Tombstone

Copyright
©
2012 AJ Investments

All Rights Reserved

Marines (Crimson
Worlds I)

The Cost of
Victory (Crimson Worlds II)

The Last Veteran
(Shattered States I)

The Dragon's
Banner

A Little Rebellion

Crimson Worlds
Book III

(December 2012)

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We were pinned down, bracketed by fire from two directions. 
Somebody screwed up; somebody really screwed the hell up.  Now we had to clean
up the mess.  Now we had to get out of here alive.

I had no idea how we were going to manage that, though.  I
was crouched behind a slight ridge, and I'd swear I could feel the
hyper-velocity rounds streaming by a centimeter over my back.  That's nonsense,
of course.  My armor was sealed tight, and I couldn't feel anything but the
cool metal on my slick, sweat-soaked skin.  The first thing I felt from outside
would tell me my suit was breached, and that would mean I had a few seconds
left to live.

Tombstone was one of the most miserable hells where men have
ever tried to live, and you could pass the time trying to count all the ways
the planet could kill you.  Heat, radiation, poisonous atmosphere – take your
pick.  Tombstone wasn't its real name, of course, but that's what the locals
have been calling it since 85% of the first colonization party died in less
than a month.  The place was a nightmare, but the elements in the planet's
crust were worth a king's ransom, so men were here to exploit that wealth.  And
we were here to defend it.

I'd drawn a hell of a mission for my first battle.  We came
in as reinforcements for depleted units that had already been fighting here. 
Neither side really controlled the space around the planet, so we'd come in hot
in two fast assault ships and made a quick landing.  The ride down had been a
rough one; I was grateful the only thing I’d eaten for 36 hours had come
intravenously…an empty stomach was a big plus.  The planet had frequent,
unpredictable storms, especially in the upper atmosphere.  Not storms like on
Earth, but intense, violent, magnetic vortices, with 1,000 kph winds and
radioactive metallic hale.  Our landing AIs did their best to avoid the worst
spots, but the disturbances were unpredictable, and some of our ships dropped
right through one of the smaller storms, taking 15% losses before we even hit
ground.

This wasn’t a normal battle or a smash and grab raid; the
situation on Tombstone was unique.  We’d had troops fighting here for ten
years, almost since the initial colonization.  In a few years the Third
Frontier War would begin, and before it was over I would fight in massive
battles I couldn’t have imagined, on worlds all across occupied space.  But the
engagement on Tombstone was one of those small, unofficial battles the
Superpowers so often fought between declared wars. 

The planet had been explored by multiple colonization groups
more or less simultaneously.  Both the Caliphate settlers and ours claimed they
were first, and each regarded the other as an invader.  The governments, greedy
for the planet’s rare and valuable resources, backed their colonists’ claims,
and so soldiers ended up here, fighting a seemingly endless struggle on one of
the deadliest battlefields where men have ever tried to kill each other.

The diplomats and government types would say that the
“situation” on Tombstone was not officially a war, but that was a bureaucrat’s
distinction, meaningless to those sent here to fight.  I doubt a bleeding
Marine gasping a dying breath of toxic air drew any comfort from the limited
status of the engagement.  It did, however, starve us of the strength and
supplies we needed to win.  Neither the Alliance nor the Caliphate were quite
ready for full-scale war, so both governments sent enough troops to keep the
fight going, but too few to risk serious escalation.  It made perfect sense to
the politicians, if not to those sent here to fight and die to maintain a
perverse status quo.

To a sane mind there were two choices:  Fight to win,
whatever the consequences, or negotiate and take the best deal you can make. 
But to those in government there was a third option - maintain a bloody
stalemate, sending in just enough force to hold out and not enough to expand
the conflict.

But the politics that led to my being here really didn’t
matter.  Not now.  What mattered was getting out of this ravine – actually more
of a gully – and doing it without getting blown to bits.  We’d been out on a
seemingly routine scouting mission.  One of the mining operations had reported
enemy activity in the area, and the captain sent out a patrol.  My platoon was
next up in the rotation, so we pulled the duty.

I’d been on planet for about a week, but I hadn’t seen any
action yet...this was my baptism of fire.  I’ve always thought it would have
been easier to draw an assault for a first mission, hitting the ground
somewhere and going right into combat without too much time to think about it
instead of waiting around for the orders to suit up and go into battle.  The
idle time was tough, really tough.  I had a long and amazing road ahead of me,
full of achievement, struggle, and sacrifice.  I'd live to wear a general's
stars one day and fight alongside friends and against enemies I couldn't have
even imagined then.  But that was still years in the future - on Tombstone I
was a raw private, and I was scared shitless.

I stripped and climbed into my armor, just as the rest of
the platoon was doing.  It takes long enough to suit up even when your hands
aren’t shaking like mine were.  The armor weighs a couple tons, and until the
reactor is powered up it’s almost totally immobile in the rack.  Once you’ve
done the prep work and setup, you back into the thing and hold yourself in
place while the front closes.  It’s hard to keep yourself suspended in the open
suit, but you only need to do it for a few seconds.  At least once my armor was
sealed it wasn’t so obvious how scared I was. 

The thing that surprised me when I first put on my armor in
training was how much it hurts.  No one had ever mentioned that before.  We’re
Marines, and we’re supposed to be tough, I guess.  So no one wants to admit
they notice the pain when they get into their armor.  Well, I’ll say it; it
hurts like hell.  The suit recycles your breath, your bodily wastes, your
sweat.  It monitors every metabolic function and administers nutrition,
stimulants, and, if necessary, medications.  There are monitors and probes and
intravenous links that all attach when you close your armor.  And most of them
hurt going in.

Tombstone was a long term campaign, and we were billeted in
firebases scattered all around the Alliance-controlled sections of the planet,
each covering a designated sector.  My platoon was stationed with another from
our company in base Delta-4, which was dug into the side of a rocky mountain
along the edge of a long range of jagged peaks.  We’d replaced two platoons that
were being rotated out after four months’ in the line.  They were 100 strong
when they got here; 41 of them marched out.

We lined up in single file in the ingress/egress tunnel and
marched slowly toward the main hatch.  The corridor was cut into the rock,
which was then coated with a high density polymer that insured the tunnel was
airtight, even against the planet’s corrosive atmosphere.  One whiff of
Tombstone’s air was enough to kill you.  There was a double airlock system, but
only one of our sections at a time fit in the outer chamber, so half the
platoon had to wait.  My squad was part of the rear group, and we stood around
in the inner chamber for a few minutes while the other section marched through
the outer airlock.  The doors back into the base wouldn’t open again until both
airlocks were closed tight and the cleansing/decontamination procedure was
completed.  The contaminants on one Marine’s untreated armor could endanger the
entire installation.  Tombstone was no joke.

When we finally got outside we deployed in two long skirmish
lines, one positioned about half a klick behind the other.  If there was one
thing they taught us in training, it was not to bunch up.  It makes it too easy
to pick us off in groups, and if the enemy decided to go nuclear, they could
take out a whole force with one or two warheads. 

I was a newb, so the sergeant positioned me between the team
leader and an experienced private.  There were only three raw recruits in the
platoon, so it was pretty easy for the lieutenant to make sure we were looked
after.  Years later, when I got my own lieutenant’s bars, we were in the middle
of the Third Frontier War and getting our asses handed to us.  My first platoon
command had 36 recruits out of 50 total strength, and there’s no doubt in my
mind we suffered heavier losses because of that.

The terrain was surreal, jagged exposed rock as far as the
eye could see.  Nothing could live on Tombstone, at least not beyond some
exotic and highly dangerous bacteria.  As far as the eye could see there was
nothing but sulfur-crusted rock and bubbling pools of fluorosulfuric acid,
heated to the boiling point by subterranean lava flows.  The atmosphere was
hazy, with dense green clouds of corrosive gas floating close to the ground.

We were moving up toward a long ridge where we could get a
good look at the low, rocky plain below.  Normally, we’d be able to detect any
enemy within 50 klicks, but between the radiation, the unstable atmosphere, and
the almost constant magnetic storms, our scanners were unreliable.  The two
sides had been fighting here a long time, and both had figured how to calibrate
their ECM to maximize the cover offered by the planet’s unique
characteristics.  The captain wanted us to scout the old fashioned way, so we
were heading for the high ground with the best visibility.

You could say we were scouting, but it was really a search
and destroy mission.  We were out here to find any enemy troops who had come
into our sector and wipe them out.  That was the reality of the fighting on
Tombstone, lots of scattered actions aimed at taking out as many of the enemy
as possible.  The war – excuse me, “situation” – was almost purely
attritional.  Neither side had enough strength to win conventionally or the
willingness to risk massive escalation, so the idea was to break down the other
side’s will to fight, primarily by inflicting losses.  Only an idiot could have
embraced that kind of strategy…precisely the kind of idiot that ran the
governments of both powers.

I didn’t think too much about why we were there, at least
not back then.  I’d gotten my blood up for the landing, and I was scared to
death on the way down, but once we’d made it to the ground the tension
subsided.  We marched right to the firebase and we’d spent the last week sealed
in, my biggest concern the inadequate number of showers and the consequent
fallout on the livability of the place.  We were bored stiff, and we played
cards or hung out in the media center to pass the time.

Now I was out in the shit, armored up and tramping through
the alien landscape looking for enemies.  Enemies I was supposed to kill. 
Enemies who would try to kill me.  That adrenalin that had faded after the
landing was back.  I was edgy and tense, imagining someone hiding behind every
rock we passed, just waiting to take a shot.  I had to force myself to focus on
my training and what I was supposed to do.  I knew my best chance to stay alive
– and help my comrades do the same – was to do as I had been taught.

Tension can be good in a combat situation; it keeps you
focused and attentive.  But it can also be dangerous.  If you step too
aggressively in powered armor you may find yourself jumping three or four
meters in the air, offering some enemy sniper a juicy target.  Move forward too
quickly and you end up out of position and ahead of your team…alone and
exposed.  The suit does so much of the work, it you aren’t paying attention you
can lose track of how far or fast you’ve been walking.

We were moving forward slowly, carefully.  The lieutenant
was a pro.  He’d been a private who came up in the Second Frontier War, and
he’d fought in the Battle of Persis, which was a bloody mess that, more than
anything else, was the climactic event of the war.  His unit ended up cut off,
and all the officers and non-coms were killed or wounded.  He was the senior
private, and he took command of the remnants of the company, maybe 40 troops in
all.  They’d been given up for lost, but when the Alliance forces finally broke
days later through they were stunned to find 23 survivors, starving and
exhausted, but still holding out – and tying down enemy forces ten times their
strength.  That got him his sergeant’s stripes and, later, his invitation to
the Academy.