Recruit, Jonathan Brazee [which ebook reader .txt] 📗

There were at least 150 Marines with the same idea as Ryck in the galley, grabbing hot chow while they could.  Over half were in skins.  These would be the light infantry Marines, both from Golf and the other companies.  The rest were in their longjohns.    The longjohns were extremely tight and left absolutely nothing to the imagination. The Marines in their skins kept a running commentary about the various attributes, or lack thereof, of the PICS Marines.  Fox was embarked on the ship as well, but a quick glance showed that none of Ryck’s friends were there at chow.  The company must have been in the middle of something.  With only four hours before launch, Ryck thought that would have been a good guess.

“Hey, Ryck, you think we’re going to launch?” Lance Corporal Naranbaatar Bayarsaikhan, asked as Ryck sat down. 

“Ghengis” was from Larudi, the extremely homogenous world settled by Mongolians, and take away his longjohns, fit him out with furs and sit him on a horse with a “larudi” on his arm, and he could pass for his ancient forebearer and nicknamesake, Ghengis Khan himself.  

“Don’t know,” Ryck said.  “Would you want to fight if you looked up and saw the Prake over you?”

“Well, they know we’re about there, and they know what we’ve got.  They haven’t surrendered yet,” Ghengis said.

“Wait until we launch,” Private Courtland Prifit said.  “Iffen they don’t we’ll kick their perking asses.”

Ghengis just looked at Ryck and raised his eyebrows.  Ryck shrugged.  Courtland was a boot, and this was his first operation.  Boots were better seen and not heard.

Their mission was to restore the government of Luminosity.  Luminosity was not a corporate world, but one founded by a freespeaker society at the height of the movement some 200 years ago.  Over the years, it had grown economically, but with keeping in line with their founding philosophy, had minimal government and no armed forces.  Even the police were only part-time deputies.

During the planet’s third immigration wave, according to the brief the Marines and sailors had received, refugees from Kyber had arrived, settling in the main mountain range.  When they started their own militia, the planetary authorities had objected, but as this was a “free” world, having a private militia was technically considered a matter of personal choice, and therefore legal.

That may have been a mistake, because over a month ago, that “militia” took over the government, declaring themselves in charge and the “protectors” of the citizens from both crime and outside influences.  When people objected, they were arrested and thrown into hastily-constructed jails.

That created a call for assistance from the Federation.  Two weeks later, the Federation voted to intervene, skirting the law by declaring that this was merely a “police action.”  The fact that the rare earth mines, especially the scandium and gadolinium mines, were closed by the new rulers, couldn’t have had anything to do with the extremely quick response by the resource-hungry central planets of the Federation. 

With somewhere close to 3,000 in the militia, the powers that be determined that one reinforced Marine battalion, with 2,000+ Marines, would be enough to defeat them and get things back to normal.  The reports that the militia might have both armor and combat suits were largely discounted.

The battalion was assigned the mission and given two days to embark.  The Prake was pure Navy and didn’t often carry embarked Marines.  But as modern bubble warships generally differed primarily in size alone, it wasn’t that difficult for the ship to accommodate the Marines.

It actually took three days before they could get underway, and then another three days of bubble-space time to reach Luminosity.  The ship had come out of bubble space an hour before.  In another three hours, it would be in orbit around the planet.

The ship had an immense capability with more firepower than the entire Marine Corps and a good portion of the Civil Development Corps.  (Not many people realized it, due to planned disinformation, but even the Civil Development Corps, which was actually an occupation army, had much more firepower than the Marines.)  Using the ship’s firepower on Luminosity, though, would be difficult if not impossible.  Not only was the bulk of the population on the side of the Federation, but also the mines themselves could not be damaged if shipments were to commence immediately.

Marines started leaving the mess decks. Ryck looked at his watch.

“Hey, eat up.  We’ve got to go.”

They crammed down their food and got back to their staging area, a large space that they shared with crates of some sort.  Then they waited.  And waited.  The lieutenant gathered them all together to go over their ops order, but in reality, that was busywork.  They had gone over it ad infinitum, and no plan lasted past the first few minutes of contact, anyway.  So it was hurry up and wait, which was par for the course.

It was a relief when the word was broadcast throughout the ship that the landing was on.  Most of the Marines gave an “ooh-rah” as they scrambled to their feet and rushed to their respective walk-ins.  Ryck rushed to his PICS and slithered through the back.  This actually took some effort as the weapons pack was still attached, so Ryck had to get low, over the butt of the PICS, then worm his way through the opening and up the suit, then pulling his legs up until he could slide them down inside.  Some of the other Marines were having problems, but there was enough assistance, Marine and Navy, to get them suited up.  An armorer ran a quick check on each Marine and initiated the cold pack.

One of the problems with any type of armored suit was getting rid of built-up body heat.  The old-fashioned fins that dissipated heat into the atmosphere made it easy for heat-seekers to pick up a suit’s signature.  The PICS were the first Marine mech suit to use cold packs.  A cold pack was a surprisingly small mass of a molecularly-arrayed synthetic heat sink.  To the layman, it looked like jelly.  What it did was capture heat.  It had to be controlled carefully, though.  If left unregulated, it could literally suck all the body heat from a Marine, killing him from hypothermia.  If it didn’t work efficiently, it could kill a Marine from heatstroke.  Any damage it received in the field could have deadly consequences, which was why each cold pack had a small jettison command that could be sent to eject it from the PICS.  The same access could be used to exchange the pack as each pack was only good for 24 to 30 hours, depending on the weather and other factors.

Finally, they were ready, and the lieutenant was given the OK.  He ordered the platoon out and to the hangar.  The Stork waiting for them was configured for PICS.  It had no enclosed cargo bay.  Marines and their corpsmen backed up to the overhead racks, and the back of their PICS married to the “clothes hooks.”  With a click, they were attached.

Within moments, the Stork lifted and flew out the hangar.  The Stork was dual-purpose, but it was better designed for air operations.  In space, it was a little slow.  So, the Storks took off before any of the support craft, the fighters and attack craft.

With no deck, the Marines were suspended “above” open space.  Some Marines didn’t like the “dangle,” even Marines who could do EVAs without a problem, but Ryck rather liked the sensation.  He’d only had two training lifts, and this was his first combat launch. Without having to fly an EVA suit, he could just sit back and enjoy the ride.

The Stork rotated, and the Prake fell out of view behind them, the planet filling their field of vision.  Ryck knew that it would be another 30 minutes until they landed.  He looked around, trying to catch sight of one of the other Storks or fighters, but space was big, and he couldn’t see anything.

It was obvious when they reached Luminosity’s atmosphere.  It started with a glow, then a burning fire that filled the space with light as the gasses of the atmosphere compressed in front of the vehicle.  Ryck knew that if the diversion field on the Stork failed, they would all burn up within moments, but that really was not a concern of his, any more than if the powerpack on his PICS would explode, or if his Navy chow was contaminated.  He just didn’t think about odd possibilities.

“Fifteen minutes to touchdown,” his comms’ AI intoned.

Ryck looked, trying to see through the flaring of the atmosphere, trying to pick out some landmarks.  Nothing.  It wasn’t for another 30 seconds that the burning died down, and he could see the planet’s surface.

The bulk of the planet’s population was on two main land masses.  There was a small unit of the People’s Army, as the militia was calling itself, on the larger mass, holding the main city there, but they would be dealt with during the second phase of the operation.  Phase 1 was to take back control of the capital and the second-largest city, rescue those being held as prisoners, and secure the three main mine sites.  The militia was larger, but it was spread fairly thin. The Marines could concentrate their forces and have local numerical superiority.  That, in addition to the Marines better training and equipment, should give the Marines the upper hand.

The Rules of Engagement were fairly stringent:  minimize friendly casualties as well as damage to the infrastructure.  For this reason, Fox (REIN)[22] had the point of main effort at the capital to dispose of the illegal Luminosity government and rescue those citizens held as prisoners.  PICS were not particularly effective in combat in a built-up area, unless full-scale destruction was allowed, so the more nimble-foot Marines, in skins and bones, would be employed there, with a squad of PICS Marines in support.  Weapons Company would take out the militia camp outside of the capital.  Echo Company would take the first mine objective (this was a foreign-owned mine, and rumor had it that this was selected due to some very highly-placed people in the Federation government having stock in the company).

Golf’s mission was the encampment located outside of Green Falls, the planet’s second-largest city.  This was the largest encampment uncovered, and it was well-situated to react to any threat toward the bulk of the largest mines on the planet.  Without friendly infrastructure