The 18th Race: Book 02 - In All Directions

by David Sherman

  Saxon barked another laugh, and clapped a hand on Greig’s shoulder. “Force Recon. Marines,” he said dismissively.

  Greig stayed quiet. Unlike many officers in the Army, he held the fighting ability of the Marines in high regard.

  Soon after, Saxon said, “Carry on” and headed for his aircraft.

  “I’ll get you some protective gear,” Hapeman told Greig, wrinkling his nose at the smell that was already beginning to rise from the scattered corpses and body parts. He followed Saxon.

  Graves detail

  “This is bullshit, Mr. Greig,” Sergeant First Class Quinn groused.

  Second Lieutenant Greig shook his head without saying anything. He agreed with his platoon sergeant, but couldn’t complain to the sergeant about the inadequacy of the protective gear that the battalion commander had provided them with. The breathing filters cut down on the mounting stench of decomposition, and the long-cuffed disposable gloves kept the men’s hands off the alien flesh and bones, but did nothing to keep them from trodding in the offal, or prevent anything from splashing on their uniforms, or any exposed skin.

  “We should have full-cover hazard suits,” Quinn continued.

  “Should, would, could,” Greig said impatiently. “That won’t get us anywhere. We’ll make do with what we have. Do you understand me, Sergeant?”

  “Ah, yeah, sure, uh, sir. We do what we can with what we got.” Then in a low voice that might not even reach Greig’s ears, “And hope none’a them creatures got anything that can kill us from simple contact.”

  But his words did carry.

  “Sarge, if the Dusters were carrying any pathogens that could harm us, I’m sure the Navy scientists would have told us.”

  “I’m sure.” To himself Quinn added, They would’a told our brass, but would the brass have passed the word to us?

  All but a few soldiers assigned to picket duty to watch for another attack were set to clearing the field of corpses and body parts. The area was extensive enough that they didn’t make one big pile, but made several, more than fifty meters apart. It took almost an entire day to assemble the piles. Then they were doused with fuel and set ablaze.

  “Goddam!” Sergeant Gasson complained. “The fire stinks almost worse than the bodies did when we were collecting them.”

  “Could be worse,” Staff Sergeant O’Connor said calmly. “We’re upwind from the fires.” He nodded toward the forest beyond the burning piles. “The wind is blowing the stink away from us, into the forest. If the rest of the Dusters, the ones that got away, are still in there, if they didn’t go far, far away, how do you think they feel smelling their buddies burning like that?”

  Gasson chewed on his lip, looking beyond the flames. After a long moment he said, “Yeah.”

  Chapter 12

  Advance Firebase One

  “Heads up!” Corporal Allen shouted as he grabbed his rifle and fired a shot toward the smoke-shrouded treeline.

  “What’s up?” Sergeant Gasson called.

  “Dusters!” Allen shouted again and fired another round.

  “Back, get back to the line!” Staff Sergeant O’Connor bellowed to his squad. They were gathering and burning corpses of the Dusters who had fallen outside the wire- and spike-studded trench.

  Lieutenant Greig and SFC Quinn took up the cry, even though neither of them had seen any Dusters through the smoke from the burning alien corpses.

  “To your positions!” Greig ordered on his all-hands freq.

  It took little more than a minute for the graves detail to pick up their weapons and make it back through the opening in the wire wire stacked pyramid-like, four rolls high, over the board-bridge over the trench, and scramble into their defensive positions.

  Greig picked up his infra scope and looked into the slowly thinning cloud of smoke. H”Damn,” he swore under his breath. In infra he saw Dusters jinking and darting toward the firebase. “They’re coming,” he said into the all-hands freq. “Wait for my order.” Where the hell is that Mobile Intel platoon? He’d contacted them more than an hour ago and told them to come back, that he needed them at the firebase because the Dusters were here. He lowered the scope and peered at the slowly thinning smoke, scanning from side to side. Then he dimly saw hunched over shapes flitting through the smoke he shouted, “Fire!” Hundreds more shapes quickly became visible close behind.

  All the weapons of the reinforced platoon opened up. The CBs had also taken up weapons and added their fire to the soldiers’. The answering caws of the Dusters couldn’t be heard over the din of the outgoing gunfire—but the cracks of the Dusters’ fire could be heard, and the thuds from the impacts of their bullets as random shots struck the faces of the bunkers. Some of the flitting forms fell or tumbled under the withering fire from second platoon and the CBs. Then the Dusters started dashing through the smoke, darting here and there, going sideways more than forward, but always closing the distance to the wire. Dusters flipped, flopped, crashed to the ground. Some of them got up again and resumed their charge, although most of the fallen either stayed down or began crawling between the burning pyres, back toward the trees. But most of them kept coming.

  The first dozen Dusters to reach the wire flung themselves onto it and writhed, bleeding from multiple punctures, pinning their bodies tighter and tighter to it until they couldn’t move any more. Their shrill caws and agonized shrieks sent chills through some of the soldiers and inspired them to shoot at the pinioned aliens, to kill them, to put them out of their misery, to still their cries of pain.

  “Ignore the ones on the wire,” Greig commanded. “Shoot the ones still coming!”

  The next dozen Dusters to reach the wire clambered up the bodies of their comrades already there and threw their own bodies onto the top tier of wire, pinning themselves to it, adding their caws and shrieks to the cacophony. The third wave scrambled over the first two and dove onto the downslope of the wire, completing a bridge over it that the following aliens used to cross the obstacle unharmed.

  The first of the Dusters who crossed the wire on the living bridges jumped into the studded trench and collapsed when spikes impaled their feet. Screaming in agony, they fell onto more spikes. The initial Dusters had intentionally sacrificed themselves to make bridges, but none of them knew about the spikes in the shallow trench until their feet got impaled. The first to reach the shallow trench became unintended bridges over the spikes.

  Hundreds thudded across their fallen mates, driving them deeper onto the spikes, snapping their bones, killing them. Those hundreds raced across the remaining killing ground at the bunkers that continued to blast death at them. More and more Dusters fell to the fire from the soldiers and CBs. And still they came on, shrieking caws and shrill battle cries.

  In their bunker, Gasson and Allen kept up a steady fire of three-round bursts at the charging Dusters. PFCs Charles F. Sancrainte and Denis Buckley joined them at the embrasure, firing at the charging aliens. The zigging and zagging of the attackers made it impossible to properly aim at them, but their sheer numbers made accurate aim unnecessary. If you picked a spot and kept shooting at it, sooner rather than later a darting, dodging body would cross through that space at the same time a bullet did, and a Duster would bite the dust.

  But the Dusters weren’t jinking directly at the fronts of the bunkers, mostly they angled and re-angled to the spaces between bunkers, to get between and behind them, where they knew the entrances were. As many as fell in the open ground between the wire and the studded trench, even more made it between the bunkers to attack them from the rear.

  “Allen, cover the rear!” Gasson shouted.

  The corporal scooted to the dog-legged entrance of the bunker and lay prone with his chest and shoulders in the tunnel section that emptied into it. He pointed his rifle around the corner just in time to see a Duster’s head poke around from the outer section. He pulled the trigger of his rifle, sending three rounds at the beaked head. The alien was fast and jerked back just in time for Allen’
s shot to miss. The Duster stuck its rifle around the corner and let off a long burst, but its projectiles went high. Allen fired another burst, hitting the weapon and knocking it out of the alien’s hands. The shriek that came told Allen he must have hit the Duster’s hand or wrist as well as its weapon. Scrabbling noises said the wounded alien was backing out. or was being dragged out of the way.

  Excited chittering came from outside, and a dark object crashed into the tunnel, and caromed around the corner to roll toward Allen.

  “Grenade!” he shouted, and scooted back and flattened against the side of the bunker next to the entrance.

  The grenade exploded with a deafening roar before it reached the corner to the final leg. Shrapnel ripped into the tunnel walls, but none entered the bunker itself.

  Instantly, Allen went prone, shoving his chest and shoulders back into the tunnel, rifle first. The muzzle slammed into the beak of a Duster who was already reaching the inner bend. Allen pulled his rifle back far enough to get off a burst, and the Duster’s head exploded from the impact of three bullets hitting from only a couple of centimeters distance. Allen pushed his rifle around the corner and quickly cranked off three more three-round bursts. Screams answered him, along with fire from alien weapons. He heard the movement of bodies withdrawing, and waited a few seconds before taking a quick look around the corner. He saw the twitching corpse of the first one he’d killed, and the sprawled body of another halfway around the next corner.

  After waiting a few more seconds before looking again, he saw the second body being dragged back. He scrambled over the body of the first one to the corner onto the one being dragged and stuck his rifle around it to fire another three bursts. A scream met his fire, and the tension he’d felt in the body of the Duster he was on fell away; whoever had been pulling it was out of the fight. He fired again, but didn’t hear any cry or other sound to indicate he’d hit another Duster. He scrambled back.

  While Allen had been fighting off the Dusters trying to enter the bunker, Gasson and the rest of the fire team were at the embrasure, still shooting at the charging aliens, but not hitting as many as before—most of the surviving enemy had reached the area between the bunkers where they were safe from the continuing fire.

  But not all had reached that momentary safety. One, shrieking madly, zigging and zagging manically, reached the bunker and jammed its weapon into the embrasure. It fired a burst into the face and chest of Sancrainte, making him second platoon’s second fatality. Gasson and Buckley each fired two bursts into the alien, killing it and tossing its blood-spewing corpse away to land in a broken heap.

  And then there were no more Dusters in front of the bunkers.

  “Buckley, stay, guard,” Gasson snapped. He spun about and in three steps went prone, on top of Allen, to peer around the corner. Seeing only the two Duster corpses, he scooted back and off Allen.

  “Let’s get these things out of the way,” he said.

  Allen put his rifle down and reached around the corner with both hands to grasp the Duster by its upper arms. He pulled it none too gently as he crawled backward into the bunker. As soon as he had the body far enough, Gasson reached over him to grab the Duster and unceremoniously yank it the rest of the way in, where he flung it into a corner.

  As soon as the first body was out of the way, Allen took up his rifle again and crawled to the second body. “Cover me,” he said over his shoulder. A quick glance showed Gasson on one knee, aiming his rifle past him. Allen reached the body and pulled it by the arms, just as he had the other. It was tight, but he squeezed past Gasson who had tucked himself into the angle of the corner and kept aiming down the short length of the tunnel. In the bunker he tossed the body onto the other, and took a quick look through the embrasure at the vacant landscape visible through it.

  “Stay sharp, Buckley,” he said, clapping the PFC’s shoulder. “When they figure out we’ve got them blocked at the entrance they might come around front again.”

  “Sure thing, Corporal,” Buckley said, glancing nervously at Sancrainte’s body where it lay on the pallet the dead soldier had used as a bed.

  Allen scrambled back to Gasson, who was waiting for him inside the entrance tunnel.

  “I’m bigger than you,” Gasson said, “so I’ll go first. At the entrance you either kneel over me, or lay on me. Between us, we can cover almost a hundred and eighty degrees. Got it?”

  “Got it, Sarge. Any time you’re ready.”

  Without another word, Gasson scooted into the long leg of the tunnel and fired around the next corner before looking down it. When he did he saw sky and ground and running, scaled legs that ended in taloned feet. And some crumpled bodies, a couple of which he thought must have been Dusters Allen had killed.

  He bent himself around the corner far enough to see farther to the sides of the entrance, about a ninety degree field of vision. Almost immediately he saw a Duster looking in his direction and skittering toward him. He snapped off two quick bursts and was satisfied to see the Duster drop his weapon as he fell face down. He put another burst into the Duster when he saw it scrabbling toward its rifle.

  Then Allen was leaning over him and looking farther out.

  “Damn, but there’s a shitload of ‘em,” the corporal said, putting his rifle to his shoulder and cranking off a few three-round bursts.

  Gasson skooched forward until he could see almost a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree arc. “They’ve got no discipline! They’re just running around.”

  “If they slowed down so’s we could hit ‘em, this’d be a goddamn turkey shoot!” Ignoring the fact that the Dusters weren’t slowing down, that they were running as fast, firing as wildly, and jinking as unpredictably as during their charge, he began putting bursts out at randomly selected targets. Beneath him, Gasson did the same. They fired again and again, and some of their bursts hit.

  But not all of the Dusters were as undisciplined as the ones the two soldiers were shooting at.

  “They’re on top of the bunker!” Buckley twisted around and shouted the warning at the entrance. If he could have, he would have squeezed through the embrasure to shoot at the aliens he heard on top of the bunker. But the opening was too narrow, he could barely sitck his head through it, and then only if he first removed his helmet.

  “Look up!” Buckley shouted.

  But Gasson and Allen couldn’t hear Buckley’s shouts over the din of firing, their own and the Dusters’. Allen was leaning out, completely exposing his head and shoulders, when a burst from above slammed into him and knocked him onto Gasson, driving the fire team leader flat. Two Dusters dropped off the top of the bunker and fired under Allen, into Gasson. With the two soldiers out of the way, the two Dusters darted into the entry tunnel determined to kill its last defender.

  Unfortunately for them, Buckley had heard the shooting at the mouth of the tunnel, and its sudden cessation, and knew what it had to mean. He was ready when the Dusters came in, and—in the tunnel that was too narrow for them to jink—killed both of the attackers.

  Buckley waited, dry-mouthed, for more Dusters to appear, either through the tunnel or outside the embrasure.

  Command post, Advance Firebase One

  Lieutenant Greig watched appalled as the Dusters overran his platoon’s defenses, and the positions manned by the CBs. He knew his men had slaughtered many, many of the attackers before they reached the line of bunkers. But there were so damn many of the alien soldiers that it was only a matter of time, and not a very long time, before they completely wiped out the small human force. He’d put in a request for Marine air support, but was told none was immediately available, that all the Marine Kestrels and Eagles were on other missions, but the first available would be sortied to his aid.

  At least his men had acquitted themselves well.

  Then the manic running about of the Dusters took on a different tone, and many of them looked to the sky beyond the perimeter.

  Greig grabbed his glasses and looked where the Dusters were looking.
There! Coming fast, were four aircraft. They were still too far away for him to make out, but whatever kind they were they were going to save his platoon and the CBs!

  The Dusters started to break and run. Only a few at first, but more and more as they saw the first ones fleeing. Soon, before the aircraft reached close enough to the firebase to lay effective air-to-ground fire on them, the Dusters were in full rout, being pursued by fire from the defenders. By the time the first aliens reached the trees, the aircraft were above them, raining fire. They were MH 15 Alphonses—the MI platoon had finally arrived!

  The Butcher’s Bill

  Second platoon, Alpha Company, First of the Seventh Mounted Infantry had lost eight men killed and another seven wounded badly enough to require evacuation to a field hospital—or even to orbital facilities. Close to half of the platoon required replacements. And from where were they going to come? The CBs had lost seven, dead or severely wounded. Where were their replacements going to come from?

  Lieutenant Greig decided than that the Troy operation was even more of a royal cockup than he’d already thought—which, after the beating that ARG 17 had taken upon arrival in the Troy system, was saying a lot.

  What next?? the lieutenant wanted to know. But there was nobody who could—or would—tell him.

  Chapter 13

  VMA 214, Marine Corps Aviation Facility, near Jordan, Semi-Autonomous World Troy

  Lieutenant General Bauer wanted combat air close to Jordan, because there had been so much Duster activity in the area. Major General Hiram I. Bearss, Commanding General of Marine Air Wing 2, selected an area that was many square kilometers of level ground. The Dusters were known for using cave and tunnel complexes as staging areas and to move about undetected. The Navy in orbit was still conducting its search for gravitational anomalies and hadn’t covered all the Jordan region, but Myers concluded that a level landscape wouldn’t have caves or tunnels. Myers tasked Marine Air Group 14 with establishing an expeditionary air field and assigning a ground-attack squadron to it.