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There was a lull in the fighting after we beat back the attack, and I took a moment
to look around. I’d lost over half my men. Most of the survivors were injured in some
way. Everyone who could lift a rifle fired over the rim of the crater after the retreating
enemy. I crawled up there and saw they were burning the humping backs of every Lobster
who had not yet managed to get out of sight.

“Well done!” I shouted, barely able to hear my own voice now. “We drove them back.
Three of you, keep firing at them so they know we’re still in this. The rest tend
to the wounded.”

I saw more laser fire flare in the pit of the crater. I looked down, and saw a marine
walking from one Lobster to the next, burning a hole in each. Some of them thrashed
feebly as he did so.

“Ceasefire, marine!” I shouted down at him. “That’s enough of that.”

“Sorry sir,” he said, “I figured we might have ourselves a barbecue after this is
over. They look like good-eating.”

I grimaced. “Belay that shit, private!” I shouted. “The enemy may not look like us,
but they will be treated with respect. They aren’t machines, damn it. We won’t use
sentient beings as food.”

“Sorry, Colonel,” the private mumbled.

I now was close enough to see the name on his helmet. “Get back to your assigned duties,
Coleman,” I said. “My orders were for you to tend to the wounded.”

“But everyone in the squad is either on the line or dead, sir.”

I decided to check on his report. I clanked around for a few moments, throwing Lobsters
off my dead men. Coleman was right. There were a few people with missing limbs, but
they were functioning due to the efforts of the newly trained under-armor nanocloth.
I had to admit, everyone who was down was dead. I looked at Coleman and nodded.

“All right. Get back up to the rim.”

By this time, it was raining marines. The forces backing us up met little resistance
once they reached the rocky surface of the station’s outer armor layer. The Lobsters
had retreated, deciding to fight inside the battle station, rather than out on the
surface. About five minutes later, Kwon found me.

“Looks like a tough fight, sir,” he said, looking around. “You know, I bet these lobster
guys would taste really good with some butter.”

I scowled at him.

Behind me, I thought I heard Coleman mutter: “That’s what
I
said!” But I couldn’t be sure it was him. Proximity radio systems weren’t as precise
as real voices in an atmosphere, and my hearing was still iffy after the grenade blast.
I decided not to take the private to task for the comment.

-39-

Most of my invasion troops were Centaurs. I wasn’t completely comfortable with that.
I’d fought with a company of them behind me in the past on Eden-11, and they hadn’t
done all that well. But today, I didn’t have any choice. We’d experienced a five percent
casualty rate on the drop. I considered this very fortunate, and marked it down to
poor gunnery skills on the part of the enemy. They’d just captured our station’s guns
and didn’t know how to aim them right yet.

Of the fourteen hundred troops I had left, only about ten percent were human. I ordered
them to spread around, mingling with the less-experienced Centaur fighters. I didn’t
have time to rebuild the command structure, so I simply attached one squad of marines
to every Centaur company. I was hoping the native troops would learn by example from
the human squads.

Our first tactical problem was getting into the battle station itself. Already, the
Crustaceans were getting ideas on how they might remove us from their armored exteriors.
I saw them setting up strong points at the only openings in the armor of asteroid
rock. In practically every case, these openings marked the placement of big gun batteries.

I stood in the same crater where the landing had been centered, and spoke on proximity
chat with my top officers. A mix of human and Centaurs marines regarded me gravely.
If anyone had chanced upon us, they might have thought it was an odd scene. An Earther
might have believed we’d brought along huge trained dogs in space suits and had them
stand beside their human trainers.

“Marines, I want you to observe those cylindrical projectors to my left.”

Helmets rotated in the direction I’d indicated. Every Centaur officer had a translation
brainbox built into his command kit, I’d insisted on that expensive equipment upgrade.
Communication often won battles.

“That’s a laser battery. Right now, those big guns aren’t firing, but when the gunboats
get here, they will be pounding our fleet. We have to take them, or preferably conquer
the entire station before the main fleet arrives.”

A young Major signaled for attention. I acknowledged her. “How long do we have before
they arrive sir? And what are our specific goals?”

“We’re going in through the laser batteries. They have to be open to emit heat while
firing, and they have large parabolic openings around them to allow a free field of
fire. The railgun batteries could be used as secondary entrances, but they aren’t
as large or as open. The passive defense batteries should be avoided. They’re sealed,
and possibly dangerous to attacking troops.”

“What about the landing bays?”

“There’s only one that hasn’t been sealed—the main cargo entrance. That’s the biggest
entry on the surface of this station, and I’m sure it will be heavily defended. My
plan is to put the second wave there, encircling the location. The second wave, made
up of six companies, will feint at the landing bay, firing into it and using small
explosives. This will draw the enemy to defend that entrance—the obvious one.”

“Sir?” asked the young Major.

I turned to her again and took a better look. She was a shapeless mass in her armor,
looking like a slightly smaller version of the other troops around her. Her name was
emblazoned on her helmet:
Reza
.

“What is it, Major Reza?”

“I get your plan, we pretend to hit the easy opening, and once we engage the real
invasion comes at the laser ports. But where and when do the second wave companies
get into the fight?”

I’d already designated Reza as the leader of the second wave, and I was beginning
to have my doubts, but I answered her question anyway. “That’s going to be up to your
discretion, Major. If the enemy starts boiling out of there, keep them pinned and
fight defensively. I don’t want them to take the surface of the station back from
us. On the other hand, if they disappear, pulling into the interior to fight the real
invasion, then press ahead and go in after them. Any more questions?”

There weren’t any, so we called the meeting a win and broke up. I headed toward the
nearest laser battery. Kwon had managed to sneak his way into my squad, and I hadn’t
objected. The Centaur Captain trotted ahead of us, and all her troops followed.

As near as I could tell, the Centaur Captain’s name was Sky. This was far from an
accurate translation, I knew. The Centaurs had a zillion words for terms like Sky
or Grass. There were even different words used for a particular species of grass at
a given season, or a given lushness. Similarly, Sky was far too vague for them. Skies
were not just overcast or clear, bright or dark. The scent in the air, the cloud formations
and the humidity levels changed the terms used. But Captain Sky would have to do for
us for now.

Kwon and I had to hurry to keep up with the advancing Centaurs. I’d never met a species
more eager for a battle that was sure to be grimly filled with casualties.

“Colonel?” asked Kwon.

“Yes, First Sergeant?”

“Captain Sky’s troops—they’re too bunched up, too close to the leader. They should
spread out, sir.”

“Of course they should,” I said. “But I’m not seeing an easy way to get them to do
that.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Back on Eden-11, when I wanted them to spread out, I ordered them to each hug a tree.
As much as they’d like to, they couldn’t all hug the same one. That was the only way
I could get them not to mass up and get nailed all at once. It’s their instinct, Kwon.
They are herd creatures, after all.”

“Ah, I see. I heard about that.”

Kwon proceeded to make a huffing sound. It took me a few long seconds to realize he’d
made a play on words. I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I chuckled politely.

“Very good, Kwon. Let’s spread out a bit ourselves. Order the human squad to disperse.
I’ll tell Captain Sky to tell her troops to follow ours, one squad per man. That will
break us up somewhat.”

Kwon relayed the order with bellows and shouts that made me wish my hearing hadn’t
returned in full force. As it was, I could have used a selective input volume for
his channel. I considered adding such a feature in my next helmet headset design.
Hell, I could use a
Kwon
button that worked just for him.

We came around the last major outcropping of asteroid rock and there it was, Heavy
Laser Battery Three. Several gleaming projectors poked up, pointing mutely at the
sky. The rock armor bulged here, due to the dome-like hump of metal that formed the
battery. It was buried under twenty feet of rock, but you could still see it was there.

Around the laser battery were three point-defense laser turrets. So far, these hadn’t
shown signs of life. When I’d owned the station, the brainboxes that operated these
defensive lasers had been conditioned carefully to ignore human troops—or any Star
Force personnel. Unlike their outdated predecessors back on Andros Island, which tracked
everything that moved in about a one mile radius, these weapons were supposed to keep
their artificial eyes on the immediate region of space around the station. Their job
was to shoot down incoming enemy missiles before they reached the hull.

Knowing this, I was alarmed to see the laser swivel and track my lead troops.

“Captain Sky,” I shouted. “Order your troops to take cover, we’ll encircle the battery
and advance—”

That was about as far as I got before the three laser turrets identified, targeted
and fired. They weren’t supposed to aim down at that angle. They weren’t supposed
to shoot at Star Force personnel, but they’d been reprogrammed. The Lobsters hadn’t
been twiddling their claws in there.

Laser fire flared in rapid, pulsing beams. Fired at pointblank range, they could hardly
miss and every shot was deadly. These systems had always been designed to target quickly
and fire missile-killing beams at moving targets. The projectors were about six feet
long, and packed a wattage output about three times that of our own heavy beamers.

The beams stitched in multiple, split-second bursts. Captain Sky lit up like a torch.
There was nothing left but the burning hulk of his armor, which spun over my head
on its way out into space. A hoof or something thunked against a ridge of rock I was
in the act of stepping over.

“Take cover!” I screamed. “Knock out those turrets!”

I rolled behind the ridge of rock that had been at my feet a moment before. The laser
fire put seven or eight burning holes into the rock, sending up puffs of vapor and
causing the rock to glow orange. It had become instant spots of lava that quickly
cooled.

The company opened up, burning the turrets. Unfortunately, most of the Centaurs didn’t
listen to me and didn’t take cover. They fired first, and before the brief action
was over, a dozen of them were floating away from the station out into the inky blackness
of space.

I didn’t bother to fire at the turrets personally. Instead, I hunkered down under
cover and used the command channel to alert every company in the assault. At least
half of them had already figured it out for themselves. When the casualty reports
came in, I was displeased. We’d already lost nearly a hundred marines in this stage
of the assault, and we hadn’t managed to breach the hull yet.

I heaved myself up and headed for the laser battery. All around me, marines came out
of cover and followed me. They were wary now, human and Centaur alike.
Good
, I thought. There were sure to be more surprises once we got inside.

I passed the sparking hulk of a knocked out defensive laser. It twitched as I came
near, trying to stir, trying to swing its broken projector around to aim at me. These
machines knew no loyalty. That was one of the problems with smart machines in a war.
The enemy could turn them right back around on you, once they’d captured them. We’d
done the same to the Macros often enough, and now the Lobsters were doing it to us.

We topped the bulge which surrounded the big projectors. Soon, I knew, the enemy would
reprogram these batteries. If they could do it to the defensive systems, they could
do it to every system on the entire station.

This put a new light on the enemy plans. They hadn’t come here just to do us some
harm and help their Macro friends. They hadn’t taken this station to knock it out
of action. They planned to make it their own. They planned to control the Thor ring,
to become the masters who decided who passed this ring and who didn’t. This raised
the stakes in my mind, as I realized losing the battle station was more than a setback
to my plans. It was a strategic disaster for the entire human race.