Stark's Command

by John G. Hemry

  "What do you mean?" Tanaka dashed forward, then cursed as she caught sight of the night watch-standers slumped over their duty stations or huddled against the walls, bright pools of blood spreading around them. "Those bastards."

  "They paid. Have somebody check for survivors. Get some sentries posted to guard that other entrance." He watched, eyes fierce, as Reynolds and her two Privates backed into the room, firing as they came. "Vic, you hold this door."

  "Roger." Higgens jerked a couple of times, his body sliding back along the floor under the impacts. "Damn. Fournier, aim your shots and keep your head down!"

  Stark pivoted, one finger singling out another soldier. "Corporal Abrakis, see if you can help Higgens." The finger shifted. "Sergeant Tanaka, get comms going in here."

  "Roger," she acknowledged. "Sergeant Tran, get on it. We're being jammed, Commander—"

  "I know. Get through it." The lights flickered, steadied, then died. Emergency lights came to life, glowing eerily. "How much of this stuff can run on backup power?"

  "A few terminals," Sergeant Tran confirmed. "I will do my best, Commander."

  Vic fired several more shots, each round aimed with cool deliberation, then halted. "I think that's the last of this bunch."

  "How many were there?" Stark demanded.

  "Four. That's how many we hit, anyway. Maybe five, if I nailed one in the corridor."

  "That's all? We're dealing with professionals, Vic."

  "No kidding. Hold here, stay alert," Reynolds barked at Fournier, then eased inside, slapping the control panel to keep the door from sealing behind her. "How many others are there? Where are they?"

  Tanaka slammed her palm onto her console in frustration. "I don't know. Most of our sensors are inactive and internal comms are blocked, but we can't locate any physical damage. They must have inserted a worm into the system from one of the security stations."

  "Then get the damn worm killed! We need to know what's going on out there!"

  "I'm trying, dammit! Guerrero, try to build some workarounds while the watchdogs are hunting down that worm. Kloster, put together a manual picture from whatever you can pick up."

  Stark glared, his frustration easy to see. "Vic, I'm supposed to be giving orders, and I can't."

  "Then we'll have to do what we can." She raised her weapon. "At least we're good at it."

  "Hey!" Sergeant Tran suddenly shouted, drawing nervous rifle barrels his way. "Don't shoot, dammit. Jill, these guys hitting us have got to be using their own systems for coordination."

  "Yeah," Sergeant Tanaka agreed tartly. "So?"

  "So we've got a couple of sets of their battle armor in here. Maybe we can use it to tap into their comms until we get our own working."

  "Maybe we can. Good idea." Tanaka knelt next to one of the dead enemy soldiers, pulling off the helmet. Dark hair rasped against the Command Center floor as the head flopped back, eyes staring upward, still fixed on the target they'd seen when death came. "Commander?"

  "What?"

  "This is American battle armor."

  "That's not our . . ." Stark's voice trailed off as he carefully looked at the equipment. "It is, isn't it? What is that, the new Mark V suits?"

  "Looks like it. They didn't even send any Mark Vs up with Third Division because they supposedly weren't available."

  Stark stared at the dark-haired soldier lying on the floor, the soldier who'd tried to kill him and died in the attempt. Are we fighting Americans? He gazed around at the bodies of the watch-standers. Did other Americans slaughter these soldiers? "Vic."

  She was already kneeling next to the body, studying it intently, then gestured at its shoulder. "Whoever they are, and wherever they got this armor, they're not American soldiers. The dogtag isn't where it should be."

  Stark let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. Every American soldier had what was still called a dogtag embedded near the left shoulder, carrying critical identity and medical information. "Thanks."

  "I needed to know, too, Ethan."

  Huddling with several other soldiers, Tanaka and Tran ran cables, scanned screens, and pulled other pieces of armor off the two bodies to plug them in as well in an effort to jury-rig a backdoor into the enemy comms. "Okay, Commander. We've got something. Apparently the worm the raiders inserted into our systems is not only blocking us, it's also hijacking our systems to relay the enemy comms. The worm's security subroutine is good, though. It keeps trying to kill our intrusions. We can get fragmentary vid, but only for one observer. I don't even know if it'll be real-time or Tactical records of recent activity, and it's going to keep shifting as the enemy worm figures out what we're doing and we have to tap into another data stream."

  "Fine. How do I call it up?" Stark followed Tanaka's directions hastily, then triggered the vid feed.

  Remote view, the vid from the spy tap grainy and dim. A big, elaborately furnished room. The Commanding General's suite. Vid shaking slightly as a weapon pumped rounds into the large bed, tearing smoking holes in the soft covers and revealing the absence of any occupant. Spinning now, moving rapidly, in the hall where the shocked face of one of the gardeners hung frozen for a bare moment before bullets hurled him back against the nearest wall. Disconnect. Gray static blurring in a chaotic mass, then the picture cleared on another enemy soldier's view.

  A hall in the headquarters complex, the vid jerking in a manner that said the soldier was jogging rapidly. Unfamiliar symbology cluttered the HUD, then unmistakable threat warnings popped up. Stark watched, helpless, as a door slid open, the enemy soldier's weapon and combat system aiming at the gap. Brief glimpse of a woman staring wide-eyed, fancy civ hair marking her as alien to military headquarters, a vague figure barely visible over her shoulder bringing a weapon around, mouth wide open in a scream of warning. Robin Masood? For the love of God, duck! Vid broke into a million shards of static, then cleared into another view as Stark slammed a fist on his console in frustration.

  "What happened?" Vic demanded.

  "I don't know." The new view looked over the hunched shoulders of several other suits of battle armor. This raiding party seemed huddled behind a corner. Visible on the floor ahead were two bodies in the Mark V armor. Threat symbology snapped to life as several rounds tore small chunks of rock out of the corner, then the two nearest enemy soldiers leaned forward to fire, hurling bullets down the hallway around the corner. Vid bounced dizzingly as Stark's unwitting host jumped into motion, clearing the corner and charging down the hall, firing rapidly at a few figures just visible behind a doorway. Is that Gomez? That might be the rec room she was in, so the other two would be the Mendozas. The enemy HUD tracked the incoming fire, painting frantic warnings the soldier couldn't react to fast enough, then the view spun wildly up and down, back and forth, as bullets hit home. Vid shattered again, then went black. "Jill, I lost it."

  "Sorry." She punched at her console frantically, then shook her head. 'The enemy worm ID'd the outfits we were using to gain access for our intrusion and froze them out."

  "Damn."

  "Ethan." Vic gestured angrily toward him. "What'd you see?"

  "I tagged three groups of raiders, I think. One was chewing up the Commanding General's suite."

  "There's nobody there."

  "One of the gardeners was." Vic's eyes flared with fury at the obvious implication. "He didn't have a chance to fight, not that it would've made a difference, I guess. The second group was in some hallway. I'm pretty sure I saw Robin Masood and maybe Murphy. I dunno what happened to them." Stark had to pause a moment, getting his voice under control. "Then one more group, pinned down behind a corner. They were trying to get past some resistance. Gomez, I think, with the two Mendozas."

  Vic thought for only a moment, then shook her head. "Gomez and the others can't have much ammo. Did Lieutenant Mendoza even have a weapon?"

  "No, but he was shooting, if it was him. Probably Gomez's sidearm."

  "Not enough weapons. Very little ammo. How long can they hold a
hallway against a group of these guys?"

  "I dunno." Memory of Stark's earlier eavesdropping came back. "She had extra ammo. But it's across the hall from them."

  "How do you—?" Vic broke off as Stark's face closed down into stubborn refusal. "Never mind. Can they reach it?"

  Stark remembered the enemy soldiers firing down the wide headquarters hallway, fast and accurate, toward the unarmored soldiers huddled behind the doorway. "Maybe. If somebody doesn't mind dying trying to get to it." He slammed one fist furiously into the other palm. "That vid didn't help. Just gave me enough information to scare the hell out of me."

  "You couldn't have known that until you tried it," Vic reminded him. "At least we know parts of the attack are being held up."

  "Yeah." Held up by the lives of my friends. Don't think about Murphy and Robin. Whatever happened has happened, maybe even before I saw it. Nothing you can do right now. How long will Gomez and Mendo and his dad last? The raiders will push them hard. Holding them off will mean firing a lot. Pretty soon, no more ammo. Then they'll be toast. Be smart enough to run, Anita. Even as Stark made that last, prayerful wish, he knew Corporal Gomez wouldn't run while she could still fight.

  "I've got a sensor active," one of the watch-standers reported, face fixed with concentration as he scanned his data. "No. Dead again. It recorded firing in Corridor Six Delta before I lost it."

  "Where in Six Delta?" Tanaka demanded. "Narrow it down."

  "I can't, Sergeant! It was echoing. Without the main sensor grid I couldn't get a fix."

  "Six Delta." Stark studied the map of the headquarters complex as Corporal Kloster manually placed a threat symbol in that corridor. "So maybe we have firing here, here, or here. Maybe. What're they after, Vic? Just this place, or something else?"

  She stared intently, then shook her head. "I can't tell. All the corridors intersect, and some of the enemy groups ran into our people before they reached where they were going. They already nailed Security Central and the Commanding General's suite. I'd guess this is the last one of their main objectives."

  "Yeah. And anybody who hasn't run into our people oughta be here by now." He switched circuits, calling the sentry in the corridor outside. "Fournier, you see or hear anything?"

  "No, sir. Real quiet, except for a lot of echoes. I don't—hey! Look out!"

  The thunder of firing reached through the door as Stark called up vid from Fournier's battle armor, catching a brief glimpse of armored foes almost hidden by the threat symbology streaming from them toward the sentry. Then the vid died as Private Fournier did. "Everybody get down! "Vic, main door."

  "Got it." She was already palming the door closed, shutting off a swarm of bullets that battered against the barrier like angry hornets, then yanked a grenade from her belt, crouching next to the doorway. Stark brought his weapon around smoothly, kneeling behind the nearest console to steady his aim on the entrance. Vic waited a moment, roughly gauging the timing, then activated her grenade, holding up first one, then two, then three fingers. On the third, Vic triggered the door open, then shut. As it bobbled open half a meter before halting to slam back, she tossed the grenade through the gap, then shoved herself away to escape the flurry of shots crashing through the temporary access.

  By the time the rumble of the grenade's detonation died, Vic was back near Stark, also in firing position. A few moments later, the door shivered, light suddenly appearing on all four sides as an explosive strip tore it free, then fell inward with slow majesty under Luna's weak tug. Wood splinters from the ornate paneling on the outside of the door spun dreamily through the air, shaking as they flew from the shockwaves of bullets ripping past them into the Command Center.

  Stark fired, almost continuous short bursts, vaguely aware of Vic doing the same. He caught momentary glimpses of targets being hit and falling back, his HUD painting a chaotic picture of fragmentary symbology as its picture shifted too rapidly to follow. They're coming in through one door even though they know we've got it covered. Dumb move. Desperate move. They must be really pushing their timeline. How many of 'em this time? Fournier took out some. The grenade took out more. How many left? The console next to Stark shrieked in complaint as answering fire slammed into it. The emergency lighting rippled again, then steadied.

  An object flew into the room, arcing too high, a grenade thrown by someone not experienced enough in lunar gravity. The grenade bounced off the ceiling, angling down toward Vic, who released her trigger just long enough to swing her right arm up and around and slap the deadly sphere back toward the door. It detonated, spraying shrapnel both outside the room and in. Stark ducked beneath his console, feeling it shudder as metal impacted it, then surged up again to fire.

  "Ethan. Hold it. Incoming fire's stopped." He paused, finger poised over his trigger, as Vic cautiously scuttled forward, coming to rest against the side wall near the gapping doorway, her rifle ready. "What do you think?"

  "Maybe they're all down, but I could use some reassurance."

  "Right." Vic dropped two grenades into her hand, hooking fingers from the other hand to activate both, then paused, counting. Her hand came forward, flicking to right and left in one smooth gesture before she yanked herself back away from the door. "Fire in the hole."

  "Watch it," Stark added to the other personnel in the Command Center, ducking behind his console once again as the grenades detonated in a twin thunderclap in the hall. He waited, rifle lined up on the doorway, as Vic eased forward again, sticking one finger gingerly around the edge, the fiber-optic camera in the fingertip scanning for movement.

  "All the ones I can see are dead," Vic reported.

  "What about the ones you can't see?"

  "I know. Look's like we took out this group, though."

  "Anybody else coming?"

  Her finger tip wriggled in search, then paused. "Nobody visible. Ethan, how are we going to secure this doorway now?"

  "Hey, you guys," Stark gestured to the two nearest soldiers. "Pick up that door and prop it back in place. You got anything that'll hold it there?"

  "We got duct tape," one offered.

  "That's better than nothing. See how well you can fasten the thing to the walls again. Sergeant Tanaka, any progress on the sensors or comms?"

  "No. The damn worm's got everything blocked." She frowned in thought. "Maybe the worm's blocking access just from our consoles, though. Maybe if we tapped into the remote feeds directly . . . Vreeland, you know exactly where the feeds are located?"

  "Sure do," Corporal Vreeland declared, enthusiasm lighting his face. "The main bundle is right outside here, in the hall." He pointed out the secondary entrance, where two Privates stood nervous watch.

  "Okay, Vreeland. Let's get them." Tanaka dashed forward, pulling the Corporal with her.

  It took a moment for Stark to realize what Tanaka was doing, a moment to understand that for all her time on the Moon, she'd been serving in headquarters, not on the front lines where a moment of carelessness or a simple mistake could cost a life in the time it took enemy systems to register a target and fire. Vic, occupied guarding the other entrance, understood a bare instant after Stark did, turning to yell even as Stark shouted a warning. "Tanaka! Not out the door!"

  Jill Tanaka spun at the warning, sudden knowledge of her error draining blood from her face, grabbing at Vreeland to yank them both back inside. The maneuver came too late, as the hall erupted with the crash of shots, bullets impacting all around the door area. Tanaka, halfway inside, went flying sideways as the enemy fire slammed into her, her hand still locked on Vreeland even as he jerked in time to hits on his body.

  The Privates on guard fired frantically, one hosing down the hall on full automatic until Stark reached him and slapped his helmet. "Aim, damn it! How many are there?"

  "I think there were just a couple," the other sentry reported, her voice shaking. "I'm pretty sure we got 'em both."

  "Assume you didn't and assume there's more. We're in combat, people! Guard yourselves from the ha
llways!" Stark stared down where a couple of personnel were frantically trying to apply medical aid to Tanaka and Vreeland, made a motion to join them, then walked slowly back to his useless command console. Do my job. Let them do theirs. I can't do anything more for the wounded than they can, except delay treatment if I insist on horning in.

  Vic's gaze met his, her eyes angry and frustrated. "Ethan, somebody's going to pay a big price for this," she vowed, her tone deceptively soft.

  "Oh, yeah. One helluva big price. If we survive to make 'em pay." He looked from one entrance to another, face bleak. "They didn't expect to run into combat troops, Vic. They thought they'd be facing nothing but headquarters types without battle experience."

  "You're probably right. Nice to know we surprised them, too."

  Waiting had never been easy. Not when leading a squad. Not now with a lot more soldiers' fates riding on his decisions. Stark's hands moved restlessly, as if seeking some task, something he could do right now while others fought and died, then clenched in frustration. He glared at his blank, useless, command display. "I oughta be out there," he whispered. "Trying to relieve Gomez."