Marines: Crimson Worlds I by Jay Allan

Author:Jay Allan [Allan, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: System 7 Publishing
Published: 2013-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Space Station Tarawa

Gliese 250 system

Major Cain. It still sounded strange to me. I remember the first time I saw a major at Camp Puller. He seemed so imperious, so totally in command, I was in awe. Was that me now?

I now outranked the officer who recruited me, or at least his rank at that time. Actually I’d found out that Captain Jack had ended up as Colonel Jack, and that he’d died during Achilles. I didn’t know at the time, but he was commanding the rearguard that covered us all as we escaped, and he was almost the last man hit.

I glanced at the organizational chart. A battalion. Over 500 troops, all under my command. We were going in as part of a brigade-sized attack, which would be the largest operation since Achilles. I was strangely calm, although the prospect of commanding so many troops in battle was daunting.

A look at the top of the org chart made me feel a bit better. Brigadier General Holm was commanding the operation. Holm had taken an interest in my career, and I didn’t doubt I owed my rapid advancement since the Academy to him, at least in part. I hadn’t served with him since Columbia. In fact, until a few days before, I hadn’t even seen him since that battle had started, though I’m pretty sure I owed my survival to his efforts to find me when anyone else would have given me up for dead.

Although smaller than Achilles, this was still a major operation, and it got me thinking about the evolution in battle tactics over the last 75 years. Early fighting in space was conducted mostly by local militias, with very small units of regulars attached for stiffening. Even during the First Frontier War, it was rare for more than a platoon of regulars to be involved in any one battle. This was true colonial warfare, not unlike what transpired in the early days of the European wars in the New World. It was just too expensive to move around large bodies of troops in space. The navies were small, and they simply did not have the capacity to transport major units. Certainly, all these early battles were fought without tanks, artillery, and other support elements.

The colonies were smaller then, too, and there were a lot fewer of them. The thin populations were generally spread around wherever there were resources to exploit, and true cities and towns were rare. Taking a planet usually required no more than attacking a few clusters of settlements.

The spheres of influence of the Powers were much more in a state of flux then, and many worlds changed hands repeatedly. Hostile colonies were all mixed together, sometimes even in the same system, and there were no real borders or rational lines to defend. The treaty that ended the First Frontier War started the process of rationalization. The Powers were each more willing to concede systems they knew they’d have trouble holding anyway, and a natural trend toward consolidation began.

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