The War for Profit Series Omnibus (93 page)

An armored Mosh command car came from the
Skeleton Desert and stopped just outside a town in the foothills of the mountains. A checkpoint of eight Mosh warriors blocked the road. The senior occupant of the command car opened his door and leaned out and said, “Merkismathr!”

A Mosh officer wearing gray chain mail looked toward the command car, walked up to it. “Yes, Stallari.”

“Have you taken bondsmen?”

The Merkismathr said, “I do not think these peasants we fight are worthy of such an honor.”

The Stallari dismounted. “I have misspoken. Do you have prisoners?”

“I do. The orders for how to dispose of them are unclear, so I’ve kept them locked up.”

“I have been sent to teach you. Bring them, I will show you. Then you can demonstrate this to your subordinate commanders and all will be well.”

The Merkismathr made a call and a few minutes later a column of two dozen captured Mandarin regular soldiers were led out of the town past the checkpoint.

The Stallari said, “Bring them shovels, one for each.”

Another delay while Mosh warriors handed their entrenching tools to the prisoners. The assembled Mosh detachment now numbered more than thirty, standing to one side of the line of prisoners.

The Stallari said, “Prisoners, dig. All of you, to make one big pit.”

They dug. The Stallari supervised, pointing out the edge of the pit, the depth, where to toss the dirt. The hole was done, about a meter and a half deep, a meter wide and three meters long. The Stallari looked up at the midday sun and wiped sweat from his brow. He then told the prisoners, “Give the tools back to my warriors.”

The Mosh came forward and took back their entrenching tools. The Stallari paced in front of the line of prisoners. He looked toward the Merkismathr and said, “Mark my words. You will have to repeat them.” The Merkismathr activated a recording device, video and audio, handed the device to his immediate subordinate.

The Stallari faced the prisoners and said, “We are warriors. It is our tradition to accept warriors that surrender to us in battle as our bondsmen, but you are not worthy. You are not warriors.”

The prisoners simply stared at the pit in front of them. The Stallari said, “We come to conquer, to become the new rulers of this planet. The people will be our servants, certainly, and it is good, to serve the Mosh. What you do not understand, and will not understand until our conquest is complete, is that we are liberating you from the cruel tyranny of lies and deceit. We Mosh, our word is our bond and we are men of honor.”

A prisoner snorted a suppressed laugh. The Stallari pointed at him and said, “Silence!”

A Mosh warrior moved in behind the prisoner, sword drawn. The Stallari waved him back, signaled “Stand down.” The Stallari then said, “Your rulers, they send you to die for their sake. On this world of over two billion souls, they chose barely a million citizens to sacrifice. And then they leave you ill-equipped and poorly trained, no match for the Mosh, no match indeed. Your greatest efforts merely insult us. I shall demonstrate.”

The Stallari went back to his command car and came back with a captured Mandarin Army weapon, a standard-issue assault rifle. “They know we wear body armor and they send you to fight us with this? You might as well wave pointy sticks at us.” He handed the weapon to the Merkismathr and said, “Shoot me in the chest with this.”

The Merkismathr took three steps back and aimed, fired a three round burst. The bullets stuck to the chain mail and the Stallari brushed them away. “That alone should make you eager to serve the Mosh. But you have surrendered to the Mosh and you are not worthy to become bondsmen, so your life is forfeit. But I offer you a new life, a rebirth. Now, take off your clothes and toss them in the pit.”

The prisoners removed their shirts, shoes and pants, tossed them in. The Stallari said, “All of your clothes. You are being reborn so you will be as naked as the last time you were born.” They complied, stood nude.

The Stallari said, “The rulers, the tiny minority of elites who hold wealth and power, they have sent you to this fate. When the Mosh conquest is complete, life will return to normal for most of the people of Mandarin. The only ones who will suffer will be the approximately five hundred individuals who now hold real wealth and power. We will take that from them and rule this planet honestly. We will not tease you with the lie that some day you might also ascend to great wealth and power. We tell you truly, we are in power, and only because we said so. Not because we are better than you or smarter than you or anything else. We will not tell you your poverty is your own fault, because it is not. When our conquest is complete, when we rule, every person on Mandarin will have adequate food, clothing and shelter.”

The Stallari then pointed toward the town. “Now for the easy part. You walk from here as a newborn, dependant on the kindness of strangers for your very lives. Turn around and walk into town and beg the good citizens for clothing, sustenance, for employment. There is much work to do for the people of the town, serving the Mosh.” The Stallari drew his laser pistol and pointed it at the pit and used it to set the clothes on fire. “Go!”

The prisoners walked away, into the town. The Stallari said to the Merkismathr, “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Stallari.”

“Train your subordinates. This is what we do with soldiers who surrender. Now there is another matter to discuss.”

“Yes?”

“Tactics. One of our lead elements met with unusual resistance yesterday. They were ambushed in the mountains and stopped in their tracks and lost a platoon of tanks and a company of infantry. This can not happen again. All lead elements will exercise extreme caution, will recon ahead by a distance of no less than five kilometers. They will not move forward until fire support has been reserved. You understand this I am sure.”

“Yes, Stallari. It will slow us down considerably but will reduce our losses.”

“Indeed.” The Stallari climbed back into his command car and rode away to brief the next detachment.

During the week that followed, the Mosh managed to secure the mountains and then landed a third army in the northern part of the Skeleton desert. That army pushed through the mountains and advanced toward Cherry Fork. Galen sat in his Lion command tank on the back slope of a low hill and watched his screen, the image from his sensor mast providing a broad view of the battlefield despite the darkness.

Forward elements sent more feeds and reports. Limited amounts, transmissions kept to a bare minimum to avoid detection. Galen stared and watched as the sun rose behind him. Daylight brought the Mosh. He received reports all up and down the line of Mosh vehicles, tanks in battalion sized formations. Some light recon vehicles, some armored personnel carriers, and trucks following behind. Trucks loaded with infantry, followed by trucks loaded with supplies.

Then the Mosh stopped. Galen looked at the reports, called Tad. “Jasmine Three, what are they doing?”

Tad called back, “They’re held up. They stopped and they are eating. Having snacks, taking naps. Their infantry has dismounted and come forward to move with their tanks but so far, they’re just taking a break.”

Galen said, “We have a real opportunity. No one fires until I give the order.”

“Roger. I got the Fire Support Officer here with me and her plan is wicked. I suggest you defer the fire command to her?”

“Let me see it.” Galen received and reviewed the fire plan. Each and every weapon of the task force was assigned a unique primary and secondary target. The first shot was assigned to him, a blast from his particle cannon to destroy what was obviously the Mosh division’s command tank. A big, super-heavy vehicle stacked with comms gear, five hundred meters back but centered on the line of Mosh medium tanks. Galen said, “Looks good.”

The FSO said, “We’re timed off your shot.”

“Thank you.” Galen leaned back in his seat and looked over the reports again. Three Mosh armored brigades with three infantry brigades in support. They were just sitting in open ground, a klick and a half to the west of Cherry Fork. Galen had all five of his tank battalions on line, facing west from concealed positions. He also had a battalion of assault guns ready to provide indirect fire, a battery of self-propelled medium artillery and the five Ajax tanks parked behind a low hill to the rear. All along the line were Marines, dismounted and positioned to support the tanks of the Brigade. Galen had his mechanized infantry battalion positioned to hold open a route of retreat, or escape, or withdrawal. Withdrawal, most likely. The Mosh division in the kill zone had two more divisions behind it, still held up on mountain roads.

Galen watched, waited. The Mosh rested for another hour and then began moving forward at a walking pace. “Forward, driver. Gunner, target.”

Trooper Bier pulled forward and stopped on top of the hill. Corporal Wine fired. He had an oblique view of the Mosh command tank, twenty three hundred meters away. He chose to hit its glacis plate, aimed for its thickest armor. Showing off. The particle cannon’s shot bored right through and out the other side of its target, stabbed into the slightly higher ground beyond and left a fiery backdrop for the Mosh command tank. It burst, all but its lower hull and road wheels vaporized.

Bier backed up a hundred meters and turned right and prepared to climb up on another low hill. Galen said, “Halt.” It would be another forty five seconds at least before the particle cannon was ready to fire again. Takes a while to spin up that much energy.

All along the line, tank and missile fire erupted. Some small arms too, Marines raked the approaching Mosh with grazing fire. Then artillery arced in to splash in the general vicinity of Mosh units. Normally, Mosh point defense lasers could knock out most incoming artillery but there was so much happening at once, they were overwhelmed. The loss of command and control, the lack of coordination…the Mosh kept on with their last order given, to advance.

And they did, right into the buzz saw that was the Jasmine Panzer Brigade defensive line. Oblivious, the Mosh still advanced. Interceptors approached from the north and struck at the lead elements of the Mosh divisions still in the mountains, to stop them from coming forward to provide support. Galen saw one of the Interceptors hit in the ass by Mosh ground fire, shot straight up after hitting its target. The Interceptor spun wildly and burst into a white ball, its atmospheric thruster propellant exploding. But the other twenty three Interceptors got away, went west and circled low to the ground, awaiting orders.

A text came, addressed to all Brigade and Marine units, “Weapons free.”

“Forward, driver. Gunner, take your pick.”

Bier pulled up on the hilltop and Wine chose a light command car near the left flank. It was speeding along the back of the advancing Mosh line, a hard target to hit. Bier fired into the ground fifty metes in front of the light vehicle. The particle cannon made a gash in the ground ten meters deep, and the gash ended in a crater of hot gas, a ball of fire. The light vehicle drove right into the ball of hot gas, vaporized inside it. Gone. Galen said, “Nice shot.”

Bier backed up. Wine said, “Sir, capacitors nearly depleted. It’ll be half an hour before we can shoot again.”

Galen said, “Roger. Bier, take us over to Mech’s location.”

Galen then keyed comms to call Tad, “I think they’ve had enough. We can withdraw at your discretion.”

“Roger, Six. Three out.”

The Mosh division in the kill zone had come to a stop. No longer combat effective, the smaller groups of survivors organized and began a slow withdrawal back toward the mountains. All of their vehicles were destroyed. Wounded Mosh warriors were carried by their comrades. Galen looked at reports and saw an estimate of eighty percent losses for the Mosh.

His task force began withdrawing around the south end of Cherry Fork. Then the space shield of Cherry Fork began taking hits. The Mosh brought its space force in close enough to get effective shots. That also meant they were close enough to take defensive fire from Mandarin cities farther to the east.

Bier parked the Lion tank on the side of the road near the Mech battalions’ checkpoint. Galen popped his hatch and stood and watched his units roll by in convoy. The Interceptors made a strafing run on the kill zone, picked off a few retreating Mosh, turned east and went back to their base. Galen looked at his auxiliary status screen and saw that the Mosh had brought nearly three hundred war ships forward to bombard Cherry Fork. They were losing ships to ground fire from nearby cities, but the Mosh commander thought it worth the price, acceptable losses. The space shield of Cherry Fork collapsed and the Mosh space ships began turning the city into rubble. They also blasted the ground around it, the areas where Galen’s task force had been just minutes before.

Galen knew the bombardment would have to stop soon, the Mosh were losing a ship every three minutes. He looked toward the city and saw that it was now little more than a smoking ruin of rubble and ash, surrounded by cratered and broken ground. The bombardment stopped and the Mosh war ships withdrew. The Mosh ships could now deploy to more forward positions, with Cherry Fork’s space guns destroyed. They began firing up what had been the defensive line of Galen’s task force. A wasted effort; the task force had already withdrawn.

Eighteen kilometers to the southeast of the ruined city, the task force took up defensive positions along a low ridge. It gave them a new kill zone, everything between them and the city. The
Ajax tanks maneuvered slowly and parked eight kilometers beyond the ridge and took on a full load of ammo. The task force TOC and ALOC were located near them. Last out of the old area of operations was the Mechanized infantry battalion. Galen convoyed with them and then split off to park near the entry point of the TOC perimeter, facing out.

Galen told his crew, “Fifty percent security. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He then dismounted and walked over to see Tad, helped the TOC crew set up the canvas extension.

Tad said, “Hey, boss,” and handed Galen a tent stake.

“Hey yourself. That was a fine combat operation.” Galen slid the stake through a grommet.

“We did all right. Lost about four percent. Not bad.” Tad tapped the stake with a hammer.

Galen said, “Now what?”

Tad handed Galen another stake, pointed at a troop. The troop was holding a rope that came off the left rear corner of the canvas. Galen slid the stake through the loop at the end of the rope and pulled, touched the stake to the ground.

Tad tapped the stake. “We stand down. Mandarin wants to send regulars to defend the rubble, but they’ll have to let it cool for a couple of days.”

Galen stood and said, “Sounds about right. It’ll take the Mosh about two weeks to pick their way through Cherry Fork. That rubble makes excellent defensive terrain and the cratered ground around the city will slow their armor. We’ll wait here and shoot up the Mosh when they try to move east, after they take Cherry Fork.”

Tad said, “Sounds good. You know, our kill ratio today was well over eighty to one. That’s epic.”

Galen puffed his chest and stroked an imaginary beard. “It is good, to fight the Mosh.”

Tad said, “We got lucky. The Mosh are learning.”

“By the way, what happened to those three Mandarin armored divisions that were supposed to attack the Mosh in the Skeleton desert?”

Tad said, “High Command took too long trying to decide where to commit them. They ended up pulling them back and they organized them into a reinforced armored corps. Now they sit near the capitol of the
Western Province, awaiting orders.”

“That’s funny. I’ll see you at your after-action brief.” Galen saw that the chuck wagon was parked nearby, ready to serve chow. He walked back to his tank, took his place in the cupola and sent his crew to eat.