Lieutenant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 3) (19 page)

One Navy frigate had  been put out of action with 86 KIA.  The cause of that still had not been determined.

The Marines had lost 18 KIA and three WIA, not including four Marines injured in a vehicle accident.  Four of those KIA were recon Marines, and what happened to them would probably always be a mystery. 

The Brotherhood-led assault on the second planet, K-65, had them landing on an empty planet.  The Brotherhood cherubim, their equivalent of recon, had reported the capys leaving the planet, but the allied forces had not been able to react in time to prevent it.

Two huge operations with over 100,000 men and women involved, some heavy casualties, and the loss of one ship seemed like a lot of investment for a minimal payoff.  Ryck just hoped that the payoff would be enough to tip things into mankind’s favor when the next fight broke out.

Zephyr-Hadreson

Chapter 23

Staff Sergeant Gilroy leaned over and shot the “capy juice” at Sams face.

“Fuck, Buttercup, keep that shit away from me,” Sams hollered, getting up from his seat. 

He leveled a spray at Gilroy who had danced back out of range while laughing. Sams shook his head and sat back down, unwilling to chase Gilroy for payback.  He’d get him later.

“Hey, you know what’s better than capy juice?” Sgt Rogers asked Sams.

“No, what Jolly, in your infinite experience, is better than capy juice?” Sams asked sourly, his head down as he examined the trigger mechanism for the mister.

Sgt Rogers stepped up to the seated Sams, suddenly turned around, pulled down his trou, and let out a huge fart just centimeters from Sams face.

“This!” he shouted, before trying to pull up his trou and make his getaway.

“You vile mother fuck!” Sams shouted back, trying not to gag. 

He dove forward as Sgt Rogers fell, tripped by his trou down around his thighs. The two Marines crashed to the deck as the other scrambled for safety, laughing uproariously.

“Get some, Bobbi!” several of the others shouted as Sams’ arm snuck beneath Rogers’ neck.

“What the hell crawled up your ass and died?” Sams asked.  “I can feel it coating my throat you capy-lovin’ freak!”

Sams pulled on Rogers’ neck, bending the sergeant backwards and exposing his junk, as his trou were still at half mast.  That brought more catcalls, most not fit for civilized company.

“Them’s your boys,” the newly promoted Capt Kylton Granger said to Ryck as the two team leaders checked their own misters.

“Yeah, and I’m so proud of them,” Ryck said as a can of coke flew over to land on the two wrestling Marines, spray from being shaken drenching the two. 

That broke the two apart, and Rogers finally got his trou pulled back up amidst comments on his physical inadequacies.  He was gasping for breath, but still, he couldn’t stop laughing.

Gunny Schmidt called out from where he’d been sitting, “If you two are done grab-assing, check your misters.  You better not have fucked them up.”

The misters were a new defense mechanism.  With the scifi boys deciding that the capy energy guns could be attenuated, they had come up with them as a personal defense shield.  The idea was that by spraying a fine mist of a glycerol mixture, the energy blasts would hit that first, and it could be enough to save the Marine being targeted.  When the Marines had been briefed on it, they gave it about a rat turd’s chance in hell of working, and they accepted the misters with about as much grace as could be expected.  Derision would be an accurate description of their feelings.

Ryck had asked one of the R&D scientists how effective they would be, and that worthy had admitted that at best, the mist could absorb up to 10% of a capy energy blast, and that was using the most advantageous calculations.  If that was at best, then Ryck thought the actual number would be from one to two percent, hardly enough reason to bother with the contraption. 

“You really think this will do any good?” Ryck asked Kylton.

“Not really.  But there’s a lot of pressure on the R&D guys to come up with something to take the fight to the enemy.  This is just one thing.  I think the new blunderbusses are a better deal.”

The “blunderbuss” was a short, flared-muzzle cross between a rifle and a handgun.  It was retro-technology at its best.  Using a compressed gas propellant, it fired an array of projectiles, all at fairly low speed, all designed to cause havoc on a soldier capy.  The “harpoon” looked particularly nasty.  It had four sharpened talons at the end of a staff.  The staff was inserted into the blunderbuss while the talons protruded from the muzzle.  Upon impact, the talons deployed.  This was a weaponized version of the grappling hook that Ryck had used on HAC-440, and should be an order of magnitude more effective. The blunderbuss had an effective range of 50-60 meters, so each Marine also carried the same modified M72 HGL as well for distances further than that.

One good revelation was that the xenobiologists concurred that the capy bioreceptors were good, but they were not sensitive enough to pick out a person’s heartbeat at anything over 15 or 20 meters.

“And of course, we’re the guinea pigs once again,” Ryck said sourly.

“Welcome to recon, Ryck.  They play, we pay.”

“At least these misters aren’t very bulky.  But I swear, if they get in the way, I’m shit-canning them,” Ryck said.

“Combat losses are a bitch,” Kylton said.  “These things happen.”

Kylton was one of the most laid back Marines Ryck had met.  He looked non-descript, perhaps better suited as some Dickensian bookkeeper, but he was actually about the most physically gifted person Ryck had ever met.  He was a superb five player, easily winning the division championship, and probably could win the armed forces championship as well.  It wasn’t just five; he excelled at handball, b-ball, billiards, and just about any other activity he undertook.  But he was also a thoughtful, caring individual.  His team adored him. 

As if catching Ryck’s thoughts, he looked up and asked, “So, how did your cam go?”

Kylton(“Killer Angel” was his recon nickname) had never met Hannah, but he was a good shoulder, and Ryck had opened up about his personal problems to him.

“Not too bad, actually,” he said, keeping his voice low as his team laughed and joked a few meters away.  “Still, no sign of a reunion, but she sounded good.  Looked good, too, not like before.  I told her I wouldn’t be able to cam for awhile, and she looked concerned, you know, like she understands what’s up.  She told me to be careful.”

“OK, that’s better, right?  Give her time, and she’ll come around,” Kylton said.  “When we get back, cam her again, see where her mind’s at then.  Who knows, after the duration, when all this is over, take a trip back and see how she feels when you two are actually together.”

The thought of that scared Ryck.  What if she officially cut their ties?  Maybe seeing him face-to-face would make her decide she really needed to start her life afresh and in a new direction, one without him?  He had almost accepted that, but still, as long as she had never voiced a request for a divorce, he had hope.

He was about to respond when the first sergeant came into the armory and bellowed out, “Your debark meal’s about ready, and I tell you, it looks mighty fine.  Someone sprang for real steaks, so unless you want me and the skipper to take all your chow, I’d suggest you get your asses in gear and to the messhall.  You’ve got until 0330 until mount-out, and then a long day ahead getting to the spaceport and embarking.  I’d suggest catching some z’s after chow, but that’s up to each team.”

There were a number of “oo-rahs” at the mention of real steaks, and the Marines scrambled to stow their misters in the mount-out boxes.  Everything else was ready—the misters were a last-minute addition.

“Real steaks?  We must be important,” Kylton said to Ryck as they stripped off their misters, tagging them so the correctly fitted mister would be re-issued before their drop. 

“A condemned prisoner gets a last meal, too, right?” Ryck asked, hoping the similarity was not a foretelling of what was to come.

GenAg 13

Chapter 24

Ryck pulled on his toggles and flared in for a landing.  He landed as light as a feather, as if stepping off the bottom stair onto a plush carpet.  This was his second combat drop, and his mind was already past plummeting though the planet’s atmosphere and onto his mission. 

GenAg 13was in the last stages of terraforming, ready to be turned into a breadbasket.  There had been approximately 400 staff on GenAg 13 when the combined science team studying the situation identified the planet as a probable target for the capys.  Several teams of scientists had been deployed to the planet, along with some Legionnaires and GenAg jimmylegs for security, to be ready to observe if the capys did actually arrive.  Ryck didn’t know if the scientists were that accurate in their projections or if it was more in line with a blind squirrel finding a nut, but they had been right.  Communications had been cut off with the teams on the planet, and with new Navy sensors that could detect the disturbance in space after something passes through it, they knew that ships had approached the planet.  They couldn’t detect the ships themselves, which was a pretty good indication that they were in fact capy vessels.

Without communications, the teams on the planet were cut off from most of the recently gleaned theories and facts about the capys.  They had landed with some pretty sophisticated equipment, though, and the hope was that they had been able to gather more observations that would help the cause.  This information could be invaluable.

The teams had been instructed what to do if the capys landed.  The civilians were to gather at various rally points and hunker down, while the teams were to observe for 45 days, and then move to the rally points themselves.

All four recon teams from the division and two from Second Division were to be inserted and sent to the various rally points, gather the personnel, and move to designated LZs for extraction before the combined forces of man launched a full-out attack.  Some of the planners didn’t want to risk alerting the capys with more insertions. They wanted to leave the human groups on GenAg 13 to fend for themselves, to be picked up after the hostilities ended.  But as the forces of man had no idea as to the number or disposition of the capys, it was vital to not only get any updates on capy capabilities, but to find out the number and positioning of the capy forces that would oppose the combined assault force. 

Ryck knew that if the defense was too determined, the planet would be interdicted, just as GKN was.  If the 450+ humans were still on the planet when that happened, they would be lost.

If the capys had landed in force, then GenAg-13 would be the site of the first major conflict in the war.  This would be where the combined human forces would test their newly adjusted tactics against the Trinocular Army and Navy.  Ryck and Kylton had discussed the potential for this to turn into a clusterfuck of epic proportions as every human organization with a military presence wanted to contribute, even going as far as those with quasi-illegal or outright criminal backgrounds.  This made command a royal headache, but both Marines understood the importance of inclusion in symbolizing that this was man versus capy, not Federation versus capy, not Brotherhood versus capy, but all men.

Sams and Gutierrez came out of the low brush together as Ryck was gathering his chute.  He rolled it up and shoved it under what looked, in the darkness, to be a bougainvillea, one of terraformers’ favorite soil fixers.  The chute would soon dissolve into nothingness, but there was no use taking any chances. 

Ryck signaled the interrogative, then the number 4, asking if either of the other two had seen Caruthers.  Each eight-man team had been broken down into four-man teams for the mission.  Gunny
Schmidt
had the last three members and had dropped some 150 kilometers away.

Neither had seen Caruthers, so Ryck had them spread out to find their wayward corporal.  It took about 20 minutes before he was spotted and the team was back together.  With the other three providing security, Ryck got out his plaspage map and oriented himself.  At least this time, they had been given some very accurate maps.  Ryck plotted his position, then a heading to reach their objective, about ten klicks away.  Ryck had wanted to drop closer, but if their target group had been overrun by capys, it wouldn’t make much sense for the team to drop right in the middle of that.

GenAg 13 had a very odd magnetic north and south, both at the 60 degrees latitude in each hemisphere.  This made for some extreme declinations when using a magnetic compass, but the calculations had already been made and the GM angle given to him. Within moments, the four recon Marines were moving through the low bushes.  Their target was a small box canyon at the head of a stream.  Box canyons offered no means of escape, and Ryck didn’t like the idea of walking into one, but that was where it had been determined the best concealment from the capys would be best achieved.

The four Marines moved steadily, but cautiously through the low brush and into a new teak forest.  The trees were only 20 meters high, indicating that they were only about 15-20 years old. Each tree was kept watered by a drip irrigation system.  The fact that teak had been planted so soon meant the planet had been pretty close to earth-normal before terraforming began.  Ryck came from a dry agricultural planet, but he wasn’t ignorant about wet-climate crops.  Normally, when a wet-world was first terraformed, the first large plants were species such as guadua bamboo, which grew faster and could handle a far greater range of soil conditions.  Teak was only planted on mature worlds.

The fact that GenAg Corp owned a planet so close to earth-normal, not only in atmosphere and gravity, but in what could grow there, scratched an old scab of Ryck’s.  This was an agricultural paradise compared to his home world of Prophesy.  His family had to scratch and fight to eke out a livelihood while in debt to United Ag, yet here, on a vast, rich planet, the corporate giant GenAg just sat there, having been granted a deed to the entire planet.  The Federation granted deeds or limited licenses to compensate corporations for the cost of terraforming, but from what Ryck could see, this planet hadn’t needed much to be ready for human colonization.  It didn’t seem fair to him.

The dawn began to lighten up the forest floor as they moved silently between the trunks.  There were none of the low brush or vines that were so often planted while terraforming.  This was already a working plantation.  Without any undergrowth other than some nitrogen-fixing genmodded legumes above each root ball, Ryck and his team made quicker progress than planned.  The sun hadn’t made it over the horizon before they came up to the mouth of the box canyon. 

Pretty grubbing good, if I do say myself
, Ryck thought, considering he was using old, old land nav technology and had managed to come out right at their objective.  Then again, he’d had the hypothalamus augmentation, so maybe he shouldn’t feel so proud of the accomplishment.

The teak forest ended as the slope rose to be replaced by a mixed forest of native vegetation and earth-trees and plants.  A creek came out of the canyon, babbling down the rocks until it was collected into the pipes that irrigated the teak.

With the dense undergrowth ahead, Ryck knew they would have to slow down.  They couldn’t move silently in all the vegetation.  The very things that made the canyon a good rally point out of capy detection meant that the Marines would have difficulty moving forward.

Ryck motioned to the others to come on line with him.  He contemplated using his voice, to let any local security know they were humans.  He didn’t know for sure, though, whether the area was free from capys or not, so he stuck with the hand and arm signals.

They slowed down, trying not to make too much noise, but the bushes and wait-a-minute vines tugged and grabbed at them.  When the voice called out, Ryck wasn’t sure he’d even heard it.

“Halt, who goes there?” a voice came out of the vegetation ahead of them.

Ryck looked at Sams, a few meters to his right, and rolled his eyes.  If they were capys, well, capys couldn’t understand Standard, so they wouldn’t be answering, would they now?

“Federation Marines,” he answered back.

“How do I know that?”

Ryck and Sams looked at each other in puzzlement.  How was he supposed to answer that?

“Um, I can come forward and you can see me?” he finally offered.

“No!  Don’t come forward.  I’m armed and I will shoot!” the voice said, panic evident in his tone.

“Look,” Ryck said, exasperation beginning to show in his voice.  “We’re coming forward.  We’re not capys because we are speaking to you, right?  You can shoot if you want, but I wouldn’t suggest it.  There are four of us here, and we are all quite well armed and trained to fight.  If you fire at us, we will defend ourselves.  We’re here to get you out of here, so how about letting us come forward?”

There was a pause, then some whispering.  There were at least two of them. 

Finally, the voice called out, “OK, come ahead, but slowly.  Remember, I’m armed.”

“Sling your arms,” he told his team.  “Then let’s move up, nice and slow.

“OK, here we come,” he called out.

The four Marines pushed through the brush, taking it easy.  After about ten meters, there was a small opening underneath some hoary old native tree, and under it were a man and a woman.  Stark naked.

Well, the man had tried to hide his dick with some sort of Garden of Eden leaf underwear, which didn’t hide much.  The woman was completely naked, if filthy.  The man held a large branch in his hand.  That was his weapon?  They were both nervous as the Marines came out of the brush, but that disappeared as soon as they recognized the humans facing them.  The man had been holding himself tall, and Ryck could see him almost collapse in relief.

“Oh, thank God!” the woman said, rushing forward to hug a bemused Sams.  Sams had hugged more than his fair share of naked women, but this was about as far from titillating as could be imagined.

“We’re mighty happy to see you, but you’ve got to take off your clothes, now,” the man said, moving forward to shake Ryck’s hand.

That was not the greeting Ryck expected.

“Huh?” was all he could manage.

“Your clothes.  The capys can sense them.  You need to take them off.”

“What gave you that idea?”

“The scientists and the GenAg security.  They said the capys could sense them.  We took them off and left them. but the security didn’t.  They kept their clothes and broke off, to lead the capys away, and sure enough, the capys followed them, not us.  We made it here, but Lieutenant Galstone, he led the capys down that way,” he said, pointing in the general direction of the DZ where the Marines had landed.

Ryck heard Sams start to laugh before choking it off with a feigned cough.

“The capys can sense a lot of things:  PAs, AIs, communicators, biomonitors, energy weapons, just about anything that emits electric waves.  But clothes?  Not that.  So we’re going to keep our uniforms on, and I would suggest you get your clothes back on, too,” Ryck told the man.

“But, but, Dr. Keasey, she said it.  She said they had a . . . what did she call it, Tara?” he asked the woman. 

“Ampullae of Lorenzini,” the woman, Tara, said.

“So we ditched everything.  And she—”

“Yeah, yeah, we know all about that,” Ryck interrupted.  “And they don’t have exactly what a shark, has, those Ampullae of Lorenzini”—he stumbled over the term when the woman had just said it easily—“and they for sure can’t sense simple clothing.

“What’s your name?” Ryck asked.

“Oh, sorry.  John Lancaster,” he said, holding out his hand even though they had already shook once.

Ryck shook it and said, “First Lieutenant Ryck Lysander, Federation Marine Corps.  Those are Staff Sergeant Sams, uh, Samuelson,
Sergeant Clarence Gutierrez, and Corporal Francis Caruthers.”

The woman, all 150 centimeters of her, stepped up and formally said, “Tara Jun, GenAg’s Director of Information for GenAg 13.”

“Director of Information” probably meant marketing or corporate misinformation, so she had to be fairly high on the food chain.  She was filthy with bedraggled hair, a completely naked body, and bloody scratches and welts on her legs, but she looked Ryck right in the eyes with all the confidence in the world, her initial relief and Sams’ hug forgotten.

Ryck turned to her, sensing she was more in control of the two despite John’s initial actions.  “Can you lead us to the rest?  We’ve got limited time to get you out of here.”

Tara led them back along a convoluted path, obviously trying to avoid the low bushes and branches.  John stumbled twice, swore three times, and muttered to himself that he knew he should have kept his boots. The guy was suffering, but in front of him, where John couldn’t see his face, Ryck couldn’t help but smile.  It wasn’t funny, but then again, it was.  The poor guy was suffering, and while Ryck felt sorry for him, he smiled nonetheless.

After moving back about 200 meters, they came to another opening beneath the trees where the undergrowth had either been cut back or hadn’t grown.  It was packed dirt on either side of the creek.  A couple of dozen people were huddled around, some sleeping under make-shift lean-tos, but as the Marines came up, everyone got up and gathered around, excitedly.