LEE
30 September 3068Gienah Combat Vehicles Manufacturing Facility Delta
Gienah, Lyran Alliance
“What do you mean you cannot engage?” Lee was shouting into the intercom, partly because of the noise of the Karnov’s rotors above, but more out of sheer frustration. “You need to keep those turrets occupied or my birds are going to be big fat targets when we come in. You have an assignment, soldier!”
“We are having enough trouble with these tanks. I am not getting in range of those turrets!” The voice on the other end paused and then added, “and we don’t take orders from a bunch of ground pounders, anyway.”
Lee held back his rising rage. It would do little good now. “Get Halberd Actual on the horn now!” Silence. “Now!” Nothing.
He slammed down the radio in frustration and surveyed the manufacturing facility fast approaching through the windows of the Karnov’s cockpit. What to do? The Monkeys attacking from the west were depending on his team getting inside that control center. Without it, they would have no way to gain entry to the facility, not to mention the turrets. Hal’s Heinous Halberds had dropped the ball on his team, and if he backed out, then he would drop the ball on the Monkeys. Too many moving parts and too little coordination between all of these mercenaries. The Halberds may be no better than a bunch of pirates, but Vlad’s Volunteers were professionals.
“Corporal, you need to bring us in as fast as you can if we are going to beat the heat. Evasive maneuvers when you get into range of those turrets.” He said.
“Yes, sir” came the strained response. He could see the concern on the pilot’s face.
He turned and made his way back into the Karnov’s hold where his platoon waited for him. he keyed the frequency to patch his message into the other Karnov carrying Bravo platoon. “OK, listen up lads. We are going to have to come in hotter than expected. Squads will jump at short intervals, starting with my squad. We are going to be scattered, but re-group around squad leaders. I will land squads A and B on the roof of the facility and we will attack from its rear entrance. The rest of you should assault from the front. You all have the skill to do this, just keep your head in the game. lets go, Volunteers!” He saw the looks on their faces, but they all gave him their best grunts.
“Brace for evasive maneuvers,” called the pilot. Lee grabbed his handle as the Karnov swayed from one side to the next. The clamshell armor of his troops banged off the metal sides of the Karnov, making for an interesting symphony that was punctuated by the sounds of large-scale weapon fire sizzling past the Karnov.
The rear platform of the Karnov began to open like the maw of some great beast, revealing a parched desert zooming by below and the Karnov carrying Bravo back and to the right. Soldiers moved into position as he moved into an egress position, his squad mates directly behind him.
Suddenly a streak of something slammed into the other Karnov’s left wing, completely destroying its left-hand rotor. It spiraled out of control and crashed to the ground in a fiery explosion. Jesus, what could have survived that? Behind him heard groans of despair from his troops. He turned to them with a steely gaze that he did not feel.
“We will mourn the dead later. We jump on my mark. 10..9..8…7..6…5…4..3…2…1…Jump!”
He was out the door and in free fall, sensing his troopers falling behind him. They were directly over the control center within the walls of the facility, but their speed was going to carry them over. He made some slight course corrections with his rocket packet and then as the ground rushed up, he lit a plasma column that lowered him slowly to the roof of the control center, as light as a feather. He sprang up from a slight crouch with his assault rifle in hand, scanning for enemies. His men were scattered to hell and back by the speed of the insertion. Heavy machine gun fire sounded from below. He looked around at his men. Less than a squad had landed on target. “Turner get a grenade into that MG nest. Jenkins and Thompson, get down and blast a hole through that rear entrance. We need to occupy their attention and give the platoon a chance to regroup.”
Turner inched his way on his belly toward the roof’s edge, hunting for the location of the MG, while Jenkins and Thompson lit their jet packs and jumped over the opposite edge. Then a shot cracked in the air just above Lee’s head. Sniper! Guessing at the direction, he threw himself into cover behind some radar equipment. Another shot ricocheted off the steel dish above his head. Making some mental calculations, he relayed the sniper’s probable position to the rest of the platoon, hoping someone would have a better shot. Then he heard the sound of detonation below, followed by automatic weapons fire and strangled grunt.
Felix ran to the roof’s edge and saw Jenkins lying in a pool of his own blood, shot through the neck and bleeding out. Thompson was lying behind the cover of a nearby rock with a nasty looking wound through his leg. Wild and inaccurate automatic weapons fire sprayed the rock and terrain in front of him. He looked up at Lee expectantly. Lee made hand motions and then uncorked a smoke grenade and threw it into the hole opened by the Jenkins’s detonation. Thompson simultaneously threw a frag grenade. Lee waited for the explosion and then he was over the edge, noting with satisfaction the screams that followed it. As he hit the ground, he let off a shot with his underslung grenade launcher into the smoky haze. It was a risky maneuver in such tight space, and shards from the blast belted him and cut his face in several places. No one returned fire, however. He now moved more cautiously into the smoke-filled building, assault rifle held in front of him menacingly. Thompson followed slowly with a noticeable limp. There was nothing they could do for Jenkins.
An explosion from the front of the building reminded Lee of Turner’s orders. “Turner get down here via the back,” he voiced into his intercom.
He caught movement coming out of the smoke and dropped a wild-eyed man in a technician’s uniform with a three-round burst to the chest. He felt, before he heard, bullets fly over his head and ricochet against the wall to his left, followed by a short concentrated burst from behind him.
“Got him” said Thompson. Lee nodded his thanks. Through the heavy smoke, he could make out the main exit from the entry room they were now in and signaled Thompson to slowly move toward it. However, before Thompson could move, two men in military uniforms burst through another door to the right which had been partially obscured by the heavy smoke still in the room. They were so close that Lee could see the sweat beading up on their foreheads. Luckily, they were as surprised as he and Jenkins.
Lee swiveled, firing from the hip. One of the soldiers clutched his leg and went down, but the other one emptied his clip into Thompson, who groaned and slid to the floor. Then Lee returned the favor and the unarmored soldier disintegrated into a mass of blood and flesh. Lee scrambled to his feet and turned to check on Thompson, only to notice at the last second the tech creeping up on him with a shotgun held at the ready. The tech unleashed a blast directly to his torso. Lee flew back a meter and landed in a heap, his body sliding across the blood-slicked floor. He couldn’t breathe or move. The pain in his chest was unbearable. He looked up in time to see the tech’s head explode in a shower of gore and then everything went black…
Lee lay propped up against the side of the building, as a medtech attended to his wound. The tech’s aim had been poor and because the blast had crossed his armor at an oblique angle, he had luckily escaped major injury. Nonetheless, the raw impact of the shotgun shell against his body had broken several ribs. His breathing was labored and painful but the shock of the Volunteer’s losses was such that he barely noticed the pain. The butcher’s bill had been high today. 20 troopers from Bravo dead, and 5 more from his Able, with plenty more wounded besides.
But even their casualties were nothing compared to what had happened to the rest of Vlad’s Volunteers. Vlad Rostov himself had led the other five platoons on another target here on Gienah, but they had been abandoned at the last second by their allied mech support, an outfit by the name of the “Shady Ladies.” Rostov’s troops had fought well, but they had died to a man. His best friend and mentor was dead as were the Volunteers, for all intents and purposes. Lee almost wished that he had died from that shotgun blast as well, to save him the pain of this loss.
The crunch of boots across the rubble alerted him to the presence of two large men, still clothed in their mechwarrior cooling suits. Taharqa Bane and Tsepo Mbeki, the CO and XO, respectively, of the Flaming Devil Monkeys. He had gotten to know them during the joint planning sessions for the raid. Given the circus freak nature of the Monkeys, he hadn’t expected them to be the ones to hold it together during the fight, but they had certainly pulled what was left of the Volunteers out of the fire. They had secured the area around the Karnov crash and retrieved survivors and in the end they had engaged those turrets themselves in order to give the Volunteers a fighting chance.
“Captain Lee, we were sorry to hear about your losses today.” Mbeki began.
“Your men fought well, Captain” added Bane.
“Thank you both.” Lee responded through clenched teeth. It still hurt to breathe, much less talk.
Mbeki glanced at Bane and then continued, “Captain, we have a proposition for you. You don’t have enough resources to continue as a separate unit. The Monkeys are in need of infantry personnel to bolster our forces. We would like to offer you and your men the chance to join us.”
Lee winced. By “resources,” Mbeki meant his men. “Sorry, but I don’t think I am going to be continuing in this line of work. I think it might be time that I retire to something a little less .. eventful.”
Mbeki smiled. “We are not interested in a frontline infantry unit. We have a shortage of security personnel to guard our assets. For the most part, we cobbled together a mix of bouncers and thugs when we left Solaris. We need someone to mold that into a professional security force that we can rely upon. How does that sound?”
Lee looked out at the heavy smoke still rising from the crashed Karnov in the distance. Light security duty and a home for his remaining soldiers? That might not be so bad. Not bad at all. “Okay, Mr. Mbeki. I will discuss this with my men tonight and let you know.”
Mbeki nodded and Bane jumped in. “You might also like to know that the Monkey’s first order of business will be securing a ride off of this planet. It seems that our transport has been hijacked by one of the mercenary groups. A group known as the ‘Shady Ladies.’” Bane looked Lee in the eye. “Are you interested in some payback, Captain?”