Dogs of War

by David Drake

  Assured him, in the red-lit darkness, Dom was aware of the other suited figures who stirred silently as they heard the words.

  “If this happens.” There was a ring of authority now in the executive officer's voice. “The Edinburgers have developed the only way to launch an interplanetary invasion. We have found the way to stop it. You combatmen are the answer. They have now put all their eggs in one basket—and you are going to take that basket to pieces. You can get through where attack ships or missiles could not. We're closing fast now, and you will be called to combat stations soon. So—go out there and do your job. The fate of Earth rides with you.”

  Melodramatic words, Dom thought, yet they were true. Everything, the ships, the concentration of fire power, all depended on them. The alert alarm cut through his thoughts, and he snapped to attention.

  “Disconnect oxygen. Fall out when your name is called and proceed to the firing room in the order called. Toth …”

  The names were spoken quickly, and the combatmen moved out. At the entrance to the firing room a suited man with a red-globed light checked the names on their chests against his roster to make sure they were in the correct order. Everything moved smoothly, easily, just like a drill, because the endless drills had been designed to train them for just this moment. The firing room was familiar, though they had never been there before, because their trainer had been an exact duplicate of it. The combatman ahead of Dom went to port, so he moved to starboard. The man preceding him was just climbing into a capsule, and Dom waited while the armorer helped him down into it and adjusted the armpit supports. Then it was his turn, and Dom slipped into the transparent plastic shell and settled against the seat as he seized the handgrips. The armorer pulled the supports hard up into his armpits, and he nodded when they seated right. A moment later, the man was gone, and he was alone in the semidarkness with the dim red glow shining on the top ring of the capsule that was just above his head. There was a sudden shudder, and he gripped hard, just as the capsule started forward.

  As it moved, it tilted backwards until he was lying on his back, looking up through the metal rings that banded his plastic shell. His capsule was moved sideways, jerked to a stop, then moved again. Now the gun was visible, a half dozen capsules ahead of his, and he thought, as he always did during training, how like an ancient quick-firing cannon the gun was—a cannon that fired human beings. Every two seconds, the charging mechanism seized a capsule from one of the alternate feed belts, whipped it to the rear of the gun where it instantly vanished into the breech. Then another and another. The one ahead of Dom disappeared and he braced himself—and the mechanism suddenly and for no apparent reason halted.

  There was a flicker of fear that something had gone wrong with the complex gun, before he realized that all of the first combatmen had been launched and that the computer was waiting a determined period of time for them to prepare the way for the bomb squad. His squad now, the men he would lead.

  Waiting was harder than moving as he looked at the black mouth of the breech. The computer would be ticking away the seconds now, while at the same time tracking the target and keeping the ship aimed to the correct trajectory. Once he was in the gun, the magnetic field would seize the rings that banded his capsule, and the linear accelerator of the gun would draw him up the evacuated tube that penetrated the entire length of the great ship from stern to bow. Faster and faster the magnetic fields would pull him until he left the mouth of the gun at the correct speed and on the correct trajectory to …

  His capsule was whipped up in a tight arc and shoved into the darkness. Even as he gripped tight on the handholds, the pressure pads came up and hit him. He could not measure the time—he could not see and he could not breathe as the brutal acceleration pressed down on him. Hard, harder than anything he had ever experienced in training; he had that one thought, and then he was out of the gun.

  In a single instant he went from acceleration to weightlessness, and he gripped hard so he would not float away from the capsule. There was a puff of vapor from the unheard explosions; he felt them through his feet, and the metal rings were blown in half, and the upper portion of the capsule shattered and hurled away. Now he was alone, weightless, holding to the grips that were fastened to the rocket unit beneath his feet. He looked about for the space battle that he knew was in progress and felt a slight disappointment that there was so little to see.

  Something burned far off to his right, and there was a wavering in the brilliant points of the stars as some dark object occulted them and passed on. This was a battle of computers and instruments at great distances. There was very little for the unaided eye to see. The spaceships were black and swift and—for the most part—thousands of miles away. They were firing horning rockets and proximity shells, also just as swift and invisible. He knew that space around him was filled with signal jammers and false-signal generators, but none of this was visible. Even the target vessel toward which he was rushing was invisible.

  For all that his limited senses could tell, he was alone in space, motionless, forgotten.

  Something shuddered against the soles of his boots, and a jet of vapor shot out and vanished from the rocket unit. No, he was neither motionless nor forgotten. The combat computer was still tracking the target ship and had detected some minute variation from its predicted path. At the same time, the computer was following the progress of his trajectory, and it made the slight correction for this new data. Corrections must be going out at the same time to all the other combatmen in space, before and behind him. They were small and invisible—doubly invisible now that the metal rings had been shed. There was no more than an eighth of a pound of metal dispersed through the plastics and ceramics of a combatman's equipment. Radar could never pick them out from among all the interference. They should get through.

  Jets blasted again, and Dom saw that the stars were turning above his head. Touchdown soon; the tiny radar in his rocket unit had detected a mass ahead and had directed that he be turned end for end. Once this was done he knew that the combat computer would cut free and turn control over to the tiny setdown computer that was part of his radar. His rockets blasted, strong now, punching the supports up against him, and he looked down past his feet at the growing dark shape that occulted the stars.

  With a roar, loud in the silence, his headphones burst into life.

  “Went, went—gone hungry. Went, went—gone hungry.”

  The silence grew again, but in it Dom no longer felt alone. The brief message had told him a lot.

  Firstly, it was Sergeant Toth's voice; there was no mistaking that. Secondly, the mere act of breaking radio silence showed that they had engaged the enemy and that their presence was known. The code was a simple one that would be meaningless to anyone outside their company. Translated, it said that fighting was still going on but the advance squads were holding their own. They had captured the center section of the hull—always the best place to rendezvous since it was impossible to tell bow from stern in the darkness—and were holding it, awaiting the arrival of the bomb squad. The retrorockets flared hard and long, and the rocket unit crashed sharply into the black hull. Dom jumped free and rolled.

  III

  As he came out of the roll, he saw a suited figure looming above him, clearly outlined by the disk of the sun despite his black nonreflective armor. The top of the helmet was smooth. Even as he realized this, Dom was pulling the gropener from its holster.

  A cloud of vapor sprang out, and the man vanished behind it. Dom was surprised, but he did not hesitate. Handguns, even recoilless ones like this that sent the burnt gas out to the sides, were a hazard in null-G space combat. Guns were not only difficult to aim but either had a recoil that would throw the user back out of position or the gas had to be vented sideways, when they would blind the user for vital moments. A fraction of a second was all a trained combatman needed.

  As the gropener swung free, Dom thumbed the jet button lightly. The device was shaped like a short sword, but it
had a vibrating saw blade where one sharpened edge should be, with small jets mounted opposite it in place of the outer edge. The jets drove the device forward, pulling him after it. As soon as it touched the other man's leg, he pushed the jets full on. As the vibrating ceramic blade speeded up, the force of the jets pressed it into the thin armor.

  In less than a second, it had cut its way through and on into the flesh of the leg inside. Dom pressed the reverse jet to pull away as vapor gushed out, condensing to ice particles instantly, and his opponent writhed, clutched at his thigh—then went suddenly limp.

  Dom's feet touched the hull, and the soles adhered. He realized that the entire action had taken place in the time it took him to straighten out from his roll and stand up. …

  Don't think, act. Training. As soon as his feet adhered, he crouched and turned, looking about him. A heavy power ax sliced by just above his head, towing its wielder after it.

  Act, don't think. His new opponent was on his left side, away from the gropener, and was already reversing the direction of his ax. A man has two hands. The drillger on his left thigh! Even as he remembered it, he had it in his hand, drill on and hilt-jet flaring. The foot-long, diamond-hard drill spun fiercely—its rotation cancelled by the counter-revolving weight in the hilt—while the jet drove it forward.

  It went into the Edinburger's midriff, scarcely slowing as it tore a hole in the armor and plunged inside. As his opponent folded, Dom thumbed the reverse jet to push the drillger out. The power ax, still with momentum from the last blast of its jet, tore free of the dying man's hand and vanished into space.

  There were no other enemies in sight. Dom tilted forward on one toe so that the surface film on the boot sole was switched from adhesive to neutral, then he stepped forward slowly. Walking like this took practice, but he had had that. Ahead was a group of dark figures lying prone on the hull, and he took the precaution of raising his hand to touch the horn on the top of his helmet so there would be no mistakes. This identification had been agreed upon just a few days ago and the plastic spikes glued on. The Edinburgers all had smooth-topped helmets.

  Dom dived forward between the scattered forms and slid, face down. Before his body could rebound from the hull, he switched on his belly-sticker, and the surface film there held him flat. Secure for the moment among his own men, he thumbed the side of his helmet to change frequencies. There was now a jumble of noise through most of the frequencies, messages—both theirs and the enemy's—jamming, the false messages being broadcast by recorder units to cover the real exchange of information. There was scarcely any traffic on the bomb-squad frequency, and he waited for a clear spot. His men would have heard Toth's message, so they knew where to gather. Now he could bring them to him.

  “Quasar, quasar, quasar,” he called, then counted carefully for ten seconds before he switched on the blue bulb on his shoulder. He stood as he did this, let it burn for a single second, then dropped back to the hull before he could draw any fire. His men would be looking for the light and would assemble on it. One by one they began to crawl out of the darkness. He counted them as they appeared. A combatman, without the bulge of a bomb on his back, ran up and dived and slid, so that his helmet touched Dom's. “How many, Corporal?” Toth's voice asked.

  “One still missing but …”

  “No buts. We move now. Set your charge and blow as soon as you have cover.”

  He was gone before Dom could answer. But he was right. They could not afford to wait for one man and risk the entire operation. Unless they moved soon, they would be trapped and killed up here. Individual combats were still going on about the hull, but it would not be long before the Edinburgers realized these were just holding actions and that the main force of attackers was gathered in strength. The bomb squad went swiftly and skillfully to work laying the ring of shaped charges.

  The rear guards must have been called in, because the heavy weapons opened fire suddenly on all sides. These were .30-caliber high-velocity recoilless machine guns. Before firing, the gunners had traversed the hull, aiming for a grazing fire that was as close to the surface as possible. The gun computer remembered this and now fired along the selected pattern, aiming automatically. This was needed because, as soon as the firing began, clouds of gas jetted out, obscuring everything. Sergeant Toth appeared out of the smoke and shouted as his helmet touched Dom's.

  “Haven't you blown it yet?”

  “Ready now, get back.”

  “Make it fast. They're all down or dead now out mere. But they will throw something heavy into this smoke soon, now that they have us pinpointed.”

  The bomb squad drew back, fell flat, and Dom pressed the igniter. Flames and gas exploded high, while the hull hammered up at them. Through the smoke rushed up a solid column of air, clouding and freezing into tiny crystals as it hit the vacuum. The ship was breached now, and they would keep it that way, blowing open the sealed compartments and bulkheads to let out the atmosphere. Dom and the Sergeant wriggled through the smoke together, to the edge of the wide, gaping hole that had been blasted in the ship's skin.

  “Hotside, hotside!” the Sergeant shouted, and dived through the opening.

  Dom pushed a way through the rush of men who were following the Sergeant and assembled his squad. He was still one man short. A weapons man with his machine gun on his back hurried by and leapt into the hole, with his ammunition carriers right behind him. The smoke cloud was growing because some of the guns were still firing, acting as a rear guard. It was getting hard to see the opening now. When Dom had estimated that half of the men had gone through, he led his own squad forward.

  They pushed down into a darkened compartment, a storeroom of some kind, and saw a combatman at a hole about one hundred yards from them. “I'm glad you're here,” he said as soon as Dom's helmet touched his. “We tried to the right first but there's too much resistance. Just holding them there.”

  Dom led his men in a floating run, the fastest movement possible in a null-G situation. The corridor was empty for the moment dimly lit by the emergency bulbs. Holes had been blasted in the walls at regular intervals, to open the sealed compartments and empty them of air, as well as to destroy wiring and piping. As they passed one of the ragged-edged openings, spacesuited men erupted from it.

  Dom dived under the thrust of a drillger, swinging his gropener out at the same time. It caught his attacker in the midriff, just as the man's other hand came up. The Edinburger folded and died, and a sharp pain lanced through Dom's leg. He looked down at the nipoff that was fastened to his calf and was slowly severing it.

  The nipoff was an outmoded design for use against unarmored suits. It was killing him. The two curved blades were locked around his leg, and the tiny, geared-down motor was slowly closing them. Once started, the device could not be stopped.

  It could be destroyed. Even as he realized this, he swung down his gropener and jammed it against the nipoff's handle. The pain intensified at the sideways pressure, and he almost blacked out. He attempted to ignore it. Vapor puffed out around the blades, and he triggered the compression ring on his thigh that sealed the leg from the rest of the suit. Then the gropener cut through the casing. There was a burst of sparks, and the motion of the closing of the blades stopped.

  When Dom looked up, the brief battle was over and the counterattackers were dead. The rear guard had caught up and pushed over them. Helmutz must have accounted for more than one of them himself. He held his power ax high, fingers just touching the buttons in the haft so that the jets above the blade spurted alternately to swing the ax to and fro. There was blood on both blades.

  IV

  Dom switched on his radio; it was silent on all bands. The interior communication circuits of the ship were knocked out here, and the metal walls damped all radio signals.

  “Report,” he said. “How many did we lose?”

  “You're hurt,” Wing said, bending over him. “Want me to pull that thing off?”

  “Leave it. The tips of the blades are
almost touching, and you'd tear half my leg off. It's frozen in with the blood, and I can still get around. Lift me up.”

  The leg was getting numb now, with the blood supply cut off and the air replaced by vacuum. That was all for the best. He took the roll count.

  “We've lost two men but we still have more than enough bombs for this job. Now let's move.”

  Sergeant Toth himself was waiting at the next corridor, where another hole had been blasted in the deck. He looked at Dom's leg but said nothing.

  “How is it going?” Dom asked.

  “Fair. We took some losses. We gave them more. Engineer says we are over the main hold now, so we are going straight down, pushing out men on each level to hold. Get going.”

  “And you?”

  “I'll bring down the rear guard and pull the men from each level as we pass. You see that you have a way out for us when we all get down to you.”

  “You can count on that.”

  Dom floated out over the hole, then gave a strong kick with his good leg against the ceiling when he was lined up. He went down smoothly, and his squad followed. They passed one deck, two, then three. The openings had been nicely aligned for a straight drop. There was a flare of light and a burst of smoke ahead as another deck was blown through. Helmutz passed Dom, going faster, having pushed off harder with both legs. He was a full deck ahead when he plunged through the next opening, and the burst of high-velocity machine-gun fire almost cut him in two. He folded in the middle, dead in the instant, the impact of the bullets driving him sideways and out of sight in the deck below.