The Tacit hung off the port bow of the Omega class corvette Volga, waiting after having picked up its complement of recon Marines. Each of the eight assault shuttles had picked up a pair of squads from the recon battalion, prepared to deliver them to the landing zones so that they could clear them for the follow-on forces.

Lt. Mary O’Bannon got the all-clear from her crew that her cargo of Marines was aboard. “Tacit to Volga, we’ve got them all. Thank you.” The Skelly acknowledged and wished them luck.

“Levon, signal our escort to form up,” the small woman ordered her Vulcan ops officer. Outside the small ship, four Viper fighters took up position around the Tacit just as other fighters gathered around the rest of the shuttles. 

“We have received the go order,” said the ops officer. Immediately, she ordered the helmsman, “Let’s go!”

The ship turned gracefully away from her larger siblings and raced for the surface, her escort in tow. Entering the atmosphere, she began to buck a little, but the helmsman calmed her down. The tactical officer called out, “Enemy fighters are moving to intercept.”

The Tacit’s escort peeled away to greet the oncoming Cardassian fighters who had broken off from the attack on the task force in orbit.

It would only take about fifteen minutes for her ship to get to its landing zone below, but those minutes would be filled with chair-gripping excitement. “One of the fighters broke through,” Levon said with Vulcan equanimity.

“Joe, come about,” she said to the helmsman. “Tactical, lock phasers and torpedoes on targets and fire at will.” The crewman at the primary tactical console acknowledged the order as she tapped the commands into the console. “Firing phasers, firing torpedoes,” she said as the little ship jolted. “Direct hit!”

“Helm, return to course.” Turning to the engineering station, she asked the officer, “What’s our status?”

“Shields are down 8 percent; all other systems are nominal,” he answered.

“Weapons fire from the surface,” announced Levon.

“Evasive maneuvers, helm,” O’Bannon ordered.

“I’m on it!” the Coridani helmsman replied. Despite the gyrations he put the Tacit through, it still shook from several shots from the garrison’s weapons and one of the consoles exploded in a shower of sparks.

“I have a lock on one of the surface batteries,” said Tactical.

“Is it near the native settlement?” O’Bannon asked. She had been given strict orders not to fire on any target near the native towns below, no matter what. While that might give the Dominion an advantage by letting them use the innocents as living shields, Mary agreed with the order. It’s bad enough those poor people had to live in the middle of a war zone without both sides shooting at them.

“No, the weapon is at least six kilometers from the closest village. I can target it without endangering the natives,” the crewman told her, the eagerness in his voice revealing his desire to strike back at their tormentors.

“Then fire torpedoes at the target.” The amount of fire they were taking was immediately reduced. Finally, they were closing in on their assigned landing zone so Mary called back to their passengers. “We’re nearing the drop zone. Prepare to disembark as soon as we hit the ground.”

In the troop compartment at the rear of the vessel, the score of Marines rose to their feet, weapons gripped tightly in their hands, prepared to run for cover as soon as they touched the ground

The shuttle landed lightly and the rear hatch dropped open even as the escorting Vipers hovered overhead. The two squads rushed out from the Tacit and, once clear, dropped to the ground, prepared to fire at any enemy that presented himself to them.

Soon they would fan out from the landing zone to hunt down the transport inhibitors, shield generators, and surface weapons that Bravo Company’s First Platoon had found and marked. Meanwhile, the Tacit and her escorts had lifted off, threading their way through the planet’s defenses once again to rejoin the fleet in orbit.

Two Evader Class assault shuttles bringing recon teams to the surface. Image courtesy of Andrew Hodges.

USS Skelly, Omega Class corvette
In orbit of Callessus III
H hour

“Captain, we’ve received the order from the admiral to launch the assault.” Commander Stanley Boone accepted the notification from the ops officer with equanimity. He wasn’t excited or on edge. He just felt quietly confident and perhaps slightly impatient to go to work. His mission was to take his ship into the atmosphere of the planet and land in a hot landing zone, drop off the remainder of the recon Marines aboard, and fly out without getting shot down. Granted, a lot of the surface to air weapons had already fallen under the bombardment of the fleet in orbit, but there were probably many others that had escaped detection or others that were just too close to the native villages to be targeted.

“Commander, is our escort in position?” Boone asked his first officer, Lt. Commander Noki Berman, seated to his right. She was tall with a long blonde braided ponytail hanging down her back, an unusual affectation among Starfleet officers. Many people seemed to think that a three-foot “leash” was just asking for someone to pull on it during a bad situation. But that was Noki’s style; her attitude seemed to be telling the universe, “Go ahead, pull my ponytail, I dare you.”

Just now the Skelly’s first officer was giving her CO the answer to his question. “Yes sir. The Aravalli and the fighter escort are now in position.” Just like with the Evader Class shuttles, the corvettes would receive an escort into their landing zones, but this time they would have starships along for the ride, in addition to the Vipers and now Peregrines. The Aravalli, a Steamrunner Class destroyer, was one of the few Starfleet vessels equipped to fly and fight, after a fashion, in the atmosphere of a planet, although she would not be the most maneuverable beast in the air.

“Go to Blue Alert. Mr. Jannsen, if you please, execute delta-3,” the captain ordered the helmsman. The ship turned from its high orbit, and began to head for the planet’s surface. By now the capital ships of the task force had ceased firing at the surface, having destroyed most of the targets accessible to them, and had turned their attention to destroying the enemy fighters that had risen to attack them.

Noki sat at her station, reviewing all of the data before her and her preparations for this moment. If she had missed anything, they might fail or be killed. She thought of her parents back home on the Moon, in Armstrong City, how proud they were when she had told them of her promotion to first officer. They had known from the beginning that a career in Starfleet was dangerous, but they hadn’t been prepared for a full-scale war to break out in which the fate of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants hung in the balance. Their last letter had been light-hearted and conversational, but she’d seen the worry lines on her mother’s face and heard the tone in their voice. She wondered what they would be thinking now if they realized she was suddenly on the front lines of the war. It’s probably better that they don’t know, she thought.

“We’re taking fire from the surface,” the tactical officer said as energy beams slammed into their shields. Noki immediately checked her readings and told the captain, “Shields are holding. They seem to be light weapons.”

“They’re probably using mobile weapons now that the fixed emplacements have been destroyed,” Boone said in reply.

Minutes later they were nearing their landing zone. “Alert the troop compartment that we will be landing in five minutes,” the captain said.

Noki tapped the comm panel on her seat’s arm. “Bridge to Marine commander, we will be in the drop zone in five minutes. Prepare to disembark.”

“Understood, bridge. We are ready,” said a voice in a clipped Andorian accent. That would be Lieutenant Bezsh, the temporary commander of the recon company, less one platoon already on the surface.

The ship took a sudden lurch to the side as a large munition exploded nearby. “Missile attack from the surface! Bearing 263 Mark 35,” yelled the tactical officer. That one blast had knocked the shields down by 15 percent, Noki saw. Another blast rocked the ship again and this time some power relays overloaded, sending sparks and smoke across the bridge.

“Shields down 35 percent, damage to Decks 1, 6, and 7,” Noki announced. She began directing damage control teams to the affected areas.

“Tactical, target that weapon,” Boone ordered.

“I’m trying, sir, but there’s a lot of interference. I think the Dominion is jamming our sensors,” the young lieutenant said. He added, “Sir, the Aravalli is breaking off to attack the weapon.”

As the ship rocked again, Boone turned to Noki and said with a wry grin, “I hope they get it soon, while we’re still in one piece.” It was all she could do not to stare at him open-mouthed. Had the stiff, old man made a casual comment in the middle of a battle? She was half-tempted to call for the doctor to see if the captain had been replaced by a changeling.

“Uh, yes sir” was all she could stammer, so she turned back to her work. Hearing the landing struts begin to extend, she knew they were just seconds away from the landing zone and none too soon for her taste. She just wanted to be done with this operation and get out of here, not just to get away from the people shooting at her, but also so Boone would start acting normal again. War did strange things to people besides making them dead.

USS Skelly
Ventral Landing Bay
H hour

Lieutenant Bezsh stood at the head of one of the three landing ramps set into the bottom of the Skelly, one facing forward and the other two to the right and left. The ship was supposed to land facing First Platoon’s position which would cover their front as the other two platoons raced down the side-facing ramps and took position. Bezsh, as temporary company commander, planned on being the last to leave the ship to make sure everyone got out as scheduled. Once they were clear, he would signal the Skelly and the ship would take off.

They landed with a bone-jarring thump and then the ramps dropped to the ground. The Skelly’s landing gear was unusually short so the ramps would be closer to the ground and at a short angle and, thus, the troops running on them wouldn’t feel like they were running down Mt. Olympus. As he waited for Second and Third Platoons to run off, Bezsh saw Ensign Kaftaro standing at the foot of the forward ramp next to two bodies.

A set of ship’s medical personnel, waiting just for this reason, ran down to meet them and Bezsh tagged along.

The young African human greeted the Andorian. “Welcome to the party, Bezsh.”

“Thank you,” he replied simply He didn’t get the human sense of humor. “How are they?” he asked, gesturing at the two men now being loaded onto the ship as they followed them up the ramp.

“Holmes is dead,” Kaftaro said, “and Mickers has a serious disruptor injury.” He looked up the ramp worriedly as the two men under his command were taken away, one dead already and the other on the brink.

“Only two,” Bezsh said to him, bringing his attention back to the situation at hand. “That is good.” Andorians were renowned warriors and largely unsentimental, although they possessed a strong sense of duty and honor. For his part, he could appreciate the difficulty of infiltrating more than forty Marines into an enemy-held planet for several days of reconnaissance while only suffering two serious casualties. That, to him, seemed a worthy achievement. He hoped the young human understood that.

“Let us go meet the lieutenant,” Bezsh said finally and the two turned for the tree line where Martinez was hunkered down. Looking left and right he saw that both platoons were clear of the ship and he signaled the Skelly that they could take off.

Callessus III
LZ alpha
25 kilometers south of the Dominion garrison
H+.5 hours

Martinez gathered his three platoon leaders around himself, happy to finally have his entire company together again. These 140 Marines would have to hold this landing zone for several hours while the 1^st Regiment began to land its troops in enough strength that the beachhead was secure from Dominion counterattack. Then they could move out ahead of the regiment’s advance, scouting out enemy forces and obstacles.

But for now they would have to continue to hold the line. “First Platoon will continue to hold the northern edge of the LZ. Second Platoon is holding the east and Third Platoon will be on the west. Bezsh, I want you to detach a squad from your platoon to keep watch on the southern edge.”

He paused and sized up his platoon leaders. Bezsh was the oldest and most experienced and the one in whom he could have the most confidence. Kaftaro was the youngest, the least experienced, and the one most likely to have problems. However, his platoon chief, Andre Flahaut, was a good man who would keep his ensign in line. Ensign Ntambue Kilolo of Second Platoon was more experienced than Kaftaro, due for a promotion to lieutenant, junior grade.

“Kaftaro, Nik and I will stay with your platoon for now to coordinate our operations. As soon as the first battalion of the regiment is on the ground and organized, we’ll begin moving out ahead of them. But that’s a long ways off. It looks like all anti-air weapons and transport scramblers in the area have been disabled, but I don’t think the division will try energy transport for a while. We’ll have to rely on our eyes and ears for recon data because the enemy has scanner scramblers operating.”

Kaftaro spoke up. “Sir, do you expect significant opposition?”

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I expect the Dominion to counterattack in force before we’ve had a chance to fortify our position. So I want all of you to be aware and keep an eye out for probing attacks. I would suggest that you set up booby traps and prepare firing lanes in front of your positions. If there are no more questions, you’re dismissed.”

As the others starting jogging off toward their platoons, Martinez and Kaftaro turned back to their now well-worn position. “Tony,” the younger man said, “do you think we can hold against a Dominion attack?”

Looking off into the silent forest surrounding them and then into the sky, which was still resounding with energy beams and missiles flying through it, Martinez thought for a moment. “Asir, I’m not going to lie to you. The Jem’Hadar are scary fighters; probably the scariest besides the Borg—who are only scary because of the numbers they throw at you. They’re tough to kill and they hide in their shrouds until they’re on top of you.” He stopped and whacked at a tree branch in front of him, turning to Asir who had stopped with him. “We’re in a tight spot, but we’ve also got some of the best soldiers in Starfleet to back us up, along with some heavy-duty hardware. Don’t worry you’ll do fine. We’ll do fine.” They continued on to the platoon’s position. Tony really believed it—they would do fine, they would be victorious on this unknown planet and most of his Marines would come out of it alive. He had to believe that. Confidence in your own abilities, and that of your team, was the first step toward victory.