Star Corps

by Ian Douglas

  “We’re taking heavy fire from the mountainside,” Warhurst said, uploading to the Derna CIC. “We need air support!” The Marines on the ground needed firepower, and they needed it now.

  “Major DuBoise,” Ramsey said. “Scrape that mountainside clean!”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Warhurst heard the orders being given over the air support net. All that remained was to wait for them to be carried out.

  Kikig Kur-Urudug

  Deeps of An-Kur

  Third Period of Dawn

  It was called the Abzu, a word constructed from aba, the sea, and zu, to know, and meaning, roughly, “the Sea of Knowing,” or possibly “the Sentient Sea.” Ancient Sumerian texts had spoken of the Abzu as a land beneath the sea, or as the “Lower World,” the place where the god Enki ruled. Perhaps, Tu-Kur-La thought, the Abzu had once been a physical place on far-off Kia, one of the scattered Anu colonies on that world before the coming of the Hunters of the Dawn. The old records read that way.

  Or perhaps it had always been this, an artificial construct representing the collective unconscious of all of the gods. The records, even the Memories passed down across the ages, often broke at key places, with information forever lost or rendered corrupt. Sometimes it was hard to tell what the old memory texts truly meant.

  Rarely, though, was an exact interpretation of the records necessary. The spirit of what was meant, of the information transmitted across the centuries—that was the heart and soul of the thing.

  Interpretation of the records was best left to others.

  Tu-Kur-La relaxed as the Sea engulfed him. Physically, he was within one of the lower chambers of the Kikig, the command center for the Mountain of the Gods. The Abzu-il, the Gateway to the Lower World, oozed slowly from the cavern walls around him, enveloping him, penetrating him, its artificial nervous system forging billions of connections with his physical brain on countless levels, drawing him swiftly under.

  To Tu-Kur-La’s senses, the Abzu seemed to be a physical place like any other, a kind of green-lit cavern with dim and far-off walls all but lost in soft fog. Reality coalesced itself from that fog. He saw images…other Ahannu…and heard voices, as the battle in the world above raged. Information was here for the asking, within a kind of library of the mind. And he could see whatever he willed himself to see….

  “Welcome, Tu-Kur-La,” a voice said within his mind. “We welcome your soul to the Circle of An-Kin.”

  “Thank you, Lord,” he replied, startled. The voice, the towering figure before him, was none other than Gal-Irim-Let—Kingal An-Kur, the Great Commander of the Mountain of the Gods. An-Kin was a council of the gods, a meeting to determine the future course of the gods’ will. Why would the Kingal itself want the advice of a mere second-level god-warrior?

  “We desire the advice of all those who faced the Zah-sagura two cycles ago,” the voice said, answering his question before he could voice it. “Your experience will help us decide how best to bring them down.”

  “To that end,” another voice said, “we bestow upon you the rank of uru-nam, that you may take your place with us.”

  This second speaker was Usum-Gal, a title that was both name and rank—the Great Dragon, the Lord of All. The Sag-ura of Kia referred to it as the High Emperor, a strange and meaningless term.

  “I…I thank the Great Lord,” he stammered. “I will strive to be worthy of the honor.” Uru-nam! It meant Guardian of Destiny; this made him a minor kingal in his own right.

  “You are one of the gods,” Usum-Gal replied, “a Guardian of Destiny by nature. It is no honor to do what is your nature, but simple personal responsibility. Now, Uru-nam Tu-Kur-La, tell us how we might destroy the invaders.”

  Within his inner vision, a scene unfolded, a view of the city the invaders called New Sumer, which the An had always called Shumur-Unu, the “Stubborn Fortress.” Strange how the invaders had such trouble with the proper pronunciation of language. Much of the city was burning, as hordes of Anu god-warriors and Sag-uras burst through and over the walls, storming toward the Pyramid of the Eye.

  A handful of offworlder warriors gathered at the base of the pyramid steps, holding off the onslaught for long moments as survivors of the attack loaded on board one of the alien flying machines at the pyramid’s apex. One by one the defenders fell, as heaps of burned and torn god-warrior bodies piled up in a semicircle about the plaza. At last, like a black sea, the Ahannu god-warriors surged forward, overwhelming the few surviving defenders.

  “Our victory two cycles ago,” Tu-Kur-La replied, “was one of superior numbers. There were not enough armed Blackheads to withstand our full might.”

  “These Sag-ura sky-warriors,” Gal-Irim-Let said, thoughtful. “What are they called?”

  Tu-Kur-La plucked the alien word from the Abzu’s knowledge stores. “Marines,” he said. “They call themselves Marines.”

  “These Marines possess a weapons technology that gives them a considerable advantage in combat. Their body armor…their weapons-of-power…”

  “All true, Great Lord,” he said. “And there are many more of them this time than last. Victory will not be easy.”

  “We will suffer terrible losses,” Gal-Irim-Let observed. “We have lost twelves of sixties already, simply defending An-Kur.”

  “But consider,” Tu-Kur-La said. “Our god-warriors number sixty sixties of sixties or more. Only a handful of these Blackhead Marines have landed so far. There may be more on the vessels now approaching Enduru, but…how many? A sixty of sixties?”

  “Half of that,” Gal-Irim-Let replied. “According to what the prisoner-slaves told us, a thirty of sixties. No more.”

  “Exactly. However many god-warriors we lose, we can afford to grow more, as many as are needed. The Marines are a long way from Kia and reinforcements. If our information from the Sag-ura we took two cycles ago is accurate, it will be a cycle and a half before news of their need can reach Kia, another two cycles before more ships could cross the gulf between Kia and Enduru.”

  “Unless they recapture the Pyramid of the Eye,” Gal-Irim-Let said. “They could call for help immediately then, as they did before.”

  “Perhaps. But their ships sail more slowly than the pictures in the Pyramid. They still require a two-cycle trip.

  “And long before then, the last of these Marines will be dead.”

  ARLT Section Dragon Three

  Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar

  1644 hours ST

  A bullet spanged into Garroway’s chest armor, staggering him back a step, but he leaned forward and kept moving. From what he’d heard and downloaded so far about the Ahannu, they were supposed to be armed with spears, damn it, not guns. Someone’s intel about this rock was seriously out of date.

  At least most of the incoming rounds were small stuff, gauss-gun projectiles accelerated by powerful magnetic fields. The monster high-velocity, high-mass rounds like the one that had taken Tom Pressley apart were pretty rare, thank the Goddess, and most of those were being aimed at the LMs and at the circling air support.

  The Dragonfly TAL-S transports, relieved of the burden of their lander modules, were lighter now by fifteen tons each and far more nimble, darting about above the LZ much like their terrestrial namesakes above an insect-infested swamp. Swooping in close to the black mountainside, chin turrets pivoting sharply, they sent fusillades of pulsed laser bursts into each crevice, outcrop, and ledge that might hold enemy gunners. Weapons pods slung under their down-canted wings loosed clouds of high-velocity needles, microrockets, and target seekers. Rock shattered as explosions detonated across the cliff face, sending showers of rock cascading down to the ledge below. The Marine pilots of those Dragons were throwing everything they had on the line to give the ground-pounders below a chance to clear the kill zone.

  As he watched, one of the Dragons shuddered from a hit, its left wing and arched tail boom crumpling as black smoke began boiling from the dorsal drive unit. The aircraft banked sharply, then be
gan tumbling, smashing into the side of the mountain. The other Dragons stooped from the glowering sky, electronically noting the location of the gauss launcher that had felled their comrade and searing it with pulsing laser flame.

  The fire from the mountainside half a kilometer ahead was slackening now, he thought. Either the air support was doing its job or the defenders were pulling out. “Heads up, Marines,” Valdez’s voice said over the tactical link. “The Ahannu gunners are pulling back. That could be good…or it could mean—”

  “Hit the deck, Marines!” Colonel Ramsey’s voice shouted in the noumenal, overriding Valdez’s words. “We’ve got a mag reading off the scale. They’re going to—”

  Garroway fell full-length on the ground. He could feel the rocky surface of the ledge trembling through his torso armor as inconceivable energies deep within the mountain built higher and higher. His audio pickups relayed a shuddering rumble, like far-off thunder.

  Then a dazzling blue-white light illuminated the rocks, the murky twilight replaced by blazing high noon. As the light faded he looked up, just in time to see a wall of white mist rushing down the slope from the mountain’s peak.

  “Shock wave!” Valdez shouted. “Stay down and hang on!”

  And then the wave front hit him like an oncoming hurricane. Once when he was a kid, a tropical storm had hit Baja and the Sonoran coast, lashing inland with 160-kilometer winds. This was like that, only worse, much worse, as the howling wind suddenly seemed to turn solid, smashing at the Marines scattered across the storm-seared landscape. The external temperature, he saw on his helmet display readouts, was nearly one hundred degrees Celsius, and the atmospheric pressure had momentarily surged to well over fifteen atmospheres.

  Garroway felt himself being lifted, felt himself sliding back across the rock. Reaching out with both gauntleted hands, he grabbed hold of a crack in the rocky grounds and hung on. The wind slammed him down then, rattling him inside his armor.

  The pressure wave passed over in another second, leaving Garroway and the other Marines gasping but more or less unscathed. He picked up his laser rifle, checking the settings. “What the hell was that?” someone yelled over the tactical link.

  “The bastards downed another Dragon,” someone else shouted back.

  Garroway looked up into the turbulent overcast. The blast had wiped the circling Dragons from the sky. Four were returning now, but one other had vanished.

  “Move in, Marines!” Valdez ordered. “Hit that gateway, bearing two-one-five!”

  Garroway turned his helmet, watching the bearing indicator numbers sweep around to the indicated direction. There was something there….

  He thought-clicked his helmet magnification to ten times and could make out the gateway Valdez was talking about. It looked as though a portion of the rock wall above the ledge LZ had been cut away with a high-energy beam of some sort, leaving a deep crevice. Rock had flowed like water there before cooling and hardening once more, leaving smoothly shaped basaltic flowstone. Within that smooth-walled break in the cliff, a high, narrow, rectangular opening plunged into blackness. His helmet radar confirmed that it was indeed a gateway of some sort, open for at least twenty meters back into the mountain. Elsewhere on the cliff face, to either side of the gate, red light gleamed from slit windows cut into rock—gun ports, he guessed, from which the defenders were sweeping the LZ with deadly fire.

  Basic tactical doctrine downloaded into Garroway’s implant during boot camp was clear. When you’re in the open and in danger of getting your ass shot off, move! NNTs sang in his blood, his brain, his thoughts. He thought-clicked his fear down another notch and started running, pounding across the scorched and broken rock surface of the ledge toward the gate.

  The other Marines in the ARLT were sweeping forward as well, armored figures to his left and right. His helmet warned of movement ahead….

  He was only a few meters away from the gateway in the rock when figures began boiling out of the tunnel and from openings in the ground to either side. It took him a chilling moment to realize that the shapes were not human.

  Humanoid, certainly…but shorter than men, most of them, with oddly articulated arms and legs and an odd, forward-leaning manner of holding themselves as they leaped into battle. They didn’t run so much as bound, with powerful leaps driven by strongly muscled legs. What he noticed about them most, though, was their eyes, large and gold, with horizontally and jaggedly slit pupils. They wore an oddly mismatched collection of armor, those that wore anything at all, primitive armor almost laughably clumsy and piecemeal compared with the Marines’ Mark VIIs. And though a few carried odd-looking guns, most were armed with spears, razor-tipped lances, swords, and even war clubs. It was like stepping from a twenty-third-century battlefield into something out of the Middle Ages…worse, like a fantasy in some virtual role-playing sim.

  Primitive they might be, but there were a hell of a lot of them, too many to count.

  And they were rushing to meet the Marine charge head-on.

  17

  25 JUNE 2148

  ARLT Command Section, Dragon

  One

  Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar

  1645 hours ST

  Another Dragon gone, snapped out of the air by a burst of plasma from that damned mountaintop. Four aircraft left out of the original eight.

  Warhurst thought he saw the pattern, though. The mountain fortress could fire at targets in any direction and within about 140 degrees of straight up. That meant that targets within a few kilometers of the mountain’s base, including the entire LZ, were safe from direct fire. Dragonfly Two, however, had circled far enough away from the side of the mountain to bring it into the defense complex’s kill zone. Secondary fringe effects of the weapon’s shots—blast, heat, overpressure, radiation—were all threats to units inside minimum range, especially aircraft, but not so deadly that they could not be countered. Armored troops in the open need only hunker down to be more or less safe; the blast effects were rough on airborne units, but the Marine flyers were good at what they did, and the TAS-L Dragonfly was arguably the most rugged aircraft in the sky.

  He was already uploading what he’d learned, seen, and guessed to Major DuBoise, and she was passing it back down in distilled form to her surviving pilots. They would have to carefully balance their flight paths, close enough and low enough to avoid becoming targets for the Ahannu gun, yet high enough and far enough out to avoid being smashed by the shock wave from the next shot.

  On the ground, the Marines had moved in close to what appeared to be the entrance into the mountain and encountered a wave of Ahannu troops.

  This, he decided, was where the Marines would earn their pay.

  ARLT Section Dragon Three

  Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar

  1645 hours ST

  John Garroway raised his LR-2120, squeezing off a burst of rapid-fire pulses when his helmet display flashed red on an acquired target. An Ahannu ten meters in front of him shrieked and staggered back into the crowded front ranks of its companions, the elaborately molded plastron of its bronze body armor exploding in glittering motes of white-hot liquid metal. The Ahannu mass continued surging forward, enveloping the dead warrior and trampling it underfoot. Garroway dropped to one knee, steadying his weapon, then fired again…and again. Other Marines were firing as well, slashing into the enemy mob, and still they kept coming.

  There were just too damned many of them….

  “Grenades!” Lieutenant Kerns yelled over the tac link. “Use your M-12s!”

  A dangerous option at such close range, but the only one going against such a numerous and densely packed enemy. Garroway thought-clicked his weapon link, engaging the 20mm underbarrel grenade launcher, then setting it to slow full-auto. He braced the rifle’s stock against his hip and pressed the firing button, swinging the weapon slowly from left to right.

  The M-12 fired with a heavy thud-thud-thud, loosing three rounds per second, each shot slamming the rifle’s butt against hi
s armor. Each spin-stabilized round detonated on contact with rock, armor, or flesh with a cheerful lack of discrimination, filling the air with dust, smoke, and a thin scarlet mist of Ahannu blood and body parts.

  The Ahannu warriors kept charging, dying by the tens, then by the hundreds, with every few paces. A number of them carried poles holding vertically hung banners, something like the sashimono of feudal Japan. They seemed to designate units; banner colors ranged from red and scarlet to orange, brown, and yellow, and each bore a different alien symbol at its center, geometric designs laid out in sharp, black brush strokes. Most, Garroway saw, carried blade weapons of various types. The ones with rifles were the most obvious first targets, and few of them got more than a few meters toward the Marine ranks before being ripped apart by explosive 20mm rounds.

  Still, it was a near thing, that desperate firefight in the shadow of the alien mountain. The Marines were putting down a deadly fusillade of high-explosive death, blasting the close-packed ranks of charging Ahannu warriors, but the enemy horde was spilling out of countless hidden doorways and crevices in the mountainside and closing in from all sides. The Marines closest to the mountain gateway had to begin letting their flanks fall back, pulling into a circle, creating a perimeter to keep the charging mob at bay.

  And Marines were being hit now by incoming small arms fire. Each time an Ahannu warrior dropped a rifle when it died, one of its companions would scoop up the weapon and keep coming, firing as it leaped across the high-piled stacks of its slain fellows. The smaller Ahannu weapons couldn’t penetrate a Mark VII battlesuit, but they had a kind of a gauss railgun, its two-meter length unwieldy for the short Ahannu warriors, and it packed enough power at close range to punch through Marine laminate armor like a high-powered laser. The sound was a hideous cacophony of cracking explosions mingled with the eerie shrieks, wails, and screams of the Ahannu and the deeper, ragged yells of the Marines.

  Garroway’s entire universe was narrowed down to a tiny slice of ground a few meters across, a space filled with dust and smoke and bodies and the staccato flash and bang of 20mm grenade charges detonating in strings. Lance Corporal Patricia Brandt was on Garroway’s left, and Hollingwood was on his right, both Marines leaning into their weapons as they hosed the oncoming charge with grenades. At this range there was no point in locking targets for guided RPG smartrounds; they simply pointed and fired, and the grenades smashed through Ahannu armor, skin, and bone at eight hundred meters per second, often before the grenade ramjet engines could even ignite.