Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade (23 page)

20

Naero had never seen the Ejjai fight so fiercely.

Company 36 moved in on the Marchant-4 main starport, in the capital gigacity of Tharis. The Marines quickly captured four starliners, disrupting their power cores with new Intel disrupting charges specifically designed for zapping and temporarily disabling enemy ships and securing Alliance vessels that the foe attempted to utilize.

Around the gigacity capital itself, Bravo Command performed a perfect encirclement and containment strategy, moving and maneuvering leaping units in precise, lightning-fast ops. They popped and dropped slasher units left and right on the way in, carving the invader up and consuming the pieces.

Fixers took out most of the demo charges and booby traps on the starliners.

They also neutralized an additional nerve gas cosmicide device, with Om’s assistance via Naero.

Shetanna trashed a squad of enemy gravtanks as they swiveled their turret guns to fire upon the vulnerable starliners.

What the hell was inside of those vessels that the enemy was protecting so fiercely?

She and the Bravo boarding teams raided the first liner they came to up close.

Shetanna transported into the bridge cockpits, cutting down the Ejjai crew. Even as the enemy tried to activate grenades and fusion charges. She sliced through their wrists firsts, if she had to. When that crew was dead, she popped over to the next two cockpits and did the same thing.

In the fourth, she was a second too slow.

She fled as the fourth starliner cockpit exploded and cooked off.

On all four rescued starliners, Marines popped out the inflating nanoslides and started tossing stunned kids out and down to the tarmac.

Om warned her.
N, that last starliner with the burning cockpit is going to go nova in less than three minutes.

“Bravo!” Shetanna commanded. “Speed things up. Get your asses out of there. That last liner is going to blow.”

Sergeant Maria Bucci answered back. “We can’t, N. The whole ship is stuffed full of stunned kids–thousands of them. Foam sprayers are on the way to suppress the fires.”

“There isn’t enough time, Maria,” Naero said. “I’m on my way; I’m returning to assist.”

Shetanna needed to come up with some kind of solution.

She floated above the burning liner. The flames spread rapidly.

First she sheared off the entire front burning section with a Cosmic slicing wave.

That took a lot of Cosmic juice, but if that part blew up, it could still take out the rest of the starliner and maybe even damage the others.

Om, please, dig deep. Help me place layered Cosmic blast shields all around the part that’s about to blow. We’ve got to contain the explosion.

N, it’s too late. We can’t.

I don’t want to hear it, Om. Help me! Just do it. Knock us out if you have to. There are four liners filled with kids and our Marines who are counting on us.

The blast ignited less than ten seconds later.

When Naero came to, everything around her seemed to be on fire. Chime Fox from Fireteam 3 dragged Naero’s scorched and battered suit of combat armor with her still in it, out of immediate harm’s way.

“I got you, N,” Chime told her.

“The liners?”

“Scorched, but secure. Between your shields and the foam trucks, we just barely kept it all from going critical and from engulfing everything in this sector in flames and explosions.”

Naero gulped in air.

“The fires will be out a few minutes,” Chime said. “What do we do then?”

Naero shook her still-fuzzy head, and blinked. “What are you talking about, Chime?”

“These stunned kids. What the hell do we do with all of these stunned kids, in the middle of a frickin’ battlefield? There are thousands of them.”

Naero tried to clear her head and ponder that problem for a moment. “Have the fixers refit the remaining three starliners, enough to get them up and running. Fly ’em out. Get those kids the hell away from here.”

Chime protested. “But we just disabled them all to get the enemy from getting away with them!”

“The fixers can do it.”

N, actually, only the first two of them are flyable. That leaves 4,631 kids age seven to eight months in imminent danger.

Naero checked the combat grid. Om was right. Incoming enemy attacks. Ground assault ships and gravtanks waves inbound.

The starliners were sitting ducks for the enemy to fire upon and destroy on sight. Naero had no doubts about that.

Om, how many Marines do we have on hand in this forward area?

Around six thousand, N.

She spoke out lout. “Get with HQ. We can do this fast. Line up the Marines. Get the two fixable ships the hell out of here. Then, on the damaged ships, each Marine grabs and carries one kid. Strap them on, use slings–haisha–use glue if we have to. But we’re getting out, and we’re taking those helpless kids with us, even if we have to fight our way out.”

Chime called back. “Major Luna has confirmed the op and shift in objective. We grab the kids and race toward these coordinates to a safe zone.”

“What’s there, Chime?”

“A secure staging area for evac refugees. There are about twenty thousand civies there, waiting for a ride out of here. They’ve agreed to help care for the kids if we can get them there safely.”

“Tell them to be waiting,” Naero said. She pulled her pulse carbine off her back where it waited. She locked and loaded.

She might be out of Cosmic juice for the day, but she could still fight.

All the while, the Marines filed into and out of the ruined starliners to grab kids and secure them. The two rigged starliners that could fly were already limping away into the sky, in the opposite direction of the fighting.

The remaining Marine force deployed layers of float-seeker mines and prepared a rear guard action to delay the advancing invaders and buy the bulk of the Bravo forces time to get away with their new charges.

Marine and naval starfighters came down to harass the enemy’s close assault ships rumbling in. The enemy was backed up by invader armor and reinforcements.

“Shields up! Let’s move,” Shetanna commanded.

The rear guard barely held.

Enemy skirmishers still managed to squirt through cracks and soon attacked both flanks.

Bravo fought their way out of the starport area, guns blazing.

Time and time again, Naero saw Spacer Marines cover their charges and take hits on their shields, on their armor, and even endure wounds, just to protect those kids.

The defenders used up their grenades and microbombs three times over, despite near constant replenishment by their fixers.

Just before they reached the designated safe area, the enemy tried to cut them off from the air with a gravwing assault.

Corporal Guy Kendall took a direct hit through his face shield and was killed instantly. Fireteam 2 towed his body and his charge in, with his mates still fighting.

Naero and most of 36 rose up, firing with precision, and shot the attackers out of the sky.

Bravo made it to the safe area and handed the stunned kids off to the waiting civies.

The Corps landers stared, hardly able to believe that the feared Spacer Marines–people they had been conditioned all of their lives to fear and hate–would sacrifice themselves and risk their lives just to rescue so many lander children, when they could have simply left them all to their fate.

Shetanna stood up, and spoke to the landers, telling them to be sure to remember that, and tell others of their people and all the worlds of the High Crusade what they had witnessed.

36 prepared and marched Guy Kendall’s body into the halls of the honored dead. This was war, and Marines died. Everyone had to accept the fact that during any battle, at any time, it could just as easily be any of them. This led many to live life only for the moment.

They might very well die the next day.

On the following Seventhday, Naero had another dance night practice session, this time with the guys and the stomping gungirls of 36. With this being her fifth session, she was starting to get the hang of things. Dancing was a performance art, a competitive sport, just like anything else.

With much help, she was even coming up with moves of her own, but her dancing friends still had to tell her whether they worked or not. Some did. Some didn’t.

After Vid Night the next day, Naero, Chime, and Jonny sat around with several other more philosophic Marines and yammered and argued about love, and what it meant to truly love another person.

Sara Maeris, a very distant cousin to Naero, if at all, spoke openly and freely about her depth of feeling her beloved, Aeden Taylor, a spacer tek in the Navy. She very clearly, simply, and eloquently stated what love was like for her.

Suki Lii spoke of the love she still felt for her deceased husband Garrett, and how much pain his loss caused her. But even more than a lover, Suki went on and on about the love of a parent, a mother. She expounded on the overwhelming depth of love that she felt for their two-year-old daughter, Brenda.

Keisha Aztec told them about the deep, appreciative love that she felt for her father, but not so much for her cold and distant mother. How she always regretted that. Now that she was married to her Marine husband Kevin, and she had a child of her own, a son named Omar who was a year-and-a-half, she was going to amend that in her life with her children. She wanted to be close to them.

Jonny Fox said that he didn’t want to marry a Marine. One in the family was enough. “I just want her to be a cute little Spacer chick who’s crazy about me. Maybe just a simple Spacer merchant girl, or a tek. Maybe even a medtek. Then she can heal me and make me all better when I do something stupid.”

Naero laughed and couldn’t resist. “She’d better get used to that with your dumb ass.” Everyone laughed. Jonny’s cousin Chime simply sat next to her cousin, hugging her knees and daydreaming off into space with a kooky smile on her face.

While the regular boneheads and horndogs just barged in and went on and on about straight up sex and the virtues of meaningless, monkey love.

21

Pulweii-11 was an archipelago water moon, with weird planetary electromagnetic effects that played havoc with tek, coms, and scanners. How convenient.

The place was practically an Ejjai invader’s dream. Pockets of hundreds and thousand of helpless natives, human and Cumi, and Corps researchers scattered across a network of countless islands. Total population about one hundred million.

Ten invader battle groups scattered a hundred thousand Ejjai over the planetary surface, broken up into smaller, murderous bands of one to several hundred raiders and skirmishers.

The Marines and locals faced something else new–mini-meatships, which were much smaller, more numerous, and far easier to cloak. That made them much harder to track down and destroy than the full-sized vessels.

The mini-meatships were about the size of a regular, private merchant ship, cheap and relatively easy to mass-construct. One of these lesser processing plants could easily accompany each of the smaller invader raiding parties.

A new miniature menace.

For one of the first times during the High Crusade, Bravo units sent to Pulweii-11 found themselves outnumbering the invaders. That was a switch.

Yet because of the planetary EM effects, the advantage in numbers did not translate into the field. In fact, it did them little good in this situation. The Spacer Marines could not scan or locate the enemy in order to quickly wipe them out all at once or in a series of lightning fast ops.

They could resort to playing a cat-and-mouse waiting game. They could monitor the planet from orbit and responds to attacks with drop troops, but the enemy could often hit-and-run fast enough–melting away before the drop troops could fully engage them.

Another first. Bravo was stymied, stuck waiting for the invaders to attack and show themselves. The Ejjai could play lots of tricks on them and jerk them around.

Naero went to Om. Nothing’s working, Om. We have to find a way to track down the invaders. We can’t be everywhere at once in sufficient numbers to defeat attacks. Both sides are well aware of that.

I’m afraid it gets worse, N. Signs point to several cloneships and factory supply ships at work onworld. The enemy numbers are only going to increase, and they can feed off of the food stocks in the oceans for months and swell their numbers without ever attacking the humans on the islands, if they so choose.

We can’t ferret out the slashers we have so far. More will only make things worse. We have to take out those cloneships and the equipment factories.

N, what about our fixers?

What about them, Om? We tried that. Fixer scans don’t work on this moon any better than our regular scans.

No. What if we blanket the planet with fixers, creating an entire chainlink network of them? We can locate and track the enemy on real-time visuals alone, and then coordinate our efforts with the combat grid to take them down. They’ll just be a grid extension in a mechanical, physical form.

Rely primarily on visual sightings? Sounds good, Om. How long would it take to cover the planet with linked fixers?

Fourteen days, three hours, twenty-seven–

No good, Om. Too long…unless that’s our only option.

Then something else occurred to Naero. The moon’s surface was effectively almost ninety percent hydrographics.

The exposed landmass of the various island systems were under eleven percent, in total.

Om, what if we blanketed just the island land masses in visually linked nets of observation and alarm fixers?

Less than two standard days.

Great. Get on it, Om. The invaders could be using submersibles in large numbers, or starships in those modes for short periods of time. Yet I’m still guessing that the bulk of their forces are hiding somewhere on land.

Naero brought up a holo map of the system from the sitrep and studied it again.

Once we can locate and track them visually and on a live basis, then we can begin to wipe them out, and pinpoint and predict where they are going to attack next. That will prove decisive.

Not only that. We can find out where their fleet ships are, including the cloneships, factory supply ships, and even the new smaller meatships.

Brilliant, Om. Prioritize the fixer network to cover the largest island networks first, and then work their way down the list. Bravo can start attacking the invaders as we locate them.

Yet that gave the enemy about a day and a half free rein to strike at will and kill and plunder, more or less unchecked.

Together, Naero and Om cooked up a response for that as well.

Naero went before HQ herself and explained the strategy to Major Luna and the Command Staff, using holo screens, simulations, and growing data feeds.

“Most of the random enemy attacks have still hit the larger islands and island network. The local population centers are the big draw, and there are still only so many of those. So by the numbers, there are only a finite number of places that they are most likely to hit. Those top locations are where we should concentrate our rapid response and drop forces.”

Major Luna nodded in agreement. “Looks good, until the slashers figure out our game and try something else.”

Naero was ready for such objections. “Yes, but this should help us for a day or two. That’s all we need, because after that, our visual fixer net will blanket this system, locate the enemy bases, and hand them to us on a silver platter.”

Luna grinned. “Outstanding. I like it. Let’s get on this, people. Good work, Maeris. We’ll purposely make it look as if we’ve spread our forces too thin across the planet, even using some holos and fake patrols over water.”

Luna continued. “That’s an invitation to be attacked. The invaders won’t be able to resist what will appear to them to be a chance to hand us a major defeat.”

Viho Cheyenne, the XO, chimed in before Naero could even jump back in. “They will attack for sure, eager to take us down along with the locals. Then we reveal our true strength, spring the trap, and split their chests and bellies open for the carrion eaters and the worms to feast upon!”

The HQ staff got quiet for a moment, staring at Viho.

“Haisha,” Naero blurted out. “Damn straight. What the XO said!”

Captain Samson Konrad, third in command, was already gaming the combat hub and shooting out orders and logistics. “Got it. We bait the most likely traps, and then we keep rapid response forces cloaked at key points nearby, ready to respond to any attack. That provides better economy of force to threat ratios and probabilities. It will give us the best chance to respond to and defeat the invader over the next two days. We just have to hold out that long.”

Naero brought them full circle. “Then the new fixernet will be up and online.”

That first day, Bravo Command was able to intercept and destroy three main enemy attacks.

Five other enemy attacks still managed to hit and run and get away. But even they were cut short and interrupted by the new protocols and procedures put into place.

Four mini-meatships were destroyed. No clone or factory ships were located or taken out, as yet.

The next day went much better. Bravo foiled well over half of the stepped-up enemy attacks and crushed them outright. They took down several mini-meatships, one conventional meatship, and even destroyed three cloneships.

As predicted, as soon as the fixernet came online later that second day, it quickly became an even worse day for the invaders.

But even when exposed and trapped, the enemy never failed to fight to the death, and spend their lives trying to do as much damage to the civilian populations before they were cut down.

Bravo was more than willing to oblige with the cutting-them-down part.

By day three, the invaders were on the run, broken, and attempting to flee. Shetanna and the Marines were the masters of fear, and the invaders had finally had enough.

The Spacer Navy had a good deal of target practice as the remaining, panic-stricken Ejjai warships tried to scatter and escape.

Very few, if any, managed to do so.

When Bravo left that world behind, another Fifthday and Chat Night came up, the big topic of conversation was the end of the war, and how it might turn out.

At least now the end of the war could be imagined, and everyone began to speak about the aftermath of the High Crusade. What would happen to the Corps? How many of them would survive?

Who was really behind the Ejjai Invasion? When and where and how would these terrible new foes strike again? What were these new aliens like?

Speculation ran rampant.

But Naero, the officers present, and the non-coms reminded everyone to glacier down, and not get too ahead of themselves. The current war wasn’t even over yet. By any estimates, there were still many worlds to rescue, and at least a few months of heavy fighting ahead of them. If their mysterious enemies didn’t spring anything new on them in the meantime.

Mundane and personal matters always took over at some point each night.

Wallace Archer was very worried about the marital problems he was having with his wife, merchant Spacer Diana Taylor, and how it might affect their two-year-old daughter Vicky.

Falco Borelli and his wife, Stephana Wallace, were concerned with their one year old son, Trenton, since he fell and broke his arm. It was already healed, but the infant seemed to be holding back after his first painful injury, and didn’t play with the abandon he had before. Many others advised them to give the little guy time. He would soon forget about the incident and go wild once again.

They came across Nick Kowalski, passed out in a corner and covered in his own sick, several empty Spacer Poteen bottles scattered and broken around him.

Chime knitted her brows in concern. “Nick was never a drinker before. Takes a lot to make a Spacer puke himself.”

Jonny sighed. “C’mon, guys. Let’s get him cleaned up and put him in his bunk. Nick’s best friend was Chang-Han. Nick’s been keeping to himself a lot since his buddy’s death. We need to watch him and help him if we can. Try to bring him around.”

Part of Naero suddenly worried if they were all like that in a war. At the very least a little damaged. War always changed people. Even after the war ended, no one could ever go back to who they were before. She knew that she couldn’t. She’d always be different now. All of them would.

By the time they put Kowalski to bed, out of nowhere, some of the Marines began singing old Spacer songs. Songs that everyone knew. Songs their parents, grandparents, and greatgrans sang to them.

Other voices joined in. Naero joined in and sang right along with them. Soon everyone was belting out the old songs. When one song ended, they took up another.

This was their history. This was their mighty heritage and who they were–as a people. Spacers were singers, dreamers, explorers, warrior poets, and philosopher queens and kings.

Then at one point the Marines took up a new song that had been around for a few months on the webnets and dumptune stations.

Naero herself had heard the song a few times, although she did not know all of the words.

She learned them as her mates sang them to her. As she wept with joy, and sorrow, and open pride before her sisters and brothers. They honored her, her blood, and her Clan as everyone sang:

The Ballad of the Omaria.