Starfist - 13- Wings of Hell

by Dan Cragg

  Commander van Winkle assigned Company L to cover the back entrance to one of the underground complexes—the same back entrance that third platoon had entered a few days earlier. The company didn’t quite get there in time.

  Lance Corporal Schultz, on the company point, froze half a klick from the company’s assigned position. “Skinks,” he said into his helmet comm.

  “Where?” Sergeant Kerr asked, rushing forward from his position between second and first fire teams. He used his infra to locate Schultz and found the point man down on one knee, pointing his blaster in an arc to his front.

  “Mohammed’s pointy teeth,” Kerr murmured when he looked where Schultz indicated. He got on the platoon command circuit. “Skinks, hundreds of them, one-fifty to our front. Moving right to left.”

  “Roger,” Lieutenant Bass answered. He then called Captain Conorado on the company command circuit to pass the word to him.

  “Everybody, line on third platoon,” Conorado ordered on the all-hands circuit. “Double time; the bad guys are crossing our front. Hold your fire until I give the word.”

  The forest through which Company L moved was thin enough that the Marines moved in two columns fifty meters apart, and thick enough that they were closed to six-meter intervals instead of ten or more. It took a bit more than three minutes for the entire company to get on line. Skinks, many deep, continued to flow past the company’s front, fleetingly visible one hundred and fifty meters away. Lieutenant Rokmonov, the assault platoon commander, positioned his assault guns, one behind each blaster squad. One hundred and twenty-four Marines—and four corpsmen—tensely awaited the company commander’s order.

  Captain Conorado used his infra and magnifier screens to look at the streaming Skinks. It was just as Bass had told him: hundreds of them. He thought there might be a thousand or more, and he didn’t know how far to his right they extended. Still, Hammer Schultz held the right end of the company’s line, and Schultz would know if anybody attempted to flank them.

  He took a deep breath and shouted into the all hands circuit, “Fire!”

  As one, all the blasters, guns, and assault guns of the company opened up on the Skinks. The forest one hundred and fifty meters in front of them blazed in fierce fire as hundreds of Skinks flashed into vapor; the forest filled with sudden smoke. Screams and wild cries came from left and right of the burned area, and from beyond it as well.

  Skinks burst through the smoke in front of the company, hundreds of them, screaming war cries. Some of the war cries were intelligible; they sounded like “Marine, you die!” and “Die, Earthman pigs!” and “I fuck your mother!”

  The Marines paid no attention to the cries, except perhaps to use them to help pick their targets as they continued to pour fire into the charging Skinks, vaporizing the implacable enemy. And then there were no more Skinks coming through the smoke, nor did any cries come from that direction. But the shouts and screams from the right front and left front were closer.

  “Third platoon, pivot right,” Conorado ordered. “First platoon, pivot left. Second platoon, hold your position!”

  Third and first platoons, on the ends of the company line, swung to face the Skinks coming from the right and the left; the assault guns placed behind their squads shifted with them. Second platoon remained in place, in case more Skinks came from the front.

  The move came just in time—the nearest Skinks were already within a hundred meters of the company’s flanks.

  “Third platoon, fire!” Lieutenant Bass shouted into his comm. But his command wasn’t necessary. His Marines were already firing into the mass of Skinks coming at them.

  “How many of them are there?” Corporal Doyle squealed. He’d already used up one full four-hundred-shot charge on his blaster and was well into a second, and the Skinks were still charging, screaming, “You die today, Marine!” There seemed to be an endless supply of them.

  “Don’t sweat it, Doyle,” Kerr said into the private circuit.

  Doyle flinched. He hadn’t known he’d asked his question into his comm.

  “We won’t run out of ammo before they run out of Skinks,” Kerr said. “Now calm down, you’re scaring your men.” Kerr wondered where the rail guns were.

  That may or may not have been true as far as Doyle was concerned, but Sergeant Souavi, the company supply sergeant, and the two company clerks were already distributing more ammunition from the supply they’d carried on two of the Battle Cars and one Dragon.

  Twenty meters to Doyle’s right, Schultz methodically shifted his aim from one target to another, flashing Skink after Skink. On his left, Corporal Claypoole wasn’t quite as methodical, but still flashed one after another. Between them, the mass of Skinks weren’t getting any closer to the platoon’s line. But far to Doyle’s left, on the platoon’s other flank, where Lance Corporal Longfellow, Lance Corporal Ymenez, and PFC McGinty held the line, the Skinks were almost within range with their acid shooters.

  “We need some help here, Rabbit,” Longfellow said into the squad circuit.

  Sergeant Ratliff looked and saw the Skinks already firing at his squad’s left flank—and the streamers of greenish fluid were getting close. He turned around and saw the assault gun supporting his squad firing straight ahead and to the right side of the squad’s line. He low-crawled to the gun and grabbed the team leader’s sleeve.

  “Put your fire over there,” he said, and pointed with a bare arm. “My flank is about to get overrun.”

  “Ah, shit,” the gun team leader swore. “Sorry,” he murmured as he redirected his gun’s fire.

  The Skinks closing on Longfellow’s fire team were torched until none were closer than a hundred meters. Then the assault gun had to return its attention to the center and right of the squad, because the Skinks had closed the gap there.

  Sergeant Ratliff wondered where the Skink rail guns were.

  Where the Skink rail guns were was two kilometers to the west, in front of the Fifty-fourth Light Infantry Division. More specifically, in front of George Company, Second Battalion, 499th Light Infantry, Fifty-fourth Light Infantry Division.

  Second Lieutenant Steven Moreau of fourth platoon hunkered down and watched his two sharpshooters. His platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Smith Downes, had somehow managed to get his hands on two Marine plasma shooters and given them to the two best marksmen in the platoon. Moreau didn’t know where or how Downes had gotten the weapons, and figured both he and the platoon sergeant were better off if he didn’t. By then, everybody in both corps knew that the plasma shooters were the most effective weapons to use against the Skinks. He was glad there were some Marines to the right of his platoon; they kept the Skinks from attempting to flank his position.

  Moreau watched the sharpshooters. They’d both found dips in the ground that were deep enough to keep them below grazing fire from the Skink rail guns. They were using a piece of obsolete equipment, also found by Downes, to locate their targets—periscopes. Where the hell had Downes found periscopes? He could have probably stolen the plasma shooters from the Marines, but periscopes? He shook his head. It didn’t matter where or how Downes had gotten them; the periscopes were exactly what the sharpshooters needed. The two soldiers stayed low, scanning the area to their front, watching for the signs that would tell them where the rail guns were. When they located one, they’d watch until none of the super-high-speed weapons were firing in their direction, and pop up long enough to fire several shots. Their efforts were often met by the flashes of Skinks being vaporized.

  But they never managed to kill the rail guns themselves; the Skinks always managed to come up with new crews.

  The other Skinks, the ones with the acid shooters, were kept at bay by the rest of the platoon. The soldiers fired the most expedient way when pinned down; they stayed below the grazing fire and exposed only their rifles and machine guns, firing blindly. They were well enough trained and disciplined that not too much of their fire went high.

  And the steady artillery fire
helped a great deal, although Moreau thought it was a shame that George Company was in the forest with the Skinks. Because of the risk of forest fire, the artillery couldn’t fire the incendiary rounds that would literally burn out the Skinks.

  If only there weren’t really the inexhaustible supply of Skinks that there seemed to be.

  The supply of Skinks wasn’t inexhaustible, as third platoon found out soon enough. The Skinks stopped charging, no more Skinks flared up, no more screams and war cries came their way.

  “Cease fire!” Captain Conorado ordered. “Cease fire!” He listened; everybody listened and watched. There was no more sign of Skinks threatening Company L’s position. But there was plenty of sound to their left. Battalion called.

  “Lima Six-Actual,” Conorado answered.

  Battalion wanted to know if there was any enemy activity in the company’s area. When Conorado said no, Commander van Winkle ordered: “The rest of the battalion and army are holding the Skinks two klicks west of your position. The Skinks are in a good position to be flanked. Go two platoons abreast; keep one platoon in reserve and to guard your rear. Put your left flank one hundred meters north of where you are now. Questions?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do it.”

  “Aye aye,” Conorado said into a broken connection. He got his platoon commanders and platoon sergeants on the comm and told them what they were going to do. Company L got on line and moved west, one hundred meters closer to the mountains.

  The Marines slammed into the flank of the Skinks just as the Skinks were rising to move to where they could attempt to flank the Marines of Mike Company. The Skinks were already demoralized because they’d been unable to advance in the face of massive casualties, and meeting Company L head-on was devastating to them. Many of them chose to use the tiny incendiaries they carried to suicide rather than be killed by the Marines. Company L was already in front of the 499th Light Infantry when they encountered the most remarkable sight any of them had ever seen outside a historical action vid.

  A small horde of screaming Skinks, fifty or sixty of them, came charging through the forest at the army lines. They were unmolested by the army, as both George Company and the company on its far side had ceased fire to avoid hitting the Marines crossing their front. So it was up to Company L to stop this last charge.

  And this suicidal charge simply had to be the Skinks’ last hurrah. Nothing else made any sense—as if any of what the Marines saw made sense.

  The Skinks weren’t in uniforms and didn’t carry acid shooters or rail guns. They wore what looked for all the world like aged leather-and-metal armor, and they carried swords.

  As surprised as they were by the incongruous sight, the Marines wasted no time in flashing the charging sword bearers.

  That signaled the end of the battle. All along the line, the remaining Skinks suicided into brilliant vapor.

  Corporal Claypoole looked up bewildered from the helmet he held in his hands. It was something that looked and felt like leather, and had metal rectangles riveted onto it. It was somewhat conical in shape, flattened a bit from front to back; it didn’t rise to a point, but curved abruptly before it reached its peak, and had two horns jutting above. The leather fell in an apron in back, and the apron had wings that could wrap around to protect the neck from the front. Short wooden dowels held by loops of leather secured the wings of the apron.

  “What’s this supposed to protect you from?” he asked nobody in particular.

  “Th-this, probably,” Corporal Doyle said. He was turning a sword around in his hands. The blade of the sword was nearly a meter long and gently curved. Its surface rippled under the changing light of its movement. The sword’s hilt seemed to be strips of wood tightly bound with a leather strap, and the pommel was a simple metal ovoid with elaborate engravings on the blade side.

  Sergeant Kerr held a leather-and-metal tunic, scorched by the fire that had vaporized its wearer. Old repairs in the tunic showed that it had actually seen use, that it wasn’t a ceremonial garment. “They’ve got real weapons,” he said. “When would they fight like this? And why?”

  Lieutenant Bass stood nearby, examining another sword. “They’re alien,” he said. “We may never understand them.”

  What everybody did understand was the war against the Skinks on Haulover was over. But the war against the Skinks was probably not. Over the next few days, the elements of the XVIII and XXX Corps that were permanent parts of Task Force Aguinaldo began heading back to Arsenault. The other units returned to their home bases.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Mr. Brackle, I am Special Agent Don Rittenhouse of the Ministry of Justice.” The man held out his credentials. “And this is Special Agent Trace Keen.” Keen held out his credentials. “We’d like to talk to you.”

  “It’s ‘Brattle,’ gentlemen,” Zechariah Brattle interrupted Rittenhouse.

  “What? Oh. Excuse me, Mr. Brattle. Sorry. We’d like to talk to you about—”

  “That letter I sent to Ensign Bass on Thorsfinni’s World?” Zechariah asked eagerly.

  Rittenhouse glanced at Keen. “Uh, yes, Mr. Brattle, that letter, the effect it had, and our search for the Skink you call Moses—”

  “Thank the Lord!” Zechariah exclaimed. He got up from his desk, came around, and shook hands vigorously with the two agents. “I knew Charlie’d come through! You’ve found him, then? Moses? Thank God, thank God!”

  “No, we have not found this Moses, Mr. Brattle,” Special Agent Keen said. “We’ve arrested Dr. Gobels and his assistant, Pensy Fogel.”

  “Devious and untrustworthy charlatans,” Zechariah said, nodding.

  “We’ve questioned everyone at a place called Wellfordsville, on Earth, a small town on the eastern seaboard of what used to be the United States. Near there was where this Gobels had his clandestine laboratory. But Moses,” he said with a shrug, “has got away and we have not been able to find him.”

  Zechariah offered the two agents chairs and resumed his own seat. Rittenhouse briefly explained the raid on Dr. Gobels’s lab outside Wellfordsville, how the two renegade scientists had been apprehended as well as, eventually, his three accomplices, three local ne’er-do-wells. “A lady named Treemonisha Giddings had been harboring Moses, Mr. Brattle, but he fled into the wilderness. We have this Ms. Giddings, a fine old Christian woman, to thank for saving Moses. But he’s gone, sir, disappeared into the vast swamplands somewhere north of this Wellfordsville place and we have not been able to find him.”

  Zechariah was silent for a moment, regarding the two agents. Rittenhouse was tall and spare, Keen short and round. “Then you will never find him,” Zechariah pronounced at last. “Water is his element. He’s like a fish when he gets into it. But no net, no hooks, no weir will ever snare that boy. He’s as intelligent as we are, and his instinct will override whatever civilization we’ve been able to breed into him.”

  “Winter’s coming on back there, Mr. Brattle. How will your Moses survive when the swamp water freezes over? He has never had to fend for himself in nature, and there is not much time for him to learn. We know enough about Skinks to know they thrive in warm, wet climates. How will he fare when it gets really cold? Can he hibernate? We were hoping to find out these things. This Dr. Gobels, he ran extensive tests on Moses, but he has refused to divulge what he knows, and his laboratory, along with all his records, burned.” Rittenhouse shrugged. “You know how important Moses can be to us in our war with the Skinks. We’ve come to ask for your help, Mr. Brattle.”

  Zechariah looked from one man to the other. “How? How can I help?”

  “We think it’s a good bet that since Moses lived with you and your family, he’ll trust you,” Keen said. “To him you may be a father figure.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Brattle. You can come back to Earth with us and we’ll take you into the swamps and you will proclaim the name of Moses throughout the land, and lead him to the promised land.” Rittenhouse smiled.

  “I can h
ardly wait,” Zechariah replied dryly. “I hope it doesn’t take forty years,” he added, and then laughed. “When do we leave?”

  “Right now,” Rittenhouse replied.

  They made the trip to Earth in the luxury of a BOMARC 37A starship, a great improvement on the earlier, 36V corporate starships. This, Rittenhouse explained, was the attorney general’s personal starship.

  Once at the Fargo spaceport they were chauffeured directly to the Ministry of Justice, where Huygens Long, the Confederation’s attorney general, awaited. On the long ride into the city Zechariah gawked at the huge buildings. He had thought Haven and Interstellar City were the epitome of urban sprawl, but Fargo took his breath away.

  “Mr. Brickle, I’ve heard a lot about you, sir,” Long said as Rittenhouse and Keen escorted Zechariah into his office.

  “He hasn’t learned to pronounce my name,” Zechariah muttered to Rittenhouse.

  “It’s Brattle, sir, Zechariah Brattle,” Rittenhouse corrected Long.

  “Well, Mr. Brattle, I’m not attorney general ’cause I’m the smartest guy in this government, I’m AG ’cause I’m an old cop and I always get my man. I don’t practice law, Mr. Brattle, never have. Please accept my apologies. Please be seated.”

  Immediately Zechariah took a liking to the bluff, plainspoken, portly official. “Sir,” he said, “the Skinks killed my only son, Samuel, and I killed Skinks.” His face colored and his eyes took on a brightness. “True justice is the Lord’s business, but until He prescribes, I’ll do what I can to help our fight against these alien monsters.”