Ninety-three. There were ninety-three Snowflakes in all of Xanadu. In the entire universe.
No wonder they think they’re special.
Each alien ran as many as thirty bodies, although the average seemed to closer to twelve or so. That still meant that less than two thousand individuals lived in the massive station. Xanadu was in effect a mostly empty ruin, a colossal gravestone for a nearly extinct species. A quick search of the place through the public network discovered miles and miles of lifeless corridors, most of their systems deactivated, doing nothing but gathering dust over untold millennia.
What a waste.
None of that mattered, of course. Heather kept a sliver of attention on the game being played out in the real world while she concentrated on the Tah-Leen known as the Scholar. The Seeker’s mission had been simple: find out what his nemesis had been up to. Snooping was one of her specialties, of course.
Learning how to turn the tables on enemies who thought they had the upper hand was another.
* * *
“Mulus Marianus,” Grampa mused as he checked the balance of the load on his back.
“Whose anus?” Gonzo said.
“Marius’ Mules. That’s what they called Roman Legionnaires. They carried a good sixty, seventy pounds of gear around when they went to war.”
“What a bunch of pussies. We have to run around with hundred-pound loads, usually more like one-fifty. Hell, our suits alone weight fifty pounds.”
“They didn’t have any power armor, though.”
“Guess you’re glad you ain’t a Legionnaire no more.”
“Heh. Not that old.”
Both Marines looked like ants dragging oversized bits of food. Russell figured he looked just as funny himself. The carefully-balanced loads they were lugging came in at a bit under one and a half times their body weight, not counting the fifty pounds of armor or the other fifty pounds of standard gear. Every Marine now weighed in at somewhere between five and six hundred pounds.
The exo-skeletal muscles of their suits allowed them to put that much on their backs, but they didn’t make marching under such loads anything but a grueling, painful mess. Their actual muscles still had to carry some of the weight: ten to thirty percent depending on their balance and posture, supposedly. More when going uphill, or leaning forward, less when everything was just right. Once you started moving at a good clip, you couldn’t just stop, either; the momentum four hundred-plus pounds generated while moving at four miles an hour was considerable. On top of that, under their current load they were generating about thirty pounds per square inch of ground pressure, twice as much as a pre-Contact main battle tank. On soft ground, that meant they’d be sinking up to their ankles or knees. At least it looked like the footing ahead was fairly solid. It was still going to be a mess. If you didn’t move just right, you’d topple like a felled tree, and you could break your neck if you landed wrong.
They’d trained for this, though. Forced marches, with and without power, carrying obscene amounts of shit over dozens of klicks, until the world became a gray thing you saw in between desperate breaths and nothing mattered except taking the next step. Not Russell’s thing, or most anybody’s for that matter. He’d rather hitch a ride any chance he got, and maybe catch a nap while he did.
Marine Mules. Yeah, that sounded about right. He’d never seen a mule but they were supposedly as stubborn as they were stupid. Maybe they should make the critters the official Marine mascot.
“Remind me again why you signed up for this shit,” Russell told Grampa.
“You know what? I can’t remember anymore. Must have been on some good drugs that day.”
“Shoulda brought some with you.”
Sergeant Fuller walked past everyone in the squad. He was, if anything, carrying more stuff than anyone else; word was the non-coms were loaded with live ammo, in case the Lampreys decided to cheat. FOS looked over everyone’s packs, making sure nothing was dangling loosely enough to throw them off-balance, and that the quick-release clips were properly set. There was hardly any cursing in his running commentary, which meant he was satisfied.
“Ready for a nature stroll, dick-heads?” he said when he was done.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Good. Don’t drop anything unless I say so. We’re going to need all this shit to take care of the Lampreys.”
Russell had to agree with that. They were carrying a ton of power packs. Those high-density batteries kept their suit systems and their personal and portable force field gennies running, and those were the real deal, just in case the aliens decided to shoot live lasers their way. Pows, ammo and rations, plus everyone had extra mortar bombs, almost all of them practice ones, of course, but still heavy as fuck.
“And try not to bust yourselves up by tripping on your feet,” Fuller reminded everyone. “You’ll make me look bad, and if you do, you better hope you’re beyond help, because I’ll make the rest of your lives a living hell.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Russell glanced around. He couldn’t see the entire company from where he was; the hundred and sixty-something men, women and mechanical cats were spread over along a wide front, strung out in squad-sized clumps. He could see the infantry platoon his squad was attached to; the guys on First Platoon were okay. Not the sharpest crayons in the box, and their Staff Sergeant was a dick, but when it came down to fighting, they’d do their job. Russell’s Guns squad would add its firepower to the mix, for as long as their ammo lasted. The 15mm ALS-43 burp-gun in each fireteam could go through a battle load in a few minutes of sustained fire. They were bringing a lot more than that, but you could never have enough. Fake ammo or not, running dry meant losing.
The sky above was light green, just like in dozens of other worlds he’d visited. He knew it was fake, but it looked real enough even when he took off his helmet and looked at it with his naked eyes. At least the atmo was breathable for both humans and Lampreys according to the briefing; must have taken some work to get the mixture just right. Gravity was .97 Earth-normal, just between the human and tango comfort levels. The trees and dirt in front of him looked natural and alive, even though they probably had been force-grown just for this exercise.
The ruins ahead would offer some cover and concealment, but if they were anything like the real thing, they’d also include half-buried cellars that could swallow you whole or break your ankle if you stepped on them, or walls that would collapse on you when the vibrations from a near miss or even your own footsteps tipped them over. More shit to worry about.
Funny how this was just a simulation, but he was as worried as if this was the real deal. Word had come down from higher to do just that, because if they lost, that would mean the local ETs wouldn’t help the US in the war, and that would get more people killed than an actual firefight.
Any game worth playing was worth taking seriously.
* * *
Fromm marched at the rear of Charlie Company while monitoring the action.
He was only carrying an extra hundred pounds on his back, mostly because he had to concentrate on the overall situation while he walked, and also so he could move slightly faster that the rest of the company if the situation demanded it. Even so, keeping an eye on the input of his drone overheads, the status of his hundred and seventy personnel, and any possible enemy movement took some doing.
So far, so good. Everyone was moving forward at a steady pace. The Hellcats led the way, also overburdened but still easily able to outpace normal infantry. Fromm had them spread out on a wide front as they advanced in bounding overwatch by squads. Like the cavalry of old, their mission was to scout and if possible seize the high ground before the enemy did.
He sent a few drones forward. The insect-sized robots flew barely above the treetops of the forest running north-south along the western side of their objective, where their minimal energy signatures might escape detection for some crucial seconds. The drones had been instructed to observe and record using passive
sensors only, and then to fall back to his position before being their observations to him via line-of-sight laser transmitters. Their information would be several seconds old by the time he got it, but that method would spare his limited supply of recon assets from being spotted and destroyed. Lampreys had excellent anti-drone technology; he’d experienced that first-hand at Astarte-Three and Jasper-Five.
Charlie Company covered a couple hundred meters or so, about one fifth of the distance to the objective, before the scouting drones uploaded their report. They’d taken no casualties in their mission, which Fromm took as a good omen. The actual info was even more encouraging.
Elite troops or not, the Lampreys had taken their own sweet time deploying and moving forward. They’d kept their Battle Bugs close to the infantry as well, spreading the armored combat vehicles among the entire front to act as mobile artillery pieces. That would bolster their firepower while reducing their speed. At the rate they were moving, about five kilometers per hour, they wouldn’t make it to the hill before the Marines had reached and occupied it. Maybe they figured they had enough strength to steamroll over the opposition. The enemy response couldn’t be better – for him.
Which probably meant things weren’t as good as they seemed. Watching his step as he kept trudging forward, Fromm ran a quick enemy force estimate and came up short. About twenty troops short, two squad equivalents to be exact. They might have left earlier, probably using stealth fields to fool his drones. Those two squads could be trying to outflank the Marines, and they had the firepower to do some damage, or even roll up his line. That was the sort of maneuver the Lampreys excelled at. Trickery and misdirection were their preferred qualities.
Best to be prepared. Fromm had the squads on either flank pick up the pace, ditching some of their extra equipment along the way. ‘Firtest’ was more important than ‘mostest,’ and the Marines could retrieve the abandoned packs later on. He also moved his swatters to the flanks, using them to deny the enemy the chance to spy on his troops.
“Let’s see how good you really are,” he muttered, as much to himself as to the enemy.
* * *
“Fuck this shit,” Lance Corporal Howard ‘Suckass’ Montero grumbled as he manhandled his Squad Automatic Weapon up the steep hill. The mad dash forward, even after they’d dropped half of their loads, had been a bitch and a half. He was almost out of breath, and he spent what little he had cursing his bad luck. “This sucks ass. Fuck this shit all to hell.”
“Less whining and more climbing, Suckass,” Sergeant Weiner said through the imp. Howard had forgotten to shut off the squad channel.
“I’m almost there, Sergeant,” Howard said by way of apology. A second later, he was in position, in the shade of an alien plant that looked like a cactus and a palm tree had made some babies. He had a nice view of a game trail cutting north by northeast. PFC Barton was right behind him, huffing under the weight of the extra ammo for the SAW.
“Good. Looks like we beat the Lampreys to the punch. They should be showing up any second.”
Assuming they showed up at all. There was supposedly a stealthed squad of Fang-Faces running around, and they might be coming this way. Or maybe someone was jumping at shadows. They’d find out soon enough.
“Is that them?” Barton said. Howard looked at the spot his loader had highlighted. There was some movement alongside the game trail, but he couldn’t see shit, even when he went multi-spectrum. Somebody was moving over there all right, but they were the next thing to invisible. He knew what that meant.
“Yeah, it’s them. Sergeant, we seen them. Lampreys are in stealth mode, just like higher said.”
“Stupid fucks.”
Stealth mode meant tuning your shields so they blocked your heat signature and bent light around you, making you impossible to spot via infrared or regular vision. Two problems with that, though: first, it got fucking hot inside the force field after a while, and, most importantly, your shields became extremely brittle, very easy to punch through. The Marines’ suits didn’t have that capability; when they needed to hide themselves they used camo blankets instead. Stealth systems worked okay in some kinds of terrain, but moving in dense underbrush, they were useless. You could be invisible, but your movements would still disturb the local shrubbery. The ETs had been trying to sneak up on the Marines, and now they were going to pay the price of doing a half-assed job.
“Everybody’s ready. Let them have it, Suckass.”
“Roger that.”
Tak-tak-tak. Tak-tak-tak. Howard couldn’t see his targets, but he fired his three-round bursts towards the moving brushes. The 4mm plasma-tipped bullets were bound to hit somebody.
And they did. A Lamprey appeared out of thin air; his personal force field went down in a shower of sparks when a glancing hit overloaded it. A second tango popped into sight as the alien turned his shield back into defense mode.
“Gotcha,” Howard said, servicing both targets with multiple bursts. The two aliens went down.
“Uh, Lance?” Barton said as Howard looked for more targets. “Something’s wrong.”
“What?” he said after he fired another burst at some movement. No luck: the other Lampreys had scrambled behind cover. That was okay; Sergeant Weiner and the fireteam leaders would make it rain 20mm plasma, right over the survivors’ heads.
“The ETs you hit,” Barton went on.
“What about them?”
“They ain’t moving.”
“So they’re playing dead. That’s what I’d do if I’d gotten administratively killed in an FTX. Lie down and take a nap.”
“One of them ain’t breathing no more.”
“The fuck you talking about?” Howard growled, momentarily taking his eyes off the suspected enemy position and checking the ETs he’d tagged. They were lying down and their vital signs were ebbing fast, just like Barton had said. He watched incredulously as one of them flailed around with all six limbs and then went still. It was wearing a transparent helmet – all these aliens did – and its mouth was frozen in a surprised-looking O-shape the Lampreys only made when they kicked the bucket He froze with his mouth open himself, stunned by the realization somebody had fucked up big time, and it could well be him.
“Oh, shit.”
The crack of multiple 20mm bomblets snapped him out of it. Unless he missed something during the briefing, they weren’t supposed to kill the ETs for real.
“Sergeant, I think we’ve got a problem.”
* * *
“I repeat. We have two confirmed, no shit, actual kills. As in those Lampreys are not going to get any better. Ever.”
The video feed from Second Squad showed two alien bodies, and they were either very dead or doing some damn fine acting.
“Check fire! Check fire!”
The order stopped the Marines engaging the enemy with direct fire, but most of the mortar rounds Third Platoon had launched in support were already on their terminal paths. Fire and smoke rose up behind the hill where the enemy squad had taken refuge. If those had been live rounds, at least half those aliens would be casualties.
“Who the fuck issued live ammo to the unit?” Lieutenant Berry roared.
“Nobody, sir,” Sergeant Weiner said in the tightly controlled voice of a pro who knew the shit had well and truly hit the fan. “We’re loaded with blue rounds. All training-rated, nothing lethal. Only way to hurt anybody with those loads is to club them with the guns, sir.”
“Then why are those Lampreys dead, goddammit!”
“No idear, sir.”
“Getting some comm chatter from the tangos, sir,” Staff Sergeant Navarro said; he’d been monitoring the enemy’s transmissions. “They sound pretty upset.”
* * *
“What is the meaning of this?”
Syndic Boosha all but leaped from its recliner and turned towards the grinning Priestess.
“My soldiers have been killed! The humans are using lethal weapons!”
“My dear Boosha, that is ju
st not so,” the Hierophant said from the human room. “The American soldiers are using simulated ammunition, just like your own warriors. We decided to raise the stakes a bit, that is all.”
“What did you do?” Secretary Goftalu all but shouted herself.
Before the Tah-Leen leader could answer her, two Marines’ status carts went black. One of the display screens showed the soldiers being transfixed with several heavy lasers when they accidentally exposed themselves to enemy fire. Heather realized with a sinking feeling that those kills weren’t simulated, either. On another screen, one without special effects to disguise the truth, she could see the bodies didn’t have any visible injuries.
“Whenever the simulation’s arbiter system decides a fatality has been inflicted, the verdict is carried out by an Executioner device,” the Priestess explained in the sudden silence that followed the second set of deaths. The troops on both sides stopped shooting when it became apparent they were inflicting real casualties on each other. “Otherwise this whole thing would be a farce, don’t you agree? We are here to watch warriors fight, not to perform some silly dance.”
“You lied to us!” Boosha said. Heather knew the exact translation was something closer to ‘You were caught in a blatant lie.’ Lampreys didn’t consider lying to be wrong in itself, as long as you got away with it.
“It was deemed necessary to mislead you somewhat to preserve the integrity of the game,” the Priestess replied. “I trust that, moving forward, this will motivate both sides to win the battle.”
Advance to Contact (Warp Marine Corps Book 3) Page 15