“Verbal, please.” The Kraxans delighted in recording their atrocities in minute, loving detail. No need to put herself through that.
The Zhang simulacrum gave out the information Heather had been looking for in concise form, much like a military briefing. The Kraxans’ battles with the Horde had involved some sort of anti-warp weapon systems, something that had been omitted from most histories because, well, the Marauders never enjoyed losing and had institutionally decided to ‘forget’ their defeats. The Horde had destroyed an entire Kraxan fleet and were only beaten when its asteroids were boarded by thousands of Battlers – special Kraxan assault troops just like Lisbeth’s pet cyber-monster – who found the weapons’ locations and destroyed them.
The weapons themselves – as seen through the sensor systems of a Battler – appeared to be crystalline structures being controlled by groups of Horde warp-sensitives. They had unique t-wave signatures that an adept should be able to locate.
“Thank you, Zhang,” Heather said. Finding that information without the humanoid user interface might have taken weeks or even months.
“You are welcome, McClintock.”
Heather looked at the Lisbeth construct. It had changed. The pilot uniform was gone, replaced by white flowing robes. There were two noticeable protuberances above her temple that looked almost like incipient horns. And a glowing circle on her forehead blinked like a third eye.
“Lisbeth?”
“Yep. I left a bit of myself in my notes – that’s kind of how the Kraxan recordings work – and I picked you up through it. This is a very long-distance call, though, so I’ve got to keep it short.”
“Where are you?”
“Not sure. I fell in with bad company and they’ve kept moving me around. But that’s not important now.”
“Then what is?”
“You need to be with the spook team they send out. I can use you as sort of a repeating station and join in the fun. Otherwise the Horde’s pet warp demon-in-chief is going to wipe you out. Even with me hitching a ride, it’s not going to be easy.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Zhang grinned at her, all three of her eyes twinkling crazily.
“Wish I was, McClintock. Wish I was.”
Heather broke the connection and found herself sweating profusely and staring blankly at the data cube.
I’d better phrase my report very carefully, or I’ll end up on mental health leave. Which might be a better place for me than where I’m going to go, but needs must.
Sixteen
Felix-Five, 199 AFC
“That’s one big landing ship,” Staff Sergeant Hansen muttered, nodding towards the burning sky.
PFC Matthew Fromm couldn’t think of anything to say. The giant pillar of fire descending over the horizon was like something out of a biblical story. His rangefinder gave him the actual size of the thing – two kilometers long and half a kilometer wide! – but that did little to describe the sight of something the size of a capital ship forcing its way through Felix-Five’s atmosphere like the wrath of a jealous god. The ground beneath his feet was shaking even though the monstrous craft was fifteen kilometers away.
“Bigger than an assault ship,” Lance Corporal Brock said. “Bigger than three of them stacked end over end.”
Three planetary defense bases were taking the impossibly-large landing craft under fire. The flashes of light as heavy grav beams struck the shields protecting the Horde vessel were visible even through the reentry flames surrounding it. Matthew kept looking for the tell-tale multicolor flares that indicated a force field breach but didn’t see any. The lander was as well-protected as a battleship and survived the three fortresses’ pounding, at least for the minute or so it took to descend behind the Olsen Mountains and out of the line of fire. Matthew didn’t see the ship touch ground, but the ground heaved strongly enough to toss unsecured equipment up into the air. Hurricane-force winds buffeted the Marines’ positions seconds later.
“Show’s over,” Staff Sergeant Hansen said when things quieted down. “But no one slack off, ‘cause them Hordies are gonna be coming through the pass, straight at us. It’s going to get hot in here in an hour or less.”
Matthew did some figuring. Fifteen km as the crow flew was more like thirty or forty through the mountains. The aliens would take at least ten or fifteen minutes to debouch and get going. Add another thirty or forty minutes for the leading elements to reach the ambush the human defenders had prepared. An hour, give or take, sounded about right.
All he had to worry about was his fire sector, but the wannabe officer inside him turned his mind to the bigger picture: two Marine battalions and about a division’s worth of Army and National Guard infantry were dug in along the two mountain passes leading to PDB 5 and Port Hoover. Backing them up were two Marine artillery batteries and one Army mobile artillery regiment.
How many troops could that monster Horde lander pack inside? Make that how many divisions could that ship pack inside? About a dozen of the gigantic landing ships had emerged from the planetoids orbiting Felix-Five. That powered asteroid wasn’t shooting at the planetary defense bases, which was about the only good news so far. It made sense; the Horde wanted to loot the cities on the planet, not destroy them. Unlike most aliens, genocide wasn’t their primary goal. The Hordelings would kill any humans they saw out of expediency, which of course wouldn’t make much difference to the dead.
Got to stop them here.
“What do ya think the Hordies got, Staff Sergeant?” Brock asked. “Tanks and such?”
“Hard to tell. Every time we fought them they had light infantry with armored shuttles in support. Went for isolated settlements, shot them up some, then the Hordies landed on shuttles and went shopping. These bastards are something else.”
Matthew figured the earlier attacks had been launched by bandits, little more than armed civilians. The newest batch was their version of the regular army. Or, say, the Mongols versus run-of-the-mill nomads. He’d inherited his father’s love for military history and had read up on them: the Mongols had run roughshod over just about every other army on Earth, way back then. They usually only lost when they overextended or got very unlucky, and for a while controlled a swath of territory that went from China to the Carpathian Mountains.
The Horde was the Starfarer version of the Mongols. Time to see how they stacked up against Warp Marines.
Minutes went by. Dragged by; waiting for an attack was, like so many other combat activities, both tense and boring. Bravo Company had had several days to prepare their entrenchments and three fallback positions as well. Mines of assorted types lined most of the plains ahead, courtesy of the MEU’s attached Engineers. Brock pulled out his e-tool and used the spade to dig himself in a little deeper. Private Knox lifted his helmet’s faceplate and treated himself to some Marlboros. Matthew didn’t smoke and didn’t see any need to do any more digging. He used his gunsights to watch the spot where the Horde would be in his Iwo’s effective range, six hundred meters away. The drones further down the pass would spot the enemy long before he could, of course.
“We got vehicles incoming,” Sergeant Hansen called out. “Light contragrav hovers, fast as hell. Engage them at will but mind your fire sectors.”
Matthew’s imp illuminated the area he was allowed to shoot at. His fireteam and the rest of the squad, including the SAWs, would sweep the entrance to the long canyon the Marines were blocking. Charlie Company had another squad in support, firing from a different angle. No matter which way the enemy turned, someone would be able to shoot them from the side.
Two hundred flyers entered the canyon, unleashing hell as they moved. The spherical shapes floated a few inches of the ground and fired plasma bursts from three hardpoints on their surface. They were fast and agile. Matthew barely got a burst out before his target moved out of his fire sector. He shot at another one, missed, let his sights guide him, and on his third burst he stitched one of the speeders with three clean hi
ts. Only one graviton pulse got through the tango’s shields, but that was enough. The sphere’s graceful glide cut short and it hit the ground at three hundred kph, bouncing over the grassy terrain and trailing smoke as it left his fire sector and became some else’s problem.
The mines did most of the destruction. Their grav sensors went live and every time a vehicle entered their range they spat out a high-intensity laser beam or an anti-vehicle missile. Dozens of flyers were chewed up before they got a chance to fire, but the survivors engaged both mines and entrenchments with everything they had.
Plasma splashed against the area force field protecting Matthew’s squad. He ducked – when someone shot at you, you didn’t wait to see if the force fields stopped the incoming – and moved to another firing position before poking his head out to look for new targets. Artillery was dropping on the canyon, armor-piercing fragmentary rounds that accelerated shrapnel to hypersonic speeds. More speedsters crashed in flames or in pieces; a few exploded but most just lay there, smoke coming out from the holes that killed their pilots. Their return fire failed to penetrate the force fields protecting the Marine entrenchments. The whole thing was about as effective as a cavalry charge against barbed wire and machinegun emplacements.
Round One: Marines.
“Incoming!”
Hundreds of contrails emerged from the other side of the mountains; the Horde’s artillery was coming into play. The Marines’ Air Defense Artillery engaged the missiles with high-speed laser Gatling guns, reaping dozens of them every second, but enough survived to fall unerringly onto the Marine positions that had been unmasked by firing on the Horde’s scouting element. Most of the guided missiles were destroyed short of their targets. Some weren’t.
Matthew’s view screen went black and the temperature inside his suit rose dramatically. When his vision cleared, he noticed his personal energy shield was down to fifty percent and the earth under him felt brittle, as if it’d been cooked by the plasma explosion that had washed over his fighting hole. The squad and fireteam area force fields had been blotted out by the massive hit, and only their body armor had saved the Marines behind them from taking casualties. Or, rather, from taking more casualties than they did.
Lance Corporal Brock’s status icon had gone red. Matthew reached him first and saw the man’s left arm had been torn off at the shoulder. Plasma penetrator munitions fired a high-intensity beam designed to penetrate force fields, and Brock had happened to be in the path of that beam. He hadn’t quite cooked to death but the rest of his body had first- and second-degree burns. The downed Marine’s nano-meds were already working to prevent shock and blood loss from killing him; Matthew injected him with another dose to help him out. Two Navy corpsmen arrived a moment later and took Brock’s limp body away.
“Fromm, check Brock’s SAW.”
He did. The automatic weapon’s matte finish was blacker than normal, but the tough alloy and composites hadn’t been hit directly and had handled the plasma exposure a lot better than Brock had.
“It’s good, Sergeant.”
“It’s yours now. Keep pouring it on!”
Matthew had trained with the SAW – everyone in the fireteam cross-trained for situations like this – but this was the first time he’d get to use it in actual combat. The sights worked much like his Iwo, but his designated fire sector was wider. He fired a burst at one of the retreating speedsters and missed. The damn things were too fast, although that came with the price of not being very survivable. The Horde’s scout detachment had lost a third of its troops in under a minute of frenzied combat.
On the other hand, the scouts had provided targets for the aliens’ artillery, and those gunners were still pouring it on. More missiles continued to hammer the American defenders, although the Marines’ ADA was killing more of them as the automated systems adjusted to the unfamiliar targets and became more effective. And the Marines’ arty was hitting back, now that the missiles’ flight paths had been traced back to their point of origin. If the Hordelings were smart they were shooting and scooting, but American shells were pretty smart as well and would alter their course to follow their targets and send them to hell.
Another plasma penetrator went off near Matthew’s position, but the area shields protecting his squad held. Some other poor bastard had eaten a direct hit. He continued firing short bursts and had the satisfaction of splashing another scout vehicle.
Enemy tanks rolled into the canyon.
In contrast with the nimble speedsters, the boxy tracked vehicles moved at a ponderous forty kph. Three triangular tracks on each side allowed the damn things to go over any obstacle. Their sloped side and frontal armor looked pretty impressive as well. As soon as one of the massive targets entered Matthew’s sight picture, he let it have it. Three grav-pulse bursts in quick succession failed to penetrate its energy shields. This was going to require coordination.
“On my mark,” Sergeant Hansen called out. Targeting icons for the entire squad appeared on a spot on the tank’s frontal glacis. “Fire!”
The full firepower of the infantry squad struck within a five-centimeter circle. The tank’s force field failed in a shower of colorful sparks. The tough composite armor buckled under the impact – but held. Matthew clenched his teeth. Few fighting vehicles could have survived that concentrated volley; the Horde built ‘em tough.
It didn’t matter. A pair of rockets from the Weapons Platoon two hundred meters behind the front lines hit the tank’s unshielded armor a few seconds later, and those hits not only penetrated but sent the tank’s main gun flying in the air as the entire vehicle vanished in a massive fireball. Tough but brittle, Matthew decided. One or both of those missiles must have hit the tank’s power plant.
More tanks fell, each leaving behind a brightly burning mess of molten metal. Others returned fire: plasma beams, rapid-firing lasers and high-caliber graviton blasts lashed at the Marines’ positions. Matthew hit the dirt again as the area force fields failed a second time. Nobody got hurt this time, but that had been dumb luck; the energy beams tore through dirt instead of a Marine’s face after they blasted through the force fields.
The Devil Dogs were going to earn their pay the hard way.
Seventeen
Starbase Malta, 199 AFC
“Felix-Five is holding,” Staff Sergeant Kinston said.
“Not fun, having to fight dirtside when the tangos control the orbitals,” Russell commented before finishing his drink. “Been there, done that.”
They were drinking at the NCO bar at Fort Osterman. A shitty bar compared to the Headless Thompson Gunner, but the entire unit had been confined to base ever since the Hordies had kicked Fleet’s ass. Who’d have thunk it? Russell had tussled with those ETs a couple of times back in the day, and he’d always thought they were about the most primitive starfaring tangos of them all. Showed how much he knew.
“Think we’ll get to do something about it?” Kinston asked. She looked mildly bored, the way she mostly did, until you looked into her eyes and saw the crazy stone-cold killer lurking behind them.
“Yeah. I can think of a couple of things we could do. Only thing we’re missing is some remfie with the balls to risk us in the field.”
Problem with being a brand-new elite unit with only a handful of ops under its belt was that the top brass got cold feet about using them unless it was a sure thing. The Corps had spent a lot of resources on the Wraiths. Nobody wanted to be responsible for getting the unit destroyed in a single mass deployment.
“They could insert us into Felix-Five, easy-peasy,” Corolla said. “We could take out command posts, maybe blow up those giant landers they like to deploy.”
“Oorah,” Dog-Boy Giraud agreed.
“Problem is,” Russell said. “They only deployed eight of them giant landers from just two of their planet-ships.”
“Planetoids.”
Russell shrugged. “Whatever. Last we heard, they had fifty-seven planetoids; Third Fleet only splashed four or fiv
e of them. So if we blow those four landers all to hell, the other planetoids can drop another two hundred
landers to replace them. Right now, most of the Hordies are salvaging all the hulks Third Fleet left for them and also the miner bases out by the edge of the system. They haven’t deployed more land troops ‘cause they don’t need to, but they got plenty to spare.”
“How many of them bastards are there?” Corolla wondered out loud.
Kinston handled that one: “Well, keep in mind that those planetoids have their entire civilization in them, so it’s mostly non-combatants. But each of those rocks carries anywhere between fifty and a hundred million of them. Maybe more, although most of their volume is solid rock according to the scans Third Fleet did before they got their asses handed to them. Let’s call it sixty million tangos per big rock.”
“You’re saying there’s over three billion of them,” Giraud said.
Kinston nodded. “Not counting the smaller asteroids. Make it four billion, give or take. If a tenth of a percent of them are leg infantry, that gives ‘em four million troops. Probably five mill, really, since I’m lowballing. Those bastards outnumber the entire Corps. Special Ops ain’t going to do much to slow them down.”
“They ain’t gonna let us sit out this war,” Corolla protested. The NCO looked about ready to start fighting right then and there, and if no Eets were around, humans would do just fine.
“They won’t,” Russell said. “Like I said, I can think of a couple things we could do. Your ideas are standard Raiders stuff – scout, hit the rear lines, go after leadership. You ain’t thinking big enough.”
“I’m dying to hear this,” Kinston said with the barest hint of a grin on her face.
“We gotta hit them where it hurts. That’s not dirtside on Felix-Five. Any ground pounder can do those jobs. We’re gonna get sent to the planetoids.”
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