Star Marines

by Ian Douglas

  He saw a tiny group of figures on the walkway bridging the stadium entrance, directly above the slow-moving hovercraft now, and then he saw one of the figures drop, neatly vaulting the railing and falling toward the back of the hovercraft.

  Garroway magnified the image in time to catch a glimpse of the falling man, one of the Ishtaran recruits, wearing nothing but Marine-green utilities as he plummeted about four meters and landed squarely on the shoulders of the marauder pig-gunner. The impact drove the marauder down and out of sight; the two other armored marauders were so busy shooting fleeing civilians they didn’t appear to realize at first what was happening.

  Zigzagging to avoid presenting too steady a target, Garroway ran directly toward the hovercraft. The cab’s wind-shield was completely covered over with sheet metal, leaving only a tiny slit for the driver to see through.

  Garroway fired into the slit as he ran….

  North Gate,

  Marshall Sports Complex

  Relief Distribution Center

  1032 hrs, EST

  Nal hit the back and shoulders of the marauder who was firing the plasma gun, the impact as hard as a fall from the branches of a red durik tree back home. The marauder dropped to his knees underneath him, then fell full-length, twisting wildly, trying to grapple with his assailant.

  The Mk. XII combat knife looked much like the Marine-issue blades of centuries past, but it had some high-tech twists to it. The blade was a microgravity-bonded crystalline alloy of ceramic, titanium, tungsten carbonitrides, and molybdenum—an alloy that could cut diamond—forged and tempered by nanobots that had worked the cutting edge down to a whisper of cerametal one atom thick. The knife blade, in short, was very hard and very sharp.

  The marauder’s armor, however, was hard as well, and as Nal brought the blade down between the man’s shoulder blades, the knife turned and skidded across the slick, mirror-bright surface. Nal had an instant’s surreal glimpse of his own face, twisted with anger and reflecting back at him out of the man’s back. Then the reflections shifted and rippled as the man turned, trying to throw him off.

  All Nal could do was hang on tight with his left hand, and keep hammering at the armored form beneath him with the knife in the right. The blade did cut the armor with each stroke, but only in shallow nicks, and he had to pull hard to yank the knife free after each blow.

  The armor wasn’t all solid shell, however; when he shifted his aim to the marauder’s elbows, the keen-edged blade sank through the folded ceramplas composite with startling ease, and he heard the helmet-muffled shriek of the man beneath him.

  Rough hands grabbed him from behind, lifting him. The other marauders on the GEV flatbed had seen him and were turning their attention to this sudden assault from above. Seconds later, however, Derel’s small and wiry frame landed squarely on the back of one of the other armored forms, followed in quick succession by Trab, V’jak Ra-il Gub, Vanet Gan-Me, and Chakar Na-il Havaay.

  One of the armored marauders spun hard, throwing V’jak against the flatbed guard rail and bringing his weapon to bear on him. The man was holding a pistol, an ugly, snub-nosed weapon that detonated small charges of chemical explosive to propel heavy metal projectiles the size of the tip of a man’s little finger. The weapon barked twice, and V’jak pitched backward over the railing, blood exploding from holes opening suddenly in his chest and back.

  “No!” Nal screamed, turning sharply and slashing at the marauder’s knee with his bloodied knife. The marauder shrieked and the pistol flew from his gauntleted hand. The man jerked away, pulling the hilt from Nal’s grasp.

  Nal was never clear as to exactly what happened next. For a blurred and utterly chaotic few seconds, he struggled between two of the marauders, while his friends swarmed over both, stabbing and flailing at them with combat knives. Two more Ishtaran recruits leaped off the walkway above, but the hovercraft slewed sharply to the right and both missed, landing instead on the nanocrete floor of the stadium.

  The hovercraft skittered sideways, wildly out of control….

  Center Stadium Area

  Marshall Sports Complex,

  Relief Distribution Center

  1031 hrs, EST

  Garroway kept firing as he leaped onto the front of the hovercraft’s cab, his bolts gouging fist-sized craters in hard sheet metal. Some must have slipped through the driver’s vision slit, however, and evidently the marauder behind the slit wasn’t wearing a mirrored helmet, because the hovercraft suddenly swung out of control, going into a gentle spin as it drifted to the right on howling thruster blasts.

  The motion almost threw him off, but he grabbed hold of a sandbag lashed on the roof of the cab and pulled himself up, scrambling against the vehicle’s makeshift armor until he could grab the flatbed railing.

  The scene on the flatbed was one of utter and bloody chaos. Ishtaran recruits were swarming over three combat-suited marauders, stabbing them with knives or pounding at them with the butts of their laser rifles. Two had just succeeded in pulling a mirror-bright helmet off of one of the marauders; for a moment, the bearded man inside looked up at Garroway, horror dawning in his eyes, and then one of the recruits drove the black blade of a combat knife, far sharper than any razor, into the man’s forehead, burying it to the hilt. The man’s arms and legs jerked once, a death spasm, and then he sprawled lifeless on the deck; the recruits who’d killed him were already attacking a second marauder, who was trying to pull another knife out of his knee. The third armored scruffie was rolling on the deck, clutching both elbows with opposite hands, apparently badly hurt.

  Garroway, seeing that the recruits had the situation well in hand, grabbed the plasma gun on its pintel mount, swiveled it around to face the next marauder vehicle in line, which was just coming through the gate. His thumbs pressed the butterfly trigger, and the weapon hissed and cracked, flinging a white-hot sliver of plasma into the cab of the other vehicle.

  Sandbags and sheet metal couldn’t protect the driver from that onslaught, and with no civilians nearby to serve as human shields, he was a slow-moving and naked target. Garroway fired three more rounds into the vehicle for effect, aiming for the undercarriage, then watching it suddenly crumple beneath a blossoming orange fireball.

  The firefight ended with startling swiftness, then. The surviving marauders inside the stadium turned and ran for the gate, rushing past the burning wreckage as Marines closed in from all sides, weapons firing. Many of the marauders threw down their own weapons and raised their hands, unwilling to face the Marine countercharge without the firepower of their technical to back them up. The second technical in line slewed to a halt when Marines killed the driver; the other ramshackle vehicles, still outside the entrance to the stadium, turned and ran, retracing their paths through sections of fence knocked over moments before.

  They hadn’t gone far, however, when a shrill roar cleaved the sky, and a quartet of ugly black fliers, looking like dragonflies with sleek fuselages slung behind insect heads with bulging eyes, streaked overhead. The A-699 Skydragons had arrived, and within moments the surviving technicals had been turned into twisted and fiercely burning heaps of wreckage.

  Garroway turned to one of the unarmored Marines standing in the gate. He was young, looked scared, was unarmed, and his utilities were covered with blood.

  He’d also leaped into a hovercraft to attack heavily armed and armored men.

  “What’s your name, son?” Garroway asked.

  “Sir! Recruit Private Nal il-En Shra-dach, sir!”

  “At ease, Marine,” Garroway said. “You men did a hell of a job.”

  It seemed to take a moment for what Garroway had said to penetrate. Marine!

  The Ishtaran, already at attention, seemed to grow taller by another half-meter.

  15

  12 JUNE 2314

  Henderson Hall

  Ring City, Virginia, US/FRA

  1020 hrs, EST

  Puller Auditorium, an enormous chamber with stadium seating located in the we
st wing of the ancient headquarters building for the United States Marine Corps, was packed to overflowing, and at the moment it sounded as though every person there was trying to get a word in. Colonel Robert Ellsworth Lee shook his head. Eight hundred people, all talking at once, made a hell of a racket.

  Tom Llewellyn, the President’s national security advisor, stood on the projection dais at the front of the room, hands held high as if in surrender, trying to restore order. “Please…please…people, please! Order!”

  Gradually, the crowd noise died away. Llewellyn cleared his throat, then pushed ahead. “Gentlemen, ladies. Thank you for your attendance at this briefing. As it says in your download egendas, we will hear the report from 1MIEU first. After that, we will begin deliberations on the Andromeda Question, with a vote scheduled for 1500 hours this afternoon. While the results of this vote will not be binding, the results will be presented to the Federal Senate for final debate and vote next week.”

  Which, Lee reflected, would almost certainly rubber-stamp the decisions made here this morning. Most of the senators who would be making that vote were in this room now, and he was sure that they would be paying very close attention to the feelings expressed in this chamber.

  The hell of it was, this vote would override the vote made by the military council the previous February. The World Union had demanded a vote on the matter of whether or not to invest in asteroid starships for an exodus from Earth.

  And the Federal Union of North America had committed itself to supporting that decision. If the WU voted to flee to Andromeda, the Marines would support the decision.

  Even if the majority of the Marines felt that that would be the wrong way to go. The Corps had a very long tradition of supporting civilian policy, not making it.

  “Obviously, emotions over this question are running high,” Llewellyn continued. “We have before us essentially two possible courses of action…the Andromedan Option, and the Garroway Option. Madam Fortier, the honorable senator from the sovereign nation of Quebec, has proposed that we accept both the advice and the active help of the N’mah, construct as many asteroid starships as possible, with cybernetic hibernation facilities for as many people as possible, and use them to travel to the Andromedan Galaxy. At sublight speeds, the voyage will take some two million, three hundred thousand years, objective, though only twenty-seven years would pass on board the ships thanks to the effects of relativistic time dilation. The refugees would be revived over two million light-years away, and over two million years in the future. It is hoped that they will be able to find a new home world, and ensure the long-term survival of Humankind.

  “Opposing this, the Garroway Option, as presented by General Clinton Garroway, suggests that we stay where we are, and use military means to prevent or at least to delay Xul reprisals against our planet.

  “I am told that new information is available regarding the military option. Present this morning is the commanding officer of the 4th Regiment, 1st Marine Division, Colonel Robert Lee. Colonel Lee?” He stepped back off the dais. “If you would, please?”

  Lee stood and walked down the steps of the aisle, then stepped up onto the scan dais at the front of Puller Auditorium. He took a moment to study the faces—expectant faces—of the men and women in the audience. The crowd was divided about half and half between civilians and people in uniform; most of the government and military leaders freed from their long subterranean imprisonment beneath the D.C. mud flats were here in person, as well as those members of the civilian governments—U.S. and Federal Republic—who’d survived the firestorm of several months earlier. Many, including President Raleigh and her staff, were watching through the newly recreated GlobalNet—still little more than a shadow of its former self, but robust enough now, at least, to support a large number of AIs, as well as linked humans. The Navy had been working constantly over the past months to build and place constellations of communications satellites in Earth orbit, as well as Earth-based nodes and server complexes.

  According to the Net statistics he’d just downloaded, in fact, almost ten thousand minds were linked into this briefing so far, besides the eight hundred present physically in the auditorium, and more were linking in every second. Phobos HQ was connected, despite the long time lag, as well as the much closer virtual networks on Luna and in Earth orbit.

  As was only fitting. This, he knew, would be a briefing session of historic importance.

  His biggest question was why he had been chosen to make the presentation. This was General Garroway’s baby, not his, and the general should have been the one to stand here and make nice to the brass and politicos. Lee felt out of place, and thoroughly inadequate. Searching through the auditorium and the watching faces, he found Garroway, ten rows back.

  The bastard actually grinned at him, as though enjoying his discomfiture.

  “Ladies,” Lee said, “gentlemen, AIs…and, of course, our distinguished guests of the N’mah. Welcome.”

  He waited a moment longer as the buzz of conversation within the auditorium died down…and, he admitted to himself with wry humor, to increase the suspense, just a bit. He wanted their absolute attention.

  “Thank you for attending this briefing, whether physically or virtually. I think you’ll be interested in what Intelligence has to say this afternoon, especially with the vote coming up this afternoon. In short…we know, with about sixty percent certainty, where the Xul attackers came from four months ago, what route they followed to get here, and something about their home system. We can, if we wish, launch a retaliatory strike, in accordance with the outlines of Operation Seafire as presented by General Garroway.”

  That announcement, almost casually presented, raised a sudden roar from the crowd. Many were on their feet, some cheering, some shouting…but very clearly the reaction was mixed. There were still many in the government who strongly advocated a policy of no retaliation, who were in favor of evacuating as many from Earth as possible, and for seeking a new world-home, somewhere far from this region of the Galaxy, where Humankind could begin again.

  Lee made a mental connection, opening a download feed. At his back, the two-story wall turned dark, then lit up with stars; at the same time, windows became available in the mind of each person at the briefing, both the physical attendees and the virtual linkers.

  “I think the information can best be presented by the entity that found and correlated it in the first place—the AI of the command constellation of 1MIEU—Quincy.”

  “Thank you, Colonel Lee,” Quincy’s voice said, his calm and measured tones speaking in the minds of all present. “It is good to be here.”

  Lee wondered if that last sentence represented Quincy’s social programming, or if he really felt some positive emotion. The question, he realized, was meaningless; in any case, most humans would have said the same no matter what they actually felt—a polite noise to grease social wheels.

  AI minds might not be so different from human minds after all.

  “We have completed an exhaustive analysis of data retrieved by one of my downloaded avatars during the Armageddonfall incursion,” Quincy went on. “This was carried out by linguistic AIs both at the Military Intelligence Analysis Center at Fort Meade, High Guard Headquarters at Fra Mauro, on Luna, and at the Marine Intelligence Complex at Stickney Base in Phobos. We were fortunate in being able to draw upon a great deal of archived data, going back to our first encounter with the Xul machine intelligence in the so-called Singer recovered at Europa in 2067. Translating an alien computer operating system from scratch would be all but impossible. We’ve had substantial help from the N’mah, and from the Ancients’ records found buried in the Cave of Wonders, in Cydonia, Mars.

  “The images you see were stored within what we believe were the equivalents of a navigational computer system on board the Xul ship. The view here is of a portion of the sky as seen from here, within our Solar System.”

  Under Quincy’s control, the scene swung sharply, the stars streaking left to
right until the familiar three-in-a-row suns of Orion’s Belt came into view. The camera view then slowed, continuing to drift left and down, centering on a particularly bright star below and to the east of Orion.

  “Alpha Canis Majoris,” Quincy said. “Better known as Sirius. Type A0, distance 8.6 light-years from Sol. We’re all familiar with the system as the location of the Sirius Stargate, and the current home of a surviving colony of N’mah.”

  As he spoke, the viewpoint seemed to accelerate toward the star, which became markedly brighter. A second, faint pinpoint of light became visible next to the star—Sirius’s white dwarf companion, Sirius B. Then a third pinpoint appeared, which expanded into something like a titanic wedding band adrift in space. The long-suspected Sirius C had turned out to be an artificial construct, a ring twenty kilometers across housing a pair of counter-rotating black holes moving at a high percentage of the speed of light. Gravitational stresses set up by those masses were sufficient to distort local space, opening a passage through non-space, and effectively permitting instantaneous travel across distances of many light-years. “According to the N’mah, the Xul use a network of these gates scattered throughout our Galaxy to effect near-instantaneous travel across distances of many thousands of light-years.” Quincy paused. “I hear a question?”

  “Yes, Quincy,” a woman in the audience said. Lee checked the speaker’s ID, intending to suggest that questions be held for the end of the briefing. When he saw that the speaker was Dr. Elena Martin, President Raleigh’s senior science advisor, he backed off. Some people here had the power, and the right, to interrupt any time they pleased.

  “Why do the Xul need the Stargates if they have FTL travel?” Martin asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “A reasonable question. According to our N’mah sources, the Xul FTL drive enables them to make use of a hyperdimensional extrusion of normal space into a higher order which they call ‘paraspace.’ By bypassing our normal four-dimensional spacetime, they can achieve velocities approaching five hundred c. Human physicists are still debating the terminology, I should add. FTL velocities in normal space are still impossible. Perhaps I should say that the Xul achieve paravelocities of five hundred times the speed of light.