by Ian Douglas
It was also something Warhurst couldn’t do a damned thing about, one way or the other. He pushed the thought from his mind and tried to focus on other, more immediate problems.
First and foremost was the creation of a perimeter within which the landing team could operate. Those things out there were enough like tanks that they might be killed using infantry antitank tactics. No guarantees, of course. In any battle, the enemy was guaranteed to surprise you. In this operation, that axiom was more true than ever. The Marines were fighting in a vacuum of information as well as in fact. They simply did not and could not know what the enemy was capable of—or how best to fight him.
But as sure as Chesty Puller was a devil dog, they were going to try.
Alpha Company, First Platoon,
B Section
1304 hours, Shipboard time
“Onager teams front!” Lieutenant Jeff Gansen’s voice rasped out.
“You heard the man!” Gunnery Sergeant Dunne snapped.
“Vinton! Morton! Get your wild asses up there! Fire teams! Cover them!”
Garroway started moving toward what passed for high ground in this alien terrain, a kind of black metal plateau two meters high, with sloping sides and oddly angled corners. He and the other two members of his fireteam, Cavaco and Geisler, had been detailed to provide fire support for Sergeant Jeff Morton and Corporal Kat Vinton, B Section’s Onager team.
“Wild asses” was an insider’s joke. The original Onager had been a kind of wild, central-Asian ass, now extinct; the ancient Romans had fielded a kind of siege catapult called the Onager, so called, according to Marine lore, because it had a hell of a kick. In the late twentieth century, the U.S. Marine Corps had experimented with a small, tracked vehicle mounting six recoilless rifles, also called the Onager.
In the twenty-second century, the name was applied to the M-30D7 shoulder-fired antiarmor weapon, and, like the original, it had a nasty kick. It looked a bit like a TOW launcher out of the twentieth century, with a complex sighting suite and a bipod forward to steady the thing. The Marine operator tucked a shoulder up under the padded shoulder grip, pressed helmet to optics—or downloaded a sight picture straight from the weapon’s targeting computer—and thought-clicked the trigger icon once to lock on, twice to fire.
The 1.2-meter-long 7-kilogram missile was an autotargeting high-velocity penetrator round with an inner core of depleted uranium that flashed into star-hot plasma on impact, creating a jet that theoretically could burn through damned near anything short of a meter or so of high-density polylaminate. Few armies fielded tanks on Earth any longer, so the weapons were used against bunkers and other field fortifications, as well as buildings, reinforced gates, and low-flying aerospace craft. It had an effective range of twelve kilometers, though the operator needed either to be able to see the target to lock on or have a data feed from either a human or an AI forward observer. The missile’s onboard AI was bright enough to recognize a variety of targets, steer a terrain-hugging course with a popup at the end, and a terminal trajectory designed to kill the target from above, where its armor, presumably, was thinnest.
He clambered onto the metallic plateau, keeping low as he moved forward with both Cavaco and Geisler on his right. Kat and Sergeant Morton were in front of them, sheltering behind a low, flat-sloped wall. And beyond them…
“My God!” Geisler said over the squad channel. “Look at them all!”
They were hard to see—flat, oddly angular, and as black as the surrounding metal from which they seemed to have sprung. Garroway’s helmet range finder threw figures up against one corner of his visual field. The nearest of the objects was a kilometer away and approaching at something close to ten meters per second. The longer he looked, the more of the oncoming objects he saw, until it seemed as though the Wheel’s far horizon was alive with the things.
“Target acquired!” Morton yelled over the channel. “Lock! Fire one!”
A silent double flash strobed from his weapon, one flash at the muzzle, the other at the breach. The missile streaked low across the terrain, weaving back and forth, then abruptly launching itself into the sky, over, and down. The explosion was also silent, and most of it was contained by the target vehicle, but Garroway saw a crater ripped open in the top and large chunks of orange-hot metal erupt from the blast. Most of the fragments escaped from the low-altitude gravity field and kept glowing as they sailed off into space.
“Scratch one!” Kat shouted, her voice ragged with excitement.
Other Onager missiles were snaking out from the marine lines now, making the final popup before descending on their chosen target, smashing inside, and detonating in brilliant, silent eruptions of light.
Kat was reloading Morton’s Onager, slipping a fresh missile from the bulky carry case at her side into the breech and slapping the back of his helmet to tell him he was good to go. He chose another target, triggered the weapon, and sent another hunter-killer on its deadly way.
The Onagers, Garroway was relieved to see, were certainly effective against the Wiggler vehicles. There was just one problem that he could see.
The enemy had far more of the floating gun platforms than the Marines had missiles for them…and at the moment it appeared that every damned one of them was heading straight for Garroway’s position.
Point Memphis—Beachhead HQ
Sirius Stargate
1305 hours, Shipboard time
Major Warhurst both watched and listened as the battle data came flooding back. The Onagers were scoring kills…dozens of them. Unfortunately, the Marines’ supply of M-30 missiles was sharply limited. At this rate, they would be out of tank-killer ammo within another minute or two, and the enemy gun platforms were still coming.
And coming fast.
Unless they stopped or turned, they would be among his Marines within another two minutes.
“Colonel Nolan!” he rasped, watching the stream of red icons lancing toward the Marine perimeter. “Now would be a very good time for some close support.”
“We’re on it, General. Seven-MAS is on high guard. The Redtails are dropping in close and hot.”
“Good man.”
But Warhurst was still worried. What other surprises can the enemy spring on us?
Alpha Company, First Platoon,
B Section
1306 hours, Shipboard time
Garroway took aim at one of the oncoming Wiggler vehicles, flat, boxy-shaped, something like an inverted dinner plate with angles instead of curves, half-glimpsed against the black and angular landscape. The thing was within easy range of his 2020—less than five hundred meters. He thought-clicked, the impulse transmitted from cerebral implant to helmet electronics to the computer in his weapon faster than the neurochemical signal could have traveled from brain to trigger finger. There was no recoil, of course, and no visible beam, but he saw the splash of the hit in his noumenal view of the target. Instantly, the hostile platform slewed right, pivoting.
“Incoming!” Garroway shouted as he rolled hard to the left. The strange ground beneath his body bucked and a three-meter slice of black metal where he’d been lying an instant before vaporized in a silent blast of plasma and fragments. Static shrilled over his comm suite.
“Gare!” Cavaco yelled. “You okay?”
“Yeah! Watch it! Those things react fast!”
He snuck another look at the vehicle. As far as he could tell, the pulse from his laser hadn’t even marked it. It had certainly sensed him, however, and sent a particle beam blast back up the laser’s path.
“Keep your heads down, people!” Dunne ordered over the company frequency. “The fly-guys are coming in!”
He glanced up, but saw only stars. He wasn’t particularly concerned about friendly fire from an airstrike; once, the Marine pilots would have been guided by a forward air controller with the troops on the ground, using laser target designation or even colored panels set out on the ground to indicate the enemy. With Sky Net and CCN online, however, the M
arines in the strike fighters overhead could see the noumenally pinpointed location of each Marine on the ground as easily as could General Ramsey, or Lieutenant Gansen, for that matter. Weapons systems were smart enough now to avoid own-goal incidents, at least for the most part.
But Starhawks and Wasps packed a hell of a lot of fire-power in their weapons pods, extremely intense firepower, and they were about to deliver it on a target now less than one hundred meters from the Marines’ front lines. It should prove to be an interesting show….
White light washed across the eldritch landscape, casting sharp-edged and shimmering shadows from men and terrain features. For long seconds, Garroway’s helmet visor polarized black, so brilliant was that strobing chain of silent detonations. Again, he felt the rumble and thump of vibrations transmitted through his vac armor. The entire Wheel was shuddering under the multiple impacts.
Goddess, he thought. What happens if they punch through to those black holes they say are moving around inside this thing?
Well, a hell of a lot of good it did worrying about that. If it happened, it happened. Meanwhile, all he could do was stay down and wait for the all-clear.
The explosions dwindled away, then reintensified as the fighters made a second pass. From the feel of it, and from the pounding the little red icons on his noumenal display map were taking, nothing could survive that bombardment.
The explosions tapered off again, and his helmet visor cleared. “That’s it, Alpha!” Dunne said. “End of the run!”
He lifted his head and felt a stab of disappointment. The enemy vehicles were still coming—many fewer now than before, and moving more slowly as they picked their way across parts of the Wheel surface blasted and cratered by the aerospace fighters’ strike—but coming. It looked like the aerospace jockeys had taken out a third, maybe even half of the attackers.
But new attackers were joining the stream moving toward the Marine lines. They appeared to be emerging from the Wheel’s surface itself.
Garroway shifted uneasily, clutching his laser rifle. These guys weren’t playing by the rules, damn it. According to the tactical and historical data downloaded through his implant, proper battle tactics required supporting armored vehicles with foot soldiers. Old-style tanks could be deadly in combat, but they had to be protected from troops with tank-killer weapons—hence, the historical battlefield symbiosis between armored vehicles and support infantry.
The Wheel’s defenders, though, were sending in these tanklike floating vehicles with no infantry that Garroway could see. Was that because the hostile tanks were so good they didn’t need infantry support? Or was it simply the application of a completely alien combat doctrine?
There was no way to know. Garroway and his fireteam were here, however, to protect Kat and Morton from enemy infantry while they killed tanks. With no enemy infantry to go after, Garroway, Geisler, and Cavaco were pretty much reduced to the role of targets.
Point Memphis—Beachhead HQ
Sirius Stargate
1306 hours, Shipboard time
Major Warhurst ground his teeth in frustration. The air strike had taken out at least thirty enemy vehicles, but Cassius was counting forty-three still out there, with new ones popping into the sensor net every few moments. Where the hell were they all coming from?
“Patch me through to the General, Cassius,” he said. “Full visual.”
“Channel open, Major.”
In his mind’s eye, he floated above the battlefield at Ramsey’s side, knowing that Ramsey, back aboard the Chapultepec, was seeing the same illusion he was. Flat and angular vehicles skimmed through the artificial valleys of the Wheel’s face, converging on the Marine lines at three points now.
“I don’t think we can hold them, General,” he said. “The aerospace strike clobbered them, but they’re still coming. The fighters are accelerating back to the Ranger, now, to rearm and refuel. They don’t have the R/M to stay over the DZ. Ground teams are reporting they’re almost out of antiarmor rounds for the Onagers. It’s going to get real up-close and personal in a few more minutes.”
“Understood,” Ramsey said. “You’re going to have to get off the surface.”
“Underground, you mean,” Warhurst said. “We’re working on it, sir.”
He knew Ramsey wasn’t calling for an evacuation. Not yet. The way the battle situation was developing, he doubted that the Marines could mount an evacuation if it became necessary.
They would face that when the time came.
“Let me see,” Ramsey said.
With a thought, Warhurst took Ramsey back to the center of the Marine perimeter, close alongside the crater now serving as a beachhead HQ. A double dome stood on the black surface of the Wheel there, its chameleonic outer coating turning it as black as its surroundings. The virtual presence of the two men floated through the shell and into the brightly lit space inside, where a half-dozen armored figures were working around something like an overturned steel bucket on the deck.
“Giotti!” Warhurst called. “What’s the story?”
One of the armored men looked up, though in reality, of course, he couldn’t see the two ghostly presences. “We’ve got penetration, Major,” Giotti said. “So far, the samples look like breathable atmosphere.”
“Hurry up, damn it. We have a situation outside.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Giotti said, continuing to work.
One man in each platoon of the assault force had been designated as an engineer, and given specialist downloads before the drop. They’d been taken from volunteers from every platoon so that an unlucky hit wouldn’t take out all of the unit’s engineers in one blow.
The bubble was a portable airlock designed for VBSS operations—Vacuum Boarding Search and Seizure. Air was injected between its double walls and it became rigid when fully inflated; a nanoseal in the deck melted its way into the surface of whatever the Marines were trying to enter—usually a space craft or space station, but in this case the face of the Wheel itself. The engineers could then cut an opening through the hull, filling the interior of the primary airlock dome with whatever atmosphere was inside; the second, smaller dome served as an airlock access from the vacuum outside to the pressurized interior.
It was one way of cutting into an enemy vehicle without risking depressurization. Usually, that wasn’t a high priority for Marines boarding an enemy spacecraft, but it was during rescue operations when the ship’s crew was disabled, or if enemy forces were holding hostages on board. In this case, no one knew what to expect inside the Wheel, and the decision had been made to preserve the thing’s structural integrity as much as possible.
“How long, Giotti?” Ramsey asked. “How long until we have full access.”
“I don’t know, General. The Wheel structure is almost two meters thick at this point. We drilled through with a laser-nano combination—seven minutes for a two-millimeter shaft. It’ll take a lot longer for a three-meter door.”
“We don’t have a lot longer, Marines,” Warhurst said. “Pick it up!”
“Aye aye, sir.”
But Warhurst could almost hear the man’s mental grumble. Some things could not be hurried and that included the laws of basic physics.
The Marines on the perimeter were going to have to buy the engineers time.
And that wasn’t going to be easy or pretty.
15
2 APRIL 2170
CPL John Garroway
Alpha Company, First Platoon,
B Section
AO Cincinnati, Sirius Stargate
1307 hours, Shipboard time
“Here they come!” Gunny Dunne yelled. “Check your CCN locks!”
Garroway’s helmet display showed a positive Combat Coordination Net link, and a glowing red triangle centered on one of the Wheel vehicles. He moved his laser rifle until the targeting curser slipped inside the triangle, then thought-clicked an okay. For the next second or two, he tried only to keep the curser inside the triangle, despite the erratic mov
ement of the target. The enemy vehicle was now 150 meters distant and even a slight lateral slew translated as a major jump on Garroway’s targeting picture.
Apparently of its own volition, his LR-2120 fired. A white flash obliterated the target. When his vision cleared, Garroway saw the vehicle with an orange-glowing crater on the glacis, just where he’d been holding the targeting curser. The vehicle wobbled, then nosed down into the angular black terrain beneath its belly, plowing forward, then tumbling, spewing bits of wreckage.
One of CCN’s particular values in combat was its ability to coordinate a large number of individual soldiers, to truly have them fight as one. At this moment, Sissy, the CCN’s aggregate AI, was selecting those targets that posed the most immediate and direct threat to the Marines and painting them with the target markers that showed as red triangles in their helmet displays, or in their noumenal imaging if they were downloading combat data directly through their implants.
The video imaging system of a Marine weapon marked its exact aim point with a red target dot. Once all of the Marines in a given firing group had their weapons trained on the same spot, Sissy triggered the weapons in unison.
A Marine LR-2120 had a .01 second pulsed output of fifty megawatts, which translated on-target to an explosive release of half a million joules, about the same as the detonation of fifty grams of chemical high explosive. Sissy allowed ten Marines to fire at the same spot on the target at the same instant, delivering the equivalent of half a kilogram of HE, definitely a force multiplier in every sense of the phrase.
A flashing red arrow in Garroway’s visor showed him which way to look to acquire the next target on Sissy’s list. He shifted, found the red triangle, and acquired the new target.
CCN’s advantages in combat were clear; the disadvantages were less obvious. Chief among them was that individual Marines had to ignore other potential threats while they focused on the target selected by the combat AI. It was a real test of a Marine’s trust in the AI to surrender his or her judgment to the judgment of the expert system software. If enough Marines decided a different target was more important or if they panicked and couldn’t hold their weapons on-target for the critical second or two it took to coordinate a number of aim-points, the whole system fell apart.