The ship shuddered. That would be incoming fire. Boghammer was suffering some blows.
There was plenty to do checking his mech suit’s systems, running final checks on weapon systems, atmosphere control, and the like, but what he really wanted to do was call the bridge and demand a status update.
At least one star wolf would die on the approach, if it hadn’t happened already. It was hard to imagine otherwise, with six star fortresses blasting away—they’d begun the attack with surprise, but that wouldn’t last—and with a star leviathan eager to gobble them down. More would die on the surface, assuming they got there.
Maybe they’d all die, in fact. It had certainly crossed his mind when arguing against Science Officer Brockett’s participation in the mission.
Svensen’s biggest worry had always been the decimator units sure to come after them, but thinking about Brockett put him in mind of other dangers. The monster might wage an immunological defense against the invaders, and there was a strange and hostile ecosystem to deal with, as well. Parasites and predators and symbiotic organisms. Things that had evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to feast on the scraps left behind by the leviathan’s feeding sessions. A mech suit would look like a lot like the crumbs they were used to feeding on.
Yeah, but crumbs don’t fight back with bullets and grenades.
The marine unclipped his suit and shifted over again. There were other raiders and marines coming down from the barracks and the recently thawed stasis rooms, but a quick glance at the hold showed plenty of empty slings to the right. Seems the marine could move over there, if he wanted more space, but he jabbed his finger in a clear indication that he wanted Svensen to move again.
Irritated, Svensen flipped on the general com. “Blast it, I’m the commander of this expedition. You do the moving, ’cause I’m not going anywhere.”
“I was thinking about taking command myself, actually,” a female voice responded, tone smooth and arrogant. “I’ve heard you Vikings love it when a woman takes over.”
He stared, and it had been so long since he’d heard her voice that it took him a long moment to recognize it.
“Kelly?”
Elizabeth Kelly popped the seals on her helmet, removed it, and gave him a saucy grin. He couldn’t help but laugh.
“How did you get on my. . .? Put that back on before you get yourself killed.”
She ran her fingers through her short brown hair. “We’re all going to die anyway, aren’t we? Isn’t that what you were telling my colonel?”
“I was getting his blood warmed up. I’m not planning to die, and I sure as hell don’t want you dying, either. So put that back on—you’re making me nervous.”
“You and all the other superstitious lads in the launch bay. A pretty face makes them nervous. You know I’m not the only female marine here, right? Oh, all right,” she added, when he gave her a stern look to let her know he was serious.
Kelly eased the helmet into place, sealed it off, and was soon another anonymous figure among the thirty or so marines in the launch bay, their gray mech suits emblazoned with rampant lions presenting a contrast to the various sizes, personalized weapons, and colorful designs of those worn by the raiders.
He felt marginally more comfortable when she had her helmet on, and addressed her over the private com link. “By the gods, I’ve missed you. Skinny little thing that you are.”
“Same here, you one-handed space Viking. Have you been taking care of your teeth? Laying off the beer and onions? What about the wenches?”
“My teeth? Ha! And you know I can’t stay away from beer and onions. No wenches—don’t you worry about that.”
“It must be hard to mount a wenching expedition when the blasted fleet never lets you go on leave. I’ll bet this war has left a good number of Scandians crying lonely tears into their tankards.”
“You’re terrible,” he said with an amused shake of the head.
“I know!”
“So how is it that you’re here?”
“There are only so many armored marines in the fleet,” Kelly said, “and Tolvern wanted every mech unit in play. She knows about us—guess she figured if we’re bunking together, we may as well die together, too.”
“But you were base commander on Castillo. You’ve got rank, now. Couldn’t they have found someone else your suit would fit? It’s not . . . we probably won’t . . .”
“I was joking about that dying business. Don’t tell me you’re scared.”
“I wasn’t before. But yeah, I am now. Now that you’re here to worry about.”
Of course he’d been scared before, but it had been manageable. Now, it struck home just how many of them wouldn’t be coming back from the assault.
“How long have you been on my ship?” he asked.
“About ten hours.” Kelly sounded pleased. “I even went to the drink hall with some marines for a final meal. Must have been ten raiders who recognized me there.”
“If they did, they kept it to themselves.”
“Good, I’m glad I got to surprise you.”
“Stay close to me when we get down, will you?” Svensen said.
“Listen to you, like a mother hen. Sure, I’ll stay close. Got to keep you alive. From what I hear, it’s going to get weird.”
The ship shuddered again. Lund’s voice came over the com. “Fifteen seconds out.”
Lund sounded strained, and again Svensen fought the urge to demand a status update. But his signalman was flying the ship with a short crew, since a third of the men were strapped down in their mech suits, ready for the assault, and he didn’t need the distraction. Instead, Svensen looked around until he found Jörvak. He’d painted his suit all black, a different look for him, and with the rocket pack they were all wearing, had the rough appearance of a giant beetle.
The first stage was relatively simple. Get down, get out of the ship with Jörvak and Kelly on his wings, and take position while the others poured out. Identify the locations of the other wolves with their assault teams, if he could. Then . . .
The antigrav gave a violent heave. He was suddenly upside down, and then he wasn’t anymore, but the whole perspective of the ship’s interior had shifted. The doors slid open, and the first thing he saw was what looked like pale pink grass waving around the opening. It seemed to be growing up and around the surface. Several men nearly jumped headlong into the grass before a shouted warning from the bridge called for them to stand down.
The “grass,” such as it was, turned out to be an attack on the ship. An immune response, maybe, or one of the life forms they’d been warned about. The bay door slammed shut again, the star wolf released a massive radiation pulse, and when the door reopened, the grass-like substance was a pool of ooze.
Svensen waited for the all clear from the bridge, then gave the command. “Go!”
The ship had the ability to extend antigrav beyond itself, and he bounded out under full gravity. Even as he took position with both gun attachments at the ready, he couldn’t help but stop and gape.
The star leviathan stretched for miles both in front of and in back of them, with the center part nearly a half-mile wide from side to side. Enormous tentacles heaved out, most of them up front by the mouth, as if the leviathan were a giant squid, while others emerged from the tail, forward of the plasma jets.
One tentacle, as thick as a star wolf, held a ship in its grasp that was flaring its engines in an attempt to get free. Its guns fired, and the surface lit up with explosions. From this vantage, it was impossible to tell what kind of vessel he was looking at, or even if it were one of their own. Only that it was doomed.
The planet of Persia dominated the sky to their left, an enormous red-and-turquoise disk. Closer at hand, he spotted the planet’s orbital fortress. From this distance, the captured asteroid appeared no larger than a misshapen marble, but it was several miles long, the size of a mountain. The fort was lit up by incoming and outgoing fire.
Following the
planetary geography to the north, he spotted rockets and cannon fire bursting into space from the missile base in the desert. To the south and southwest, flashing lights indicated battle. A star wolf flashed overhead only a few hundred yards above the surface.
An Adjudicator star fortress hung at roughly three o’clock in the sky overhead, framed by a swath of stars. It was long and lethal looking, with a blue torus ring placed midway down the hull to strengthen its tyrillium armor. Missiles flew outward from multiple batteries. It was taking damage, as well. Someone, somewhere, was laying down a heavy bombardment, which splashed explosions against its armor.
Another ship streaked past, squirting fire. Yet another flashing ship followed it a split second later. They were moving too fast to identify, but they must be ships from the Fifth and Third Wolves, drawing fire away from the landing parties.
He looked away, more concerned about their immediate surroundings. Taken in a wide view, the whole creature appeared like some vast bio-mechanical monster of the deep, but up close, the environment was even weirder.
He’d always thought that the skin of a star leviathan would be smooth and rubbery, but it was covered with bumps, columns, and other protrusions. They ranged in size from fist-sized warts flickering with cilium-like hairs to twenty-foot-tall tubes. Some of the objects were fixed in place, while others shifted across or just below the skin of the creature.
Svensen gestured at a trio of raiders, including Jörvak with his glossy black shell, and addressed them over the com. “Take position there. Put down the big gun.”
Kelly moved to assist. While the four of them erected the gun and its turret, he positioned more raiders and marines, still pouring out of Boghammer, to form a defensive perimeter. There was a flash of light, and the ground shuddered as another star wolf rammed into the leviathan’s skin roughly two hundred yards behind them. The doors opened and figures streamed out.
No more than thirty seconds had passed since Boghammer struck home, but the last of its mech units were already unclipped and jumping onto the surface. Kelly finished with the gun emplacement and began to organize her marines in a cluster, while Svensen formed raiders into ranks to their side. Once everyone was out, and their surroundings secured, he gave the order.
Raiders and marines gathered their gear and bounded away from the ship. Artificial gravity vanished, and they relied on mag clips and rocket packs to maneuver. The instant they’d gained some distance between them and the ship, Boghammer blasted its engines and broke free.
He couldn’t help but watch as his ship pulled away. Tentacles seemed to be waving everywhere, and a spectacular display of fireworks lit the sky. It was hard to believe that his ship—that any of the ships—would get away unscathed, but within seconds his star wolf had vanished. Alive, he presumed.
Another star wolf in the assault team was not so fortunate. It broke free of the surface, fell under attack by long-range fire from an unknown source, and made an evasive roll as if to use the body of the leviathan to shield itself. More fire forced a second maneuver.
The ground bulged and tossed a few marines skyward. Several long, needle-like structures resembling thirty-foot-long porcupine quills burst from the leviathan and exploded a few hundred yards above the surface. A gummy substance ensnared the star wolf, and a tentacle lurched around from the mouth-side of the monster and grabbed it before it could drift away.
The only thing that seemed to stop the leviathan from going after the other ships was that it was now fully engaged with a much larger target—the orbital fortress. Except for the arms holding the captured ships, all its appendages stretched forward toward the fort. The garrison was about to get served up for lunch.
Svensen soon had other worries closer at hand as three mushroom-like objects sprouted from the leviathan’s skin roughly twenty yards from his position. Their trunks were a creamy white color, but the crowns unfurled to reveal leaves that pulsed with rainbow colors. Sparks of glowing light burst out like a cloud of fireflies and dispersed.
A pair of marines aimed their assault rifles and tore the mushrooms up before Svensen could stop them. “Hold your fire! No shooting until attacked. Nothing, do you understand?”
He was not entirely certain that the fiery spores hadn’t presaged an attack of some kind, but the last thing he wanted to do was attract other, meaner critters. In any event, he was relieved when there seemed to be no repercussions from the trigger-happy marines.
A band of newcomers arriving from Svensen’s left identified themselves as raiders and marines from Blood Eagle, and he moved his forces toward them to make a rendezvous. A third ship, Wasteland, broke through the static and interference and announced that they’d also landed troops nearby. Svensen ordered them to hold position and wait for Boghammer and Blood Eagle’s forces to advance. Scans so far had not revealed the location of the implant, and he realized he may very well be moving in the wrong direction, but he figured there was safety in numbers if they needed to do an extended recon.
Meanwhile, he was having a hard time finding the other troops from the Second and Fourth Wolves. If anything, the interference across the com channels was increasing. Jamming from the star fortresses, perhaps? The countermeasure bursts filling the sky wouldn’t help matters, either.
“Svensen, you there?” a voice said over the command-level com as Boghammer’s units moved forward. It was Helsingor, which meant Icefall had landed forces, too. “I picked up your signal. We’re about four hundred yards from your position, just over that spiny ridge. You see what I’m talking about?”
He amplified his vision and scanned the horizon until he spotted the ridge. It rose in a long, undulating hump, and was crowned with something that resembled a fish’s bony fin, if that fin had been twice the length of a whale. There were flashes of light in that direction, but short of the ridge, that he thought were coming from Wasteland’s crew, the second of the two assault teams he’d earlier identified for rendezvous.
“Yeah, I got it. Are you under attack?” he added as he picked up background chatter over a secondary channel.
“Sort of. Some crazy tree-like thing with tentacle arms grabbed one of my men and stomped him into the ground. We’re shooting the damn thing, but it keeps growing new arms.”
“Get out of there, don’t fight it.”
“I’d love to, but it’s sitting on top of the implant.”
Svensen stiffened. “You found it?”
“Hell, yeah. Practically landed on top of the damn thing.”
“And it’s the damaged one?” Svensen asked.
“That’s what I’m saying, buddy. All we’ve got to do is get this stupid tree out of the way, cut the implant loose, and get out of here.”
It was a great piece of luck, and resolved the biggest concern Svensen had faced since landing. How long could they stumble around looking for the damaged implant without the enemy attacking them with decimators, the strange creatures on the leviathan’s surface overwhelming them, or the monster itself noticing their presence and taking them out? Yet they’d found their target in the first few minutes after landing.
Maybe this would be easy, after all.
The leviathan shuddered as if it had struck something, and Svensen looked up to see the orbital fortress looming. The captured asteroid into which it was built looked like a giant turnip, bulbous up top with a root that trailed toward the planet. The root was the orbital elevator.
Two massive explosions burst on top of the fort. Nukes. Svensen’s mech suit sent out a mag-pulse to keep the systems from being fried in the resulting radioactive burst.
“Um, Svensen?” It was Kelly. “Should we be worried about this?”
They’d been moving to rendezvous with the mech units from Wasteland, who’d reached the bottom of the spiny hill and were waiting for Boghammer and Blood Eagle’s raiders and marines to arrive before scaling it to join Helsingor and the rest at the implant.
Eirik Haugen, Wasteland’s commander, was among the knot of tro
ops with his red mech suit and a huge Gatling gun attachment on one arm. They were trying to cut/shoot free a marine with his leg trapped in something that Svensen couldn’t identify from this distance.
He thought at first this was what Kelly was talking about, but she was pointing at three raiders who stood apart from the others with their guns trained up the hillside toward the ridge. While they stood motionless, looking elsewhere, something that looked like a giant snail crept toward them from their left. The snail was at least a dozen feet tall, with a head and multiple probing eyestalks, and hardly inconspicuous in spite of its slow approach. Yet the three men appeared not to notice it looming over them.
Svensen called Haugen. “You got three idiots about to be run down by a giant snail, you know.”
“Hold on . . . this blasted worm thing—” Gunfire. Shouts over the com. “I didn’t catch that. What did you say?”
“I said you’ve got three troops who look like they’ve fallen asleep. Look to your right. That’s your left. Look toward the planet.”
Meanwhile, one of the three raiders swiveled his head slowly and stared at the snail. His gun still pointed up the hill. The creature opened its mouth wide, but it was still about twenty feet away, and had come to a stop as if uncertain. Svensen, Kelly, and several of the others had their guns trained on it, as did several of Haugen’s raiders. Haugen himself and two other troops pulled the trapped marine away with what seemed like an eyeless snake that coiled around his leg.
Something flashed from the snail’s mouth, so fast Svensen almost missed it. The raider lurched forward, harpooned in the chest. In a split second, he was hauled off his feet and into the snail’s mouth, which was already turning toward the other two men even as it swallowed its first victim.
Gunfire erupted from Svensen’s and Haugen’s forces simultaneously. The giant snail withdrew its head inside its shell, and bullets ricocheted harmlessly from the surface. Then someone fired a hand cannon, and the thing rocked backward. More grenade and bomb attacks smashed its shell, and it was soon riddled with holes and leaking snot-colored goo, which floated away in big globules.
The Alliance Trilogy Page 64
