Star Corps (28 page)

“Damn it, Ramsey, you're no help. Who's the ARLT commander…. Warhurst, is it?”

“Yes, sir—”

“How do I raise him directly? Ah…there's the command channel….”

Ramsey felt King opening up the private link with Captain Warhurst.

“Warhurst? This is General King. You are not to use the cork unless I give explicit orders to that effect.”

Ramsey didn't hear Warhurst's reply. Abruptly, he pulled out of the noumenon, returning his full awareness to
Derna
's CIC. King was floating on the other side of the compartment, secured in his harness. “General King. A private word, sir?
Outside
the noumenon?”

After a moment, King's eyes blinked, then opened. Ramsey unsnapped his harness and pushed off from his console, drifting across the compartment to a point near King.

“This is highly irregular, Colonel,” King told him as Ramsey caught a hand grip on the overhead and pulled himself to a halt.

“And everything we say over the noumenal link is recorded by Cassius and the
Derna
's AI,” Ramsey replied. “I wanted this to be private.”

King arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Sir, we have to let our people down there do their job. Anything else is micromanagement bullshit and is going to jeopardize the mission. Let's let it play out and see what happens. Sir.”

“I could order you to stand down, you know,” King told him. “Insubordination! Those aren't
our
people on Ishtar, Colonel. They're the Marine Corps' people, and since I am the senior Marine officer within eight light-years, they are
my
people. Is that understood?”

“With all due respect, General, that's not how the chain of command works. As regimental commander,
I
have authority over my units, and that includes Captain Warhurst and the ARLT. You have overall command of the MIEU, and it is your job, therefore, to determine overall strategies that you then implement through me. Sir.”

“Are you telling me my job, Colonel?”

“I am reminding the general that our people at the LZ know what they're doing and that micromanagement will only confuse, slow, and hamper operations. Sir.”

King opened his mouth as if to argue, then seemed to think better of it. “The success of this mission, our very survival, depends on Warhurst and the ARLT, Colonel. At the same time, however, my orders require me to secure certain potential assets on Ishtar, assets of considerable value to…to Earth. Using a cork would guarantee the destruction of that planetary defense complex down there. But if we can find some sort of control center inside that thing, or access the computer that controls it….”

“The ARLT officers and senior NCOs have all been well-briefed, sir. And we have ten people down there with special download programming for dealing with any instrumentation they may find. If there's any way to capture the facility intact, they'll manage it. If not….” He shrugged, the motion turning him slightly in zero g. He pulled himself back to avoid bumping the general with his feet. “If not, they use the cork in another four hours. That's the plan, as we all agreed to it.”

“God help us if this goes wrong, Colonel. God help us all.”

King, Ramsey noticed, was sweating heavily, the droplets of moisture beading up and drifting through the air like tiny, gleaming words when he moved his head.
He's terrified
, Ramsey thought.
What the hell is going on with this guy?

ARLT Section Dragon Three
Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar
1715 hours ST

Garroway had stopped feeling much of anything. His emotions during the past few minutes had seesawed wildly between terror and elation, and Hollingwood's death had left him feeling utterly spent. He watched in numb emptiness as a spidery-looking walker picked its way over the steaming
piles of Ahannu bodies and vanished into the gateway crevice.

“Garroway,” Valdez said. “You okay?”

“I…think so.”

“Brandt bought it. I'm moving Sergeant Foster to the PG team. From now on, you're with my fire team. Understand?”

He nodded, then realized his squad leader couldn't see the nod in his helmet. “Uh, yes, Gunny. Aye aye.”

“Good man.”

The import of Valdez's words was only now beginning to sink in. Second Squad had been organized as four fire teams of three Marines apiece. His fire team had consisted of Hollingwood and Sergeant Cheryl Foster. Lance Corporal Brandt had been teamed, along with PFC Cawley, with Honey Deere and his plasma gun. Brandt's death put a hole in the plasma gun fire team, which needed three experienced operators—gunner, assistant gunner, and spotter/security. Foster was filling that hole, which left Garroway without a fireteam. Valdez's trio, called the squad command team, included Dunne and Pressley. Now he was replacing Pressley in the SCT.

The reshuffle made sense, he supposed, given the need for three experienced hands on the plasma gun. Still, he felt a nagging worry that Valdez was doing it this way just to keep a close eye on him.

“TBC in place and ready to fire,” Valdez called over the tac net.
“Fire in the hole!”
An instant later the crevice in the mountainside lit up with a fierce, blue-white light. The shock wave washing over the Marines crouching outside was as thunderous as the detonation from Krakatoa's peak.

Rock was still clattering down the mountainside when Lieutenant Kerns shouted,
“Go! Go! Go!”

Garroway scrambled to his feet and advanced toward the crevice. “Mind the walls,” Valdez warned. “They're still hot.”

Hot enough, indeed, to melt any part of Garroway's armor that happened to touch them, though the special insulation
on his boots would let him cross the entrance floor without burning his feet. The rock underfoot was oddly plastic, clinging to him like heavy mud with each step. The Thermal Breaching Charge, teleoperated into the gateway by a small remote walker, had momentarily concentrated the heat of a small star against a portion of the blocking door less than a millimeter across. Much of the gate, as well as several tons of surrounding rock, had been turned into plasma and a great deal of energy, leaving behind a larger, gaping hole with walls and floor still incandescent. Air roared into the tunnel as the Marines filed through, entering the larger chamber beyond.

“We're looking for a control center of some kind,” Valdez told her squad. “But stay alert. These passageways'll be full of Frogs.”

Garroway thought-clicked his light and heat sensitivity up a few notches. It was dark in the high-vaulted cavern beyond the entrance, with only a dim, reddish glow filtering down from somewhere high overhead. With enhanced vision, he could dimly see the far walls of the place, black and rippled, as though the rock had momentarily flowed like water before hardening into something like glass.

The TBC's effects hadn't reached this far inside the mountain, he knew. These chambers in the heart of Krakatoa must have been melted out of the solid volcanic rock millennia ago by a technology at least as advanced as what humankind currently possessed. He overlaid his surroundings with a virtual image drawn from the maps of the tunnel complex stored in his helmet memory, and dim green ghosts of passages and rooms and chambers floated in the darkness around him, beyond the shadowy rock walls. Hot spots from his IR sensors pinpointed places where some of those tunnels opened into the main chamber. Other Marines were already fanning out in several directions to seal those potentially lethal doorways.

He kept looking ahead, though, wondering if some of
those tunnels up there connected with the core of the mountain. Could the Frogs vent some of the titanic fury of their big weapon into these passageways? Not a pleasant thought…

“Second Squad,” Valdez called. “With me!”

Garroway trotted along after Valdez and Dunne, trying to look in all directions at once. This was a wonderful place for an ambush, if there was going to be one….

It was then that a portion of the chamber wall dissolved and the Marines were enveloped by hordes of Ahannu warriors.

And this time they had no hope of help from air support.

ARLT Command Section, Dragon
One
Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar
1725 hours ST

“They're coming! Open fire!”

“Third Squad! First Squad! Form perimeter! Second Squad, get your asses the hell back here! You're going to be cut off!”

“Mathorne! Where's Mathorne?”

“Get those PGs firing, damn it!”

“Corpsman! Marine down!”

“Second Squad! Damn it, you're being cut off!”

Captain Warhurst listened to the excited shouts and commands coming from inside the mountain and wondered if he could pull the plug.

The “plug” was a Mark XVII laser-plasma-fired backpack fusion demolition device. There were six of them assigned to the ARLT, and four were currently being worn by four different Marines inside the mountain—Gunnery Sergeants Mathorne and Valdez, Staff Sergeant Ostergaard, and Lieutenant Kerns. The remaining two were stored on
the lander modules for Dragon One and Dragon Six. Any or all could be detonated by the Marine carrying one, with the appropriate firing codes provided by one of the LM AIs, by Warhurst himself from Lander One, or by the Command Constellation still on board
Derna
. It was believed that one device, with a yield of 0.7 megaton, detonated inside Objective Krakatoa, would collapse enough of the entire mountain to render the Ahannu planetary defense complex useless.

The plug was decidedly an option of last resort, one to be used only if there was no other way to protect the incoming transports. The things could be given a time delay or triggered immediately. The hope, of course, was that one of the Marines could leave a warhead where it would do enough good and give the ARLT time to evacuate to a safe distance, but no one in on the planning for Operation Spirit of Humankind believed that escape would be possible. The plugs turned the ARLT assault into a suicide mission.

Worse, from Warhurst's point of view, only the Marines actually wearing the deadly packs knew what they carried. The rest of the Marines down there didn't know, and that was just plain wrong, Warhurst thought. A man or woman who was going to die when a
friend
thought-clicked a command trigger ought to know what was going to happen…and that instantaneous incineration meant success for the rest of the invasion.

But knowledge of the Mark XVIIs had been locked under need-to-know restrictions. Someone higher up the chain of command had decided that knowing about that part of the operation might degrade unit combat efficiency.

That still didn't make it right.

Four warheads were inside the underground complex now, totaling 2.8 megatons. If he was ordered to fire those warheads in the next few minutes…could he? No problem if everyone inside was dead when he punched it, but combat rarely worked out that neatly. There would be survivors in
there, not to mention the Marines still outside the mountain who might be caught in the blast. None of them would know….

And as the battle inside the mountain increased in fury, Warhurst knew the moment of decision was almost on him.

Damn
the waiting…and damn the fact that he was stuck out here, instead of inside that mountain with his people.

25
JUNE
2148

ARLT Section Dragon Three
Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar
1727 hours ST

Second Squad had been ahead of the others when the Ahannu warriors began boiling out of hidden entrances on all sides of the underground chamber. As a black sea of leaping, thronging figures swirled around them, they were in serious danger of being cut off from the ARLT main body.

Garroway dropped to one knee between Well Dunne and Gunny Valdez, pumping 20mm grenades into the horde of attackers, using single shots to conserve his dwindling ammo. Many of these new Ahannu, he noticed, were different from the ones outside—taller, more muscular, and much darker in color, the green-black of their skin making their large, golden eyes even more prominent in the dim light.

These attackers, in fact, were quite different from those he'd studied in downloads on board the
Derna
. A different species? There wasn't any data on the topic one way or another. Their body armor looked heavier, more ornate…and seemed to provide better protection from shrapnel and laser bursts.

But they could still be killed. Explosions chopped and tore through the packed ranks of the attackers. The onslaught wavered as the Ahannu in the lead ranks hesitated,
unwilling to press in closer to the deadly ring of fire laid down by the hard-pressed Marines.

Then Garroway's M-12 chimed a tone indicating it was out of rounds.

He reached for his belt pack and pulled out his last forty-round magazine. “I'm almost out of grenades,” he told the others. “One mag left!”

“Same here,” Vinita added.

“I'm out,” Chuck Cawley said. “Nothing left but light!”

The attacking wall surged closer. And beyond the massed ranks, Garroway saw a larger shadow, a hulking, humanoid form rising above the smaller Ahannu like a giant, with massive forearms, stooped shoulders, and gold eyes tiny compared to the broad swath of face, almost hidden deep within bony sockets. It carried a long and clumsy-looking weapon, another gauss gun of some kind, but so long that no smaller Ahannu could have wielded it.

“My God!” Garvey screamed. “What the hell
is
that?”

“Just kill it!” Foster barked. “Pour it on!”

Laser fire snapped and flashed across the monster's heavily armored form, eliciting a scream like doomsday. It raised its weapon; Garroway felt the high-velocity round shriek low overhead, felt the concussion behind him.

“Second Squad!” Honey Deere yelled. “Hit the deck!”

Garroway threw himself forward, landing facedown on the rock floor. An instant later lightning snapped and glared overhead with a stuttering burst of thunder. Outside, he'd not noticed the squad's plasma gun in action in all the swirling noise and confusion. Inside this enclosed chamber, however, the rapid-fire bolts of charged plasma banished darkness in a dazzling explosion of light and sound.

Garroway felt the noise fade out as his helmet compensated, and his visual feed darkened as the input filters snapped in. Deere's plasma gun loosed bolts in such rapid succession that the effect was of a single flickering bolt of lightning.

And whatever that lightning touched vanished, exploding in clouds of vapor and sprays of blood and charred tissue. The giant Ahannu collapsed in a heap; smaller Ahannu were scrambling back, falling over one another in their rush to escape.

Someone cut loose with a wild rebel yell. And then the Marines were alone once more in the chamber, surrounded as before by piles of burned, torn, and flame-mutilated bodies.

Other Marines rushed up then, pushing past 2nd Squad. First Platoon was coming through the tunnel now, surrounding the battered remnants of Third Platoon.

Two more casualties. That single round from the giant's gauss gun had smashed through Chuck Cawley's helmet, obliterating his head, before hitting Cheryl Foster in the torso and tearing her apart. With only seven Marines left out of the original twelve, 2nd Squad was seriously under strength.

“Stand down, Third Platoon,” Lieutenant Kerns ordered. “We're pulling back to the entrance.”

Odd. Garroway felt a strange combination of relief and disappointment. He was happy to be pulled out of the battle line, yeah…but he also wanted to see this thing through.

Mostly, though, he was just too damned tired to even think. He trudged back to the entrance with the others, emerging in what looked like bright daylight until his visual filters accommodated. The cavern battle must have taken place in almost total blackness, and he hadn't even realized it.

Outside, the overcast was beginning to break up, with patches of dark green sky showing through black and deep maroon-lit clouds. His helmet AI informed him that it was dawn at the LZ and would remain so for the next several hours. Ishtar's lazy rotation made for long, long periods of night and day, with a lingering, drawn-out transition between the two.

The rest of the ARLT was completing the job of securing the LZ, setting up a perimeter against possible attacks from off the mountain and laying out guide strips for incoming robot supply landers. A supply dump had already been set up on the north side of the ledge; someone had raised a UFR
flag on a makeshift staff there, the red, white, and blue cracking hard in the wind.

“Pick up fresh grenade mags and power packs,” Valdez ordered. “And check your battle armor for breaches, feed failures, and power drain.”

As they replenished their ammo stores, a squad hustled past in single file, vanishing through the yawning gateway into the mountain.

“What's going on?” Kat Vinita asked.

“Ah, don't sweat it,” Womicki replied. “Nobody'll tell us nothin' anyway.”

“I just had word come down from the captain,” Valdez announced to the squad. “Twenty minutes rest. Then it's back to work!”

“Semper fi, man,” Dunne said, laughing. “The Corps is always looking after us.”

With a groan, Garroway slumped to the ground and was almost instantly asleep.

Chamber of Warrior Preparation
Deeps of An-Kur
Third Period of Dawn

“Our forces retreat,” Tu-Kur-La said. He felt a crushing disappointment, mingled with fear. The scenes they were watching, of a fierce battle within the flame-lit passages of An-Kur itself, were coming from the mind of a Commander-of-Sixties actually participating in the battle. Much of that commander's emotion was transmitted through the organic connection that linked them.

“We lose too many warriors,” Gal-Irim-Let said within the warm embrace of the Abzu. “And we are not holding them back.
Still
these Marines come.”

“Their weapons…” the Great Lord said, sighing. “Against such weapons…”

“We still have the mountain itself,” Dur-En-Mah pointed
out. It was a senior controller in Gal-Irim-Let's staff, a high-ranking drone, one of the lords of An-Kur. “We have destroyed several of their flying weapons. And soon their ships will be within our reach.”

“The Kur-Urudug is largely useless against the Marines that have already landed,” Tu-Kur-La pointed out. “And we have only warriors to throw at the Marines that have already entered the gate.”

“Those worry me,” the Great Lord said. “They may have the means of destroying An-Kur.”

“The Abzu has detected Divine Weapons among them,” Gal-Irim-Let said. “They are small but would do much damage.”

“We must stop them!” Dur-En-Mah exclaimed. “They must not be allowed to—”

“Peace, Dur-En-Mah,” the Great Lord said. “If they wished to destroy the mountain, they could have done so by now. I think they wish to learn An-Kur's secrets.”

“But we should withdraw to a safe place,” Tu-Kur-La suggested. “If we withdraw, they may be deceived into believing they have captured An-Kur.”

“Sound strategy,” the Great Lord said. “Let it be done.”

ARLT Command Section, Dragon
One
Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar
1740 hours ST

“New passageway,” the voice said in Warhurst's mind. He could see the scene in his noumenon—a high, narrow corridor with smoothly sculpted walls, intense darkness relieved only slightly by wan red lights. The sensors in Lieutenant Frayne's helmet relayed the scene in rapid, uneven sweeps. “No one—”

The transmission was lost in a burst of static.

“Say again, Seeker,” Warhurst said. “You're breaking up.”

“How's this, Captain?”

“Much better.”

“The mountain's blocking transmission, as we expected,” Staff Sergeant Krista Ostergaard's voice added. “The relays work okay, but sometimes we have to face just the right way. The lieutenant was saying this looks like a new passageway but that no one's at home.”

“Left at the next intersection,” Warhurst told them. “If the layout is anything like at Tsiolkovsky, that'll be the control center.”

“Roger that,” Frayne said. “We're at the intersection. Geez, are you gettin' all this?”

The passageway was opening up now, with the left-hand corridor debouching into a huge, open chamber. The squad, designated Seeker, spread out, examining everything, weapons at the ready. Various sensors reported elevations in temperature, in magnetic flux, in radiation. The air was wet, heavy with steam. Some sort of organic matter—something halfway between jelly and mold—grew on most of the surfaces.

“Affirmative,” Warhurst called back. “What's that wet goo covering everything?”

“Not in the IBB, sir,” Frayne replied, referring to the data base of Ishtaran life cataloged and transmitted to Earth by the First Expedition. The Ishtaran BioBook was far from complete. “Looks like someone's not been taking proper care of the place, though.”

“This is definitely the control center, though,” Ostergaard told him. “I see touch controls here…and they match the Tsiolkovsky configurations.”

Seventy years ago, during the UN War, U.S. Marines had captured a long-dead Ahannu base discovered in the central peak of Tsiolkovsky, on the far side of Earth's moon. The layout had been similar—except that the lunar weapon had been designed to fire antimatter beams. The two facilities must have been erected at more or less the same time…some ten to twelve thousand years ago.

“Roger that,” Warhurst said. “Plant the charge, Lieutenant. You know the drill. Set it for detonation on direct
command, relay trigger, and tamper-trigger. Your team will stay in place until relieved.”

“Aye, sir.” The microthermonuke in Ostergaard's backpack was swiftly mounted beneath one of the smoothly sculpted consoles, and Frayne and Ostergaard began setting the detonation triggers.

“Captain Warhurst,” another voice said, coming in through the tactical chat link. “This is General King.”

“Yes, sir.” What was the general doing calling a captain?

“I just heard you order the nuke set for tamper-trigger. What are your intentions?”

“I was going to set the nuke in place, with a squad to watch it. If we need to blow Krakatoa, the squad can do it themselves, or we can fire it here or from orbit using the relay at the halfway point in the caverns. And it'll blow if the enemy tries to mess with it, of course.”

“I'm not comfortable with that, Captain. Too much can go wrong. Your men might panic and pull the plug too soon.”

“What do you suggest, sir?”

“Put the nuke in place, but no tamper charge. We don't want the enemy taking the initiative from us with this thing. And pull your people out of that control room. I don't want them panicking and setting the charge off prematurely.”

“Sir, we need to set guards to protect the charge and the relay….”

“The relay, yes. The relay will feed us sensor data on what's going on around the warhead, and we'll need to protect the relay to keep that feed open and to trigger the charge from here. But
I
want that responsibility. No one else should be able to fire the warhead unless I give specific orders to that effect. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Carry on.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Warhurst shook his head. Micromanagement reared its ugly head once again.

Still, he could understand the general's position. Setting
off a nuclear warhead was not exactly on the same level as deciding whether or not to return enemy fire. It was an escalation of force that had to be ordered from the very top of the chain of command.

But he was afraid that the constraints King was putting on the mission were going to jeopardize its execution. The more you tinkered with a plan, the more complex and convoluted it became, the greater the certainty that something was going to go the hell wrong.

“Lieutenant Frayne? How's it going?”

“Just about set, Captain.”

“New orders, Lieutenant. Set the charge for relay-detonation only, then get the hell out of there. Set a guard on the relay unit, but do not leave anyone in that chamber.”

“With pleasure, sir. This place gives me the crawlies.”

Frayne reset the trigger mechanism, using his armor AI. “Relay check,” he said.

“I've got a signal,” Warhurst replied. The relay was transmitting a steady and unobstructed signal from the backpack nuke to Lander One. “You're clear. Set the gunwalkers and pull out.”

“On our way out, Captain.”

“And about fucking time,” Ostergaard added. The squad began filing back out the way it had come.

Maybe, Warhurst thought, just maybe this crazy operation would work out right after all. General King's micromanagement had made him a bit nervous, but with the backpack nuke in place and the relay guarded, they could still pop the mountain's cork anytime they needed to, and the incoming
Derna
and the supply ships would be safe.

Now he needed to see to the security of the Marine ARLT.

ARLT Section Dragon Three
Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar
2250 hours ST