Tombstone by Jay Allan Read Free Book Online Page B

enemy
penetration here would quickly become an exposed salient.  But what we didn’t
know…what we didn’t need to know…was under the ridge ran a rich vein of
trans-urianic element…not the fleeting scraps manufactured in labs that decayed
in nano-seconds, but naturally-occurring stable isotopes that were non-existent
on Earth and still not fully explained by physicists.  These strange substances
had been found on a small handful of worlds and, vital for high-yield spaceship
drives, they were priceless.  The deposits under the ridge were worth more than
all of our lives - at least to Alliance Gov - and while the Corps had a
different set of priorities, it followed orders.  Where we were told to fight,
we fought.  And right now that was on McCraw’s Ridge.  I was positioned almost
dead-center, along a spiny Y-shaped rock outcropping…a spot that would later be
known as the Cauldron.
     

Chapter 7
     

2252 AD
McCraw’s Ridge
Central Sector – “The Cauldron”
Day Two – Morning
Delta Trianguli
     
    They’d hit us five times the day before.  Of course, the
days were our own construct, existing largely on our suits’ chronometers. 
Tombstone took over sixty Earth hours to complete its rotation, and it was
never really dark, not even at night, thanks to the electrical activity and
chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere.  The eerie glowing clouds didn’t
give off the light the sun did, but it was enough to see by, especially with
your visor set to mag 2 or 3.
    Now we were on day two of the battle, though we’d fought
more or less continuously, and the second day notation had more importance for
record-keeping than any real tactical significance.  You’d want it to be
correctly noted what day of the battle you were killed on, after all.
    I was only a private, barely a rung above the lowly position
of “new guy,” so keeping track of planetwide resources wasn’t something I spent
much time on.  But to my knowledge, our total strength on Tombstone was
approximately three battalions.  The enemy had more, but only marginally so –
about two and a half of their tac-forces – the rough equivalent of four
battalions.  Now they’d deployed what appeared to be an entire tac-force
against us, which was an unprecedented troop concentration on Tombstone.  A
ten-year struggle between widely-dispersed patrols and platoons was seeing its
first pitched battle.
    We’d been taken by surprise by the enemy build-up, but the
colonel responded quickly, shifting forces from all over to reinforce our
position.  It’s amazing how minutes can drag into eternity when you’re
outnumbered 5-1 and waiting for reserves that are “almost there.”
    I hadn’t moved more than 50 meters in the last 24 hours.  I
was behind the rocky crest of the ridge when the attacks started, with a good
field of fire on the broad plain in front of us.  Just to my right there was a
spur of the outcropping that ran perpendicular out from our location.  Any
attack on our position forced the enemy to either split his forces or
concentrate on one side or the other.
    The first attack came right at me, with all the strength to
the left of the rocky spine.  We hit them hard with fire on the way in, but
there were a lot of them, and it looked like they might overrun us.  But they’d
made a mistake in ignoring the other side of the rock spine.  The lieutenant
swung around with one of our squads, firing at the enemy flank from the cover
of the line of rock.  Faced with heavy fire from two directions they withdrew
with heavy casualties.
    The lieutenant pulled back the advanced squad before they were
exposed to the resumption of enemy long-ranged fire.  The Caliphate forces had
suffered at least 40 casualties; we’d lost 3, and two of those were wounded. 
We got them both patched up and stabilized before Tombstone finished them off. 
The enemy casualties were mostly KIA, either from the initial hit or the
consequences of their suits