The Assault of Orion I

Part Three

Rhame tightened his harness as the ship gave a massive lurch . He checked the readouts on the vehicles tiedowns and made sure they were still all green. "A little more of this and things are going to start breaking loose in the cargo bay." He thought to himself . "ONE MINUTE TO LANDING " The computer synthesized voice was normaly soothing , but during emergencies it got shrill enough to remind Rhame of his ex wife. A Troop's commanders voice cut through the noise of landing into everyones headphones "All A Troop vehicles be ready , remember we have to get to that south ridge before they can mount a serious counterattack." Rhame's gunner Corporal Dunphy looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes at Rhame. "Yeah" Thought Rhame , " Captain Lewis was an ok guy most of the time and kept his nose out of what went on in 3rd Platoon but he had a tendency to remind you of stuff he reminded you of 10 mins. ago"

The blast of the landing retros caught Rhame by surprise. The sleet of weapon impacts that he heard on the outside of the ships hull did not ."Well we are gonna know in like an hour whether the General is a genius or if she just sentenced the whole Corps to death" Rhame muttered "After 3 years in her command , smart money is on genius " Or so the unit was hoping. The impact of landing wasn't as bad as some landings he had experienced. "Well seeing as where we landed , I guess the Navy guys can't complain too much" Rhame shook his head when he thought of the uproar when General Parker first revealed her plan for the initial landing zone. "Well , with the Antarans having our original Battle Plan , I guess the best place to land was also the craziest."

The bang of the loading ramps hitting the ground was drowned out by the explosion of all the tiedowns cutting loose at once. Rhame looked down and saw all 4 tiedown indicators had red markers showing proper separation. The sound of all the vehicles in the Corps starting up simultaneously was felt even through all the layers of Xintium between him and the outside world . General Parker's voice cut in on the Command channel with just four words. "XV CORPS MOVE OUT". As Rhame expected , Trooper Cahill had them moving as soon as that word was given. As the tank hit the landing ramp Rhame looked around and just chuckled to himself . "Yup , she has got to be a genius to do something this stupid." The sound of his laughter was drowned out as the tracks of his tank hit the surface of the Main Starport of the Orion Capitol.

Rhame saw what appeared to be a weapon emplacement off to his left and targeted it . "Gunner . Target . Gauss Cannon" Cpl. Dunphy immediately replied "Identified" Rhame's command of "Fire" was nearly simultaneous with Dunphy firing the main gun. The Antaran weapon and the crew that was trying to bring it to bear on his tank were engulfed in raw plasma and incinerated. His driver just rolled over the chared area and headed for the ridge to the south. Captain Lewis cut in. " 1st Platoon keep moving , you are falling behind , I need you on the left side of that ridge 3rd Platoon as soon as you get in place on the right get those sensors out. And 2nd Platoon stick tight to me , we are gonna roll right over those troops dead ahead of us" Rhame saw over the command board that there seemed to be a small group of light infantry in front of 2nd Platoon . They shouldn't be much threat to the 4 tanks of 2nd platoon and the 2 tanks of the command section. But something in the most primitve part of Rhame's brain was screaming "But they are Antarans ! They are the Masters , it shouldn't be this easy to kill them." Rhame was just about to cut in on the Command channel to say something when multiple bolts erupted from the Antaran infantry and engulfed one of 2nd Platoons tanks and hammered it to a halt. The other 5 tanks flayed the defensive line with plasma and in a few seconds they were rolling through ash and glazed sand where a moment ago 100 infantry had been. "Well thats what happens when ground pounders mess with the Cavalry" Rhame thought. Before he could com the tank that had been hit Sergeant Simmons voice came over the com " We are O.K Captain , they just blew the track , we can get it put together in 10 mikes if we can get some protection" The Captain didn't take but a moment before sending the Executive officers tank back to cover Simmons while they repaired the track , all the while he continued to roll to the ridge with the rest of 2nd Platoon.

As 3rd Platoon rolled forward Rhame looked back at the transport ship and was amazed at all the damage that showed on the hull of the ship . "Man her Captain is gonna be pissed at the General for making him put down in the middle of a hornets nest like this." Rhame laughed as he pictured the swabbies in spacesuits scouring all the carbon marks off of their nice pretty ship. He also noticed that all the combat units seemed to be offloaded and the support units were begining to roll off now. "Well the sooner we get Operations and Control running 100 % , the happier I will be." Rhame hated fighting half blind and only seeing part of the big picture.

A series of explosions and a roar behind him pulled Rhames attention to the center of the starport , but it was only the Troopship cutting loose the cargo pods and heading for orbit. "Well" thought Rhame "They put us all down in one piece and weren't too bad for a bunch of Navy types , I hope they make it off planet" "Well I guess the General is makin a statement by telling our ride home to take off." "We rip a beachead out of the guts of the enemy or we die trying , just the way it should be "

His tanks begining to climb up the ridge brought Rhames attention back to where it should have been. " You are getting old Jake , letting your mind wander like that." "Besides" he thought "it's bad luck to watch your ride fly away." The Troop had reached the top of the ridge and Rhame got a good look at the terrain on the other side . "Well you cant ask for a better field of fire than a desert with no vegetation.""I guess thats why so few units were assigned to this area." "The 13 tanks of the Troop , 14 if Simmons can get his rustbucket fixed and on line , should be able to hold this sector against a lot of nasties for a long time" Other indicators on the command board showed that the outer perimeter was in place and the inner circle was clear of live units.

A series of hollow thumps reminded Rhame of something important and he coded in the ok to deploy his tanks remote sensors . A dozen small rockets arced out from his turret and deployed a set of independent sensor packages to give Operations and Control all the data they needed to coordinate the coming battle. From the data coming in from the other units remotes , it looked like all the Antarans major units were squatting on our planned drop zones and not in position for an immediate counterattack. A long series of fire and counterfire to the east showed that units from the city were begining to try and make their presence known. A beep on his command board told Rhame that Ops and Control was online and transmiting data to all units. Rhame saw with a snort that the enemy units skirmishing to the east were marked as police units. Rhame laughed outloud and when questions came from his crew he just said "Cops , Antaran cops are trying to push us off this field " The crew joined in the laughter and as soon as he pulsed the feed to the rest of the platoon , the sound of laughter echoed through the platoon frequency. "Umm Sarge i got a question" Rhame rolled his eyes and replied "So what else is new LaPare , whats your question?" There was a moment of silence and then Trooper LaPare's confused voice came over again "If these Antarans are supposed to be perfect and all , you know so far above us , why do they need police in the first place . I mean since they have police , wouldn't that mean they have criminals and all ?" There was a long moment of silence over the com as what LP had said sunk in and Rhame was only saved from answering by General Parker's voice cutting into all channels.

"Heads up troops , we have detections of lots of mechanized forces incoming , probably battleoid class so lets show those overpriced 2 legged machines what happens when you mess with the Cavalry!"