My men received the same message.
“Why the hell should we waste time capturing an apartment building?” Sergeant Evans asked.
“Stevens, hand me that rocket launcher,” I called to one of my men.
PFC Stevens, a grenadier, did as asked. He selected a handheld rocket launcher from his gear and gave it to me.
“Boys, this is the best-built home you will ever see,” I said as I hoisted the launcher to my shoulder, turned toward the tenement, and fired. There was a jolt to my shoulder and the rumble of the rocket. A moment later the smoke from the rocket hung across the open area like a fluffy white feather. The rocket’s contrail formed a shallow arc, then the rocket slammed into the target with a thunderous bang.
Smoke and flames flashed from the side of the building. There was no debris and the smoke cleared in seconds because the rocket did not so much as smudge the tenement.
“Harris, what happened?” the colonel barked.
“Just showing my men what we’re dealing with,” I said.
“We need that building in one piece,” the colonel warned me.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “One piece, sir.”
That rocket, which would have destroyed several city blocks back on Earth, had not so much as broken a window on the tenement. The building stood untouched.
“What the hell?” Evans asked.
“Shields,” I said. “They have shields protecting every building on this planet.”
“Every building?” Evans asked.
“So how the speck are we supposed to take a building with specking missile-proof shields?” Philips asked.
“I don’t think we’ll have much of a problem,” I said. “The shields are only on the outside walls. Once you get inside, everything is breakable.”
We moved as teams, taking corners, making sure every corner was secure, then moving ahead to the next. One of my fire teams flanked the rest of the platoon. If we entered a firefight, one team would pin the enemy down while the flanking team came around and attacked from the side. But the enemy had not yet arrived. They were not coming from across town. They were coming from the other side of a continent, possibly the other side of the planet. We would have time to dig ourselves in.
The apartment building had an open doorway, just like the spaceports and elevator stations. The Mogats had never been invaded. They did not expect an invasion. Until the moment we landed on their planet, they did not believe their enemies could reach them. As far as they knew, the Unified Authority was landlocked.
“Is it shielded inside, too?” Evans asked.
“No, just on the outside,” I said. I remembered the armory Illych and I blew up as we left the planet. “Hard on the outside.
“Evans, secure the first floor. Thomer, you’ve got the second floor. Greer, take your squad and secure the third. Got it?”
Evans’s squad ran in first. One of the men tossed a smoke grenade through the doorway. All three of Evans’s fire teams stormed into the building under the cover of the smoke.
“Evans, run a heat-vision sweep. What do you see?” I asked.
Moments later, he said, “This is a civilian dwelling.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound as caustic as possible, “that’s who you find in civilian sectors.”
“There are people in the apartments, Master Sergeant,” he said.
“Flush them out,” I said. “We want the building to ourselves. Do you read me?” I was prepared to kill anyone who would not leave. We had come here to kill. But I did not relish the idea of killing women and children as they cowered in their apartments. I wanted minimum breakage.
As we cleared the apartment building, other platoons prepared in other ways. Demolitions teams placed mines on the train wells and traffic ramps. We hid snipers and grenadiers along the roads. We had time to burrow in, but I did not hold much hope. The same shields that protected the building would protect the trains and armored transports. We might derail a train or knock over a transport, but we had no prayer of defending ourselves until the Mogats’ shields were down.
I entered the tenement lobby. The last remnants of smoke still hung in the air. My men had trampled the lamps and smashed furniture on their way in. As I looked down a hall, I saw a Marine rifleman kick a door open and step back as his automatic rifleman charged in. A moment later a woman carrying a baby with three young children came galloping in my direction. All of their mouths hung wide open in panicked screams. Fortunately, the audio filters in my armor dampened the sound of their shrieks. I stepped out of their way, and they ran screaming through the lobby and out into the street.
The woman and her children were the first Mogat refugees. Over the next few minutes, dozens of people followed. Men, boys, women, girls, children alone, children with adults—I felt more like a bully than a Marine.
Gunfire echoed down the hall. There was a single shot followed by the rapid fire of an M27.
Those shots were a wake-up call. I ran down the hall and stopped by an open door in which one of my men stood pointing his weapon. Inside that apartment, a man lay sprawled on the ground in a kidney-bean-shaped puddle of blood.
“Report!” I shouted into the interLink.
“The guy had a gun,” the Marine said. Near enough to the corpse to be covered with blood, an old-fashioned automatic pistol lay on the floor.
“That was a bad choice on his part,” I said.
“Thomer, Greer, stay alert. Evans already found one Mogat packing a gun. There may be more in the building.”
Oh, there would be more guns in the building. The problem was, I felt bad for the dead guy. He was not an enemy soldier hunting my men. He was just someone protecting his property…just a guy with an old pistol trying to stand up to armor-clad Marines…a casualty of war.
I looked back at the body—an old man with gray-and-white hair dressed in an old T-shirt. There might be 200 million more like him on this planet. Why did these assholes ever pick this war?
CHAPTER
FORTY-SEVEN
I stood by a window on the third floor watching a steady flow of Marines pour out of the elevator station. Nearly twenty minutes had passed since we landed on the planet. I wondered how much time we would have before the Mogats would arrive.
Below me, former tenants of the building poured out into the street. Some ran for cover. Some stood just outside the entrance in a forlorn circle. Some walked away huddled together. A middle-aged man walked with his arm across his weeping wife’s shoulders. Their children dragged behind. They were refugees now, but at least they were alive.
We found two or three hundred people living in the building and turned them out. Some screamed at us. One woman tried to attack one of my Marines with her bare hands. In anger, her face contorted with hate, she shrieked like a wild animal and beat on his chest. Her husband dragged her back and thanked my Marine for not shooting her. I could not believe it. He actually thanked the man who had just evicted them from their home.
The woman was short and chubby, with six screaming children. Shooting her might have been an act of kindness. I stood in her tiny two-room apartment now. Judging by the mattresses stacked along the wall, four of her children slept in a room that doubled as the family room, living room, and kitchen.
On their wall was a family portrait and a picture of Morgan Atkins. They had a bookshelf with storybooks, a small bin of toys, and eight copies of Man’s True Place in the Universe, the Space Bible. The entire apartment was twenty feet wide and maybe thirty feet across, about the size of a doctor’s office—and eight people lived in this hole.
Atkins, what good did you do for these people? I thought to myself. They lived in a plasticized city. Growing up in Orphanage #553, I played in fields and forests. The Mogats provided their people with apartments but not so much as a blade of grass on the entire planet. All the buildings and streets were made of the same material. I could see schools and stores from up here. Everything was made from distilled shit gas. That was why the
Mogats tried to establish a colony on Hubble, too. They planned to turn the distilled shit gas into a city.
From where I stood, I had a clear view of the city around us. Blocks away, the traffic ramps rose out of the ground like attic doors. The Mogat Army would use those ramps as they came to retaliate. Just a half mile away, the magnetically charged lines of several train tracks funneled into a train station. Normally we would destroy the tracks and traffic ramps, but these had shields.
“Sergeant Harris, we have a small situation,” Greer called in to me over the interLink.
“I’m on my way,” I said.
Taking one last look at the city below, I left the apartment. I don’t know if all Mogats lived as these families did. Looking around on my way out, I saw three child-sized mattresses stacked along the wall. Maybe that was how the Mogat population grew so quickly—pregnancy spread through them like a virus. The small kitchenette in the corner of the room included a hot pad, a sink, and a single pot.
I had no trouble finding the altercation, it was just down the hall. Most of Greer’s squad stood staring into the door of an apartment. I pushed my way through.
In the eye of this gathering stood Sergeant Greer, my newest squad leader, along with two teenage boys, both barely five feet tall. The boys looked to be friends, not brothers. They had long hair and pimples. One had oily blond hair to his shoulders, the other had red hair that only covered the tops of his ears.
“Specking clone,” the redhead sneered.
“This boy doesn’t seem to like you, Greer,” I said.
“They attacked one of my men with knives,” Greer said. He held up two kitchen knives for me to inspect.
I tried not to laugh, but could not help myself. Our armor would not stop lasers or particle-beam weapons. Bullets glanced off our armor if they hit it at a shallow angle. Kitchen knives, on the other hand, would break long before they could so much as scuff the polish. They might as well have attacked the Marine with a pillow.
“You called me about a couple of kids with knives?” I asked. I said this using the microphone so that the boys would hear me.
“Get specked, clone,” one of the boys said.
“Their buddy in the next apartment says he has a gun,” Greer said.
I nodded. Without saying a word, I pulled a grenade from my belt.
“Chris, he’s got a specking grenade!” one of the boys screamed.
The door of the apartment opened and another old-fashioned twenty-four-shot pistol flew out. “Don’t shoot, man, I’m unarmed.” A boy who could not have been a day past twelve stepped out with his arms up, his fingers sticking up in the air.
“Somebody take these boys out of here,” I said, still using the mike.
Chris, the rebel without the gun, stopped in front of me and spit on my armor. I shot out my hand and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. “You got something you want to say to me, boy?” I said.
“Yeah, I’m going to kill you, you specking tube-for-a-mother clone.”
I pulled off my helmet and stared down at the kid. “The term is, specking tube-for-a-mother Liberator clone,” I snarled. All three boys stared up at me in panic, but only Chris wet himself. They knew Liberators. They probably grew up hearing horror stories about us in school.
“Get these children out of here,” I said. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Let them go?” Greer asked me.
If the boys found real weapons, they might come back. Ray Freeman would have killed them and not thought twice about it. So would Illych and his SEALs. I suppose I should have as well; but deep in the back of my mind, I did not think we belonged on this planet. Killing Mogat soldiers and destroying Mogat battleships were one thing, landing an invasion in a residential sector and terrorizing kids was something else.
“Unless you have a better idea,” I said. I knew he did. We should have shot the boys; but coming after a platoon of Marines with kitchen knives and an old pistol did not seem like capital offenses.
I watched Greer and two of his men lead the boys down the hall at gunpoint. One of them stopped and turned to face me. “Devil!” he screamed. Greer grabbed him by the hair and kept on walking without breaking stride. As they stepped onto the elevator, I replaced my helmet.
“Any other problems, gentlemen?” I asked over a platoon-wide band.
The colonel, the highest-ranking Marine to accompany the invasion, called me over the interLink. “Sergeant Harris, are you and your men comfortable in that cozy little hotel you’ve captured?”
“Just dandy, sir,” I said.
“Sergeant, I have it on good authority that the first wave of Mogats will be here in less than ten minutes. I would like to offer you and your men front-row seats if you’re feeling up to it.”
This was neither a friendly offer nor an order. It was a challenge. “Scared we’ll miss the action?” I asked.
“I just thought you’d want to be in on it. Your choice, train station or traffic ramp,” the colonel offered.
“You know, sir, I’ve always had a thing for trains.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-EIGHT
Two other platoons replaced us as we left the building. They would fight from behind the shielded walls we had captured. Leaving the tenement gave me the same feeling I sometimes got when I parachuted out of a transport. I had the uneasy feeling of leaving safety behind.
Watching my men, I saw that they knew the countdown had begun. We might have three minutes, we might have seven, but the Mogat Army was coming with its shielded tanks and vehicles and its endless supply of men. Leaving the shielded safety of the tenement, we entered the street. To our right was an elevator station from which a steady stream of Marines continued to pour.
The neighborhood around us looked like a ghost town. No one stood in the streets. By this time everyone had found cover, even the people we evicted from the apartment building. No one stood in the doorways or courtyards of the three-and four-story tenements we passed on the way to the station. Running alongside my platoon, I scanned those buildings and occasionally saw Marines peering through open windows. If the Mogats wanted this neighborhood back, they would have to take it floor by floor.
“Harris, you and your platoon better hurry if you want to catch your trains,” the colonel called to me.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
The colonel transmitted virtual beacons to guide us to the station. The beacons led us through alleys rather than along main streets. Unless we got very lucky stopping the Mogats, we would need to retreat. The colonel’s path would let us fall back more safely, leading the Mogats through gauntlets in which our men would already have high ground.
We ran another three blocks, crossed an open square that was probably the Mogat version of a commons. The park had benches and sculptures of people, but when it came to plant life, it had not so much as a single bush.
Then we arrived. The train station had a roof but no walls. Weather was not an issue in this artificial environment.
Another platoon had already set up. The lieutenant in charge came out to greet us. “Sergeant Harris, am I ever glad to see you,” he said.
“Find cover,” I told my men, then I turned to the lieutenant. “What’s the situation, sir?” I asked.
“We’ve mined the tracks,” he said. “I have snipers on every roof.”
“Do you know how much longer till they arrive?” I asked.
“How could I know that?” the man asked.
“Evans, search the station. There should be a computer monitoring which tracks are in use. I want men with rocket launchers watching each of those tracks,” I said.
“Got it,” Evans said.
Turning back to the lieutenant, I said, “My men and I will have a look. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”
A moment later Philips called me. “Hey, Master Sarge, ain’t those trains shielded?”
“They are,” I said.
“So what’s the use of shooting rockets at them?”
“We’re going to shoot at the front car,” I said. “Let’s see if we can derail a train or two.”
“Derail the suckers; I like it,” Philips said.
“Thomer, keep a leash on Philips, will you?” I asked.
“I found your control system,” Evans called back a moment later.
“Open band,” I told Evans. “We need everyone to hear you. Where’s the first train?”
“Track number seven. It arrives in thirty-eight seconds.”
“I got this one,” Philips called over the interLink. He trotted off toward a track carrying a rocket launcher in his right hand and his M27 in his left.
“I’ll watch him,” Thomer said.
“No, I’ll go with Philips,” I said. “Take care of the rest of your squad.”
“There are trains coming down tracks one, three, eight, nine, and eleven,” Evans radioed me.
“Did you get that, Lieutenant?” I asked.
“Got it. My men can take eight, nine, and eleven,” the lieutenant said.
The tracks were trenches with plasticized edges and metal floors. They were five feet deep and fifteen feet across, and they seemed to worm their way under the horizon. The trains used magnetic levitation. The Mogats had undoubtedly shielded the tracks and the trains floating inside them, but the men inside those trains would be as vulnerable as eggs in a carton.
I ran to join Philips. At the edge of our vision, the train sped toward us. At first it was nothing but a tiny spot of light. Soon I saw the massive wedge of its engine, then I could identify the dome on its nose and the airfoils along its top. A mine blew up beneath it, and the train seemed to wriggle in the track. Another mine exploded. A small burst of flames erupted under the heavy engine; the cars kicked from side to side in the track.
“Steady, Philips,” I said. Now I was calm. My combat reflex had begun, and warmth spread through my veins. I knew I could have made the shot, but I trusted Philips to shoot as well as me.
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