Starfist - 14 - Double Jeopardy

by Dan Cragg

  The nest was evidently inside a crate; some of the crate’s contents had been piled around it like a row of sandbags protecting a trench or fighting hole. The improvised wall around the nest was too high for the mercenaries to look over, so they had to shoot blind. The Marines poured plasma into the flimsy wall. The bolts punched holes straight through the piled-up boxes and containers, too hot to raise debris clouds. Dowling thought the fire from that direction slacked off; maybe they’d hit one of the shooters.

  The Marines still below continued to fire down the length of the aisle, although they were shooting higher now, and another gun team was climbing to the top of the crates on the other side of the aisle.

  Dowling glanced to the left front again and saw the heat signature of a body slithering into an opened crate. He snapped off three quick bolts at it, and saw it slump, half in and half out of the nest. But more splotches were moving in that direction, and the fire from the front was picking up again.

  Suddenly, Dowling heard Lance Corporal Hernan Peasley’s voice on the comm. “I’ve got them flanked.”

  “Then shoot their asses!” Dowling snapped.

  “They’re down too low for me to hit them in the ass,” Peasley said in reply, “so how about head shots?” A flash of brilliance lanced from his position to the nest, and fire from it stopped for a few seconds. Peasley shot again and again. “I think I got them all,” he radioed.

  “We’ll cover you while you check,” Dowling told him. Then he asked his other men how they were; he remembered the groan from the first fire from the other side of the aisle.

  “Aldridge is down,” Corporal Frank Rushin answered. “I’m fine.”

  Dowling didn’t waste any time swearing. Instead he ordered him to cover Peasley. He and Rushin rapid-fired into the diminishing wall fronting the nest. No more fire was coming from their left front; that nest was fully involved with the gun team that had reached the top of the crates on its side of the aisle.

  Peasley scooted forward as fast as he could, firing as he went. There was no return fire.

  “Cease fire,” Dowling told Rushin when he saw Peasley almost at the nest. He kept his weapon ready to fire at any sign of enemy movement, but his caution wasn’t necessary.

  “They’re all dead,” Peasley reported. He sounded like he was about to regurgitate inside his helmet. “They’re a mess in there.”

  “Pull back from them and take a few deep breaths,” Dowling said. He looked around for Corporal Aldridge and spotted him several meters back.

  “Corpsman up,” he called on his comm as he started crawling toward the injured Marine. “Right-side stacks.” He reached Aldridge and quickly found a hole blown through his left chest, under his outstretched arm. Blood dribbled from the wound, visibly evaporating in the vacuum.

  “Aldridge, are you with me?” Dowling asked as he worked a patch out of the corporal’s repair pouch.

  No answer.

  “Hang in there, Marine. We’ll have you out of here most ricky-tick.” He found the patch and applied it to the opening in Aldridge’s armored vacuum suit. “Corpsman’s on his way. I’ll help him get you out of here.”

  Rushin came up on Aldridge’s other side. “I’ll help if you want to move him now.”

  “Back to where we came up,” Dowling said. He called for Peasley to join them. Shit, have I lost two men? he wondered.

  There were two more nests in the hold the Marines had entered. They were all cleared and the defenders either dead or escaped by the time Dowling saw Aldridge into the Dragon that was supposed to carry prisoners back to the Grandar Bay.

  Dowling removed Aldridge’s helmet while the corpsman checked the vital sensors in their pocket on the chest of the armored vacuum suit.

  “Stasis, fast,” the corpsman said. He and Dowling quickly stripped off Aldridge’s suit and sealed him in a stasis bag.

  “Will he make it?”

  “The Grandar Bay has an outstanding surgery and surgeons.” The corpsman shook his head. “But he was exposed to vacuum for so long, and lost so much blood, I don’t know.”

  Newman’s suit was properly patched and his chest bandaged; he was ready to return to the fight.

  * * *

  The Marines, less four evacuated casualties, swept through the hold to make sure no mercenaries or crew were still hidden. Then they broke out of the hold. Ensign Marston led them in a sprint to the Tidal Surge’s bridge.

  The bridge’s hatch was dogged from the inside.

  “If that’s the way they want it,” Marston said. He was angry enough over the casualties the platoon had suffered that he wasn’t going to accept any resistance—and a dogged hatch was resistance. “Burn it.” He pointed at the hinges of the hatch.

  “Aye aye, sir,” Staff Sergeant del Valley said. “Gladly.” He used hand signals, signing to the Marines to concentrate fire on each of the three hinges, four blasters firing at the top and middle hinges, three at the bottom one. Once he’d watched long enough to make sure his instructions were being followed, he turned, hand blaster at the ready, to cover the passageway in one direction while Marston covered the passageway in the other. They couldn’t assume that other mercenaries or crewmen weren’t on their way to engage the platoon.

  The fight in the hold had been silent except for voices over the comm units; sound doesn’t carry in a vacuum. But in the atmosphere of the passageway outside the bridge, the CRACK-sizzles of a baker’s dozen blasters combined to mimic the roar heard in the center of a fierce thunderstorm. Only the fact that they were sealed inside their suits kept the Marines from being overwhelmed by the stench of ozone, vaporizing paint, and melting steel.

  The paint blistered and peeled from the hinges when the first plasma bolts struck them. The metal turned black, then a ruddy red, grew brighter, turned cherry, and then white. After a hundred rapid bolts struck the hinges they began to sag. The Marines kept shooting, intent on burning the hinges until they had made holes through the surrounding plate. The air turned hazy with vapors from the metal; men breathing that air would be overcome.

  “Shit!” del Valley shouted. “Here they come!” He’d seen someone run into the passageway from a side passage and duck back before the shot the Marine snapped off could hit him. “Anybody in sight from your end, Mr. Marston?”

  “Negative. How many are there?”

  “I only saw one, but that don’t mean shit.”

  Marston turned to look at the progress his Marines were making on the hinges. “Take Dowling’s team and clear them out.”

  “Aye aye. Dowling, with me.” Del Valley began trotting away from the bridge, in the direction of the man he’d briefly seen. He stopped meters short of the cross passageway.

  “One man with a blaster, put three bolts down there.”

  “Let me,” Corporal Newman said. “Payback.” He brushed past del Valley and angled his blaster around the corner. He pressed the firing lever three times and pulled back. There was no sound other than the faint sizzle of something scorched by the plasma.

  Del Valley groped for Newman’s shoulder and pulled him out of his way. He lowered himself to the deck and edged forward to look around the corner. “Gods damn them!” he swore, pulling back and rising to his knees. “The bastards piled some flammables in there. Newman, you started a fire! Get back and finish burning those hinges.”

  A fire would set off the antifire systems, and the passageways would fill with flame and heat-smothering chemicals that would probably defeat the platoon’s attempt to burn through the hinges on the hatch to the bridge.

  Back at the entrance to the bridge, the center hinge was almost burned out, and the top hinge wasn’t far behind. Dowling and his men resumed firing at the bottom hinge. Although partly slagged, the hinge had turned black and solidified again.

  Klaxons began sounding—the fire alarm. Del Valley saw a fog coming from the burning passageway and swore. He looked up, knowing that the heat cast off by the melting metal would soon set off the antifire chemica
ls, cooling the melting metal front of the hatch.

  “Middle hinge through.”

  Two more blasters added their plasma to the fire raining on the top hinge, and two to the bottom.

  “Top hinge burned out.”

  Now thirteen blasters were firing away at the bottom hinge, which had reached cherry red once more. And vents in the overhead opened and began spewing the chemicals to suppress flame and cool overheated metal.

  Del Valley swore again, then yelled in triumph as he saw something he hadn’t noticed before—a fire box on the bulkhead a few meters away. He dashed to it and tore it open. It held what he was looking for, an old-fashioned fire ax. He yanked the ax from its tie-downs and raced back to the hatch, holstering his hand blaster as he went.

  “Out of the way,” he shouted, shouldering the Marines away. “Cease fire! I don’t want anybody shooting me, gods damn it!” He didn’t wait to make sure everybody had stopped firing at the bottom hinge before he stepped in and swung the ax. Once, twice, three times. His arms vibrated all the way down to his boots with every blow against the hinge, but the hinge buckled a little bit more each time he hit it.

  He didn’t know if it was the abrupt change in temperature from cherry-red-going-on-white to being cooled by the chemical wash from the overhead, or if it was the blows he hammered with the ax, maybe both, but the hinge suddenly shattered. He jammed the ax head into the gap left by the middle hinge and pushed with everything he had, levering the hatch open.

  The hatch budged a few centimeters and stuck. Ensign Marston reached in to help him push on the ax handle and the hatch sprang free, clanging and thudding to the deck, just missing three Marines who managed to jump out of the way in time.

  Inside the bridge, the Tidal Surge’s captain looked awed and frightened as the Marines entered his bridge. He raised his hands and whispered at them. The bridge crew stood at their stations and held their hands up. The two Sharp Edge mercenaries guarding them decided to live to fight another day; they threw down their weapons and raised their hands.

  After that it was simply a matter of having the remaining mercenaries assemble in a landing craft bay and loading them into the waiting Essay for transport to the Grandar Bay’s brig.

  The deaths of ten mercenaries on the Tidal Surge and capture of the rest convinced the mercenaries on the Lady Monika to surrender without a shot being fired.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  While the starships of the Sharp Edge flotilla were being taken by the Marines of Thirty-fourth FIST’s antiaircraft company, Brigadier Sturgeon attempted to contact Louis Cukayla, attempted being the operative word.

  “Sorry, Brigadier,” Johnny Paska said, “but the boss is unavailable at this time.”

  “Unavailable. That could mean that he’s not there, or it could mean he doesn’t want to talk to me,” Sturgeon said. “Which is it?”

  “One or the other, it doesn’t matter.” Paska had the visual turned off on his comm so Sturgeon couldn’t see him, but a shrug was virtually audible in the Sharp Edge number two’s voice.

  Sturgeon let a silence grow for a moment or two before saying, “Deliver a message for me. Your people at Mining Camp Number Three met my Marines with force; they killed one Marine and put four more in the Grandar Bay’s hospital. Sharp Edge’s losses were forty-one dead or seriously wounded, and the rest taken prisoner. We are going to close every mining camp you have and release every Fuzzy that wants to leave the camp. My Marines will be expecting resistance from your mercenaries the next time we meet. Resistance will be met by even greater violence than in Mining Camp Number Three.

  “Sturgeon out.” He broke the connection with Sharp Edge’s Base Camp and looked across his desk at the officers crowded into his office; Commodore Borland, Thirty-fourth FIST’s chief of staff Colonel Ramadan, Commander Daana of intelligence, Captain Chriss from operations, FIST Sergeant Major Parant, and Commander van Winkle of the infantry battalion.

  “You heard the man,” he said. “Cukayla doesn’t want to talk and doesn’t seem willing to surrender anything, even though he must know that the navy has taken control of his starships and”—a smile quirked his face—“all the supplies on them. Which must have his four shop in a tizzy.” A “four shop” is logistics; all manner of weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, water, food, clothing, other supplies—in short, everything needed by troops in garrison or in the field. “So we are going to oblige him, meeting force with greater force until Sharp Edge stands down.

  “Three,” he said, addressing Chriss, “get together with Commander van Winkle and his three, and begin making plans to close every mining camp with as much force as necessary. Coordinate with Four, and with One to deal with the prisoners.” “One” was the F1, Captain Shadeh, the personnel officer. “Again, one platoon per installation. Questions?”

  “Sir, should we retrieve our chameleons from the Grandar Bay?” van Winkle asked.

  Sturgeon shook his head. “I want the Fuzzies to see us, to see the Marines are freeing them from the mercenaries. That should pay major dividends later on when we start talking with them.”

  “Understood,” van Winkle said, nodding.

  “That is all for now.”

  Everyone left except Borland and Parant.

  When he’d watched the last of the visitors leave, Borland looked at Sturgeon and said with a wry smile, “When we start talking with the Fuzzies? Brigadier, I believe it will be navy officers attempting to establish communications with these aliens.”

  Sturgeon smiled back at him. “This is a Marine Corps–navy team, Commodore. So the first-person plural applies.”

  “I do believe it’s commonly stated as ‘navy–Marine Corps’ team.”

  “By your leave, sir,” Parant said, “but we’re planetside now, and the commander of the landing force is in command. So…”

  Borland had to laugh at that. “That’s not exactly how it works, Bernie. But what the hey.”

  Sturgeon winked at the Sergeant Major, who inclined his head in a brief bow.

  “Do you have any platoons going after mining camps now?” Borland asked, turning serious.

  Sturgeon nodded. “Yes. And this time, they’re wearing body armor.”

  “Button up, Marine!” Lieutenant Bass snapped at Lance Corporal Schultz. They were on the same hopper, heading to third platoon’s landing zone on their way to Mining Camp No. 15.

  Schultz’s negative head shake was clearly visible—none of the shields on his helmet were closed.

  “It’s too damn hot out there,” Bass said. “I’m not having any of my Marines go down with heatstroke. So button up!”

  “I can do it,” Schultz snarled.

  “No you can’t. It’s over fifty degrees where we’re going. Nobody can take that kind of heat for very long. Now button up.” The two men locked eyes for a long moment. Bass could tell that Schultz wasn’t going to obey, and he knew he’d have a heat casualty on his hands if the Marine didn’t close his faceplate so his climate control could keep his head cool.

  “Hammer, if you don’t button up, I’m sending you back with the hopper after it drops us off.”

  Schultz’s coppery face darkened at the threat, and he looked like he was about to explode. Instead he jerked his hand up and slapped a clear shield into place.

  “That’s better,” Bass said calmly, and patted the big Marine on the shoulder.

  * * *

  Third platoon approached its objective much more cautiously than Mike Company’s first platoon or Kilo Company’s second platoon had approached the earlier mining camps. Hoppers dropped the platoon off five kilometers from their objective; they’d walk the rest of the way. This time the Marines were expecting trouble. The Sharp Edge mercenaries didn’t let them down.

  “We’ve got trouble,” Corporal Raul Pasquin reported to his squad leader. First squad’s second fire team was moving as flankers, a hundred meters to the left of the platoon’s main body.

  Lieutenant Bass was listening in. “Thi
rd platoon, stop in place,” he ordered his men on the all-hands circuit. “Defensive posture.”

  “What do you have?” Sergeant Ratliff asked Pasquin.

  “Got an ambush line. The point’s already in the killing zone. I can see evidence of thirty men in the ambush. Might be more; I can’t tell where the far end is.” The vegetation there was sparser than in many other places because the land had been covered by a lava flow recently enough that it hadn’t broken into gravel-size rocks and sand, so the colonizing plants had few place to sink roots. Third platoon was on the side of a ten-meter-high lava ridge, staying below the skyline and above the floor of the narrow defile between their ridge and another. The ambushers were on the reverse slope of the ridge opposite third platoon. The lava bed behind the ambushers was rippled. Pasquin and Lance Corporals Quick and Longfellow had taken cover behind one of the ripples.

  “Have they seen you?” Ratliff asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Pasquin answered. He whispered, even though his helmet’s clear screen was in place. “We’re behind them, and they don’t seem to have anybody watching their rear. I did see someone using what looks like a periscope to look over the top of the ridge.”

  “Have they seen us?” Bass asked.

  “I do believe so, boss.” Pasquin raised his head to look at the ambush line again. “Some of them look like they want to climb to the top so they can open fire. Wait one. Right, someone’s signaling them to stay back. So they must have spotted the platoon, and are waiting for you to get moving again, get more into the killing zone.”

  “Move forward; see if you can find the far end of the ambush.” Bass looked forward, along the line of the platoon, and knew that the mercenaries must have seen the Marines. The dull green of their garrison utilities and body armor stood out clearly against the black lava bed; the thin vegetation did little to conceal them from the ridge on the left.

  “Aye aye.” Pasquin toggled to the fire team circuit. “You stay here and cover me. I’m going forward to find the far end.”

  “Are you sure you want to go alone?” Quick asked.