“Okay, bellhop! Come on, come on, let’s have it out! Right here! Right now!” Palmita danced lightly on his feet in the center of the companionway. A thin stream of blood dripped down his left cheek from the blow Conorado had given him, but it did not appear to be bothering him. He was young, he was lithe, and he was in good condition.
Conorado discovered very quickly that the man could fight. Warily, still in great pain, Conorado straightened up. Palmita whirled in and delivered several blows and kicks, one opening a cut above Conorado’s right eye and the other to his midsection, which doubled him up again. Palmita danced back lightly, like a prizefighter, “Come on, come on, lover boy! Get up and get some more!”
“Conflict! Human conflict!” Minerva blared.
Lewis Conorado knew three basic things about hand-to-hand: get your opponent on the ground, never let him get on your back, and fight dirty. Palmita was proving deadly, but only because Conorado had been trying to fight back by the same rules. He rushed Palmita, grabbed him around the waist, and shoved him back along the companionway. Palmita pedaled desperately to keep his balance while raining chops to the back and sides of Conorado’s head, but he went down with a crash and Conorado was on top. He grabbed Palmita’s hair with his right hand and smashed the back of his head on the deck plating so hard he scraped his own knuckles. Then he gouged the thumb of his left hand into Palmita’s right eye while squeezing him as tightly with his legs as he could. Palmita flailed and screamed as Conorado’s hands turned red with his blood.
“Stop this at once! Stop it! I order you, stop this!” Ambassador Franks shouted. He and the rest of the tourists stood filling the companionway aft, gawking at the pair. One of the ’Finnis, a big man with a tobacco-stained yellow beard, grinned fiercely and nodded his head in approval.
“He tried to rape me,” Jennifer said, stepping up to the ambassador.
Franks thought she meant Conorado had assaulted her. “Captain! I am going to ask Captain Tuit to put you under arrest! What kind of a man—”
“No, goddamnit! It was him! It was that goddamned Palmita, not Captain Conorado!” Jennifer shouted, pointing a rigid finger at the diplomatic officer, who now stood panting, one hand over his bloodied eye.
“Sir, I was only trying to kiss her! I thought she liked me! Then all this screaming,” Palmita shouted.
“Well . . .”
“Excuse me.” The miner who’d been with Conorado in the lifecraft stepped up. “I am Epher Benediction. The captain is right. I saw the whole thing. This man was forcing his attentions upon the young lady.”
“Well . . .” Franks began. “Well, ahem! Miss, if you wish to make a formal complaint against Mr. Palmita—”
“Just keep the sonofabitch away from me the rest of this voyage,” Jennifer hissed.
“Well, then, I suggest these gentlemen see to their wounds and we call the tour off for now and return to our quarters.”
“Just a minute, sir,” Conorado interjected, glaring at Ambassador Franks. “You wanted to put me in irons when you thought I’d assaulted Miss Lenfen, but now that it’s your man in the dock all you want to do is call off the tour? I say what’s good for me is good for him too.”
“Captain, this matter is concluded,” Franks answered, and turned to go.
Conorado laid a restraining hand on the ambassador’s shoulder. “Not so quick; I have something more to say to you.”
“Get your hand off of me, sir!” Franks said.
Conorado pointed at Palmita with a forefinger and then he waved it under the ambassador’s nose. “You’re not in my chain of command, Ambassador. Both of you listen to me. Carefully. If that man over there ever tries anything like this again, if he even says anything to Miss Lenfen, I will perform a radical operation on him that will not even leave enough meat for him to jerk off with. Do you understand me? And then I’ll make personal inquiries into the effectiveness of his chain of command.”
“Awriiight, belay all that nonsense down there,” Captain Tuit broke in. “You two see to your wounds and then report to me on the bridge. You too, Lenfen, and you also, Mr. Benediction. Anybody goes to the brig on this ship, it’ll be on my order, and since we haven’t got a brig, I’ll put all of yer asses in stasis the rest of this voyage and then when we get to Earth you can forget about kissing and learn how to walk all over again. For the rest of you, I apologize. We’ll arrange to continue your tour another time.”
The passengers filed on by Conorado, some patting him on the shoulder as they passed. He and Jennifer stood there for a moment before following them.
“Captain.” It was the miner who called himself Epher Benediction. He stood there extending his hand. “You are a brave and honorable man. The Bible teaches us that courage and honor are valuable qualities. The Lord shall welcome a man like you.”
“Thanks, Epher.” They shook hands warmly. “But forgive me, I hope the Lord will keep me around a while longer.” Conorado grinned.
“Only the Lord knows the day of our death.” Epher grinned back. Under other circumstances, Conorado would have found that grin very disturbing.
CHAPTER
* * *
SEVENTEEN
All fighting stopped a couple of hours before dawn. Brigadier Sturgeon didn’t go to sleep with the coming of quiet, though; he stayed in contact with his battalion and squadron commanders and kept his F2 and F3 shops busy analyzing incoming data from the string-of-pearls, planning what to do next. At daybreak he had the squadron’s Raptors once again clear a path through the swamp for Dragons to bring out the casualties. They made it without incident. There was a distressing number of casualties—fifty-eight dead and well over a hundred wounded; the exact number was uncertain because many wounded Marines refused to be evacuated—in addition to the two Raptors and three Dragons killed by weapons he couldn’t identify. In his years as a FIST commander, he’d lost so many Marines killed or wounded on only one other deployment—the war on Diamunde—and it had taken weeks in that war for casualties to mount so high. Equipment, tactics, and medical treatment had reached a point where Marines simply didn’t suffer so many casualties anymore.
Sturgeon was by then convinced that they were fighting the same kind of Skinks a platoon from Company L had encountered on Society 437. Who were the Skinks? Where did they come from? As far as General Aguilano had been able to find out, Society 437 was the only known contact with them. If the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps couldn’t ferret out other contacts, there probably hadn’t been any. Why did they attack humans without at least attempting communication?
He shunted the questions aside. All they would do was raise more unanswerable questions. His infantrymen were in trouble and he had to get them out of that swamp.
The string-of-pearls still couldn’t find the Skinks, not a trace. The navy techs and analysts working on the data in orbit still had no idea what that possible anomaly might have been, where the squad sent to check it out had found nothing—and then had been cut off and almost overrun. All he had to go on were the reports from Commander van Winkle, and those didn’t tell him enough to make any intelligent command decisions.
Well, he was a Marine. When in doubt, be decisive.
His choices were to continue through or to pull out the same way they’d come in. The Marines wouldn’t like pressing forward; that was what they were doing when they were getting hurt. But pulling back over ground they’d already covered would feel like retreat, and that could be catastrophic for morale. He might not have the information he needed to make intelligent command decisions, but deciding which way to go was easy. Press forward. That way was shorter anyway. The battalion had advanced more than halfway through the swamp during the previous day. He issued the order and had both the squadron and the battery stand by to give support.
“Saddle up, people, we’re moving out.” Staff Sergeant Hyakowa’s voice came loud and clear into the helmet comm of every member of third platoon. “Saddle up!”
There was gener
al grumbling at the order, but none that wasn’t totally routine for tired men trying to ignore the life-threatening aspect of where they were and what they were doing. None of them wanted to be there; certainly none of them wanted to get up and go into further danger. But they knew it was more dangerous to stay where they were, and the only way out was to go through more of what they’d already been through.
“We’re continuing through the swamp,” Hyakowa said. “Same order of movement as yesterday.”
Shouted objections greeted that announcement. Continuing through the swamp meant going through more of what they’d already gone through.
“Secure that, people,” Hyakowa snapped. “Forward is the short way. Back is farther. Do you want to get out of this swamp or not?”
The objections quieted. They wanted to get out, they just didn’t want to walk it. But there was no other way.
Schultz flexed his left arm, willing the traumatized tissue to loosen up. He ignored the pain as adhesions broke and blood tried to seep past the artificial skin that covered the wound. He took his position, sniffed the air, listened to the sounds, got himself ready to give far worse than the Skinks could give back.
Doyle looked around fearfully, terrified of continuing the march through the swamp.
Kerr scuttled over to make sure Schultz was all right. On his return he checked Doyle to make sure he had everything he was supposed to and his blaster was loaded and functional. Then the signal came to move out. Kerr was glad he’d been so busy with his men that he didn’t have the time to worry about how he was doing himself. The action the night before, when the squad was cut off, left him with a stronger feeling of mortality than he’d had since his first contact after he returned from convalescence. He’d gotten over it quickly enough that time; this time it was gnawing at him.
Word had finally spread through the insectoid world that the massive herd migrating through its territory wasn’t an ambulatory banquet, so few of the Marines were bitten or stung, and most of their itching was residual from the previous day and night. Even the walking came a little easier. The land sloped gently, almost imperceptably, up toward the mountains from which its water flowed. The muck underfoot became less clingy, firmer, gave their boots better traction. Water moved less sluggishly, less often lay in sheets on the ground, and stream beds were better defined. Vegetation was hung in fewer lank sheets and tangles, sight lines were lengthened. They were heading through more swamp, but it wasn’t as depressing as it had been; spirits rose. Especially when they didn’t have any contact for the first several hours. But all things end. Especially the good ones.
The battalion was almost at the far side of the swamp. The leftmost platoon of Kilo Company had already broken into an arm of open land that poked into the swamp. With firmer ground in which to dig their roots, trees grew taller. Grasses hopscotched under them to grow in scattered clumps where sunlight managed to filter to the ground. It was as dark as ever under the trees, but colors began to appear where light did come through. The air was freshening from its swampy rankness.
Schultz froze. He could never afterward remember what made him freeze, he simply knew a threat was nearby. While he was still deciding if immediate action was necessary, Doyle, who sensed the nearness of the end of the swamp and wasn’t paying attention to Schultz, blundered into him. The two fell, and that saved Schultz’s life. As he hit the ground, Schultz very clearly heard the sharp crack of something supersonic pass through the space he’d just occupied.
“Thanks,” he rumbled in surprise and rolled away. In the instant, he thought Doyle saw whatever was coming and deliberately tackled him to save his life.
Doyle also heard the crack but didn’t understand what it meant. He wanted to raise his head and look around, but when his infra showed Schultz hugging the ground, he realized raising his head might be a good way to lose it. He scrambled for cover.
“Right!” Kerr shouted, and dove to the ground. Behind him the rest of second squad hit the mud and faced their right, firing blindly into the swamp.
No greenish streams of viscous fluid shot at the Marines. Supersonic cracks shot overhead, faster and faster, until in seconds they crescendoed in a skull-splitting whine. Leaves and branches, sliced through by whatever was being shot at them, cascaded down. Trees toppled in front of them, their trunks cut through.
“Where are they?” someone shouted.
“There!” someone shouted back.
Sergeant Bladon couldn’t see where the hellish fire came from, nor did his UPUD show anything. He did the only thing he could. “Volley fire, thirty!” he shouted. “Fire!” On the platoon command circuit he heard Gunny Bass order the gun squad to move into position to help second squad. Bass ordered first squad to move back and swing to what was now second squad’s right side.
The eight blasters of second squad put out a ragged line of plasma bolts that struck the mud thirty meters distant.
“Volley fire, up ten!” Bladon ordered as soon as he saw his squad’s fire was on line. The bolts from the squad’s eight blasters hit foliage and ground deeper in the swamp. The two guns added their rapid fire. A curtain of steam rose from the frying mud.
“Up ten!” Bladon ordered. The squad’s fire, even with the guns added to it, seemed to have no effect on the enemy’s rate of fire.
“Third platoon, volley fire, sixty!” Bass shouted over the all-hands circuit. First squad was on line by them and added fire from its blasters.
Kerr couldn’t see sixty meters through the steam rising from the overheated mud. He guessed where it was and fired a bolt. He shifted aim to his right and fired again, shifted left and fired. Again and again he shifted, trying to draw a stippled line in the mud sixty meters away. What the hell kind of weapons were they using? He’d never seen or even heard of weapons like this.
“Third platoon, up ten!” Bass commanded. They fired deeper.
Felled trees smoldered, tongues of flame flickering up from them from repeated blaster hits. Trees crackled and popped from the abruptly heated fluids in their trunks and some split. The crashes of felled trees in the killing zone between the Marines and their ambushers became more frequent. Trees toppled behind them. The ground shook. Things hit the mud in front of them, behind them, between them, pulverized the ground where they hit, exploded flesh and bone when they found their targets.
A tremendous crash came from first squad’s area. Someone screamed briefly.
“Who was that?” Bass demanded.
The volume of blaster fire increased as first platoon arrived on third platoon’s left flank with one section from the assault platoon. A moment later second platoon and the other assault section reached their right flank and joined in.
“Company L! Volley fire, seventy!” Lieutenant Humphrey ordered on the company all-hands circuit. Where the hell are they? he wondered. Sightlines were thirty meters, rarely more than fifty. Volley fire at seventy meters over flat land should have been killing just about everything up to double that distance, yet everything his company was throwing out had no effect on the enemy’s fire. There was no way anyone could be in that range and be able to put out directed fire. He heard the fire from his company slowly slacken and saw holes open in the coverage.
Two minutes into the firefight, Surveillance Radar Analyst Third Class Auperson on the Grandar Bay shouted, “Chief, take a look. You’re not going to believe this.”
“What’cha got, Auperson,” Chief Nome asked as he leaned over Auperson’s shoulder to look at his displays. He blinked.
“You’re right, I don’t believe that.” Without turning his head he called, “Sir! Over here. Are those jarheads down there in trouble?”
Lieutenant (jg) McPherson, the string-of-pearls watch officer, raised a “wait one” finger; he was talking on his headset. He joined Nome and Auperson as he wrapped up the conversation. “The Marines are screaming for data. What do you have?”
Nome pointed. McPherson looked at the display. “Hot damn, that’s it!” He got ba
ck onto his headset and reported. “Those coordinates the Marines are at—there’s a swath of swamp being torn apart between them and an area eight hundred meters to their east northeast. Looks like mad bulldozers at work.” He rattled off the coordinates of the northeastern edge of the area, then said, “Aye aye, sir, I’ll keep on top of it.” Fascinated, he kept his eyes glued to the display. He couldn’t imagine what kind of weapon would wreak the destruction he was watching.
“That’s the report, sir, but it’s not possible,” said Lieutenant Quaticatl when Brigadier Sturgeon looked up after reading the string-of-pearls report.
“Possible or not, it’s all we’ve got,” Sturgeon replied. “Three!”
“Sir?” Commander Usner replied. He had also just finished reading the report.
“Work with air. Box those coordinates. I want the heaviest hit possible there, and I want it now.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Usner got on the open comm link to the squadron’s operations officer and fed him the information. “The brigadier wants it five minutes ago,” he finished. He nodded, satisfied with the response of the squadron’s S3.
“Sir,” he reported to his commander, “half of the Raptors are orbiting within range now and will fire with Jerichos as soon as they’re pointed in the right direction. The other half are fueled, loaded, and launching. They’ll be on station in five minutes.”
“Good,” Sturgeon grunted. His brow was deeply furrowed. He looked into someplace only he could see. What the hell kind of weapons were the Skinks using?
Starfist: Kingdom's Swords Page 18
