We had about 60 dead and 175 seriously wounded. One of the transports was detached to take the wounded and prisoners back to Gliese, and the task force reformed and made a course for the only other warp gate in the system - the one to 79 Ceti.
The transit took six days, and then we decelerated into the 79 Ceti system and revectored toward our target, the fifth planet. I have landed on many worlds, some virtual paradise and others difficult environments, but 79 Ceti V was the most hellish world I've ever experienced.
The system's seventh planet was an enormous gas giant, with almost 100 times the mass of Jupiter, and the forces exerted by this gargantuan neighbor distorted the orbit of world number five. Highly elliptical in nature, the resulting orbit caused the planet, called Eridu by its occupants, to be bombarded by intense heat and radiation during its long summers and to become a frozen wasteland in winter. The atmosphere was noxious, though not immediately lethal. But between the overall environment and the massive radiation from both 70 Ceti and planet 7, Eridu was one of the unhealthiest environments ever occupied by man.
But the planet had large, naturally occurring stable isotopes of certain trans-uranium elements, which existed only in trace quantities in laboratories on Earth. These elements were extremely useful in starship drives, and they were almost incalculably expensive. Eridu was the only known location where these elements occurred naturally in significant quantities, and where there is such value men will find a way to extract it.
According to intel reports, the planet was primarily inhabited by bonded workers, citizens of the Caliphate who had committed some offense or failed to pay a tax and were sent to Eridu to work off the debt. Poorly equipped with protective gear and working under dismal conditions, the median life expectancy for a new worker was less than eighteen months. Few who were sent there ever returned.
The supervisors lived in better shielded quarters and were equipped with superior protective suits. They were rotated out after a two-year assignment, generally quite wealthy after their stint. With no permanent population, there was no militia or local defense force, and the planet's garrison consisted entirely of regulars. Because of the savage environment, the garrison was all powered infantry, which meant we were likely to have a significant fight on our hands.
My battalion made up the lead assault wave. Eridu was the toughest objective of the campaign, and the general was counting on me to make sure the landing went smoothly. Or as smoothly as possible. Landing on Eridu was not an easy task. It was mid-winter, and the planet was wracked with massive ammonia blizzards. The dense, radioactive snow played havoc with scanners, but was even tougher on visibility. We sent down three automated drones, each with a very high-powered beacon that would serve as guidance for the landers. One of the landers crashed, and a second had a very hard touchdown but managed to deploy its beacon. On the third we got lucky; it landed perfectly.
We used the two functioning beacons as ground zero for two groups of landers. The general left all the details of the landing up to me, and I decided to land two companies in the first wave, and after they were down, send in the battalion assets and the third company.
I went in with the first company, though I suspected I might get a lecture about it after the battle. But if my troops were going into this hell, I was going with them. It was a rough ride down, but my lander made it without any damage. A few of the others landed hard and eleven troops were wounded. One crashed, killing all five occupants.
The conditions were even worse than I expected. Visibility was less than ten meters, and even with Hector constantly enhancing the constructed images, the data from my scanners was fuzzy and difficult to read. The wind was fierce, and I could feel myself pushing against it even in my suit. It would have blown an unarmored man away like a dry leaf.
I had assigned one platoon from each company form a circular picket line all around the LZ. I didn't seriously expect the enemy to come out of their bunkers to fight us here, but long-range scanning was next to useless, and I wasn't going to risk a surprise. The rest of us cleared the LZ. The Gordons were shot, but they had enough juice left to lift off and fly a few klicks before crashing. I wanted the landing zone clear. Dealing with the conditions was bad enough, I didn't want the second wave having to deal with the debris from the first. God damn it, I wasn't losing any more of my troops in crashes we could avoid.
We had a couple of hard landings and a few more minor wounds, but the second wave made it in more or less unscathed. I formed the battalion up with two companies abreast, covering a frontage of about 6 klicks. I had a company and the battalion assets in reserve about three klicks back.
There were two major mining operations on the planet, and they were the only population centers. We were assaulting one of them, and as soon as we were engaged, the 2nd battalion would commence their landing against the other one.
Our advance was slow. Even in powered armor, it's not easy to make time slogging through waste deep ammonia snow, with almost no visibility and your scanners only half working. I didn't want any stupid accidents causing unnecessary casualties, so I kept the pace very deliberate.
We had a rough projection of the location of enemy bunkers, but we really had no idea what they'd managed to do since we burst through the warp gate and triggered the alarm systems. We didn't even have a reliable estimate of enemy strength. At least their visibility and scanning would be as fouled up as ours, but I figured they'd probably have some type of detection net set up. I gave orders for any squads that drew fire to fall back and report.
I wanted to be in the forward line, but I knew the general didn't want me there, so I took position back with the battalion assets. Not that he'd know unless I got hit. We had verbal communication with the fleet, but the radioactivity and the vicious storm cut the normal link with the battle computers on the flagship. We were on our own, much more than any strike force I'd been part of.
We got to within one klick of where we had intermittent readings of some type of energy source, when automatic fire ripped across the frontage of one of my squads. They followed orders and pulled back, carrying their two casualties with them. The guys who were hit were just wounded, but both of them died before their comrades got them back to the medic. The cold, and the atmosphere were a rough combination for the wounded to survive.
I commed the entire battalion and told them to prioritize patching the armor of wounded personnel. The suit's trauma control would stabilize most wounds, at least for a while. But it wouldn't help if the injured marines were exposed to the elements for too long. The suits did have a self-repair system, but it was only good for patching small breaches. We had adjustable patches that could be used for temporary repair jobs, but they had to be applied manually, usually by someone other than the wearer of the damaged suit.
I ordered a platoon to move around the flank of the position that had opened fire, but they took fire from another direction and pulled back with one man down. Trying to flank the second enemy position we took fire from a third. I had Hector chewing on the probably locations, and he projected that there was an enemy position every 1,000 meters along a circle 3 klicks in radius out from the settlement. I had him transmit his best calculated locations to the platoon commanders.
We still had no idea how big or well armed the strongpoints were. The fire was heavy, a SAW or equivalent at least, maybe something heavier. Frontally assaulting these things was going to be expensive, maybe even impossible in these conditions. If we could get clear line of sight we could try to take them out with heavy weapons fire, but a direct hit in this storm would be dumb luck.