by Rick Partlow
Nathan Tanaka didn't comment on her outburst, watching the events unfold through his own set of field glasses. The bodyguard looked ill at ease in the camo fatigues he'd borrowed for the operation, a Marine assault rifle slung from his shoulder. He'd nearly balked when Shannon had insisted he carry the weapon, but it had seemed more important to him to come along and guard her safety than to preserve a long habit. It seemed to Shannon that he had, in the absence of his charge Valerie O'Keefe, adopted safeguarding her as his primary duty.
Her temples throbbed with her pulsebeat as she watched the scout car race up the slope onto the plateau, still seemingly unnoticed. Trailing by nearly a kilometer, the APC rumbled out of the draw at a more sedate speed, curving around to take the plateau at a wide arc, keeping to the edge of the foothills on the east side. By the time the slower vehicle had taken the hill and mounted the flat table of the port highlands, the quicker scout car had finally managed to get the Invaders' attention. One of the gangly Hoppers on patrol nearly a kilometer out stopped in mid-stride---like a grotesque, mechanical parody of a man doing a double-take---and swivelled the upper torso around to bring the main gun and missile pods to bear on the advancing Marines.
That was all the encouragement Jimmy Jimenez needed. A guided missile flared off the Marine vehicle's launch rack and crossed the distance between the car and the anthropomorphic tank in less than a second. The warhead detonated against the Hopper's left turbine, enveloping the machine in a halo of fire with a thunderclap that rolled across the mesa. Armored Invader troops immediately began to pour out of the control center, while the remaining Hoppers turned in their patrol paths and heavy-weapons crews picked up their guns and missile launchers to run out to the front and meet the threat.
As yet unseen, the APC curved around to the rear of the port complex and came to a halt on the far side of the landing pad, disgorging Gunny Lambert and five of his Marines. The troops fanned out into two-Marine teams, each team equipped with a shoulder-fired missile launcher, and took up positions behind what cover they could find at the inner perimeter of the landing pad.
Shannon could see the loosely-organized mass of Invaders streaming out of the control center begin to drop by twos and threes as the two Marine autogunners, in each of the outermost teams, opened up on them. A rifle grenade shot out from one of Lambert's troopers, exploding in the midst of the armored Invaders and sending a half-dozen of them flying in a billowing cloud of smoke and dust. The withering fire drove the Invader troops even farther away from the operations building, drawing half of them toward the landing pad to face the attack from their flank.
"Now, Vinnie," Shannon muttered to herself. "Do it now!"
* * *
More than a klick away from Shannon's position, in a junction of rocky outcroppings overlooking the east side of the spaceport, Vincent Mahoney lowered his field glasses and twisted around on the seat of his borrowed motorcycle.
"Well, Cap," he commented to Shao Tri Trang, seated behind him on the dirt bike, "I don't think they're gonna get any more diverted than that." He turned to Jock Gregory and Tom Crossman, who shared the other bike. "Let's move."
Kickstarting the cycle, Vinnie twisted the accelerator and gunned it down the slope with a hum of electric motors, the other machine following close behind. The gap between the outcroppings was rutted and rocky, but both ex-Marines had been trained in handling nearly every land vehicle in existence and negotiated the path with practiced ease.
Vinnie concentrated on controlling the bike, confident in Captain Trang's ability to look out for threats, but he couldn't help the expectant stiffening in his spine as he heard the gunfire erupting all around. There was a bullet with his name on it out there, he had no doubt, and this was as good a chance of catching it as he'd ever had in his four years in the service. What kept him riding into the midst of the fray despite that knowledge was the realization that this was the culmination of his military experience: this was why he'd joined the Marines in the first place.
Without this assignment, the biggest contribution to the preservation of the Republic he could have hoped to make was putting down some petty rebellion that would inconvenience some corporate miner or landholder. Now, he was putting his life on the line to actually defend humanity against the most significant threat in history.
What a rush.
Both cycles were more than halfway across the plain before any of the enemy spotted them, but one of the few heavy weapons crews which had kept its position in a foxhole at the rear of the control center finally traversed its machine gun and brought the two bikes into the targeting reticle. A fraction of a second more was all it would have taken for the gunner to squeeze the weapon's trigger and blow all four men out of existence, but their presence had not gone unnoticed by either Shao Trang or Tom Crossman.
Although his and Jock's bike was slightly to the rear of Vinnie and Trang's, Crossman actually spotted the emplacement first and brought up the grenade launcher he'd worn slung across his back. Seeing his motion, Trang unlimbered his own launcher and the two men fired almost simultaneously, each loosing a full-auto three-round burst. The mini-grenades described a high arc from the lightweight launchers and came in directly over the weapon emplacement and the pair of Invaders manning it.
Dust flew and machine-gun ammo cooked off with a flash of fireworks as the grenades scattered mingled pieces of machine gun and Invader in a half-circle around the foxhole. Before the smoke had cleared, Vinnie and Jock were swinging their cycles in a dust-flinging braking arc that brought them to an abrupt halt at the back wall of the control center. Crossman and Trang threw themselves belly-first to the ground, covering Vinnie and Jock as the two Sergeants laid the dirt bikes on the ground and freed the canvas rucksacks which had been strapped to the machines.
"Go!" Vinnie barked, unslinging his borrowed Marine assault rifle.
Mahoney led them away from the bikes and Trang brought up the rear as they edged around the fusion-formed block building---ignoring the rear entrances that early reconnaissance had told them were barricaded---and jogged briskly around to the east side to the juncture of the side and front walls. Vinnie craned his neck around the corner, motioning to the others to halt while he checked out the front of the building. The weapons' emplacements were deserted as the fight had been carried to the Marines over at the launch pad, but there were still a pair of Invader troopers keeping a guard at the front door, their rifles held at high port.
Vinnie leaned back around and, shifting his rifle to his right arm, flashed the others a signal with two fingers, then pointed at Jock and jerked a thumb at the corner. Trang and Crossman took up cover positions while their comrades moved into place at the corner, readying their weapons.
"One," Vinnie hissed in a barely-audible mutter as Jock huddled against his left shoulder. "Two...three!"
Jock threw himself out around the corner and into a prone position as Vinnie leaned around the corner and brought up his rifle left-handed, and the two men opened fire simultaneously. The two Marine carbines chattered in unison, each sending a three-round burst into the heads of the armored Invaders. Before the troopers hit the ground, all four of the penetration-team members were around the corner and rushing for the front entrance, this time with Trang and Tom Crossman in the lead, hands filled with grenades.
Vinnie and Jock moved to take up positions on either side of the blown-out doorway as Tom and Shao deactivated the grenade's safeties and prepared to chuck them through the entrance. Feeling something under his boot, Mahoney glanced down and saw that he was standing on the partially-skeletal, rotting hand of one of the human corpses the Invaders had left behind. Its empty eye sockets stared back at him, its face frozen in the rictus of a smile.
Vinnie forced his gaze away from the loathsome spectacle, biting his lip to keep the bile back in his throat and quickly moving his boot off of the bare-white finger bones. He turned his attention back to Tom and Trang, watching them underhand the grenades into the blown-out doorway,
ducking reflexively and covering his ears just before the detonation. The ground shook beneath him and he could feel the concussion in his sinuses and diaphragm as dust shook off the walls and fire and smoke shot out through the doorway.
Mahoney and Gregory darted inside before the smoke had fully cleared, and found themselves in a control room now wrecked twice over, the equipment that had survived the surgical attack of the Invaders now wrecked completely. Blood coated the walls from the handful of Invader corpses lying in pieces on the floor; but several of the aliens still clung horribly to life. A blue-skinned Invader, his torso severed at the waist, was dragging himself toward them by his shredded hands, his eyes just as shark-dead as they had been, his face eerily expressionless. Another lay with his entrails hanging from a gaping wound that exposed most of his chest and belly, but seemed to be trying to get to his feet.
The hellish sight filled them with revulsion, but Jock and Vinnie didn't waste any time ogling the creatures---they sprayed the survivors with carbine-fire, obliterating their oddly swollen heads with 6mm slugs. The two ex-Marines reloaded their rifles from magazine pouches in their tactical vests as Trang and Crossman dashed in behind them to cover. Crossman took up a position behind a control panel to keep their avenue of retreat open, while the others headed through the main control room, through a connecting corridor to a narrow, grey door marked "Authorized Personnel Only."
With Trang staying in the hallway to stand guard, Jock yanked the door open and he and Vinnie ducked through it into the cramped passage within. Chemical ghostlights cast a network of shadows through the open metal gridwork that lined the passageway onto the bare sandstone behind it; but the far end was lost in darkness, which did nothing to assuage the fears of the Intelligence teammembers. Their boots clanged off the gridwork as they jogged quickly down a long set of stairs that finally levelled out onto a narrow walkway. Keeping the muzzle of his weapon pointed at the dark end of the corridor, Mahoney cursed himself for not thinking to bring a flashlight: if there was anything down there, they were well and truly screwed.
But the end of the tunnel proved to hold nothing more threatening than a stout, metal hatchway, sealed with a locking wheel. Jock slung his carbine across his chest and Vinnie moved aside to let the bigger man have a go at the door. Gregory wiped sweat off his forehead, then dried his hands on his utility fatigue pants before grasping the wheel and throwing his weight against it. There was a low squeak, barely audible above his own labored grunts, and then the wheel was turning. Vinnie flattened himself against the opposite wall, his carbine held across his chest, as Jock slowly pulled the thick hatch open.
There was a pneumatic hiss as air from the tunnel rushed into the hatchway, and an automatic light flickered on within. Vinnie angled through the portal and into a large, cavernous chamber, walled on three sides with air-sealed plastalloy. The fourth side was composed of the guts of the laser focussing system: a complex network of encased lenses and cooling valves as intricate as a spider's web, and nearly as delicate.
Vinnie set his carbine on a work bench and shrugged off his backpack.
"Well, buddy," he said, grinning at Jock, "looks like we got some blowing up to do."
"What the fuck is keeping those guys?" Lambert muttered through clenched teeth, taking aim at one of the advancing Invaders and walking a burst from high on its chest to blow out its faceplate.
Invader corpses littered the ground between the control center and the landing pad, at least twenty of them down from the withering fire from the dismounted Marines and the APC's chain gun. Bobby had kept the vehicle moving to try to avoid catching a missile from the Invader ground troops, and had been successful so far---as a matter of fact, none of the Marines had suffered so much as a graze as yet. But that, Lambert knew, was not going to last. They'd used up the shoulder-fired missiles disposing of the Invaders' heavy-weapons teams, but there seemed to be no end to the supply of troops to attack their position. What worried the Gunny most was the thought that these guys had to have some kind of aerospace support, and it was only a matter of time till it arrived.
Lambert twisted around in his prone position just inside the low blast wall of the landing pad, panning past the other Marines arrayed in a semicircle around him to check the position of his vehicles. The scout car was nearly out of sight, even with the magnification of his helmet optics, leading the enemy Hoppers on a merry chase across the plateau, but the APC was less than half a klick away, chasing down a squad-sized element that had attempted to flank them.
The carrier's chain gun spurted a short burst, and half the Invader squad went down, their armor flayed open by tungsten-core slugs. But Gunny Lambert could see one of the creatures bringing a plastic tube up to its shoulder.
"Bobby!" Lambert barked into his helmet pickup. "Missile on your six!"
The APC skidded into a fishtail just as a flare of propellant shot from the tail of the launch tube, and the smoke trail of the projectile angled wide of the carrier's rear. The Invader trooper tried to bring his aim around and shepherd the wire-guided weapon back to the vehicle, but the carrier's bubble turret barked sharply, spitting out a two-round burst of 25mm caseless that trashed the launch tube and its holder, sending the missile plowing harmlessly into the ground.
"That," Bobby Comstock transmitted, "was too damned close." He twisted around in his harness to fix a glare at Peplowski, his gunner. "Peppy, you better keep your eyes open or we'll be wearing this tin can for a coffin!"
"I'm doing what I can, you redneck hick," she grumbled. "Just concentrate on driving!"
"Shut up, you two!" Lambert snapped into their headphones, struggling to hear himself think above their cross-chatter on his comlink and the hammering of the autoguns around him. "Jimmy!" he transmitted to the scout car driver. "Gimme' a situation report."
"Running low on ammo, Sarge," Jimenez told him. "We need to cut this short."
"Jimmy!" Camellia Tinker, Jimenez's gunner snapped. "Look at the launch pad."
Jimenez shifted the Heads-Up-Display's view from the Hopper he was chasing down to the far-off pad, where the Invader launch vehicle rested on its multiple thrust nozzles---which were slowly becoming enshrouded with a white mist that Jimenez recognized all too well.
"Sarge!" Jimmy transmitted, trying to keep one eye on the Hopper while the other watched the rocket. "That shuttle---it's venting coolant! It's getting ready to launch! You guys better get out of there!"
Lambert's eyes went wide as he rolled over and saw the mist rolling out from the rocket in preparation for main engine ignition.
"Fuck me," Clarke, one of the autogunners, murmured, seeing the same thing. "Sarge, we gotta get over the wall!" He nodded at the meter-high fusion-form blast wall they'd been taking refuge behind. "That thing lifts, it'll roast us in here!"
"At ease, Clarke," Lambert snapped. "We get out from cover, we'll be just as dead in less time. Jimmy," he transmitted, "get over here and give us some support. Bobby, we need to evac this area now or we're cooked! Get your tin-plated ass over here and pick us up."
"Roger that, boss man!" Comstock replied, twisting the steering yoke of the personnel carrier hard enough to throw Peplowski against her restraint harness, earning him a vociferous curse.
Nearly a kilometer away, Jimmy Jimenez brought the scout car around in a gentle arc, setting it in a course back toward the landing pad and simultaneously bringing the last remaining Hopper into the targeting scope of the vehicle's missile launch rack.
"Let 'er rip, Tink," he ordered, but the Private was already jerking the trigger on her control stick. One of the vehicle's two remaining missiles flared out of the streamlined pod built into the scout's roof and caught the Hopper low, at the juncture of its left leg, blowing the limb off and sending the machine crashing to the ground in a cloud of smoke. "Now let’s boogie," Jimenez grunted, pressing the accelerator to the floor.
The scout shot forward, closing the distance from a kilometer out faster than the lower-powered APC could cross
the few hundred meters to Lambert's position. Tinker's volley of grenades scattered the advancing wave of Invaders, and then the APC took over, pulling up between the dismounted Marines and the incoming Invader fire.
Peppy cut loose with a short burst from the carrier's grenade cannon, trying to conserve the dwindling supply of ammo for the chain gun, to cover the dismounted Marines in their rush for the slowly-opening side hatch. Booted feet clanged on the APC's floor as the Marines jumped into the machine en masse, the autogunners staying till last and having to be helped through the hatch before it closed.
Even as the APC accelerated away from the pad, a crackle of sparks was beginning to halo the engine nozzles of the heavy-lift shuttle, the heat from the igniting fuel distorting the image in Shannon's binoculars. Lowering the glasses, she retrieved her comlink and broke the radio silence she'd been observing since they'd begun the operation---she was taking a chance that the Gomers could home in on her position, but there was little choice now.
"Vinnie," she radioed. "Set those charges and get out of there!"
There was nothing but silence for a long moment, but then the comlink's speaker crackled and a broken, tinny version of Sergeant Mahoney's voice replied.
"We're gone, ma'am! It'll blow in thirty seconds!"
Shannon brought her binoculars back up in time to see the four men dashing out of the front entrance of the control center and sprinting around the side of the building toward their cycles. Shifting her view back to the shuttle, she could see the whole superstructure of the rocket shaking as the engines began to build thrust, and the massive bulk of the launch vehicle slowly and laboriously lifted itself into the air with a crackling rumble she could feel in her bones through the ground beneath her.
The ship was only a couple meters off the ground and about to begin its ascent when the last missile left the scout car's launch rack and impacted the ship low, just above its portside nozzles. There was a small flash, barely visible through the eye-searing glare of the rocket blast, as the missile warhead detonated; and for a moment, Shannon thought the weapon hadn't had any effect. No sooner had those neurons fired, however, than a wide swath of black smoke billowed out of the portside engines and the huge vehicle began to waver in its flight, lurching gradually to port and angling slowly back toward the control building.