by Rick Partlow
“You might not want all that attention, Jimmy,” Bobby Comstock argued. “Armor on that speed buggy of yours won’t stop no missile.”
“The Private is correct.” Tanaka spoke for the first time since the meeting had begun. “The scout can be only one part of the attack. Besides the penetration team, you will need a dismounted element utilizing shoulder-fired missiles to support the diversion.”
“Oh, goody,” Corporal Camellia Tinker muttered, chuckling humorlessly, “fun for everyone.”
“So we’ll need four groups,” Shannon Stark mused, rubbing her chin. “Penetration, mounted diversion, dismounted support and an overwatch element to coordinate.”
“Well, we know who’s in the scout group,” Comstock declared. “Who gets to go inside?”
“That’s what we were trained for,” Vinnie reminded Shannon.
“Vinnie’s right,” she said. “The four of us will take the laser.”
“All due respect, ma’am,” Lambert said, shaking his head, “you going in wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“He is correct,” Tanaka agreed, his tone gently reproving. “You are the only officer: you must stay with the overwatch element and direct the other teams.”
“All right, damn it.” Shannon let out a sigh. “This commanding officer crap is getting old. If not me, then who? Three probably won’t be enough—you’ll need two to hold the control center and at least two to set the charges.”
“How about you, Captain Trang?” Vinnie asked the mercenary officer. “You handled yourself pretty good out there.” He extended the man a hand. “Wanna come along for the ride?”
“You patriotic types will get me killed yet,” Trang moaned. But he took the hand. “I’m in,” he told Shannon.
“We’ll hang with you, Captain,” one of the other two security people, a tall, lanky European whose name escaped Shannon declared. The other merc, a broad-shouldered Asian, nodded his agreement.
Trang shook his head. “I thank you for your loyalty, but your place is here, to ensure the safety of the governor.” He glanced at Sigurdsen, who sat off to the side, a potted plant for most of the conversation. Actually, Shannon couldn’t recall the big man having said more than two words since the night of their arrival, but the reference to him seemed to stir him from his self-imposed silence.
“Lieutenant,” he spoke hesitantly, “are you certain this is the right thing to do? What if your ship is still out there? Shouldn’t we wait till we’re sure there’s no other way?”
“They didn’t reply to our transmission, Your Honor,” she reminded him. “Even if they’re out there, they couldn’t approach till we took out the laser—otherwise, the Invaders could use it to knock out any attempt at a counterstrike.”
The Governor nodded slowly and reluctantly, still seemingly not quite convinced.
“All right.” Shannon took a deep breath before continuing. “Gunny, I’ll leave it to you to separate your people into three teams: the scout car assault group, an APC crew and a support team to dismount from the carrier and back up the diversion. Vinnie, you coordinate with the Gunny on coming up with the charges and timers.”
“We can rig something up from rifle grenades,” Mahoney stated, rising from his seat as the others began to drift away from the meeting.
“Lieutenant.” Governor Sigurdsen motioned for her to remain by the couch as the others moved away to prepare for the mission.
“Yes, Your Honor?” Shannon cocked an eyebrow.
“What should I… should we do if none of you come back?”
Stark regarded him silently, sorely tempted to reply: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” But a sidelong glance at the two merc guards and the young servant girl squashed that impulse.
“Pray.” She shrugged, turning away from him. “God might be merciful, but I doubt the Invaders will be.”
* * *
The midday sun beat down on Shannon’s back, leaving her with an inescapable feeling of exposure and helplessness. It seemed odd, even now, to launch a commando raid in broad daylight, but the benefits of a night attack would have been illusory at best. The Invaders surely had infrared night vision and thermal imaging equipment, and there were no assurances they slept at night as humans did. Worst of all, and the final reason for deciding on high noon as H-Hour for the raid, they had to consider the fact that the Invaders ships were undoubtedly monitoring the planet from orbit.
They couldn’t be sure what kind of computer technology the enemy had, but Republic ships and satellites had the ability to automatically scan for thermal anomalies. At night, the Marine vehicles would have stood out from the cold, desert surface like a Christmas tree; in the day, with the scorching flame of white-hot Tau Ceti beating down, the thermal output from the turbine-driven tactical vehicles would be insignificant.
Yet, despite all the logic behind her decision, sitting out on the rocky outcropping, with the shelter’s dune buggy parked down the hill behind her and Nathan Tanaka by her side, she felt like somebody had drawn a bullseye on her back. Trying to shake that image, she raised her binoculars and focussed on the spaceport control center.
There was still some evidence on the building of the damage done in the invasion. Pockmarks from bullet impacts scarred the front face, a single crater from a grenade explosion had taken a chunk out of a corner at hip level, and the front door had been blown off its hinges. A pair of bodies, still in their grey Port Authority coveralls, had been left to decompose only meters from the entrance, and Shannon flinched as she saw a local scavenger gnawing at one of the corpses.
But the building was still in use: through the doorway, she could see shadowed figures milling around, working the instrument boards and monitoring the launch systems. For a bizarre moment, she thought the figures were human, but then one stepped into the light from the entrance and she saw that it was one of the blue-skinned Invaders, sans armor and helmet. Still, it seemed different somehow from the one she’d seen face-to-face back at the mansion. After wasting a second staring at the creature, she realized what the difference was: its head. The cranium was larger than a man’s and much larger than that of the other Invader she’d seen. It gave the creature an odd, lopsided look that sent shivers up her spine.
Tracking away from the control center, she found the shining, metallic strip of the maglev rail and followed it around to the laser-launch platform, where several cars were waiting to be unloaded, their cargo of launch pods squatting in utilitarian ugliness on the flat-bed car. The powerful laser discharged even as she watched, the ionization of its beam making the hair on the back of her neck stand up from several kilometers away.
Shifting her view to the left, she brought the rotund shape of the Invader shuttle into her view—either they were still loading the same craft Vinnie and Captain Trang had observed, or this was yet another launch vehicle. Probably the former, she judged: the loading ramp was up, the cargo doors closed, and it seemed that they were clearing the area around the shuttle in preparation for take-off.
Swinging the binoculars around ninety degrees, she focussed on a narrow draw some three klicks from the control center. Her mind ticked off the seconds and, right on cue, a dull-grey teardrop shape burst out of the draw in a cloud of dust and a whine of turbines audible even from their far perch.
“There they go!” Shannon exclaimed, nearly breathless with tension—sounding, she thought, like a worried mother watching her son play football for the first time. Of her two years as a Fleet officer, nearly eighteen months had been spent as an intelligence analyst. Leading troops into battle—or worse, sending them into battle—was something alien to her.
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 cleare
d, 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.