CPL Nickelbaucher

Location: Harper’s Junction, Star Kingdom of Windsor

CPL Mitch Nickelbaucher kept his thoughts to himself as he reached out to steady himself on the rock face. Most of the 942nd, including his battalion the 9422nd, was marching toward the capitol city to take it back from the Windsor’s. He’d been part of that march as they went up the mountains and back down the other side, but once they reached the bottom they got a FRAGO from the Battalion Commander.

The LCDR knew Mitch’s team, and a few others, had taken it on the nose in securing the valley town, so he had an alternative mission for them. Being taken out of the fight was something an infantryman never wanted to hear, but after getting charged by a Windsor mech, he was a little more amiable to the situation change.

What he was not cool with was having the hump it back up the mountain for the new assignment.

he mentally bitched where no one could hear him. As a CPL and team leader, it was his job to back the SGT, who was backing the LT, who was backing the Commander. No one else was bitching. Bitching was for PVTs and PFCs, although he was pretty sure the fixed look of irritation on the SGT’s face had a little to do with their new mission.

The mission of the detachment of Alpha Company 9422nd Infantry Battalion was providing close security for a pair of recon sniper teams and an unknown number of HI troopers that were going to provide indirect fire missions for the BDE as it marched across the farmland between the mountains and the city.

With the loyalists and Windsor’s already cleared out of the valley, and the only other hostile forces digging in around the capitol, sitting behind cammo-netting on a mountainside while the sniper’s sought out enemy leaders wasn’t a half bad gig. The problem was getting up to their position.

Snipers didn’t like to be where the enemy could easily find them, so they weren’t anywhere near the paths carved through the mountainside by centuries of travelers. That meant their squad had to scramble up the rock face relaying only on their strength and sense of direction. The loose shale had already rolled one ankle among the PVTs, and the PFC carrying the area forcefield had nearly fallen on his ass and slid back down the mountain.

“We close, Sergeant?” he sent over TACCOM. He couldn’t keep the exhaustion out of his voice.

“The beacon is close, Corporal. Just a bit farther.” Even the fit NCO sounded out of breath.

Mitch did his duty and motivated his soldiers forward, only for a chunk of mountainside the give way under him as he tried to crawl up it. He flailed helplessly in the air, wondering which of his soldiers he was going to land on top of, when a giant metal hand shot out of thin air and grabbed him.

“Easy there,” a suit-to-suit connection opened up. “I got you.” The metal hand, which was attached to a suit of V3 LACS armor effortlessly yanked him up and under the cammo-netting protecting their position.

The position was a shelf on the side of the mountain about twenty-five meters deep and nearly a hundred wide. Three other HI troopers were staggered across the shelf, along with area shield generators. It took a minute for him to spot the two sniper teams, even though one was less then five meters in front of him. Their polymorphic camouflage was engaged and they melded into the rock. An IR outline on his HUD popped up over their position so he didn’t step on them in the future.

“You’re our new security?” an LT appeared from behind a second cammo-net further back from the ledge.

“Yes, Sir,” the SGT let his neck gator slither down and removed his helmet.

“We’re on fifty percent security right now. Have your guys eat, shit, and sleep if they can. The fireworks aren’t set to kick off for at least another hour.” The LT left the SGT to do the NCO work and returned to his tent.

“Nickelbaucher, your team has thirty minutes to grab some chow and catch a few Z’s. Then be ready.”

Mitch and the rest of his guys were more than happy to take their helmets off, plop on their asses, and dig through their packs to grab the MRE’s that the quartermaster had randomly selected for them. As Mitch chomped on his chicken with noodles, which was nothing more than a mass of soy flavored to taste like those foods, he watched the battlefield before them. It was a trek all the way to the city, but the Windsor’s weren’t going to let them stroll right up to the gates without a fight. The leading elements of the Commonwealth force were about fifteen kilometers away, and slowly moving forward under the cover of area force fields. They were on foot and searching for anything that the enemy might have placed in their path. He’d heard whispers about mines, but couldn’t be sure about it.

The Commonwealth force were in unit-sized wedges over several kilometers. They weren’t going to bunch up and endure mass casualties if enemy artillery got through. Mitch popped his helmet back on and dialed his visuals into the shields. What popped up was a hodge-podge of overlapping energy. Each squad seemed to have a shield generator on the back of someone in the middle of their formation. The company then had a larger shield in a vehicle with the command team. The battalion had an even bigger shield that covered their command team and more important assets, and the CMDR with the brigade command team had their own powerful shield that covered a large swath of space. Any indirect fire from the enemy on the main body of the assaulting Commonwealth force would have to get through a lot of energy to hurt the soldiers on the ground.

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He’d heard about the new defensive tech, and experienced it with the tank and their own area shield, but this was something else entirely.

He was still watching when flares of energy erupted from a kilometer in front of the vanguard elements. Voices started to boom over TACCOM in the LT’s tent behind them.

“Here we go it’s time to earn our paychecks,” the LT yelled.

With a force this big moving on a target the brigade commander must have wanted a centralized artillery element. The HI troopers were good when looking after their own units, but trying to coordinate that fire over ten battalions and a hundred different companies was a headache just waiting to happen. Instead, the CMDR took a chunk of the HI, stuck them on the mountain behind shields and cammo-netting, and gave an officer the job of fire direction officer to address the fire missions and deploy their resources appropriately.

“And it’s our job the guide them,” Mitch sealed up his helmet just before panels in the cammo netting parted and half of the HI on the ledge fired. The boom stirred up dust and automatically activated his audio dampeners.

“Nickelbaucher, deploy your team,” the SGT sent a waypoint over his HUD.

The security elements were deploying to the ledge’s avenues of approach. Mitch’s team was guarding the way they’d come up, which was nothing but a field of shale for a hundred meters before hitting a walking path that snaked down to the main road in another two-hundred and fifty meters. They had clear fields of fire on anyone that was trying to sneak up on them, and protection from an area shield placed just fwith them in mind.

He was feeling the most protected since first setting foot on Harper’s Junction, which was what made his stomach drop when he saw the mountainside start to shift three hundred meters away.

“Sergeant!” he yelled as dirt and shale shifted and fell as something slid back to reveal a hole in the mountainside.

“Shit… open fire,” the SGT looked just as confused, so he went to the infantry default response.

Mitch put his sight on the opening and pulled the trigger. Rounds spit toward the chunk of missing mountain, but he had no idea if they were effective of not.

“Are we doing anything, Corporal?” a PVT asked as he dropped a spent magazine and loaded a new one.

Mitch switched the thermal vision and saw something hot inside. “We might have hit some…” his statement was cut off by the roar of sound and energy that sprang out of the opening. His HUD automatically shut down to protect his eyes, so he didn’t see the beam designed to engage warships in orbit punch right through a battalion, company, and squad shield on the Commonwealth formation’s right flank.

One second two hundred fighting men and women were marching, and the next they were vaporized by the energy emplacement.

TACCOM must have been going crazy, but as a lowly CPL, he didn’t have access to that chatter. His mission was the door to the energy cannon, which was already sliding closed.

“Put a grenade in that thing now,” he held down the trigger and sprayed rounds not into the opening but into the door itself.

A PFC with the fire team, the team’s only grenadier, slid an HE 40mm grenade from his armored compartment, stuck it in the oblong barrel attached to the bottom of his M3, sighted, and fired. The round arched through the air as the mini-silicon brain in the munition looked for any weak points. As it turned out, there was a small one. This firing point had been taken under fire by the Windsor’s during their invasion of Harper’s Junction. Their energy weapons had greatly weakened a section of the duro-steel door next to the opening/closing mechanisms. The grenade’s tiny brain noted the weakened density if the area and lined up its explosive charge to elicit maximum damage.

In the grand order of things in the battle for Harper’s Junction, a 40mm grenade fired from an infantry PFC’s M3 was nothing, but in this instance it got the job done. The grenade exploded, which sounded like a lady-like fart compared to the roar of the energy cannon, and the door’s closing ground to a halt.

“Nice shooting!” Mitch gave the PFC a mental high-five. “Sergeant, we busted the door. Permission to go in there and kick some ass.”

There was a pause before the reply. “Granted, and you’re taking backup. We can’t have that energy weapon blowing holes in the brigade again.”

Mitch’s team got up from their prone firing position and was joined by one of the HI troopers.

“Follow me,” the trooper announced as he hopped up and slide down the side of the mountain toward the winding foot-trail that would lead them to another forty-five degree climb up to the busted door.

“Lead the way!” Mitch wasn’t dumb enough to slide down the mountain without the added protection of a LACS, but he followed as fast as he could. Any thought of a leisurely mission was gone after seeing hundreds of his fellow soldiers incinerated.

Windsor Planetary Defensive Battery Seven

“Fire mission complete.” Ned informed as the batteries started to recycle and recharge. “Closing door now.” He hit a sequence of buttons and the cannon dropped down on the elevator to a separate firing position while the door closed up behind it. Hopefully, when the Collies figured out what happened there would be nothing but empty mountainside for them to find.

“Cannon to Position Three. That’ll give us the best angle on the left flank,” the SGT in charge of the battery ordered.

Planetary Defensive Battery Seven had a rough go of it so far. They’d had their power lines cut by sabotage at the source in the city, so they didn’t have enough power to damage the warships in orbit. Command had come down and told them to button up and wait it out for further orders. Then word came of the Collie landing force that took control of the valley to their south. The mountains were the only thing standing between the Collies and the capitol, but command still refused for them to conduct fire missions. Now Ned knew why.

The Imperial marines had several fixed fighting positions already in place between the mountains and the city. They wanted to trap the imperialist Collies between those lines and Battery Seven’s guns in the mountain. It didn’t matter if the enemy force was a thousand or a hundred thousand, their energy cannon, even with the planet’s atmosphere degrading their already-weakened effectiveness, was still more than enough to cut through most mobile infantry shields.

Ned grinned at the blow they would strike against the Empire’s enemies when an error icon flashed on his screen. “Sergeant, Position Eight’s door failed to close,” he relayed.

“Shit,” the SGT cursed. “Get a repair team up their now. ETA on the cannon getting to Position Three?”

“Four minutes and six seconds until cannon is locked in Position Three,” another member of the gunnery crew informed.

“Another two minutes and thirteen seconds for a full charge,” Ned added.

They had six minutes and nineteen seconds until they could deal another blow to the enemy. Ned looked over at Martin and smiled.