A World of Hurt

by David Sherman

  Schultz used his infra for a moment of looking around. A faint haze showed on the ground; decaying vegetation, he decided. Still, his skin crawled with the feeling of danger.

  Where are you? He tried to project his thoughts at the unseen foe. Give me a hint, so I can kill you.

  The company command group was between and a little behind first and third platoons. It consisted of Captain Conorado, the company's executive officer; Lieutenant Humphrey; Gunny Thatcher; Lieutenant Rokmonov of the assault platoon; Staff Sergeant DaCruz and his assault section; two communications men; and the four medical corpsmen assigned to the company. Second platoon trailed them with the other assault section attached to it.

  Conorado was concerned. The forest was far too quiet. It was dawn, sunlight rapidly climbing its way down the trees. The forest should be alive with the screeches of avians. Every forest he'd ever been in had raucously greeted the dawn--unless there was a good reason for silence. His Marines were moving stealthily enough that they shouldn't be disturbing the treetop dwellers. But there weren't any fliers singing welcoming hosannas to the local Apollo. He'd have to wait until dawn reached the ground to see for himself, but he didn't imagine he'd see any animal tracks where the recon team that came into this valley had not.

  And he remembered what Sergeant Steffan had said about no flashes of flaring Skinks when his team had to fight its way out. And what Steffan had said about maybe acid guns being more common in the galaxy than the Marines had imagined.

  He looked at his Universal Positionator Up-Downlink. The string-of-pearls had a good fix on his company; the UPUD's real-time download showed first and third platoons moving in good order. He shrank the scale to show a larger area of the forest. The hundred and more dots that represented his Marines shrank and consolidated into a smaller area toward the left of the screen. No matter how he adjusted the UPUD's contrast and brightness, it didn't show any dots or even smudges that would indicate a warm-blooded animal or anything large and exothermic.

  Maybe the Skinks--or whoever it was that attacked the recon team--had left the valley. But if they did, why hadn't the string-of-pearls spotted them leaving? Had they gone to ground in tunnels? The string-of-pearls maps weren't good enough yet to show underground spaces in the heavily wooded valleys. Damn, tunnels. The Skinks had made good use of tunnels and natural caves on Kingdom. And the Skinks that third platoon had encountered on Society 437 also had a tunnel system. He hoped they weren't underground again; the Marines had had some hairy fights in the tunnels and caves.

  But if they were above ground, where were they?

  He was changing the scale on his UPUD again to check on Mike Company's progress from the south when the crack-sizzle of distant blaster fire came to him.

  Before he could give an order to his battalion-net comm man to relay Mike Company's reports to him, he heard a sharp yell from someone to his rear, the direction of second platoon, and the crack-sizzle of a blaster from the same place. Then all of second platoon opened fire.

  Chapter Nineteen

  "Everybody down!" Captain Conorado snapped into the all-hands circuit, then switched to the command circuit. Everyone in the company except second platoon, which was already down and fighting, went to ground and took defensive positions, ready to open fire. He looked back and saw the dawn dimness of the forest to his rear brilliant with the strobing of blaster fire in time with the repeated crack-sizzle.

  "Two, Six. Report. Second platoon, this is the company commander. What's happening?"

  "Six, Two. The Skinks are behind us!" came Ensign Molina's excited reply. "We're holding them."

  "Two, how many are there?"

  "Six, I can't tell. At least a squad, maybe a platoon. They're close, well inside their range."

  The Skink acid guns had a range of about fifty meters. How could the Skinks have come up from behind to closer than fifty meters without any of the company's UPUDs picking up their motion?

  "Casualty report."

  "No casualties, Skipper, our chameleons are working."

  Conorado spared neither time nor energy for a sigh of relief that the impregnated chameleons were proof against the acid. "Enemy casualties?" he asked.

  "We don't seem to have hit any." Molina sounded surprised. "No flares, anyway."

  Conorado remembered the recon briefing; Recon hadn't seen any flares either. He looked at his UPUD's screen. Every Marine in second platoon showed up, but there were no dots indicating the locations of the enemy shooting at them.

  "I see you on my UPUD. Where are they relative?"

  There was a brief pause before Molina said, "They don't show on my UPUD!" There was another brief pause, then he added, "I see the acid streamers. Some seem to be coming from within ten meters. The farthest are forty meters away. Scattered formation," he added unnecessarily.

  "How wide is their front?" Conorado wanted to send a squad on a flanking maneuver to catch the Skinks in a cross fire, but needed to know where their flanks were.

  "Wait one." Molina was back quickly after checking with his squad leaders. "Their flanks seem to be fifteen to twenty meters beyond ours."

  "Volley fire, clear them out. I'll have first platoon send a squad to hit them on your right flank."

  "Aye aye, Six." The crack-sizzle of blaster fire from second platoon's position changed from a din to measured, loud reports as the Marines shifted from firing independently at targets of opportunity to firing simultaneously in disciplined volleys that struck on line.

  "One, did you hear that?"

  "Roger, Skipper," replied Ensign Antoni. "My first squad is ready to move."

  "Send a gun team with them. Volley fire. Go."

  "One squad with gun team. Aye aye, Six."

  But before first platoon's first squad had time to get to its feet to move onto the attacking enemy's flank, the crack-sizzle of blaster fire broke out all around the company and first and third platoons reported in:

  "Fire coming from our rear!" they both said.

  Then Molina reported Skink fire coming from his flanks.

  "Up and at 'em!" Corporal Joe Dean relayed Sergeant Ratliff's orders to his fire team to begin the flanking maneuver. He was halfway to his feet, turning around to face the rear, when a streamer of greenish fluid shot out of the forest to his rear and slapped him in the leg hard enough to sting. Without thinking, he continued his turn, making it a downward spin, pointed his blaster in the direction the acid streamer had come from and pressed the firing lever before he hit the ground.

  "Down!" he shouted over his fire team circuit as his back thudded onto the ground. "Down!" he croaked again, not sure if his first command had gotten out before his landing jarred the air from his lungs.

  The crack-sizzles to his sides told him his men, Lance Corporal Godenov, and PFC Quick were down and firing to the rear.

  It was still dark at ground level, but the viscous arcs of acid were visible as snaky shadows moving through the night. Dean snapped his aim to where one came from and fired a bolt, then swore when there wasn't an answering flare. He fired several more bolts at the same place, moving them about to cover the entire area, before deciding the Skink must have moved as soon as it fired. He saw another shadow-arc and fired four or five bolts at its source, again without the reward of a flaring Skink.

  Vaguely, he was aware of fire coming from all of Company L's platoons, but the only fire he was immediately interested in was his own fire team's. "They're shooting and maneuvering," he said into his fire team circuit. "Watch my spot, then saturate the area where I hit."

  Without waiting for a response, he shot another plasma bolt at the source of another acid shot, and fired again and again. Godenov and Quick followed his example, and an area nearly five meters in radius was strobed with little bits of star-stuff.

  No flaring Skink answered the deluge of plasma, but neither did more acid fly from that area. A small fire started from the concentration of plasma bolts.

  Corporal Rachman Claypoole of third platoon's
second squad also had his men firing on his spotting shots, with the same maddening lack of flaring Skinks.

  "SECOND SQUAD, SECOND SQUAD!" Sergeant Linsman's voice boomed on the squad circuit. "Volley fire, seven meters. NOW!"

  Ten blasters fired simultaneously, the bolts striking the ground a scant seven meters in front of the Marines and the damp ground erupting in veils of steam as the Marines moved their aiming points from side to side and kept firing. Some bolts sank into the moist dirt and slowly fizzled out; others smacked into trees, thick roots, or vines, and lanced heat into drying wood, raising its temperature to ignition point; other bits of star-stuff ricocheted and arced farther into the forest. All that plasma fire hitting so close caused steam to rise from the uniforms of the Marines and raised copious sweat on their bodies.

  But there were no flashes of vaporizing Skinks.

  "Second Squad, volley fire, ten meters!" Linsman ordered, and the Marines shifted their fire farther from their positions.

  The acid arcs coming at second squad decreased, and Linsman shifted the aiming line again.

  What's going on? Claypoole wondered. Why aren't they flaring? Who are we fighting?

  Captain Conorado followed his company's fight with everything at his command. On his squad override circuit he heard the commands and questions of every one of the squad leaders as well as those of the platoon commanders and platoon sergeants. His UPUD visual showed the positions of every one of his Marines, as did its motion detector--but the thing didn't give a hint of the enemy positions, except for the brief tracks the motion detector showed of the acid streams arcing at his men. In less than a minute the entire company was fully engaged. There wasn't anybody he could send on a flanking maneuver--even if he could find an enemy flank to maneuver to.

  Where had the Skinks come from? The attack first came from ground the Marines had already walked over. This wasn't a marsh or swamp like the Skinks liked to hide out in; they'd only passed a few trickles of water so narrow and shallow they barely deserved to be called waterways. Was the floor of the valley honeycombed with caves? Had the Skinks dug a tunnel network? Were they hiding in spider traps, individual fighting holes with camouflaged covers? Small fires were breaking out in the forest where the firing was heaviest.

  Something smacked into his left side. He rolled away and looked to his left. Liquid glistened in the growing light where he'd lain on the forest floor; it looked faintly green in the dim light.

  As he looked he saw a line of viscous, greenish fluid arc through the air at HM3 Hough, one of the company's corpsmen. The Skinks were inside the company formation!

  One of the assault gunners, closer to where the arc came from than Conorado was, also saw the acid arc and sent a spray of plasma pulses at the ground fifteen meters from the gun. The heat from the assault gun strike washed over Conorado.

  "DaCruz!" he shouted into the command group circuit. "Cease assault gun fire!"

  Staff Sergeant DaCruz was already ordering his assault gunners to hold their fire. "Blasters and hand-blasters only!" he ordered, but not before the assault gun had caused flames to begin licking up the trunk of the tree that had taken the brunt of the assault gun's burst.

  "Plasma shields up!" Conorado ordered over the all-hands circuit. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had to order his company to power up the shields that protected them from plasma bolts, but if the Skinks were inside the company's perimeter, there was danger of his Marines shooting each other by accident.

  He saw an arc of acid and fired several shots at where he thought it came from with his hand-blaster.

  Then he heard another report that chilled him: first platoon was under fire from its flank and rear. Seconds later third platoon also reported it was under fire from all directions.

  Company L was totally surrounded and the enemy was inside their perimeter! He ordered DaCruz to deploy his assault gun section in support of first and third platoons, leaving one man from each gun squad as a blasterman to support the headquarters element.

  Corporal Claypoole reacted violently when something liquid slopped across his calves--he jerked and rolled and spun about, his hand pressing his blaster's trigger lever repeatedly as soon as its muzzle cleared Schultz.

  No flares met his fire and he saw no bodies charging at him through the trees.

  In his peripheral vision he saw a viscous line arcing toward Schultz. Before he could shout a warning, the big man twisted out of the way and fired back.

  More acid arcs came at Claypoole, Schultz, and MacIlargie. Rapidly, almost frantically, the Marines returned fire, seeking targets, seeing none except where the arcs came from. But no one was there when they fired.

  Claypoole turned his head to his left when he heard footsteps pounding toward him, and his eyes widened when he didn't see anyone. Then he thought to use his infra screen, and saw two Marines with an assault gun stop to set up between MacIlargie and Linsman.

  "Third fire team," Linsman said on the squad circuit, "heads up! An assault gun is going to fire over you."

  Claypoole was already flat on the ground. He wiggled and managed to lower his profile a few more nanometers. The assault gun began to fire a steady stream of plasma pulses that began in front of first squad and swung around the front of second squad, around its side, and to the rear, completely enveloping its perimeter before the gunner paused to change barrels before his overheated barrel melted. When he resumed firing, it was in shorter bursts that wouldn't quickly melt the gun's barrel.

  The incoming arcs of acid ebbed until only a few continued to come, and those from greater distances than the earlier streamers. Small fires licked here and there where plasma bolts and the larger pulses of the assault gun struck dry wood. The smell of smoke began to mask other odors.

  "Second platoon," Ensign Molina called on his all-hands circuit, "cease fire! Second platoon, cease fire!" The acid streamers had stopped arcing in. "Squad leaders, turn half of your men around to support the command group!"

  In seconds the fire from second platoon was cut by more than half, as half of its Marines held their fire and prepared to repel another assault, and the others turned about to deliver slower, more disciplined fire at the force attacking the company command group. There were a few brief strobes of light as plasma bolts hit Marines, but none of them took enough hits for their shields to be overwhelmed, and the command group suffered no casualties from friendly fire.

  Heavier fire erupted from the lead platoons as the three assault guns of Staff Sergeant DaCruz's section joined in their fight. Captain Conorado continued to monitor the company's situation while directing the defense of the command group. In only a few more minutes fire ebbed from all Marine positions. Smoke from burning trees and brush was beginning to obscure vision.

  "Cease fire," he said into his all-hands circuit. "Company L, cease fire." When three seconds passed without a crack-sizzle, he said, "Platoon leaders report."

  "First platoon, no casualties. Enemy situation unknown, but I've got some fires out here," came Antoni's report.

  "Second platoon, no casualties," Molina reported. "We've got a lot of fires in front of us. Enemy sit unknown."

  "Third platoon," Ensign Bass replied, "no casualties. They're gone for now, but we've got fires too."

  Conorado considered briefly. His company was whole and suffered no casualties, thanks to their acid-proof chameleons and the fact that all of their plasma shields worked. But he had no idea what kind of harm they'd done the enemy or where that enemy had gone. Given that, they should get to their feet and search the ground they'd just fought over for enemy casualties, cast-off equipment, or signs of where they'd gone. But everywhere he looked, he saw only small blazes started by the intense fire thrown out by his Marines. If the company stayed where it was, it was possible they'd be trapped in front of a rapidly moving forest fire.

  A retrograde was the better move. They'd be out of the way of a possible forest fire. If the Skinks who attacked them from the rear had withdrawn, the Mari
nes might catch them in that narrow open area between the forest edge and the sides of the valley. Or chase them out of the valley altogether, to where they'd have to face Kilo Company.

  He checked the battalion net. Mike Company was withdrawing in the face of a growing forest fire. That merely reinforced what he'd already decided to do.

  "Company L," he said into his all-hands. "Retrograde movement. First and second platoons, in the lead, lines of squad columns. Third platoon, bring up the rear behind the command group, squad columns. Assault squads, remain with the platoons you're with. One, let me know when you're on line with Two." Having the squads in line parallel to each other wasn't a very efficient formation for putting out fire power, but it allowed the company to move faster with more cohesiveness; also, if an ambush came from the flank, the company could respond to it better than if it was spread out on one line, as they'd been when they entered the forest. Conorado checked his map and drew their route while he waited for the platoons to get into position.

  A couple of minutes after he gave the marching order, first and second platoons were on line and ready to move out. "Here's our route of march and rally points," Conorado said on the command circuit, and transmitted the map overlay he'd drawn. "Acknowledge receipt."

  In a moment all platoon commanders acknowledged receipt of the route order.

  "We're heading back to where we came in," Conorado said on the all-hands circuit. "Be alert, they're probably still out there, and they might be sitting in an ambush waiting for us. Move out."

  The Marines of Company L began their retrograde. They started by moving to the side, around the fire growing between them and the valley wall.

  Bushes and saplings snapped and crackled as flames chomped at them, and bark popped as fire ate its way up tree trunks. Smoke hung in the air, eddying until breezes caught it and swirled it away. Steam began rising from damp mud heated by the growing blazes. Full day had come to the forest floor, but the smoke and steam combined to reduce visibility to what it had been when only the treetops were in sunlight. The fires made the Marines' infras worthless. Flame glare reduced the ability of the light gatherer shields to see into shadows. The Marines were forced to rely on their naked eyes to see in the dimness, to search for danger. And the growing denseness of the smoke forced them to keep chameleon screens in place so they'd have some clear air to breathe, further limiting their vision.