by A. D. Bloom
"My job!" You pissing hypocrite, Devlin. You self-righteous bitch... He shook his head left and right in his helmet and had to laugh.
"You're responsible for those pilots' lives," the XO said. He wanted to kill that man and it wasn't Dirty's compound making him feel that way.
He said, "We started with 44 Lancer nuggets. Now, we're down to five because it's our job to fly into the meat grinder. Hell, today Harry Cozen sent us in with warspite torpedoes on our wings just to make sure the job got done and the bandits got waxed so Tipperary could get away. I know it's more important than our lives, and I know victory has to be paid for in blood, but don't you dare pretend to be appalled if we take risks to get our job done."
"Your job is to follow my orders and keep your pilots alive."
"We waxed eighteen red bandits today and a couple hundred Squidies on the hull of this ship. Does it really matter to you if we put ourselves in danger to do it?"
Ram Devlin's face screwed up like he'd smelled something awful. "Don't treat your pilots like that."
"Like what?"
"Like it doesn't matter if they live or die," Ram said.
"We did good with what he gave us," Jordo said. "We did better than good. This is what you wanted. This is what you need. Don't pretend it's any other way. Don't pretend this isn't what you want from us."
The XO said it quietly: "There's only five of you left."
"Don't you dare put that on me. I did my best to keep every one of them alive. You ask for more than we can give every time. Every time. And we give it. We die giving it. Don't put those deaths on me. You and Cozen put us here. You think you could have done any goddamn better with the hand you dealt us? I made decisions. Some wrong maybe, some right – the best ones I could. I lost nine Lancers today. Nine out of fourteen. Six weeks ago there were forty-four. You going to tell me you could have done any better? You think you could have taken less risks with their lives and got less of them killed?" The XO didn't answer him and the twinge of pity in his self-righteous eyes was infuriating. "Look around you on the hull of this alien ship, Commander Devlin. You think you're doing any better than I am at making decisions and saving lives?"
Ram Devlin tried to stare a hole through the spot between Jordo's eyes. "Keep him tied up," Devlin said. "I haven't decided whether or not to shoot him." Then he walked away and exited out the Tick's hatch while Jordo struggled against his restraints.
He looked up at Lucy Elan. "Devlin's got the balls to send us out to die and then tell me it's my fault – that it's because I'm taking unnecessary risks with my pilots lives? Does he think his hands are clean? You know they got us from a prison, right?"
Lucy said, "I won't presume to speak for the man, but I don't think that's what he was trying to say. Look, Lt. Flyboy. You're new at this, so I'm just going to lay it out for you all square and ugly. Your superior officers are going to try and get you killed. It's part of their job."
"No shit."
"We do it all the time. And this might make you think you're expendable."
"We are."
"But even if you know you're expendable, it's your duty to the pilots under your command to treat them like their lives are precious. You're the only thing between your people and the officers that want to kill them. You get that? If Harry Cozen treats your pilots like their lives are cheap, then it's your duty to them to push back, Lt. Flyboy. Sometimes you gotta fight Harry Cozen... for their sakes. I'm not going to tell you what you should have done today or what choices you should have made. I'm not that kind of an asshole. But I am going to tell you that you gotta protect the lives of your pilots because men like Cozen won't. If you don't watch out for your people, then nobody will. I think that's what your XO was trying to say. He's wound up a little tight. It's not easy working closely with Harry if you have any real sense of right and wrong."
But Hardway revolved around Harry Cozen. "I don't get it. He's the Captain. Ram Devlin follows him. And you... you and him... you go way way back... but you talk about him like... like he's the enemy."
"First of all, technically, he's a Staas Company VP and Privateer Admiral acting as Hardway's Captain, presumably grooming Devlin for the job. Yeah. We follow him. And it's true that me and Harry Cozen go way back. So I know that Harry Cozen is a dangerous sociopath and a truly evil bastard. But. Harry Cozen has his place. He has his function. I'd even say we can't get by without a man like him, but unless the people around him are twice as conscientious, twice as ethical, then his poison spreads. His way of thinking is seductive, but the ends never justify the means no matter what he says and no matter how desperate we are. If he ran completely unchecked by those around him – if Harry Cozen always got his way, then Humanity's survival would be assured, but what we became under his hand might not be a thing worth saving. So... Important takeaway here: we need Harry Cozen, but we only need one of him, Flyboy. Get it? No need to emulate him. In fact, do the opposite, Jordo, because unless the people around Harry Cozen work real hard to make sure it doesn't happen, then that man will steer us all straight to hell. You and the Lancers have had a taste; you know I'm right."
*****
Outside Tick #1 Ram Devlin peeked over the lip of the blast crater and tried to get a glimpse of the enemy positions. Hollis nagged him to keep his head down. "You trying to get dusted, Mr. Devlin?" Ram didn't answer him. "They're still out there," Hollis said. "They're not advancing. They're waiting."
He barely heard Hollis. As Ram looked out in all directions over this massive cock-up of an assault and counted the dead on the hull, J. Jordo Colt's words echoed in his ears. He wasn't sure if the Lancers' rookie squadron leader was right when he said Ram wasn't doing much better himself. Ram wanted to tell that pilot to blame the damn war and not him, but those were Cozen's words.
Lucy Elan made her way around the whole perimeter. Ram watched her go from position to position, checking in with her remaining Marines. They'd taken heavy casualties.
In the abstract, his plan to detonate the Ticks' reactors and drive to the edge of the hull sounded solid. When he came up with it, it seemed sensible, but now, looking at all the corpses on the hull, he felt like he had no right to ask his people to take this chance. Even if the plan worked, it was practically suicide.
"Hardway got another one," Hollis said. He pointed straight up at the carrier, still leading the alien battlegroup in a running fight. The Dreadnought had steamed close enough to the battle for them to see the hulls in low orbit clearly. The ship falling towards the planet was one of the big ones, an alien heavy cruiser probably. The dying ship stabbed at Hardway one more time before its guns went dark. It trailed smoke against the rings, on fire.
Hardway blasted to a higher orbit to put the innermost moon between her and the pack of warships hounding her. It was harder now. She had to avoid the pack of Squidies chasing her as well as the Dreadnought since it had limped close. On one engine, the Squidies' battleship wasn't going to run Hardway down, but the attack carrier had to maneuver to keep out of effective range of its guns.
Buzzing points of light and flashes around the carrier told Ram the Dingoes were still intercepting alien torpedoes, but there weren't many left and she'd already taken heavy damage. Every module looked to have taken a hit of some kind. She'd probably lost a lot of crew.
Lucy Elan ran to Ram's position from behind. She dove into the shallow, vape crater with him and Hollis. She said, "It's almost time to pull this stunt of yours."
Ram nodded. "Hollis, go make sure the drill crew are good to go." After he was gone, Ram opened a private comms channel to Lucy. "We can fit our survivors on three Ticks and detonate the last one."
Lucy shook her head. "That doesn't give us nearly as good a chance of killing this battleship. We have to detonate all four remaining Ticks, Ram."
"This plan is rot. Jordo Colt was right about us, Lucy. About Cozen and me. We ask more than they can give. We do it over and over like we've got some right to. I half-expect them to finally mutiny out
of self-preservation. I wouldn't blame them. My people never signed on for this. Not like your people did."
"You this whiny a bridge officer before the war?" she said. "Don't underestimate Hardway's crew," she said. "They've proven tougher than anything you've ever asked them to do."
"If we're going to make it to the other side of this ship's hull, then this is going to be a running firefight with limited cover. First, we'll take fire from two sides and then three as we charge right at them. This isn't what they trained for."
Lucy Elan said, "Mr. Devlin, you came to this ship straight out of Staas Aerospace Academy, right?" He nodded in his helmet. "They run you there?"
"What do you mean?"
"They ran us Marines a lot. God, I hate running. Before I learned to keep my mouth shut, I asked my DI why we run for Ks and Ks when we have a million different ways to get around. That day, he just sat at the end of the two-mile loop and ordered me around it for eight hours straight. That was way more than I could run. I hit the wall around three hours. And I kept going. Spent two days getting my blood cleaned and my kidneys fixed and destroyed half the muscle fiber in my legs, but I figured out the answer to my question. We run, but it's not our legs we're training. It's not your legs that save you. It's heart. It's whatever they say is at your center, above your frickin' belly button that lets you do what you didn't think you could do. It's hate sometimes. Or love. And you always gotta reach down deep and pull it out and find a way to give more than you knew you could because that's the job. That's the job because not only do they always want more than you have to give, but once they figure out you can give it once, they'll never stop asking you to do it. Not until you're dead. Not until so much is shot and blown off you they can't patch it up and send you out again."
Ram nodded. "Uh-huh." He didn't think she'd pull this 'don't you wish you were a Marine' crap now – not now.
"We overcome, Ram. That's what we do."
"Too bad we're not Marines like you."
"Hey, you stupid, button-neck, Privateer POG, when I said 'we overcome', I wasn't talking about Marines. I was talking about Hardway. I was talking about your crew. Adapt and overcome and give more than they thought they could... that's what they've done from day one in this war. That's Hardway's tradition, Ram. Your people made it. And today, when you ask them for more than they know how to give, they'll live up to that tradition and they'll find a way. Whiny bitch."
Ram let his breath out and nodded. "That was a nice speech. Really."
"Hang around Harry Cozen and you'll get the knack," she said. "One more thing."
"What?"
"Us Staas Company Marines want our money back. We lost a lot when you cheated in the last skirmish."
"We didn't cheat."
"What do you call giving your two fighter pilots cognitive enhancements and not giving them to ours?"
Ram knew what she wanted him to say. And he was trapped. Unless he wanted to concede that all the money they'd won in the last Marines vs. Crew skirmish was undeserved, he had to say it was fair play: "I call it winning," he said.
"So," she said, "If you're going to keep the money, then you might want to think about giving Lt. Flyboy a break. J. 'Jordo' Colt isn't the worst squadron leader I've seen."
"Well, you're definitely not getting your money back," Ram said.
"Then how about a new bet – a race to the edge of the hull."
"Are you giving Hardway odds?"
"It's only fair we give Hardway odds." Lucy Elan grinned. "After all, this is a job for Marines." She winked at him.
*****
Jordo couldn't see the XO from where he was, strapped down on the crash couch. He could hear him, though. Everyone could hear him in their helmets. "All Ticks, all boarding parties. This is Ram Devlin. We will drill the enemy hull until the last moment. Then, we will set the Ticks' reactors to self-destruct, assemble all remaining personnel around Tick #1, and move under enemy fire to the top of this ship. On the far side of the hull we will survive the detonations, shielded from the heat and radiation." Ram paused. That was the easy part to say. The next part was harder. "I know this isn't the mission you trained for. In the final phase of this action, we'll be taking fire from three sides. They may even close in behind us. Lucy Elan told me this is a job only her Company Marines can do. I told her to put her money where her mouth is. I bet every penny I had that Hardway's people would reach the other side of this hull before her Marines. I know you won't let me down because I have seen the crew of this ship rise above, time and time again to give more than you thought you had to give. I have seen you do what nobody thought you could. That is who you are because that is what you do. That is Hardway's tradition. You are the ones that made it and you will not fail it. That is all."
Chapter Twelve
Five minutes after his big speech, the XO stood over Jordo again, looking down at him. He said, "Can I trust you with a rifle?"
Jordo said, "I don't know if I'll hit anything with it."
"I need to know that if I untie you and give you a rifle, you're not going to shoot at us."
"Untie me," Jordo said. "I know who the enemy is. I know who to fight."
The 46 remaining marines formed themselves into the point of a spear – a wedge. They drove forward in a formation designed since ancient times to punch a hole through battle lines by dividing the enemy. The price of it was fighting on three sides at once.
The Squidies hit the last two knuckledraggers with a salvo from their stovepipe anti-armor weapons that caught Pardue's and Hong's suits in the legs and the hip. They went down face first in front of the Marines and slid along the hull to a stop. Lucy's squad only paused around them for a second, but when Jordo ran past with the rest of Hardway's crew, he could see the pilots of both suits had been extracted.
The line of Squidies in mechanized battle suits held their ground. Jordo watched in utter amazement as the Marines' combined and directed fire blew the aliens open one by one until they fell like shattered monuments before the charge.
"Stay close to them! Widen the wedge!" Devlin shouted to Hardway's crew. The XO ran a few steps ahead of Jordo, sweeping his sidearm's beam like a sword. It was some kind of antique, x-ray laser pistol terror weapon one of the NCOs said was illegal on earth. Jordo only saw it fire briefly, but as they drove into the line, the XO's antique cut the ropey, armored legs off three mechanized Squidies before it overheated.
Jordo ran and fired the bulky MA-48 rifle they gave him. The double-barreled, over-under weapon pumped out sabot and pulsed laser fire. They told him to stick to the laser until he could handle recoil in low-gees. He couldn't distinguish his own fire from the fire of all the other MA-48s, so he didn't know if he hit anything, but he aimed where they aimed, and the Squidies went down. Where they pointed their rifles together, they tore the enemy apart.
The Squidies who managed to fire at point blank range were guaranteed to hit something. Huge streaking rounds from alien battle suits on either side tore into the crewmen making brief and gory tunnels through crowd.
Like the Marines in front of them, Hardway's crew picked up the wounded and threw them over their shoulders in the low gees and ran with them.
200 meters from the edge of the hull, the Squidies closed in. After that, the fire came from all sides. It rocketed in from behind and the crewmen it hit got thrown forward, past him, propelled by the big alien shells in their backs. Men and women on either side of him burst into flame in their suits under fire of the Squidies' masers. It was a roll of the dice who got hit and who didn't. It was as random and brutal as the torpedo-filled furball he'd sent his Lancers into.
"Company Marines! Cover fire to the rear!" Ahead, the Marines had punched through the Squidies' line. Now, they could turn and kneel and fire at the aliens cutting down Hardway's crew.
They all charged the last hundred yards and made the final push together.
The Squidies that remained in their path fired from over the edge – from the top of the ship. T
heir nubby helmets poked up over the metal horizon with their long arms and at the end of each one was the flashing barrel of a hand maser. Where they pointed, running figures flared and fell, burning inside their suits. The ones that got hit point blank just flared up and disappeared where the beam caught them.
Jordo couldn't tell if it was a Marine or a crewman that reached the edge of the enemy hull first, but they poured over the top and blasted left and right down the line of Squidies there, firing full enfilade down their line – aiming along the edge of the hull where the aliens had lined up to kill them.
Behind every towering Squidy that Jordo aimed at there was another Squidy. He fired his MA-48, and the freakish thing in front of him fell and crumpled into an small pile of torso and coiling limbs to reveal another behind it. He fired the x-ray laser again, and then, after the alien he'd holed fell like the first, he burned a hole through the one behind it. The Squidies fell and fell and fell, and guns to his left and right flashed and fired, all of them screaming hate and rage at the enemy. Together on comms their voices made a chorus – a chorale in hateful praise of the one true god of war who had come to take the enemy and not them.
When he saw how they'd cleared almost the entire alien line, Jordo cheered, but then massive rounds rocketed up from the side of the hull they'd just escaped. He looked over the edge where they'd come from and saw fifteen alien battle suits coming for them. They strode in a broad firing line.
"Off the hull!" the XO shouted. "Off the hull! It's going to blow!" Lucy Elan shouted it, too. All around him, they jumped and launched themselves off the hull and away from the edge, jumping in the .2 gees.
"Det in 3... 2... 1... Mar-" The XO's voice drowned in a waterfall of static and high-pitched tone.
The reactors on the four, surviving Ticks detonated within 10ms of each other and even with his helmet protecting his eyes, the armored Squidies charging at Jordo burned bright enough for him to see right through them. In the vacuum there was no blast wave. The Squidies seemed frozen in the light. It consumed their armor and then it consumed the naked, alien things inside it. They writhed like earthworms and bats' wings under a blowtorch as they burned away.
