Crimson Worlds Collection II Page 43

  But there were more pressing issues at present. The future of Mars, the chance for its still embryonic society to develop for good or for ill, was tied to the fate of all mankind. The war against the First Imperium was a fight for survival, one that had to be won.

  Vance had, more than anyone else, been responsible for forging the Grand Pact, and he was pleased with the results. The nations of Earth were truly cooperating, in a way they never had. Fear had gripped the elite classes, and their own rivalries and arguments fell away…at least while the threat from outside faced them all.

  Now, Vance focused on insuring the fighting forces on the front lines got the reinforcements and supplies they needed. His operatives infiltrated factories, shipyards, spaceports, doing whatever was necessary to keep the production going. When necessary, his agents had assassinated corrupt managers and manipulated assignments to insure the most capable candidates were placed in charge. All the Powers were mired down in patronage and entrenched seniority-based systems, and Vance wasn’t about to let foolishness like that impede production. If a Senator’s nephew couldn’t handle managing a munitions plant, he could easily be found in a hotel room, dead from a drug overdose. Nothing could be allowed to detract from the war effort.

  He was keeping an eye on the other intelligence agencies too. He had no doubt that the Powers were still maneuvering for position, seeking to come out of the current conflict with an edge…a strong negotiating position at least, and possibly an advantage in the next war. Vance was darkly amused to watch fear and greed struggle against each other among Earth’s competing Superpowers.

  He’d spent very little time on Mars since the crisis began. He’d only been back a week, and he was leaving again in a few days. He’d vindicated the resources put into the development of the Torch transports. The superfast ships had proven themselves invaluable, though he was more or less constantly bruised and sore from the enormous pressures endured at 40g+ acceleration.

  He leaned back and panned his eyes again over the hilly landscape. He was going to Epsilon Eridani IV to check on Friederich Hofstader and make sure the German scientist had everything he needed. The brilliant physicist had proven himself an able manager as well. He’d worked nothing less than wonders since Vance’s Marines had put him in undisputed control over the research facility, but the war effort demanded even more. If there was anything Hofstader needed, anything at all, Vance would see that he got it.

  Then he was going to Armstrong to meet with Admiral Garret. The enemy had attacked Sandoval, but so far not Garrison or Samvar. Vance expected them to eventually hit all three worlds, but if they wanted to make Sandoval the primary target, Vance was happy with that. Cain was in command on Sandoval, and Vance didn’t think there was another officer in any of the Powers more suited to this fight than Erik Daniel Cain.

  Chapter 13

  Marin Highlands

  Northern Continent

  Planet Sandoval

  Delta Leonis System

  “The Line”

  “Incoming!”

  The warning came first from his AI and then, a second later, from half a dozen Marines in the HQ group. Kyle Warren reacted on instinct, diving forward and landing unceremoniously in a deep muddy puddle as the enemy cluster bombs dropped all around his position. The bombardment was short…there wasn’t a major concentration of troops anywhere near Warren, and the enemy didn’t know they’d inadvertently targeted the commander of II Corps.

  The First Imperium forces were far more advanced technologically than the humans, but their tactics were cruder and less developed. That didn’t exactly even the score, but it gave the defenders a chance at least. The invaders certainly hadn’t seemed to master the concept of targeting command groups and high-ranking officers. But that, too, was even between the two sides, since the humans still hadn’t figured out how the First Imperium command structure even functioned.

  Warren pulled himself out of the mud, an effort made much easier by the massive strength amplification provided by his armor. He suit was covered head to toe in the slimy near-black mud common to the Sandoval highlands…quite an undignified appearance for a general commanding almost 40,000 troops, he thought with mild amusement.

  II Corps was holding the line south of the primary enemy LZ. Cain’s nuclear bombardment and Merrick’s counterattack had hit the First Imperium forces hard, and it took them almost a week to get organized and bring additional units down to the surface. Cain had continued to mass his remaining point defense batteries against the enemy landing craft, ignoring the largely ineffectual follow-up nuclear strikes launched from the orbiting fleet. The surface of Sandoval had gone from paradise to blasted hell, but 1st Army remained safe in its hardened fortifications. Now the ground to air defenses were mostly gone, relentlessly targeted by orbital counter-battery attacks and wiped out.

  General Merrick had performed well, driving his unblooded troops hard into the maelstrom of battle. He’d lost almost a third of his tanks, but the rest had successfully disengaged and pulled back to their fortified positions along the enemy’s flank. Some of his units had frozen, and a few had broken, but overall they’d performed better than he’d expected. Better than anyone had expected.

  There were a few genuine heroes too, including a lieutenant who ended up commanding his entire company, and led it right through a fortified enemy position. After he took that, he turned and drove north, rolling up the enemy line for 5 klicks. He’d lost heavily…by the time his attack petered out, his own tank was the only one from his original platoon still moving, and the entire company fielded only three. Lieutenant Weld was now Captain Weld, and Merrick moved him to permanent command of a full-strength company, one that had broken and fled, with orders to whip it into shape.

  Warren had heard a few other things, too, but they were just rumors…the kind that tend to run rampant in an army. Still, he wondered if there was any truth to them…if Merrick had actually shot the officers who’d panicked in the face of the enemy. In the more colorful tellings, the general pulled the trigger himself, but most versions had a firing squad doing the deed. The Marines had been almost universally skeptical of this terrestrial army officer from a political family, but the Battle of the LZ, as it had come to be called, changed that doubt to respect…and a little fear as well. Now he was Merrick the Killer, the protégé of Erik Cain, who shot down any of his troops who failed him.

  Warren laughed to himself. He was more familiar with Merrick than anyone on Sandoval, and he knew the Earth officer was a fair and honorable man, far more so than most of those he’d met. Warren had formed that favorable opinion as an enemy, fighting against Merrick’s forces on Arcadia during the rebellions. He didn’t doubt Merrick had executed some soldiers after the battle, but if that was the case, he was sure they were guilty of gross cowardice or desertion, not simply officers who had been unable to prevent their troops from breaking and fleeing during the fight. Merrick didn’t have veteran Marines under him; he had regular army troops who’d never been in battle before. Warren wasn’t going to second guess what Merrick thought was necessary to keep his troops in the line.

  Cain had thrown the army back on the defensive after the LZ attack, and Warren’s people were manning a largely subterranean network of bunkers and fortifications ten klicks south of the enemy LZ. Kyle’s corps had pulled the assignment to hold the entire defensive perimeter, allowing Cain to keep a large part of the army in reserve. His position was strong…there was no doubt about that. But his corps consisted mostly of new recruits, rushed through the normal six year Marine training program in less than 18 months. He did have some veteran cadres to stiffen his newbs, at least, and Cain had assigned one of Commander Farooq’s Janissary contingents to support him as a mobile reserve.

  The Janissaries were elite troops, no question, on a par with any veteran Marine unit in 1st Army. The two forces had fought each other for over a century, and each had won the other’s grudging respect. Now they’d begun to earn mutual admiratio
n as allies. Old hatreds still lingered, but they were gradually falling away, and 1st Army was starting to become a cohesive force instead of a multinational hodgepodge. That process had started with Erik Cain, who vowed never to let his old prejudices interfere with his battlefield judgment again. That had happened on Farpoint, and it had cost General Jax his life...at least that’s how Cain saw it. Never again, he swore, and he had been true to his oath.

  The enemy offensive had started gradually, mostly small probing attacks all along the line. Warren kept most of his forces in their bunkers, rotating units out to man the trenches. This battle had already gone nuclear and done it in a big way. He wasn’t about to mass his troops and serve the enemy a nice juicy target.

  Now the attacks, while still localized and sporadic, were getting heavy. He’d been compelled to bring more troops to the surface to beat back the enemy assaults. There had been a few nuclear exchanges, but he’d managed to avoid taking heavy losses from the strikes. It was a chess game of sorts. If the enemy massed its troops for an attack, he’d hit the formation with a nuclear bombardment; if he strengthened his line to receive an assault, the First Imperium forces would blast a hole in the defenses with their own nukes.

  His scouting reports showed the enemy forming up in front of his center, with dozens of successive skirmish lines, widely spaced. It was a buildup of force, but it was dispersed enough to minimize vulnerability to battlefield nukes. Warren sighed as he looked at the display. They’re learning, he thought somberly.

  “Colonel Jarvis, put your brigade on alert immediately.” Warren was going on instinct, but he was convinced the enemy was getting ready to launch an all-out assault. They couldn’t mass tightly, so they were spread out and deep. It was a guess, but he was sure he was right…he was sure because it’s what he would have done.

  “Yes, general.” Jarvis sounded a little surprised, but his response was sharp and crisp. Antoine Jarvis was a veteran who’d fought through the entire Third Frontier War. He hadn’t been in General Holm’s I Corps on Carson’s World during the final campaign, like most of the other old veterans in 1st Army, but he’d been in his share of other hotspots. His Marines were mostly raw, however, fresh from the truncated training program on Armstrong. Warren’s entire corps was green, in fact, except 7th Brigade…and they’d been detached to support General Merrick’s tanks. He had the unit of Janissaries, of course, but he had to keep at least one dependable formation in reserve.

  “Antoine, I know your people are wet behind the ears.” Warren decided he might as well address what they were both thinking. “I’m counting on you to be five places at once. We’re asking a lot of your newbs, but we need the best you can get out of them.”

  “Understood, sir.” Jarvis’ voice was decisive. “I’ll make sure they do their duty.” There was a brief silence. “Whatever it takes.”

  “Third wave…attack!” Merrick wiped the sweat from his forehead. The command tank was hot, and the air was stale. They’d been operating on recycled atmosphere for 30 hours, trying to keep out the radiation. The enemy had blasted the steppe with atomic shells for two days, trying to wipe out his force. The bombardment had been largely ineffective – Merrick had pulled his tanks back after their offensive, into dispersed, fortified positions. The nukes took out a few tanks here and there, but Merrick’s corps was still combat effective when the First Imperium forces swarmed onto the steppe.

  “Acknowledged, sir.” It was Major Tomkins…Colonel Graves had been killed a few hours before…one of the unlucky nuclear bombardment victims. “Commencing attack.”

  Merrick leaned back in the cramped chair. What a place for a corps HQ, he thought with grim amusement. He’d considered positioning himself in one of the bunkers, but he decided he needed to be mobile, to be in the line with his troops. He’d stayed back in the third wave, however, despite the urge to move to the front line. The commander of 1st Army had expressly forbidden him to go farther forward. Erik Cain had spent much of his career being scolded by his own commanders for taking too many risks, but now he understood what they’d been pounding into his head all those years. He couldn’t afford to lose Merrick, and certainly not for no gain, just because the Earth general wanted to salve his conscience by needlessly exposing himself to the enemy.

  “Fuck!” Merrick recoiled from the plasti-steel support. That was the fourth time he’d slammed his head into it. Or was it the fifth? He wasn’t used to such cramped quarters, and it was working his last nerve. Merrick had come from a powerful political family, and his army service had been exclusively as a senior officer. He’d been in a tank a couple times before Sandoval, but never for more than a few minutes. He didn’t think he’d have any desire to return once he got out of this one, either. It was ripe in the tank, almost enough to make his eyes tear…and he knew he’d contributed to that as much as any of the others. He had a new respect for tank crews. The infantry tended to envy the armor, but Merrick decided he’d rather be in the mud with the ground pounders any day.

  The comlink buzzed, and he flipped the switch. “Merrick here.”

  “Captain Weld reporting, sir.” Weld was in the first wave, which had been overrun. “I’ve got 31 tanks, sir. Enemy forces penetrating our line at all points.” He paused, and Merrick could hear him coughing, trying to clear his dry throat. “I think I’m in command, sir. I can’t find a superior officer.”

  “You are in command, captain,” Merrick snapped, “regardless of who you find. The first wave is now your responsibility. Try to pull back and join the second wave.” Weld’s force had suffered 85% casualties since the enemy landed on Sandoval. Merrick couldn’t ask any more of them. The second wave wasn’t doing nearly as well, but they still were hanging on…mostly.

  “Sir…” Weld paused, uncertain if he should continue.

  “What is it, captain?” Merrick’s voice was sharp, impatient. “Speak!”

  “Request permission to advance, sir. I believe we can penetrate to the enemy’s rear and then turn about and attack.”

  Merrick hesitated. God, he thought, this kid’s got balls. Weld’s suggestion would have been extraordinary among the Marines, but from a junior officer in a terrestrial army unit it was unprecedented. “Captain, you don’t have the strength…you’d be crushed.”

  “Respectfully, sir, we’re going to catch hell trying to fall back to the second line. We’ve got Reaper swarms around us on all sides…between us and the fallback position.” Weld’s voice was getting stronger, more determined. “At least moving forward we might be able to do something other than getting shot to pieces.” Another brief pause then: “And we’ll surprise them.”

  Well, Merrick thought, it looks like we’ve got one of the first heroes of the Sandoval campaign. “Very well, captain.” Weld was right, at least mathematically. The first wave was a spent force…they weren’t going to help much holding the line…if they even made it back. But as a loose cannon deep behind the enemy advance? Maybe they could do something. Still, it was hard for him to send such a small force off by itself. If things went wrong, not one of Weld’s people would make it back. He hesitated, but finally he finished what he was going to say. “Advance to the enemy rear and then act at your own discretion.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “And Weld?”

  “Sir?”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re doing what?” Storm was stunned.

  “I’m taking the tanks through the rest of the enemy formation and attacking from the rear.” Weld sounded calm, matter-of-fact. He was resigned to what he was doing, and he’d shoved the doubts and fear aside. “You need to get your people out of here. Try to get back to the second line.”

  Storm couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was insane. He’d had the same doubts about the terrestrial army units that all the Marines had, but Weld kept surprising the hell out of him. He’d been fighting alongside the army officer’s tanks since the battle started, and he wasn
’t about to abandon him now. Marines retreating while the army advanced? Not on Storm’s watch.

  “Negative. You can’t move forward with no support…you’ll get swarmed by the bots.” Storm’s voice was rock solid. “If you’re moving up, we’re coming with you.” Storm commanded all the Marines supporting Weld’s tanks. After the initial attack, General Cain had given him a battlefield promotion to captain and put him in charge of the battalion. It didn’t look much like a battalion anymore…casualties were well over 50%. But Storm had kept them in the field fighting, despite a couple moments when it looked like they were ready to break.

  “We don’t need support. You have to fall back.” Weld was determined to take his forces in, but he didn’t want to commit the Marines along with his own people. “The tanks can get through – your Marines will be too exposed”

  “Shove it, Carl. We’re coming.” Storm allowed himself a brief smile. One thing was certain…the next time he heard any of his Marines talking down the army forces they were going to have words.

  There was no point in arguing with him, Weld thought…these Marines are the most pigheaded grunts I’ve ever seen. He sighed hard. “Alright, but stay close to the tanks…and be ready to move. We’re slicing through and not stopping for anything.”

  “We’re with you.” Storm took a deep breath, allowing the oxygen rich mixture in his suit to clear his head. He was uncomfortable…he’d been in his armor more than a week without a break. The suit could recycle just about everything, but after a while it got pretty nasty inside. This wasn’t the longest Storm had been in armor, but it was getting close. “Just give the word when you’re ready.”