Starfist - 13- Wings of Hell

by Dan Cragg

  “Everybody not involved in the fight on the right flank, listen up. Estimate where that rail gun is and put everything you’ve got into it. Fire!”

  One gun and seventeen blasters opened up on the estimated position of the rail gun. Some of the bolts must have struck their intended targets, because the rail gun abruptly fell silent.

  “Second squad, assist gun two to break contact,” Bass ordered.

  “You heard the man,” Kerr shouted. “Let’s do it!”

  First and third gun teams jumped to their feet and ran to the flanks of second fire team, adding their fire to what was already flying at the Skinks. In less than a minute the few surviving Skinks ran.

  “Third platoon, let’s bug,” Bass ordered. “Second squad, guns, first squad. I’m with guns.”

  The platoon began to move at a trot away from the Skink lines. Bass checked on second gun team as they went.

  “Damn!” he said when he saw the state of their uniforms. “I’m surprised your chameleons held out this long.” And he did see the chameleons—they had been coated by so much acid they were visible to the naked eye.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Second Lieutenant Steven Moreau’s fourth platoon, George Company, Second Battalion, 499th Light Infantry, held the regiment’s right flank, where it linked with the left flank of the 227th Light Infantry, Fifty-fourth Light Infantry Division. Moreau couldn’t remember for the life of him which company of the 227th was on his right—or was supposed to be there. All he knew was that all the devils in hell were coming straight at the front of his platoon, and an equal number were trying to get at his platoon’s flank through the remnants of the 227th. At least that’s how he saw the Skinks.

  He’d called Captain Grady Riggan, the George Company commander, and asked for artillery support, but the CO couldn’t get any for him. The captain had said he’d tried already, but all of the division’s artillery was busy supporting the 138th, which was in imminent danger of being overrun.

  “Well, so the hell are we, Captain!” Moreau had just about screamed into his comm.

  “The whole damn division is in danger of being overrun, Lieutenant!” Riggan shouted back. “Now fight your platoon and try to kill those Skinks before they can overrun your position! George Six-Actual out.”

  Fight my platoon, sure, Moreau thought. Fight my platoon? Sure, a platoon commander’s weapon was his platoon, but Sergeant First Class Smith Downes, the platoon sergeant, and the squad leaders seemed to be doing well enough on their own without his meddling. Moreau risked raising his head far enough to look along the line of his platoon from its left, where it linked with third platoon, to its right, where one fire team had turned to meet the threat from the flank. Yeah, everything seemed about the same as it had the last time he’d looked. The Skinks with the acid shooters were pinned down beyond the range of their weapons, in the cleared stretch of ground between the division’s hastily prepared defenses; and every time a Skink stood up to dash forward a few meters, one or more of the soldiers of fourth platoon zeroed in on him and the Skink went down hard, shredded by flechettes.

  Speaking of flechettes, his men were putting out a horrendous amount of fire. How was their ammo holding up? That was something he could do something about. But before he could, a lengthy whirr made him duck back down below the lip of the hole he was in—a Skink rail gun seemed to be devoting its entire attention to the platoon. He didn’t have a recent count, but he knew the platoon had already suffered several casualties with devastating wounds.

  The rail gun’s fire moved on, and Moreau got on his comm and asked his squad leaders about their ammo. All of them were getting low.

  Not the report Moreau had been hoping for, it meant he was going to have to expose himself. Sure, he could send a runner to get fresh ammo boxes and distribute them, but he was in charge and it was incumbent upon him to take care of his men. That meant that going for more ammo was on him. That didn’t mean he couldn’t take his runner with him—the two of them could carry twice as many needle boxes.

  “Yancy,” he said, “come with me, we’re getting more ammo.”

  Private Yancy looked at his platoon commander with horror. Get out of the bottom of their hole and expose himself to the rail gun? Was the LT out of his mind? Yancy listened, heard the whine of the rail gun’s pellets way off to the side somewhere, and decided it was safe enough for the moment. He poked up like a prairie dog and looked toward the company’s supply point, where the ammo dump was, some two hundred meters away. He saw three piles of thrown-up dirt that indicated hidey-holes along the way.

  “Right after you, sir,” Yancy said.

  “Good man.” Moreau vaulted out of the hole and ran, zigging and zagging, toward the supply point. Yancy followed five meters behind him. They only had to go to ground once along the way, but it was close; Moreau’s helmet got sideswiped by a high-velocity pellet from the rail gun. When he took it off and looked at the damage—a fist-size chunk was missing from the helmet’s rear—he thought it was a miracle that his head hadn’t been shattered at the same time. He’d have to get a new helmet—if the supply dump had any.

  The supply dump wasn’t out in the open, it was in an interconnected maze of bunkers that had been dug by heavy equipment. Two soldiers Moreau didn’t recognize were in the trench, guarding the entrances to the bunker.

  “Whadaya need, Joe?” one of the soldiers asked when Moreau and Yancy dropped into the tunnel.

  “I’m looking for Sergeant Grubley,” Moreau answered.

  The stranger shook his head. “Grubley got took out by the damn Skinks,” he said. “He looked above the trench when the rail gun was firing this way. Took his head off.”

  “’Cept we couldn’t find his head afterward,” the other stranger said with a snort.

  “Then who’s in charge here?”

  “I am,” the first soldier said. “Sergeant Constable. Battalion sent me down to replace Grubley. Who the fuck’re you?”

  “Lieutenant Moreau, fourth platoon. We need more ammo.” Moreau decided to ignore the noncom’s insubordinate attitude for now.

  “Ammo. You got it,” Constable said. “As much as you two can carry?”

  “Every bit of that.”

  “This way.” Constable turned to the entrance to one of the bunkers and motioned for Moreau and Yancy to follow. In about a minute, Constable had the two loaded so heavily with needle boxes they could barely stand.

  “Where’s your helmet, LT?” Constable asked.

  “Got whanged by a rail gun.”

  “Were you wearing it at the time?” Constable’s eyes opened wide when Moreau acknowledged that he had been. “You’re damn lucky you’re still alive. Here, take this one, you need it more than I do.” He yanked his own helmet off and plunked it on the officer’s head. “I’ll scrounge up another one for myself. Now let’s get you back to your platoon.” He led the way out of the bunker, to the ladder that climbed out of the trench.

  “Wait one.” Constable held up a hand as he listened to the fighting. “Now!” he shouted when the rail gun whine sounded farthest away. He and the other soldier gave Moreau and Yancy a boost, and the two were on their way back to fourth platoon.

  Their progress on the return was much slower than it had been on the outgo; Moreau and Yancy didn’t so much zig and zag as they staggered and stumbled. And they had to go to ground twice—deliberately. But at last they made it back to the hole Moreau had begun thinking of as home, sweet home. They dropped into the hole, drenched with sweat and heaving for breath, but otherwise unscathed.

  Moreau quickly divided the needle boxes into six approximately equal piles. Pointing at one of them, he said to Yancy, “Take that to third squad.” They were on the right of the platoon line.

  “Yes, sir,” Yancy gasped. Having made it to the supply dump and back without undue incident, he was perhaps feeling a touch invincible. He slung the needle boxes over his shoulders and clambered out of the hole.

  Moreau scooped
up the second pile and scampered to the platoon sergeant. He reached him and got down just as the rail gun came back.

  “Get this to second squad,” he said without too much gasping; he’d almost regained his breath. “I’m going back for more for first squad.”

  “Don’t take so long this time,” SFC Downes said. “They’re dangerously low.”

  Moreau shook his head. “I only have to go back to my CP; Yancy and I brought back two full loads for the entire platoon.”

  Downes looked at the young lieutenant with new respect; he knew how much two full loads for the platoon weighed—and they’d hauled it under fire. “Will do, LT.” Downes waited for the rail gun to pass them by, then jumped up and ran for second squad’s position. Moreau headed for first squad at the same time and made it back to his hole before the rail gun returned.

  A few minutes later, when he looked up after another pass by the rail gun, he saw the most peculiar thing he’d ever seen on a battlefield.

  Streamers of fire were coming out of the forest, arching over the prone Skinks, who were still pinned down by the fire from fourth platoon. The fire moved back and forth on the killing ground where so many Skinks had flared while trying to get in range of their weapons, and every time a streamer hit one of the bodies, the body blazed up in brilliant, vaporizing fire. When the flashes cleared, the Skinks were retreating into the forest. The rail gun had gone silent.

  “Get them!” SFC Downes’s voice rang out, and the soldiers of fourth platoon increased their rate of fire into the retreating Skinks. As soon as most of the Skinks were far enough into the trees, the flaming streamers began arching again, incinerating the dead and wounded left behind.

  Moreau reached for his comm to report to the company commander, but Captain Riggan beat him to it:

  “George Company,” the CO ordered, “this is Six-Actual. Cease fire! Repeat, cease fire!”

  The command was repeated all along George Company’s line, and the fire quickly died out.

  “Is anybody still engaged?” Riggan asked.

  All four platoons reported that the enemy had broken contact and that they were no longer receiving fire from the rail guns.

  “Casualty report!”

  Moreau called for a squad leaders’ report, and waited for the squad leaders to get back to him. The news was bad, but his voice was calm when he gave the casualty report to the company commander.

  “Fourth platoon. Six dead, four major wounds. No minor wounds.”

  Ten casualties in a platoon that an hour earlier had been thirty-five men strong. Moreau was sick; he’d never had that many casualties before. He didn’t think SFC Downes ever had, either. He wasn’t at all consoled by the thought that the 227th was hurt even worse; some of its platoons had been wiped out.

  There was a brief pause after all the platoons delivered their casualty reports, then the CO came back. “I just got word from battalion,” he said. “The Marines hit the Skinks from behind, that’s what broke their attack on us. The Marines are pursuing the Skinks. We sit tight and tend to our wounded.”

  After a hundred meters, Bass stopped the platoon for a moment.

  “Roll on the ground,” he ordered the Marines of second gun team. “Maybe the dirt will sop up some of that acid and keep it from eating through your chameleons until we can replace them.” It didn’t stop their disintegration altogether. The platoon hadn’t been on the move for very long when Lance Corporal Dickson stifled a scream and tore off his shirt.

  “Shit!” Corporal Taylor swore, only in part because one of his men was suddenly visible. Dickson’s shoulders and torso were speckled with tiny greenish dots.

  “Get him on the ground!” Sergeant Kelly yelled. “Roll him, try to get that shit off him.”

  Taylor and PFC Rolf Dias knocked Lance Corporal Dickson off his feet and began rolling him in the dirt.

  Dickson gritted his teeth to keep from screaming as the droplets of acid nibbled away at his skin. Some of the acid was absorbed and drawn away from Dickson by the dirt he was rolled in, but most of it remained on his skin, eating away at him under the dirt that now coated his body.

  Kelly stripped the leaves off a bush branch and shoved them at Taylor. “Wipe off the dirt,” he snapped. “That should get rid of more of the acid.”

  Taylor snatched the leaves from Kelly and began wiping. Kelly stripped more handfuls of leaves, gave one to Dias, and held the other ready to give to Taylor when he tossed the first.

  In moments they had most of the acid off Dickson, but some continued to eat at his flesh.

  “Start cutting,” Kelly ordered. He bumped Dias aside and knelt on the opposite side of Dickson from Taylor. He drew his fighting knife and began scraping acid from Dickson’s body, wiping the blade in the dirt between swipes. Then he began digging the point of his knife into the holes the acid had eaten into Dickson’s body, flicking away the mix of acid, blood, and flesh that he dug out. Taylor did the same. When Kelly thought they had cleaned Dickson’s chest and belly well enough, he flipped him over and set to on his back.

  An occasional whimper passed Dickson’s lips, but he never cried out again, despite what must have been excruciating pain.

  Lieutenant Bass had been on the comm with Captain Conorado and the other platoon commanders while the platoon was stopped. He checked with Kelly when he had the platoon’s new orders.

  “Put him in your stasis bag,” Bass ordered when Kelly told him the extent of Dickson’s injuries. “Is anybody else in similar danger?”

  “Taylor and Dias.”

  “Damn. Is it visible on the surface, can you wipe any of it off?”

  “That’s an affirmative—both times.”

  “Do it, and listen up while you do.” Bass switched to the platoon circuit. “Listen up, everybody. Battalion reports that the Skinks the company was hitting are retreating in the direction of the tunnel mouth that Pasquin found. We’ve got the go-ahead to set up an ambush for them. Kelly, let me know when you’ve got Dickson on a litter and are ready to move out.”

  “No litter, boss,” Kelly replied. “Tischler’s carrying him. We’re ready to go whenever you say.”

  Bass nodded. Lance Corporal Tischler, the gunner of first gun team, was a big man, easily capable of carrying Dickson by himself.

  “All right, third platoon, move out. Same order as before. Hammer, here’s the route.” Bass transmitted a hastily drawn overlay to Lance Corporal Schultz and to Sergeant Kerr and Corporal Claypoole.

  The platoon resumed its movement, on a sharp tangent to the direction it had been going before Dickson tore off his shirt.

  Company L had severely mauled the Skinks attacking the 499th Infantry’s front, and Kilo Company had done equally well against the Skinks advancing on the 499th through the position of the 227th Infantry. The remnants of both Skink units were in hasty retreat, though not all were heading for the tunnel Corporal Pasquin had found. Kilo Company was engaged in a running firefight with its Skink unit. Company L’s first platoon harried the Skinks who had been in front of them as the Skinks attempted to get out from between the Marines and the army. Second and third platoons, along with the assault platoon, raced to the tunnel mouth to set their ambush. Mike Company was moving to assist.

  There was no good location for an ambush near the tunnel mouth; no low rise the ambushers could hunker behind, no dry rill they could use as a trench line. There weren’t even enough trees big enough to give a man adequate protection from the Skinks’ acid shooters.

  But even though they were ambushing a much larger unit, the Marines had two major factors in their favor: the element of surprise, and range. They set up far enough outside the maximum range of the Skink acid shooters that the Skinks had little chance of getting close enough to return fire before most of them were flashed—if the Skinks attempted to charge into and through the ambushers.

  The only thing the Marines had to worry about was the Skink rail guns, and they’d killed enough of them during their counterattack from
the Skinks’ rear that the rail gun threat wasn’t what it would have been earlier.

  Third platoon, being closer to the tunnel mouth to begin with, got into position first. The Skinks were already pouring into the tunnel.

  “Hold your fire,” Lieutenant Bass ordered as his Marines began dropping into firing positions two hundred meters away from the fleeing Skinks.

  “Right there,” Lance Corporal Schultz grumbled, caressing his blaster’s firing lever.

  Schultz hadn’t said it into his comm, but he may as well have—Bass knew his men well enough to know what Schultz was most likely thinking.

  “Don’t sweat it, Hammer,” Bass said into the private circuit. “There’s plenty more where they came from. The skipper wants everybody in position before we hit them.”

  Schultz grunted. It was an acknowledgment; even though he didn’t like the order, he’d hold his fire.

  The Skinks continued to stream into the tunnel, unmolested by the Marines watching them. Hundreds of Skinks, perhaps as many as a thousand, ran into the tunnel while third platoon watched and waited for second platoon to get into position.

  Corporal Doyle carefully kept his hand away from his blaster’s firing lever—he was afraid that if his fingers got close to it, he would accidentally fire a bolt, setting off the ambush before everybody was in position.

  He’d never seen so many Skinks at one time, even if right then he wasn’t seeing all of them at once, but rather in a steady stream. The rational part of his mind rejected that idea and tried to think back to the war the Marines had fought against the Skinks on Kingdom. But the frightened part of his mind insisted that there hadn’t been so many Skinks on all of Kingdom during that entire war. So many Skinks were going past third platoon that if they suddenly detected the Marines, they could turn and charge, and the Marines would have no chance to win against them—they’d all die!