Short story, maybe a novella, expanding the world of the Spartan's Last March.  Wanted to introduce some new characters and add some depth to a few that were in the book.  

The events here take place several years before the events in the Spartan's Last March.







Part 1


“In the morning they’ll come at us with everything they’ve got.  When that happens, we either hold and live, or we break and die.”  

Those words were true and each of the five men in the machine gun pit knew it.  Such sayings were an ever present cultural element in New Sparta, but in the last 24 hours those words became more than just rhetoric.  Those words had literally meant the difference between life and death.  

The machine gun pit, with its sandbag lined top and heavy timber reinforced walls, was just part of a larger defense, a company sized outpost in the craggy mountains of the place once called Oregon.  The men who manned the pit’s two machine guns were part of what had once been a rifle company.  That morning the company had numbered 154 of all ranks.  Then the waves of Gomorrah fighters had come.  They attacked without warning, pouring out of the craggy draws and valleys just a few hours after dawn.  They attacked in wave after wave until the sun set and the darkness brought a temporary cease fire.  Of the 154 who manned the defenses that morning, now there were maybe 70.  

“That sun comes up, and they’ll come at us in waves again, screaming and howling, beating on their drums and blowing on their crappy-ass trumpets,” the speaker continued.  He was a grizzled old veteran.   He had the wrinkled face of a man well into middle age but he wore only the two stacked stripes of a corporal, a career corporal.  He huddled low in the pit, sitting on his haunches and yammering away while his comrades stood watch or feigned sleep or just sat scared.

“They’ll come up out of them draws and canyons just like they did yesterday morning, swinging their clubs and waving their fire-lance and firing their rippers into the air.  They’ll come at us screaming and chanting and all high from snorting up lines of quake.  When they do, you better be on the spot with ammo and the spare barrel, kiddo.”  The veteran corporal said this with a leer at the youngest man in the pit, a teenager with the appropriate name of Greene, PFC Greene to be exact.  Greene had no wrinkles on his face and no stripes on his uniform.  He’d joined the unit just a few days before.  He said he wanted to see action.  In the 24 hours Greene experienced enough action to last a career.

“Cuz them Gomorrah fighters, they won’t just kill ya.  No, not a sweet one like you.  Them fuckers would love to capture a sweet one like you.  And when they do…”

“Corporal Arch, quit trying to scare the kid,” the senior man in the pit said.  He stood behind one of the two machine guns, peering out into the crisp, clean, Oregon summer darkness.  He didn’t turn his head when he spoke.  He didn’t need to.  He spoke with the calm, comfortable authority of man who has spent decades speaking with authority.  He bore the wrinkles and scars of a middle aged man too, with streaks of gray in his reddish beard.  Instead of the two strips of a career corporal he wore the chevrons of a gunnery sergeant.  He was Gunnery Sergeant Charles Lefranc of New Sparta.  This was his gun pit, these were his guns, and the men who were waiting out the final hours before dawn and the inevitable attack were his as well.

“When they come at us in the morning, you just do your job and you’ll be alright.  Do it slow and smooth and by the numbers.  They’ll run out of the will to fight or bodies before we run out of ammo.  So do your job just like you were trained and we’ll all get through this.”  The old staff non-commissioned officer said the words because that was his job.  He said them, but he didn’t know if he believed them.  Not this time.  He’d been through situations like this before, facing down hordes of enemy fighters that had to be slaughtered wholesale, but this time the enemy had their shit together.  Gomorrah forces usually fought as nothing more than huge mobs.  However, every once in a while they brought it all together.  This was one of those times.

The enemy had approached the small outpost through the steep and rocky mountain draws, staying off anything that could even remotely be considered a road and moving undetected.  The attack on the company outpost began with combined barrages of mortars and rocket propelled grenades.  None were particularly well aimed, but what the gunners lacked in skill they made up for in volume.   Rockets and bombs came screaming into the firebase by the score.  Those initial barrages took out the company’s railguns and mortars.  For all Lefranc knew, those were the last batches of mortar rounds and rocket propelled grenades Gomorrah owned because there were no more enemy barrages.  Instead, there came human wave attacks.  They came hundreds at a time, Gomorrah fighters armed with clubs and rippers and sputtering fire lances that reeked of sulfur.  The human wave attacks came one after another after another, charging as fast Lefranc and his comrades could cut them down.  A couple of times they made it through the Spartan wire and had to be beaten back by close combat.  It wasn’t until the sun went down that the attacks ceased.  Gomorrah had left thousands of bodies on the field.  Those bodies were important not because of the loss of life they reflected on the Gomorrah side, but on the loss of ammunition they reflected on the Spartan side.  And that wasn’t the worst of it.

Gomorrah’s attack wasn’t limited to just this remote mountain outpost.  The enemy launched other assaults, all coordinated with this one.  All of this area once called Southern Oregon was aflame.  Hordes were marching up the old Interstate 5.  Spartan outposts and Ashland and Medford had been overrun.  Grants Pass was under threat.  A second Gomorrah column was marching on Klamath Falls.  When you came down to it the enemy had only one play in their playbook; overwhelm the system.  That’s how their predecessors took down the United States.  Politically, socially, culturally, economically, they just overwhelmed the old system and brought it crashing down.  That was then.  Here and now in the rocky escarpments of Oregon they were trying to do it militarily.  On the tactical level, they were going to try and overwhelm the company defenses with their own volume of bodies.  On the operational level, well that was where the enemy really had their shit together, Lefranc thought.  Huge columns had come up from The Bay to attack Grants Pass and Klamath falls.  Those attacks were meant to overwhelm the system as well.  New Sparta only had so much of anything.  They only had so many aircraft to fly sorties and evacuated the wounded.  They only had so many trucks to haul ammunition.  They only had so many of their Morning Star super weapons in orbit that they could bring to bear.  They only had so many warriors to send into the fight and only so many staff officers to figure out what the fuck was going on and what to do about it.  Gomorrah was overwhelming the Spartan system, and paying for it with thousands, maybe tens of thousands of their own dead.  But Lefranc knew that the leadership of Gomorrah didn’t give a damn about the lives of their own people.  For them, losing a few thousand of their own people to take out a handful of Spartans was a bargain.  What Lefranc also knew was that when the system was overwhelmed like this, when resources were scarce and Spartan bases threatened, nobody in the Spartan high command was likely to care about a few dozen grunts on some worthless pile of rocks.  Commanders prioritize.  They prioritize who gets the ammo and where the aircraft drop their bombs and where the reinforcements go.  Lefranc wouldn’t say it aloud, he was too good a soldier for that, but he knew whoever was establishing priorities right now wasn’t going to give a tinker’s damn about a half dead rifle company in the middle of nowhere.  They were on their own.

The commanders of Gomorrah of course had priorities too, and their priorities and New Sparta’s were not in line each other.  Gomorrah columns were marching north on Grants Pass and Klamath falls, and New Sparta’s staff officers were scrambling to respond, but that was all just a put on.  Gomorrah didn’t care about either one of those cities.  Sure they were sending huge numbers of men to take them, but so what?  The lives of their citizens meant nothing to Gomorrah’s ruling class.  Even if they took those areas, they could never hold them for any length of time.  No, those efforts were just a big show and Lefranc knew that too even if his high command back in the Spartan capital didn’t.  Gomorrah’s bid for victory was much more modest.  They weren’t out to capture territory.  Gomorrah was out to surround 154 Spartan infantrymen in a small outpost in the middle of nowhere, attack them, and capture them or massacre them to a man.  Grants Pass and Klamath falls were just supporting attacks, feints, a magician’s sleight of hand.   The enemy wanted a few dead Spartans, and if they lost thousands in the process nobody on Gomorrah’s High Council was going to see that as a problem.  To the High Council, their own casualties were meaningless and Grants Pass and Klamath falls were just dots on maps that nobody could even read.  But parading a company’s worth of dead Spartan bodies through the streets of the Bay would be a domestic political victory that would keep the High Council in power for another 100 years.  

That was the reality of the situation.  From inside his sandbag bunker Gunnery Sergeant Lefranc could see what all those majors and light colonels and full colonels could not.  This was where the real battle was going to be fought.  The unit that New Sparta had already written off was the same unit that Gomorrah was committed to destroying.  And so the old Gunnery Sergeant starred out into the darkness and waited.

Lefranc wore a revolver on one hip and a bowie knife on the other.  In the back of his belt he kept a hand axe.  He removed the axe from his belt.  From a pocket he produced a plug of tobacco. With the razor’s edge of the axe he shaved off some tobacco and popped it into his mouth.  He chewed it a few times, then reached over to the side of the gunpit, grabbed an old metal can, brought it to his mouth and spat.  He did this all with slow deliberate movements, and not once did he turn from the darkness beyond the barrels of his machine guns.  He wore no night vision.  One look at the way his wise grey eyes moved across the nighttime landscape was enough to know he didn’t need night vision.  

“The Morning Stars,” Greene said emphatically.

“Huh,” one of the other men in the pit said.  Lefranc turned his head away from the threatening darkness for a second to regard his crew.  There are five of them total.  Yesterday there had been six, and that didn’t include Gunny Lefranc, or the baldheaded wounded one who sat in the corner.  Now there were five.  Five men, two machine guns and a few thousand rounds of ammo to face down everything that the enemy could throw at them once the sun came up.  In addition to the career corporal and young PFC Greene, Lefranc had two others.  The first was Lance Corporal Drake.  Drake crouched beneath the second machine gun.  He had dark hair, a slight built and a pointed chin.  His face was covered in cakes of dirt mixed with sweat.  Drake was a good fighter and a good machine gunner, just what they were going to need when dawn broke.  The other one sat on the ground, knees up, head down, with his back against the bunker wall.  He looked like a Mexican peasant on siesta.  He was feigning sleep and his bald head was wrapped in bloody bandages.  A medevac bird had come by earlier.  The wounded man was supposed to board it, but he hadn’t.  

“The Morning Stars,” Greene repeated.  “Why don’t they just use the Morning Stars to vaporize them?”

“Morning Stars are offline,” Drake said dryly.  Corporal Arch coughed, his throat making a wet sound.  Then he spat on the ground.

“That dipshit general in charge of Science and Technology Branch decided it would be a good idea to reset all the Morning Star reactors at the same time.  The whole damn fleet is offline.  Guy is damn idiot, never spent a day in the field.  What’s his name?  Grossman?  Guzman?”

“Gorman,” the man with the bandage head answered.  “His name is Gorman.”

Arch spat again when he heard the name.  “Yeah, that’s him.  He fucking hates us grunts.  It ain’t no coincidence that they attacked when our fleet of morning stars were getting their reactors reset.  He took the whole fleet off-line just so the enemy could come up here and…”

“Knock that conspiracy theory bullshit off,” Lefranc said.  His word came out with enough power to silence the entire gun pit.  That was good.  Lefranc knew such rumors inspired panic, that panic spread like wildfire, and panic could kill an infantry unit more quickly than the enemy.  

“There isn’t any plot.  The Morning Stars are just getting their reactors reset.  That’s it and that’s all.  So shut up about it.

“And you,” Lefranc said, redirecting his energy at the wounded man.  “You should have gotten on that medevac bird like you were ordered.”  Lefranc spoke not with anger, but with a father’s disapproval.  The wounded man was supposed to be gone.  Major Kelly, the company commander, had ordered him onto the one and only medevac bird that left hours ago.  The wounded man had run onto the bird only to run right back off again and rejoin the others in the gun pit.  Rather than be evacuated he stayed with company.  That, Lefranc thought, was just one more problem with this whole awful situation.

“I can’t leave.  I’ve got a job to do,” the wounded man replied.  

“You got shot in the head.  Not for the first time I might add, which is probably why you’re so stupid.  Your job was to leave.”

The wounded man raised his hand and touched the dirty and bloody bandages wrapped around his bald head.  At his side was a battered pump action shotgun.  “When the sun comes up tomorrow you’ll be glad I’m here.”

“I’d be glad if you followed orders and got evaced.”

“Like I said, you’ll be glad I stayed Gunny.  I’ve got a plan.”

Drake, who had been silent up to this point, spoke up.

“I hope your plan doesn’t involve you getting shot in the head again.”

Corporal Arch spoke up.  He had drawn out his pistol for cleaning.  He spoke in what was almost a jolly sing-song as he rubbed down the pieces with a rag.

“Oh he’s got all kinds of plans.  He’s got plans for this and plans for that.  Plans for tomorrow and plans for yesterday.  Course he’s been shot in the head twice now.  Every time he comes up with a plan we end up surrounded by a few thousand screaming Gomorrah pederasts.  Then it is all dodging bullets and look the hell out for whoever is standing next to him.  Oh, but he has a plan.  Yes.  A regular savant this one is; an idiot savant.”

The wounded man wasn’t moved by any of the taunts.  He spoke calmly then lowered his head again to feign sleep.  “Like I said, I have a plan.”

Greene, shaking more than a little now, asked, “What kinda plan can you have?”

Corporal Arch let out a cackled and slapped at his knee.  

“Don’t you know who that is kid,” The veteran asked.  The kid shook his head to indicate the negative.  The career corporal flashed a grin of tobacco-browned teeth.

“Well, my son, let me tell you.  That shot up son of a bitch is royalty.  You’re sharing a hole with none other than the Crown Prince of New Sparta.”


Green eyed the bald and bandaged man suspiciously, not sure if this was all some jape, a trick to play on the new guy.  His eyes moved up and down the prince several times.  The man huddled against the wall of their machine gun bunker didn’t look like a prince.  He didn’t look like any person of privilege.  To Green he looked like any other wounded grunt trying to get some sleep, which is to say, he looked like each and every one of them.  

“Bullshit,” Green said at last.

“No bullshit,” Drake said.  “He’s the Crown Prince.”

Green pursed his lips and asked, “If he’s the Crown Prince then what the hell is he doing here?”

“What’d ya forget your civics class,” Arch said with a grin.  “The Crown Prince serves as a ranker.”

Green’s face tightened, certain the corporal was playing him for a fool.  Drake spoke up.

“If you don’t believe us ask Gunny.  He and the Crown Prince have been campaigning together for a while now.  They were part of the team that took down the Peaceful Army.”

Green looked toward Lefranc.  The gunnery sergeant turned from the threatening darkness to give Green a single nod of confirmation.

“Told you so,” Arch said.  “The Crown Prince fights in the ranks, same as grunts like you and me.”

Green’s eyes moved over the prince again.  His brow wrinkled.  “He may fight in the ranks, but he ain’t like you and me.”

Green considered the royal curiosity for a few moments longer before deciding sleep was more valuable.  He rolled up into a ball on the dirt floor of the pit and closed his eyes.

Back at his machine gun, Lefranc paid little attention to the exchange.  He perceived it, but his attention was elsewhere.  His mind had traveled forward in time, to the dawn and the onslaught it promised.  The night kept the enemy at bay.  The enemy rarely attacked at night.  They had no night vision, something every Spartan was equipped with.  Nor did the enemy train to fight at night.   The night held the enemy back, but the night couldn’t last forever.  When dawn came, so would the enemy.

Near the machine gun was a field telephone mounted on one of the bunker’s heavy timber supports.  It rang, the ringing not being the rings of a bell but instead a series of sharp, quick clicks.  Lefranc grabbed the handset.

“Go,” Lefranc said, not taking his eyes from that enemy darkness.

“This is command.  The CO wants to know if he’s there with you.”

Lefranc brought the metal can to his lips and spat out a stream of dark liquid.

“Roger command.  He’s here.”

“OK,” The voice on the phone answered awkwardly. Lefranc hung on the line.  He knew the conversation wasn’t over and he knew what was coming next.

“The CO is heading to your position.”

Lefranc gave a grunt that served as an affirmation and then hung up.  After a few minutes they heard the crunch of footsteps on loose gravel behind them.  Lefranc turned to face the noise.  Drake, who had been trying to doze also rose and peered out of the back of the pit.  Two figures approached from the direction of the command post. The first was a kid of about twelve.  He was a squire who wore a bugle on a sling of woven green parachute cord.  The second was a tall man with a thick chest and broad shoulders.  Every pouch and piece of kit on his body armor was arranged in the precise manner prescribed by, “the book.”  The single gold oak leaf emblem was also worn centered on his armor in the manner demanded by, “the book.” In fact everything about the large figure suggested a high degree of belt-fed, regulation, by-the-book conformity.  The tall man strode purposefully while the kid stumbled along at his heels, like a small dog trotting behind its larger alpha.

“Crap,” Drake said miserably.  “I wanted to get some sleep.”

The big man walked up to the pit. Without hesitating he jumped inside, landed next to the Crown Prince, and roared.

“What the hell are you still doing here?”

The Crown Prince looked up.  Drake and Green looked away from the uncomfortable confrontation, as if looking away might transport them to some other machine gun pit in some other defense on some other planet.  The boy who trailed behind stood nervously on the lip of the pit, not knowing what to do.

“Get down in here before you get shot kid,” Lefranc said.  He didn’t think anybody was getting shot, at least not until the sun came up.  Gomorrah’s fighters were saving themselves for the morning, either sleeping or snorting up lines of quake.  The only person likely to get shot tonight was the Crown Prince.  Still, Gunnery Sergeant Lefranc hadn’t lasted this long ignoring the fundamentals of being a grunt.  You don’t skyline yourself if you don’t half to, he thought.  That thought was immediately followed by another; why couldn’t the Crown Prince have learned that.

“I thought I told you to get out of here,” The big man roared again.  A crooked grin crept across the Crown Prince’s face.

“Major Kelly,” the prince said amiably, still seated on his ass in the dirt of the floor.  The major leaned in close to the seated prince.  His face twisted and went red with rage.

“I told you to get on that bird.”

“I did get on the bird. But I got off before it left.”

“Hilarious,” The major said with a tone that indicated he didn’t think it was hilarious at all.  He turned from the Crown Prince to Drake, Arch and Green.  

“Give us a moment alone, would you.”

The three grabbed their carbines and scrambled out of the pit as quickly as if it were filled with snakes.  Drake, who managed to wrap himself in a poncho, mumbled something about never getting enough sleep and chicken shit outfits.  Lefranc remained behind his machine gun.  When other the three disappeared into the darkness Kelly spoke directly at the Crown Prince.

“Do you have any idea what is going on here?”

“Yeah.  Gomorrah is making a bid to wipe us out, here.  Meanwhile they have a pair of diversionary attacks going on to the east which probably have the whole high command in a fit.   The enemy is focused here and higher is focused there and this company is caught in the middle.”

“Good,” Major Kelly said.  “Now if you’re so smart then what are you still doing here?”

“I fight in the ranks, same as all of them,” the prince said, motioning towards the spot of darkness that Green and the others marched off into.

“You can go fight in the ranks somewhere else, like back in the Emerald City.”

“They don’t get to go back to the Emerald City, why should I?”

“You’re wounded.”

“Lots of people on the lines are wounded right now.”

“You’re wounded and you’re the Crown Prince.”

“And I’m not going anywhere,” the Crown Prince fired back, still seated on his ass much to Major Kelly’s chagrin.

Major Kelly drew in a deep breath and let out an exasperated sigh in that manner that only frustrated majors can perform.  The Crown Prince may have fought as a ranker, but he was still royalty and thus immune from court martial or any of Major Kelly’s wrath.  This was a fact Kelly was aware of, and it made him even more exasperated.  

“There sending another bird out for you.”

“They better send enough birds for everybody; otherwise I ain’t getting on it.  If they can fly out a transport for me they can fly out some reinforcements.  They can fly out some railguns.  They can fly out attack sorties and bury these assholes alive.”

Kelly looked over at Lefranc and then back at the prince.  

“They aren’t going to do that for the same reason you shouldn’t stay here; this place holds no value.  Grants Pass is a major outpost and has value.  Klamath Falls has value.  These rocks we’re sitting on, they have no value.  The enemy values this place only in that we’re here and tomorrow they got a good shot at massacring us.  The thing is, even if they did, it would take New Sparta no time at all to put together another company to replace us. We are expendable, and wasting a Crown Prince on something as expendable as us is not smart. When it comes down to it, just what are we worth?  What would you put at risk for a company of grunts?”

The Crown Prince stood up out of the dirt and looked Major Kelly in the eye.

“What would I risk for a company of grunts?  The same thing I’d risk for just one grunt.   I’d risk everything.”

Major Kelly seemed to emit a low growl that dripped disapproval.  He collected himself and climbed out of the pit without another word, at least not another word to the Crown Prince.

“Gunnery Sergeant, a word please.”

Lefranc turned from his gun and said not a word.  He took up his rifle and climbed out of the pit.  The other three were back already and settling down to try and sleep again.  Lefranc had no doubt they had remained just out of sight and listened to the entire exchange between the major and the prince.  He also had the feeling that in a few hours none of that might matter.

All three walked towards the command post in the dark, Major Kelly, his squire, and Lefranc.  When they were halfway there Kelly stopped and said to his squire, “Go on ahead.  I’ll meet you in the bunker.”

The squire, who looked so exhausted that he might keel over at any moment, continued on, the bugle bouncing off his hip.  Kelly and Lefranc watched him go.

“What are you going to do with the kid,” Lefranc asked.

“If I knew that dummy back there wasn’t going to stay on the helicopter I’d have put the kid on it instead and got him the hell out of here.”

“So what are you going to do with him?”

Kelly’s face tightened.  “If things go bad tomorrow, if they make it through the line, and I think they will, I’ll have him blow ‘form square’ on that bugle of his.  Everybody left can rally up on the command post and we’ll shoot until we have no ammo left to shoot and we’ll fight until none of us are left alive.”

As he spoke, Major Kelly reached into his back pocket, and produced a silver flask.  It was a rather not-by-the-book piece of gear for a man who otherwise appeared to be completely by-the-book.  Lefranc eyed the flask warily, as he might eye a poisonous snake who sat coiled up and ready to strike.  When the cap came off he could immediately smell the aroma of fine whiskey inside.  It was a warm smell, Lefranc thought.  It was an inviting smell.  It was the smell of an old friend coming to visit.  Kelly took a hit off the flask and then offered it to Lefranc.

“Sir, I better not,” Lefranc said.  

“I think you better,” Kelly urged.

“You know how I get around the booze.”

“I do,” Kelly replied.  “But you ain’t gonna get more than a nip and besides, it may be the last nip you ever get to take.”  Lefranc took the flask.  The polished metal was cool to the touch.  The whiskey was warm against his lips and even warmer going down.  The whiskey was warm, and good, too good.  As good as it was it also tasted of guilt. Lefranc handed the flask back as quickly as courtesy allowed while Kelly kept talking.

“They got their shit together this time.  Just like they did with the Peaceful Army.”

“Sir, shit-together or not, we destroyed the Peaceful Army,”

That brought a nostalgic smile to Kelly’s face.  

“Yeah Gunny, yeah we did.”  The smile became a frown.  Nostalgia gave way to solemnity. “Sunrise won’t be like the Peaceful Army though.”

Kelly took another nip from the flask.  He looked at Lefranc with cold eyes that bespoke dire business.

“It’s going to get dicey when the sun comes up and they attack us.  I just ordered the Company First Sergeant to be prepared to strike and burn the unit colors.  I gave him that order because I will not let the enemy capture our unit colors.  That, as you and I both know, is unacceptable.  Better that they be destroyed than fall into the hands of the enemy.  We won’t give Gomorrah that kind of victory.”

Kelly looked over in the direction of the machine gun pit and the Crown Prince inside it.

“We only have one unit colors.  They aren’t simply replaced. You can replace dead men.  You can rebuild destroyed units, you can retake lost territory, but there is only one set of colors.  Honor demands that the enemy cannot be allowed to take them.  We destroy the colors if we have to but we don’t let the enemy capture them.

“Our colors aren’t the only thing around here that we cannot allow the enemy to capture.   If we get overrun tomorrow, if the enemy captures this position, everybody needs to do what needs to be done.”

Lefranc looked over in the direction of the Crown Prince.  Then he looked back at Kelly again.

“If the enemy wipes us out it doesn’t really matter.  New Sparta will put together a new rifle company to take our place.  If the enemy captures Grants Pass or Klamath falls, that doesn’t really matter either.  We’ll recapture those cities soon enough, assuming Gomorrah doesn’t just abandon them first. Hell, it ain’t like they can hold on to them if they do take them.  

“But if the enemy captures the Crown Prince?  That’s a different story.  He isn’t somebody we can replace with a raw recruit.  Just like with the unit colors, him getting captured is something we cannot allow to happen.  Honor is at stake.  We’re grunts.  We ain’t got much, but we have our honor.”

Kelly looked Lefranc right in his wise grey eyes.  “Can I count on you Gunnery Sergeant?  Can I count on you to do what needs to be done?”

“Sir, you can always count on me to do what needs to be done,” Lefranc answered. “And we aren’t getting massacred tomorrow.”

Kelly almost laughed at that.  “Maybe not, but it’s dicey at best.  If they don’t divert air from Grants Pass or Klamath Falls, or get those damned Morning Stars reset and in action… You know the deal.  This position was established to be both a lookout and speed bump.  Holding this ground, for any reason, was never part of the plan.”

Kelly took one last hit from the flask and then secreted it away again.  He looked up at the stars and let out another one of his exasperated major’s sighs.

“The east is where they’ll come through.  They made it through there twice yesterday.  If they were smart enough to get this far they’re smart enough to put their weight against that part of the line when they come at us.  If I had an operational railgun, or maybe two extra squads…”  But he had none of those.  Major Kelly shook his head.  Lefranc turned to the east.  Even now the sky seemed to be growing brighter.

“He’s got the whole high command in a tizzy,” Kelly said.  “Back in the Emerald City they shit their pants when they found out he was still in the field.”

“What are they going to do,” Lefranc asked.  Kelly snorted out a laugh and shook his head.  

“They don’t know what they’re going to do.”  He shook his head again.  It was a small demonstration of disgust, but it was enough to convey the deepness of the major’s emotion.  “This ain’t the same army it once was.  Twenty years ago they’d be knocking down entire mountains in a situation like this. Fifty years ago the Hammer would have driven up here and be beating people to death with his bare hands.   He wouldn’t have asked permission or anything, he’d have just done it.  Today?”  Kelly shook his head one last time.

“The Prince said he’s got a plan.”

“I hope so.  If he does he may be the only one.”  Major Kelly smiled thinly and offered his hand.  

“Tomorrow you do what needs to be done, Gunnery Sergeant.”

Lefranc took the major’s hand.

“I always do, sir,” Lefranc answered.  Kelly ambled back to his bunker and the burden of command.

Lefranc walked back to the machine gun pit.  The others were already there.  Drake was up but the other two had curled up on the floor and were sleeping beneath camouflage ponchos.  The Crown Prince sat on the dirt floor again.  His bandaged head rested on his drawn up knees.  

“Get some sleep, Corproral,”  Lefranc said.  Drake nodded and went to get some sleep.  Lefranc took his place behind the machine gun and waited for the inevitable.

The final hours crept past.  The fighters in the pit slept fitfully of feigned sleep altogether, all but Lefranc.  He managed the post through the night as alert as a machine purpose built to stand sentinel.  His eyes took in the ending of the night and the transition to the beginnings of the day.  To the east, a dot of white gold appeared on the skyline.  It stretched out into a thin line that ran across the horizon.  The dark world that once existed in front of the gun pit began to take shape.  From the transitioning world came a noise so faint it might have been inaudible.  However, to a discerning set of ears it was louder and more distinct than a volley of cannon fire.  

With movements that were slow and deliberate, Lefranc took the can from its niche in the wall. He brought it to his lips and spit out all of his tobacco.  He returned the can to its place with the same slow and smooth, deliberate movements.  Then he spoke to the men in the pit.

“Stand to.  Here they come.”

XXXXX

An instant later came the rattle of Gomorrah’s war drums, shouts, screams, rhythmic chanting.  Behind them somebody shouted, repeating Lefranc’s words.

“Stand to!”

All around their defenses Spartan warriors scrambled.  They grabbed up helmets, worked the bolts on weapons, kicked aside the ponchos under which the feigned slumber.  The tattoos of the enemy war drums grew faster.  The pulsed with rhythmic, violent energy.

“On your guns,” Lefranc ordered.  They were already there.  Arch and the bandaged Crown Prince manned one.  Drake and Green manned the second.   The rattling of the drums increased in tempo, building to an ominous crescendo.  Lefranc’s wise eyes scanned out to where the ground sloped down and away.  That was where the enemy hordes would come from.  

“Standby,” he growled to his gunners.  

The rat-tat-tat of the enemy drums rose.  The beats now almost constant,  the fluttering heartbeat of a demon.

Drake cocked his weapon and steadied its buttstock in his shoulders.  

Tat-tat-tat-tat went the drums.

Somewhere off to a flank an NCO yelled.  “Get your fucking head down.”

Tat-tat-tat.

The drums stopped and in that instant came a series of terrible booms followed by the scream of rockets.  

“Incoming!  RPGs!”

The volley of rockets landed amongst them before the words were even finished.  They crashed among the Spartan defenses and threw up clouds of smoke and dust.  Lefranc heard wild screams of pain back by the command post.  He didn’t turn to look.  He focused on where he knew the enemy would come from.  

The booms of the rockets died away, replaced by a new sound. It was the screams of men.  It was the screams of wild blood-lusting monsters.  Green turned around to the eastern side of the defenses and saw human waves coming.

“Over there,” he shouted, pointing.

“Watch your own sector,” Lefranc ordered.  

Green turned back around.  To their flank they heard the eastern side of the defense open up.  Machine guns chugged.  Rifles snapped.  Grenade launchers made their hollow bloop sounds.  Lefranc tuned them all out.  He had his own sector to worry about.  His eyes fixed on his front, to where the ground sloped down and away.  He knew that’s where the enemy would come from.  And they did.

“Fire mission.  Enemy infantry direct front.  Five hundred meters.”

They were coming up into the engagement area in ones and twos.  They carried clubs and blades, spears and the crude automatic pistols they called rippers.  Some came entirely naked.  The enemy line was broken, thin.  Lefranc knew more would come behind them.  

“Gun one, traversing fire from TRP 3 into TRP 5.  Gun two, traversing fire from TRP 5 back to 3.  At my command.”

Lefranc let his orders hang there.  The enemy were charging uphill, up out of the draw and into their line of fire.  Their line was ragged, thinned and stretched out, but growing.  He wanted to give them time to group.  

“Standby.”

The ones and twos had grown to solid dozens.  Green’s eyes widened.  Arch gulped and adjusted his grip on his machinegun.  The Crown Prince stood naturally.  His hands held the brass belt of ammunition so that it would easily feed into the weapon.  Ahead, Gomorrah fighters knelt to light their fire lances, eight foot long poles capped with tubes of chemicals that spat out hissing, sulfurous flames.

“Standby.”

The ragged line grew.  All along its length, it started to spark, yellow-green.  They could smell the stink of the fire lances.  They could hear them sizzle.

Drake let loose a burst

Lefranc slapped Drake on the back of his head.

“You forget what, ‘at my command’ means?”  

The dozens had grown to scores.  They were massing up into respectable sizes now.  The human waves grew thicker, deeper.  Charging bodies piled in behind charging bodies.  Individual fighters seemed to be melding together forming one giant antagonist. Clubs and machetes waved in the air, like the antennae of some horrible insect.  Shots from rippers and strange Gomorrah revolvers rang out, unaimed and without effect.

“Standby.”

The scores turned into hundreds.  The charged headlong.  Fear and caution washed away by drugs and bloodlust.  Fire lances spurted their stinking chemical fire.   Fiendish mouths full of teeth filed to points snapped and bit at the air, like wild and hostile animals.  Eyes, wide and dilated with drugs glowed white and insane.

“Standby.”

A man painted red and wearing only a torque waved a giant black and red Gomorrah standard over his head.  A woman wearing a unicorn mask and carrying a ripper in each hand charged at them from out of a surreal, psychedelic nightmare.  An enemy carried a pickaxe painted with rainbow stripes.  One carried a scepter topped with what looked like a baby’s skull.  Lefranc’s eyes absorbed them as they came closer, closer, closer…  until at last they came close enough.

“Fire!”

The machineguns fired.  

Thanks Sharkman. great read. Is there any more on the Sean Bastle story line?

There will be one last book on that story line to make it a trilogy.  The "end of the  war"  is never as clean
as it is made out to be, so Sean will have some more people to kill.  
I'm just not in the right place to write it yet.  

A good start Sharkman6. Can't wait too read more.

Interesting, waiting for more tales of Spartan herorics....

Ah, , another insight into New Sparta, excellent. Patiently waiting.

Update in original post.

Cool, I like this. I just finished The Spartan's Last March yesterday and it was great I would gladly buy and read more...

Gorman!  Again!

Updated in original post.

 

Any updates?

Kinda blew this one off.  Didn't think it was catching much interest, story wasn't going where I wanted it too and there would be some continuity issues with the other stories.  Plus, trying to get the next book going and there are only so many hours in the day.

At this point, if I closed this one out it wouldn't be much more than gratuitous violence.

Thank you.  I always look forward to your work.  Loved The Spartan's Last March as well as the Flip of The Coin series.  Some of the best, if not the THE best, fiction I have ever read.  

I bought Last March and loved it. I enjoy reading these. Keep up the good work.

Updated in original post.  Look for the XXXXXX

Nice, keep up the writing.

I just discovered this one and really enjoyed the read.

Looking forward to when you have the time to continue it.

I was going to let this die on the vine.  I was using this as a way of introducing Lefranc and Kelly before the follow up to TSLM, but there would be some continuity issues between everything.  

We'll see.

I'd really like to see this finished! This is a great world you are developing. With some editing, it could be as good as any paperback fiction I buy at B&N. You are head and shoulders above the other stuff I've been buying on kindle. You should try and get in touch with Hugh Howey and see if he can get you some connections.

Thanks, and thanks for the kind words.   No real plans to finish this soon.  I have about a half dozen short stories  I am working on (when time allows), that I might put out in a collection.  

Editing is my second biggest issue with time to write being number one.
Any help would be appreciated.