Havoc of War (Warp Marine Corps Book 5)

by C. J. Carella

  But first he had a job to do.

  One didn’t move inside warp. It was more like switching frequencies until you got the one you wanted. His Black Eagle shook a bit as it ‘climbed.’ Gus saw new shapes in a multicolor stream, growing closer. There were standard US fighters mixed in with the skeleton ships. And piloting one of those skull-things was someone he recognized.

  “Grinner,” he said. His voice was oddly distorted, and after a moment he realized he sounded just like the monster under his bed. He’d once cared for the former flight commander. She’d saved his life a bunch of times, and he’d deeply regretted betraying her. But that had been before he and Bogey had become one.

  His smile widened, became utterly feral and hungry.

  * * *

  First came an energy blast that caught one of the War Eagles by surprise and shredded it and the pilot inside. Then a single word that echoed through Deborah Genovisi’s mind.

  “Grinner.”

  It was Bingo Chandler, but it wasn’t the same Navy pilot she had known. He’d joined with a Warpling, becoming something else altogether. And the new Bingo wanted nothing more than to make her die.

  The Black Eagle fired again. Deborah’s gunship should be proof against the fighter’s 20-inch cannon, but the twisting beam that struck it cut through its shields and scored a deep gouge on its bone-hull. She was nearly thrown out of her chair by the sudden impact.

  No choice; she twisted around and shot back, or at least her still-human perceptions translated what she did in those terms. The Corpse-Ship fired something much more powerful than a cannon, but several Warplings leaped forward and interposed themselves, absorbing the blast meant for the fighter. They died for their efforts, but her target was unharmed. Gus Chandler grinned maniacally as he shot her again. She could see his expression as clearly as if they were sitting across from each other. That time Deborah managed to dodge away, and never mind that none of those things were possible in the physical realm, where dodging light-speed beams was not an option. Even their enhanced senses didn’t truly see warp space, but something edited for their minds to comprehend.

  “Bingo!” she called out to him. “You have to end this!”

  “You’re supposed to be dead, Grinner.”

  They blasted away at each other, striking with both their minds and their guns system. Around them, dozens of similar dogfights were taking place; Third Fleet’s fighters were doing a little better than Kerensky’s renegades, One on one, they would have wiped out the mutineers, but a horde of Warplings were fighting on the Black Eagles’ side.

  She couldn’t afford to waste time on a single enemy, not when several had crossed over to murder any Imperium citizens who hadn’t managed to escape into makeshift shelters. Trial and error had discovered force field frequencies that could block tachyon waves, but only a small percentage of ground-based generators had been converted, mostly around military facilities. Most of Primus-Two’s billions were exposed, easy prey for Mind-Killer weapons.

  “Gus,” she pleaded.

  “It’s too late, Deborah,” he said; he’d never used her name before. “Point of no return, baby. Way behind me.”

  He was right. She gritted her teeth, fashioned her mind into a weapon, and fired it along with her Corpse-Ship’s eye beams. Three white spears of light tore through half a dozen lesser Warplings and shattered the fighter. Gus had time to feel surprise, and then the Bogeyman that had attached itself to his soul turned on him. She would have liked to think the end was quick, but she’d be lying to herself. It wasn’t quick. It might never be over.

  There was no time for mourning or regrets. Deborah wiped out the rest of the squadron – her old squadron – just as thousands of sacrificial victims flooded warp space. Thousands became millions of souls. They all arrived screaming and were absorbed by the massive shapes waiting on for them. The lesser entities grew stronger as well. They had to put a stop to it before they grew too strong to contain.

  Emergence.

  She arrived on the heels of a Black Eagle, moving at Mach 3 and spreading death in a hundred kilometers radius around it. The pilot was so besotted with slaughter that he didn’t notice her gunship. A single shot scattered the fighter into a spreading cloud of flaming debris.

  “Pour it on!” Colonel Zhang shouted. “We have to stop them before they kill enough – ”

  Reality wavered. The sudden shift, affecting all her senses, almost caused Deborah to fly her gunship into the ground. Her vision swam as impossible colors flashed all around her, colors she could hear, even as her fingers tasted the inside of her flight gloves and alien sounds echoed inside her nostrils.

  Synesthesia? Or something worse?

  A Great One was about to break loose.

  * * *

  “Fuck me,” Lisbeth Zhang growled as she fought to hold on to reality, any reality. Everything had gone crazy around her.

  “That would be highly inappropriate, Christopher Robin,” Atu replied. “I am your teacher, after all. And, to borrow a turn of phrase, I don’t swing that way.”

  “Funny guy,” she told her psychic friend. Her five senses were getting back to normal, which was great, because her favorite Warmetal tunes turned out to taste like shit. Of course, regaining her composure meant she had to deal with the humungous blip showing up much too close to Third Fleet for comfort.

  The mother of all warp apertures had appeared over the defenders of Primus-Two. It was about to disgorge one of the Starless. A big one. And she had a bad feeling she knew exactly which particular NSS was about to poke its head out. If she was right, everybody on Primus, and probably the known galaxy, was about to have a real bad day.

  “Death Heads, prepare for transit on my mark,” she called out. Enough of her half-formed plan leaked through to them to let them know just how crazy dangerous the next stunt was going to be. To their credit, all four of them followed her. They jumped into warp at the same time.

  The universe shifted again. Or maybe it was just her.

  Lisbeth was sitting in an office. The standard-issue furnishings told her it was a military office. It reminded her of a certain Marine major’s office, the jarhead who’d recruited her into the Corps after her fall from grace in the Navy. She glanced at the ‘I-Love-Me’ collection of holo-portraits filling one wall. Yep, it was the exact same office.

  Sitting across the desk was someone else altogether, however.

  “Colonel Zhang,” Doctor Munson said, beaming at her. The obese scholar with the wild shock of white hair shouldn’t be there, or anywhere for that matter, having been consumed by the Warpling who wiped out the Marauders not too long ago. The Warpling who was about to make a triumphant appearance in Primus.

  “The Flayer,” she said, feeling like a two-bit character in a cheap action flick.

  “That would be me,” the monster said, sounding just as pompous as the man whose face it was wearing. “Our last meeting was rudely cut short, to no fault of my own.”

  “Well, you were about to kill everyone in the room. Figured I’d show you the door.”

  “And now I’ve found a bigger door, and replenished myself. I won’t be banished so easily this time.”

  “So what do you want? I’m kinda busy, trying to collapse the warp aperture and all.”

  “I am aware. Which is why I want to offer you a deal, Colonel. One that will benefit you and your entire species.”

  “I’m listening.”

  No choice but to listen, although her invisible friends were nearby, and they were doing something else. She focused all her willpower into hiding them from the Flayer. There was no telling if it was even possible, of course. The Great One was well beyond anything else she’d faced. Sending him back into the Starless Path had been a miracle in itself, and only possible because the monster had been weakened after a few tens of thousands of years trapped in a Kraxan prison.

  “Humanity is an interesting species,” the Warpling said, still using the ‘I’m smarter than you’ Munson t
one that had always grated on Lisbeth. “You have the potential to reach Transcendence faster than most sophonts, which also puts you at high risk for Oblivion. You fear that dealing with my kind endangers you, but I wish to convince you that, to the contrary, we hold the keys to the advancement of your race. We can set you above all other Starfarers.”

  “And in return, what do you want?”

  “Stand down. Let me manifest in all my power into your realm. Allow me to speak directly to your Admiral Givens. I believe I can make a convincing case to her, but she is currently isolated behind those modified shields of yours. With your help, I can get through to her. After that, all Third Fleet needs to do is stand aside and let me do my work.”

  “Kill billions of people.”

  “Aliens.”

  “And then what?”

  “Our hold on the Starless Path will be strengthened. We will need native civilization to serve as mediators for us on this side of the Divide. Once we are entrenched, no vessel will be able to enter our side without our leave. Which in turn means it is you who will decide who can travel between the stars. You will be our satraps on this realm, to rule it as you wish. In a few centuries, you will dominate the galaxy, and will have the resources and knowledge to move on to the next stage of your destiny.”

  “To become one of the Elder Races, you mean.”

  He grinned. “There are many steps. To reach Starfarer status is but one of them. An early one, as a matter of fact; there are more to follow. To an ant, the difference between a toddler and an adult is meaningless, but once you become a toddler, you will realize how far you still have to go.”

  “Won’t the Elders disapprove of your actions? You did destroy an entire ecosystem and messed up two others.”

  “We are not Starfarers. The rules binding you do not apply to us.”

  “But you aren’t Elders, either.”

  The Warpling continued smiling but said nothing.

  “You, know, Flayer, I have the feeling that you are telling me the truth, but not all of it. Just enough to convince me to play along.”

  “Maybe there are things that an ant or a even toddler wouldn’t understand.”

  “And what if I refuse your deal?”

  “At best, a few decades of peace before your civilization’s enemies grow bold enough to try again. At worst, your species will suffer an eternity of torment before being obliterated. You will be selected for special attention, of course. It doesn’t matter. We will eventually find willing servants, either among your kind, or other species. We can wait.”

  The monster wearing the dead scientist’s face leaned forward. Its eyes became endless dark pits.

  “Choose, Lisbeth Zhang. Choose now, or I will choose for you.”

  Seventeen

  “All enemy fighters have been destroyed, Admiral.”

  Sondra Givens nodded wearily. It had been a close-run thing; she had fifteen War Eagles left, and the gunships had disappeared into the maw of a massive warp aperture. Three thousand kilometers long and half as wide, give or take, since its outlines kept shrinking and widening like a throbbing heart. Either the enemy was planning to spring their version of the Wall of Fire on them, or something that needed a doorway that big was going to squeeze through, and she didn’t think there were enough guns in the system to shoot it down.

  “The Black Ships still remain,” the Tactical Officer added, rather unnecessarily, since the enemy icons were all shining brightly on the holotank. “We cannot assess how much damage they have suffered.”

  “By all account, our weapons suffer a ninety to ninety-nine percent reduction in power against a target suspended in warp space,” she replied. “So what’s your best estimate?”

  “No significant reduction in fighting capabilities, and minimal personnel losses,” the officer replied immediately. “Other than the effects those levels of warp exposure must have on their crews, that is.”

  “They are already crazy. I doubt they are going to obligingly drop dead.”

  She had a decision to make, and knew she would hate herself for making it.

  “Send in the Marines.”

  “Ma’am?”

  Nobody was sure what would happen if you tried to warp-drop troops into a ship that was already in warp space. Just getting a targeting solution that would place the Marines inside the selected vessel would be difficult enough. It was utterly impossible before t-wave implants gave a select few Navy crewmen the ability to ‘see’ into warp space. Now it was merely next to impossible. And even with the new drugs and implants, there was no telling if the Marines would be able to operate normally aboard a ghosting ship. The leading theory was that Kerensky’s vessels had created a bubble of normal space inside them, which allowed the crews to operate them. If the theory was wrong, she’d be sending those Marines to stumble blindly among self-created hallucinations, easy prey for warp adepts or Null-Space Sophonts.

  “They are going to kill us all before we can inflict enough damage on them,” she said. “They can’t sink us, but all they need is to breach our shields for a few seconds and the Warplings will finish the job. Half of the Imperium Guard is gone. Their ships are fine, but everyone inside is dead or catatonic. We are barely hanging on. And then there is that aperture. Nothing good is coming out of that. We have to take out those bastards quickly, and that’s the only way. Our fighters are on their last legs. The Death Heads are gone.”

  Sometimes all you had left was a Hail Mary pass. To win or lose it all.

  “Send in the Marines,” she repeated, feeling like she’d passed a death sentence.

  * * *

  “I need to go on the first wave, sir.”

  “And why is that, Fromm?”

  “Second Platoon doesn’t have a CO, sir. And we need a senior officer to coordinate. Lieutenant Hansen can do the job, but he can also handle anything that needs doing from this end. I’ll do more good leading the attack than in the rear with the gear, sir.”

  Colonel Brighton didn’t look happy on the imp-to-imp display. The battalion commander knew as well as Fromm that his arguments worked just as well for sending Hansen on the drop. The XO could do the job – had done the job – as well as or better than him. It took Brighton a couple of seconds to make his decision. Time was in short supply.

  “All right, Captain. If you want to play Second Loot, I won’t stop you. Carry on.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Fromm said before realizing the 101st’s CO had cut the transmission. He’d probably added a few years to his time as an O-3, or killed his chances of making O-4 altogether. Not that he cared either way.

  He went over his gear. In addition to his standard combat load, he was carrying extra power packs – he had a feeling they would need them – and one tenth of a portable warp catapult, on the off-chance they had the chance to make a return trip. They were all carrying spares; multiple redundancy was a must when there was no telling who was going to make it through. He was going in with a squad from Second Platoon and two sections from Third. Twenty-four men. It brought back not-so-fond memories of a similar forlorn hope in Kirosha.

  He’d thought nothing could be bad as Kirosha. Life had a way of exceeding your every expectation.

  The Marines around him were probably not thrilled to have the Old Man looking over their shoulders. The Second Platoon squad had very few familiar names in it. That unit had taken in excess of a hundred percent casualties in the course of the Parthenon and Xanadu operations. None of the members of the squad had been around when Fromm assumed command of Charlie Company, six years and a lifetime ago. The Guns and Assault fireteams from Third had a higher proportion of old-timers. They included a handful of problem children who had accumulated more Non-Judicial Punishments than the rest of the platoon combined, but also as many commendations. One of them, Corporal Edison, had carried Fromm’s half-dead body out of a blasted crater. They might cause trouble in the barracks, but when the chips were down they would do their jobs.

  After you spent so
me time among Marines in full battle-rattle, you learned to read body language that would be invisible to others. The men were tense, and several were having serious jitters: the third member of Edison’s fireteam was downright terrified, moving with a slow care that didn’t quite conceal the man’s shaking hands. Edison said something to him via a private channel; whatever it was seemed to steady the man. Good.

  “Just follow the yellow strips,” Fromm said out loud, earning a few chuckles.

  Navy ships had arrows painted on most passageways, bright yellow and with big letters explaining where they were and where they were going. The bubblehead running joke was that they were there mostly for the benefit of Marines and other dim bulbs.

  “One minute to drop,” the spacer in charge of the launch announced. Fromm stepped onto the standard catapult and tried not to think about what waited for him on the other end. All of higher’s reassurances to the contrary, nobody knew what would happen when the Marines made this drop. They were about to make history one more time, and Fromm for one was getting sick and tired of it.

  He’d mentally jotted out a brief email to Heather on his way to the launching bay. Nothing much, just enough to let her know he was doing the job, plus the three words he still wasn’t used to saying out loud. Knowing that she would read it if Third Fleet came home helped him face the possibility he might not be aboard when it did.

  “Drop initiated: Transition in ten, nine…”

  I don’t have a death wish. I’m just tired of seeing my people die. Everybody comes home this time.