by Ian Douglas
It was clear now that the analyses of the beam’s power was understated by at least eighty percent. Possibly, much of that initial beam had actually missed the hurtling asteroid, and been lost in deep space, a possibility that the Lords Who Are had not considered.
They considered it now, as the beam struck the huntership’s shields, overwhelmed them, and drove them down. Star-hot radiation struck the living surface of the huntership, flash-boiling vast quantities into the vacuum. The power plant and the reactionless drives, both those that maneuvered the huntership through normal space, and those that made faster-than-light travel possible, began boiling away an instant later, as heat exchangers and quantum dampers strove to compensate for the torrent of coherent EM radiation.
Worse, optical and other sensors located in the huntership’s skin were seared into uselessness. New ones could be grown, but, for the moment, at least, the ship and the Lords Who Are were blind, deaf, and helpless.
Given the technology of the species inhabiting system 2420-544, this was not a serious situation, but it was irritating. And frustrating. Vermin were not supposed to fight back.
There would be no more experimentation with the locals’ defenses. The damage to sensors, power plant, weapons, and drives would be repaired, the huntership restored to full operational capacity, and the worlds of this star system would be sterilized.
Once and for all.
Assault Detachment Alpha
On Board Commodore Edward Preble
Outbound from Mars
1308 hrs, GMT
“All right, Marines,” Garroway bellowed over the platoon channel. He was standing in the central aisle of the crowded autie, gauntleted hands braced on seatbacks on either side. The CAS helped him stand, but it still wasn’t pleasant. They were pulling, according to the telemetry coming through his link, two and a half gravities. “Noumie briefing in five! Check your contacts!”
“Damn it, Gunny,” Corporal Kevin Yancey said. “When can we peel out of these tin cans? It’s getting freakin’ ripe in here.”
“Stew in it, Yancey. ‘Your combat armor is the Marine’s skin. Your combat armor will keep you alive and able to kill your enemies. You will care for your combat armor as though it was your own body….’”
The old litany out of boot camp raised a chorus of groans from the Marines, which had been Garroway’s intent. A griping Marine wasn’t necessarily a happy Marine, but he was an alert and attentive one. And he needed their attention now.
He didn’t blame them, though. They’d been suited up for the better part of nine hours, now, ever since they’d prepped for the IMAC launch at zero-dark-thirty that morning, Zulu. The Marine CAS was a flexible and remarkably versatile instrument. It had its own water supply, and a ready cache of combat rations, which, of course, the more inventive Marines stocked with candy bars and other gedunk. It had attachments to let you piss and shit, too…all the comforts of home.
Well, most of them. The trouble was, after a few hours sealed in the thing, the best filtering and air scrubbing cyclers in the world couldn’t keep up with the canned stink of excrement and sweat. They said you got used to it after a while. Once, Garroway had been on a training exercise where he’d donned a CAS and kept it donned for fifty-three hours. “They” were wrong.
“Man, I don’t see why we have to stay suited up either, Gunny!” Sergeant Roderick Franks said. “This stink ain’t never comin’ out!”
“Don’t worry, Roddy,” Chrome told him. “You couldn’t get a date, anyway.”
“Says you. Anyway, we all know the brass is just jerking us around.”
“Jack in and ice it, people,” Garroway said. “The word is we’re on another op. We stay in the cans until the Man says otherwise. Ooh-rah?”
“Ooh-rah!” several Marines chorused back…but not many, and not with a lot of enthusiasm. Morale was not good.
Lieutenant Wilkie had passed the word coming down from higher up on the chain of command. The RST had been ordered both to stay suited up and to remain on board the dust-off autie, which had been swallowed whole a few hours ago by the transport Preble. Now they were going somewhere in one hell of a hurry. Two point five Gs was about max for a Patriot-class transport.
That told Garroway that they wanted the Marines ready to go at an instant’s notice. Unfortunately, no one had yet bothered to tell any of them what the hell was going on.
But maybe that was about to change. Wilkie had just passed the word that there would be a noumenal briefing in five more minutes. About damned time, he thought fiercely. Marines never liked operating in the dark…at least, not the kind of political-situational darkness that even Mk. XC night-vision equipment simply could not penetrate.
The minutes dragged past. Then the noumenal link alert flashed on. Garroway took his seat, making the connections with his armor gauntlets on his seat.
Lieutenant Wilkie’s virtual image appeared in the window that opened in his mind. The face looked a lot like Wilkie’s real face, Garroway thought, but had obviously been aged a bit, to give it a more experienced and commanding presence. Garroway didn’t like playing that sort of game with the noumenon, though he knew a lot of officers who did.
“Listen up, people,” Wilkie said. “We have new orders. Approximately four hours ago, an alien spacecraft entered our solar system and destroyed several of our ships, including a Titan-class High Guard cruiser. It then proceeded to accelerate several small asteroids on new courses, apparently in an attempt to bombard the Earth.
“A few moments ago, the alien changed its position, moving to a point less than eight hundred thousand kilometers from the Preble. At that point, the High Guard heavy laser arrays took it under fire, and appear to have disabled it. We have been ordered to board the alien, and destroy it.”
Garroway listened, reserving judgment, but waiting for the proverbial second shoe to drop. Clearly there was a lot that Wilkie wasn’t saying…though whether that was because he was withholding information from the enlisted personnel, or because no one had bothered to tell him the whole story, there was no way of knowing.
The biggest question was…what could thirty-two Marines do against an alien warship capable of flinging asteroids at the Earth? It sounded like it must be one of the fabled Hunters of the Dawn…something like the two-kilometer-wide Singer discovered three centuries ago on Europa, or the Hunter ship that had come through at Sirius…and those things were huge.
The only way a handful of Marines could take out something that big was…
“In order to effect the target’s destruction,” Wilkie’s image went on, “the RST is being issued all available K-94 packs on board the Preble. I need five volunteers to actually deliver the weapons into the enemy spacecraft.”
That was the other boot.
Five Marines were being asked to commit suicide.
And the rest almost certainly would die with them.
5
12 FEBRUARY 2314
Assault Detachment Alpha
On Board Commodore Edward Preble
Outbound from Mars
1412 hrs, local
“I want to volunteer, sir.”
The face of Lieutenant Wilkie’s icon didn’t change expression. “Request denied.”
“The hell it is. You wanted volunteers. I’m volunteering.”
“Gunny…I don’t think you understand. I can’t let you go out there.”
Garroway was startled by that. “Huh? What do you mean? Sir, we’re all going on this op.”
“You’re not. I want you to stay on board the Preble.”
“Fuck that! Do you think I’m going to watch my boys and girls vaporize themselves from a safe distance? No way! Sir.”
“Gunny…your uncle is on board the Preble.”
That stopped him for a moment. “My…uncle?”
“General Clinton Garroway, yes. He came aboard at Phobos, when they evacuated the high-ranking brass.”
Garroway gave a mental shrug. “Doesn’t change an
ything, Lieutenant. I am going on this op. With my people.”
He felt Wilkie hesitate. “If you buy it in there…”
“C’mon, Lieutenant. Uncle Clint didn’t order you to pull me off of this run, did he?” The very idea was ludicrous. Both Garroways were Marines. Both knew what that meant. “Are you telling me you discussed it with him, and he said no?”
“No. Of course not. But regulations—”
“If I know the General,” Garroway said, interrupting, “he’s going to be looking for an excuse to come along with us. If you want to quote regs at someone, talk to him. This is your op to lead, sir, not a goddamn general’s!”
“Roger that, Gunny.” He felt the lieutenant’s mental sigh. “Okay. Forget what I said. You’re on the op.”
“Affirmative, sir. But what I wanted to say is…I want one of the boom-packs.”
“Denied.”
“Sir, it’s my right….”
“And it’s my right to refuse. We’re not leaving you on the Intruder.”
“Damn it, Lieutenant, how can I let five of my people volunteer to go out in a nuke fireball when I won’t do it myself? My uncle would grab one and go in a second.”
“No. Your uncle knows that a very great deal of money, time, and effort has been expended in making him a general. The days when an officer led his men by running out in front of them and shouting ‘follow me’ are long over.”
“But—”
“Furthermore, Gunny, the platoon needs you. I need you. You know as well as I do—better, maybe—that a unit’s success and efficiency both depend on the experience of its senior NCOs. I cannot afford to lose you.”
Garroway had worked with Wilkie long enough to know that tone, to know that the lieutenant was not going to give in on this. The man might be barely out of Annapolis, but he could be as gold-plated stubborn a bastard as any gunnery sergeant when he set his mind to it.
“Therefore, Gunny,” Wilkie continued, “if you insist on going along, you will go in your capacity as senior NCO, to lead the other Marines and to support me as CO. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Are your Marines ready to boost?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Load-outs checked?”
“Yes, sir.” He resisted the temptation to add of course. “We’re going in light with expendables, but we have four extra pigs.”
“And the boom-packs.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Pass the word, then. Fifteen more minutes to launch.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Dismissed, Gunny Garroway.”
Garroway broke the link, and was again aware of his surroundings—sealed inside his CAS, squeezed into one of the chairs on the cargo deck of the autie with thirty other Marines. The lieutenant was riding this out in relative comfort up on the flight deck.
Briefly, Garroway considered uplinking through to his uncle, but decided against it almost before the thought had fully formed. No sense in risking having to disobey a direct order. Besides, once you started going around the chain of command to get what you wanted, discipline and order started to break down. There was a reason for the chain of command, and both Garroways were dedicated to upholding it.
Besides, he wasn’t sure his uncle even knew he was a part of Detachment Alpha. Generals didn’t usually pay much attention to the individual grunts, and the IMAC tests weren’t 1MIEU’s concern yet. Garroway didn’t know how his illustrious uncle had turned up on Phobos, but he doubted very much that it had anything to do with him.
Travis Garroway was a Garroway on his mother’s side, but, like several others in the family line over the past century or two, he’d chosen to take his mother’s family name at his Naming Day ceremony. His father, a psychtech applications specialist with Dynate Systems in Atlanta named Travis Kraig, had been disappointed, understandably, but he’d understood. Travis’s father had never been in the military, but simply by marrying into the Garroway family, he’d come to learn a hell of a lot about the Corps, and what it meant to bear that name.
Hell, most of why he’d chosen the Garroway name was due to his Uncle Clint, who’d been a lieutenant and, later, a captain running a platoon in 1MarDiv when he’d still been in his early teens. Some of the stories he’d heard back then about the Corps had fired his passions…but even more he’d been hooked by the historical stuff involving his own family, Major Mark “Sands of Mars” Garroway, Lieutenant Kaitlin Garroway, Corporal John Esteban Garroway, and others. Many others. It certainly wasn’t true that all Garroways ended up in the Marines, but there were enough ghosts looking over their shoulders to make anyone in the family think twice about joining—for instance, and perish the thought—the Navy.
He sighed. Wilkie was right, of course. He didn’t belong on the suicide squad. But he didn’t have to like the alternative.
Suicide squad. That was what some of the Marines in the platoon were calling it, of course, though Garroway, Chrome, and the other senior people were trying to discourage that idea. This would be a team effort…gung ho. Everyone pulling together.
No one would be left behind.
Even so, it was hard to imagine hauling a thirty-one kilo pack containing a 120-kiloton nuclear device into the bowels of an alien starship without thinking in terms of suicide. No one knew what kind of close-in defenses the Hunter of the Dawn warships possessed. No one knew for certain what the crew was like. Xul starships appeared to be crewed, or at least defended, by mobile machines…though the vessels seemed also to be little more than bodies housing titanic and very alien artificial intelligences.
Did they possess other means for discouraging enemy troops from coming onboard and leaving unpleasant surprises behind, surprises such as a quintet of K-94s?
No one knew. But the Marines of RST-1 would be finding out for themselves very soon now.
“Equipment check,” Garroway called. “Everybody check your buddy.”
The Marines were paired off, each with a partner…except for Garroway, the platoon gunny. He watched the others check one another, moving down the crowded aisle. “Chien! Check your starboard-side harness. You’re dangling.”
“Right, Gunny.”
“Tomasek! Shorten up that strap on your ’thirty.”
“Aye, aye, Gunny Garroway.”
He continued making his way among the men, checking equipment, but mostly letting them see that he was there with them. Twelve of the thirty were newbies straight out of boot camp. And two of those, he saw—Istook and Lowey—had volunteered to backpack a couple of the ’94s.
Both were sitting next to each other on the starboard side aft, and their vitals readouts showed they both were scared. Well, hell. So was Garroway.
“Hey, Marines,” he said over a private channel. “How’s it going?”
PFC Gwyneth Istook was a pale, red-headed youngster from Sebree, Kentucky. Private Randolph C. Lowey was a black kid from Manchester, Georgia. “Doin’ okay, Gunny,” Lowey said.
“Yeah,” Istook added. “Ooh-rah!”
“I want you both to stick close to me, understand? No heroics. No wandering off.”
“Right, Gunny.”
“Okay, Gunny.”
“This is not a suicide mission. You will follow me in, place your devices, and follow me out. Got it?”
“Got it, Gunny.” Istook’s mental voice was level and hard.
“Good.”
He wished he could be as sure of that as he sounded.
“Uh…Gunny?” Lowey asked. “What if that thing collapses while we’re in there?”
It was a question for which there was no answer. Marines had boarded a disabled Xul huntership once before…and escaped moments before the black hole that apparently powered the thing had devoured the entire mile-long hulk.
“Then we’re dead,” he replied, his voice cold. “But we’ll be dead so fast we won’t even know what hit us. And we know the bastards won’t take the rest of humanity with ’em. Righ
t?”
“Right, Gunny. It’ll be quick?”
“Faster than an eye-blink.”
He didn’t add that it would also be quick if they all went out in their own nuclear fireballs. They knew. In a way, it was a kind of blessing. Most Marines Garroway knew were more afraid of being seriously wounded or mutilated than they were of a fast and clean death. There was scuttlebutt—only scuttlebutt, he reminded himself—that if the Xul captured you, it was neither fast nor clean.
Casualties in the unforgiving vacuum of space tended to be fatal, and rapidly so, in any case. But right now, he thought, every man and woman in the autie must be thinking about the alternatives.
“Five minutes!” sounded over the command channel. “Everybody strap in!”
Garroway made his way back to his seat, squeezing the bulk of his CAS into the bucket between Corporal Visclosky and Sergeant Bonilla.
“Think they’ll have the front door open for us?” Chrome asked him over a private channel.
“Damfino,” he replied as the grabbers snugged him in. “Wish we’d had time to load on some IMACs.”
“Roger that. This whole fucking op feels like the brass is making it up as they go along.”
“Yeah. What if we can’t breach the objective’s hull?”
“Then we’ll do it the Marine way,” Garroway told her. “Improvise, overcome, and adapt.”
“We can use Will-kill’s head as a battering ram.”
Garroway let that pass…and hoped, for Chrome’s sake, that Wilkie wasn’t monitoring the private channels. Chances were, though, that the lieutenant had other things on his mind right now.
Like how the hell the RST was going to get inside the Intruder if its hull hadn’t been breached.
Garroway, along with most of the Marines in this compartment, had studied the intelligence data gleaned from studies of the Singer, found almost three centuries before beneath the ice of the Europan world-ocean, and from the battle with a Hunter-of-the-Dawn starship at the Sirius stargate 144 years ago. The Xul Hunters possessed a technology that made human starships look like stone axes by comparison.
