God be with you, she prayed for the men and women she was sending into the unknown.
* * *
“All clear, sir.”
Fromm nodded at Lieutenant Hansen and stepped into the Lamprey dreadnought’s bridge. The aliens there had died hard; an improvised barricade, reinforced with portable force fields, marked the CIC crew’s last stand. Armed only with personal weapons and light shields, the aliens’ desperate defense had availed little against his battle-hardened Marines. Several men were dragging the aliens’ corpses out of the way. The only reason the Lampreys had lasted so long was that the Americans’ orders had been to seize the ship relatively intact.
“They didn’t even have time to activate their self-destruct system,” Hansen said, grinning at his own joke.
Fromm chuckled politely in return. Contrary to fiction, starships didn’t have devices that would scuttle a vessel with a single command or the push of a button. A determined crew could do so, with a little time, but it generally required control over a ship’s engine rooms, and the boarding parties had seized those first.
The Lampreys had reaction forces prepared for a boarding attack, but years of neglect had turned those duties into routine, easily neglected assignments. The Lamprey Spaceborne troops had reacted sluggishly at best, and their resistance had been nearly as ineffective as the bridge crew’s last stand. Charlie Company’s only fatality had been one Missing-In-Warp Marine, lost during the initial drop. There were a few yellow icons on the personnel roster window, men and women too severely wounded to continue fighting, but only a few.
“We have an incoming warp arrival, sir,” the company’s commo tech announced. “Headed right here, coming in ten seconds.”
“Clear the area.”
The new warp systems created warp apertures that didn’t inflict damage on the landing area unless it was deemed necessary, but it was better to not tempt fate. The transition happened without incident and a trio of Marines from the headquarters company arrived, bearing orders.
Fromm grunted as he read the uploaded message. The new orders were unexpected.
“Acknowledged,” he told the new arrivals. “Will this work?”
“It should, sir,” the Lieutenant from Battalion HQ said, sounding about as happy as Fromm felt. The man knew he was likely sending Fromm and his people on a one-way trip, and he didn’t like it one bit. “The portable catapult your company brought along will perform as well as the ones aboard the Mattis, and our techs will slave the Lamprey’s sensors to it to ensure a smooth jump onto the new target.
He grunted again. The Marines had been expected to jump to the Lamprey ship, disable it, and then jump back to the Mattis. That by itself would be a historical event. Now they were being tasked to jump from the Lamprey vessel onto one of the unidentified alien ships that were raking Third Fleet with some sort of plasma super-cannon.
“I’ll assemble the troops.”
This had all the makings of a bad day.
* * *
“Tell me you’re joking,” Grampa said.
Russell shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you. New orders.”
They’d just finished clearing a hangar bay. A pack of Lamprey spacers had been trying to get aboard a shuttle and ended up jettisoned into hard vacuum instead. The Marines had just re-pressurized the compartment when their new orders had arrived: assemble at the field warp catapult they had brought along on their backs, piece by piece, and prepare for another boarding action.
“I mean, how can we board a ship when we don’t know their specs?”
“Been doing that since the beginning brah. Our sensors give us a targeting solution, just like a gun. Only we avoid spots where warp events can’t happen, like near power plants. The techs find an open space, and that’s where we go. They beam us right there. We get there, kick ass, the end. Except this time we also get to jump back rather than wait for a shuttle ride.”
“How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit? That’s a classical reference, by the way.”
“Anything you say, Grampa.”
They reached their assembly area a few moments after their conversation drifted off. Grampa wasn’t the only one fighting a bad case of the nerves. The pucker factor for a raid on an unidentified ET ship was off the charts. Most Starfarers existed along a somewhat-survivable spectrum of conditions, at least if you were in a combat suit or standard haz-con gear, but there were a few notable exceptions. High-g natives whose idea of normal would cripple a regular grunt; radiation-resistant types who filled their ships with unhealthy doses of x-rays; and a couple others just as nasty. Even under ideal circumstances, setting up one of their new portable catapults required six people and five minutes’ work; that could be a mite too long if their armor began to dissolve in a highly-corrosive atmosphere, for example.
From the looks of it, if they didn’t knock out those ET ships, their rides weren’t going to survive, so bitching about the mission was pointless. Russell kept his worries to himself.
They’d set up five mini-catapults in a large compartment. The little bastards were only big enough for three grunts at a time, but they could stay open long enough to let three groups in per launch. They’d dialed them in for maximum mayhem on the emergence point, so hopefully anybody on the other end would be too dead to give them trouble.
The Marines stood patiently in line while a couple of warp-rated pogues they’d brought along for the trip activated the catapults. Unlike the regular version, the insertion teams would have to walk through a colorful gateway. Sergeant Kruger and a couple grunts from First Platoon went in first, followed by another three Marines, and then it was his fireteam’s turn. Russell gritted his teeth – he’d done this a few times already, but he still hadn’t gotten used to it – and walked through.
One step, that’s all it took, but it was a long step and a bad warp trip in between. Before his right foot stepped on something solid and he came out the other side, Russell spent what felt like a good minute watching himself be skinned alive by a couple of tangos from Parthenon-Four. Something that hadn’t happened but might have in another world, maybe. Nothing he wanted to see, let alone hear or smell.
Finally, it was over, and he was through. He had to help Grampa; the old-timer was off-balance from whatever he’d seen during the drop. While Russell steadied him, his imp scrolled down all the sensor data on their surroundings. By the time he’d half-dragged Gorski out of the way, Russell had a good idea what kind of shithole they’d invaded.
Minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Nitrogen, oxygen and ammonia atmosphere at low pressure; the air was almost Mars-thin. Point-eight gees. His suit’s thermal systems would keep him cold and uncomfortable instead of frozen and dead, but they’d drain his twin power packs a lot faster than normal, just the kind of shit anybody about to go running around and getting shot at didn’t need. The compartment was a bit torn-up, but even at first glance the distance between decks was pretty high – close to three meters – and the only door he could see was narrow as hell. It was going to be a tight squeeze for one grunt.
Narrow-band comm links were up with the other assault teams. A total of forty-five Devil Dogs had arrived, and that was going to be it for five minutes or so, the time it would take the mini-catapults to power-up again.
“Get that door open.”
“Copy that.” A burst of three breaching charges blew the door in; a slightly wider passageway lay ahead. It was going to be one Marine at a time.
“You know the drill. Hand Feldman the porta-field,” Sergeant Kruger said.
PFC Jon ‘Jobber’ Feldman got to be point man and shield bearer. He let his Iwo hang from its tactical sling and held the portable force field generator in both hands. If the shit hit the fan, he’d drop to one knee and hope the grunt behind him took care of any problems before enemy fire depleted the area force field he was holding. A shit detail, in other words, but someone had to do it and Russell was glad it wasn’t him; he got to be third in line, though, plent
y close to the sharp end.
The NCOs in charge of each assault element had brought a high-power sensor pack along, to help them figure out where to go. Deep grav-wave scans showed where the engine rooms were: two decks below and about fifty meters forward from their position, about as close as you could get to them via warp. They got moving.
Another team not too far away ran into the ETs. Gunfire and shouts erupted from their comm channel. The vid feeds gave them a first look at the tangos: tall and spindly things like jellyfish with stilt-like legs. Russell figured the nickname ‘Jelly’ would stick. Iwo fire tore them up pretty good. Russell took it as a good sign.
“Tangos dead ahead!” Jobber called out. He kneeled down so Lance Corporal ‘Barbie’ Barbour could shoot.
The door at the end of the passageway slid open. Barbie was popping caps the moment it started to move, and the 4mm rounds blew up against the soap-bubble shimmer of a force field. These Jellies were ready for trouble. Three laser beams hit Jobber’s shield, making it strobe in multiple colors.
“Fire in the hole!” Barbie shouted; he cut loose with a 20mm breacher.
The whole corridor shook and filled with smoke, although Jobber’s shield kept the blast away from the Marines. Two lasers stopped firing, but the third one kept pecking away at their force field.
“Barbie, hit the deck. Russet, light ‘em up!”
“Copy that,” Russell said. Barbie was crouching down behind Jobber, but he still had to lift his plasma thrower to make sure he didn’t blue-on-blue anybody. The smoke from the twenty-mike-mike was clearing, and he could see shapes moving at the far end. He sent a continuous stream of fire towards them. The laser stopped shooting: the Jelly gunner must have ducked for cover, for all the good it would do.
The plasma blast shattered the ET’s shield on impact and began to fill the compartment with superheated gas. Russell caught a glimpse of a dozen semi-transparent tentacles failing briefly above the flames before everything in the area of effect disappeared in a yellow-white glare. He shut off the beam and stepped back a pace.
“Clear,” he told Barbie, who rose to his feet and fired a string of mini-grenades down the room for good measure.
“Now it’s clear,” the grunt said.
“Move on, but watch it,” Sergeant Kruger added.
The compartment was clear. The combination of bursting plasma and explosive ordnance had also turned the door at the other end into scattered wreckage. Russell could see a large clear space on the other side of the opening, with a catwalk along one long bulkhead and a long drop-off on the other side. A cargo hold, he figured. Lots of fire sectors for any ETs willing to make a stand.
The Marines spread out into the compartment. Grampa placed his own porta-field on the next door while Jobber changed power packs on his; it was down by forty percent from just a few laser hits: the Jellies’ guns packed some serious punch.
And a bunch of lasers were in play out there. Grampa pulled back; his porta-field had been hit multiple times and was sparkling like a Roman candle. They must have a platoon-equivalent somewhere down below, and they had the exit onto the catwalk bracketed pretty well.
They were going to earn their hazard pay.
Eight
Fromm arrived at the alien ship with the second wave: thirty-three Marines plus himself to reinforce the forty-five already in combat. He ignored the frigid atmosphere and the sound of fighting somewhere ahead as he concentrated on the overall action.
The attack on the ship’s engines stalled at a large open section that lay beneath a massive tube; the structure was the ‘barrel’ of the massive plasma gun the Marines had been sent to silence. The five-hundred-meter long pipe compressed and accelerated the superheated star matter brought through a warp gate. The resulting jet of plasma left the muzzle of the gun at half the speed of light. It hadn’t fired since the boarding action had started, so his people had accomplished that much. The job wouldn’t be complete until the ship had been captured or disabled, however.
The alien ‘Jellies’ had concentrated below the catwalks running on both sides of the massive gun and were sweeping the Marine positions with sustained laser fire and fragmentary munitions. The catwalks had been wrecked beyond repair; their absence wouldn’t hamper the Marines or any personnel with directional-gravity generators, but they needed to take out the ETs before they could proceed. The relatively short-ranged plasma throwers the heavy weapons section was armed with weren’t up for the job. The reinforcements Fromm had arrived with carried a different weapon mix, however.
First Sergeant Goldberg sent the assault section forward: three seven-man squads, each able to deploy two Light Missile Launchers Mark Eleven. They ran through still smoldering passageways and compartments the first wave had cleared, took positions behind the portable force fields being steadily depleted by the enemy, and volley-fired on command.
Six anti-shield missiles struck the alien positions, their duplex warheads designed to obliterate the force fields the desperate defenders had erected around their spacers. They were followed a split-second later by a deluge of grenades and self-propelled munitions that turned the lower level into a hell of high-explosives and slashing fragments. There’d been close to a hundred aliens there, huddled behind structural pylons and cargo containers. By the time the smoke cleared, there were a dozen survivors; most of them tried to flee or were too stunned to do even that, and the few that tried to resist were cut down by the advancing infantrymen.
“Clear.”
Marines moved forward, their grav fields turning the sides of the vessel into walking surfaces, in defiance of the ship’s artificial gravity. They fired on the move, busting open the doors on the other end. Fromm looked through the eyes of the point men and saw a few more Jellies, their translucent tentacles holding small arms and they tried to form a perimeter past the broken doors. That only lasted for as long as the Guns sections from Third Platoon used their plasma throwers on them.
“Clear.”
Most of the components in the engine room would remain operational despite the damage; they were designed to survive space combat. While Fromm moved forward, he followed the Marines’ progress: his XO, officers and senior non-coms used their imps in an attempt to ‘handshake’ with the alien systems: the Jellies’ technology diverged enough from Starfarer standards to make the process difficult. From the way Lieutenant Hansen was cursing, perhaps impossible.
Where did the Lampreys find them? Fromm wondered. New species were discovered infrequently, and they rarely were advanced enough to become short-term allies or threats. Whoever the so-called Jellies were must have come into contact with the Lhan Arkh fairly recently, very likely after the current conflict had started. The Lampreys were too cautious and paranoid to start a war with humanity at the same time they had encountered a new Starfaring polity.
He shrugged. The intelligence weenies, including his girlfriend, could sort that out. His job was to determine whether they could capture the ship or would have to scuttle it instead. The second wave had brought enough warp catapults in place to evacuate the entire assault force in fifteen minutes, which made him favor destruction over capture, even if the troops would grumble at the loss of salvage bonuses.
By the time he reached the engine room, the area had been secured. Lieutenant Hansen was hard at work coordinating the ‘hacking’ evolution. From the looks of it, he wasn’t having much success.
“Their comm systems aren’t standard, sir,” Hansen reported. “No grav systems. Looks like they only use tachyon-based tech.”
“We’d been warned of that. No way to take the ship over, then. We’ll set scuttling charges.” The assault section would take care of that. “Start moving the men back towards the catapults. Time to blow this Popsicle stand.”
“Copy that.”
The enemy had pulled back, ceding the engine room to the human invaders, but Fromm didn’t think they would remain passive for long. A feeling of impending danger grew stronger with every passi
ng second. It didn’t make sense, but his heart was racing. His imp warned him that his blood pressure was beyond normal levels and released a med dose to bring it down. It didn’t work, and he could feel his pulse pounding against his head.
“Something’s wrong,” Hansen said, stepping away from the comm station. His hands were shaking. Elsewhere in the compartment, several Marines were swaying on their feet. Their status icon were beginning to turn yellow.
We’re under attack.
Fromm glanced at the sensor readings, forcing himself to look past the red haze that obscured his vision. The enemy was beginning to move forward, unimpeded by the incapacitated Marines. He tried to give orders but couldn’t concentrate enough to activate his imp. He could barely stand upright.
T-waves, was his last conscious thought as the red haze began to fade to black.
* * *
“Big trouble, Christopher Robin.”
“I know!” Lisbeth shouted at her invisible friend. She and the rest of the squadron had returned to the Laramie after wiping out the last Lamprey heavyweight, and were taking a short break while their gunboats got some maintenance. Lisbeth had been drinking some electrolyte-enriched Tang when she felt it. A psychic ‘sound’ that made her think of alien voices singing. The song made the inside of her head itch, and she felt a slight numbness trying to spread through her body. It took an effort to shrug off the effects. Atu explained what was happening a moment later.
“Everybody rally on me!” she called out. The pilots’ bodies didn’t move from where they’d been sitting, but their minds jumped to a virtual assembly point. They’d practiced the maneuver often enough they could do it even while in normal space.
“Looks like the new ETs are telepaths, or at least some of them. They are hammering the Marine boarding parties.”
“The technique was not unknown to my people,” Atu explained. “It uses mental impulses that disturb the target’s physiological balance. If powerful enough, the technique can shut down a sophont’s autonomic functions.
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 136
