David Sherman & Dan Cragg - [Starfist 13]

by Wings of Hell (lit)

  “Heads up,” he said onto the squad circuit. “Bad guys coming.” As he switched to the platoon command circuit, he did a quick count of the Skinks he could see. “Bad company,” he reported. “At least a platoon in three columns. Point is within one hundred meters. I see two rail guns.”

  Ensign Antoni, the commander of first platoon, answered Wilson’s transmission immediately. “On my command, take out that gun.” He switched to the platoon’s all-hands circuit and said, “Bad guys, range one hundred. On my command, fire!”

  “Get the rail gun!” Wilson shouted on his fire team circuit. His first bolt took out the Skink carrying the weapon; before he could aim at one of the gun’s other crew members, his men took them out. A Skink who looked like a sergeant was yelling at others to get to the gun and put it in action. He shot the sergeant, then switched his aim to the rail gun itself and put several bolts into it in an attempt to disable it. In his concentration on the rail gun he didn’t notice the whine of a second rail gun firing until its slugs ripped into the ground next to him. He yelped and rolled away—just in time to be missed by another burst. The incredibly fast slugs plowed into the ground where he’d been firing.

  “Shoot and move!” Wilson yelled to his men. Putting action to words, he fired a bolt at another Skink and rolled without waiting to see if he’d hit his target.

  “Someone find that rail gun and kill it!” Staff Sergeant DaCosta yelled over the all-hands circuit. The Skinks might not be able to see the Marines in their chameleons but they could certainly see where their plasma bolts were coming from.

  The other Skinks were maneuvering, trying to get within the fifty-meter range of their acid guns. Here and there and the other place, brilliant flashes flared as Skinks were hit, but more and more of them poured into the area, and by now second platoon, on the left side of the perimeter, was also fully engaged with the enemy. Crack-sizzles from farther away indicated that Kilo Company was also engaging the Skinks.

  Third platoon, less Lieutenant Bass and the other five who had gone to the company command post for the debriefing, was holding down Thirty-fourth FIST’s right flank. They didn’t see any Skinks; neither did their motion detectors or other sensors pick up signs of the enemy to their front.

  “That doesn’t mean they aren’t there, people,” said Staff Sergeant Hyakowa, in command of the platoon in Bass’s absence. “When we have them, be ready for volley fire.”

  “Allah’s pointed teeth!” Sergeant Ratliff shouted. Like the others in the company CP, and those leaving it, he had his screens up and his voice carried through the air. He followed his shout with a shot from his blaster, and the light from a Skink vaporizing showed everybody nearby where to look—a mass of Skinks was racing toward them through the thin forest, getting close to the range of their acid guns.

  “On line!” Captain Conorado shouted, taking command of the small group around the CP. He only had ten Marines with blasters. Another eight, including himself and the company’s medical corpsmen, were armed with hand blasters.

  Make that ten with sidearms.

  “Where do you want us?” Commander Usner shouted.

  “There!” Conorado pointed, and Usner and Commander Daana sped to the right end of the line, where they hit the dirt and began putting out aimed shots with their hand blasters.

  The command Dragon that had brought Usner and Daana to Company L’s CP was lightly armed but it maneuvered to bring its gun on the advancing Skinks as well. Its fire was effective, as a virtual wall of fire flared up along part of the line facing the Marines.

  “Shoot and move, shoot and move!” Conorado shouted. The Skinks hadn’t brought a rail gun into action against the CP yet, but he could hear at least two firing at other parts of the company’s lines, so he knew they had some with them.

  He looked at the display on his UPUD and saw the entire company was engaged in the fight. But the Skinks’ heat signature was so faint he could barely make out where they were—he had no idea how large the force was that was attacking Company L, or how much of the rest of Thirty-fourth FIST was fighting.

  “Kill those bastards!” Corporal Claypoole yelled into the fire team circuit. “Kill them, kill them, kill them!” Joe Dean was a friend of his, a damn good friend, a better friend than any of the other friends he’d lost to enemy fire over the years he’d been a Marine. And now the Skinks had seriously wounded him, maybe killed him. Izzy Godenov was also a friend, and he was probably dead. Claypoole wanted revenge; he wanted to kill every Skink in existence. But as furious as he was about the wounding of those two men, his fire was disciplined. He picked his targets and put every bolt into a Skink. The brilliant flashes of dying Skinks flaring up gladdened his heart.

  When he finally saw movement through the trees that told him Skinks were passing third platoon’s front, Staff Sergeant Hyakowa decided to engage them immediately even though they weren’t coming toward the platoon.

  “Third platoon,” he said on the all-hands circuit, “two hundred meters, grazing volley fire. Fire!” He only had fourteen men with blasters available, what amounted to a reinforced squad, and neither of his guns was sited where it could put enfilading fire into the enemy. But the Skinks were two hundred meters distant and didn’t have any rail guns so far as he could tell. When Sergeant Kelly told him he was moving the gun squad into position to support the rest of the platoon, Hyakowa told him how he wanted them used.

  “First gun, traversing fire left to right,” Kelly ordered a moment later. “Second gun, traversing fire right to left. Fire!”

  “Squads, volley fire. Fire!” Hyakowa commanded. “Fire! Fire!”

  With each command to fire, fourteen plasma bolts went downrange, where they struck the ground on a ragged line two hundred meters distant. Some of the bolts stuck and smoldered where they hit, while others fragmented and sent small streamers in different directions. But most ricocheted off the ground and continued in the same direction at no more than knee height. Many of the bolts—and even fragmented streamers—hit Skinks, even where the Skinks were out of sight of the Marines.

  Reacting to commands from their officers, some of the passing Skinks dropped to the ground and began crawling toward the Marines, trying to stay below their lines of fire until they were close enough to engage with their own weapons. The rest retired deeper into the forest and continued their eastward movement.

  Third platoon kept up its volley fire and traversing fire, adjusting range as needed to keep their plasma bolts striking the ground in front of the crawling Skinks and ricocheting into them.

  “Cease fire, cease fire!” Captain Conorado shouted. In seconds, the crack-sizzle from the blasters and hand blasters of Company L’s command post stopped; even Corporal Claypoole stopped when he had no more visible targets. “Did we get them all?” Conorado asked. “Does anybody see any more of them out there?” When nobody admitted to seeing any Skinks remaining to their front, he called for a casualty report. Nobody was injured; the Skinks had only been able to get off a few ineffective spurts from their acid guns before being beaten off. He turned his attention to his UPUD. Damn, but the Skinks are hard to spot in the infra! he thought. Conorado had no idea whether his CP was about to get hit again. At least they seemed to have killed all the attackers without taking any casualties of their own.

  “Wild Bill,” Conorado ordered to his UAV team leader, “get your birds in the air. I want to know if anybody else is coming at us, and then let me know what the rest of the company is facing. Particularly third platoon on the right flank.”

  “Aye aye, Skipper,” Sergeant Flett replied. He got up from his fighting position and ran to the UAV control module. Corporal MacLeash was right behind him. They quickly got their drones into the air and headed into the woods to the north. They knew that, aside from needing to know if they had to prepare for another attack, Conorado had to know if he could release Lieutenant Bass and his five men to return to third platoon—and how badly they were needed.

  It only took a
few minutes for the two UAVs, disguised as something that vaguely resembled an archaeopteryx, to discover a hundred or so Skinks north of them and heading south, almost straight at the company CP. And that company of Skinks had at least one rail gun. Flett reported the discovery to Conorado, who told him to leave MacLeash watching over the approaching Skinks, and go himself to check on third platoon.

  Conorado set about making better preparations for fighting off the second wave of Skinks.

  Two or three or five Skinks lit up with every volley the shrunken third platoon fired. More Skinks turned to vapor with every traverse of the guns. It appeared that none of the crawling Skinks would survive long enough to use their acid guns.

  PFC Ymenez’s fire was more ragged than Schultz’s—or anybody else’s in the platoon. He hadn’t had as much practice at volley fire. But he was close with every shot, and some of his bolts flared Skinks. Enough that he felt queasy: His only other combat experience was against the Coalition forces on Ravenette. And there he’d shot at men who were shooting back. But this, this was like shooting unarmed people, and that simply felt wrong. Sure, he’d heard about the Skinks; how they always fought to the death without any of them ever giving up, that they never took prisoners—except that they captured Lieutenant Bass and turned him into a mindless slave. And he’d heard about their weapons: the horrifying acid guns that ate people whole and turned them to mush, their rail guns that shot out pellets at 0.2c and utterly destroyed everything they hit.

  But he hadn’t seen the Skinks in action, hadn’t faced their weapons. Except for the brief action in the tunnel, in which he hadn’t done any shooting or even seen the Skinks for himself, this was his first combat against them. And they weren’t shooting back, they were simply flashing into vapor every time they got hit. Still, even though it felt somehow wrong, he kept shooting and killing Skinks.

  Most of the other Marines in the rump platoon had faced Skinks before and had no compunction about shooting them before they could shoot back.

  “The skipper wants the range and azimuth on that rail gun,” Corporal Escarpo said to Corporal MacLeash. “And he wants the azimuth from the Dragon.”

  MacLeash whistled. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  “Yeah, the skipper said you might say that. He said to just do it.”

  “Just do it. Right.” MacLeash was maneuvering his false gliding animal over the Skinks in the trees, trying to locate the position of the rail gun Sergeant Flett had seen when the UAVs first went into the forest and found the approaching Skinks. He found it quickly enough and marked it on his monitor, then worked an azimuth and the range from the Dragon to the rail gun, and gave the numbers to Escarpo, who radioed them to Captain Conorado.

  “Have him spot for the Dragon,” Conorado said. He gave the azimuth and range to the Dragon commander and told him to use traversing and searching fire on the target—the Skinks weren’t yet visible from the Marine CP. “Birdie Two will adjust,” he finished.

  “Aye aye,” the Dragon commander replied. “Comm with Birdie Two already established.”

  Conorado signed off and went to the UAV control center to observe.

  The Dragon opened fire. It may have been lightly armed for a Dragon, but its gun was more powerful than any of the personal weapons in the command post. The stream of plasma bolts burned their way through the foliage, seared off twigs and small branches, set fire to a few trees—and finally bored a hole through to where the Skinks carrying the rail gun were.

  But the Skinks were advancing steadily and had already moved on from the Dragon’s initial aiming point. MacLeash watched the Skinks moving and called corrections to the Dragon. Again, by the time the Dragon adjusted its fire and burned a hole through the forest, the Skink rail gun was no longer where the Dragon was shooting, but the bolts hit closer—and random bolts flared some Skinks. Once more, and yet again, MacLeash corrected the Dragon’s fire, and still the Dragon missed.

  But then the Skinks got almost in sight of the CP and the rail gun crew stopped to set up their weapon. MacLeash gave the Dragon the new numbers and its gun’s next burst was on target, flaring the Skink crewmen just as they were opening fire.

  “Hit it again,” Conorado ordered. “Destroy that gun.”

  It took three long bursts but the rail gun was permanently silenced, along with a dozen Skinks.

  Then a second rail gun, which hadn’t been spotted by the UAVs, opened fire on the command post.

  Some of the Skinks attacking third platoon finally worked their way close enough to use their acid guns and began spraying at the thin line of Marines. But the Marines shifted their positions after every shot so none of the greenish fluid struck close enough to hit. Every time a Skink shot he exposed his position and most were quickly flared before they could advance or fire again. Staff Sergeant Hyakowa canceled the volley fire and allowed the Marines to select targets and fire when ready.

  Lance Corporal Schultz’s fire was methodical, and he never missed. Now that the Skinks were shooting back, Ymenez stopped worrying that something was wrong about shooting at them and set to with a vengeance, readily killing every one he could. After all, a live, shooting Skink threatened the lives of him and his fellow Marines.

  The firefight didn’t last long after the few surviving Skinks had closed enough to return fire. And then there weren’t any surviving Skinks facing third platoon.

  When Thirty-fourth FIST had reached its location, the Marines expected to move out again on short order. They had dug no fighting holes, built no berms. All they had for defensive works was tree trunks and ripples in the ground. The Skink rail gun opened fire with a long burst at the command Dragon that had killed the other rail gun, pulverizing it and turning its crew into a rapidly dispersing cloud of red blood, flesh, and bone. Then it set to traversing fire, grazing fire that was low enough to kill any Marine not prone in a ripple in the ground and that moved side to side fast enough to keep any of them from rising up and taking more than one hastily aimed shot at the Skinks. Blood sprayed on its first traverse. The Marines in the Company L command post were fully pinned down, held in place until the Skinks with the acid guns could get within range of their weapons.

  Sergeant Kerr, near the left flank of the thin defensive line, hugged the ground. Trembles shook his body and palsied his hands. His mind worked so rapidly that his thoughts became jumbled, almost chaotic. But his thoughts were of how to kill that rail gun before it killed Marines.

  He lay with the right side of his helmet on the ground and examined the lay of the land to his left. It was almost flat, but almost isn’t completely. Years of experience had taught him how to find low places and he saw a path that would take him beyond the rail gun’s traverse. Keeping his helmet in contact with the ground he turned his head and looked to his right. He saw Corporal Claypoole, his helmet screens up, a few meters away.

  “Rock, with me!” Kerr ordered. He began slithering to his left. He didn’t look back; he knew that Claypoole would follow exactly in his path.

  It took uncomfortably long for Kerr and Claypoole to low-crawl forty meters, long enough for the Skink infantry to get close enough to use their acid guns, but the two Marines were finally outside the area along which the Skink rail gun was firing. They raised their heads just enough to allow them to look into the woods from inches above the ground.

  “This way,” Kerr said, and he began crawling again. To their right the two Marines heard the flashing of Skinks and an occasional scream as a Marine was hit by streamers of acid.

  Then the ground dropped and they were able to rise to hands and knees and make better time. When they finally stopped and looked over the edge of the shallow defile, they saw the Skink rail gun barely more than fifty meters away. It was tripod-mounted and had a crew of four: a gunner, a loader, a Skink who acted like a sergeant, and another whose job was probably ammunition carrier, but who now knelt ready with an acid gun in his hands.

  Kerr touched helmets with Claypoole. “You get the g
unner first, and I’ll take out the sergeant. Then you disable the gun while I get the rest of the crew. Got it?” Claypoole said he did. “On three. One, two, three!”

  Both Marines fired on the command, and the two Skinks they shot at flared up in all-consuming flame. Claypoole switched his aim to the gun and fired rapid bolts into it, concentrating on what he thought was the receiver, where pellets were taken from the ammunition drum into the weapon to be flung into the barrel and accelerated to 20 percent of the speed of light. Kerr flashed the other two crew members, then began looking beyond the gun for more Skinks—he needed to get them before any could begin spraying acid at Claypoole.

  Bolt after bolt from Claypoole’s blaster slammed into the rail gun, heating it to red, and then white, until the metal finally softened and began to sag. Claypoole kept firing at it until a gob of molten metal dropped off the gun.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Let’s roll up their flank,” Kerr said.

  “Right. Sure thing. Are you fucking crazy?”

  But Kerr was already on his feet, moving forward. Claypoole had little choice but to get up and advance with Kerr, to look for targets while hoping he took all of them before they could zero in on him.

  Kerr’s helmet comm couldn’t transmit on the company command circuit but it could on the platoon circuit, so he switched to it and said, “Lima Three, the rail gun is dead. Friendlies are crossing your front. Make sure you don’t shoot us!”

  Lieutenant Bass got the message and immediately passed it on to Captain Conorado, who relayed it to the rest of the command post group. With the rail gun out of action, the defenders were able to rise up enough to take aimed shots at the Skinks.

  The firefight at the Company L CP was soon over. And then it was time for the butcher’s bill.