Casserine

by Bernard Lee DeLeo

  “Hell’s bells, Jake,” Dougherty gasped. “What the.”

  Mercer saw Dougherty’s shock, and grabbed Jake’s arm with both of his hands. The fear in his eyes disturbed Jake more than Dougherty’s surprise.

  “Easy, Charlie,” Jake said quietly. “It’s a DNA thing that triggered after I started serving on Casserine. The heavy gravity.”

  “Save it, Jake,” Mercer broke in, releasing his friend’s arm. “Give me the short version. Are you all right? I mean does this change simply kill you, or burn you out like a torched candle?”

  “Neither one,” Jake replied. “You guys have to keep this to yourselves. Risling’s been having my condition monitored for a long time. Nothing bad has come of it yet, and it’s not like there’s anything I can do to change it. It has its good side. You already know I heal faster. I can’t be hurt easily either. I’m not experimenting with MAG50 rounds in my face, but I’m not as vulnerable to blunt attacks. There’s also the strength factor. Watch.”

  Jake leaned over, as his two uneasy friends watched. He gripped the solid metal stanchion under their seats, and squeezed for a few seconds. When he removed his hand, he had left behind the impression of where his hand had been, molded into the metal surface.

  “Holy crap,” Dougherty whispered, stunned. “That. that. I couldn’t do that with a hydraulic press. Jake, I.”

  “Will this thing kill you, Jake?” Mercer broke in.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so. Hell, I’ve been on borrowed time since the first nest on Omaha. We all are. Can’t worry about what can’t be changed.”

  “Does Adrian.. mean…does your wife know,” Dougherty asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Jake laughed. “How the heck would I be able to hide it from her?”

  “You ain’t going to mutate into a Bug, or something, are you?” Mercer asked, only half kidding. “If you start growing mandibles, I’ll have to put you down.”

  “These boys sure look eager,” Jake observed, as he sat next to Mercer on the way back down to the planet surface.

  Mercer nodded. “Most are vets from Omaha and Bougainville, but I ordered the new recruits to be interspersed amongst the vets. After we get done playing around, we are going to have one bad ass military force. In the space of time these operations took place, we’ve trained regiments of Marines, and ship’s crew, not to mention scores of pilots qualified on everything we have.”

  “Sounds like you’ve taken some satisfaction out of all this,” Jake replied. “I’m making you a Colonel, by the way. You’ve earned it. That’s for sure.”

  “Busted down private to Colonel inside of a year,” Mercer sighed. “Nice pay raise, and hell yea, I take some satisfaction in all this. We were born to do this stuff, Jake, just like I keep telling you. It probably don’t mean as much to you since you’ve turned into some kind of freak.”

  Jake laughed in appreciation. “I figured you could use some extra money, now that you have a family and all.”

  “I haven’t made that much progress.”

  “Someone, who will remain nameless, said they saw you have a rather emotional parting with Alice and her little girl,” Jake remarked.

  “We’ll see,” Mercer shrugged. “She likes me, and so does Julie. I showed them my Star Wars collection.”

  This time, Jake laughed loud and long. “Oh Han, you are so smooth. You aren’t making Alice dress up in a Princess Lea outfit, are you?”

  Mercer hesitated for a moment, only to have Jake draw back away from him, pretending disgust. “Charlie, you dog you. You didn’t.”

  Mercer smacked the side of Jake’s head with the back of his hand.

  “Owwwwwww,” Jake intoned, playing hurt.

  “No, I didn’t make her dress up as Princess Lea, Bug Man. Only you would consider something as perverted and childish as that. Besides, where would I get a Princess Lea outfit out here?”

  “I could loan you Adrian’s,” Jake quipped.

  The rest of the Marines, seated silently around their two mission commanders, once again watched in amazement as Jake and Mercer laughed continuously until tears were streaming down their cheeks, and they were pounding on each other’s backs.

  One Drop Ship landed at a time, with Alpha Drop Ship first in line. After disgorging five companies of the Marine First Regiment, they off loaded equipment and hovercraft on the center of the Landing Zone. The other Drop Ships kept the Bugs well away from the epoxy base of operations. Without close connections, the Bugs lost contact with the Queen, and would simply wander around until killed.

  Mercer deployed the Marines outwards to guard the operations setup, while Jake oversaw the building structure, which would house their temporary command center. After the command structure and communications were up and running, the other Drop Ships came in to unload tunnel pipe and other hovercraft. By the end of the Passallion morning, which consisted of torrential downpours mixed with red tinted sunlight, the temperatures were hovering in the steamy nineties. The landing force of over two thousand Marines proceeded to build connecting shelters to the point of where the tunnel to the nest would begin, in order to protect men and equipment from the elements.

  Air conditioning made the inside of the command center, and sheltering connections havens to refresh the Marine force. Medical stations were set up in a dozen spots, managed by med techs trained on Omaha by Adrian Matthews, interspersed with med tech veterans from the Omaha and Bougainville missions. With the tunneling pipes laid out for quick installation, Jake went with Dougherty to make a check of where their tunneling operation would begin. They used the modified hovercraft designated for the main digging operation.

  Gunnery Sergeant McClure had formed a skirmish line where Mercer had directed him, right at the point where the digging would begin. A fifty-yard gap existed between where the shelter tunnel ended coming from the command center, and the edge of the Landing Zone, where the tunnel to the nest would begin. Because it was in direct line to the nest, the Bug line continually surfaced at or near McClure’s squad. A Drop Ship hovered over the immediate area, disrupting the line further toward the nest, leaving McClure’s squad to kill the ones no longer guided by the Queen. Dougherty set the hovercraft down near McClure’s Marines. He and Jake disembarked to join them at their skirmish line.

  McClure turned, and snapped a salute, which Jake returned.

  “Hi Vic, how’s it look?” Jake asked.

  “Pretty light, Sir, thanks to the Drop Ship screwing with the Bug line all the way to the nest,” McClure replied. “When you start getting down underground, I bet it’s going to get real dicey. The Queen probably has multiple lines heading for our LZ.”

  “You’re right, I’m sure,” Jake agreed.

  “We’re expecting to plow through half dirt and half Bug matter, Sergeant,” Dougherty replied.

  “Yes Sir, I bet it will be at least that, and they’ll be plugging your hole at every opportunity.”

  Jake looked up at an increasingly clearer sky, and subsequent blazing red sun. “How are your guys holding up in the heat, Vic?”

  “Ooh-rah!”

  “Good,” Jake chuckled, “because except for getting drenched in between, this is it. Let’s get Charlie, and get started, Tim. Vic, I want your squad to go in with me once we get started. We’ll have two squads in there at all times, rotating out every hour, just as planned. Stay out here where you are though, until I call for you.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  Jake and Dougherty flew the hovercraft right up to the edge of the epoxy surface. They could see on the monitors where the surface bubbled slightly, all over the area, which meant McClure’s assessment was correct.

  “I bet Vic’s being conservative with half dirt, half Bug juice,” Jake commented. “We’ll have to make sure we keep the tunnels clear, even if it means going a little slower. I don’t want these guys wading around in Bug fluid.”

  “These craft will keep us moving, Jake. They can clear out a lot of tunnel deb
ris in a very short period of time, and the width of the pipe will allow us to have two following along at a time,” Dougherty said.

  “As the tunnel gets longer and deeper though, we’ll have to have more hovercraft along the route, until we have a steady circle in and out, removing debris and rotating troops. Okay, let’s get started, Tim.”

  Later, Dougherty, with Mercer sitting next to him, blew a fifty-yard gouge downwards in the wet sludge at the angle they needed for the tunnel pipes. The first collapsible tunnel pipe was jammed into the groove, and expanded by remote control in the command center at Dougherty’s order. It expanded into a rectangular, rounded on the edges pipe, complete with its own individual luminescence, fifty yards long, fifty feet across, and twenty-five feet in height. As Tim blasted into the second section of the ground, two hovercraft on the left of the pipe, at staggered distances from each other, sucked debris into huge tanks mounted on the nose section of their craft. When the tanks were full, the craft simply backed out of the pipe on the right.

  Dougherty continued excavating for the second pipe partition, cauterizing the surrounding dirt in the hole with high heat, so it would hold until the collapsible pipe was pushed into place. After five of the pipes had been placed into position, and their ends joined, the Bugs attacked the hovercraft in bulk. Their numbers filled the opening as they punched through the excavated hole, and into the tunnel. Dougherty opened fire on the hole with devastating effect.

  Jake, who had been following along behind the hovercraft on foot, putting Marines on guard at each juncture, now called for McClure’s squad to fly in with the next hovercraft. Jake killed a few Bugs, which tumbled into the tunnel beyond Dougherty’s guns, but even they had been hit and maimed before getting by. The hovercraft continued their vacuuming procedure, leaving behind only a few inches of debris on the tunnel floor. When McClure’s squad arrived, Jake split them up to cover the hole from both sides of the tunnel. The mop up operation worked well; but more untouched Bugs made it through, because of the sheer numbers jamming the opening.

  Jake rotated the Marine squads at every two pipe junctions, and ordered the sentries guarding the pipe joints relieved every two hours. After twelve of the sections were laid in place, the pace slowed down dramatically, because of the cave-in factor. With the Bugs attacking the opening in mass, Dougherty and Mercer had their hands full at the controls. By cauterizing the opening a couple of minutes longer, Dougherty managed to stop the cave-ins, but multiplied the Bug numbers at the opening. Mercer watched Jake on his monitor, as he helped up Marines who slipped in the tunnel soup, and directed replacements to their posts. Jake had to pause every few minutes to squirt off his visor, which was covered in sludge and Bug slime.

  “Jake?” Mercer called out.

  “I’m a little busy here, Charlie.”

  “Rotate out goofball before you pass out.”

  “I’m fine, Charlie,” Jake chuckled. “If you see me start to stumble around, then get on my case. Until then, stay off my command frequency.”

  “Aye, aye, General Cement Head,” Mercer retorted, as stifled laughter echoed throughout the command channel.

  Chapter 41

  Chamber Surprise

  The excavation continued non-stop for the rest of the day. After twenty-four hours straight, they reached the hollowed out area housing the Queen’s chamber with thirty sections of connected pipe. Sixty Marines guarding the pipe joints, and twenty more at the point with Jake, were rotated more frequently as the digging had slowed down. The Marines above kept guard over the Landing Zone against the dwindling number of surfacing Bugs. As the last pipe was put into place and sealed, Dougherty punched through into the chamber area suddenly, and all hell broke loose, as thousands of Bugs, unable to get at the hovercraft before, attacked simultaneously.

  Jake called in reinforcements, as Dougherty was unable to kill the Bugs fast enough. Jake, with his twenty Marines held the point. Every hovercraft coming in, dropped off more platoons of Marines, driving the Bugs back into the surrounding sludge as they blanketed the area with particle beam fire. Dougherty’s hovercraft was brought to a halt by the sheer weight of the Bugs dropping in on it, as Dougherty guided it to the Queen’s chamber shield.

  “We’re buried, Jake,” Mercer pronounced. “Tim and I are killing Bugs as fast as the guns can fire, but they even have the turret movement stopped.

  “On our way, Charlie,” Jake replied. “Will the hovercraft fly if we get the Bugs off?”

  “Put a fork in us Jake, we’re done,” Dougherty answered. “I have the portable gun, loaded with shield solvent for just this type of screw-up, but I have no way of getting it to you.”

  “Understood,” Jake replied. He looked around at the Nest Marines he had covering the edge of the chamber, blowing away Bugs as fast as they came. “Boys, I need cover, so I can swim through this mess to the disabled hovercraft. I want hovercraft, three abreast, at the tunnel entrance, with Marines rotating in a skirmish line underneath them. Hovercraft Five, you on the right, I need a ride in to Hovercraft One. I’ll hold on to the side. Deck gunner on five, you read me?”

  “Yes Sir, Corporal Stassinas here, Sir.”

  “Change to pulse blasts on the Bugs covering the hovercraft, or you’ll blow up Hovercraft One.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Stassinas acknowledged.

  “Pilot, Hovercraft Five?”

  “Yes Sir, Lieutenant Brisby here, Sir.”

  “This is going to be tricky, you okay to go in on this?” Jake asked. “If not, say so.”

  “Let’s make some Bug Juice, Sir,” Brisby replied.

  Jake climbed up on the outside of Hovercraft Five.

  “Don’t do this, Jake,” Mercer said calmly. “Back the force out, and rig another ship. You can always fight your way through again.”

  “Bugger off, Major,” Jake retorted, as he pounded on the side of the hovercraft he clung to. He had his sidearm out, which fired only pulse blasts, and had slung his particle beam rifle. “Let’s go Brisby. The rest of you will have to try and keep the Bugs off us without blowing a hole through me. Remember, I love you guys.”

  Laughter echoed in his ear as Brisby flew into the Chamber. The contingent of Marines and hovercraft blasted attacking Bugs, flailing at the wavering Hovercraft Five from above as well as below. Jake killed four Bugs with his blaster, which had clamored onto the debris tank mounted on the front of Hovercraft Five.

  “Brisby, can you jettison that friggin’ tank?” Jake asked, blowing the head off of yet another Bug which landed on the tank.

  Seconds later, the debris tank fell away, and they were at the downed Hovercraft One.

  “Position the Hovercraft so Stassinas can clear off Hovercraft One, Brisby. Charlie, you and Tim get ready to come out the back hatch.”

  “Already there, Jake,” Dougherty called out, as Brisby maneuvered Hovercraft Five so his deck gunner could clear away the Bugs.

  Jake climbed around to the back of Hovercraft Five. “Drop the rear hatch, Brisby, and back her in. Keep that cover fire going boys, we’re going down.”

  The Chamber looked like a Bug charnel house. Bug parts, and innards were piled to the center of the downed Hovercraft One. They rained down over everything as Marines and hovercraft deck gunners blew Bugs apart all around Jake’s craft. The hovercraft rear hatch dropped open, and Jake slipped inside. He leveled the previously slung particle beam rifle, and holstered the blaster. Brisby backed his hovercraft right to the rear hatch of downed Hovercraft One, as it virtually rained Bug pieces.

  “Pop her open guys, your rides here,” Jake ordered.

  Hovercraft One’s rear hatch popped open into Bug soup. Debris literally flowed into the hovercraft hatch. Dougherty and Mercer rushed out, firing as they came with their hand blasters. Corporal Stassinas and Jake covered the two as they jumped onto Hovercraft Five’s rear hatch, and turned to add their fire to the mix.

  “You see the Bitch’s Chamber, Brisby?” Jake asked, as a Bug landed right in f
ront of him, and opened up the front of his armor, knocking him off his feet. Mercer blew the Bug’s head off, and Dougherty covered them as Jake regained his feet.

  “I see it, Sir,” Brisby acknowledged. “Shall I back in?”

  “As quick as you can,” Jake replied, taking stock of anything besides armor damaged on his body.

  “Cripes Jake, that one opened you up like an old time tin can,” Dougherty commented, as they all fired into the Bug mass Brisby backed them into. “Are you bleeding?”

  “I don’t think so, Tim,” Jake replied, as he just barely swung his rifle up in time to blow apart a Bug dropping onto the open rear hatch. Its innards blew back over the deck turret, leaving Stassinas with only his rear monitor for vision, and even that had been impaired.

  “I’m almost blind in here, Sir,” Stassinas called out. “I’m rotating cover fire, but not at much I can see.”

  “You’re doing fine, Corporal,” Jake replied. “You can’t miss from here. Hovercraft Two, and Three, jettison your tanks, and fly in on both sides of us. When you get here, open up on everything, but the front of the Queen’s shield. We’ll be working there.”

  “More hovercraft are there to take up the slack, Jake,” Corey inserted from the Command Center.

  “Thanks, Sara, I was hoping you could still see what’s going on,” Jake said.

  “We’re all with you, Sir. We’re just staying quiet,” Colonel Peters

  “This soft ground is the pits,” Mercer muttered, firing a steady stream of particle beam fire into the roof of the Chamber. “I’m glad these new rifles don’t heat up like those old blasters they gave us on Omaha the first time in, huh, Jake?”

  “Man, you got that right,” Jake grinned at the memory. “We’d be Bug food already. Get set Tim, here we go.”

  Brisby backed his hovercraft right into the shield surface. The moment he could see, Dougherty fired the shield solvent. It took only a moment to dissolve away a hole big enough for Jake and Mercer to literally disintegrate the Queen, who did not even get a chance to attack the hole. In the sudden silence from the final cessation of the Queen’s keening screams, Jake, Mercer, and Dougherty dropped down against the inner side of the rear hovercraft bulkhead, ignoring the nearly three inch covering of Bug matter they collapsed in.