Starfist - 13- Wings of Hell

by Dan Cragg

  Usner rotated the hologram. “This entrance is on a higher level.” He indicated one of two entrances on the far end of the cavern. “It has a secured hatch. The others are closed with simple wooden doors with primitive locking mechanisms. A firm kick should be all it takes to open any of them. But you’ll only need to open this one.” He indicated the nearer entrance off the tunnel.

  “Anything else?” Nobody had further questions. “In that case, do this thing.” Usner nodded at Conorado, collapsed the hologram, rose to his feet, and left.

  “Stand by to receive,” Conorado said when the F3 was gone. He transmitted the map of the operational area of the Skink complex to Bass’s and Hyakowa’s comps. They’d copy the map to the squad leaders and probably the fire team leaders as well. He checked the time and said, “Be ready to move out in thirty. Take the sappers with you.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Bass said. He signaled the sappers to come along, then turned and led the way back to third platoon’s area. Along the way, he put his helmet on. Hyakowa and the squad leaders followed suit; they knew their boss wanted to discuss the upcoming mission privately.

  “This mission isn’t going to be the cakewalk the F3 implied,” Bass said on the platoon command circuit. “If it was, he’d send a squad along with the sappers, not a whole platoon.”

  “He didn’t mention passive security,” Hyakowa said. “Vid cameras, motion detectors, sniffers, booby traps.”

  “I have trouble believing that we can just slip in, watch the sappers set their charges, and slip back out without anybody noticing,” Sergeant Ratliff said. “We’ll probably have to fight.”

  “Skinks don’t show up very well in infra,” Sergeant Kerr added. “We learned that on Society 437. We’ll need to be on the lookout for them when we go into the defile.”

  “So we better be ready for anything,” Sergeant Kelly said.

  And then they were back where Lance Corporal Groth, the platoon comm man, and Lance Corporal “Wolfman” MacIlargie, acting as platoon runner, held down the command post in the platoon area.

  “Fire team leaders, gun team leaders, up,” Bass ordered on the platoon circuit. He took off his helmet and raised an arm to let his sleeve slide down his arm so the corporals could see where he was.

  Hyakowa transmitted the map to the squad leaders’ comps while they waited.

  “Take a close look, memorize this,” Bass said when the fire team and gun team leaders joined them; he projected the hologram map. “Here’s what we’re going to do…”

  The “back door” of the underground Skink base wasn’t on the reverse slope of the mountain; it was the easternmost entrance to the tunnel system. But it was small and situated in a narrow defile. The minnies sent into the cave and tunnel complex by recon hadn’t found any tunnels or chambers east of the back door.

  The defile was narrow and steep-sided, with a dry seasonal streambed in its bottom. Its sides were lightly wooded; it was too steep for trees of any size to hold on, though fallen trunks showed past attempts. Lesser bushes made up the vegetative deficit. The cave entrance was barely visible seven meters above the bottom of the defile, and it would have been difficult to spot had it not been for scuff marks left by the Skinks who used it to sun themselves in the defile.

  The vegetation was thin enough that a few minutes of observation by Bass and the squad leaders was enough to reassure them that no Skinks lay in wait outside the cave mouth. It took them longer to be certain that there wasn’t a post just inside the cave. They used all of their detectors to search for security devices but found none. That didn’t mean there weren’t any well-camouflaged passive detectors; truly passive detectors only received signs, they didn’t emit any signals.

  “All right, let’s do it,” Lieutenant Bass said on the squad leaders’ circuit.

  The four Marines slid back from the top of the wall and returned to their positions with the platoon. Sergeant Kelly took his guns to the top and set them up to cover the two blaster squads and the sappers on their approach to the cave mouth. Lance Corporal Groth stayed with them. Sergeant Kerr and second squad went downhill before crossing into the defile, and approached the cave from the downstream end. Sergeant Ratliff led first squad, Bass, and the sappers uphill, then over and downstream. Once they were in the defile, the Marines used all their senses, natural and augmented, to look for passive detectors. Lance Corporal Schultz had the point of second squad, and even he didn’t spot any.

  “Doesn’t mean,” Schultz said on the squad circuit. He didn’t feel the need to finish the sentence: “that there aren’t any.”

  Schultz was also the first man up to the cave mouth; that was the way he wanted it. He believed he was the best able to spot danger, and the fastest to take the best action when he did—he always wanted to be in the position that was most likely to meet a threat first. Everybody else in Company L believed in Schultz, and they were always more confident when he held the most dangerous position anytime they were opposed by a live opponent.

  Schultz had his ears turned all the way up when he reached the cave mouth and tilted his head to listen inside. All he got back was the hollow sound of empty space. He slid his light-gatherer screen into place and lifted his head above the lip of the narrow opening, just far enough to see inside with one eye. He made out a natural tunnel that had been enlarged and roughly finished. Crates of various sizes could be seen along its length. A light glowed dimly a hundred meters or so away, barely illuminating a blank wall where the tunnel made a sharp turn to the left.

  “Clear,” he murmured into the squad circuit. Then he slithered up and into the tunnel. He rose to a crouch and moved in a few meters to make space for Corporal Claypoole to join him. He would have crouched to make a smaller target of himself even if the lowness of the tunnel ceiling hadn’t forced him to. Schultz was a big man, and the Skinks were smaller than an average human; the Skinks had enlarged the tunnel but only to their own dimensions.

  Once Claypoole was in the tunnel, Schultz began to move forward. But something didn’t feel right, starting with the fact that he didn’t understand why the Skinks would leave an entry to their cave system unguarded. He reached the first crate along the side of the tunnel and stepped behind it. The crate was wide enough to cover him completely, and low enough to allow him space to look over its top. He left his ears turned up all the way but raised his helmet screens to look down the tunnel with his bare eyes. He saw even less than he had with the light gatherer, and nothing seemed out of place. He tried with his infra and nothing showed up.

  “What do you have, Hammer?” Claypoole’s voice came over the fire team circuit.

  “Nothing.” Schultz lowered his light gatherer before he stepped from behind the crate and resumed his slow movement down the tunnel. But something still didn’t feel right.

  The crates weren’t all an equal size; some were almost too high to fit inside the tunnel, some were not quite knee-high, and others were in between. There was as much as ten meters between them, and an occasional stretch where several in a row were touching or almost touching. Schultz took time to quickly examine each before he passed it; they all seemed to be properly sealed—no one was hiding in them. Neither were there any sensors on the surfaces he could see, or wires leading into the crates, so he didn’t think they were booby-trapped. But the sappers might find something when they took a closer look.

  There was one other thing Schultz thought curious—the surface of the walls seemed to ripple. When he was concealed behind a crate, he removed a glove and ran his bare hand over the wall. It was smooth, with ripples that seemed to run down, almost like partly melted wax. He thought the walls must have been somehow heat-treated, so they were fused. That would explain why there was no visible shoring to keep parts of the ceiling and walls from falling. He didn’t know if that was important, but it was interesting, so he reported the fused walls on the squad circuit. Sergeant Kerr agreed that it could be important, and passed the word to Lieutenant Bass. Schultz stopped payin
g attention to the walls and watched ahead. He moved forward.

  He stopped and listened where the tunnel turned, watching the light on the walls where they met at the corner. He saw his own shadow in front of him, but no other variation in the dim light. The hollow absence of sound here was subtly different from what it had been in the entry tunnel, but nothing in it indicated anybody was near. He slid his chameleon screen into place and hunched himself up until the top of his helmet grazed the tunnel roof, then eased his head far enough to see around the corner with his right eye. A light burning where the ceiling met the walls at the next turn, and another midway between the turns, provided enough light to show that the hundred-meter tunnel leg was empty. There weren’t even any crates lining the walls to provide potential hiding places.

  Crouched again, Schultz ran on the balls of his feet to the next turn and listened and watched as he had at the first turn before lowering himself to peek around the corner next to the floor. The tunnel now ran straight as far as he could see. A few dim lights were visible at approximate fifty-meter intervals along the tunnel, at the junction of ceiling and wall. Something indistinct on the right wall caught his eye and he slid his magnifier screen into place. He studied the blemish for a moment; it appeared to be a door frame set in the wall. He slid the magnifier back up and resumed his advance. The long corridor didn’t have as many crates along its sides as the entry corridor had. Schultz walked along the side of the corridor, taking as much advantage of the cover the crates offered as possible. At least so far, that stretch of tunnel didn’t feel as wrong as the first section had.

  Schultz took it slow and easy, constantly checking everything in sight or hearing, and letting his senses move out, seeking anything out of the ordinary that he might sense but not see or hear. Claypoole followed a few meters behind, watching beyond Schultz. Lance Corporal Ymenez came behind Claypoole, watching the display of the motion detector he carried. Sergeant Kerr inserted himself between his second and first fire teams, and Corporal Doyle’s third fire team brought up the squad’s rear. Then came the platoon’s command group and the three sappers. First squad followed. The gun squad remained outside covering the back door.

  Moving as cautiously as he was, it took Schultz several minutes to cover the hundred meters to the doorway on the right. As the Force Recon minnie had seen, the door looked fairly flimsy, as though it could easily be knocked open with a firm kick. He stopped and listened to the door; nothing sounded from inside.

  “Check the lock,” Kerr’s voice said on the squad circuit.

  Schultz tried the door. It gave slightly to pressure but didn’t give way. “Locked,” he reported.

  “Keep moving forward,” Kerr ordered.

  Schultz didn’t give the door another look, but continued toward the next doorway, which was dimly visible on the left side of the tunnel a hundred meters beyond. While he advanced, all senses alert for danger, he puzzled over the first stretch of tunnel. Why did he feel danger there, but not in this stretch, which was even deeper into the enemy complex? He found no answers.

  Lieutenant Bass signaled the sappers to put a booby trap on the door to the beans-and-bandages chamber when they reached it—he didn’t want to risk anybody’s coming through the door after the platoon passed and surprising them from their rear.

  When they were closer to the second door, Bass said over the all-hands circuit, “Second squad, keep going when you reach the door; get to that second doorway and set security. First squad, when the sappers have the first door open, you go in with them to provide security. Acknowledge.”

  “First squad,” Sergeant Ratliff acknowledged. “We go in as soon as the sappers open the door. Check it out and provide security.”

  “Second squad, we have security beyond the doorway,” Sergeant Kerr said.

  Bass hadn’t needed to remind the men of what to do; they all remembered the plan. But it never hurt to make sure.

  Both blaster squads moved into position: first squad ready to rush into the chamber beyond the door as soon as the sappers opened it, second squad in positions beyond the doorway. Bass stood, crouching out of the way of the sappers. Like the previous door, this one gave slightly to pressure. The lock was simple, and the sappers were able to get through it without making much noise. The door slid into a recess in the wall with barely a rumble.

  “Three, go!” Ratliff ordered, and Corporal Dean darted through the open doorway with Lance Corporal Godenov on his heels and PFC McGinty immediately behind Godenov.

  “One, go!” Corporal Dornhofer and first fire team raced in behind third. Ratliff followed them and ordered “Two, go!” as he was moving through the doorway himself.

  Inside the large, roughly square cavern, Dean led his fire team to the side wall with the two entrances. The three Marines scrambled up a stairway so steep it was almost a ladder to where a balcony wrapped around the room and along the wall to the door there. He put his helmet against the door with his ears turned all the way up and listened. He heard nothing outside the door. He took the motion detector from Godenov and positioned it to seek movement in the space beyond the door. He positioned his men to cover the door; they were ready to capture or kill anybody who opened it.

  Corporal Pasquin led second fire team to the door on the lower level, below third fire team’s door, and checked for enemy on the far side. Satisfied that nobody was there, he set his men to cover the door.

  Corporal Dornhofer set his men in the middle of the chamber, in position to cover all entrances.

  There were no stalagmites or stalactites in the cavern, though blemishes on the ceiling showed where stalactites had been removed. Dean discovered that the walls of the cavern were fused and rippled in the same manner as the tunnel walls.

  As Commander Usner had said, the room was filled with racks holding the canister-on-packboard arrangements that the Marines who had been with third platoon on Society 437 or Kingdom well recognized. The weapons were stored on racks stacked as high as the Marines’ chests, with three shelves of empty racks above them, awaiting more weapons. The racks were constructed of wood, with some sort of twine binding them together. Along the wall of the chamber near the lower door were stacks of lumber the same sizes as the risers and shelves that held the weapons and rolls of twine. It looked to Bass as though there was enough wood and twine to double the height of the existing racks.

  Bass shook one of the racks and found it surprisingly stable. He climbed to the top of it and stood to look around the chamber. One thing he wanted to do was estimate how many weapons were in the room. First he counted the racks, then multiplied that by the average number of filled shelves in the nearby racks, and that by the average of weapons per shelf. He estimated the one cavern held enough of the weapons to arm two units the size of army brigades, with enough open shelves and parts for more shelves to hold the weapons for two full divisions.

  How many Skinks are there in this complex? he wondered.

  The three sappers hurried about, deciding where to place their charges to do the greatest damage; thermal charges that would burst in great balls of burning plasma, calculated to melt acid-containing canisters and explode canisters of compressed air. The sappers were careful to place their charges where they’d have the best chance of making the exploding canisters cause other canisters, beyond the reach of the plasma heat, to explode. Bass dropped off the racks and grabbed a packboard. While he was adjusting the straps to give him room to shrug into it, he had Lance Corporal MacIlargie also take a packboard. He didn’t have MacIlargie try to wear the weapon.

  On the all-hands circuit, Bass asked, “Has anybody seen the hose and nozzles for these things?” He swore when nobody had; the tank-and-packboard arrangement couldn’t be used without the nozzle and the hose that connected it to the canisters. He didn’t think just the tanks would be of much intelligence value.

  It took the three sappers almost ten minutes to place their charges and set them to go off in twenty minutes. Then Bass ordered the platoon t
o withdraw from the chamber as far as the beans-and-bandages chamber, where the sappers could set their remaining charges.

  None of the Marines noticed the tiny eye of a miniature camera tucked away in a corner of the ceiling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Masters and Junior Masters who were supposed to be supervising the Leaders in the security chamber were riveted to the visuals coming back from the aircraft raiding the Earthman spaceport, military airfield, and city; they neglected to notice that the Leaders they were supervising were also glued to the visuals of the attacks, instead of to the monitors that showed various unguarded spaces within the tunnel and cavern complex. Even the Senior Master overseeing the Masters and Junior Masters was enthralled by the devastation being wrought on the Earthmen and their constructs. The Masters cheered every time a grounded Earthman aircraft was pulverized by a bolt from a rail gun, a building disintegrated after a burst of rail gun pellets, or Earthmen writhed on the ground in their death agonies after being sprayed by the acid from the aircrafts’ missiles. The Leaders refrained from cheering—they knew better than to call their officers’ attention to the fact that they were watching the action instead of their assigned monitors.

  So it happened that by the time a Leader looked at his monitor and saw a door to the weapons storage chamber—to which he was supposed to be devoting his attention—as it closed, the door was closing behind the exiting Marines. The Leader, of course, didn’t know that. He only knew that a door to a chamber under his watch was closing and that nobody was supposed to be there. With great trepidation, he got the attention of the Junior Master who was his supervisor and told him what he’d just seen.

  Furious at the Leader’s negligence, the Junior Master struck him across the head, hard enough to break the skin and draw blood. Harshly, the Junior Master demanded that the Leader replay what he had observed. The Junior Master watched while the door slid open for a short time, then closed again, seemingly on its own, as no one had entered or left the room while the door was open. Cursing at the Leader’s stupidity and incompetence, the Junior Master ordered the Leader to play back in time and soon found the door opening and closing once more without anybody coming or going.