Galactic Corps

by Ian Douglas

  But S-2 still offered them one slim hope. . . .

  Marine Regimental Strike Team Firebase Hawkins, S-2/I

  Core Space

  0220 hrs, GMT

  Garroway found he was glad to be out in the open for a change. In ten years of fighting the Xul, the vast majority of his encounters had been below ground or within the close corridor- tunnels of their giant spacecraft and gate fortresses. That last underground fight in the buried city earlier had nearly pushed him past his limits with its claustrophobic terror. It felt cleaner out here, somehow, though he knew that distinction made no rational sense. He leaned up against the lip of the fighting hole and targeted the oncoming black machines as they drifted in from the downed Xul Behemoth.

  Every Marine position was firing now, both along the perimeter and from the hard points grown in the city to the rear, hundreds of weapons pouring a devastating fusillade into the approaching black tide. The black sky above that tortured landscape flashed and sparked with hellfire volleys of Marine weaponry—rapid-fire plasma weapons, lasers, Gatling cannon, pulse rifles, high-velocity mass drivers, mortars, shoulder-launched missiles. Nightstar fighters continued to streak overhead in flights of two, scant tens of meters above the ground, strafing and bombing the sea of Xul machines. Plasma bolts from the Tarantulas snapped overhead between each fly-by, vaporizing oncoming Xul combots by the hundreds . . . by the thousands. . . .

  And still there were enough of them to sweep past and through the Marine perimeter, firing wildly as they came. Garroway held his position, firing with cool, almost detached precision. When his plasma gun again showed empty, he dropped the weapon and drew his pistol. Xul machines floated into the fighting hole, tentacles snaking out. He fired into one point-blank as it grappled with Chaffee, then extended his slicers and began carving up a second machine as it tried to grab him.

  Master Sergeant Gardner twisted and screamed as three Xul machines targeted her together, slamming bolt after bolt of high-energy laser fire into her armor, vaporizing a ragged emptiness in her left shoulder and the side of her helmet as her atmosphere blasted free and instantly froze into glittering crystals of blood- tinged ice.

  Chaffee was dead a moment later, his armor holed squarely through his chest and out his back. PFC Connors crumpled and fell, shrieking. . . .

  Breaking free of the enemy, Garroway dropped and rolled, snatching up Chaffee’s plasma gun and pouring fire into the advancing mob. “This is Perimeter Three! Perimeter Three!” he yelled over the regimental net. “We need close support here! Perimeter Three!”

  With no atmosphere, he couldn’t hear the approach of the Nightstar fighters, but he felt the shudder traveling through the ground as it rippled beneath his boots. An instant later, he was tumbling across the rocky ground, as white fire engulfed the rim of the fighting hole.

  “All perimeter teams!” an AI’s voice said, speaking in his mind. “Fall back to secondary positions!”

  “About fucking time!” Garroway snapped back. Standing, he cut down three more Xul forms as they drifted out of the haze of light and falling dust beyond the position. “Huerra! Grab Connors and let’s get the hell out of here!” He was already checking Gardner and Chaffee. Both Marines were dead, but there was always the possibility of bringing them back if their brains weren’t badly chewed up.

  Half of Clara Gardner’s skull was missing. Chaffee, though, had taken a small, high-energy slug through his chest, losing atmosphere and a lot of blood, but it might be possible to recover him . . . if they could get him to a hospital ship or facility in time. Stooping, he hoisted the Marine’s body over his shoulder, then started sprinting toward the rear.

  Behind him, another close pass by the Nightstars lit up the shadow-cloaked landscape for kilometers around.

  22

  0605 .1102 Ops Center

  UCS Hermes

  Point Diamond,

  Core Space

  0445 hrs, GMT

  “The astrogation department just checked in,” Taggart told Alexander. “They should have the local metric nailed within the next couple of hours.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Commander Warnke didn’t sound too enthusiastic about it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I got the impression he would like to keep the AIs chewing on the data for the next ten years or so, before risking an actual translation, that’s all. He didn’t sound happy with the simulations.”

  “We don’t have ten years.”

  “That’s what I told him.”

  Alexander frowned, considering alternatives. S-2 was only about a tenth of a light year away from IRS-16—roughly the same distance as the Dyson cloud, or close enough. They could make the run under Alcubierre Drive, and be there within an hour or so.

  But he didn’t want to risk it. Ships moving under Alcubierre Drive left wakes in the surrounding interstellar medium, as the space-distorting bubble of the drive field alternately compressed, then stretched space-time around the moving vessel. Xul instrumentation might well detect the little squadron as it made its way from the star cluster back to S-2.

  Besides, every Xul ship within a thousand light years of GalCenter must be on alert by now, and half of them must be swooping in toward the Core’s innermost realm—S-2, the Dyson cloud, and IRS-16. It was going to get very crowded around here, and damned quickly.

  “So what do you have in mind, exactly?” Taggart asked him. His voice was patient, but carried a slight edge. Alexander could hear the unspoken question: Just what do you plan to do with my squadron?

  And it was a fair question. Sure, Alexander might command the entire MIEF, ships and all, but Admiral Taggart still carried the primary responsibility for the naval vessels within the group. Liam tended to think of them all as his children, to be as fiercely protective as any parent.

  “I want to load four of the squadron ships onto Hermes,” he told the admiral. “Ludwigson, Plottel, Lejeune . . . and especially the Howorth. We leave the others here for now. When things quiet down, we can come back for them, or they can get to S-2 under their Alcubierre Drives.

  “We translate to S-2 and drop the ships off. If there are Xul ships in- system, we neutralize them. Howorth goes down to pick up the RST, after they initiate Operation Heartbreak.”

  “You want to leave Morrigen here?” Taggart asked. “Her firepower would be damned useful if the Xul are occupying S-2.”

  “I know . . . but she’s a big-assed bitch. And so are Howorth and Lejeune. We can’t fit all three of them on board Hermes at once. We need Howorth to lift our Marines off the planet . . . and I want Lejeune so we can take our fighters on board, if Cunningham didn’t make it.”

  “Of course. I should have thought of that.”

  “No, you’re thinking in terms of concentrating firepower where we need it, which is exactly what you should be thinking about. I wish we could have Morrigen along . . . but this is going to be a recovery mission, not a strike.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cara? Pass the word to begin maneuvering Howorth, Lejeune, Plottel, and Ludwigson in for docking with Hermes. Admiral? I suggest Mars, Ardash, and Morrigen be deployed farther out, on perimeter defense.”

  “We call it picket duty in the Navy, General. But, yes. I concur.”

  Alexander ignored Taggart’s gentle jab. Both the admiral and he were stressed to the limit at this point. An argument, a turf war, would serve no one, save, possibly, the Xul.

  “So what are we going to do about Earth?” Taggart asked him. “And the Senate?”

  “I don’t know,” Alexander conceded. “I was hoping to bring in the rest of the MIEF through the nearest Core stargate as support. At this point, I doubt the Senate will release them.”

  “The fleet’s still in Cluster Space.”

  “It was.” He checked his time sense. It had been roughly four hours since the Pax Galactica had vanished, and since Hermes had suddenly developed “communications difficulties” and cut the connection with
George Stahl back in EarthRing. Yarlocke’s people must be frantic by now, and sending QCC messages to every naval vessel they could reach. “If the Senate is panicking, they may have already ordered it back to Sol, and if we translate back, either to Cluster Space or Sol Space, we may find ourselves under direct orders not to return to the Core . . . even if we still have ships and personnel here. I don’t want to see that happen.”

  “True,” Taggart said. “But it takes time to get the MIEF ready to move. And without orders from you, well, prep time could be a lot longer . . . if you know what I mean.”

  Alexander gave a wry grin. “And I should have thought of that.”

  Taggart shrugged. “Remember, sir. You’re Alexander the Great.”

  Alexander snorted, a dismissive sound. All military commanders, he was certain, picked up nicknames in the course of their careers. During the past few years, General Alexander hadn’t so much acquired a nickname as he had a persona . . . an assumed connection with the historical figure of Alexander the Great.

  The comparison, he thought, while distinctly flattering, had little enough connection with reality. Like the historical Alexander, he was leading his nation’s military forces against a far larger empire that threatened that nation’s very existence. Like the original Alexander, his campaign thus far had been remarkably successful, successfully striking node after node of Xul control just as Alexander of Macedon had taken on the individual Persian satraps.

  But where Alexander of Macedon had ended up conquering a large portion of the known world, Martin Alexander had not been engaged in a war of conquest. Alexander the Great might have demolished Tyre and burned Persepolis, but he hadn’t been in the habit of blowing up Persian star systems.

  He decided that if he, Martin Alexander, ever began showing signs of acute alcoholism and mental instability—to the point of killing his closest friends and advisors—it would be time to retire. That would be pushing the absurd connection much too far.

  “Your people adore you at least as much as Alexander’s men loved him. They damned near followed him to the end of the Earth . . . they were willing, at any rate. And your people feel the same about you. Or were you aware of that?”

  “I was aware that Alexander’s men mutinied when he tried to push them too far,” Alexander reminded the admiral. He’d experienced a rather lengthy and detailed entertainment sim on the life of Alexander of Macedon a few years before—at right about the time he realized the personnel of 1MIEF were making that comparison. “That’s why he turned back from India.” Alexander the Great had pushed the boundaries of his empire east to within the borders of India, only to turn back at last when his army simply refused to go farther. He’d died—probably of the combined effects of disease, drink, and dementia—at Babylon during the return.

  “That’s beside the point,” Taggart said. “He also drank himself to death at the age of thirty- three, and you’re well past that milestone.”

  Alexander grimaced, a good-natured jibe. “Thanks so much for reminding me.”

  “Any time. Point is, Klass is going to take his sweet time withdrawing the MIEF from Cluster Space if the order doesn’t come from you. And if he did, he’d have a real fight on his hands with Pierce.”

  Rear Admiral Regin Klass was Taggart’s exec, and had been left in command of the rest of the MIEF back at Cluster Space. Brigadier General Timothin Pierce was in command of the rest of the MIEF’s Marine contingent currently stationed in Cluster Space.

  Taggart, he knew, was right. The MIEF’s personnel would follow him before they would follow the orders of anyone in the Senate hierarchy. The idea left Alexander somewhat uncomfortable. The Commonwealth military in general and 1MIEF in partic ular were supposed to answer to the Commonwealth Senate, not to any partic ular officer. Once, the ultimate command authority would have been the President, but the steady and long- term erosion of the executive branch’s power had left the military solidly under the control of the Senate’s Military Council . . . and that meant Senator Yarlocke and a handful of others.

  He wondered again what the hell had happened to the woman.

  He was facing, he realized, the ultimate crisis in any nation’s hierarchy of command and control. The forces of 1MIEF answered to him, were loyal to him, and it was, therefore, up to him and to him alone to maintain the chain of loyalty with the constitutionally designated command authority. If he wanted to overthrow the Commonwealth government and establish himself as a military dictator, he could probably do it; 1MIEF constituted less than a quarter of the Commonwealth’s total military might, but it was by far the best quarter and, properly led . . . sure. He could see several possible ways to seize the EarthRing government centers swiftly enough that the Army and other services would be presented with a fait accompli.

  That thought made him even more uncomfortable. He’d sworn an oath to the Commonwealth Constitution and to the Senate. Hell, he didn’t even want to be a dictator.

  But what if he became convinced—absolutely and determinedly convinced—that to save the Commonwealth he would have to overthrow the Senate?

  A new thought startled him. Was that why Yarlocke hated him so much? Why she kept trying to dismantle the MIEF? Because she was afraid of what he, Alexander, might do? He’d never even considered that possibility.

  He realized Taggart was watching him, waiting for some comment. “Pierce and Klass had damned well better follow any legal orders they get,” he said. “The Expeditionary Force is not my private army . . . and it’s just possible that the Senate might have need of it some day.”

  “Maybe. But we only developed our ‘communications problems’ four hours ago. They’ll try to get in touch with us with courier drones, if nothing else.”

  Which meant that they needed to get done what needed to be done quickly, before they found themselves in the position of having to directly and deliberately disobey orders.

  Of one thing Alexander was certain. No matter what orders the Senate managed to transmit to the squadron, they would not be leaving personnel behind at S-2/I.

  Nightstar 442 Surface of S-2/I Core Space

  0505 hrs, GMT

  Lieutenant Ramsey pulled his Nightstar around and lined up for yet another pass over the battlefield. His plasma weapons were long since empty, but so long as he possessed power taps he could keep flying and keep his lasers charged. There were only two real variables in the equation—how long the Nightstar would hold together as hour followed pounding hour of combat, and how long the pilot could keep flying under the unrelenting punishment.

  Flying an aerospace fighter in vacuum was utterly unlike flight within a planetary atmosphere, where the pilot could bank, roll, and use lift and drag to maneuver his craft. Even close to a planetary surface like that of S-2/I, the only constants of flight dynamics were thrust and gravity. Once he’d over-flown the target, he had to flip the Nightstar end for end and use his agravitics to decelerate, killing his forward velocity, then build up acceleration once more for another pass at the target. While he could jink a little with his lateral thrusters, his approaches and attack runs tended to be strictly ballistic, virtually straight-line and entirely predictable.

  It was that predictability that was wearing down the squadron. With each pass over the Xul hosts, powerful pulses of laser light snapped across the sky, weaving deadly webs attempting to snag the onrushing fighters. Major Treverton had died an hour ago as he streaked low above a mass of enemy combots. Lieutenants Handley, Baker, and Smeth all had been killed since. Only three Nightstars remained in the sky now: Eva Grant, Karl Mayfair, and Ramsey.

  Since the other two were newbies, only recently commissioned, Ramsey had taken command, leading each pass across the battlefield throughever- shiftingthree-dimensional mazes of deadly laser light. Each time, they came from a different direction, lining up on different sets of targets, always trying to keep the enemy fire controllers guessing.

  Each time, their Nightstars took more damage—mostly through high-veloc
ity collisions with bits of grit, rubble, and shrapnel flying above the battlefield. Ramsey’s ship was failing rapidly, its magnetic rad shielding degrading with each pass, its phase- shift protection working now only intermittently.

  Just a few more passes. There were so damned many of the Xul combots. From up here they resembled black seas flowing out from the wreckage of the fallen Behemoth. The three fighters targeted the largest masses with their lasers, but also continued to hammer at the wreckage. There were gaping, town- sized craters in the alien’s hull, now, and maybe, just maybe, they could yet score a hit that would stop the march of those black hordes.

  He put his targeting cursor over one of the larger craters on the Xul hulk. Enemy laser fire flicked past him, made visible by his AI’s computer graphics. Initiating the thoughtcode sequence that triggered his primary lasers, he directed a stream of invisible, high- energy fire into the depths of the target.

  And then, shockingly, he was tumbling, half of his Nightstar sheared away by a Xul weapon—probably a plasma bolt. Sky and ground merged in a wild, frantic whirl as he tried to trigger the cockpit eject sequence.

  “Mayday! Nightstar 442 . . . I’m hit! I’m going in! . . .”

  Marine Regimental Strike Team Firebase Hawkins, S-2/I

  Core Space

  0507 hrs, GMT