Starfist - 14 - Double Jeopardy

by Dan Cragg

  “Get me comm,” he told the officer of the deck.

  “Communications, aye, sir.” He spoke into the comm and signaled Borland.

  “Commodore here,” Borland said when he reached for his comm. “Contact the starships in orbit. Tell them to identify themselves and their business here.” He signed off without waiting for acknowledgment. That was an advantage of having an officer two ranks too high in that division; he knew that his orders would be carried out exactly, even if the captain in charge wasn’t all that expert at her job.

  S and R had identified the three starships growing on the main display. The freighter was the SS Tidal Surge, leased from Interstellar Tramps, a charter freight company. The Countess-class was the SS Lady Monika, retired from the WeddingWays Line, also leased from Interstellar Tramps. The Grandar Bay had no data on who leased the two starships. The Bomarc was a model 39V, registered to one Louis Cukayla; he’d named her Pointy End. According to several entries in Jane’s Private Paramilitary Organizations, Cukayla was the owner of Sharp Edge, a “corporate security provider.”

  “Now we know,” Brigadier Sturgeon said when he saw that. “The ‘privately owned, interstellar corporation’ in the intelligence report is mercenaries.”

  “Mercenaries, indeed,” Commodore Borland agreed. He turned his head from the display to look at the Marine. “The Skinks fight Marines to the death, but let themselves be taken prisoner and turned into slaves by mercenaries?”

  “Not likely.”

  “I don’t think so, either.” Borland looked back at the display. “If the Skinks don’t attack outright, like they did on Kingdom, they do something sneaky, the way they sucked in Force Recon on Haulover.”

  “Or on Society 437, which was where we first encountered them.”

  “Mercs.” Borland shook his head. “Hell of a thing to have to call in the Marines for, to rescue mercenaries who got stung while doing something illegal.”

  “This is the Confederation Navy Starship Grandar Bay. Starships orbiting Ishtar, identify yourselves and state your business. CNSS Grandar Bay calling unidentified starships orbiting Ishtar. Identify yourselves and state your business. Over.” Radioman First Class Testor sat back, waiting for the long seconds it would take the radio signals to reach the starships around the planet, for someone on board to hear the message, then to compose and send a reply. Being a generous sort, he allowed three seconds for the radio round-trip and a dozen seconds for somebody to decide what to say and to say it.

  When fifteen seconds had passed with no reply to his challenge, he again called, “Confederation Navy Starship Grandar Bay to unidentified starships orbiting Ishtar. Identify yourselves. Over.”

  After another fifteen seconds without a reply, he swiveled to Captain Wilma Arden.

  “Ma’am, they aren’t replying.” He moved his hands to indicate his comm controls. “I’m broadcasting on all standard guard freqs. Unless they’ve got their comms turned off, they heard me.”

  Arden nodded; she fully understood the implications of the lack of response. She tapped comm for the bridge and reported, “No response from the orbiting starships. Next message?”

  There was a pause before Commodore Borland’s voice came to her: “Tell them to identify themselves or stand by to be boarded by Confederation Marines.”

  “Aye, sir. Identify themselves, or stand by to be boarded by Confederation Marines.” She was looking at Testor while she repeated the order. Borland signed off, and Arden told the radioman, “You heard the order. Tell them.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am!” Testor again requested identification from the orbiters and issued the warning. After fifteen seconds he swiveled to face Arden again. “Now what, ma’am?”

  “Now we wait.”

  Ten minutes later, word filtered down to third platoon that it looked like they were going to have to breach the hull of the Pointy End.

  “Third platoon got picked to go after the Bomarc because we’ve gone into one before, as those of you who were with us on Avionia remember,” Lieutenant Bass explained to the platoon.

  Corporal Dean bit his tongue to keep from yelling out, “We lost Van Impe when we boarded that Bomarc!”

  “For the rest of you, the Bomarc is very unusual; it’s the only starship designed to land on a planet’s surface,” Bass said. “Another odd thing about the Bomarc is, it has a sharply conical shape. That shape might cause problems in securing the Tweed Hull Breacher to the Pointy End.” He smiled wryly. “We’re lucky we have Corporal Doyle in the platoon. He’s the one who figured out how to keep the THB from killing the Marines using it—so if the cage doesn’t hold on, Doyle might be able to figure out how to make it do its job anyway.”

  Several of the Marines looked at Doyle, who flushed and wished he were wearing his chameleons instead of the armored vacuum suit so he could disappear.

  “All right, people, button up, we’re going outside for a test boarding,” Bass commanded.

  He waited while the Marines donned their vacuum helmets and locked them into place, waited while the fire team leaders checked the seals on their men’s helmets, and the squad leaders did so on the fire team leaders’. Then he and Staff Sergeant Hyakowa checked the squad leaders’ seals, donned their own vacuum helmets, and checked each other. He gave a last look at the lines tethering the Marines together.

  “Third platoon sealed and ready,” he reported to the chief petty officer in charge of the airlock by which the platoon was exiting.

  The airlock’s inner hatch opened and third platoon crowded into it, each Marine in direct contact with the one to his front, his rear, and both sides. Even though the airlock was designed to admit bulk containers, the armored vacuum suits were so bulky that contact-crowding was the only way the Marines could all fit into the airlock. The inner hatch closed with a clunk. As the air was pumped out, the chief’s voice came over the platoon circuit: “You Gyrenes had best engage your boot magnets right about now, ’cause local gravity is about to disappear.”

  Clicks, more felt than heard, sounded through the airlock as the Marines turned on the magnets that would hold them to the deck when the local gravity was turned off. The atmosphere in the airlock wasn’t completely purged when the Marines felt themselves lifting slightly; they were happy for the magnets that held them in place. A moment later, the outer hatch opened. Pressure from behind forced the front row of Marines to lean out of the hatch so they were standing at an angle to the deck.

  “Don’t turn your boot magnets off until you’re told to,” a petty officer second class who was waiting outside said into the platoon circuit. “Don’t exit by yourselves; let my deckhands guide you.” The Marines had already been drilled on the procedure, but that was in a cargo bay, with full gravity throughout the exercise.

  Four sailors used brief puffs from their backpack jets to approach the front row of four Marines and took their arms. They touched helmets and said, “Release your magnets now.” The words carried by induction, so only the men being told heard. The front row released and the sailors drew them out and gave them a gentle push. The sailors repeated with the second row of Marines as they shuffled to the front of the airlock. In less than two minutes, all of third platoon was outside the Grandar Bay, slowly drifting away from the starship.

  The sailors, under the direction of the chief, jetted to the front of the four lines of Marines, grasped them by an arm, and tugged them toward the Tweed Hull Breacher, situated a kilometer distant. The THB was already attached to a large sheet of 50mm-thick plate armor, much stronger and probably thicker than the skin of the Bomarc V39. The four sailors guided the Marines at a tangent to the THB before turning directly toward it. Unlike the earlier version of the THB that third platoon had used when boarding the Marquis de Rien, this one didn’t have an airtight chamber but rather was open to space except for a deck for the Marines and the petty officer operating the cutting controls to stand on. And the deck had been extended so that three of the four files of Marines could stand on it at
the same time. The fourth file took defensive positions around the THB, simulating guarding against an attack from a hatch somewhere else on the simulated vessel. Four of the Marines in the first two rows picked up rams that were waiting for them.

  The business end of the THB was a three-meter by three-meter hatch, open for the moment. The two sides of the hatch exposed a rectangle of gas jets aimed at the sheet of plate armor. When turned on, they would cut through the plate.

  A petty officer second class manned the controls. He finished checking the nozzles and closed the sides of the hatch. He waited for the order to begin cutting. As soon as the first three lines of Marines were secured to the deck by their boot magnets, the chief supervising the operation told him, “Cut it,” and he turned the dials that caused gases to be pumped into the mixing chamber and then shoot out of the nozzles.

  Almost immediately, everybody on the THB felt the vibrations and pops of the metal heating up—but they couldn’t see what was happening through the closed hatch. A harsher crack told them the plate armor was breaking loose along the cut. A few seconds later, the second class cut the gases off and opened the hatch to expose a rectangle of red, runny metal adjacent to the nozzles.

  The four Marines with the rams stepped forward and slammed them into the plate. The cut section of plate armor shot away and began tumbling. The Marines released their boot magnets and bolted through the opening, where they were met by three of the same sailors who had guided them to the THB. The sailors brought the first Marines under control and began guiding the three lines away from the remainder of the plate armor and the THB.

  “Is that all there is to it?” PFC John Three McGinty asked when the sailors had the Marines formed up again and headed back to the still-open airlock.

  “Not hardly, Triple John,” Corporal Dean said. “We weren’t dealing with atmosphere gushing out of the hole in the hull, or with transition to the starship’s generated gravity.”

  “Or not, if the gravity’s turned off,” Sergeant Kerr added.

  When third platoon exited the airlock back into the cargo hold where they’d formed up for the exercise, they learned that they were standing down from a forced entry of the Pointy End.

  “A message is coming in, ma’am,” Radioman First Class Testor said.

  “Don’t reply,” Captain Arden said. “Pipe it to me.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am.” Testor did something with his controls, and Arden listened to the incoming message.

  “Hello, Grandar Bay! This is the Pointy End, you know, that sharp-looking Bomarc you can probably see. Whom do I have the honor of speaking to? And what the hell is the Confederation Navy doing here? Not that we’re not glad to see you, of course; we most certainly are. The Grandar Bay, huh? That’s a surprise, I heard you were lost in Beam Space.”

  As soon as the caller identified where he was calling from, Arden contacted the bridge. “For the Commodore,” she said. “We have a message from the Pointy End.”

  “Let me hear it,” Borland said. After listening, he said, “Pipe me in. I’ll answer the call.”

  As soon as he was told he was patched into the ship-to-ship comm, Borland said, “Pointy End, this is Commodore Roger Borland, captain of the CNSS Grandar Bay. Who is speaking for you?”

  “Well, now, Commodore. Hmm. Ain’t commodore some kind of admiral? Never mind. I’m Louis Cukayla, owner and master of the Pointy End. Also owner, chief executive officer, and chief operations officer of Sharp Edge, LLC. Now, like I said, what brings the Confederation Navy to Ishtar? Gotta say, though, I’m sure glad you showed up.”

  “Perhaps the better question, Mr. Cukayla, is what are you doing here? And while you’re at it, you can explain to me about the two leased starships you also have in orbit around Ishtar.”

  “I’m here doing what Sharp Edge does, providing corporate security. The two leased ships are here to transport and provision my security personnel. What else would they be doing here?”

  “Mr. Cukayla, as soon as we are close enough I will send a lighter to the Pointy End to bring you to me—”

  “That’d be kinda difficult, Commodore, seeing as how I’m plan-etside. You might have heard, I’ve got a bit of a situation here. Come to think of it, you’ve probably heard of my situation and that must be why you’re here. Say, isn’t the Grandar Bay part of the gator navy? Do you have Marines on board? I’ll be even happier to see them than I am to see you!”

  “Give me your coordinates. I’ll send a platoon of Marines to secure a landing field. Then I’ll come to meet with you. Grandar Bay out.”

  Only then did Borland look at Brigadier Sturgeon, who had entered the bridge during the conversation. “How much of that did you hear?” he asked.

  “Enough. I’ll have the infantry battalion prepare a reinforced platoon to be the point team, with the rest of its company to follow shortly. My primary staff and I will be with the company.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Button up tight, Mo-reens,” the coxswain ordered when the three Dragons his Essay was ferrying to the surface of Ishtar were locked in place. “We got us a long way to go on this here rocky road, and you just know I’m taking it at high speed.”

  “Great, just what we need,” Corporal Claypoole grumbled. “A squid who likes the sound of his own voice driving this sucker.”

  “Maybe the g-forces will clamp his mouth shut,” the gun squad’s Corporal Kindrachuck offered.

  “Nah, ain’t how it works,” Lance Corporal MacIlargie said. “On an assault landing, g-forces force your mouth open. He won’t be able to shut up.”

  “Nobody told you you could talk, Wolfman.” Corporal Chan had chimed in. “This is corporal talk; no peons allowed.”

  “Say what?” MacIlargie squawked.

  “Corporal talk,” Corporal Taylor agreed. “Right, Corporal Doyle?”

  “What? Doyle gets to talk, and I don’t?” MacIlargie sounded outraged.

  “That’s ‘Corporal Doyle’ to you, Wolfman,” Claypoole said. He reached from his webbing to smack MacIlargie on the helmet.

  “Lance Corporal MacIlargie,” Doyle, glad to be included in the corporals’ banter, said, “you’re a senior lance corporal. It’s incumbent upon you to set a good example for men junior to you. Now be quiet and respectful of your superiors.”

  Chan howled with laughter, then hooted, “That’s telling him, Doyle!”

  In the rear of the Dragon’s troop compartment, Lieutenant Humphrey, the company’s executive officer, listened to the high-spirited chatter with half an ear, amused by the way the enlisted men distracted themselves from the coming rough ride planetside. The rest of his attention was fixed on the sounds and movements that told him the atmosphere was being sucked from the Grandar Bay’s well deck, that the well deck hatch was being opened, and that the Essay bearing the Dragon was being gently pushed out of the starship.

  Everybody noticed when the Essay’s engines engaged and sent the shuttle along the axis of the starship to get into position to begin its rapid descent to the surface.

  Most of Company L’s third platoon was in one Dragon; the rest of the platoon was in the second Dragon with half of the assault section that Commander van Winkle had decided to reinforce the platoon with. The remainder of the assault section was in the third Dragon, along with the FIST’s recon squad. Lieutenant Humphrey was along in overall command of the fifty Marines heading planet-side. Humphrey would be the first man off the first Dragon when they reached Base Camp, Sharp Edge’s primary base of operations, where Louis Cukayla awaited them.

  Base Camp was far to the north, where temperatures weren’t too extreme, normally in the upper thirties centigrade, in order to give Sharp Edge’s operatives occasional relief from the high temperatures they worked in elsewhere. It was too far inland for the Essay to make the Marines’ traditional over-the-horizon water landing. Instead it came down on what passed for a lake on Ishtar, a smallish hollow no more than four acres in area, filled with brackish water, a couple of kilo
meters from Base Camp. Orbital observation had shown Base Camp to be a cluster of ten buildings laid out on a grid, with clearly delineated walkways. Two of the buildings were oversize and tentatively identified as storehouses. Three were probably living quarters, and a smaller one was likely the quarters of Louis Cukayla. One, centrally located, was identified as a dining facility. Two others were garages. Another was likely the administration building, and the remaining one was tentatively identified as an energy control center. There were three watchtowers and what appeared to be a small airfield for VTOL/VSTOL aircraft.

  The Essay disgorged its Dragons, which roared ashore on their air cushions, and sped inland on billowing clouds of dust and dirt.

  “Calculated to impress the natives,” Humphrey murmured to himself. As were the chameleon utilities the Marines all wore. Not that these natives were all that impressed.

  The Dragon jolted to a stop in front of the clapboard building with the most ornate frontage, the one that had been identified as the probable administration building. The Dragon spun about so it faced away and dropped its ramp. Lieutenant Humphrey was the first man off. He marched straight at the three men standing on the building’s portico. The three could see him only because he carried his helmet tucked under one arm and had his gloves off and sleeves rolled up. The exposed skin of his head and arms prickled as beads of sweat popped out and evaporated almost immediately.

  The Marines who’d ridden with Humphrey sprinted out behind him and wrapped around the sides of the building to set up security to the rear of Base Camp. The other Dragons nosed in toward the first and dropped their ramps; the Marines aboard them boiled out to complete the defensive circle around Base Camp. The air rang with the shouts of NCOs moving their men into position and the clangs of heavy weapons locking onto bipods and tripods. A background hum of climate control equipment issued from the buildings.