by John Ringo
“I don’t see a choice but hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle,” Harkless said. “Sir.”
“Me neither,” Mike admitted. “We’re moving forward. With all the firepower that they’ve got covering the openings, we’re going to take casualties. The more shooters the better.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Cuelho said.
“Shelly, have Third squad leave sensors at the Foxtrot opening. Have One-Alpha mark the secondary Gamma opening and have all teams move to the primary Gamma opening. Time to try to take the pass.”
Corporal Doyle stuck his arm out around the corner and tossed a sensor ball. He got a brief take from it and then there was an explosion.
He popped a camera around the corner and grunted at the large crater on the floor of the corridor.
“They shot the bloody ball,” Doyle muttered, incensed. “You don’t shoot a bloody sensor ball. Who shoots a bloody sensor ball?”
“Someone who doesn’t want you looking at them, Corporal,” Mike said.
“Well, I can’t throw it faster, General,” the corporal pointed out. “The damned things break too much as it is.”
“Allow me,” Mike said, leaning under the massive trooper’s arm and tossing another down the corridor. This one, however, skittered all over the place. Two shots were fired and the closest they got was rolling it faster.
“Just needed a little English, trooper,” Mike said, considering the take. “Seven men. All wounded.”
“In heavily prepared positions,” Shelly pointed out. “Those are overpressure bunkers. You can’t even blast them to death. Well, you might be able to but it would be tough.”
“And they have a cross-fire set up,” Cuelho said unhappily. “No way around them, either.”
“And there’s more energy readings farther in,” Harkless said.
“I can see all that, gentlemen,” Mike said, somewhat testily. “It doesn’t mean we can’t get through.”
He considered for a moment, then sighed.
“Harkless, are you old enough to remember a game called ‘dwarf-tossing’?”
“Time to buy some more time,” Maise said. “Buckley, cut me into the ACS frequency.”
“We’re all going to die,” the buckley replied. “What’s the point. Trust me, I know ACS. You’re going to get slaughtered.”
“Then best we try to talk them out of it,” Maise said. “Just get me the ACS commander.”
“You got it?” Mike asked, kneeling by the opening.
“I’ve pretty much figured my career is toast,” Harkless said. “Getting the Federation’s greatest hero killed in a minor little skirmish isn’t going to make things any worse.”
“Uh…” Lieutenant Cuelho said.
“Hey, ACS commander.”
“Stand-by,” Mike said. “Who’s this?”
“The sacrificial rear guard. Wanna know how this whole thing started?”
“Well, in the beginning was the Word,” Mike said.
“Very funny. We took down a Darhel mega-corp and a metat, one like your daughter, who had gone crazy and thought he was the Evil Overlord or something.”
“That would tend to piss off some very powerful people,” Mike said.
“And do you know how those people responded? They sent assassins after our families.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mike said. “If you surrender I will guarantee the safety of your families. Or, yeah, I’ll start killing Darhel myself.”
“Too late. They killed my wife and daughter.”
It was pretty hard to pick up people’s emotions through ACS but Mike had been around it a long time. That sort of hit home with the platoon.
“Mine were killed by the Posleen,” Mike said, omitting the fact that, in fact, his daughter Cally had been killed by a nuke he himself had ordered. “Know what I was doing six months ago?”
“Wandering around in the Blight doing dick all?”
“My division dropped on a world where the Posleen were well on their way to recovering from ornadar and had ten ships ready for lift-off,” Mike said. “Ten ships isn’t much, but we’ve only cleared five percent of the Blight. And you can’t really call it cleared. Every planet there are some Posleen. Every planet they’re working on the same thing: Building ships to start conquering the universe again. So when you can explain how rebelling against the Darhel is going to keep Earth from being overrun by ravenous, carnivorous extraterrestrial centaurs I’ll be happy to join your cause. Are you going to supply more ACS suits? Orbital satellites? Fleet ships?”
He waited a moment for a reply, then nodded inside his suit.
“Thought not,” Mike said. “So, we gonna do this thing? Or are you going to surrender?”
“Sorry, no, General,” the rear-guard commander said. “To be clear, we don’t hold what happened before on you or Fleet Strike. Fleet on the other hand…”
“Don’t get me started,” Mike said. “And to be equally clear, I’d much rather have you fighting for me than fighting against you. You’re… quite good.”
“Pretty fucked up situation.”
“Standard for every day since Jack Horner called me at work,” Mike said. “It has been… an honor doing battle with you.”
“Likewise. Well, time to die.”
“Does appear so,” Mike said. “Shelly, cut the connection. Sergeant Harkless?”
“This is crazy, sir,” Harkless said, grabbing the smaller armor by its lift-points.
“The situation or the method?” Mike asked.
“Both.”
“Remember to bounce me,” Mike said. “Maximum difficulty of targeting.”
“What about your targeting, sir?” Cuelho said, gulping.
“Sir…” Sergeant Harkless said, reprovingly.
“I think what Sergeant Harkless is trying to say is that… I’ve got it, Lieutenant,” Mike said, chuckling. “I’ve done tight targeting while being bounced about before.”
“I just mean… Entry is what privates are for, sir.”
“I’ve got it, Lieutenant,” Mike said. “Corporal Doyle, some cover fire if you will.”
“Right you are, sir,” Doyle said. “Hutch, double up.”
“This is crazy,” the specialist said.
“A moment, though,” Mike said, his fingers moving in the air. “It’s always a tough choice at a moment like this…”
“Sir?” Cuelho said.
“Goth? Industrial? Heavy metal…?” Mike said. “There’s an argument for ‘Brickhouse’ to tell you the truth. It’s got a beat and you can dance to it. Great for skiing… Ah. Sergeant Harkless. ‘Citadel’ or ‘Honor’?”
“Oooo,” Hutchinson interjected. “Tough choice, sir. ‘Citadel’s got a great entry beat but I always find that ‘Honor’…”
“He wasn’t asking you, Hutch,” Doyle growled.
“Sorry, sir,” the specialist said.
“I think I’m a bit older than you are, sir,” Harkless said, chuckling. “I usually go with ‘Smoke on the Water’ or ‘Highway to Hell.’ ”
“What in the hell is that?” Cuelho asked, thoroughly confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Lieutenants,” Mike said, sighing. “You let them wear shoes… ‘Honor’ it is.” He made a couple of more motions, then grasped his grav-rifle and toggled off the safety. “Now if you will please, Sergeant,” he said somewhat loudly.
Kyle Davis hadn’t suffered quite as badly as most of the rear-guard: He’d only had a foot blown off. On the other hand, somebody had to slow the ACS down so the rest of the group could get to minimum safe distance. Which was… pretty far all things considered.
But because he and a few others hadn’t been more or less blown to shit, they were holding the forward portion of the defenses.
“Davis.”
“Go, Maise.”
“What the hell is taking them so long?”
“Dunno. Not going to knock it.”
“Fire some suicide bars down there to remind them
we’re in here.”
“Fuck you.”
Whoever had designed the defenses knew what they were doing. All of the firing points they’d used had been good but this one was the cat’s pajamas. There was only one way into the area and it was a narrow corridor that debouched into an open area about fifteen meters across. It looked like it had doors opening to other portions of the sector but only the inner one worked. Between the false doors were hidden firing points for five shooters. All of the points would close down for explosions and the armoring was proof against even grav-gun fire.
So whoever entered the open area was going to be taking fire from five DAG troops and two concealed automated grav-guns. And the only way to take out the DAG troops was to slide a round through a small opening with pin-point accuracy.
Which meant they were going to get shredded.
The port automatically closed when a suicide bar came flying into the open area and Davis leaned the barrel of his rifle against it. The system would drop the port as soon as the overpressure dropped. Since even ACS could take some serious damage from suicide-bars, they’d have to come in hard on its heels to get there before the DAG shooters could engage.
The port dropped and Davis instinctively began searching for targets even as the last of the propellant from the grenade washed past him through the port. But what he saw froze him for just a split second.
The entry-person was not running into the area. The entry person was not sliding into the area. The entry person was flying through the open-area in more or less a flat spin.
It took Davis just fraction of a moment to identify that the thing flying through the air, with rounds spitting out of its grav-gun, was, in fact, a small suit of ACS. One that, before he could react, took out the automatic guns and three of the defending DAG. Then hit the wall with both feet and flipped back across the open area.
Davis had just started to take up trigger squeeze when the little shit put five rounds of depleted uranium through a hole not much larger than a fist.
It just didn’t seem fair.
“Clear,” Mike said, flipping to his feet. He’d somehow ended up upside down right there at the end.
Rounds cracked through the open area from a further firing point and he pumped a couple of grenades downrange to keep their heads down.
“Okay,” he said, crossing to the far side of the open area where there was a bit more cover. “Correction. More or less clear.”
“Glad to hear it, General,” Corporal Doyle said, thudding into the wall and craning his grav-gun around the corner. “These lads are a bit feisty.”
“And well dug in, again,” Mike said, flipping a sensor ball down the corridor. “More or less straight shot.”
“Which means no more finesse, sir,” Sergeant Harkless said.
“Suppose so,” Mike said, getting to his feet.
“Oh, no, sir,” Harkless said, putting his hand on the general’s shoulder. “You’ve had your fun.”
“You can’t exactly order me, Harkless,” Mike said.
“No, but I can sit on you, sir,” the sergeant said.
“Grenades,” Doyle said, falling on the general’s suit.
The suicide bars fell all over the compartment but none of them actually managed to hit a suit.
“These guys are starting to piss me off,” Harkless said. “Second Squad. Clear that corridor.”
“Here they come,” Maise said, opening up at full auto.
Both groups were using virtually identical weapons. The M-292 grav rifle could spit three thousand three gram depleted uranium pellets downrange per minute. Designed to not only kill the Posleen they hit but a couple of its buddies as well, the pellets had the kinetic energy of a small meteor.
The ACS armor was proof against one pellet. Even five pellets. The bunkers the last of the DAG were in were proof against about the same fire power. They could shrug off suicide bars a bit better than ACS.
The corridor was narrow and there was only one way to clear it: Brute force.
Or, when it came down to reality: Mutual annihilation.
Maise let out one long scream as thousands of grav-rounds caused the armored bunker to ring like a tocsin. If anyone else was screaming he couldn’t tell but he could see lines of silver fire stretching out to rip the armored suits apart. More, though, was coming in the opposite direction and the corridor quickly filled to choking with gaseous uranium as one by one the final defense points fell.
“No surrender,” Maise said as the bunker came apart under the concentrated fire of five grav-guns.
“That was… unpleasant,” Mike said, looking at the scorched corridor. They’d lost two troopers but they had the, hopefully, final defenses. “But I will reiterate. I wish these guys were on our side.”
“Be careful with the door,” Harkless said. “Lord only knows what sort of booby traps these guys lay.”
“Something… unpleasant I suspect,” Mike said. “Onward, Lieutenant.”
“Second Squad,” Lieutenant Cuelho said. “Move out.”
The actual door, per se, at the end of the corridor was slag. But a few kicks from one of the suits got it knocked off its hinges at least. On the far side was another small open area, apparently unguarded. However, there was a large Galplas box blocking the far door. It was gray, unmarked and had no apparent way to open it. On top was a large purple bow.
“What do we have here?” Doyle asked, stepping around the box. It… boded. And there was no way to get the door open without moving the box out of the way.
“Nothing good,” Mike said, slipping through the gathered platoon. “Shelly?”
“It’s got an AI broadcasting from it,” Shelly said. “One of those buckley things but with an emulation of… Oops.”
“What is ‘oops’?” Mike said.
“I don’t think I should have talked to it,” Shelly said as a hologram appeared on top of the box.
“Greetings, Gentlemen.”
The hologram was of a thin, faintly Native American female wearing a mini-skirt, go-go boots, a wildly tie-dyed halter top and a bandana around her head.
“It is my pleasure to welcome you to the final challenge,” she continued, smiling merrily. “You have until the music stops to reach minimum safe distance. Good luck.”
“Antimatter!” Shelly shouted as rock guitar started to play and the hologram started dancing on top of the box. “Antimatter source revealed! Twenty grams of antimatter!”
“We have three minutes and either ten or eleven seconds to get to minimum safe distance,” Mike said, spinning in place. “Which is very far away. Move!”
“Sir,” Cuelho said. “Move out by squad!”
As the ACS troops started pounding past him, Mike slapped them on the shoulder to hurry them, and Cuelho contacted him on the command freq.
“Sir?” the LT said as the last trooper passed and he dropped into place. “Three minutes and either ten or eleven?”
“Depends on whether it’s Disraeli Gears, Best of Cream or Cream of Clapton,” Mike said, running after him. Keeping the suits down while runing was the tough part of running indoors. They had so much power they tended to want to jump.
“Sure it’s not London Philharmonic?” Harkless asked. “That would give us… more time.”
“Not echoey enough,” Mike said. “Eight minutes and forty-two seconds. Includes a one minute and fifty second and a separate three minute instrumental portion.”
“Sir?” Cuelho said, now thoroughly confused.
“Cream, sir,” Harkless said, starting to faintly pant. “Eric Clapton, lead guitarist. The song is ‘Sunshine of Your Love.’ ”
“My Dad’s favorite song,” Mike said. “I’ve got most of the versions available.”
“I’m not feeling very well loved,” Cuelho admitted. They’d gotten to the elevator and fortunately it was open. The troops were piling in. Unfortunately…
“Very Best of Cream,” Shelly interjected. “You now have two minutes, forty-three secon
ds to reach minimum safe distance. The elevator takes two minutes and twelve seconds to reach the top.”
“Fine,” Mike said, last to pile in. He hit the up button and the ‘close door’ button, controlling his power so the finger of the suit didn’t go straight through the plate. That would probably break the elevator which would be… bad. “No problem. I eat stress for breakfast.”
The door close and he winced.
“Oh,” Sergent First Class Harkless said. “That’s just… wrong.”
The booming music that had been blasting over the annunciator was cut off. But the elevator was playing the same song, Muzak style.
“Whoever did this…” Mike said. “Just… sick. Shelly. Time?”
“Two minutes, twenty-two seconds…”
“Nearly as sick as I am,” Mike added.
“Yes, sir,” Harkless said.
“Been waiting so long…” Lieutenant Cuelho muttered without really thinking about it.
“To be where I’m going…” Doyle added, his suit absentmindedly rocking back and forth.
“In the sunshine of your lo-o-o-ve!” Third Squad chorused.
“Nah-nana, nah, nah! Nah! Nah! Nah, nanana!” Hutch screamed, plowing an air-guitar on his grav cannon.
“Hutchinson!”
“Sorry, Sergeant.”
“Sort of didn’t complete the mission, sir,” Sergeant Harkless pointed out. “We’re entirely sans Indowy.”
“Hey, they’re all over the place,” Mike said. “If the Darhel want Indowy let them catch their own.” He paused and shook his head. “I hate Muzak.”
“Thank God for Eric Clapton instrumentals, sir,” Harkless said.
“Agreed, Sergeant,” Mike said, rocking back and forth. “The moaning of just we two…” Mike muttered as the doors opened. “Haul ass for the stairs!”
“After you, General,” Harkless said.
“Get moving, Sergeant,” Mike snapped as the platoon pounded past. “I’m faster than you are.”
Mike made it out of the hidden entrance just as the vocals cut off. Not a good sign. The platoon was well ahead of him, spread out in a broad formation and heading for the horizon.