He wondered how his Marines would do. Sure, they were trained and disciplined and well-equipped. Certainly there was no lack of courage. But none of them had any combat experience. Captain Scott had met with Colonel Baek and Colonel Raper the day before and they sat with him and talked about it, the need for courage to overcome fear and that brief period of time between the fear and then the courage. And it wasn’t predictable. A fighter might perform well and then suddenly freeze up, the fear finally coming after the courage wore off. And the ones who run their first time out. There is no way to understand their thought process because they don’t understand it either. Just try to collect them up afterwards and assure them they’ll do better next time.
It was tacit jealousy on the part of the Capellan Marines, their resentment of the Mercenaries and their combat experience. Nearly all of the mercenaries had faced the real likelihood of death, had killed in cold blood, had survived combat. But man for man, the Mercenaries were no match for the Marines, on paper. Hell, a full third of the mercenaries were women! The Marines had a broader base of individual combat skills. But there was a point where the specialization of the mercenaries began to multiply combat power. The tipping point, determined by Colonels Baek and Raper, was at the company level. Any one Marine company could reasonably expect to defeat any mercenary company, but beyond that, with a battalion-sized unit on each side, the mercenaries would wipe the floor with the Marines.
And Captain Scott liked that. He commanded a company. He also appreciated the privilege of taking his unit out to face the Mosh with no Mercenary support. The lessons learned from this experience would resonate and raise morale for all the Marines. He just hoped they wouldn’t embarrass themselves. That little problem with each and every Marine under his command having to face that part of their humanity that made them not want to kill other people, that basic survival instinct that made them want to avoid danger, flee, that was the real enemy.
The first Mosh arrived, three medium tanks. Over-confident, they drove along at thirty kilometers per hour, right into the kill zone of the ambush. The laser gun crew fired at the second tank and caught it right in the base of the turret, right in the bullet trap below the gun mantle. The laser shot burned through and the hatches on the top of the turret blew off and black smoke billowed, but the tank kept driving along in formation. The laser gun’s second shot caught the lead tank in its right track and it ran into the ditch on the left side of the road. Its turret swung and its coax machine gun swept the area near the laser gun.
The Mosh tank commander popped his hatch and stood behind his machine gun and fired to the right, looking for targets. The Marine laser gun fired again, hit that tank in the side of the turret. The tank exploded. The damaged second tank moved beside it and used it for cover. The third tank moved off the right side of the road and snuggled down in the ditch to reduce its exposure. Its main gun drew a bead on the Marine laser gun and fired. The gun and its crew were blown to bits. Captain Scott was fifty meters away but was blown another twenty meters sideways by the blast, his medium powered armor pelted with high-velocity debris.
His face piece was scratched and his right arm immobilized. His XO ordered the mortars to fire. They finished off the first two tanks and were bracketing the third tank. Then Mosh artillery landed on the Marine mortars and turned their position into a smoldering crater. Captain Scott stood and looked toward the Mosh tank that remained, fully functional. The company’s First Sergeant gripped Captain Scott by the shoulders and pulled him back, tossed him to the ground. “Stay down!”
More Mosh artillery came, landed all along the back slope of the spur where Captain Scott lay. More Mosh came, carried on trucks. The trucks stopped outside the kill zone and the Mosh warriors dismounted. Captain Scott crawled up and looked ahead, saw that the Mosh wore conventional body armor and carried assault rifles. No match for Marines in powered armor, certainly. The Mosh dropped and crawled forward slowly, using individual movement techniques at times. Then they stopped. Mosh mortar fire landed in the general vicinity of first platoon.
Captain Scott called, “Fist Platoon, you better do something.”
The Marines of first platoon moved forward to attack. Some had flamethrowers, some had missile launchers, but half of them had anti-personnel rifles and all of them had vibro-blade swords as secondary weapons. The Mosh had secondary weapons as well, rocket launchers of their own, specifically designed to destroy powered body armor. Scott ordered second platoon forward as well.
First platoon lost half its strength but did mange to render the Mosh company of dismounts combat ineffective. Second platoon ran through and finished off the Mosh and began caring for casualties. Some Marines had gone the wrong way, had run from the fight. But they stopped and were collected up by third platoon.
The Mosh tank was still there in the ditch, fully functional. Soon that tank commander would figure out that all his comrades were dead and that he should begin firing into the Marines. The third platoon leader moved with his platoon and closed within rocket firing range of the Mosh tank. More Mosh artillery landed in third platoon’s old position and Mosh mortar rounds were landing behind second and first platoon, a clear signal that the Mosh tank commander was about to make things real ugly for the Marines.
The third platoon leader grabbed his XO and First Sergeant and the first squad leader and said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to capture that tank and swing it around to cover the road.”
“Hooah,” in unison.
A Marine with a rocket launcher rolled into the ditch right in front of the tank and fired a rocket that knocked off its right track. The tank returned fire with its main gun and blew the Marine to bits. A second Marine used a flame thrower on the tank from the side, a short blast of flame followed by a second; just enough to let the crew of the tank know he meant business.
The third platoon leader stood in front of the tank with a rocket shoved right down the barrel of the main gun. He yelled, “Come out or die!”
The coaxial machine gun of the Mosh tank pelted the third platoon leader with rounds, the aggregate force of the rounds pushing him back a step. As soon as the rocket was out of the muzzle the main gun fired. The third platoon leader’s body armor took the round right in the center of the chest. The round left a clean 100mm hole right through him. The third platoon leader looked down at the hole, the last thing he ever saw, and then fell dead on his back.
A Marine fired a rocket into the side of the Mosh tank and the Marine with the flame thrower bathed the tank in fire. The tank rocked and popped and burned. Mosh mortar fire landed all around the Mosh tank and across the road ahead of it. Another platoon of Mosh tanks was approaching. Captain Scott ordered a retreat back to the assault boats. His company boarded them and was lifted out of the area, back to the camp near Cherry Fork. A full third of the Capellan Marines of India Company died that day.
Chapter Nine
An armored Mosh command car came from the Skeleton Desert and stopped just outside a town in the foothills of the mountains. A checkpoint of eight Mosh warriors blocked the road. The senior occupant of the command car opened his door and leaned out and said, “Merkismathr!”
A Mosh officer wearing gray chain mail looked toward the command car, walked up to it. “Yes, Stallari.”
“Have you taken bondsmen?”
The Merkismathr said, “I do not think these peasants we fight are worthy of such an honor.”
The Stallari dismounted. “I have misspoken. Do you have prisoners?”
“I do. The orders for how to dispose of them are unclear, so I’ve kept them locked up.”