Star Marine!

by John Bowers

  "Altair is going better than we expected," he said, displaying the overhead holomap and adjusting colored markers to illustrate. "The fighter bases on the moons are fully operational, and the fresh squadrons have been very successful against the enemy. They are concurrently engaging enemy fighters and supporting the ground troops. So far, there's been no overt attempt by the Confederates to reinforce Altair, thanks in no small part to the landings on Alpha 2.

  "Ground forces have captured most of their objectives so far, and friendly Muslim forces are fighting much better than we expected. Pending further developments, I feel confident we can put Altair to bed for at least a month. At some point we'll have to get another supply convoy out to them, but there's no immediate need."

  He switched holomaps, and Alpha 2 came up. His face hardened as he looked at it.

  "Alpha Centauri is another story," he said. "We knew from the beginning it was going to be the more critical battle, and we were right."

  He began rattling off reports of the most recent engagements, including casualty figures, objectives won and lost, and the prognosis for continued results.

  "We have almost completely occupied the Isthmus of Latia," he said, pointing to one of the more strategic areas near the planet's equator. "Combined forces of Infantry and Star Marines have expanded out from Lucaston; that region is entirely in our hands, but Camarrell —" He pointed. "— is proving to be difficult. The Cimarron Mountains form a natural barrier around the city, and the Sirians have dug in. They have a strong presence throughout those mountains, and they're throwing counter assaults against us. It's going to be a tough go."

  He turned to look around the room.

  "We've been getting more troop convoys in," he said. "The Fighter Service has been extremely successful against enemy interdiction, and we now have just under seven million men on the ground, which brings us almost to parity with the enemy. We also have the advantage of friendly civilians, who give our men aid whenever possible.

  "But there's a complication."

  Wade grimaced. He knew what that would be. The battle had been in progress for two weeks, and he was surprised it hadn't happened sooner.

  "The enemy is transferring fighter squadrons from Beta Centauri," Willard said. "They're doing just what we're doing — letting their fighters make the jump through hyperspace instead of sending in carriers. At this point, we're not sure if their fighters are coming all the way from Beta, or if they have carriers lying out of range and launching from there. But we do know these new squadrons are not based on Alpha 2, because our people have seen them arrive and depart."

  He sighed.

  "Our own squadrons have taken some serious losses, and we've been rotating them out when their combat efficiency drops below fifty percent. Palmer's idea of sending fresh squadrons out to the carriers has saved us, because we can bring the decimated units out the same way. We have plenty of reserves, but they won't last forever. Sooner or later, we may have to find those enemy carriers and engage them."

  He grimaced.

  "I'm not sure we're ready for that."

  Wade rested his face in his hands. God!

  "Nobody said it was going to be easy," Willard said. "When this war started, we knew it was going to be a fight to the death. Alpha 2 is going to be the first real test of our ground forces. If we can take it, and hold it … " He shrugged. "Well, then we'll know, won't we?"

  Wade looked at the map again. It was a big planet, and the blue shading showed the areas under Federation control. It represented less than ten percent of the landmass, and most of that had been captured the first day.

  This thing was going to take years.

  Camarrell, Alpha 2, Alpha Centauri System

  Rico Martinez cowered in his foxhole, cold, dirty, and tired, wishing he could sleep, completely unable to. After two weeks of ceaseless maneuvering, the 33rd was finally in action again. He was finally getting the experience he'd expected on Titan.

  The mountainside looked like a wasteland. Trees had once covered it, but they were mostly gone now, shattered or blown apart by explosives, lasers, and bullets. The terrain was composed of layered ridges, each a few hundred feet higher than the last, stair-stepping up to the final ridge, and beyond that was Camarrell, a fair-sized city valued for its skiing and scenic tourism. Only one major highway led in from the west, and the enemy had it blocked with armor and interlocking artillery fire.

  The 3rd Star Marine Division sat astraddle the lower ridges, men clinging precariously to their sides like fleas on a trembling dog. The night was split by flashes as Sirian missiles and artillery cracked across the slopes, the ground heaving with each salvo. White-hot, razor-sharp shrapnel sang through the night. It had been going on for hours, with no sign of relief any time soon.

  A few yards away, Lt. Bauer was screaming into a microwave handset.

  "Goddammit! I said twenty-two degrees, not twenty! Twenty-two degrees! The fuckers are killing us! If you can't hit the bastards, call in a space strike! We can't keep this shit up forever!"

  Bauer was hunched over in his shelter, one hand pressed to his ear as he listened to the microwave response. In the flash from an enemy missile Rico saw the grim expression on his face; teeth bared, sweat pouring down his chin.

  "That's right!" Bauer shouted. "Yes, sir! Can you do it?"

  Federation artillery had been having trouble hitting the Confederate batteries ever since the assault on these ridges began; apparently the enemy used shields similar to those used by spacecraft. Their batteries seemed invincible.

  Bauer acknowledged the other end and broke the connection. Enemy fire continued to rain from the sky; Rico ducked his head and tried to still his nerves. It had to end sooner or later. Next to him, Jeff White sat perfectly still, only the whites of his eyes betraying his terror.

  "Hey," he said, and Rico turned toward him. "You been through this before, ain't you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You've been in action."

  Rico turned away, feeling guilty.

  "Who told you that?"

  "I always knew, man."

  "You're full of shit."

  "No, I ain't. I seen you open your footlocker once, back on Luna. You got a Crimson Cross."

  Rico didn't answer. He wasn't aware anyone had seen his medal. The Crimson Cross was awarded to anyone wounded in battle. He'd received it after Titan.

  "No, I ain't never seen nothing like this before."

  "Then where'd you git the Cross?"

  "Found it in a yard sale."

  White laughed, an explosive release of tension.

  "Bullshit!"

  Even above the unending explosions, they heard the passage of Federation missiles overhead, and soon brilliant flashes in the east indicated they'd hit. More missiles passed over in a steady stream, and the enemy began taking it, too. But the artillery didn't decrease appreciably — either the Fed artillery wasn't hitting its targets, or it was doing no good.

  Twenty minutes crawled by. The mountain ridge seemed to convulse with pain. Men continued to die; twice White and Rico were half buried by nearby explosions. Suddenly, out of the west and high in the night sky, Rico heard a peculiarly familiar sound, as if the very air were being ripped by a lasersaw. He looked up, but could see nothing. The sound grew louder.

  "Ours!" he shouted, shaking White by the shoulder.

  The fighters were in a steep dive toward the east, invisible in the night, but clearly heard even above the din. Rico never saw them, but as they passed overhead their sonic reverberations crashed louder than the enemy fire. The ground trembled anew as massive explosions a few miles to the east turned some of the Sirian positions into a preview of hell, lighting the entire mountain for several seconds.

  The Sirian artillery all but stopped, just a few sporadic missiles still dropping.

  "Okay, Delta!" Capt. Connor's voice sounded in the headset of every man in the company. "Lock and load! Over the top, let's go!"

  Rico scrambled
to his feet, shook off the dirt, grabbed his weapon, and shrugged into his backpack. Around him, the rest of Delta did the same. The artillery had been frightening, but at least it had been a break in the action. Now they were on the offensive again. They started toward the top of the ridge in winding files, each platoon forming its own line. Second Squad was in the lead, with Ragsdale on point and Rico just behind the Fearless Fourless.

  Rico couldn't see shit. His IR contacts displayed heat sigs, but the ground was still largely invisible. The terrain kept rising, and he plodded along behind the man in front, feeling for each step to keep from stumbling. The air was oppressive, the ridgeline blocking the wind. Sweat trickled inside his fatigues, mixing with grit to form mud, itchy and uncomfortable. The smell of cordite and smoke from burning trees stung his eyes and made him sneeze.

  The file wound around a knob on the hillside and into a narrow draw, with sides sloping darkly upward against the night sky. Somewhere to the rear, missiles still exploded ineffectually as what remained of the Sirian batteries continued to fire. But the space strike must have taken out the bulk of them. The draw continued for several hundred yards, twisting and turning without warning. Its rocky floor required careful footing. Rico thought about rattlesnakes, then remembered there were none on Alpha 2.

  "Delta, this is Captain Connor. We're coming to a trench line in a few minutes. Keep your heads down. They'll be watching for us from their bunkers."

  Rico's heart quickened, and without thinking he pressed the switch that displayed his rifle's load meter. The magazine was full. Something opened fire to his left. He kept walking, panting lightly as the rattle of small arms increased. He could see the flash of lasers reflected over the side of the draw.

  Third Platoon was almost up to the line of bunkers when they blundered into a minefield. Everyone hit the ground simultaneously. Rico heard men scream up ahead as plasma flashed and the night turned to day. Oh, Jesus! Don't let me step on one of those things!

  Suddenly everything was pandemonium. The exploding mines had alerted the Sirians, and lasers reached out from the bunkers, chipping rock and sending fragments flying. Rico huddled behind a boulder, trembling with excess adrenaline. Jeff White crouched ten feet away, behind a smaller rock.

  "Let 'em have it!" Bauer screamed in his headset. "Hit the bunkers! Cover Third Platoon!"

  Gritting his teeth, Rico leaned around his boulder and took in the scene. The bunkers were about fifty yards away, poorly defined in the darkness, just black shapes from which pencil lines of lasers flashed. Third Platoon was fully exposed in the minefield, most of them flat on the ground, illuminated by the smoldering bodies of three men and the dancing beams of Sirian lasers. Rico spotted a laser beam and took aim at its source; he opened fire.

  He fired in short bursts of ten or fifteen rounds each, aware that his muzzle flash gave him away, but comforted by the fact that seventy others were doing the same thing, which reduced the odds that a Sirian would fire on him personally. He couldn't tell if his fire was having any effect, but the idea was less to kill individual Sirians than to discourage them from firing on Third Platoon.

  The firefight continued for twenty minutes. The men of Third Platoon gradually worked their way out of the minefield, feeling with their hands for the mines, some crawling forward, others back. Two more mines exploded, and Rico was instantly blinded by the flash of plasma, recording retinal images of men writhing in agony, something he would never forget. He blinked away the spots before his eyes, changed magazines, and continued to fire, sweeping the bunkers at the level where the firing ports seemed to be.

  Finally, Third Platoon was out of immediate danger, leaving at least a dozen men trapped between the minefield and the bunkers, unable to move either forward or back. Their only defense for the moment was the cover of darkness. Someone opened up with a laser-sighted missile launcher and put one through the firing port of a bunker. The inside flashed yellow as the missile exploded, and the bunker fell silent. The rest kept up a steady fire.

  The minefield was the problem. No one dared move forward, and the trapped Marines couldn't get back. Delta found itself in stalemate for over an hour, until a Fed Engineer platoon moved up from the rear. They were carrying sonic equipment for detecting mines. The Star Marines resumed their grazing fire while a squad of Engineers crawled carefully forward with the sonic mine-busters in hand. It took another hour to clear a path through thirty yards of mines, first detecting and then detonating them. Each detonation looked like a nuclear blast, brilliantly white and painful to the eyes. Two of the Engineers were hit by laser as they worked, but the rest completed the task and placed markers so the Marines could see the path through the mines.

  Connor came over the headsets then.

  "First Platoon, stand by. When I give the word, you go through the minefield. Get into the trench behind those bunkers, and take them out!"

  Christ! Why us?

  Rico swallowed rapidly and began to hyperventilate. All he had, besides his rifle, was a bandoleer of grenades. No heavy explosives, nothing heavy enough to take on a bunker. Jesus!

  Connor gave directions to the other platoons as well, and ten minutes later the volume of fire against the bunkers increased dramatically. Missiles from launch tubes crashed against them and the Engineer platoon joined in with heavy machine guns. For six minutes, the firefight raged furiously, the night streaked with return fire from Sirian lasers.

  "First Platoon! Go!"

  Rico forced himself out of cover, sprinting toward the lane through the minefield. He felt completely and totally alone, but thirty other men also converged on the lane, and seven reached it ahead of him. Keeping low, he dashed as fast as he could between the mines, and prayed the Engineer guys hadn't missed any. His heart almost stopped as lasers began to converge like flickering searchlights, and the man immediately in front of him went down. It was Healy, from his squad.

  "Keep goin', Beaner! Don't slow down!"

  The voice was right on his heels, and Rico recognized it as Maniac. He leaped over Healy and poured on speed. It was the longest thirty yards of his life.

  He reached the base of the embankment and dived for cover, landing between two others who'd been ahead of him. A few yards away were three of the trapped men from Third Platoon, and as more men traversed the narrow lane Rico heard them land heavily along the embankment. Missiles still burst against the bunkers, showering the area with fragments. He panted rapidly, wondering what the hell to do next.

  "Second Squad, follow me!"

  The voice in his headset was Ragsdale, and he saw the sergeant leap to his feet and claw his way up the embankment toward a gap between two bunkers. Rico decided Rags was crazy — the combined fire of Delta and the Infantry was still sweeping the sides of the bunkers. But Texas leaped up, followed by Tiny and Gearloose, and Rico instinctively followed them, certain he was about to die.

  When they were ten feet from the top, the fire from behind them died, and Ragsdale heaved a grenade that soared too far and missed the trench. They went over the top between the bunkers, five abreast, with Maniac, Quince, and White right behind them. Rico opened fire as he cleared the top of the embankment, sweeping his rifle right and left, and then he was inside the trench, surrounded by Sirians, and wondered suddenly what had happened to the others. The Sirians had been keeping their heads down, and were startled to find Star Marines in their midst. Rico's Spandau chattered in terror and he swept from side to side, spattering Sirians across the side of the trench. He heard more firing behind him, and recognized the familiar sound of the Spandau.

  He was fighting by instinct now, too terrified to think. Things seemed to happen without his knowledge or approval; he saw the gaping black hole of a doorway in the nearest bunker, and jerked a grenade off his bandoleer. Pulling the pin, he tossed it inside, then threw another before the first one exploded. The interior flashed red and yellow, he heard screams, but was already running toward the next bunker, twenty yards away. Shapes poured into t
he trench, just heat sigs in the darkness, and a laser beam cut through the black toward him.

  He pulled the trigger again, spraying the trench ahead, but had forgot to change magazines. The Spandau stopped suddenly, and another laser streaked by him, missing by an inch. He dived to the bottom of the trench, grunting loudly with the impact. He peeled another grenade from his bandoleer and threw it, then buried his face in the dirt and let his helmet shield him from the blast. The explosion left him completely deaf, only a shrill ringing in his ears. No fragments had touched him, and he managed to insert another magazine.

  No heat sigs were still standing, and Rico leaped to his feet again. Like the last bunker, the door to the next one was also open, and he pulled off more grenades. Someone filled the doorway and Rico fired; hot blood sprayed over him as the Sirian stumbled backward. Rico loosed the grenades and ducked for cover.

  After the blast, he was about to head for the next bunker down the line, but several men with lasers opened fire on him, narrowly missing. He dived through the doorway of the bunker he'd just grenaded, choking on the smoke that still rolled through the starcrete room. The floor was slippery with blood and flesh fragments, fifteen to twenty bodies sprawled in all directions. Three tripod lasers now sat unmanned at the firing ports along the far wall, another lay on its side.

  Rico trembled as he plastered himself against the open doorway, listening as Sirians from the next bunker ran to meet the Star Marines in the trench. When they were only seconds away, he began tossing grenades, driving them back.

  "Sergeant!" he gasped into his headset, "this is Martinez! I've got the third bunker to the left of where we hit the trench! I need some help down here!"

  Ragsdale didn't answer, but Texas did. Rico could barely understand him for the ringing that persisted in his ears.

  "I'm headed your way, Beaner! Don't shoot me!"