A Deep Sleep (Valhalla Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the rest of the battalion? If we lead with the strike against the force in between us, they’ll likely not suspect a spoiling attack. Give it a few minutes then launch the second barrage against the enemy forces in front of the port.” He outlined his plan for the strike over the next minute or so. Danford was sold before he finished speaking.
    “Damn good idea, let’s do it. We’ll have to be careful in our targeting, because we’ll have to shoot out our stocks to do this.” Company level units didn’t bring many nukes with them, expecting that by the time they were needed in any significant quantities, there’d be at least a full battalion, if not a regiment on the ground. Between the three companies stuck in the pocket of LZ Hotel, they had just twenty-four warheads, all of a variable yield between four and fifteen kilotons. “Set it up Diggs, but stick with the ordnance deployment you just laid out, I don’t want more than half dropping between us and the port. We’re already stretching it to make that attack only a spoiling attack.”
    “Yessir.”
    “Get me Lieutenant Colonel Cain” Danford said to his AI.
    “Connected.”
    “Colonel Cain, sir, the other company commanders and I have an idea and not much time.”
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    From the center of the LZ, fourteen free-flight rockets leapt from their launch tubes, their engines cold until they were well clear of the mortar tubes. Their rockets ignited and they sped away towards the enemy positions along the ridgelines between the two elements of the battalion. The PRC Marines, expecting such an attack, were in a dispersed formation. They all took cover and waited for the blanket of atomic fury to subside.
    The rockets might have found their flight path unusual, had their tiny processors had the capacity for true thought. Instead, they merely executed their pre-programmed commands and converged on a small period of frontage. One warhead was intercepted by a lucky shot from the enemy AA, but the remaining thirteen rockets detonated fifteen meters off the ridgeline in a grid, blanketing a mere one kilometer of the enemy frontage, the entire depth of their line. Instead of covering the entire twelve kilometers line between, the center kilometer was subjected to a concentrated fireball. The armored troops taking cover there were subjected to an inferno in excess of thirty-five hundred degrees centigrade, easily melting their suits and boiling the soldiers inside them. In the places directly below the detonation the landscape was forever changed, ancient rock formations melted and blasted away by man’s fury.
    Lieutenant Diggs couldn’t help but be slightly awed by the raw destructive power at his disposal. The heat was dissipating quickly and it was almost time to move. His company, at least his two most intact platoons, were about to launch a spoiling attack right into the new flanks of the enemy they’d just created with their barrage. Hopefully they’d make this spoiling attack morph into the rest of the regiment breaking through to them. Diggs didn’t think that retreating back to his current position would be particularly easy once the enemy got reorganized.
    “Alright 3 rd Company, on me!” Diggs slipped above the trench line, careful to not leap too high in his armor.  Jumping, running, even just moving in armor was a skill all marines had to acquire before they even left boot camp. Even for a veteran it still took some concentration to do it right. If you leapt with all the power in your suit, well, a sniper was going to end you real quick. He knew he shouldn’t be among the first over the top, but he couldn’t send his men in their without going right in with them. They needed him and he needed to do it for himself as well. Lead from the front was the way of the Marines.
    The first platoon of 3 rd company came out of the trenches with him, thirty-two marines charging the enemy. They