Star Corps

by Ian Douglas

  He became other minds. In particular, he felt a Keeper of Memories, a drone named Zah-Ahan-Nu, crouching in the shadows of the Chamber of the Eye, peering out through the opening and down into the walled-in rectangle of the offworlder compound. The bodies of several Ahannu and Sagura lay sprawled about on the stone floor, testimony to the deadly accuracy of the Blackhead warriors below.

  Slowly, Zah-Ahan-Nu raised its head, surveying the alien compound. It appeared to be filled to overflowing with Blackheads—wild slaves escaped from Ahannu care. These would be the remote descendants of the Blackheads left behind on Kia after the coming of the Hunters of the Dawn.

  Its horizontal, slit pupils widened until nearly the entirety of the golden eyes showed glassy black. Zah-Ahan-Nu had become the eye of the Zu-Din.

  Regimental HQ

  Building 5, Legation Compound

  New Sumer, Ishtar

  1920 hours ALT

  “Attention on deck!” Captain Warhurst called, standing. The several dozen Marines in the room came to attention as Colonel Ramsey, Major Anderson, and General King strode in.

  “As you were, as you were,” King said, waving a hand. “This is your HQ, Colonel?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s not much, but it’s home.”

  Until a few hours before, the former supply room had been an empty, junk-filled shell. Working parties had cleared out the debris and brought in chairs of various descriptions salvaged from other parts of the compound, which were set up around a makeshift boards-on-nanocrete-block map table. Someone had painted sheets of plyboard white and drawn rough topo maps on them using colored markers. Chips of painted wood with unit designations printed on them were scattered about the board, blue for Marine forces, red for known or suspected concentrations of the enemy.

  Most of the men and women in the room were still in their armor, with their gloves, helmets, and weapons stacked in military order along the wall next to the smashed-open door. The only civilian present was Gavin Norris, and he was wearing a green Derna jumpsuit with the Spirit of Humankind patch on the front.

  Captain Warhurst stepped to one side, making room for the newcomers. He could sense the tension in the air; Ramsey was making nice to the general, but the politics of the situation were obviously costing him in stress.

  “This is your answer to the noumenon?” King asked, looking down at the table. “How the hell can you see what’s going on?”

  “It’s not as bad as you might think, sir,” Ramsey replied with a thin smile. “It’s true, without remotes giving us data from all over the battlefield, without linked-in team leaders, this is the best we can manage. But Marines were playing war games on computers, on paper, and with sticks in the sand long before we had noumenal sims.”

  “Show me.”

  “We’ve reorganized the MIEU in order to spread out the effect of casualties from the initial assault. Five companies in two lightweight battalions—768 Marines altogether—plus our air wing, another twenty-three. The rest—about two hundred, including both physical and psych wounded—have been assigned to an ad hoc reserve company.”

  He began pointing out the different features on the map: the walls of the Legation compound, the city proper, the river, and, squarely to the east, a black square representing the Pyramid of the Eye.

  “Right now we have the walls secured and patrols inside the compound. This,” he said, tapping the representation of the pyramid to the east, “is our big problem.”

  “The so-called Pyramid of the Eye,” King said. “That thing has a Priority One for this mission, you understand.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Damn it, it should have been among the first objectives taken.”

  “That possibility was discussed, General. It was decided, you’ll recall, that it was more urgent that we take Objective Krakatoa before the main landing, and it seemed unwise to divide our forces among too many targets.”

  “I am not senile, Colonel. I remember the briefings, even if they were ten years ago.” The weak attempt at humor fell flat.

  “Yes, sir. In any case, we had no way of knowing how strongly held the pyramid was when we made the landings inside the Legation compound.”

  “Some of your men reported taking fire from it.”

  “Yes, sir. We think the Ahannu may have tunnels or secret passageways inside the structure. Our spotters have seen some movement up there during the past few hours and have taken a few shots. We believe they’re using it to watch us, rather than as a strongpoint. At least so far.

  “That could change, however, at any time. And, as you’ve pointed out, General, the pyramid is a high-priority target.”

  “It’s more than high priority, Colonel,” Gavin Norris said from the back of the room. “It’s our only hope for communicating with Earth. We need to reestablish FTL communications with the folks back home.”

  “That would be desirable, of course, Mr. Norris, but that’s not a good reason for risking additional casualties. The International Relief Force is six months behind us. There’s nothing Earth can do to speed them up…or even to warn them if something goes wrong here.”

  “The FTL link is vital to our work here, Colonel.”

  Who the hell had the bright idea of inviting a freaking civilian on this joyride? Warhurst thought, angry. He’d had his fill of micromanagement and ROEs—the ubiquitous Rules of Engagement—in Egypt. He’d expected eight light-years to be more than enough breathing room, at least when it came to interpreting orders. Evidently, he’d been wrong.

  He was tired. His body ached inside the unrelenting embrace of his armor. The Mark VII’s microtubule filtration system was supposed to suck up the sweat he’d been dumping into the suit, but he still was sticky, hot, and miserably filthy, and he felt damned close to being ready to negotiate a deal involving his soul and a hot shower. During the attack earlier on the north wall, he’d been in the Lander One CP, trying to coordinate communications…and perhaps drag the makeshift net online, without success.

  And, damn it, he was jealous of Ramsey. The colonel had seen some of the fighting, and he’d been stuck in the damned LM.

  He wasn’t Wayning this thing, he didn’t think. It was the principle involved. Half of his assault force had been killed taking that mountain. He was a company commander, not a REMFing general. And he thought he saw a way that would let him set things straight.

  Listening to King’s petty bitching and Norris’s corporate kibitzing, Warhurst wished he could scratch beneath his armor or, better, peel it all off and take a long hot soak.

  “Another thing, Colonel,” Norris was saying. “Your men reported firing on the pyramid. If a stray round hits the Eye, that could wreck the facility’s usefulness. I’d like you to pass the word to your troops not to fire into the Chamber of the Eye.”

  “Again, Mr. Norris,” Ramsey said quietly, “we’ll do our best…but no promises. So far as I’m concerned, your precious FTL communicator is not worth the life of a single Marine. But it is my intention to take that pyramid in order to deny its use to the enemy.”

  “I can’t say I’m impressed with your spirit of cooperation, Colonel. General? You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes, Mr. Norris. I do. And I remind you, sir, that Colonel Ramsey is in operational control of this MIEU, while I have responsibility for the overall mission. At this point, until we can induce the Ahannu leaders to begin negotiations with us, or unless we regain a significant orbital capability or an operational Net, I’m just along for the ride. I can offer criticism, I can offer advice, but he is in charge of the routine operations on this beachhead. Is that clear, sir?”

  Warhurst opened his eyes at that. This was new. Maybe old King wasn’t such a flaming son of a bitch after all.

  “Thank you, General,” Ramsey said. “Captain Warhurst? You have an operational plan sketched out, I gather?”

  “Yes, sir. I think we have the means for a vertical envelopment.”

  He began laying out the plan he’d worked
out during the past few hours. It was risky in some ways but held a fair promise of success.

  City fighting—close-quarter combat in built-up urban areas—was the dirtiest, nastiest kind of fighting there was, with every building a potential bunker, every wall a stronghold, every window a possible sniper’s nest. Multistory buildings were the worst, with attackers having to fight their way up each stairwell against a well-covered enemy who had gravity on his side. Modern combat doctrine stressed attacking strongly defended buildings from the top down, when possible—vertical envelopment, it was called—using VTOL/hover landers like the Dragonflies.

  “We employ two Dragons,” Warhurst explained, moving four wooden chips, stacked two and two. He placed one on the pyramid, the other nearby. “One for the assault, one in reserve. I have some of my people working now on rigging a bunch of twelve-pack sling harnesses with quick-release catches. Secure a couple to the tail boom of each TAV, and we can have twenty-four Marines on top of that pyramid—forty-eight if we need them—in a couple of minutes. We place our snipers inside the compound—here…here…here…maybe on the rooftops of some of the Legation buildings—and have them cap anything that moves on the pyramid during the Dragon’s approach.”

  He continued moving other squares of blue-painted wood. “Meanwhile, we push a team of gunwalkers around to the east side of the pyramid…here, to give us a tacsit on that side. It’ll help compensate for not having remote probes, and they’ll be in a position to intercept enemy reinforcements moving to the objective.

  “At the same time, we’ll have two full companies on the ground, ready to roll at the east end of the compound. As soon as the lead Dragon makes its move, they rush the base of the pyramid and start moving up. They’ll throw up a defensive perimeter around the pyramid itself and catch any Frogs coming down the pyramid trying to escape the airmobile assault.”

  “I wish to stress that the taking of prisoners is vital at this stage of the mission,” General King said. “We need to capture and identify their leaders if we wish to open negotiations with them.”

  “Does anybody know what their leaders look like yet, sir?” Warhurst asked with a smile.

  “We’re…working on that,” Ramsey replied. “If we can take some live prisoners this time and if our Sumerian experts can talk with them, we have a chance. Ideally, we’ve hurt them bad enough already that we can negotiate a truce, hang on to what we have here, until the relief expedition arrives.” He looked squarely at Norris. “That assumes, of course, that the Ahannu can be reasoned with.”

  “I’ll be blunt, gentlemen, ladies,” King said. “This is the critical stage of Operation Spirit of Humankind…critical to our survival, not just the success of the mission. Most naval personnel have remained on board the Derna, with Admiral Vincent Hartman directing salvage and recovery operations. However, it is unlikely at this juncture that they will be able to repair the ship’s main power plant. With luck, they may regain sensor and communications capability—which means access to the net once again. We cannot afford to wait for that eventuality, however.

  “With the destruction of the Algol, our supply situation is precarious at best. I believe Major Anderson has some figures for us?”

  “Yes, sir. From what I’ve been able to ascertain so far, water supplies in the city are adequate. We have access to the Saimi-Id River at the west end of the compound, and nanoprocessors are being set up to filter out pollutants…and to watch for any unpleasant surprises the natives may slip into the water upstream.

  “Expendable ammunition is tight on the ground right now, especially smart-grenades and DNM-85, but the situation will ease as more supply LMs come down from the Regulus. Total expendable ammunition is not a problem at this time.

  “Food, however, is. We have enough packaged food for perhaps six weeks, mostly T-rations and hotpacks. I’m told that with strict rationing, our nanoprocessors may be capable of extending that limit to two, maybe three months, but they have a limited daily output…not enough to handle over a thousand people for six months.”

  “There you have it,” King said. “If we are to survive until the relief expedition arrives, we must gain access to native food sources and ascertain which ones are safe for human consumption. That means we either capture and hold the region surrounding the city in order to forage for our own supplies, or we negotiate with the locals for native food shipments.”

  “Assuming we can trust them not to poison us,” Master Sergeant Vanya Barnes said, a growl in her voice. “You ask me, the only way to secure this fucking mudball is to wipe ’em out to the last freakin’ Frog.”

  “That will do, Master Sergeant,” Ramsey said sharply. “The Corps is not in the business of genocide.” He looked at Norris. “However, we will employ whatever level of force is necessary in order to safeguard the mission and our personnel.”

  “That’s obvious,” Norris said with a bitter laugh. “You’ve already used nukes.”

  Ramsey ignored the comment. “Captain Warhurst. It appears to me you’ve already made personnel selections for your operation.”

  “Yes, sir. First and 3rd Companies for the ground assault. The airmobile element will be volunteer, of course.”

  “Who do you have in command of the air assault?”

  “Me. Sir.”

  Ramsey raised an eyebrow at that. “Not exactly according to doctrine.”

  “With respect, sir, there’s damned little about this operation that’s going down according to doctrine. I can’t ride herd on my people through the net, can’t maintain a coherent picture of the battlefield from my LMCP. So I’m going along. Sir.”

  Ramsey nodded. “Very well, Captain. I understand. And…good luck to you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Timing. Have you worked out a timetable yet?”

  “Since it’s going to be daylight for the next three days, sir, the light’s not an issue. I would like to give all of our people time for some shut-eye, though.”

  “Agreed. Shall we say, H-hour in…twenty hours from now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. I’ll leave the final planning with your staff—code names, communications protocols, and so on. Just one more thing, though. Do you have a designation for the objective? The command constellation has been calling that thing ‘the pyramid.’ Shall we name it Objective Giza, after the Great Pyramids?”

  “I’ve been at Giza, sir.” He shook his head. “Those pyra-mids are nothing like this one. Actually, I have another suggestion.”

  “And that is?”

  “We’ve been calling it Objective Suribachi, sir.”

  Ramsey smiled, then chuckled. “I like it. Objective Suribachi it is.”

  Suribachi was the volcanic mountain on the south end of a black speck of an island in the Pacific Ocean where six thousand Marines had given their lives two centuries before, a place called Iwo Jima.

  Mount Suribachi had been the site of the famous flag-raising during the battle, a Corps icon. Watching from a ship offshore, James Forrestal, the Secretary of the Navy at the time, had declared to General Holland Smith, “The raising of that flag on Suribachi means there will be a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years.”

  Well and good. All this Suribachi would determine was the survival of the MIEU for the next six months.

  23

  27 JUNE 2148

  Marine Bivouac

  Legation Compound

  New Sumer, Ishtar

  0053 hours ALT

  He was Lance Corporal Garroway now. Funny. He’d not even gotten used to being a PFC, and now he’d been advanced to pay grade E-3.

  The announcement had come down from HQ with a blizzard of other announcements and promotions. Sergeant Tim Logan and Hospitalman First Class “Doc” McColloch—one of the Navy corpsmen assigned to the Marines as medics—had been put in for Medals of Honor for their daring rescue of two wounded Marines at the north wall earlier that day. And the newbie PFCs had all gotten their promotions�
��not, as it turned out, by being Van Winkled, but as meritorious field promotions. Van Winkling would have required confirmation from Earth; Colonel Ramsey had chosen to make those promotions immediate.

  It didn’t matter, really. The experience of combat, of surviving his first firefights, had changed Garroway far, far more deeply than any bureaucratic waving of the wand possibly could.

  Out of his armor at last and clad in Marine utilities, Lance Corporal Garroway stood beneath the Ishtaran sky. It was, for him, the end of a very long day, even though technically the sun was still rising. This was his down time; in a few minutes he would try to go get some sleep. First, however…

  Facing east, in the direction of the red-spark sun close beside the towering pyramid at the edge of the compound, he held the athame, ritual blade high, point toward the sky, and intoned the old formula. “Brothers and sisters of the east, spirits of air, spirits of mind and intellect…hail, and welcome.” Sketching the outline of a pentagram in the air with the blade, he then turned in place to the right, drawing an imagined quarter circle of blue fire. “Brothers and sisters of the south, spirits of fire, spirits of directions, of paths, of passions…hail, and welcome…”

  It had been a long time since Garroway had performed ritual and cast a circle. He had been raised Wiccan by his mother, though he’d lost interest in all religion and drifted away until about four years ago, when the workings of the craft had become yet another way to defy his staunchly Catholic father. “You won’t practice that pagan crap in my house!” the elder Esteban had stormed…and so he’d taken warm satisfaction in holding ritual outdoors in secret, at a private stretch of the Guaymas beach.

  Often, his mother had joined him.

  “Brothers and sisters of the west, spirits of water, spirits of emotions, of relationships, of family…hail, and welcome…”