“What now? We going to fire?” BK asked.
The Marines with the Weapons Pack 3 could reach across the seven klicks, and that meant Hondo. He was the fire team’s missileman, his HM-48 more than capable of reaching the Grub. Somehow, the thing had taken the full brunt of the major’s 20mm gun, but Hondo’s 48 could take out any tank known to man. Additionally, on station 30 klicks to the rear, were two Falcon-Cs, the most powerful atmospheric craft in the Federation Marines, matched only by perhaps the Confed Orcus. Each Falcon could level a fortified city or take out a battalion of tanks.
“Stand by,” Lieutenant Silas passed, her voice calm and collected.
An instant later, the Grub started forward, followed by eight or nine more that emerged from the battlefield. In a rough line abreast, the things, as big as busses, seemed to glide over the ground as they rushed the Marines.
“Kilo, Echo, engage MH-48s. Weapons Company, weapons free,” the order came over the battalion ops net.
Hondo activated his weapons system. Unlike Weapons Company, which would fire at will and at any target, the line company Marines were each given a designated target. Hondo’s was the second Grub from the left, and he targeted the thing as it closed the gap, already covering more than a klick.
“Get some, Hondo,” BK said on the P2P. “I mean it. Those things are coming on fast.”
He ignored her as his system confirmed the lock, then he triggered the missile. The next one was cycling into firing position as he watched the track of the 80cm-long missile. If the things had jamming of some sort, it didn’t work, and the missile flew true, hitting the Grub on its left side an instant before another hit it right in the front. Hondo wanted to shout in victory, but the Grub barely slowed down, if at all. His missile looked as if it penetrated the thing’s body, but with no effect.
There were explosions as Weapons Company’s field guns struck the Grubs, and with a huge crackling of light, the beams of one of the company’s energy guns hit and splashed around an advancing Grub.
Hondo fired his second missile, not seeing if any of the Marines’ weapons were having an effect. One of the Falcons swooped in, its telltale broadcasting to the Marines that it was a friendly as it unleashed the fires of Hades upon the Grubs. One Grub slowed to a stop as tendrils of light from the others seemed to converge and then shoot forward as a single beam to envelope the plane. A Falcon had fairly robust shielding which was particularly effective against energy weapons, but that was no match for the Grub power. The Falcon swerved to the side in a death spiral.
And then the Grubs turned their weapons to the Marines on the ground.
Fingers of light reached out to sweep the Marines, and where the light hit, Marines were killed. The PICS armor, perhaps the best ever developed, could stand up to the onslaught for perhaps five seconds, no more.
“Cease firing, Second. Pick up your protectee and get them back to the rally point,” Lieutenant Silas ordered.
Hondo had four more missiles, and he wanted to expend them, but orders were orders. Along with the rest of the platoon, he peeled back and sprinted to the civilians, his armored feet chewing up the loose soil. He’d been assigned Dr. Hastert, a UAM scientist of some sort, but the civilians were in panic mode, and the Doctor wasn’t responding.
“Just pick up anyone,” Staff Sergeant Aster ordered.
Evidently, Hondo wasn’t the only one having trouble. Two civilians were standing in shock, looking out towards the still advancing Grubs when a finger of light reached them, hitting the man in the chest. The Confed sheath armor didn’t give much protection, cracking open as the man fell.
The woman took a step back in horror, not even seeing Hondo as he stepped forward and picked her up by her waist. He turned just as his alarms went crazy and light streamed around him in goblets.
Five seconds!
The woman went limp in his arms as he triggered superman mode and jumped forward. He landed and immediately triggered another jump, this time clearing the crest. His alarms went off, flashing lights indicating the extent of the damage. He could still move, but his suit wasn’t in good shape.
Staff Sergeant Aster was acting as traffic cop, getting the platoon on the move. Hondo shifted the woman to the crook of his arm, using it as a chair, which had been determined as the most comfortable way for the civilians to be carried if they couldn’t mount themselves on a PICS’ back. The woman wrapped her arms around his big mechanical one, which was a relief. She was still alive.
The second Falcon-C screamed overhead as it joined the battle. Hondo didn’t bother to look. He felt bad for abandoning the fight. Marines were dying, but he was running for safety. His orders were clear, though, and his charge was the woman perched on his arm. Lima and Mike Companies would hold off the Grubs while Kilo got all the civilians to safety . . . hopefully. From what little Hondo had seen, he wasn’t sure the rest of the battalion could stop the things.
With Third Platoon providing security, the platoon ran silently towards the rally point where the Big Ski’s shuttles waited.
Chapter 4
Skylar
Sky held onto the Marine’s arms, trying to buffer the jolting. The armor she’d been given to wear was some help, but the bottom pelvic plate dug into her with seemingly every step the Marine took.
All of this was in a fog, though. She knew she was in shock. She’d just seen Baylor Torgenson killed right in front of her eyes, for the love of God. One moment, they were watching the Dictymorph approach, and the next moment, the light tendrils enveloped him. Sky knew she would have been next if the Marine hadn’t plucked her from the ground and used his bulk as a shield. Even so, her left arm was burned as if by acid, pain radiating in waves, making her nauseous as well.
Reality had just hit her across the head. She’d been so proud to be selected for the mission, representing the Second Ministry. The youngest scientist in the task force, she’d hoisted that as a badge of honor. Not only would she get to delve into the psyche of the Klethos, but she would be on the ground floor of Dictymorph study. Her career was set, and there was no telling how far she could go.
But . . . this? Somehow, despite knowing the Dictymorphs and the Klethos were at war, it never really sunk in what that meant. She’d been as vocal as anyone else when the Admiral hadn’t wanted to allow them onto the planet’s surface, and she’d rejoiced when Archbishop Lowery had overturned her. They were on a quest for knowledge, and no turf-protection from the military was going to get in the way of science.
The time spent on the ship with the Klethos quad had been somewhat frustrating. Each of the Klethos spoke excellent Standard, and every sentence made sense on its own. It was when everything was taken in its totality that things began to get confusing. For all their talk about honor and the warrior spirit, they seemed to know next to nothing about their enemy. Sky thought that if anything, they respected the Dictymorphs.
With the frustration mounting, Sky had jumped on the opportunity to join the party on the surface. She was sure that if she could see the Klethos in a more natural environment, that would give context to what they said. It would also give her the first data to be gathered on the Dictymorphs.
But it had gone so horribly wrong. The Dictymorphs were monsters, horrors, worse than she could have imagined. And they were deadly.
Sky wanted to look around the Marine to see if the Dictymorphs were following, but she couldn’t. If she was about to die, she didn’t want to see her death coming to claim her.
Next to her, Dr. Janus was being carried by another Marine. Their eyes met, and he nodded with a look of acceptance? Resignation? Sky couldn’t tell. She wondered how many of her peers made it out of the battle.
The Marine carrying her started to slow down, and that was rougher as he adjusted his stride to come to a stop. Sky looked up to see the glorious sight of three shuttles, lights on and ready to take off.
Sky was sitting on his left arm, and he reached with the right to lift her to the ground.
“Are you OK, ma’am?” he asked through his external speakers.
“Uh . . . yeah, I think so. My arm’s burnt, but I think so. Thank you.”
“You’ll get treatment onboard, ma’am.”
Sky let go of his arm and saw the Marine’s name which was engraved on his left chest piece.
“What’s your first name, McKeever?” she asked.
“Lance Corporal Hondo McKeever, ma’am.”
“Well, thank you, Hondo. Can I call you that?”
“It’s Lance Corporal McKeever, ma’am,” he told her.
“OK, Lance Corporal. I just want to thank you. You saved my life.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am,” he said, his voice sounding sorry despite coming through a speaker.
Why is he sorry? He got away from that madness. He lucked out.
“What’s now? Do we get on the shuttles?”
“You get on the shuttles, not us.”
“But you’ve got to get out of here, too.”
“Not while we have Marines back there, ma’am, still fighting so you can get back to the ship.”
Sky wanted to argue, to say that “back there” was hopeless. She appreciated their sacrifice, but any rational person would understand that at this point, nothing more could done.
She was about to say that when McKeever said a final, “You’d better get going,” and turned around. It was only then that she saw all the Marines had turned as well and were going back to the battle.
That’s crazy!
“Come on, Doctor Ybarra. We’ve got to get on the shuttle,” Dr. Janus said, grabbing her arm.
Sky yelped as the remnants of the armor dug into her burned arm. Still, she let the head xenologist lead her to join the others as they loaded. One step onto the ramp, she stopped to look back. The Marines were already 200 meters away, rushing to the sound of gunfire.
She shook her head in disbelief and boarded her lifeboat back up to the ship.
FS BENJAMIN GRABOWSKI
Chapter 5
Hondo
A blue beam sliced from out of the recorder’s field of view, hitting the Grub dead on with kilojoules of energy. The Grub recoiled, raising the front half of its body while tendrils of light shot out, only to be wisped out like a blown candle. Explosions rocked the creature, taking out chunks of the white flesh. With a shudder, the Grub collapsed, its carcass spreading out as gravity took hold of it.
Hondo suppressed a cheer—too many had been lost to celebrate anything.
“As you can see, the Grubs can be killed,” the Navy commander said. “The fire that immobilized it came from the Confederation destroyer, the CS Philippi. The meson beam was depicted in blue for this brief, of course, but its effectiveness can’t be denied. With the Philippi’s help, four of the Grubs were killed.”
“Yeah, and the Philippi was shot out of orbit, too,” Tinman said from his bunk.
“They’re just trying to show that we can kill the bastards, so lay off of them,” BK said.
The nonrates in the squad, who had somehow come out of the battle intact, were sitting in berthing, watching the brief. Most of the Marines who survived were in some degree of shock. In less than an hour on the surface of the planet, 68% of the battalion had been wiped out. Mike Company, which had taken the brunt of the attack, had only four survivors. No other Marine battalion, going back to the War of the Far Reaches had lost so many in a single battle.
“And now we’re looking at another Grub kill, this one when the Klethos pursued them.”
Hondo had seen this with his own eyes, returning to the ridge just as the mass of Klethos fighters reached the Grub. At least forty Klethos had converged on it, some firing their disrupter rifles into the massive body while others fired what looked to be wide-mouthed anti-boarding guns that shot out metallic objects big enough and moving slow enough to be picked up in the holo. Instead of simply aiming at the center mass, though, they seemed to focus on one portion of it while the thing “fired” tendril after tendril of the plasma-like light, killing or disabling the Klethos with each swipe. A chunk of the thing finally sloughed off, and Hondo took the opportunity to fire an HM-48 into the wound. As before, the missile simply disappeared into the Grub’s body, but Hondo thought it had to have done some good.
Then came a line of Klethos who rushed the Grub bearing what looked to be Roman lances or pikes. Swinging them, lights and sparks flashed off the tip as either the pikes’ or the Grubs energy fields were disrupted. More Klethos fell, but at last, whether from their efforts of the massed fire from the Marines, the Grub collapsed to the ground like a half-filled water balloon, as if its skin could no longer support its mass.
“With this kill, that made six. Three Grubs broke off the assault and fled the battlefield,” the commander continued as if that constituted a victory.
Any more victories like that will be the death of us.
None of the Marines who’d been on the ground thought it was much of a victory. Too many friends had been lost, all to kill six Grubs. Another hundred or so Kelthos littered the battlefield. The Marines had gone in confident, even eager for a fight, but the stark reality of why the Klethos wanted allies was abundantly clear.
“And now, if I can ask Doctor Ybarra to give us an info-dump on what we’ve discovered about the Grubs so far. Doctor Ybarra?”
The woman Hondo had carried out of the battle stepped forward, looking much smaller—and much younger—out of her armor. Her left arm was in a regen sleeve.
“Hey, it’s the xeno-lady,” Sam said, but no one was in the mood to comment.
“Thank you, Commander,” she said before clearing her throat. “Um . . . we still don’t have a detailed analysis of just what we’re facing here. We took tissue samples of the dead Dictymorph, samples of the residue of their weapons,” she continued, her right hand drifting to rub the regen sleeve. “The tissue sample is being broken down to send the data to every lab of the allied governments. I can tell you this, it’s nothing we’ve seen before. It is not carbon-based; that we’ve already determined. But just what kind of life this is, we’ll need more time for that. The weapon they used, though, is some sort of a chemical weapon. The molecular structure had both similarities to luciferase, one of the three ingredients that enable bioluminescence, and some acids. But that’s too general a comparison, as you can see from here.”
A convoluted-looking molecule appeared on the monitor, parts of it highlighted. Alongside of it, two other molecules, one labeled luciferase and the other luciferin, were displayed. Dr. Ybarra, started going into detail that quickly went beyond Hondo’s understanding or care.
“I don’t care what it is, lady. You just tell us how to kill it,” BK said to the mutters of agreement of the other eight Marines in the compartment.
Even the commander looked glassy-eyed ten minutes later when the woman finally stopped explaining. Despite all the science being thrown about, as far as Hondo could tell, all they knew was that the thing was not like life as humans understood it. Everything else was a mystery. The only thing she’d said that had resonated was that the best scientists in human space were working on deciphering the Grubs, or Dictymorphs, as she called them, so they could develop weapons that would kill them.
Admiral Xu was the last person to speak. She looked much older than she had a week ago when she welcomed the units to the fighting arm of the task force. She’d been put into a tough position, having to implement a plan that she had fought against. It turned out she was right. Right or not, however, losing a Confederation ship and the bulk of a Federation Marine battalion was not something that she was going to be able to overcome. In the old days, she’d face execution. Today, she’d be retired in disgrace and unofficially exiled to some backwater planet. Some people would say that execution would be more merciful.
“Sailors, Marines, soldiers, and Legionnaires of the task force, I just want to tell you how proud I am of your performance. You did your duty no matter what faced you.”
&nb
sp; “Not everyone. Just us in 3/6 and the Confed ship. The rest just watched,” BK said, pointing out the obvious.
“You suffered great losses, but those losses were not in vain. With the data we gathered, we’ll be able to develop weapons and tactics that will allow us to come back and defeat this new enemy.”
Pretty high price to pay for that, Hondo thought, despite his knowing that she was right.
With just under 1,100 dead, the price was a relatively cheap one to pay in the grand scheme of things to get the information they needed. There had been naval battles over the last 200 years that had killed hundreds of thousands. The difference was, at least to him, that he knew many of those killed, fellow Marines who had no chance at resurrection. Marines with whom he’d gone to boot camp. Two Marines from his home planet of Paradhiso. Marines and corpsmen from the battalion with whom he’d played sports with and against, whom he’d shared beers on liberty. Friends.
Hondo thought about those who were gone, the admiral’s words fading away until her “We’ve got our new orders,” dragged him back to the present. Everyone wanted to know what was next, and over 4,000 sets of ears on the four remaining ships were locked on what she would say next.
“We’ve been ordered to Purgamentium to train up, as per our original orders. This will include combined training with the Klethos. Human forces will not be committed until we are an integrated force and have weapons that will kill Grubs.”
Hondo was both disappointed and relieved. He was disappointed because the seed of hate had been planted in his heart. He wanted to kill every Grub that dared stick its whatever it had for a head in human space. But he was also relieved. He knew the task force was not ready to fight the Grubs. It wasn’t just their weapons. The task force was just too disjointed. Each force was the best that their governments could provide, but that didn’t mean they could operate together yet, much less alongside the Klethos. And if the battle has shown anything, it was that weapons designed to take out combat soldiers and tanks were not effective against the Grubs.
Alliance (The United Federation Marine Corps' Grub Wars Book 1) Page 3
