Task Group One

A hastily rewritten plan split the Fleet along uneven lines.  The light cruisers Cairo and Dallas and three destroyers were already on their way, escorting the Marine division to New Albion. 

The balance of the Fleet, including the newly arrived Arcadia and her sister ship the Ranger, expected within forty-eight hours, would jump for the calculated location of the primary Grugell rally point, where the enemy was expected to regroup after their initial flight into Confederate space.  The rally point seemed to be a randomly chosen spot in open space; exactly what Admiral Gauss would have chosen.  It was a random coordinate-set in deep space, near no occupied system, deep in a sector of space normally transited only by ships traveling in subspace.

The task of calculating the trajectory required to drop the Fleet in on the unsuspecting Grugell had taken only a day, once all the locations were plotted.  Assembling the Fleet had taken longer, and in this they had been aided only by the fact that the Grugell faced the same handicap. 

When all was ready, Captain Jerry Jensen brought the finalized timetable to Fleet Admiral Gauss as he sat in his habitual chair in the Mountain View’s Combat Information Center.

Gauss studied the timetable carefully, and then looked up at the big time display on the wall.  The Fleet would cross the Line of Departure in sixty-three hours and twelve minutes.

“Any word from New Albion yet?” he asked no one in particular.

“No sir,” the Signals watch officer replied.  “Shouldn’t expect anything for a few days.”

New Albion

The cruisers and destroyers popped out of subspace within a whisker of normal orbit, a risky move but one deemed acceptable by Captain Kirk Oliver, commanding Task Group 1.1.  Two Grugell cruisers and a smaller ship opened fire almost instantly, damaging the Cairo before both cruisers vanished in puffs of flame from several Lancer missile hits.  The smaller ship, one drive pod sheared off by particle beam fire from the destroyer Charles Daly, fled into subspace, leaving the garrison below abandoned.

Landing operations commenced two days later, on arrival of the old OWME liner Santa Maria.  By that time, the Grugell garrison on the surface had been meticulously mapped by the cruiser’s scanning suites; detailed maps were passed out to all the Marines down to the Squad Leader level. 

One platoon descended in each of the Santa Maria’s old landing shuttles, enduring the jolting ride down through New Albion’s gravity well to find a dispirited defense waiting them on the surface.  Abandoned by the Fleet, the Grugell infantry on the surface were more inclined to surrender than fight, with one notable exception.

Dug in around the Command compound for the Grugell Occupation was a battalion of the Fifth Imperial Guards, a unit noted for fanaticism.  The Commander of the Fifth, Stekakrattik III, had issued orders:  Fight to the death.  No human troops to pass their perimeter.  The Occupation Commander’s compound to be preserved at all costs, in the name of the Emperor.  Armed to the teeth and dug deep into heavily fortified positions, the Fifth would be the toughest nut for the Confederate Marines to crack.

The first Confederate troops down near the Fifth’s perimeter was the shuttle carrying First Platoon, Charlie Company, 3^rd Marines.  Corporal Gerald Rosenberg led his squad off the shuttle with a roared, “Second Squad, all the way!  Follow meeee!”

The eight Marines of Second Squad, First Platoon charged towards a high wire fence containing a number of low buildings.  Green bolts of Grugell fire swept the field, killing two squad members and driving the rest to earth.  Around them, Corporal Rosenberg heard shouts, screams, and the popping of M22 carbines as the rest of First Platoon tried in vain to find cover.

Two bunkers on the other side of the fence were laying down a fan of green flame over the field.  Rosenberg stuck his head up; risking decapitation from the blast of energy weapons fire, he carefully marked the locations of the bunkers.  Rolling into a tiny depression in the brown dirt of the field, he fumbled for his radio.

“Charlie Six, this is Charlie One Two.  Request orbital particle beam fire on coordinates one four six five, six five three six and one four six six, six five three eight, over.”

“Charlie One Two, this is Charlie Six.  Negative on your request,” the crackling answer came back.  “Orbital emitters are busy elsewhere; unable to comply for one zero mikes.  How copy, over.”

“Six, One Two.  Roger that.  We’ll all be dead in ten minutes. Over.”

“One Two, this is Six.  Use your goddamn head and take out your targets.  Over.”

Rosenberg swore at the unseen radio operator on the other end of the radio net.  “Roger that, Six.  One Two out.”

The young Marine risked another quick look.  The two bunkers were still firing away with abandon; a scream to his left let him know another Marine had been hit.  He picked up his mike again.  “One Two Two, where you at?”

“To your left, One Two, about thirty meters,” the reply came back.

“You still got the Volcano?”

“Roger that.  You want to dig a hole?”  The Volcano was a cratering charge, which used a tiny particle of anti-matter to destroy landing fields by blasting a fifty-meter semi-circle of earth into vapor.

“Something like that.  You see where I am?  Make your way over here pronto.  Bring anyone else from Second Squad you can find.”

“On my way.”  Three breathless minutes later, Lance Corporal Jonah James arrived with three other Marines.  He wordlessly handed the golf-ball sized Volcano explosive to his squad leader.

“OK, here’s the plan.  Mickey, you and Pete lay down fire on that bunker to the right.  Harry, you roll a little to the left, fire on the firing slit of that other one.  Jonah, you come with me.”  Low-crawling in the best style they’d been taught by the screaming, foul-mouthed Drill Instructors at Camp Instruction, the Marines wriggled off towards the right-hand bunker.  After a minute or so of wriggling through the choking dust, they arrived at a small depression forty meters from the bunker.

“How you doing?” James asked the corporal. 

“I’m fucking amazed we made it.  How’s your arm?”  Rosenberg rolled to grin at James, his white teeth standing out against his camouflaged, dust-covered face.

“You did better than me in grenade practice,” James replied.

“I’ll give it a try.  Horseshoes and hand grenades, right?”

He rolled on his back, holding the Volcano in his right hand.  His thumb pressed a contact; the Volcano began to whine softly.  He counted to five, half-rolled, rose to his knees, and threw the Volcano with all his strength at the bunker.

A bolt of green clipped his shoulder, but the explosive was already on his way.  Rosenberg dropped to the dust, teeth gritted against the burn, and buried his face in the dust as a massive blast erupted only eighty meters away.  The shock wave rippled sickeningly through both Marines. 

“Gerry,” James spat a mouthful of dust out.  “Gerry?  You ok, dude?”

“Think so.  Burned my shoulder, but it’ll be all right.  No bleeding, anyway.”

“Bunker’s gone, dude.  Sorry, I mean Corporal.”

“Don’t sweat it.  What about that other one?”

“Still shooting, but taking a lot of fire back.  WHOA!”  Fired from Second Platoon’s positions, a Kestrel anti-armor missile slammed into the other bunker, obliterating it.  The path into the Grugell Command compound was open.

The mop-up of the main compound was over in two more hours.  With the capture of the Grugell Occupation Commander and the destruction of the last of the Fifth Imperial Guards, the Grugell resistance evaporated. 

On the third day after the firing stopped, a thin, bedraggled, and thoroughly exhausted Jason MacFeeters led a hundred and six survivors out of what remained of the Crow Ridge Mountains.  He reported to the Marine outpost near the ruins of Glengarry as the commander of the “First New Albion Highlander Volunteers,” and requested orders.  He was told to stand down.

New Albion belonged to the Confederacy again.

To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.