going to be throwing a lot on your shoulders.”

“You’ve got it, sir.  I’m ready,” the XO told him eagerly. 

A Marine with a purpose could do anything, whatever the situation, Ryck thought, as the XO hurried off to carry out his orders.  He had to keep his men focused if he was going to not only get them through this, but complete the mission and destroy the SOG.

And destroy the SOG was just what he was going to do.