UNIVERSAL TURBULENT

XLIV - INDEPENDENT EARTH

A tone warbled, James gave a war whoop, and the plane flipped onto its back. There was no way to tell whether the officer had a reason for flying that way or simply wanted to.

Luton, still strapped into his chair, felt his feet flip over his head. A stylus feel out of his pocket and clattered to the floor.

The infantry officer felt the chair jerk, knew air to surface missiles had been launched, and heard James' casual drawl.

"Blue Six to Blue Leader. Feet dry, enemy engage. Over".

"That's a roger, Blue Six. You are green for target one-niner-four. Do your s**t. Over".

The Lance flipped right side up, shuddered in response to a near miss, and jerked as two additional flights of ASMs raced toward a preselected target. The sticks continued to pound out their rhythm.

Luton forced himself to think, to switch himself away, to "ride" someone else.

He was a platoon leader this time. The hard metal seat slammed into the base of his spine as the transport hit the bottom of an air pocket and lurched forward. The voice was calm and measured. "We are five to dirt. Passengers can collect their baggage on carousel six. Lock and load".

Luton jumped again. The fort passed below. A two thousand pound bomb exploded on the northern scarp. Dirt and rock flew into the air. White paint turned black, but the heavily reinforced walls continued to hold.

The officer jumped, found himself aboard one of the Trooper IIIs and watched his heavily armed analogs fly, wriggle, and roll away. Something shoved from behind. The cyborg fell, hit, and rolled.

The borg climbed to his feet and turned toward the sound of another explosion. Flames belched from the recently emptied transport. A crew person staggered out through a hatch and collapsed on the ground. Her flight suit was on fire. She lay without moving.

The cyborg turned his back, spotted what looked like a mobile radar platform, and fired a shoulder mounted missile. The target exploded. Assault Team Victor was on the ground.

* * *

Marco would have preferred to be up on the walls, or out with the troops, but couldn't afford the luxury. Not with half a brigade of still questionable troops under his command. No, like it or not, the Sit Room was the right place to be. Thanks to the advance work carried out by Sergeant Fo and her staff, he had plenty of intel. Nearly too much.

It was difficult to keep up with the back and forth radio traffic, the video feeds provided by squad and platoon leaders, the eye in the sky stuff beamed from unmanned drones, tiny robocrawlers and remote sensor packages stationed up to fifty miles out.

That being the case, a technician named Motif had been assigned to assist Marco by switching appropriate images to the bank of three monitors located in front of his command-style chair. Not the same as a full-blown VR rig, but his enough.

The initial stage of the attack had gone pretty much as Marco had expected it to. A wave of fighter bombers came first, followed by the surviving transports, and landing in force at Boi Vawa, Dahmer, Arta, and Salmi.

War involves tradeoffs, so while the assault team had multiple landing zones to defend, the strategy would allow them to deploy quickly and force the defenders into a complicated response.

The strategy seemed familiar somehow, as if Marco had seen it before. But where? The question continued to nag at Marco's mind as the officer sorted his forces into response teams and struggled to stay on top of the incoming intelligence.

Then he had it, Luton! A younger version of whom had successfully split a frog offensive into six separate elements, thereby enabling the planet's security detachment to fly from one fire base to the next and attack the phibs one pod at a time. "Divide and conquer" was one of the oldest military strategies around, and one of the best.

Not satisfied with running the Legion from North America, the traitorous sonofabitch was leading the raid himself! Talk about walls. Maybe they could nail the bastard and really deal the enemy a blow. Satisfied that he knew whom he was up against, Marco turned to the matter at hand.

Luton's forces had broken out of three different landing zones, picked up the old Darie Dari railroad bed, and were on the move.

Captain Walker had orders to cut them off while Major Daniell brought Delta company into action. If the XO could manage to flank the enemy, Walker would have a chance. But how likely was that, given the officer in question?

Marco watched from Captain NY's point of view as her energy cannons burped coherent energy, converged on a Trooper II, and blew the cyborg in half. The camera shuddered as a missile hit the quadrupled, then steadied. The mutineers hadn't put any quads on the ground, not so far, and that was good.

"Look", Makoje said, momentarily forgetting to say "sir", as he pointed toward monitor three. "They're taking a run at battery one sierra echo".

The AA battery, which consisted of four 133mm SAM launchers and A Gatling g*n, opened fire. It was located near Loyada. Marco saw four contrails and listened to the operator cheer on channel two. "Did you see that? We nailed the bastard!"

It was the least transmission he ever made. Chunks of mutie aircraft still cartwheeled out of the sky as three enemy fighters rolled and dived toward the ground. The bombs knew where to go and went there. The monitor snapped to black.

Marco swore activated his mike. "One-One to One-Three. Where the hell is that air cover? We need it now! Over".

Given the fact that Lucy had no control over the matter in question, she might have been angry or resentful. She sounded smug instead. "Roger that One-One. Fast friendlies on the way, ETA one minute thirty seconds. Over".

Marco was speechless. Lucy smiled.