“Aye, aye, sir.”
“And, Corporal, if you miss one of those things this time,” Taggart said, with a grim smile, “I’ll bust you so low, you’ll think a transfer to a Neo-Sov Rad Squad is a promotion.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Henry repeated. He turned smartly on his heel and headed into the cargo bay, calling his squadmates together.
Taggart watched him go. Ignoring Dr. Cortez for the moment, the Marine officer leaned wearily against the edge of the sprung cargo bay door and stared off into the darkness. His mind was already in motion. If the Mashers had left one ambusher behind, they could have left two or more. The aliens had adequately demonstrated that they had no fear of the more heavily armed Marines, at least not when the Mashers outnumbered the humans. The attack on Gunny Frost’s party proved that.
Taggart momentarily considered pulling out, taking with him only those casualties he had already discovered. He pushed that notion aside. The terrain of the rift valley would be easy enough to negotiate if the Marines and medical team were unburdened. But carrying the dead and wounded along would make the passage too difficult to attempt at night, even with night vision gear.
Besides, Marine traditions, not to mention those of the Union Armed Forces, dictated that every reasonable effort had to be made to rescue prisoners and to recover the bodies of the slain. With that in mind, he needed to take out a search party to rescue or recover those of Cabot’s crew the Mashers had carried off as prisoners.
Recent events demonstrated that he was not facing a tribe of primitives, but a savage race of cunning, if not necessarily intelligent, beings. Though the Mashers’ weapons were crude, they were undeniably effective. They had exhibited little in the way of tactical ability, yet they were capable of executing an ambush against experienced combat troops.
There were far too many unknown factors. How many aliens were there on Sierra Seven-Five? He had no way of knowing. Taggart had sixteen effectives of his original twenty Marines. When he launched his search and rescue operation, he’d have to leave at least two, or more likely four, of those behind to protect the medical team.
My God, can that be right? Have I really taken twenty-percent casualties?
The realization jarred him. Such casualty rates in larger, mainline units often brought disciplinary actions. Special Operations units like his Marines were expected to take slightly higher casualties because of the nature of their missions, but no commander liked to think that he had cost almost a quarter of his men their lives.
Thus far, all the Marines had seen were the spike guns and those wicked saw-edged clubs, which his men had taken to calling Thumpers. Did the Mashers have heavier weapons? His two depleted squads had four Bulldog support rifles and two Rottweiler machine guns available to them, but lacked anything more powerful. And then, there were the spider-walkers, the tracks of which Dade and Black had seen on the approach to the crash site and in several places surrounding the wreck. The Marines had yet to see the devices. They were another unknown factor. Were the mechanical walkers simply cargo haulers? Or might they be weapons platforms, troop carriers, or some sort of armored fighting vehicle?
He briefly considered contacting the landing zone and calling in the intact squad he had left to guard the landing craft, or even using the Type 60 Antipersonnel Enforcer chainguns in a ground-support role. He discarded both ideas in short order. Even though his troops had received basic Pathfinder training, none of them was experienced enough to lay out a safe landing zone for the assault boats, especially given the unpredictable winds that continued to whistle through the rift valley at random intervals. Those same winds would make it suicidal to attempt an abseil or para-jump from a hovering assault boat. That was why he and his men had had to hike over the rocky hills in the first place.
As for using the assault boats in a close ground-support role, there was still the unknown quantity of the state of the Mashers’ heavy weapons. If the ugly little aliens had the capability of shooting the assault boat down, the Marines on Sierra Seven-Five would be stranded.
Nope, we’ve got to do this, Taggart told himself. We’ll just have to do it ourselves.
At that moment, Gunny Frost reappeared out of the darkness. She caught sight of her commanding officer, who beckoned her to him. With a posture that fairly screamed of frustrated disgust, Frost squatted on her heels next to Captain Taggart.
“Well?” he prodded.
“Well, nothin’, sir,” she growled. “Nobody saw nothin’. Nobody heard nothin’. Either those ugly little buggers are the sneakiest thing since my Aunt May’s housecat, or we had a couple of Marines asleep on the job. Or else the Mashers aren’t as stupid as we thought they were, and they left a couple of stay-behinds in the ship when they pulled out.”
“That’s what I was thinking, Gunny,” Taggart said. “I’ve got Corporal Henry conducting another search. I don’t think he’ll turn anything up, but we gotta check.”
“Yeah,” Frost echoed. “We gotta check. So what are you gonna do about Michelli’s story? You really think the Mashers took any prisoners?”
Frost’s sudden change of topic failed to take Taggart by surprise. He had been teamed with Onawa Frost long enough to become accustomed to the Mohawk sergeant’s abrupt nature.
“I don’t know, Onawa. I guess we can’t afford not to.” Taggart sighed wearily.
“I guess not.”
“We’ll have to wait until morning to get started,” Taggart said. “I’ll get the scouts out looking for a trail as soon as there is enough light to track by.”
He tapped the visor of his environment suit’s helmet. “Light-amplification gear is wonderful stuff. But Dade tells me it doesn’t render the depth of field necessary to allow easy tracking, especially in this kind of soil. Since the Mashers all seem to go barefoot, he says it would be almost impossible to follow a trail in the dark.”
“Wonderful,” Frost said disgustedly. “So instead of hitting the bad guys in the middle of the night, we’re gonna hit them in broad daylight.”
“Gunny, I know doctrine says this kind of operation should go off between oh-three-hundred and oh-four-hundred, when the enemy is at his lowest physical and mental ebb.” Taggart’s manner suggested that he was reciting from the G-Force manual. “But we haven’t got much choice.”
Dr. Cortez got to her feet, brushing the dust from her knees. She had not wasted the time Taggart had spent in silent contemplation of his future actions. She had used that long period of quiet to examine the Masher corpse lying outside the cargo bay.
“What about letting your scouts track the Mashers back to their base, or village or whatever, during the day tomorrow, then hitting them tomorrow night?” she offered.
“No good, Doc.” Frost shook her head with a snort. “That would mean sitting here another day, bottled up in the ship. One-on-one, we outgun the bad guys. But if they try to storm the ship, come at us in a rush with any kind of numbers . . . well, I’ve faced Neo-Sov mass charges, and that was with a full platoon. Believe me, you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a human-wave attack, especially if you’re short-handed.”
“We don’t know if the Mashers even use human wave . . .”
“Begging the lieutenant’s pardon, but yes, we do, ma’am,” Frost cut her off. “Every time we’ve run across them, those little buggers have given us a couple volleys of spikes, then come up close with their Thumpers. Now, that may not qualify as a human wave, but that’s only because the Mashers seem to be driven a little more by individual heroism and personal greed than by a group goal.
“We’ve got a lot of firepower here. Those Rottweilers and Bulldogs can lay down a real spit-storm, but I wouldn’t want to rely on them to break up an attack. And, if the Mashers do get in among us, then machine guns and grenades aren’t gonna be worth spit. Then it’ll be down to knives, gun-butts, and dirty fighting. There just ain’t enough of us to stand off that kind of attack.”
“Oh,” Cortez said, and subsided into silence.
“Yeah,” Frost continued in an acid tone born more of weariness than a dislike for Dr. Cortez. “And it doesn’t end there. Like the captain said, starlight gear is wonderful stuff for making your way in the dark, if you know exactly who and what your enemy is. It isn’t so great for distinguishing fine details, especially at a distance. We go in at night, and we’re gonna have a helluva time distinguishing the prisoners from the enemy, at least until we close up with ’em. And that’s gonna eliminate any range advantage our weapons might afford us.”
Cortez bowed her head in silence, partly in acquiescence to the Marines’ superior knowledge and skill in this sort of operation, partly to conceal her embarrassment. Recovering her composure, she changed the subject.
“What I wanted to speak with you about, Captain, is the dead Masher Sergeant Frost brought in. Of course I haven’t had the time to do a full autopsy. We don’t even have the facilities here to do a proper job. All I could do is a cursory external examination.”
“And?”
“Well, Captain,” Cortez said in a detached, professional tone, “if I had to make a determination, I’d have to say that the Mashers are not Neo-Soviet mutants, but a new alien race. Of course, I can’t make that determination for sure until we do complete a full autopsy, complete with a genetic analysis. No matter how twisted Neo-Sov mutants are, they still possess basic human DNA. But that’s not what I’m basing my assessment on. It’s this.”
Cortez returned to the dead Masher’s side, knelt beside it, and tapped on the infrared sensor package implanted in the creature’s shoulder with the blade of a pocketknife she took from a pouch on her web gear.
“Now, understand, please, I’m not an expert in bionics or cybernetics. Everything I know about those subjects comes from med school and the occasional journal article. Still, I’ve got some understanding of the matter. If this sensor package really came from one of the platforms we set up, it would be my opinion that there is no way the Neo-Sovs, or anyone else for that matter, could have stolen it and implanted it in this creature’s body in so short a time, let alone have him up and in shape to start brawling with enemy troops. I suppose it’s possible that the Neo-Sovs could have developed a mutant that heals at a vastly accelerated rate. That might explain it.”
“Doc,” Frost cut in, “my guys shot, stabbed, or clubbed the heck out of these little bastards. None of them showed any signs of instantaneous healing ability.”
“I suppose the Neo-Sovs may have come up with a new kind of Mental, one that can perform a sort of ‘psychic surgery’ on these creatures, one who could help speed up healing. If that’s the case, we should make capturing him a high priority.”
“Well, Doctor, perhaps you could answer a question that’s been bothering me,” Taggart said, ending that course of speculation. “Ever since Gunny Frost brought this bugger in here, I’ve been wondering about that IR package. Do you think he can access it? Or is he just wearing it as a sort of decoration, like all those screws and bolts in his legs and arms?”
“I don’t know, Captain. Without a full autopsy, it would be impossible to say for certain. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d have to say yes, it can access the sensor. Remember, they seem to be powering or controlling their spike guns through cables attached to their bodies.” Cortez tapped a thick cable connecting the dead Masher’s weapon to its torso. “On the basis of that evidence at least, and pending a full investigation, we’d have to assume that these creatures can access and operate any device grafted into their bodies.”
“Hmmm,” Taggart grunted. “Whether they can use any implanted devices or not, Doctor, I’d have to agree with your assessment that these things aren’t any kind of Neo-Sov mutant, though I’m basing my assumption on different points of evidence. The Neo-Sovs aren’t particularly tolerant of self-expression among their troops, not officially at least. They most especially are not given to assent to requests for decoration or embellishment from their mutants or slaves. We’ve seen at least three examples of that kind of implant among these creatures. The one that attacked Dade had a Union Space Force buckle implanted in its shoulder. Then there were the Star of David and the coffeemaker. Both were covered in what seems to be blood from these aliens.” Taggart nudged the corpse with his toe.
“Now the Star would be considered a form of decoration, and a Neo-Sov officer might let it slide. But the coffeemaker? That strikes me as a little too weird. If I was to guess, I’d say these critters can’t tell the difference between a practical item like that sensor package, and something completely useless like a coffee machine. They have to learn by trial and error.”
“You may be right, Captain,” Cortez nodded. “That could explain some of the scars, if the creatures had a useless item implanted and then removed.”
“Doc, I mentioned this to Gunny Frost a little earlier, but I didn’t want to say too much, because it sounds so crazy.” Taggart paused, and took a deep breath. “I’m wondering if these creatures, be they aliens or mutants, can control their bodies to the point that they can sort of absorb a foreign object into their own flesh.”
“It’s possible,” Cortez allowed. “We’ve had contact with a number of alien races since Earth was ‘inducted’ into the Maelstrom. Each one has had its own set of paranormal abilities.
“I think you may be right, Captain. I think we’re in a first-contact situation.”
27
* * *
P rivate First Class Saul Decker poked his head over the rim of the foxhole and peered out into the darkness shrouding the rift valley. Here and there, the odd blue-black bushes that dotted the valley floor showed up as dark patches in his helmet’s starlight viewer. If he switched to his thermal-imaging system, he knew those bushes, unlike terrestrial plants, would glow faintly. Almost everything about the planetoid designated Sierra Seven-Five was unnatural. The vegetation grew seemingly without the benefit of water and had much stronger heat signatures than an earth plant would. The wind, which was not silent, could rise and fall without so much as a second’s notice. Those unpredictable breezes would set the bushes to stirring, adding a layer of random movement to the scene. The low-light viewer tended by nature to restrict one’s field of view, and the fluttering bushes always seemed to be on the edge of Decker’s peripheral vision.
Worst of all were the unnatural creatures lurking in the darkness. Disturbingly human in their appearance, they seemed to thrive in an atmosphere that would suffocate a normal Terran in short order. To make matters worse, the gruesome monsters seemed to be growing increasingly hostile and aggressive with every hour the rescue party hung around the wreck site. It was almost as though the creatures had been afraid of the humans when they first arrived on Sierra Seven-Five, but over time they had become acclimated to and then contemptuous of the Terrans.
Decker shivered, the involuntary tremor born of a deep-rooted, morbid fear of the alien beings hiding behind the curtain of darkness. Something moved on the edge of his restricted field of vision. Hitching his eyes another centimeter over the lip of the earth-and-stone parapet, Decker scanned the area carefully. For long seconds he peered into the weird green-and-gray landscape, straining his eyes against the flattening effect of the starlight viewer.
There, about seventy-five meters out. What’s that?
The young Marine studied the odd-looking dark gray mass, flicking between his helmet visor’s light-amplification and thermal-imaging systems. Automatically, he brought his rifle to his shoulder, ready to engage the anomalous target should it turn out to be hostile.
A gust of wind swept over his position, blowing loose grit against the back of his neck. The coarse sand hissed against his helmet and momentarily clouded his vision. When it cleared, he saw the shadowy form toss and sway as the stiff breeze whipped across it.
Another lousy bush.
Decker let a half laugh escape his lips as he relaxed back into the foxhole. The tension of the moment had left his mouth so dry that his tongue was sticking to his palate.
With a self-disparaging snort, he lowered his weapon, cradling it in the crook of his left arm. Reaching behind him, he pulled his canteen from its nylon carrier on the back of his belt. Like most of his comrades, Decker had packed in as much water as he could carry along with his regular combat load. They had been told that the likelihood of finding a source of fresh, drinkable water on Sierra Seven-Five was virtually nil. A good portion of Cabot’s store of fresh water had been lost in the wreck, but enough had remained in her storage tanks for the rescue team to top off their somewhat depleted canteens.
Decker did not unscrew the canteen’s large knurled cap. Instead, he flipped aside a small friction-fitted cap, exposing a thick rubber O-ring. From a small pocket on the front of the canteen carrier, he extracted a heavy rubber tube with a hard plastic nozzle on each end. Decker inserted one of the nozzles into the canteen’s O-ring and tried attaching the other to a special fitting on his helmet’s jaw-guard. The lightweight, bulky Pitbull rifle resting in the crook of his left arm made the job almost impossible. With a growl of mild frustration, Decker let the rifle slide through his grip until he held it by its stubby flash-hider, and lowered the weapon to the ground, resting it carefully against the side of the foxhole.
Freed of the impediment of his rifle, Decker easily locked the plastic nozzle into the helmet fitting that was connected to a “bite valve” on the inside of the reinforced kevlon band protecting the lower half of the trooper’s face. Upending the canteen, he took the bite valve in his teeth and sucked in a mouthful of the flat, tepid water. Decker closed his eyes, relishing the water’s soothing effect on his dry mouth, despite its stale flavor.
Operation Sierra-75 Page 20