Chapter 4
“…So it is, when we see ‘tribalism’ condemned, it is usually group chauvinism that is actually implicated and misnamed. Those most naturally and comfortably ensconced within some form of modern tribe tend to be more contented than others, leading to more prosocial interactions…”
—Dr. Georgette Hester-Vicary, Irresistible Puppeteer: The Motivational Primacy of Tribe
“They’re dropping us in too early, Skipper,” Corporal Luton complained, holding tight as they rattled and bounced their way through Ericsson Two’s thick atmosphere. “We’re gonna cop it any second now, I know it.”
“Shut up, Luton,” Lieutenant Newick said, checking the counter in his UI while silently agreeing with Luton’s assessment. Two destroyers and two carriers loitered in orbit above, pounding the surface with a variety of lethal munitions, and still the loach bearing them seemed to jolt every few seconds from another near miss. If they could survive just another sixty seconds…
“Sixty seconds…” The loach pilot’s voice crackled across the internal comm at that moment, sounding tight, strained.
Lieutenant Newick strapped in even tighter and began calling through his crew, station by station. “Power plant?”
“Ready, Skipper.”
The loach jolted hard and Newick swallowed as he continued, his voice quavering from the vibration…and maybe more. “Fire team?”
“Ready, sir,” Berry affirmed, his laconic voice as unruffled as ever.
“Waist gunners?”
The loach’s engines suddenly roared, the crushing force of deceleration making the gunners’ voices sound thin and high as they acknowledged.
Before Newick finished his circuit, the loach touched, depositing HMGP-2 on the planet’s surface, peeling off to run, its vast shadow sweeping across the reddish ground as it raced for the horizon. Lieutenant Newick possessed no time to observe the questionable fate of the loach.
“Full speed; hit it Luton!” he commanded, and HMGP-2 launched forward, suspended on its four graviton elements. “High Mobility Gunnery Platform” was the official name of their vehicle, though Legion troops simply called them “gun barges” in daily parlance, a fairly apt description. Time to utilize that High Mobility and get them off the X before any interdiction fire found them idling.
A column of black smoke threaded through the murky atmosphere in the distance, but Newick couldn’t be sure if he saw the terminal fate of another loach and barge, or if the smoke merely bore witness to the rain of fire poured down from orbit. Either way, HMGP-2 accelerated its considerable mass toward the ripple of small hills a couple klicks distant, even as Newick’s crew remained fixed on their duties. Ericsson Two had already gained the ugly reputation of a meat grinder, despite the constant pounding of nonfissionable munitions from Fleet craft in orbit, and none of this crew felt eager to add their blood to the butcher’s bill.
“Combat Nets are up, Lieutenant,” Corporal Kitma said from the panel beside Luton, turning her head to look at Newick. “Riley’s barge and the loach…they ate it on the way in.”
Lieutenant Newick swallowed again, his mouth dry. HMGP-1 and fifteen crew probably comprised part of that column of black smoke on the horizon, then.
“Damn,” Newick said for lack of anything more inspiring. “How about the three-barge?”
“They’re down clean. Six klicks east, maneuvering to join up with us.”
Lieutenant Newick couldn’t determine how Kitma and Luton felt as they worked their respective stations, HMGP-2 skimming fast toward a modicum of cover on the horizon. He shared the tight cockpit with them in this lethal war machine, but they both seemed to turn their nervous energy into mechanistic action and he tried to do the same, reviewing their assets as calmly as possible.
The barge packed one heavy howitzer right in the center of the deck, twenty full paces aft of the cockpit, a pair of mass-driver turrets fore and aft, with multi-barrel cannons on either side of the waist in armored pockets below the deck. One hardpoint held their sole missile battery, mostly for defensive interdiction fire. With all their lethality, Newick should have possessed a fair measure of confidence, but he didn’t. Ericsson Two already ate more than her share of the most deadly Imperial hardware and warfighters thrown onto her surface, seeming to beg for more.
Squinting ahead at the approaching tumult of terrain, Lieutenant Newick said, “Luton, see that gap about fifteen degrees right?”
“Um, got it, Skipper.”
“Let’s just slide in there until the three-barge closes it up a bit.” Slipping into a narrow notch in the hills just might keep them off unfriendly scans and out of direct-fire contact from any powerful enemy weaponry concealed about the landscape.
Where it came to the relatively rare art of indirect fire on the modern battlefield, their heavy howitzer could stand against most anything the enemy might try…as long as drones or aircraft didn’t actively hunt them.
Luton piloted their barge expertly through the wind-carved red rock features, straight for the notch between two flat-topped hills. Newick craned his head, sizing each geological formation for a shelter from unfriendly eyes. The weight of his helmet seemed to multiply, pressing down on him, and he wondered how effective their preparation for Ericsson Two’s heavy gravity would really turn out to be. The majority of his crew were of heavyworld stock, thankfully, while the Legions generally attracted fewer heavyworlders than the Marines or Fleet. With luck they would handle the gravity more comfortably than Lieutenant Newick. At least they didn’t face the gravitational torment of Thorsworld or even Al Sakeen, where it’s a wonder the early colonies had survived at all. By comparison, Ericsson Two was practicable by a properly conditioned coreworlder like Lieutenant Newick.
“Getting updated target coordinates, Lieutenant,” Kitma said, and Newick glanced at the freshly populated scope. One new potential target lay only a few klicks distant, but it suggested a game that Newick hesitated to initiate.
Their primary mission revolved around discovering and destroying shield generators and their associated power plants, but Newick felt certain that his first successful engagement would paint such a target on HMGP-2 that the remainder of their mission might be brief indeed, spent running from enemies.
Newick’s thoughts fell silent as the internal comm crackled. “Skipper, target!” Sergeant Armas called out from the forward mass-driver turret. “Three-five right, positive…four-one; range about six thousand.”
Kitma made a few quick motions and their optical scopes transfixed the target: high on a rocky plateau, a stonelike slab folded up, allowing the slender barrel of a large energy weapon to project, pulses of fire lancing out into the murky sky above, before disappearing beneath the stony cover again.
“Got it, Armas.” Newick felt his pulse suddenly pounding. He called the gunnery pit. “Berry, ready for a fire mission now? We will have to time it sharp.”
“We’re on it, Skipper,” Berry’s voice came back, unruffled as ever. “Thirty seconds.”
“Luton, hold our position. Stabilize for the shot.”
“Yes, sir.” The barge glided to a halt.
“Berry, three rounds, high-explosive, on my call. You ranged?”
“Ready to fire, sir.”
Newick stared at the optical feed, waiting for the enemy weapon to reappear for a shot. It seemed an interminable wait until the hidden battery emerged from cover for another shot, either engaging orbiting Fleet vessels or merely taking out micro-sats.
“Fire, fire, fire.” Before the words left Newick’s mouth, the gun barge jolted hard, three times in quick succession, the shocking blast of the howitzer a thrilling contrast for Newick, roaring defiance back at their enemies.
At least one of the heavy howitzer rounds slipped through the notch, dropping within the enemy battery, the optical screen revealing an enclosed detonation, vast pieces of the enemy weapon system cartwheeling up through thick air.
“Hit! A hit,” Newick called out. As a variety of cheers came across the internal comm, Newick immediately sobered, saying, “Luton, let’s move…fast.”
Luton responded, pouring on the power, and they skimmed down the center of the gap between the hills, displacing from their firing position and any return fire that might be targeted for them.
“Kitma,” Newick said, “better redirect the three-barge so they don’t step in the storm we just created.”
“Yes, sir.” She composed a message, bouncing it through the combat Nets.
Newick scanned the low hills and sharp cliffs surrounding them, seeking threats and a likely hole to hide in, but only the unfriendly rock and sand of a hostile world presented itself. The most basic scout drone could easily spot them unless they dipped into more effective cover, and a small drone might readily evade detection by the Fleet warships above.
Newick suddenly felt very glad HMGP-2 didn’t carry its usual detachment of infantry. They could comfortably accommodate up to forty dismounts, but that would only offer forty more lives Lieutenant Newick couldn’t protect.
What were the brass thinking, sending them down here to sift half a continent for infrastructure that the rebels would likely defend at all costs?
His thoughts came to an abrupt halt as something akin to a dry, ancient riverbed emerged from the shattered teeth of a rocky canyon to their left.
“Luton, see that notch opening at about thirty left? Can we fit in there?”
“Mmm…yep, we can Skipper,” Luton said. “As far back as I can see, but it’s gonna be a little tight.”
“Let’s thread it if we can. That might keep the bastards off us.” He checked the orbital imagery, but shadows concealed most features of the possible old river course.
While the flat upper deck of the gun barge could sport a variety of payloads and weapon packages, HMGP-2 remained largely clear, the perimeter benches for dismounts standing empty. Only the thick howitzer barrel jutting up from the central pit, and two topside hardpoints, disrupted the clean sweep of the flat deck from fore to aft. Now that deck fell into semidarkness, shrouded in the shadow cast by sharp canyon walls, and Lieutenant Newick looked up at the jagged rim above them, dreading the idea of some enemy poised up there, able to pour fire down upon them, while much of their own armament couldn’t bear on such an elevated target so tight against their flanks.
Luton steered the course at a cautious pace, his attention fixed on the narrow channel ahead, and Newick looked also, uneasy, hoping he had made the correct decision. A glance at the tactical display assured him they continued to weave their way toward one of the target areas dictated by the brass, so self-preservation and duty currently aligned.
Aside from an ambush, Newick’s great fear became the idea of an ever-diminishing canyon course ahead that would eventually require retracing their path back through this narrow channel, or attempting to surmount the canyon’s steep walls. Neither possibility seemed tactically advisable, but Newick’s breathing eased as he watched the path ahead appear to slowly broaden as they continued to wind along, relieving both of Newick’s most immediate fears.
When the sheer walls on both sides came to an abrupt end ahead, Newick called a halt some distance from the mouth. Consulting the orbital picture, Newick perceived a wide crater or dry lakebed stretching out beyond the canyon, but no warship or micro-sat above provided a live picture. The open expanse that would greet them could contain any number of unfriendly eyes, leaving them terribly exposed once they left the sheltering canyon behind. Still, their first appointed target area lay beyond the crater. At some point their duty demanded that they cross that naked expanse.
“Kitma,” Newick said, coming to a hesitant decision, “can you put a Kilroy right past the entrance up there? What is that? About…two hundred to the lip?”
Kitma cleared her throat. “Can do, Skipper…just a moment.” She manipulated the stubby launcher projecting out beside their compact cockpit. The launcher elevated, then belched out the globular Kilroy. Newick stared at his optical display, seeing the Kilroy casting up puffs of fine sand as it struck near the lip, bouncing to a halt, its tether spooling out behind, back to HMGP-2.
A moment after its forward momentum ceased, the globe-like Kilroy uncurled, its six small legs extending. A binocular vidcapture element popped up and scanned across the full sweep of its expanded horizon, the signal feeding through the Kilroy’s tether back to Kitma’s monitor.
Kitma’s shoulders lurched and she uttered a guttural sound, perhaps a curse in her native tongue. Newick stared, too, unbelieving. Five armored vehicles openly maneuvered across the hazy crater, dust plumes rising behind them, seemingly without a care for the Fleet warships loitering above.
“Looks like…three Gitano trooper carriers, a Sandhurst mobile cannon and…is that an old crawler tank?” Kitma said, staring at the optical scope.
Newick murmured assent without taking his eyes off the scope. “One of those old Mauler series tanks, maybe, but what’s it doing way out here?” Newick frowned to himself for a moment before an idea dawned. “Scan up. Along the rim of the crater, Kitma.”
The Kilroy obediently tilted its binocular eyes upward, sweeping along the junction between rocky spires and murky sky. “Ah! There.”
Newick felt a degree of satisfaction amid his ongoing perplexity. “See that? Shimmer field over the whole crater.” That explained the evident impunity of the enemy, able to conceal themselves under the shimmer field from all but the most thorough forms of orbital snooping.
The Kilroy’s vision returned to tracking the enemy vehicles in time to see a white-hot streak and flash in the distance. “Weapon signatures, Skipper,” Kitma said, even as the crawler tank went to work, its heavy twin mass drivers spearing wicked shots into the broken rock of the far crater wall.
“Who’re they…?” Newick began, staring at the continuing exchange of fire. “Kitma, what Legion forces dropped in around here?”
She shook her helmeted head. “No other unit shows, Skipper. No one dropped in anywhere near here.”
“Well, someone is getting their arse kicked out there.” It had to be some unit the brass thought to be wiped out, holding out here still. Newick calculated quickly, clenching down on the cold knot in his gut.
“Reel in the Kilroy.” The device’s legs and eyes curled back in, forming a nearly perfect sphere again, and the tether wound back in, sweeping it back, skipping and bouncing from rocks and sand until it whipped into the launcher.
Newick took a breath and keyed the alert through HMGP-2, attempting to steady his nerves. “Alright, everyone, this is it. Five enemy vehicles killing our comrades out there, and we’re going to take the bastards out.”
He weighed the idea of simply shelling the enemy with howitzer fire, holding their current concealed position, but there was little chance of disabling more than one or two vehicles before they began to maneuver…then the enemy could find and trap HMGP-2 at their leisure, sending drones, calling in aircraft or missile barrages to finish them off in this canyon where Newick had no room to displace.
They would strike hard, hopefully crush the enemy armor, and then collect any Legion survivors as they ran.
Newick keyed the comm again. “We’ve got to take out that crawler tank first or it’ll eat us alive. Berry, give it a full salvo. You open the ball.”
“Full salvo on the crawler. Got it. Locking in the coordinates now.”
“Alright, Luton, bring us out, slow and steady, then rotate us to zero-seven-five left so we can bring the front and rear turrets to bear.”
“Yes, sir. Zero-seven-five left.”
He directed the mass-driver turrets to focus all fire on the crawler tank before calling the right-side waist gunner. “Suud, follow Berry’s lead, get ranged and focus your fire on that Sandhurst first off.”
“On it, Skipper.”
Newick felt some degree of satisfaction at the nervousness in Suud’s voice. It matched the quivering that rippled through Newick’s own guts.
Luton steered them to the open mouth of the gorge, the broad expanse of the windswept crater or lakebed stretching out before them. To the naked eye their enemies appeared as barely perceptible lumps undulating through the haze, but Newick and Kitma locked optical scopes upon their distant shapes as Luton rotated HMGP-2 broadside. As the gun barge stabilized, Newick had one wild, desperate moment in which he almost yelled over the comm, canceling the whole action, but instead he targeted a small missile battery upon the crawler tank.
They must kill that tank, or it would tear them up in a hurry.
The howitzer suddenly thundered its salvo, its huge rounds flying in a steep arc, high into the murky air, on their way to the crawler.
Newick triggered the missiles from their lone rack, feeling the sharp thrust as they launched, the torches of their transit dancing across the distance, even as the gun barrage erupted in fire. The front and rear mass-driver turrets lanced bolts out at the crawler tank’s exposed rear, several impacts flashing a blinding white in the optical scope, but the crawler responded in an instant, its turret snapping around in a blur, its twin barrels seeking them. The tank’s countermeasures exploded upward, shattering Newick’s three missiles before they could impact, and Newick felt he stared directly into those twin muzzles, clenching himself tight, waiting for the blast that would end his life.
A second round of countermeasures detonated, this time ineffectually, as Berry’s howitzer shells impacted on and around the tank, obscuring it behind smoke and dust.
Only then did Newick notice the green wand of the waist gunner’s multibarrel cannon tracers arcing out across the murky distance, shrouding the Sandhurst in continuous flashes, tracer chunks flying in every direction.
“Luton, move us! Full speed!” Newick ordered, and Luton poured on the power as both mass-driver turrets speared fire into the Sandhurst, the three Gitano carriers scattering, their autocannons blazing, streaks of arcing fire whipping into HMGP-2.
Newick heard the impacts now, surprised at the sound, like a dozen workers pounding HMGP-2 with mallets.
“We’ve got dismounts,” Suud’s voice crackled out, the roar of his cannon loud through the comm channel, and Newick thought he saw the flicker of small-arms fire bearing witness to Suud’s warning.
“That Sandhurst’s finished,” Newick said, staring at the optical screen, seeing the distant armored vehicle canted and smoking, even as the gun barge maneuvered fast. “Kill those Gitanos.” As he spoke a cannon round smashed through the cockpit, armored glass and shell fragments showering Newick, Kitma, and Luton.
For a moment, Newick couldn’t see or hear, opening his eyes as Kitma cinched a tourniquet on his right arm, her own shoulder and neck leaking blood from a dozen small perforations. Newick’s vision drifted to the optical screen, seeing Suud’s arc of green tracers washing over a distant Gitano, sending smoke and sparks out from its perforated hulk.
Suud’s rain of death fell abruptly silent as some concealed dismount launched a shoulder-fired missile that struck HMGP-2 amidships, detonating with a shocking blast.
Luton still steered their course, though he too bled from several wounds. “Bring us around, Luton,” Newick managed to say, and the gun barge swept in an arc that brought her uninjured left side to bear. The final remaining waist gunner began sending streams of fire out, sweeping over individual figures as the mass drivers finished beating the Gitanos to shreds.
By the time HMGP-2 reached the scene of destruction, no living enemy appeared, the armored vehicles smoldering and smoking where they lay.
Faint with blood loss, Newick wanted to see their misplaced Legion comrades safely aboard before his eyes closed, but as they approached the blast-cratered embankment that formed the far wall of the dry lakebed, Kitma made a soft, shocked sound a moment before Newick realized what they beheld.
From the rocks and shallow caves, dozens of dirty, desperate figures emerged, staring downhill to their saviors in HMGP-2.
“They…they aren’t Legion,” Kitma said.
Newick shook his head, unable to comprehend the implications of what he saw.
“They’ve got to be…locals,” Luton murmured. “Why was the enemy killing them?”
Newick couldn’t form a response, instead attempting to say that Kitma was now in command, but his mouth would not shape the words, his vision shrinking, growing dim as he faded into the welcoming darkness.
Kitma knew she was in command anyway…