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  Tombstone

  ( Crimson Worlds )

  Jay Allan

  In the 23rd Century, the Superpowers of Earth vie for control of occupied space and the vast resources of the colony worlds.

  Darius Jax is a senior officer and hero of the Marine Corps, veteran of countless battles fought throughout occupied space. But once he was a raw private fighting his first battle on a planet so deadly, so hellish, its own occupants called it Tombstone. This is his story, before fame, before glory.

  The fighting on Tombstone is brutal and deadly, and Jax must find his inner strength if he is to survive. As he struggles through an unwinnable war he learns to rely on himself as he never has before, and he begins to understand just what he is - and is not - fighting for.

  Tombstone is a novella of approximately 24,000 words, and prequel to the best-selling Crimson Worlds series, set in the years just before the Third Frontier War and the events described in Crimson Worlds Book I: Marines.

  Tombstone

  A Crimson Worlds Prequel

  By Jay Allan

  Chapter 1

  2252 AD Kelven Ridge Delta Trianguli I

  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.

  My suit’s AI controlled my internal climate perfectly, but I was still sweating. I could feel the slickness of my arms sliding against the cool metal sleeves of my armor. I was a little lightheaded – I still wasn’t used to the oxygen-rich mix my suit fed me during combat operations. We’d used it a few times in training, but I think I was a little sensitive to it, and it was taking me longer to adapt completely. The suit had given me the standard pre-battle stimulants which, combined with my own adrenalin, really had me on edge.

  We’d just reached the ridgeline, and my com started beeping. It wasn’t any of our communications; it was something else my AI picked up. I was just about to report it to Corporal Clark when his voice came through. “Everybody down.” He was in control, as always, but his tone was excited, urgent. “Now!”

  My body responded to his command before my conscious mind had processed it. I’ll never know for sure, but I’d wager the stimulants they give us before battle saved my life that day, because an instant later the spot where I was standing was raked with fire. I was behind a spiny rock outcropping, maybe two-thirds of a meter high…just enough to duck behind if I lay very flat.

  I was the lowest rung on the chain of command, so I didn’t have a data feed on the rest of the platoon or squad, but I could tell from the chatter on the com that we had some people hit. Getting shot on Tombstone was especially bad, because if the breach was more than your suit’s auto-repair system could handle you were as good as dead. A scratch on the arm could be fatal.

  The armor does have a significant self-repair capacity. The AI will respond to any breach in a hostile environment by increasing the air pressure to keep toxic atmosphere from leaking into the suit. The climate control adjusts, attempting to minimize the effects of any excess heat or cold. While these systems are keeping the Marine alive, at least for a few seconds, the suit deploys nano-bots to attempt to patch any breach with self-expanding adhesive polymer. It is an extremely workable system, as long as the hole isn’t too big.

  They’d laid a trap for us. The beeping was coming from a series of transponders they’d set along the ridge, powerful enough to send a signal through the dense atmosphere, giving them a precise firing solution. Now we were caught in interlocking fields of fire – they had heavy auto-cannons hidden in multiple locations. It was bait and destroy instead of search and destroy, and we were the targets.

  The heavy auto-cannon rounds tore into the rock wall that was shielding me, sending shards scattering in all directions. My body was pressed down against the front of my armor, an instinctive but pointless effort to get farther away from the deadly stream of fire just over my back. My mind raced…what should I do? I looked for a spot where I could get a view out over the ground in front of the outcropping, but I couldn’t find anything. I couldn’t move up and fire over the ridge; I’d get cut to pieces before I got a shot off.

  I just lay there, thinking, I’m going to die here. Six years of training so I can come here and get killed in my first skirmish? I was scared for sure, but even more, I was angry at the waste of it all. But I couldn’t think of any way out. I was starting to
panic, to forget all the training. Then I heard the lieutenant’s voice on the com.

  Chapter 2

  2243 AD Abandoned suburbs North of the ruins of Old Houston Texas, USA, Western Alliance

  The Corps got most of its recruits in unorthodox ways, and it had a tremendous track record of turning cutthroats and gutter rats into top notch soldiers. But I wager they found me in the strangest way of all. I was stealing from them.

  I was a thief, a damned good one. I’m two meters tall and then some, and I look like a big clumsy oaf. But looks can be deceiving. I can sneak around without anybody hearing me, and I can strip everything valuable out of a warehouse in the time it takes a guard to finish his rounds.

  I was only sixteen, but I had my own crew. We had our base in an old suburb outside Houston. The fringe areas had been mostly abandoned by the government, and when the police and other services went, so did the residents…or at least most of them. Anyone who tried to stick it out gave up after Houston was nuked; they built New Houston about 50 klicks west of the old city, and the fallout-contaminated exurbs surrounding the radioactive ruins sat almost totally empty for a century.

  The radiation had long since ceased to be a major hazard, at least this far out, and the place made a great base of operations. None of the monitors and detection devices that were so thick in the inhabited areas. We hijacked freight shipments, and we raided the Cogs living around New Houston. Since the original city had been destroyed, New Houston didn’t have the ancient factories and decaying slums most of the other metro areas did. The Cogs lived in cheap prefab housing units and tent cites set up around the big plasti-crete and chemical plants the megacorps had built there. They had it a little better than those in some other cities. There was crime, certainly, but there wasn’t as much of an organized gang presence as in other places. It was more a series of company towns, and while the inhabitants lived just above sustenance levels, they were a little more prosperous than Cogs elsewhere. They had a bit more material wealth, and we tried to steal it all.