Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  “Tran,” Ayrock said flatly, “we’ve had a change of plans. President Jameson won’t be joining our conversation or any other, depending on your beliefs regarding an afterlife.”

  There was a long pause. “I…uh, I see, Director Ayrock,” Tran said. The man was quick on the uptake, Ayrock would give him that. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I need as many troops as you can move out quickly, Colonel,” Ayrock told him. “And I need them sent to the eastern boundary of the Old City. It’s time to clean that place out.” He snorted. “It’s time to clean out a lot of things.”

  Chapter Forty

  “Yuri!” A panicked voice accompanied the pounding on the door.

  Yuri blinked once then opened his eyes wide. The room was small and musty and dark as a tomb; and the cot was bent and rickety, but he’d slept in far worse places. He swung his legs off the cot, reaching over to switch on the cheap, battery powered light on the folding table next to him. The light was dim, but it was enough for him to pull on his shoes and flip the lock.

  Freed of its only constraint, the door swung open with a noisy creak, revealing the alarmed and flushed face of Gennady Sobchak.

  “Sir!” he said, panting hard and out of breath. “The sensors, they’ve picked up an aircraft…it’s going to be here in minutes!”

  “Have you activated the air defenses?” Yuri demanded, pushing past him and heading for the stairs.

  “Yes, sir,” the man told him, following as he took the stairs down into the command bunker two at a time. “Pavel is on them now!”

  The stairs from the living quarters took them down another three stories past levels labelled “Storage,” “Maintenance” and “Climate Control” to a final door at the lowest level of the base. Yuri threw it open and dashed down a short corridor to a partially-open armored hatch several centimeters thick. It had been designed to survive a rocket crashing onto the upper stories, though Yuri wasn’t sanguine about how it would do against modern breaching charges.

  He gave a mental shrug. Either way, it probably wouldn’t matter.

  Pavel Bukharin was seated at a jury-rigged control station, its monitors old-tech OLED touch screen displays, watching a glowing green arrow spiraling down from about five kilometers up as he frantically tried to bring their air defense systems to bear. Yuri pushed him aside wordlessly and fell into the seat. Bukharin was a talented engineer, but he was not a military man and knew next to nothing about the ground-to-air missiles.

  Yuri checked and found that Pavel had at least armed the missiles, but the man had been having trouble linking the targeting systems to the base’s active radar and lidar. He corrected that with a few swipes across the touch screen and then typed in an access code to verify that yes, indeed, he did want to shoot down that target.

  “Fucking pansy-ass system,” he muttered, touching the launch control.

  At the bottom of the screen, a half dozen green circles turned red as each emplacement launched four radar-guided missiles into the night sky.

  “Will that stop them?” Gennady asked, wiping sweat from his forehead. The man was at least twenty kilograms overweight and the stairs hadn’t been kind to him.

  “Maybe,” Yuri said with a shrug. “Probably not.” His mouth twisted in a grin that made Gennady blanch. “So, get the ICBM ready…we are launching immediately.”

  “Yes, sir!” Gennady nodded. He touched his ear bud. “Karl, Alex, I am heading to the silo…we need that warhead assembled now!” He heard the reply and nodded, then looked back at Yuri. “We need at least an hour, sir…will we have time?”

  “I will endeavor to make certain that you do, my friend,” Yuri said. “I have a wonderful surprise for our friends from the Republic. A taste of things to come, if you will…”

  * * *

  “We have missiles inbound,” the pilot announced with the typical calm of assault shuttle pilots everywhere. “Deploying countermeasures.”

  McKay heard a series of bangs from the belly of the craft as dozens of small projectiles were launched from the weapons pods, each erupting with an intensely burning magnesium flare as it simultaneously shot out clouds of sensor-distracting chaff. He tightened his harness, expecting the shuttle to immediately start jinking, but it kept its course.

  “Not going to try to evade?” he asked the pilot, trying to keep the concern out of his voice.

  “Not yet,” Lt. Commander Summers responded coolly. “We break out of the chaff cloud too soon, their radar and lidar will paint us right away. Gotta give the countermeasures time to work.”

  “Of course,” McKay muttered, eyeing the two dozen incoming bogies lighting up the Tactical display. “What was I thinking?”

  “Sure woulda’ been nice to get a little orbital prep before we hit this place,” Jock commented on the command channel. “Not askin’ for much, just a few kinetic kill rods and maybe a laser shot or three…”

  “If it was easy,” Vinnie told him, words light and bantering but tone flatly serious, “anyone could do it.”

  “Okay,” Commander Summers said, “we dropped off most of them. Still got four tailing us. Time for evasive.”

  “Oh goodie,” Jock murmured.

  McKay had time to take a deep breath and clench his abdominals and then the shuttle was screaming into a dive that left his stomach somewhere around 3,000 meters up. McKay felt gorge rising in his throat as the aerospacecraft went through a series of high-g maneuvers that he didn’t even try to follow. His field of vision narrowed to a tunnel dark on all sides, he totally lost track of which way was up and if anyone said anything to him on his helmet radio in the thirty seconds of intense maneuvering, it didn’t register.

  McKay thought he heard the pilot say something about countermeasures, but he didn’t dare access the shuttle’s tactical feed or even look at it for fear of puking in his helmet. Finally, the assault shuttle levelled out and McKay’s vision returned to normal long enough to see that the Tactical display was clear.

  “We’re clear,” Commander Summers told him, voice as normal as if they were taking a flitter on a day trip to the beach. “That second round of countermeasures did the trick.” He snorted disdainfully. “Bunch of antique solid fuel pieces of shit.”

  “I’m kind of glad they didn’t have anything more modern,” Vinnie commented drily.

  “Hold on,” Summers said, a grin in his voice. “Gonna take care of those launchers real quick.”

  The shuttle banked left and dove sharply and McKay gritted his teeth again. It wasn’t as bad as last time, however, and he was able to keep an eye on the Tactical board long enough to see a flight of Anti-Radiation Missiles cut loose from the weapons pods and streak downward. One by one, the icons that represented the radar-guided missile launchers winked out of existence as kilograms of hyperexplosives blew them into scrap.

  “I’m picking up some emissions from the silo blockhouse,” Summers’ copilot drawled. Lt. JG Scott was a broad-shouldered woman who had an accent that McKay marked as Alabaman. “Might be ground level sensors for automated defenses.”

  “We’d better take care of that,” the pilot decided. “Locking on.” He touched a control and McKay felt another flight of missiles cut loose from the craft. Boosting at Mach 3, they struck their targets just a heartbeat after their launch.

  “Lemme see,” Scott said, checking her board carefully for a long moment. “Signals are gone. I think we got ‘em.”

  “Vinnie,” McKay said, “get your people ready to go.”

  “Teams up!” Jock called to the Special Operations troops.

  The two teams of operators arrayed along the port side of the shuttle unstrapped and stood, each grabbing a handhold on the bar affixed to the roof of the cabin and shuffling carefully towards the rear of the vehicle. Vinnie was at the head of the column, Jock at the rear, but McKay’s eyes were drawn to the trooper carrying the Special Munitions backpack. He didn’t envy the man.

  “Ten seconds,” Summers announced.

&
nbsp; “Good luck,” McKay said on Vinnie and Jock’s private channels.

  “You too, sir,” Vinnie replied.

  Then McKay’s stomach flipped as the lander dropped fifty meters in less than a second, stopping the descent abruptly on columns of fire from the vectored thrust nozzles. The rear hatch descended, leaving the trailing edge less than two meters from the ground.

  “Go!” Vinnie and Jock’s voices echoed the pilot’s direction, but the line was already moving.

  The two teams of operators shot out of the back of the lander with practiced precision and began scattering into positions around the entrance to the massive blockhouse. McKay tried to watch them through the shuttle’s exterior viewers, but once the last man was out, the pilot kicked the bird in the pants and the view tilted crazily as they began jetting toward the command bunker.

  “Two minutes to secondary LZ,” Commander Summers said, shifting the Tactical screens to the next target, the base command bunker, which was several kilometers from the silo.

  The landscape outside was an endless, barren waste turned into false day from the darkest night by the shuttle’s computer simulators. But for the lingering tracks of vehicles swiftly being erased by the desert winds, it could have been as empty as it had been for the last two centuries. There was no visible opposition, though McKay could see a thin column of smoke in the distance where one of the air defense sites had been destroyed. There was a sprawling, one-story structure about halfway between the silo and the launch command center, but it showed nothing on thermal and from what he could make out, it seemed totally abandoned.

  The lack of enemy troops on the surface worried him. It could be that they’d just caught Yuri by surprise, but it seemed more likely that he was keeping his forces underground to prevent the assaulting force from using air support against them. Too many damned unknowns in this operation…

  He increased the magnification on the tactical feed to his helmet HUD and saw the multistory command building growing in the cameras as they burned across the steppe-land towards it. There was still no one in sight and although there were several vehicles parked in front of the building, they showed nothing on thermal.

  “Captain Muniz,” McKay said as the seconds ticked down, “get them ready to go.”

  McKay unstrapped and carefully pulled himself from the cockpit, feeling the weight of his equipment trying to yank him off balance, as he heard Muniz order his Marines to prepare for deployment.

  “Summers,” McKay said, “you’re all the support we have…stay in the air, run an evasive pattern that takes you no farther than twenty klicks away and wait for a call for fire. If you see any targets of opportunity, notify me before you fire but don’t wait for approval if you can’t reach me.”

  “I’ll be the angel on your shoulder, sir,” Summers assured him lightly.

  McKay frowned as he made his way to the end of the double-line of Marines, grabbing the overhead bar to steady himself. “Ayrock isn’t going to leave us a ride out of here, Commander,” he reminded the man. “Watch for incoming; ditch if you have to.”

  “We all volunteered for this, General,” Summers said for a reply and McKay felt his gut squeezing again. “Ten seconds, folks…”

  McKay saw the hatch open and the cabin was filled with the roar of the engines, a cloud of dust floating in to throw a haze across the interior lights.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  It had been over ten years since McKay had done a ballistic insertion in combat---a Balls-In, the Marines called them. The last one had been as a Marine platoon leader on Inferno, putting out a brushfire rebellion by a group of politically motivated terrorists. But as he shuffled out the rear hatch of the lander, it all came back to him in a rush of adrenaline that he had to fight to hold down. He nearly forgot that the lander was hovering over two meters from the ground and had to adjust his stance in mid-fall to avoid landing face-first. He managed to keep his feet together, though, and took the hit on the balls of his feet before stumbling into a crouch, his carbine held across his chest.

  The Marines had already spread out into a circular defensive formation around the LZ and the assault lander was screaming away into an overwatch orbit, so McKay took a moment to do a 360 degree scan of the area. Nothing was moving except the windborne dust, and thermal scans showed only a few power feeds running from underground lines buried beneath the dirt and sand into the massive, darkened structure that towered four stories above them and over a hundred meters on a side.

  “The front door, sir?” Muniz asked him, gesturing at the large double doors sheltered under an ancient, crumbling overhang, across the cracked and dust-covered pavement. The doors, by contrast with the surrounding decorative features, appeared new and fairly sturdy. “If it’s secured, we’ll have to blow it down with HpE.”

  “Got another idea, Captain,” McKay told him and switched to the lander’s frequency. “Gulf India Niner niner, I need a laser-guided munition, on my mark.”

  “Roger that, Gulf India One,” the pilot replied almost immediately. “Say when.”

  “Captain,” McKay instructed the Marine commander, “have one of your men paint that door.”

  McKay didn’t see the missile launch, but he picked up the glow of its exhaust against the clouded darkness of the night sky while it was still a kilometer out. He couldn’t see the infrared laser designator that the Marine was using to paint the target either, but his helmet’s tactical HUD simulated it for him, a green line stretching from a crouching figure’s rifle to the armored doors two hundred meters away.

  It wasn’t a large missile: barely a meter long and with a payload of just a couple of kilos of HpE, the shuttle carried two dozen of them in its weapons pods along with a lesser number of much heavier weaponry. But when it streaked into the double doors, the explosion echoed over the plains like thunder and the entire entranceway collapsed in a cloud of dust and rubble.

  “We have splash,” McKay told Summers. “Stand by.”

  “Knock-knock,” Muniz cracked. “Gunny, send ‘em up.”

  “First squad,” Gunnery Sgt. Kennedy barked, her voice deep and raspy, “move up and check it out. Third squad head to the right and cover them. Second, consolidate the perimeter.”

  Muniz’ platoon, McKay noted, was well trained; they moved like fingers on the same hand, as choreographed as if they were dancing a ballet. Their platoon leader must have been pissed to be left behind, he reflected with the empathy of a former PL. He felt a pang of nostalgia for those days…but then he remembered why he’d left the Marines in the first place.

  First squad bounded forward through the wrecked entrance two at a time while Third took shelter behind larger bits of fallen concrete and covered the advance. McKay brought up the point man’s helmet camera feed and saw a large entrance hall that was littered with the charred and smoking remnants of old furniture. On the far wall, half hidden by drifting smoke, the tattered shreds of a red and blue flag hung flapping in the breeze coming from the blasted entrance. Movement teased at his eyes as the corporal walking point glanced about furtively, catching glimpses of his fellow Marines, but no threats resolved in the jerkily moving picture. On the far side of the entrance hall were three elevator stations, and in the corner was the door to the emergency stairwell.

  “It’s clear,” Sgt. Conover, the First squad leader, announced.

  “First, watch the elevators and the stairs,” Gunny Kennedy ordered. “Third, move in and secure the front entrance. Second, on me and prepare to lock down sensor spoofing.”

  McKay moved forward with Second squad, tucked between Muniz and Kennedy, as they moved carefully through the rubble and into the entrance hallway. He felt glass crunch beneath the soles of his boots and bits of jagged concrete try to turn his footing, and he had to bend forward to see where he was walking. He saw the members of Second squad drop off to set up the sensor spoofing equipment and begin putting it in place to jam the signals from any insect drones the bad guys might have left behind; whi
le he, Muniz and Kennedy walked over to the emergency stairwell. The door to the stairwell was old but looked kept up, and he could see that the elevators still had power going to them.

  “We taking the stairs,” Gunny Kennedy wondered, “or do you sirs wanna rappel down the elevator shafts?” The brawny woman shrugged expressively. “I’m tempted to say both,” she admitted. “But down there, with all this concrete and steel, we’re going to run into a problem with communications if we divide our forces.”

  “There’s a bigger concern,” Muniz put in. “We don’t know for sure what floor they’re set up on…our plans for this place are about two centuries out of date. There’s a time factor here, and we have to scout the place out; that’s going to be a lot slower using the elevator shafts.”

  “They didn’t have enough time or resources to re-engineer everything,” McKay declared. “I’m going to bet they just re-wired the Protectorate-era control room, and that’s sub-basement level five. We take the elevator shafts to sub level three,” he decided, “then hit the stairs. If they have troops on the stairs up here, we’ll get behind them, cut them off.”

  “You heard the man, Gunny,” Muniz said.

  “Third!” Kennedy snapped. “Get those elevator doors open and get a rappelling anchor secured!”

  “We’re up, sir,” Muniz told him, waving towards the elevator banks.

  The doors of two of the four elevators had been pried open and each had a squat, polymer rappelling anchor secured to the floor in front of it by a molecular adhesive that permanently bonded it to the hard surface. Thin, black climbing line had been attached to the anchors via D-rings and lowered down into the elevator shafts and the point-men of First and Second squads were already hooked up to the line via a harness built into their armor.

  “Send them,” Muniz told Gunny Kennedy.

  The next two Marines were hooked into the line before the ones on point had taken their first bound into the darkness of the shafts; but they paused there at the edge of the doorway with one hand on the line and the other to their weapons, waiting for a report from the first two. McKay wondered for just a moment whether Muniz shouldn’t have dropped grenades down the hole first, but rejected the notion almost immediately: they were hoping to get to the lower floors undetected, after all, and the explosions would have been a clear signal they were using the elevator shafts rather than the stairs.