Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade (4 page)

They fell back slightly and took cover behind the next large building over that way, where the fighting had already passed them by.

The leftenant scrambled to call in the vital significance of that data directly to HQ and on to Intel and Command. “HQ, HQ, get me Major Luna and shunt this all the way up the chain. Patch us directly in to General Walker himself. This is an Alpha-Charlie-Negative One Alert. Situation Red. I repeat. Situation Red.

“The threat is preparing to set off a tek-crippling EM blast net. That way, we couldn’t detect it, the way we could if they had used a large EM bomb. They will most likely cripple all of the tek of our forward units in this area. They also have large numbers of combat reinforcements buried, shut down, and concealed underground that will not be affected by the blast net. They are waiting only for us to move further and deeper into their trap–just as we are doing now by pressing our attack. Then their fully functioning troops will emerge and wipe us out.”

Wilde suddenly sounded frustrated. “What do you mean, where’s my proof? Damn it! It’s all right in these scan reads, if you’ve got brains enough to know what you’re looking at, and you can see the tactical patterns and analyze the energy signatures. Who the hell is this? Goddam it. Get me Major Luna or one of her officers. I don’t care which one. Here’s the data push once again. Show it to someone who’s got a clue! Analyze the situation and advise. Over. Yes, I will hold the link, goddam it!”

Some degree of static blipped over the link and a well-known voice cut in. “Ana, this is Major Luna. Hold your position, Leftenant. Hold and stand by while we confirm your findings. Alerting all Company 36 units. Assemble on new priority orders and prepare for a heavy enemy counterattack, possibly from all sides and directions.”

Shortly after that, Bravo broke off their initial assault, withdrew to a defensive line, and pumped up their shields.

Om almost screamed at Naero,
No, no! Make them power down all shields, N. Tell them to do so, before it’s too late. Maxing all shields is exactly what the enemy wants us to do!

“Leftenant!” Miranda-Naero called out. “We’re playing right into their hands. They’re going to negate all tek with a massive pulse surge. Even maxed out, our shields can’t stop it! Insist that Major Luna have Bravo power down and button up–just like we would against atomics. That will protect us, and we can still power back up and fight! That’s what the enemy is planning.”

Wilde got on the horn, and the relay went from her to Luna, and then straight to General Walker. But orders were already filtering down from Intel and Command. Other heads had figured out the danger as well.

Most of Bravo had barely shut down and covered up, when the wide-reaching EM pulse flashed through nearly everything in the gigacity’s western half.

All exposed tek was burned out: friend, foe, or civilian. Everything cooked and went down.

The game was up, and the hidden enemy forces then powered up and emerged from their hiding places underground.

They fully expected to crush and obliterate everything living around them.

Bravo command powered up and met them head on, picking up the new assault on the evolving combat grid.

Intense firefights erupted close in, in a ring of fire and death all around Elaris. The Marines slugged it out face to face as only they could, nailing targets at will, taking fire from all sides and giving back better.

At one point Naero was about the press the assault forward.

She felt a strong hand on her shoulder holding her back.

Trevor Lakota pulled her into an alley. An alley filled with dead Ejjai, butchered like cattle.

Lakota wiped his long battle blades on the hide of a dead Ejjai Alpha.

Naero hadn’t detected anything or heard a sound. The slashers had been hiding there, holding back, ready to ambush anyone who came near.

Lakota had slipped in behind them fast and scythed them all down.

“What do we do now?” she asked him.

Lakota smiled. “Wait a moment. Little brother Fox is tricky. He knows his business. He and fourth squad have some tricks of their own to play. Then we can join in.”

The other squads held their positions, making the advancing enemy pay.

Then three score enemy strikers raced in fast and low to ground on gravwings.

Float-seeker smartmines popped, taking the foremost Ejjai and halting their advance.

Jonny Fox and the rest of Squad 4 cut across the jumbled up enemy like flashing razors, gunning them down.

More foes tried to rush in.

Squad 4 suddenly shot straight up.

A mek platoon uncloaked and shredded the enemy reinforcements with interlocked autogun and rocket fire.

By this time the enemy and their reinforcements were fully exposed. Marine and naval close air support dropped down and became a crucial factor.

Then several naval warships also swooped in to assist, modified for ground attack and further close support over the heaviest engaged portions of the rapidly expanding battlefield. They pounded the invaders wherever they showed themselves in excessively large numbers, chewing them to pieces.

After that, Bravo command pushed in at numerous key points and carved the remains of the enemy trap into manageable chunks that it could envelope and eliminate in efficient, short order.

Company 36 and 2
nd
Platoon assisted in pinning down Ejjai strikers in high-rises, pyramids, and skyscrapers all around them. While they held the attention of the enemy up front, more Bravo units slipped in stealth mode to finish them off. This system worked time and time again.

Sometimes they switched off.

Sometimes others kept the enemy busy, and 36 went in to take out the Ejjai up close. At one point, the slashers tried to use hostages and human shields.

Marine Company 36 went in like ghosts and took the enemy down, up close and personal with blades in order to limit casualties to the civies.

Much like herself, she saw Trevor Lakota fight fiercely at several points, with a gory blade in each hand. He zipped through a dozen Ejjai like a surgeon, slicing windpipes and spines, nearly severing heads, piercing hearts and lungs. The invaders barely knew they were dead before they hit the ground. Even the civilian hostages were stunned at what occurred.

Miranda-Naero grinned as she moved forward, cutting down Ejjai on her own.

Her knife sparring matches with Lakota were going to be a hoot.

Miranda-Naero didn’t hold back for once, and passed through the astonished enemy in a whirlwind of flashing, spinning kicks and deadly steel. She left almost thirty invaders in bleeding pieces in her wake. All told, 36 cut down several hundred foes in a matter of seconds, and did so in almost eerie silence, except for the grunts and yelps of the dying Ejjai.

Hundreds of severed Ejjai claws clutched weapons, grenades, and explosive devices that they never had a chance to activate.

The Anaconda grabbed her and yanked her back for a second. “Allen! Where in the hell did you learn to fight like that? I’ve only ever seen one other Spacer ever fight that way–The Invincible Cyclone!”

Miranda-Naero grinned and shrugged. “I grew up watching the fight circuits,” she said.

No time. Word came down. They needed to execute another gravwing assault on an enemy hardpoint nearby. They left the startled civies confused, but alive, to fend for themselves. The combat grid would not wait.

Five hours later, the primary fighting was over, with the invaders eliminated as a major threat. The landers and the remaining Corps forces could handle the mop-up.

The Spacer Navy and Bravo Command had liberated four gigacities from the brutal attacks of the invaders, thanks to heavy naval fire support. Then they all packed up to go free the other six.

When Ovedar-3 was finally pacified the next day, Leftenant Wilde still seemed a bit suspicious, but she commended Pfc Allen for her detection and observation skills in the aftermath, during their stand down.

“Good work spotting that ‘minefield,’ Allen. Exposing that raw data to Command and Intel early on gave them the time to figure out what it was. Bravo avoided what could have been a major disaster for us, because of you. I think we’ll call you ‘Bright-eyes,’ from now on. Anything else ever looks funny to you, you just sing out and let us know.”

The Anaconda even saluted her. Miranda-Naero returned it, with great respect. “Thank you, sir. I will, sir.”

“Damn right. These slashers are tricky bitches. What do we need with MCLs who don’t show up on time when we have rooks like you! Well, you’ve seen you’re share of action these past two days. Excellent work, Marine. You’ve done well, and you’re not a rook anymore. Congrats!”

“Thank you again, sir.” They exchanged the warrior’s handshake, all the way up to the elbow. And before that night was over, she had shared it with every Marine in 36, her new company.

She had fought and endured beside them in the furnace of combat and put down their enemies. She was one of them now.

2

With the mop-up proceeding on Ovedar-3, Bravo packed up and hopped over to their next mission, an all-out assault on Ptolemy-5. The system there was yet another earthlike with slightly higher gravity. Everyone had to take ACDs to compensate, and adjust the gravitics on their suits accordingly.

Since it was the next invasion world over for Bravo, the jump in system took less than two days.

But it still gave Miranda-Naero a chance to get to know the Marines in her platoon and rifle company better.

She ate with them, gambled with them–mostly shooting craps–goofed around them, and grabbed some badly needed sleep.

She liked some of her new mates better than others, and some felt the same way more or less about her. Miranda-Naero strove to keep her personality neutral–not too extreme in any way. Not too hard or soft, not too quiet or loud.

There was always someone there to test the new guy.

A big stocky Marine named Luke Barrett from Squad 3 shoved her out of his way and into a wall kind of hard. She could take it, but it was still a provocation.

“Outta my way, Suga’ doll. Little kids who block my path can get stomped on. ’Memba that.”

Miranda-Naero turned and wheeled into Barrett with two blinding spin kicks. She broke his nose, blackened both his eyes, and put him down on the deck. She nearly knocked him out cold.

Then she glared down at him. “I would advise you to take more care about who you shove around and stomp on, you stupid rock ape. Some of us kids know how to stomp back.”

Laughter and hoots erupted.

She shot a look at Barrett’s mates coming to collect him, Patton and Ramsey. “You two gonna say or do something?” she asked.

They both glared at her with weird, dopey looks of sudden desire.

Uh-oh. Now she’d done it. She didn’t expect them to get turned on by that. But most of these guys–and gals–were major ass-kickers in their own right. And they respected and even savored that in others.

“You’ll know if we do, Allen. Better watch yourself.”

“Ooh, like I haven’t heard that before,” she snapped.

“Dang,” Patton droned, as if entranced. “I think I’m in love. Haisha, Allen. You are so bee-yoo-tee-full. Will you marry me and have my bay-bees?”

“Hell no,” Miranda-Naero said with a grimace. “Your right hand might get jealous and try to strangle me in your sleep.”

More laughter followed. His mates helped walk Barrett to the infirmary.

This was Thirdday, what the landers used to call Tuesday, after some ancient god or goddess or some such. Every day of the standard week, the Marines did something special at night, if they weren’t on duty.

Every Thirdday was food night, and Company 36 made special dishes or shared special treats with their mates. It got pretty wild, along with the regular crap of gambling, bitching, posturing and trash talk, sparring, and couples pairing off and sneaking away for monkey love.

The next day, Fourthday, the old Wednesday from the past, was strangely enough: reading and Book Day, Chime Fox’s fave day.

First, 36 began to settle down and study their sitreps for Ptolemy-5. There’d be an initial briefing before they geared up and dropped.

Later that day, the gravity went off for a bit during their reading time. Naero thought it was very humorous, and took vids of her and nearly a hundred of her new chums with some of Chime Fox’s paperbacks, floating about and bouncing around, reading and turning pages. She seemed to have a little bit of everything.

“Wanna meet my second cousin Jonny in Squad 4?” Chime asked. “I’m the older cousin, by several months. I’m sure he’d like to meet a hot little dish like you, Allen.”

Miranda-Naero sighed and frowned. She remembered seeing Jonny in action during the battle. “I’m willing to meet anyone, but I don’t need you pimping me out to your Clan there, Chime.”

Chime laughed. “Don’t be that way. Jonny’s a sweet guy–unlike most of these goons, and he’s a great Marine. You’ll like him. Come on.”

Miranda-Naero shrugged, and Chime led her over to Squad 4.

Someone whistled when they floated over into view. That was Terrence Decker, ripped, 1.91 meters or bigger, and short blue hair on top like a coarse brush, blue eyes and bold-ass naked, reading a murder mystery. “Oh, man. Lookee here, Jon-Jon. Your hot cousin’s here to screw my brains out…again.”

A guy who looked a little like pretty Chime frowned and droned, “That shouldn’t take long, Decker. Imagine her surprise.” Jon Fox was average size, medium brown hair, well-built and in perfect shape, with soft green eyes. He was reading a historical romance by the cover, possibly even a regency.

Decker either didn’t get the jibe or ignored it. “Ooh, lookee-lookee. My lucky day. She brought a cute friend. It’s the hot little rook. Looks like a threesome ta me!”

Chime burst out laughing. “In your dreams, you troglodyte. Put some man-clothes on and go hump a dead mammoth or something. But you stay away from me and my new gungirl galpal, Decker, or we will both kick your balls to mush. You haven’t seen her fight. I have. We got a regular Cyclone among us.”

“Ooh, I like it rough.”

“Hey! Decker,” Jonny Fox suddenly warned, with an edge to his voice. “Chime’s my Clan and my blood, so just frost your dumb ass.”

Decker grinned. “Sure thing, Jonny. Later, honeydolls.”

Jonny smiled at Miranda-Naero. “Don’t mind him; he can’t help it.”

“Mental defective?” Naero asked.

Jonny chuckled. “No…he’s just a dick. Get’s stupid when purty girls are around and too much blood rushes to that tight little head of his.”

Chime and Miranda Naero tried not to giggle a that one.

Miranda-Naero glanced at his book “Regency, huh?”

“What can I say. Those fancy clothes are a turn on, and I’m a sucker for happy endings. What do you have? Hard boiled detective, huh?”

“Yeah…the butler did it.”

He halted. “Isn’t that more of a whodunit or a cozy? And what the hell was a butler, anyway?”

“All right,” Miranda-Naero said. “Then it’s the smoking hot dame with legs that won’t quit. Oh, and a butler was a kind of house servant.”

“There, that’s more like it. And thanks for the info.”

Chime just stood by, watching and listening to them go back and forth. She put her hands on her hips. “Well Haisha. Should I leave you two kids alone with your books?”

All three of them laughed. “Hey,” Jonny said. “Let’s float over to my cold stash and have something tasty.”

“Sure thing,” Miranda-Naero said.

When they got to a coded storage hatch, Jonny punched it open with his thumb. “I got three bottles of ice cold Spacer poteen,” he bragged.

Naero nearly fainted.

He also had about six four paks of Jett behind that.

“Make mine Jett, please,” she nearly stammered. “In fact, I’ll pay you top market price for one of those four paks, and be your goddam friend for life.”

Jonny Fox took out one of the cold four paks and tossed it to her straightaway. “No, charge, Allen. Consider it a gift…friend for life.”

By then Miranda-Naero had snapped one open and guzzled it down.

Chime laughed. “Haisha, I think she likes that stuff.”

“I do, too,” Jonny said, and grabbed a pak for himself. Chime still took a bottle of poteen for herself, holding it protectively.

“Dang, that was good!” Miranda-Naero exclaimed, chucking the empty borbble into the recycler. “I sure as hell needed that. Guys, I’d get transfusions of this stuff if I could. I love it that much.”

Jonny closed and secured his stash, and smiled. “Well, if anyone blasts my cold stash open, I’ll know who the hell it was, Allen. I hear they call you Brighteyes now.”

“Oh, they’re just being generous.”

They wandered into the ship’s gallery to play some vidgames. Other Marines joined them there, and they had a great time goofing off.

Jonny Fox pulled her aside at one point. “Hey, Allen. Do me a favor and help me look after my cousin Chime. I worry about her.”

“Why is that? She seems as competent as any other Marine, just like the rest of us.”

“Yeah, I know she can handle herself. But it’s a long story. We’re the last two surviving kids our great-granny has. Everyone else died off during the wars. And sometimes, I just have dreams about something bad happening to her. Not me. I’m a survivor. But I keep worrying something bad is going to happen to Chime. She was always greatgran’s fave.”

“Friend for life, you have my word. I’ll look out for my gungirl Chime. Good enough?”

“Thanks, Allen. Very glacier of you.” They clicked Jett borbbles together.

They sat up bullshitting, drinking Jett, while Chime sucked down Poteen and fell asleep between them with her head on first Naero’s and then Jonny’s shoulder, smacking her lips in her sleep. Chime looked very pretty like that.

A Marine named Peter Cooper came by to return a book to Chime. Naero took it and assured Pete that she’d tell Chime how much he enjoyed the hell out of that historical thriller she gave him.

Miranda-Naero went to sleep in her bunk that night, after putting Chime to sleep and dodging Acer’s stupid advances again.

She was going to have to kick that dumbass Romeo silly at some point.

She sent a quick report to Klyne, coded through normal channels, noting that she had not revealed her special status with Company 36 as yet.

Somehow, she had a feeling that it was going to come out at some point on Ptolemy-5. On this system, it was a full-on, planet-wide war that they were jumping into.

And as usual, the local landers were slowly losing. The Ejjai invaders had only been onworld for ten days. The entire local population of two billion Joshua Tech humans had done their best to fully mobilize to resist them, and continued to take heavy losses. Only their superior numbers were holding the enemy off, but they were clearly no match for the invaders on their own.

Intense fighting raged around and throughout all five of the major gigacities.
Hot
did not begin to describe what Bravo Command and Company 36 would be storming into. They had been lucky on Ovedar-3. Bravo had caught the invaders before they could do their worst.

But the meatships and the cloneships were busy, and on the move.

On Ptolemy-5, the enemy meatships still operated full bore, day and night. Without assistance, the planet would be stripped clean within a month.

This was already a straight-up fight.

They were simply joining the dance fashionably late.

General Walker started off by dropping down five Divisions of Bravo Command Marines, including Company 36. One division each would take on and engage the five enemy battle groups of ten thousand Ejjai each.

As Walker put it, delicately, they were going in to take those Ejjai clone bitches by the throat and knife open their guts through the spine. And once each enemy battle group was fully engaged, more Bravo Marines would be poised to drop in at the best points to wipe them out even faster.

Naturally, reports of atrocities by the invaders were already routine and to be expected. The usual hi-tek war was waged trying to keep the invader broadcasts of those horrors to a minimum. The invaders went out of their way to be brutal, ruthless, and cruel. They rejoiced in such activity–even wallowed in it. And in keeping with their hyper-violent nature, they fought without quarter or mercy to butcher anything that lived.

Bravo killed–hot or cold–quickly, and efficiently, only too happy to oblige the foe and surpass them in ferocity, if nothing else.

The Marines went in at night, just the way they liked, did their homework, and got into position.

They hammered the enemy hard, catching them in the middle, between the defenders. Yet the Ejjai were many, well-armed, and almost always fought to the death, laughing their eerie, chortling laughter.

The war quickly fragmented like glass into scores of pocket battles, various unit campaigns of fronts, rears, and flanks. This pitted specific units against one another in a rather normal, conventional war.

There were advantages and disadvantages to this. There was no way to separate the attackers away from the defenders, and the invaders were also attacking the civilian population and refugees at the same time. This made naval and Marine air and ground support far less useful and effective.

This meant that most of the war had to consist of close-up fighting. Unit shield flared and disrupted against unit shield, with weapons barking and punching back and forth. Microbombs, negation grenades and various ordnance burst among both side.

2
nd
Platoon took on two hundred Ejjai at four to one odds. Undaunted, Leftenant Wilde led them into coordinated battle. They set their unit combat shields layered and full front, and charged them into the foe.

The Anaconda sank her teeth deep into the invader throat, while her coils encircled and wrapped around them to throttle the life out of them.