Excess hubris was not one of Esther’s problems.
“Let’s go,” she passed to her three Marines.
Clearing buildings was something the squad could do in their sleep. With the battalion based in a station, structures were plentiful. It was training in wide open spaces that was at a premium, given they had to catch rides to any planet.
PFC Maltese barely hesitated as he performed a heat scan to make sure there was not a hostile waiting just inside the home’s front door.
“Contrary,” Esther reminded him.
“Going in right!” he shouted as he kicked open the door and rushed to the left.
It was a simple misdirection, and with the AI’s locked on, a big flashing “LEFT” on their face shields reminded each Marine that Maltese was in fact going left, not right as he announced.
“Coming in left,” Yadry shouted, darting to the right.
“Clear!” Maltese shouted a few moments later.
“Contrary, off!” Esther ordered, as each AI switched modes.
Esther wasn’t too sure the contrary mode was a good idea. Even with the AI displays flashing, in the heat of battle, things could get confusing, and a Marine hearing a shout might react instinctively. The contrary clearing command was fairly new, and even if they’d rehearsed it many, many times, Esther was a little wary of it. With the entry gained, she thought she could switch off from contrary mode.
“Coming in right. Actual right,” she added, walking more than darting inside the home, Wells on her ass.
For such a bright pink home on the outside, the interior was rather more subdued. The furniture consisted of a tan, overstuffed sofa, a dining table with mismatched and beat up chairs, and a small, older-model holo projector. Esther took off her helmet, and immediately, she was hit with the unmistakable smell of grissen pounte, the inedible delicacy of the Funden Belt—of which Callet had been part of until its evacuation. Fundens were inordinately proud of their love of the fermented mass of crap they called a delicacy that no one else in human space could stomach. They even insisted that no fabricator in the universe could duplicate it, so it had to be prepared by hand.
Esther walked up to the table where she saw three half-eaten bowls of congealed grissen. She reached out a forefinger and touched the contents of one of the bowls—it was pretty hard. Esther didn’t have a clue as to how long the bowls had sat there, but it was clear to her that they’d been abandoned quickly.
“Sergeant Kinder, the pink house is clear,” she passed on the P2P. “It looks like there were three people here, but they left in a hurry. They left behind three bowls of grissen pounte, all well-congealed.”
“Grissen pounte? Got to be Callet refugees, then,” he passed, stating the obvious. “Come on back out.”
Esther held her forefinger up and twirled it in a circle, then flattened it out to point out the door. Maltese nodded and led the team out. Esther took one last look around. On the wall by the door, a simple 2D picture hung, featuring a smiling man and women, a grown man-child between them with the obvious features of a regressor. Esther couldn’t withhold a shudder. Regressors never grew too large, but the furrowed brows and lower-jaw droop were the primary signs of the genetic condition, one of the few that doctors could not cure. Even with genetic manipulation and then regen, the same symptoms simply reappeared. The unfortunate sufferers live shorter, much more limited lives, and their frequent outbursts made caring for them difficult. Many ended up as wards of the state, but evidently, not in this case.
Esther stepped outside, glad to get out of the house. The parents of the boy had been dealt a rough hand, first with their son, and then losing their home on Callet. They’d arrived on Requiem as refugees, and now, it looked as if they’d been caught up in the fighting. Esther couldn’t imagine a life like that, but still, the two had been smiling, and the father’s hand on the boy’s shoulder spoke of something deep, something vital in their connection.
Esther felt an unexpected pang of loss. She’d been cut adrift herself when her parents were killed. Noah was the only family she had left now, and she’d been more than a little distant to him since Camp Charles. She still wished he’d never enlisted, but she also knew she needed to rectify that.
All three teams gathered around the squad leader. The little settlement had been abandoned. No one could tell if they’d fled the area or were inside the looming factory taking refuge or being held as human shields.
Esther looked up at the massive facility. Processing ore had become streamlined over the last few centuries, but still, a massive amount of ore was being refined, and the size of the plant reflected that. Esther couldn’t even imagine how much the facility cost. It looked quiet, but she doubted that either corporation would simply abandon it to wait out the conflict. The fact that their scanners weren’t picking up anything hinted that if there was anyone in there, they were sophisticated enough to be able to block any detection.
Which probably meant the St. Regis Brigade, which had been hired by Excel Sun. The brigade had once been one of the finest, best-armed mercenary units before their ill-fated experiment with creating “super-soldiers” using a “zombie parasite”-based procedure. Stung by their defeat, the brigade hadn’t folded but become far more aggressive as it tried to regain its former reputation. Esther’s father had even faced them on Gaziantep while a battalion commander, and he’d acknowledged they were a worthy foe.
The brigade had resurrected its reputation through a series of conflicts, but perhaps most by siding with the Evolution, fighting—without pay—alongside the rest of the evolutionary forces. They’d managed to rebuild themselves, purchasing the best gear right up to—and some charging past—the Kiev Limitations. And now, the circle had been completed. Ether’s father had fought against the brigade, the brigade had fought with her father’s forces, and now it potentially faced the daughter.
Excel Sun was not a powerful as Rio Tinto, but they’d scored a coup in hiring the brigade. MKX was a good unit, but if it came to a confrontation, Esther would rather face the Mixxies than the Regis mercs.
“What’s the plan?” Telly asked the sergeant.
“We just go inside and check it out. You take the left. Lysander, you’ve got the middle, and Dogman, you take the right.”
Esther kept a straight face. Sergeant Kinder was a good NCO, but he was a “pantser,” as in going by the seat of his pants. He rarely had detailed plans worked out, instead relying on giving very vague guidance and relying on training. Esther was firmly convinced that operations orders, even at the squad level, needed to be more detailed. It was all well and good to shift due to enemy reactions, but there had to be a good solid base from which to shift in the first place.
“OK, let’s move out. Keep me updated,” he said.
Without a firm boundary, Esther turned to her team and pointed at the front office for the compound. She’d clear that, then coordinate with Eason to the right. With Maltese leading, they simply walked up.
“Actual, no contrary,” Esther said as Maltese waved his hand over the pad, and to everyone’s surprise, the door whisked open.
“Coming in right,” Maltese said as he darted inside, followed by Yadry.
Esther and Wells were right behind the first two. The main office was rather small for such a large facility, she thought as she looked around. A front counter kept visitors from the main office, where four desks with screens stood empty. The Marines vaulted over the counter and spread out to check the side offices, the head, and what looked like a break room. In the back was a long, rectangular room with a window for a back wall that looked over the compound. On the front wall of the room was a bank of monitors, a few showing various spots in the facility, but most were turned off.
“Corporal!” Yadry said, pointing to a rack along the back corner of the room.
Esther walked up. It was a weapons rack, no question. There were slots for ten weapons, slots that were now empty. She couldn’t tell what the weapons were, nor if the slot
s had even been filled, but this was not good news.
“We’ve got possibly ten weapons out there,” she passed on the squad circuit, pushing her helmet cam view to the sergeant.
“What kind?” Sergeant Kinder asked. “Can you see?”
“No. Can’t tell. Personal weapons, from the size of the racks, but beyond that. . .”
Many isolated facilities had weapons for security. Most often, they were non-lethal, and Esther hoped that was the case here. But given the situation between the two corporations, she wouldn’t bet on that. And these were only company weapons; they would be in addition to any merc weapons, if merc forces were in the facility.
“Anything else in there?” Sergeant Kinder asked.
“A bank of security screens. Most are off,” she passed as Wells played with the controls, trying to pull more online.
“Roger. If there’s nothing else, move on. We’ve got to sweep this place as quickly as we can if we’re going to get to our next two objectives.”
Esther frowned. “Quickly” so as to get to the “next two objectives” was not a course of action, in her opinion. “Thoroughly” was more important. Get the job done, then worry about other objectives. It would be easy to bypass an enemy if they went too quickly, an enemy who could jump up and bite them or the rest of the company in the ass. Third Platoon’s mission was to clear the southern approach into Lassiter Crossing. First Squad had been assigned the small valley along Sukiko Ranch Road, clearing four objectives, after which they’d set up a blocking position at the ranch itself. They were to keep individuals from using the road, or if a larger unit moved past, too strong for a single squad to stop, report that back.
If they missed someone in the compound by rushing, whoever that was could have a clear shot all the way to the city if that was their intent. And the huge facility could easily hide even a platoon-sized unit.
“You heard the man. Let’s move on,” she told the other three Marines.
“But I’ve almost got this,” Lance Corporal Wells said, fiddling with the control panel for the screens.
“Yeah, just another two hours, I can get it,” Yadry mocked.
“Now, Wells,” Esther ordered. “We need to move.”
“I could’ve got it,” the lance corporal muttered as he complied.
The four Marines filed out of the office, automatically moving into a fire team diamond. Esther looked around, then pointed to what looked to be a pipe nexus, a square building, about 15 meters by 15 with pipes of various diameters converging on it and disappearing inside. Maltese nodded and headed in that direction.
At the back point of the diamond, Esther was responsible for rear security, so she was scanning the area. Dogman’s team was exiting their first structure, which looked to be some sort of maintenance bay, and looked to be heading to a berthing area, and Sergeant Kinder was in the small common area in front of the apartments, one foot up on a bench and leaning forward, arms on the elevated knee as he watched Third Team. He made a good picture, and if they’d been deemed important enough for the press to be with them, Esther knew they’d be recording him. It was just the kind of image that they loved—the stalwart Marine, defending the citizens of the Federation.
For a moment, Esther wished he’d been standing like that, looking oh so competent, and that the press was there. She might be a mere corporal, but the more anyone was in the public eye, the better it was. Part of her was ashamed for considering politics, but it would be stupid to ignore the realities of life. It wasn’t as if she created the system, after all.
She was just turning away to scan to their direct rear when a sharp crack of ionizing air filled the compound as Sergeant Kinder collapsed.
“Run!” she shouted a split second after her feet launched her forward. She’d made it less than ten meters before a cacophony of kinetics reached her. She swept up the other three as they sprinted to the pipe nexus.
That was an energy weapon, she realized as she dug down for more speed. But from where?
Something hit her hard on the shoulder, but her bones hardened as designed, and she wasn’t hurt. She reached the building and hit the deck behind the wall, finding a space between the other three.
“Hal! You OK?” she asked over the squad net.
She’d seen him drop, and she feared his condition. He had to have been hit by the energy weapon, and as good as the STF armor that made up their bones was against kinetics, it wasn’t that effective against the more powerful energy weapons. And from the volume of the sound of the displaced air, Esther was sure the sergeant had been hit with a crew-served weapon.
“Sergeant Kinder’s dead!” Telly Eason passed over the net.
Shit!
With the sergeant down, the command AI monitor would have switched over command properties to the next senior Marine, which was Telly. Part of the command avatars was that they went light blue for WIA and gray for KIA.
“I need help!” Dogman shouted over the net. “We’re pinned down and taking heavy fire.”
Rounds kicked up the dirt and grass alongside the pipe nexus. So far, though, nothing reached them behind the wall. But on the other side of the common area, Dogman was in the shit. Esther superimposed their avatars on an overhead image of the compound.
Sergeant Kinder’s avatar, still blue on her face shield, was where he’d fallen in the middle of the commons. Dogman’s team was arrayed alongside the apartment building.
Where’s the firing coming from?
Without live surveillance, she couldn’t get tracking. Looking at the impacts just a few meters away, she thought that at least most of the rounds were coming from the white, flat-topped building on the far side of the commons.
What about that fucking crew-served?
But she’d seen Kinder fall! Esther gave her AI the command, and a moment later, the display was back to just before the weapon fired. Changing the visual mode to compressed spectrums, she advanced the recording. When the weapon fired, she tried to ignore the sergeant as she picked up the beam track, a red streak across the now blue-tinted image.
She pulled up the overhead view and superimposed the track. From this view, she couldn’t tell elevation, but the beam came from either the same flat-roofed building as the kinetic firing or one of those behind the building. She wished she knew exactly from where it had fired, but at least she had an axis.
She saved the track, then sent it out to the other Marines.
“Hare’s down. WIA. We need help here, guys!” Dogman said.
“Come on, we’ve got to get fire on this,” she told her team, blinking forward the overhead of the building to their AIs.
“Get ready to get the hell out of there,” she passed to Dogman. “On my command!”
Maltese and Esther hugged end of the wall, Yadry and Wells the other end.
“And now!” she told her team members.
“Go, Third!” she passed as the four leaned forward to pour fire at the building.
She caught sight of Dogman leading his team into the apartment building, two of them dragging Hare.
Shit! Now you’re stuck inside!
A round ricocheted off the top of Maltese’s helmet from where he leaned out over her.
“Back!” she ordered, an instant before the whiz of something large-caliber passed where her head had just been.
Whether whatever it was had the power to punch through her armor, she didn’t know, but she suspected that it did.
“Telly, where are you?”
She could see his avatar on her display, of course, but no one in his team had moved.
“Esther, I called the company for help, and they just told me to hold on,” Telly said, his voice high, his words clipped. “What do we do now?”
There was another crack of ionized air, and a moment later, Woowoo managed to get out, “Dogman’s KIA. And me and Luna’re messed up something fierce. We’re inside the building!”
Esther could hear the outrage in his voice, but she wasn’t surpri
sed. Judging from the large displacement of air after the weapon had fired, she guessed that it was a high-powered, man-packed meson cannon, and simple walls were not enough to shield from a beam like that.
“Try and get out the back, Woowoo, if there’s any way,” she told them. “And take Dogman with you.”
Dogman’s AI might list him as KIA, but if the walls of the building had absorbed enough of the beam’s energy, then his nervous system might not be too damaged to preclude resurrection.
“Telly, you’ve got to maneuver around. Try and flank them here,” she said, highlighting a smokestack.
It was probably sturdy enough to withstand the cannon fire, and maybe they could get up high enough to put plunging fire on whoever might be on the roof of the building.
Esther pulled up her recording again, then timed from the shot that killed Kinder to the one that hit Dogman and Woowoo. Seventy-three seconds. She ran a search, pulling up all energy weapons with a 70-75 second recharge rate. Nothing from the Regis or Mixxie weapons list came up. There wasn’t anything close.
What the hell? There has to be something.
Then it hit her. They had to be tied into the grid. She changed the parameters, ran them again, and hit paydirt.
What was facing them was probably a Sylvesterie DR-40, fired by St. Regis mercs. The Confederation-made cannon was a two-man, three-megajoule meson weapon, with a 110-second battery recharge-cycle, a 70-second direct connection recharge cycle. With one battery pack, it could fire between three and twelve rounds, depending on the output setting.
Esther’s body suddenly spasmed, every nerve on fire. She barely heard the clap of air that followed. Her mind panicked for a moment before the tingling stopped and she could breathe again.
“You OK?” Yadry shouted as he rushed over.
“Fuck me royal,” Maltese said as he shook out his leg.
“Yeah. We’re still kicking,” Esther said, even if Maltese seemed to be having some trouble.
“You’re lucky it was a near miss,” Yadry said.
“I don’t think it was a near miss,” Esther told him. “I think there’re enough pipes inside this building,” she said, patting the wall behind which they had taken cover, “to deflect most of the beam.”
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 19
