Hondo felt a moment of astounded victory until with a huge flick that rumbled down the length of the Grub’s body in a wave, the still-burning volc was flung off and to the ground.
“BK, max thermo,” Corporal Yetter ordered.
He’d seen Hondo’s volc. BK, with her meson cannon, could adjust the frequency and focus of the beam to create heat when it struck something solid. In an instant, she could hit the Grub with the same amount of heat as a volc took over a minute to expend.
“Got it, boss,” she answered. A moment later, she said, “Nothing. It didn’t even flinch, damn it.”
A tendril of light reached out and hit her. She dodged to the right into cover. The tendril drifted, as if seeking her out.
A bulge lifted from the top of the Grub, elongating into a fleshy mound. Hondo joined six or seven Marines on firing at the mound just as the tip of it separated into two of the light spheres. Rounds ricocheted off as they hit, but several grenades seemed to penetrate into its body. A chunk of Grub-flesh broke off, and the creature seemed to contract upon itself, its skin smoothing out.
“We’re hurting it!” Sergeant Mbangwa shouted. “Keep up the pressure.”
With the eight Klethos from Third Squad and seven more from First Platoon’s Third Squad closing in on the second Grub, that left First and Second Squad facing the first one. As the Marines closed in, the Grub seemed to focus more on them. Light reached out, and within moments, three Marines were down. Hondo could see their avatars on his display flash to gray, but he couldn’t take the time to see who they were.
More volcs were hitting the Grub, and it was definitely not happy. The light tendrils increase in number, and one tendril splayed across Hondo’s chest. His alarm screamed out a warning, and Hondo was about to boost-jump when he broke in the clear.
The red flashing 18% let him know his power was below combat-ready minimums. There was no retreating to the rear to get recharged, though.
“Beamers, focus on the the right front,” the lieutenant passed, spotting where she wanted them to target. “Everyone else, expend your volcs, then use your pikes!”
The platoon had practiced the pike drill a hundred times or more back on Purgamentium, both with all hands and with one or more PICS deploying other weapons. Hondo shifted his pike to his right arm, not that it made any difference in his PICS, and slid to the right, covering BK. He clamped his gauntlet closed—nothing was going to be able to pry the pike loose.
Here it goes!
With three final steps, he plunged the pike into the Grub’s side. He expected more resistance, but the sharpened head easily pierced the skin, and he had to stop himself from physically colliding with it.
Brute, on his left, ran his pike all the way to the hilt, and as soon as his hands reached the pulsing white skin, the blue aura-like glow flowed around and encased him.
“Brute! Push back!” Hondo shouted over the net.
Brute struggled a moment before he stopped moving and his avatar switched to gray on Hondo’s display.
Hondo reached back to grab the protruding hilt of his pike, intending to drive it in deeper when a flap of Grub shot out of its side, a meter adjacent to where his pike was buried. Three years of training took over as Hondo extended his right arm to fire on the flap . . .
. . . training that put him in mortal danger. The flap narrowed to a tentacle and shot around Hondo’s neck. He tried to reverse and pull back, but with tremendous force, the Grub pulled him into its embrace. His suit alarm gave an aborted squeal before his PICS went dead.
Hondo was blind. He hit the emergency power, but nothing happened.
Go through your steps! he told himself in his rising panic.
One: Activate emergency power!
He tried it again, but with the same result.
Two: Pump the primer three times and restart.
Still, his PICS didn’t react.
Three: Signal for emergency evac.
He thumbed the button, but there was no indication that the self-powered signal was sent.
Four: Combat molt.
He hesitated at this. He was motionless, the best he could tell, so he might not still be in the Grub’s grasp. If he was, however, and he molted, he’d be a dead man. He had to see what was going on.
Without power, there was only one way to do this. He pulled his left arm out of its sleeve, reached up, and by feeling in the dark, found the fiber knob. The knob was mechanically attached to a tiny covered porthole, and each turn opened the periscope cover. Flashes of light flickered across his faceplate display, and for a moment, Hondo thought it was malfunctioning, but as he opened it farther, the image was reflected onto the inner layer of his display. The lights were from the Grub, now four or five meters away from him. Without power, he had no night vision, but the light show was more than enough for him to get his bearings.
A Marine, probably Brute, was motionless beside him, frozen in a lunge. Beyond Brute, another Marine was pouring beamer fire into the Grub at point-blank range.
The scene was surreal. With no sound reaching him except for his heavy breathing, Hondo felt as if he were watching the fight through a telescope. He was very aware of the emergency molt lever by his left thigh, but he couldn’t tell if it would be safe for him outside of his PICS, dead as it was.
A tendril of light touched the Marine with the beamer.
Break away.
But the Marine didn’t. Dropping the useless weapon, he or she reached for the pike, and then just sort of came apart as the light danced over them. The PICS collapsed, falling into a disjointed heap on the ground. Hondo didn’t need a working order of battle display to know that whoever it was had just died.
The tendril lingered a moment, then almost meandered five meters across the ground to where Brute stood frozen in his lunge.
Hondo was still alive, so he’d hoped Brute was too, that they’d both get out of this in one piece. He cried out in agony when the light caught Brute, flaring him that horrible shade of luminescent blue. Four, five seconds later, Brute’s PICS collapsed as well, almost flowing as it came apart.
In 15 seconds, Hondo has just seen two Marines killed while he stood by, helpless to save either one. He screamed in frustration, a scream cut off when the light finger started to advance on him.
Two: Pump the primer three times and restart. Two: Pump the primer three times and restart, he told himself as he furiously pushed on the button and hit the start.
Nothing.
At that moment, Hondo knew he was going to die, and a feeling of calm swept over him. He’d have thought he would go down kicking and screaming if it came to that, but no. He watched the light come up to him, then blue light filled his optics.
What’s it going to feel like, coming apart?
The shock jolted him.
“What the . . . ?”
He’d hit hard, and now he was on his side. Most of his vision was obscured, but he saw the feet of a PICS advancing on the Grub before they passed through his field of view.
What’s going on? he wondered, his mind dazed and not grasping reality.
It took him a moment before he realized that he was still alive. He was on his side, he was in an unpowered suit, but he was alive. He might have been calm as he watched the Grim Reaper come to him, but now that he was alive, his emotions almost overcame him.
I’m fucking alive!
Now, how to keep that way?
He realized that one of his fellow Marines had knocked him out of the Grub’s grip, then taken the fight to it. Hondo had been given a reprieve, but that didn’t mean he was out of the woods. He had no power, and other than the 2mm Colt-Ruger clipped into the holster attached next to the emergency molt lever, he was unarmed.
Still, I’m alive.
Hondo’s vision was extremely limited, and as the Grub moved, the fight shifted out of his vision. All he could do was watch the reflections of light and the few tendrils that flashed across his field of view. After a few minutes, the lig
hts seemed to peter out, becoming fewer and fewer.
The immediate fight might be ending, but Hondo knew that things were going badly for the humans and Klethos; otherwise, the Brotherhood battalion wouldn’t be withdrawing. If the survivors hadn’t already passed by on the way to the pickup site, they would be soon. Hondo could not afford to let them pass him by.
It had to be now.
Taking a deep breath, he reached for the lever and triggered the molt. Slowly, too slowly, the hydraulics pushed the suit apart along the seams. Air sharp with the tang of ionization blew inside. Hondo grabbed his 2mm and performed the contortion required to back out of his PICS, then jumped to his feet, clad only in his longjohns, the form-fitting suit that a Marine wore while in a PICS.
The Grub was gone, but not so the Marines. Five destroyed PICS were scattered around him. Beside a boulder, another PICS was basically whole, standing normally, its split back evidence that the Marine had molted. There could have been others, but in the darkness, he couldn’t see much more than that.
As he moved forward, handgun at the ready, a flare of light reflected off the standing PICS, revealing the small four-leaf clover patched on the back shoulder.
“BK!” Hondo shouted, rushing ahead, mindless of anything else.
He rounded the PICS and skidded to a halt. BK was sitting on the ground, with what looked like a torn doll in her lap.
Oh, shit, shit, shit.
The PICS on the ground was destroyed. Almost one entire side and both legs had the same kind of damage as the other destroyed PICS. The rest looked whole. Hondo didn’t have to ask whose PICS that was as he reached BK.
Sam, his legs, pelvis, and one arm simply gone, looked up at him, and said in slurred words, “Glad I didn’t waste my effort.”
That hit Hondo like a mule kick, and he felt faint.
“You did that? You save me?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
Of course, it would be Sam. Or BK. Or Yetter. They were family.
“Someone had to take care of you,” he said before slipping into a series of coughs.
“Shhhhh, Sam. We’ll get you back.”
“What, so you can keep telling me I owe you one? Fat chance. Just go, get back to the shuttles.”
“I owe you, Sam,” Hondo said. “We’ll get you back, too.”
“I don’t think I’ve got any balls left,” he said, matter-of-factly.
He turned his head, and Hondo could see half of his face was gone as well, as if it was melted wax.
“We’ll get you new ones,” BK told him. “Hush.”
Despite the darkness, Hondo could see the glint of tears in her eyes.
“If I do get them, then . . .” his voice trailed off before he quietly said, “BK, I’m afraid.”
“I know you are . . .” she started before Sam’s head lolled back.
He was gone.
“BK, we’ve got to go,” Hondo said.
“I know. Give me a moment.”
Hondo nodded. Another minute or two wouldn’t make any difference.
“Dodds, move out” Sergeant Mbangwa’s voice came over BK’s PICS’ external speakers. “We’re falling in with the Brothers.”
Hondo looked up in shock. He hadn’t realized that her PICS was intact. She’d molted just to be with Sam. Once molted in the field, it would take an armorer to get her PICS functional gain.
BK lifted Sam off her lap, then stepped up to her PICS, hitting the mic and saying, “Roger. I’ve got Hondo with me, but Sam didn’t make it.”
“Most of us didn’t make it,” he responded with bitterness in his voice. “But I’m glad McKeever’s with you. Look, we’ve got 30 minutes to get to Ozark. I’ll see you there.”
Ozark was an emergency LZ about four klicks away, nothing to a Marine in a PICS, but it could be tough going in their longjohns.
“Roger, that,” she passed. “See you there.”
“Ozark. We’d better get going,” Hondo said.
She nodded, then bent over to pick up Sam’s body.
“Let me,” Hondo said.
BK could be stubborn, especially if someone was insinuating that she couldn’t pull her own weight. But at just over half Hondo’s mass, she just didn’t have his strength. She nodded, stepping back.
Hondo picked up what was left of Sam and slung him over his shoulders. The resurrection and regen rate for casualties in this war was abysmal, but despite the damage to his face, Sam’s brain had been functional. If there were a chance of resurrection, it was worth taking.
With BK leading, the two took off running. It would have been touch and go anyway, and Sam’s body would slow him down, but there wasn’t even a question.
Marines don’t leave Marines behind.
FS OSCAR DE SPAN
Chapter 11
Hondo
Hondo flopped into his rack, still in his longjohns. He locked his eyes on the bottom of Sam’s rack, 40 centimeters in front of his nose. It should have sunk under his friend’s weight, creaking as he shifted his body. Only that wasn’t going to happen anymore.
He refused to look anywhere else, not willing to take in the empty racks, racks that had been occupied not 22 hours earlier by his squadmates, his friends. Sam was gone. Brute was gone. Tara, Star Bright, and Josiah. Corporals Kleinmaster and Uheap. All gone.
Hondo had been a Marine for almost three years, during which time he’d barely heard shots in anger fired until the first fight against the Grubs. The squad had escaped unscathed then, and while he knew some of those who’d been killed, they’d been in other units. This time, though, for the first time during his service, his own squadmates had died, probably beyond resurrection.
Sam, Josiah, and Corporal Uheap had been put into stasis until the docs could figure out how to reverse the damage done to their bodies, but that was not a sure thing. Hondo had to consider them gone.
We weren’t even supposed to be leading the fight!
There was a creak from the rack across from him.
“You OK, BK?” he asked.
She didn’t respond, turning on her side and presenting her back to him.
Give her time. She and Sam . . .
The debrief had been brutal as well, but at least they’d been together, not going in individually. It wasn’t as if anyone was being blamed for the loss, but the debriefers were digging in at the facts surrounding the ambush. Hondo understood why. The Grubs didn’t show a lot of technology as humans understood it, and no one was quite sure just how intelligent they were or if they were acting by instinct—or, from what Hondo gathered, as some sort of hive mind.
The fact that they could power-down a PICS should have been an indication that these were not simply large animals, that and the fact that they could navigate space. Hondo hadn’t any doubt about their intelligence, but the way they conducted their ambush cemented it. They adjusted to the tactical scenario as it unfolded. The Grubs were smart, and they could adapt. That made them more dangerous than the Capys had ever been and more dangerous than the Klethos.
Of course, they’re more dangerous than the Klucks. That’s why they came to us for help.
He still didn’t understand what happened with Third Squad, though. The Klethos just didn’t seem to have their heart in the fight. They’d been so deadly in the first few battles with humans not only because they had to tech to render human weapons useless, but they were so laser-focused on the battle. That wasn’t what he’d seen on the planet, and he didn’t know why.
Hondo was exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep, his mind racing through the battle. The feeling of helplessness when he lost power had hit him hard. He’d always known that being a Marine came with risks. He understood that he could die, but that had always been an almost substanceless concept. With a useless PICS and a Grub bearing down on him, though, that had brought everything into focus. Hondo McKeever knew at that instant that he was mortal, and he was afraid.
The Grubs were a mortal danger, not just to him, not just to BK layi
ng in the next rack, but to humanity as a whole. BK wanted revenge, and she wouldn’t stop until she had it. Hondo felt differently. He did not want to face another Grub, but he would. If he didn’t, someone else would have to, and if that person didn’t, well, humanity would not survive.
PURGAMENTIUM
Chapter 12
Skylar
Sky was numb, and not just because of being up for 42 hours. Everything: the lack of sleep, the rush of adrenaline when the attack kicked off, and the horrible consequences of so many lives lost, had all taken its toll even before the marathon after action brief which showed no signs of ending soon.
She took another swig of Joltz, but the energy drink was losing its effectiveness. Pretty soon, she was going to have to go to something stronger if she was going to contribute.
Not that she had contributed much so far. This brief was being run by Archbishop Lowery himself, and all the department heads on the planet, as well as various worthies via meson-conferencing, were in attendance. Sky was definitely on the low end of the feeding scale, and she was there to answer questions, nothing more. After twelve hours, she’d been asked a grand total of two of them: one to repeat a finding from the Jesuits that she knew Janus had at his fingertips, and one on a vague question that had no known answer.
She tried to follow what was going on, but her mind kept drifting to the poor souls back on the planet. The Confederation battalion had essentially been wiped out to a man, and she’d held so much hope for the synchrotron particle beam projectors, something about which she’d become an advocate. The beams should have interrupted the cellular messaging of the Dictymorphs, but the soldiers had only managed to bring down one of them, and that one possibly because of cruder physical damage to its body.
She’d been an early advocate of the projectors, and now she felt an overwhelming sense of guilt.
They should have worked, she thought for the thousandth time.
The Jesuits, building on what others had begun, had finally come up with a biological model that seemed to fit observations. The Dictymorphs were not exactly individual organisms as she’d first thought, but neither were they a colony organism. When needed, they could detach energy-rich portions of themselves which could function on their own. The spheres rising from the main bodies were examples of this. These spheres had minimal mass, but a tremendous amount of stored energy. This energy could then be released as a type of organic artillery. In other words, they could “throw” parts of themselves through the air to extend their reach. How sentient the calved sections were or if the main body could communicate with them was open to debate, but they weren’t “dumb bombs.”
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