The March South

By Mike Adams

The aliens are planning to use their captives for the main course at a feast.

Captured by aliens when Winter Haven fell, the Rangers and civilian captives are on the move south where a huge alien camp awaits.

Commander Rick Cassidy and Gunnery Sergeant Molly Pickford and their Jacks Company are headed for the ferry terminal on the Clearwater River while trying to avoid being spotted by the aliens during their long journey.

The aliens have the remaining human settlements in their sights and Villa De La Montana is in their sights.

The starship Australia is hoping to land without interference from the alien ships in orbit. The Rangers aboard include Rick Cassidy’s sister Nicole. Their youngest sister Chloe O’Brien is aboard as well.

The starship James Cook and main relief force is getting ready to depart Earth for the colony and Major General Robert Black will be their commander.

“It’s bad enough being forced to march our way to be the main ingredient for an alien stewpot but us being stripped down to our bloomers is just a bit much. My neck, back and bum are glowing red and sitting down is a real pain. Next time I get captured by aliens I’ll have to remember not to wear a thong!”
-Lieutenant Moira Sullivan, shuttle pilot, Colonial Rangers, New Hope Colony, Ireland.

If you liked the first books of the Fierce Girls At War series you will love The March South, the 17th installment of the saga of the ‘fierce girls’ war against the aliens. Click the BUY NOW button at the top and continue your journey now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Adams
• Release date: Apr 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463473849

Mike Adams

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, NY. Mike has a BS in Business Admin from Wagner College and an MBA from SDSU. A retired US Navy Lieutenant Commander, Supply Corps (Logistics), a former small business owner, and part-time substitute teacher. he's visited 6 continents and 36 countries, speak Spanish, some German, a little Italian and a little less French. He currently lives in Chula Vista, CA with his wife Chris.

Book preview

Prologue

The March South

April 5, 2127

Day 190

Winter Haven

On what the prisoners had calculated was their 24th day in captivity, the doors to the four storeroom cells in the warehouse next to the terminal were opened and the ogre-like guards roared at the 58 captive Colonial Rangers and civilians captured when the aliens attacked Winter Haven from across Lake Chun. The Raagaas pointed outside and waved for them to get up and exit the storerooms. Everyone got to their feet and the aliens didn’t object as each person grabbed their blanket and some bottles of water and two ration packs as Major Anna Pietersen had advised them to do days before, in the event they were to leave their current cages permanently. They were again roped together neck to neck in the same four groups as before.

Stepping outside the hot warehouse, the fresh breeze off Lake Chun was a profound relief after the last six miserable days in the now fetid storerooms with their boxes and buckets full of excrement and urine. None of the Jammies had checked on them and their makeshift latrine hadn’t been emptied since they’d been allowed to shower and change clothes a week earlier. The weather was much warmer now; summer was in full bloom and without the air-conditioning that normally kept the storerooms at a comfortable temperature they had gotten almost unbearably hot. Their stay would have been even worse but for some lingering coolness in the warehouse. The choking air had been relieved only by the infrequent opening of the doors when the guards checked on them and the small air vents above each door.

They were marched across the landing field under a bright mid-morning sun all the way back to the shuttle buses they’d been forced to abandon when they were surrounded and captured on the morning that the aliens invaded had just after sunup. The two 20-passenger buses were still sitting where they’d left them. Roughly ordered aboard, 29 captives crowded into each of them. Only the two drivers were freed from their restraints. With the alien guards pointing at the drivers’ seats, they were ordered to drive the electric vehicles. Soon they were moving slowly south with a somewhat shorter than average giant armed with a curved sword standing next to each driver while a dozen guards trotted easily on either side of each overloaded vehicle.

As they passed through the northern settlement the captives saw hundreds of the 7-foot tall 450-pound aliens dubbed ‘Raagaas’ after their war cry RAAGAA! RAAGAA! and the occasional Jammie moving around the area. Although much more technologically advanced, with an average height of just 5-feet the Jammies were much smaller than their mercenary troops. The smaller aliens had been dubbed Jammies by the Rangers after the one-piece, footed, coverall-like garment they all wore that reminded the humans of a toddler’s pajamas. Before the Winter Haven attack, the Rangers had only seen brown ‘jammies’ that made them look like big teddy bears but the ones they saw now all wore a light-blue garment.

Doesn’t look like they trashed the place too bad, does it? noted Sergeant Danny Cane, a medic from Canada.

I think they plan to use the place themselves, observed Lieutenant Hanna Smit, a Dutch comm officer.

I’d say they plan to stay here when winter comes, no doubt, said Irish shuttle pilot Lieutenant Moira Sullivan. It would be stupid to destroy buildings that they’d need for their shelters from the cold and snow. We already know they’re not stupid.

Look up ahead, said Selena Vega. Looks like a couple hundred of them waiting for us. Sergeant Vega was an American Colonial Security officer from Texas.

Shite! I ‘ope they’re not wai’ ‘in for their goddamn’ lunch, said British shuttle pilot Master Sergeant Tamara Halliday.

I don’t think they’ve been keeping us just to feed us to this bunch of trolls, Moira Sullivan.

What makes you say that? asked Anna Pietersen. Like Smit the medical officer was from the Netherlands.

Sullivan pointed, Just take a look over there on the far right of that crowd. There’s a dozen Jammies climbing up on those rhino-crocs of theirs. There are more of those beasts behind them carrying supplies. The huge animals that looked like a cross between a rhinoceros and a crocodile served as mounts for the Jammie officers and carried supplies for their army.

You’re right, and I can see cases of Ranger field rations in some of those big net bags slung over them, said Sergeant Teresa Molinari, a logistics NCO from Italy.

You can tell that from here? said a doubtful Sergeant Elektra Makris, a Greek communications tech.

You can see the black and red Ranger seal on some of them, the logistics specialist replied.

That’s reassuring, Pietersen said in all seriousness. At least they intend to keep us alive for a while.

I’m all for ‘at, Tamara Halliday said. No one disagreed. Their long journey to the south was just about to begin.

###

When they reached the hills thirty miles south of the town where most of the Ranger defenses had been, they were directed to take the one road through the hills that led to the countryside further south. The Rangers had successfully repulsed the aliens there during two major attacks the previous summer and it had been heavily mined again in expectation of another attack from the south.

Look at that! said Moira Sullivan pointing towards the roadway where wide holes had been blown in the road bed.

They must have set those mines to go off automatically before they headed out, said Lieutenant Eva Helguson, a shuttle pilot from Iceland. Those holes weren’t there the day before we were taken.

Danny Cane grinned in satisfaction, They must have caught some of the aliens coming up from the south. I’ll betcha some of them had a real bad day when they tried to come through here.

They must think it’s safe enough to send us through now, said Japanese comm officer, Captain Yui Watanabe. Probably is. I’d have had all the mines go off at one time to do the most damage.

They had to get past the blast holes in the roadbed first and the Raagaas ordered everyone except the drivers and their guards to get off the buses. The vehicles had to leave the roadway in a few places and would have gotten stuck had they carried a normal full load much less a badly overloaded one. The buses also had to wind around some concrete barriers set at intervals on the roadway that had been meant to slow the aliens down and make them easy targets. Once the buses had gone beyond the damaged area, the prisoners were ordered back on and they continued south on the partly paved road without further problems. The two hundred giants and their Jammie officers waited for the buses to catch up then the caravan began moving again. Fifty miles south of Winter Haven they made their first stop at one of the abandoned agro-complexes. The humans were herded into an empty storehouse where they would stay the night.

The next several days dragged interminably on as the buses struggled to move forward over the often-rough terrain. The captives had to get off several times each day so the buses could be pulled out of holes they’d been driven into or to cross small waterways. The empty buses could float or drive across fairly easily when it wasn’t deep enough to have a strong current. At times the Raagaa guards had to carry the prisoners across deeper stretches. Pietersen and her people could tell that the Raagaas were a bit frustrated by the slow advance but it would have been even slower if the captives were on foot all the time. The aliens were rough on their captives but did no real damage. Eight days and 200 miles south of Winter Haven the terrain forced the buses to a permanent halt.

I guess we’re walking, Yui Watanabe commented.

Looks like it, agreed Anna Pietersen. Don’t leave anything in the vehicles, people! I don’t think we’ll be coming back to them. The captives gathered up their meager possessions as they climbed out of the buses. The vehicles would be abandoned where they’d ground to a halt. There was a scream and Watanabe and Pietersen both turned to see what had happened. The Raagaas had killed both of the drivers, why they didn’t know.

Sons of bitches! said Danny Cane. As soon as everyone was off two of the Raagaas swung those swords they carry and cut their heads off where they stood. They never saw it coming, they were hit from behind!

Pietersen murmured softly, A warning to the rest of us maybe.

Yui growled, A warning not to try to run, I’ll bet. The two bodies were taken away and the captives continued their perilous journey on foot.

On several occasions as they were marched south Mallory Claymore demanded that she be allowed to talk to the Jammie-in-charge. The big aliens didn’t understand what Winter Haven’s imperious Assistant Settlement Director wanted and everyone could see that they were getting more and more annoyed with the woman. Finally, a Jammie with a translation box on his wrist came over and asked, What want?

The 5-foot, 7-inch-tall Claymore glared down imperiously at the five-foot tall alien, and said, I am the senior civilian in this group. Let me ride on one of your animals. I cannot walk all the way and the last time one of your ugly subordinates carried me across a river I nearly drowned!

The Jammie looked at her curiously then turned away and called to one of the guards. The Raagaa came over and the Jammie gave him some instructions. The giant gave what the humans had come to recognize as a laugh and picked the struggling Claymore up and slung her across his shoulder.

Pietersen and the others had tried to get Claymore to stop berating their captors but she’d ignored them. Now they watched as the giant dropped her on the ground then quickly tied the screaming woman’s feet and wrists together. Her limbs secure he carried her over to one of the pack beasts and tied her to its side, upside down. Mallory kept shrieking for a few minutes more then went quiet when she realized that the aliens were just going to ignore her.

Well, it looks like she got what she asked for. She won’t have to walk for a while, said Eva Helguson.

I guess she should have been more specific but as long as she’s quiet, I’m good with it, said an unsympathetic Watanabe. I felt like drowning her myself during our last river crossing. And she only almost drowned because she was whining so much her ride dunked her under the water to shut her up. He actually didn’t keep her under very long. It worked too; for a while.

Chapter 1

Chloe Capps

April 6, 2127

Day 191

Jacks Company, 420 miles southwest of Winter Haven

Squad Five was on rear guard duty about 700 yards behind the rest of Jacks Company in one of the eight 4-seat ATVs that had been brought out of the mountains with them using the limited range shuttles that had been in the cargo transport lander Cairo’s cargo hold. Their squad leader, 18-year-old Winter Summerfield, sat in the front passenger seat next to her driver, 16-year-old Australian Baylee McMahon. In the back seats were 15-year-old Monica Keller, a German and the company’s best archer, and 18-year-old Chloe Capps. The other two members of squad Five, 15-year-old Paola Bertalucci from Italy, and 17-year-old Eloise Dion from France, were up forward with squad Seven filling the open seats in the two ATVs leading the way about a half mile west of the main body of Jacks Company.

Winter had Baylee stop at the bottom of a small hill then had Chloe and Monica scramble up the fifty feet to its top and take a look around. The climb was easy and they reached the top quickly, staying low to avoid being seen themselves if there were any alien patrols in the area.

"How's it look, Chlo?" Winter asked her assistant squad leader over the squad’s comm channel.

The 5-foot, 9-inch-tall, blue-eyed, blonde British girl searched the terrain as far out as she could with the Ranger field glasses she carried. It was set at maximum magnification but she saw nothing of interest. The land around them was mostly barren, rocky soil with some purple moss-like growths in places. It’s quiet, Five. There’s nothing moving in sight behind us or to either side.

"Okay, come on down then. We need ta close up wi’ the company. They’re ou’ a’ sight an I don't like being ‘is far back around here."

Coming down now. Five, I need to take a piss. Can we take a minute before we push on?

"Okay, don't but be long about it!"

No worries, and we’re halfway down already.

"Take it easy, Chloe. No need to break your neck over it."

Copy that!

The two girls made their way back down to the waiting scout car then Chloe found a place to squat and do her business before she hopped back into the waiting back seat and the ATV started moving again. Driving faster than they had been they soon closed to within 500 yards of the company moving ahead of them then slowed to maintain that distance while they kept their eyes on the area around them. The possibility of sighting aliens wasn’t the only danger they had to be aware of; some of the local wild-life could be dangerous if spooked by the ATVs. Although they were at a lower altitude than where demon wolves and other mountain predators usually roamed, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t see the humans from higher up and follow their ‘prey’ to the lower countryside below. They also had to keep an eye on the sky behind them both for alien airships headed their way and for storm fronts that could come in quickly from the east and south and possibly force the company to take cover.

###

Born in Manchester, England in June of 2108, Chloe Capps was a brilliant and precocious child who had learned to read by age 4. The daughter of a doctor and an engineer, she was a naturally competitive kid both in the classroom and on the playing field where she excelled at soccer for the school team. Always at the top of her class, when her parents were selected for postings at the New Hope Colony when she was 13, Chloe easily passed the academic, physical and psychological screenings required of any student who hoped to go to the colony and attend the New Hope Academy.

Chloe had already turned 14 but although her brother Allan had also easily passed all of the qualification tests, he was several months too young to go right away. All prospective students of the New Hope Academy had to attain age 14 before the starship they were on jumped out of Earth’s system. They had to wait another six months before they could head out for the colony.

Chloe and her family boarded the 500-passenger cargo supply ship Australia in March of 2123 for the six-month voyage to the Tau Ceti system and the New Hope Colony. Within the starship’s 5 decks of living and working spaces was a fully equipped gymnasium, a zero-gravity gymnasium, a large swimming pool, rock climbing walls and indoor tennis, basketball and volleyball courts for use by the passengers. There were separate facilities for use by any Colonial Rangers traveling to the colony.

Aboard the Australia Chloe met a group of girls who would become some of her closest friends during her time at the Academy. Among them were Venus Bennett from Chile, Rain Moon, a half-Korean, half-Irish girl from the United States, Japanese student Saki Hashimoto, Luka Teranova from the Ukraine, Emilie Paulus from Germany, Chinese student Liu Sun Chu and an Israeli student named Sofia Goldman. At the time they were all 14- or 15-years-old except for Venus, who at 16 was the oldest of the group of fast friends.

All of the students making the transit to the colony had to continue their academic studies aboard the starship and Australia had its own team of instructors. Surrounded by other highly intelligent and ultra-competitive students Chloe was in her element. The New Hope Academy was more like a small college than a high school and all of her classes were taught in a higher level than any she'd taken before. During the voyage the students studied the starship’s propulsion systems for their engineering class, they studied exo-biology to prepare them for living on an alien planet, and they studied the starship’s life support systems and the onboard farms where fresh fruit and vegetables were grown and used to feed the passengers and crew.

The friendships made during that voyage would become the nucleus of what would later become the school's semi-covert campus enforcement (read vigilante) group. It was founded and led by the then-16-year-old students Nikola Dubrovski and Stormy James, two girls who had arrived during the previous year. Six months after the Australia arrived at the colony the Marco Polo arrived with Naomi Winston and Winter Summerfield, the brilliant but rebellious daughters of the Academy's new senior Administrators Rodger Summerfield and Penelope Winston. Both would also become close friends and core members of the campus enforcement group that handled problems with other students that the administration couldn't or wouldn't deal with.

Despite the rigorous screening process that generally weeded out bullies and other kids who might cause problems for other students, teenagers being teenagers, sometimes latent personality traits reared their heads during the hormonal years. If someone was causing problems, the enforcement group would have a talk with the offender and that was usually the end of it. Sometimes though, the problems were more intractable. Sexual harassment was all too common, usually perpetrated by the less mature boys but not always.

Nikola had been inspired by the way her Ranger friends Commander Rick Cassidy and Gunnery Sergeant Molly Pickford handled such problems within the Colonial Ranger Regiment, the international military force organized to protect the colonists from the dangerous native predators. Nikola and her father Gregor, the senior manager for Aricola Mining, had come to the colony on the North America with the two Americans and they’d become close friends.

Along with her friend Stormy James whose father Jon James was the Assistant Settlement Director for Villa De La Montana, Nikola had been looking for the right people to recruit for this informal ‘club’ and the group of girls that Chloe came in with was just what they had been looking for. There were a few boys deemed worthy enough to be included in the group but the core members of the group were these girls. They all became student leaders, as well as captains and co-captains of the girls’ sports teams and they helped the newly arriving students get comfortable in their new environment. Everyone attending the New Hope Academy lived in the dorms on the campus on the east side of the colonial capital of New Hope Town and more often than not their parents were living and working hundreds or even thousands of miles away at settlements far to the north or east.

Over time, most of the students, both the boys and girls, would come to learn who to talk to if they were having a problem with another student. The school counselor Karen Marona tried to deal with these kinds of problems but not every problem was solvable by her or the school’s administrators. When this happened, she might just mention the problem to one of her student aides, Venus Bennett for instance, and suddenly, usually, the problem would just go away.

As brilliant as all of the students were, and as well-adjusted as they were supposed to be, the fact was that many of their parents were high-ranking members of the colonial administration or were highly skilled professionals such as doctors, engineers or scientists, or were senior management of the private companies with offices at the colony. Their children were often a bit spoiled and used to being the smartest kid in their school. That was not the case at the New Hope Academy where the competition was at a much higher level and they were no longer quite so special. Some of the boys particularly had problems making the adjustment. Used to being swooned over by the girls at their old schools, the girls at the Academy were not as easy to impress.

It took a few bruises and a few broken fingers before word spread among the boys that they weren't going to get away with their unwanted touching or verbal harassment but there were always a few who pressed their luck. One particular boy by the name of Richard Haskell, also known as Rich the Bitch, the molester and other derogatory nicknames, was the son of the senior manager of a mining company based in Villa De La Montana. Despite repeated warnings he continued to provoke the enforcement squad to take action. He and several of his friends ended up in the emergency room at the New Cancun hospital after Nikola and her group responded to a particularly mean episode that resulted in the permanent separation of the boys and girls for all future internship tours. The internship tours took a number of the best and brightest students from the school during breaks between full semesters to the various settlements where they would spend time in government offices and at private companies so they could learn about the inner workings of the colony.

Another incident left Richie hanging upside down and naked from the second floor of the school’s main administration building. The girls on the Cairo didn’t know it, but Richie was to lose the tip of one of his fingers after their internship tour left town. He thought he was safe while Nikola and the older girls from the enforcement group were gone. He hadn't reckoned with the other girls, most of them a year younger than the original members, who were still in town and ready to step up to the challenge.

After Chloe graduated from the Academy, she stayed on as an intern as had Venus, Nikola and Stormy. She planned to stay until Allan graduated when they would return to Earth together to attend university. Chloe planned to attend Oxford University and Allan would likely go there as well. The best colleges and universities in the world vied to attract graduates from the New Hope Academy. The students were typically offered four years of free education in return for sharing their experiences on another planet.

Tau Ceti 4 had a year that was half the length of Earth’s so there were two sets of local springs, summers, falls and winters during every 12 Earth months. For the second spring internship tour of 2126, 46 girls were selected for their academic and their athletic and/or performance achievements. Chloe, Nikola, Venus and Stormy were all asked to go along to assist the 11 staff members as the girls learned how the colony operated. Some of the girls on the tour were in the performance group and at each stop they put on shows for the colonists who were generally starved for entertainment.

The internship group was led by the Assistant Director for Student Travel and Transportation Veronika Tchachenko. Veronika had eight teachers, the counselor Karen Marona and the head school nurse Diana Alexander to help manage the menagerie. After a stop in New St. Louis, the group moved on to Southport. Their trip to New Cancun, their next stop, was delayed when their transport was rerouted and didn't stop at Southport. After waiting for two days, they were boarded the cargo transport lander Cairo for the two-hour run to New Cancun on September 12, 2126.

Twenty minutes later, just after dawn, the transport flew over a fleet of alien vessels headed for the southern coast near Southport. Plasma cannon fire battered the 850-foot long, anti-gravity powered, cargo and personnel transport and damaged its starboard anti-grav cells causing the massive aircraft to turn on its side while flying over 4 miles above the surface of the ocean below. Anyone who was not in a crash couch or was unable to grab onto something fell up to 60 feet down to the now lower starboard bulkhead. Chloe had been up and had just returned from the restroom when the transport came under attack. When it turned on its side, she fell about ten feet, breaking her arm when she hit one of the supports for a crash couch. Stunned and in pain, she grabbed onto the support and held on until there was a chance to climb into a crash couch.

Fortunately for Chloe, Molly Pickford was close by when the flight crew was able to right the ship briefly as they descended into a 4-mile-long mountain valley, 500 miles north of Southport. They’d tried to make for the open steppes north of the mountains but the transport had lost too much altitude to get through the mountains ahead. During those few seconds before hitting the ground, Pickford had grabbed three girls who were hanging on nearby including Chloe, picked them up, and literally threw them into crash couches, barely getting into one of them herself before it was too late. The Cairo came down on the valley floor and skidded for almost a mile before smashing into a wall of granite and killing twenty members of the crew, three teachers and Karen Marona. Some of the injured had to spend weeks in medical pods in the ship’s sickbay and then months recovering.

With most of the adults either dead, injured or caring for the injured, Commander Cassidy and Gunnery Sergeant Pickford, who had also been on their way to New Cancun, asked the girls to help them with the difficult and grizzly chores ahead. Every one of them volunteered to do so. Cassidy asked some of the girls with relatively minor injuries, Chloe’s arm counted as one of these minor injuries, to record everything happening inside and outside the transport. Chloe recorded the scene as the broken bodies of the dead crew and teachers were placed in body bags and carried down to the cargo bay where there was a refrigerated compartment designed for the transport of anyone who had died in accidents or had been killed by native predators. Other girls cleaned up blood and pieces of brain and skulls that had been smashed against armored bulkheads and cargo containers in the cargo bay where 13 of the 14 cargo handlers and engineers were killed.

Expecting this to be their last opportunity to go on an internship tour before graduation most of the upperclassman who led the enforcement group had been with the group on the Cairo. Natural leaders, Chloe and the others helped the younger girls, some of them were just 14, through this terrible period, encouraging them, consoling them, and setting examples for them to follow.

With no way to contact the outside world and with no real hope of rescue Cassidy and Pickford began to train the students and the surviving staff in how to fight demon wolves and other predators they were expecting to face come winter. They also learned the skills they would need when they eventually left the valley for the long trek to human-held territory. Chloe and her friends were all chosen as squad leaders or assistant squad leaders of the eight six-girl squads that were formed. These small groups learned to fight as small units and as part of the larger group. Chloe was chosen to be the assistant squad leader for her friend Winter Summerfield’s squad Five.

Later that summer the squads fought off an alien invasion of their valley, after which their company of young students and teachers took the name ‘Jacks Company’, short for ‘Jacks the Giant Killers’, a name suggested earlier by River Sleight one of the two girls who died that day. During the winter they fought off attacks by packs of demon wolves and an attack by some of the fearsome snow panthers that even the demon wolves avoided tangling with. Since leaving the valley, Jacks Company had yet to encounter any groups of aliens but they all knew that could change at any time.

Chapter 2

Ciara at the Residence

New Hope Town

Ciara Cassidy stopped at the residence after her three-hour shift at the Ranger Base training range for a bite to eat and to visit with her Aunt Bridget O’Brien who was now fully recovered from the concussion, bloody nose and split lip she'd received in Castillo. During the Battle on the Mountaintop one of the hundreds of Raagaas who had scaled the east side of the mountain had thrown a spiked-iron ball at her. The 5-pound throwing weapon could do terrible damage to or kill anyone lacking protection. A Ranger wearing a combat helmet with the visor up would be killed instantly, if she were lucky, if hit in the face by one of these iron balls with their two-inch long spikes all around it. With the visor down she would likely survive with just a concussion, maybe some loosened teeth or a broken nose unless the spikes hit low enough to rip a gash out of her throat.

Twelve days earlier, Lieutenant Bridget O’Brien had been fighting with her visor down when a spiked iron ball hit the barrel of her rifle, smashing it up into her face. The ball didn't touch her but the rifle hit her in the visor hard enough to crack it and the force of the blow gave her a concussion, split her lip and bloodied her nose. The battle was almost over at that point and shortly afterward she was helped to the medical tent with the