by Andrew Beery
His team had engaged several groups of Ashtoreth soldiers in the corridors. The outcomes had been mixed. The Marines had better armor but the dampness and exposed steel mesh in the walls played havoc with their plasma rifles.
The result was that fighting was often hand to hand. For normal humans this would have been bad news but for augments, with the additional advantage of Stark suits, the situation was reversed. It wasn’t long before the Ashtoreth were beating a hasty path away from the advancing Marines. Unfortunately this meant they left surprises along the way.
Corporal Stevens bit his third Big-D in as many weeks courtesy of a well-concealed plasma mine. The blast had vaporized the lower half of his body and sent the rest crashing back into the marines behind him. Private Mancie had a broken nose as a result. His medical nanites quickly knitted the torn cartilage… it was anybody’s guess as to whether or not it would be straight when they were done.
AG had ordered Gunny Sergeant Ramirez to take point. The Gunny was as crafty as they came and the man could practically smell a trap. They went another ten minutes without taking any casualties.
The Gunny advanced slowly towards a large consolidation of joining tunnels. He was especially careful because they had run into a number of Gators the last time they had approached a section like this. His caution turned out to be well-founded. No sooner had his head popped through the opening of the tunnel then an explosion of kinetic rounds started pinging off of his shields. If he had not been wearing a Stark all that would have been left of his head would have been a puddle on the ground.
“I think we’ve got’m right where we want’m sir,” Ramirez said with a grin as he tossed his last plasma grenade into the corridor junction.
Afterwards AG remembered a lecture he had heard once as he was going through basic training. Explosions in confined spaces could sometimes produce unpredictable and undesirable results. It seemed this was one such time. Several of the mines the marines had carefully avoided tripping behind them decided to respond to the concussive blast by detonating. This caused the tunnel behind the marines to collapse. While their ears were still ringing, a second set of explosions began. This time they were in front of the group. The junction between the various corridors had been rigged with their own explosives. Tons of rock and steel collapsed down into the tunnel complex. Had the marines actually made it into the confluence of tunnels, it is likely they would all be waking up in Marine City. As it was, they were trapped between two collapsed sections of tunnel.
Gunny Sergeant Ramirez looked at AG with a shocked expression on his face. “I swear before the almighty Sir… it was just one little grenade.”
***
JJ Hammond was convinced the Creator had a wicked sense of humor. By all rights he should be dead several times over. He had a mortar fall close enough to his position that personal shields had burned through sixty percent of his power reserves trying to protect his behind. The blast had opened a hole into the extensive underground cavern system.
The resulting crevasse he had fallen through landed him in the middle of some type of Ashtoreth angry gator convention. He was able to shoot his way clear but in the process his Stark suit was down to eleven percent power reserves. His plasma rifle had burned out several minutes ago. He still had his pointer but shooting Gators with a pointer was little better than saying ‘piss off.’
After several minutes of mindless fighting his back was finally against a rock outcropping. He had nowhere left to go and there were still a couple dozen Gators making to have a go at him. To his way of thinking, he was pretty much out of options. He signaled his Stark suit’s AI to begin a self-destruct sequence. At least he could take a few more of the buggers with him.
At about the same time a series of rumbles echoed through the chamber. This caused the Gators to pause and look at the walls. JJ began a series of taunts involving Gator skin boots and how to best scramble Gator eggs. His encounter unit handled the translation so he was pretty sure the buggers knew he was trashing them.
He was about to start a second round of taunts… he really needed them to get closer when a second explosion rocked the very ground they were standing on. This was followed by a most unusual sound.
“I swear before the almighty Sir… it was just one little grenade.”
The sound came up from a hole in the floor three feet in front of him and between him and the equally confused Ashtoreth soldiers. JJ looked down and saw several marines staring at one another like kids that had been caught stealing fireworks.
“Bloody hell Gunny,” he yelled down the hole. “Can’t you see a man is trying to kill Gators up here?”
***
Manu woke up with a start. He felt disoriented and slightly confused. He had just tossed a grenade down the mortar barrel of a Gator tank. Now… somehow he was lying flat on his back. He hadn’t remembered falling although he must have jumped. He looked around. He was in a bed… in a well-lit room. Strangely he knew he had been feeling exhausted but now he was fully rested. Had he been hurt?
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. It was a bed like the Earthers favored but larger. Manu reasoned that he was on the Yorktown… or perhaps Marine City. He looked at his hands. The callus from years of Saba harvesting were gone. That could mean only one thing… he was in the medical center at Marine City. He had died.
It was a startling revelation. He knew intellectually that this could happen. Admiral Kimbridge and Commander Stone had explained at great length the risks should he insist on joining the Infinity Brigade Marines. Being a marine was a dangerous job in the best of times… and these were anything BUT the best of times.
He thought he would feel different but somehow he knew he was still the same man. He was still Manu Yreeb, the Basharite.
“Hey there Little John! How ya feel’n?” The voice belonged to Gunny Sergeant Ramirez who was sitting on the edge of the next bed. He had gone through his own replicant rebirth and was waiting for Manu to finish integrating his newly implanted engrams. Not everybody reacted well the first time they went through the Big-D.
“I’m not all together sure Gunny. I expected to feel different… and I do.” The big man paused to consider his answer. “…and yet at the same time, I do not.”
“Well the Big-D will do that to you. Be careful though. You will be a lot stronger than you used to be and quite frankly you were strong enough to begin with. Try not to hurt the medical staff accidentally. Most of them are still norms.”
“Strangely, I feel more alive now than I did before I died. I feel like I have a purpose and even death will not keep me from it.”
The gunny laughed and padded his shoulder as he got up to walk out of the room. His charge would be fine.
It was at that moment that Manu realized that, as an augment, his life would be forever different. It changed his perspective on what it meant to be alive. As an augment he had a unique perspective. He knew both life and death. The priests had always said that death was a necessary part of life… that it was a necessary step to fully live. He had never understood what they meant. Now he thought he did. Life was a most precious gift and no matter how many times it was given, it was to be cherished. To do less would be to dishonor the giver of that life.
He stood up. It was time to embrace this second life. It was said that when marines die they go to hell and regroup. He thought about his feelings for the Ashtoreth and what they had done to his people and his planet. It was time to get back into the fight.
Chapter 9: Marine City…
Cat swiveled her command chair. The bridge of Marine City’s operation center was easily four times the size of the bridge of the Yorktown. In addition, there were four holo-chambers situated just off the main section that could display the complete bridge of each of four different starships. This allowed Cat to monitor what was going on in a space battle with unprecedented ease.
Two of the Holo-chambers displayed real-time representations of the bridges of the Yorktown and Mador w
hich were in orbit around Bashar. The other two chambers had similar displays of the Exeter and Relentless.
It was these last two that were of most interest to Cat. The Exeter under the command of Captain Hikaro Takei was chasing three Ashtoreth battlecruisers. The Ashtoreth ships had launched forty fighter aircraft each. The one hundred twenty small ships had in turn launched their full load of sixteen smart nukes at the WhimPy station. All one thousand nine hundred and twenty missiles had flown straight at Marine City.
If the Ashtoreth had expected the GCP forces to react to their attack on the WhimPy they were in for a surprise. The Exeter’s scorpions completely ignored the attack on the Marine station and instead engaged the Ashtoreth fighters directly.
Cat used a hand gesture to signal the Exeter’s main display to clone itself on the operation center’s primary display. It looked like ten of the Ashtoreth fighters were attempting to peel off from the engagement and head to the planet. So far none of Hikaro’s scorpions were following.
Cat glanced over at the Relentless’ bridge. They looked to be in a better position to intercept them. She toggled her commlink.
“Vigit, this is Admiral Kimbridge. I show ten bogies heading toward the planet. Please intercept them. Our boys and girls on the ground have their hands full already. They don’t need any distractions.”
“On it Admiral,” Captain Purohit acknowledged.
At about the same time a silver shimmer enveloped Marine City and the entire WhimPy station. WhimPy had activate a specially tuned absorption field in response to the incoming missiles. As they impacted the shield they detonated with a force of about two hundred and fifty Tera joules of energy each. By nuclear standards, they were not big, but at the same time there were just under two thousand of them.
The shield around the massive station hungrily sucked in the energy that was released. As the Ashtoreth missiles hit the shield they turned the exterior of the station into a miniature sun with nuclear flares protruding all along its surface. Those inside Marine City where treated to a spectacular light show.
All told the missiles provided WhimPy with the smallest fraction of a single percent of the energy his systems where capable of storing. When the glow of the nuclear barrage faded, the WhimPy was unscathed.
***
Flight Commander Jax Jackson ordered his wing to vector over towards the planet. His new Captain, Vigit Purohit, had just relayed instructions from Admiral Kimbridge to intercept a handful of flying Gators that were attempting to sneak past the Yorktown and Mador blockage.
Lieutenant Connors who was his wingman was the first to spot the Gators. “I have ten fast moving blips on my LiDAR. Shifting course to engage.”
“I see them now too,” Jax confirmed. “Gold Wing, follow our lead. No one gets through.”
As a single unit the scorpions in Gold Wing swung about and headed towards the enemy. Jax sent a data feed to both the Relentless and the Yorktown. If any of these birds go past them the Yorktown would need to handle the mop up.
“Wow they are coming in hot,” Ensign Bucky Mayweather said from the Blue Raider.
“Yeah momma put some hot sauce on’em today,” Lieutenant Connors agreed.
Jax looked at the screen and realized there was a problem. “Folks I think we’ve been played. Ashtoreth fighters don’t have that type of energy signature. They must have used the EM blast from those nukes to hide the launch of decoy drones.”
“Then where are the real fighters?” Someone asked.
Jax thought for a moment and then toggled his wing-wide comms. “Everyone do an immediate 180. Revector your momentum. We don’t have any time to lose. Accelerate full ahead and switch to long range scanners.”
Five minutes later they spotted the Ashtoreth fighters. Jax confirmed that their energy emissions matched the profile that had for the Gators. Unfortunately both the Mador and Yorktown fighters were out of position to intercept.
“Guys, we are going to be it. There is no backup that can get here in time. We either take all these guys out or they are going to eat up our boys on the ground.”
Thirty seconds later they were within engagement range. Say what you will, Jax thought. These Gators learn from their mistakes. The Ashtoreth fighters were not the easy marks they had been when Jax had first fought them near the Hupenstanii home world.
For every move Jax made in his scorpion the Gator fighter seemed to have an appropriate counter move. If he had to guess the Ashtoreth had analyzed their previous battle and programmed their fight computers to counter them.
His guys were winning but it was going to be close. “Blue Raider just bit the Big-D,” Connors announced over the comms. “Is it my imagination or are these buggers playing hard to get?”
“I think they have analyzed our attack patterns,” Jax said. “Gold wing, start mixing up your routines. We knew this was a potential problem when we used the engram training. We are too predictable. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I need you all to start winging it. Improvise.”
Over the next several minutes the outlook improved. Jax lost three more pilots but the enemy lost nine of their ten fighters. Unfortunately the tenth was intent on being a royal pain. At one point, just as they were entering the oxygen rich atmosphere of the planet the enemy pilot jettisoned a large part of his fuel reserve and ignited it with a well-placed laser blast. The resulting explosion temporary blinded Ensign Orillia who was attempting to line up for a shot.
He took the shot but ended up hitting and taking out Jax’s wingman Lieutenant Connors. Connors lost propulsion and proceeded to do an uncontrolled tumble and reentry into the thick Basharite atmosphere. Jax did his best to follow his friend down but at nearly Mach Twenty there really was no way Connors’ ship would survive the atmospheric friction and he knew it. Being burned alive was not a way any of them wanted to go.
For the next two minutes and forty three seconds his wingman speculated, at great length and with colorful language, as to the probable genetic origins of Ensign Orillia and promised to remember him fondly when he woke up from the ‘replicate canning factory’ on Marine City. When at last his friend started to scream in agony Jax put a plasma bolt thru his canopy. He would apologize later… for waiting so long.
***
Faragon-3 dodged another plasma bolt. His specially modified Ashtoreth fighter responded directly to his thoughts. He was an experiment he knew but he had been since the day his creators had replicated the first eight copies of Admiral Bud Faragon. Not all had survived the replication process… after all Bud Faragon was the first human to go through the Ashtoreth replication process. Sadly the memory engram process was especially flawed at first. As a result, F3 did not have a full set of properly integrated memories.
Still, the Ashtoreth had found various uses for their creations. F3 had convinced the scientist in charge of the human replicant program to use the human engram technology he and his staff had developed to create a man/machine control interface. The most obvious use would be for enhancing their fighter aircraft. No Ashtoreth would allow their mind to integrate with a machine intelligence… it was antithetical to their psychological makeup. But human replicants had no such negative compunction.
As a result F3’s mind received sensor feeds from his fighter’s systems. It was like he had eyes with a 360 degree field of vision. His fighter was not as fast as the GCP ships he was fighting but his response time helped to negate that difference. The very fact that his was the only ship from his squadron left was… in itself… testimony to the efficacy of the experiment.
He dove his fighter deeper into the atmosphere. His initial objective had been a group of marines attacking the spaceport. However that battle was done and, quite frankly, the Ashtoreth had lost it. He shifted his attack run to his secondary target. The main supply and maintenance depot was still under siege. He might not be able to stop the attack but he could make the marines responsible pay a heavy price.
***
Commander AG Stone dust
ed the dirt and mud off his Stark. He and his men had just spent the last twenty minutes digging their way out of a Gator hole. Along the way he had found a friend that he had assumed was dead. Much to JJ’s personal disappointment Sergeant First Class Jeremy James Hammond was very much alive.
The last of the Ashtoreth defenders had finally surrendered. All were civilians and not part of the Ashtoreth armed forces.
AG scanned the Ashtoreth Depot. The damage was extreme but there might be some recoverable intelligence that the Intel guys might be able to glean—once his Troops had finished their final sweep.
An absolutely fifthly JJ stood about ten feet away from him. He was arguing with a corporal. It seemed the young man had three fully charged spare power packs for his weapon. JJ’s were all drained by his spelunking activities. When JJ had asked the corporal to surrender one, the corporal made the mistake of telling him to piss off.
JJ wiped the crusted mud from his rank insignia and asked the corporal -- soon to be private -- to reconsider his answer. The man did… but not before JJ explained in very colorful language that marines were a team and that they supported one another. The fact that JJ outranked the other man should never have been a factor in the man’s decision to share his ammo.
It was perhaps the volume with which Jeremy James explained this concept that caused AG to miss the sound of a rapidly approaching fighter aircraft. It was only the sonic boom that shook the base, and the explosions off to his left, that caused him to realize that they were under attack from above.
He quickly ordered his troops to take cover but before he could move more than a few hundred feet the fighter was back on them. This time a guided missile with a tactical yield of 0.5 megatons hit the ground two hundred and fifty yards away. The crater that was formed covered an area three times that size. AG remembered the flash and that was it.