As soon as I realized what we were up against, I'd sent runners back to the main chamber to contact fleet command so they could warn Major Johnson and his battalion before they went in. Unfortunately the warning was too late. The complex on the other side of the planet was a copy of the one we attacked, and it was also full of Mubarizun. Johnson's troops there were beaten back, and the general had to send in another battalion to reinforce them, which played havoc with the org chart for the rest of the campaign.
We boarded the shuttles and rode back to the ship in almost total silence. Everyone was in a dazed stupor, and after we docked I just left everyone alone for a few days. No reports, no training, no drills. I let them mourn our dead in their own ways.
In the days after the battle we managed to piece together what had happened. It seems there had been a rebellion among the workers that shut down production. Shortly before my strikeforce took the station at Gliese, the Mubarizun expedition had been dispatched to support the garrison, which had not been able to take the mines back from the rebels. The elite troops quickly wiped out the rebellious workers, but they couldn't withdraw because we now controlled the Gliese 250 system. So we blundered into a prepared and fortified force of elite troops where we'd expected only garrison. And we'd paid the price in blood.
The garrison troops had Mubarizun units embedded with them, which explains why they fought so hard on the surface. In the end there were no prisoners at all, and even if they'd tried to surrender, after the losses we'd taken I doubt any of us would have accepted it. When a battle reaches a certain point, when the cost has been too high, it becomes a struggle to the death.
So I'd been in another battle where my troops suffered 50% casualties, and a very large percentage of those were killed. More ghosts to share my fitful and restless sleep.
Johnson's battalion got hurt even worse, with casualties over 70%. In the end the general had to rescue them with a reserve battalion, which itself took 20% losses. Tyler Johnson would have plenty of time to think about his own ghosts. His men pulled him out of the mines still alive, but barely. Now he would go through the ordeal of growing two new arms and two new legs, among other treatments. He was a good officer, but I didn't know if he'd ever be the same again. I wanted to see him before he was shipped back to Gliese, but he was heavily sedated and kept in medical isolation, so it wasn't possible.
The task force set a course around 79 Ceti toward the warp gate leading to HD 44594, while the battered marines onboard licked their wounds and tried to reorder themselves. There was still one fight left on this campaign, though none of us really had the stomach for it.
The Lafayette, one of the large transports was detached back to Gliese with the wounded as the rest of us pressed on. My battalion had 540 men and women at full strength. The day we went through the warp gate to HD 44594 I we had 252 fit for duty. Sanchez was dead, and Rijis was wounded and en route for Gliese, so two of the three companies were without their commanders. Most of the platoon leaders were on their first campaign in that post, and I really didn't want to put a green lieutenant in command of a company, even a seriously shrunken one. I transferred most of the battalion auxiliaries to Frost's company to bring it up to strength, and I combined Sanchez's and Rijis' companies and put Jax in charge. It wasn't a demotion for Jax, but I needed a solid company commander more than an exec right now. I kept two heavy weapons teams under my direct command as a battalion reserve.
After we'd emerged into the HD 44594 system, I shuttled over to the general's ship for a conference. We could have done it over the communications grid, but after the fight on Eridu, I think he just wanted to meet with me in person. I could immediately tell he felt guilty for the bad intel and the losses we'd suffered as a result. General Holm had his own retinue of ghosts, and it was even bigger than mine.
He told me he was going to try to keep my people out of the next fight, but that he might need us for reserves. I told him we were ready to drop in front of an enemy division if that's where he needed us. He transferred the remnants of Johnson's shattered battalion to me, and I organized most of them into a third company. I took the snipers and heavy weapons teams and added them to mine to beef up the battalion reserve. We were still below strength, but a lot better off than before.
Johnson's troops were on the Iwo Jima, and it wasn't practical to move them over to the Belleau Wood, so we'd assemble the battalion on the ground if it came to that. I thought Johnson's men would need some attention, though, so I requested permission to shuttle over to their ship on my way back. The general agreed completely and even decided to go with me.
The visit had a tremendous impact on the troops, whose morale had been sorely battered. Major Johnson had been very popular, and the battalion had taken horrific losses fighting in almost impossible conditions. We gave them an update on the major - he was going to survive, and he would eventually report back to duty. Then I welcomed them to my battalion and told them I was proud to have them join us. The general gave them a somber but inspiring pep talk that seemed to help somewhat.
As it turned out, we did see more action on the campaign. The third planet of the system was a world just like Earth, and if it hadn't been situated in a remote dead end in space, it would have attracted enormous colonization interest. As it was, it served mostly as an agricultural world, producing food for export to nearby colonies. It had been colonized by a group of religious extremists too fanatical even for the Caliph's tastes. So he accommodated them by giving the group their own planet, and in doing so got them off of Earth and secured a food supply for his Rim colonies.
Great. More fanatics. One of these days I wanted to fight a sane enemy. There were no regular troops posted on the world, which they had named Aroush, but the entire civilian population would likely fight to the death. Where there weren't farms, the planet was covered with deep pine forests, giving a guerilla force a lot of places to hide. The entire battle was a series of search and destroy actions to hunt down the locals. We ended up having to rotate in and relieve some of the units from the initial wave.
Our wounds were still fresh, and we were in no mood to be gentle with any enemy, particularly a bunch of suicidal religious crazies. I've never seen troops under my command act so much like grim executioners, and we swept entire areas, killing everyone we found.
It was three weeks before we'd eliminated the last holdouts and General Holm declared the campaign completed. The savagery of the whole thing had been beyond anything we had expected. Two of the three worlds we had invaded were now uninhabited graveyards. The Mubarizun had massacred the rebellious population on Eridu, and were themselves wiped out in the battle with us. On Aroush we'd systematically hunted down and killed every occupant of the planet, all of whom had taken up arms to fight us.
I managed to arrange to have the troops from Tyler Johnson's old battalion transferred to the Belleau Wood when we re-embarked. They'd meshed very well on the ground, and were well on the way to becoming a full-fledged part of my battalion, a process I intended to see completed on the long trip back to Gliese 250.
We'd had a hard campaign, but I wanted us to be back to total readiness as soon as possible. Rumors were rampant that General Holm would be mounting another campaign from Gliese, this time against the outer rim, and I was sure my battalion would be part of it.
I would be saying goodbye to my liaison officer, who was heading back to PRC headquarters before being posted to a new command. Aoki wasn't even going to the station at Gliese, but would be shuttling directly to an outbound PRC cruiser. There was an informal black market on ships, and even throughout entire fleets, where liquor, food, and other rarities were obtainable. I did a little trading myself and managed to secure a few pounds of good ground beef. We had a little going away party on Aoki's last night with us, complete with very rare burgers.