Battle Group Epsilon

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

April 6 2184, 08:29 Hours (Standard Solar Time)
Aboard USNI MAKO C15536 in Martian LPO

"Hang on to your hats," Foster said over the speaker system. "We're in for a rough ride ahead." If she said so, Grabowski knew it was going to be bad.
Freemen smiled at him from the other side of the ship. "It's just like an amusement park ride," he said just before the transport jolted violently.
He shook his head. He had never liked roller coasters. A part of him wished he had gone on them more as a child though. A little preparation for this hell ride would have been nice.
He glanced back at the far end of the ship and felt even more discontent. MAKO transports had been designed to carry a squad of marines, twelve soldiers and all of their gear. Their squad had been undersized from the start but now that Temple was gone, there were only eight Marines left. Because of the opening, the platoon's sharpshooter and machine gun team were temporarily attached to second squad.
Besides that, there was an additional space where larger equipment could be stowed. While the other two dozen dropships heading down to Washington Military Base had things such as remote sentry units, Surface to Air Missiles, and even Light Armored Vehicles, his squad had the good fortune of having a Longbow Non-Nuclear Warhead a few meters away. Sitting in the corporal's old seat was a demolitions technician to operate it. Grabowski only had to take one look at the man to know he was scared shitless. They were all scared, but it was a learned fear and one they could control. The technician had no control. Sweat was poring down his face as he clung tentatively to his restraints.
They all would have been much better off if their Commander had instead come up and just taken a long steamy piss on their boots. Even if by some stroke of luck their MAKO avoided all incoming fire on their way to the drop zone and the warhead didn't kill them all instantly, it only served as a reminder of how screwed they were.
Their tactical situation was far from ideal. On the other hand, when had it ever been ideal? They needed to defend Mar's only military base from a force that outnumbered their own. Short of doing that, they had been instructed to blow them all to hell, which was where the Longbow came in. They hit more turbulence and Grabowski closed his eyes as he heard the bomb rattling against the deck it was strapped to. It was the military's most powerful non-nuclear warhead. One hundred and fifty megatons. One stray round or a piece of shrapnel that hit them just the right way, and all thirty MAKOs along with their crews would return to the simple elements they had all derived from. Grabowski leered at it and gritted his teeth. Get me off this f***ing dropship, he thought.
"ETA six minutes," Foster said. After the ship had gone to full alert, she'd headed straight down to the hangar and he to the briefing room. He took a deep breath and sighed. He wasn't sure why, but her voice helped to calm his frayed nerves.
He craned his neck and peered out the circular window near his head. They were through the outer atmosphere and now wisps of clouds flew past. He could see a half dozen other MAKOs plummeting towards the ground in a near nosedive. The dropships did it to try to avoid as much incoming fire as possible. Grabowski got a first hand look at how it wasn't always effective. He saw the glowing yellow phosphorescent tracer rounds shoot up from below.
He was thrown against his restraints as the MAKO pulled up and began zigzagging toward their destination; standard evasive maneuvering. He looked back again just in time to see the MAKO beside them take on fire and burst into flames. He decided he didn't really want a seat with a view. In fact he didn't even want to be on this damn ship. He was tired of flying business class.
The incessant roar of the engines was deafening. Someone may have been yelling but he couldn't be sure. His eyes were closed tight but they just wouldn't close enough. His mind was doing all the strange things people tend to do in the face of inevitable doom. The old saying was tried and true as Grabowski could attest; there's no atheist in a foxhole.
Something hit the dropship. He didn't see it but he felt the impact. He felt the air blowing through the crew hold from the pressure differential as control of the ship was being lost. He was past the point of Hail Mary's. He couldn't remember the words anyway. He began to think of stranger things, like the fact that it must have been shrapnel of some sort that had hit them. A direct hit and he wouldn't have been alive to contemplate what had hit them in the first place. He wondered if the Longbow would explode.
He jerked back in forth in his restraints and his eyes opened involuntarily. Anything that wasn't tied down with the intent of surviving a tornado had snapped loose and was crashing and knocking around in the troop hold. He closed his eyes as a metal crate flew towards his head. It ricocheted off the upper restraint cage with enough force to knock down a tree. He preferred not to think what it would have done to his head.
An alarm began to sound and the red emergency lights flashed on and off, just incase he didn't already know how screwed they were. The MAKO lost a lot of velocity and he thought they might still be able to land. The ground came up too fast. They impacted like a hollow point against battle plate. The nose of the dropship plowed through two meters of gravel before finally stopping. The back end of the dropship crumpled up like an accordion but it somehow managed to stay in one piece.
The complete and consuming silence that filled the dropship was a disturbing contrast to the din a few moments earlier. Grabowski opened his eyes. There was blood splattered on the metal grated floor. He thought it might have been his at first. As he tried to move though he realized all his wounds were superficial. A couple bumps and scrapes, more than a couple bruises. He had a cut on his forearm where blood was flowing freely.
He looked at the dropship's other occupants. Everyone looked as though they were unconscious. He hoped that was all they were anyway. He didn't want to be in this mess alone. Blood was seeping out of a gash on the Sarge's head and had covered the majority of his face. He looked to be in the worst condition. That was until he saw the technician. He no longer had a face. His forehead had been pushed inward as though his head had caved in.
He smelled smoke and turned to see a pillar of it drifting lazily from one of the electrical conduits. There was no chance of a fire, Grabowski knew. It was just a short circuited fuse.
Someone groaned. It was Freemen on the opposite side. His head flopped over from one shoulder to the other. Private Nguyen beside him woke up and got into a coughing fit. He looked over to the Longbow and saw it was pretty much the only thing that hadn't sustained any damage. Lucky them, he thought. Beyond that was the MAKO's cockpit. He hoped Foster was alright.
He shook his head to clear his mind. He felt above him for the emergency release button to disengage his restraints. His fingers found it and it popped open. He realized too late that the MAKO had landed, using the term loosely, at an uneven angle. When they came up he well forward landing on his hands and knees.
"Bowski, help me out of this thing," Freemen asked. He stood up, leaning backwards to stay upright, and went toward his friend. The metal bars of his safety restraints were mangled. The bars had buckled and as he looked around he saw most of them were in similar shape. He hit the release button but nothing happened. He tried again with the same results.
"Hold on," he said. "I got an idea." He walked over to Mac and saw that she was slumped forward. He lifted her head and tried to shake her awake. All Marines carried a small first aid pouch and he reached for his. He pulled out a stimulant and cracked it in half. They made for great practical jokes on dull days when there was nothing else to do, but now it came in handy. He put it under Mac's nose. As soon as she smelled the ammonia, her head jerked up and her eyelids fluttered open. "Come on," he said, "give me a hand."
Fortunately her harness was in good condition and it opened up on the first try. She got her handheld welder out and they began cutting off Freemen's restraints.
Mac's ice blue eyes focused intently on the last cut and Grabowski snapped the piece of junk off, tossing it to the side. Together they helped Freemen to his feet.
McNamara tried opening the MAKO's hatch but it was unresponsive. "This will take a while," she said.
"I got a better idea," he told her. He kicked the hatch as hard as he could and the corner came free. A thin trail of light trickled through. The entire door shook. A few more kicks and it broke free. It fell forward and created a ramp leading to the red ground below. He had to squint his eyes in the bright light.
The door between the troop hold and the cockpit slid halfway open before sparks shot out and the auxiliary system died altogether. The opening was large enough for Foster to slide through. She seemed disoriented but otherwise in good condition.
"Your copilot?" Mac asked. Foster just shook her head. Grabowski nodded. Together they helped the rest of the squad out of their harnesses and carried all of the equipment outside. It took fifteen minutes and they had to cut through four more restraints.
Just as they carried the Sergeant outside and laid him down the good Lieutenant Hornberg chimed in. "Second squad this is Hornberg, come in." He had flown down on a separate dropship from them.
"Second squad to Hornberg," Mac replied. "We read you, over."
"Where's Sergeant Garret?" he asked.
Mac looked down at him and said, "He's no longer in command of second, over."
There was a long pause before the Lieutenant replied. "We read your tags, we're coming to pick you up, sit tight." The COM went dead.
"He's coming to get us," Grabowski said. "I feel better already," Grabowski said. The Lieutenant had been getting on his nerves lately. The other day he had reprimanded Grabowski on his hair length which was still within regulation. He understood the need for protocol and military discipline. Even so, those strict codes were aimed at soldiers that were either boot or stationed in a non-combat zone. He was neither. It was an unspoken precedent that guidelines on appearance and other frivolous subjects were to be interpreted loosely. Hornberg would have nothing of it.
Besides that, the man had an ego that could barely be contained within their little frigate. He was an OCS graduate with less field experience than any man he commanded, but he acted like he was George Patton born again.
Even without a squad leader, second squad still functioned adequately. They formed a rough perimeter around the crash sight and waited for their ride. Grabowski and Mac stayed in the center with the Sarge. Foster was hunkered down beside him, pouring water on his head, washing away the blood. He got down on his knees beside her.
"How's he doing?"
Something hit his head hard," she said. Foster pulled out a roll of gauze and began wrapping it around his head. "But not hard enough. It could be a concussion but from what I know about him, he's a fighter. He'll make it." She pinned it tight with a clip and looked up at him. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," he said.
She saw his arm and said, "You're bleeding."
"I'm fine," he repeated.
"Look hunny," she said with that know-it-all southern attitude that had first attracted him to her. "We're a long way from a Navy hospital and there's no corpsman attached to your squad. As I'm sure you can recall, we only got a one way ticket down here so you can let me take a look at your damn arm or let it get infected." She looked at him expectantly and finally he stuck his arm forward. She got another roll of gauss and tightened it around the cut. By the time she finished, Hornberg and a column of three transport trucks arrived.
The Lieutenant hopped out of the first truck before it came to rest and came over. "What the hell happened?" he asked, looking at the MAKO wreckage.
Grabowski would have made some sarcastic remark questioning the LT's intelligence but he was too tired. "We crashed," he said.
"I can see that," he replied.
Why the f*** did you ask then, Grabowski wanted to say. The rest of the squad fell in from their perimeter positions and gathered around their PL.
"Christ," he said, looking down at the Sarge. He looked back up and said, "Who's in charge here? Where's Corporal Temple?"
Grabowski could have hit him. "He was killed last week," Freemen told him.
He thought the Lieutenant's face might have turned red from his own incompetence, but if he was embarrassed, it didn't show. "Who has seniority here then?" Greenberg asked.
The squad was quiet for a moment as they tried to remember. Grabowski knew but he kept his mouth shut. When Chavez spoke up, he was ready to hit him next. "Grabowski's been in the squad the longest."
The Lieutenant scanned the white stenciled names that had been written on their armor, trying to find the right one. He saw his and said, "Grabowski, you've got the squad." He pointed to the second truck and said, "Get the Longbow in their, and pile your people in the third truck." Grabowski stood there stupidly for a time. "Move it," the Lieutenant yelled.
He turned and looked at the squad, his squad. He was supposed to give them orders he remembered as they watched him expectantly. "Chavez, Freemen, Vance, give me a hand with the Longbow." He looked at the others and said, "Get our equipment on the truck."
He got back into the MAKO with the others as they manhandled the Longbow. Even with four people it was heavy. It was particularly awkward tying to get it out of the cramped dropship. They carried it over to the second truck. The light armored vehicle had a machine gun turret on the top. It was manned by an Army Reservist that might have been sixteen. He looked at Grabowski like he had three heads. It's your problem now. They put the warhead inside and ran back to the third truck. The column took off immediately.
They weren't chauffeured for long. The Lieutenant dropped them off in a riverbed only a kilometer or two from the base. "We've got incoming units moving from the south of the base," he told them. "They should be further east of here. All you have to do is watch our flanks. Set up fighting positions and wait for evacuation. We won't be here long."
The squad hopped out, grabbing the few cases of equipment that had survived the crash. The Sarge and Foster stayed on the truck. He looked back at her before he jumped off. "Don't leave without us."
She winked at him with a smile. "Darling, I ain't going no where."
The column took off, following the riverbed northeast to the base. For the second time, his squad looked to him for the answers he was supposed to have. The dried up riverbed formed a rough road that any incoming vehicles were likely to use. He split the squad into their teams, setting up fighting positions along one side. It was simple enough. Nothing stays simple for long though.
Freemen took out a pack of cigarettes and handed one to Grabowski. He lit it up as he pulled out his datapad. He started up the GPS software and zoomed into the base defenses. It wasn't long before he heard a firefight not far away. He watched the battle unfold in the extreme close up of the datapad's screen. It looked pretty bad but the Army and Marines defenses were holding. He and his men spectated the battle for forty minutes. A part of him wanted to be in it but the rest was content to be far away, safely guarding their flank. That was until he heard a distant rumble of another explosion. This one was west of them.
He changed the view of his tracker to his own position. He moved the camera to where the explosion had come from. There were three unmarked military vehicles heading his way. They were chasing someone too. He had a NAVID tag. It was a Lieutenant Daniel Chang and he was heading straight toward the river bed.
"f***," he said. The seemingly simple had rapidly become quite less simple. What the hell was this guy doing out here? More importantly, what the hell was he supposed to do about it?
He watched a few moments longer. He didn't need to be a Navigation Officer to know that the unmarked vehicles would reach this guy before he reached second squad, his squad. Why the hell did the Sarge have to get knocked out? This was his command, not Grabowski's.
He opened up an encrypted channel to the Lieutenant and said, "Second squad to Charley One Six, over."
"Sixth squad this is Charley One Six," Hornberg said. "What do you need, over."
"I'm picking up a GPS signal of an unmarked convoy heading our way. They're chasing a Naval Lieutenant. What are our orders?"
"You are to hold position," Hornberg replied. "And ambush the convoy from your current location, over."
Grabowski shook his head. "The convoy will reach the Lieutenant before he reaches us, over."
"Hold your position. This battle is not going well. We'll be dusting off shortly. Sit tight. Charley One Six out."
"Lieutenant," he said. The COM was dead. "Son of a bitch," he yelled. Grabowski was all for staying where he was and waiting for evac to come. He didn't want to be a squad leader; in fact he had actively spent his career avoiding it. The very reason he had joined the Corps, besides getting the hell away from his folks as Foster had guessed correctly, was to avoid responsibility. He was watching out for himself and no one else. Even so, he still had a conscience. If it were him out there, alone and being chased down, he'd want help. It was decided.
"Second squad," he said. "Get ready to move out. We're heading along this river bank."
Freemen looked over at him. He was the only one in the squad to have heard his conversation with Hornberg. "I thought the LT said stay put."
"Well Lieutenant dipshit's not here right now. We are." Freemen nodded. There was no more said on the matter.
He met the rest of the squad in the middle of the naturally formed path. "We got a squid up ahead who's coming this way. He's tailing a whole bunch of trouble." He looked at each of their faces before continuing. "I don't know about you, but I didn't get my shit handed to me on the way down here only leave without doing something useful. Let's het the squid, take care of his friends, and get the hell out of here." They nodded approvingly. "First round of drinks is on me tonight. Let's move."
What was wrong with him? Since when did he play cowboy? It had been a long time since they'd been apart of a decent stand up fight. This war had been going shitty from the start. His two firefights during it; the black-ops mission that had to his knowledge, yielded nothing worthwhile, and the defense of the mainframe were hardly something to be prideful of. When was the last time they had done anything to be feel good about? When he was older, he wanted to have at least one memory to be proud of. He wanted to tell people he had done at least one decent thing.
They jogged down the river bed as he kept an eye on the tracker. When they reached the point where he thought Chang would come, they stopped. He evaluated the Marines. Including himself, there were ten of them. Two fire teams and a Heavy Machine Gun crew. Most of them just had the standard M36 pulse rifles.
Vance was the Platoon's heavy weapons specialist with an M72 Light Pulse Cannon. He had a clean shaven head and he routinely won arm wrestling matches in the squad. His off duty time was spent at the gym. In his pack he also carried half a dozen landmines.
Nguyen was their Platoon's qualified sharpshooter. He was the shortest member and also the quietest. A good example of the strong silent type. He had a high-powered fifty caliber pulse rifle slung over his shoulder. It was the largest caliber pulse weapon ever made.
He was looking at his squad mates in a new light. They were his friends but also soldiers. He was used to being one of them, taking orders and following them. Now he had to look at what their strength's were and how to use them. He had to think.
He paired up the squad and sent two riflemen to points along the path fifteen meters apart. He checked each one to make sure they had overlapping fields of fire and they started to dif into the dusty ground. He had Vance set up in the path behind an elongated boulder to give him a superior field of fire. It was a standard L-shaped ambush.
"Nguyen, where do you think you can get the best shot from?" he asked.
The sharpshooter looked around and pointed to the far left. "That ledge," he said.
"Do it," Grabowski said, "and take Mac with you." He went over to the middle next to Vance. The two of them set up the six landmines on the riverbed about fifty meters from their positions. The explosives were remote operated and he had the controls relayed directly to his datapad.
His COM opened up. "Charley One Six to Second squad leader, report."
"Grabowski here. I read you, over."
"What the f*** are you doing private? Get your squad back to position immediately! Over."
"We're going to save this soldier, sir. Over."
"The Base has been compromised, we're setting the detonators for fifteen minutes. Get the squad back for immediate evac, I'm sending a transport now."
"Negative," he replied flatly.
"You will follow my orders god dammit!"
"Negative." He ended the COM channel and made it so it couldn't be reopened. He opened another channel that went to his whole team. He knew they had heard the conversation. "Fifteen minutes guys. What does everyone think?"
"It's going to be a close one," Mac said.
"You know me Bowski," Freemen said. "I'm up for it."
Vance looked over at him. "Another shuttle ride? I want to stretch my legs a little bit first."
Everyone of them wanted to stay. A bunch of damned heroes. He wanted to leave but there was just something about the prospect of pissing off the Lieutenant that brightened up his morning. They were going to stay.
Twelve and a half minutes.
"Hey Ski," he heard on the team's private COM. It was Chavez. "Mira."
He saw the dust kicked up by motorized vehicles grow closer in the distance. The navigator showed Chang heading directly toward them. Perfect he thought. A plan that was going the way it was supposed to. He had only heard of such things.
"Nguyen, talk to me."
"Three LAV's. Two are troop holders, maybe a dozen in each. The middle is an Infantry Fighting Vehicle. A small turret, maybe forty mm." They were soft target all. As long as they could disable the one with the turret quickly, the rest would be easy. They wouldn't know what hit them.
He saw the Lieutenant running towards them up ahead. He was close, running through the kill zone of the mines they had put down. The incoming vehicles were close. Very close.
Just when he was at the edge of the kill zone, Chang ran off from the main path and ducked behind a boulder. "Son of a bitch," Grabowski whispered. The three armored vehicles stopped directly in the middle of the kill zone. The Lieutenant fired a green flare into the sky. What was he doing? If the FOJ troops didn't know where he was before, they certainly did now. Thirty troops jumped out of the trucks and began firing at the squid's position. The forty opened up two. Its rounds hit the boulder he hid behind, chiseling away fist sized chunks.
Did he expect his squad to go running over to save him? If he had come this way, he must have known that marines were waiting for him. Grabowski checked his watch and cursed. Ten minutes. This guy had better be worth all of this. They'd better give him a goddamn metal for his troubles. In reality though, he thought, he was more likely to get court-martialed for insubordination. This was FUBAR.
Just before he was about to say ‘to hell with this guy' the Lieutenant jumped back to his feet and sprinted toward them, taking fire the entire way. Grabowski brought up the binoculars he had taken from the Sarge and waited just a moment. He clicked his datapad and detonated six HE landmines right up the Fist of Jupiter's ass.
The LAV with the forty mm cannon was history. It exploded into a firestorm of shrapnel as the turret was sent into the air before crashing unceremoniously a few meters away.
The concussion of the blast still got Chang. He was blown forward and hit the ground hard. Grabowski grimaced, hoping he hadn't misjudged the kill zone's radius. He couldn't have because a good deal of enemy soldiers had survived closer than Chang was. They were covered from head to toe in grey-blue body armor.
As soon as the explosion occurred, the squad opened fire. Grabowski moved a meter away from Vance. He forgot how loud the pulse cannon was. One of the transport trucks was still functional. It started to drive away but Nguyen put a fifty caliber round through the driver's chest. The weapon left a hole through the door the size of a softball and did the same to the driver's torso. One of the soldiers was hit in the face shield. He struggled to take the piece of armor off and when he did, Grabowski froze.
He had seen the man's face before. Shaven head, goatee, and a scar across his eye. It was the man that had shot at him on the black-ops mission. What the hell? What were the chances that he would be here, right now? And even odder was the fact that he was a mere foot soldier. Only a grunt. Why had he been in possession of all those classified materials on the colony?
The man squinted and as he tried to reorient himself, a trio of rounds caught him in the head. He fell backwards like an unbalanced statue. The enemy was beaten, there was no one left.
His COM hissed to life. "Foster to second squad," she said. "I heard you boys need a lift."
"Good to hear from you Foster," he said quite honestly.
"Where do you want me to settle this hunk of junk down?"
He consulted his datapad and read her a pair of coordinates. He wasn't sure if the LT was going to leave them for dead. "You're gonna get an earful for this one," he said to her.
"No more than you are," she replied. The dropship settled down two hundred meters east of their position.
Four minutes.
"Chavez, Freemen, get the Lieutenant and meet us at the DZ," he said. They hauled ass in every aspect of the term. "Let's go!" They got to the ship and loaded up. It was an old model, outdated by three decades of innovation but it was in better shape than the bucket that had brought them down to this hole.
Foster wasn't going to wait for them to get comfortable. Once everyone was on, the hatch closed behind them and they were airborne. They struggled to strap into their seats as the ship gained altitude and struggled to fight the laws of physics.
They had managed to strap down the Lieutenant as well. His head lulled back and forth, still unconscious.
Thirty seconds.
Grabowski closed his eyes and counted them in his head. There was a brilliant flash outside that he could see through his eyelids. Then the concussion of such a powerful explosion. It shook their dropship but after their last flight, it felt comparatively tame.
When it had passed and they were in orbit Chavez spoke. "I can't wait to get back man," he said. "I'm gonna have a drink, take a hot shower, and shit a break."
Freemen laughed. "You've said it man."
Grabowski's unrelenting curiosity drew his eyes to the window. The fleet looked terrible. Every single capital ship was fit for a garbage dump, or at the very least, a few months of dry dock.
What he also noticed was they were leaving Mar's orbit, heading slowly toward Sol. A wave of smaller ships was chasing after them, including their own. Because of the fleet's slow velocity though, they had no trouble catching up.
Foster's voice chimed in over the speakers confirming what he had already guessed. "Get a long look at Mar's everyone. It'll be the last time you see her for a while. The fleet was beaten."