“This is unacceptable,” Goftalu said. “We will not slaughter each other for your amusement.”
“What better reason for slaughter, Madame Secretary? Amuse us well enough, and you will get what you want. The same, of course, applies to your worthy counterpart.”
“As the representative of the Lhan Arkh Congress and People, I accept the revised situation,” the Syndic said, nimbly setting aside its previous protests. “I will order the Combat Nest to resume hostilities.”
“Excellent! What about your troops, Madame Secretary? Will they fight, or will they allow themselves to be killed without resisting? Rest assured, those are the only options available.”
Sec-State hesitated for several seconds before answering. “Our troops will defend themselves by all means necessary.”
“That is all that is required. Let the games continue.”
* * *
“I got movement along my sector,” Lieutenant Berry said. “The survivors from the ambush, plus a Battle Bug squad and extra leg units.”
“Fire at will,” Fromm replied. His next words went on the company channel. “Proceed with the mission. Repeat, proceed with the mission. Keep using training munitions but be advised casualties will be real. It’s kill or be killed, Marines, just like regular combat. Let’s wipe out those Lampreys.”
“You know what, sir?” First Lieutenant Hansen said when Fromm was done. “This may be fucked up, but I like this better. I didn’t sign up to play games with the goddamn Lampreys.”
“Agreed,” Fromm said. “But I still don’t like being some ETs’ dancing bear. Might be we can do something about them.”
No time for that now, of course. He had a battle to fight.
Second Platoon was the first to open fire fully knowing the situation. A squad of four Battle Bugs skittered into an open clearing and was engaged by a barrage of Light Missile Launchers and 20mm anti-armor munitions. One of the Lamprey war machines ground to a halt, smoke and fire pouring out of several breaches on its hull, at least according to the simulation’s visual input; the rest retreated hastily, all with some damage. Further back, ET infantry took Second Platoon under fire with their lasers. His drones had been swatted out of the area; Fromm couldn’t see where the rest of the enemy light armor had gone, but he figured they were trying to flank his force. One way to find out. He raised Third Platoon’s commander.
“Conduct fire recon on coordinates as follow,” he ordered Lieutenant Chambal, highlighting the area in the map he wanted struck with a six-round barrage. The bombs carried their own sensor packages and they would give him a quick peek over the most likely path taken by the surviving Battle Bugs.
A few seconds later, the mortars delivered their loads. Fromm’s imp processed the information gathered during the munitions’ brief flight time and converted it into something useful. Eight Lamprey mobile units and about a platoon of infantry were indeed moving along a dip in terrain that masked their approach as they tried to circumvent the American lines. The mortar munitions were all detonated in mid-air by the aliens’ air defenses before they could inflict any damage, but the information was more than worth it. A squad of Hellcats was already watching that possible path; Fromm reinforced it with most of First Platoon and an attached weapons squad. They should contain that thrust easily enough.
At this point he was well ahead on points. He couldn’t see any way the Lampreys dislodge his troops from their positions. Everyone was digging in, and he had more than enough forces to contain any attempted breakthroughs.
A sudden series of explosions over the advancing Mobile Infantry squad and the infantry follow-up forces forcefully reminded him that plans never survive contact with the enemy.
* * *
“Incoming!” Russell shouted. He, Gonzo and Grampa all hit the ground as an artillery barrage blew up the Hellcats they’d been on their way to reinforce.
One of the four MIUs had an air-defense laser mounted on one of its weapon pods. The multi-barreled weapon spat out twenty light pulses per second and exploded about half of the ordnance about to land on the unit’s heads. That helped, but wasn’t enough. The other ten shells detonated about thirty feet aboveground, showering the Mobile Armor suits with shrapnel and focused plasma blasts. Russell’s display indicated that the area force field protecting the Hellcats had collapsed. One of the armored troopers’ carat went yellow.
“What now?” Grampa asked after the barrage was over.
“This way,” Russell said, marking the spot on the fireteam’s imps. A heavily-wooded area across a burned-out clearing. That was where the Hellcats were supposed to fall back, and they’d be able to cover their retreat from there. “Move it!”
The troops rushed up the hill and spread out, using digging charges to set up a defensive line between several massive trees. Grampa, Russell and a couple other guys from the other fireteam hastily assembled their two portable force fields, setting them up in an umbrella config that would help a little if the enemy artillery switched to their position. A little. They didn’t have any area defense lasers, or wouldn’t until the Hellcats got back there, and his teams’ area shields were much weaker than the ones the Lampreys had just knocked down.
“Fuckers ain’t supposed to have arty,” Gonzo said.
“Looks like the game masters decided to give them some regimental batteries to play with,” Russell explained after his imp gave him the updated tactical overview. “Guess that’s what a Lamprey company normally gets for support. One or two stonks.”
“Be nice to know if it’s exactly one or two,” Grampa commented. “Because if it’s two, it’s not going to be good.”
A second barrage went off ahead of their position, along the path the Hellcats were taking to get back there. The yellow icon blinked red, then black. PFC Fiorello had bought it. Another one went from green to yellow.
“Well, that’s two,” Russell said. “I think they blew their wad.”
“Let’s hope they don’t get a third one,” Lance Corporal Bruno said from where he and his fireteam were set up. “Or we’re all dead.”
“Here come the kitties.”
The headless mechanical cats ran into sight, going full tilt, fire and smoke rising behind them. There were only three of them, and one was limping on three good legs. The alien cannon-cockers had taken out almost half of the MI squad.
“And here come the B-Bugs,” Bruno added.
The Lamprey war machines – four of them – must have been rushing right behind the short barrage to try and catch the fleeing Hellcats and get to the Marines’ rear. They were about to get a surprise of their own.
“Light them up.”
Each fireteam and an infantry squad took a Battle Bug under fire. Bursts of 15- and 20mm plasma penetrators stuck in unison, digging through force fields and composite armor to get to the flesh and circuitry underneath while a steady downpour of lighter round washed over both targets like a swarm of angry hornets. Both bugs came to a stop, spewing smoke, just as the mortal section dropped twenty-four bomblets on the entire area and finished them off. That left two relatively intact BBs, though, and they lashed the Marines’ positions with continuous beam lasers and half a dozen medium missiles.
“Fuck!” Russell screamed. Everyone hit the deck when the enemy volley tore through their perimeter force fields and turned the massive trees around them into kindling. Chunks of wood moving at bullet speeds peppered him from behind. A case fragment from one of the missiles went through his personal shield and struck his back plate but didn’t penetrate. At least, that was what his imp told him. He knew the whole thing was fake, just virtual multisensory input from the simulation program, but if the computers decided that the fragment had gone through his body armor and cracked open his spine, the fucking Xanadu aliens would turn him into a real corpse.
The enemy stopped shooting after a few seconds. He didn’t have to lift his head off the ground to find out why, as the take from the Hellcats’ sensors was available. The two inta
ct ‘cats had circled back and taken the surviving Bugs on the flank. The alien death-machines were dead, or rather their pilots were; the Tah-Leen assholes running the show had murdered them. Either way, they were down.
“Grampa, get a new power pack for the area shield. Gonzo, watch the other side of the clearing. Lamprey infantry’s supposed to be inbound.” The mortars were hitting the aliens’ path, so maybe they wouldn’t get this far, but it was best to be ready.
“Reloading,” Gonzo said.
“Gotcha.” Russell thumbed in a new six-pack of 20mm munitions while he kept an eye out for more ETs. He heard the Hellcats taking positions on his right. If the aliens showed up, they were going to get a hot reception.
Nothing about this felt right. He didn’t mind killing Lampreys, but the idea some other Echo Tangos were jerking off to it royally pissed him off.
* * *
“We found it, sir,” Hansen said. He and First Sergeant Goldberg had been playing with the company’s sensors since the battle had turned deadly, trying to uncover the device killing Fromm’s people. “They are using some sort of grav-wave transmission to kill the designated casualties. Way more powerful than anything I’ve seen before. G-waves don’t have enough energy to hurt anybody, but these ones manage it just fine. Looks like they have two versions, one designed to kill Lampreys, the other calibrated for us.”
“And the source?” Fromm asked.
“Stealth drones. Two of them, one for us, one for the tangos. We can only track them when they send out the kill transmission; they disappear right after.”
“Got it.” He raised Gunny Briggs of Third Platoon next. “All right, Gunny. How many live LML rounds did you bring along?”
“Thirty HE, thirty-six PAP, sir,” the Gunnery Sergeant replied.
“Well, it’s time to use them. Load up Third Squad with live PAPs, repeat, war rounds, Plasma Armor-Piercing, and prepare to engage airborne target. Hansen, feed them the sensor data on that drone targeting us. Next time it goes after one of my Marines, I want it blotted out of the sky.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Fromm knew the Tah-Leen might be displeased. There was a not-small chance he was signing his entire company’s death warrant by attacking the aliens’ casualty dispenser.
Fuck them. They want to play, let’s see how they like it when they have some skin in the game.
It didn’t take long. A minute after he gave the orders, a Lamprey sharpshooter got lucky and struck Lance Corporal Hennessy from First Platoon with what the simulator decided was a lethal shot. The invisible drone reaped the luckless Marine like a mythological Valkyrie.
Except Valkyries never had to deal with Plasma Armor-Piercing missiles.
Three Light Missile Launchers fired on the sudden blip in their targeting sights. The drone was nimble; it managed to evade two of them. Nimble, but not very sturdy; the focused plasma discharge from the third missile turned the sophisticated killing device into a blooming fireball.
“Scratch one bandit,” Gunny Briggs said.
“What about the other one?” Hansen asked. “The one targeting the Lampreys?”
“Take it out as well. It might be able to reconfigure to fire on us.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
* * *
The Hierophant wasn’t smiling anymore.
“They cheated.”
The obese figure rose to his feet.
“They cheated!”
He started banging his fists against the central table, again and again, froth and spittle flying from his mouth as he kept screaming and jumping up and down in between blows.
“CHEATED! CHEATED! CHEATS! CHEATERS!”
“The second Executioner has been destroyed,” the Priestess said dispassionately. Her words stilled her consort’s tantrum. “The one tasked with dispensing the game’s results on the Lhan Arkh. Perhaps out of mercy or a sense of fair play.”
“I do not care why they did it! They cheated!”
The Hierophant turned his baleful gaze on the American delegation. He stopped screaming, but his near-whisper sounded far more dangerous. “And they will pay for that.”
“Point of order, Great One,” the Seeker of Knowledge said. He wasn’t present in either room, but his voice and identity showed up on everyone’s imps.
“What is it?”
“The Americans openly proclaimed they would defend themselves, did they not?”
“Yes,” the Hierophant said. “What is your point?”
“And the Executioners are – were – a lethal threat, were they not? Isn’t destroying such threats part and parcel of such a defense?”
The Tah-Leen leader’s voice acquired a petulant tone as he reluctantly answered. “Yes. But they cheated. They were not supposed to use real weapons. They lied to me. To us.”
“And we lied to them. In any case, did you truly expect members of a warrior race to completely disarm themselves?”
“This is your fault, Seeker. You were in charge of examining their weaponry. You were supposed to see to it that they were helpless.”
“I was – I am – charged with ensuring neither Americans nor Lhan Arkh pose a threat to our persons. Their heaviest weapons cannot harm us, even if they were wielding them in our presence, which they are not. Given that fact, I decided to let them proceed unhindered.”
They aren’t worried about the Marines’ heavy weapons, Heather thought. That’s an important point of information.
And not an encouraging one. That probably meant the aliens had high-powered personal force fields. Or maybe they didn’t care what happened to their drone bodies, or any bodies for that matter. Each of their actual consciousness was stored somewhere deep inside the station, out of any immediate danger. The whole concept of ‘uploading’ ones’ mind had been shown to be impossible at the average Starfarer tech level, but these spoiled monsters weren’t bound by those limitations.
“I don’t like this,” the Hierophant said. “Don’t. Like. This.”
“Great One, isn’t being thwarted a novelty?” the Seeker of Knowledge said. “When was the last time you actually lost at something?”
“I can’t remember,” the Hierophant admitted. “I still don’t like it.”
“The battle continues,” the Priestess said. It wasn’t a question, and there was no mistaking the challenge in the words or her tone.
The Tah-Leen leader stared at her for several moments. The tension between the two aliens was palpable.
“The battle continues,” he said at last.
Heather let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. The other diplomats relaxed visibly as well, at least the ones who understood the situation. A few of them still hadn’t processed the fact that they were at the mercy of a pack of insane brats with godlike powers. Their naiveté didn’t last long, however.
“Your soldiers will live to fight another day, win or lose,” the Hierophant went on. “However, I feel you still do not understand the seriousness of the stakes involved. An example will help you in that regard, I think..”
Everyone in the US delegation tensed at those words.
“Two nights ago, we spent some quality time with one of your own. Javier Fitzpatrick Llewellyn. He told us a great deal about you Americans. Towards the end, he told us everything we wished to know and more. Including the things that scared him the most.”
The alien in the fake human face smiled. “We decided not to deprive him of such an intense and special experience.”
One of the screens switched to an indoors scene. A dark room with a spotlight focused upon a reclined table where a mutilated figure writhed and whimpered as blood seeped through the stumps that were all that remained of his legs. It took Heather a moment to recognize the former US Ambassador.
“It appears that the tortures the Kirosha inflicted on their convicted criminals deeply scarred poor Javier’s psyche,” the Priestess explained amidst the Hierophant’s laughter. “Even speaking about it triggered panic attacks in th
e man. We thought that the best way to help him overcome his fears was to have him experience that torture. As you can see, he’s no longer afraid. All he has left is some vague hope death will release him from his torment.”
“That is the fate that awaits those we deem unworthy,” the Hierophant explained. “Well, not that exact fate. Each of you will endure something unique and special, of course. We can be extremely inventive, as befits our wondrous individuality. Those who displease us, or whose presence we find offensive, will find just how inventive.”
The screen went black just as Llewellyn gathered his breath for a final scream.
“You owe me a debt of gratitude,” the Seeker told her through her imp while she struggled to process what she’d just seen. “If I hadn’t spoken in your behalf, you all would have shared Llewellyn’s fate. By the way, five out of your twelve missing personnel are dead or dying. The Diverse Multitude are very creative when dispensing intense experiences. Pray that when your time comes, you are given the chance to kill yourself; very few are that lucky. And think of what your fate would have been without my protection.”
“Thank you for keeping us pawns alive a little longer,” she replied.
“For as long as our interests coincide, I will continue to do so. And not a moment longer. Keep that in mind.”
The connection ended.
Heather went back to work. If she didn’t produce some results, the Seeker might decide she wasn’t worth keeping around, and they’d just seen the Snowflakes could kill both humans and Lampreys with a simple imp transmission – and that a quick death would be the best they could expect. They were at the mercy of a pack of ancient sadistic children. They had solved the mystery of Xanadu’s missing ships. They’d been takin into this den of killers where their crews were murdered for sport.
Sooner or later, she was going to have to use her special apps and make a move. For now, however, she would play by their rules, until she saw an opportunity.
Advance to Contact (Warp Marine Corps Book 3) Page 16