Meddlers In Time- The Cockatoo River Incident

  The raider's commander was no fool- as soon as the bell sounded he gave the order to fire the breaching charges and commence the assault. As the stone walls were breached, grenades were lobbed into the courtyards and the slavers immediately climbed through the breaches firing their short-barreled assault rifles, as they charged into the apartments.

  Jenny silently cursed as she hurried to take up a new position- the staff apartments were on the blind side to her hide on the knoll and her secondary position was five hundred meters away. The attack would be won or lost before she could get in a position to help. From the sounds of the battle, she could hear that the attackers were not having it all their own way. Somebody inside was fighting back.

  ***

  The old Blademaster, Jan Kessel, had taken charge of the survivors and was directing a fallback towards the central winding staircase. The surviving adults- five of them- were all bloodied and battered from the explosive attack and running low on ammunition. Jan knew they were done for, but he wanted to buy the girls’ time to organize a defense. If they could make the attack expensive enough, or keep them at bay long enough, there was a chance that the raiders would break off the attack before the local militia could mobilize. As the last of the group rounded the corner, he spied four troopers advancing through the smoke. “Hold the stair,” he yelled and threw himself at the advancing troops, firing his last two rounds. One struck a Crow trooper in the face, felling him, the second being stopped by the trooper's body armour. As he closed to knife range, a burst of rifle fire hit him in the belly. With his last strength, he staggered against one of the troops, sliding his dagger under his armour and through the diaphragm, into a lung.

  ***

  Assault Captain Ishmal sized up the situation on his tactical monitor and ordered the next two groups of four in, convinced that they had broken the back of the resistance. It had cost him four men, but he had known that the Imperials would not be taken without a fight. As he waved them in, a rifle shot sounded- not one of theirs- and one of the waiting assaulter's fell dead. The troops immediately located the position and two light machine guns hosed down the bell-tower. “Keep your eyes open,” barked the Captain. “You should have seen that sniper- they are meant to be the amateurs- not you.”

  As soon as Jenny heard the report of a sporting rifle, she groaned. “Not the tower- you know better than that.” Sure enough, the top of the bell-tower disappeared in a cloud of pulverized limestone.

  Inside, the assaulter's made the most of the distraction of the firing outside and rushed the stairs, firing as they ran upward. As they reached the first landing, two assault rifles opened up, one from each side of the first floor landing, raking the assaulter's with 7mm military rounds- which had no problem defeating Crow body armour. As with all cadet units, their rifles were not the latest, but were a perfectly adequate older revision of the Imperial 7mm caseless general-purpose rifle. The second wave was held off.

  Ishmal cursed again. This was taking too long and his losses had been high- but his backers did not accept defeat. He decided to redeploy and ordered his troops to the front of the mission, where he ordered a grenadier to breach the first floor wall, pointing at a likely spot. The grenadier fired two RPG rounds, tearing a meter-wide hole through the thick stone and the Captain ordered a scaling ladder into the breach, as his troops kept up a suppressing fire into the hole.

  With the worst of luck, the RPG rounds had struck the nursery, as several of the younger girls were evacuating the babies to the top floor. From her vantage point, Jenny could see where the wall was breached and guessed the worst, fighting back the streaming tears of rage and sorrow in her eyes. She needed her eyes clear- now she was in a position to fire on the raiders.

  Through her scope she saw one climb the ladder and raise something to the edge of the hole in the wall, before climbing down- it must be a camera. A short discussion between four figures- they would be the command group- and two details moved off. One went to the rear of the structure, while another set charges on the gate hinges. It looked like they were going to try a push from all directions, which would almost certainly overwhelm the defenders. Now she saw the auxiliaries start to move- they must have been summoned as scratch reinforcements. Jenny had a plan of attack.

  Assault Captain Ishmal was a very competent leader and knew that the attack had to keep moving, before the defenders managed to barricade themselves in further. He ordered his grenadiers to fire their last hyperbaric missiles at the stairwell and into the breached room. He figured that damaged slaves were better than no slaves. Not wanting to wait until his reserves brought up the extra ammunition- now running low, he ordered the attack to recommence. The first section blew the gates off and their grenadier fired down the main hall at the stairwell, as another blast weapon tore apart the badly damaged nursery, blowing out partitioning walls and widening the breach. Now there was no return fire coming from inside the building and the troops raced up the ladder and gained a foothold in the mission. At the same time the second and third sections stormed the stairwell, killing the last defenders. Intent on watching the action on his monitor, Ishmal failed to see that his reinforcements had not arrived.

  Jenny made the call to concentrate on cutting off the reinforcements. As the lead man reached the suspension bridge, she fired, dropping him in his tracks. The men following thought he had stumbled until others started to fall at a rate of one every three seconds. Finally realizing that they were under attack, they scattered for what cover they could find, while Jenny's heavy slugs tore through them. As soon as she saw the command group turn towards them, realizing that their reserves were under attack from a sniper, she swung her rifle around, loaded an armour-piercing round and carefully shot the man pointing and giving orders. The multipurpose round hit Assault Captain Ishmal under the armpit, the RDX charge detonating, sending the tungsten penetrator through both sides of his body armour and riddling his chest cavity with incandescent Zirconium chips.

  By way of getting their attention, she then loaded one of her full-power rounds and gut-shot the man next to him, then scurried back down the reverse side of the slope, to find another position. Machine gun fire raked the brow of the spur and a poorly aimed RPG grenade burst 50 meters away- but Jenny had disappeared into the night.

  The defenders had rigged a camera in the shattered remains of the bell tower and could see that somebody was out there and hurting the slavers- it had to be Jenny. The word spread like wildfire and strengthened their fading resolve to hold on. The attackers were now out of explosives, grenades and RPG's- their resupply scattered across the field on the far side of the river, dropped by fleeing or dying auxiliaries. They were now unable to push up the final flight of stairs, without facing a hail of copper and tungsten cones. After several minutes without a shot from below, the camera showed the troops in an orderly retreat, headed in the direction of their lighter. Every now and again one would fall and not get up.

  Jenny was now stalking. She would make a kill, then retire and take up another position. As she got nearer to the crippled ship, she glanced to her rear, checking her six and saw a flag had been raised from the ruins of the bell tower. They had held their ground. Then she felt her comm unit pulse against her wrist- comms were being relayed locally and somebody was calling her directly. She interrupted her stalk and moved back 100 meters to talk. She selected 'play' and received a message: “Jenny- if that is you out there, move back towards the mission- we have incoming.”

  She doubled back towards the Mission, keeping cover between her and the troops cautiously retreating towards their ship. Somebody back at the mission had gotten a message out on the backup radio, kept on the top floor. Help was on the way.

  ***

  Sixty kilometers out, Lieutenant Hanna received the order to commence her attack run on hostiles at the Cockatoo River Mission. Pulling her GS-16 into a climb, she set her scanners to sweep ahead to the target area. At forty kilometers, the scan was complete and she confirmed the aim
point. Dipping hard towards the ground, and then pulling up sharp at full power, she executed a flawless toss-release of her eight 100kg cluster units, then banked hard to orbit the target zone, in case a guns pass was needed. The bombs soared upwards, and then started a near-vertical descent into the 'basket'. Their targeting computers found the designated target- a group of men on the ground- identified them by weapons and uniform and coordinated an optimum spread for their bomblet payloads. At 100 meters AGL, the bombs dispersed their sub-munitions and fire fell from the sky on the hapless Crows.

  Lieutenant 'Wedgetail' Hanna flashed over the target, her anti-personnel masers finishing the work her bombs had started. She keyed 'Hail' and transmitted “Target neutralized.” As she continued to orbit the area, covering the incoming infantry and rescue services, she saw a lone figure running towards the enemy ship. 'Looks like that is the one they warned me about' she thought.

  Running back towards her original position, Jenny prepared to fend off anyone trying to reach the ship. Now that the large rear ramp was secured, they would have to enter by the side hatch, presenting an easy target. Jenny was down to her last six rounds, so she checked a captured assault rifle and laid it on the ground next to her. She made a call to the mission on the channel used before and started relaying information to the Territorial infantry that were now dropping into the zone. Directing one section to land and secure the ship, she had the others drop in a line parallel to the previous advance of the Crows.

  Annoyed at the lack of appearing targets, she moved in carefully to make contact with the infantry now at the ship, calling ahead to make sure they knew she was coming.

  She was challenged, then passed through the perimeter and Jenny was lead to the section commander, a sergeant wearing insignia showing he was attached Imperial cadre. “You didn't leave us much- someone has done for this ships crew,” he said, then stopped as he saw the tell-tale blood splatters over the front of Jenny's clothing. He knew the signs of a knife fight when he saw them. “You did that?”

  Jenny nodded.

  “You got a unit yet?” he said, assuming Jenny was about the age for starting her service.

  “Puckapunyal Bushrangers- just badged and home on leave.”

  The sergeant gave a low whistle and said “Figures,” with a quick grin, then turned to his watching squad “Do any of you wombats have JOBS to do? - well bloody get on with them.”

  He was then interrupted with a contact report from the south picket. “Bravo two- Papa four- south sweep linking up reporting sector clear- out.” A few minutes later, the patrol's section leader was at the CP, which had been set up at the rear of the ship. “The Major wants any locals back at the mission for debriefing and your body count, then secure this ship as a crime scene.”

  “We have six hostiles KIA here, courtesy of the ranger here.”

  “Those high caliber kills we been finding would be yours too?”

  “They are- relay back to your OC that we had 54 raiders, sixty auxiliaries and six flight crew- I counted them coming off the lighter.”

  “Good work troop. The boss will be a lot happier if we can account for all of them. I will have a detail escort you back. Best you stick with us- the troops on the line are a bit trigger-happy tonight.”

  The larger moon, Pearl, was up now and with the moonlight the trip back was a lot easier, their escorts still taking care to let the pickets know of their advance. Word over the net was that there were only a few Crow survivors and they were all injured. Unlucky them. As the party neared the mission, they saw the organized chaos of the emergency services. It looked like every unit in the province had descended upon the Mission. A military police patrol craft orbited the area, warning off the flood of jumpbugs carrying civilians wanting to help or fight. A field hospital had landed behind the Mission and floodlights had been rigged everywhere. Police and intelligence were imaging and gathering evidence for a full investigation, soldiers were policing up the damage inside and, ominously, a mortuary truck was being loaded with small body bags. Off to one side, a line of body bags had been kept separated.

  Jenny was escorted to the CP, which had been set up in the mostly undamaged commissary, where she waited for a harried Major to finish giving orders through a military comm set. She came to attention and saluted. “Trooper DeVries reporting, Sir.” The Major removed his helmet and wiped his dusty forehead. “Take a seat Trooper, it's been a bad night and I hear that you have been in the thick of it- now first- can you confirm those hostile numbers?”

  “Yes, Sir- I got a good count. I was out hunting and saw the ship drop not far from my hide.”

  “Good- then we have accounted for all of them. Their support ship slingshot out of orbit at the first sign of trouble and they will be in subspace before anyone can get near them.”

  “Sir- how bad was it here?”

  “Bad enough- we have 61 confirmed dead and a couple that probably won't make it- almost everyone surviving was injured- mostly minor stuff though.”

  “Sir- with your permission, I need to...”

  He interrupted: “No Trooper- you need to stay out of there. Take it from an old soldier- the dead don't need you- remember them as they were. The living- they need the medics now. They will need you later. In a few minutes naval intel will be landing and they are going to debrief you. They will want to get your turn of the events and its policy not to let you talk to the other players- at least until after they have wrung you out.”

  He saw the grim set of her jaw and continued, “What I can tell you is that the people here- every last one who could point a rifle- put up one hell of a fight against a real tough opponent. For what it's worth this battle is going to go in the history books. Your actions almost certainly turned the battle, from all accounts and that’s all I can say right now.” His wrist comm buzzed and he glanced at it. Calling an orderly over from the far side of the room, he directed her to take Jenny to the intelligence section that had just landed on the other side of the river.

  Jenny would spend longer than the battle took being questioned by Intel and it was daylight before she left their ship. By the time she was dismissed, the survivors had been evacuated- the settlement of 'Second Chance' had offered to-insisted on- taking them as a group, while the Mission was cleaned up and repaired. Already the cleanup was well under way, with no shortage of willing volunteers. She wandered about the Mission, taking in the battle damage- walls pock-marked by bullets and grenade fragments, windows blown out and the lingering acrid fumes of explosives- along with the metallic tang of too much spilt blood. “There you are,” came a call, and she turned around to see her section commander. “Come on, the skipper has popped over to pick you up- wants to get you before the brass does.”

  Glad to get away before her emotions took over, Jenny climbed on board the troop carrier. A crewman closed the rear hatch and took off on a semi-ballistic course for the capital of Victoria.

  “I'm afraid you won't be getting much shut-eye for a while, Trooper,” said Lieutenant Colonel Atkins, her Commanding Officer. “I will have the medics give you a pepper-pill when we land- the Governor and the Official Representative want a word. What has happened is that you have been a big part of capturing the first definitive proof of a government organized slaving ring. We all knew it was going on, but had no real proof until you took that lighter. Intel is unpicking all sorts of info out of its computers already.”

  “Sir, all I did was fail to keep the cockroaches out of that mission.”

  “No, troop- what you did was give them a fighting chance, when you rung that bell, when you took out their commander, when you chased off the auxiliaries. We found 61 bodies with ten mm slugs in them. That's a fair effort- although I would expect nothing less from one of my troops.”

  She gave a tired little grin. “That's near one for every one of ours- not enough- I want a rematch.”

  “You shall get one. I believe your application for Academy training will now be fast tracked- you can consider your a
ctive combat requirement ticked off.”

  “Sir- I really want to know what happened inside the mission.”

  So he told her.

  “Not going to pull any punches, so here it is, based on the interviews of the survivors.

  When you rang that bell, you gave the Mission about two seconds warning. Just enough time for a couple of the staff to grab sidearms before the Crows stormed in. The attack still killed most of them, but nine survived and rallied by the old Blademaster, they fought a retreat to the stairs. There three of them- sorry- I don't have names apart from Jan- chose to play Horatius at the bridge, while the others got the wounded upstairs. More importantly, they brought the time for the girls upstairs to make a stand, while evacuating the young ones up to the next level.

  The old man- and he was a good friend of mine- went out fighting to the last and brought the rest the seconds they needed. He was near cut in half and managed to get one with his blade before he died.” The Colonel paused for a bit before continuing.

  “Upstairs, the girls had taken a position either side of the landing and were holding the Crows off. The Crow commander then had his troops force an entry by blasting the wall with RPG's. Unfortunately, they hit the nursery, which the younger girls were in the process of evacuating. I'm sorry- you lost sixteen infants and young children when they put a hyperbaric into the room, as well as four of the defenders.”

  He paused again and watched her closely, waiting until she had rubbed the tears from her eyes before continuing.

  “Another standoff then took place, as the survivors held the next stair. At this point, the Crows were out of grenades and were holding their position, while the reserves brought more ammo up. This is the point where you took out their command group and started harrying the reserves. Unable to continue the push and with no effective command, the Crow troops decided to get out of Dodge- they were over time and knew that local forces would soon be on the way. You turned the battle.”