Issue In Doubt by David Sherman

Author:David Sherman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: space battles, Military science fiction, Aliens, stellar marine force, space marines, starfist
Publisher: Dark Quest Books
Published: 2013-04-09T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Near the McKinzie Elevator Base, Marine Headquarters

Lieutenant General Harold W. Bauer, commander of the 1st Marine Combat Force, studied his situation board. The First Marine Division was all present. Sixteen battalions—infantry, light armor, armor—all ranging out far from Millerton on search-and-destroy missions, seeking the aliens who had invaded the world, and hoping to find survivors. The division’s reconnaissance battalion roamed in platoons and squads farther out. The rest of the division was in defensive positions surrounding Millerton and the planethead, formerly called the landing zone, five klicks to the west of Millerton. The Second Marine Air Wing was all planetside. Sixteen of the fighter and ground attack squadrons flew cover for the battalions; the other three flew search patterns where the ground forces didn’t go. Two of the atmospheric squadrons off the carrier Rear Admiral Norman Scott had been deployed planetside and joined the Marine air in searching for humans and aliens in areas not being patrolled by the ground forces. The rest of the MAW’s units were assigned to building, securing, and maintaining its base, and maintaining, refueling, and rearming the squadrons’ aircraft when they returned from their patrols. The First Marine Logistics Group was busy building Camp Puller, which would be the division’s home base on Troy, and in preparing ground for the VII Corps to establish its base when it made planetfall.

The level of the force’s activities satisfied Bauer—except for one detail. They had yet to find one bit of activity that they wouldn’t find on any habitable world that didn’t have human or other sentient occupants. For all he, or anybody else, could tell, Troy was an uninhabited world of ruins, or human structures that would someday decay into ruins.

The report from the Navy in orbit seconded what the Marines on the ground and in the air found: No vessels other than Task Force 8’s warships were anywhere in or near Troy’s system; Amphibious Ready Group 17 had already returned to Earth to pick up VII Corps. The satellites ringing the planet found nothing but a few gravitational anomalies on the world, not all that unusual for extraterrestrial planets—gravitational anomalies had long been known on Earth and its moon. Troy’s two moons had similar gravity irregularities.

The situation was such that Bauer and Rear Admiral James Avery considered sending a message to Earth calling off the deployment of VII Corps. In the end they decided that, in the interest of training for the Army and the ARG, not to send the message.

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