Corey’s mouth tightened, but she nodded her understanding and jogged off in the direction of the Drop Ship cockpit.
“She looks as happy about this idea of yours as I am,” Mercer observed.
“In or out, Bubba?” Jake replied, donning his helmet again.
“I wouldn’t miss observing this brilliant plan for anything,” Mercer laughed, as he also put on his helmet.
“I go where you go, Sir,” Mendoza said, helmet in place.
As they walked over to the Drop Ship personnel hatch, Jake gauged it for handling the body size he planned to bring aboard. Mercer motioned his platoon over. They had all followed their commander across the deck.
“Heads up, Marines,” Charlie said over the helmet intercom. “The General will be going out to exhume a couple of bodies. The corporal here and I will be providing close in support. You bunch will deploy around the ship, and make sure we have no unwanted company.”
A chorus of assenting voices followed the order, and Mercer’s platoons deployed, weapons at the ready.
“I’ve got three bogies trying to gimp back to the original hole, Sir,” Major Peters said.
“Outstanding, Jas,” Jake replied. “The personnel door will not do. Will you keep me on screen so Sara can take over control of the transport hatch? Secondly, do we have enough Epoxy surface to land safely?”
“Yes to both Sir,” Peters replied. “Putting down now.”
They all felt the ship come to rest.
“Transport door coming down, Sir,” Corey’s voice said.
“Tim, you have the Bugs in your sight?” Jake asked.
“Yes Sir. They’re together, and dragging their mangled butts back to their hole, but they ain’t moving very fast.”
“Good, blow the crap out of the one in front, and put a round through each of the other two. Target the main body on those.”
“Will do,” Tim replied.
The Marines deployed around the ship as the transport door came all the way down. Jake, Mercer, and Mendoza went forward as Tim’s first burst disintegrated the lead Bug. The deck gunner’s next two shots passed through the center of each of the remaining two. They fell over to their sides, with a high-pitched screech. They lay directly between the hole and the Epoxy surface. When the three men reached the end of the landing zone, Jake waved the other two to a stop, gesturing for them to set up to cover him from there.
“Jake,” Mercer said, exasperation creeping into his voice. “You can’t go out there alone. Hell, how you plan on bringing them to the ship anyway, on your back?”
“You let me worry about that, Charlie. You guys watch for movement out of the hole, or any ground stirring around me as I go. Tim, I don’t have to tell you to scan the.”
“I’ve got the back door, Sir,” Tim broke in.
Jake ran full speed for the two incapacitated Bugs. He covered the distance in less than half the time it would have taken Mercer and Mendoza. When he drew abreast of the creature nearest the ship, he looked around quickly and then slung his weapon. With his gloved hands he grabbed the two large mandibles near the front of the thing, and simply started dragging the huge monster back towards the ship.
“Jake, look out,” Mercer screamed. “It’s still moving. Drop down so we can nail it.”
“Don’t shoot Charlie, I’ve got it.” Jake dropped the Bug. In one motion, he drew the gear knife at his belt, and plunged it into the creature’s head through the softer fold around where it sprouted one of the antennae like appendages.
After cleaning the knife in the dirt, Jake resumed his trek to the ship. When he reached the open hatch, he dropped his hold on the Bug. He then headed back out for the other one at full speed. This time Jake took no chances with the thing. He again used the gear knife to finish it off. Dragging the second corpse toward the ship, Jake felt the ground begin to rumble.
“We’ll have company soon guys,” Jake warned. “Almost therenow.”
“I see the spot, Jake,” Tim added. “You’re going right over it.”
“I feel it,” Jake confirmed, as he moved even faster. He cleared the edge of the landing zone just as the ground disgorged a new stream of Bugs, with Mercer and Mendoza retreating on each side of him, weapons at the ready.
“Fire at will,” Jake called out. “I only need a couple of moments to load the samples. Get ready Sara.”
“On it,” Sara acknowledged.
Jake finished dragging the two Bugs through the transport hatch, and then rushed out with his weapon back in his hands. “Let’s go home. Tim, put a MAG50 round into the hole as soon as we lift off.”
“Aye, Sir,” Tim replied, firing the deck gun as the Marines retreated in good order back aboard ship.
Jake ran in at the end of the skirmish line of Marines. The transport hatch closed, as Mercer made an on site head count. No one was missing, so Jake gave the lift off order. As the Drop Ship moved up and away from the area, Dougherty let loose with the MAG50, obliterating the Bugs at the hole.
“Well done, men,” Jake said. “Take off the helmets and strap yourselves in. We’re heading for the Gallant. That was one fine day’s work. Take us back home, Jas.”
“Aye, aye, Sir, on the way.”
As the ship began to move again, Jake and the rest of his party strapped in for the ride back out to the Gallant. Mercer and Mendoza stayed with Jake.
“What the hell you been eatin’, Jake?” Mercer asked. “How can you haul those monsters around by yourself. Did you get blown up or something, and made into a cyborg?”
Jake laughed. “No Charlie, I’ve been billeting on a heavy gravity world for the last five years. Operating out here in standard gravity is like being enhanced for me.”
“Those babies must weigh a ton,” Mercer continued. “Listen Jake, I’ve got this desk I want to move in my quarters. Can.”
“Very funny,” Jake sighed, as Mendoza laughed.
Tokoru and Stavros met the returning recon mission participants at the hatch after Drop Ship Alpha landed safely on the Gallant. Although many of the Marine regiments on board had either flown down on the other Drop Ships held in reserve, or watched the whole mission from on board the Gallant, they were now hanging around to meet the lead ship’s combatants. Two teams from the Gallant were on hand to collect the specimens Jake had gathered. Jake waved them off for the moment, as he shook hands with Tokoru and Stavros.
“Bring them out, boys,” Jake said motioning to the Marines on board. “Just drop them right here in the hanger bay. I want everyone to get a close look at what we’re fighting before the lab boys take over. Wear your gloves, and wash them off once you get them out here.”
As the military personnel aboard the Gallant began inspecting the two creatures’ corpses, Jake pointed to the civilians starting to exit the ship. “Yuri, I want a twenty-four hour guard on that bunch until we can get them the hell back to where they came from. Playtime’s over. If they give anyone any trouble, I want them put in the brig. They will be confined to quarters until a transport takes them off the Gallant.”
“Yes Sir. Do you want to file any charges?” Tokoru asked. “It might look good just in case some of them start getting mouthy when they get back home.”
“Forget it, Yuri,” Jake replied. “We have the video record this time. There will be no more encounter groups after this lesson.”
“They sure didn’t waste any time getting back on the hovercraft,” Stavros added. “If not for the Doctor getting grabbed, and those two nitwits trying to close the hatch on you, the whole thing would have been funny.”
“Tep,” Jake agreed. “They did pretty much what I’d figured they’d do. Any sane person would have.”
“What do you have planned for your exhibits, General?” Stavrosasked.
“I want to see if we can find out what attracts them, or makes them do what the Queen orders,” Jake explained. “If we know what kind of a signal makes them jump, we can.”
“Lure them out away from the Queen,” To
koru broke in excitedly. “It would be like shooting fish in a barrel if we can isolate her.”
“We also have to figure out a way to block her signal though,” Jake added. “When we find out where she’s at, we may be able to bombard her with ultrasonic vibrations, while playing Pied Piper to her horde.”
“What about changing the frequency of the particle beam weapon theory?” Mercer suggested. “It works using the molecules in the air. If it were set to work within an audio range of the type used by the Queen, we could bombard her right through the ground from above.”
“Damn Charlie,” Jake smiled, clapping a hand on Mercer’s shoulder, “that might just work. What do you think Anton?”
“I’ll get the lab boys working on it as soon as they figure out from our recordings, and the creatures, what exactly makes them tick. I have some disturbing news to add though, General.”
“What is it?” Jake asked, suddenly somber at Stavros’ words.
“I hate to disrupt the festivities over your successful mission, but you might as well hear it now,” Stavros replied. “Our tracking satellites with the heightened sensor arrays worked just as you had envisioned. We were getting readings from two different areas on Bougainville, and since you left the surface, the activity in those suspected nests sends the scanners right off the scale.”
“Two Queens?” Jake asked.
“I’m afraid so, General,” Stavros confirmed as the others around them cursed under their breath. “As you know, Bougainville orbits this quadrant’s Sun at roughly the same distance as Omaha, and only has slightly more mass. Both planets would seem almost negligible to Earth in size, but their density is almost identical, hence the atmosphere they enjoy, and the Earthlike gravity. Omaha.”
“I don’t mean to be short with you,” Jake interrupted impatiently, “but this changes.”
“Bear with me, Sir,” Stavros cut in. “Reports of new plant and animal life on Omaha since the extermination of the Bugs make our scientists believe the Bugs are responsible for the barren aspects of the terrain on both Omaha and Bougainville. Even small bodies of water have formed on Omaha since the war there. The scientists believe the Queens and numbers in the horde vary according to planetary conditions or attrition, meaning they drain the very life out of the planet to the point where nothing can exist there but them. Ever.”
“I’m beginning to get a headache, Colonel,” Jake said quietly. “Let’s take this discussion into a more private hearing room, and you can bring me up to date. A picture has begun forming in the back of my head, and I don’t like what it’s showing me. Charlie, can you tell those lab boys what we want them looking for, and then meet us in the same wardroom as before. Get the weapons officer you met in the meeting, Major Richardson, in on it too, okay?”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” Mercer replied crisply, turning to carry out hisorders.
“Corporal, see to those civilians,” Jake told Mendoza. “Make sure they are confined to quarters, and a guard assigned to make sure they do no wandering around at all. You know what to do if you get any grief from them.”
“What about you Sir, I.”
“Do what I said, Bob,” Jake smiled, “and then get some food, clean up, and report to the wardroom. I’ll still be there.”
“Yes Sir,” Mendoza saluted, and hurried off.
Jake turned to Stavros and Tokoru, gesturing for them to lead the way. “Shall we gentlemen? Let’s get the video piped into the wardroom, and I’ll watch it while I throw down some coffee. Then you can finish telling me what they’ve been holding out on us.”
Stavros began to say something, but instead he turned towards the wardroom with a smiling Tokoru trailing him. Jake saw Major Peters exit the Drop Ship with Captain Corey. Corey gripped Peters’ arm, shrinking back away from the creatures and the crowd around them. Jake caught their attention, and gestured for the two pilots to join him. They caught up to Jake, with Corey still hanging on to Peters’ arm. Major Peters patted her hand with his free one, smiling down at her in commiseration. Corey looked up at Peters sheepishly, as if noticing for the first time she was still clinging to him. As they drew abreast of Jake, Corey had moved a step away from Peters, and her color had improved.
“God, Jake,” Corey exclaimed in a whisper. “What the hell did you have to bring those things on board for? You thinking of getting a pet?”
Jake and Peters both laughed at her half serious remark. “They were dead before I brought them on, Sara, and we need to find out a lot more about them. Remember this was only the preliminary round, and from what Colonel Stavros just hinted to me, we may even need a live one later on.”
“You don’t mean that,” Corey said. “Adrian would cut your heart out if she ever gets wind of what you’re up to, General.”
“There’s a nice court martial and five years on Tannengate for the one who lets her in on the details of our mission on Bougainville,” Jake replied, shaking his finger at Corey.
“I won’t do it,” Corey protested, “but what about the streaming video you had going back to Genoa live? Don’t you think…Jake…are you okay?”
Jake had stopped dead in his tracks as he remembered he had ordered video transmitted right from the recon mission to Genoa for all military and civilian personnel to see. “Oh…my…God.”
Corey broke into raucous laughter at the sight of Jake’s stunned visage. She turned to Peters, who merely smiled in confusion. She gestured to Jake. “When his wife gets a look at that video from the recon mission, our erstwhile General will be volunteering for sentry duty back at Tarawa Jump Gate again, right Sir?”
Chapter 14
Re-infestation
Jake started walking again, as he slung his particle beam weapon further up on his shoulder. “What was I thinking? I could have edited the public version, and sent back the whole thing for General Risling, encoded. She’s probably already transferred my stuff to the cave.”
“Maybe Risling hasn’t sent it out to her yet,” Peters offered. “She doesn’t have a live feed on Casserine unless she gets the signal from Genoa.”
“Tea,” Jake said enthusiastically. “I’ll bet he didn’t. I’ll get hold of him after the meeting, and make sure none of it gets to Casserine.”
“In all of your old video and literature perusing Jake, did you ever run across the term ‘pussy whipped’?” Corey asked derisively.
“Okay, I may overreact a little where Adrian’s concerned,” Jake admitted, “but living by ourselves on Casserine means I have no place to go when she gets mad at me.” He hesitated for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders in resignation. “I’m whipped. There’s no use in denial.”
Both Peters and Corey burst into laughter at this admission as they walked through the hatch and into the wardroom. Jake stripped down to just the uniform coveralls he wore under his armored outer layer. Peters and Corey joined Tokoru and Stavros at the conference table after getting some coffee from the drink dispenser. Jake brought his cup over moments later and sat down.
“We better make this short,” Jake said apologetically. “I smell like agoat.”
“If you hadn’t been hauling around twenty foot monsters, General, you would be a bit fresher,” Tokoru pointed out to everyone’s amusement.
“Thanks for the insight, Yuri,” Jake replied. “Let’s get started.”
Stavros triggered the hologram display set up at the end of the table. Images showing the action sequence, along with the movements of the support ships, played as a backdrop to the helmet cam video streams. Although they stressed the terror of the confrontation, Jake had Stavros cut out the civilian group’s video stream. The whole mission took very little time from beginning to end. When the display ended, Jake looked around.
“Any observations?”
“They picked up on the civilian group astoundingly fast,” Stavros said. “Add to it the speed at which the things started a flanking movement, and I can see why it was a miracle you ever made it down into the nest on Omaha.”
“All the weapons worked,” Mercer said as he joined the group.
“Amen to that,” Jake agreed.
“Well, here’s what the satellite scanners picked up,” Stavros said, switching to an image of movement under the crust of the small planet, as projected from the scanners. Two distinct pockets of heightened activity became immediately obvious as the attacking horde was destroyed.
“Son of a bitch,” Mercer exclaimed. “There are two Queens.”
“This the only surprise you were talking about, Colonel?” Jakeasked.
“That and the news they finally let filter down to us about how changed Omaha became after the Bugs were killed,” Stavros replied. “The rumors of some form of communication between the Bugs on both worlds would seem guaranteed with today’s recon mission info.”
“I think it may be bigger than just some telepathic communication,” Jake proffered. “The Bugs don’t have space ships, so how the hell did they get on Omaha and Bougainville. Even with the similarity in conditions, it’s a big stretch to start believing in spontaneous creationism. I’m glad they’ve started thinking about how Omaha changed without the Bugs. There’s a piece missing out of this puzzle, and my imagination has begun to work overtime. Maybe.”
Jake jumped up out of his seat. “Shit, I just got a bad feeling. Anton, can you put me through to the Commanding Officer over on Omaha?”
“Sure,” Stavros replied, as everyone else had stood up. “What’s wrong?”
“Does Omaha have any tracking for underground movement since the war?”
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