“I have reached the ship’s memory banks,” Lisbeth said. “The Marauders didn’t use normal data storage, but you already knew that. Looks like most of their files have been damaged or lost over time, but there is still a lot left. I’m trying to sift through it, but it’s going to take a while. These guys went for full virtual reality downloads, and I haven’t been able to skim through them. And their search engine plain sucks. I’m working on it.”
“I am glad your mind can access the information,” the Tah-Leen said. “That means I’m not wasting my time with you. You need to hurry, however. A second day of games is at hand, and it is unlikely your fellow Marines will survive. After they are gone, the rest of you will be taken and used for our more theatrical productions; there is no telling how long those games will last. The Hierophant is in an evil mood, and he might terminate the chosen victims faster than is customary. If you wish to save any of them, you will have to hurry.”
“If they’re all dead or being tortured, you won’t get anything out of me,” Lisbeth warned him. “And I need proof of life. Let me make a call.”
“The Seeker will monitor any such calls. If he discovers what we are doing here, I will be ruined. Perhaps even killed.”
“I won’t mention you. Does this Seeker guy even know you picked me up?”
“No. I took great pains in concealing my identity. And I made sure a few of my peers also collected their own prizes. And I assure you, every other human they chose would envy your fate, were they in any condition to do so.”
“They’re dead, you mean. You’ve been killing people all along.”
“A few of them are, yes. The others wish they were. Many of the Unique Individuals that make up the Special Community have lost any traces of self-control, I’m afraid. We’re all so dreadfully bored, you see. Not to mention we are philosophically reluctant to restrain our impulses. To deny any of our needs and desires is to deny ourselves.”
Lisbeth didn’t know what to say to that.
“So go ahead, Lisbeth Zhang. Make your call, but I will be listening in, At the first hint of betrayal, I will make sure that whoever you contacted doesn’t live to tell any tales.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
A moment later, her imp’s communications’ system was restored. She called Heather.
“Are you okay, Major?” the spy said as soon as they made visual contact.
“Could be better. Just checking on things.”
“We have five dead marines, and a dozen missing civilians, including one confirmed fatality. We are prisoners of the Tah-Leen.”
‘Gotcha.” Among other things, being designated a prisoner meant her primary duty was to escape. “Anything we can do?”
“Probably not.”
“I’m glad you are okay. Take care, Heather.”
“You too.”
The call ended, and her imp was blocked once again.
“I hope that satisfies you,” the Scholar told her. “I expect you to resume your work as soon as possible.”
“If you let me have three hours of sleep, I’ll be in better shape to get things done.”
“You may have two.”
She shrugged. “As you wish.”
Lisbeth made herself comfortable in the narrow confines where she’d been trapped for two days. She dreaded the idea of crawling back into the memories of the Marauders and their Pathfinder slave. But hopefully her call to Heather would…
“Lisbeth?”
The mental voice was Heather’s, but the connection wasn’t coming from her imp. The spy was using her new gadget to reach her via t-waves.
“I’m here.”
“Hold one.”
Lisbeth’s perspective shifted. The Corpse-Ship’s cockpit was gone, and she was sitting in a plush armchair in a cozy living room, sipping tea while Heather did the same from across a coffee table. She could smell the tea, feel the cushioned surface under her butt, and breathe air that wasn’t canned and flat like what she’d been inhaling inside the Tah-Leen station. Lisbeth took a sip of the tea. It was hot, almost hot enough to burn her lips and tongue, but the taste was almost orgasmic after days subsisting on boiled water and emergency rations well past their expiration date.
“You’ve got the whole visualization deal down,” she said. “This is way better than my mental sanctuary. Guess you took my lessons and ran with them.” She sipped the tea again. “This is better than the best VR simulation I’ve been in. They never get the tastes and smells right.”
“Probably a good thing, or people would starve to death playing Advanced Second Life,” Heather said. “But let’s get down to business. I don’t know how long I can keep this up. So brief me on what’s been happening on your end, and I’ll do the same.”
Lisbeth did, leaving out how nasty the experience had been for her. No time to waste on feelings.
“I haven’t found what the Scholar is looking for yet, but it won’t be long, now that I’ve figured out how to search the Marauders’ records. I lied to him about that, by the way, just to buy more time. Whatever it is he wants, it can be used to kill Tah-Leen.”
“Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting,” Heather said. “But it gives us a real chance to get out of this mess alive.”
“Are you sure they can’t listen in on this?” Lisbeth asked when Heather was done with her own briefing. “If either the Seeker or the Scholar finds out about our conversation, we’re all dead. Or any other Snowflake for that matter.”
“They can’t. This tachyon-messaging system actually opens a microscopic warp link between people. Only someone like a warp navigator or fighter pilot would be able to even sense its existence, let alone receive a call.”
“Good. Did you know the Tah-Leen aren’t warp-rated at all?”
“All of them?” Heather asked. At Lisbeth’s nod, she continued. “An important data point. Keep looking for the Scholar’s weapon. And when you find it…”
Lisbeth’s grin matched Heather’s; it was a look that would have unnerved the two Snowflakes who thought they could control them.
Ten
“No choice. Leave them, except for one squad; four ‘cats for scouting and two we’ll use as pack mules.”
“Leave them, sir?” First Lieutenant Verdi asked, the disbelief in his voice bordering on the insubordinate. The commander of Fourth (Mobile Infantry) Platoon clearly wasn’t happy about the idea of abandoning his Hellcats. “But…”
“No resupply, Lieutenant. Mobile Infantry Units’ power packs are supposedly good for thirty-six hours of operations. The reality is, they barely last twenty-four unless all they do is stand around with their shields down. We have enough spare power packs to keep them going for more than another day at best, but those packs could also keep our area field generators going a lot longer. We are on hour eighteen of this operation, with no end in sight. Even worse, the MIUs are ammo hogs. We only brought one actual combat load, which will last for one fight at best. Better to have four to six ‘cats able to fight than sixteen going bingo power at the worst possible moment.”
“There goes my command,” Verdi said bitterly. “I’ll be running a short squad of ‘cats and a squad of light infantry.”
Fromm didn’t dignify that with an answer.
“Take the best of the bunch, remove anything remotely useful from the discards, and redistribute it among the infantry,” he ordered instead, then decided he might as well clarify the situation. “The MIUs are great when working with battalion-level logistics, but that doesn’t apply here. Those spare power packs will keep the rest of the company running for a while longer. That could make all the difference in the world.”
Verdi nodded. He might be just going along with his CO, but Fromm hoped he got it. Fourth Platoon’s commander wasn’t a bad officer, but he was too focused on his unit rather than on the big picture, and that didn’t bode well for his career down the line. An officer needed to keep the primary mission firmly in mind, even if it meant sacrificing the assets directl
y under him. And they were all going to make sacrifices
Even after overloading everyone for the initial exercise, their logistics sucked. The infantry had drained their personal power packs during the previous day’s hard marching and fighting. They had camped out for the night in full armor with most systems running, standard procedure while operating in hostile territory, which had drained even more power. Fortunately, the Tah-Leen had left them alone that night.
That morning, General Gage gave Fromm a new set of marching orders: advance towards a new objective, ten klicks from their current position, and await further instructions. Fromm still found it hard to believe a space station had enough free space to let them wander around for dozens of kilometers without hitting any bulkheads or support pillars, although he suspected every ‘impassable’ terrain feature they encountered hid load-bearing structures.
Any Lhan Arkh units they encountered along the way were to be engaged and destroyed. They would switch to live ammo from now on; the training ammunition they had was to be discarded unless it could be used in combat. That reduced the loads his troops had to carry (and the resulting battery drain) but left them with just enough ordnance for one engagement, or less than that if the fighting became intense enough.
Lieutenant Verdi went off to see to the dismantling of his unit after Fromm dismissed him. Lieutenant Chantal showed up a few moments later.
“I want to keep two of the mortars fully loaded, sir. The third one we can use as a cargo hauler for the time being. If we use all three, we’re going to run dry too quickly.”
Fromm nodded, glad to see at least one of his officers was paying attention to the situation. The quick-firing mortars were another logistical nightmare. The volume of fire they could deliver could be very effective, but it couldn’t be sustained for long, not without ample supplies. Better to have two weapons able to fight an extended engagement than three that would run out too quickly.
“I was just going to give you orders to that effect, Lieutenant. Glad to see you thought of it first. Great minds think alike, I suppose.”
Chantal had taken off his helmet; his grin made him look indecently young for his rank.
“Just following your lead, sir,” he said. “We’re removing the EM-propellers of the training rounds and bringing them along. Sergeant Martin says he can jury-rig them into a half-assed anti-armor bomb. He figures it’ll take about five training rounds to make one we can use. I can assign the Assault section to assist him, if we can spare them for the night.”
“Good idea; I’ll have Goldberg take them off the duty roster for tonight. Keep thinking, Lieutenant. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need all our brainpower for this one.”
Third Platoon’s CO nodded.
“We don’t know how long this so-called game is going to last,” Fromm added. “We have to prepare for the worst.”
Well, worst case was they’d be killed out of hand without a moment’s warning. If all the Tah-Leen wanted was to massacre his unit, there was nothing much he could do about it. But the Snowflakes seemed to be obsessed with following some rules, even if they were heavily loaded against their victims. Fromm would do his best to keep his people alive for as long as possible.
Hopefully long enough to find a way to stop playing games and do some serious work.
* * *
The dignitaries had been allowed to return to the Brunhild for the evening. A conference between the naval officers, Agent in Charge Petroysan and the other delegation leaders had gone far into the night, with little to show for it. The idea to try to leave, even if it meant abandoning the Marines and the other missing personnel to their fate, had been floated and quickly shot down. Ethical concerns aside, the cruise liner was still docked in place, and her escorts were maintaining station a mere hundred kilometers away. The destroyer squadron could go into warp and flee, although at considerable risk: performing long-distance warp jumps while away from a ley line opening had a failure rate in the five to ten percent range. The Brunhild didn’t have that option even if it wasn’t currently attached to the Habitat for Unique Diversity; an unauthorized separation would require the judicious application of explosives and damage to both the ship and the station, after which the passenger ship would have to lumber towards the nearest friendly warp line entrance, over an hour away at her best speed.
Heather thought fondly about a similar situation, where the merchantman Maffeo Polo had warped while still docked at a Vehelian star base. The situation had been very different, however. The station in question had been a few kilometers away from the warp mouth, more than close enough for the Polo’s civilian FTL drive to access it. Two light seconds was an impossible distance for a civilian drive. Too bad; if anybody deserved to have a good chunk of their station destroyed, it was the Tah-Leen.
The conclusion they all reached was simple: they were trapped here.
Convincing Sec-State and General Gage to keep playing the aliens’ games had taken some work. General Gage had been in favor of making some grandiose gesture involving an assault on the station with all available combat-trained personnel aboard the Brunhild while the destroyer squadron fled to spread the news of the Snowflakes’ treachery. ‘Death before dishonor’ had become the Marine’s refrain. It had been tricky to get him to relent, since Heather couldn’t explain why. Telling her bosses the truth risked tipping off their ‘hosts,’ who were almost certainly eavesdropping on the discussion, privacy fields or not. The Marine officer probably suspected Heather was a coward trying to live a little longer by prolonging everyone’s suffering. Finally, Secretary Goftalu had agreed to postpone any suicidal moves for at least one more day.
The meeting was followed by another sleepless night doing double-agent work.
The Seeker’s mission was progressing along fairly well, for whatever that was worth. She had managed to penetrate the Scholar’s records without attracting attention. Only the outer shell, as it were, showing his activity in the Common Conduit, but that had provided a great deal of context. Of course, she already knew what the Scholar was planning, thanks to her private conversation with Lisbeth Zhang, but finding some data herself would lend her more credibility.
Her initial report used only what she’d found on her own: basically, that the Scholar was spending a great deal of time and energy researching long-lost civilizations, apparently looking for some sort of weapon. Her report seemed to satisfy her ‘employer.’ As long as the Snowflake snoop was satisfied, he would continue running interference for the American delegation. If or when he decided she was useless, she was as dead as former Ambassador Llewellyn, and probably in a similarly gruesome way.
The new round of games didn’t start until around noon, ship’s time. Once again, Sec-State, General Gage and the usual gaggle of guards and assistants, including Heather, assembled at the oversized copy of the historical Situation Room, where they were greeted by the Priestess this time. The Hierophant had traded places with her and was presiding over the Lhan Arkh chamber. The Lampreys didn’t look happy to see him, but not particularly outraged, either. Based on what Heather knew about their body language, the aliens seemed resigned to their fate; living in an autocratic society, they were probably used to having their lives disrupted or even destroyed at the whim of their superiors.
“Today is a special day,” the Priestess told the American delegates once everyone was seated. “I put a lot of work and love into this project, and I think you will appreciate it.”
* * *
“The fuck was that?”
“Something big,” Gonzo said, seeing trees swaying in the wake of whatever was coming their way.
Something had killed their drones. All of them. As soon as that happened, the Skipper had everyone double-time it to a nearby hill and take positions there while the four combat-capable Hellcats spread out around the perimeter to see what was coming. They’d just set up a hasty firing line around the hill when they saw movement through a nearby forest, about a klick away from their posit
ion.
“Hold your fire till you get the word,” Sergeant Fuller said over the squad channel.
A big-ass monster knocked a tree down as it came into the clearing.
“Holy fucking shit, it’s a dinosaur,” Grampa said.
“Looks like one,” Russell admitted.
And so it did. This critter was big, a good fifty feet long from head to tail, covered in bright green scales, with silly-looking tiny arms and a mouth full of nasty-looking teeth A classic T-Rex, just like the ones in pre-Contact flicks like A Million Years B.C. or Jurassic Park. The dino paused, sniffing around. Russell noticed more movement coming up from behind the monster.
“That shit ain’t right,” Gonzo said as five other T-Rexes joined the first one, looking the same except for being bigger; the point critter had been the runt of the litter. “Them things didn’t hunt in packs. Even I know that.”
“Well, these do,” Grampa said. “Can we shoot them now?”
“They’re a klick away. Maybe they won’t come this way.”
“Yeah, pull the other one.”
“If they are as fast as the real thing, it’ll take them like a minute to get here,” Grampa said.
The dinos milled around for a second or two, and then they all turned their heads in the direction of the Marines’ improvised stronghold. They roared in unison, a terrifying sound even from a thousand meters away. A moment later, they rushed forward like a pack of wild dogs, if dogs came in multi-ton packages.
They weren’t as fast as the real thing. They were way faster.
* * *
“Fire at will.”
Against mere flesh and blood, all the Marines’ weapon systems were lethal at a thousand meters. Only First Platoon and two weapon squads were in the right position to engage the targets, but that included over forty rifles and grenade launchers, half a dozen automatic weapons and three missile teams. The Hellcat that had happened to be closest to the dinosaurs also engaged them with its weapon pods as it nimbly hopped out of their way. Nothing that ever walked the Earth, or most habitable worlds for that matter, could survive such a barrage.
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 81
