He shunted the questions aside. All they would do was raise more unanswerable questions. His infantrymen were in trouble and he had to get them out of that swamp.
The string-of-pearls still couldn't find the Skinks, not a trace. The navy techs and analysts working on the data in orbit still had no idea what that possible anomaly might have been, where the squad sent to check it out had found nothing—and then had been cut off and almost overrun. All he had to go on were the reports from Commander van Winkle, and those didn't tell him enough to make any intelligent command decisions.
Well, he was a Marine. When in doubt, be decisive.
His choices were to continue through or to pull out the same way they'd come in. The Marines wouldn't like pressing forward; that was what they were doing when they were getting hurt. But pulling back over ground they'd already covered would feel like retreat, and that could be catastrophic for morale. He might not have the information he needed to make intelligent command decisions, but deciding which way to go was easy. Press forward. That way was shorter anyway. The battalion had advanced more than halfway through the swamp during the previous day. He issued the order and had both the squadron and the battery stand by to give support.
"Saddle up, people, we're moving out." Staff Sergeant Hyakowa's voice came loud and clear into the helmet comm of every member of third platoon. "Saddle up!"
There was general grumbling at the order, but none that wasn't totally routine for tired men trying to ignore the life-threatening aspect of where they were and what they were doing. None of them wanted to be there; certainly none of them wanted to get up and go into further danger. But they knew it was more dangerous to stay where they were, and the only way out was to go through more of what they'd already been through.
"We're continuing through the swamp," Hyakowa said. "Same order of movement as yesterday."
Shouted objections greeted that announcement. Continuing through the swamp meant going through more of what they'd already gone through.
"Secure that, people," Hyakowa snapped. "Forward is the short way. Back is farther. Do you want to get out of this swamp or not?"
The objections quieted. They wanted to get out, they just didn't want to walk it. But there was no other way.
Schultz flexed his left arm, willing the traumatized tissue to loosen up. He ignored the pain as adhesions broke and blood tried to seep past the artificial skin that covered the wound. He took his position, sniffed the air, listened to the sounds, got himself ready to give far worse than the Skinks could give back.
Doyle looked around fearfully, terrified of continuing the march through the swamp.
Kerr scuttled over to make sure Schultz was all right. On his return he checked Doyle to make sure he had everything he was supposed to and his blaster was loaded and functional. Then the signal came to move out. Kerr was glad he'd been so busy with his men that he didn't have the time to worry about how he was doing himself. The action the night before, when the squad was cut off, left him with a stronger feeling of mortality than he'd had since his first contact after he returned from convalescence. He'd gotten over it quickly enough that time; this time it was gnawing at him.
Word had finally spread through the insectoid world that the massive herd migrating through its territory wasn't an ambulatory banquet, so few of the Marines were bitten or stung, and most of their itching was residual from the previous day and night. Even the walking came a little easier. The land sloped gently, almost imperceptably, up toward the mountains from which its water flowed. The muck underfoot became less clingy, firmer, gave their boots better traction. Water moved less sluggishly, less often lay in sheets on the ground, and stream beds were better defined. Vegetation was hung in fewer lank sheets and tangles, sight lines were lengthened. They were heading through more swamp, but it wasn't as depressing as it had been; spirits rose. Especially when they didn't have any contact for the first several hours. But all things end. Especially the good ones.
The battalion was almost at the far side of the swamp. The leftmost platoon of Kilo Company had already broken into an arm of open land that poked into the swamp. With firmer ground in which to dig their roots, trees grew taller. Grasses hopscotched under them to grow in scattered clumps where sunlight managed to filter to the ground. It was as dark as ever under the trees, but colors began to appear where light did come through. The air was freshening from its swampy rankness.
Schultz froze. He could never afterward remember what made him freeze, he simply knew a threat was nearby. While he was still deciding if immediate action was necessary, Doyle, who sensed the nearness of the end of the swamp and wasn't paying attention to Schultz, blundered into him. The two fell, and that saved Schultz's life. As he hit the ground, Schultz very clearly heard the sharp crack of something supersonic pass through the space he'd just occupied.
"Thanks," he rumbled in surprise and rolled away. In the instant, he thought Doyle saw whatever was coming and deliberately tackled him to save his life.
Doyle also heard the crack but didn't understand what it meant. He wanted to raise his head and look around, but when his infra showed Schultz hugging the ground, he realized raising his head might be a good way to lose it. He scrambled for cover.
"Right!" Kerr shouted, and dove to the ground. Behind him the rest of second squad hit the mud and faced their right, firing blindly into the swamp.
No greenish streams of viscous fluid shot at the Marines. Supersonic cracks shot overhead, faster and faster, until in seconds they crescendoed in a skull-splitting whine. Leaves and branches, sliced through by whatever was being shot at them, cascaded down. Trees toppled in front of them, their trunks cut through.
"Where are they?" someone shouted.
"There!" someone shouted back.
Sergeant Bladon couldn't see where the hellish fire came from, nor did his UPUD show anything. He did the only thing he could. "Volley fire, thirty!" he shouted. "Fire!" On the platoon command circuit he heard Gunny Bass order the gun squad to move into position to help second squad. Bass ordered first squad to move back and swing to what was now second squad's right side.
The eight blasters of second squad put out a ragged line of plasma bolts that struck the mud thirty meters distant.
"Volley fire, up ten!" Bladon ordered as soon as he saw his squad's fire was on line. The bolts from the squad's eight blasters hit foliage and ground deeper in the swamp. The two guns added their rapid fire. A curtain of steam rose from the frying mud.
"Up ten!" Bladon ordered. The squad's fire, even with the guns added to it, seemed to have no effect on the enemy's rate of fire.
"Third platoon, volley fire, sixty!" Bass shouted over the all-hands circuit. First squad was on line by them and added fire from its blasters.
Kerr couldn't see sixty meters through the steam rising from the overheated mud. He guessed where it was and fired a bolt. He shifted aim to his right and fired again, shifted left and fired. Again and again he shifted, trying to draw a stippled line in the mud sixty meters away. What the hell kind of weapons were they using? He'd never seen or even heard of weapons like this.
"Third platoon, up ten!" Bass commanded. They fired deeper.
Felled trees smoldered, tongues of flame flickering up from them from repeated blaster hits. Trees crackled and popped from the abruptly heated fluids in their trunks and some split. The crashes of felled trees in the killing zone between the Marines and their ambushers became more frequent. Trees toppled behind them. The ground shook. Things hit the mud in front of them, behind them, between them, pulverized the ground where they hit, exploded flesh and bone when they found their targets.
A tremendous crash came from first squad's area. Someone screamed briefly.
"Who was that?" Bass demanded.
The volume of blaster fire increased as first platoon arrived on third platoon's left flank with one section from the assault platoon. A moment later second platoon and the other assault section reached their right flank and joi
ned in.
"Company L! Volley fire, seventy!" Lieutenant Humphrey ordered on the company all-hands circuit. Where the hell are they? he wondered. Sightlines were thirty meters, rarely more than fifty. Volley fire at seventy meters over flat land should have been killing just about everything up to double that distance, yet everything his company was throwing out had no effect on the enemy's fire. There was no way anyone could be in that range and be able to put out directed fire. He heard the fire from his company slowly slacken and saw holes open in the coverage.
Two minutes into the firefight, Surveillance Radar Analyst Third Class Auperson on the Grandar Bay shouted, "Chief, take a look. You're not going to believe this."
"What'cha got, Auperson," Chief Nome asked as he leaned over Auperson's shoulder to look at his displays. He blinked.
"You're right, I don't believe that." Without turning his head he called, "Sir! Over here. Are those jarheads down there in trouble?"
Lieutenant (jg) McPherson, the string-of-pearls watch officer, raised a "wait one" finger; he was talking on his headset. He joined Nome and Auperson as he wrapped up the conversation. "The Marines are screaming for data. What do you have?"
Nome pointed. McPherson looked at the display. "Hot damn, that's it!" He got back onto his headset and reported. "Those coordinates the Marines are at—there's a swath of swamp being torn apart between them and an area eight hundred meters to their east northeast. Looks like mad bulldozers at work." He rattled off the coordinates of the northeastern edge of the area, then said, "Aye aye, sir, I'll keep on top of it." Fascinated, he kept his eyes glued to the display. He couldn't imagine what kind of weapon would wreak the destruction he was watching.
"That's the report, sir, but it's not possible," said Lieutenant Quaticatl when Brigadier Sturgeon looked up after reading the string-of-pearls report.
"Possible or not, it's all we've got," Sturgeon replied. "Three!"
"Sir?" Commander Usner replied. He had also just finished reading the report.
"Work with air. Box those coordinates. I want the heaviest hit possible there, and I want it now."
"Aye aye, sir." Usner got on the open comm link to the squadron's operations officer and fed him the information. "The brigadier wants it five minutes ago," he finished. He nodded, satisfied with the response of the squadron's S3.
"Sir," he reported to his commander, "half of the Raptors are orbiting within range now and will fire with Jerichos as soon as they're pointed in the right direction. The other half are fueled, loaded, and launching. They'll be on station in five minutes."
"Good," Sturgeon grunted. His brow was deeply furrowed. He looked into someplace only he could see. What the hell kind of weapons were the Skinks using?
Thirty seconds after getting their fire orders, the four orbiting Raptors lined up, pointing their noses at the Swamp of Perdition, and hovered while they locked their Jerichos in with the string-of-pearls guidance system. Then they let rip in six waves of eight missiles. They turned about and headed back to base to refuel and rearm. Two minutes into their return they wiggled their wings at the other four Raptors and got wiggles back. Fifteen minutes after firing they were back on station awaiting another fire mission.
"Cease fire! Cease fire!" the commands rang out. The mind-numbing whine had stopped, mud no longer pulverized, no more flesh and bone exploded. "Report!" Casualty counts came in. M Company had been pinned down, unable to maneuver to join in the fight. It lost three more Marines killed. Two had limbs blown off, but corpsmen reached them in time to stanch the bleeding and stick them in stasis bags to stabilize them until they reached the hospital. Kilo Company lost four men while maneuvering to Company L's right flank, and another six once they joined the fighting. The assault company had lost two full squads, a third of its strength, when their guns were hit by things.
In Company L, Sergeant Bladon was down. Something had torn off his right arm midway between the elbow and wrist. First squad's Lance Corporal Van Impe was crushed by a toppled tree; PFCs Godenov and Hayes were wounded. In second squad, Lance Corporal Rodamour, wounded the night before, was killed. So were Corporal Stevenson and PFC Gimbel in the gun squad. First platoon lost five men, dead or mangled; second platoon lost six.
Commander van Winkle didn't give his Marines time to dwell on their casualties. As soon as the battalion surgeon informed him that he was able to gather the wounded and dead, van Winkle ordered the battalion to get on line and sweep toward the enemy position.
There wasn't any mud in front of third platoon for the first 150 meters. It had all been baked into dirt by the plasma bolts from their blasters and bigger guns. The dirt was pitted and pounded into dust by the Skink weapons. They had to step or climb over trees; hardly any were left standing. Many of the downed trees—and a few of the standing ones—were smoldering or burning. Those, the Marines walked around. That first 150 meters looked like it had been hit by a swarm of tornadoes accompanied by lightning strikes, but there were none of the scorch marks left behind by dying Skinks.
Beyond the first 150 meters, the swarm of tornadoes continued its rampage, but had been abandoned by the lightning.
"H-Have you ever seen anything like this?" Doyle asked.
Schultz grunted a negative.
Kerr softly said, "Never."
Corporal Linsman, now the acting squad leader, had but didn't mention it. He once saw a forest after a twenty ton meteorite had exploded in the atmosphere above it. This looked like that, except that had covered hundreds of square kilometers. This devastation was a band a couple of hundred meters wide. A couple of hundred meters wide, but how long? He had heard the explosions of the missiles, but couldn't judge their distance. There was too much other noise, and the sound echoed off and was muffled by the trees. He could see a lot farther than he should have been able to in this swamp. In the distance a black cloud rose from the swamp. What the hell are the Skinks using? he wondered.
A little more than seven hundred meters from where they'd lain to futilely return fire, they reached the closest Jericho hit. The fire started by the missiles was almost completely burned out. Most of the trees had been reduced to embers and charred bits. They continued through. A box three hundred meters on a side had been hit by Jerichos. The area between there and the Marines' former position had been devastated, but the Skink position, if that was really where they'd been, was obliterated. A few badly charred spikes stood up where trees had been, most of the wood and vegetation that had been there reduced to embers and charcoal. There was no chance of finding bodies or even Skink scorch marks.
"Hey, Dorny, look at this," Claypoole shouted.
"What do you have?" Corporal Dornhofer asked as he trotted over.
"Damned if I know, but it used to be something."
It was a mess of metal, some bent totally out of shape, some sagged from too much heat. Parts of it had completely melted and puddled.
"You're right," Dornhofer said when he saw it, "it used to be something. But what?" He squatted and used the magnifier shield to look at it more closely. "Rabbit, I've got something," he said on the squad command circuit.
"Show yourself," Sergeant Ratliff replied.
Dornhofer raised an arm so his camouflage sleeve slid down to expose his flesh and said, "Coming up."
"Too small for a vehicle," the first squad leader said when he saw it. "Must have been a weapon of some kind."
"Yeah, but what kind?" Claypoole asked.
"The kind that was shooting at us, that's what kind."
Gunny Bass joined them. "Don't touch anything," he said as soon as he saw it. "The navy forensic people might be able to figure out what it used to be."
"You really think so?" Ratliff asked. He looked dubiously at the twisted, half-melted metal.
"I think they maybe really can. Really. Maybe," Bass said.
The battalion spent the rest of the day searching the swamp in the vicinity of the fight but found nothing. No bodies, no scorch marks, no equipment or weapons. Best of all,
nobody shot at them. They moved out of the swamp at dusk. In the morning they went back in and swept south, parallel to the route they'd taken north. They found no sign of anybody, nobody shot at them. It appeared that the Swamp of Perdition was cleared of enemy forces.
Thirty-fourth FIST's infantry battalion returned to its encampment outside Interstellar City to lick its wounds and begin to heal.
Chapter Eighteen
Although not a member of any recognized sect, Conrad Milch was a quiet, reserved, and intensely religious man. As a propulsion engineer all his working life, he had a profound sense of nature's most elemental forces harnessed in the power plants of starships such as the Cambria. He reasoned that if man could capture the energy of the stars and put it to work for him, then how much more awesome was the Power that had created mankind.
Milch was enormously content on that particular voyage because the Cambria's chief engineer, a besotted Scot who thought only about his impending retirement, had left the supervision of the ship's drives almost totally in the humble young man's capable hands. Milch spent most of his waking hours ensconced far in the aft reaches of the enormous ship, monitoring the wonders of the Beam drive. He knew little about drive theory, but he knew the drive's components and he could keep them working at peak efficiency. He would happily have stood all the watches by himself; Captain Tuit demanded he eat and sleep to keep his body functioning properly and his mind sharp enough to do his exacting work.
When Conrad Milch was away from his drives, he felt no interest in the other onboard operations or the activities of the crew and their passengers—until the miners from Siluria boarded the Cambria. One day as he passed through one of the recreation rooms on the way to the crew's quarters, he saw them holding hands, obviously deep in meditation or prayer. Now there was something he could relate to! He often spent the long hours of his watches contemplating the irresistible potency of his engines and yearning to be one with the omnipotence of the universe.
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