by Ian Douglas
“They could have come home.”
“Maybe not. Not if their leaders had burned the bridges behind them when they boarded ship at Starport. People in positions of leadership, of power, are the biggest rationalizers of all. They’ll believe anything—or make others believe it—if it helps them keep their power.”
The briefing download Joy had mentioned had included a psychological profile of the Salvationists, based on their Book of Salvation and some of their other writings. Religio-social mania, the briefing called it, with the warning that even the rebels, the Salvationists we’d been helping and who had helped us—could not be trusted. Our operational orders were to establish contact with human colonists where they initiated it, but to avoid them otherwise. The key problem seemed to be that the Salvationists thought that anyone who’d taken nanobots or other high-tech medical gadgets into their bodies were no longer human.
Working with the demons of hell, the Qesh, was one thing. Apparently, working with humans who were no longer “pure” in Salvationist eyes was quite something else.
“I just want to know if we’re going to have to fight both of them,” Joy said, “the Qesh and the Salvationists.”
“Maybe it won’t come to that,” I said, “if the Qesh back down.”
“Maybe,” she replied. She shook her head. “You have it easy, Doc.”
“How’s that?”
“You just have to heal them. The Marines have to sort them out.”
“Who was it who said, ‘Kill them all, let God sort them out’?”
“A religious fanatic,” Joy said, “like the damned Salvationists.”
Hours later, we decelerated into battlespace to engage the predarian fleet.
Chapter Twenty-Two
We hit them good going in.
We didn’t learn the whole story until later, of course. Even with all of the optical scanners and AI integration, with viewalls and cerebral downloads and in-head displays and all the rest of the technologies that let humans link in to the flood of data moving around them, the ancient darkness we call the fog of war still guaranteed that we would see only a tiny fraction of what was going on. The advanced AIs managing the battle, Admiral Talbot and his command staff and tactical planners . . . maybe they knew what was going on.
But at the time, they didn’t bother telling us.
Admiral Talbot, it turned out, had pulled a sneaky, a tactical coup with which to open the battle.
First of all, he’d divided the fleet. All of the downloads on fleet tactics declare that you should never do such a thing, but he did it.
A diversionary force, designated Force Glacier, continued decelerating in-system, falling past the orbit of Niffelheim and heading directly toward Bloodworld and the Qesh fleet, continuing to broadcast demands to parlay across a range of EM frequencies known to be used by the enemy. That diversionary squadron consisted of eight destroyers and frigates, plus the two largest warships we had, the two system monitors, Sentinel and Europa. These were massive bombardment ships grown out of a pair of small planetoids, semi-mobile fortresses originally launched to keep watch over the dark outer marches of the Sol System. Only recently, however, they’d been uprated with Plottel initiators that turned them into capital ships, which let them keep up with the rest of the fleet. Talbot had sent both of them in manned by skeleton crews, piloted by artificial intelligences copied and downloaded from the heart of the Primary Command AIs.
The balance of the fleet, however, our main force consisting of 266 ships, had re-engaged their Alcubierre Drives and, so far as the Qesh were concerned, disappeared.
The Jackers knew we were there, of course. They must have picked up our drive signatures as soon as we emerged from Alcubierre Drive the first time. But we’d emerged at more than three astronomical units out—and it took light, and the EM signatures of our drives—nearly half an hour to crawl in-system to their receivers. After they picked up our emergence from Alcubierre Drive, some twenty-five minutes after we’d actually done so, they would have been focused on that one small patch of sky where the fleet had first dropped into normal space.
What they didn’t know, what they couldn’t know, is that Talbot had taken the main body in a long, wide swing around the Gliese 581 system, re-emerging into normal space on the far side of the star. It was a dangerous maneuver, since by that time we were well inside the accepted safe limits for Alcubierre travel in the vicinity of something as massive as a star. Gliese 581 was a midget, so far as stars were concerned, with a hair more than three tenths the mass of Sol, but it was enough to gravitationally warp local space, making faster-than-light Alcubierre travel risky at best.
Four of our ships failed to emerge on the far side of the star from Bloodworld—a Brazilian heavy cruiser, the Mato Grosso, the French planetary bombardment vessel Duquesne, and the destroyers Murakumo and Boyevoy. The rest dropped into normal space with the Bloodstar between us and Bloodworld, accelerating hard, while a scattering of battlespace drones kept us apprised of unfolding events close to Bloodworld.
For the record, the Qesh opened fire first, sending volleys of relativistic projectiles streaking through our diversionary squadron while they were still minutes out, turning the destroyer Rochambeau and the frigate Gravina into dazzlingly brilliant minor suns as the rounds vaporized first one, then the other, in flaring bursts of kinetic energy. Sentinel took a grazing hit as well, but kept coming in.
At the moment the Rochambeau exploded, the organic crews of both monitors had jettisoned in lifepods; the Commonwealth assault at the Battle of Gliese 581 was initiated by computer AIs.
With the Europa trailing the Sentinel by 10,000 kilometers, the pair swung around Bloodworld and into the midst of the waiting Qesh war fleet. From our electronic vantage point, in Clymer’s squad bay, it appeared that the swarm of red icons representing the enemy ships were closing in around the Sentinel, surrounding her, concentrating fire against her. Both monitors had been constructed in and on kilometer-wide planetoids, and were mostly solid lumps of nickel iron bristling with particle beam turrets and missile launchers. It takes a long time in combat—whole minutes—to smash and burn through that much native shielding.
Sentinel fought back, giving a good impression of a manned ship attempting to maneuver and fight against desperate odds. A Qesh Leviathan was badly damaged and one Titan was destroyed before Sentinel began to come apart in tumbling, semimolten chunks.
Europa entered the hornet’s nest of Qesh fire an instant later. By now almost all of the Qesh warfleet’s attention was focused on the two monitors.
And that was the second part of Talbot’s tactical one-two punch. The largest, most massive vessels in the Earth Commonwealth’s fleet were, from the Jacker perspective, clearly the most dangerous, the biggest, most serious threats. All of their attention was, for a critical few moments, devoted to eliminating those two vessels.
And that’s when the bulk of the Commonwealth fleet arrived, skimming past the star, hurtling through that final fifteen hundredths of an AU into the volume of battlespace around Gliese 581 IV, and slamming the Qesh fleet with kinetic impactors, high-yield nuclear weapons, and particle beams. Both of the monitors were destroyed by then, but the diversion had pulled most of the enemy ships out of position and focused their attention on a relatively small volume of space out beyond Bloodworld’s nightside. Pulses of nuclear light, starcore-hot, flared among the Jacker vessels, and enemy ships began to die.
By that time, however, 1st Battalion was loaded into the Clymer’s compliment of Misty-Ds, strapped in, making the final preparations for trans-atmospheric deployment. We hadn’t seen the close passage of the main body past the mottled red-and-black face of the Bloodstar, hadn’t seen the final approach of the fleet as we came in out of the sun, closing on the Qesh defenders from their rear, our approach masked by the star’s glare. We were receiving tactical feeds, still, through our implants, but those were limited in the amount of data they could provide.
At that point
, I imagine things were pretty confusing, even on the bridge of Admiral Talbot’s flagship, the heavy carrier Spirit of Earth. The battle for Gliese 581 had been joined.
And all the Marines on Clymer and the other troop transports could do was prepare to play their small role in that titanic clash of arms.
“Hey, Gunny!” Private Colby called over the platoon net. “What happens if the fleet gets vaped?”
“Then we have a long walk home,” Hancock replied. “Now shut your fly trap and finish your weapons check.”
I could feel the shudder through the bulkheads as our D/MST-22 dropped into atmosphere and tried not to think about Colby’s question. Talbot was breaking another of those fleet tactical rules besides the one that said not to split your fleet in the face of an enemy force. If you’re going to invade a planet, make sure you’ve secured the space around it first.
Ideally, the combat vessels would have moved in first and destroyed the enemy fleet or put it to rout, and only then would the transports have come in, sent the Marines down to grab the appropriate real estate, and declared victory. Sometimes, though, the real universe doesn’t work the way the tactical download briefings say it should.
In this case, Talbot wanted to grab the low ground.
Ancient military dictum emphasized the high ground. If you have a defensive position on top of a hill, looking down on an enemy who’s forced to charge uphill to reach you, you’ve got a significant tactical advantage. Crécy, Gettysburg, Dushanbe, Noctis Labyrinthus—all places where the infantry grabbed the high ground and held on. In space combat, space itself is seen as the high ground, with planetary defenders trapped at the bottom of a gravity well. The attackers, literally, can drop crowbars on them from orbit, and the defenders can’t do a damned thing about it.
But long-standing military wisdom eventually had to give way to planetary energy weapons and fusion cannons.
Major General William Craig, commander of One MarDiv, had presented the plan to Talbot. Put a Marine force down on Bloodworld large enough to hold a patch of ground against all comers, and have them grow a planetary defense battery. Do it while the fight to dislodge the Qesh is still raging around the planet, and Bloodworld becomes in effect a very large system monitor, one big enough to take out even Jotuns.
It was that part about holding against all comers that was going to be tricky. The issue that Colby had raised was one that probably every marine in the division was wondering about just then. If the Commonwealth fleet got “vaped”—vaporized—those of us on the surface of Bloodworld would be trapped: stuck on a hostile planet with no way off and no way home.
The Misty-D shuddered again, harder this time. I’d already checked both my Mk. 30 and my Browning Five as well as my M-7, and knew I was as ready as I would ever be. The platoon tactical feed was showing a detailed graphic of the planet’s surface ahead and below. We were coming in low above the Twilight Ocean. A chain of volcanoes was erupting to the south; the city of Salvation emerged from solid rock above the black, basaltic cliffs directly ahead.
The area around the city had been smashed moments before by a heavy railgun bombardment by the Ceres and the Juno; Navy trans-atmospheric strike fighters off the carriers Spirit of Earth and Constitution had followed up with low-altitude passes, loosing cluster-D munitions and volleys of laser and missile fire. Our Misty was vectoring in toward the wrecked spaceport, just to the left of the main city.
There were no Qesh Rocs or other heavies that we could see, thank God. Maybe the bombardment had swept them out of the sky.
“Ten seconds, Marines!” Hancock barked. “Stand ready!”
The Misty swooped in, nose going high, and we felt the sudden, hard deceleration as the landing craft bellied down, jacks extended, egress hatches already swinging up and open as the debarkation ramps came down. I was a little surprised to see that it was dark out, the sun having dropped below the eastern horizon. The data feed had been enhanced, and looked like broad daylight. I turned up the illumination in my in-head, and daylight returned.
Hancock was screaming at us. “Go! Go! Go!”
I pounded down the starboard ramp and out onto the ruin of old tarmac. My platoon data feed was throwing graphics up against my vision—identifying buildings and showing a path, picked out in green, toward a city entrance. I took a closer look, then nodded to myself. The entrance was the same one we’d visited before, where we’d found the computer interface and downloaded the goods. Wreckage was strewn everywhere, and the spaceport surface was heavily cratered; some of the pits were twenty meters across and four deep.
We spread out across the ruined tarmac, getting clear of the grounded Misty. The landing craft had been configured for gunship mode, with a couple of turrets on its dorsal hull that were whipping back and forth, seeking targets. As the last Marine came off the cargo deck, the craft lifted into the air once more, drifting clear of the LZ to provide covering fire over the whole area. Fighters howled low overhead as well, Marine A/S-40 Star Raiders off the Spirit of Earth, the Constitution, and the Tarawa, providing close ground support.
Above the fighters, where clear sky peeked through patchy clouds, brilliant pulses of light flared and faded—nuclear detonations strobing among the desperately battling fleets out in space.
I ignored the far larger battle going on overhead. There was nothing I could do about that, and my attention was completely focused on what was going on immediately around me. We were taking fire from the city itself—energy weapons of some sort, firing from turrets or open ports high up among the cliffs from which the city of Salvation grew—and the Marines of Second Platoon, Bravo Company, were going to ground, taking cover behind tangles of wreckage or inside the rims of craters punched into the tarmac.
I couldn’t tell if the fire was coming from Qesh inside the city, or from the city’s human defenders. It hardly mattered. Ten seconds after my boots hit pavement, Sergeant Tomacek yelled “Corpsman!”
It was Lance Corporal Andrews, sprawled on his back in the bottom of a crater. A beam had sliced into his right leg just below the knee, melting armor and severing the limb; I saw it, his foot and lower leg, still encased in armor, the knee-end still smoking and molten, lying a few meters away.
He was shrieking, rolling on the crater floor, hands gripping his right thigh.
“Easy there, Bennie,” I said, linking in for a diagnostic. “Let me see whatcha got.”
In fact, his armor had already done a lot of my work. A guillotine seal had come down just above his ruined knee, amputating the damaged part cleanly while firing a high dose of nananodynes into his carotid, sending them flooding through his system and blocking key nerve bundles. His screaming was probably less from actual pain at this point than it was from realization: the sheer, mind-ripping horror of seeing a piece of yourself burned away.
Sure, we can grow new arms and legs and graft them into place, no problem—assuming you don’t want a better-than-human prosthetic instead—but the more primitive parts of our brain tend to lose it when we take that kind of damage. For the better part of half a million years, almost the entire span of Homo sapiens’ existence, that kind of injury had meant crippling deformity at best, a horrible death by gangrene at worst, assuming you didn’t just bleed out and die on the spot. The reassuring knowledge that we can grow a new leg when we need one hasn’t filtered down and through to the brain stem yet.
His blood pressure was 190 over 110, almost certainly a fear response.
I sent a second jolt of nanobots into Andrews’ brain, programming them to move into his limbic system and, especially, to a tiny lump at the end of his caudate nucleus called the amygdala. It actually looks something like an almond, which is what amygdala means in Greek, and is the center of the fear network that connects key parts of the brain—the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex, especially. The nanobots began dialing down Andrews’ level of fear by damping out some of the chemoelectrical activity within the amygdala, and also began working to interrupt his e
pinephrine response, slowing his breathing and relaxing his blood vessels, which, in turn, would bring his blood pressure down. I also told his suit to treat him for shock, but with an override to keep his diastole below 130.
“Man, Doc . . . what the hell hit me?” Andrews asked.
“Fear,” I told him.
“What the fuck? That’s not in the Corps’ job description!”
“No, it’s part of being human. Don’t sweat it, Bennie. You’re going to be fine.”
I checked his vitals again, then tagged him for medevac. The nano I’d given him ought to hold him until we could get him back to the Clymer. The wound appeared to have been sealed both by the suit’s guillotine valve and by the beam’s cautery effects; no need to peel him open and use skinseal.
“Corpsman! Corpsman front!”
“They’re calling me, Bennie,” I told him. “Gotta run.”
“I’m doing . . . okay, Doc. Thanks.”
“Sure you are. Just hang tight and pretty soon you’ll be asking Ms. Wojo for a date.”
An OR nurse on Clymer’s surgical ward, Lieutenant Andrea Wojowicz was a stunning woman who served as inspiration for a lot of the Marine shipboard bull sessions and shared fantasies. Scuttlebutt had it that she’d provided the personality matrix for a popular ViRSex model, though I tended to believe that that was wishful thinking on the part of some sex-starved Marines.
Bennie Andrews just gave me a thumbs-up. “She’s a class-A babe. Be sure to introduce me to her when I’m awake, Doc.”
“Absolutely.” I was already scrambling out of the crater and getting a line on my next patient. Gunnery Sergeant Roger St. Croix was the senior NCO in Third Platoon. I’d seen him around a lot, but didn’t know him well. It didn’t look like I was going to get a chance to, either; he’d taken a plasma bolt square in the chest.
