Mike's War: Sequel to Jesse's Starship (21 page)

“I don’t know if I’m ready to die, Sarge.”

Belinda smiled at Pvt. Tobulu, “When would you be ready?’

“I don’t know; just not now.”

“You’ll be saying that the rest of your life Tobs. We’re never ready to die. It’s how you die that’s important.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve thought about it and I know I can give in to my fear and pretty much paralyze myself. Or I can live in every single second I have left and extract as much joy as possible. Lt. Brunner didn’t choose to die here but he saved several of you doing it. I guess I’ve decided that every Gracken I can kill here will be one less to face our brothers back on Sparta. I think that’s what motivates me at the moment.” Belinda paused and said, “I hate to say never, so I won’t. If we can kill enough of them; they may back off and leave us alone.” The warriors around her laughed. She smiled with them, “I know; that’s probably not a realistic hope.”

Tobs said, “But it is hope none the less.”

“That it is.” Belinda blew out a breath, “We knew this was a possibility when we signed up. I want to say to all of you that it has been a pleasure serving with you.”

The Platoon yelled, “Boooya!”

The other platoons heard them and took up the chant. The waiting Gracken Warriors heard the chant and knew they were facing real warriors that deserved their respect. They began yelling, “Chaaa ya.” Soon the air was filled with the battle cries of the two forces. Derek heard his warriors and felt immense pride at their bravery. He knew the Gracken also deserved his respect. He wondered if he would be doing exactly what they were doing if he had discovered a civilization that destroyed planets. Would he go to war against that civilization? That was a question he would have to put aside and face the huge creatures coming to kill him. War didn’t play favorites and sometimes the end was inevitable. Even so; the game had to be played.

• • •

“Mike, Pete says numerous Gracken ships are jumping in three hundred miles out.”

Hot Shot said, “There’s six hundred ships of varying sizes jumping in. They appear to be surround one giant vessel in the center of their ranks. The jump field on that ship is still active. Whoever is on board that ship must be pretty high up in the Gracken chain-of-command.”

“Is there any way to get a shot off at that ship?”

“Not unless you want to die making it happen. All of those ships have their blasters activated.”

“Do we stand a chance against them if the entire fleet moves on us?”

“We can hold them off. The problem with getting at that ship is that it’s more than four miles deep in their ranks. The outer ships would combine their blasters against us. We can probably kill them as fast as they come toward us. Our overlapping fire should provide an effective cross fire against them. If we’re forced, we can jump a short distance and start the process again.”

Mike shook his head, “I will not leave our ground forces undefended. We will hold them off or die here trying.”

“You’re the boss.”

Derek sat on the ground and kept his eyes on his visor. He felt his fear of dying try to raise its head but he pushed it out of his mind. He saw the Gracken that had charged down the two streets were standing up and moving into ranks. He quickly changed the view to the buildings in the center of his formations and didn’t see any Gracken outside them. He changed the feed and saw hundreds of them were hanging on the back wall of the building. The giant creatures had gripped the concrete and made handholds to pull themselves up the wall. There was a single Gracken Warrior standing alone in the street and Derek knew he had to be the commander of that unit. He flashed the view back to the Gracken forming ranks and saw them start trembling. The last of them fell into ranks and the obvious leader moved away from in front of them.

“Get ready, they’re coming. He looked up at the right corner of his combat visor and saw the trigger icon. He stared at it and tapped the side of the visor. Every Abrams and Leopard tank fired at the same moment into the buildings in front of their lines. The blasts blew through the first floor and, after a brief pause, the buildings collapsed into their foundation.

• • •

The Gracken Unit Commander saw the blasts erupt out of the buildings he had sent his warriors into and knew all of them were probably killed. His warriors clinging to the buildings’ walls tried to jump away but the building caught most of them in the rubble as it scattered across the street. The Commander would have been killed if not for his incredible speed. He scrambled away from the falling structures and jumped to the roof of the building across the street from the carnage. His rage took him and he started releasing his hormones. “You will stop releasing hormones and report to the Planetary Commanders presence immediately.”

The Unit Commander fought hard but then he heard, “This is an ultra-order and you will obey!”

The Commander fought hard and stopped the release of his hormones and he dropped to the ground with the effort. He was breathing rapidly and it took several minutes before he could regain control of his body. He finally stood up turned, and sprinted away. He had lost his entire unit without even getting a shot off at the invaders. They had been given too long to see what was going on. He ran at his top speed trying to burn off the hormones he released. He expected to be executed when he arrived at the Commander’s Control Center.

He arrived and forced himself to walk into the Commander’s presence. The Commander was watching the other two units start their charge and he looked over and saw the Unit Commander standing at attention. He was still shaking from the hormones still in his body and the Commander waved a hand at him, “Go and burn off those hormones. Get back here quickly; I want your insight on this attack.”

The Unit Commander raised his right arm over his head, turned, and left the Control Center. He left at a sprint and ran to the low range of hills two miles away and ran up the hills at full speed. He jumped off the hill and ran up again. After six sprints up and down, he turned and sprinted back to the Control Center. He arrived in time to see the end of the attack. He was staggered by what he saw.

• • •

Derek watched the feed coming in and saw the commander of the center Gracken Unit run away. He activated his communicator, “Major Romanov, reassign the tanks designated to the center of line to the two outside forces. It appears the center Gracken attackers have been eliminated from the board.”

Romanov began issuing new orders and the ten tanks in the center of the human’s formation rotated their barrels. Now there were fifteen tanks assigned to each of the two remaining Gracken units. They barely had time to coordinate their fire with the other tanks but the additional firepower was a difference maker.

• • •

The Gracken warriors burst into the two streets to the left and right of the Spartan lines and the tanks ripple fired their antipersonnel rounds into them. The initial wave of Gracken were blown apart by the thousands of slivers filling the air. There wasn’t much left for those in the second wave to pick up to use as shields. The platoons on each side of the tanks fired to the sides of the streets to pick off any Gracken that managed to jump out of the blast zone.

• • •

Belinda fired a quick stream of slivers ten feet off the ground to the left of her tank’s field of fire. When she fired the rounds there was nothing in her sites. She paused and tracked her shoulder rifle back firing another stream. She absently noticed that two Gracken had jumped and were hit by her first burst. She was astounded by the speed of the Gracken rushing toward her platoon. The Gracken in the city were slow compared to the mass of brown creatures moving toward her. “Do not lose control of your fire zones! Keep firing until this is over.”

Nineteen thousand Gracken Warriors rushed out of the streets. Half of them were killed by the tanks initial volleys but the nine thousand that made it out of the streets were coming toward the tanks and infantry at an incredible speed. Derek watched the Gracken move to within two hundred yards of his formation and pressed the general frequency. He yelled, “GO TO FULL AUTO NOW!”

The tanks fired salvo after salvo into the charging Gracken and the infantry fired into their fire zones at full auto. The wall of slivers moving into the Gracken filled the air from four feet to twenty feet off the ground. In two minutes Derek said, “Cease fire! Look for any stragglers we might have missed.”

The incredible roar stopped and the silence was eerie. Nothing was moving on the beach between the Spartan lines and the city. The battle had happened so fast that the incredible damage was almost impossible to believe. There were Gracken bodies still twitching all over the beach and, after another twenty minutes, they stopped moving.

Derek pressed his communicator, “Major Romanov, how is your ammo holding up?”

“I have enough to handle one more attack, Sir. We have plenty of high explosive rounds but we’ve used about fifty percent of our antipersonnel.”

Derek shook his head. There were still more than a hundred and fifty thousand Gracken warriors camped just outside the city. He pressed another frequency, “Gremel, what’s the status of the force field?”

“Barely holding.”

Derek shook his head and looked up at the sky, “I trust you can put down on the list of what we’ve learned here is that the tank’s antipersonnel rounds are critical to holding the Gracken off.”

Mike heard Derek and shook his head. The Gracken had managed to get a hundred and fifty yards from Daniel’s formation. The tanks made the difference but it was still a close thing. Without an active force field protecting them, the Gracken had moved close enough to endanger the infantry.

• • •

The Gracken Planetary Commander turned and looked at the Unit Commander, “What do you think about our failed attack?”

“I’m surprised you want my opinion, Commander. I lost my entire command before the charge began.”

“You lost them because those two incompetent Commanders caused a delay for their warriors to recover. If the attack had gone off as scheduled, the enemy would not have had time to prepare a counter to your plan. I want your thoughts on this.”

The Unit Commander looked at the wall video replaying the recording of the attack and his face turned ugly, “We couldn’t use our major support weapons in this attack.”

“The Mobile Heavy Blasters are too big to move through the city.”

The Unit Commander’s hardened expression grew harder as he said, “Then burn the city to the ground so they can.”

The PC thought about the suggestion and knew that if he followed that suggestion he would lose the population that worked the mine. He looked over at his Support Officer and she stared at them saying nothing. “You have nothing to say about this idea?”

The Female raised her hands in a shrug, “We have more than a thousand other mines on this planet.”

The PC smiled. She was right. There were more mines but only one place where the enemy had landed. He looked at his staff and saw their hatred of the beings that had killed more than thirty thousand of their brothers and sisters. He knew he should be angry but he was worried about what it would cost to remove these invaders. “Issue an order to bring a hundred Mobile Blasters here. I want them ready within eight hours.” She turned to her panel and began issuing orders. The PC turned to the Unit Commander, “You know that if our blasters move into range of those large mobile vehicles, they’ll be destroyed.”

“I don’t believe they will, Commander.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“We’ll be firing our conventional heat blasters to burn the city. I don’t believe the projectiles will make it through the heat to hit them. But even if they could, they would have to fire through the buildings to hit them. We’ll burn everything up to the last line of buildings and burn them from outside the range of those large mobile structures.”

The PC saw this Commander was smart. He decided to follow his plan.

The Support Officer turned and her expression showed fear. The PC knew something drastic had happened. She never showed any emotion. “Commander, One of the Elders has brought his personal fleet and is observing our actions.”

The PC instantly felt his body tighten up. “Has the Elder communicated?”

“No, he is holding station away from the planet and observing what’s happening.”

The PC yelled, “Get those blasters here now!!”

The Unit Commander knew he was going to die. The Elders saw him lose his command. He forgot his rage at the invaders and could only see his impending death in his mind.

• • •

“Mike, whoever is in charge of those ships is a pretty smart cookie.”

“Why do you say that, Bowen?”

“The ships surrounding that large ship in the middle are moving around it like electrons circling an atom’s nucleus. That ship is also moving at random speeds and distances before it changes direction. It would be impossible for us to hit it.”

“Jericho tells me there has been some communication between the ships but nothing has been directed toward the planet.”

Adams said, “Bowen, when are you going to find someone to fly that ship with you?”

“I like it this way; it’s a lot quieter.”

Jeanette said, “Are you saying I’m a loud mouth?”

“Hey, make of it what you will…but if the shoe fits…”

Adams sighed, “You didn’t have to add that last part, Bowen.”

Jeanette began yelling at Bowen and Adams secretly agreed with him; it had to be quieter. “You couldn’t find anyone with more intelligence than a snail that would tolerate your sorry butt. If I see you again I’m going to hit you with a Taser to shock some sense into you…”

Bowen leaned back in his chair and turned the volume down. He knew his former partner was going to hear about this for the next few hours and he knew Adams realized Bowen had done it on purpose.

Adams shook his head. Bowen must still be angry at getting shot in their last fight before peace was forced on Earth. He waited, knowing what was coming. Finally Jeanette stopped yelling at Bowen and turned to him, “Do you think I talk too much?”