Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade (7 page)

“You know they’re cousins, not sister and brother, right?”

“That does not matter. They were raised together like brother and sister by the last of their elders, but the little brother always tries to look out for the older sister. He protects her like a brother should and has a good heart.”

“I would agree with you, though, Lakota. Chime can be a little much at times.”

Lakota sighed, “It’s because she’s crazy. If she survives this war, and finds the right person to love her well, Chime will be all right I think.”

They talked for another hour, drinking lix paks. Lakota informed her about several others in the company that she would enjoy matching iron with, half of them from the other native Clans.

Naero gave him one of her special Clan Maeris battle blades, and showed him all of its powered features.

Lakota’s eyes twinkled and he smiled. He unfolded an ornate leather wrapping with intricate beading and gave her a warrior’s knife from his people. He said the hilt was buffalo horn and that the blade was sacred to his Clan.

Naero gasped slightly, actually sensing a touch of Cosmic power within that blade.

Naero made certain to thank and honor her new friend with great respect. Honor was something that was paramount to all Spacers; something that they all shared and could understand.

4

Metra-4’s lush, green, primordial forests and grassy plains covered most of the three main continents, sprinkled with a few mountains and foothills here and there. There were very few deserts, and extremely small polar ice caps.

The Metrans had a system population of only 1.8 billion souls–almost all of them Besh, with their gray-green skin, green-black hair, and small ears. Mining and lumber were, of course, the two biggest exports.

Here the Ejjai invaders had primarily split their forces and were locked in two separate, all-out struggles with the locals, naturally around the two largest gigacities, Bronten and Turam, each on a different continent.

Ejjai military doctrine consisted of having their battle groups surround the two gigacities within rings of artillery, gunships, and gravtanks. They proceeded to shell the the defenders relentlessly and without mercy, while gunships and warships modified for ground assault raked the defenders and the civilian population indiscriminately.

Once the defenders were sufficiently beaten down, the invaders began to collect the locals for the meatships, efficiently wiping out area after area.

This strategy was very effective against mostly static, planetary defenses with weak militaries.

The Marines of Bravo Command slipped onto the surface of Metra-4 without being detected, and organized two massive surprise assaults directly against the two main bodies of the invading forces.

When night came, and darkness shrouded Bronten and Turam, the Marines unleashed their carefully orchestrated assault plans.

Naero had been forward, scouting as usual with Company 36, and Squad 3 of her assigned recon platoon. Squad and Fireteam 1 leader Python Wilde, younger brother of the Anaconda, led the rest of her fireteam into harm’s way, consisting of Rebecca Cooper, Neesha Flynn, and Felix Blooding–no near relation, apparently, to an assistant cook Naero had known during the Annexation War, famous for a certain gravy he made.

Fireteam 2 was led by Corporal Chang Han, Vincent Fay, Nicholas Kowalski, and Ted Kim. Squad 3 was rounded out by Corporal Lance Allen, Bryan Mitsubishi, Gabriel Patton, and Luke Barrett in Fireteam 3.

Shetanna and her dozen Marines watched and painted Ejjai gravtanks and vehicles, belching forth out of a big enemy transport, assembling into their attack formations.

They put all of those vehicles into play on the main combat grid, where they would be tabulated and assigned targeting profiles and priorities. Yet as they watched, another similar transport came down and began to disgorge its forces, making for a very tempting profile for an advance attack.

Every enemy target couldn’t always be engaged at once, especially as enemy forces increased in size and became very numerous. Thus they had to be prioritized and attacked in the best order possible for maximum success.

Naturally, higher value targets had a higher priority in the flow of attack and were engaged and eliminated first. This was done according to the integrated firing profiles of the Spacer Marine Battle Command System, its series of linked, powerful AIs, and the leadership, right on up to General Walker himself.

“Sergeant Wilde, that’s a lot of enemy armor coming online,” Naero noted over their secured helmet link. “That’s going to be a major problem for everyone when they start to maneuver and fire.”

“Yes, sir. I agree, sir.”

“Wilde, let’s drop the
sir
stuff when we’re on our own. There’s no brass here.”

“Copy that.”

“How can we possibly resist such rich targets of opportunity? What say we seize the initiative here, swoop in and use up all of our explosives and ordnance. I mean drop it all where it counts–grenades, charges, microbombs, and float-seeker smartmines–everything we’ve got–in order to take out those two transports and perhaps some of those other ships, while they’re still unloading those tanks.”

Python nodded. “I like that idea a lot, N. But after we do all that, we’re still in the middle of a combat zone, completely depleted, with nothing but our primary weapons. And then the fighting really kicks in.”

“I’ve thought of that. Let’s see what our fixers can do about resupplying us along the way from whatever they can recycle. Let’s keep them busy working for us.”

Python studied the gravtanks and grimaced. “You know, it’s too bad we couldn’t get a unit of our own meks or gravtanks over here. They’d have a field day. That’s what we could really use.”

Naero thought about it. “Everyone here knows how to operate a tank, don’t they?” she asked.

All of Squad 3 clicked in. “Affirmative.”

Naero looked back the way that they had come in.

The battlefield was awash with a litter of ruined, damaged, and abandoned enemy gravtanks from prior battles with the local forces.

“I think we might just go for a little ride. Let me and the fixers do a bit of teknomancing and upgrading, while you and Squad 3 go set those transports to go up in flames.”

“We’re on it, N. Pick us out some good ones. Four or five. We can put two or three people in each one.”

Naero handed all of her remaining explosives over to the sergeant to put to good use.

She and Om sent some fixers to scrounge and recycle the battlefield for more ordnance and explosives they could dole out and utilize.

But the bulk of their small fixer cloud they sent to work on a handful of mostly abandoned and lightly damaged enemy gravtanks that could be teknomanced, modified, and somewhat improved upon. Perfect for a little jaunt in the country to see the sights.

By the time Squad 3 joined back up with her, Naero had teknomanced four enemy gravtanks back to life, and even better than their counterparts–with a few upgrades and modifications of her own.

“Here we go, Wilde. You wished for armor? Haisha! I give you armor. Our chariots await. When things go hot in just a few minutes, and those transports cook off, that’s when we make our move. I say we jump in these hopped-up babies and take them for a joy ride. Our fixers have painted them so that our people won’t fire upon us, and we can have all the fun we can manage.”

Python turned to Squad 3. “Split up, three to a ride, just like the lady said. We slip in from behind if we can and knock out their rearward lines while they’re still forming up. We hit hard and fast, do as much damage as we can, and keep going. If your tank gets shot up or destroyed, cloak and fly out on your gravwings to support the assault.”

“I’ve increased the firepower and the rate of fire on these guns,” Naero told them. “Keep all weapons blazing. In the middle of a couple of enemy tank battalions, we’re bound to hit something. Ram and slam. I’ve also boosted the armor and the shields, and the speed and power plants. These tin cans can take it, and we don’t have to give them back. Keep your fixers active around you to repair any minor damage on the fly. Fight well, and enjoy the ride!”

She and Om kept the controls basically the same. By now they were all familiar with the invader Marauder IV class, standard main battle gravtank. They had fought against and taken out many of them and their variants.

Naero merely improved upon their known weaknesses.

Normally, operating such gravtanks took a crew of four to five slashers. Naero simplified and used fixers to automate the systems so that two or three persons could operate the gravtank and its systems effectively. At the very least, there had to be a commander/spotter and driver/gunner.

“Everyone settled in and clear on the mission?” Python asked. “We go in fast, strike from their rear, and roll them up. Pop as many targets as we can, and then bail out when we must.”

“Arrowhead-3, loose armored formation,” Naero said. “Three gravtanks forward, one guarding the rear–I’ll stay cloaked until you need me. I’m your wild blade. I’ll do whatever I can to keep the enemy from swarming on you and dragging you down. Don’t get stuck. Move fast, and keep dodging, maneuvering, and firing. Fight well, my brave tankers.”

“We’re about to go hot very shortly,” Python advised. “In no time, there will be fire coming at us from all sides, even if we do everything right. We are descending straight into a hornet’s nest and blowing up the hive. The slashers are going to be pissed as hell. Your tank gets hit too bad, everyone bails on gravwings, cloak, and regroup to continue the assault with the remaining elements. Keep as much heat on the foe as you can for as long as possible.”

“Exactly,” Naero added. “We do as much damage as we can, and then if they trap us, we scatter and slip away, regroup as assigned, and find another place, another way to keep fighting.”

Python checked his combat feeds. “Mark. Hot in 1.45 minutes when the main attack kicks in with our explosives. Everyone frost down, check your systems, and get ready to ride.”

Hundreds of invader gravtanks had unloaded by the time the transports blew up and became an inferno. Fuel, ammunition, and power cores cooked off as the flames soared.

Squad 3 became a gravtank unit, and vectored in toward the enemy rear under the cover of all of the chaos and confusion.

Then they swung their guns around and blazed a path of destruction in wild, crazy, slashing arcs. They cut a zigzag trail of burning and exploding gravtanks and vehicles, where they were still hemmed in and packed too closely together to be able to move and fire effectively.

The commander of each tank stood up in the turret, behind a unit shield pod, integrating the targeting systems in his or her helmet, patching into the battle command system and the fire control systems of each tank by itself as a separate mobile gun platform.

The commander could also engage targets of opportunity and paint them into the profile with his secondary weapon, a viper gun–an even more devastating version of the basic autogun. The high rate of fire from these energized gauss cannons was blistering, and could degrade and destroy practically anything but another tank itself. Concentrated fire from a viper gun could even eventually take out a tank on its own. And it was positively lethal again all other soft targets with less armor or shields than a tank.

That included other enemy tank crews and personnel out in the open.

And everything popped by the viper guns was automatically painted and lit up on the targeting arrays.

These feeds poured in to the main combat system, where indirect and adjacent direct fire and units could be applied against priority targets.

The gunner operated the main gravtank energy cannons, confirming targeting patterns and redirecting rapid fire as needed. They struggled to stay several targets ahead of the actual guns, which fired very quickly and efficiently after Naero’s modifications.

They fired so quickly that some of their firing profiles couldn’t help but overlap. They also cancelled and redirected fire away from targets already destroyed, to new targets of opportunity.

The gunner helped monitor the onboard systems and kept them operating at peak effectiveness. That also includes shields, damage control, and fire suppression. The driver helped keep them moving, in a pattern that was not predictable, but allowed for good firing profiles to be executed.

The four modified gravtanks roared over the enemy’s rear and–in the words of Naero’s father–tore them a new ass.

They very quickly fought within what seemed to them to be spinning wheels and spheres of exploding fire all around them, lit from within.

The steady bump and pulse of the tank cannons punching, rocking, and hammering at the hapless enemy tanks quickly disrupted the invader formations in several directions.

The sweeping spray of the secondary viper guns and the launching of smoke, mines, and missiles only added to the destructive confusion.

Because most of the enemy tanks didn’t have their shields up yet, Naero’s little joy ride with Squad 3 raked and blasted the foe by the dozens with each second.

Burning hulks and wrecks were soon everywhere in their passing.

Naero also guarded them from above, enclosed within a red star of Chaos energy, whenever enemy gunships of starfighters tried to wing in. Like a guardian spirit, she bobbed above them, flitting from tank to tank, deflecting or absorbing incoming energy blasts and hits.

She returned fire on her own, concentrating on knocking out any enemy gunships or starfighters in their vicinity who tried to get a lock on them.

The Navy and the Marine starfighters were a big help with that. With the sky clear and dominated, Naero focused on helping her tankers pop and kill as many tanks as they could. Om and the fixers assisted them with fine-tuning and computing their own targeting profiles in a target rich environment.

Many invaders adjusted and began to respond to the surprise assault within less than a minute. But by then, Shetanna and the Marines had shot up significant portions of both massive tank formations.

What a ride.

The world all around them continued to light up and explode.

As they suspected, the remaining enemy gravtanks reacted eventually, activating their shields and maneuvering to envelope the raiders in a dome of deadly, interlocking fire.

Shetanna and her tanks took multiple hits as scores of gravtank cannons came online and started to beat the hell out of them.