Starfist: Kingdom's Fury

by David Sherman

  Corporal Doyle would have been catatonic if only Corporal Kerr would let him lay down on one of those nice bits of dry land that edged above the water all over the place. But no, Corporal Kerr kept on him about moving ahead and maintaining contact with Schultz. Why did he have to maintain contact with Schultz? He didn’t want to follow Schultz. Schultz always went places that were dangerous. Doyle didn’t want to go anyplace dangerous; he was supposed to be a clerk. It was some kind of horrible mistake that he was out in that marsh following Schultz in a mad search for Skinks and their monstrous weapons. All his eliminatory sphincters would have let go and emptied his bladder and bowel, except that they were already empty—they gave out when the orders came down for third platoon to accompany the Dragons, and he hadn’t been able to hold anything down since.

  “Keep moving, Doyle,” Corporal Kerr said on the fire team circuit. Kerr was secretly glad Doyle was in his fire team. Doyle’s fear and his constant need to be reminded to pay attention were the only things that distracted Kerr from the motion detector he carried. Somewhere inside, Kerr knew that if he was glued to the motion detector, he could well miss something else and get killed because of it. Still, he listened too hard to the motion detector and looked at its display far too often. He tried not to flash on the Siad horsemen—horsemen!—who had almost killed him on Elneal. The Skinks were far more deadly than the Siad could ever have been. Kerr strained to break his concentration on the motion detector. He knew he had to give his own senses and his hard-earned combat savvy a chance to keep him alive.

  At the rear of the platoon column Corporal Dean was keenly aware of how Company M had been mauled by Skinks who hid in the water and didn’t attack until the Marines had passed them. He and Lance Corporal Godenov walked backward, looking forward only often enough to keep from tripping over objects in their path. PFC Quick, his third man, had a tough job. Quick had to keep contact between them and the rest of the platoon, to make sure they didn’t get separated. Quick also monitored the motion detector. Maybe he should have had Godenov walk drag and had Quick back here with him, Dean thought. Godenov was more experienced and could handle both jobs better. But Quick was good too, and Dean wanted those experienced eyes watching the rear with him. Godenov was more likely than Quick to spot something subtle. Maybe the next time they stopped he’d switch them around. But there was no way the Skinks were going to hit third platoon, Company L, the way they hit M Company. Nossir!

  Staff Sergeant Hyakowa wondered what had happened to the Skink patrols that third platoon and so many others had run into a few days earlier. He didn’t think it was simply luck that kept the platoon from encountering patrols—the Dragons should have been a magnet for Skink security. Unless the Skinks had something else in store for them. He communicated this thought to Lieutenant Rokmonov, but otherwise kept his concerns to himself.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  Brigadier Sturgeon sat at a console in a corner of the MEF operations center, out of the way of his staff. They were monitoring everything: the movement of the Dragons, of Company L’s third platoon, and of the sensors in third platoon’s area of operation. He’d chosen the area for the mission precisely because it had been seeded with a full array of sensors. His staff was in constant communication with the Grandar Bay’s string-of-pearls monitors and Laser Gunnery Division. The displays on his console and the earpiece he wore kept him in constant touch with everything that was happening—or not happening, as it was turning out.

  Third platoon and the Dragons had been out there for hours. They’d already passed within range of several known entrances to the underground system without incident. They would have to turn and begin the arc back soon. Why weren’t the Skinks taking the bait? Sturgeon wondered.

  “Mudmen, this is Skyboy,” a voice said over the string-of-pearls circuit. Sturgeon held his earpiece tight. “We’ve got the signature you’ve been waiting for. Details coming.”

  Sturgeon saw the coordinates and the location appear on a map. A suspected rail gun was a kilometer and a half north-northeast of the Dragons. If it was giving out a signal, it was probably ready to fire.

  “Locked on,” came another voice. The Laser Gunnery Division was ready.

  The air seemed to crackle, and Schultz, about to step around the end of a long, narrow hummock, dove into the water behind it instead. Behind him the rest of the platoon also went for cover. The concussion wave from the eruption of a Dragon half a kilometer away rippled the water and shook the trees around third platoon. The fans on the surviving Dragons raced faster, louder, and they shot off in evasive movements. Dean raised his head to look forward and saw a lance of light slash down from the zenith to strike somewhere ahead of third platoon. Something exploded where the laser hit.

  “Signature silent,” the string-of-pearls reported.

  Cheering burst out in the Marine operations center. Officers and NCOs congratulated each other, slapped each other’s backs, shook hands.

  Brigadier Sturgeon didn’t join in the celebratory reaction. How many more of those things do they have? was the question on his mind. Killing one gun wasn’t enough cause for celebration. He sidestepped the chain of command and radioed directly to third platoon.

  “Patch me into the all-hands circuit,” he ordered. When he was on, he said, “This is Brigadier Sturgeon. We just lost a Dragon, but that was deliberate. There was nobody on that Dragon, no Marines were lost. In return, we killed one of the Skink main guns. Now we know how to kill them when they’re ready to fire. I want you to go in farther and see if you can get more of those guns to expose themselves. Good hunting. Sturgeon out.”

  He looked across the room to where the crews of the Dragons sat at their control stations. All nine Marines were looking back at him. They hadn’t joined in the celebration: it didn’t matter to them that no Marines were injured when the Dragon was destroyed—that Dragon was one of theirs. He got up and walked over to them.

  “This time let’s see if you can kill one of those guns before it gets another Dragon,” he said softly.

  The nine Marines smiled grimly at him. “Yessir,” one of them said. “Where do you want us to go?”

  He told them, then went back to his console and told the string-of-pearls monitors what he wanted them to do. The cheering and backslapping stopped and everybody returned to the job that needed to be finished.

  The Dragons stopped evasive maneuvers and sped across third platoon’s trail as though they were cutting and running. But they were headed on a course that would expose them to more cave entrances that might be guarded by rail guns. Third platoon rose and followed along a parallel route. The Dragons stopped behind an islet that stood high enough to shield them from the suspected Skink positions and waited for the infantry to catch up. Third platoon went past the islet on its other side, closer to the entrances. The Marines stayed in the water, crouched to present the smallest possible targets for Skink gunners. When they were less than two hundred meters from the cave entrances, they stopped and waited for the Dragons to come forward.

  “Rail gun signature detected,” the string-of-pearls monitors reported.

  The Dragon crews immediately directed their vehicles into evasive maneuvers, and the gunners oversaw downloading of the targeting data from orbit to their guns.

  “Damn!” one of the drivers swore. The slap he gave his console sounded like a gunshot in the command center.

  “Dragon One down,” the Dragon One commander said with a leaden voice.

  “Not your fault,” the Dragon One crew chief told his driver. “The relay took too long.” There had been a slight time lag between when he gave the commands and when the commands reached the Dragon. That lag could have been long enough to keep the Dragon in the line of fire of the rail gun.

  “Dragon Three, locked on,” the gunner of the remaining Dragon said calmly. Its gun was able to maintain a lock on its target no matter how violently the vehicle maneuvered.

  “Fire,” the Dragon Three crew
chief said, just as calmly.

  Unseen in the command center, the Dragon spat a ball of plasma at the rail gun that had just taken out its partner.

  “Signature gone,” the string-of-pearls monitors reported. “New signal up. Locking on.” This time the Grandar Bay didn’t download targeting data; it was the Laser Gunnery Division’s turn. “Signature gone,” the ship reported to the Marine command center.

  Mere seconds separated the three explosions: the one that demolished one of the two remaining Dragons was quickly followed by two more a couple hundred meters east of third platoon. A moment later Lieutenant Rokmonov ordered the Marines to move out—east, toward the location of the explosions.

  Lance Corporal Schultz halted and lowered himself when he saw the devastation through a break in the trees. Tendrils of smoke still rose from a patch of charred vegetation in the middle of a small hummock. The hummock was covered with tumbled and shattered trees and brushes, and broken vegetation floated in the water around it. Here and there sunlight glinted off something metallic. Nothing moved except the rising smoke and small fragments of foliage in the breeze.

  Corporal Kerr observed the scene from a few meters away. “Doesn’t seem to be anybody alive there now,” he reported. “I don’t see a cave entrance.”

  “Wait for me,” Rokmonov replied. A moment later the lieutenant was with Kerr and Schultz. He watched for a minute, then said, “Let’s check it out.”

  Kerr and Schultz rose to a crouch and quickly crossed to the destroyed area and a short distance beyond it. Corporal Doyle reluctantly went with them. The three Marines examined the ground around the charred area and the water surrounding the hummock.

  “All clear,” Kerr reported.

  “Five, set a perimeter,” Rokmonov said on the all-hands circuit as he went to join the fire team on the hummock.

  “Aye aye,” Staff Sergeant Hyakowa answered. He began issuing orders to the platoon. The Marines moved into positions around the hummock, leaving Rokmonov and the comm man alone to examine the hummock.

  Fragments, some of them metal, studded the ground in the charred area. More fragments were flung about the hummock. It was obvious that the Dragon’s plasma cannon had destroyed the Skink weapon. But what had it been doing sitting exposed in the open? And why hadn’t any of the many patrols the Marines and Kingdomites sent out found one before?

  Hyakowa joined Rokmonov and quickly wondered the same thing. “Rat, give me Claypoole and Mac,” he said.

  Claypoole’s toe caught on something just inside the charred area and he almost fell. “What?” he squawked, and knelt to see what had tripped him. His probing fingers found a hard ridge about a centimeter high and a couple millimeters wide. He brushed at it, clearing ash and dirt away to expose several centimeters of the ridge.

  “Look at this!” He raised his chameleon shield so the others could see his face and kept brushing at the edges of the visible ridge, lengthening the exposed area. By the time Rokmonov and Hyakowa joined him, he could see about thirty centimeters of the ridge. It was uniform in height and slightly arch. He did a quick mental calculation and concluded that if the arc continued it would probably make a circle.

  “Buddha’s blue balls,” Hyakowa said softly when he saw the arc. “How deep does it go?” He dropped to his knees and began digging with his knife along both sides of the ridge.

  “Mac, get over here,” Rokmonov told MacIlargie. “See that? Help Claypoole clear it.”

  “Mohammed’s cocked eye,” MacIlargie whispered when he saw the metallic ridge. He dropped and began clearing it in the opposite direction from Claypoole.

  “It goes down about ten centimeters on the inside of the arc,” Hyakowa said. “It seems to be the side of a dish.” He dug away from the ridge.

  “Rabbit, give me a fire team,” Rokmonov said.

  Sergeant Ratliff sent his third fire team.

  “See this?” Rokmonov said when Corporal Dean and his men joined him. Dean whistled. “See if you can find more of it. One of you dig in the middle.” Rokmonov indicated the narrow trench Hyakowa was digging from the ridge toward the center of the charred area.

  “Izzy, dig here,” Dean told Lance Corporal Godenov when he and his men were near the middle of the charred area.

  “Right.” Godenov began digging with his knife.

  Dean and Quick went to the opposite side and probed with their toes until they found the ridge, then started clearing.

  The digging soon revealed that the ridge did indeed make a circle, and the circle was the lip of a dish about four and a half meters in diameter. And MacIlargie made another discovery.

  “I found a cable!”

  “The rest of you keep clearing,” Rokmonov said. He signaled Hyakowa to come with him.

  The top end of the cable Godenov found was fused from the heat of the plasma ball that had destroyed the rail gun. The bottom end went through the metal dish under the dirt.

  “Hammer has an uncomfortable feeling,” Ratliff reported on the command circuit.

  Rokmonov considered for a few seconds, then spoke into the all-hands circuit, “Let’s check out the other one, then head in. Everybody, look alive, there are probably Skinks nearby.”

  The Grandar Bay’s laser had been even more destructive. More than half of the dirt from the “dish” was gone, which clearly was a constructed platform for the rail gun. Unlike the platform hit by the Dragon’s plasma gun, this one was depressed from the surrounding ground far enough to expose the edge of a retracted lid that would slide into place when the rail gun was belowground. Rokmonov understood why none of the patrols in the area had ever found one.

  Now that he knew how to locate and kill the rail guns that had grounded his aircraft and kept his armor out of action, Brigadier Sturgeon put his staff to work drawing up new operational plans. He even brought Archbishop General Lambsblood into the planning—the Army of the Lord would have a major role to play in the upcoming offensive.

  Lambsblood was elated. De Tomas had been right; the business with Sturgeon was clearing up, and command of his army returning to him! He shuddered when he recalled what he had seen in the lowest level of Wayvelsberg. Perhaps he wouldn’t need Dominic de Tomas as a friend in the future. De Tomas was a powerful man, a dangerous man. After the demons who now infested the countryside were banished back to the hell from whence they came, perhaps something could be done about—

  No, now was not the time to think such thoughts. The Collegium had eyes and ears in too many places. Sometimes, Lambsblood thought de Tomas could read thoughts.

  The commander of the Army of the Lord was given an extensive briefing on the latest findings. He had never heard of rail guns, but was thoroughly impressed by the presentation on the history of the weapon he was given by the Confederation Navy. The daring displayed by the Marines in locating rail guns and the inventiveness and close cooperation displayed by them and the Confederation Navy in destroying three of them made him wonder if they had known about the rail guns earlier and weren’t admitting as much. He grew eager as Brigadier Sturgeon outlined the plan of operation.

  In his excitement about being the main thrust, he failed to wonder why Sturgeon had relegated his own forces to such a minor, supporting role. Nor did it occur to Lambsblood that the supposedly complete briefing he was given was in fact somewhat less than fully complete.

  Phase one of Operation Exorcism was designed to reduce the number of rail guns in the Skink arsenal. The Army of the Lord sent two battalions of remotely controlled Gabriel armored fighting vehicles into the wetlands where the demons were concentrated. During the one day it took for the rail guns of the demons to consume all of them, the Gabriels and the Grandar Bay killed at least 150 of the rail guns. Phase one was declared over on the second day, when not a single rail gun made its presence known.

  The Great Master sat on his commander’s throne, his face expressionless. No females hovered in the background, ready to serve steaming beverages to the assembled Over Masters and mo
re senior of the Senior Masters. No cup or graceful vase with delicate flowers sat on the low table by his side—not even the low table was there, nor were there tables between the kneeling Over Masters and more senior of the Senior Masters who knelt in their rows before the Great Master. The Great Master wore his battle armor once more. The battle sword that had drunk blood in so many battles lay across his knees, one hand wrapped tight around its hilt.

  The Over Master in command of the defenses stood in front of the Great Master, not facing him, but with his right side to the Great Master. He held his battle sword, both hands on its hilt, its point on the matting between his feet. His subordinate, the Senior Master in command of the greater rail guns, knelt with his back to the Great Master. Both of them were clad only in loincloths.

  “The Earthmen have done us a great damage!” the Great Master said, his voice a breaking storm. “Greater damage than when they raided one of our supply depots. They did it because no one saw the damage being done and kept our greater rail guns hidden, where they would not be destroyed. This is unpardonable dereliction! There is only one course that may be taken.”

  The Great Master’s slitted eyes flicked to the Over Master in command of defense, flicked to his sword, flicked to the Senior Master in command of the greater rail guns. The Over Master in command of defense bowed deeply, raised his sword above his head, and brought it down on the extended neck of the Senior Master in command of the greater rail guns. The Senior Master fell forward onto the matting, his spine cleaved almost all the way through. Blood gushed from the wound, and the Senior Master’s mouth opened and closed as though he tried to speak. The Over Master raised his sword and brought it down again. His aim was true, the head rolled clear. The Senior Master’s body spasmed once, twice, lay still. More blood flowed.