Chapter 5: A Cluster Fuck and a Half

“Captain. Brigade Headquarters, sir.”

The head shed Sig flipped Brad the headset thirty seconds later, and we were a Militia unit, not Reservists, not even Territorial Guard, although there were a quite few of the older guys with military experience so yeah, orders were orders but the formalities were few and far between. It worked because we knew what we were fighting for and why. We all knew why. For most of us, why was lying in the ground or on the street somewhere in a pool of red or beaten to a pulp in some Ratdog camp or prison cell.

Or gutted and hacked to pieces with machetes on a living room floor.

Yeah, it really was that bad and we weren’t too easy-going ourselves these days. That time was long past.

“Yep ... yes ... gotcha ... okay ... Roger ... Roger, got it ... Will do.” Brad nodded and he was making notes. Paper and Pen, nothing electronic. The EMP bombs had seen to that weeks ago. Ours and theirs and no-one had much of a communications network or an Air Force anymore.

“Motherfucker,” Brad said, carefully taking the headset off. “This is a cluster fuck and a half.”

“What is?” I asked, and yeah, heart pounding because I knew that look, and he had the maps out.

“Ratdogs ‘re counter-attacking,” he said. “Coming up this road here and heading for this pass and they’re coming with tanks and infantry, bunch of Ratdog militia units stiffened by their Antifa Guard units.” Brad grinned. “Good news is, that’s like stiffening a bucket of snot with shotgun pellets. Bad news is, they’re pounding up that backroad there and there’s nothing but a few piddley little militia units between them and breaking through this pass here and cutting our supply lines south to the front.”

“Good move by someone,” I said, eyeing the map. Didn’t make much sense to me and I was a mustang First Lieutenant running an improvised company of women, kids and old guys and we tidied up, and yeah, that’s a euphemism for what we did ‘ n that was fine by me too because I didn’t exactly enjoy the job although I did like it that we recued people. Rescued the good people. Didn’t have the faintest idea about actual combat except what I’d picked up from Brad on the fly. Which was why he was in command of our little task force and me, I did what I was told to do and that was fine by me.

“Yeah, it is,” Brad said.

“What’s the head shed doing ‘bout it?” I asked, and Brad and the CSM both looked at me. “We gonna move our asses or something?” Because when I looked at Brad’s notes, that looked like some serious Ratdog shit coming up that road and through that pass and I sure didn’t want to be around when they came down our side. That’s what the combat units were for.

“What?” I said, because they were still looking at me.

“Jenny,” Brad said, and yeah, I knew that tone. Patient, as in, Jenny’s said something real dumb and I gotta explain this. I knew that tone and I knew that look and my heart kinda took a sudden dive.

“What?” I said.

I had the radio on as Kagan drove. Listening, not transmitting and I could get the gist of what was going on. That Californian National Guard unit that’d come over to us was holding the line. Them and a newly formed Infantry Battalion, volunteers, not much training, that’d been moving south and a battery of old 105’s that’d moved up from somewhere. Contact with the Ratdogs, light infantry units moving up into the pass and the contact reports came faster and more frequently and all I could figure out as we moved up into the hills was that the fighting on the pass was getting heavier and heavier.

The Ratdogs had tanks and infantry, but our mortars and the 105’s dusted the infantry of their tanks and the Javelin anti-tank teams were holding the Ratdog tanks off and we were taking casualties and the traffic got heavier and heavier. Contact calls. Fire mission requests. Resup calls because ammo was running low here and there. Casevac calls and some of them were pretty desperate and Brad was on the other radio with the headshed and there were more units coming up behind us.

Jesus, and we were heading into this? That wasn’t what my unit was for. Brad’s maybe, because he had a company of mostly vets and they mighta been a bit old, but they knew what they were doing. Mine? Jesus, mine were half women and kids and half old guys that really were a bit too fucking old or damaged to fight, like old Roskill with his gimpy leg. Good for dealing with prisoners and civvies maybe, but Jesus, this was a full-on battle and more I listened, the more terrified I was because I’d seen the sitrep Brad’d been planning from.

You gotta do what you gotta do, that’s what I told myself. I was a First Lieutenant in the Second Republic’s National Liberation Army but straight up, I was just about peeing myself because clearance duty was one thing. Combat was another, and I’d never been trained for that and we were heading right into it because High Command had said everyone and anyone and I hadn’t argued.

Radio flashes I caught said the Ratdogs were pulling back and that was a relief, because yeah, Brad’d pulled together a few hundred men from all the units around but it was an ad-hoc clerks and cooks unit we had and I really hadn’t been looking forward to actually being on the front line in case you didn’t already get that and a couple of hours later we were winding up to the crest of the pass and dismounting.

“What’s the boots on the ground, Lieutenant?” Because the senior ranking officer was one of the Californian National Guard First Lieutenant’s and that Guard unit I’d watched had taken a total frigging hammering but they’d sure proved that change of sides was genuine. So’d the Infantry Battalion taken a hammering and Brad was a Captain and that made him the senior officer I guess because the only officer that Battalion had left was some butter-bar who knew about as much as I did.