The War for Profit Series Omnibus (91 page)

Flight Leader Major Johnston sat at his desk in the ops room and drummed his fingers. Bored. The ops room was on the first floor of the three-story barracks building that was built right onto the flank of the aerospace hanger. The Brigade’s twelve Interceptor aerospace craft were lined up along the tarmac in hardened bunkers. The first floor of the barracks was all admin and office space and a rec room and a chow hall and a briefing room. The upper two floors were rooms for the pilots and ground crews and support staff. The pilots were on standby, of course. Ground crews rotated out to the Interceptors on twelve hour shifts, waiting for the call to get the craft ready, to stuff the flight crew in it and send them off to the fight.

Some Marines were here too. Their landing boat pilots were training, learning about the Interceptors. The Brigade had twelve more Interceptors coming, had put in an order to a Mandarin manufacturing plant, and needed more pilots. The Marines had excess pilots. Flight Leader Johnston wanted a mission, wanted to send the Marines along as observers in the seat right behind the pilot. That would give the Marines some combat experience in an Interceptor, would make them better pilots.

Comms buzzed and Johnston acknowledged. “Flight ops. Major Johnston here.”

“Hey, this is Miller at Brigade ops. I have a mission for you.”

“Send it, over.”

“Data inbound. It’s an intercept mission. T plus five hours, roughly.”

Major Johnston looked over the data. “Thank you, I’ll get the ball rolling.”

Lieutenant Colonel Miller said, “Handle your business, flight leader. I expect a back-brief within the hour. Miller out.”

Comms shut off. Chief Rother, the Flight Ops NCOIC, said, “Thirty minutes, sir?”

“Sure. Thirty minutes.”

Chief Rother keyed his comms and got a response from the pilots, told them to be in the briefing room in thirty minutes. Then he got up from his desk and went to the briefing room to make sure it was ready. It was, always kept in a state to give briefings. He made sure the beverage machine was fully functional, then went to the chow hall and got a box of pastries and took them back to the briefing room and put them on the counter by the beverage machine.

He then sat at the display controller table and brought the screen out of standby. The Flight Command Logo showed. Pilots came in groups of two or three and took beverages and pastries and sat in the rows of chairs that faced the screen. Soon, Chief Rother saw all twenty four pilots. He slid back the dust cover of the data ports of the display controller and waited.

Major Johnston entered and said, “Keep your seats, Ladies and Gentlemen and Marines.” He handed a data stick to Rother and then stood behind the lectern to the left of the screen. Rother inserted the data stick, found the presentation and advanced it to the first image. A Mosh bomber showed on the screen.

Major Johnston spoke, “The Mosh launched a bomber group comprised of three hundred and four of these bad boys. They have fighter escorts now, but Mosh fighters are incapable of atmospheric flight so they aren’t part of our mission. The Mandarin Space Force will worry about them. I do, however, expect all the Mosh bombers to make it to their targets. The Mandarin fighters are somewhat superior to the Mosh fighters, and the Mandarin pilots are trained to a high degree of expertise, but they just don’t have the numbers. I don’t think it’s possible for them to get through the Mosh fighter escorts to attack the bombers. But that’s okay, the bombers are all ours.”

The image changed again, showing a mountain range with a desert to its west. “The objective of the bombers has yet to be determined, but we think they will strike the mountains to the east of this desert, the Skeleton Desert, as a way to soften up the defenses prior to their landing, which we are sure will be on the Skeleton Desert.”

The image changed to a forward view of a Mosh bomber. “These are what they look like right before you destroy them. They are aerospace craft but have limited maneuverability in the atmosphere. Analysis based on the assumption that they want to bomb and scan the defenses of the mountains makes us believe they will have to drop in sharply from space, at a high rate of descent, to get below the firing arc of Mandarin space guns as quickly as possible. Then they should level off at an altitude of fifteen hundred meters as they run along the desert toward the mountains.”

Major Johnston took a sip of his beverage, cracked his knuckles. The image changed to a view of the bomber rotating. It was a long cylinder with short, stubby wings. The wings gradually extended to an 800 mil angle and covers along its belly slid back. “They have eight bays capable of carrying five thousand kilograms each. At this time we don’t know their capabilities or weapons types, target priorities or exact intentions. For that reason, the High Command wants us to let them have their bombing run, so that they can analyze what it is the bombers are trying to do.”

A low murmur came from the group. Major Johnston said, “Shut up. The air corridor of the bombing runs will be hot with Mandarin anti-aircraft fire of all types. I’m not trying to get a belly full of friendly flak. Once the bombing run is nearly complete, the air corridor will be cleared for our attack. That is when we will engage the bombers, show them what we can do. Then the High Command can analyze our capabilities. Fair enough?”

Nods, positive vocalizations. Johnston said, “Okay. Any questions?”

A Marine pilot stood. “How many of these bombers do you expect us to destroy?”

Major Johnston said, “Twelve. One each. As soon as they unload their bombs they will want to shoot straight up and out of our atmosphere. Meet them head-on and give them a face full of direct fire. That will take them out. I expect them to beat a hasty retreat before anyone gets a second shot.”

“Can we pursue them when they go perpendicular?”

Major Johnston said, “You could. We can out-climb them, and they would be easy targets. But we won’t. Follow them out of the atmosphere and your Interceptor will be set upon by an overwhelming number of Mosh fighters. So my answer is no, hell no, you can’t pursue them. As a matter of fact, your maximum flight ceiling for this mission is three thousand meters. Go above that and I’ll make sure you never sit in one of my Interceptors again.” He looked around the room, eye contact with each pilot. “Are we clear?”

“Yessir,” in unison.

“Good. You have two hours and eight minutes. After that, be seated in your birds and ready to blast out here at a moment’s notice.”

The pilots left the room.

***

Capellan Marine Pilot Stovall secured the respirator tight against his face and then loosened it a bit, for comfort. The display in front of him gave him pilot’s view at the moment but he could switch to rear, below, oblique in all corners…it was nice. The Interceptor was a bit more rugged and much more powerful than the Marine Assault Boat he’d been piloting.

The pilot said, “If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from?”

Stovall said, “Terra, originally. But my parents moved to Langston when I was a child.”

“You didn’t join the Legion?”

Stovall said, “Oh, I was in the Legion. I was with you all on Fairgotten, as matter of fact.”

The pilot said, “Huh. How’d you end up in the Capellan Marines?”

“I did such a god job for the Legion on Fairgotten, I was nominated for the Legion of Merit award. They gave me a free genome test. Turns out I’m only one eighth black, not black enough for the Legion of Merit or citizenship on Langston. So I took an early discharge from the Legion and joined the Capellan Marines. They don’t give a crap what race you are.”

The Flight Leader’s voice came over comms. “Time to go.”

The pilot taxied out to the end of the tarmac, lined up with the other three Interceptors of the first flight. They sped along in formation and then left the ground and retracted their landing gear and then shot straight up a thousand meters. They leveled off and found their mission vector. The other eight Interceptors launched and came up from behind, took positions to the right and left. Stovall looked at his display and saw that the flight was travelling along at three times the speed of sound, not more than three hundred meters above the ground.

They slowed to mach 2 and spread out, on line with five hundred meters between each Interceptor. Ahead, Stovall saw bright flashes on the horizon. Bombers, bombing targets. Then he had visual of the bombers. They were in several rows of V formations, fifteen hundred meters above the ground. Lines of tracers and beams of lasers in red and green lanced out from the ground at the bombers. Missiles as well, long white and yellow trails of flame from their thrusters sending them toward the bombers. Some missiles went wild, their controls jammed by countermeasures from the bombers. Some missiles got close enough for the bomber’s defensive lasers to engage, sliced to explode prematurely.

Some bombers took damage, flew erratically. Crashed, or dumped their entire bomb load immediately, abandoning the mission to tilt straight up and flee to the safety of space. But that was a very few, five or six perhaps. The bombers continued their grim task. The ground fire stopped, suddenly, all across the area. The air corridor was clear. The interceptors accelerated, gained altitude. They closed on the bombers head-on at the same altitude. Stovall’s pilot closed in to visual range and fired the 20mm rail gun and both medium lasers. The nose of the bomber shattered and the bomber peeled apart like a banana. The Interceptor pilot traded speed for altitude and went into a loop and flew upside down for a moment and then did a half barrel roll to level off and then accelerated to Mach 5 and flew back to the tarmac.

Stovall checked his screen and saw that all twelve Interceptors were heading home. Not as a group, but individually. The Interceptor parked back in its bunker and the ground crew helped Stovall and the pilot climb out and began their inspection of the aerospace craft. Stovall walked with his pilot back to the barracks and sat in the briefing room and enjoyed a cup of hot noodle soup.

After a few minutes, Major Johnston entered and stood behind the lectern. He looked around and saw that all the pilots were there. “Congratulations and welcome back. Any mission you can walk away from is a good one. Now it’s report card time. You done good. You shot down twelve bombers, and did it in accordance with mission parameters. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

A pilot stood. “Sir, I do think we could double that.”

“How?”

“We could have the Mandarins clear the air corridor ten seconds earlier, that would give us time to line up more shots.”

Major Johnston said, “We’ll analyze all that and incorporate lessons learned. But just off the top of my head, don’t you think the debris of the first bomber might be in the way of lining up your second shot?”

A few pilots snickered. The pilot sat.

Major Johnston said, “Sure, the ground fire took out five bombers and damaged eighteen more. I do expect that next time the mission will be to attack the bombers before they can drop their bombs. So think about taking longer shots to avoid the debris of the secondary explosions from their bombs. We’ll work out if you can then circle back around after that for some shots at empty bombers. It’s a lot of very fast moving parts so don’t get your hopes up. If there are no more questions, you’re dismissed.”

Silence. The pilots stood and made their ways back to their rooms. Major Johnston went back to the ops room and he and Chief Rother started reviewing the details of the battle.

Colonel Galen Raper entered the conference room and said, “Keep your seats,” and then sat in his chair at the head of the table. To his immediate left sat Colonel Baek. To Galen’s right sat Lieutenant Colonel Miller. Around the table were Marine and Panzer Brigade battalion and detachment commanders. “Leaders, it seems we’re having a positive effect on the outcome of this war. The bombing has stopped, and it’s estimated the Mosh have lost as much as forty percent of its bomber forces. Congratulations.” Galen nodded at the Flight Commander.

Major Johnston said, “There have been sightings of modified Mosh bombers. They have been refitted to attack singly or in pairs, to get in close and attack a single target. They have a much lighter bomb load but have increased maneuverability, the area of the control surfaces increased. They also have heavier forward-facing guns. We shot down one that had rapid-fire cannons pointing out the side, meant to pound a ground target while the bomber circles it. We’ve classified them as close air support. Not a big deal now, but later, as support for advancing ground units, they could be a real pain in the ass.”

Galen said, “Thank you for your astute observations. The reason I called you all here is to announce our movement. Flight and a few other supporting activities will remain here, but the bulk of this task force will move to the town of Cherry Fork. It is a small city located northeast of the mountain range. It is equipped with a space port and has a medium space shield. The space guns nearby are in a position to harass a Mosh landing, and it also sits astride several key junctures of road, rail and river transport. Eventually, the Mosh will have to seize that town or else pack up and go back where they came from. But our initial mission there is not defense.

“From Cherry Fork, we’ll be in a position to attack the flank of the Mosh during their initial breakout through the mountains east of the Skeleton desert. I do know the Mandarins have three armored divisions prepared to attack into that desert and I hope they do well. My heart goes out to them. But in all seriousness, I doubt they’ll do much more than delay the Mosh by a few days. They’ll be beyond the reach of friendly air support and the Mosh space fleet will be able to target them directly. Not an enviable position.”

The Stallion Battalion commander said, “Where are these Mandarin armored divisions and under what circumstance will they be committed to attack into the Skeleton desert?”

Galen said, “They are held in reserve, parked eighty kilometers southeast of Cherry Fork. They will move only when ordered to by the Supreme Commander, the order sent directly from the High Command to the commander of that armored corps. So to answer your thinly veiled question, no, you can not spearhead that attack and no, you can’t even move in to cover their withdrawal. No. We are separate from all that. Independent.”

“Yessir.” The Stallion Battalion commander leaned back in his chair.

The fires support officer said, “Then what is our overall operational mandate?”

Galen said, “Mobile defense. We’ll look for opportunities to inflict casualties on the enemy while conserving our forces. Holding the line is not our problem. That’s for the Mandarin regulars. We have the authority to maneuver independently and conduct our own offensive operations without approval from the High Command. Our contract is with the office of the Chancellor of the governing body of Mandarin, the legislature. If the High Command asks me nicely to help them out with something, and it doesn’t interfere with our obligations to the Chancellor, then sure, we might get involved in joint operations with their government troops. However, we won’t be tossed out there as speed bumps by leaders who are focused on strategic matters and don’t possess our high degree of tactical expertise. Any more questions?”

“Certainly,” said a Marine Rifle Battalion commander. “Will we have a chance to fight?”

Galen smiled. “Yes you will. But be patient. It’s my job to get you into battles you can win. I have faced the Mosh before and I know how to hurt them. I promise all of you this: you will come out of this with considerable bragging rights. What I can’t promise any of you is an overall victory by Mandarin over the Mosh. I can win battles, not wars.”

Colonel Baek said, “We have an extraction plan but it only works if we do enough damage to the Mosh. Let them know they’ve been in a fight, let them know they are better off letting us go when the time comes. So we are not fighting for nothing. Weaken the Mosh enough now and it goes a long way toward convincing the Confederation to return and re-take this planet.”

Galen said, “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. There’s a war right in front of us and we are eager to get down to some serious fighting. I understand that, I understand that is why you Marines put yourselves along side my mercenaries. Our next step is our move to Cherry Fork. Movement will commence tomorrow night and I expect us to be camped out near Cherry Fork by the end of this week.”

Colonel Baek stood. “Dismissed.”

The leaders left the conference room. Galen went to his office and sat at his desk and brought up schematics of Mosh armored vehicles. He knew them by heart but just liked refreshing his memory. Then his personal communicator buzzed a message from flight ops, “Your drop ship is here.”

Galen sent back, “Be right there.”

Galen left by the commander’s entrance and walked across the quadrangle to the pedestrian gate of the marshalling yard and made his way past all the Capellan Marine vehicles parked in it. He stepped through the vehicle gate onto the tarmac, looked both ways, removed his head gear and walked quickly across it. His command drop ship was parked at the base of the auxiliary control tower with its cargo ramp lowered. Galen walked up the ramp and was met by the co-pilot.

He saluted, “Sir, you’re going to like this.” He pointed at the tank inside. Corporal Wine and Trooper Bier were there, unhooking the tie-downs.

It was a new tank design, a stolid boxy body over wide, skirted tracks and a domed turret that sloped out to a sharp edge at the gun mantle. Galen said, “What’s the deal?”

“After we flew to Juventud to drop off noncombatants, we swung by Fairgotten and paid General Sevin a visit, to drop off Pescador and his secret cargo. General Sevin insisted we take this tank on board. It’s for you, a new command tank.” The co-pilot handed Galen a data stick. “Operator’s manual is on here.”

Galen inserted the data stick into his communicator. The Lion Main Battle Tank, command variant. Galen climbed up over the glacis plate and onto the turret and took his place in the commander’s cupola. Not a cupola really, but a weapons station in a rotating ring recessed into the turret. He sat, consulted the operator’s manual. A wide array of comms and countermeasure gear, advanced optics and sensors. Galen advanced the page and his jaw dropped. The main gun was a class three particle cannon. He put on the comms helmet and hooked up its cord and waited. He heard the sound of Bier and Wine hooking up. The co-pilot ground-guided the tank off the drop boat. Galen said, “Take us to the range, driver. We need to familiarize with this new piece of equipment.”

Then he keyed comms. “Jasmine Three, this is Jasmine Six, over.”

It took a minute for Tad to respond. “This is Jasmine Three, over.”

“Three, I just got a new tank. I need to familiarize. Is there a range open?”

A long pause. “Table eight is all yours. Have fun.”

“Oh, I will. Six out.”

Major Polar and Captain Day stood near the vehicle exit gate of the marshalling yard and watched the Lion tank roll by. They waved, appropriate behavior since they were dressed in civilian clothes. Skimpy outfits really, but Galen wasn’t about to complain. It was a warm day, after all. Galen and his crew rolled past the HQ buildings, past the barracks and motor pools, along the tank trail past the compound’s back gate, onto the gravel road that led out to table eight. A convoy of Hercules tanks passed them going the opposite way, having just concluded their qualification run.

At the entrance to the range the range control representative climbed up on the Lion tank and gave Galen a task, conditions and standards statement and told Galen to go on through. They entered a narrow gap at the base of two hills and engaged dismount pop-up targets with the coax and cupola rail guns. They moved forward and drove across a three meter trench, up a steep hill and stopped on top to engage targets fifteen kilometers away with the main gun. The first shot from the particle cannon vaporized the target silhouette and blew deep into the small hill behind it. A moment later the superheated material of the hill vaporized and came out the top as a blast of material that was so hot it ignited into a fireball two hundred meters across. The dust cloud rose up and began to take on a mushroom shape.

“Jasmine Six this is Range Control. Check fire, check fire. This range is not adequate up for that weapon. Power down your weapons and exit the range now.”

“Roger. Jasmine Six out.”

Corporal Wine said, “That’s a nice gun.”

Galen said, “Wine, you think you can control it?”

“Yessir. I pity the fool who gets in front of me.”

“As do I. We’ll park this thing right in front of HQ, facing out from the main entrance.”

“Yessir,” said Bier.

Galen said, “Bier, this tank okay with you?”

“It’s a little slow on acceleration and the controls are a bit sluggish but I can make it work.”

“I have absolute confidence in your abilities.”

Bier said, “I do like this tank better than the Hercules, sir.”

“Me too,” said Galen.