“Thirty-fourth FIST will be isolated.”
“FISTs are accustomed to fighting alone, unsupported. Let’s do this thing.”
The two commanders wished each other good hunting, and glasses clinked again.
“High speed on a bad road,” was what the Marines called their method of planetfall. They boarded Dragons that were nestled by threes into the bellies of Essays and strapped themselves firmly in. The Essays were forcibly ejected from the starship transports, gathered in formation nearby, then headed planetside. Most planetfalls made by the Essays were relatively sedate affairs—the shuttles went into deteriorating orbits that normally spiraled them around a world three times from the top of the atmosphere to touchdown. Not when they landed Marines, though. With Marines aboard, the Essays aimed almost straight down and kicked in the afterburners. The initial forces vibrated the Essays and their embarked Marines wildly. As the atmosphere thickened, the vibrations turned to shaking, then rattling, and finally rolls so violent it felt like the Essays would tumble and crash. Anyone who had not been firmly strapped in returned to orbit with the Essay—and hoped he lived long enough to reach the starship’s hospital.
Essays carrying Marines took not much longer to go from the top of the atmosphere to the surface than the same trip took a meteorite. This was deliberate, done to reduce the time of entry and the exposure time to planet-based defenses. Since Marines made planetfall via “high speed on a bad road” when making planetfall on any world, no matter how friendly, many Marines suspected the real reason was to make the trip so unpleasant they would be in a killing mood when they got where they were going. Whatever the real reason, when it seemed that a catastrophic deceleration encounter with the surface was inevitable, the Essays leveled off and extended stubby wings and their flight paths became speed-eating spirals. When the Essays’ speed dropped enough, drogue chutes popped out of their rears to further slow them. At the end of the rough ride, the Essays set gently down—usually at sea, over the horizon from the nearest landmass.
The science and technology expedition that had investigated Society 362 a dozen years earlier nicknamed it “Quagmire” for good reason. It had no dry ground; it was covered in a tremendous thickness of mud. The Marines of 34th FIST who made planetfall on Society 362 didn’t come down on an oceanic surface—Quagmire didn’t have any oceans since it was too wet for an ocean basin to form and hold. Every time one began to develop, the sides collapsed and filled it in. There were rivers all over the planet. They ran into other rivers and into lakes that grew into temporary ocean basins. The only variations in the weather forecast anywhere on the planet were how low the overcast was and how heavy the rain was coming down.
High speed on a bad road to get here? the commander reflected. The Marines of 34th FIST would truly be ready to spill blood.
When decoys sent planetward failed to draw fire, the landing force was launched. The Essays touched down twenty kilometers from the area where the Skink shuttles had launched and returned. The Dragons roared off the Essays and charged through a dripping forest of tall, widely spaced trees held up by spreading buttress roots. Secure in their webbing in the bellies of the Dragons, the Marines couldn’t see what the Dragon crews saw—the damnedest indigenous fauna they’d ever seen. Most of them, large and small, were hexapods. That wasn’t as weird as the fact that none of them had heads! The Dragons were going so fast over the unknown and potentially treacherous landscape that the crews couldn’t spare enough attention to notice the snouts that projected from high in the chests of the hexapods, or the eyestalks that popped up and down on their shoulders. They certainly didn’t notice that the man-size creatures with torsos that reared up above the middle pair of legs carried spears.
The spear-bearing headless centauroids, eaten by curiosity and driven by anger, scampered after the Dragons. They couldn’t scamper and clamber nearly as fast as the Dragons rushed, but they never had to stop and back up and go around an obstruction. They dropped behind, but even so, they reached the island of the murder-monsters close behind the strange new monsters.
And these new monsters were the strangest of all the monsters they’d seen. Or not seen, but that was a question for the shaman.
The hunters hunkered in the deep shadows beneath the roots of the forest giants, hid behind boles in the crooks of mid-size trees and watched a more amazing battle than any of them could ever have imagined. In the middle of the great island in the great river where they had established their base, the murderous monsters who enslaved and killed so many of the people lay or crouched behind the very hard nests that moved. They sprayed their evil acid at the near end of the island. The hunters watched the near end of the island very closely. The monsters they saw there—they were invisible, but rainwater sluiced over otherwise unseen forms—threw balls of lightning at the monsters that sprayed acid! Monsters they couldn’t see except for the holes they made in the rain throwing balls of lightning. It was incredible, but were these monsters less believable than the monsters who murdered people and worked them to death? Or less believable than the other monsters who were there half a lifetime ago, who left behind so many strange and wonderful objects before departing for reasons knowable only to them?
“We live in interesting times,” one of the hunters said. He was just giving voice to what was on the minds of many of them. Mature hunters were chilled by the thought. The younger hunters were excited by it.
The battle between the evil monsters who sprayed flesh-eating acid and the invisible monsters who threw balls of lightning was fascinating. Especially when one of the murder-monsters was struck by a lightning ball—it vanished into a larger ball of lightning! The hunters watched spellbound. They didn’t know anything about the monsters they couldn’t see, but they hoped they’d win this battle since they hated the murder-monsters.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
Kilo Company was stuck on the downstream end of the four-kilometer-long island. The constant rain was leaching the acid retardant from their chameleons—which they discovered when three of them went down with acid wounds—so they couldn’t just get on line and move through the Skink positions. And the Skinks were firing from behind massive vehicles, and so didn’t have to expose themselves to fire. The Marines had put concentrated fire on the vehicles in an attempt to slag or even melt them. But the vehicles were too big, too hard, and the rain kept dissipating the heat anyway.
Neither were the Dragons much help for flanking maneuvers. The flora on the sides of the river was too dense for them to get through without burning their way, and too wet to burn without plasma fire. The Dragons had attempted to swim the river itself to flank the Skink positions, but the Skinks had some bigger acid shooters that could reach across the river. Concentrated fire from the acid shooters had eaten through the armor of one Dragon and sent it to the bottom. Two others were damaged.
Company M sat in its Dragons half a klick downriver, waiting for orders. It couldn’t come up to help Kilo Company because there wasn’t enough room on the end of the island. Company L was dismounted and advancing through the growth fifty meters deep from the left bank of the river, but the foliage was thick and tangled, and the ground slippery and soft. The going was hard, and it would be a while before they got to a position to pour flanking fire on the Skinks.
Corporal Claypoole put his right foot on yet another knee-high buttress root and stepped up. The bark under his boot sloughed off and he yelped as his foot slid and his knee turned in a way it wasn’t supposed to. He yelped louder when the twisted knee slammed against the root.
He dropped his blaster and swore, “Buddha’s sweaty balls!” He massaged the injured joint with both hands.
“More like Christ on a crutch,” Lance Corporal MacIlargie said. “I think you just got an idiot stripe. You’re bleeding.”
MacIlargie sloshed close and picked up the dropped blaster. “It’s a good thing for you Staff Sergeant Hyakowa didn’t see you drop this,” he said. “Or I’d be th
e new fire team leader and you’d be following my orders.”
Claypoole snarled and snatched the blaster back. “I’m fire team leader, Boot,” he said as he stood erect and lifted his injured leg over the root. He flinched as he put his weight on the leg, but the knee held as he lifted his left leg over. “Don’t you ever forget that.”
“Sure thing,” MacIlargie said. He wished Claypoole could see his grin behind the chameleon screen.
“Close it up, second squad,” Sergeant Linsman said on the squad circuit.
Muttering to himself, Claypoole limped after the rest of the squad, careful not to step on any more roots.
Lance Corporal Schultz, on the point, didn’t make any missteps. He’d never before been in a forest quite like this one, but he’d been in enough rain forests that he didn’t find it a totally alien environment. It reminded him more of the swamps of Kingdom than of rain forests. He stepped over roots rather than around them, and put his mass over his lead foot before applying all of his weight to it. He took care to walk on an automatic level; all his senses were directed outward. So far as the Marines knew, all of the Skinks were on the island, pinned down by Kilo Company. But that didn’t mean there weren’t any on the land on this side of the river. He kept himself oriented by listening to the sounds of the battle that raged on the island—the company was too far inland to see the water through the trees.
It was slow going in the forest. Captain Conorado followed between third and first platoons with a truncated command group: himself, Gunnery Sergeant Thatcher, Corporal Escarpo on comm, and a fire controller from the artillery battery. He didn’t think he’d have any use for the artillery controller except as an extra blaster—if the battery had managed to clear enough trees forward of their position to fire, he was sure they’d already be firing in support of Kilo Company. By the sounds of the battle on the island, he judged the command group was nearly parallel to Kilo Company’s position. When Company L advanced far enough that second platoon was slightly to the rear of the Skinks, he’d call a halt and change formation—third platoon would form a defensive arc upstream and inland, with first platoon doing the same from the opposite direction, while second platoon moved closer to the river to fire into the Skinks. Nobody knew whether there were more Skinks somewhere; when Company L joined in the battle, the Marines had to be prepared to fight in all directions.
The battle didn’t seem to favor either side. Fewer of the murderous monsters were turning into lightning from the lightning balls thrown by the invisible monsters, and no more of the invisible monsters were being killed or injured either. The chief hunter left the other hunters where they watched the fight and clambered upstream through the trees. He went in search of a way he and his hunters could tip the tide in favor of the invisible monsters.
At its upstream end, well above the fighting, the island grew close to the far bank and the water ran slowly over a shallow bottom. When he was sure none of the monsters were looking in his direction, the chief hunter slithered into the river and swam to the shallow channel. Once there, hunkered low, he crawled onto the point of the island. There were many, many—the chief hunter’s vocabulary didn’t have words for the things—many things on the island. So many that the fight at the downstream end wasn’t visible through them, and the lightning thrown by the invisible monsters couldn’t get through them. A hunter could lie in ambush here safe from sight and injury. But lying there wasn’t good enough; it was not possible to reach the murder-monsters, to injure or kill them.
The chief hunter moved closer, flitting from one thing to the next until at last he came to where he could extend his primary eyestalks around the corner of a thing and see a murder-monster. It was within the casting range of his spear. A six of spears lay in their quiver on his back. Without conscious thought, one came to his hand. It would be so easy to kill one of the murder-monsters from here. He hefted the spear, then lowered it. No, before he killed a murder-monster, he needed to bring more hunters, enough that they could do serious damage to the murder-monsters and tip the battle in favor of the invisible monsters. He returned to the water by the same route he’d come. A short while later he was back where the other hunters watched the battle.
“Is there any change?” the chief hunter asked.
An older hunter extended his dorsal eyestalks and aimed them at the chief hunter, his primary eyestalks remained fixed on the battle. “None,” he told the chief hunter. “They remain with neither able to gain advantage.”
“We can reach casting distance behind them unseen,” the chief hunter said to all. “Those who want to kill a murder-monster, join me.” Without waiting for replies, he turned about and clambered back upstream to where he would enter the flowing water.
Each of the hunters had lost at least one family member or close friend to the murder-monsters; some had lost many. All wanted vengeance. None remained behind to watch the battle from safety.
Captain Conorado couldn’t fully trust his UPUD to tell him where he was, relative to the Skink positions on the island, since the Grandar Bay hadn’t strung a complete string-of-pearls. He judged the company’s position as much by the sound of the fighting as by the UPUD. When the UPUD’s display and his ears agreed that second platoon was beyond Kilo Company, he called a halt.
“Take new positions,” he ordered.
The platoon commanders and platoon sergeants of first and third platoons began directing their squad leaders to get their Marines into position. They hadn’t rehearsed the maneuver, but everyone knew where he was supposed to be relative to the Marines on either side.
Conorado watched what movement he could see on his UPUD, and listened to the orders given over the command circuit. When first and third platoons were in position, he ordered, “Second platoon, advance to the river.”
Before second platoon reached the bank, the forest a half kilometer upstream erupted with the impact of a barrage of missile impacts.
“Get Battalion, ask if that was ours!” Conorado ordered Escarpo. “Second platoon, continue to the river.”
Before either could obey the orders, the roar of landing shuttles sounded from the area of the missile impacts.
When second platoon reached the river, they saw the Skinks rapidly withdrawing from the island.
The hunters were paddling across the river, completely submerged except for their dorsal eyestalks and snorkeled nostrils, when the shock waves from the explosions slammed through the water and violently buffeted them. As one, they stopped, paddling enough to keep from being swept downstream. Most of them extended primary eyestalks to look at the chief hunter for guidance—none had ever experienced a buffeting like that.
The chief hunter was aware that the other hunters watched him, waiting for instructions, but he paid them no attention for the moment. He had no more idea than they did what caused the monstrous explosion. Before he could tell them whether to continue or retreat, he needed to know whether it was a threat. Maybe the murder-monsters could tell him what they were doing? He aimed his dorsal eyestalks beyond the middle of the island, toward where the murder-monsters battled the invisible monsters. He was too low, there were too many things in the way, he couldn’t see to where they were. Then new vibrations came to him, conducted from the air through the water. He rolled to one side and raised himself to expose a tympanum. A roaring sound grew, a roaring he had heard before—the strange nests that took the murder-monsters to beyond the sky! He rolled back and lifted enough to aim his primary eyestalks in the direction the sound came from. Yes, he saw several flying nests rapidly descending toward the forest upstream and inland from the top of the island. Were more murder-monsters coming?
He looked back at the island and saw the murder-monsters racing toward its end; some were almost at it. The flying nests must be coming to take them beyond the sky! This could be the only chance the hunters had for vengeance. He signaled the hunters and swam rapidly toward the shallow channel. They could reach it before all the murder-monsters crossed it.
>
“Third platoon, the Skinks are withdrawing. Move upstream on line. Fast! Cut them off,” Captain Conorado ordered as soon as second platoon reported the Skinks’ retreat. “Try to cut them off.” He turned to Corporal Escarpo. “Report to Battalion, the Skinks are withdrawing.” Escarpo had already relayed a message from Battalion—the missiles that erupted in the forest were not theirs. The Skinks had a ship up there, so it had to be the smaller one that had vanished while the Grandar Bay was fighting the Crowe-type ship. The missiles had to have been fired by it to clear a landing zone for the shuttles he heard coming down. “Second platoon, fire on them. First platoon, catch up with third platoon.”
“You heard the man,” Lieutenant Rokmonov ordered. “Let’s cut them off. Move, move, MOVE!”
Third platoon scrambled, slipping and sliding over roots and through mud. First squad struggled to catch up with second squad and get on line with it. They batted wet foliage out of their way instead of going around or ducking under. This was not the time for stealth.
Lance Corporal Schultz was the first to spot the Skinks. He threw his blaster into his shoulder to fire at one, but didn’t shoot. “What the . . . ?”
The first of the murder-monsters was already across the shallow channel when the hunters reached the top of the island, and the last were approaching it. The chief hunter pointed, and the hunters surged onto the tip of the island. Their mid and hind limbs powered them forward into the trailing monsters, and they crashed against their smaller foes and bowled them over. Their spears stabbed into the bodies of the monsters, and the monsters screamed in agony as death rattled through them. The monsters were so intent on flight and so surprised by the attack of their former slaves that none of them fought back immediately. That delay cost them their lives.
The chief hunter shrilled a command, and the hunters raced into the shallows to fall on the fleeing murder-monsters from behind.
Starfist: Kingdom's Fury Page 30
