Bull caught her eye and lifted his cup. She raised hers back in greeting, but doubted his held coffee. He stood up, nodding to the brigadier, then waved Repeth over to a table nearby, growling at a lone Navy ensign. The young man hastily grabbed his powdered eggs and found another place to be.
“Good decade, Smaj,” Bull greeted her as they sat down.
She accepted the familiar corruption of “Sergeant Major” with good graces, knowing such nicknames built trust and camaraderie. “Good freakin’ four decades, Bull,” she replied, “but it feels like I only slept for a week.” Repeth sat down across from him and reached over to tilt his cup toward her with one short-nailed finger. “Ugh. Can’t believe you’re still drinking that dreck. I should space it.”
Bull pulled the protein shake back protectively. “Don’t you dare. I used all my personal allowance on this stuff. Can’t stay big on Navy food.”
“Who cares if you stay big? Your cybernetics provide most of your actual strength. Besides, it gives you gas like a sick hound.”
“I like to be big. You think this huge noggin would look good on a skinny body like yours?” He reached up to run a hand over his basketball-sized cranium.
Repeth held up her hands in surrender. “All right. So what’s the word?”
“Word is, All-Hands assembly at 1500 hours. Word is, Earth got hit five years ago by sixty-four Destroyers. We don’t even know if anyone’s left.” Bull slurped more of his shake, pensive.
Repeth pursed her lips and put on a stoic front. “Can’t help that. We knew when we left it was long years of travelling at best, a one-way trip at worst.”
“We might be all that’s left of the human race.” Bull hid a fleeting expression of deep concern.
She leaned over to pound her index finger on the tabletop in front of the big young Marine officer. “Listen, sir, I’ve been in active combat longer than you’ve been alive. I’ve spoon-fed green lieutenants and I’ve made and I’ve broke battalion commanders like you. But I’ve seen you over the past few months – before the forty years – hell, you know what I mean – and I know you’ve got what it takes. So just do your job the best you know how and have faith in ol’ mother Repeth.” Unconsciously she patted her left breast pocket where her father’s ancient leather-bound small-print Bible rested.
Bull’s mouth quirked up in a smile at her gesture. He reached up to his neckline to reveal a heavy ferrocrystal Star of David medallion on a chain. “I got faith, Smaj. But Moshe Dayan said faith and bullets’ll get you farther than faith alone.”
Repeth laughed. “Amen to that, my bulky brother. No atheists in armor, eh? Pass the Lord and praise the ammunition.” She clapped him on the shoulder, a sensation like slapping wood. “I see the NCOs are up. Suggest you finish that glop and start doing some officer stuff. Find your drip-nose lieutenants, tell them mommy and daddy will make everything all right.”
Bull rose with her, draining his plastic cup and folding it into a cargo pocket. “Yeah, lieutenants. Making simple shit hard since Christ was a corporal.”
Repeth tsk-stk’d good-naturedly at his irreverence.
The Jewish major grinned. “You don’t like the way I talk, Smaj, that’s your cross to bear.”
“Why do I feel like you set every Gentile you know up for that line?” With a rueful snort she took her leave and refilled the coffee mug, intending to see to her awakening troops. It was NCO business to get them ready so officers didn’t have to.
Crossing the floor, Repeth spotted Tran Pham “Spooky” Nguyen sitting alone in a corner. Usually the slim Vietnamese highlander was easy to overlook, except that today she saw he wore the blinding white high-collared uniform of the Naval Stewards, EarthFleet’s specialized protective police service. She’d given up surprise at Spooky’s changes of uniform; he’d long since passed into legend within the clandestine services of Earth.
He’d gotten the nickname long ago, before the aliens salted Earth with the Demon Plagues, with which the Meme had tried to reduce humanity to mindless animals. Later enhancements – combat nanites in the blood, cybernetic implants like Repeth’s, and his dedication to the martial arts – had only enhanced his legend.
I’m one of the handful of people aboard that knows he’s a covert operative – spy, assassin, intimidator. Should have figured he’d show up; he’s always where the action is.
“G’day, Spooky. Nice look.” She sat down, knocked her coffee cup against his tea mug. “You playing bodyguard this trip?”
“Thank you, Jill. Of course, a Steward’s role extends beyond personal protection of the senior staff.” His accent was precise, perfect upper-class English, an affectation adopted so long ago that it was unshakeable. “Are you still playing at being Australian?”
She noticed he didn’t exactly answer her question, a common occurrence with Spooky. Jill chuckled. “Lots of Aussies in the Marines, so I pick up the dialect, that’s all. But are you doing anything, uh, specific, or just keeping an eye on things?” And I refuse to ask why you even came on this mission, she thought. You’ve always done exactly as you pleased and somehow you get away with it.
“As you say, keeping an eye on things.” Spooky’s gaze roamed the room, searching, she knew, for anything out of place.
Repeth wondered whether he was hunting traitors and spies again…ugly work, work she never wanted to have to do again. Guarded, she watched him for a moment more. “Good to see you on the job, but I have things to do. Look me up sometime.”
“Oh, you can be sure of that.” His look was unfathomable.
She ignored the comment and stood up, bowed formally to him as if they were back at the dojo, then put away her mug and went looking for her troops.
-
End of First Conquest preview. Read on for a preview of Stellar Conquest Book 2, Desolator
---
Bull began barking orders through his suitcomm, consolidating his men and weapons, converging them midway between where he estimated the AI vault to be and its nearest reactor, even as he led his heavy weapons section there at a shuffling trot. Down metalsnake corridors, steely gray with age and use, Marines tramped on converging courses.
He watched as Corporal Bannon cleared corners, releasing tiny gnat drones from a slot on his back-rack. Special suits and training made Recon Marines the best at what they did, and he wondered what possessed him to have tried walking point himself. Probably stupid enthusiasm after nothing but training for the last three years, he thought. Well those autoguns almost got me, and the aliens’ maser weapons gave me some nasty burns. Maybe Jehovah is trying to tell me to quit sticking my dick out quite so far.
Splitting his attention between the here and now and the virtual HUD overlay, he watched carefully as his section approached the rear of the two score Marines of First Platoon, Alpha Company. “Captain Bryson,” he called to the company commander on the top channel, “keep a good three-sixty lookout, three dimensions. The enemy’s resistance has been scattered, but the Ryss aliens say the Desolator AI is crazy. We don’t know what it will do.”
Bull switched his net one level down, in order to include the understrength battalion’s senior NCOs. “Coming up behind, Swede,” he called, watching as Bannon sent a drone around another corner. “You should see my point man’s gnat momentarily.”
“Got it, sir,” Master Sergeant Lars “Swede” Gunderson replied. “Come on in. First Platoon will keep you snug and safe as a baby in his mother’s arms.”
“Bad metaphor, Swede, since all the mothers are back on Afrana, but I appreciate the sentiment.” Bull waved his men forward rather than switch channels again, though the gunner in charge of the semi-portable should have heard the exchange anyway.
A moment later they jogged by First Platoon’s outer troops and into the large intersection that was their meeting place.
From the portside corridor, another Recon Marine showed himself, and then led others forward. Third platoon, Bull saw on his HUD. Fourth was off to the starboard side and H
eavy Weapon Section Two moved up behind them. He now had most of Alpha Company here, minus only Second Platoon spread out guarding the sleds, almost half his command.
Sergeant Major Charlie McCoy waved a greeting as he joined Bull from Fourth.
“General channel, all hands. First, Alpha Company,” he said. “Objective One is this fusion reactor,” throwing it up on their HUDs. “It’s forward of us and on the port side. My intent is to move forward cautiously and in force to Objective One and use the semis to disable it. My goal is to deny power to the enemy. The enemy is an AI the aliens call Desolator, and the machines it controls. All of those are fair game.”
“The aliens are big catlike people,” he went on, “and they don’t have sealed armor the way we do, but their weapons are high-tech and effective. Do not engage them unless you absolutely must. They are supposed to be passing the word over their comms to avoid engaging us too, but you never know.”
“All right, Third Platoon you are on the port side flank up these parallel corridors, with your limit the usable edge of the ship. Fourth here to starboard, with your limit the central corridor. First platoon, right up the middle toward the reactor, with semis One and Two in trail. Third and Fourth, detail one squad each to cover my ass, and remember everyone, they could come from the levels above or below. Any questions?”
None came, so Bull ordered, “Alpha, move out. Break break, Bravo Company this is Objective Two here,” HUD-marking a fusion reactor on the starboard side of the ship. “Captain Curtin, take that objective with all deliberate speed, keeping the rules of engagement in mind. The aliens are our allies, but new and twitchy ones from what I have seen. When you disable that generator, move on to the next one forward. Ben Tauros out.”
Curtin was a good man; Bull knew he’d get the job done.
Walking forward, he kept watching the HUD for any sign of resistance, but it didn’t come right away. Instead a sudden heavy feeling staggered him, and he saw the section carrying the semi-portable suddenly and clumsily set it down. “Gravity is increasing,” an unknown voice reported, then the whole company was shoved to the deck as the Gs went up to at least five. Bull crawled forward, his implanted cybernetics powering his limbs, but the sixty kilos of armor, suit and weapons that normally seemed so light now weighed at least three hundred.
“Alpha Company, is anyone experiencing less than five Gs?” The pull was not dangerous in itself, but they had lost all mobility and some of their combat capability too.
“I am, sir, about two,” Corporal Bannon called. The other two platoon Recon Marines on point reported the same.
“Gravplates take a lot of power, people, and that’s one thing this ship is short of – that’s why it pirated our fuel and why it’s only now putting these reactors on line. It’s also why we need to take them down. I’m guessing it has sensors and is gravving as many of us as it can, but it can’t do all of us, so everyone start crawling outward from the center of the company. See if you can find zones of less gravity, but be careful about standing up.”
Acknowledgements filled the suitcomm and Bull saw the company slowly spreading out. He noticed Bannon and a few other Recons moving fast enough to be on their feet, then the icons suddenly reversed course and blinked with the shorthand for enemy contact.
“Bannon here; war drones coming.” A shaky video feed from a gnat flashed briefly on the company’s HUDs, showing a jumble of nightmare machinery with far too many arms and legs for comfort before whiting out. “They got the gnat, though it took a few shots. First it tried some kind of EM weapon, maybe a maser, then it fired that blue plasma discharge.”
“The aliens had masers too. I think both sides are armed with weapons optimized against Meme,” Bull quickly called over the general net. “If they hit you they will cause burns. Seal up all faceplates and go to instruments only, or you may lose your eyes. Use the new anti-armor rockets and Hippo plasma rifles, and fall back toward the semis if that doesn’t stop them. Fire from doorways and crawl back into rooms if you have to. You know the drill.” He hoped they did: they may have trained too much against anti-Meme scenarios. He’d have to correct that later.
Bull watched the icons representing the enemy advance up the three corridors against Alpha Company, wondering if the AI would really be this unsubtle. Perhaps it was used to fighting nonsentient Meme boarders who used no technique, just brute force and numbers.
“Set up ambushes at the intersections, then fall back, delaying tactics,” he ordered. “Recon elements, get me some more video, I want to see what we’re up against.”
Bursts of static came though his suitcomm, quickly suppressed by the software. Microwaves were, after all, a kind of EM radio wave, and apparently were causing interference with the Marines’ ultra-wideband system.
Seems all right so far, Bull thought. We can handle five Gs if we have to, from on the deck, but retreating will be a hell of a thing. “Sections, get those semis set up to cover these corridors.” The teams grunted and dragged the heavy machines inch by inch into positions where they could fire down two of the most likely avenues, and the operators crawled up wearily to sit in the gunners seats.
Looks like maybe we waited too long to attack these reactors. Now we’re stuck like bugs in glue. We can fight, but we can’t move. We might all die in place here. Have to change the game. Already he heard terse orders and cursing as his lead elements ambushed the advancing war drones.
Dialing up the senior Flight Warrant on the assault sled channel, Bull said, “Sled command, this is Bull. Butler, we’re pinned down by heavy gravplates and being attacked. Is there any way you can take the sleds outside the hull and come back in through a damaged area, give us some fire support?” The idea was crazy, but then again, so were flyboys.
“Negative, sir…there’s no outside to go to. I can’t even describe what I’m seeing, but we are not traveling normally through space. Everything to the front and rear just turned black. There’s a white-and-rainbow vertical band precisely perpendicular to our axis of travel, and the radiation meters in the outermost sleds has gone off the charts. We had to move them inward to get behind more shielding. Whatever is out there…we can’t survive in it.”
Bull swallowed a few choice epithets. “All right, can you fly the sleds through the main corridors? It looks like most of them run five meters square.”
“Five by five? We’ll barely scrape through. Do a lot of damage to the sleds and corridors both, and everything will get torn up by fusion drive and thrusters. Sleds might not be flyable after all that.” Flight Warrant Butler sounded very doubtful.
“I don’t care. We’ve already lost enough men that we can spare some sleds, and we can always pack more in them, and we need fire support, now.” Watching the icons, he saw a dozen of his men already showed as dead, and two dozen more wounded as enemy warbots drove his Marines back toward his laser cannon.
Bull went on, “Get volunteers and send one sled up these four corridors on this center level. Look at your HUD feed, the whole situation is there. Use the breaching weapons to blast your way through along our flanks, engage any war drones you see, and if you can, put a couple of missiles into the Objective One reactor. That may get rid of the heavy gravity, and then you can come around behind the enemy and take them in the rear.”
“If I wanted to do that I’d have joined the Navy instead of Aerospace,” Butler quipped. “Aye aye, sir; we’ll get the job done.”
-
End of Desolator preview.
The Plague Wars Series
The Eden Plague
Reaper's Run
The Demon Plagues
The Reaper Plague
The Orion Plague
Cyborg Strike
Comes the Destroyer
Stellar Conquest Series
Planetary Assault - contains First Conquest: Stellar Conquest
Desolator
Tactics of Conquest
For more from David VanDyke visit www.davidvandykeauthor.com,
Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer Page 40
