24
“Here they come,” Lance Corporal Porter said.
The team came to a stop, turned, and looked up into the sky. High over the western horizon, a dull black disk descended. Rev had seen Centaurs land before in the recordings, but never in person.
The disk was too large to be in the air, as big as a cruiser. It just wasn’t natural. No human ship that size, or anything close to it, could do that. Forget the physics required, but the exhaust of a ship that size would fry anything on the ground for hundreds of kilometers.
But the Centaur ships didn’t have human-type engines. The media called their drives anti-gravity engines, but the scientists weren’t united in what they thought they actually were. But the bottom line was that their huge landing craft could land and debark hundreds if not thousands of paladins and coursers.
The Centaur ship started to sparkle in the air as human self-defense energy weapons reached out to it, hitting its defensive shielding. A missile of some sort struck it, the explosion a bright flash but not hampering the ship in the least. And the Centaurs fought back. An explosion in the distance was probably an artillery battery being destroyed.
Centaurs didn’t even need a ship to put them on the planet. Their armor had limited capabilities to both descend to a planet and take off from it, but even coursers could be shot down. Not so the big ships like the one Rev was watching. They were a much, much tougher nut to crack, almost an impossible one if the public perception were true.
Rev didn’t completely buy that. The Navy could sometimes defeat Centaur ships, so why not ground-based weapons? But whatever weapons New Hope had, they weren’t slowing down the Centaur ship.
“Where’s it landing, do you think?” Strap asked.
“Looks like around Kerrville,” Rev said. “I’ve got cousins who live there.”
“Hope they got out,” Tomiko said.
The civil defense plan was for a massive evacuation of the cities and towns into the countryside. New Hope was not densely populated, and the hope was that by dispersing, enough people could live long enough for the Union to send forces to drive off the enemy. And it was the New Hope Marines’ mission to fend off the Centaurs, keeping them occupied, until those forces could arrive.
Only this time, Rev didn’t think there would be a rescue. Part of that was because the Corps was stretched thin, and they couldn’t rely on allied forces who were fighting in their own territories. But a larger part was that just as they were leaving the base, the orders came down to use the virus grenades, putting the infection plan into effect.
If the Council wanted to infect the Centaurs, then they didn’t want to kill the Centaurs in place. They wanted enough to escape so that they could become vectors back to their homeworld, and that meant if the citizens of the planet had to be abandoned, well, in their view, that was a small price to pay for the greater good.
So, if the planet was going to be saved, they couldn’t count on outside help. It would be up to the forty-thousand Marines and sailors of the New Hope military forces.
* * *
The teams watched silently as several columns of smoke rose over Swansea. It seemed surreal to be sitting here in what was a beautiful summer afternoon, the sun approaching the horizon. Their rally point was one of the Three Amigos, three conical hills in the Tristan Provincial Park where civilians like to climb on the weekends for the view. It felt so normal, despite the fact that Centaurs were now on the ground. Invaders, here on New Hope. Rev felt he should be fighting now, not sitting quietly as he looked over the forest below.
The Centaurs might not be there yet, but they were coming, and he should be focusing on tactics. He was human, though, and he couldn’t help but worry about his family and friends. He trusted his stepfather, but what about Mr. Oliva? The man had no family and not many friends outside of the VGW. And the place had to be a madhouse. For all the lip-service given to a possible invasion and how to evacuate the city, no one thought it would actually happen. New Hope was not especially noteworthy, and it was well within human space.
Rev hadn’t seen any civilians as the team rushed to their rally point, but with the Marines trained for rapid reaction, that could just have to do with timing. Right now, under the densely forested canopy, most of the city could be on the move.
He hoped.
“What next?” Radić asked.
“We’ll know soon enough. The skipper’s getting our orders now,” Tomiko said. “But it’s gonna be epic, so gird your loins and put on your warrior face.”
There were contingency plans upon contingency plans on the shelf, and even with no comms, the Marines knew what to do. Despite being without normal comms, however, which had been knocked out shortly before the ships started landing all over the planet, they had means to communicate. Buried and shielded landlines snaked throughout the planet, linking the underground command posts with each other and the unit rallying points scattered through the countryside.
“How close to Kerrville did that thing land? Can you tell?” he asked, shifting his gaze to the south to where the smoke there had by now dissipated.
<Probably right on the eastern outskirts of the town.>
“What are the chances that there are survivors?”
<Centaur SOP is to clear a landing zone before a ship comes in to land.>
Which means killing whoever is there.
Rev already knew that in his heart, but it still hurt to have Punch confirm it. He hadn’t seen his cousins since he was conscripted, but they were still family, and something in the neighborhood of 20,000 people lived in the town. He just hoped that some escaped before it was targeted.
He shook his head and shifted back to Swansea. That was the population hub of the province. He didn’t know what was causing the smoke there. It could have been the Centaur ship leaving, giving a parting shot to soften up the city. And, truth be told, it could also be looting. Even when faced with an alien invasion, some people would sink to their lowest level, as hard as that was for Rev to imagine.
“Hey, the skipper wants us all now,” Greenie Sjberic said as she came up to the viewpoint. “He’s got word.”
Rev spared one last look to the city, then followed the rest as they went down to the landline hub near the public restrooms.
“Gather around,” Captain Omestori said. “OK, it’s about like we figured. There might be four hundred tin-asses on the ground twenty clicks south of here. With all our drones and orbital platforms knocked down, the numbers are still a little fuzzy, but we should be able to narrow that down as our CWVs get situated.”
The Civilian Watch Volunteers were two-person teams who were tasked with manning observation posts throughout the planet, each connected with landlines. Up until now, they’d been mostly a social organization, what many Marines considered military wannabees. They got a small stipend and a jacket with a patch, and they met once a month, mostly to drink beer and hang out.
Now that the shit had hit the fan, Rev hoped they would rise to the occasion. Without them reporting in, the Marines’ missions would just be that much harder to prosecute.
“Two ships landed at Anastasia, and so it looks like the only three on the continent. At least six made planetfall on the mainland. So, we have to figure somewhere between three and nine thousand tin-asses on the ground right now.”
Hopefully closer to three thousand.
Nine thousand Centaurs would be a tough row to hoe with only forty-thousand Marines and no Navy support.
“We have to assume that the tin-asses here are going to be heading to Swansea, but we’ll hopefully get some more clarification on that. I’m sorry that’s about all I’ve got now on the enemy situation, but it is what it is.”
“As of the moment, except for air assets, we are close to full strength. Air is down to thirty percent, with most of those who attacked the ships being lost. The prepositioned air and those that managed to get to the caves are about all we have, but their use will be coordinated with division.
“I know this isn’t much, but I did get our orders. As per the planetary defense plan, our tank and mech assets will be moving to intercept forces heading to the city. They will not become decisively engaged. If the tin-asses want Swansea, they’ll take it.”
There were a few sighs at that, but everyone knew that was the plan from the beginning. New Hope was its citizens, not the buildings.
“Hopefully, though, some of the surprises left behind will catch some of the bastards. Make them pay for that real estate.
“But now onto our mission. As you know, we were supposed to be flank security for the heavy forces. But with the gats, that has changed.”
Rev stole a glance at Tomiko. You’ve got him calling the grenades gats now, too?
“The Council itself has ordered us to employ the gats, and with that, we, and the rest of the infantry, are the real points of main effort. The heavy forces are still going to do what they’ve always been planned to do, but that is now just to focus the tin-asses’ attention. To make this perfectly clear, the commander’s intent, and in this case, the commander is the Director Prime himself, if not the Council, is to infect the tin-asses, not destroy them.”
“And what about our families, sir? What about the people of New Hope?” Gizzy Incrit-Kole asked.
“I know, I know,” the captain said. “I asked the same thing. I was told they’d get back to me. But until I get a response, I have to reiterate, our mission is to infect the tin-asses. And that is what we’re going to do.”
“That’s bullshit,” Hussein muttered.
“No, it isn’t bullshit, Sergeant Černý,” the captain snapped. “And I expect no pushback on that.”
“But—”
“No pushback, Sergeant. But that doesn’t mean the tin-asses are off-limits, as far as I can tell. We need to make our defense look real, and the armor and mech will be trying to kill them. Anything else could alert them that something is up.
“And as we engage, if we managed to kill some,” he continued, this time pointedly looking at Rev, McAnt, and Pierson in that order, “then all the better. And I’ll add this. It’s one thing to let a tin-ass retreat, if it came to that. But until I hear different, if it comes down to a tin-ass or a citizen, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure it’s the tin-ass that goes, even if that’s at the cost of my life. Have I made myself clear?”
There was a chorus of ooh-rahs at that.
“And all this starts now. We’re to move to the intersection of Highway Eighty-three and the Old Forrestal Road and link up with Alpha Company again. Together, we’re going to be sniping tin-asses from the flank as armor and mech engage them from the front.
“Let’s get these bastards sick!”