Solfleet: The Call of Duty

by Smith, Glenn

  SOLFLEET: THE CALL OF DUTY

  by Glenn E. Smith

  Copyright © 2014, Glenn E. Smith

  All Rights Reserved

  DEDICATION

  To all those who refused to stop believeing in this work, I thank you.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  SOLFLEET: THE CALL OF DUTY

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Interlude

  Prologue

  Rosha’Kana Star System

  Earth Standard Date: Wednesday, 14 July 2190

  Amidst the steady chatter that always seemed to accompany long stretches of ‘hurry up and wait,’ the Marines filed onboard their assigned assault shuttle, took their seats on the twin troop benches, one squad facing the other, and strapped themselves in. The new, lighter weight combat suits known within the fleet supply system as ‘Combat Armor, Semi-Ablative’, or CASA armor—the Marines naturally referred to their individual suits as their houses—made simple tasks such as walking, stowing gear, sitting down, and strapping into a seat much easier to perform than they had been before, so the decrease in bulk and weight was a welcome change in the short term, but the Marines couldn’t help but wonder if it was really such a good thing. None of them dared say anything aloud for fear of making the worst come true, but to a person they questioned in silence how much protection the new suits were going to give them in the thick of battle. They seemed almost too lightweight to be of much use, except for the TAC helmets that went with them. Those were still plenty heavy.

  As soon as Gunnery Sergeant Harrison saw that all his troops and their gear were secure, he sent word forward to the pilot. The standard high-G combat launch followed seconds later, and as the shuttle raced across the perilous open space between the assault carrier Tripoli and the Marines’ objective, one of the Veshtonn armada’s enormous command cruisers, each man and woman fell silent and turned inward to the depths of his or her own thoughts. For those twenty-four Marines, and for the hundreds of others who waited as they did while their own shuttles made the same dangerous crossing, the long hoped for chance to do their small part, to join the epic battle to defend the Tor’Kana people’s home star system from the Veshtonn invaders, had finally arrived.

  All so young, Gunny Harrison thought, shaking his head ever so slightly as he gazed at their smooth-skinned faces. Why did they always have to be so young? Even the squad leaders were what, all of about twenty-two or twenty-three years old? The lower enlisted were of course even younger than that. Hell, most of the privates and lance-corporals weren’t even out of their teens yet. They had their whole lives ahead of them.

  So what the hell were they doing riding into combat with the Solfleet Marines?

  He knew the two-fold answer to that question of course. First, it was only logical that the lower enlisted ranks would be filled with younger people. Such had been the case throughout all of history and would continue to be so. Second, because lately fewer than a third of all Marines who charged into battle against the Veshtonn came out of it in one piece. That fact often made an old-school roughneck Marine like him wonder why the young continued to volunteer, but as he gazed once more at the youthful, tight-jawed faces before him, he realized that he needn’t wonder about that. The answer, though multifaceted, was all too simple. Patriotism. A sense of honor and a self-imposed requirement to answer the call of duty.

  Much of the older generation, including many who’d spent their entire adult lives in the public eye, barked and whined a lot about how much softer, more selfish, and less disciplined the younger generation was, and tended to blame the young for society’s continued moral decline when in many cases it was their own actions in the pursuit of their own selfish agendas that were to blame. But from where he sat, Harrison couldn’t have disagreed more. As far as he was concerned, those of the younger generation whom he’d had the opportunity to meet and the honor to serve with were to be commended.

  The Marines all leaned sharply toward the bow as the shuttle suddenly slowed, then practically fell into each others’ laps as it came to an abrupt halt with a resounding thud that reverberated through the deck plates.

  “We have contact,” the copilot practically shouted over the intercom.

  Case in point, Harrison thought as he slapped his harness release and stood up. Their own copilot was a twenty-three year old baby-faced ensign who didn’t even have to shave every day yet. A newlywed fresh out of flight school and on his very first active duty assignment, he’d volunteered for this mission—volunteered to fly straight into hell. Volunteered! His wife would kill him if she ever found out.

  “Holy shit, we actually made it,” one of the Marines commented.

  “You stow that bullshit right now, Marine!” Harrison shouted at him. More than anything, he hated pessimism. It was a morale killer of the worst kind, and as such could seriously curtail a combat unit’s efficiency and effectiveness. Factually of course, the young Marine was right. They’d made it across wide open space despite incredible odds against them. A barrage of enemy weapons fire had rained down on them all along the way—a veteran of dozens of battles, Harrison had barely noticed it—but the shuttle’s armor plating had held.

  God willing, their new CASA armor would hold up just as well.

  “Grapplers deployed,” the copilot announced. “Positive lock established.”

  “Transfer tunnel secure and pressurized,” the pilot added. “Good hunting, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “Thanks, L.T.,” Harrison responded. “Be back as soon as we can.” He pulled off his headset and hung it up, then marched toward the airlock. He intended to lead the way into the enemy vessel. He always led the way. Modern military doctrine dictated he do otherwise, but as far as he was concerned a leader was supposed to lead from the front, not bri
ng up the rear.

  “All right, Marines!” he called out. “Prepare to assault!”

  Like a well rehearsed dance company beginning its first live performance, the Marines released their safety harnesses and rose to their feet as one, locked and loaded and charged their weapons, slid their visors down over their eyes and ran checks on their Heads-Up Displays, and then double-checked each others’ armor and equipment. Then they turned and faced the airlock, ready to follow their fearless leader—if they only knew—into the enemy vessel as soon as the doors opened in front of them.

  Thunder rolled through the shuttle, vibrating the deck plates beneath their boots. An explosion outside. The alien vessel’s hull had just been breached. A second, more distant blast shook them, and a third immediately followed. At least two other shuttles had made it safely across, Harrison concluded. But the fourth apparently hadn’t. Twelve more had headed for more distant parts of the ship, probably too far away for him and his platoon to feel or hear their breach blasts, and still dozens more had set out across the gauntlet of open space toward other ships. He offered up a quick prayer for them, especially for those souls who hadn’t made it, then drew a deep breath and set his mind to the task at hand.

  The airlock doors parted fast and he and his Marines charged forward, into the belly of the beast.

  The first thing Harrison noticed as he turned and faced the Marines behind him, before his eyes had even begun to adjust to the dim, almost dusk-like and slightly red-tinted lighting, was how strange the deck felt beneath his feet. Soft, even a little squishy, it felt more like a shallow mudflat at low tide than it did the hard deck of a space vessel, and it smelled a lot like a stagnant swamp. The second thing he noticed was the heat and what had to be nearly a hundred percent humidity. So thick with moisture that he could actually see it, the heavy atmosphere made breathing a chore. It collected on his visor, forcing him to wipe it away every few seconds. It condensed on his skin and ran down inside his uniform like rivulets of warm sweat. They hadn’t been aboard for thirty seconds yet and already the back of his collar was damp and chaffing against his neck.

  The Marine closest to him looked up from his own feet and asked, “How the fuck are we supposed to fight in this shit, Gunny?”

  Harrison slapped him across the top of his helmet and glared at him. The younger man’s wide eyes met his in silent protest, but quickly fell away. He knew without having to be told what he’d done wrong of course. Without the advantage of total surprise, their mission, not to mention their lives, depended on stealth.

  Their objective was the main computer core, located less than a hundred meters down the left corridor, then right at the first cross corridor for fifty meters, assuming of course the sketchy schematics Intel had provided them with were correct. Their mission was to copy every scrap of information they could access onto their handheld data compressor—disposition of combat and support forces, advanced tactics and combat doctrines, mission objectives, navigational charts, communications records, cultural information, and whatever else they could find—while at the same time transmitting it back to the Tripoli for immediate backup. Then they were to introduce a high-speed data-wiping virus into the source system. Fleet Command’s hope was that the loss of all data would plunge the vessel into chaos and immediately render it combat ineffective.

  Harrison held up one finger and then pointed to his right—a silent command deploying first squad in that direction. Then he held up two fingers, covered his fist with an open hand, and made a karate chop motion toward the deck to his immediate left. Second squad, take up rear guard positions, beginning right here.

  First squad assembled into its fire teams and Harrison accompanied them as they moved out, wiping the moisture from his visor once more. Staying close to the warped, uneven walls while being careful not to scrape against them, each Marine crouched as low as he or she could in order to present the smallest possible target. Second squad, meanwhile, headed a relatively short distance in the opposite direction, then deployed to numerous positions along the gently curving and downward sloping corridor.

  One apparent advantage they had over the enemy likely crossed the minds of those few among them who had previous combat experience, Harrison realized as they advanced, and perhaps even provided them with a little extra ray of hope. The corridor was indeed sloping downward at a substantial angle in both directions from their point of entry. They held the high ground—always an advantage in any battle, aboard vessel or otherwise.

  First squad reached the intersecting corridor without incident. So far, so good.

  Harrison glanced at the name stenciled in black across the back of the helmet in front of him as Private Valentino, the squad’s point man this time around, dropped to one knee against the bulkhead and raised his left fist to ear level, signaling the rest of the squad to stop and drop as well. The kid was barely eighteen years old and the closest thing to real combat he’d ever seen was last month’s battalion paintball tournament, and now here he was at the front of the line in the middle of a damned suicide mission.

  Valentino activated his HUD and aimed his rifle around the corner, but before he could even begin to make any sense out of what the camera started displaying on his visor, someone—something—grabbed hold of the barrel and yanked him forward, off balance. He screamed in terror as he fell into the open intersection. He let his rifle go, hoping to scramble back behind the safety of the bulkhead, but he never got the chance. A shower of green-white energy bolts rained down on him from both directions of the cross corridor, perforated his torso armor’s thinner side panels and back plate, and eviscerated him.

  Small groups of heavily armored Veshtonn blood-warriors—reptilian Kree-Veshtonn from the look of them—suddenly appeared through several previously unseen hatchways on both sides of the main corridor ahead of the Marines. Firing their weapons seemingly at random, they stepped into harm’s way without any apparent hesitation and advanced quickly on the Marines as if none of them cared whether they lived or died. Those Marines fortunate enough to survive the initial volley fired back, their rifles set to full automatic, spraying the enemy with a deadly wall of fully energized mini-explosive pulse rounds. Warriors on both sides fell during the brief but intense firefight, but in the end the Marines emrged victorious, at least for the moment, forcing the few surviving Veshtonn to retreat. Apparently not all of them were so willing to die after all.

  “All right, Marines, let’s do this!” Sergeant Harrison shouted into his pin mike—no point in continuing to maintain radio silence now. “Take care of the wounded and regroup. We got a mission to complete.”

  Privates Harper and Jennings were up. They moved forward, side by side, and cautiously checked the cross corridor in both directions at the same time while some of the others slung their rifles over their shoulders and carried or dragged the dead and wounded back to the relative safety of the shuttle, where some of the best combat medics in the Corps waited to take care of those who still clung to life.

  With all the smoke and humidity floating on the air, seeing clearly beyond the first dozen yards or so was beginning to prove difficult and infrared was useless against the cold-blooded lizards, but the cross corridor appeared to be free of immediate threats. Harper and Jennings looked back at each other, shrugged, and then raised their hands and gave the ‘all clear’ signal together. Van Slyke and Bellasario dashed past their positions quickly, crossed the intersecting corridor, and took up covering positions at the opposite corners. Then they, too, gave the ‘all clear’ signal.

  The rest of the squad raced ahead, rounded the corner, and made a run for the computer center, but when they reached the circular hatch that led inside, they found it to be locked down.

  Of course, that was exactly what they had expected to find.

  “You’re up, Brewer,” Squad Sergeant Graves said, reading the name on the back of the younger man’s helmet to make sure he got it right. He wondered what all the guys around him must have thought about
taking orders from someone they didn’t know and had never fought beside, but at the same time he felt pretty sure he already knew the answer. They didn’t like it, and he couldn’t blame them.

  He still could hardly believe he was there—could hardly believe the Corps had thrown him into the middle of a major campaign with a bunch of Marines he didn’t know and hadn’t even trained with before, let alone fought with. According to all official doctrine, they shouldn’t have. This wasn’t his unit. He wasn’t even assigned to the Tripoli. He’d only been hitching a ride back to Cirra from Earth when the ship’s captain received orders to divert to Rosha’Kana and join the battle. He’d received his temporary orders attaching him to the unit almost immediately afterwards and had asked Gunny Harrison what happened to the squad’s regular sergeant, but the Gunny had refused to answer, and all his Marines had followed suit.

  Lance Corporal Brewer moved up with a prepared explosive charge already in hand. He slapped it over the hatch’s locking mechanism and backed off in a hurry. The rest of the squad took their cue from him and backed off as well and turned their faces away.

  “Fire in the hole!” Brewer shouted. Then he depressed the clacker.

  The charge exploded and the entire hatch literally spun out of its place in the wall like a coin sent spinning on its edge across the top of a table until it fell against the opposite wall with a clang. The Marines surged forward into the lingering cloud of smoke and dust. One after another they charged single file through the gaping hole in the wall and flooded into the computer center, where they fanned out and prepared to defend themselves. Surprisingly, they met no resistance.

  “All right, Stevenson,” Gunny Harrison called out, “your turn.”

  Jake Stevenson, a man whose friends had long ago proudly proclaimed to be the best hacker in the entire Solfleet Marine Corps, slung his rifle over his back and made a beeline for what precious few other human beings would even have recognized to be the computer core’s master controls console. He plugged his HDC, a data thief’s most prized piece of equipment, into the board and went to work. Less than a minute later he’d hacked through the security protocols and had gain unrestricted access. “Ready, Gunny.”