Starfist - 13- Wings of Hell

by Dan Cragg

  A reinforced platoon went planetside with Ensign Daly and Staff Sergeant Wu. Its assigned mission was to provide security around Marine House in Sky City. Wu and his twelve recon Marines traveled with an army squad in one of the three Dragons the Essay carried. Daly elected to ride in the same Dragon as the army platoon leader—ostensibly to confer with him on how to provide security. He didn’t get any conferring done; the army lieutenant had never made a combat assault landing before, and the straight-down plunge had him continually sick almost from the instant the gut-churning planetward dive began.

  Corporals Ryn Jaschke and Harv Belinski, with two landcars, met Daly, Wu, and the other FIST recon Marines at Beach Spaceport. Daly introduced his men to Wu but held off on the rest of the introductions until they were at Marine House and the FIST recon Marines could meet all of the Force Recon Marines. Jaschke and Belinski followed Daly’s lead and said just about nothing on the short drive through Sky City to the edge of the plateau that held the spaceport and Haulover’s capital city, where the Force Recon Marines had their base of operations.

  The main room of Marine House, which had felt so spacious when nine Marines met in it to plan their missions, debrief, or just relax, felt crowded with the thirteen FIST recon Marines and the remaining six from Fourth Force Recon. But nobody expected to be in the house long enough for sleeping accommodations to be a problem.

  After quick introductions, Daly began the planning session by projecting his map onto the room’s rear wall, between the corridor leading to the back door and the door to the shorter hallway to the second bath and two bedrooms; it was the largest open stretch of wall in the house. While studying the map and listening to Daly, the Marines ate a meal that Lance Corporals Hans Ellis, Santiago Rudd, and Elin Skripska had prepared while Jaschke and Belinski were picking up the others at the spaceport.

  “This is where we are,” Daly said, using a laser to indicate the location of Sky City, in the lower left-hand corner of the map. “And here’s where we found the Skink base, a thousand klicks to the northeast.” He pointed at an area in the northeast map corner. “The Broward County has found more signs of Skink bases here, here, and here, and we’ve confirmed those locations,” he said. The bases were widely separated, but all were at about one thousand kilometers distance, in an arc that ran from north to east.

  “Not everybody here has seen the Skinks,” Daly said, looking at Wu and his men.

  “Actually, Mr. Daly,” Wu said, “we ran into them on Kingdom. We not only saw the same kind of Skinks you’ve been attacked by, but we saw them in their uniforms, and we fought their giants and their swordsmen, which, unless I was misinformed, you haven’t.”

  Daly nodded at Wu. “You haven’t been misinformed, but evidently I have. My apologies.”

  Wu waved off the apology. “No harm, no foul, sir.”

  “All right,” Daly said, mentally kicking himself for assuming that he and his men were the only ones who’d fought the Skinks—he’d been told that Thirty-fourth FIST or its elements had already encountered them twice. “We all know what kind of creatures we’re up against. Have you seen any of their underground facilities?” The last was directed at Wu.

  “Yes, sir. We examined several Skink tunnels on Kingdom, and retrieved some of their materials for the scientists to study.”

  Daly nodded. “Did the tunnel systems you examined have multiple levels?”

  Wu shook his head. “They were under what passed for high ground in a swampy area.”

  “Here, at least in the one we visited, they’re in mountains and are multilayered.” Daly turned off the map display and projected a 2-D vid onto the same wall. “Here are the highlights of what our minnie found in the first complex we examined.” The low-grade vid went on for fifteen minutes, showing chambers that held war machines; smallish armored vehicles, artillery, and aircraft of types unfamiliar to the Marines; and what looked like maintenance depots for the equipment.

  “We didn’t see aircraft on Kingdom,” Wu remarked. “What was your minnie disguised as?”

  “Norway brown rat,” Daly said. He smiled at Wu’s surprise. “They stowed away on the colonization ships. They’ve got no natural predators on Haulover, and seem to thrive on the local grains and other seeds, so they proliferated wildly and are found throughout the continent. Sky City has an active rat eradication program,” he said when he saw some of the Marines looking into corners and shadows of the room, “so there aren’t many in the city.”

  The vid continued, showing chambers with stacks of munitions, fuel depots, and crates with indecipherable markings. Other chambers were filled with what appeared to be foodstuffs, located near food service facilities. There was a complete hospital. The vid showed barracks facilities sufficient to hold five thousand men. And there were tunnels leading off into areas the minnie hadn’t gone into on its first visit.

  “We’ve been back three more times,” Daly said when the vid ended, “and took more minnies. Enough to get what we think is a complete map of the interior.” He touched a button on his controller and a 3-D map of the cave and tunnel complex was projected above the low table in the middle of the room. The FIST recon Marines studied it with a great deal of interest. “We found more of the same in later recons. I estimate that this one complex houses thirty to forty thousand Skinks.”

  There were a couple of low whistles.

  “You said you’ve confirmed those other locations,” Wu said.

  Daly nodded. “We’ve sent minnies in, enough to confirm that they’re complexes similar to the first one we reconned in detail. We didn’t recon them as thoroughly as the first, but we think they’re about the same in scope.

  “What we’re going to do now that you’re here is check out some of the other locations where Broward County has detected possible Skink activity.” He turned the tunnel map off and projected a new map on the wall, larger scale, and showing an area northwest of the first. Four areas were marked on it. “I will take a team consisting of Jaschke, Ellis, and Skripska to this area.” He used his pointer to show which one he meant. “Staff Sergeant Wu, assign your teams to the other three. I’m going to be in the field, so I want you to stay here in command of our ops and comm center, with Corporal Belinski and Lance Corporal Rudd.”

  Daly looked at Belinski and Rudd, who clearly wanted to object to being left behind. “We’ve been over this already. You might be ninety-five percent recovered from your wounds, but you aren’t one-hundred percent. We’ve got enough people now that I can afford to leave you behind until you’re fully recovered.”

  Then to Wu, “If one of the teams gets into trouble and needs rescue, take that army security platoon outside to pull the team out.”

  Wu cocked an eyebrow at Daly. “On what authority will I give that doggie lieutenant marching orders?”

  “You heard Lieutenant General Carano. If we need anything we don’t have, call him and ask for it. It’ll be ours.”

  “What about Brigadier Sturgeon? You know, my chain of command.”

  Daly shook his head. “You’re part of my command now. You aren’t working for your FIST anymore—we work for the corps commander. If you need anything, go directly to him.

  “The Haulover authorities have given us the use of a small aircraft. When we leave here, we will go to a location southwest of Sky City, using that aircraft and our landcars. We will rendezvous with an AstroGhost here.” He projected another map and lasered the spot. “It will take us to drop points near our areas of operation.” To Wu he said, “I’ll have the AstroGhost come back here to stand by for you in case you need to come to anybody’s rescue.”

  Wu’s eyes lit up at that. Like all FIST-level recon Marines, he’d heard rumors about the highly stealthed, top secret AstroGhost shuttle that was capable of atmospheric as well as orbit-to-surface flight, and even beyond-orbit-to-surface, but he had never even seen one let alone ridden one. He almost hoped one of the teams would need extraction so he’d have the opportunity to ride the AstroGho
st. Almost, but not quite; if one of the teams needed emergency extraction, it probably meant wounded or dead Marines. More than likely, his Marines. That wasn’t worth a ride in an AstroGhost.

  After that, nobody had further questions for Daly so he wrapped up the meeting with assignment of call signs. The Marines who were going got their weapons and equipment ready.

  The AstroGhost dropped off second recon team a shade west of something more than eleven hundred kilometers due north of Sky City. The suspected Skink base the team was to recon was a bit less than eleven hundred klicks from the capital, but the four Marines would approach it from behind on the theory that security would be lighter in that direction.

  The FIST recon Marines wore the same chameleons that the infantry did, not the superior ones that Force Recon had, so they had to move more cautiously than Force Recon teams did in order to avoid detection. But the FIST recon Marines’ chameleons were impregnated with a neutralizer for the phosphoric acid mix shot by the Skinks’ acid guns so they were safer from injury from the Skinks’ primary infantry weapon.

  Sergeant Saber, the team leader, didn’t care that he and his Marines were relatively immune to the Skink acid; if they were detected their mission had failed. He didn’t want the mission to fail. His men felt the same.

  The AstroGhost dropped the four Marines a few klicks beyond the reverse slope of the mountain where the Broward County had detected Skink activity. The mountain wasn’t high enough to project above what passed for a tree line on Haulover but had reasonably well-wooded slopes. It took the four Marines an hour to reach the mountain and another hour to scale it to a pass, but they didn’t attempt to use the pass, opting instead to climb above it. That turned out to be a wise decision—they discovered a squad-size observation post covering the pass. Saber used his Universal Positionator Up-Downlink (UPUD) to report the observation post as soon as his team was in a defile and it was in no danger of detection.

  They moved more slowly on the front side of the mountain. While they saw—and easily evaded—two small security patrols moving through the forest and saw signs of others, they didn’t find any passive security devices.

  And then they found a midsize clearing, about two hundred meters on its long axis and somewhat more than half that on the short axis, right where the string-of-pearls-guided you-are-here on Saber’s heads-up display map said it was. The Marines backed up and took to the trees, climbing to about fifteen meters above the ground, high enough to let them look down into the clearing. Saber assigned Lance Corporal Hagen to watch the rear, which Hagen did by alternating through his magnifier and infra screens.

  About fifty Skinks were evident in the clearing. Some of them were playing a sport that involved a ball being hit by a stick; it was slow-moving with occasional running around. Most of the rest of the Skinks were watching the game, some cheering, some groaning, having evidently picked sides. Many of the Skinks, including half the players, were shirtless, and many were barefoot. The lines of closed gill slits were visible on the sides of the shirtless ones. Few weapons of any sort were in evidence. The Marines watched for several minutes and saw numerous brown rats scurrying about the edges of the clearing, some even going in and out of the cave.

  Saber checked with Hagen to verify that the rear was secure, then climbed down to the ground and input the final programming for two minnies, which he then released. Back in the tree, he watched as the minnies emerged from the forest and headed for the cave mouth.

  His heart lurched when he saw a Skink throw something at a rat at the forest edge, then dart toward it with a cry of triumph. The Skink picked up the barely moving rat by its tail and held it aloft for its comrades to admire. Others gathered around the Skink and its trophy, cheering and pummeling its back. Then they began to chant. The rat must have been merely stunned by the blow, because it suddenly began squirming, struggling to get loose. The Skink holding it flipped it upward by its tail and bit its head off as its companions cheered lustily. Blood spurted from the rat’s neck, and Saber felt relief; the rat wasn’t one of his minnies. But he didn’t relax fully, because he now knew the recon robots were in danger of detection by the Skinks. He had to report that to Staff Sergeant Wu, who would notify the other teams.

  After a few more minutes, the Skinks returned to their game, although whether the same Skinks resumed play or some were replaced by others he couldn’t say.

  Motion at the forest edge caught his eye, and he turned his head as two rats slipped out from under the trees and scurried to the cave mouth, then disappeared inside it. He thought it pretty obvious that the two rats were his minnies. He prepared a report to Wu at Marine House in Sky City stating that his team had arrived at their objective and had it under observation, and on the Skink catching and killing the rat. He tight-beamed the report to the string-of-pearls, then settled down to watch and wait.

  Over the course of the next five hours, the recon Marines observed several changes of Skinks outside the cave. Saber would have been exaggerating if he’d said the Skinks all looked alike to him, but he couldn’t easily tell their faces apart, certainly not at the distance he was viewing them, even with his magnifier screen. But he could easily see that they didn’t look like clones of one another, that there were subtle differences among the faces, just as there were among faces of the Marines in the recon squad. Their body types and skin coloration, though, were far more uniform than those of the Marines, which suggested to him that the Skinks were from a more homogeneous population. He wished his team had face-recognition equipment such as Force Recon had and, as far as he knew, hadn’t used when they observed the Skinks before the arrival of Thirty-fourth FIST at Haulover.

  Anyway, even without the means to identify individual faces, he was pretty certain that every replacement group of Skinks was a new group of individuals. Going by that, he and his men saw about three hundred different Skinks outside the cave.

  He looked at the string-of-pearls map downloaded to his UPUD and saw that other, smaller clearings in the vicinity also had Skinks in them. He suspected they were from the same cave complex and that he was looking over what might be the primary entrance.

  At intervals slightly longer than the rotation of Skinks into the open air, six or seven Skink patrols went out or returned to the cave. None of them came close enough to detect the Marines by whatever means it was that allowed the Skinks to spot chameleoned Marines.

  After eight hours, with the sun lowering toward the western horizon, two rats came out of the cave mouth and skittered to the forest edge. Several minutes later, Saber heard scrabbling at the foot of his tree. It was the two minnies. He signaled his men, and they climbed down. He put one of the recon robots in his own pocket and gave the other to Corporal Soldatcu to carry. The Marines then headed toward their pickup location, reaching it an hour after sunset. The AstroGhost picked them up soon after, and in another hour they were back at Marine House along with the other recon teams. During the flight, Ensign Daly had had them upload their minnies’ data to the string-of-pearls. At Marine House they began studying the recordings themselves.

  The caves all seemed to be as massively developed and populated as the first one Force Recon had reconned.

  “There must be a couple hundred thousand of them,” someone murmured.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Gentlemen, I’ll give you”—Gobels paused, pretending to think his offer over—“let’s say, five hundred credits each to bring me the child.”

  Gooden Ashcake glanced sideways at his two friends and scuffed one foot in the dirt. As the spokesman for Adner Shackelford and Linney Liggons, he had to make the negotiations look good, but five hundred credits? Why, a man could live like a king for a whole year in Wellfordsville on that kind of money! “Ah dunno, sir,” he answered, pulling on an ear. “Ah dunno,” he repeated.

  “We din’t come all the way out here to Jack’s Shop fer enny five hunnert credits, Mr. Gobbles,” Linney said.

  “Please,” Gobels smiled pleadingly
, “it’s Doctor Gobels! I’m a pure scientist! I have academic degrees, you know.”

  “I knows pure corn likker, ’n thet’s all!” Linney cackled, seeking approbation from his colleagues with a nudge. He thought that riposte unbelievably witty and that it put him one up on the fancy-doctor scientist. But Adner and Gooden remained unimpressed. Here he was, Linney Liggons, matching wits with a scientist fella and all those boys could do was dream about what five hundred would get them at Verne’s place! Damned hicks, he thought, went right over their heads. “Well, what I mean, Mr. Doctor there, is thet woman’s never wifout her shotgun, ’n ah don’t hanker after gettin’ shot fer no five hunnert.”

  “How well we know,” Pensy Fogel muttered.

  “Whazzat?” Gooden asked.

  “Nothing, nothing, my good man,” Gobels answered. He scratched his nose. “Well, the woman does go about armed with that ancient fowling piece—”

  Linney nudged Adner and whispered, “Knowin’ her, she keeps that scattergun clean as a whistle! No fouling on thet piece. Shows ya how much these city folks knows about us folks ’n our firearms.”