The Fall: Crimson Worlds IX (5 page)

Of course!  It all made sense.  Stark was betting on the destruction of the Earth-based facilities as well.  All of them.  That was how he planned to defeat Garret.  He was going to starve him of supplies and ordnance and wait until his fleet was helpless.  Vance felt a cold chill in his stomach.  Stark was really planning to take his insane scheme all the way.  He was going to manipulate the Powers into full-scale nuclear exchanges, a final battle that would destroy all the cities and factories on Earth.  Once the Superpowers had obliterated each other and Garret’s helpless fleet was destroyed, Stark would have all the time in the world to establish control.  There would be no one left to oppose him.  No one but Mars.

Vance’s head snapped around, staring back at his surprised agent.  “We need to get back to headquarters.  Now.”  He turned without explanation, waving for the agent to follow.  He’d assumed Stark was holding his fleet back to preserve its strength for an eventual showdown with Garret.  But if he was going to starve Garret out, that meant he could use his fleet someplace else.  And if the Superpowers on Earth slipped into their final death struggle, there would only be one place left in occupied space where Garret’s ships could rearm and resupply.  Mars.

Rod Heath crouched down behind piles of shattered masonry that had once been a small building, peering carefully out toward the enemy lines.  The commander of the first wave was far forward, too far, he knew General Gilson would have said, but there wasn’t much in the way of a rear area anyway.  The LZ was small, and the enemy had been hitting it relentlessly, trying to pinch out the beachhead before the rest of the Marines could land.  His people had been struggling to widen the tiny scrap of Columbia they controlled, but the enemy had reacted rapidly to the landing, and the Marines had fought hard for every meter of ground, paying the price in blood.

His people hadn’t died passively though.  The ground in front of his position was covered with the bodies of armored enemy soldiers.  They had hit this location and hit it hard, but the defenders had held firm, driving them back with heavy losses.  He could see from the numbers of dead lying along his side of the line that the defense had been a costly one. 

Heath had lost count of his casualties since the landing.  His AI could have given him a figure in an instant, accurate at least to the extent that fighting suits were still reporting and communication nets were active, but he’d told it not to.  He knew well enough they were bad, and he wasn’t ready to hear the numbers yet.

Things had been hard from the start.  The enemy AA fire had been thicker than expected, and his people suffered badly on the way in.  The first wave had 500 casualties in the landing, almost all of them KIA when their Liggetts were shot down.  That was over 10% of the total force, before a boot even touched the ground.  Those losses had been far heavier than projected, and they had left weak spots in the OB all across the battlefield.  He’d spent the first hour on the ground shifting troop concentrations, trying to plug holes to meet the enemy attacks.  Now he had to get his people moving.  Just hanging on wasn’t going to get it done.

He looked around at the pockmarked and blackened ground.  His forces had repelled multiple enemy assaults here, and by all accounts, they’d barely managed to hang on.

“Lieutenant, who’s in command here?”  He crouched low and walked toward an officer kneeling alone in shell hole.  He glanced up at the display inside his helmet, IDing him as he approached.  Callahan, Lt., commander of 1st Platoon, Company A, 2nd Battalion.

“I don’t know, sir.”  Callahan’s voice was hoarse, his tone vacant, stunned.  He was clearly in some sort of shock, but he was still at his post.  “My platoon was wiped out, General.  I’m all that’s left.”

The words hit Heath like a hammer.  He slid down into the muck of the water-filled hole and put his armored hand on Callahan’s back.  “I’m sorry son,” he said softly, wishing he could talk to the officer without armor and com units between their words.  “Things have been hard all across the line.”  His eyes drifted up, staring out over the temporarily still field.  “Tell me what happened.”

“I lost two of my boats coming in, sir.”  Callahan stared at the ground as he spoke.  “The first was blown apart at high altitude.  None of them even had a chance.”  He took a ragged breath.  “The other was hit just before we landed.  It tumbled over and crashed.”  He paused, and when he continued his voice was halting, cracking.  “We got to them as soon as we could but…”  He hesitated again, and Heath could hear the pain in his shallow breaths.  “…but it was too late.”

Heath had been in the Corps a long time, long enough to know there was really nothing to say.  Men kept getting themselves into wars, and as long as they did, soldiers would fight those wars.  The Marines considered themselves an elite fighting force, but they died just like any other men.  And when they did, their comrades were expected to keep going, to fight the battle until it was won.  Or until they were all dead.

“There was nothing you could have done, Lieutenant.”  He knew his words would be cold comfort, but they were all he had.  “Any of us can get hit on the way down.  We all know that when we bolt ourselves into those landers.”  His eyes darted up to his display.  His AI was streaming Callahan’s service record.  Heath nodded as he read.  The kid was hardcore, promoted from the ranks by none other than Erik Cain.

“I pulled everybody together the best I could, sir, but then they hit us almost immediately.  There must have been 200 of them, just on our frontage.  The first wave came in before we even got the autocannons out of the locker and deployed on the line.  We did our best, sir, but they kept coming.  And every time they did, I lost more of my people.”

Heath looked out over the field in front of Callahan’s position.  He did a quick estimate and decided there were at least 150 bodies in front of the line the kid’s platoon had defended.  “It looks like your people gave ‘em hell, son.”  He shook his head.  He’d always considered dead enemy soldiers a poor trade for the loss of his own comrades, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say, any way he could convince Callahan that his Marines had died for something worthwhile.  Talk of causes and justifications was for aboard ship, when the fight was in prospect or the combat was over.  There were reasons to fight, some even to die, but Heath knew well enough that down here, in the mud and blood, amid the stench of death and battle, men and women fought for one thing above all else – for the friends and comrades in the line next to them.

He knew warriors who survived their wars often mustered out and dispersed, resettling on various planets and going on to live out their lives, often never seeing their old comrades again.  But on the battlefield, these men and women were closer than brothers and sisters.  They shared a bond that couldn’t be fully understood by anyone who hadn’t felt it themselves.  Heath couldn’t imagine a harder thing than watching your entire platoon being slaughtered.  He knew Callahan was wondering why he had survived, and on some level wishing he hadn’t.  But Heath was glad the young officer had made it.  He knew he was going to need men like him in the hours and days ahead.

He was glancing at the AI’s report on 2nd Battalion, and he barely caught a gasp before it escaped his lips.  The battalion had launched with 604 Marines, and now it was down to 199 effectives.  Major Bellas was dead, killed on the way down when his transport was blown out of the sky.  Every company commander was dead or wounded, and half the platoon officers were down.  He kept reading.  The 1st Battalion wasn’t much better off.

“Son, I know you’re dealing with the loss of your people, but the job’s just getting started here, and I need you.”  Heath’s voice was sympathetic but also firm.  “You’ve got to pull it together for me.  I’m giving you a battlefield promotion to major, and I’m putting you in command of the remnants of 1st and 2nd Battalions.”

It took a few seconds for Heath’s words to sink in, and when they did Callahan’s mind screamed, “No!”  He wanted to run, to escape and hide somewhere.  The thought of more responsibility, of another four or five hundred Marines under his command – dying under his command - was more than he could bear, and he could feel himself unraveling.

“Sir…”  He paused.  “I don’t thin…”

“Listen to me, son.”  Heath’s voice was soothing, but there was toughness there too.  “You did it right here today.  You were there for your Marines, and you held your position.”  He reached out with both hands, grabbing Callahan’s armored shoulders.  “Now we’ve got hundreds of other Marines, and they need someone to get them through this.  They’re stuck here, just like you.”  He could see Callahan shaking his head, but he continued anyway.  “I need you to shake it off, son.  If you have to torture yourself, do it later, when we’re back aboard ship.  Right now there are Marines who need you.”  Another pause.  “I need you.”

Callahan turned his head slowly, staring back at Heath.  He wished he was anywhere else, even that an enemy bullet had found him and taken him down, but he knew he’d obey the general.  Jack Callahan the man felt numb, dead - but there was still life in the Marine.  He straightened himself up and looked back at the general.

“I’ll do my best, sir.”  His voice was weak, his tone uncertain, but Heath knew at once he’d gotten through to him.

“I know you will, son.”  He turned and started to climb out of the shell hole.  “Good luck, Major,” he said as he crouched low and scrambled back toward the command post.  There was an art to rallying fighting men, and Heath had learned from some of the best.  The only thing they hadn’t taught him was how not to hate himself after he did it.

“General, we have reports of fighting east of Weston.”  Hal Richmond came running into the tent, the excitement obvious in his high-pitched voice.  He caught himself and straightened up.  “I’m sorry, General.  Request permission to make a report.”

Jarrod Tyler was sitting on a small folding chair, wearing a pair of gray fatigue pants and a t-shirt that had once been white but was now some indeterminate shade of brownish-gray.  His face was twisted into a frustrated scowl, the same expression he’d worn for months now.  He’d failed to defeat the invaders who had come to ravage his world, and then he’d led his people into the swamps and badlands, seeking any fate for them save surrender.  It was a choice that appeared noble, a soldier’s last stand, but it had also thrown them all into a hellish nightmare, one it seemed few of them would survive.

The Columbians, most of them at least, had avoided capitulation, and they were still maintaining the fight.  The war had become a guerilla battle now, Tyler’s remaining warriors primarily engaged in raids targeting enemy supplies and patrols.  But the cost had been staggering.  They were short of everything – food, drugs, basic survival gear.  Civilians began dying almost immediately, and the daily toll still continued.  Diseases that could be healed with an injection killed for lack of proper medicine.  Civilians weakened by malnutrition and unused to living outside in the cold and damp were easy targets for a variety of pathogens, and the overworked doctors and med techs did what they could as their supplies dwindled to nothing.  Yet the people remained steadfast behind their leader, most of them at least.

There had been a few stillborn rebellions against his authority as dictator, but most of the Columbians were still with him.  They lived their miserable lives in cold, leaky tents, watching their families slowly starve to death, but still they gave him their loyalty.  He was grateful for the support, but it tore at him as well.  Part of him wanted the people to hate him, to rise up and cast him aside.  In many ways, their loyalty was his greatest source of pain, and it prevented him from shifting any responsibility for the holocaust on Columbia away from himself.  With total power came total responsibility.

He bore the guilt, all of it.  For failing to defeat the enemy in the field, for leading his people into the nightmare of continued resistance in the wildest areas of their world.  He’d led them here, and they had followed, placing their trust in him to get them through this greatest trial.

Richmond’s excited words pulled him from his deep retrospection.  “Oh…Hal.  Come in.”  Hal Richmond was his aide, or a makeshift assistant, at least.  Tyler wouldn’t have enlisted a 15 year old kid, but he took the boy in after his parents and sister died of infectious diseases that hadn’t killed anyone in civilized societies for centuries.

“General, we have multiple reports of fighting east of Weston.”

“Multiple reports?”  Tyler’s eyes widened.  He’d thought he’d seen a few strange flashes in the sky the day before, but he’d discounted them.  His people had been waiting for relief for a long time, and he’d just about given up.  He knew the Marines would have come if they could have, so he assumed this enemy, whoever they were, had attacked other worlds as well.  He’d assumed the Marines were committed elsewhere.  Or worse, defeated.

“Yes, sir.”  Richmond was nervous and excited, but he held his composure well.  “Two different hunter teams have reported in.”  His voice became darker.  “And three more deployed to that area failed to check in and are missing.”  He paused.  “Sir, could it be the invasion?”

That’s what they’d been calling it.  The invasion.  Not Tyler, but his soldiers and the civilians of Columbia.  Through all the death and hardship, they’d continued to believe the Marines would come and liberate them once again.  Tyler had less faith.  His didn’t doubt the dedication of the Corps, but he also knew the Marines were only men and women.  They’d gone right from the Third Frontier War into the Rebellions, and the survivors had poured their blood into the sands of a dozen worlds fighting off the robot legions of the First Imperium.  The few who’d made it through that holocaust had returned to this new struggle.  Tyler didn’t doubt the Marines would come if they could; he doubted there were any Marines left.

Tyler looked back at his young aide.  “It could be a lot of things, Hal.  Maybe a separate group of refugees launching an attack.”

“Or the Marines!”  Richmond’s eyes were bright with excitement.  “It could be the Marines too, couldn’t it?”

“I suppose it could, Hal.”  Tyler didn’t want to let himself believe.  He’d waited each day for help to come, watching his people die in these miserable swamps.  But it was possible.  He tried to force back his own excitement at the prospect.

“Hal, go get Lieutenants Paine and White.”  He waved toward the flap of the tent.  “Tell them I’ve got a mission for them.” 

If the Marines had really landed, it was time to launch his own attack to support the landing.  It would cost him all his remaining supplies and leave him nothing to defend the civilians.  It was a last roll of the dice for Tyler and the remnants of Columbia’s army.  He had to be sure the Marines were actually here before he issued the order.