Starfist - 12 - Firestorm

by Dan Cragg

  “We’re aboard and the birds are cranking. Wait one.” Godalgonz heard a muffled exchange, then Devh came back. “Killer, we’re lifting off. Where do you want us to go, and what do you want us to do when we get there?”

  Godalgonz didn’t take the time for a sigh of relief; instead he began giving orders to the commander of 29th FIST.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Third platoon went down Center Street. Not in the middle of the street, the way the armed citizens of Gilbert’s Corners had in their ill-fated attempt to fight the Force Recon raiders, but along the fronts of the buildings and houses on both sides of the street, taking advantage of every bit of cover afforded by architecture or nature. They didn’t bother with concealment—their chameleons kept them out of sight—except when they entered buildings or houses in search of members of the Coalition government.

  Corporal Joe Dean went to a knee at the corner of a yellow brick house with a miniature portico. A shallow roof with two pillars supported it. Second squad’s third fire team had already searched four houses, finding only frightened civilians who huddled away from the faces floating horribly in midair. But that experience didn’t make Dean feel any more confident about searching the fifth house than he had searching the first. There had been weapons in each of the first four houses, shotguns and hunting rifles rather than military. Still, a bullet from a deer rifle will kill a man just as dead as a burst from a fléchette rifle. In three of those houses the people had been too frightened and shaken to try to fight—or even protest when the Marines confiscated their weapons. In the other, Lance Corporal Izzy Godenov had snatched a rifle from the hands of a man taking aim at Dean’s back, just in time.

  Then they reached another house that needed to be secured.

  “Three, you know the routine,” Sergeant Lupo Ratliff murmured over the squad circuit. “Do it.”

  “Aye aye,” Dean murmured back. Then, “Izzy, Triple John, with me.” He stood hunched, then dashed along the front of the house to the far side of the portico. Godenov and PFC John Three McGinty followed to the portico’s near side. Dean reached in and tried the door; it wasn’t locked. “Screens up,” he said. The three Marines raised the chameleon screens on their helmets, exposing their faces. Dean kept his light-gatherer screen in place, Godenov kept his infra up. Only McGinty would go in with just his eyes to see through. Dean looked into his men’s faces. “Ready?” When they both nodded, he shoved the door open, darted through, and slammed the swinging door against the wall. Godenov and McGinty went through the door just as fast, against the wall on the other side of the doorway.

  They were in a living room with two doorways leading off it. Nobody was visible in the room. Bulky furniture stood about, none of the overstuffed chairs or the sofa against the walls.

  “Izzy, right. Me, left,” Dean said. He and Godenov quickly checked behind the furniture. Nobody was hiding in the room. Dean could see a dining room through the doorway to the right; there didn’t seem to be anyone in it. He slipped off a glove and signaled Godenov to slide his chameleon screen back into place and take a quick look.

  Godenov did, and reported no one there.

  “In the house!” Dean called out loudly. “We are Confederation Marines. Come into the living room. Throw any weapons you have into the living room before you enter, and have your hands in plain sight. We aren’t going to hurt you, we’re looking for someone. As soon as we are sure whoever we’re looking for isn’t here, we’ll leave you in peace.”

  A voice yelled from deeper in the house, “We ain’t comin’ to no Confed’rations. Git out’n here or ye’ll be sorry.”

  “I’m sorry now,” Dean called back. “I wish you hadn’t said that. I’m sorry we might have to hurt you. Now do what I said and nobody’ll get hurt.”

  “Fuck you!” the voice shouted defiantly.

  Dean sighed, and lowered his chameleon screen. Godenov and McGinty did the same.

  “Izzy,” Dean said on the fire team circuit, “what’s beyond the dining room?”

  “Looks like a kitchen.”

  “Check it out. McGinty, go with him.” Dean turned his ears up and listened to the faint sounds his men made as they went through the dining room into the kitchen. He heard cabinets being quietly opened and closed again.

  “Nobody’s here,” Godenov reported.

  “What about other doors?” Dean asked.

  “There’s a doorway into the hall we could see from the living room. Another door is right across the hall.”

  “Wait for me.” Dean made sure his light gatherer was in place and slipped through the doorway on the living room’s back wall, into a hall that led to the rear of the house. When he neared the door into the kitchen, he reached out with a hand. Godenov took it.

  “Go to the rear of the door,” Dean told Godenov; to McGinty, he said, “Cover us to the rear of the house. Then he stepped to the side of the door opposite the kitchen door and flipped his infra down just long enough to see that Godenov was in position on the doorway’s other side. He reached out and swung the door open. He entered low and fast. It was a bedroom, but nobody was in it, not under the bed, in the closet, or in the adjoining watercloset. The bedroom had no other exits.

  There were three more doorways off the hall, plus an exit at its far end. The first two opened into bedrooms that were as empty as the front of the house. They stopped shy of the last door, and Dean suddenly wished they were wearing body armor. He leaned forward, turned on his external speaker, and said, “Throw out your weapons and come out with your hands up. Nobody will get hur—”

  “Fuck you!” the voice shouted again, not as defiantly this time, followed immediately by a loud Ka-boom! and the less loud ka-chunk of a fresh shell being racked into a shotgun.

  Dean turned his speaker up and tried again. “Last chance before we come in.”

  The man didn’t reply with words; his shotgun answered for him. The pellets blew a fist-sized hole in the wall next to the door, matching the hole the first blast had made.

  “Shit,” Dean swore. “I hate it when civilians want to fight us.” He switched his external speaker off and turned his head toward the splotch his infra told him was McGinty. “Triple John, you’re about to participate in something no Marine should ever have to do—kill a stupid civilian.”

  “He’s too stupid to live,” Godenov muttered angrily. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Dean sighed before saying “Izzy, on my signal, burn the catch. Triple John, put three bolts through the hinge side of the door—mix them up. Fire!”

  The relative quiet of the house’s hallway was suddenly filled with multiple CRACK-sizzles as the three Marines opened fire. Godenov blasted away the door’s catch with his first shot and fired two more through the door itself. McGinty hit the hinges with his first two shots and the now unconnected door toppled into the hallway. He put his third shot through the now empty doorway. Dean shot three spaced bolts through the wall between himself and the door.

  “Cease fire!” Dean ordered over the tinkling of breaking glass and ceramics that came from the room. The three Marines listened for movement, but once the tinkling ended, the room was silent.

  “In the room,” Dean shouted through his speaker, “if you can, throw your weapons out. If you’re too badly injured, let me know, we’ll provide medical attention.”

  No weapons came through the doorway, no one spoke from within the room.

  “Hold your fire, I’m coming in to check on you.” Then on the fire team circuit, “Cover me.” Carefully, silently, he eased over to where he could see through the door, bringing a bedroom into view. It wasn’t a large room, and it looked like it belonged to a teenage girl who had recently redecorated it from being a young girl’s room. A plasma bolt had gone through a bed with a frilly cover, now smoldering. Next to the bed was a filigree nightstand that had held a cut-glass lamp and several now unidentifiable ceramic objects, all of which were partly melted and broken. Next to the nightstand, a man sat slumped aga
inst the wall; his hands loosely held a shotgun across his thighs. A hole was burned through the left side of his chest—he was dead. From the angle of the shot that killed him, Dean thought it was from his blaster. Glass beads lay on the floor next to the man, melted from the shattered window above. A bundle of bedclothes tossed in the far corner of the room moved.

  Dean almost flew through the room; he landed on the bundle hard enough to knock the wind out of whoever was hiding under it. He rolled off and roughly yanked the linens away.

  A girl lay there. She looked to be about fourteen years old and was dressed in what Dean thought was local peasant garb, though of too fine a cut and quality to be authentic. A stuffed doll lay tossed aside near her. She was struggling to draw a breath.

  Dean took a quick look around; no one was under the bed, the hope chest at the bed’s foot was too small to hold anyone other than a child, there was nothing else a person could hide in or under.

  “Izzy, the closet,” Dean ordered. “Triple John, cover him.” He rose to his feet and pulled the girl to hers. He slung his blaster, and holding the girl upright by her arm, slapped her back to make her cough. She did, and sucked in a deep, gasping breath, then almost wrenched herself from his grasp reaching for the doll. Dean gave her enough slack to reach it.

  Then she saw the dead man and shrieked, “You killed my daddy!” The girl wildly swung the doll with her free arm, but couldn’t see her target and spun so violently from the force of her swing that she would have fallen had Dean not kept his grip on her arm.

  “He shot at me, girl. I wouldn’t have killed him if he’d come out quietly. But he tried to kill me first! I had to.”

  “You came to kill us anyway. And you were going to, to—you were going to rape me!” She clutched the doll to her face.

  “Shit.”

  “Closet’s clear,” Godenov broke in. “So’s the hope chest.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Dean headed for the door, pulling the girl with him. “Who told you that, girl?” he asked her. “Whoever it was lied to you. The liar, that’s who killed your father.”

  She didn’t listen, but screamed and tried to pull away, waving the doll as though she would fling it away. He was too strong, though, and she was dragged along with him. When they reached the living room he shook her and snarled, “Stop struggling or I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you.”

  “Y-You wouldn’t!”

  In answer, Dean slung her over his shoulder like a sack of dirty laundry. He unslung his blaster and carried it in the hand that wasn’t holding her legs.

  The girl screamed again, and kicked and beat at him with the doll and one fist, but not violently enough to break away and fall to the floor. She beat her fists futilely against Dean’s back. She was the only one of them who saw the glow of the flames beginning to devour her bedroom.

  Staff Sergeant Hyakowa and Sergeant Kerr were waiting outside the house. Kerr’s face showed. Hyakowa had his helmet tucked under his arm. The girl screamed again and began blubbering when she saw them. Being manhandled by an invisible man was one thing, seeing a face and a head hovering in midair was something entirely different.

  Dean raised his screens, showing his face. “This girl and a man with a shotgun were the only people inside,” he reported. He grimaced. “Someone told them we were going to kill them and rape her.”

  Hyakowa made a face. “Damn, I wish people wouldn’t say things like that. It gets too many civilians needlessly killed. All right, bind her wrists and ankles, then leave her in the street for someone to pick up and take to the collection point.” He glanced at the house, then looked at it again. Flames were starting to shoot out of the left side of the house in the back. “Belay that. Take her to the collection point yourself. It’s two blocks back.”

  Dean shifted his blaster to the hand holding the girl’s legs and gave her bottom a sharp smack. “Can you walk, or are you going to make me carry you?” he asked.

  “I-I’ll walk,” she stammered. He let her down and tried not to look disgusted as she used a sleeve to wipe snot from her nose and mouth.

  He took his helmet off and said, “Look at me. See? I’m a man, not a monster. Let’s go. We’ll probably find people you know, and they’ll take care of you.”

  “W-Where are we g-going?” She hid her face with the doll.

  “To a collection point, where people are being gathered to keep them out of trouble.” He looked at her harshly. “And to keep them from getting hurt.”

  The girl looked up at Dean’s hovering face. She wanted to believe what he said, she wanted to believe him so badly. But these Confederation Marines were the devil incarnate. She knew it was so, her daddy told her so. And they killed her daddy and they had her and there was nothing she could do about it. She bravely clutched her rag doll to her chest and went with the Marines to whatever hell they had waiting for her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Second squad had an easier time going down West Street than first squad had advancing along Center Street; most of the residents of Gilbert’s Corners who lived on the west side had fled to the imagined safety of the 819th Regiment’s encampment as soon as they realized an attack was under way.

  A massive firefight was raging to the southwest of Gilbert’s Corners when second squad reached the south end of the village. Sergeant Kerr didn’t like it, but orders were orders, so he held the squad in place when they reached the village’s southern edge.

  “What’s happening, honcho?” Corporal Chan asked on the squad’s command circuit. As the squad’s senior fire team leader, it was his place to ask the question.

  “We’re waiting for orders,” Kerr replied.

  “We’ve got Marines in a fight over there,” Corporal Claypoole said. “We should go and help them out.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Kerr answered drily. “But my honcho said we’re to hold in place until further orders. When my honcho gives me orders, I obey them.”

  “Ah, right. Okay, we wait.”

  “You got that right.” Kerr waited, and so did his Marines.

  Lieutenant General Kyr Godalgonz didn’t much like what he saw. Alpha Company, on the right flank, had slowed the advance of the regiment coming from its southeast, and Bravo Company was beginning to roll up the flank of the force pinning down Charlie Company. But Bravo wasn’t rolling the flank up fast enough to free up Charlie to go to the aid of Alpha. It was going to be touch and go whether 29th FIST would reach the battle area soon enough to help Alpha. Thirty-fourth FIST was just finishing its sweep and search of Gilbert’s Corners, but none of its companies was close enough to help Alpha, either. Thirty-fourth had to go by foot. Godalgonz wasn’t about to waste any time or energy wishing he had some Dragons. He didn’t have the armored amphibians, so he simply had to make do without.

  To make matters worse, he didn’t know where the regiment to the northeast was now; he’d barely found it on his UPUD when the enemy started knocking out the string-of-pearls satellites and he lost his overview of the battlefield. So he took what action he could.

  “Viper, this is Killer.”

  “Killer, Viper. Go,” Brigadier Sturgeon answered immediately. He’d been listening in on Godalgonz’s command circuit and was waiting for the call.

  “Do you see where Alpha 17 is?”

  “That’s affirmative, Killer.”

  “Send Kilo to help them roll that flank. I need to free Bravo 17.” Kilo Company was on 34th FIST’s right flank, the closest to 17th FIST’s action.

  “Roger, Killer. They’re on their way.”

  Commander Usner, 34th FIST’s operations officer, stood close enough to Sturgeon that he was able to overhear the conversation. Sturgeon, helmet and gloves off, looked at him and gave a hand signal. Usner, also without helmet or gloves, returned a thumbs-up, and went to his own comm to call Captain Terris, Kilo Company’s commanding officer, to pass the order.

  “More news, Viper,” Godalgonz continued. A force of probable regiment size is approach
ing from the northeast. Here’s where they were.” He transmitted a screenshot of his UPUD display made just before the string-of-pearls went down. “I don’t know where they are now.”

  “Received, Killer,” Sturgeon said as he looked at the image Godalgonz downloaded to his UPUD. “I understand your lack of current intelligence.” The satellite communications of his UPUD had gone dead when the Coalition’s satellite-killer guns had gone into action, the same as it had for the general. “We’ll stop them.”

  “Killer out.” Godalgonz, still pinned down, took a quick look around the edge of the debris pile and returned his attention to his personal problem.

  “Any ideas on how we can get out of here?” he asked Ensign Rynchus.

  Rynchus grinned at him. “What do you mean, ‘we,’ paleface?” he asked. Then, timing his movement, he sprang up and dashed at the strongpoint that held the automatic weapon system that held Godalgonz in place.

  Sergeant Kerr listened carefully to Captain Conorado’s squad leaders’ briefing, and just as carefully examined the map the company commander had transmitted to the squad leaders via their platoon commanders. The briefing wasn’t as good as it would have been had Conorado gathered the squad leaders, but time was of the essence.

  “We move out in zero two.” Conorado ended his briefing.

  Kerr, like all the other squad leaders in Company L, took advantage of those two minutes to brief his men. He had so little to tell them, two minutes was more than he needed. Seconds after the two minutes had passed, word came over the company net to move out.

  “Up and at ’em, people,” Kerr said. “Second fire team, first, third. Remember, we’re the company’s right flank.”

  Lance Corporal Schultz grunted and headed to the head of the squad column. Everybody knew that third platoon’s second squad had the company’s right flank because of him. Schultz always took the most vulnerable position in movement or defense; he didn’t trust anybody else to spot the enemy as quickly as he did. Nobody would ever dare argue the point with him.