Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade Read online

  “You’ll know if we do, Allen. Better watch yourself.”

  “Ooh, like I haven’t heard that before,” she snapped.

  “Dang,” Patton droned, as if entranced. “I think I’m in love. Haisha, Allen. You are so bee-yoo-tee-full. Will you marry me and have my bay-bees?”

  “Hell no,” Miranda-Naero said with a grimace. “Your right hand might get jealous and try to strangle me in your sleep.”

  More laughter followed. His mates helped walk Barrett to the infirmary.

  This was Thirdday, what the landers used to call Tuesday, after some ancient god or goddess or some such. Every day of the standard week, the Marines did something special at night, if they weren’t on duty.

  Every Thirdday was food night, and Company 36 made special dishes or shared special treats with their mates. It got pretty wild, along with the regular crap of gambling, bitching, posturing and trash talk, sparring, and couples pairing off and sneaking away for monkey love.

  The next day, Fourthday, the old Wednesday from the past, was strangely enough: reading and Book Day, Chime Fox’s fave day.

  First, 36 began to settle down and study their sitreps for Ptolemy-5. There’d be an initial briefing before they geared up and dropped.

  Later that day, the gravity went off for a bit during their reading time. Naero thought it was very humorous, and took vids of her and nearly a hundred of her new chums with some of Chime Fox’s paperbacks, floating about and bouncing around, reading and turning pages. She seemed to have a little bit of everything.

  “Wanna meet my second cousin Jonny in Squad 4?” Chime asked. “I’m the older cousin, by several months. I’m sure he’d like to meet a hot little dish like you, Allen.”

  Miranda-Naero sighed and frowned. She remembered seeing Jonny in action during the battle. “I’m willing to meet anyone, but I don’t need you pimping me out to your Clan there, Chime.”

  Chime laughed. “Don’t be that way. Jonny’s a sweet guy–unlike most of these goons, and he’s a great Marine. You’ll like him. Come on.”

  Miranda-Naero shrugged, and Chime led her over to Squad 4.

  Someone whistled when they floated over into view. That was Terrence Decker, ripped, 1.91 meters or bigger, and short blue hair on top like a coarse brush, blue eyes and bold-ass naked, reading a murder mystery. “Oh, man. Lookee here, Jon-Jon. Your hot cousin’s here to screw my brains out…again.”

  A guy who looked a little like pretty Chime frowned and droned, “That shouldn’t take long, Decker. Imagine her surprise.” Jon Fox was average size, medium brown hair, well-built and in perfect shape, with soft green eyes. He was reading a historical romance by the cover, possibly even a regency.

  Decker either didn’t get the jibe or ignored it. “Ooh, lookee-lookee. My lucky day. She brought a cute friend. It’s the hot little rook. Looks like a threesome ta me!”

  Chime burst out laughing. “In your dreams, you troglodyte. Put some man-clothes on and go hump a dead mammoth or something. But you stay away from me and my new gungirl galpal, Decker, or we will both kick your balls to mush. You haven’t seen her fight. I have. We got a regular Cyclone among us.”

  “Ooh, I like it rough.”

  “Hey! Decker,” Jonny Fox suddenly warned, with an edge to his voice. “Chime’s my Clan and my blood, so just frost your dumb ass.”

  Decker grinned. “Sure thing, Jonny. Later, honeydolls.”

  Jonny smiled at Miranda-Naero. “Don’t mind him; he can’t help it.”

  “Mental defective?” Naero asked.

  Jonny chuckled. “No…he’s just a dick. Get’s stupid when purty girls are around and too much blood rushes to that tight little head of his.”

  Chime and Miranda Naero tried not to giggle a that one.

  Miranda-Naero glanced at his book “Regency, huh?”

  “What can I say. Those fancy clothes are a turn on, and I’m a sucker for happy endings. What do you have? Hard boiled detective, huh?”

  “Yeah…the butler did it.”

  He halted. “Isn’t that more of a whodunit or a cozy? And what the hell was a butler, anyway?”

  “All right,” Miranda-Naero said. “Then it’s the smoking hot dame with legs that won’t quit. Oh, and a butler was a kind of house servant.”

  “There, that’s more like it. And thanks for the info.”

  Chime just stood by, watching and listening to them go back and forth. She put her hands on her hips. “Well Haisha. Should I leave you two kids alone with your books?”

  All three of them laughed. “Hey,” Jonny said. “Let’s float over to my cold stash and have something tasty.”

  “Sure thing,” Miranda-Naero said.

  When they got to a coded storage hatch, Jonny punched it open with his thumb. “I got three bottles of ice cold Spacer poteen,” he bragged.

  Naero nearly fainted.

  He also had about six four paks of Jett behind that.

  “Make mine Jett, please,” she nearly stammered. “In fact, I’ll pay you top market price for one of those four paks, and be your goddam friend for life.”

  Jonny Fox took out one of the cold four paks and tossed it to her straightaway. “No, charge, Allen. Consider it a gift…friend for life.”

  By then Miranda-Naero had snapped one open and guzzled it down.

  Chime laughed. “Haisha, I think she likes that stuff.”

  “I do, too,” Jonny said, and grabbed a pak for himself. Chime still took a bottle of poteen for herself, holding it protectively.

  “Dang, that was good!” Miranda-Naero exclaimed, chucking the empty borbble into the recycler. “I sure as hell needed that. Guys, I’d get transfusions of this stuff if I could. I love it that much.”

  Jonny closed and secured his stash, and smiled. “Well, if anyone blasts my cold stash open, I’ll know who the hell it was, Allen. I hear they call you Brighteyes now.”

  “Oh, they’re just being generous.”

  They wandered into the ship’s gallery to play some vidgames. Other Marines joined them there, and they had a great time goofing off.

  Jonny Fox pulled her aside at one point. “Hey, Allen. Do me a favor and help me look after my cousin Chime. I worry about her.”

  “Why is that? She seems as competent as any other Marine, just like the rest of us.”

  “Yeah, I know she can handle herself. But it’s a long story. We’re the last two surviving kids our great-granny has. Everyone else died off during the wars. And sometimes, I just have dreams about something bad happening to her. Not me. I’m a survivor. But I keep worrying something bad is going to happen to Chime. She was always greatgran’s fave.”

  “Friend for life, you have my word. I’ll look out for my gungirl Chime. Good enough?”

  “Thanks, Allen. Very glacier of you.” They clicked Jett borbbles together.

  They sat up bullshitting, drinking Jett, while Chime sucked down Poteen and fell asleep between them with her head on first Naero’s and then Jonny’s shoulder, smacking her lips in her sleep. Chime looked very pretty like that.

  A Marine named Peter Cooper came by to return a book to Chime. Naero took it and assured Pete that she’d tell Chime how much he enjoyed the hell out of that historical thriller she gave him.

  Miranda-Naero went to sleep in her bunk that night, after putting Chime to sleep and dodging Acer’s stupid advances again.

  She was going to have to kick that dumbass Romeo silly at some point.

  She sent a quick report to Klyne, coded through normal channels, noting that she had not revealed her special status with Company 36 as yet.

  Somehow, she had a feeling that it was going to come out at some point on Ptolemy-5. On this system, it was a full-on, planet-wide war that they were jumping into.

  And as usual, the local landers were slowly losing. The Ejjai invaders had only been onworld for ten days. The entire local population of two billion Joshua Tech humans had done their best to fully mobilize to resist them, and continued to take heavy loss
es. Only their superior numbers were holding the enemy off, but they were clearly no match for the invaders on their own.

  Intense fighting raged around and throughout all five of the major gigacities. Hot did not begin to describe what Bravo Command and Company 36 would be storming into. They had been lucky on Ovedar-3. Bravo had caught the invaders before they could do their worst.

  But the meatships and the cloneships were busy, and on the move.

  On Ptolemy-5, the enemy meatships still operated full bore, day and night. Without assistance, the planet would be stripped clean within a month.

  This was already a straight-up fight.

  They were simply joining the dance fashionably late.

  General Walker started off by dropping down five Divisions of Bravo Command Marines, including Company 36. One division each would take on and engage the five enemy battle groups of ten thousand Ejjai each.

  As Walker put it, delicately, they were going in to take those Ejjai clone bitches by the throat and knife open their guts through the spine. And once each enemy battle group was fully engaged, more Bravo Marines would be poised to drop in at the best points to wipe them out even faster.

  Naturally, reports of atrocities by the invaders were already routine and to be expected. The usual hi-tek war was waged trying to keep the invader broadcasts of those horrors to a minimum. The invaders went out of their way to be brutal, ruthless, and cruel. They rejoiced in such activity–even wallowed in it. And in keeping with their hyper-violent nature, they fought without quarter or mercy to butcher anything that lived.

  Bravo killed–hot or cold–quickly, and efficiently, only too happy to oblige the foe and surpass them in ferocity, if nothing else.

  The Marines went in at night, just the way they liked, did their homework, and got into position.

  They hammered the enemy hard, catching them in the middle, between the defenders. Yet the Ejjai were many, well-armed, and almost always fought to the death, laughing their eerie, chortling laughter.

  The war quickly fragmented like glass into scores of pocket battles, various unit campaigns of fronts, rears, and flanks. This pitted specific units against one another in a rather normal, conventional war.

  There were advantages and disadvantages to this. There was no way to separate the attackers away from the defenders, and the invaders were also attacking the civilian population and refugees at the same time. This made naval and Marine air and ground support far less useful and effective.

  This meant that most of the war had to consist of close-up fighting. Unit shield flared and disrupted against unit shield, with weapons barking and punching back and forth. Microbombs, negation grenades and various ordnance burst among both side.

  2nd Platoon took on two hundred Ejjai at four to one odds. Undaunted, Leftenant Wilde led them into coordinated battle. They set their unit combat shields layered and full front, and charged them into the foe.

  The Anaconda sank her teeth deep into the invader throat, while her coils encircled and wrapped around them to throttle the life out of them.

  Not only that, but Marine reinforcements and support units dropped in out of nowhere to exploit enemy weaknesses wherever they appeared.

  Air and ground support couldn’t dust the entire area for fear of taking out friendlies. But they could use negations blasts to take down enemy shields over the invader positions, with little harm to friend or foe–except for exposing the slashers to direct fire without their shielding.

  Once their shields collapsed across the line, even the lander forces could exploit such advantages.

  2nd Platoon marched in behind a drop of meks and gunned the Ejjai down point blank, filling the enemy’s armored faces and chests with blaster fire and glowing holes.

  Bravo broke them down. Then the local defenders demanded the right to take their vengeance upon all of the foes who remained. The Marines gave them that right, and went along only to back them up and help protect them from any enemy traps and nasty surprises.

  In almost every engagement, even when outnumbered, the elite Spacer Marines eventually outwitted, outfought, and overcame the Ejjai invaders and soundly defeated them, always with pitched fighting.

  Yet as always, new problems and complexities presented themselves. Every battle and combat situation was different.

  At the next gigacity, the Ejjai were nearly in complete control, dug in and entrenched in all of the built-up areas. On top of that, they used captured civilians as not just hostages, but active human shields.

  Bravo again waited until nightfall, making their plans for another stealth assault. The city could be taken, yet there was no way to prevent hundreds of thousands–perhaps millions–of civilian deaths at the hands of their captors.

  Naero and Om had some ideas of their own, but to make them known, Shetanna could no longer remain silent.

  Miranda-Naero went to her commander for the last time in her disguise. “Leftenant Wilde, contact HQ and Major Luna immediately.”

  The Anaconda looked at her funny. “What is it this time, Brighteyes? Another hidden enemy minefield?”

  Naero hit her nano presets and morphed her stealth armor into her Intel variant, complete with her dark cloakcoat and Mystic battle mask. She undid her gleaming, long black hair and shook it free. Next she ignited her twin, blazing red Chaos katanas in both hands.

  Then she made her blades and all of herself go transparent, until she was nearly invisible. “I’m sorry to have deceived you,” she said. “Miranda Allen is but an alias.”

  Trevor Lakota stood by smiling slightly, not looking very surprised at all.

  “I see,” Wilde said. “Then I’m guessing that you are, in fact, our delayed Mystic Combat Liaison? How shall we know you, sir?”

  “I am Mystic Adept Naero Amashin Maeris, of Clan Maeris. And I hold the matching rank of Strike Fleet Captain. My battlefield codename is Shetanna.”

  Wilde saluted. “That rank is the Marine equivalent of a major, sir. I’ll bring you to the attention of HQ at once, and escort you there personally, if you so wish it.”

  “Please, out in the field and unless our superiors are around, let’s be on a name basis, first or last, you pick. That’s the way I run. Call me Naero, N, or Maeris.”

  “I’m Ana,” Wilde said. “I like that as well. Thanks, N. General Walker has spoken very highly of you and your service both during and after the Annexation War. And who has not heard of your illustrious parents? I thought you had that fighting style down a little too well.”

  Naero nodded. “My thanks once again, Ana. You honor me and my Clan.”

  “So, N. I assume that with this flamboyant entrance of yours, you have some Mystic tricks in mind to unleash on our new friends, in conjunction with our developing night operations?”

  “Indeed. Something quite radical, I would say.”

  The Anaconda showed her teeth. “Bravo specializes in stealth attacks, the radical, and the unexpected.”

  “First, I think we should send in everyone–even our reserves and any numbers that we can muster. And we do it quiet. They won’t expect us to overwhelm them one-on-one with knives, battle blades, and swords. We gut them all silently in the black with blades.”

  Ana raised both eyebrows. “Interesting. Daring. No military force has attempted such a thing on this scale in centuries, perhaps millennia. At the least, in a thousand years.”

  “And Bravo is the only force that can pull it off,” Naero said.

  “You are correct, N. It just might work, and they would never expect us to do such a thing. We can coordinate the attack with the assistance of all the other MCLs present in this battle zone.”

  Naero was called in to meet with Major Luna, who was still technically her commander. Everyone on the command staff for 36 introduced themselves to her, and she to them. Naero and Ana outlined the plan together.

  Then they contacted General Walker and Intel directly to gain approval.

  That night, a powerful thunderstorm unleashed i
ts fury on invader and defender alike. The weather played into Bravo’s hands even further. Under the cover of that storm, waves of Marines moved through the shadows in a deadly sweep.

  By dawn the next day, tens of thousands of Ejjai invaders lay dead, all with stunned and surprised looks frozen on their dead faces. Millions of equally stunned defenders and civilians finally began to realize that they were not only free, but delivered from the foe.

  It was as if avenging spirits had walked about and among the invaders that night and stolen their lives away in silent waves of sweeping, whispering death.

  Throughout the gigacity of Kolovan, and three others, the defenders found countless enemies cut down where they had stood and fought. Eyes staring wide in shock and fear. Throats slashed, necks and spines severed, eyes stabbed out, lungs and hearts punctured, heads nearly decapitated and skulls crushed. Guts sliced open and ripped out.

  Bravo exhausted themselves, but they took out entire armies of invaders, struck down silently in the black.

  And the legend of the deadly ghosts of Bravo Command only continued to spread and grow. Across all sectors, the invaders were freaking out, big time.

  Naero walked among Company 36 and introduced herself once more, apologizing for slightly deceiving them the way she did. She had her reasons.

  Jonny Fox laughed. “So, Brighteyes. Does this mean we’re not really friends for life?” he asked.

  Naero smiled. “It doesn’t change that much. Hand me a cold Jett, ffl, and let’s talk about it.”

  They did so. That night after the battle was another Fifthday, the ancient Thursday named after some other god. Fifthday nights were Chat Nights, and the Marines broke off into groups and pairs to talk, gripe, or get to know each other better.

  Naero sucked down some more of her stash of Jett, sharing one of hers with Jonny this time. “So, you gonna tell me this long story of yours?”

  Jonny Fox laughed, still so young that he looked like a boy more than a man. “Oh, I guess it isn’t that long. Like I said, Chime and I are the only surviving members in our family besides our great-granny Farita. Everyone else died in the various wars. Great-granny Fari loves books, and always read to us when she was raising us. She made us read to her when we got old enough. If you haven’t noticed, Chime’s a little bit of a kook about books and reading and all that.”