Jay Allan - Marines

With the blast shield down I still couldn’t see anything outside, but the monitors in my helmet activated automatically, feeding me all sorts of information – altitude, velocity, armor skin temperature, heart rate, and a dozen other informational tidbits of questionable usefulness. I pressed the small button under my left forefinger and the deployment display was projected on the inside of my faceplate. I could see 50 tiny green dots in ten groups – the entire platoon in ten landing craft. It looked like our formation was perfect (though as the junior private in the squad my only real concern was my location and that of my fire team leader). I knew the 1st and 3rd platoons were scheduled to launch 20 and 40 seconds after we did, with the company command and heavy weapon sections right after them. I had no reason to believe that they hadn’t launched as planned, but their assigned position was considerably outside the range of my deployment display, so I didn’t know for sure. I didn’t need to know.

The Gordon is a five-man disposable sub-orbital insertion vehicle designed to rapidly land attacking forces onto a hostile planet. Actually, “vehicle” is a strong word – it’s really just an open steel frame with a large triangular heat shield in the front. The entire thing looks a little like something you could build out of a child’s erector set. With 5 armored marines bolted to it.

The ride down started to get pretty rough as we entered the denser levels of the atmosphere, and the lander’s thrusters fired to lessen the angle of descent. Despite this and the protection of the forward heat shield, the status display indicated that the external temperature of my suit was rising as the protective foam coating burned off. The readings were well within the expected mission parameters, so I felt pretty confident that I wouldn’t be incinerated during the landing. Unless we were hit, of course.

The comlink crackled to life. “Altitude ten kilometers, retract blast shields and prepare for landing.” The lieutenant’s voice was calm and steady – I doubt mine would have been so reassuring. Fortunately, no one was waiting for instructions from me.

I depressed the small lever under my left thumb to retract the blast shield and with a loud click the steel plate slid up over my helmet, and I could see. Mostly I could see the back of Will Thompson’s helmet. As the squad’s junior member (and only new recruit), I occupied the last position on the assistant squad leader’s lander. Will was the senior private in the squad – traditionally the one given the task of babysitting new guys – and he was positioned right in front of me.

I was still locked in place on the lander and couldn’t even turn my head to look around. It was just about dawn over the landing site, and even if I could have taken a look, the visibility in the early morning light was pretty limited.

I did have a peripheral view of the lander’s top-mounted point-defense laser turret (there was a bottom mounted one as well) as it whipped around and fired at something off to the right. I didn’t see any explosion, but we weren’t hit by anything either, so the laser must have been on target.

Fleetcom had told us to expect minimal ground-based fire during landing. There had been a few orbital platforms hastily positioned by the enemy, but the navy had blasted those long before we stepped into the launch bay. We had total local-space superiority, a prerequisite to any landing that wasn’t going to be a bloodbath.

According to Fleet, there were no ground-based installations whatsoever, so any surface to air fire would be from hand-held rocket launchers and maybe a light vehicle or two – nothing the Gordon’s onboard point defense couldn’t handle. Of course, no one from Fleet was bolted into a lander right now, so I suspect all of us were a little more concerned than they were. I certainly was.

The top laser turret whipped around to the left and fired twice within two or three seconds. Only the onboard tactical computer knew whether there were two incoming targets, or the first shot was a miss.

I rolled my eyes up to check the status monitors. Our altitude was just under 6 kilometers, a bit high to be taking this much fire from hand-held rocket launchers. According to the training manual, most hand held surface to air weapons had a generally effective range against a point defense equipped target of 3 km, though the theoretical maximum ranges were far greater. Most likely there was some kind of vehicle mounted SAM down there. Not a huge danger if there weren’t too many of them – the Gordon’s point defense was state of the art. Besides, the SAM couldn’t fire too many times without moving. The Guadalcanal was still monitoring the landing area and would provide suppressive fire if the launcher gave up its position.

The lander’s thrusters fired again, and we banked sharply to the left. I couldn’t see any of the other ships, but a quick click of my finger brought up the deployment display again, and we were still in perfect formation. Our altitude was 3.5 km and descending rapidly.

The comlink crackled to life again. “Four minutes until touchdown. Landing proceeding according to projection. The tactical plan is unchanged….I repeat, the tactical plan is unchanged.”

Every specific aspect of a planetary assault is thoroughly planned before a single marine enters the launch bay, but with so many variables it is crucial that modifications can be made at any time. If any of our landers were off course, or if the resistance on the ground was substantially stronger than expected, the battle plan could be altered in response to the change in conditions. Our platoon commander remains in constant contact with the company CO, who himself is tied in directly with tactical support services on the Guadalcanal. If changes are required, he would revise the plan, and the new instructions would be downloaded into the squad leaders’ personal AIs. After a briefing by the platoon commander, the squad leaders would then be responsible for transmitting revised orders to their own troops.

With the landing going as expected, the mission was to proceed as planned. The entire population of Carson’s World lived in a cluster of small mining towns in the southwestern section of the single major continent. The Central Asian Combine had sent in an invasion force about three months before and had taken control of the developed areas. With no regulars stationed on the planet to support them, the local militia had been unable to hold the towns against the CAC assault troops.

Intelligence reports indicated that the militia, rugged miners all, had hurt the CAC regulars badly and had withdrawn into the hills with much of their strength intact. Based on these reports, Fleetcom had decided to launch an immediate counter-invasion with a single battalion rather than wait for more units to arrive.

“Two minutes until touchdown. Power-up weapons systems.” I clicked the levers under my right middle and forefingers. There was a series of loud clicks as the autoloader fed five grenades from the magazine on my back into the launcher on my left arm. My AI could have done that for me, but I felt better feeling the switches under my fingers.

“Squad two, weapons check. Report status.” The voice on the comlink had changed. It was Sergeant Harris, our squad leader. One by one the members of the squad sounded off. “Jenkins operational. Kleiner operational….”

I glanced up at the status monitor. The two green weapons control lights indicated that my battle computer had successfully completed a full diagnostic test of armaments. My grenade launcher and auto-rifle were loaded, charged, and ready. As the only raw member of the squad I had not been outfitted with any other weapons, though my armor could have carried and powered at least two additional systems.