by B. V. Larson
“What it is, gentlemen?” I asked them, turning on them.
To my surprise, they were all lieutenants. I frowned, wondering what the hell they wanted from me now. All I needed were a pack of scared Centaurs, ramming me from behind in the coming firefights.
“Excuse me, Colonel,” said the nearest. He was a big buck with a set of horns on him that would have made any doe back home swoon.
“What is it, Lieutenant? Why are you marines following me around, rather than leading your own platoons?”
They shuffled on their hooves. “We don’t have a leader sir. Except for you.”
“Yeah? Who’s second in command?”
“That has yet to be determined. We haven’t had time for a duel amongst ourselves for the honor. Normally, we don’t duel until after a battle is complete. There is no honor in it, and the wind will not tolerate—”
“Well,” I said, “the part about not dueling in the middle of a war sounds like an intelligent policy. But don’t you work out who is second in command of a given herd before you go into a fight, in case the leader falls?”
“No sir. We follow the next higher commander.”
“What if your top guys are all taken out?”
“Then the battle has been lost, sir.”
I filed that factoid about Centaurs away in the box marked “cultural failures.” It was amazing the predators hadn’t come out on top on their world. A moment later, I realized why they were hugging up to me like I was giving milk: the highest available commander was obviously me.
“All right,” I said, making a mental note to retrain some new protocols into my native levies after this was all over—if I was lucky enough to survive it. “You’re the new Captain,” I said, pointing to the one with the big horns who’d been doing all the talking. “When the battle is over, you can defend that rank against the others, if that is your tradition.”
“Thank you, Colonel!”
“What’s your name, marine?”
The translator buzzed in my ear: “I’m known as Captain Sky, sir.”
“Of course you are,” I said.
-40-
The battle began to heat up. On the surface of the station, Major Reza was putting up a good show of attacking the landing bay. I could tell she didn’t really want to be the sideshow in this assault, and if she could press ahead and enter the big portal, she would do it. I was happy with that, as I wanted her attack to be as convincing as possible, without costing us a lot of men.
Unfortunately for the Major, the Lobsters were just as determined to hold onto their position as she was to push them back. The fighting was fierce, lighting up the region with a continuous glow of dust, vapor and reflected laser light. I looked out toward the battle, and saw the rising cloud of debris which was lit up from the inside in brilliant flashes. A fierce firefight with beam weapons often looked like that. So much energy was released that it vaporized rock and metal. A haze would arise, and as the beams continued to burn through it, the dust itself was ignited and became visible. It looked as if a lurid red dome had grown over the region, reminding me of a laser show at a rock concert, or a particularly wild aurora borealis display.
Out at the laser batteries, things were progressing more smoothly. All but one of the companies assigned with assaulting a battery had been successful enough to get inside. My group headed down into the dark passages, eager to push the enemy back.
“I want us to break down into platoons now,” I told the Centaur officers. “You know the target, marines. Don’t get bogged down, keep moving. If you meet stiff resistance, you’re to take another route, even if you have to cut your way through the walls. The goal isn’t to stand and fight the enemy in the passages. We must take down those central generators.”
The orders were met with no response. I heard them on their own channel, making a few remarks. But they didn’t say anything to me. We’d yet to train them to acknowledge commands the way human troops were accustomed to doing. Under Centaur cultural rules, when the commander gave an order, there was no need to acknowledge it. Everyone in the herd assumed that the order would be followed without question.
For me, it was a little unnerving to have them all just stare at me silently. It gave me the feeling they didn’t like the orders. I knew they might not consider them honorable, as they didn’t involve a straightforward fight on an open plain. To the Centaur way of thinking, just being down here in these dark tunnels was demeaning, lowly and faintly disgusting. We’d gotten them past their fear of such situations thanks to Marvin’s Microbial baths, but they still didn’t like it.
“You’re now part of Riggs’ Pigs,” I told them. “We’re famous for our bravery, for doing what must be done, no matter what the cost. We’re famous for our victories, victories that often come at a high price. Marines, we must not think of ourselves today. Don’t dream of lush grasses, shining waters, or even the wide open sky. What we do today we do to honor those we left at home, those who we must defend with our sacrifice. We will honor them and gift them life through the loss of our blood. Is that clear, platoon leaders?”
“Yes, Colonel!” all of them answered. Their voices crashed into my helmet in unison. At least they knew how to yell like real marines.
I smiled as I led them into the tunnels of steel. They ran faster now, their short tails flipping high inside the special sock-like appendages we’d built into their nanocloth suits. High tails were a sure sign of high spirits. I felt I’d hit a home run with that quick speech. I’d managed to learn how they thought by now, and I could tell I’d revved them up. Really, it wasn’t hard to do.
Very shortly after my speech was over, we met our first obstacle. Our rush forward toward the core of the station was halted by a defensive bulwark thrown up in the primary passage in the center of the structure. Here, the passageway was almost circular, and was about thirty feet across. Depending on your point of view, it resembled a mile-long shaft, or a tall corridor, if you walked on the walls. We’d built it with size in mind in order to let big equipment such as generators and projectors move through the station. I’d envisioned being under siege, and hadn’t wanted to have to fly or drag new equipment into place over the surface of the station. Anything outside the armored hull was exposed, and could be vulnerable to bombardment.
Now, the central shaft served us as an odd battleground. The Lobsters had formed up a wall in the central region—a wall made up of rounded humps of some kind. I frowned when I spotted this structure, uncertain where’d they gotten these yard-wide spheroids. Whatever they were, they’d piled them into place and welded them together with a layer of metal. I wasn’t sure, but I figured they’d probably taken parts of the station to do it, such as broken boulders from the outer hull and metal from the station itself.
I frowned at the structure and decided I didn’t care how they’d built it. The thing was in the way, and it had to come down.
“All beams, concentrate on the—”
“Behind us, sir!” shouted Kwon. His voice boomed in proximity chat, indicating he was very close. A big hand swatted me and I automatically tightened my body.
For perhaps the first time since I’d met Kwon, I stood up to one of his bear-claw blows that were meant to take me down to the ground with him. I watched as he slammed down on the floor of the shaft near me. He was on his belly, turning his projector back the way we’d come.
I lifted my projector. Things were moving in slow motion now, as time always seemed to slow down when a firefight began. Looking forward at the barrier ahead, I realized what its true purpose was. The Lobsters hadn’t put it there to stop us, they’d put it there to trap us.
The sizzle and snap of beams began. My body entered that state I think of as full battle-mode. I hadn’t experienced my new body in a firefight since I’d undergone fresh microbial baths, new nanite refills and donned the latest in battle armor.
I turned around and saw what was coming. A mass of enemy troops boiled out of the side passages. My Centau
rs were running everywhere, spinning around, running up the walls, firing and being shot down. Several had already taken hits and gone tumbling.
I realized in an instant the Centaur species had a critical flaw in their body structures for this kind of fight. They couldn’t lie flat and shoot. It just didn’t come naturally for them. They could fold up their legs, but their horns and head were still up high, as their arms weren’t positioned as close to their heads as was the case for a human body. Worse, they didn’t want to throw themselves flat under fire. It was the absolute last thing a herd animal did when in danger. Falling down meant certain death when being chased by a predator.
All around me, my Centaur marines whirled, stood their ground, and fired at the humping horde of enemy that appeared behind us. I was just as bad as the rest of them, burning away while presenting a big fat target.
I was hit almost immediately, then hit again. My body rocked, and my armor smoked. But I didn’t feel any pain. I kept firing, taking out an advancing attacker with every strike.
I felt the armor plates on my body moving of their own accord. They were reactive, and as smart as the nanocloth underneath them. When a region was damaged, that region moved out of the line of fire and rolled another plate into position. I kept firing and advancing.
Our weapons were more powerful than the enemy’s, I realized. Even better, their armor was like tinfoil. Unfortunately, my Centaurs weren’t heavily armored like I was. They were taking a beating.
Kwon had finally given up on getting me to lie on my belly.
“This sucks!” he shouted. “I can’t even get a shot, all I see are Centaur legs!”
“Get up and advance,” I said.
He did as I ordered, and together we marched toward the Lobsters, burning them. Each one died with a plume of expanding steam, as their suits were at least partly filled with water. Before it was over, they’d managed to hurt me, putting a hole in my left kneecap. It was a small hole fortunately, and the suit resealed itself. I cranked up the exoskeletal setting on that leg and it forced me to walk. My step changed to an uneven one, but I kept moving. I gritted my teeth against the pain and continued advancing.
They broke when about half of them were dead. They’d fought well, and had wiped out most of my platoon. I counted twenty enemy dead, some of them still twisting and writhing in agony. Kwon kicked one of them, and in the low grav the body went twisting down the shaft ahead of us.
“That was bullshit,” he said. “They knew we were coming.”
“Well, that’s their job. These guys are smart, but they aren’t the best fighters.”
We turned back to the wall that had stopped us. I examined it more closely, snapping on my suit lights.
“Ah,” I said, “I get it. These are dead Lobsters. See these rock-like balls? They stacked up their own dead and sprayed constructive nanites over them. The smart metal is acting like a weld to hold the barrier together.”
“What killed them all?” Kwon asked.
I shrugged. “Most likely, Welter’s people did. They’ve been fighting down here for quite some time, you know. Maybe Welter killed them all or even built the wall himself during his last stand. There’s still no contact from him, is there?”
“No sir. Lots of interference in this big structure. And the central com system is worse than dead. It seems to be jamming all long-range signals.”
We blew apart the barrier with grenades and carefully continued past it. I had a grand total of fifteen effective Centaurs, plus Kwon and I. The lieutenant I’d so recently promoted to captain was dead, and I didn’t feel like making a new Captain Sky out of the noncoms to replace him. I took personal command and told them Kwon was my second, if I should fall.
We continued up the central shaft until our automaps showed we should take a side route. There, we met up with another platoon—or rather, with their remains.
“They’re all dead, sir,” Kwon said, stumping around the piles of bodies.
There were Crustaceans, Centaurs and humans everywhere. At least sixty bodies, maybe more, were clustered around a junction of two passages.
“There seem to be more dead Lobsters than anything else.”
“That’s good!” Kwon said. “Let’s make more dead ones.”
Grim-faced, I pressed on. We were getting close to the generators now. I could see signs of heavy fighting, and I could hear laser fire echoing down the passages from distant fights. I tried my suit radio again, but got nothing other than static. Our com-links didn’t synch-up unless we were very close. I realized I could probably shout farther than I could communicate with my headset.
“Let’s stay tight,” I told my troops. “Anyone who gets lost now is never going to be found.”
This was the sort of instruction the Centaurs dreamed of. They were immediately hugging up against one another and bumping their horns into my generator pack. I almost yelled at them, but held back. They’d suffered a lot, and not one of them had broken. I’d asked for their sacrifice, and they’d given it their all. I wasn’t going to dishonor any of them by admonishing them now.
For a Centaur, simply being ignored by a superior was a powerful rebuke. Outright confrontation and enduring an angry display was so humiliating that the underling in question often took his own life, or he might become so distraught he could not function properly. I didn’t need any of my surviving troops opening their suits in despair. They’d suffered enough, and they didn’t deserve a cranky human officer at this point.
“Good job, marines,” I said. “You’ve all done extremely well. The fallen will water the grass with their blood, and will never be forgotten in the song of the winds.”
This seemed to make them happy. Tails lifted all along the line. I’d heard the speech from other Centaurs after rough fights, so I figured I might as well give them what they expected.
We made it to Generator Room Three after a few more skirmishes with the Lobsters. I could tell the area had been fought over before. There were bodies here, many of them Fleet crewmen. They were Welter’s men, and they’d died putting up a fierce defense.
“Plant the charges, Kwon,” I said.
He was already doing it. He hummed as he worked. I marveled at his attitude. All the blood, all the gore, all the bodies strewn everywhere—they never seemed to bother Kwon. As long as he was in a battle zone, he was content and life was good.
“Timer set, sir,” he said.
I blinked in my suit. “How long do we have?”
“Ah…oh yeah. Didn’t check.”
“Out! Out! OUT! Everyone move to the exit, now!”
We ran out of the generator room. Kwon was the last one to the door, and his shadow loomed over me as the explosion bloomed into life. The roar of it was somewhat muted by my helmet and as I’d managed to turn a corner into a side passage. Luckily, I wasn’t deafened again. I was, however, smacked from behind and pushed into a pile of squirming Centaurs by Kwon’s flying hulk.
We picked ourselves up, with our heads ringing. The corridor had gone black—in fact this entire region of the station had darkened. We turned on our suit lights and beams stabbed into the dusty darkness around us. Centaurs limped and spoke together in their own odd language. I could tell their remarks weren’t meant for my ears, as they hadn’t engaged my translator. I could well imagine what they were saying.
“Sorry sir,” Kwon said. “I have trouble with the timers. I get excited.
“I think you’re going back to the explosives training center after we get back home.”
“You mean the one back on Andros Island? With all the pits and bunkers?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly what I mean. If we ever get back home, that is.”
“Can’t do it, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve been banned from there, sir. The duty Sergeant said he never wanted to see me again.”
I nodded. “All right. But next time, I’m lighting off the charges.”
“Very
good, Colonel.”
-41-
One by one, the generators were taken out. After that, each of the invading companies had their follow-up orders: we were all to hunker down and stay alive until relief came. The gunships and the rest of our infantry were inbound, and with the big guns silenced, they should be able to land as an organized force. We had fifty gunships and about ten thousand men out there, more than enough to sweep aside the surviving Lobster defenders. The only hard part was waiting for them to arrive. I looked at my chronometer, and grimaced. We had about five hours to go. Five hours didn’t sound like a lot, but when you were crouching in the dark with a handful of troops, it was an eternity.
“You think squatting here at the gen room is the best idea, Colonel?” Kwon asked me.
I looked at him. My ears had stopped ringing from the grenade attack back on the surface by this time, but they were still sore. A trickle of liquid ran from each ear down my neck. I figured that was a mix of blood and nanites. The worst was the itching. Healing fast always seemed to have its trade-offs. One negative was the horrible itching. As the pressure was low here, I couldn’t even afford to take off my helmet and have a good scratch.
“What do you suggest, First Sergeant?”
“Let’s go look for Welter. I bet he’s holed up around the backup bridge—if he’s still alive, that is.”
I snorted, catching on. Kwon wasn’t worried about the dangers of sitting here beside the blown generator. He was bored and wanted to get back into the action.
“Forget it, Kwon,” I said. “We’re staying put.”
Kwon sat against a wall and pouted. I ignored him and worked on my radio. If I was lucky, the generators were powering the jamming system. The central com system didn’t have to work—I could use suit power alone to contact someone.
After a few minutes of fooling with the channels, I managed to get a live conversation to play in my helmet. It was between two officers, and it sounded urgent. I caught something about the bridge, then lost the signal.
