Starfist - 13- Wings of Hell

by Dan Cragg

  Seventy-five meters from where the nearest Skinks should be, Pasquin halted his patrol. He still hadn’t heard or seen sign of the enemy to his immediate front, only to his right front, and the nearest sounds he heard there were more than a hundred meters to the right. He considered his options, then called Quick and Shoup to join him. When they did, he drew them close and touched helmets, to communicate through direct conduction rather than via helmet comm, which could be intercepted by the Skinks.

  “Stay here, back to back,” he told them. “I’m going forward on my own until I find where they are. As soon as I locate their positions, I’ll be back. Got it?”

  “Are you sure you want to go alone?” Quick asked. “Wouldn’t it be safer if we went with you?”

  Unseen inside his helmet, Pasquin shook his head. “One man is quieter than three,” he said. “Plus, I’ve got more training and experience in the kind of movement that’ll get me close undetected. You two stay here.”

  “I don’t like it,” Quick murmured.

  “You don’t have to like it, Marine,” Pasquin said harshly. “Just do it.”

  Quick shrugged. “Whatever you say, Corporal.”

  Satisfied that his men were going to do as he said, Pasquin broke contact and headed farther south by himself. He didn’t bother to check that Quick and Shoup went back to back as he’d told them; he was confident that they’d do as he said without close supervision.

  Weaving cautiously, avoiding contact with the undergrowth as much as he could, and keeping behind trees where he could, Pasquin advanced toward what he thought should be the Skink line. He reached it without seeing anything more than traces of past movement.

  And then he was right where the Skink rail gun had been. Examining the ground, he saw where the crew had picked up the gun and headed west. Looking more, he found where what must have been an entire platoon, maybe more, had gone with the rail gun—this was evidently the markings of the platoon and rail gun that Schultz had encountered. Pasquin wondered where the survivors of that platoon had gone. He resumed moving south but turned back after he’d gone two hundred meters without seeing more signs. What convinced him to turn back then, though, was the whizz of a flechette dart that spit past him; he was within the extreme range of the army’s shoulder weapons.

  Pasquin followed a track fifty meters west of his original route on the way back to his men. Standard procedure: Never return along the same route you came out on. The enemy might discover your movement out and set an ambush to catch you on your way back. Because of his changed route, he came across signs of movement that he wouldn’t have otherwise seen: traces of large numbers of troops moving at an angle to the Skink main line. He checked his position and turned off his route to follow the Skink marks—they might lead to the transport the Skinks had used to get from their underground bases to the positions of the Fifty-fourth Light Infantry Division.

  He found what he sought but it wasn’t what he was expecting. Instead of vehicles, he found the entrance to a tunnel, a long ramp dug into the ground, well enough camouflaged that it wouldn’t be spotted from orbit or by an air patrol. Faint sounds from inside suggested vehicles and a ventilation system. He wondered if the tunnel ran all the way to the underground bases—and whether there were more such tunnels. He shook his head in marvel. Just how long had the Skinks been on Haulover? he wondered.

  Pasquin hurried back to where he’d left his men. The three Marines followed a different track returning to the rest of the platoon.

  “I wish I could tell you more, sir,” Corporal Pasquin said when he completed his report to Lieutenant Bass.

  “You told me plenty, Corporal,” Bass said. “I’m going to get this to the skipper ASAP. Return to your squad, but be ready to be called in to report higher up the chain of command.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Pasquin looked to Staff Sergeant Hyakowa for directions to the rest of first squad.

  As soon as Pasquin left, Bass had Lance Corporal Groth contact the company command unit on his comm then reported Pasquin’s discovery to Captain Conorado.

  “Well, that’s very interesting,” Conorado said. “I’ll report it to battalion. There are probably more tunnels out there; it would have taken too long for so many Skinks to come out of one tunnel. Carry on, and keep me apprised of what’s happening.”

  “Aye aye, Skipper,” Bass replied.

  Half an hour later, third platoon had killed another Skink rail gun and was closing in on yet another. Lance Corporal Schultz, as was his habit, was on the platoon’s right flank as it moved on line through the forest; the position most exposed to the enemy. This time, the Skinks were waiting for them.

  The Skinks may have been ready this time, but Hammer Schultz was ready all the time.

  “Bad guys, sixty,” Schultz said into the squad circuit.

  “Second squad, halt,” Sergeant Kerr said into the squad circuit, then into the platoon command circuit, “Schultz reports bad guys sixty meters ahead.”

  “Third platoon, hold in position,” Lieutenant Bass ordered when he got Kerr’s message. Then to Kerr, he said, “Have they seen us?”

  Kerr was already asking Schultz the same question. Schultz grunted in reply; if the Skinks had detected the Marines, he would have already been firing at them.

  “Negative,” Kerr told Bass.

  “Third platoon, take a knee,” Bass ordered. Sixty meters was a pretty extreme range for the Skink acid shooters, but he was concerned about the rail gun; the Marines didn’t know what its range was, guesses ranged all the way up to interstellar, if the pellets didn’t burn out in the atmosphere before they escaped a planet’s gravity well. “Does anybody have a fix on the rail gun?” he asked.

  All through the platoon, the fire team and gun team leaders asked their men, then reported negatives back to their squad leaders. Nobody in the platoon saw the rail gun to their front but they could all hear it—and more of them reported seeing Skinks to their front, Skinks facing in their direction. While Bass waited for the squad leaders to report, he contacted Captain Conorado and informed him.

  Bass considered his options. He had an approximate position for the rail gun, but the reading on his UPUD from the string-of-pearls wasn’t capable of giving him any more accurate a location than he would get by triangulating on what his Marines could hear. Anyway, if he had everybody fire where they thought the rail gun was, the other Skinks would be able to see where the Marines were and could quickly close to effective range. Even though the chameleons his men wore were impregnated with an acid repellent, the acid could still cause casualties. His other option was to fire on the closer Skinks and try to take them all out, and then shift fire before the rail gun could turn. He didn’t like either option, but the latter was probably the better one.

  “Listen up, everybody,” Bass said into his all-hands circuit. “We’ve got to clean out those Skinks right in front of us before we can go after the rail gun. Don’t fire until I give the command. If you have targets, on my command burn them. If you don’t have targets, then fire into the dirt fifty meters to your front, and make those rounds skitter along the ground. Gun one, sweeping fire from left flank to center, gun two, sweeping fire from right flank to center. I’ll tell you when to shift your fire to the rail gun. Squad leaders, report when all your men understand.”

  All along the platoon line, fire team leaders checked their men to make sure they understood the orders, then reported to their squad leaders, who in turn checked that the fire team leaders had it right.

  After the three squad leaders reported to Bass, he said, “Stand by to do it. One, two, fire!”

  The Skinks, as Bass had hoped, were caught off guard—all along the Marine front Skinks flared up as they were hit by plasma bolts. But there were a lot more Skinks than Bass had suspected. Hordes of them—maybe an entire battalion of Skinks—suddenly rose up and raced forward to get in easy range of their acid shooters. There were so many that, even if every plasma bolt the Marines fired flamed a Skink, t
here were too many Skinks to get them all.

  Suddenly, after charging forward thirty meters, the Skinks dove for the ground, and the rail gun that had been third platoon’s objective turned and began firing. Not all of the Skinks got down fast enough, and some of them virtually exploded when the rail gun’s pellets hit them.

  Acid streamers, hundreds of them, began arching at the Marines.

  “Down!” Bass screamed, “everybody get down!”

  Everybody was already down; they’d gone prone when the rail gun opened fire. With the Skinks in front of them also down, most of the Marines could see their targets only by noting where the acid arcs started.

  “Volley fire,” Bass ordered. “Twenty meters. Pull back between volleys! Fire!” A volley of twenty bolts crack-sizzled from the two blaster squads, striking the ground along a line twenty meters in front of the Marines. The bolts skittered forward, spreading as they went; some fragmented and continued on as though they were multiple shots. Skinks flared into brilliant flame as the Marines shifted positions, moving slightly to one side or the other, and a few meters to the rear.

  The rail gun’s fire swept back and forth, across the width of third platoon’s position and beyond, but the fire was ineffective—the gunner had to shoot high enough to avoid hitting the Skinks who were so close in front of the Marines, and so the bursts sped harmlessly over the Marines’ heads as long as they remained prone.

  “Fire!” Twenty more bolts flew at the Skinks, immolating more of them. The guns continued sweeping fire, left and right to center, their bolts striking the ground along the same line as those from the blasters. The Marines moved again, and acid streamers struck the ground all around where they had fired from, some splashing far enough for Marines to be struck by drops of acid.

  “Shift aim, up five meters,” Bass ordered. “Fire!” The Skinks were dying by the dozens, yet the rate of their acid streams didn’t ebb.

  “Fire!” Bass heard shouts to his right front and left front and looked to where the cries mounted in frequency and intensity.

  He saw the flanks of the Skink mass rising and running to the left and right.

  “Fire!” Bass continued to watch the Skink flanks while his men fired volleys into the massive formation in front of them, and then shifted position, further increasing the distance between themselves and the acid shooters. Another volley and the Marines would be far enough back to shift their aiming point again.

  “Fire!” Now Bass saw the Skinks on the flanks turn forward—they were moving to close on third platoon from both flanks!

  “Blaster squads, continue volley fire front,” Bass commanded. “Guns, turn to your flanks. They’re trying to flank us in both directions!”

  The volume of fire to the front was sharply reduced as the guns shifted their fire to the flanking elements. But still Skinks flared up in front of the platoon. Then Skinks began flashing into vapor on the flanks as well.

  Lance Corporal Schultz noticed, here and there along the front, that when a plasma bolt struck right at the base of a bush or other bit of the undergrowth, the vegetation hit began burning, though the fire generally went out in a few seconds. Vegetation struck a glancing blow, or through its leaves, didn’t burn. He experimented; the next time Bass called “Fire!” Schultz shot three quick bolts into the base of a bush, right where he saw its stem emerge from the ground.

  The bush started burning. It was still burning two volleys later, far longer than any of the bushes that had been hit by one bolt had.

  “Rock,” he said into the fire team circuit. “Watch.” He fired another three rapid bolts into the base of a bush.

  Claypoole saw the bush go up in flames that didn’t look like they were in any hurry to die out. Beyond that bush, he saw the one Schultz had fired at before; not only was it still burning, the fire was beginning to spread to other bushes.

  “Mohammed’s pointy teeth,” he murmured. He switched to the squad circuit. “Honcho, three hits at the base of a bush sets it on fire. If we zap enough of them, we can make a wall of flame between us and the Skinks, maybe drive them back.”

  Sergeant Kerr looked at the bushes Schultz had lit up. “You may be right,” he said. Then he switched to the platoon command circuit and reported Schultz’s finding to Lieutenant Bass.

  “Claypoole said that?” Bass asked. “Doesn’t he remember what happened on Maugham’s Station?” Third platoon had been caught in a forest fire, started when the Marines’ fire had ignited some volatile brush. None of the Marines were killed in the fire, but Claypoole was one of several who had to be evacuated and treated for smoke inhalation.

  “Fire!” Whatever reports Bass was getting from his squad leaders, the platoon still had a battle to fight. He consulted his UPUD, checking the meteorological report for the area third platoon was in. The prevailing ground wind was from the northwest but midlevel currents could shift the ground current to the east shortly.

  “Fire!” Still, he liked the idea of making a wall of fire between the platoon and the Skink battalion. If the shift in wind direction held off for a little while, the ground wind could sweep a fire toward the Skinks to the platoon’s front—and maybe even go far enough to get the rail gun.

  As soon as the volley was fired, Bass said into the platoon circuit, “Blaster squads, listen up! For the next volley, fire three rapid bolts into the base of the closest bush to where the Skinks are. Gun squad, continue your fire on the flanks. Fire!”

  A dozen bushes between third platoon and the Skinks to their front ignited.

  “Do it again, fire!” More bushes ignited and the fire was beginning to spread.

  “Again, fire!” Then he asked Sergeant Kelly, “Guns, which gun is on our left flank?”

  “First gun team,” the gun squad leader answered.

  “You know what the blaster squads just did?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Have first gun team do the same. Second gun team is not to fire at the base of the bushes. Got it.”

  “Gun one, light up the bushes. Gun two, do not,” Kelly said.

  “Do it.” Then to the blaster squads, “Fire!”

  The Skinks in front of third platoon had been slowly crawling toward the Marines, not allowing them to increase the distance between them as fast as they wanted to. But burning bushes began to block them and the Skinks’ forward progress was broken up. Some were able to continue but others stopped and were unable to see where the Marines were firing from. A few jumped up to run from flames that were beginning to advance on them, and in their panic some of them were killed by the rail gun that was still firing over their prone companions.

  Bass had Hyakowa take control of the volley fire while he contacted Captain Conorado to update him on the action—and inform him about the fires the platoon was starting in the underbrush.

  Conorado checked his UPUD’s real-time map. The Skinks were hard to detect, but it looked as though a huge mass of them was closing on the front of the 499th Infantry, which Company L was trying to relieve with its attacks on the Skink rail guns. A fire coming at the Skinks from behind could break up the assault. The fire in front of third platoon showed clearly in infrared and was becoming visible in visible light. Moreover, it seemed to be spreading farther. He checked the location of the tunnel entrance that Corporal Pasquin had found and thought it was a good time to move third platoon, or even the entire company, to the tunnel mouth to set an ambush for Skinks who might retreat to it.

  “All right, Charlie, I want you to run a fighting withdrawal, get away from the fire you started. Then swing back east and set an ambush at the tunnel mouth. I’m going to check with battalion, see if I can get permission to move the entire company.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” They signed off.

  “Fire!” Hyakowa called, for the sixth time since Bass gave over control to him.

  The attackers on the left flank stopped their advance in the face of the growing wall of fire, a wall that the northeast wind was beginning to push in the
ir direction. The only Skinks still making a serious attempt to get to the Marines were the company or more coming from the right flank. However, that group was no longer a company or more; second gun team had reduced its number by nearly half. Still, fifty or seventy-five Skinks were now within acid range of the gun team, and the gun wasn’t able to maneuver as agilely as blastermen. The three Marines of second gun team were getting hit, hard enough that the acid retardant on their chameleons was in danger of becoming overwhelmed.

  “Two,” Bass ordered between orders to fire a volley, “turn one fire team to assist gun two.”

  “Second fire team,” Kerr snapped, “wheel right, assist gun two. Lay down enough fire for them to withdraw.”

  “Three men, enough fire to hold down that many Skinks,” Claypoole grumbled, as he and his men slithered to the right flank to assist the gun team. “Right.” They began firing past second gun team, and enough extra Skinks flared up that the rest of them hesitated.

  “Let’s move!” Corporal Taylor ordered, and his men picked up the gun and its tripod and pulled back, out of range of the Skink acid shooters.

  “Honcho, we’ve got to get out of these chameleons soon,” Taylor reported to Kelly. “Mine are starting to steam. I think they’re pretty close to being eaten through.”

  “Did you get that, boss?” Kelly asked Bass, and repeated Taylor’s report when Bass hadn’t.

  Bass looked to the front and the left flank. The Skink advances in those directions had stopped and the Skinks were withdrawing. It seemed like a good time for the platoon to break contact. But first…