Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade by Mason Elliott Read Free Book Online Page B

Besh mining slaves had armed their world to the teeth since the Annexation War.
    By the time the Ejjai invaders fought their way through the Alliance fleets, and the system mines and gunships, most of the Ejjai shock troops had been swarmed on and slaughtered.
    So, why were the Marines of Bravo Command even there?
    For one thing, the defenders were exhausted, and many of their best units and fighters had suffered heavy casualties during the initial phases of the invasion.
    Next, one entire Ejjai battle group of ten thousand slashers were smart enough to escape with their remaining ships–including clone and meatships–to a continent on the earthlike planet that had not been settled. As a jungle world with dangerous creatures and unstable selontium deposits that disrupted and blocked coms and scanning, it was the perfect place to hide and lay low. Even fixers could not scan the continent and the thick jungles, although they could maintain some fleeting coms at close range.
    Even worse, the Ejjai sent out distress calls to all available invaders on the nearby systems. Other invader battle groups kept trying to reach Zvigeny-7 and join the fight. Everyone was getting worn down in a ceaseless hot zone.
    If the Ejjai maintained their foothold on that key system, the world-hopping campaign of the Spacer Alliance could not go forward and would stall-out. The enemy could flood more forces forward and seize even more worlds.
    Unless these Ejjai were eliminated, they would only continue to cause major problems. The depleted system defenders weren’t in any shape to pursue the holdouts. And there was always the threat of the enemy meatships and cloneships creating more enemy troops on their own.
    Naero finished studying the sitrep on her holopad screen and turned to Staff Sergeant Owen Valmont, leader of Squad 2. “Okay, so it’s a mop-up, but a tricky one.”
    Valmont seemed to be in agreement. “With a few complications, you are correct, N. We’ll insert in stealth mode, scout the target areas, and then bring the heat down where it’s needed.”
    As the company MCL for Company 36, Naero went in on point, ahead of Squad 2 in advance recon mode.
    Staff Sergeant Valmont, Deb Steiner, Waylon Aztec, and Wallace Archer in Fireteam 1. Sergeant Milton Ramsey in charge of Bessa Jackson, Acer Adams, and Sender Konrad in Fireteam 2. Corporal Baylor Scott led Fireteam 3, with Chime Fox, Falco Borelli, and Trisha Marshall.
    Five minutes after they dropped into the dense jungle, a hunting pack of twenty or more midsized carnasaurs started tracking and sizing the Marines up for a snack.
    Naero sighed and zipped back to Squad 2.
    “We don’t have time for this crap. Fighting these dinos will attract too much attention. Everyone with me in stealth mode. Hop-jump three klicks southeast of here. Form up on my mark, vector close. Mark!”
    That slight hop got them out of scent range from the pesky hunting pack.
    An hour later, Naero guessed that they had to be getting close to their quarry.
    The Ejjai were both messy and efficient. That section of jungle had been stripped of all life, huge or small. Anything that was meat. The invader meatships could process huge dinosaur carcasses as well as civilian humans.
    No scans worked, but from visuals alone, the old blood trails and kill spots were slightly less than a standard week old–about six days. That meant at least one or more meatships, and most likely a cloneship, as well, was feeding off the local fauna.
    Given time, the invaders would expand their own numbers, producing more and more of their violent kind, training and arming them to fight and kill relentlessly.
    It only took about a standard month of thirty days to create a fresh crop of Ejjai clone troops. They’d be meatship-fed and shunt-memory trained, complete with manufactured gear and weapons, ready to go forth and fight and feed on their own.
    This was the plague of the Ejjai invaders that the enemies of all humanity had unleashed