by B. V. Larson
“Get ready to repel those crawlers, Welter,” I shouted over the command channel. “You have to hold out for about thirty minutes.”
I left the command deck then and headed for the destroyer’s small sally port. We kept the invasion equipment there, and the onboard marine complement was already there, suiting up. They nodded and saluted me, then went back to the intensely focused work of getting ready to leap out of a ship moving at screaming speeds.
Over time, our kits had evolved. It seemed like every battle I had a few new gizmos to experiment with. In the past, I’d designed most of the battlesuits personally. We’d moved on past those days now. I had a design team in charge of improving equipment on a continuous basis.
The latest battlesuits were still built along my design parameters. They had a heavy suit of armor that was layered with overlapping plates. It was similar to the equipment a knight might have worn into battle a thousand years ago. Our materials, naturally, were greatly improved when compared to the simple steel plating of old fashioned knights. Underneath the entire suit we wore a skintight suit of nanocloth. This was airtight, and self-repairing. In the case of a suit breach, this final inner layer of protection had the job of sealing the leak even if it meant coating a damaged limb with nanites.
A lot of improvements had gone into training the nanites on emergency procedures. For too long, we’d relied on their innate understanding of human anatomy and pretty much let them “do their thing.” Now, we’d stepped in and given them priorities. If a limb or a portion of the suit was too damaged to salvage, the nanites were to cut that part off and save the rest of the victim.
This knowledge was met with some grim fatalism by my troops. They didn’t trust the tiny little machines to know when it was time to amputate by digging through the flesh and covering the stump with a fresh layer of smart metal. I didn’t look forward to the experience, either. But in theory, it would save lives.
Unfortunately, the nanites still weren’t too good at pain-control. When they went to work on a man, he was liable to do a lot of frenzied screaming. But, when it was all over and the marine returned to his or her ship, we could regrow those limbs with Marvin’s biotic soups. That was, if there was a ship to return to.
These thoughts went through my head as I went through the self-check routine. Each marine automatically checked the other men around him as well, pointing out dangling cords and equipment that hadn’t been cinched tight enough. Luckily, due to nanite technology, most of our connections took care of themselves.
When I finally switched on the generator on my back and felt that familiar revving hum tingling its way up my spine, I experienced a matching thrill of adrenaline. My body knew I was about to go into battle, and it was working to sharpen me up, just as I was working to organize my kit. The huge ruck-like unit on my back almost felt good. The weight of it, crouching on my shoulders and hugging my ribs, brought back a flood of memories.
I pulled out the single projector these suits came with. Rifle-like, with a forward grip and a precision sight, this weapon had a longer effective range than previous models. When everyone had their autoshades active, I test-fired it into the blast doors. Just a tiny blip of laser light was enough to burn a hole you could fit an armored finger into.
“You like these new suits, boys?” I asked aloud.
There was a chorus of “hell yeahs” which gave me a grim smile. A moment later, I felt the ship veer sharply. We’d arrived. The ship was making its final approach course changes—either that, or we were dodging incoming fire.
“Colonel?” Captain Sarin’s voice crackled inside my helmet.
“Go ahead, Captain.”
“We are taking some incoming fire. Tell your men we might have to let them fly at long range.”
That was bad. When doing a hot-drop or a ship-to-ship boarding attack, my marines needed to spend as little time as possible buzzing around in open space before they reached the target. While we were out there, exposed to every kind of attack, we were like a swarm of flies and about as easy to swat.
“How far out are we doing this jump?”
“Excuse me, Colonel? Did you say ‘we’?”
“How far out, dammit?”
“Around ten thousand miles. Let me say for the record, sir that—”
“Unacceptable, Captain. Take me in closer. Give us no more than a thousand miles, tops, to decelerate. I’d prefer a hundred, or even ten.”
“We’ll be under heavy fire by then, sir,” she said. “And I don’t understand why you insist on leading attacks personally.”
“When I’m dead, you can run things as you see fit, Commander. You can hide under your desk if you want to. While I’m in command, I’ll fly with my marines. These men fight harder when their leaders are on the lines with them. Every soldier does. Check your military history.”
She stopped scolding me, and I had a chance to think about something. I frowned inside the glowing confines of my helmet. “Sarin?” I called out. “Why are we under heavy fire? Where’s it coming from?”
“The battle station, Colonel. Several of the weapons batteries appear to have been captured. They are in enemy hands, and they are taking pot shots at us as we approach.”
“What the hell happened to Welter?”
“We’ve lost contact with him.”
I knew what that meant. Quite possibly, the crew had been eliminated.
“Is there any evidence that the battle station crew is still fighting?”
“Yes sir,” she said, “we’re registering a steady series of emissions. People are still in the upper portion of the station, in the farthest sector from the surface of Hel. They’re definitely still in the game, sir.”
I took a look then at the battle rosters. We had three transports, plus the platoon I would be flying with on Actium. Each of the transports had about five hundred marines aboard, mostly Centaurs. I’d never fought with these new and improved native troops. I found myself wishing they were all human marines. I hoped my allies could perform on a mission like this one. They would be green, at the very least.
I had a sudden thought, and contacted Kwon. “Kwon? Are you in contact with the Centaur force-leaders?”
“Yes sir.”
“Tell them I want them to leave their nuclear grenades behind on the ship. I repeat: leave the nukes behind. There are friendlies on this battle station. I’m not interested in seeing any suicidal Centaurs crashing themselves into the station and killing everybody.”
“Ah, good thinking, Colonel. I’ll relay that.”
I felt the ship rock and sway as the pilot dodged incoming railgun fire. Fortunately, the enemy gunners weren’t connected to the central fire control system on the battle station and weren’t able to target us easily. They were also new to the equipment, or we’d never have survived the flak.
I closed my eyes to think. When I opened them, I contacted Miklos: “Captain? Remember, if I’m out of action, you are my second in command. Is that clear?”
“As always, sir. Come back in one piece—or at least with enough pieces to allow us to reassemble you.”
I grinned in my helmet, something that always caused my cheeks to press against the hinges on the visor. They felt cool there against my skin.
“That is my intention, Captain,” I said. “Tell me how things look up there. How close are we to the drop zone?”
“We are close now, sir. I recommend you open the sally port and mount your flyers.”
I signaled the team around me. Everyone moved with purpose. A few slammed their open palms down onto the helmets of their friends. A few others took a moment to pray or roar a battle cry.
“Men,” I said, opening up the proximity chat channel. “We’re about to do a tough jump. I want you all to remember you’re part of an elite group: Riggs’ Pigs. Let’s show those Lobster traitors why they should fear us more than their metal masters!”
A chorus of shouts rang in my ears. The men were hot, and ready to fly. The sally port o
pened then, revealing space in all its majesty.
Immediately, I was alarmed by the amount of visible fire coming from the battle station. Had Welter lost the entire station? It didn’t look good. Like flying blue sparks, the fire was moving so fast, it resembled lines of light, drawn in glaring streaks that went past our ship. They were firing wide and wildly, but even without precision targeting, they were bound to hit something eventually.
“Captain Sarin?” I shouted. “How many miles out are we?”
“About seven thousand, sir.”
“Give me the signal at five thousand. We’ll jump then. The second we’re out, get the hell out of here.”
“Yes sir,” she said.
I could hear the relief in her voice. I couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t worth losing the command ship just to save the lives of a few grunts. The math was unpleasant, and it always seemed to come out against the men in boots. Unfortunately, it was my job to call those shots, even when my own ass was on the line.
-38-
The go-signal came in the form of a tone in our helmets and a flashing green light over the sally port doors. Making a jump out of a cruiser was a little different than doing it inside a planetary atmosphere. Instead of having wind in your face, there was nothing outside but vacuum. There wasn’t even gravity to rely on to move you downward, away from the ship.
Instead, we had our skateboards. Essentially, we were tiny one-man vehicles capable of self-propulsion. We shot out of the portal one at a time in rapid succession. To an external witness, the scene must have looked as if the ship was experimenting with a new kind of weapon. We came out like a spraying shower of mini-missiles, just far enough apart not to ram one another and send the next guy into a deadly tailspin.
Fortunately, my men knew what they were doing. They all had more training with this new technique of rapid-fire jumps than I did. I had more experience with jumps in general, however. I took the rear spot and followed the rest so I wouldn’t mess up their timing. It was easier to stay with them from that position too, as I only had to see any one of the string of flyers and keep on his tail.
The second we were out, I was doing a slow spin and it took me a second to get my skateboard under my boots. The squad had almost lost me by the time I had it under control. I hit the acceleration pads hard to catch up.
I checked my altimeter the moment I was among them, and that mistake was almost fatal. All around me, the drop-troops vanished. They’d all fired their brakes. I did the same without hesitation. I didn’t even get a good reading on the distance. I just flipped the skateboard around and pushed for emergency braking. The little unit slipped and jiggled under me, wanting to throw me off. I held my balance with my knees bent, clenching my teeth and squinching up my eyes, expecting a bone-jarring slam into the battle station.
It didn’t happen. Instead, the men around me shot past again. I dared a peek at my altimeter. They were doing a controlled landing, just as they’d been taught. I was trying to keep up and overcorrecting first one way then another.
A shot of anger and embarrassment went through me. I didn’t like playing the fool with a dozen recruits watching. Forcing myself to take a breath and think, I read the altimeter again and eased off on the braking. I let myself drift. I was coming down at about three hundred miles per hour, and we were in the last two miles of the drop. Not one of my marines had been taken out yet. It was time for me to stop freaking out and to act like a pro.
“As soon as we’re down, seek a surface crater,” I ordered my squad. “There should be plenty of holes left over from the last time this station was assaulted.”
They were braking again, doing the final approach. I let them slip away above me before hitting the brakes hard.
It was a near disaster, but I managed to make it look cool. I came down and slammed into the surface of the battle station inside a deep black crater, which was about a hundred feet wide and twenty feet deep. Everything went dark for a second, then I hit the bottom doing about seventy miles per hour I’d say. Normally, we liked to hit doing around thirty, tops. Landing at seventy felt like being slammed by a car on the highway.
Fortunately, I landed on my feet and was in a battle suit built for absorbing shocks. My body was full of nanites, Microbe-altered flesh and pissed-off marine. I limped out of the crater, my right hip aching. I tried not to let it show. I left my skateboard in the crater, ignoring it. My fall had crushed it and it was no longer serviceable.
“Nice landing, sir,” the squad leader told me. He was a Gunnery Sergeant with a rough, accented voice. I couldn’t see his face inside the suit, but I figured he was some kind of Brit.
I swiveled my helmet to regard him. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was being sarcastic or not. I decided to take his remark in the best possible light.
“Thank you, Gunnery Sergeant. Did we lose anyone?”
“Only three, sir! But I think we’re the first team down.”
I looked up and around, and realizing he was right. I frowned, as this wasn’t a good thing. I could see the big guns all around us, aiming up into the sky. My autoshades dimmed and brightened rhythmically in reaction to the steady fire they were pumping up at my marines.
I used my long range command-link to connect with Kwon, who was riding his skateboard down under heavy fire.
“First Sergeant Kwon, are you guys out of your ships yet? We’re already down.”
“Lucky bastards,” Kwon said. “We jumped out a long time ago, but we’re still flying. We’re taking lots of flak. How did you get there so fast?”
I thought for a second. “I didn’t let Captain Sarin release us until she was close-in.”
“Ah,” Kwon said, “you pulled rank. Now I know why you like being an officer. The transport captain kicked us out early. We won’t be there for another two or three minutes, sir.”
“It’s okay, I think,” I said. “Except for some flak on the way down, we—”
At that moment, all hell broke loose around me. My squad had come to join me at the bottom of the crater of blasted rock we were standing in. Most of them had gone up to the rim of our crater to watch for enemy action and look for more marines. It was the ones up on the rim that were firing now. The flaring laser light darkened my autoshades and explosions began all around us.
“Enemy contact, sir!” shouted the Gunnery Sergeant. “The Lobsters know we’re here!”
The information was self-evident, but still useful. I stumped up the crater wall, almost dragging my right hip which was stiffening now. I tweaked the gain on my exoskeleton, which made my limbs move more quickly. This caused ripples of pain to run through me. I ignored the discomfort and threw myself down alongside the Gunnery Sergeant who was crouched at the crater’s rim.
Behind me, in the bowl of the crater, an explosion popped. Then a half-dozen more followed it. I felt fragments hitting the back of my armor. Burning pits showed up on the backs and legs of all the men around me.
“They’re throwing grenades down here,” I shouted. “Do not respond with anything big—conventional weapons only. Monitor your fire and hold this crater, men. We have to hold out for two full minutes before reinforcements arrive.”
The incoming fire intensified. Our first casualty was the Gunnery Sergeant beside me. He took a direct hit in the faceplate from an enemy laser bolt. At first, I thought maybe they’d gotten control of the defensive laser towers and tilted them down toward us, but as I surveyed the situation, I realized the fire wasn’t coming from heavy weapons. The enemy had moved to higher ground wherever they could find it, mostly along ridges formed by previous bombardments.
“We’re surrounded,” I said, assuming tactical command. “Spread out and shoot for any target that has reached high ground. I don’t want them to be able to shoot down into our cover.”
There was a wild series of blazing light flashes as we returned fire. The enemy was driven back, and although we were still pinned here, we weren’t completely helpless. We kept our heads down after
that, and only shot at Lobster troops when they scuttled forward too close, or when they climbed up on top of one of the big railgun batteries to fire down into our midst. Whenever we could, we concentrated our fire to kill any enemy marine who achieved a good firing position.
During the next minute, we lost one more man, but we were holding. A lot of marines had smoldering holes in their armor, but they were still in the fight. Some were howling in pain, but they kept using their weapons. I saw one Corporal with a missing foot. He crawled around on his hands and knees, dragging a smoking stump, but never complained. I knew the nanites must be chewing into the good flesh, sealing off his suit and his blood-supply, but he kept firing and crawling and most impressive of all, he kept quiet.
In the last minute before the mass drop came, things changed. Someone must have told the Lobsters they didn’t have all day to kill us. They’d finally realized the rest of our troops were coming down, about fifteen hundred strong. The enemy decided it was time to finish things in this crater.
They charged us from every direction. I’d been preparing for this kind of move. The moment I saw massed movement, a hundred or more flashing bits of metal on humping backs, I knew what was coming. The enemy troops crawled toward us rapidly, all at once. They had metal hooks on their churning spiny feet, I saw. I figured that’s how they kept hugging the surface of the battle station without the aid of gravity. It was a low-tech solution, but it worked for them.
“They’re rushing us!” I shouted. “Release your fragmentation weapons now! Frag out!” I readied and tossed my own ordnance. I aimed at the biggest concentration of rushing troops.
Throwing grenades in low grav took some experience. I saw a number of my men’s weapons zoom off into space. Even if they threw them at a low angle, they often bounced off rocks and flew high before detonating harmlessly. Our packs and repellers applied enough force to our backs to keep us down on the battle station, but the grenades didn’t have such refinements. Most of my men were green and they threw their weapons with far too much force. Even a toss didn’t work, as the grenades just kept going and left the surface of the battle station.
