THE PRIZE: BOOK TWO - RETRIBUTION by Rob Buckman Read Free Book Online Page A

noncoms.
    A lot of unanswered questions still bugged him, but he didn’t have time to worry about them right now. His main concern was getting a bunch of individual units into a cohesive fighting force. No small task considering that only a few of them came from the same regiment. Taking Colonel Ellis at her word, he immediately promoted people as needed for his command staff, starting with Second Lieutenant Partridge. He promoted him to Captain and made him his Adjutant. That halved his administration load and permitted him to concentrate on an improvised training schedule, and order of battle. As promised, supply shuttles arrived at regular intervals, bringing with them much needed new weapons, ammo packs, and sundry food supplies. The shuttles came in, dumped their load, and took off again without anyone seeing or speaking to the shuttle crew. Whoever orchestrated this, and Cassidy was betting the Colonel, made sure they got the best of everything, right down to new uniforms, boots, and combat gear. Few if any had a problem with dumping the worn out, hand-me-down, second-rate equipment they’d been issued with by the Tellurians. Even with all the rush, it still took a month before Cassidy felt ready to push off. What surprised him was that he wasn’t getting a constant stream of screaming messages from some brown-nosed Var officer for him to get a move on. Starting at the bottom, he and the RSM organized troopers into a five-man fire teams with a Lance Corporal in charge. Two fire teams had a Corporal in charge, and a Sergeant had four fire teams under him, or 50 troopers each. Building on that, he put a Second Lieutenant in command of two complete fire teams, or 100 troopers each. The Lieutenants had two Second Lieutenants reporting to him, and the two Lieutenants reported to a Captain and designated Squadron Commander. In all, he had sufficient troopers to make up four squadrons, with enough left over to make up two scout squadrons, a HQ company, a mortar and a light artillery company. With no mech equipment he didn’t have to worry about a large maintenance unit. The small, lightweight tracked robo units would carry their extra ammo, mortar and artillery rounds, food and medical supplies. It did worry him that he didn’t have any satellite coverage, but he did have sufficient stealth anti-grav drones to give him reliable ‘eyes in the sky’. Colonel Ellis only turned up twice to check on his progress and give him the latest Intel updates on the Thrakee deployment. The day after her last visit, Cassidy issued the order to saddle up and move out to start the march up country. They met their first resistance three days out, and all hell broke loose.
     

Chapter Four
    Earth - Sol Space
    ...♫We all shall lead more happy lives by getting rid of brats and wives that scold and bawl both night and day - O'er the Hills and far away and over the main, through Friend, Foe, and Markoff’s hand, Emperor Cytec commands, and we'll obey O’er Hills and far away♫…
    While General Marks and Colonel Cassidy organized and trained his army, Penn and Ellis contemplated where to start on their action plan, and how to get Earth back on its feet. Penn’s fake orders from the Director and the Emperor had worked like magic and the Empire troops were gone, at least for a while. How long it would take the Imperial Navy’s Startography division to resurvey this region of space was unknown, probably years. At least five was Penn’s guess, before they ‘rediscovered’ Earth. By that time he had to have an army, some form of air force, a space based navy, and have Earth back into some semblance of civilization. He’d put the first element into motion, and placed it in the hands to two very competent men, one on planet, the other in a simulated war somewhere inside a mountain size pyramid on the other side of the galaxy. Now, with Ellis’ help, he pondered how to start the process for the other two elements.
    “You know, we could