Star Corps

by Ian Douglas

  Training told him he should seek medical assistance, perhaps lie down to avoid the effects of shock…but in his current state of mind, that level of coherent thought simply wasn’t possible. Instead he stood at the edge of the pyramid roof, leaning on his captured spear and watching as the incoming Dragonfly drifted lower on whining belly thrusters. The double line of Marines harnessed to its spinal boom dropped free in a ragged spill. The armored forms hit the ground, rose to their feet, and began spreading out across the pyramid.

  “Marine! Hey, Marine!”

  A gloved hand slapped his right shoulder, startling him. “Wake up, son.”

  He turned quickly, dropping into a defensive crouch before he saw that it was Captain Warhurst, his helmet tucked under one arm.

  “Sir!” Garroway came to attention.

  “At ease, at ease,” Warhurst said. “I just wanted to requisition your pig sticker.”

  “My…what?” Then he realized Warhurst was talking about the three-meter spear he carried. Several other Marines had gathered nearby…Corporal Womicki, Sergeant Schuster, Sergeant Dunne, Lance Corporal Vinita. Kat Vinita was carrying an American flag, still folded in a tight blue triangle with the white stars showing.

  “Flag-raising time,” Warhurst said. “Gotta let ’em know down below we’re all right.”

  Schuster and Dunne attached the flag to the butt end of the spear. Together, then, the six of them planted the spear tip in a crack between paving stones close to the western edge of the pyramid’s top, wedging it in tight. They stepped back and came to attention as the flag unfurled in the freshening Ishtaran breeze, thirteen stripes and fifty-eight stars representing the United Federal Republic. Captain Warhurst saluted for the six of them.

  Those stars, arranged in three concentric circles on the blue field, suddenly and irrationally and almost painfully reminded Garroway of home. The referendum to determine statehood for Sinaloa and the other three Mexican territories had been scheduled for six years ago. He wondered if this flag with its fifty-eight stars was out of date now.

  It still represented home, no matter how many stars it bore.

  He felt something catch in his throat and swallowed to clear it. Flag-raisings. There was a particularly emotional connection with this one, as he remembered photos of two other similar flag-raisings, one at Cydonia on Mars during the UN War a century ago, and the one on the original Suribachi a century before that.

  His ancestor, Sands of Mars Garroway…what would he think if he were here now, watching this simple ceremony?

  Garroway’s helmet external mikes were picking up a strange sound. He tried to identify it—a low-pitched rushing or roaring—and failed. Damn, if he just had a link to the net….

  “Detail, dismissed!” Warhurst said.

  Garroway unfastened his helmet and pulled it off one-handed, trying to make out the source of the sound with his own ears. It was coming from…

  Ah. That was it. Looking down on the Legation compound from his vantage point atop the Pyramid of the Eye, he could see a huge crowd of Marines in the courtyard near the north gate. The sound…he was hearing cheering, the sound of hundreds of Marines cheering the flag atop this alien Suribachi.

  “I need volunteers,” Warhurst said. “We’re going down to the Chamber of the Eye. Who’s with me?”

  The other four all had their hands up, and Garroway raised his own. His arm was beginning to hurt now, a dull, pounding throb in his shoulder, but nothing serious. He felt fine…maybe a bit light-headed.

  “Where’s your weapon, Marine?” Warhurst asked him.

  “It kind of got bent on a Frog’s skull, sir,” he replied.

  “Is your arm okay? There’s blood on your armor.”

  “I think I got winged by a gauss round, sir. Doesn’t hurt, but I’m having a little trouble moving it.”

  “Okay. Here.” Warhurst unholstered his sidearm, a heavy, 15mm Colt Puller, and gave it to Garroway. He unslung his other weapon, a Sunbeam LC-2132 laser carbine, a lightweight weapon that was low-powered compared to a 2120 but didn’t need the three-cable connection with a shoulder-carried power pack. “Okay, Leathernecks. Move out!”

  Together, they began descending the pyramid’s western steps. Behind and above them the flag continued to flutter in the breeze.

  Chamber of the Eye

  Pyramid of the Eye

  Shumur-Unu

  Third Period of Brightening Day

  Tu-Kur-La emerged through the inner passageway from the Deeps, stepping into the Chamber of the Eye. He felt a bit light-headed, mildly dizzy, almost, with the shock of the past few periods. The Memories had not prepared him for this…not at all.

  The Ahannu were gods. Gods. Beings who once had strode among the far-flung stars, wielding lightnings that could render whole worlds barren and lifeless. How was it that these Blackhead warriors—these Marines, as they called themselves—could defeat the combined will and consciousness of the Zu-Din?

  He found the charred and broken corpse of Zah-Ahan-Nu near the outside entrance to the Chamber. The Blackhead fliers had seared this entire side of the pyramid with their light weapons, burning down hundreds of god-warriors swarming up the steps. Zah-Ahan-Nu, the Keeper of Memories serving as an eye of the Zu-Din, had gotten too close to the sky outside and been caught in the firestorm.

  Tu-Kur-La began reestablishing his own connections with the Abzu-il, slender threads of organic molecules trickling down his back and seeking companion threads growing in the cracks between the stones of the chamber. As the Abzu-il made its myriad interlocking connections, Tu-Kur-La again felt his own personality fading, felt again the growing awareness of the Godmind, of thousands of other Keepers of Memories joining with him, mind to mind to watching mind.

  Cautiously, he peered from the open doorway. Blackhead Marines thronged within the walled enclosure below, shouting madly. The Ahannu attack on their fortress had failed, as had the counterattack against the pyramid. The enemy warriors, evidently, were celebrating their victory.

  Victory. Against the gods.

  The thought was almost literally unthinkable, a concept not easily put into words. Not since the time of the Hunters of the Dawn had such a concept even been considered.

  Uneasily, the eye of the Godmind watched the Enemy thronging below.

  Lance Corporal Garroway

  Pyramid of the Eye

  New Sumer, Ishtar

  1736 hours ALT

  They made their way down the steps as quietly as they could manage, no conversation, with each step past crumpled, charred Frog bodies carefully considered before the step was actually taken. Two Marine Dragonflies circled at a distance, ready to provide close support should that be necessary.

  Half a dozen more Task Force Warhurst Marines had joined the six of them descending the west face of the pyramid. Twelve of them had survived the Ahannu attack, it turned out…exactly twenty-five percent of the original forty-eight. Garroway remembered General King’s ill-advised pep talk before the landings…was it only yesterday? Marine losses on Suribachi had been high, higher in terms of percentages, certainly, than those Army Rangers had suffered at Pointe du Hoc.

  He caught himself wondering if King had somehow jinxed the assault with his speech.

  Superstitious nonsense, Garroway thought with wry amusement. Might as well blame the fucking apricots.

  The entrance to the Chamber of the Eye extended from the center of the pyramid’s western steps, a squared-off white stone structure with ornate, apparently abstract designs engraved in the sides. The carvings looked like they might represent something—beings, perhaps? But they followed an artistic tradition alien indeed from both human and Ahannu thinking. It was difficult to make sense of the swooping, curving, interlocking knots and patterns.

  It was possible, even probable, that Ahannu warriors were inside. The chamber provided too valuable an observation post overlooking the Legation compound for the enemy to have left it unoccupied…especially since there apparently were hi
dden tunnels and passageways within the pyramid’s massive structure. God-warriors had emerged from the pyramid’s interior during the battle…and done so in surprisingly close support of the attackers outside. That suggested sophisticated lines of communications, a high degree of efficient command control, and the Ahannu equivalent of scouts and officers overseeing the unfolding battle. With the top of the pyramid under Marine control and the sides scoured clean of the enemy, the Chamber of the Eye was the only vantage point the Ahannu had left on the pyramid.

  Following Warhurst’s silent hand gestures, Garroway, Dunne, Schuster, and Vinita had moved around to the left, coming up on the entrance from its southern side. The rest approached from the other side, squeezing up close against the comforting stones for cover. This, Garroway thought, would be a great situation for smart grenades…except that you had to show the RPG a target for it to lock onto and follow. And standing orders for Task Force Warhurst were not to use explosives inside the Chamber of the Eye.

  Again following Warhurst’s signed commands, he crouched beside the entrance, pistol in hand, ready to move. On the other side of the door, Warhurst apparently had decided to ignore his own orders. He took an RPG from one of the other Marines, twisted its tail-fin assembly to manually arm it, and gently tossed it around the corner. There was a loud bang as the 20mm grenade detonated inside. Garroway rolled around the corner and into the cool darkness of the entranceway…

  …and found himself face-to-face with the enemy.

  The Ahannu was sprawled on the floor of the chamber, just rising, as though it had been knocked down by the grenade blast. Its eyes—huge, pear-shaped, and golden in the poor light—blinked rapidly as the creature held up one splayed, six-fingered hand. Other features—lipless mouth, twin-slit nostrils, finely scaled skin, bony head crest, the lack of any external ears at all—all added up to something that looked far more reptilian than human, despite the humanoid number and arrangement of limbs and other body parts.

  Strangest, perhaps, was the mass of purplish, translucent jelly riding on the creature’s shoulders and the back of its slightly elongated neck. A thin slime of the stuff coated the being’s skin and seemed to be leaking from nostrils and the openings at the base of its jaw that must be its ears. Threads of the gel stretched from the Ahannu’s shoulders to the floor and the back wall of the room, like a spider’s web made of glistening mucus.

  Garroway brought the Colt Puller up, aiming it at the creature’s flat face, his finger tightening on the trigger.

  “Nu!” the creature shrilled. “Sagra nu!”

  Without the net, there was no hope of a translation. What the hell was sagra nu?

  But as near as Garroway could tell, the being was unarmed. It wore torso armor that looked like green-stained leather, and some bangles on its arms that might have been gold. Unless that purple crap on its head and shoulders was dangerous…

  “Sagra nu,” the Ahannu said, still holding up its open hand. “Ga-me-e’din!”

  Primitive the being might be, but it was afraid of the pistol. “You’d better not even twitch, Frog,” Garroway said. He knew damned well the Ahannu couldn’t understand, but he tried to throw enough authority and menace into his voice to get the message across anyway.

  “I…no…twitch…frog…” the Ahannu said, its voice raspy and hard to make out, but intelligible all the same.

  “Jesus!” Sergeant Dunne said at Garroway’s side. “The thing speaks English!”

  “We…thing…speak…” it said. “A few of…we…thing…speak….”

  “Who are you?” Captain Warhurst demanded, keeping his laser carbine aimed at the Ahannu’s chest. “What do we call you?”

  “We are…Zu-Din,” the being replied. “We are…the Mind of God.”

  “No weapons,” Garroway said. “He must either be a scout…”

  “Or what?” Warhurst asked.

  “Or an officer, sir. I don’t think he’s a regular warrior.”

  “We’ll let Intelligence sort that out,” Warhurst said. “Schuster! Evans! Dumbrowski! March our friend here up to the top. Ride with him back to the compound and tell the colonel it speaks English. Sort of.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” The three Marines led the Ishtaran out.

  Warhurst, meanwhile, was studying the only piece of equipment in the small, black-walled stone chamber, a football-shaped object two meters wide suspended from the ceiling by a cable that appeared too slender to bear its weight. A dark red cloth had been draped over the top, covering it. Carefully, he used the muzzle of his laser to tug the cloth off.

  Underneath, an oval screen glowed softly deep within black crystal. A human in civilian clothing was visible on the screen, apparently reading an e-pad in her hands.

  “Excuse me,” Warhurst said. The woman didn’t react. Warhurst reached out and touched the bottom of the device with his gauntlet; there was supposed to be a touch-sensitive volume control there. “Excuse me,” Warhurst said again.

  This time the woman jumped. She turned her head and stared at the Marines with eyes widened in shock. “Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed. She launched into a torrent of something sounding like French.

  “Whoa, whoa, there,” Warhurst said, holding up his hands. Reaching up, he removed his helmet. “We do not have net access here, so I can’t understand you. Uh…non comprendez. Do you read me?”

  The woman blinked. “I understand,” she said in heavily accented English. “I am Giselle Dumont of the Cydonian Quebecois Research Team. And you are…?”

  “Captain Martin Warhurst, First Marine Interstellar Expeditionary Unit, 1st Division, 44th Regiment, UFR Marine Corps,” he replied. “Can you patch me through to the UFR Military Communications Network, Code one-five-alpha-three-echo, Priority One, please?”

  “I am sorry, sir, but the WorldNet interplanetary relays are offline at this time. We have had a period of bad solar weather….”

  Garroway stood to one side of the chamber, beyond the FTL communicator’s pickup field. It figured. Communications between Llalande 21185 and the vast underground facility on Mars were obviously crystal clear. The ordinary speed-of-light channels between Earth and Mars, however, seemed to be out of commission.

  Or…was that really the whole story? The woman was Quebecois, and the nation of Quebec was allied with the EU, had been ever since the UN War. What if there’d been some political or military changes back home in the past ten years? What if the Cydonian complex was under EU control now? Hell, how were they supposed to know anything was as it seemed?

  As Warhurst continued speaking with the woman, Garroway noticed something on the floor…a folded piece of fabric that apparently had been pulled from the top of the FTL comm device when Warhurst had dragged the red cloth cover off. Stooping, he picked it up.

  It was a small, folding monitor display, fifteen centimeters by twenty-one, with a tiny camera woven into the smartthreads of the upper border. Printed on the bottom were the words SURVIVALCAM: UFRS EMISSARY .

  “Emissary,” he said aloud.

  Warhurst turned from the screen and looked at him. “What was that, Marine?”

  He looked up. “Sorry, sir. ‘Emissary.’ I found this on the deck.”

  Warhurst took the cloth and studied it.

  “Emissary,” Kat Vinita said. “That was the Terran Legation ship, wasn’t it? The one that was destroyed?”

  “That’s the one. I wonder who—” He stopped. “My God!”

  Warhurst stepped beyond the FTL unit’s pickup field, holding the display screen taut in his hands. Garroway was close enough to see a face, a human face looking up out of the cloth, a face as surprised as the captain’s and perhaps even more delighted.

  “You came!” the face said, the voice thin and reedy over the folding screen’s smarthtread speakers but clear enough to be understood. “My God, you came! We knew you would!”

  “I’m Captain Martin Warhurst, UFR Marines. Who are you?”

  “Uh…sorry, sir! Master Sergeant Gene Aiken, UFR
Marine Corps! Currently assigned to the Terran Legation, Ishtar!”

  “Goddess! Where are you?”

  Aiken grinned. “The Ahtun Mountains, sir. Roughly fifty klicks east of New Sumer. We’ve been holed up here ever since the Frogs chased us out.”

  “Ten years…?”

  “I reckon so, sir. But we knew you wouldn’t forget us. We’ve just been waiting for the Marines to land and put the situation well in hand!”

  “Stay on this line, Master Sergeant,” Warhurst said. He handed the cloth to Garroway, then stepped back in front of the FTL screen. “Um, Madame Dumont?”

  “Yes, monsieur. I could not catch what you were just saying. Is there interference at your end?”

  “My apologies, Madame Dumont. Something urgent has come up. We’ll be in touch shortly.”

  “But, monsieur—”

  “Let’s go, people.”

  Wondering just what the hell was going on, Garroway followed Warhurst and the others out of the Chamber of the Eye.

  Regimental HQ

  Building 5, Legation Compound

  New Sumer, Ishtar

  1924 hours ALT

  “This Dumont person didn’t tell you anything more?” Ramsey demanded.

  “No, sir,” Warhurst replied. “She seemed helpful enough and surprised to see me. But she would not make the connection for us with Washington.”

  Ramsey rubbed his chin. “She could be telling the truth, of course. Solar weather does play hob with the comm relays sometimes. But I don’t like this.”

  “Neither do I, sir.” He pointed at the unfolded screen on the table beside them, with Aiken’s bearded face looking up at them. “That’s why I decided to keep this quiet, at least until you decide otherwise.”

  “Well done, Colonel.” Ramsey looked at General King. “General? I suggest we defer further communications with Earth until we can transport the Legation survivors back here.”

  “I agree, Colonel. A communications malfunction right now is just a little too convenient.”

  “So, Master Sergeant,” Ramsey said, looking down into Aiken’s face. “How would you like to come back to the compound?”