Nothing normal, that was.
“They’ve got shields,” Lieutenant Hansen said unnecessarily; the enhanced visual display showed plasma-tipped bullets and the first salvo of missiles all detonating harmlessly about half a meter away from their targets. The six pseudo-dinosaurs staggered under the impacts but kept coming, stomping over burning grass ignited by the initial volley without any concern.
“Coordinate fire,” Fromm ordered. “Assume targets to be heavy armored vehicles. Assign aiming points by squads. And bring the rest of the assault section to this side of the hill. Keep everyone else where they are.” There was always a chance this was a feint and another attack might come from the open terrain to the south of their position.
Shooting died down for a few seconds as sergeants highlighted single spots for entire squads and organized fire missions. The four Hellcats that still had active weapons paralleled the charging dinosaurs and selected their own targets. Defeating heavy shields and armor required concentrated volleys centered on a small area. Countless hours of training allowed Marine infantrymen to do so nearly flawlessly, even while being shot at. In this case, the unnerving sight of the approaching monsters was almost as disconcerting as being under fire.
A series of simultaneous salvos erupted from the hill, each consisting of multiple weapon systems striking at the same spot on one the creatures rushing forward. Under ideal circumstances, each of those coordinated volleys would defeat the force fields of most tanks, which a good chance of penetrating their armor and reaching crewmen or vital components inside.
The three leading T-Rexes were struck. One staggered and went down. The others didn’t even slow down. And the fallen one scrambled back onto its massive hind legs and kept moving.
“Mortars, prepare for concentrated stonk, armor-piercing. Assuming fire control,” Fromm said in the cool voice people who knew him would identify as a sign of growing tension. “Highlighting target.”
His helmet-enhanced eyes focused on the lead dinosaur. A quick multi-spectrum scan showed spots where its armored hide, made of a composite material tougher than the alloys used by fighting vehicles, had been pitted by the first couple of volleys. He selected an aiming point where its left leg joined the massive body and illuminated it for every Marine who could bear on the target, as well as the two active mortars from the weapons platoon.
“Fire.”
The T-Rexes briefly disappeared in a cloud of smoke. An instant later, the cloud was washed away by a roaring fireball that hadn’t come from any Marine weapon. Fromm felt the shockwave wash over the hill, seven hundred meters away from the explosion. One of the dinosaurs’ multi-ton body was flung out of the conflagration and landed with a crash that carved a long furrow on the grass-covered earth. When the flames and smoke cleared, four other figures were visible; they’d been thrown off their feet by the detonation, but all were rising, including the one that had been tossed forward. Of the actual target, nothing remained but some unrecognizable debris scattered around a steaming crater. The dinosaur’s power plant had detonated, with impressive effects.
Okay, that was overkill. And they are one third of the way here with five to go. The math added up to a really bad day.
Fromm highlighted new targets for the arrayed troops even as he ordered everyone to join in. They were going to need all hands on deck for this. He split his available firepower, dividing it among the two dinosaurs that appeared to have been hurt the worst, noticeable because their hide had been stripped away, revealing the dull composite materials beneath and, in one case, portions of its artificial skeleton. He selected leg joins one more time, since a mobility kill was more than good enough under the circumstances. By the time everyone was ready, the range had closed to six hundred meters.
“Fire.”
Everyone hit the highlighted targets, and Fromm felt a rush of pride in his people. Even to combat veterans, the sight of those striding monstrosities rushing towards them was unnerving on a visceral level. The roaring sounds might have been fake, but they awakened something in everyone’s hind brain, an atavistic urge to flee from certain death. They might all die in the next few seconds, but nobody tried to run.
Another great explosion swallowed the advancing pack, this one close enough to drop rocks and clumps of dirt over the Marines’ positions. Only one explosion, though. The target on the left was gone, but the second one was still limping forward, its right leg a tangled mess of exposed mechanical components and hydraulic pipes but still working well enough to keep it moving. The other three were knocked down by the explosion but from the way they scrambled to their feet, they hadn’t suffered any significant damage. One down. Four to go.
“Fire.”
Three hundred yards this time. Fromm’s sound dampeners saved his eardrums, but he felt the ground shudder beneath him. More debris rained down on their positions; at that distance, the expanding flames reached the edge of the company’s firing line. Three targets emerged from the smoke. One of them was missing both legs but kept crawling forward, using its undersized front arms and tail to propel itself. The other two had been stripped of most of their fake flesh, leaving behind a skeletal undercarriage, the metallic alloys polished brightly by the explosion. It took the survivors a few moments to pick themselves up, barely enough time for new aiming points to be selected.
“Fire.”
The volley was a little ragged as Marines hurriedly slammed reloads into their weapons and reacquired their targets. Another T-Rex brewed up, much too close for comfort. Area force fields flashed brightly and died under the double hammer of shockwave and firestorm. Even crouching inside a hastily-dug fighting hole, Fromm was nearly knocked to the ground. Several Marines were down; one of them writhed for a second, making the metal pipe that had transfixed his chest shake back and forth a few times before he was still. His status icon turned black.
Two monsters emerged from the funeral pyre the third one’s destruction had created. Both of them had lost their legs, but they pressed on with the surprising speed of charging alligators.
There was no time for coordinated fire. The mechanical beasts had reached their position, and it was down to individuals or small groups fighting for survival at close range.
“Follow me,” Fromm heard himself said as he picked up his IW-3 and started down the hill.
* * *
“Fuck me,” Private Louis D’Onofrio said as he fumbled while trying to reload his Iwo. Those were some shitty last words.
The crawling dinosaur lunged, twisting its head sideways so it could bite the luckless Marine. The personal force field was useless against that sort of low-speed kinetic impact, and armor did no good against jaws that exerted multiple tons of pressure as they chomped down. D’Onofrio had time for a brief shriek before blood burst from several ruptured seams in his suit. The T-Rex shook its head, sending torn-off limbs and internal organs flying in every direction.
Russell watched all of that through the sights of his Iwo from fifty meters back, carefully lining up his shot. Four-mike-mike was useless against the monster; he put a 20mm PAP round right on the critter’s neck, but its shields absorbed the shaped charge. Off to his left, Grampa stopped firing a useless string of grenades and turned around to help Gonzo reload his Alsie. Down below, D’Onofrio’s buddies were scattering from the monster, running or crawling away as it spat out what was left of the dead Marine and hunted for other prey. Not too far away, another crawling T-Rex was coming up to join in the fun.
The assaultmen further up the hill fired their LML-10s in a coordinated volley. They targeted the dino further back, because the other one was too close to be engaged; if it blew up, it’d inflict more casualties than its bites ever would. Either Gunny Naismith picked just the right spot for the missiles, or the rear dino had been about ready to pack it in. Either way, it brewed up.
As it turned out, the second one was also way too close.
Russell went flying ass over teakettle, blinded by a flash of pure white like Go
d’s own lightbulb. He barely had time to process those sensations before he slammed against the side of the hill and felt several ribs give under the impact. The sudden pain woke him right the hell up. He thought he was screaming his lungs out, but it was hard to tell, because he couldn’t hear a damn thing. The helmet’s sound baffles had probably saved him from permanent hearing loss, but he was deaf for now.
Moving hurt like a mother, but lying down was just begging for a monster to show up and take a chomp out of his ass. Russell sat up with some effort. He was a good ten meters from his fighting hole, lying down on the charred remains of some local brush. His imp ran a diagnostics report: one broken rib, three sprained ones, major whiplash on his neck. Painkillers were already being pumped in, turning paralyzing agony into something that could be ignored, if one was tough enough. Russell was many things, but he’d never been accused of being frail.
Gonzo and Grampa’s icons were yellow. Hurt but alive, and still in their holes because they’d remembered to duck down. Besides D’Onofrio, there were several other dead grunts, and a bunch had been hurt badly enough to be out of the fight. What a cluster-fuck.
Careful not to fuck up his neck even worse, he took a gander down the hill just in time to see the Skipper and the rest of the headquarters element walk up to the last dino and pump it full of plasma.
The T-Rex that had chomped down on D’Onofrio wasn’t dead yet, but its force field had finally given up the ghost when its buddy exploded behind it. The Skipper and his command team were carefully shooting it at point-blank range with their Iwos, aiming away from its midsection and the power plant inside it. It was like some fucked-up dance: the dino lunged at Lieutenant Hansen, who leaped out of the way while the others kept firing. The critter went for Captain Fromm next, moving so fast he couldn’t dodge in time. Only thing that saved him was his Iwo; he held it sideways just in time to keep the robot monster’s jaws from fully closing around him for the second it took him to roll out. A moment later, the rifle snapped in two and the mouth came closed with a slam even Russell’s damaged ears heard clearly. The Skipper picked himself up, grabbed someone’s Iwo and went back to work. Guy had balls.
The officers and noncoms had ordered everyone else to check fire while they carved the robot T-Rex like a Thanksgiving turkey with close-in bursts. Multiple 4mm hits cut through its tail, arms and finally its neck, leaving behind a flopping torso and a chattering head. That would have to do until they could drag everyone off and light it up for good, or maybe just leave it there.
It was over.
“Until the next level,” Russell told himself as he lay back down and waited for a corpsman to come find him. “Wonder what that boss is going to be like.”
This was going to turn him off from gaming forever. If he survived this, he might end up having to read for fun.
* * *
“They broke my dinosaurs!” the Priestess said with a pout. “I loved those dinosaurs.”
“It happens, my love,” the Hierophant told her. “If the Seeker in his negligence hadn’t allowed the humans to bring along real weapons, things would have been different, of course.”
“In all fairness, Great One, the Lhan Arkh’s weapons were fully functional,” the Seeker answered, via audio only. He still hadn’t shown his face in public, Heather noted. Either he wasn’t welcome among his kind, or he was too paranoid to trust even one of his many bodies to be out and about. “We would have had to make some provisions for the humans to be able to defend themselves.”
“True, I suppose,” the Priestess conceded. “Still, after all the work we put in building our pet monsters and then riding them on their great hunt, we should have produced a higher body count. We only slew seven humans.”
“On the other hand, the Great Serpents reaped a great slaughter among the Lhan Arkh,” the Hierophant said with a smug smile. He’d been in charge of that attack. “Over half of them were killed before they stopped their tormentors.”
Heather shuddered, remembering the Lampreys’ fate. The prehistoric beasts that had attacked them looked like a combination of centipede and King Cobra, with the addition of a highly corrosive acid spit that flew right through force fields and could turn an adult Lamprey into a frothing semi-liquid blob in under a minute. Two of the six monsters had survived to make it into the aliens’ lines, where they’d wreaked a terrifying slaughter. Even worse, when they were finally destroyed their power plants had exploded, killing as many Lhan Arkh troopers as their fangs and acid attacks, if not more. Only blind luck had spared Peter’s Marines from a similar fate.
“Well, that will be enough for today’s festivities,” the Hierophant announced. “Both warrior parties can rest until tomorrow, when they will meet for a final battle. Since the Lhan Arkh are fewer in number, they will hold a defensive position which the Americans will have to seize.”
“Can we send some more ammunition and consumables to our troops?” Secretary Goftalu asked.
The Priestess shook her head. “I think under the circumstances, your Marines will have to make do with what they brought.”
“It’s the least they deserve for cheating in the first place,” the Hierophant said.
Heather gritted her teeth. The Lampreys had spent a great deal of their own ordnance – they were out of missiles, for one – but their lasers would probably not run out of power before the human soldiers shot themselves dry.
Nothing she could do about that, of course.
“What else have you found?” the Seeker asked her via their private channel. “Note that I have once again deflected the Hierophant’s wrath from your folk. I expect something in return.”
“The Scholar intends to kill you,” Heather told him. Time to give him just enough information to string him along a while longer. “You, the Priestess and a handful of other targets.” She sent him the entire hit list.
“Kill me? All of me?” the Snowflake asked, total shock and incredulity in his voice.
“Yes.”
“How dare him? In eighty thousand years, no Core Persona has died in Xanadu. Even the Nameless One’s life was spared. We condemned it to eternal slavery instead. This… this is monstrous!”
Heather stayed quiet. If the Snowflake expected sympathy from her, he would be disappointed.
“He will pay for this,” the Seeker said, regaining his composure with some effort. “I noticed that the Hierophant is not included in the kill list.”
“Apparently the Scholar thinks that without your faction around, he can influence your leader as he sees fit.”
“To what purpose?”
“He wants to extend the Tah-Leen’s influence beyond Xanadu. To recreate your old empire, basically.”
“That is idiotic. We cannot endure warp space. We are doomed to remain here forever. He knows that.”
“Is that right?” Heather asked in feigned surprise. No sense letting her ‘partner’ know she was already aware of the Tah-Leen’s great shame.
“Never mind that. How does the Scholar plan to circumvent our imprisonment?”
“He believes that the Tah-Leen can use client races to conquer the known galaxy in your name, and send you billions of slaves as tribute, slaves you can play with as you see fit. He thinks large-scale games are just what your species need to avoid terminal boredom.”
“Oh.” The Seeker was deep in thought for several seconds. “You know, that isn’t such a bad idea. We have been forced to be circumspect when indulging in our proclivities for far too long. There really wasn’t much choice, of course. Anger enough sophonts and we might end up facing a united front, one strong enough to inconvenience us. Or the Starfarers might stop using Xanadu as a transit point, which would condemn us to misery and isolation. But if Xanadu becomes the capital of an empire, the possibilities are… interesting.”
The thought of exposing billions, perhaps trillions of sapient beings to the tender mercies of the Snowflakes was enough to nauseate Heather. She barely managed to keep her emotions hidden fro
m the alien spy.
“Once I deal with that simpering fool, perhaps I will implement his plans myself,” the Seeker said. “Maybe you Americans can be our Janissaries. That, in case you didn’t know, is a historical term for…”
“Slave soldiers,” Heather said. “Yes, I am aware of it.”
“It is a better fate than what would await everyone else,” the Snowflake said. “You would be well advised to consider such an offer carefully. Of course, the easiest path would be to co-opt the Galactic Alliance instead. We could turn the Imperium into the hegemon of the known galaxy by providing it with a few technological trinkets, not enough to threaten us here but plenty to conquer the other primitives of this degenerate age.”
Slave soldiers or the first victims on the sacrificial altar, Heather thought. Talk about poor choices.
“We shall see,” the Seeker concluded. “But first, I need you to discover how the Scholar intends to murder us.”
“Still working on it,” Heather lied. “That’s the Scholar’s topmost secret, and he’s been very careful about keeping it that way.”
In fact, Heather would have found it impossible to learn the alien’s secret, if she hadn’t cheated via the tachyon device to reach Lisbeth, who’d promptly spilled the beans. That was something she intended to keep to herself, of course.
“You would be well advised to hurry, Heather McClintock. Your time is running out fast.”
The line went dead.
One day, maybe two, and I’ll have to make my move.
A few experimental tries had demonstrated that she could use the tachyon device to access some Tah-Leen systems with none being the wiser. Secure networks would be a tougher nut to crack, though. She wanted to bide her time and study the enemy before making any decisive moves.
Like the Seeker had said, however, time was almost up.
Eleven
“Everyone’s accounted for, sir,” Lieutenant Hansen reported. “Seven KIA, eight wounded badly enough to be out of it for the duration, and a bunch of hurt people who’ll be ready for action tomorrow.”
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 82
