“I hope they shut down those shields soon,” Philips said.
“Hit the train low,” I said. “Let’s try to upend it.”
“Damn it, Master Sarge, I know that,” Philips snapped. He fired the rocket. A long rope of smoke appeared three feet above the floor of the track. The rocket reached the train so quickly that the smoke and the explosion seemed to all happen at once. A star-shaped flame exploded beneath the base of the train. Philips had fired a damn-near perfect shot.
What happened next was as beautiful as any ballet. The train veered toward the edge of the track as its nose kicked up. Magnetic levitation had placed that train in a nearly frictionless environment, so its bulk and momentum continued forward despite the upward thrust of the rocket.
Barreling forward at hundreds of miles an hour when the rocket struck, the engine bounced nearly three feet on its magnetic cushion, enough to leap the edge of the track. The rest of the train followed, twisting over on its side as it did. The track sort of ejected the train.
The rear cars slid over three more mines as they threaded their way out of the magnetic tracks. I expected sparks and a trail of destruction to follow the derailed train, but it did not happen that way. The shielded train slid across a shielded street, hitting a couple of shielded walls. The train gave off no sparks; but smoke rose from its windows as its cars slid along the street, rebounding against walls before skidding to a rest. The outside of the train went undamaged; but liquid, maybe blood, maybe oil, maybe both, slowly seeped out of the wreckage.
The cheer started spontaneously. Marines stood up from behind cover, waved their rifles in the air, and shouted at the tops of their lungs. You had to have your ear to the interLink to hear them, of course, but I imagined the noise ringing through the air. In that moment, I imagined us as the Israelites watching David slay Goliath. I imagined us as the Union soldiers on Cemetery Ridge after Hays’s men stopped Pickett’s Charge. Our armor and interLink technology did not fit into my image of this battle.
“Nice shooting, Philips,” I said as I slapped him on the back.
For the first time, maybe in his whole entire life, Philips had nothing to say. He stood staring at the carcass of the train absolutely silent. Perhaps he was in awe of what he had accomplished.
Our revelry ended quickly when we heard men firing rockets a few tracks away. One of the Marines from the other platoon fired his rocket too early. It struck the track more than a hundred feet ahead of the oncoming train. The train continued to barrel toward us. Mines blew up beneath it, creating small geysers of flames that flashed and disappeared.
Rushing because he knew his life depended on it, the Marine slipped open the back of his launcher and reloaded it. He brought the tube up and rested it on his shoulder. By this time the train was only a quarter of a mile away. I could read the numbers printed along its cab.
The Marine fired his second rocket. It struck the engine head-on but too high. The train buckled and continued on. Then a Marine two tracks down fired a rocket that slammed into the side of the train, just behind the “gills”—the flexible corridor between the engine and the first car. The front of the train leaned over precariously. It would have righted itself, but another Marine fired a second rocket into the side of the engine, tipping the heavy car over.
The train had come close enough to the station that it had already begun to slow for its stop. With so little momentum, many of the rear cars did not follow the engine off the track but sat upright just behind the cars that had tipped over.
Trains started coming down other tracks, but I no longer had time to watch. A Mogat soldier climbed from the wreckage of the train that Philips derailed. The train had come to a stop less than a hundred yards from us, so I could see blood smeared on the man’s face and tunic. The train was lying on its side, and he popped out of a door, headfirst, like a prairie dog popping out of its hole.
He had a gun in his right hand. He laid the gun on the side of the train, then used both hands to push himself up. Once he was out of the door, he picked up the gun and stood on the side of the train, a shaky, dizzy survivor. I shot him in the head, and he fell behind the train.
“Shit, here it comes,” said Philips.
One of the cargo doors opened on the train that other Marines had knocked over. There was a moment of silent mystery, then three Targ Tanks rumbled out of that compartment.
Targs were an old model, antipersonnel tanks. They had smaller cannons and carried light armor, but they could scoot at speeds of up to 170 miles per hour. They were only five feet high. When they got going, their low-slung profile reminded me of spiders. These particular tanks would not need heavy armor, not with those Mogat shields.
In our rush to nail that first train, Philips and I had separated ourselves from the platoon. It didn’t seem important at the time; but seeing those Targs rush toward the station, I knew we were cut off.
“Philips, give me the launcher,” I said.
He handed me the rocket launcher, then took up his M27. “Master Sarge, I don’t like the look of those tanks.”
I fired a quick shot at one of the tanks. It was a perfect shot. The arc of the contrail ended right at the middle of the turret on the tank. There was a massive explosion. Flames and smoke filled the air, and the tank rolled through them untouched. The turret turned in our direction as the tank driver looked to return fire. Philips and I lay flat on the ground, hiding behind a waist-high wall.
“Should we hold the station?” Evans called in.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Philips said.
Marines fired a hailstorm of rockets and bullets at the three tanks, but the situation was getting worse. Another cargo car opened, and three more tanks spilled out. Down the alley I could see more tanks off-loading.
“We can’t stop the tanks!” Thomer yelled into the interLink. “The other platoon is clearing out.”
“Go with them,” I said. “You got that?” I added for Evans and Greer. I sent the communication over the platoon-wide frequency. “Fall back. Get back to the apartment building.”
“Got it,” Evans said.
“Yes, Sergeant,” said Greer.
“What about you?” Thomer asked.
“Fall back. You read me, Thomer? Fall back.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Safest place for us is in that train,” Philips said, pointing to the wreck he had made.
I knew he was right. “Stay down,” I said, as I pulled a smoke grenade from my armor and tossed it into the open area between us and the train. We would need to wait another twenty seconds for the smoke to spread. More survivors climbed out of the wreck. Someone back in the station shot a man as he rose out of a doorway. They shot another as he popped out of a window and started to aim his gun. Then a tank fired a round at the station. I could not tell if the shell hit anyone, but no one fired back. By this time the smoke from the grenade had formed a fairly thick cloud.
“Let’s go!” I yelled as I leaped from behind the wall and dashed into the cover of the smoke. “You there, Philips?” I asked.
“Right behind you,” he said.
“Run for the train,” I said. Once you start talking in battle, it’s all too easy to repeat the obvious.
“And here I was thinking I should run for the Mogat tanks,” Philips said.
A Targ fired into the smoke. It was a blind shot that missed us completely, but the force of the shell’s explosion sent me skidding just as I reached the train. I flew forward five feet and spun to the ground. The upended engine lay on its side, its roof facing in my direction just a few feet ahead. I lunged forward and hid behind its mass.
“That was close.” Philips said.
“It’s going to get a lot more exciting around here,” I said. I found a handhold and scaled the roof of the engine. We needed to find a way inside.
One of the tanks spotted me and fired a shell that struck the base of the train. The whole thing slid. I dropped flat against the engine and hel
d on. Philips, who was trying to climb up behind me, fell off.
“Philips, you all right?”
“Yeah, just dandy,” he said.
I had climbed to the top of the train. Several cars ahead of us, a Mogat popped out of a doorway. His head, chest, and rifle stuck out of the train. He spotted me and started to bring his gun to bear, and I shot him. Another followed him. Philips nailed that one before I could get off another shot.
I found an open doorway just behind the gills of the train and jumped in. What a mess we’d created. With the train on its side, rows of seats hung horizontally in the air like padded shelves. Some bodies lay slumped in the seats. Others were thrown across the car. The ceiling of the train car was to my left. All the light fixtures along the ceiling had shattered.
Scores of men lay bleeding along the side of the car. Some were dead and lay as still as sardines in a can. Others squirmed. If they squirmed enough, I shot them. If they lay still with their hands on their weapons, I shot them—the logic of the battlefield: Only when an enemy truly looked dead did you spare him.
In some spots the bodies were stacked two and three men deep. I suppose I could have pushed them out of my way. Instead, I had to stretch my legs and step over them. An inch-deep stream of blood ran along the side of the car.
I saw a man lying facedown in a puddle of blood so deep that he could have drowned. His hand was wrapped around a gun, and his finger was on the trigger, so I shot him. Another man sat limp in a corner of the train. His hair was matted with blood, but he sat vertically and had a gun on his lap. He looked dead, and I saw no sign of breathing as I fired a shot into his chest. Either of them might have been alive enough to shoot me in the back as I passed.
I heard a crash, pivoted around and aimed my M27, then saw that it was Philips. “Don’t shoot, Harris, it’s me,” he said, holding his hands in front of his face.
I lowered my gun and started for the next car.
“I heard gunshots,” Philips said.
“I’m making sure there aren’t any survivors,” I said.
“You think any of these guys are alive?” Philips asked. He prodded a pile of bodies with the barrel of his M27. The man on the top slid over the other side showing no more signs of life than a sack of potatoes.
“Not in this car,” I said.
“What’s going on out there?” I called to my squad leaders.
“It’s getting ugly,” Thomer shouted. “They parked two trains out of range and off-loaded tanks. There’s a column headed right for us.” I could hear gunfire in the background.
“Targs?” I asked.
“Bigger. I think the Targs were meant to pin us down while they waited for the real guns to arrive.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“We’re still in the station,” Evans said. “They sent Targs around the building to cut us off.”
The door to the next compartment fell open and machine-gun fire sprayed across the wall above my head. I dropped to one knee and fired back, knowing I would not hit the gunman.
I snatched a grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it through the open doorway. The grenade exploded, blowing out most of the wall between our car and the next one. Nothing stirred when I got a look in the next car. I climbed over the remains of the door. With the train on its side, the doorway formed a horizontal stripe. It looked more like a window than a door.
“I’m not sure how long they’ll hold up against those tanks,” Philips said as he followed me into the next car.
I sighed. Maybe all of the bodies were bothering me. So much blood and carnage and no one left to shoot.
“Good news, gentlemen,” the colonel called over an open frequency. He had to be calling about the shields. If they were down, we could shoot our way out of this killing bottle. A rocket or two would take care of the Targs once the shields were down, and our grenadiers had plenty of rockets. If the shields were down, all we would have to do was hold out for a few more minutes, then the reinforcements would arrive—wave upon wave of soldiers.
“Navy SEALs have touched down on Mogat territory,” the colonel said. He spoke in a cheerful tone that radiated his utter ignorance about the fight. He was probably tucked away safely in a transport, a million miles from the action.
“Speck,” I hissed. “They’ve only specking touched down?” I asked. They’d barely begun their damn mission. “That’s great, sir,” I said. “Why don’t you call me when they shut down the specking power.”
“Watch yourself, Sergeant,” the colonel said. For a moment, it occurred to me that the spirit of the late Colonel Grayson had returned to haunt me through that fool.
“Sorry, sir,” I said.
“You and I are going to have a conversation when this is over, Harris,” he said over an open frequency that every Marine on the planet could hear.
Several Mogat survivors fired at us from inside the next car. I took cover behind the metal walls of a storage locker and radioed back to Philips. “Can you go up top and flank these guys?” I asked.
“I’ve got ’em, sir,” Philips answered. He called me “sir.” Enlisted men never called other enlisted men “sir.” That kind of respect was reserved for officers. By reprimanding me, the colonel had won me respect that I could never have earned on my own.
Bullets clattered against the metal and ricocheted around the compartment. The firing stopped for a moment. I looked around the locker and fired shots through the open door. I had nothing to shoot at, but I wanted to distract the Mogats on the other side. It did not work. When no one fired back, I ventured for a closer look and peered into the next car. I saw a Mogat trying to shoot through the windows along the top of the train. He must have been shooting at Philips, but his bullets would never get through the shielded glass.
One of the Mogats spotted me. I rolled back behind my cover as he shot. Then I heard the creaking of metal. I rolled out and fired at the man as he tried to climb onto my side of the door. I missed, and he ducked back for safety.
“How’s it going, Philips?” I called over the interLink.
“Keep your panties on, Master Sarge,” Philips sneered back. So much for respect.
“They’re expecting you,” I said, warning Philips.
“I know…I know.”
The gunfire continued, but now it was farther away. I rolled for a quick look, shot the Mogat who was supposed to be covering me, then rushed the door of the next compartment, where I got the drop on one of the three men tracking Philips. I shot him. As the other two turned on me, Philips shot them.
“Harris, are you there?” Thomer called in over the interLink.
“I’m here,” I said. “What’s going on out there?”
“They’re closing in on us,” Thomer said.
“Did the other platoon make it out?” I asked.
“Some of them,” Thomer said. “Those tanks caught a bunch of them in the open. Half of them did not make it across.”
“Squad counts,” I ordered.
“I’m down to nine,” Thomer said. One of those nine would be Philips, who was in here with me.
“Seven,” said Evans.
“Five,” said Greer.
Of my original forty-two men, I now had twenty-three remaining, including myself. If I did not find some way to get my men out of there, the roll call might only find two.
“Hold on,” I called over the platoon-wide band. “I’ll find a way to draw some of the heat off you. Just hold on.”
“You want to draw some heat?” Philips asked. “You should see what we have in here.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE
The Mogats had only launched the first wave of their counterattack and already our invasion was unraveling around us. I wondered how long the platoons guarding the traffic ramps would hold out. I wondered if the Mogats would send gunships across the planet to attack our transports. Probably not. Why should they? Their Navy ruled orbital space. If they waited for us to surrender, they could take our trans
ports intact.
Everything hinged on the SEALs. Our invasion was meant to draw Mogat forces away. Well, we’d pulled that one off. If the SEALs could just accomplish their objectives, some of us might survive.
“Harris, over here,” Philips called excitedly, as I came across the car.
Along the left wall, which had become the floor when the whole train tipped on its side, lay stacks of clear canisters filled with some sort of swirling brown gas. The canisters were strapped down tight. Nothing short of a grenade would have shattered them; the Mogats did not take any chances with this cargo.
Stacks of a different sort hung from the top of the train—canisters filled with gray, glittering gas. Seeing these lethal weapons, I could not help but smile.
“What is this shit?” Philips asked.
“The brown ones are distilled shit gas,” I said, borrowing that briefing officer’s parlance. “This is the most corrosive stuff you’ll ever see. Eats anything soft—skin, wires, rubber.”
I pointed to the canisters on the other wall. They were filled with compressed silver gas. They looked like they might have contained mercury. “You know what this is, right?” I asked.
Philips shook his head.
“That’s noxium gas. You’ve heard of noxium gas before?” I said.
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of it.” Terrorists favored noxium because it was cheap and scary. It bored into people and turned them to jelly, then dispersed into the air. You could shoot it into a building, kill everyone inside, then enter the building yourself five minutes later. The air would be clean.
“How are you holding up out there?” I called on a frequency that reached only my squad leaders.
“Rumsfelds,” Evans said. “They’ve got specking Rumsfelds!”
Of course there were Rumsfelds. I should have known there would be Rumsfelds. That explained the gas canisters. Rumsfelds were designed to spew supercharged gas. They also packed the standard machine guns and cannons.
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