Crimson Worlds: Prequel - Tombstone by Jay Allan

Author:Jay Allan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: System 7 Publishing
Published: 2012-11-17T06:00:00+00:00

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 being breached.

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