“All right. Can we move the wounded?”
“Yes, sir. The corpsmen have them patched up well enough for that.”
“Good.” Fromm spared a last look at the robotic pieces near the bottom of the hill, still trying to climb towards them.
“We can move everyone to the reverse slope and finish it off,” Lieutenant Hansen suggested. “Without its shields, two or three LMLs might do the job.”
“We’re almost out of armor-piercing missiles,” Fromm said. “And we’re supposed to tackle the Lampreys tomorrow. We’ll need all the ordnance we have. More than what we’ve got, as a matter of fact.”
“The Combat Nest was also attacked, though,” Sergeant Goldberg said.
“Yes, and from what General Gage tells me, they took more casualties than we did. Question is whether or not their supply problem is as bad as ours.”
Fromm moved on to the next set of problems. The wounded were getting the best care the four Navy corpsmen with the company could provide, which unfortunately wasn’t much. Nano-meds would close most wounds and repair broken bones, but several Marines were missing limbs, mostly torn off by when the robotic dinosaurs’ power plants blew up. Fixing those would require full medical facilities, which were a few klicks away, aboard the Brunhild – and might as well be on Sol System for all the good they did to them here. He could sympathize, having had to endure the loss of three of his own appendages after the battle of Kirosha without access to modern medicine.
Nothing could be worse than Kirosha. He’d often told himself that, whenever things seemed desperate. This situation was giving the siege a run for its money, though. And what made it worse was the sheer pointlessness of it. At least the Kirosha and even the Lampreys had reasons to do what they did. They fought for survival, or to protect their way of life. Things Fromm could understand, even as he did what he could to stop them. The Snowflakes, on the other hand… They were just bored.
A virtual reality program would be just as entertaining as all of this, except for the knowledge that real living beings were suffering and dying for their entertainment. That was what the Tah-Leen were after: the thrill rapists or serial killers got from having absolute power over their victims.
Nobody like that should be allowed to live.
But first they had to survive. After checking on the wounded, Fromm turned to his next problem.
“We’re running low on ammo, sir,” Gunnery Sergeant Freito said. “We have one missile apiece for the LMLs, half PAPs, half HE. Half a magazine per Iwo, and that is if we only count the remaining active personnel. Less than that for 15 and 20 mike-mike. A little better on mortars, but not much. The Hellcats done shot themselves dry, all of them.”
Fromm nodded. It had been necessary: stopping the robots had taken everything they’d been able to throw at them. You did what had to in order to win a fight. He’d heard of units that had been overrun because they’d tried to conserve their ammo in the middle of combat. Fromm had been willing to be sparing whenever possible, but when it came down to it, it was far better to go all-out and worry about the next fight later. Of course, the next fight was just about to begin. Time to start worrying.
“How about power packs?”
“Area force fields, good for one firefight, maybe. Depends on the quantity and quality of the op-force’s incoming, sir. When those dinos went up, they drained half of our inventory, just about. Besides that, we’ve got enough juice to run our combat suits for sixty hours of sustained operations, maybe one hundred if we just walk slow with our shields down.”
That was a little better than he’d feared, but not exactly great. They would run out of bullets long before they ran out of force fields and powered armor.
“All right,” he said after he considered the situation for a few moments. “We’re going to redistribute the ammo among platoon and squad leaders. The rest of us will have to make do with field expedients.”
“And what might those be, sir?”
* * *
“This is a goddamn joke,” Gonzo said for the twentieth time since they’d gotten their new orders.
“What’s the matter, Gonzo? Afraid you’ll get some ET juice all over your armor?”
“Fuck you, man,” his buddy said as he looked at the improvised spear he’d just finished making.
They’d all had to surrender their weapons and ammo; only the noncoms would get to carry guns until they got resupplied, whenever that happened. Instead of their Iwos, the rest of them had been ordered to make spears for themselves. They were going medieval, in other words.
He checked his own handiwork after standing up and stretching a little. His nanomeds had fixed his ribs, but he still felt them. A little pain wouldn’t stop him from using his Mark One Pig-sticker, though. Russell liked to carry at least two knives with him, plus his standard-issue Ka-Bar. The combat knife had a monomolecular collapsed-diamond edge and high-resiliency composite blade. As it turned out, it made a pretty nice spearhead as well. The trees the Tah-Leen had grown or fabricated for their fake forest provided good material for the six-foot-long shafts.
Russell ran an ungloved hand over the carved finish of his new weapon. A little sealant spray had given it a nice coat of textured varnish that provided a good grip even with his gloves on. Not too bad. He’d always liked shop class during the few days a month he actually went to school, back in the day. And Sergeant Fuller, as it turned out, liked to do woodworking as a hobby. Between the two of them and some imp uploads from a couple grunts who did reenactments for fun, they’d helped outfit the squad.
Setting the spear aside, Russell hefted his secondary weapon. The entrenching tool design predated First Contact and had gone through the ensuing hundred and sixty years without changing all that much, other than using better alloys to make it a little lighter and a lot tougher, plus a collapsible handle that could extend from twelve to forty-eight inches as needed. At the end of the day, when you had to dig holes, you needed a shovel. You could make instant holes with explosive charges, but even then you wanted to improve them the old fashioned way. And the e-tool made for a pretty good axe when you needed one.
“Maybe they shouldn’t have stopped issuing bayonets,” Russell mused. “Would have saved us the time to make these.”
Not too far away, Grampa ran through a few practice moves with his own spear. It looked like the old guy had done some staff work in the past, and by staff Russell meant using a long stick to bash skulls in, not weenie remfie shit.
Russell and Gonzo had done bayonet drill during boot camp; the Corps did that to instill the proper Devil Dog attitude into the boots. Funny how it might come in handy here.
“Been in the gun club for most of my life, and I’ve gotten into hand to hand twice,” Gonzo said. “Other than busting heads on liberty, that is. And both times, the e-tools worked just fine. We’re making these pig-stickers so we don’t feel helpless, but when it comes down to it, we’ll never get close enough to the Lampreys to use them.”
“They’ve got to be hurting for ammo, too,” Russell said. “They fought their own pack of dinos, or whatever the Lampreys had for dinos, supposedly. Chances are they’re making their own spears over there.”
“Sucks to be them, then. They don’t wear heavy body armor, right?”
“Not really. Them fishbowl helmets are tough. Won’t be able to crack them open, so don’t bother trying. They’ve got vests that can catch light shrapnel, but a spear or e-tool should punch through them. Or go for the spot right below the vests, or the arm and leg joints; lots of blood vessels there. They mostly rely on their force fields. Better than ours, as usual. But energy shields don’t mean shit against a spear.”
“Okay, so maybe having a spear’s better than holding our dicks in our hands,” Gonzo admitted before turning to Grampa. “Kinda takes you back, doesn’t it?”
The old bastard laughed. “Spears were a little before my time. Even bayonets. Our M4s didn’t have them, or at least they didn’t issue us any. And we c
ould have used them a couple times.” The good humor left his face as he remembered something nasty. “Maybe for the best. It was ugly enough without them.”
Neither Russell nor Gonzo asked any questions. Poor bastard had done all his killing on humans, and a lot of it on fellow Americans. Nothing Russell wanted to think about.
He checked the edge he’d given the e-tool’s spade. You couldn’t exactly shave with it, but that wasn’t what he was planning to use it for. You wanted it sharp enough it would cut into flesh or crack a skull open, but not so sharp it might turn on bone. He knew how that kind of thing worked; most of his experience with blades came from before he joined the Corps. Growing up in the Zoo, you picked up quite a few tips on how to cut and stab people, in no small part because there were plenty of assholes ready to use something sharp or pointy on you.
“Anybody done close-up work with Lampreys?” Gonzo asked, getting back to the business at hand.
“Buddy of a buddy did. He’s the one who gave me the tips on how to kill them,” Russell said. “Some alleged Fang-Face renegades were playing pirate at Mishna System. Our guys had to clear a mining facility. Too many volatiles had gotten loose to use standard plasma tips, and solids don’t do shit against force fields. In the end, they had to club the Lampreys to death.”
“And?”
“They’re big and ugly, but they don’t fight for shit when it comes to hand to hand. Not like the Vipers or their Snake cousins.”
“That’s good. Those fuckers are tough.”
Dealing with Vipers at close quarters was like wrestling with an octopus who knew how to use knives. Not an easy way to earn a living. Best thing to do was use an e-tool and chop their tentacles off one by one. Or even better, shoot them. Shooting was usually the best way to deal with an Echo Tango.
Burning them would work too. Russell looked at the pile of improvised fire-bombs, using assorted containers. They’d been treated to break apart on impact and filled with flammable liquid. He sighed. Everyone who’d been toting hard alcohol had contributed to the cause, but his cache of Vyrlian brandy was providing the bulk of it. They’d mixed it with assorted other flammables and some soap to make a proper burning mixture, but he still figured those Molotov cocktails would retail at four hundred bucks apiece. What a waste.
“You know,” Grampa said after a few moments of quiet. “Going after the Lampreys doesn’t make much sense now. We’re all in the same boat. The Tah-Leen want us killing each other so they can get their rocks off.”
“Sure,” Gonzo agreed. “And?”
“Well, maybe we should try to work together. Us and the Lhan Arkh.”
Russell and Gonzo burst out laughing.
“What?” Grampa asked. He looked a little pissed off.
“You’re serious.”
“I’m not saying become best friends with them. But maybe if we joined forces, we’d have a better chance to survive this mess. It’d be in everyone’s best interest.”
“Yeah, that’s the kind of shit you see happen in movies, especially pre-Contact sci-fi. That’s where you got the idea, right?” Russell asked him, not unkindly.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“It sounds nice, but it’s all bullshit. And I’ll tell you why.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Lampreys ain’t people. They ain’t humans. They ain’t even human-like. That kind of deal, it might work with some of the more people-like aliens, like the Puppies or even the Imperials. But a lot of tangos, they don’t think like we do. They don’t give a shit about ‘best interests.’ Maybe at flag rank they do, sometimes. The grunts over on the other side of those hills, they got orders not to talk to us. Any of them does anything other than kill us on sight, their own side will take them out. They think all Class Two bio-critters like us are a plague.”
“But they’re working with the Imperium,” Grampa protested. “And most of its member species are Class Two. A couple could pass for human in a bad light.”
“Only reason they are allies with the Imperials is ‘cause they hate us extra special, enough to make them work with critters they hate only a little bit less. So tell me, Starfleet, what do you think their reaction to us showing up waving a white flag is going to be? Hugs and kisses?”
Grampa shrugged. “It was just an idea.”
“It’s not even a bad idea,” Russell said, trying to ease any hurt feelings. “If we were dealing with people. But they really ain’t. Lampreys, Vipers and Snakes are about the worst of the lot; they all believe there can be only one kind of biology in the galaxy, and it ain’t ours.”
“The Wyrms are our allies, though.”
“They are the nicest Class One species. Well, them and the Butterflies. And they’re nice to us mostly because the Gal-Imps were leaning on them even before the war and they figured jumping in on our side might help them get a few licks in.”
“Shit, Russet, I had no idea you were an expert in Galactic politics,” Gonzo said. “Me, I don’t give two fucks. If it comes at me with a gun in its hands, it’s dead. Furry, scaly or smooth. Don’t give a shit why it’s doing it.”
“Just like to keep up with what’s going on,” Russell said, beginning to regret speaking up. He normally didn’t let on that he actually read briefings and news bulletins when he wasn’t chasing pussy or money. Too many assholes would give him a hard time about it.
“So do I,” Grampa said. “But I guess I’ve been listening to the civvie stuff for too long.”
“It’s a tough universe. The only Starfarers who live long enough to Transcend are the ones who’re too tough to exterminate.”
“It’s a shitty universe, is what it is.”
Russell couldn’t disagree with that.
* * *
I found it.
There was no sense of triumph in the thought. Lisbeth Zhang might have found her weapon, but she wasn’t sure it’d been worth the price she’d had to pay for it.
Digging through the Marauders’ records had been like being trapped inside a horror flick. She’d seen – and heard and smelled – things nobody should have to experience. The worst part had been the creeping realization that she wasn’t watching recorded imagery but that her perceptions had been thrown into the distant past, and was witnessing them as they actually occurred.
Her suspicions were proven right. During the sack of a great city that covered an entire continental mass, a rampaging warrior, a bipedal horror covered in chitin, feeding tubes and metal spikes, stopped tearing its victims apart and looked directly at her.
WHO-WHAT-ARE-YOU?
Each word felt like an icepick driven into her skull. Lisbeth flinched and found herself back inside the cockpit of the Corpse-Ship. Blood was running down her nose; the throbbing agony pounding on the left side of her head felt all too real. It took a massive dose of painkillers to bring her back to something approaching functionality. Dreams or time-traveling or whatever, this Woogle search from Hell was killing her. Good thing she was done. That final foray into ancient history had given her the last pieces she needed to complete the puzzle.
She’d learned many things along the way.
Warp space was far more than a convenient way to violate physical laws. Anybody who’d ventured there could tell you that, of course, but she now had some understanding of the meaning of ‘more.’ It was a realm of the mind, or to be more accurate, of consciousness, the kind of place that Jung and Penrose had hinted at in their wildest theories. Thoughts and memories became objects of sorts, capable of being manipulated, and to come alive. Time was as arbitrary as distance inside that dimension; past, present and future could be observed from there.
Most importantly of all, it hosted its own native life.
Lisbeth didn’t know what to call them. She’d come up with Warplings as a catch-all nickname. Spirits or demons was probably just as good a term. Or maybe gods. Maybe even God. She had never been religious, but she figured that if some all-powerful deity truly existed, it would probably
make its home in a place that wasn’t bound to time or space.
Whatever they were, Warplings borrowed their shapes from the minds of normal-space dwellers, or maybe that was the only way mere mortals could perceive them. Which of course meant that it was nearly impossible to tell apart a memory come to life from one of those creatures. For all she knew, everything she saw while in warp transit was some incarnation of the spirits that lived there.
Her atheism was being shaken to the core. The more she learned about warp, the more she found evidence that consciousness was something that wasn’t limited to the material realm, that in fact it took place outside of it. A part of her resisted the idea. She was sure – or maybe just hopeful – that there was a materialistic explanation for all this. Tachyon waves or particles sounded better than souls or psychic emanations. The universe was full of forces and concepts the human mind couldn’t really understand or even perceive, but that didn’t make them supernatural. In fact, if they existed at all, they had to be part of the natural universe. Or so she told herself, over and over.
“Stop acting some bored sorority girl,” she told herself. “Things to do, people to kill.”
Alongside assorted great revelations, she’d uncovered the weapon the Scholar had been looking for. It was called the Mind-Killer, and it was tailor-made to kill Tah-Leen.
How do you kill beings who could inhabit dozens of bodies at the same time? You destroyed their shared consciousness. The Tah-Leen, as it turned out, hadn’t mastered the art of uploading their minds. Like everyone else, they’d discovered that any electronic copy they made of themselves, no matter how detailed it was, had no consciousness or volition. Instead, they’d bio-engineered a personal storage device, made of brain matter held in a nutrient vat, linked to its drone bodies through a gravity-wave network. The physical locations of those ‘brain-jars’ were so well-protected that only the complete destruction of the Habitat for Unique Diversity had any chance of damaging them, and they might survive even that.
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 83
