“That’s where the New Men landed their fold-fighter,” Maddox said. “That’s where we’re going to go. I can find my way from there.”
That was the beauty of the plan. Maddox would reenter the Vendel world the same way he’d left. Once in, though, could he convince the first Vendel he met to tell him the scoop? Had the Vendels kept the landing party in a palace prison? Was the palace or prison near, or far away?
Maddox was determined to find out.
The jumpfighters landed roughly, jolting the captain. None of the pilots was Keith Maker. Today, that didn’t matter.
Soon, Maddox powered up his exoskeleton armor, clanking from a hatch and wading into fungus growths. They had several options on how to do this. Maddox had decided on body-armor and firepower. He lacked his normal team. Thus, today, he used space marines in their stead.
Each exoskeleton armor-suit gave its wearer superhuman strength. It had a tough outer-alloy Shnyss shell and hours of mobility. 900-horsepower Kelchworth 350s allowed the one-ton armor suit to make ninety-meter jumps and it had shock absorbers to land. No one wore a flight pack. Maddox couldn’t foresee a reason to have one in corridors and tunnels. Instead, each marine carried extra ammo and more juice in case several hours of walking wasn’t enough.
The suit was like a small tank. Inside it, Maddox wore a one-piece with receptors pressed against his major muscles. He had a HUD on the faceplate, a .90-caliber shredder and grenade ejector. A few specialty marines carried plasma flamers. A few others had mortar launchers.
Along with Maddox and Lieutenant Sims, twenty space marines unloaded from the tin cans. It was a hard-hitting team, and if they showed up in the heart of the Raja’s citadel, it might prove enough to win the day.
If any of Maddox’s guesses were wrong, however, this could prove to be a very bloody and exhausting day. It might also mean death for Meta, Keith, Professor Ludendorff and the new landing party. That was the chief reason Maddox had gone to the lengths he had to get Sims on his side. The marine lieutenant was the best fighter after himself. In battle armor, Sims might even be better.
“Is everyone ready?” Sims said over the short-range comm.
The squad leaders sounded off and reported.
“Sir,” Sims told Maddox. “We’re locked and loaded for war.”
“I’ll take point,” Maddox said.
“Sir…I have to object,” Sims said. “We have three marines with special training and suits to do that. I would consider it a personal favor if you would let us do our jobs.”
Maddox noticed his was the only armor-suit that used a regular helmet lamp. The rest must be using night sensors. Maybe the lieutenant had a point.
“Favor granted,” Maddox said.
Sims gave terse orders. In less than thirty seconds, the war party began trudging along the same path the captain had used a couple of hours ago. This time, though, Maddox had his hands free.
***
Among his many gifts, Maddox had a phenomenal memory. It only took three detours and one dead-end for the armor-suited party to reach the burned remains of the New Man where Darius had left him.
Sims and Maddox conferred.
“This confirms it,” Maddox said. “This must be a back area. It felt lonely the first time. That means we’ve moved fast enough so the Vendels haven’t found out yet about the New Men snatching me.”
“How accurate is your sketch?” Sims asked.
Maddox had grown more accustomed to the armor-suit as they traveled. He had a sketch of the underworld on his HUD. He’d made the sketch earlier as they planned the assault. As they’d traveled, Maddox had added a few items he’d overlooked. With his chin, he clicked a control, sending the new data to Sims.
“Three kilometers of corridor,” Sims mused. “That’s a lot of territory for them to spring an ambush on us. This isn’t going to be like a surface battle. Tunnel warfare is treacherous. If the aliens mine one of these corridors with enough explosives—we’re cooked no matter what we do.”
“Speed is our armor today,” Maddox said. “Surprise is our best weapon.”
“Begging your pardon, but that’s what you hope.”
“If I’m wrong about surprising the Vendels, this isn’t going to work and we’ll have to beat a hasty retreat.”
Sims turned so his faceplate aimed at the captain. “Begging your pardon, sir, but counting on luck is a poor way to survive the battlefield.”
“What would you call your leap at Darius in the hangar bay?”
“A calculated risk made spur of the moment. That’s different than rushing headlong into the stronghold of your enemy.”
“I agree with your logic as far as it goes,” Maddox said, “but I’ll counter with my own. Striking boldly produces fantastic luck or a glorious battle death. We’re taking on a world—what’s left of a shattered world anyway. Twenty-two men can’t do that the normal way. This is the Pizarro method.”
“What’s a Pizarro?” Sims asked.
Maddox didn’t have time to explain. “Ask me later,” he said. Pizarro had been a Spanish conquistador with less than two hundred soldiers, a handful of horses and some war-dogs. They had scaled vast mountains to reach the South American Incan Empire. There, Pizarro had captured the Incan Empire despite its millions of Indians and tens of thousands of warriors. Pizarro had done so by slaughtering thousands of the Inca’s most important nobles and capturing the monarch. Afterward, Pizarro had dictated terms.
Maddox had decided on a similar strategy, but with fewer soldiers—space marines, this time.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the term, grab them by the balls and their heart will follow,” Maddox said.
“A time or two,” Sims said dryly.
“That’s our strategy.”
“Hoping for luck,” Sims said.
“No, counting on luck because we’re stabbing without hesitation for the heart of the matter. It’s a coup, if you will.”
The lieutenant looked back at his men before regarding the captain again. The helmet nodded. “I’ve heard Riker say you’re di-far. Guess I’m going to find out if that’s still true or not.”
***
Maddox found the long-stride lope difficult to do properly in the confines of the long corridor. He jumped too hard, his helmet smashing up against the ceiling. The third time that happened, Sims dropped back beside him.
“Frankly,” the lieutenant said, “I’m amazed you can do this at all. Combat-suit training takes months. I never thought you’d get this far without a major accident.”
“Do you have a point?” Maddox asked testily.
“You’re jumping up too much. You have to make it a stride, a long stride. That’s the secret.”
Maddox concentrated, and he found the knack soon. Like a pack of monstrous metal hounds, the space marines dashed along the corridor. They traveled the three kilometers in a fraction of the time it had taken Maddox before.
“This is the location,” Maddox said. “Do you see the blood on the floor?”
“Yes,” Sims said. “But I don’t see a body.”
“The Vendels found it, clearly.”
“Which way do we go from here?”
That was a good question. Maddox wasn’t sure. His neck burned then. He looked around, feeling as if someone watched them.
“Lieutenant,” a squad leader said. “My scout sees motion ahead—a regular Vendel. The creature is spying on us.”
“Capture him,” Sims said.
Two marines surged up a smaller corridor. They returned almost right away, carrying a struggling Vendel. At Sims’s command, they brought the wide-eyed alien to Maddox.
The captain had to click several different channels before he brought up the stolen translator. Andros Crank had fitted it into Maddox’s comm system.
“Do you understand me?” Maddox asked the alien over his helmet speaker.
The Vendel continued to struggle. He wore a long blue robe and had a purple metal band around his head with a sunb
urst symbol in front.
“You,” Maddox said, louder.
The Vendel’s head snapped up so he stared at Maddox.
“Set his feet on the floor,” Maddox said.
The Vendel’s mouth opened in shock. He clearly understood the words. The marines did not, though.
Maddox motioned down.
The two marines set the alien down so his feet touched the floor, although they kept hold of his arms.
“Do you understand me?” Maddox asked.
The Vendel nodded briskly.
“Say it,” Maddox said.
“I…understand you,” the alien said. “But how can that be. None of the other demons understands our speech.”
“I’m using a translator.”
“Yes,” the Vendel said. “That is logical if rather bizarre.”
“Are you a scientist?”
“I am a priest-technician,” the alien said proudly.
“What is your name?”
“I cannot tell you, lest you use my name to conjure a curse against me.”
“You’re worried about the wrong things,” Maddox said. “Watch my left hand.”
The captain punched the wall, driving his exoskeleton fist through. He pulled out the hand, grasped the wall and crumpled bricks so they broke apart.
“That is what I will do to your head if you don’t give me your name,” Maddox said.
“I am Priest-Technician Blue Saul de Fine.”
“You’re going to take us to the Raja, Blue Saul.”
The Vendel shrank back from Maddox.
“Why do you fear that?” the captain asked.
“The ex-Raja consorts with demons,” Blue Saul said. “The Supreme Vicar has symbolically cast the former Raja and his demon allies into the outer darkness. They have befouled us too long. But surely, you know this. You are a chief demon, a wicked creature. I had not thought my gambling at treys a terrible sin, but clearly, it is, as I have fallen into your hands. The Builders, glory unto them in the highest, have unleashed this demon plague upon us. Our doom is nigh. The end has finally come to Sind.”
As the priest-technician spoke, foam appeared at the corners of his mouth. It dawned on Maddox that the alien raved. What was the best way to deal with a raving madman?
Inspired by the Vendel’s words, Maddox reached out with both power-gloved hands and began to squeeze the alien’s head.
Blue Saul de Fine howled in agony and terror.
Maddox dialed back on the crushing grip. “Listen closely, Priest-Technician. You may yet survive this day. I am not a demon but a demon slayer. I have come to take the demons and physically cast them into the outer darkness.”
“Can this be true?” the Vendel whispered.
“You must lead us to the former Raja and his demon allies.”
“No. That is impossible now.”
“Speak quickly,” Maddox said. “Explain yourself.”
“If you are from the Builders, glory to their names, you would know the location of the ex-Raja. I believe you are practicing deceit. That would mean you’re a demon attempting to trick me.”
“Are you ready to die?” Maddox asked in an ominous tone.
The Vendel nodded miserably.
Before Maddox could continue the questioning, shredder fire from up ahead interrupted the process.
Maddox clicked off the translator and patched into the comm system. Sims rapped orders on the short range. One of the marines let go of the Vendel and turned to help the others.
Maddox did likewise, unlimbering his shredder. He clanked around several corners and came into a larger area, coming into a war zone. Soon, he realized this was a butcher’s yard. The marines in their power-armor mowed down attacking Vendels. Shredder shells and 9-mm daisy chains obliterated flesh, blowing Vendels apart in ghastly displays of firepower. The alien weaponry proved futile, bullets bouncing off the Shnyss alloy and the beams equally ineffectual.
More Vendels poured into the giant chamber, forcing the mass closer to the firing line by sheer weight of numbers.
Sims rapped out new orders.
A few marines maneuvered into different corridors. They pressed sticky mines against certain walls, backing up fast. The mines blew, creating new openings. Marines marched through those, blew another set of walls, and came in behind the massed Vendels. The marines cut off the continuing reinforcements and herded the others into the vast subterranean amphitheater, forcing them into a tighter clump.
“Flamers,” Sims radioed.
The milling aliens seemed to understand their fate. They shouted and screamed. Some Vendels rushed the closing marines in obviously suicidal charges. The alien rifles chugged bullets, which bounced off armor. Knives appeared in alien fists. The Vendels lacked competing technology, but they had courage.
In a gush of plasma, the flamers ignited the packed throng. The Vendel soldiers burned in clusters as they howled dementedly. It was like a scene from Hell.
The three flamer-marines continued to gush plasma, aiming higher so it arched over the burning Vendels into those yet untouched. Soon, the amphitheater was dense with oily smoke. The remaining aliens coughed explosively, before falling to the floor as they died.
“Forward,” Sims said.
The marines waded through the dead and dying. Maddox almost felt like a demon doing so.
“At your three o’clock, Lieutenant,” a marine said. “It’s a new assault.”
Maddox turned as did others. Giant doors burst open where no doors had been. Huge, hidden corridors held masses of mutated cannibals. The eight-foot creatures charged the marines in the flank. The savages bellowed with crazed bloodlust.
There was nothing to do but face the onslaught. Maddox lowered his shredder. He felt the vibration of the weapon as his .90s blew apart monsters at almost pointblank range. The creatures were taller than the space-marine armor-suits, but they lacked the same mass and had no firepower.
This proved almost beyond understanding. The savages seemed drunk on bloodlust, oblivious to their hideous fate. They clawed over the dying, scampered on all fours, raving and chomping their fangs. A few made it through the murderous firepower to claw and scratch battle armor.
Marines punched back, shattering skulls with exoskeleton strength. Others used battle blades, hacking Vendels so chunks tumbled everywhere.
One nine-foot monster wrapped its arms around a marine’s powered legs. The marine kicked, but this Vendel possessed berserk strength. Two more creatures bounded onto the stricken marine, knocking him to the floor.
“Samson is down,” a marine shouted over the comm. “The thing is ripping off his helmet.”
Two creatures tore the helmet from Samson, exposing him to their chipped fangs.
Maddox clanked to Samson’s aide, using the stock of his shredder. He brained the nine-foot savage. The blow broke the creature’s skull, but it wasn’t enough. The animalistic Vendel looked up in a daze. Maddox struck again, caving in the face and killing the creature. A look down showed a dead space marine, his face bitten clean away.
The news of Samson’s death worked like a tonic on the others. Many of the marines had grown weary of the butchery. Now, everyone realized he could die down here.
The marines doubled down. Flamers belched longer. Mortars rounds sailed in thicker clumps overhead, landing farther behind the howling savages. Gunners made sure a savage was dead before blasting another to death.
Before it was over, another marine died and over five hundred of the mutated creatures perished. The dead aliens almost succeeded in choking the way with their corpses. Marines pitched dead bodies aside, creating a lane forward.
“We’ve used up a third of our ammo,” Sims told Maddox over the comm. “It’s a good thing we overpacked.”
With the respite in the fight, marines brought Maddox another captured alien. Blue Saul was dead. This alien babbled his answers, shell-shocked and frightened beyond reason. According to him, the Raja and his demon allies were less than ten q
uads away, which translated into four kilometers underground.
Sims and Maddox conferred, made a crude sketch map of what lay ahead and began to march for the Raja’s Palace.
-45-
Two kilometers later, Maddox and the marines burst into a vast subterranean area. Ceiling lamps one hundred and twenty meters high, poured bright light onto the scene like a noonday sun.
There were large box buildings five stories tall ahead that could have been apartments. Vendels peered out of porthole windows. When the aliens realized the armored “demons” could see them, they drew back and yanked curtains over the portholes.
“Any time now,” Sims told his squad leaders.
“You’re expecting another ambush?” Maddox asked.
“We should have brought jet-packs,” Sims said. “That would have let us fly up to the top of those fortresses.”
The box buildings grew even denser ahead. There were slender minarets between some of the five-story buildings. That would be ideal territory to spring an ambush, maybe pouring heavy-weapon fire down from rooftops.
The ancient warrior-king Pyrrhus—a relative of Alexander the Great—had died from a tile rained onto his head while storming an ancient city-state. City battles had proven the most costly during World War II, the Battle of Stalingrad a metaphor for the process.
“We should swing wide left,” Maddox said, “coming in from a different direction.”
“Halt,” Sims said.
“No,” Maddox said. “Don’t halt. Keep moving. Speed is our best armor.”
The lieutenant glanced back at Maddox. “Yes, sir,” Sims said. The marine rattled off orders to his squad leaders.
As a group, the exoskeleton suits pivoted to the left. The lead marines began to leap and run at speed. The group gathered speed, pivoted again and ran toward the densely packed buildings from a different direction.
“I see military Vendels,” a scout reported.
Sims spoke. Marines shifted into clumps and readied weapons. They advanced at a clank, coming upon three hundred aliens. Most of the Vendels strained to turn huge cement blocks into new positions.
There were weird power-wagons among the aliens.
Slabs of muscle had been fixed to a large rectangular frame. A synthetic skin protected the muscles, while wires led to motor nodes in the elementary brain. The muscles moved rocker arms that stimulated drive-wheels. Each power-wagon carried a heavy gun and crew. Such a gun—a cannon—could possibly cause even an armored marine problems.
The Lost Planet (Lost Starship Series Book 6) Page 24
