Frantically, Melindez reloaded his rocket launcher, racing against time as the damaged enemy turned jerkily to bring its gun to bear.
To complicate matters, Rick suddenly noticed the impacts of autogun fire on the back armor of his war-car, then he felt the vehicle settle and scrape as his tires were shredded. He found himself caught between enemies.
Hitting a switch until then unused, the vehicle gave a lurch and rolled ninety degrees. The cockpit cage he was in gimbaled upright, and at the end of the evolution he had a new set of tires on the deck.
Unfortunately that did not solve his autogun problem, and shells continued to hammer away at his back armor. One round slammed into his right elbow as he let it get too far outside the open edge, and his arm went numb.
I’m not physically enhanced like the Marines, he reminded himself, and gunned his war-car forward and around the side of the semi-functional war-drone away from its working cannon.
Unfortunately that gun was now pointed at Melindez, who fired a fraction of a second before the mini-tank did. Rocked by an explosion, the enemy lifted up its nose, and its gun went off while it pointed at the overhead. Its shell exploded, ripping a hole in the metal ceiling and showering a slew of hot debris on the Marine crouched in the doorway.
It then slammed down nose-first, its forward wheels in ruins, its back ones resting on rubble and its gun pointing toward the deck. Melindez dug his way out of the mess as Rick maneuvered the war-car in behind the wrecked tank, using it as cover against the autoguns. “Can you make it to me?” he called.
“Not sure, sir,” the Marine said from his doorway. Autogun fire, drawn by his movement, tore chunks from the jamb, and ricocheted into the niche, pieces striking Melindez’ armor with painful thuds. “I don’t think so.”
“Hunker down there, then. You’re okay for now. Maybe you can open that door behind you.” Switching channels, Rick checked his HUD for the nearest Marine forces.
“Captain Bryson, this is Commander Johnstone, come in,” he radioed.
“Bryson here, sir. Kind of busy.” Rick heard the whines and thuds of weapons fire.
“A Marine and I are pinned down. Can you send me a squad to take out these autoguns?” He caused the friendly and enemy icons to flash on Bryson’s HUD.
“Just as soon as I can, sir,” Bryson said resignedly.
Rick could hear the disgust in the Marine captain’s voice, as he probably thought he was weakening his own force to get a stupid Navy officer out of an unnecessary jam. As long as the man sent help, he really didn’t care what Bryson thought.
Just then the damaged enemy mini-tank fired its cannon from its awkward nose-down position. Gun pointed sharply at the floor, the blast threw another shower of debris onto Melindez, burying him in the doorway, and incidentally rocked the war drone back onto its wheels. It now had a distinct forward slope but with its gun elevated as high as possible it could probably fire out to a range of fifty meters, if awkwardly at the floor.
Rick’s war-car was within fifty meters.
Pulling the controls toward him, he backed up as fast as he could, presenting his front armor to the wounded mini-tank. He hated to leave Melindez but he had to get out of the thing’s line of fire.
Triggering his own gun, Rick watched with satisfaction as his shell slammed into the enemy, knocking it briefly sideways before inexorably lining up on him again. Then it fired.
Backing up the way he was, he had a front-row seat as the floor before him exploded. The war drone’s shell had plowed up the deck where he had been just a moment before, but now he was too far away, skating backward. Stuck downward as the thing’s cannon was, it could not reach him.
Or so he thought.
Still backing, he watched as the clever machine climbed its damaged fore-wheels up onto a piece of its fallen fellow, elevating its whole front end and, incidentally, its gun. Oh, crap, Rick thought just before an explosion knocked the enemy war-drone sideways and off its perch. Melindez’s rocket had come just in time, as he finally pulled his war-car around a corner and out of the line of fire.
“Bryson, where is that squad! I still have autoguns pinning down Corporal Melindez, and there’s a damaged war drone with a functional cannon here,” he said angrily, highlighting all the positions on the captain’s HUD.
“They should be flanking the autoguns momentarily,” Bryson said calmly. It sounded like his own fight was done with.
“Those guns and the war drones were guarding a fusion generator. As soon as you relive Melindez, disable it,” Rick ordered.
“I just might do that, sir,” Bryson said dryly. “Bryson out.”
A motion to Rick’s right startled him, but it was only Trissk with three other war-cars pulling up beside him – two Marines and one Ryss.
“Can we help?” the young male asked.
Rick held up his palm, hoping the gesture to wait was understood, as he switched to the two Marines’ channel. “Melindez is pinned down up there. Bryson is supposed to be hitting the autoguns momentarily. When they do, can you go and get him?”
“Damn right, sir,” one of them replied, and the two raced up to wait at the corner, ready to dash in.
“Trissk,” Rick said, flipping up his visor, “the human combat specialists have better armor and weapons than yours. They will help their comrade.”
The Ryss sighed wearily, visibly exhausted and covered with cuts and bruises. Without armor, every ricochet or piece of shrapnel meant a wound. “As you wish. Your people are great warriors.”
Rick did not disagree, not wanting to offend the Ryss’ taboos by explaining that the Marines were full of augmentations. Undoubtedly in their natural state the Ryss were fearsome indeed, with their size and strength and claws and teeth.
Besides, he thought to himself, humans are great warriors when they have to be. Just not me…not the way they mean. I wonder what they will think of our female Marines… Probably best to let Bull be the liaison, once he learns the Ryss language.
Checking his HUD, he saw a platoon of Marines engage the autoguns from the side. Moments later, the professionals had disabled the enemy machines and shut down the reactor, and Rick, Trissk, Melindez, two surviving Marines and one remaining tough old Ryss warrior began digging out their dead and wounded.
Chapter Seventeen
Chirom dragged Vusk’s corpse into the warm-room, trailing blood smears all over the deck. Females gasped, and some looked away.
Kirst’aa ambled over and poked at the dead thing with her ancient walking stick. “So you got him in the end,” she remarked. “Good thing, since he was of your clan. I thought we females would have to do your dirty work for you.”
“I am far too weary to put up with your bile anymore, crone,” Chirom replied stiffly. “I am only here to show you the threat is past, and to see if there are any Ryss heroes who can still fight.” Stepping past her as she choked on a reply, he began to walk down the rows of wounded.
“Are there any warriors here whose tails can stand?” he asked loudly, and a few, then several more, rolled or scrambled or dragged themselves to their feet. One lacked an eye, a simple piece of electrical tape across the socket. Others had paws tied to their sides, but most could still use at least one. Some had cuts and gashes and blood matted into their fur, but all were now upright. He counted perhaps twenty volunteers, of the hundred lying there.
“Excellent. While the aliens and the rest of our warriors attack Desolator’s head and claws, we will sink our teeth into its tail. Gather weapons from the females, heroes, and follow me.”
Chirom gave B’Nur an implacable look, and she acquiesced bowing, waving her sisters forward to place carbines in the warriors’ paws.
***
Flight Warrant Butler held still as Flight Sergeant Krebs sealed up his armor, and then helped him snap on a back-rack full of gear. Then he did the same for his flight sergeant.
While not augmented with physical cybernetics to the extent Marines were, all Aerospace Force
s personnel had excellent equipment, as well as Eden Plague and combat nanites in their blood. Those enhancements allowed them to carry the weight of the battlesuits and gear, but they wouldn’t be running and jumping through the ship like Marines.
That was just fine with Butler, as he didn’t intend to go charging toward the enemy.
Their sled was wedged in to the corridor good and tight, half-turned with its nose up in a corner. Dropping the rear ramp had allowed them to squeeze out and shove aside some wreckage – enough to assemble their gear – but the vehicle was not going anywhere soon. Not unless he wanted to try blasting and melting his way out with his drive and thrusters, but that might be asking to be trapped inside like sardines in a can.
Hefting his PRG, Butler and Krebs scuttled heavily among the debris of the corridor for a hundred fifty meters or so. At that point they had to stop, because something heavy had broken through the overhead – a piece of machinery of indeterminate usage, all gears, belts and hoses. He thought it might be an air handler for the ventilation.
“Can’t get past,” Butler grumbled to Krebs. “Looks like we can climb to the next deck, though,” he said as he craned his neck upward. The battlesuit made it hard to see without actually leaning back.
“Let’s get to it, then,” Krebs stolidly replied. The man had little imagination but he was dependable. He put one foot above the other and climbed.
Once atop the pile, he reached up and chinned himself to peer onto the deck above. “Hmm,” he mumbled. “Looks okay.” Laboriously he pulled himself onto the next level, and Butler followed right behind, giving Krebs a shove the last bit. They both lay there for a moment, then scrambled to their feet and looked around.
They found themselves in a room with several of the same type of machines that had crashed through the deck. There was nothing above that would seem to have caused the collapse, until Butler realized the obvious. “The sled must have ripped into the overhead from underneath as we went by, and weakened the deck enough here that the weight of this machinery broke through.”
Krebs looked at the mess, then upward, then around, as if taking it all in. “Yeah.”
After waiting futilely for more, Butler asked, “I ever tell you what a great conversationalist you are, Krebs?”
“Ever’ chance you get, sir.” He began to walk between the dozen or so five-meter-high devices. “Ain’t none of them workin’ though.”
Butler realized that was true. Like much of this broken-down ship, this installation was derelict and possibly unusable. “Let’s look for an exit in the direction we want to go. Toward the stern.” He strolled slowly through the boxes that resembled nothing so much as cottages for robots, boxy and bangled with unknown gadgets.
“Here’s a door, boss,” Krebs said, pointing. Larger than the average human size, the portal was a sliding type, split in the middle like a lift. After a few moments they realized nothing they could do would budge it.
“Damn,” said Butler. “Is there another door?”
“How ‘bout that?” Krebs asked, pointing to where a large tube penetrated the wall above their heads. “Mebbe we can cut into there and just walk along it, crouched-over like.”
“Worth a try.” Butler reached for Krebs’ back-rack to fish out a monofilament saw. Carefully he cut a hole in the thin-walled pipe, then closed the device back up and stowed it. “Think you can get in there?”
“If’n I ain’t wearin’ this back-thingy,” Krebs replied, and turned to allow Butler to detach it, then did the same for the pilot. “Boost me up, boss.”
Butler helped shove Krebs up into the meter-and-a-half wide pipe, then handed up their back-racks and clambered up himself. Soon they walked, hunched over, through a long dark tunnel, their suit lights illuminating out to ten meters or so.
“You’d think there would be some vents in this thing,” Butler remarked.
“Mebbe it ain’t an air handler after all. Mebbe it carried water or sumpin’ else, long time ago.”
“Maybe.” After fifteen minutes of slow, uncomfortable creeping, Butler bumped into Krebs as he stopped and shut off his light.
“Sumpin’ up there, sir. Lights, movin, mebbe a vent. Let’s be quiet.” He set down his back-rack and stepped forward slowly and carefully.
Butler did the same, and soon the two men crouched next to a grilled opening that overlooked a bustle of mechanized activity.
It looked like a factory, assembly lines of robot arms and automated devices constructing some kind of bots or drones. Conveyors carried half-finished devices beneath the tube and out of their vision, so they were not able to see just what the final result looked like.
Butler activated his suitcomm and tried to reach the assault sleds, but got nothing but dead air. Switching from channel to channel, finally he reached Commander Johnstone. “Butler here. Sir, sorry to bother you, but you’re the only one I can talk to. My sergeant and I were trying to make it back to the other sleds when we ran across something funny. We’re deep in the guts of some kind of distribution tubes, and we came upon a factory that looks like it’s building machines.”
“What kind of machines?” he heard Johnstone ask sharply.
“Uh, can’t be sure. Wait one.” Retrieving the back-racks and pulling out the monofilament saw, Butler set it to its narrowest form and used it to cut a fingertip-sized peephole in the tube they occupied, opposite the grill. Putting his faceplate against the hole, he managed to maneuver his viewpoint until he could report. “Sir? It looks like war drones of some kind. Shiny little wheeled tanks with guns on them.”
“I think we’ve already seen some of those, up close,” Rick replied dryly. “I can’t get your location on my HUD. There’s some kind of interference. Where are you?”
“I think we’re about a kilometer aft and one level up from where we left our sled. Inside a big pipe.”
“I got the sled on HUD. I’ll pass this on to Major ben Tauros.”
“Sir?” Butler asked uncertainly, “What do you want us to do now?”
“Haven’t a bloody idea, Butler. If you want to be a hero, see if you can gum up their works. If not, sit tight and wait for the cavalry, or sneak away.”
“Roger that. Butler out.” He exchanged glances with Krebs. “You feel like a hero?”
The flight sergeant shook his head. “Nope. If’n I’d wanted to be a hero, I’d a joined the dang Marines like my dumbass brother.”
Butler lowered himself tiredly to a sitting position in the tube. “Guess we wait. I don’t want to move around too much and draw attention to ourselves. We did our job by reporting it.”
They sat there for a few minutes, just waiting, until finally Butler stirred and said, “Shit.”
“What?”
“I guess we should have joined the Marines after all.” The pilot reached for his back-rack and started removing gear from its many niches.
Krebs snorted, and began to do the same with his own. Soon they lined up two limpet mines and two rocket launchers with two armor-piercing rounds each, along with sixteen small fragmentation grenades and two gnat spy drones.
“What we gonna do, boss?” Krebs asked.
“Now we wait for the dumbass Marines to distract the machines. Then,” Butler made a bombing gesture with his armored hand, “death from above.”
Krebs sat down and got as comfortable as he could in their tight confines. “Good idea, sir. Thought for a minute I was gonna have ta mutiny on ya, sir. For your own good, like.”
“Shut up, Krebs.”
***
Bull allowed himself a feeling of cautious satisfaction as he reviewed the tactical situation on his HUD. His troops had disabled the six auxiliary reactors, as far as he knew leaving just the original three operational: one near the bow of the great ship, one in the center behind the AI’s vault, and the one halfway to the stern next to the Ryss living areas. He also assumed the ship’s fusion drive in the tail could provide auxiliary power. They would eventually have to take that one down
as well.
The one far forward was his next logical target, but he was loath to extend his thinned perimeter so far. He’d been waiting for some kind of serious counterattack from Desolator for the last two hours, and he needed to maintain concentrated firepower in reserve to do that. Ditto the drive in the stern. The vessel was just too big for three hundred surviving Marines and their Ryss allies to hold, even though most of it looked like a junkyard.
Unfortunately the reactor the Ryss abutted was off limits. If it was disabled, their civilians would quickly freeze. If he had the time and personnel he could try to cut its conduits to whatever else it was powering, but that was far too tricky to consider right now.
That left the one near the center of the ship, right behind the AI’s vault. He’d stayed away from that area, as every corridor and intersection teemed with spider-drones and autoguns. Gnats had caught video of the first carrying and emplacing the second; it seemed they made an effective team. The robot cannon wasted nothing on mobility, and were relatively dispensable, while the shiny arachnids with them provided the ability to reposition and maintain a reserve, and to counterattack using their energy weapons.
Lucky for the Marines, their armor mitigated the war drones’ microwave bursts and resisted their plasma blasts, but lately it seemed they had been hit harder. Perhaps the AI was adjusting the maser wavelengths to be more effective.
Bottom line, it was time to go after the AI vault: to batter his way through the defenses and burn out the thing’s brain. After that, the Ryss had assured the humans, all opposition would cease. Bull hoped that was so.
On his HUD he saw his Marines surrounded the stronghold, keeping their distance, taking cover at intersections. Recon elements spread out on the decks above and below, to make sure the enemy did not use the third dimension to sneak over or under and counterattack.
Desolator: Book 2 (Stellar Conquest) Page 17
