The War for Profit Series Omnibus (99 page)

Galen
stood tall in the cupola hatch of his Lion tank, his combat suit providing protection from the radiation of the solar flare. His tank sat at the release point, the exit ramp of the highway his unit traveled along from the Jasmine Panzer Brigade compound. Until now; this was the exit for the secondary road that ran west into the Kyok Forest.

Armored vehicles rolled by, oversized markings painted on them to show their combat identifications. All had a two meter round circle, rescue red, painted on top of their engine compartments to identify them to friendly aircraft. The Brigade’s Interceptors would be flying in support, as well as a few Mandarin Interceptors. The Mosh didn’t have anything that could fly under these conditions. In fact, the Mosh space fleet had backed off a great distance to get away from the flare. The Mandarin Space Force, unwilling to move too far from the planet, was sheltering from the flare in the planet’s shadow. An Armored Personnel Carrier at the tail end of the Mechanized Infantry Battalion column was marked with “D 88” on each side, showing that it was the Motor Sergeant. The number ‘8’ resembling a wrench…

Others, the tanks especially, had horizontal bands of duct tape around their turrets. One band for first platoon, four bands for fourth. Many had rings painted around their main guns, a modest way to show how many enemy tanks they had killed. Kill rings. Commanders flew storm-sized unit guideons from their sensor masts. Vehicle commanders who had combat suits stood in their hatches. Comms were out, due to the solar storm. Hand and arm signals still worked. Although the gadgets inside the armored vehicles were protected, it was the keen eyes of the vehicle commanders that were best at finding targets under these circumstances.

External loud speakers allowed the vehicle crews to yell at each other over short distances, and ultrasonic bursts allowed for delayed but secure communications. Line of sight comms between vehicles through laser pulse, that was spotty and unreliable. Galen saw the last vehicle of his task force roll by, a recovery vehicle based on a Hercules tank chassis. Galen lowered his seat and closed his hatch. “Okay, driver. Get out ahead and park at the next release point.”

The task force halted for crew rest at the far end of the forest, armored vehicles bunched up bumper to bumper on either side of three parallel gravel roads. It violated doctrine but this time it was essential to hide in the woods, compressed like a spring poised to launch from the forest. Trooper Bier managed to get the Lion tank positioned at the head of the column with half an hour to spare.

It was near midnight and the solar storm would be harmless for a couple of hours. However, the units maintained comms silence to avoid alerting the Mosh. Galen stood in his cupola and removed his helmet. The sky glowed green and crimson, great streaks of upper atmosphere aglow, moving, like a distant fire. The trees of the forest seemed to like the extra energy of the solar storm, the leaves lush and dark, and sprouting new leaves at the tips of branches to capture more energy.

To the right and left and rear were the Brigade HQ tanks, Hercules tanks. Tad on his left, Spike on his right, two more tanks behind for the S-1 and S-4 commanders, with a flak panzer section behind tasked with watching their backs. In a column to the right was the Cavalry Squadron. Behind them, the Hercules heavy tank battalion. In a column to the left were the Light Tank and Mechanized Infantry battalions, vehicles intermixed.

The Stallion medium tank battalion was lined up behind the command group, a squad of Capellan Marines riding atop each tank, protected from the storm by their medium powered body armor. Behind them were the armored vehicles of the Brigade Support Battalion. The thin-skinned and lighter elements of the Brigade and the Marine detachment were still back at the Jasmine Panzer Brigade compound, hunkering down in metal-roofed buildings and underground bunkers. They could come forward after the solar storm passed, transported quickly by the Helos and Marine assault boats. That was the plan.

Galen’s tank moved out first, alone. Bad doctrine and bad tactics usually, but under the circumstances it was best. To avoid detection, or at least present only one tank for the enemy to spot, if they spotted it. Besides, there wasn’t a Mosh weapon within twenty kilometers that could kill the Lion tank with one shot. The Lion was eight hundred meters beyond the edge of the forest as it climbed up the slope of a low hill. At the crest of the hill it stopped, found its target: the entrance to a highway tunnel. It was the main road into Guri. The task force didn’t need it, they were bypassing that town. The Mandarin forces were going to encircle the town, didn’t need the tunnel either. Not yet; they could re-open the tunnel after they took Guri.

But that tunnel was a likely place for a sizeable force of Mosh warriors to shelter themselves from the rays of the solar storm. Corporal Wine laid his main gun on the target, Colonel Raper confirmed the point of aim through the optical sites, and Corporal Wine fired the particle cannon. The face of the hill above the tunnel bulged, burst outward and then a landslide buried any evidence there had ever been a tunnel. Trooper Bier backed the Lion tank a good twenty meters, to put plenty of masking between the tank and the enemy.

The rest of the command group moved up in support of Galen’s tank and stopped. The task force units sprang from the woods, across open fields and around the right side of the hill that had the ruined tunnel, kept going around the outskirts of Guri. Rolling farmland gave way to great, flat stretches of fertile fields. Resistance was futile at best. The tanks barely slowed down as they returned fire from weak ambushes. Pop-shots mostly, weak opportunity fire from Mosh light tanks that just happened to be in a position to notice the task force’s movement.

The Stallion Battalion established checkpoints along the route, a tank and a squad of Capellan Space Marines set up along every kilometer. The Cavalry Squadron’s four Troops closed in and secured the objectives designated as the firing points for the Ajax guns. Mechanized and Light Tank Companies came in to re-enforce them, and then a company of Hercules tanks moved in to secure those areas and the Cavalry Troops set to the task of securing lines of communication all the way back to the Kyok Forest. The Hellcat tank battalion remained in the forest, keeping the route of egress open. Seemed silly under the circumstances, but Tad insisted. Galen and his task force now waited for the arrival of the five Ajax guns, waiting for the Mandarins to capture Guri so that the Ajax guns could be brought forward by rail.

The Mosh were caught completely by surprise. Their units were hunkered down to wait out the solar storm. Resistance was spotty and ineffective. Without effective comms, reliable reports were slow to go up their chain. In a knee-jerk reaction, the Mosh High Chief ordered his independent armored corps into Guri. It came in from the west but arrived too late. Guri was already cut off by Mandarin forces and the Mosh independent armored corps was stopped at a river crossing more than fifteen kilometers away. A blocking force and harassment by Mandarin Interceptors prevented the Mosh from bridging the river. They were stuck.

The Mandarin commander of forces surrounding Guri was a Field Marshall and had an Army Group at his disposal. He bolstered his outward-facing defenses, concerned about another push from the outside by Mosh forces. He assigned a mechanized infantry corps the task of taking Guri. That corps surrounded the city, conducted a general bombardment of key defensive positions, and then sent a representative to the Mosh commander to demand his surrender. The representative was decapitated by the Mosh, his headless corpse sent back.

The Mandarins then probed the defenses for weak spots and found that the entire perimeter was lightly defended. Then a massed assault was turned back, the defending Mosh using a limited amount of indirect fire to weaken the attack. They also had a mobile reaction force to meet the attack head-on, with a small but fierce company of light tanks to hit the attack in the flank. The Mosh also made use of underground transportation and storm sewer tunnels to move forces around and established a crude landline phone system in the tunnels for communication.

The Mosh defenders were little more than a light infantry division augmented by the garrison force of Guri and whatever stragglers had managed to retreat there. The Mosh commander made the most of limited resources and held on stubbornly. Three more Mandarin attacks were turned back and an all-out air attack by every available Mandarin Interceptor simply flew low over the city but could not locate any targets. In frustration, the Interceptors expended their rail gun rounds at random buildings and then returned to their base.

Time was running out and the Mandarin Field Marshall made a final push to capture Guri, committing an armored division to back up the mechanized corps. Many tanks fell into traps and pits, were set ablaze. The tanks that moved slowly enough for infantry to clear their path were picked apart with Mosh indirect fires. Streets were blocked by falling buildings, cutting units in half. The Mandarins, the ones that still could, retreated. Staring fifty percent casualties in the face, the Mandarin Field Marshall decided to call off the attack and simply re-enforced the siege.

His request for re-enforcements and more assault forces was sent up to High Command. Their response was to send out a field court that conducted a summary courts-marshal, formed a firing squad and executed the Field Marshall. The acting commander then ordered all his units to attack the town, to move into Guri all at once. It was a complete disaster for the Mandarins. When the blocking force in front of the Mosh independent armored corps left its position to join the attack on Guri, the Mosh independent armored corps crossed the river and came in to flank the entire attack, moving around it in a circular sweep.

And then the solar storm ended earlier than expected. The storm ended a day early because the Mosh fleet had moved around and positioned itself between the sun and the planet and the ships expanded their shields and deployed chaff to temporarily block much of the energy of the solar flare from reaching the planet. The Mosh fighter-bombers were in the air again.

Galen sat up, the screens of his command suite coming to life with more data than he’d seen over the past two weeks. How long had he slept? Two days? The solar storm…

The solar storm had ended a day sooner than expected; he’d only been asleep for three hours. He sorted through reports, statuses, shook his head. He then sent a text message to every element of his task force, “Retreat pending. Orders coming. Execution within the hour.”

He then called Tad, “Hey three, you got a plan?”

“Roger. Touching it up now, sending it out in a mike.”

“Good. I think this op didn’t go so well.”

Tad said, “Fucking indigs. Transmitting orders now.”

Galen looked them over. “First in, last out.”

“That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

Galen added his approval to the digital orders and forwarded them. He and the Command Group were the rear guard. Kitty bar the door.

Unit markers for Mosh units began to show up on the battle maps. Fighter-bombers sought targets, strafed columns of retreating tanks. The less experienced pilots made straight runs, most of their rounds dusting the ground between the vehicles, scoring maybe two or three hits on a tank, rarely inflicting enough damage to disable the vehicle. The less experienced Mosh pilots also made themselves easy targets for Jasmine flak panzers, flying in straight lines.

The more experienced Mosh fighter-bomber pilots approached from odd angels, constantly changing speed and altitude and direction, circling back and diving at a single vehicle, pouring enough fire into it to destroy it before peeling off. The better pilots also knew to run away like scalded dogs when Jasmine Interceptors arrived, to retreat back to their base and the protective umbrella of their own air defenses.

Galen and the command group sat at the road intersection where the routes back from the four firing points converged. They waited until those units, the Light tank and Mechanized battalions, had withdrawn. Then the command group followed the main road, spread out on either side to present a harder target to air attack. The loss of vehicles to air attack was a nuisance so far. Six vehicles. Then Galen saw a large formation of fighter-bombers approaching. He ordered the troops in the Hercules and Stallion tanks to abandon their vehicles and walk back to the forest. The lighter vehicles were fast enough to get back to the forest in time. Galen looked at his own position. He and the command group had the farthest to walk, twenty five kilometers.

As he climbed out of his tank, he noticed that the large formation of Mosh fighter-bombers was headed to Guri, to finish off what remained of the Mandarin army group. That group was trapped, cut off from retreat. Galen called the Helos and Marine assault boats forward to pick up troops and shuttle them back to the Jasmine Brigade compound, with Interceptor escort.

Galen then had Bier park the Lion tank on a low bridge crossing a creek, parked the tank sideways across the road surface and turned the main gun toward the west and pulled the emergency destruct cord. He and his crew had time to walk a hundred and fifty meters before the Lion tank went into its death throes. First its electrical systems overloaded, the circuit breakers locked closed. Smoke from the electrical fires billowed from the open hatches. The relief valve for the fusion bottle popped, allowing the liquid hydrogen inside to escape as a gas, ignited into a tall flame by the electrical fires. The overcharged capacitors of the particle cannon burst in a brilliant white light. The turret lifted off and landed upside down ten meters away and the sudden loss of electrical power allowed the containment field of the reserve capacitors to collapse. The upper hull of the Lion tank lifted half a meter and the lower hull fell through the bridge, the force of its internal explosion enough to ruin the structure below it.

Trooper Bier watched, presented a proper hand salute to the dead tank, dropped it and executed an about-face and started walking along the road. Corporal Wine said, “It was fun while it lasted, sir. Firing the particle cannon, I mean.” He walked off briskly to catch up with Bier.

Tad and Spike waited for Galen to catch up to them. They saw a Helo set down a short distance ahead and sprinted to it, climbed in with the rest of the dismounted command group and rode back to the Jasmine Panzer Brigade compound.