Disclaimer: Avatar is the property of James Cameron. I do not own anything other than my original characters.
Chapter 2
Work went fast in the next two weeks. Selfridge had never seen engineers of any military variety in action, but he was quickly impressed when he saw them in action. After huddling together with Quaritch and his other senior commanders, a spot was staked out for the 9th's new base. On a slight elevation in the ground, twenty miles out, a 10 hectare clearing had been carved out of the jungle by the slash-cutters of the 7th engineers in little less than six hours. This would be where the Marine's new base would be located.
The one issue that had not been addressed was that of command. The regiment had brought a staff for a major command with them, however there was no ranking officer who could take the assignment. Thusly, Quaritch was still in temporary military command while Selfridge ran the operation as a whole.
Drawing (not unfair) parallels from the Vietnam Wars, due to the terrain and surroundings, the Marine base, New Da Nang, was built quickly and efficiently. The plan for defense was simple; two battalions manning the line, with the other two and the 7th engineers in reserve. Equipped with UH-101 Super Huey's and AT-100 Hornet gunships, the 9th Marines were a rapid reaction force, made to move quickly to, and engage any enemy forces that approached. So far, all was quiet.
The morning came with the same deceptive peacefulness that is endemic on a death world, but almost everyone could feel a certain tension in the air. Despite the fact that two weeks had gone by, there were only light attacks. Then, at eleven fifteen a.m, the comms burst into frantic chatter.
"Da Nang! This is mining site 01! We are under attack by blueskins! I say again, blueskins! Need help immediately, mining site 01 is under attack!" The colonel was in before the man on the other end finished his sentence.
"This is Clewell. We read you site 01, 3rd battalion will be with you in half an hour and the rest of the regiment will close on foot to eliminate any attackers mounted on Dire Horses or other such ground based enemies. Hold out until we get there, over." The Colonel spun around and began barking orders and flagging down his 3rd battalion commander, Major Jack Larson. Larson was a middle sized man with dark skin and chocolate brown eyes, though he personally did not approve of that description. "Major!" He shouted, immediately the Chicago native seemed to materialize in front of him and snapped to attention.
"Yes sir!" he replied, in a tone that just begged to be given an order.
"Major, you have command of the air-mobile forces of the regiment, so I'm tasking you with relieving the site and defeating the blueskin attack!" came Clewell's response. Maj. Larson saluted once more and rushed off to assemble his battalion. The assembly itself took less than 10 minutes, marines sealing themselves into their armor, grabbing their weapons and running to the activating helicopters. Soon the major was in his chopper and he felt the familiar sensation of his stomach dropping as the helicopters began to raise themselves off the ground.
At lift off plus 12, the columns of smoke rising from the mine could be seen. Two minutes later, the yells and cries of the natives could be heard. At lift off plus thirty five, the choppers descended to treetop level. After what seemed like an eternity, the choppers arrived at their destination, the weapons company landed 200 meters outside the mining zone while the others dived down into the mine itself. The Marauders of the weapons company quickly set up and began lobbing mortar shells into the pit, though they took great care to avoid damaging the excavators closest to the combat sector. And then in ten minutes, it was all over. The first major engagement of the war. There had been several over the previous two months, but none on this scale.
No news travels faster than bad news, and it flew along the grapevine back to Hell's Gate that the first mining site had been attacked. A force of 200 Na'vi had made the assault, but fewer than 20 made it out, and they had been riding Banshees. But this attack, however large, was a probing assault. Two attacks in the next week, on a smaller scale, confirmed this. When the second attack hit, the regiment took their first casualties, two dead and five wounded in the 2nd battalion. Something big was coming, and whatever it was, one regiment, even of marines, would not be enough to defeat the native attack.
These were the thoughts running through the mind of Bob Clewell as he sat at his desk at the command post. Clewell thought it over and then he marched to the staff car landed in the second day of their service. After a tense fifteen minutes of watching the jungle around him, watching for ambushes, his car arrived at Hell's Gate.
As the vibrations ceased from exposure to the cold tarmac of the base, Clewell felt some sense of relief as the gate closed behind his vehicle, but that did not detract from the greater weight on his mind regarding the coming storm. Shoving those thoughts to one side, he entered the now rapidly expanding Ops Center of Hell's Gate. Taking a glance around, he saw the new banks of computers and radar monitors being integrated with the main command center. At the center was Quaritch and Selfridge and half a dozen other orderlies pouring over virtual maps and pointing out various necessities and dangers.
"Colonel." he greeted Quaritch cordially. "Administrator." and he shook Parker's hand. "Gentlemen, I've come here today due to the mounting pressure on our forces in this region. Despite our best efforts, native attacks have continued, in increasing frequency."
"I heard about the attack on the mining site. Your boys did a good job out there." Quaritch said with a smirk. "I expected nothing less." he thought proudly to himself.
"It's not just the mining site. Sec-ops has been running ragged trying to keep up with the viper wolves and every damn thing coming up to the fences these past two days. There was even a Thanator that nearly ripped through the wire before the guards shot the thing down." Selfridge interjected. He was looking nervous and kept lightly touching things like the map or his coffee cup with the tips of his fingers.
"We need more men. And we need them fast. The forces I have at present are not enough to stop the enemy forces. Though there are only 20,000 at present, they are probably going to send out the word to other clans and tribes around Pandora. If that is the case, then we are going to have an even tougher time. I suggest that we petition High Command to send the rest of the 3rd Brigade, an air task-force, another engineering and logistics force, and a general officer to fill the position of Commander United Earth-MDCP."
"Out of the question." Selfridge declared, almost instantaneously. "There's already a regiment of marines here, that's won entire wars back on earth! We won't need any more than that to handle a bunch of blue savages!" There was no arrogance in his tone, instead there was fear. Clewell could see the problem immediately. The RDA was a semi-governmental organization. If Selfridge called for reinforcements, then he might be reflecting poorly upon both the company, and on the UEG itself.
Clewell was about to retort to Selfridge's irrational fear of a loss of face, but Quaritch cut him off by saying, "I'm frankly of the opinion that we'll be needing a lot more than a brigade, no matter that those bastards out there only have bows and arrows. There has to be at least 50,000 by now, all over the country side. The only reason there isn't more is because they can't feed that number with their current food supply! Even 4,000 Marines in power armor can't stand up to that. We're outnumbered 12-to-1. I say we get the 3rd brigade and then some. Tell them to bring the whole Expeditionary Corps if they can!"
This verbal sparing continued on for some time, but in the end Selfridge saw that he was beaten, and they agreed to a compromise. They would request the rest of the 3rd Marine Brigade and the commander for MDC-P, but that was it. The next day, Selfridge sent the message and a day later, the reply came, advances in technology allowed longer messages, and the full text read as follows.
To: Military Defense Command, Hell's Gate, Pandora, Alpha Centauri
From: UEG Armed Forces Headquarters, Columbia, Earth, Sol System
"The 3rd Brigade for the 1st Marine Division is en route. Plans are also being developed to deploy the entirety of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Corps if necessary. Furthermore, a Tactical Fighter Wing and general officer are being deployed along with the Marines. They will arrive two days after the brigade makes landfall."
This meant they would be forced to hold the line for another month. And Clewell continued to fret as small raids were made by small squad size blueskin forces. The nights he spent frittering away over casualties his regiment suffered were in number, almost as many as the days they waited for the remainder of the brigade. Sitting at his desk, licking his dried lips and downing his 10th cup of coffee of the day, he would look over the numbers of wounded and dead. By the time that three weeks had passed, some thirty men had been killed, while roughly twice that number had been killed.
Often, those wounded and killed were found near the base, struck by arrows from banshee riding Na'vi when they were out of armor, or as happened with increasing frequency, when they pierced the vulnerable back armor and stranded the wearer out in the jungle. An even greater form of anxiety was the creation of sufficient lodgings for the 3rd, and there were only three weeks until they arrived. He lamented that he had not requested anti-aircraft weaponry as well as the forces he had already, but the brigade's arrival would offset loses.
In order for the brigade to function, the base had to be expanded, and expanded quickly. Soon, concrete barracks and a hanger bay for the Marine's transports and gunships were taking shape, the parts to which had been fabricated by the Stereolithography Plant at Hell's Gate, and a new ops center was complete. An air strip, 20,000 feet long, and concrete helicopter pads were completed two days later. This base was different in that is was similar to the old air bases on earth, indeed, this was to be the main headquarters for all Marine Corps military matters on base was based around the dual airstrip with the ATT and the Ops Center right along side. The marine base was close by, two regiments, including the 9th, were on base. The other two were in the outer barracks. The base was enclosed by a security fence over fifty feet tall and had large guard towers with reinforced rail-guns every two hundred feet along with prefab pillboxes and trenches outside of the fence providing a forward defense.
Finally the 3rd Brigade arrived and the base was filled. The brigade also brought with them the new commander of the Military Defense Command, an Army general named Robert Richmond, who couldn't have been any more different from Quaritch and himself if he had attempted to do so. Richmond was skinny, he had dark hair which was quickly graying at the roots, he was in his early 60's and he was calm and introspective, rather than the bellicose aggression of Quaritch or the boisterousness of Clewell, though it had been rather subdued due to recent events.
After the men had settled in, Clewell had been debriefed by his commander, General Hatfield. The plan at home was, it developed, to launch air strikes against the main centers of Na'vi resistance. But the start of the campaign brought a new problem. The aircraft and their crews would be vulnerable to Na'vi strikes, thusly the Marines were to serve as the base guards. It was a rather bitter pill for Clewell to swallow, but he had his orders. What was more, the Marines were not allowed to move anywhere further than the mining sites to pursue any Na'vi that came within the bounds of the base.
"At least," he consoled himself as he left the General's office, "I've got those HAWK missiles now. That's the end of any banshee attacks they might launch on us." The missiles he was thinking of were Raytheon MIM 312 Hawk (Homing All the Way Killer) surface-to-air missiles. Virtual carbon copies of the missiles deployed in the 20th century, the increasingly dangerous state of affairs on Earth had necessitated their redevelopment, especially with the fact that various terrorist organizations had gained access to EMP equipment. Though the perks their renovated design offered were more than enough to compensate for the defects. And a 60 kilometer range was one of them.
The increase of soldiers had necessitated the building of a Stereolithography Plant at New Da Nang (courtesy of Hell's Gate) to supply the necessary material for weapons, and Clewell was quite happy that he didn't have to sweat over the transfer of equipment and the building of the factory on the base. Now it was General Hatfield's problem, he would be the one watching for Na'vi attacks. Now Clewell would simply be taking orders and following them to the letter. Though he was an independent character in the Corps, that was for when he was in combat. Now that his superior was in command, life, or so he thought, would be significantly simpler for him.
The brigade had brought with it two Dragon Assault Ships in the cargo bays of the new ISVs, as well as it's own equipment. These were given to the Hell's Gate defense force to serve as additional firepower, though with the number of airmen present, the Dragons would have to be put in storage for the time being. That was another thing. The Sec-ops forces were being consolidated into a single air-mobile regiment. That was something that he and Selfridge were not expecting. Nor did Selfridge particularly enjoy the fact that he had to oversee the expansion of Hell's Gate to facilitate the accommodation for the eventual arrival of the new troops.
Not that he disliked the man, but Clewell did feel some schadenfreude at the turn of events. Now he would be the one who was fretting over how the expansion went. But his mind uncomfortably returned to Quaritch's estimation of enemy forces. If his estimations were true, then humanity was still out numbered two to one. And if Clewell remembered the population estimate, then there were more than one hundred and fifty million natives on this world. If Sully's crusade reached enough ears, then they would be facing an army several millions strong. Though it would be a guerrilla force the Earth Army would fight, and that would make things even more troublesome.
But these thoughts seemed rather unfounded when the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing landed at New Da Nang. Sonic booms rang out, one after the other as the aircraft descended, escorting the shuttles that carried the maintenance and support staff. Four hundred gleaming fighter-bombers with bombs and missiles already being produced at Hell's gate and New Da Nang, it seemed like a sledgehammer to drive a nail. And their commander, Brigadier General Walter Helmholtz was level headed and of a melancholic temperament. But there was the matter of the jungle too. There would need to be defoliants requested. "But again," Clewell thought happily as he saluted the airmen, "That's something I won't need to request."
The situation had been peaceable for another week when it happened. Clewell was on a morning inspection when a sound like a thunderclap shattered the early morning calm. Looking up, after recovering from the sheer mind numbing noise, he saw smoke rising in a great dark column towards the sky, from the direction of Hell's Gate. Knowing the worst had come to pass, he immediately jumped into his staff car and had the vehicle driving at top speeds to reach the base compound. When, after wrangling with the base guards for a minute or so, his car finally pulled through the gate, he saw the wreckage of nearly a dozen Samson and Scorpion helicopters.
"What happened?" he questioned Selfridge and Quaritch, all business.
"It looks like the blueskins planted a bomb of some kind in the helicopter pads. We managed to catch the bastards as they were taking off and we actually caught two of 'em while they were trying to escape. Most of their group is dead but one or two got away in addition to the two that we captured." Selfridge said, while suppressing a tremble. The fact that some of the natives had managed to infiltrate the base was even more disturbing than the fact that some of their number had escaped.
In the aftermath of the attack, General Richmond, Brigadiers Hatfield and Helmholtz, along with Administrator Selfridge, his mining foreman William August, Colonel Quaritch and the commander of engineers on Pandora, Major Lang, met to discuss the matter of the military. Clewell was also granted a place at the table, for he had been the only commander other than Quaritch with any sort of experience fighting the Na'vi. When Robert Clewell was informed of this, he was flattered, but also annoyed, for he was being called away from New Da Nang, where he was needed.
When Clewell arrived at the ops center, everyone save for him was already seated. Scanning the room, he saw that it was good he had worn his dress uniform, for every person at the table was in their dress uniform, or in Selfridge's case, a suit. Quaritch in particular seemed rather out of place, wearing his dark green Army Service uniform with it's tightly buttoned collar and generally civilized appearance, he looked more natural in the battlefield camouflage he wore about the base and in the thick of fighting. This observation out of the way, he crossed the room to his chair, positioned at the furthest southern end, to the left of General Hatfield. In the center of the table sat Selfridge, flanked on either side by General Richmond and Foreman August.
Presently, Selfridge began speaking. "Gentlemen," he said, his voice unusually grave and his usual smug tone was nowhere to be heard. "we have been attacked deliberately by forces of the Na'vi organized by rogue Marine Jake Sully. I have called you all here to openly discuss, what measures we shall take in response to this." The conversation that followed was quiet and not at all like the normal staff meetings Clewell was used to. But perhaps, he reflected latter, that was because everyone already knew the other's position. The only challenge at that point was to ensure cooperation between the various agencies in the Military Defense Command.
General Helmholtz was the first to comment. "In my opinion sir," he respectively nodded to Selfridge, then cleared his throat. "Excuse me. It is my opinion that we must begin an air campaign against known Pandoran enclaves and base areas. And this would be a first step in to a larger operation, so long as Earth Command approves. However, we will need more units eventually to properly prosecute the war. In addition, I request that the 366th is given it's own base area, to properly stow it's aircraft. Other air assets are vulnerable to attack by IEDs and other such weapons in our current layout of our bases."
Brig. General Hatfield then leaned forward and queried, "What about the Marines? Are we just going to be playing house sitters at New Da Nang? Because that's not what my boys are here to do."
Sensing that Hatfield was getting tense, Selfridge moved to head him off. "Everyone's point of view will be considered general." Selfridge waved a hand in a placating manner, and then motioned to the offended general. "But since you want to make your thoughts known, what do you want done with the Marines?" Hatfield sat back in his chair and considered his goals.
"What I want for the Marines is that my forces be allowed to begin ground operations to drive the enemy forces out of our territory." he finally amended. Then he requested for additional forces to be made available to the ground forces.
With his point out of the way, the conversation switched to Major Lang. When his turn came, the quiet engineer remarked, "One engineer battalion isn't going to be enough to ensure the proper expansion of the military infrastructure necessary to facilitate the escalations you both want. So I request that the logistics command be placed on Pandora to expand marine forces barracks and airfields."
Suddenly, Quaritch raised his hand and began to speak. "There's one group that we aren't taking into account. I received a communique from the Pentagon, the Army has been eager to get regular ground troops on this venture. They want two army corps on-planet and in the fight by the end of the year. They also want preparations for an army command."
That was the clincher. How to get what everyone wanted, without snubbing the other service branches. Finally, they agreed to request the remainder of the 1st Marine Division and the Logistics Command for the I Marine Expeditionary Corps and two brigades of Engineers to pave the way for the Army's requested corps. Clewell did not say much, only offering his opinion on how offensive actions should be executed. Foreman August was relieved to hear that his miners would not be conscripted into any more fights and Selfridge would not have any fear of Hell's Gate being overrun.
However for some reason, as Clewell laid down in his bed, he was not set at ease by the recent turn of events. "We're past the point of no return." he thought, as he gazed out at the titanic spectral form of Polyphemus. "The brigade might have been a security investment. But this is only going to get bigger." And when three days later, the response to the conference's resolutions came through, Clewell finally knew what it felt like to be in the old capitol on the Day of Infamy.
The response ran as follows:
To: Military Defense Command, Pandora
From: UEG High Command, Earth
OPLAN 335 is now in effect. Prepare for a large number of allied forces to begin landing no later than 15 June. The engineers will arrive first, then the Marines and the Army and Air Force after them. Administrator Selfridge is now created by the Senate and the President of Earth, by the grace of God, Provisional Planetary Governor of the World of Pandora and shall report only to the President himself. Good luck and Godspeed.
Author's note: And that's the third chapter. Sorry it took so long. Favorite and follow and give constructive criticism please. If I'm doing anything wrong, give me a holler and point it out.
