Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade (5 page)

Not only that, but Marine reinforcements and support units dropped in out of nowhere to exploit enemy weaknesses wherever they appeared.

Air and ground support couldn’t dust the entire area for fear of taking out friendlies. But they could use negations blasts to take down enemy shields over the invader positions, with little harm to friend or foe–except for exposing the slashers to direct fire without their shielding.

Once their shields collapsed across the line, even the lander forces could exploit such advantages.

2
nd
Platoon marched in behind a drop of meks and gunned the Ejjai down point blank, filling the enemy’s armored faces and chests with blaster fire and glowing holes.

Bravo broke them down. Then the local defenders demanded the right to take their vengeance upon all of the foes who remained. The Marines gave them that right, and went along only to back them up and help protect them from any enemy traps and nasty surprises.

In almost every engagement, even when outnumbered, the elite Spacer Marines eventually outwitted, outfought, and overcame the Ejjai invaders and soundly defeated them, always with pitched fighting.

Yet as always, new problems and complexities presented themselves. Every battle and combat situation was different.

At the next gigacity, the Ejjai were nearly in complete control, dug in and entrenched in all of the built-up areas. On top of that, they used captured civilians as not just hostages, but active human shields.

Bravo again waited until nightfall, making their plans for another stealth assault. The city could be taken, yet there was no way to prevent hundreds of thousands–perhaps millions–of civilian deaths at the hands of their captors.

Naero and Om had some ideas of their own, but to make them known, Shetanna could no longer remain silent.

Miranda-Naero went to her commander for the last time in her disguise. “Leftenant Wilde, contact HQ and Major Luna immediately.”

The Anaconda looked at her funny. “What is it this time, Brighteyes? Another hidden enemy minefield?”

Naero hit her nano presets and morphed her stealth armor into her Intel variant, complete with her dark cloakcoat and Mystic battle mask. She undid her gleaming, long black hair and shook it free. Next she ignited her twin, blazing red Chaos katanas in both hands.

Then she made her blades and all of herself go transparent, until she was nearly invisible. “I’m sorry to have deceived you,” she said. “Miranda Allen is but an alias.”

Trevor Lakota stood by smiling slightly, not looking very surprised at all.

“I see,” Wilde said. “Then I’m guessing that you are, in fact, our delayed Mystic Combat Liaison? How shall we know you, sir?”

“I am Mystic Adept Naero Amashin Maeris, of Clan Maeris. And I hold the matching rank of Strike Fleet Captain. My battlefield codename is Shetanna.”

Wilde saluted. “That rank is the Marine equivalent of a major, sir. I’ll bring you to the attention of HQ at once, and escort you there personally, if you so wish it.”

“Please, out in the field and unless our superiors are around, let’s be on a name basis, first or last, you pick. That’s the way I run. Call me Naero, N, or Maeris.”

“I’m Ana,” Wilde said. “I like that as well. Thanks, N. General Walker has spoken very highly of you and your service both during and after the Annexation War. And who has not heard of your illustrious parents? I thought you had that fighting style down a little too well.”

Naero nodded. “My thanks once again, Ana. You honor me and my Clan.”

“So, N. I assume that with this flamboyant entrance of yours, you have some Mystic tricks in mind to unleash on our new friends, in conjunction with our developing night operations?”

“Indeed. Something quite radical, I would say.”

The Anaconda showed her teeth. “Bravo specializes in stealth attacks, the radical, and the unexpected.”

“First, I think we should send in everyone–even our reserves and any numbers that we can muster. And we do it quiet. They won’t expect us to overwhelm them one-on-one with knives, battle blades, and swords. We gut them all silently in the black with blades.”

Ana raised both eyebrows. “Interesting. Daring. No military force has attempted such a thing on this scale in centuries, perhaps millennia. At the least, in a thousand years.”

“And Bravo is the only force that can pull it off,” Naero said.

“You are correct, N. It just might work, and they would never expect us to do such a thing. We can coordinate the attack with the assistance of all the other MCLs present in this battle zone.”

Naero was called in to meet with Major Luna, who was still technically her commander. Everyone on the command staff for 36 introduced themselves to her, and she to them. Naero and Ana outlined the plan together.

Then they contacted General Walker and Intel directly to gain approval.

That night, a powerful thunderstorm unleashed its fury on invader and defender alike. The weather played into Bravo’s hands even further. Under the cover of that storm, waves of Marines moved through the shadows in a deadly sweep.

By dawn the next day, tens of thousands of Ejjai invaders lay dead, all with stunned and surprised looks frozen on their dead faces. Millions of equally stunned defenders and civilians finally began to realize that they were not only free, but delivered from the foe.

It was as if avenging spirits had walked about and among the invaders that night and stolen their lives away in silent waves of sweeping, whispering death.

Throughout the gigacity of Kolovan, and three others, the defenders found countless enemies cut down where they had stood and fought. Eyes staring wide in shock and fear. Throats slashed, necks and spines severed, eyes stabbed out, lungs and hearts punctured, heads nearly decapitated and skulls crushed. Guts sliced open and ripped out.

Bravo exhausted themselves, but they took out entire armies of invaders, struck down silently in the black.

And the legend of the deadly ghosts of Bravo Command only continued to spread and grow. Across all sectors, the invaders were freaking out, big time.

Naero walked among Company 36 and introduced herself once more, apologizing for slightly deceiving them the way she did. She had her reasons.

Jonny Fox laughed. “So, Brighteyes. Does this mean we’re not really friends for life?” he asked.

Naero smiled. “It doesn’t change that much. Hand me a cold Jett, ffl, and let’s talk about it.”

They did so. That night after the battle was another Fifthday, the ancient Thursday named after some other god. Fifthday nights were Chat Nights, and the Marines broke off into groups and pairs to talk, gripe, or get to know each other better.

Naero sucked down some more of her stash of Jett, sharing one of hers with Jonny this time. “So, you gonna tell me this long story of yours?”

Jonny Fox laughed, still so young that he looked like a boy more than a man. “Oh, I guess it isn’t that long. Like I said, Chime and I are the only surviving members in our family besides our great-granny Farita. Everyone else died in the various wars. Great-granny Fari loves books, and always read to us when she was raising us. She made us read to her when we got old enough. If you haven’t noticed, Chime’s a little bit of a kook about books and reading and all that.”

Naero chuckled. “Really? I had no idea. So, what do you want, Jonny?”

“Me? Not that much. As soon as this war’s over, I’m done with the Marines. I’ll muster out like a lot of Marines do, and get a little ship, somewhere nice and peaceful on some milk run for great-gran and me, and Chime, too, if she wants to tag along. A simple life in the stars for a Spacer. Maybe track myself down a cute wife and have some kids for great-gran to fuss over.”

Naero nodded, drained her borbble and reached for another. “That all sounds like a pretty good life, Jonny.”

He belched real loud. “I thought so.”

They stopped talking for a while and listened to the other Marines around them.

Staff Sergeant Gerrold Donovan had three kids with his wife Kelly: Donald, age six, Mearal, age four, and Tarana, at one and a half. He showed pics and vids of his kids around for all to see. Corporal Poker Elkins and his wife Arrella had two children: Wilton, age five, and Karina, age three. Victoria Apache had a two-year-old daughter with her husband, Jim Williams. Everyone in the Marines was proud of their kids, if they had them, and liked to show them off to everyone.

Everyone had something, or someone to live for.

Trisha Marshall, their scrounge, had a Marine starfighter pilot named Jake Turner that she was crazy about. Vincent Fay had fallen nose over tail in lust with a medtek on a hospital ship, Shelly Baker, who apparently felt the same way about that gorgeous hunk of Marine.

Everyone was either in the Marines for life or, after this tour or war, they were going to take it easy and live whatever they called “the good life” somewhere else somehow.

Either way, everyone had big plans.

3

Zvigeny-7 was a special case. The local population of former Ramoran and Besh mining slaves had armed their world to the teeth since the Annexation War.

By the time the Ejjai invaders fought their way through the Alliance fleets, and the system mines and gunships, most of the Ejjai shock troops had been swarmed on and slaughtered.

So, why were the Marines of Bravo Command even there?

For one thing, the defenders were exhausted, and many of their best units and fighters had suffered heavy casualties during the initial phases of the invasion.

Next, one entire Ejjai battle group of ten thousand slashers were smart enough to escape with their remaining ships–including clone and meatships–to a continent on the earthlike planet that had not been settled. As a jungle world with dangerous creatures and unstable selontium deposits that disrupted and blocked coms and scanning, it was the perfect place to hide and lay low. Even fixers could not scan the continent and the thick jungles, although they could maintain some fleeting coms at close range.

Even worse, the Ejjai sent out distress calls to all available invaders on the nearby systems. Other invader battle groups kept trying to reach Zvigeny-7 and join the fight. Everyone was getting worn down in a ceaseless hot zone.

If the Ejjai maintained their foothold on that key system, the world-hopping campaign of the Spacer Alliance could not go forward and would stall-out. The enemy could flood more forces forward and seize even more worlds.

Unless these Ejjai were eliminated, they would only continue to cause major problems. The depleted system defenders weren’t in any shape to pursue the holdouts. And there was always the threat of the enemy meatships and cloneships creating more enemy troops on their own.

Naero finished studying the sitrep on her holopad screen and turned to Staff Sergeant Owen Valmont, leader of Squad 2. “Okay, so it’s a mop-up, but a tricky one.”

Valmont seemed to be in agreement. “With a few complications, you are correct, N. We’ll insert in stealth mode, scout the target areas, and then bring the heat down where it’s needed.”

As the company MCL for Company 36, Naero went in on point, ahead of Squad 2 in advance recon mode.

Staff Sergeant Valmont, Deb Steiner, Waylon Aztec, and Wallace Archer in Fireteam 1. Sergeant Milton Ramsey in charge of Bessa Jackson, Acer Adams, and Sender Konrad in Fireteam 2. Corporal Baylor Scott led Fireteam 3, with Chime Fox, Falco Borelli, and Trisha Marshall.

Five minutes after they dropped into the dense jungle, a hunting pack of twenty or more midsized carnasaurs started tracking and sizing the Marines up for a snack.

Naero sighed and zipped back to Squad 2.

“We don’t have time for this crap. Fighting these dinos will attract too much attention. Everyone with me in stealth mode. Hop-jump three klicks southeast of here. Form up on my mark, vector close. Mark!”

That slight hop got them out of scent range from the pesky hunting pack.

An hour later, Naero guessed that they had to be getting close to their quarry.

The Ejjai were both messy and efficient. That section of jungle had been stripped of all life, huge or small. Anything that was meat. The invader meatships could process huge dinosaur carcasses as well as civilian humans.

No scans worked, but from visuals alone, the old blood trails and kill spots were slightly less than a standard week old–about six days. That meant at least one or more meatships, and most likely a cloneship, as well, was feeding off the local fauna.

Given time, the invaders would expand their own numbers, producing more and more of their violent kind, training and arming them to fight and kill relentlessly.

It only took about a standard month of thirty days to create a fresh crop of Ejjai clone troops. They’d be meatship-fed and shunt-memory trained, complete with manufactured gear and weapons, ready to go forth and fight and feed on their own.

This was the plague of the Ejjai invaders that the enemies of all humanity had unleashed on the Alpha Quadrant.

Om cut in.
Scanning and communications are greatly reduced, N. Fixer waves have spread out over this section of jungle and pursued the visual signs of enemy unit passage. Three Ejjai hunter-killer teams, thirty-five kilometers, heading in a northwest direction on these headings. Combat armor and energy weapons. They are also posting small pockets of troops around them in a defensive perimeter pattern. These small groups of Ejjai have cloaking tek after their own fashion.

Most likely scout/sniper teams on the outer perimeter of their base, Om. Good work; you and the fixers have located the outskirts of their base.

Naero notified her recon team. “If we pop them too soon, they won’t report in, and the enemy base or bases will know something’s wrong and have advance warning. The bulk of them might be able to slip away before we can wipe them all-out.”

“Copy that,” Sergeant Valmont said. “So, we paint them on the combat grid map and bypass them. They’ll get theirs later from the other units, when the main show starts up.”

“Leave no stone unpulverized,” Corporal Scott added. “Fox, Borelli–paint the enemy scouts and snipers with your fixers and relay their positions up the fixer chain that we established on the way in.”

“Affirmative,” they both said.

“Squad 2, move out,” Naero said over their close link. “We mark all of the enemy positions, numbers, and makeup on the way in. Watch for any additional secposts. Locate the primary targets, and paint them on the short combat grid.”

Up close, on the ground, the Ejjai were easy to track. So what if scanners didn’t work?

The slashers left a trail of death in their wake. They killed and ate anything that moved. Leftovers went into the spinning, processing blades of the meatships. No waste.

The enemy kept their scouts and listening posts in concentric rings, two klicks apart. With the enemy on the move, the rings would fall back at times, following the path of death that the main camp carved through the jungle every day or two.

In the event that one perimeter ring was attacked or did not report in on time, the entire battle group could alert the rest and close in for defense, or scatter in several directions to vanish and escape, and link up somewhere else at pre-arranged rally points.

Bravo had seen this pattern of operation before, yet without coms and scans, the situation was that much more complicated.

“Got a buried gravtank,” Pfc Steiner noted.

“Ejjai gunship completely concealed up in a huge vine and tree complex,” Pfc Aztec noted. “The slashers exposed their position by dumping their waste down the trees, thinking no one would notice.”

Pfc Konrad cut in. “Don’t let the slashers empty a latrine catch on you, kids. You’ll never get that stench out of your filters.”

“Quiet, you goons,” Valmont ordered.

Pfc Archer called out, “Two slasher listening post at these points, halfway up the leeward hillside among the rocks.”

“Another three enemy sniper team, hidden in this group of trees, mark these points,” Jackson added.

“Heads up,” Naero warned. “Our first forward infantry defensive line…complete with hardpoints and autogun emplacements. Enemy troops dug in. They must be protecting something further in.”

“Copy that,” Sergeant Ramsey stated. “What are those positions, N? Say again?”

“Here’s the feed again, Milt. Don’t blink next time. Off our two o’clock position, east by southeast. We’ve got vehicle movement and engine noise, half a klick in.”

“Got it. Copy that,” Valmont said. “Let’s swing in and check it out. Stay on approach, just under the tree canopy, ten meters off the deck, rearward triangle assault pattern. Fifteen meters between fireteams. Team 2 take point behind our MCL. One left and three right. Everyone glacier in, quiet and cool.”

Naero led them in, three hours before sunset, as they painted everything they could on the way through.

Bravo Command closed in and encircled that area, taking up assault positions, processing all data feeds on the expanding play map.

The rest of Bravo stood poised to bring overwhelming firepower to bear on the invaders, once their exact positions and locations were known.

Naero and her team counted and marked three separate meatships, two cloneships, and four automated factory supply ships–all running full tilt.

Enemy transports brought in dead dinosaurs and jungle animals to be fed into the meatship blades.

Squad 2 and Naero continued to paint gravtank units and gunships, troop emplacements, two battleships, three cruisers, and five destroyers–all concealed in the dense jungle vales, along with assorted transports and lesser support vessels.

Even Naero grew alarmed. “This battle group is much larger than we originally thought,” she said.

“Copy that Brighteyes,” Valmont said. “We’ll call in more units from command, and alert the Navy. They’ll make ready to intercept any ships that try to leave the atmosphere.”

In the end, the secret enemy base covered an area in a radius of only ten klicks. To Naero, it looked like a straightforward drop and pop. Bravo most likely calculated it that way, too.

“Uh-oh,” Pfc Chime Fox said.

Staff Sergeant Valmont barked at her, “Dammit, Fox. You know how I hate to hear ‘Uh-oh!’ Report something if you have it to report. Now. I want deets and specifics.”

“How’s this, Staff Sergeant: I’ve got a feeding pen of three or four thousand friendlies. That’s right, mates. Friendlies, all sexes, all ages. And it looks like some of them are rigged with explosives.”

“Dammit to hell,” Naero said. “Haisha! Just when we thought this was going to get easy…a damn feeding pen full of prisoners.” Nothing was ever simple.

“The slashers like fresh meat,” Pfc Borelli flatly noted. “Why are we surprised?”

“Now Bravo can’t just sweep in and wipe out every slasher in sight.” Chime said. “Haisha! Now we have to perform a rescue op at the same time.”

“Okay, so we do it the hard way,” Valmont said. “We secure that pen and get those civies out of harm’s way. We do the job with finesse instead of sledgehammer.”

“Aww…” Naero muttered in disappointment. “I like the sledgehammer.”

Chime actually giggled.

“Can it, you two,” Valmont told them.

“Very well. We’ll survey the extraction site and prep the coming assault. Inform HQ about our complication,” Naero said. “I want to try to locate the enemy command and control. We might be able to take them out right before the attack begins, with remotely detonated microcharges. Fireteam 3, with me. The rest of you work out what’s best to accomplish here with Staff Sergeant Valmont.”

Naero led Fireteam 3 around to the various starships, watching and observing for the right signs.

Finally, they spotted one. Ejjai troops came to the feeding pen and culled out several local pregnant women, and women with babies and small infants. About a dozen in all.

That had all of the earmarks of a snack for the invader high command, or whoever the officers were in charge of the battle group.

Grimly enough, the Ejjai leadership hoarded the best meat for themselves, and feasted regularly, as the disgusting, greedy gluttons that they were.

“I’m going in,” Naero told her fireteam. “You four stay put out here and do what you can. If I’m not back in half a standard hour, and I send no word, I order you to return to the rest of Squad 2 and assist with the primary assault.”

“Be careful, sir,” Corporal Scott told her, a little sheepishly.

“Aww…why, Scott, you bad boy. You do care about me. The last thing you said to me was something about chopping off my–”

“I-I’m…really sorry about that, sir. I was kinda having a bad day, you know? I’m hoping you’ll kind of forget about all of that.”

“Sure, consider it done, Scott. And besides, the medics tell me it only takes a day or two in the regen tanks to grow your nips back. And they say even say they come back all pink and pretty and even perkier than before, so good news!”

Naero left him staring with his mouth hanging open.

Yep, always leave them either laughing or wanting more.

The rest of Squad 2 also wished her good hunting and told her to be careful.

“I’ll be fine,” she told them. “If you hear a commotion, that will just be me giving our visitors holy hell. But I want to stress that we should all do our best to remain undetected until just before the assault begins. You guys have your orders.”

“Yes, sir,” they all said, mostly in unison. There were always a few stragglers late to the party.

Naero zipped away on her gravwing, working her way above the heads of the terrified captives and the jeering, chortling guards escorting them to their grim doom.

Those captives had to know very well what was going to happen to them, where they were being taken, and why.

Naero despised this part, and the Ejjai even more for forcing the issue.

She was under direct orders to do nothing. And she had to watch the looks on those people’s faces, sometimes as the enemy tortured and killed them. That wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair, but sometimes that was war.