“Servant!” he scent cast to the Swarmer in charge of within nest communications. “Awaken the resting Swarmers! Alert them to the entry of Soft Skins!” He looked to the Fighter Leader. “Fighter! Send your Swarmers to where a Soft Skin craft entered our tail end. Those Soft Skins could damage our weapons ring! Hunt them! Hunt their craft!”
“Awakening those Swarmers,” responded the first Servant in a mix of signal and territorial pheromones.
“Sending Fighters to the tail of our nest,” called the Fighter Leader in a strong flow of excitement, defense and alarm pheromones. “Other Fighters are heading for the Nourishment hall and for the invaders near our front energy node.”
Seven watched the imagers on all walls of the Flight Chamber. Much was happening as some Swarmers awakened, while others gathered in caste groups and flew off to hunt for the Soft Skin intruders. Frustration filled him as he saw one group of Soft Skins, those who had killed his Workers as they fed in the Nourishment Chamber, create a hole in the floor of the chamber and drop down to another level of his nest. How much deeper might they go? He tilted his antennae at that perception imager.
“Fighter Leader! Send your best Fighters against that group of five Soft Skins in Nourishment! We must stop them before they reach the inner tubeways of our nest!”
“Sending new Fighters after those Soft Skins!” cried the Swarmer in a harsh flow of anger, trail and home pheromones.
Seven flapped his wings, lifting his abdomen off the bench below him. He held position in the air, his presence dominating all who worked within the globular chamber. He flapped his wings faster on one side to tilt over and view one group of imagers, then flapped faster on his other side to view a new group of imagers. Seven studied the many perception imagers as they revealed the movements of the three groups of Soft Skin ground crawlers. At least these invaders could not fly. Which meant they could not quickly retreat from his Fighters. His gut felt warm as his hearts filled his body with the energy to dominate all who served him. Soon, soon enough, he would dominate the Soft Skins!
CHAPTER FIVE
Jacob watched the front wallscreen as the three groups of Marines moved through tubeways inside the wasp ship. Each group’s first sergeant wore a shoulder vidcam that relayed what was happening. Every hard shell suit carried such a vidcam, but the Dart pilots who were transmitting the imagery to his ship limited the neutrino transmissions to just the leader from their ship. Below him Daisy and Aaron had stayed quiet as everyone on the Bridge watched the forced entries. The initial fire fights by the teams from Darts One and Two had cleared the way for them to advance. Now, Richard’s team was preparing to enter a room with an extra large door.
“Blow it!” called the chief warrant officer.
“Kabooom!”
Yellow flame and black smoke gradually cleared enough for him to see that Richard and his four Marines were already inside a large room filled with wasps gathered at a dozen or more pillars that had tubes sticking out from them. Some wasps had their mandibles clamped onto the tube ends, while most of the red and black-striped wasps were on the room floor, knocked there by the blast shockwave.
“Kill ‘em all!” yelled Richard.
Yellow streams of flaming napalm reached out to envelope the closer wasps, while the booms of four shotguns sent solid shot to either side and ahead. Most wasps were hit by either flame or shot, and some got both. At the far end of the room, the vidcam image showed two wasps rising up. Each held a long tube in their chest arms. Their large wings flapped so fast he could hardly see them.
“Scatter!” boomed Richard’s deep voice.
Two yellow lightning bolts streaked through the room, just missing the Marines. All were on the floor, their arms with the flame thrower and shotgun attachments briefly silent as they rolled in every direction. But one Marine’s hard shell was still. From its backpack erupted a black rocket. Which shot toward the two wasps.
“Oh!” said Daisy as the rocket became a ball of yellow napalm fire that reached out in all directions.
A few wasps not hit by the initial attack now staggered about with yellow patches of flame adhering to their backs, wings and even a few heads. They quickly fell to the room floor and became still. In a few seconds the entire room became quiet, with a good twenty wasp bodies lying in contorted positions. Slowly the Marines stood up, their outstretched arms aiming their shotgun and flame thrower attachments in whatever direction their arms pointed.
“A good take-down,” Aaron said, his tone tense.
“Chief O’Connor is a fine leader,” Jacob said, meaning what he said.
Up front on the left side of the arc of function stations filled by his nine Bridge crewpersons, one turned toward him. Rosemary of Tactical looked very sober. “Captain, that team has not yet captured any wasps. Nor have the other teams.”
He nodded. “You all heard what O’Connor said. They’re moving to capture tech stuff now. Once they have all the tech they can carry, they will take captives on the way back to their Darts. He’s in charge. They’re doing what needs to be done and I support him, totally.”
Silence resumed on the Bridge as everyone watched the live action vidcam images that filled most of the front wallscreen. While some crewpersons on every ship in the battle group had live fire, live combat experiences, still, watching one-on-one deadly fighting was new to many of his people. Including himself and Daisy. Watching spaceships explode in space, or become flaming clouds of plasma as they were hit by an antimatter beam, did not hold the immediacy of what they all now saw. Jacob did not enjoy seeing living bodies filled with red-bleeding holes, or flame turning black the colorful bodies of the wasps. But these aliens had been the first to attack his people, beginning with the sneak attack on the meeting site. Now, they were on the receiving end of human vengeance. That, he felt good about.
♦ ♦ ♦
Richard scanned the room they had dropped into. No live wasps, according to both his eyes and his infrared tracker. He stayed in a squat, his arms outstretched, as Jane gestured the rest of the team to head for the two circular doors that lay at either end of the long rectangular room. The five of them had landed in a central open space. In all directions were low benches or elevated rods. White-yellow light shone down from the ceiling five meters above. The drop had not been hard, thanks to the half gee gravity in the room. He noticed there were several black rectangles affixed to the room walls. One of them held a colorful image of a landscape from some world. In it wasps flew about, dodging purple and green trees, a few dropping to sip water in a small pond fed by a woodland creek. Other wasps wore straps about their chests and abdomen that carried silvery metal tubes, blocks and whatever. The vidscreen imagery seemed to show some kind of landscape survey. For what he had no idea.
“Chief,” called Jane. “There are square blocks here too,” she said, gesturing at the space above each circular door. “The black rectangles look to be vidscreens. Grab some?”
“Yes,” Richard said as he stood, then moved to join Jane where she stood to one side of an exit door, both arms aimed at it. At the far end, Tim did the same. He noticed small open trays lay next to each of the benches or elevated rods. Metallic things lay in most of them. He pointed with his shotgun hand. “Team, grab everything in those trays. Whatever it is, it’s metallic and might be tech.”
“Chief, could this be a dorm room? Wasp style?”
The gunnery sergeant had always been observant about her surroundings, both in simulations and while roaming the cafes at the Earth orbital station. “Could be. They’re flying critters. Birds like limb perches. These rods could be such perches. The benches, well, they might be beds. Or chairs. Or whatever the wasps rest on whenever they’re not flying about.” He recalled an image from the meeting site video. The wasps lined up inside the glass dome had each rested their long abdomens on narrow benches, while facing the senior officers with upright thoraxes and heads. “Yeah, these benches are seats or beds. The meeting site video showed similar st
uff.”
“We’re done,” called Didier as he attached a black carrybag to his waist belt.
The bags were just some of the many items carried on or attached to the hard shell of each trooper. Richard had his own bag in his left hand. He reached down and grabbed three metallic thingies from a nearby tray, then stuffed them into his carrybag. “Gunny, the room above us. The food place. What’s the direction to the circular door we blew through?”
Jane looked his way. Her black visor kept him from seeing her brown face, which had a hummingbird tattooed onto her right cheek. She’d passed on the arm and leg tattoos favored by most Marines and had chosen the bird. He felt certain there was a story behind that choice. Maybe when they returned to the Philippine Sea he could prod her into sharing it.
“That way,” she said, pointing at Tim. “The tubeway door lies further down the room above, but this door is on the same side as the tubeway above us.”
“Good. Tim, you see any sign of a touchpad for opening that door?”
The stocky, heavyset Marine stepped back a little. His hard metal helmet moved a bit as he looked over the wall in which lay the person-high circular hatch. Now closed. “Maybe that yellow dot on the right side?”
“Touch it,” Richard said. “No need to use up all our C-4.”
Tim touched the yellow spot. “Wow!” he muttered as the circular hatch split apart like an eye opening. The top half rose up while the bottom half went down into the silvery metal floor of the room.
“Makes sense, that door,” said Jack as he moved to the opposite of Tim to point both weapons arms at the opening, which revealed a pipe-lined tubeway similar to what they had used one level up. “Flying critters don’t walk through doors. They fly through them. That kind of opening allows them to fly in and out pretty easily.”
Richard agreed. But wasp social behavior was of no interest to him, except when it posed a threat. “Corporal,” he called to Tim. “Launch a claymore drone through that door. I want eyes in that tubeway before we enter it. Gotta assume we’ve been under vid observation ever since we arrived inside this ship.”
“Launching,” Tim said as he told his suit’s AI to launch a propeller-driven drone from where it was attached to the outside of his backpack.
A small, four-limbed drone spun up its four propellers, detached from Tim, hovered, then moved through the opening. Richard tongued a stud on his helmet’s inner rim, activating the vidcam feed from Tim. Who was getting a vid feed from the drone. The tubeway’s white-yellow light strips showed an empty tubeway in both directions. Though the tubeway turned left in one direction and went down like a ramp at the other end. Since he preferred to walk rather than drop down to an unknown reception, he made the necessary decision. “Team, through that opening, then go left. Let’s explore more of this level. Might find some engineering spaces or cargoholds or whatever. Now that we know what the yellow dots do, we can check every door we pass.”
“Ooh rah!” called Jane as she led the way into the tubeway.
“Ooh rah!” he said loudly, joining his voice with the voices of his teammates as they moved into the tubeway.
♦ ♦ ♦
Seven felt frustration as he saw the Soft Skins who had killed every Swarmer in the Nourishment Chamber drop down to the next level of his nest. The team of Fighters that were just a few flights away from entering the destroyed door would now have no enemy to kill. Well, they could drop down to the rest chamber that lay below the food room, after they gave the Soft Skins time to move out into the tubeway on that level. Another perception imager showed those Soft Skins sending a flying watcher into the tubeway before they entered. It had no wings but stayed suspended in the air. Would the Soft Skins launch a similar device to watch behind them? If they did, the entry of his Fighters into the tubeway behind them would be seen.
“Fighter Leader,” he scent cast to the Fighter in charge of all Fighters on his nest. “See the flying watcher? Have your Fighters follow this group, but at a distance.”
“Hunter Seven, my caste understands how to track the flight path of any enemy of the Swarm,” the Fighter Leader said in a flush of signal, territorial and trail pheromones, with no hint of aggregation scent. “The leader of the team pursuing these Soft Skins will be alert for the flying watcher device.” The older male bent his two black antennae toward Seven. “Observe in the other imager. A different Fight team approaches the Practice Chamber, where the Soft Skins are wasting time pulling pheromone signalers from the walls. They are scattered. Soon, my Fighters will bite hard!”
Seven ignored the arrogant scent from the Fighter Leader. It was the nature of his caste to always be confident and arrogant. And he spoke truth. His caste had hundreds of generations of practice in breeding for deadly violence and superior tracking of enemies. Whether other Swarmers, or the tree thieves on Nest, the Fighters living within his flying nest knew well their task.
“I look forward to watching the actions of your teams. But what of the intruding nest that lies near our rear weapons ring? Do you control it yet?”
“Not yet,” the Fighter Leader said in a mix of trail and aggregation pheromones, as if it realized it had spoken harshly to the leader of all Swarmers on the flying nest. “I have sent two six-groups of Fighters to the tubeway where the Soft Skins from that intruding nest entered our home. The four Soft Skins who entered there are far from their nest. We think only a single Soft Skin is left inside the nest, judging by the numbers of walking Soft Skins who entered at the middle and head portions of our flying nest. Surely it will die and we will control one of these Soft Skin conveyances!”
Seven liked the multiple attack efforts now being led by his Fighter Leader. While the three groups of walking Soft Skins could not all be englobed at one time, still, they were few compared to the many Fighters, Workers and Servants living within his nest. And the Fighters were well-armed with their lightning rods. That weapon had frightened the middle entry group. Clearly the metal hard shells they wore were vulnerable to Swarmer weapons. He looked forward to smelling the scent of Soft Skin meat being cooked over an open flame!
♦ ♦ ♦
“Jerry,” called Richard as he followed after Jane and his troopers. “What is the count of wasps we have killed?”
“Twenty-nine,” the AI said brightly. “Three at your entry point, five at the entry point of Wayne’s team and 21 inside the eating room.”
That was a third or a quarter of all the wasps on this ship, depending on how close his crew estimate was. How many were armed with lightning bolt weapons? “Jerry, show me your dead reckoning map of this spaceship, based on the entry points and movements of all three teams.”
“Displaying on the left side of your HUD,” the AI said as Richard followed his troopers as they turned left to follow the twist of the tubeway.
Richard saw a side cutaway view of the log-like spaceship. The spine was up top. Three green dots glowed on the spine, where his Darts had penetrated the outer hull. Several tubeway lines showed near that outer hull, reflecting the three tubeway entries by his people. The ‘park’ area encountered by Wayne’s team near the front of the ship was shown as a box with a very high ceiling. The eating room they’d just left showed as a smaller box lying next to his team’s entry tubeway. Auggie’s team was still moving along their tubeway, heading from the ship’s rear to its middle. And his Dart. It made sense to him. Heading in the reverse direction and getting into engineering and thruster spaces would only expose Auggie’s team to tech too large for them to carry. He noted that the level they now walked on extended just a short way under the eating room. No other team had gotten as far into the ship interior as theirs had. Maybe they should fix that.
“Team, stop!” he called, keeping one eye on the flying claymore drone that he had launched from his backpack and which flew to their rear. “People, let’s drop down another level. Jane, open that entry door so we can find a room where we can blow a hole in the floor.”
“Tim, Jack, to the sid
es of the door!” Jane called over the comlink. She stepped to the right of the circle that outlined a person-high door on the right side of the tubeway. “Tim, call back your drone. I want yours and the chief’s following us as we drop down.” She reached out for the yellow spot that lay on the right side of the closed hatch. “Chief?”
Richard moved to the side of the tubeway and behind Jack’s hard shell. “In place. I’m calling in my drone.”
Jane reached out and touched the yellow spot.
“Whoosh!” came the sound of the two door halves opening.
White-yellow light shone from within.
Tim leaned past Jane and pushed out his gauntleted left hand. A small mirror lay in his palm. He moved the fingers holding the mirror past the door rim.
Yellow lighting hit the mirror and Tim’s hand.
“Fuck! Enemy!”
Jack and Jane threw in hand grenades they’d pulled from their waist belts.
“Kaboom! Kaboom!”
The two followed their grenades with slanting spurts of napalm flame. Tim’s drone, guided by the trooper’s AI even as he cradled his blackened hand against his side, flew into the room. Richard sent his drone in after Tim’s.
Many things happened simultaneously.
Richard saw the drone images on the small vidscreen in his helmet. Both showed a large square room partly filled with boxes and crates that were not metal. Behind some crates in the middle of the room there hovered two wasps, each aiming a lightning rod at the open doorway. The crates in front of them showed holes from the two grenades. Flames rose from the crate fronts. One wasp now landed atop a crate due to large holes blown in its two wings. The other shifted its rod upward, toward the two drones.
Battlegroup (StarFight Series Book 2) Page 7
