"Everybody up," Hyakowa ordered. He turned the buzz saw around to face away from his Marines and knelt to examine it. "Allah's pointed teeth," he murmured. "This looks almost like the firing mechanism on some twenty-first-century machine guns I saw in the Marine Corps Museum on Carhart's World. Heads up, everybody." He took hold of the two handles in the rear of the weapon and pressed his thumbs on the swivel plate between them. The buzz saw ripped, and the wall of the tunnel at the next bend powdered. He pulled his thumbs back almost instantly, but the burst was still long enough to plow a gouge several centimeters deep in the wall. He examined the weapon more closely. Except for the oddly cased barrel, it looked remarkably similar to the ancient machine guns in the museum. The box on the side of what appeared to be the receiver assembly had to be the ammunition container, he decided. How many rounds did it hold? Two more canisters sat on the floor nearby. There was nothing that resembled a safety—unless it was, yes! Another plate slid out from in front of one of the handles hooked into a recess in front of the other handle and covered the thumb trigger to keep it from being accidentally depressed.
"First fire team, cover the next bend. Chan up." Hyakowa continued to examine the buzz saw. In a moment he had the receiver cover raised and the ammunition container detached and open. Inside, the receiver didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before. The container was filled with uniform metal bits. They didn't look particularly aerodynamic, but he guessed at the speed they were propelled, they didn't have to be. There was no obvious mechanism for feeding them into the receiver. He pulled one out and weighed it in his hand. It felt lighter than ten grams.
"First fire team, get back here." He lowered his infra to make sure the three Marines got behind him. When they were out of the line of fire, he reattached the container, closed the receiver cover, and shoved the safety plate out of the way. He tapped his fingers against the trigger plate and a short burst shot from the buzz saw's muzzle.
"Chan, did you see everything I did?" Hyakowa asked as he replaced the safety.
"Yes."
"Show me." He moved out of the way. He watched the receiver cover rise and the ammo container lift off, then reattach and the cover close. The safety slid out of the way and the trigger plate depressed briefly. A burst powdered more of the facing wall.
"We're in business. Chan, you've got the buzz saw. Have each of your men carry one of those ammo containers. Let's move out."
Third platoon's Bravo unit resumed its advance into the depths of the Skink stronghold.
The Great Master received reports of the battle in his command center. The reports were all negative. Nearly all of the heavy guns that could take out Earthmen aircraft and armored vehicles were destroyed. The advance of the Earthmen scum army of this mudball to the west of the underground complex had been stopped, but at the cost of too many weapons and Fighters for the defense to hold for much longer. Earthmen Marines were inside the complex, advancing against scattered and disorganized resistance from the south. The mission to draw the Earthmen Marines into a decisive battle had succeeded. But yet again, the True People had failed to defeat the Earthmen Marines. He had failed.
He summoned his second in command and major subordinate commanders to meet him in his quarters. They arrived and bowed respectfully. The Great Master sat cross-legged on a mat on the floor, wearing a simple robe. They waited for him to speak.
"I have failed," the Great Master said at length, his voice chalk crushed underfoot.
The few Over Masters who attended him stood silent, their heads bowed.
"Send the rovers against Haven to draw the Earthmen back," he said to the Over Master in command of defense, his voice a rasp on wood. "Prepare defenses for when the Earthmen Marines return.
"Get a message to the Grand Master Commanding," he told the commander of communications, his voice the sigh of a breeze through an ancient forest. "Tell him we need the ship.
"Take command," he ordered his second in command. "Return Home with the survivors," his voice a mouse gnawing a hole in a silo's side.
"Now leave me," he said, his voice sand running through a glass.
The few Over Masters who attended the Great Master bowed again, not as deeply as when they arrived, and filed out of his quarters. A Large One remained behind.
"You know what to do," the Great Master rasp-whispered to the Large One, who bowed deeply in appreciation of the singular honor he was being granted.
The Great Master opened his robe and shrugged it off his shoulders. He reached under his thigh to pick up a knife that had lain there out of sight and raised it before his misted eyes. Slowly, he lowered the knife and turned it until its point rested ever so softly against the side of his abdomen. He held it there for the time of two rasping breaths, then plunged it in and slashed it across with the same fervor he had cut through the bodies of foes when he was a young Master at war.
The Large One bent over the Great Master and took the knife from his trembling hands. Then he gripped his commander's head with one hand and bent it back. He sliced the Great Master's throat to the bone. When the Great Master's eyes glazed, the Large One flamed the corpse.
The Marines hadn't entered the underground through all of the entrances on its southern fringes; there weren't enough platoons and squads. Nor did they have enough Dragons to cover the entrances the infantry hadn't used. And there were many, many more entrances in the wide gap between the fringes where the Marines went underground and the western fringes where the Army of the Lord fought its terrible battle. Many of those entrances were large enough for smallish vehicles to use. Small armored vehicles began to trickle out of the larger cave and tunnel mouths; entrances the Marines hadn't used, entrances between the Marines and the Kingdomites, entrances deeper within the Skink stronghold. None of the vehicles sought out the Dragons standing watch on the southern fringes, none assaulted the Army of the Lord to the west. Instead they struggled through the waterways, heading southwest, toward Haven. The going was difficult for the vehicles because they were designed for travel on dry land and had only limited amphibious capabilities.
The string-of-pearls spotted them almost as soon as the first one moved from the darkness underground to the light of day.
Brigadier Sturgeon got the report from the Grandar Bay and saw the speckling on the large situation map that indicated the vehicles. He swore under his breath. Where had those things come from? Why hadn't the Skinks used them before?
"Get me a visual on one of those vehicles," he ordered.
In seconds an image from one of the many surveillance devices planted by the Marines came up on his console. A tank trundled past the device. It seemed sluggish, though he thought that might have been because of the marsh. The tank tapered in steps, front and back, to a cupola on the top. The barrel of a weapon sprouted from the front of the cupola. Using the Skink who was half out of the top of the cupola for scale, Sturgeon was able to tell its size—less than half that of a Dragon. When it climbed out of the water onto an islet, he saw it moved on two pairs of treads, one fore, the other aft.
He looked at the large situation map. The speckles of the armored vehicles seemed to all be moving toward Haven.
"Get me an ID on that weapon," he ordered Commander Daana, the intelligence officer. By the look of the barrel, he suspected it was an acid shooter. If it was, Marine artillery and aircraft could do the attackers severe damage. But if it was a rail gun . . . The Haven defenses were thinly manned by two understrength Kingdomite infantry divisions that would be shattered by the three hundred or so small tanks headed toward them. He needed his infantry. But most of the platoons and squad were out of touch inside the Skink stronghold.
"Two, send recon and the scout-snipers in to get the infantry out, we need them here," he ordered Daana.
"Aye aye, sir," Daana answered. He passed the order to his comm men. A moment later he said, "Sir, I have an ID on those weapons. Acid shooters. The Skinks used those tanks in several attacks during the course of the origi
nal invasion. According to the ambassador's records, they're pretty nimble." He looked at an image on a console. The vehicles didn't seem nimble in marsh. On the large situation map, speckles began blinking out as the Grandar Bay's lasers picked them off. More flowed from underground. The small tanks started to join together in formations.
Another report came in from the Grandar Bay.
"An object, possibly a defensive missile, just launched from the Skink complex. It jumped into Beamspace before the Laser Gunnery Division could fix on it."
"That's impossible," Daana said. "Nothing can jump into Beamspace from inside a gravity well!"
"I know that," the Grandar Bay replied, "but all the signatures it kicked out said it was doing it anyway."
"Then it probably destroyed itself."
"We're hoping that up here. If it didn't, we don't even know in what direction to look for it." The Grandar Bay's comm officer sounded very nervous.
"Two," Sturgeon interjected, "the recordings recovered from Society 437 showed Skink shuttles moving in and out of Beamspace inside a gravity well. It might be impossible, but they do it anyway."
Before Daana could reply, the Grandar Bay's comm officer spoke again, this time with evident relief. "We picked it up again, it made a course adjustment. It's not a defensive missile, it's heading out-system!"
Sturgeon squeezed his eyes shut to block the sudden pain he felt. He remembered the message Ambassador Spears showed him from Fundy's Tide. Society 362, only three light-years away, almost positively had Skinks. That launch was probably a drone heading for Society 362, a request for reinforcements. Three light-years. Not quite twelve hours, standard, travel time in Beamspace—assuming the Skinks traveled in Beamspace at the same rate as human ships. Given the Skink ability to move in and out of Beamspace within a gravity well, the only question was how fast reinforcements could board ships. If they were already on board, it was conceivable that more Skinks could arrive in just over twenty-four hours, standard.
"Where's my infantry?" he growled.
The infantry was assembling by platoons and companies in six predetermined locations, one per company, within the Skink stronghold. Of the thirty-five units from the two FISTs—which ranged from reinforced platoon down to reinforced squads—that entered the massive cave and tunnel complex, only sixteen had contact with Skinks. Eleven had captured buzz saws, and seven of the eleven had figured out how to work them. The four that hadn't figured it out were quickly shown. Marines were always armed and deadly; now they were better armed and more deadly.
Company L assembled in a large chamber that had matting on the floor and a low dais at one end. A chair with a low seat, oddly elegant despite its lack of ornamentation, stood on the dais.
The two units of third platoon were jubilant at rejoining. They admired the buzz saw each had captured. Each group was only slightly disappointed that the other had figured out how the weapon worked, and neither was able to show off its superior skills.
"Listen up," Captain Conorado shouted. He had his helmet off so his men could see him. Everyone except the few who were assigned to watch the entrances to the chamber looked at the company commander.
"Don't think we've got this fight won yet," Conorado said sternly. "All we've done so far is clear a few entrances to this complex. You've seen the maps, so you have an idea how big it is. We've barely gotten inside. There's a lot more fighting ahead of us. Some Marines are going to die and some will be crippled before we're finished. I want as few of those dead or crippled Marines as possible to be from Company L." He transmitted the current situation map to the platoon commanders and platoon sergeants. His voice lost its harsh edge and he continued. "Here's where we are and where we're going next. Show it to your people."
Throughout the chamber, Marines clustered around their squad leaders to study the maps they projected into the air.
Conorado checked the time. Lacking communications between companies, the operation was being coordinated by the clock.
"Rest up a bit," he said. "We're moving out in one-four minutes. Any questions?"
"Send more Skinks!" Corporal Dean shouted.
"Don't worry about it, Dean," Conorado said above the laughter. "We've got quite enough of them ahead of us."
The two Marines of a scout-sniper team, breathless from running, arrived less than two minutes before Conorado gave the order for Company L to move out.
"Company L!" he shouted. "New orders. We are withdrawing. The Skinks have launched an armor attack on Haven."
Armor. The word shot through the Marines like a jolt of electricity. Most of them had fought in the campaign on Diamunde, the first war in centuries in which heavy armor was used in combat. They shuddered when they remembered the monster vehicles that had been so hard to kill and had killed so many members of the company. That war had been fought by six FISTs and an entire army and was supported by navy Air. Even then, the outcome had been in doubt for weeks. Here, there were only two FISTs, no army backing them up, and no navy Air in support.
Armor! Christ on a crutch? It was more like Buddha's blue balls locked in Mohammed's pointed teeth!
Chapter Twenty-Four
Free from worry about rail guns, half of the Marine Raptors stopped firing Jerichos at the Skinks battling the Army of the Lord and took flight after the armor, which began massing as soon as it left the wetlands. The small tanks were nimble enough to avoid most of the point-target missiles the Raptors fired. The Marines quickly shifted back to Jerichos and found them very effective against the little armored vehicles.
Artillery, Marine and Kingdomite, began pounding the Skink armor as soon as it got in range. As imposing as they looked to men on foot, the Skink tanks' armor was thin, and so highly vulnerable to area-denial munitions. Between the Jerichos and the artillery, they died by the dozens. The survivors fled back for their underground homes, reaching the marshes and swamps, only to encounter the Marine infantry. The captured buzz saws simply shredded the tanks. The guns of blaster platoons and the bigger guns of the assault platoons easily burned through the thin armor with long bursts and vaporized the crews. Blastermen who evaded detection found that a fire team that concentrated its three blasters' fire had enough power to burn through the thin armor at the backs of the tanks. Almost none of the tanks of the Skink counterattack made it back underground.
"Now I know why they didn't use their armor against us earlier," Brigadier Sturgeon said. He wondered what other surprises the Skinks had in store. That futile attack had to have been a diversion. But a diversion for what?
He ordered the infantry to return to Haven. He made sure Commodore Borland understood the situation the same way he did, then composed messages to dispatch to the Combined Chiefs, Commandant Tokis, and Assistant Commandant Aguinaldo to travel in the same drone Borland was using to send messages to the Combined Chiefs, the Chief of Naval Operations, and the Minister of War.
The staffs of Marine Expeditionary Forces, Kingdom, and the two FISTs worked on defense plans. They assumed the worst—that Skink reinforcements superior in number to the original Skink invasion force were on their way.
All Raptors returned to base to preserve the remaining Jerichos. The Hoppers, with less effective area weapons, replaced the Raptors in support of the Army of the Lord on the western fringes of the Skink stronghold. Marine artillery was moved into position and added its support. It wasn't long before the Skink resistance completely collapsed. Sturgeon ordered Archbishop General Lambsblood to return his divisions to Haven.
Lambsblood was furious. He wanted to pursue the demons into their Hades and expel them back to the hell they had come from. Unwillingly and protesting, he complied with Sturgeon's orders. Twelve hours after the collapse of the Skinks' western resistance, the badly battered divisions that had participated in that assault were integrated into the Haven defenses, which looked a great deal different from how they had earlier.
Twenty-four hours and thirty-seven minutes after the Skink drone launched, a starship
the size of a Crowe-class Amphibious Battle Cruiser popped out of Beamspace into orbit within visual range of the fast frigate CNSS Admiral J. P. Jones. The J. P. Jones was so surprised by a starship entering Space-3 that deep in a gravity well, it didn't immediately take defensive action. By the time it did it was too late—missiles fired by the Skink starship had already been fired and were closing on the J. P. Jones. The J. P. Jones got off one shot from its laser battery before the incoming missiles destroyed it. The debris cloud left by the fast frigate began its slow expansion.
The Grandar Bay, in orbit on the opposite side of Kingdom, was shocked by the abrupt arrival of the Skink starship in orbit and the destruction of the J. P. Jones. Battle stations were called immediately and the Grandar Bay prepaired to defend itself. But the strange starship didn't attack. It dropped shuttles that popped in and out of Beamspace on their way around the globe to the Skink stronghold.
The Marines gritted their teeth. Those so inclined prayed to whatever gods they believed in. They did whatever they could to prepare themselves for a fight they expected would be fiercer than any they'd ever been in before.
The Soldiers of the Lord weren't told about the arrival of the Skink starship and the impossible descent of the shuttles. Lambsblood was too afraid of panic in the ranks and mass desertions.
The first shuttles touched down in the wetlands. On the Grandar Bay, the Laser Gunnery Division locked on targets and fired.
"What do you mean, missed?" demanded the gunnery officer.
"The targets are still there," the senior chief petty officer who was the gunnery chief said. "Must be a glitch in the aiming program."
The gunnery officer checked the visual, radar, and emissions displays. The lasers had fired at an array of six shiny shuttles on the ground. The six shuttles were still there, apparently intact and unharmed.
"Run diagnostics on the computer and debug the program," the gunnery officer ordered. "And while you're at it, fire another salvo at those shuttles."
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