“I concur, sir.” The young woman’s eyes lost focus for several seconds while she communed with the computer banks inside her head. “I only have one concern; there seem to be some Kirosha Army units whose radio chatter doesn’t match our sensor data. An infantry battalion and an artillery regiment. They are supposed to be marshalling outside the Palace, but there aren’t enough warm bodies in their bivouacs to match their unit sizes.”
“Pity we can’t send drones out to take a closer look,” Fromm said. Donnelly could massage a great deal of data even from long-distance sensor readings, but she couldn’t be expected to catch everything. “Maybe those units took losses during the recent purges and their current numbers aren’t up to administrative strength.”
“That could explain it, sir. I’d feel better if I knew for sure.”
“You’re doing great, Chief. No perfection this side of Heaven.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep me posted.”
He left them to it.
The waiting was the hardest part of the job, he mused as he walked towards the command post in the rearmost bunker of the triple line of trenches. All the defensive works were more or less complete, thanks to the efforts of human and Kirosha work crews. The Ruddy converts had worked their asses off. The prospect of death by torture had made them focus their efforts like nothing else would have. Hopefully that meant that the volunteers the Mormons were training would stand their ground if he put them on the line. That could wait at least a week, unless things became so desperate he’d have to put every warm body he could find inside the trenches.
It probably will never come to that, he told himself. All they had to do was hold for a couple of weeks. The fleet would send a relief force by then, if not before. You keep telling yourself that.
Sergeant Amherst was on watch at the command post. “Everything’s quiet so far, sir,” the NCO said. He’d shaped up rather nicely and was clearly trying to unfuck himself after his first-day screw-up. “The Ruddies are sticking to the walls so far. Looks like they’re worried we’ll be coming after their sector next.”
“That concerns me,” Fromm said. “They’ve got to know we don’t have the numbers to mount an assault. The sortie to the south was easy enough, but they know what our objective is, and all our available routes. That gives them plenty of options.”
“They can’t react in time, sir. And our tech will handle anything they can throw in our way.”
“You’re probably right,” Fromm admitted.
Otherwise, he might have sent thirty men to their deaths and condemned another hundred to the same fate.
* * *
Nights in Jasper-Five were either very dark or very light, depending on the position of the second planet of the binary system. When Jasper-Four – what the locals called Nuuri-osh, the Eye of God – was fully visible in the sky, its reflective surface provided enough illumination to read a book. When it wasn’t, the night was much darker than on Earth; chemicals in the upper atmosphere made most stars invisible to the naked eye, plunging the night side into pitch darkness. When the Eye of God is closed, all are blind; the Kirosha saying was particularly apt that night. The rescue operation would have the full cover of darkness.
All of which suited Russell just fine. Their suit sensors made fighting in total darkness no more difficult than at high noon. Everything looked clear as day, in full color; intellectually he knew the colors were computer-generated approximations, but they looked real enough, and that was all that mattered. He could see well enough to tell that the bouncing figure that ran across the road was some sort of possum-deer thing and not a Ruddy with a rocket launcher and murder in his heart, which meant he didn’t waste a round on the critter as it barely avoided getting run over by his truck.
“Fucking wannabe roadkill,” Gonzo said as they drove past the lucky beastie.
“They don’t know any better,” Nacle said. “Not their fault.”
“Not our fault if we squish ‘em, either.”
“Guess not.”
They were all a bit on edge, mainly because things had gone off without a hitch so far, and luck that good never lasted. Russell and the rest of the team would have felt better if something had gone wrong. Nothing big, a minor mechanical glitch, an accidental discharge that scared the shit out of them without doing any harm, or even a bunch of Ruddies stumbling into them. Nothing had happened, though, and Russell’s superstitious side felt like they were building up a reservoir of bad luck that might come crashing on them at the worst possible time.
“Launching drones,” Obregon announced over the imps. They’d gone far enough away from the capital to risk the little buggers. The Ruddies couldn’t have too many Swatters, and they were likely to be around the Enclave, not out in the boonies. The bubbleheads at the spaceport had eyes on several concentrations of Ruddies around them, and it wouldn’t hurt to get a closer look.
“All right, we have several campfires. About two thousand fighters split into two main groups, and another few hundred in small bunches. One of them is right on top of the highway, behind barricades. No heavy weapons in sight.”
Russell looked through the drones’ beady little eyes. Yep, it was more assholes in their black bathrobes. Armed with their traditional pig stickers, plus a few rifles and RPGs. And they were up and about, which meant they were expecting company.
“ETA five minutes. Shit, they’re moving. Looks like they’re mounting a general attack on the spaceport.”
“Hostiles inbound!” the Chief Warrant in charge of the spaceport announced; Russell could hear the sound of blaster fire in the background. “You jarheads better hurry up!”
“Fucking Ruddies,” Russell said.
“Think they’ll overrun the port before we get there?” Nacle asked.
“Nah. Ten to one odds ain’t enough,” Gonzo said. “All they gonna do is get caught between a rock and a hard place when we show up.”
“Yeah. Should be a piece of cake. So tell me why I’m worried.”
“You just ain’t happy unless something’s wrong, Russet. Piss poor attitude to have, if you ask me.”
“Nobody asked you, G. Keep your eyes on your sector. We’re about to be knee-deep in sword-swinging motherfuckers, just like in those Conan the Barbarian movies you like so much.”
“By Crom, you’re right.” Gonzo said; he jacked a round into his ALS-43. “This is gonna be fun.”
Conversation drifted off as they got ready for the upcoming fight. Russell watched drone videos showing a wave of attackers rushing towards the fenced enclosure. The landing platform of the spaceport was a good sixty feet higher than the surrounding area, and the only way up was through a winding path around it, making it a fortress of sorts even without the line of defenders on top shooting at the black-bathrobe maniacs below. Over a hundred Ruddies went down before they even made it to the fences. The electrified fences. Another dozen Ruddies started convulsing and spouting smoke as lethal currents ran through their bodies. The ones behind them paused and got picked off. That didn’t last, though; some of the attackers had satchel charges and rockets and they started taking the fence apart.
The barricades were up ahead. Several rockets flew out and splattered onto the shields of the lead vehicles without doing any damage. About the only problem the task force had was that the road was only wide enough for four vehicles abreast, limiting the firepower they could bring to bear. Not that it mattered. A barrage of plasma and laser fire turned the barricade into a bonfire and its defenders into scattered pieces of charred flesh.
“What’d I say, Russet?” Gonzo crowed. “Fun.”
Before Russell could reply, an eruption of light and smoke engulfed the merc combat car in front of them; the smaller vehicle tumbled end over end as it was flipped up by the explosion. Spotlights came to life on both sides of the road, spearing Task Force Able with bright halogen beams as flares rose into the sky and dispelled the night. An instant later, a massive impact on the side of Russell’s truck sent them ve
ering off course.
Gonzo was wrong.
None of what happened next was any fun at all.
* * *
Lisbeth Zhang stumbled into the hell that was ground combat.
E&E was as much of a pain as she remembered, with the added bonus that failure wouldn’t result in a permanent down check on her record but a chance to get acquainted with the locals’ hospitality and sexual customs. There were parties of armed men wandering the countryside, either looking for her or heading towards the militia encampments surrounding the spaceport, and even with her stealth suit she’d had too many close calls for comfort. She was utterly invisible to anybody beyond fifty feet; closer than that, she had to stay still; any movement would catch someone’s eye. At ten feet, someone who was paying close attention would spot her even if she didn’t move.
A couple of times, enemy patrols came to within a few feet of her position. It’d been a miracle they hadn’t seen her. A miracle, and the fact that the Jasperians had been busy chatting with each other and smoking some noxious tobacco equivalent to notice little old her.
Her estimated time of arrival had been dead wrong. Night had fallen while she was still three klicks away. Nightfall had been a boon; the locals were effectively blind and were mostly congregating around campfires, which further ruined their night vision. She covered the last leg of her journey much faster than she had before.
Which meant she was just outside the spaceport when the shit hit the fan.
After following a game trail for a good hundred yards, she emerged from the woods onto the cleared ground surrounding the fenced perimeter. Finally! Now all she had to do was let people know she was there.
A screeching chorus of alien voices to her left froze her before she could call the spaceport. She hid behind a tree as a horde of armed Eets rushed toward the fences, waving swords and screaming in high-pitched voices that would have sounded funny under any other circumstances. They were struck by a storm of fire from the spaceport’s landing platform. A storm of fire that was too close to Lisbeth’s position. Shit on a shingle.
She ran back the way she came as not-too-distant impacts tore through trees and brushes. Screw this ground-pounder shit! She had to put some decent terrain features between her and that firefight, or her unshielded hide would end up eating a plasma blast or a bullet. There were some hills a quarter of a klick back; she’d hole up behind them and try to catch the relief column on their way back.
As soon as she reached a ridge, she discovered there was no safety there, as several gun positions came to life before their eyes. Camo sheets were flung aside: sophisticated, IR-signature-obfuscating camo sheets, better than what the Marines used. The large artillery pieces and crews the sheets had been hiding scrambled into action and began engaging somebody down range, using flares and spotlights to turn night into day. Their target wasn’t the spaceport, which was protected by heavy force fields. They were attacking the relief force down the road.
Lisbeth cursed herself. The vehicles she’d heard earlier that day must have been part of this. She could have warned the rescue force if she hadn’t been too chickenshit to take a gander.
Nothing she could do about that, but there might be something she could do about the current situation. She placed her imp feed on a priority channel so the relief force could see the gun emplacements she’d spotted. That might help, but not enough. If the locals took out the flying column, everybody in the spaceport was doomed. She had to do something.
Surviving the destruction of her ship made the last twenty-four hours nothing more than borrowed time. If she had to follow her dead crew, she might as well do something useful beforehand. Lisbeth crept toward the gun positions. The depressed barrels indicated they were direct-fire weapons; from the frantic calls she was hearing from the humans on the other end, they were effective enough.
She dialed her beamer’s power to its maximum level, which would deplete its battery after five shots. Better make them count. There were ammo limbers behind each truck, designed to be towed by a vehicle, each containing a couple dozen rounds. She found a firing position two hundred yards away, used her imp to find a proper aiming point, and took a shot.
A glowing red circle marked the spot where the metal surface of the artillery ammo container had sublimated away. Nothing else happened. Maybe she’d missed the explosive propellant in the cannon rounds. Maybe…
Light overwhelmed her sensors before something hot and huge slapped her even from across two football fields. Lisbeth ducked behind cover as debris rained all around her.
Scratch one artillery piece. Time to find another.
They weren’t too far apart, and not exactly inconspicuous, not now that their camo nets weren’t hiding them. This time she knew better than to hang around and watch the results of her shots. She was on the move before another explosion consumed the firing position. Two down; how many more to go?
As many as she could hit before they ran her down. She hoped she was making a difference.
She hoped it would be enough.
* * *
The first sign Obregon had that things had turned to shit was a flare going off in the sky, followed by a HEAT round missing his command car by a couple of feet and going off on the other side of the road. Spotlights stabbed down towards the task force and more explosions went off between the moving vehicles.
“Motherfuckers!” Hendrickson roared as he spun the vehicle towards the source of the threat. The closest gun emplacement was on a hill, a thousand meters out. The artillery crew snap-shot a second time four seconds after the initial volley, and the grav car shuddered under a direct hit. The shields held, though, and then it was the Marines’ turn.
Da Costa was the designated gunner; she sent a long double burst of graviton beams uphill, walking the shots towards the source of the attack. The pulses of twisted space-time chewed through dirt and rocks until they hit something that went boom. The hill vanished in an expanding cloud of fire and smoke.
Obregon barely noticed the destruction of the gun; he was too busy trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Chief Donnelly sent him a brief sit-rep which he downloaded straight into his memory. The drones had been swatted just after the ambush was sprung, and they hadn’t detected anything beforehand. The Navy puke who’d crash-landed out in the wild had spotted several artillery emplacements, and the observation post in the spaceport identified several more. Over twenty guns, a fucking anti-tank regiment was all around them, and those 93mm fuckers packed enough punch to flip a truck over even if they didn’t get through its shields.
“All elements, engage enemy artillery! Take them out!”
The order was unnecessary, of course; everyone was doing just that, except for a mercenary crew who tried to rabbit and took a no-deflection shot up the ass for its troubles. The HEAT round went right through the rear force field of the combat car and turned it into a flying fireball. Another car had been overturned by a hit; a follow-up shot finished it off. Fuck.
The two Oval hovercraft maneuvered wildly, evading several shots, and brought their lasers to bear; they took two guns under fire and exploded them in a couple of seconds; after that, they dashed towards the hills, pumping coherent light into anything that moved. Da Costa dropped mortar bombs on two more; they were anti-pers but the frag charges shredded the gunners and silenced the guns. Somewhere behind Obregon’s car, a long ALS-43 burst from Rover Three scored another kill. The Navy chick took out three guns with nothing more than a hand beamer and sheer guts.
That left a good dozen guns still around, still belching fire every five or six seconds. Most of them missed, although a glancing shot sent his grav car veering off course. There were some direct hits; a merc combat car’s frontal shield failed in a shower of sparks as an armor-piercer bounced off it; the vehicle was fine but its force field was off-line. On the other side of the road, a lucky or very skilled team lined their gun perfectly and sent a long-rod penetrator into the unshielded underside of an Oval
hovercraft just as it crested a hill. The metal dart punched through the car, destroying one of its fans, and turned one of its crew into a splash of liquefied flesh and bone as it flew out the other side; the vehicle crashed a moment later. The driver and a gunner survived the shot and the crash, but they were both badly hurt. Icons on Obregon’s display flashed yellow or went purple and black as they became casualties or fatalities. Ruddy infantry leaped from their own concealed positions and opened up with small arms and rockets.
How the fuck they had managed to sneak a force this size into place, Obregon couldn’t begin to guess. The Navy officer had mentioned camo nets; that still didn’t answer how they’d moved this many troops without anybody twigging to it. Of course, none of that mattered. All that mattered now was wiping out the ETs as soon as possible. The battle turned into a mad scrimmage as the remaining vehicles of Task Force Able fought back. Merc railguns dropped infantrymen back into their ditches and smashed spotlights. The Marines raked hilltops with their ALS-43, silencing a few more guns. It wasn’t going to be enough.
“Take us up,” he told Hendrickson.
“You sure?”
“Take us the fuck up.”
Only way. His was the only vehicle with all-around shield coverage and enough energy output to take multiple shots and survive. The car rose up, spewing mortar bombs and death rays all around as it engaged multiple targets at once. He left Da Costa in charge of the mortar and took over the grav cannon, noting the Navy chick on the ground had taken out a fourth gun; she ought to transfer to the Corps.
He and Da Costa rained death on the Ruddies while Hendricks ducked and weaved, moving too fast to be hit by anything firing over metal sights except by blind luck. A lucky point-blank shot did just that, but the sabot-discarding armor-piercer bounced off the limo’s heavy shields. The Ruddies’ technology just wasn’t up to the job.
Unfortunately, the Kirosha’s benefactor had provided them with ten state-of-the-art Flying Fang surface-to-air missiles. Four had been deployed alongside the ambush force. Three had been destroyed before they could be used, struck by mortar bombs or bursts of automatic fire. The last missile team targeted the grav car and opened fire. A moment later, a 15mm grenade incinerated the weapon and its gunners, but the damage was already done.
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 25