David Sherman & Dan Cragg - [Starfist 13] Page 16

  Another advantage the XVIII Corps had over the Skinks was combat aircraft. Each of the FISTs had its own composite squadron, composed of Raptor fighter/attack aircraft, and hoppers that could be fitted as ground assault aircraft. And the navy had two aircraft carriers, each with an entire air wing. The Skinks didn’t have combat aircraft. At least they hadn’t used any in the contacts the Marines had had with them. In those contacts, the Skinks hadn’t had aircraft of any sort, but on Haulover they were known to have some manner of airborne troop transport, so enemy combat airpower wasn’t out of the question and needed to be planned for.

  Carano gave his operations people his commander’s-intent and one full day to draw up plans. Then he held a meeting of his major-element commanders: five division commanders, four FIST commanders, and two air wing commanders. The air wing commanders weren’t actually elements of XVIII Corps, but Rear Admiral Worthog, the senior air commander, put navy air under Carano’s command for the planetside operation. Carano also had his primary staff and Ensign Jak Daly, the Force Recon commander planetside, in attendance for the briefing. Daly probably had additional intelligence about the Skink positions—Daly had sent his recon teams back out a few hours after he filed his report, and they were gathering additional intelligence on the internal layouts of the underground Skink bases. With luck—or perhaps skill—they were also getting additional intelligence on the enemy order of battle.

  “Gentlemen, I’ll make this short,” Carano began. “Everybody has been briefed on the enemy we’re about to take on, but almost none of you has seen them. You’ve read the after-action reports filed by Twenty-sixth and Thirty-fourth FISTs, and the element of Thirty-fourth FIST that has had previous contact with the Skinks. Those contacts, and the recent encounters Force Recon had here on Haulover, are the only known occasions on which humanity has faced this implacable enemy. We do suspect, however, that the Skinks may be behind the disappearance of some human groups on isolated worlds.

  “I just used the word implacable. It was quite deliberate; the first time the Marines encountered them, the Skinks fought until they were totally wiped out. On the second occasion, when two FISTs took on a force larger than a division, they fought until they were past the point where any human force would have surrendered to avoid further, needless casualties before they attempted to cut and run. On both occasions, individuals were seen to suicide when they were no longer able to continue fighting and were about to be captured. So, when you get planetside, you should expect and be prepared for the toughest fight you’ve ever been in. A very tough fight. Our best estimate at this time is that the Skinks planetside outnumber us by more than two to one, and it’s possible they have an even larger advantage over us.

  “Major General McKillan will give you the details, but in brief, what we are going to do is start with the easternmost enemy position and clear it. Once it’s cleared, we’ll move on to the next and clear it. We will continue moving and clearing until the Skink threat is fully removed from Haulover.

  “General McKillan.” Carano nodded at his chief of staff, and strode off the small stage.

  “Atten-tion!” McKillan called out, and the assembled generals and staff officers jumped to their feet as their Corps commander exited the briefing room.

  “Seats!” McKillan called out when the door closed behind Carano. McKillan pointed at the map that sprang into view on the wall behind him. “Here you see…”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Among the lead elements of the gator fleet to arrive in orbit around Haulover was the construction starship CNSS Wedge Donovan, which immediately landed its construction battalion and their heavy equipment. The navy engineers selected land next to Beach Spaceport for an expeditionary airfield. Not that they had an easy time securing the land. Haulover Chairman of the Board Smelt Miner, the closest thing Haulover had to a head of state, wanted to charge top credit for the land, and refused to allow construction to begin until he was paid a sizeable deposit. Vice Admiral Geoffrey Chandler, the gator fleet commander, wasn’t about to delay construction of the airfield just because some pipsqueak of a local dignitary let petty greed cloud his judgment. Chandler promptly ordered a light armored infantry battalion, one of the first ground combat elements to arrive with the fleet, planetside to convince the civilian authorities to let the construction begin even before proper negotiations on a lease began. Mr. Miner backed off as soon as he realized that the light armored infantry battalion was fully capable of defeating the entire military, such as it was, and police forces of Haulover without breaking a sweat. Miner was somewhat mollified when Chandler told him there was a chance that ownership of the airfield would revert to Haulover at the conclusion of anti-Skink operations.

  Chandler didn’t mention that it was at least equally possible that the airfield would form the core of a permanent Confederation military base on Haulover.

  At any rate, the navy construction battalion had the airfield ready for use by the time Lieutenant General Carano briefed his major element commanders on the coming operation.

  Within hours of the combat briefing, the Fourteenth Air Wing, off the carrier CNSS Raymond A. Spruance, landed at what the navy saw fit to name Naval Air Station George Gay, after a navy pilot of a twentieth-century war, and prepared for its first mission. The Twenty-fourth Infantry and Eighty-seventh Heavy Infantry Divisions were landed by waves of Essays two hundred kilometers east of the easternmost Skink base. The Essays had dropped from orbit south of Sky City, and flew nape-of-the-earth, to avoid detection by Skink observers, to their drop zones. The Twenty-fourth Infantry Division would be the assault element, with the Eighty-seventh in reserve. The Fifteenth Armored Division was dropped midway between the objective base and the next one to the left. Other Essays swung around to the east and landed Thirty-fourth FIST a hundred klicks northeast of the Skink base. The Essays that dropped the Twenty-fourth and Eighty-seventh Divisions turned about and retraced their routes to orbit, where they refueled and brought the Fifty-fourth Light Infantry and Twenty-seventh Medium Divisions, along with the remaining FISTs, to bivouac areas a short distance north of Sky City. The Eighth Air Wing, off the CNSS Frank Fletcher, followed to NAS Gay.

  Even before the Fifteenth Armored Division was in position, the Twenty-fourth Infantry, mounted in armored personnel carriers, sped toward the Skink base. At that same time, the ninety-six Raptors of the Eighth Air Wing began launching and headed for the objective, intending to devastate the enemy forces taking their ease outside the cave and tunnel system.

  The Eighth Air Wing passed over the advancing infantry division when they were still a hundred klicks away from their objective. Less than a minute later, they encountered a surprise such as Lieutenant General Carano had warned about.

  “Magnum Lead,” Ensign Jabarrah said in a voice that denied the excitement and adrenaline that suddenly surged through him, “I have bogeys at two o’clock low.”

  “Magnum Four,” Lieutenant Deitz, Magnum Lead drawled, looking down and to his right front for the bogeys Jabarrah had alerted him to. He spotted them. “I have them.”

  “Buddha’s blue balls!” Ensign Ghibson, Magnum Three, exclaimed when he spotted the bogeys. “How many of them are there?”

  “Enough that not even you can miss,” Lieutenant (jg) Hoot, Magnum Two came back.

  “Can the chatter, people,” Magnum Lead snapped. Then he said to the squadron commander, “Pistol, Magnum division has numerous bogeys approaching from two o’clock low. They have no IFF signal. I want to veer off to investigate.”

  “I have them, Magnum Lead,” Pistol answered. He was Lieutenant Commander Pitz. “Check them out. Go red.”

  “Roger, Pistol. Going red. Magnum Division, arm air-to-airs, charge guns. Follow me.” Magnum Lead turned his Raptor into a shallow dive to the right, heading for the middle of the approaching formation.

  The pilots of the Eighth Air Wing were flying top-of-the-line fighter aircraft and were very highly trained. Many of them, including all of Mag
num Division except Magnum Four, also had combat experience. So the pilots weren’t unduly unsettled by unexpectedly encountering a sizeable force. After all, they’d won all of their air battles in the past. In fact, although the four pilots of Magnum Division seemed to be heading into combat against an entire sixteen-aircraft squadron, they were confident of coming out of the battle as undisputed victors.

  Magnum Lead was closest when red flashes showed on the wings of four of the bogeys. Lieutenant Deitz didn’t even have time to open his mouth to call a warning before half a dozen pellets struck his Raptor at a significant percent of the speed of light, disintegrating it and killing him. The other three Raptors of Magnum Division disintegrated less than a second later.

  Pistol happened to be looking in Magnum’s direction when the division was killed, and saw four of his aircraft get knocked into small bits, none of them as big as a human being. He was good enough a combat pilot that he didn’t go into immediate shock at the inconceivably sudden deaths of four of his men and total destruction of their aircraft. Instead, he began immediately snapping orders to the remainder of his squadron to take evasive action.

  Captain Mason Anderson, the Eighth Air Wing commander, had been monitoring that action and more, and knew that more squadrons were approaching his wing from various directions. He ordered his squadron commanders to have their pilots take evasive action, then counterattack what were obviously “bandits,” bad guys, rather than just “bogeys,” unknowns.

  In seconds, the airspace occupied by the Eighth Air Wing was filled with Raptors flying in multiple directions, mostly in four aircraft divisions, but some flying in pairs or individually. A dozen bandit squadrons were rapidly approaching them from multiple directions, spreading out, spitting red flashes from their wings. More Raptors disintegrated. Some Confederation pilots tried to line up shots for their guns or to get solid locks for their missiles but most of those were killed before they could get their shots off. The rest of them began firing their guns and missiles as soon as they were anywhere near having a good shot or lock, trusting to luck. A few had that luck, but nowhere near enough of them. Most of their kills came when a bandit jinked to throw off someone’s aim and accidentally put himself in the path of someone else’s plasma bolts or missiles.

  In minutes, the ninety-six aircraft of the Eighth Air Wing were reduced to thirty-seven, which turned tail and headed at maximum speed back to NAS Gay. Against their fifty-nine losses, they had scored twenty-three kills.

  Unfortunately for them, the past air battles of the Confederation Navy had been against the air forces of planetary militaries, which were rarely a match for them. The Skink pilots, on the other hand, had turned out to be every bit as skilled as the pilots of the Eighth Air Wing. They had numbers on their side, and, although the Confederation forces didn’t learn this until much later, the Skinks’ guns were rail guns, which meant much greater destructive power. Every Raptor that got hit went down, mostly in rather small pieces.

  The Skink aircraft then turned their attention to the still-advancing Twenty-fourth and Eighty-seventh Divisions.

  At first, those soldiers of the Eighty-seventh Heavy Infantry Division who could see the fighting in the sky above cheered every time they saw the explosion of an aircraft being killed. Until they realized that those were navy Raptors, not Skink aircraft that were being pulverized. The cheers turned to groans and gasps, then silence when the surviving Raptors turned tail and ran.

  The silence didn’t last long. It was shattered by screams when the enemy aircraft turned their noses groundward and began firing their rail guns at the armored personnel carriers.

  “Point those guns up!” shouted Captain Sparr, the commanding officer of Fox Troop, Seventh Heavy Infantry Battalion. His men were well enough trained that half of the swivel-mounted guns on his battalion’s armored vehicles were already firing at the diving aircraft. It wasn’t until the guns on all thirty-six of his vehicles were spraying bullets into the sky that they finally hit one of the attacking aircraft.

  Fourteen aircraft began the run at the armored vehicles of Fox Troop, and eleven of them completed the run. But they killed seventeen of the armored personnel carriers—and more than 150 of the 170 soldiers in them.

  Not every troop in the Eighty-seventh Heavy Infantry Division was attacked; each of the Skink squadrons struck at two troops, hitting twenty-four of the division’s thirty-six troops. Not all of them were damaged as badly as Fox of the 505th, and only a few were hit harder. But by the time the Skink aircraft flew away, Major General Kocks, the division commander, had little choice but to turn his division around and head back toward the bivouac that was building just north of Sky City.

  The Twenty-fourth Infantry and Fifteenth Armored Divisions, although uninjured, went with them; the initial offensive by the XVIII Corps died aborning.

  Brigadier Sturgeon believed that the Skinks hadn’t detected Thirty-fourth FIST, so he ordered his Marines to hunker down and hold their position until the army was ready to resume its offensive.

  “Hurry up and wait,” Lance Corporal Isadore Godenov grumbled. “Hurry up and goddamn wait!”

  Corporal Joe Dean, his fire team leader, ignored him.

  PFC John Three McGinty, still a bit uncertain of his position in the fire team, the squad, and the platoon, also didn’t say anything, but he did stare at the complainer. Like Godenov, McGinty didn’t understand why, after the rush to get all of the ground combat elements of Thirty-fourth FIST planetside a hundred klicks from their objective, and then onto Dragons and headed toward that objective, the FIST had suddenly stopped with orders to stay in place. So they sat, the third fire team, first squad, third platoon, Company L, in a hole in the ground where a large tree had toppled over and its root-ball had ripped free of the earth. Dean had put out a motion detector and was occupying himself by trying to figure out what local life-forms made which signals on it. So far, all he’d positively identified was the platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Hyakowa, and a scaled animal twice the size of an Earth rabbit that hopped like a rabbit even though it didn’t look like a rabbit at all.

  “I don’t like this one little bit,” Godenov complained, swiping at some tiny, exoskeletoned beasties that were crawling across his legs. He looked at Dean. “You aren’t listening to me, are you?” Dean continued to ignore him. “You’re my fire team leader, Dean-o. You should be finding out why we’re just sitting here letting these fire ants eat me up.”

  “That’s Corporal Dean-o,” Dean said absently.

  Godenov snorted.

  “If Sergeant Ratliff knew anything, I’m sure he’d tell us,” McGinty offered.

  Godenov gave him an “Are you really that dumb or do you have to work at it” look. “Triple John, you haven’t been in Mother Corps long enough to realize that squad leaders don’t tell their men anything. They get their rocks off by keeping their men in the dark.”

  “Rabbit will tell us when he knows something,” Dean said, still not looking at Godenov. The local animal Dean had identified with his motion detector might not have looked like a rabbit, but Sergeant Ratliff did have a certain facial resemblance to a rabbit.

  Godenov snorted again. “Can I at least get away from the bugs, honcho?”

  Dean finally looked at him from where he lay against the side of the hole with his arms hooked over its top. Godenov was sitting in the bottom of the hole. “Move into a position where you’ll be useful if any bad guys come looking for us. Like Triple John.”

  McGinty looked at his fire team leader, not sure that he wanted to be used as a good example for the more experienced lance corporal. Godenov slid his chameleon screen into place before glaring at Dean. Invisible, he scrabbled up the side of the hole and took a position on the other side of Dean from McGinty.

  “See anything?” he asked.

  “Not a thing, except those hopping things over there,” Dean answered. “I wish somebody would tell us what’s going on.”

  “That’s what I’ve been sayi
ng,” Godenov muttered.

  “I could have sworn that Wolfman was still acting as runner for the boss,” Dean said. “Nobody told me he was assigned to my fire team.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Wolfman’!” Godenov squawked. “I’m not Wolfman.”

  “You’re complaining like him.”

  Godenov’s glare went unseen behind his chameleon screen, but he stopped complaining. Out loud, at least.

  Thirty-fourth FIST was too far away from the sky battle and the aerial attack on the Eighty-seventh Heavy Infantry Division to have seen or heard it. The only people who knew why the FIST had stopped were Brigadier Sturgeon, his ground component commanders, and their respective staffs—and, for the moment, they weren’t telling.

  Brigadier Sturgeon knew what he wanted to do. He suspected that, following their breakup of the XVIII Corps’s initial attack, the Skinks felt safe from an assault in the next few hours or even days. And he had an entire battalion of Marines who had fought the Skinks in their caves and tunnels on one or more occasions—fought them and severely beat them.

  Brigadier Sturgeon was in his command post—the FIST’s command Dragon—hidden under a canopy of chameleoned fabric. He was in intense conversation with his boss, Lieutenant General Carano, trying to convince the corps commander to let his infantry move ahead and tackle the caves with no more than the FIST’s organic combat support units.