Star Corps

by Ian Douglas

  Worse, from Warhurst’s point of view, only the Marines actually wearing the deadly packs knew what they carried. The rest of the Marines down there didn’t know, and that was just plain wrong, Warhurst thought. A man or woman who was going to die when a friend thought-clicked a command trigger ought to know what was going to happen…and that instantaneous incineration meant success for the rest of the invasion.

  But knowledge of the Mark XVIIs had been locked under need-to-know restrictions. Someone higher up the chain of command had decided that knowing about that part of the operation might degrade unit combat efficiency.

  That still didn’t make it right.

  Four warheads were inside the underground complex now, totaling 2.8 megatons. If he was ordered to fire those warheads in the next few minutes…could he? No problem if everyone inside was dead when he punched it, but combat rarely worked out that neatly. There would be survivors in there, not to mention the Marines still outside the mountain who might be caught in the blast. None of them would know….

  And as the battle inside the mountain increased in fury, Warhurst knew the moment of decision was almost on him.

  Damn the waiting…and damn the fact that he was stuck out here, instead of inside that mountain with his people.

  18

  25 JUNE 2148

  ARLT Section Dragon Three

  Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar

  1727 hours ST

  Second Squad had been ahead of the others when the Ahannu warriors began boiling out of hidden entrances on all sides of the underground chamber. As a black sea of leaping, thronging figures swirled around them, they were in serious danger of being cut off from the ARLT main body.

  Garroway dropped to one knee between Well Dunne and Gunny Valdez, pumping 20mm grenades into the horde of attackers, using single shots to conserve his dwindling ammo. Many of these new Ahannu, he noticed, were different from the ones outside—taller, more muscular, and much darker in color, the green-black of their skin making their large, golden eyes even more prominent in the dim light.

  These attackers, in fact, were quite different from those he’d studied in downloads on board the Derna. A different species? There wasn’t any data on the topic one way or another. Their body armor looked heavier, more ornate…and seemed to provide better protection from shrapnel and laser bursts.

  But they could still be killed. Explosions chopped and tore through the packed ranks of the attackers. The onslaught wavered as the Ahannu in the lead ranks hesitated, unwilling to press in closer to the deadly ring of fire laid down by the hard-pressed Marines.

  Then Garroway’s M-12 chimed a tone indicating it was out of rounds.

  He reached for his belt pack and pulled out his last forty-round magazine. “I’m almost out of grenades,” he told the others. “One mag left!”

  “Same here,” Vinita added.

  “I’m out,” Chuck Cawley said. “Nothing left but light!”

  The attacking wall surged closer. And beyond the massed ranks, Garroway saw a larger shadow, a hulking, humanoid form rising above the smaller Ahannu like a giant, with massive forearms, stooped shoulders, and gold eyes tiny compared to the broad swath of face, almost hidden deep within bony sockets. It carried a long and clumsy-looking weapon, another gauss gun of some kind, but so long that no smaller Ahannu could have wielded it.

  “My God!” Garvey screamed. “What the hell is that?”

  “Just kill it!” Foster barked. “Pour it on!”

  Laser fire snapped and flashed across the monster’s heavily armored form, eliciting a scream like doomsday. It raised its weapon; Garroway felt the high-velocity round shriek low overhead, felt the concussion behind him.

  “Second Squad!” Honey Deere yelled. “Hit the deck!”

  Garroway threw himself forward, landing facedown on the rock floor. An instant later lightning snapped and glared overhead with a stuttering burst of thunder. Outside, he’d not noticed the squad’s plasma gun in action in all the swirling noise and confusion. Inside this enclosed chamber, however, the rapid-fire bolts of charged plasma banished darkness in a dazzling explosion of light and sound.

  Garroway felt the noise fade out as his helmet compensated, and his visual feed darkened as the input filters snapped in. Deere’s plasma gun loosed bolts in such rapid succession that the effect was of a single flickering bolt of lightning.

  And whatever that lightning touched vanished, exploding in clouds of vapor and sprays of blood and charred tissue. The giant Ahannu collapsed in a heap; smaller Ahannu were scrambling back, falling over one another in their rush to escape.

  Someone cut loose with a wild rebel yell. And then the Marines were alone once more in the chamber, surrounded as before by piles of burned, torn, and flame-mutilated bodies.

  Other Marines rushed up then, pushing past 2nd Squad. First Platoon was coming through the tunnel now, surrounding the battered remnants of Third Platoon.

  Two more casualties. That single round from the giant’s gauss gun had smashed through Chuck Cawley’s helmet, obliterating his head, before hitting Cheryl Foster in the torso and tearing her apart. With only seven Marines left out of the original twelve, 2nd Squad was seriously under strength.

  “Stand down, Third Platoon,” Lieutenant Kerns ordered. “We’re pulling back to the entrance.”

  Odd. Garroway felt a strange combination of relief and disappointment. He was happy to be pulled out of the battle line, yeah…but he also wanted to see this thing through.

  Mostly, though, he was just too damned tired to even think. He trudged back to the entrance with the others, emerging in what looked like bright daylight until his visual filters accommodated. The cavern battle must have taken place in almost total blackness, and he hadn’t even realized it.

  Outside, the overcast was beginning to break up, with patches of dark green sky showing through black and deep maroon-lit clouds. His helmet AI informed him that it was dawn at the LZ and would remain so for the next several hours. Ishtar’s lazy rotation made for long, long periods of night and day, with a lingering, drawn-out transition between the two.

  The rest of the ARLT was completing the job of securing the LZ, setting up a perimeter against possible attacks from off the mountain and laying out guide strips for incoming robot supply landers. A supply dump had already been set up on the north side of the ledge; someone had raised a UFR flag on a makeshift staff there, the red, white, and blue cracking hard in the wind.

  “Pick up fresh grenade mags and power packs,” Valdez ordered. “And check your battle armor for breaches, feed failures, and power drain.”

  As they replenished their ammo stores, a squad hustled past in single file, vanishing through the yawning gateway into the mountain.

  “What’s going on?” Kat Vinita asked.

  “Ah, don’t sweat it,” Womicki replied. “Nobody’ll tell us nothin’ anyway.”

  “I just had word come down from the captain,” Valdez announced to the squad. “Twenty minutes rest. Then it’s back to work!”

  “Semper fi, man,” Dunne said, laughing. “The Corps is always looking after us.”

  With a groan, Garroway slumped to the ground and was almost instantly asleep.

  Chamber of Warrior Preparation

  Deeps of An-Kur

  Third Period of Dawn

  “Our forces retreat,” Tu-Kur-La said. He felt a crushing disappointment, mingled with fear. The scenes they were watching, of a fierce battle within the flame-lit passages of An-Kur itself, were coming from the mind of a Commander-of-Sixties actually participating in the battle. Much of that commander’s emotion was transmitted through the organic connection that linked them.

  “We lose too many warriors,” Gal-Irim-Let said within the warm embrace of the Abzu. “And we are not holding them back. Still these Marines come.”

  “Their weapons…” the Great Lord said, sighing. “Against such weapons…”

  “We still have the mountain itself,” Dur-En-Mah pointed out. It
was a senior controller in Gal-Irim-Let’s staff, a high-ranking drone, one of the lords of An-Kur. “We have destroyed several of their flying weapons. And soon their ships will be within our reach.”

  “The Kur-Urudug is largely useless against the Marines that have already landed,” Tu-Kur-La pointed out. “And we have only warriors to throw at the Marines that have already entered the gate.”

  “Those worry me,” the Great Lord said. “They may have the means of destroying An-Kur.”

  “The Abzu has detected Divine Weapons among them,” Gal-Irim-Let said. “They are small but would do much damage.”

  “We must stop them!” Dur-En-Mah exclaimed. “They must not be allowed to—”

  “Peace, Dur-En-Mah,” the Great Lord said. “If they wished to destroy the mountain, they could have done so by now. I think they wish to learn An-Kur’s secrets.”

  “But we should withdraw to a safe place,” Tu-Kur-La suggested. “If we withdraw, they may be deceived into believing they have captured An-Kur.”

  “Sound strategy,” the Great Lord said. “Let it be done.”

  ARLT Command Section, Dragon

  One

  Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar

  1740 hours ST

  “New passageway,” the voice said in Warhurst’s mind. He could see the scene in his noumenon—a high, narrow corridor with smoothly sculpted walls, intense darkness relieved only slightly by wan red lights. The sensors in Lieutenant Frayne’s helmet relayed the scene in rapid, uneven sweeps. “No one—”

  The transmission was lost in a burst of static.

  “Say again, Seeker,” Warhurst said. “You’re breaking up.”

  “How’s this, Captain?”

  “Much better.”

  “The mountain’s blocking transmission, as we expected,” Staff Sergeant Krista Ostergaard’s voice added. “The relays work okay, but sometimes we have to face just the right way. The lieutenant was saying this looks like a new passageway but that no one’s at home.”

  “Left at the next intersection,” Warhurst told them. “If the layout is anything like at Tsiolkovsky, that’ll be the control center.”

  “Roger that,” Frayne said. “We’re at the intersection. Geez, are you gettin’ all this?”

  The passageway was opening up now, with the left-hand corridor debouching into a huge, open chamber. The squad, designated Seeker, spread out, examining everything, weapons at the ready. Various sensors reported elevations in temperature, in magnetic flux, in radiation. The air was wet, heavy with steam. Some sort of organic matter—something halfway between jelly and mold—grew on most of the surfaces.

  “Affirmative,” Warhurst called back. “What’s that wet goo covering everything?”

  “Not in the IBB, sir,” Frayne replied, referring to the data base of Ishtaran life cataloged and transmitted to Earth by the First Expedition. The Ishtaran BioBook was far from complete. “Looks like someone’s not been taking proper care of the place, though.”

  “This is definitely the control center, though,” Ostergaard told him. “I see touch controls here…and they match the Tsiolkovsky configurations.”

  Seventy years ago, during the UN War, U.S. Marines had captured a long-dead Ahannu base discovered in the central peak of Tsiolkovsky, on the far side of Earth’s moon. The layout had been similar—except that the lunar weapon had been designed to fire antimatter beams. The two facilities must have been erected at more or less the same time…some ten to twelve thousand years ago.

  “Roger that,” Warhurst said. “Plant the charge, Lieutenant. You know the drill. Set it for detonation on direct command, relay trigger, and tamper-trigger. Your team will stay in place until relieved.”

  “Aye, sir.” The microthermonuke in Ostergaard’s backpack was swiftly mounted beneath one of the smoothly sculpted consoles, and Frayne and Ostergaard began setting the detonation triggers.

  “Captain Warhurst,” another voice said, coming in through the tactical chat link. “This is General King.”

  “Yes, sir.” What was the general doing calling a captain?

  “I just heard you order the nuke set for tamper-trigger. What are your intentions?”

  “I was going to set the nuke in place, with a squad to watch it. If we need to blow Krakatoa, the squad can do it themselves, or we can fire it here or from orbit using the relay at the halfway point in the caverns. And it’ll blow if the enemy tries to mess with it, of course.”

  “I’m not comfortable with that, Captain. Too much can go wrong. Your men might panic and pull the plug too soon.”

  “What do you suggest, sir?”

  “Put the nuke in place, but no tamper charge. We don’t want the enemy taking the initiative from us with this thing. And pull your people out of that control room. I don’t want them panicking and setting the charge off prematurely.”

  “Sir, we need to set guards to protect the charge and the relay….”

  “The relay, yes. The relay will feed us sensor data on what’s going on around the warhead, and we’ll need to protect the relay to keep that feed open and to trigger the charge from here. But I want that responsibility. No one else should be able to fire the warhead unless I give specific orders to that effect. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Carry on.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Warhurst shook his head. Micromanagement reared its ugly head once again.

  Still, he could understand the general’s position. Setting off a nuclear warhead was not exactly on the same level as deciding whether or not to return enemy fire. It was an escalation of force that had to be ordered from the very top of the chain of command.

  But he was afraid that the constraints King was putting on the mission were going to jeopardize its execution. The more you tinkered with a plan, the more complex and convoluted it became, the greater the certainty that something was going to go the hell wrong.

  “Lieutenant Frayne? How’s it going?”

  “Just about set, Captain.”

  “New orders, Lieutenant. Set the charge for relay-detonation only, then get the hell out of there. Set a guard on the relay unit, but do not leave anyone in that chamber.”

  “With pleasure, sir. This place gives me the crawlies.”

  Frayne reset the trigger mechanism, using his armor AI. “Relay check,” he said.

  “I’ve got a signal,” Warhurst replied. The relay was transmitting a steady and unobstructed signal from the backpack nuke to Lander One. “You’re clear. Set the gunwalkers and pull out.”

  “On our way out, Captain.”

  “And about fucking time,” Ostergaard added. The squad began filing back out the way it had come.

  Maybe, Warhurst thought, just maybe this crazy operation would work out right after all. General King’s micromanagement had made him a bit nervous, but with the backpack nuke in place and the relay guarded, they could still pop the mountain’s cork anytime they needed to, and the incoming Derna and the supply ships would be safe.

  Now he needed to see to the security of the Marine ARLT.

  ARLT Section Dragon Three

  Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar

  2250 hours ST

  “Awright!” Valdez exclaimed. “The word’s just come through. Derna and the transports are in orbit! The next wave of LMs is already coming down.”

  “Outstanding!” Deere said. “About time those assholes quit lounging about in zero g and got their dead asses down here to give us a hand!”

  “Who needs a hand, Sarge?” Womicki asked, laughing. “We got this place secured without ’em!”

  “Krakatoa, maybe,” Valdez said, cocking an eye on the mountaintop looming above them. “But there’s still the little matter of New Sumer and the Legation compound. You feel up to tackling those on your own?”

  “Hell, no, Gunny,” Womicki said, jerking a thumb skyward. “Like Honey says, let those guys upstairs do something for a change!”

  What was left of 2nd
Squad was seated on the ground in a circle not far from their LM, peeling open their self-heating rations and eating. They’d removed helmets and gauntlets but were still encumbered by the heavy shells of their Mark VIIs.

  Some six hours had passed since the battle. After a brief rest, the platoon had been assigned to pickup detail, going over the whole LZ, moving Frog bodies and picking up weapons. A science team off the Derna, they’d been told, would examine the bodies. The alien weapons were sorted and deposited in piles for later study. And now there was nothing to do but sit, sleep, eat, and talk, while taking turns with the other platoons on perimeter guard.

  The sky was definitely lighter now, and the clouds that had shrouded the LZ earlier were breaking up, but it was still darker than an Earthly twilight to unaided eyes. In the east, a line of scarlet-gold light rimming the clouds masking the horizon marked the rise of Llalande 21185. In the west, swollen Marduk loomed vast and wan and ringed in a green and indigo darkness, its banded face pocked with oval storm patterns, each as big or bigger than the Earth. Overhead, a meteor blazed brightly, scratching a thread of light across a sky already aglow with the soft reds and greens of the Ishtaran auroras.

  The literally unearthly beauty of this place, Garroway thought, was hypnotic, supremely compelling. It was possible to lose yourself in that sky….

  “So what’s on the agenda, Gunny?” Gerrold Garvey asked. “Are we out of the war yet?”

  “You wish,” Valdez said, and the others laughed.

  “I don’t think the Frogs beat that easy,” Deere added.

  “You call that easy?” Garroway asked sharply, looking up. “We got kicked in the ass today!”

  “We won, kid,” Sergeant Dunne told him. “Right now, that’s what counts.”

  Garroway stared at his hands. They were trembling, the adrenaline-laced aftershocks of the NNTs he’d ridden.