The War for Profit Series Omnibus (54 page)

Chapter Nine

Galen had just taken his last bite of lunch when a troop from the Guns section walked by and said, “Three is calling you, sir.”

Galen swallowed hard and put on his commo helmet and heard, “Jasmine six, this is Jasmine Three. Over.”

“Six here.”

“We have contact. You near a display?”

“Getting there.” Galen climbed up on his tank and sat down in his cupola seat.

“We have three full armored brigades with infantry on board moving to breach at three points.”

Galen switched his status screen to battle map display. On there, it looked bad but he knew it wasn’t as bad as it looked. “Gotcha, three. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“I do what I can. Three out.”

Galen knew the Mosh tables of organization and equipment made them look stronger on the battle map than they really were. A Mosh armored brigade had two tanks as the HQ Company, and a singe tank as the battalion HQ Company, and a Mosh tank company HQ was a single tank, and that company had three platoons made up of three tanks each. So, a Mosh armored brigade was only sixty five tanks, the numerical equivalent of what most military leaders would recognize as a battalion. On those approaching Mosh tanks were infantry, a squad riding on each tank. But again, Mosh infantry squads were only seven solders.

Galen watched the battle map. The Mosh attacking the center stopped and used their tank’s main guns to bombard the area ahead of them, the faces of the hills in front of them, the gap between the hills where they intended to pass through, and the ridge lines to their front. Galen saw that the indig infantry on the line were in positions where the Mosh couldn’t hit them with tank fire, hunkered behind the hills on each side, and a company behind the line deployed parallel to the road but back a half a klick. He also noticed that three klicks to the right, a Jasmine light tank company had passed forward of the indig line and turned left, to come in behind the Mosh brigade.

The Mosh moved forward, their third tank battalion in the gap when the lead unit turned right. The indig infantry attacked the Mosh tank battalion in the gap, but the Mosh lead element and its first and second tank battalions continued with their right turn. The indig infantry deployed along the road moved forward and attacked the second Mosh tank company from behind as it turned. Then a company of seventeen of the Jasmine Brigade’s Stallion medium tanks met the lead elements of the Mosh head-on. The Mosh leader and the first tank battalion stopped to slug it out and were set upon by another indig infantry company. The second Mosh tank battalion turned about and then attempted to make it back into the gap. The Jasmine light tank company was now in position to close off the gap, hugging the side of the hill to limit the number of Mosh tanks that could shoot back at any one time.

Indirect fire landed in the gap, a battery six fired from the four-gun 240mm battery located at the Jasmine Panzer Brigade TOC location. Then mortar fire from the 107mm mobile mortars of the mechanized battalion. The Mosh units in the gap, minus their infantry and half their tanks, moved to join their first battalion. But that fight was nearly over. The indig infantry pulled back and Jasmine Brigade indirect fire landed on the remaining Mosh. Galen watched as enemy unit markers turned amber, the red, then black, and finally disappeared. He looked at the other two points where the Mosh had breached the lines and the story was pretty much the same. Then he zoomed out to see deeper into Mosh territory. The guns in the TOC perimeter were already engaged in an artillery duel with Mosh artillery. Although outnumbered, the Panzer Brigade guns were mobile while the Mosh guns were towed artillery in fixed positions. The Panzer Brigade guns acquired a target, moved to avoid the masking of the hill in front of them, unloaded six rounds each at their opponents and pulled forward, snug up against the hill to avoid getting shot back at. Then they’d acquire the next target’s location and drop six more rounds on each of them. Although the counter-battery fight was only taking out about half the intended targets with each volley, it was effective at drawing all the Mosh artillery fire away from the Jasmine and indig units on the line. By the time the Mosh had given up on trying to hit the Jasmine Brigade’s artillery, the attacking Mosh armor had been rendered combat ineffective and the indig and Jasmine Brigade units were already snug up against various hills along the line, below the firing arc of Mosh artillery.

Galen leaned back and relaxed his tense back. Although he had been more than twelve klicks away from any action, and Tad had been in control the whole time, still, his teeth hurt where he had been gritting them all through the battle. The past forty minutes had seemed like ten hours. He called Tad, “Hey three, can I move my task force out now?”

Tad said, “Negative, six. I’m getting more Mosh activity. Wait and see what develops, then I’ll see about cutting you loose.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Check center front, deep in Mosh territory, about sixty five klicks in.”

Galen looked. The Mosh were rallying their reserves. Not really reserves but their new units. Assembled, it would be a force the same composition and size of the one the Mosh had just lost. Three Mosh armored brigades with three Mosh infantry brigades riding on the outside of the tanks. A force the size of two divisions, one infantry and one armored. One big difference, though; the second group was not as well trained. Two months before, the Mosh had brought in new soldiers to field the new equipment built at the Grinder factories. They had trained up to unit level tactics and were set to relieve the Mosh units already on the line. The units on the line were supposed to mount one drive-through ‘thunder-run’ style attack against the Tuha infantry line before moving back to their own space port, then deploy off this planet.

But the Jasmine Panzer Brigade had just screwed up that rotation. Galen had expected the Mosh reserve force to take up a defensive posture near their military industrial complex, but it was obvious they intended to attack. Galen knew Tad made the right call, holding back Galen’s maneuver until the Mosh were fully committed to whatever it was they were going to do next. If Galen moved now, the Mosh could detect and intercept him.

So Galen switched his main screen to the Awareness Channel. Captain Grey was seated at a desk in the TOC, giving commentary.

“The Mosh attack was thoroughly unsuccessful this afternoon. I’m glad I’m not the Mosh commander right now.”

A Master Sergeant from her public affairs team sat next to her. “Ma’am, if I were the Mosh commander right now I’d go choke myself on a rope. Our first field correspondent report on today’s action is now available.”

The scene changed to a Public Affairs Corporal in full field gear. “Here we are at the breach that occurred on our right flank this afternoon with Troop Justice, a tiger team member leading a platoon of Tuha infantry out here on the line.”

Justice said, “The Mosh stopped about a klick short of this hill behind me, got on line side by side and began firing. Not sure what they were shooting at, we were on this side of the hill, but they sure made a lot of noise. Then they got back in column and moved into the gap between this hill and the next. Since the shooing had stopped, I led my platoon up to the crest of the hill to see what else was going on.”

“So, what did you see?”

“Some wheeled vehicles, trucks, trailing the tanks. I relayed that information to Sergeant Anderson, he’s the CO for this company, and he told us to come on down and join him. When we got there, most of the tanks had gone on by but a company halted in the gap. The plan was to hit the last tanks first, to obstruct the gap to prevent enemy retreat, but we hit trucks along with them. Wasn’t sure if truck wreckage would present enough obstruction to stop tanks from retreating, but we hit enough tanks so it didn’t matter anyway. That took all of thirty seconds, to take out that company of tanks. Their dismounts came at us but by then they just didn’t have the numbers. They went down pretty quick.”

A sound of several rifles fired in a single volley came from the side. Justice looked to his side and stormed off and said, “What the hell are you doing?”

A squad of Tuha infantry stood in a line, rifles at the ready. Three meters in front of them lay the body of a Mosh soldier, riddled with bullet holes.

Justice yelled, “I told you guys to stop doing that! Drop, just drop! Do some push ups!”

The Tuha soldiers knelt to lay their rifles on the ground and then started doing pushups. Justice paced in front of them. “That’s right; keep pushing until I get tired. I won’t tell you again, you need to stop shooting prisoners. There’s no excuse for that crap!”

The next scene was a young man in tanker uniform. The correspondent asked, “Captain, can you let us know how your fight went?”

“Captain? Hell, I’m a Lieutenant. My Captain is stretched out with the medics getting his legs un-bent and pinned together.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant.”

“Oh, never mind. I’m with the hornet light tanks that came to cut off the egress route. We came in right after the last Mosh tanks went into the gap. We stacked up with the hill on our left, off-set so that my front sprocket was about midpoint on the tank next to me, all down the line, all seventeen tanks. That presented limited target profiles for the Mosh tanks. The first ones to come out came out backwards, you know, in reverse, so we held fire as long as we could, because our light laser cannons can get first-time kills on the sides and backs of Mosh medium tanks. Finally one of them noticed us and swung his turret our way but we blasted them before they could get their first shot off. That took out seven of them. Three more tried to come at us forward. The first one came around the hill, in the sights of all our tanks at once because of the way we were set. We fried that guy, burnt holes right through his gun mantle and glacis plate and everything else. The next tank had to come even wider to get around the tank we had just hit, and he presented us his flank. That tank burst, somebody drilled his fuel cell I guess. The last tank pushed the hulk of the first tank, using it for cover, and was able to take out Captain Morgan’s tank before we could shoot back. But we got him.”

The Lieutenant turned his back and walked away.

The screen went blank for a moment. Then another tank commander, still wearing his combat suit, removed his helmet. His face filled the screen. “What we had here was every tanker’s dream. We met an overwhelming force head-on and turned it back. My company of Stallion tanks was on line behind here,” the tank commander walked backward and indicated the terrain behind him with a broad sweep of his right arm, “set up with intersecting fields of fire, waiting for the Mosh to get inside our kill zones. After initial contact, their fields of fire were obstructed by destroyed tanks. My wing man and I were on the reverse slope of that hill,” he pointed to a hill to this right, the viewer’s left, “and we rolled up on there and started taking top shots down at the Mosh tanks. My gunner knocked out three, and the crew next to me got five of them, including their brigade command tank. By the time me and my wing man had backed off the hill and come down to circle the hill to take flank shots at the Mosh, they had withdrawn into the gap they had come from originally, and Red Leg took care of them from there.”

The correspondent said, “And what are you doing now, Captain?”

“I lost four tanks and have nine injured troops, one dead. The after action logpac is just about done taking care of business here; we’ll be back in position ready to fight in just a few minutes.” He put his helmet on and walked over to his tank and climbed back up into his cupola.

The next scene was a tiger team Corporal with his left arm around the shoulders of a Tuha soldier who had a huge smile on his face and a bandage wrapped around the top half of his head, his left eye peeking out from under it, his right eye covered. His left arm was in a pneumatic splint, slung in front of his chest.

The tiger team Corporal said, “These Tuha soldiers, they’re a great bunch of guys, you got to love them. Put a little hot chow in their bellies and they turn into heroes. This soldier, he had an anti-personnel grenade and ran right up to a Mosh tank. Their tanks have 122mm main guns that fire chemically propelled rounds that feed in from an autoloader. Well Smiley here ran right up to it, and right after the Mosh tank fired, Smiley shoved his grenade down the barrel of the tank and crouched right under the gun. When the tank blew up, the barrel came down and cracked him right on top of the head. His battle buddy was a little too motivated, broke Smiley’s arm dragging him away to safety. But that’s okay, right, Smiley?”

Smiley nodded and smiled.

Tad interrupted. “Six, this is three. I need a favor.”

Galen called back, “You name it.”

“I need to pass operational control to you. The Mosh are on the move, committed, and headed right for me. They must have put our annoying gun battery on the top of their ‘to do’ list.”

“Roger, I now have control. So what are you doing about the Mosh charge?”

“Running,” said Tad. “I already sent ALOC up the road. They’ll take up a position beside the Tuha corps HQ. I’m just about done packing up; I’ll be on the road in a few minutes. I plan to run up the road a few klicks and turn right and end up near where you are now and re-assume control after I get there. That’s when you’ll start your attack. The Mechanized battalion will pull out last and link up with the two reinforced Hercules companies and obliterate the Mosh. They’ll be west of Corps HQ, where they can get close air support from our Interceptors if they need it.”