“He’s dead,” I answered. “There’s some sort of toxic gas in the snake shafts.”
“I saw shit like this during the Galactic Central War,” Shannon said. “You find it on scorched planets.”
“I hate this place,” I said.
“Then I’ve got some bad news for you,” Shannon said. “Our Harriers destroyed their ships.”
“That’s good,” I said, feeling brighter. “I forgot about the air battle.”
“The speckers ran into caves at the far end of the valley,” Shannon continued, ignoring my comment.
“We’re going after them, Harris. We’re going underground.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The pleated cliffs surrounding the far edge of the valley had nearly vertical walls made of a black, obsidian-like rock that reflected light. From our gathering point a few hundred yards back, we did not have a good view of the dozens of caves in the craggy walls. They might have been formed by erosion, or bubbling heat, or carved by the same Mogat hands that dug the snake shafts. At the moment, our invasion looked more like a rescue operation. Teams of corpsmen brought breathing gear to men trapped in LG tanks, and evacuation teams pulled the crews to safety. From what McKay told Shannon, our engineers had not yet figured out how to pull the surviving tanks off the battlefield. At a hundred tons each, the tanks weighed too much for personnel carriers to lift, and the ground was too broken to land barges. Vince Lee made a joke about building dozens of bridges and rolling the tanks to safety, but that seemed like the most plausible answer.
While engineers and evacuation crews cleaned up after the first stage of our invasion, wings of ATs flew in another regiment to replace the dead and wounded. Captain McKay had his two platoons regroup along one side of the Mogats’ launchpad. We had lost twenty-one men—just less than half of our men, and our platoon had one of the lower casualty rates because we were at the front of the attack. We had almost been across the field by the time the shafts caved in.
We were not the only ones who had suffered. The broken hulls of so many Mogat cargo ships littered the near side of the canyon that I did not bother counting them. Our fighters and gunships had left a smoldering graveyard in their wake. The wrecked ships, strewn like broken eggshells across the ground, glowed with small fires that burned inside their hulls. The flickering flames were only visible through port-holes and cracked hatches.
The Mogats had cargo ships of various sizes in their fleet. Clearly the enemy wanted to escape, not fight. I saw no sign of the dreadnoughts that had destroyed the Chayio , just lightly armed cargo ships and transports.
“I am sending coordinates over your visor,” Captain McKay said, over an open frequency on the interLink. “We’ve been ordered to secure a cave.”
McKay’s mobile command center had survived the trap. His pilot had managed to swerve around three shafts and drive the vehicle to safety. With the airspace over the battlefield secured, the officers overseeing the invasion now commanded us from one of Klyber’s diplomatic cruisers.
“Maybe they could command us from a penthouse in Washington, DC,” Lee joked. “There aren’t many snake shafts around Capitol Hill.”
“Watch your mouth,” Shannon said, his voice snapping like a whip. “Now roll out.” Shannon, always duty-bound, did not let his men criticize officers.
The shortest way to our sector was straight across the launch area. We followed a path through the destroyed ships with our particle-beam rifles raised and ready, prepared to fire at anything that moved. We needn’t have bothered. It quickly became apparent that our pilots had more than evened the score. I passed a large freighter with an oblong, rectangular front and sickle-shaped fins. Two-foot-wide rings dotted its sides, marking the spots where particle beams had blasted the hull. When I got closer, I noticed that the armor plating under the blast rings had blistered. Most of the ships had not even lifted off the ground when the attack started; and their shields were down.
As I walked by this particular wreck, I saw the fatal wound. The engines at the back of the ship, now little more than blackened casings and fried wires, had exploded. The thick and unbreathable Hubble air stifled the fire outside the freighter, but the inside sparkled with dozens of tiny flames. I peered through the open hatch and saw fire dancing on the walls.
I also saw people. If the ship was full at launch, at least three hundred people died inside it. In the brief glimpse that I got, I saw men slumped in their seats like soldiers sleeping on a long transport flight. One dead man’s arms hung flaccid over the armrests.
“Are they all dead?” I asked Lee.
He did not answer at first. Just as I prepared to ask again, he said, “I hope so, for their sake.”
We pushed on, weaving through the wreckage. I passed by a small transport—a ship capable of carrying no more than seven people. It had apparently lifted a few meters off the ground when a missile tore its tail section off. The ship crashed and settled top side down, bashing a hole in its nose section. I looked in the cockpit and saw the pilot hanging from his chair, his restraint belt still binding him into place. The man’s mouth gaped, and blood trickled over his upper lip and into his nostrils. More blood leaked from the tops of his eyes, running across his forehead in little rivulets that disappeared into his thick, dark hair. The pilot’s arms dangled past his head; the ends of his curled fingers rested on the ceiling.
I could not tell if Hubble’s gases had killed him or if he had broken his neck in the crash. I had no problem identifying what killed the copilot hanging from the next seat. A jagged shard of outer plating hung from his neck. From what I could see, that bloodstained wedge had sliced through the man’s throat and become jammed in his spine.
A hand touched my shoulder and I jumped. When I looked over, I saw Shannon’s identifier.
“Don’t get distracted,” Shannon said.
“Remind me never to piss off the U.A. Navy,” I said.
“That’s not the worst of it.” Lee approached us and nodded toward the body. “His pilot’s license was revoked.”
“You’re a sick man, Lee,” I said.
We turned and continued through the wreckage. After a while, one ship looked pretty much like the next, and I no longer bothered to peer inside. The passengers were dead; that was enough. As we reached the edge of the landing area, I noticed piles of melted netting and wires—the ruins of a camouflaged hangar. These people were so desperate to live that they had colonized an uninhabitable planet. No sane person would have ever searched for life on a rock like Hubble, but our intelligence network found them just the same. Perhaps a recon ship just happened to spot them or maybe a loose-lipped friend let the information slip over a drink. In any case, they were trapped. We stopped a hundred yards from the cliffs. I had to ping the wall to locate the caves—night-for-day lenses are not good tools for spotting dark caverns set in jet-black cliffs. The ground was black, the cliffs were black, the sky was black, and the dust and oil on my visor were not helping. My sonic locator outlined the opening with a translucent green orifice, but I still could not tell what machinery might be hiding inside.
“Are we going in?” I asked Sergeant Shannon when I spotted him and his men. He did not dignify the question with an answer. He stared ahead at the cave, his hands tight around the stock of his gun.
“They fight harder when they’re backs are up against a wall like this,” Shannon said. “They’ll be more angry than scared.”
I thought about what he said. “They’re bound to have a few more tricks.”
“No,” Shannon said, sounding resigned to the situation. “They’re at the bottom of their deck. They could never have expected us to find them here. We’ve finally closed every back door unless their friends have enough ships to overwhelm an entire fleet.”
I followed Shannon’s gaze back to the cliffs and the barely visible mouth of the cave. “We could wait them out. They’re going to run out of food and air . . .”
“We’ll take the battle to them, Harri
s. You want to know why we have all-clone enlistment? It’s so that we can throw an infinite supply of men into any fire and not worry about the public outcry.”
“Clones are equipment,” I echoed.
“Standard-issue, just like guns, boots, and batteries,” Shannon said. Through most of our conversation, Shannon stared at the cliff; then he paused and turned toward me. “We’re still on point, and McKay’s going to give the order soon.”
I nodded and turned. “Lee,” I called over the interLink. “Shannon says it’s almost time to roll.”
Lee came to me and held out his hand. He held a swatch of black cloth. “Wipe your visor, friend,” he said.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked.
“I swiped it from that ship,” he said, pointing toward a small cruiser that had broken wide open. “It’s from the upholstery.”
“Clever,” I said. “Thanks for sharing.”
“No problem,” Lee said. “You’ll do a better job of watching my back if you can see where you’re going.”
“Ha,” I said.
By that time, the reinforcements were positioned all along the valley walls. We had enough men to cover every cave. No matter where they tried to evacuate, the Mogats would run into Marines.
“Okay, Lee . . . Harris,” Shannon called out, “I just got the word. McKay wants us to secure the entrance.”
That was just a courtesy call. The next message, sent over the platoon frequency, was the actual order.
“Okay, gentlemen, secure this area and stay within the goddamned lines!” Shannon barked. Along with missiles, fighters, and tanks, the Unified Authority Marine Corps utilized more subtle technologies. Command divided the battlefield and sent platoon the coordinates of their attack in the form of a visual beacon—a signal that drew virtual walls around our zone in our visors. Looking straight ahead, I saw the black face of the cliffs. If I turned to the right or the left, however, translucent red walls appeared.
Lee and his team took the left edge of the target zone. Shannon sent my fire team to the right edge. He and the rest of the men ran up the middle. Shannon led the charge, leaving small clouds of dust in his wake as he moved forward in a low crouch. There was no cover for hiding, just flat, featureless soil. With the next man crouched ten paces behind me, I sprinted along the right boundary of the target zone. Keeping my finger along the edge of the trigger guard, I pointed the barrel of my particle-beam gun at the cave.
The mouth of the cave—a broad, yawning keyhole in the side of the cliff—was twenty feet high and maybe ten feet wide. If the inside of the cave was as narrow as the mouth, we would be vulnerable as we funneled through it.
Somebody fired at me. Had he used a particle beam or laser, he might have hit me. Instead, he used a regular gun—a weapon that was somewhat unpredictable in the oil-humid air. Instinctively reacting to the first shot, which clipped the dirt near my feet, I jumped to my right and rolled. The world turned red around me. I had left the target zone and entered the no-man’s-land outside the beacon’s virtual walls. I heard more bullets strike the ground in front of me; but with the red light from the beacon filling my visor, I could not see where they hit.
I climbed to my knees and lunged back to the target zone, jumping forward, slamming my chest and face into the soft ground. My helmet sank deep into the ash, which caked onto glass. As I rolled to my left, staying as flat to the ground as I could, a coin-thick layer of ash clogged my sight. Moving slowly to avoid attracting attention, I reached up and tapped my visor with one finger, causing most of the ash to slide off. Then I pulled the swatch of cloth from my belt and wiped away the grime and ash. Using heat vision, I peered into the cave and saw six gunmen hiding in the shadows with three more on the way. As I rolled on my back again, I saw red streaks flash through the air above my head. I wanted to fire into the cave, but I did not dare. If I’d turned to shoot, I would have made an easy target—the enemy had pinned me down. They had pinned all of us down as they hid behind the entrance of the cave.
Of the forty-two men in our platoon, only twenty-one had survived to make the assault, and I suspected the casualties were mounting. Suddenly there it was, that sweet clarity. My body was awash with endorphins and adrenaline. My fear did not disappear, but it no longer mattered. I could see everything clearly and knew that I could handle any situation. The hormone left me feeling in control. I rolled to my left to get a shot, but a laser bolt struck the ground near me. Apparently the Mogats intended to make us earn every inch of ground we took.
Two bullets flew so low over my shoulder that they clipped my armor. One of the other men was not as lucky. As a seemingly endless wave of laser fire flew overhead, the interLink echoed with his scream. Shannon shouted for him to stay down, but the wounded man did not listen. I turned in time to get a glance of him, though not in time to read his identity. The laser must have grazed the front of his visor, superheating the glass, which melted and splashed on his face. He managed to climb to his knees before a combination of bullets and laser bolts tore into his face and chest blowing him apart. Seeing what was left of the soldier collapse back to the ground, I felt that strange, soothing tingle. Some hidden corner of my brain automatically took over, shutting out the panic. “I think I can get a grenade in there,” I called over to Shannon.
“No grenades!” Shannon shouted.
“I can get it in the hole,” I said.
“I said no, goddamn it!” Shannon said. “You hear me, Marine?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I did not answer as I released the grenade I was pulling from my belt. At that moment, lying in the soil with bolts and bullets streaking over my head, I wondered if Sergeant Shannon might not be the real enemy. Rolling over on to my stomach, I held my gun in front of my face and squeezed off three shots. The men in the cave responded with a hailstorm of laser fire.
If anybody had asked me to guess who would break up the stalemate, I would have said “Shannon.” But he was in a worse predicament than I. He was pinned down under heavy gunfire directly in front of the cave.
It took Vince Lee to turn the battle around. Suddenly pushing off the ground in a cloud of dust, he sprinted toward the mouth of the cave and leaped forward, squeezing rapid shots from his particle-beam rifle. Firing blindly, he managed to hit three of the Mogats guarding the cave. Using my heat-vision lenses, I watched them fall.
Lee landed face-first and slid into a cloud of dust just in time to dodge the return fire. I do not know if Lee and Shannon coordinated their attack on a private frequency; but as the Mogats concentrated their fire on Lee, Shannon rose on one knee, aimed, and fired.
Undoubtedly using heat vision for a clearer view, Shannon did not fire blindly. Each shot hit its mark, and the last of the Mogats fell dead. I expected more shooters to come, but the mouth of the cave remained empty.
“Cover me,” Lee called, over the interLink. Keeping his rifle trained on the cave, Lee stooped into a crouch and cautiously walked toward the foot of the cliffs. He pressed his back against the obsidian wall, then inched his way toward the cave. He came within arm’s reach of the opening and paused. “See anything?” he asked Shannon over an open channel.
“All clear,” Shannon replied.
“Great work, Lee,” Shannon said. “Okay, everybody, stay put. Captain McKay is sending a technician to check for traps.” Shannon and I joined Lee just outside the mouth of the cave, but we did not enter it. Shannon took a single step into the fissure. He patted a clump of obsidian with one hand. Glancing back at us to make certain that no one was too close, he fired into the wall.
“Sergeant?” I said, rushing over to see what happened.
“It’s nothing, Harris,” Shannon said. “I’m just testing a theory.”
An AT hovered toward us, hanging low over the valley and landing in our zone. The kettle opened, and a Navy lieutenant came down the ramp wheeling a bell-shaped case behind him. The engineer wore a breathing suit. It was not stiff like our combat armor, but it pr
otected him from the environment. Shannon met the lieutenant at the bottom of the ramp. I followed.
“What’s that?” I asked Shannon.
“That, Corporal Harris, is our eyes,” Shannon answered. “Right now we have the enemy trapped in these caves. We’re going to send in a recon drone to make sure our positions do not get reversed.”
“A recon drone,” I repeated. “That makes sense.”
The case looked like it had been made to hold a tuba. It was three feet tall and wide on the bottom. The metal wheels under the case clattered as they rolled down the ramp.
“Are you the one that requested a drone?” the lieutenant asked. “What’s the situation?”
“There are hostiles in those caves, sir,” Shannon began.
“I know that, Sergeant,” the lieutenant interrupted. This was no fighting man. He was a technician, the lowest form of engineer—but he was also an officer, and he had all of the attitude that came with wearing a silver bar on his shoulder.
“The enemy had several men guarding this entrance, sir,” Shannon said. “My men were able to neutralize the threat. We want to send your drone to look for traps and locate enemy positions before going in, sir.”
“Playing it safe, Sergeant?” the lieutenant quipped in a voice that oozed sarcasm.
“Yes, sir,” Shannon responded.
“I didn’t know you Leathernecks were so squeamish,” the man mused. “I suppose I can help.” He opened his case.
“What an asshole,” I said over the interLink.
“Steady, Harris,” Shannon answered in a whisper. “He’s not just an asshole, he is an officer asshole . . . a second lieutenant. They’re the buck privates of the commissioned class; and they always have chips on their shoulders. Besides, we need this particular asshole.”
“Heeere’s Scooter,” the tech said to himself as he opened the bottom of the case. Scooter, a chrome disc on four wheels that looked like a slightly oversized ashtray, scurried out of the case. This demented officer treated the robot like a pet, not equipment. He’d painted the name “Scooter” across its front in bright red letters, and he stroked its lid gently before standing up.
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