Spoils of War Read online

  Spoils of War

  Book One of The Imperial Marines Saga

  Terry Mixon

  Contents

  Spoils of War

  Also by Terry Mixon

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Also by Terry Mixon

  About Terry

  Spoils of War

  Book One in The Imperial Marines Saga

  by

  Terry Mixon

  They thought they could force her to conform. They were wrong.

  Inside a dystopian school in the Singularity, the twelve-year-old girl known as One Twenty-Four struggles to survive. Failure to conform means death at the hands of her teacher.

  Assuming her clone sisters don't kill her first.

  The Terran Empire has tasked Imperial Marine Lieutenant Grace Tolliver to lead her platoon into the Singularity as a privateer. Her mission: to tear a great bloody strip off their enemies and to take anything that isn't nailed down.

  The collision of this unlikely pair will change the humanity in ways that no one could predict. If they survive.

  Author's Note: This novel takes place more than five centuries before the Empire of Bones series and the events unfolding here have implications there.

  Spoils of War

  Copyright © 2020 by Terry Mixon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and/or retrieval systems, or dissemination of any electronic version, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review, and except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Yowling Cat Press ®

  Digital edition date: 7/14/2020

  Print ISBN: 978-1947376250

  Large Print ISBN: 978-1947376649

  Cover art - image copyrights as follows:

  DepositPhotos | innovari (Luca Oleastri)

  DepositPhotos | algolonline (Caroline Rosa Nicolette Atkinson)

  Donna Mixon

  Cover design and composition by Donna Mixon

  Print edition design and layout by Terry Mixon

  Also by Terry Mixon

  You can always find the most up to date listing of Terry’s titles on his Amazon Author Page.

  The Empire of Bones Saga

  Empire of Bones

  Veil of Shadows

  Command Decisions

  Ghosts of Empire

  Paying the Price

  Recon in Force

  Behind Enemy Lines

  The Terra Gambit

  Hidden Enemies

  Race to Terra

  Ruined Terra

  Victory on Terra

  The Humanity Unlimited Saga

  Liberty Station

  Freedom Express

  Tree of Liberty

  Blood of Patriots

  The Imperial Marines Saga

  Spoils of War

  The Fractured Republic Saga

  Storm Divers

  The Scorched Earth Saga

  Scorched Earth

  Omnibus Volumes

  The Empire of Bones Saga Volume 1

  The Empire of Bones Saga Volume 2

  The Empire of Bones Saga Volume 3

  Humanity Unlimited Publisher’s Pack 1

  The Vigilante Series with Glynn Stewart

  Heart of Vengeance

  Oath of Vengeance

  Bound By Law

  Bound By Honor

  Bound By Blood

  Want to get updates from Terry about new books and other general nonsense going on in his life? He promises there will be cats. Go to TerryMixon.com/Mailing-List and sign up.

  Dedication

  This book would not be possible without the love and support of my beautiful wife. Donna, I love you more than life itself.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank the folks that support me on Patreon. You got to read this book as I was writing it and that kept me working. You have my deepest thanks.

  In particular, I want to thank those patrons that supported me at the $10 level:

  Bryan Barnes

  Bill Colston

  Dave Dolan

  David Goldstein

  Christian A. Michelsen

  Dale Thompson

  Clark Williams

  And my special thanks to John Page for his exceptionally generous donation.

  Finally, I want to thank my readers for putting up with me. You guys are great.

  1

  Lieutenant Grace Tolliver used the optics in her powered armor to scan the icefield that stretched out in front of Third Platoon’s makeshift offensive point, looking for any signs of the opposing force. They had to be out there somewhere.

  Thankfully, the filters cut the glare down to a manageable level. If she’d been using just her own eyes, the scene would’ve been lost in the blinding light reflected off the ice of the frozen bay she stood on as she stared out over the ocean that never thawed.

  Working in powered armor was a lot better than regular armor, especially out here in the Crag. For one thing, she wasn’t shivering her ass off.

  Her platoon was spread out over a kilometer and a half between two frozen outcroppings of rock deep inside the Crag, the arctic training ground used by the Imperial Marines on Seward. Like the rest of Delta Company, she was playing defense while waiting for Alpha Company to try and get past them.

  The goal of this exercise was to make certain that the opposition force—or OPFOR as the marines called them—didn’t surprise the rest of the company. Considering the excellent visibility, she thought the odds of them being able to sneak up on her people were slim, but she wasn’t taking anything for granted.

  “The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Na said over the command channel.

  Her top NCO had about twice her experience, and if she felt uneasy, that made Grace feel edgy. Na wasn’t given to needless worry.

  “Are you seeing something I’m not?” Grace asked, once again scanning the area in front of the platoon. “I’m just seeing sheets of ice and way too much sun.”

  Na was down at the other end of the line, so Grace couldn’t see the other woman. Both of them had enough experience working with their implants and their armor to behave as if they were standing next to one another even when they were so far apart. It made collaboration easy.

  “No, ma’am,” Na said slowly. “I can’t say what’s got me fee
ling this way, but I’m pretty damned confident that somebody is trying to pull something on us. This exercise always seemed just a little bit too easy to me.

  “If the opposing force is going to have any chance of success, they can’t just walk up to us over the icefield and expect to win. They’re going to have to be tricky, and we need to expect something we never saw coming.”

  That set Grace to thinking about the defensive perimeter again. They had every angle covered. There were even scouts up on the slopes of the rocks to the left and right of the area of operations to make sure that no one made it around them unseen.

  How in the world could elements from Alpha Company get past them when they had to come into sight at some point?

  Going overhead was out. The visibility was excellent, and even if it had been at night, their optics would be more than capable of detecting any vehicles trying to overfly their position. They’d have no difficulty targeting them with the training weapons they used for exercises like this.

  But she had to admit that Na was right. The colonel wouldn’t set up a field exercise where one side had such a huge advantage. He expected everyone to use their brains. The OPFOR had a path to victory. She just had to figure out the angle they’d use.

  Sometimes winning a battle wasn’t about the strength of forces one brought to the fight. It was the way one applied that force. If you could finesse your way into attacking an enemy from a blind spot or pinning them against another force, you could win even when you were outnumbered. So, what was she missing?

  If the answer wasn’t over her head, could it be under her feet?

  “Just how thick is this ice?” she asked Na. “Is there any chance they could be going underneath us? Does the ice in this bay go all the way down to the seabed?”

  “I’m not certain. Even if it doesn’t, exactly how would the opposition force get back up to attack us?”

  “Go to infrared and let’s see if anything is going on underneath us,” Grace ordered. “With all this ice, it’s going to shield any action they’re taking unless it’s close to the surface, but it won’t hurt to double-check.”

  Leaving the observation of the ice field to the marines around her, Grace switched her optics to thermal mode and began looking at the ice both in front of the line and behind it. It all looked the same to her, so she couldn’t imagine that anything was going on beneath the surface in her general vicinity.

  She turned her attention toward the rocks that rose above the ice to her left. There were a couple of scouts high up on the protrusion, but they wouldn’t have a line of sight to the area just below their location. If she wanted to know what was going on there, she was going to have to send a group to check it out.

  Or go herself.

  She tagged two of the Third Squad marines to accompany her and headed off to examine the area near the rock outcropping herself. If she spotted anything, she’d call for backup.

  When she arrived at the base of the rock and started scanning, it only took a couple of seconds to realize that something was wrong. Very wrong.

  The temperature of the ice at the base of the cliff was uniformly the same as out in the area she’d been just a few minutes ago, except for an area about twenty meters across that was almost hidden behind a curve of the rock. That area was at least thirty degrees warmer, and she couldn’t think of any good reason that would be.

  “Breach!” she shouted over the general channel. “We have an OPFOR breach in progress near the base of the left outcropping. I want Second and Third squads on my position ASAP. Sergeant Na, coordinate coverage of our zone with First Squad and sound the alert to Delta Company.”

  Things were going to get ugly fast. Once the enemy came out from beneath the ice, there would be no cover for her people as they defended against the incursion. All of the barricades they’d constructed would be useless now that the enemy was behind them. She had to come up with a new plan fast.

  “Everyone needs to spread out as far as you can while still being close enough to fire on the breach,” she ordered. “Get down in the prone position and wait for my signal. They’re going to be coming out of a choke point a lot like a hatch on a ship, and we’re going to be able to bring a lot of force to bear against them if we can get into place in time.”

  Grace wasn’t certain how long they had before the ice was thin enough for the enemy to come through, but she was sure it would be less time than she’d like.

  She found a good position and sprawled out on the ice, bringing her heavy flechette rifle to bear on the target zone. It was loaded with real flechettes, but the rifle was rigged to fire them at a greatly reduced velocity, so none of the marines she’d be shooting at would be in any danger. Their suits would still register the hits and tally them as injured, disabled, or dead.

  The two marines with her had barely gotten down when the ice in front of Grace cracked and split. Two marines in powered armor popped out of the fissure and landed with a slight skid on the slick surface, already scanning the area around them.

  None of her other marines were in position to take on the intruders, so it fell to Grace to buy them time. Without hesitation, she opened fire.

  The two marines in front of her “died” in a hail of flechettes, their armor locking up and freezing them into position. Unfortunately, that told the marines behind them that their plan had gone sour, and they came boiling out of the hole in the ice like disturbed ants.

  This was rapidly becoming what Sergeant Na liked to call a “target-rich environment,” so Grace had no problem hitting whatever she fired at. Unfortunately, it only took the enemy a couple of seconds to dial in her location, and she had no cover whatsoever.

  Within a couple of seconds, her armor went from indicating that she was uninjured to locking up her arms with hits on both and then registering her as dead. Her com system still allowed her to receive transmissions from her platoon, but she could no longer transmit. She was just an angry observer to the debacle that then ensued.

  According to her HUD, two entire platoons came out of that hole in the ice. Even if her people had been ready for the attack, they’d probably still have lost, but it still annoyed her that she’d fallen for their trick.

  In less than fifteen minutes, Alpha Company had routed her platoon and taken over the bay that they were supposed to be guarding. The breach would cost Delta Company the exercise, and it was her fault.

  The final humiliation came when Senior Lieutenant Anatoli Bashir came sauntering up to her frozen armor and squatted down beside her. She only knew it was him because he’d configured his armor to tell her who he was.

  The smug bastard.

  “Didn’t they ever tell you that you’re not supposed to lead from the front, Grace?” he asked in a condescending tone. “Once again, you’ve let me outmaneuver you. I wouldn’t want to be you when they start the after-action debrief.”

  She couldn’t respond in a way that he’d hear, but she also couldn’t keep herself from growling out an answer. “Screw you, Bashir.”

  He laughed as if he’d heard her and then walked away to organize his company’s incursion into her zone.

  She’d be stuck here for the next few hours, so she’d have every opportunity to go over what she’d done wrong. She hadn’t considered all the possible avenues of attack. Bashir was an ass, but he was dead right about her screwing up by the numbers.

  Grace vowed never to let something like this happen under her watch again. When the ass-chewing came, she’d deserve what she got, but she was going to learn from this. Losing to Bashir was embarrassing. Losing to someone with real weapons would get her marines killed, and that wasn’t going to happen.

  “One Twenty-Four!”

  One Twenty-Four jerked back to awareness when Keeper’s disciplinary rod slapped the desktop in front of her. She’d been daydreaming. Again.

  “I’m sorry, Keeper,” she lied contritely. “I was considering the implications of your lesson.”

  The tall woman standing n
ext to her desk obviously didn’t believe her. Her face was cut into a thunderous frown that made the swirling tattoos of her social status seemingly stand out from her forehead and cheeks as if they too were angry with her.

  Honestly, One Twenty-Four was almost certain that that was an intentional part of its design. The ruling caste of the Singularity needed to be aloof and imposing.

  Keeper was all that and more.

  Each crèche belonging to the Andrea Line started with two hundred children. One Twenty-Four suspected the more common lines inside the Singularity consisted of significantly more line sibs and hosted their decantings with more regularity. The Singularity needed far more servants than rulers, after all.

  One Twenty-Four was identical in every physical respect to her crèche mates, and Keeper was precisely what she’d look like when she grew up, if Keeper permitted that to happen.

  If One Twenty-Four could keep her mind focused on her lessons.

  She and her crèche mates had wondered—once they were old enough—how Keeper was able to tell them apart. The answer was in the bracelets they each wore. Adults presumably had a different method of identifying one another, but the crèche used bands on the children’s left wrists.