Advance to Contact (Warp Marine Corps Book 3)

by C. J. Carella

  Moving hurt like a mother, but lying down was just begging for a monster to show up and take a chomp out of his ass. Russell sat up with some effort. He was a good ten meters from his fighting hole, lying down on the charred remains of some local brush. His imp ran a diagnostics report: one broken rib, three sprained ones, major whiplash on his neck. Painkillers were already being pumped in, turning paralyzing agony into something that could be ignored, if one was tough enough. Russell was many things, but he’d never been accused of being frail.

  Gonzo and Grampa’s carats were yellow. Hurt but alive, and still in their holes because they’d remembered to duck down. Besides D’Onofrio, there were several other dead grunts, and a bunch had been hurt badly enough to be out of the fight. What a cluster-fuck.

  Careful not to fuck up his neck even worse, he took a gander down the hill just in time to see the Skipper and the rest of the headquarters element walk up to the last dino and pump it full of plasma.

  The T-Rex that had chomped down on D’Onofrio wasn’t dead yet, but its force field had finally given up the ghost when its buddy exploded behind it. The Skipper and his command team were carefully shooting it at point-blank range with their Iwos, aiming away from its midsection and the power plant inside it. It was like some fucked-up dance: the dino lunged at Lieutenant Hansen, who leaped out of the way while the others kept firing. The critter went for Captain Fromm next, moving so fast he couldn’t dodge in time. Only thing that saved him was his Iwo; he held it sideways just in time to keep the robot monster’s jaws from fully closing around him for the second it took him to roll out. A moment later, the rifle snapped in two and the mouth came closed with a slam even Russell’s damaged ears heard clearly. The Skipper picked himself up, grabbed someone’s Iwo and went back to work. Guy had balls.

  The officers and noncoms had ordered everyone else to check fire while they carved the robot T-Rex like a Thanksgiving turkey with close-in bursts. Multiple 4mm hits cut through its tail, arms and finally its neck, leaving behind a flopping torso and a chattering head. That would have to do until they could drag everyone off and light it up for good, or maybe just leave it there.

  It was over.

  “Until the next level,” Russell told himself as he lay back down and waited for a corpsman to come find him. “Wonder what that boss is going to be like.”

  This was going to turn him off from gaming forever. If he survived this, he might end up having to read for fun.

  * * *

  “They broke my dinosaurs!” the Priestess said with a pout. “I loved those dinosaurs.”

  “It happens, my love,” the Hierophant told her. “If the Seeker in his negligence hadn’t allowed the humans to bring along real weapons, things would have been different, of course.”

  “In all fairness, Great One, the Lhan Arkh’s weapons were fully functional,” the Seeker answered, via audio only. He still hadn’t shown his face in public, Heather noted. Either he wasn’t welcome among his kind, or he was too paranoid to trust even one of his many bodies to be out and about. “We would have had to make some provisions for the humans to be able to defend themselves.”

  “True, I suppose,” the Priestess conceded. “Still, after all the work we put in building our pet monsters and then riding them on their great hunt, we should have produced a higher body count. We only slew seven humans.”

  “On the other hand, the Great Serpents reaped a great slaughter among the Lhan Arkh,” the Hierophant said with a smug smile. He’d been in charge of that attack. “Over half of them were killed before they stopped their tormentors.”

  Heather shuddered, remembering the Lampreys’ fate. The prehistoric beasts that had attacked them looked like a combination of centipede and King Cobra, with the addition of a highly corrosive acid spit that flew right through force fields and could turn an adult Lamprey into a frothing semi-liquid blob in under a minute. Two of the six monsters had survived to make it into the aliens’ lines, where they’d wreaked a terrifying slaughter. Even worse, when they were finally destroyed their power plants had exploded, killing as many Lhan Arkh troopers as their fangs and acid attacks, if not more. Only blind luck had spared Peter’s Marines from a similar fate.

  “Well, that will be enough for today’s festivities,” the Hierophant announced. “Both warrior parties can rest until tomorrow, when they will meet for a final battle. Since the Lhan Arkh are fewer in number, they will hold a defensive position which the Americans will have to seize.”

  “Can we send some more ammunition and consumables to our troops?” Secretary Goftalu asked.

  The Priestess shook her head. “I think under the circumstances, your Marines will have to make do with what they brought.”

  “It’s the least they deserve for cheating in the first place,” the Hierophant said.

  Heather gritted her teeth. The Lampreys had spent a great deal of their own ordnance – they were out of missiles, for one – but their lasers would probably not run out of power before the human soldiers shot themselves dry.

  Nothing she could do about that, of course.

  “What else have you found?” the Seeker asked her via their private channel. “Note that I have once again deflected the Hierophant’s wrath from your folk. I expect something in return.”

  “The Scholar intends to kill you,” Heather told him. Time to give him just enough information to string him along a while longer. “You, the Priestess and a handful of other targets.” She sent him the entire hit list.

  “Kill me? All of me?” the Snowflake asked, total shock and incredulity in his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “How dare him? In eighty thousand years, no Core Persona has died in Xanadu. Even the Nameless One’s life was spared. We condemned it eternal slavery instead. This… this is monstrous!”

  Heather stayed quiet. If the Snowflake expected sympathy from her, he would be disappointed.

  “He will pay for this,” the Seeker said, regaining his composure with some effort. “I noticed that the Hierophant is not included in the kill list.”

  “Apparently the Scholar thinks that without your faction around, he can influence your leader as he sees fit.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “He wants to extend the Tah-Leen’s influence beyond Xanadu. To recreate your old empire, basically.”

  “That is idiotic. We cannot endure warp space. We are doomed to remain here forever. He knows that.”

  “Is that right?” Heather asked in feigned surprise. No sense letting her ‘partner’ know she was already aware of the Tah-Leen’s great shame.

  “Never mind that. How does the Scholar plan to circumvent our imprisonment?”

  “He believes that the Tah-Leen can use client races to conquer the known galaxy in your name, and send you billions of slaves as tribute, slaves you can play with as you see fit. He thinks large-scale games are just what your species need to avoid terminal boredom.”

  “Oh.” The Seeker was deep in thought for several seconds. “You know, that isn’t such a bad idea. We have been forced to be circumspect when indulging in our proclivities for far too long. There really wasn’t much choice, of course. Anger enough sophonts and we might end up facing a united front, one strong enough to inconvenience us. Or the Starfarers might stop using Xanadu as a transit point, which would condemn us to misery and isolation. But if Xanadu becomes the capital of an empire, the possibilities are… interesting.”

  The thought of exposing billions, perhaps trillions of sapient beings to the tender mercies of the Snowflakes was enough to nauseate Heather. She barely managed to keep her emotions hidden from the alien spy.

  “Once I deal with that simpering fool, perhaps I will implement his plans myself,” the Seeker said. “Maybe you Americans can be our Janissaries. That, in case you didn’t know, is a historical term for…”

  “Slave soldiers,” Heather said. “Yes, I am aware of it.”

  “It is a better fate than what would await everyone else,” the
Snowflake said. “You would be well-advised to consider such an offer carefully. Of course, the easiest path would be to co-opt the Galactic Alliance instead. We could turn the Imperium into the hegemon of the known galaxy by providing it with a few technological trinkets, not enough to threaten us here but plenty to conquer the other primitives of this degenerate age.”

  Slave soldiers or the first victims on the sacrificial altar, Heather thought. Talk about poor choices.

  “We shall see,” the Seeker concluded. “But first, I need you to discover how the Scholar intends to murder us.”

  “Still working on it,” Heather lied. “That’s the Scholar’s topmost secret, and he’s been very careful about keeping it that way.”

  In fact, Heather would have found it impossible to learn the alien’s secret, if she hadn’t cheated via the tachyon device to reach Lisbeth, who’d promptly spilled the beans. That was something she intended to keep to herself, of course.

  “You would be well-advised to hurry, Heather McClintock. Your time is running out fast.”

  The line went dead.

  One day, maybe two, and I’ll have to make my move.

  A few experimental tries had demonstrated that she could use the tachyon device to access some Tah-Leen systems with none being the wiser. Secure networks would be a tougher nut to crack, though. She wanted to bide her time and study the enemy before making any decisive moves.

  Like the Seeker had said, however, time was almost up.

  Eleven

  “Everyone’s accounted for, sir,” Lieutenant Hansen reported. “Seven KIA, eight wounded badly enough to be out of it for the duration, and a bunch of hurt people who’ll be ready for action tomorrow.”

  “All right. Can we move the wounded?”

  “Yes, sir. The corpsmen have them patched up well enough for that.”

  “Good.” Fromm spared a last look at the robotic pieces near the bottom of the hill, still trying to climb towards them.

  “We can move everyone to the reverse slope and finish it off,” Lieutenant Hansen suggested. “Without its shields, two or three LMLs might do the job.”

  “We’re almost out of armor-piercing missiles,” Fromm said. “And we’re supposed to tackle the Lampreys tomorrow. We’ll need all the ordnance we have. More than what we’ve got, as a matter of fact.”

  “The Combat Nest was also attacked, though,” Sergeant Goldberg said.

  “Yes, and from what General Gage tells me, they took more casualties we did. Question is whether or not their supply problem is as bad as ours.”

  Fromm moved on to the next set of problems. The wounded were getting the best care the four Navy corpsmen with the company could provide, which unfortunately wasn’t much. Nano-meds would close most wounds and repair broken bones, but several Marines were missing limbs, mostly torn off by when the robotic dinosaurs’ power plants blew up. Fixing those would require full medical facilities, which were a few klicks away, aboard the Brunhild – and might as well be on Sol System for all the good they did to them here. He could sympathize, having had to endure the loss of three of his own appendages after the battle of Kirosha without access to modern medicine.

  Nothing could be worse than Kirosha. He’d often told himself that, whenever things seemed desperate. This situation was giving the siege a run for its money, though. And what made it worse was the sheer pointlessness of it. At least the Kirosha and even the Lampreys had reasons to do what they did. They fought for survival, or to protect their way of life. Things Fromm could understand, even as he did what he could to stop them. The Snowflakes, on the other hand… They were just bored.

  A virtual reality program would be just as entertaining as all of this, except for the knowledge that real living beings were suffering and dying for their entertainment. That was what the Tah-Leen were after: the thrill rapists or serial killers got from having absolute power over their victims.

  Nobody like that should be allowed to live.

  But first they had to survive. After checking on the wounded, Fromm turned to his next problem.

  “We’re running low on ammo, sir,” Gunnery Sergeant Freito said. “We have one missile apiece for the LMLs, half PAPs, half HE. Half a magazine per Iwo, and that is if we only count the remaining active personnel. Less than that for 15 and 20 mike-mike. A little better on mortars, but not much. The Hellcats done shot themselves dry, all of them.”

  Fromm nodded. It had been necessary: stopping the robots had taken everything they’d been able to throw at them. You did what had to in order to win a fight. He’d heard of units that had been overrun because they’d tried to conserve their ammo in the middle of combat. Fromm had been willing to be sparing whenever possible, but when it came down to it, it was far better to go all-out and worry about the next fight later. Of course, the next fight was just about to begin. Time to start worrying.

  “How about power packs?”

  “Area force fields, good for one firefight, maybe. Depends on the quantity and quality of the op-force’s incoming, sir. When those dinos went up, they drained half of our inventory, just about. Besides that, we’ve got enough juice to run our combat suits for sixty hours of sustained operations, maybe one hundred if we just walk slow with our shields down.”

  That was a little better than he’d feared, but not exactly great. They would run out of bullets long before they ran out of force fields and powered armor.

  “All right,” he said after he considered the situation for a few moments. “We’re going to redistribute the ammo among platoon and squad leaders. The rest of us will have to make do with field expedients.”

  “And what might those be, sir?”

  * * *

  “This is a goddamn joke,” Gonzo said for the twentieth time since they’d gotten their new orders.

  “What’s the matter, Gonzo? Afraid you’ll get some ET juice all over your armor?”

  “Fuck you, man,” his buddy said as he looked at the improvised spear he’d just finished making.

  They’d all had to surrender their weapons and ammo; only the noncoms would get to carry guns until they got resupplied, whenever that happened. Instead of their Iwos, the rest of them had been ordered to make spears for themselves. They were going medieval, in other words.

  He checked his own handiwork after standing up and stretching a little. His nanomeds had fixed his ribs, but he still felt them. A little pain wouldn’t stop him from using his Mark One Pig-sticker, though. Russell liked to carry at least two knives with him, plus his standard-issue Ka-Bar. The combat knife had a monomolecular collapsed-diamond edge and high-resiliency composite blade. As it turned out, it made a pretty nice spearhead as well. The trees the Tah-Leen had grown or fabricated for their fake forest provided good material for the six-foot-long shafts.

  Russell ran an ungloved hand over the carved finish of his new weapon. A little sealant spray had given it a nice coat of textured varnish that provided a good grip even with his gloves on. Not too bad. He’d always liked shop class during the few days a month he actually went to school, back in the day. And Sergeant Fuller, as it turned out, liked to do woodworking as a hobby. Between the two of them and some imp uploads from a couple grunts who did reenactments for fun, they’d helped outfit the squad.

  Setting the spear aside, Russell hefted his secondary weapon. The entrenching tool design predated First Contact and had gone through the ensuing hundred and sixty years without changing all that much, other than using better alloys to make it a little lighter and a lot tougher, plus a collapsible handle that could extend from twelve to forty-eight inches as needed. At the end of the day, when you had to dig holes, you needed a shovel. You could make instant holes with explosive charges, but even then you wanted to improve them the old fashioned way. And the e-tool made for a pretty good axe when you needed one.

  “Maybe they shouldn’t have stopped issuing bayonets,” Russell mused. “Would have saved us the time to make these.”

  Not too far away, Grampa ran t
hrough a few practice moves with his own spear. It looked like the old guy had done some staff work in the past, and by staff Russell meant using a long stick to bash skulls in, not weenie remfie shit.

  Russell and Gonzo had done bayonet drill during boot camp; the Corps did that to instill the proper Devil Dog attitude into the boots. Funny how it might come in handy here.

  “Been in the gun club for most of my life, and I’ve gotten into hand to hand twice,” Gonzo said. “Other than busting heads on liberty, that is. And both times, the e-tools worked just fine. We’re making these pig-stickers so we don’t feel helpless, but when it comes down to it, we’ll never get close enough to the Lampreys to use them.”

  “They’ve got to be hurting for ammo, too,” Russell said. “They fought their own pack of dinos, or whatever the Lampreys had for dinos, supposedly. Chances are they’re making their own spears over there.”

  “Sucks to be them, then. They don’t wear heavy body armor, right?”

  “Not really. Them fishbowl helmets are tough. Won’t be able to crack them open, so don’t bother trying. They’ve got vests that can catch light shrapnel, but a spear or e-tool should punch through them. Or go for the spot right below the vests, or the arm and leg joints; lots of blood vessels there. They mostly rely on their force fields. Better than ours, as usual. But energy shields don’t mean shit against a spear.”

  “Okay, so maybe having a spear’s better than holding our dicks in our hands,” Gonzo admitted before turning to Grampa. “Kinda takes you back, doesn’t it?”

  The old bastard laughed. “Spears were a little before my time. Even bayonets. Our M4s didn’t have them, or at least they didn’t issue us any. And we could have used them a couple times.” The good humor left his face as he remembered something nasty. “Maybe for the best. It was ugly enough without them.”