by John Ringo
"It's important!" the scientist screamed. "Tell Runner! The readings! Aaaaagh!"
"Grapp," Hedger said, backing up the stairs and filling the room with lead. "We have breakthrough in the basement! Dr. Beach is KIA!"
* * *
". . . Demons have broken through in the basement," Captain MacDonald said. "They've also breached the lower doors. We've three KIA, including Dr. Beach."
"Hang on," Spectre said. "We'll be overhead in ninety seconds. We'll clear the courtyard then exit the building and we'll deal with the Demons in there."
"Roger, sir," MacDonald said. "I'm sure we can hold ninety seconds . . ."
* * *
"Oh, no, you don't!" Sergeant Samson said, firing down the stairs at the wave of Demons scrabbling up it. "You want some?"
The Gatling fire smashed the Demons to the side, spinning them to where their more vulnerable flank was exposed, then blasting them apart. But more and more were pouring up the stairs, climbing over the bodies of their dead.
"There's too many of them!" Tanner screamed, pumping grenades into the room. When they hit a Demon dead center they'd kill it, but the light fragments barely slowed them down. Some of the Demons had guts hanging down but they just kept coming.
"We can hold them, Marine!" Samson screamed. "Just hold your position! We can—"
"Sergeant!" Revells screamed as the rock floor under the sergeant's armor gave way, Demon claws scrabbling at it.
"Aaah!" Samson said, dropping into the hole. "Behanch—"
"Sergeant!" Tanner yelled, firing grenades down into the hole. But the fire taken away from the Demons on the stairway let them charge up and Tanner was covered in a wave of bodies.
"Gunny! Second level's down!" Revells yelled, backing towards the stairs. "I need cover!"
* * *
"Grapp," Gunny Hedger said. "Alpha, cover Revells' retreat." He paused for a second then nodded. "Bartlett?"
* * *
"Here, Gunny," the master sergeant said. He was covering Dr. Robertson, who wasn't even in armor for grapp's sake, on the top level.
"Dr. Beach said something," Hedger said. "About readings. He said Runner would know what he meant. Something about mining and readings. That's all I got. He thought it was important enough, it was his last words."
"Not 'oh, maulk' or 'grapp me'?" Bartlett said. "I've got it. I'll try to retrans it to the ship. Because it don't look like I'm going to be telling him in person."
"We'll hold 'em," Hedger said. "We've got the stairway covered and . . . Aaaaah!"
"Dr. Robertson, did you get that?" Bartlett asked.
"Yes, I did," the biologist said. "And, no, I don't know what it means."
"All teams," Lieutenant Mark Van Groll said calmly. "They're coming up through the floors. Second level is—" The platoon leader of Third Platoon was cut off in mid-sentence.
"Grapp, grapp, grapp!"
The Marines were boiling up the stairs and taking positions around the room.
"They're tearing through the floor!" Revells yelled. "They're—" The stone floor under him erupted and he dropped into the hole, screaming and firing his Gatling at the monsters that were tearing at his armor.
* * *
Captain MacDonald looked out the window at the courtyard. No joy, there; it was covered in Demons. As he watched, a beetlelike head erupted, looked around, then most of the courtyard punched up as the massive beast surfaced.
There was, however, a roof below. It wouldn't hold the Wyverns, but . . .
"Dr. Robertson," the captain said, holding out a hand. "How well do you jump?"
* * *
Clay felt the ground under him give way and he shook his head.
"This is a grapped-up place to die."
"No maulk, man," PFC Smith said, turning to present his back.
The two went back to back and as they dropped they stayed together, arms locked. The Gatlings didn't need arm controls, being controlled by eye movements.
The Demons had stacked on top of each other to tear at the floor and the two descending Wyverns knocked the pyramid over. The Demons just scrambled back up and started tearing but the two Gatlings tore into them, ripping them to shreds. The two suits of armor were still against a wall and for a moment they held the horde off.
Then one of the ripped Demons pulled itself forward, its guts trailing on the floor, and ripped up into Clay's armor.
* * *
"Sir, if I may," Top said.
"Go for it," the CO said.
"Join arms if you will, sir," Top said. "Bartlett! Roberts! Marines! Circle up, face out!"
The Demons were coming up the stairs as well and when Staff Sergeant Rocco tried to retreat from the door they swarmed him.
"Concentrate fire on that, please," Top said, even though he was facing the other direction. "Right, now, hop!"
Two hops was all it took and the overstressed floor gave way.
There were Demons waiting on the level below, but when two tons of rock and fourteen tons of Wyvern dropped on them, they weren't doing much fighting.
The group not only fell through that level but the one below and, floor by floor, into the basement.
"Right," Top said, clambering out of the rubble. "Down the hole."
There was still a trickle of Demons coming out of the hole, but most of them seemed to have been in the upper floors. Quite a few of those had fallen with the group, but they were in a daze from the rocks and fall, those that weren't killed by it, and the group finished them off, then darted to the hole.
"Top, this is where they're coming from," the CO pointed out.
"And there is a rather large one in the courtyard, sir," the first sergeant said. "But we will fight our way to the courtyard, then hunker down. How long until the ship gets here?"
"Mac, you still there?"
"Some of us, sir," the captain said.
"We're on sight. Clearing the courtyard . . . now."
"We're going out of commo," MacDonald said. "But we'll be back in a moment."
"Bailey, Holland, you have point," Top said.
"Roger that, Top," Corporal Chris Bailey gestured for his rifleman then got down on elbows and knees. "Let's go, Holley."
"This really sucks," PFC Holland said, squeezing into the narrow tunnel next to his team leader. Immediately, he saw a Demon headed for them and bit down on his fire circuit, blowing it to pieces. They were big pieces, though. "How we getting through that?"
"More power," Bailey said, firing his Gatling and ripping up the Demon even more. "Now we push."
* * *
"Bartlett, Roberts, you've got back door," Captain MacDonald said.
"Roger that, sir," Bartlett said. "You first, Garrett."
"No arguments," the staff sergeant said, backing into the hole.
A Demon dropped from the upper floors and Bartlett blew it against the wall, then started backing into the tunnel.
As he did, a rock rolled aside and a Demon reached out with one claw, ripping into the back of his Wyvern, severing his ammo feed and piercing the back of his armor.
"Grapp," Bartlett said. "Gun's down and I've lost containment." He turned his head and saw the claw ripping into his armor.
Another and another dropped from the still uncleared upper floors. The two Demons approached the trapped SF master sergeant cautiously, but he couldn't fire.
"Right," Bartlett said. "Gary, you well back?"
"What are you going to do, Ed?" the staff sergeant asked.
"Just get the grapp out of here," Bartlett said. "I'm going to close this grapping hole. Get way the grapp back."
* * *
"Top Sergeant, we gotta move!"
"We're moving as fast as we can," First Sergeant Powell said. "Why do we have to move faster?"
"Because this place is about to blow!"
* * *
Smart people in the military are a joy and a pain. The problem is that military life creates a great degree of boredom. And smart people try to find wa
ys to become unbored. Certain types of smart people play practical jokes. Others act up. Still others, though, tinker.
Master Sergeant Ed Bartlett was a tinkerer. So when he'd gotten a Mark V Wyvern, he had tried to discover everything that a Wyvern should and should not do.
One of the things he discovered, and told no one else, was that under certain very precise conditions, the americium reactor on the Wyvern could be forced to do things other than engage in controlled reaction. It was a very "hot" reactor, the radioactive material very pure and very finely packed. It was, in fact, right on the edge of being a nuclear bomb, rather than a nuclear reactor.
And in certain circumstances it could be forced to change its mind.
The term is "sub-critical reaction." The bomb was below the yield of any weapon in the nuclear inventory. Only a very little bit of the americium could be forced to enter unrestricted chain reaction. But a very little bit of nuclear explosion is a lot of explosion.
* * *
"Whoa!" the XO said as the converted barracks blossomed up and outwards. "What the grapp caused that?"
"Command, Tactical. We just got a nuclear spike from the location of the palace."
"I'm pretty sure we didn't issue any special munitions down there," the CO said. "We didn't issue any special munitions, right?"
"I'm sure we would have noticed, sir," the XO said.
"Mac, you there?" the CO said. "Talk to me, Mac."
* * *
"Sort of!" Captain MacDonald said.
The narrow tunnel had blossomed out into some seriously unnarrow tunnels. And the big beetle that had been in the courtyard had reoccupied them when it felt its armor getting singed by lasers.
Now the Marines surrounded it, pouring fire into the thing. Which its armor was shrugging off.
"Aaah!" Corporal Bailey screamed as one of the thing's claws caught him and flung him across the thirty meter wide room. He slammed into the wall and slid to the ground, his armor limp.
"Check fire!" Top shouted. "Holland! Wave at it!"
The Marine lifted both his hands and cut in his external circuit.
"Yo! Ugly! Over here!"
The massive beetle spun in place and considered the Marine for just a moment.
That was all the time that Top needed. He dropped to his wheels and slid under the beetle's rump, then pointed his Gatling upwards and opened fire.
The beetle jumped up at least ten feet, then landed, spinning again, stamping inward to try to kill its tormentor.
But the first sergeant wasn't having any of that. He stood up abruptly and jumped himself, bringing the Gatling down as he entered the blown-open cavity and grabbed the sides.
He swept the inside of the beast until he felt its knees buckle and drop. At that point he was trapped inside the beast but he had pretty good spatial awareness.
* * *
"Top!" Holland screamed. "Top! Are you okay?"
"Just peachy, Holland," the first sergeant said, blasting out the mouthparts of the beetle and crawling out. "Kind of a strange day, I'll admit. You?"
* * *
"How are we going to get them out of there?" the XO asked.
"Hmmm . . ." the CO said. "We still got that hole in the bottom of the ship or have we patched it, yet?"
"There's a team getting ready to put a patch on now, sir," the XO said.
"Tell 'em to hold up."
* * *
"Yeah, Top, I think I'd call this a strange day," Holland said as he tied the fast-rope around his Wyvern.
"Welcome to the Space Marines," Top said, holding out his arms.
"Everyone in place?" Captain MacDonald asked. "Right. Vorpal Blade, you can lift at any time."
The remaining Marines and one SF staff sergeant lifted off the beetle's shell and upwards into the light, dangling from the bottom of the ship.
"We lost a lot of people," Holland said, looking back at the smoking hole where the barracks used to be.
"Could be worse," Top said as they STABOed eastwards. "Could have been us."
32
Is This a
Good Time to Panic?
"Okay, we're out of here," the CO said as soon as Weaver entered the compartment. "These things track in on electromagnetism. We're just a big attraction to them. Wherever we go, they'll follow."
One by one the groups had been picked up as the Vorpal Blade scoured the area of surfaced Demons. Weaver, Miller and Miss Moon had been plucked out of a running gunfight; Dr. Robertson had been pulled off the roof of a building. The ship had then lifted to hover at ten thousand feet while the meeting took place. The agenda was obvious. Everybody living was aboard and it was time to leave.
"Sir," the XO said uncomfortably. "I agree that we need to leave. However, we've got major damage throughout the ship. We're not exactly air-worthy at the moment."
"Then the Marines go in their bunks and we run like hell," the CO said.
"Very well, sir," the XO replied, nodding. "It's only about eighteen hours to Earth. But we're definitely not seaworthy. We're going to have to land out at Dreamland."
"Sir, if you'll give me a moment," Dr. Robertson said.
"Doctor, I appreciate your input—"
"This may be important," the biologist said. "Runner?"
"Sir, I think everyone has noticed this hill," he said, keying up a map of the local area.
"Yes, Master Sergeant," Spectre said, holding onto his patience.
"I believe it is the source of the Demons," the master sergeant said. "At least locally."
"Say again," the CO said.
"We were picking up odd seismic activity, sir," Runner said, walking to the computer screen. "It was coming from the direction of this hill. The hill looks like a basolith, a granitic extrusion. But it has no secondary indicators of being one. There should be more granite around and there's not. Then we were getting those seismic readings, moving towards us and the city. I couldn't figure out what they were. Dr. Beach did, just before he died."
"Tunneling," Weaver said.
"Yes, sir," Runner said, shaking his head. "It sounded sort of like mining, but not exactly, so I didn't pick it up. But it was these things heading for us and the city."
"They started coming out because of the electrical experiments the Cheerick scientists were conducting," Miss Moon said. "When we got here it just moved up the date of the first attack."
"Why are they attacking electricity?" the XO said. "And why not one of those boards?"
"Unknown, sir," Weaver said, leaning forward and looking at the screen. "Captain, we're beat up and need repairs. If we can stop these things, at the source, we can get those repairs, here, and save these people."
"Commander Weaver, we've got, what? Ten marines left?" the CO said, exasperated. "And you want to send a forlorn hope?"
"No, sir, I want to lead a forlorn hope," Weaver said. "I want to know what is under that mountain. And I want to have a culture to come back to. The boards take the weight of armor. We can drop from right here and take out that facility. Enter one of the tunnels, put an ardune warhead in it and that's all she wrote."
"You want a special weapon," the CO said wonderingly.
"I was thinking one of the torps, sir," Bill said. "Actually, I was thinking two; one for backup. There's a way to adjust them to be selective yield. We can do this, sir. Now that we know the source of the Demons."
"Captain, Tactical. We've got some boards coming up from the ground."
"I don't know why we're even talking about this," the CO said.
"We've got eighteen Marines shooters, sir," MacDonald said, turning back from a quiet conversation with the first sergeant. "We are, of course, at your disposal."
"You want to do this, Mac?" the CO asked in disbelief.
"Payback, sir," MacDonald said, stone-faced. "I left a bunch of good boys down there. Lost more up here while I was running for my life. Hell yes I want to take them out, sir."
"Nuke it from orbit," the XO said. "Only way to be sure.
"
"Granite's tough stuff, sir," Runner said. "It would take a full-yield ardune system to be sure of cracking it. Probably why it's made of granite. Take it out and you're pretty much going to take out the city."
"And if we pop one inside?" the CO asked.
"The granite's going to absorb most of it," Bill said. "Trust me on this, I've done nuclear design. Granite that big, less than fifty kilotons? It's going to shatter it and maybe toss some around. Not much. And ardune's pretty clean stuff. Not even much fall-out."
"Captain, sorry, Tactical again," Lieutenant Souza said, nervously. "It's Lady Che-chee, the queen and some of her guards. They're getting pretty close."
"Tell the COB to get a party up on the sail hatch," the CO said. "I'll receive her there."
"Okay, okay," he continued, looking at the group. "If you really want to do this, Mac, you can do this. But you need to leave soon. Get every clerk and jerk in armor. We don't have enough boards, though."
"Some arriving, sir," Bill said. "And I suspect they're going to be willing to loan us some . . ."
* * *
"This is a bold plan, Captain Blankemeier," the queen said.
Most of her party was clearly overwhelmed by the ship. But the queen along with Lady Che-chee and General Chuk-tuk just as clearly refused to appear surprised. The queen had allowed the captain to escort her to the wardroom, disdained the apologies for the conditions and then listened, carefully, to the translation of the plan. Actually, it couldn't really be called a plan. The synopsis. The outline. The guess.
"Can you not leave?" the queen asked.
"Our ship has sustained damage," Spectre admitted. "We could run home, possibly, but we'd rather repair damage first and . . ."
"And . . . ?" Miriam asked.
"Just translate it as closely as possible," the CO said.
"And you don't care to run away with your tail down," the queen said, her nose pulling back.
"That too," the CO admitted.
"Why do you tell me?" the queen asked.
"First of all, the weapon we are going to use is going to do damage beyond the mountain," the CO said. "We could strike the mountain from space and remove the threat entirely and with no danger. But that would destroy your capital as well."
"You have weapons that powerful?" General Chuk-tuk asked. "And yet you fight on the ground."