Star Corps (32 page)

Valdez's helmet indicators were showing it now, the steady, throbbing pulse of Objective Krakatoa's magnetic field, building steadily toward a deadly climax. She couldn't hear the radio call from Dragon One any longer.

“Lieutenant?” she called. “I don't think we're gonna make it through to the nuke in time!”

“I know,” Kerns replied, snapping off a trio of laser pulses as the Ahannu horde surged forward. “Any suggestions?”

Valdez concentrated for a moment on her own fire, coolly taking down one of the giant Ahannu just before it fired its gauss gun. The idea behind Task Force Kerns had originally been to reprogram the nuke with a time delay, enough to let them get out of the mountain before the thing blew. She had to admit to herself that it had never looked like a real good possibility since any attack by the enemy would have thrown a major wrench into the works.

They couldn't trigger the nuke from here. It had been reset to detonate only with the proper authorization code, a set of alphanumerics transmitted either from Dragon One or from orbit. And without the relay…

“I think we have to act as a new relay, Lieutenant,” she said, “
if
we can get a clear signal through to the captain.”

“Roger that,” Lieutenant Kerns said. “I'm afraid I don't see any other way….”

Lander Dragon One
In flight, Ishtar
0011 hours ST

Success! Warhurst felt the familiar tingle of the net going online, the flow of data unfolding itself within his mind. The noumenon opened…narrow and poorly defined, but with resolution enough for him to begin directing his efforts toward establishing a stronger radio link with Task Force Kerns. The Lander One AI had done the trick. It might not have the high-powered processing thrust of a CS-1289, Series G-4, Model 8 like Cassius, but it knew how to set up network protocols.

He could see outside now. The Dragon carrying Lander One was racing low across a purple-red forest, skimming
the canopy at treetop level. Behind, ten kilometers distant, now, An-Kur rose above the jungle, a vast, black, flat-topped cone.

He was still getting a faint radio signal from within the mountain, transmitted and magnified by a relay left on the ground at the LZ.

“Enhance signal, Channel Five,” he ordered over the net. “Boost it!”

Damn, but this pocket version of the MIEU Net was ragged! His internal cerebralink hardware was so much faster than this cobbled-together monstrosity, he felt himself waiting with dragging impatience after each set of commands.

“…Kerns! Dragon One, this…Force Kerns. Come in!”

“This is Warhurst. I copy!” He shot a coded mindclick up the link.
Clean this freaking signal up!

“This is Kerns. We're surrounded and can't reach the nuke. Suggest using me as a relay for detonation. Over!”

Warhurst stared in sick horror at An-Kur. “Roger that, Lieutenant. I…copy…”

Task Force Kerns
Depths of An-Kur, Ishtar
0012 hours ST

Again the enemy was falling back, but four more Marines—Knowles, Luttrell, Muhib, and Couture—were dead, brought down by heavy gauss-gun fire. Rounds continued to crack and snap around them, as hidden snipers fired from behind the surrounding rocks.

“This is Kerns. We're surrounded and can't reach the nuke. Suggest using me as a relay for detonation. Over!”

Valdez looked at the lieutenant. She didn't know him that well, but she knew he'd seen action in Colombia. She caught his eye through his visor and nodded.

“Roger that, Lieutenant,” Warhurst's voice replied after a pause. “I…copy…”

They couldn't reach the nuke in time. Warhurst had the trigger code. He couldn't detonate the nuke directly, but he could send the signal through Kerns's comm gear.

“I'm sorry, people,” Kerns told the listening Marines. “There's no other way.”

“Hell, Lieutenant,” Ostergaard said cheerfully. “No way we were gonna get out of here anyway!”

“Yeah,” Staff Sergeant Feltes added. “Let's take a few of the bastards with us, straight to Hell!”

The Ahannu were surging into the cavern again. Lieutenant Kerns jerked and fell, half his helmet ripped away. No matter. Any of them could provide the necessary relay.

For an instant the cavern grew extraordinarily bright, as though the rock ahead had dissolved to admit the bright white sunlight of a summer's noon at home….

Lander Dragon One
In flight, Ishtar
0012 hours ST

The mountain seemed to heave higher, its slopes trembling, a gentle fog of dust rising from its flanks. Warhurst watched, in horror mingled with awe, as the mountain shuddered in an uncertain equilibrium between gravity and the titanic forces loosed within its depths.

Then, after a seeming eternity, gravity won and the mountain began to settle back upon and into itself, the crest slumping, the base of the mountain spreading out, a pall of gray-white smoke spewing from the peak.

He could see the shock wave racing out from the crumbling mountain's base.

“All Dragons!” he called over the newly established net. “Up! Go up!” When that shock wave overtook them, it might slam the landers into the ground. They would be safer
at higher altitudes. The view in his mind tilted sharply as the Dragon clawed at the sky.

The shock wave, racing at the speed of sound, thundered past, grabbing the lander and shaking it hard, as the strangely shaped and colored Ishtaran trees were uprooted below and tumbled along in a surging sea of devastation. The Dragon trembled and bucked, the bulkheads of the LM ringing with the concussion.

And then…a blessed, dazed silence.

Behind them the mountain continued to settle, slumping into a mound about half as high as the original peak. Seams opened in the rock on all sides, emitting boiling, furious clouds of ash and smoke.

Captain Warhurst watched the mountain's funeral pyre with dark broodings.

Chamber of Seeing
Deeps of An-Kur
Eleventh Period of Dawn

Once again he was Tu-Kur-La,
only
Tu-Kur-La. The Abzu-il, the living Gateway to the Sea of Knowin
g
, had recoiled, shrieking, and Tu-Kur-La and his fellow members of the Zu-Din found themselves again in the Chamber of Seeing, deep below An-Kur.

Seismic quakes continued to rattle walls, ceiling, and floor, and a fine mist of dust filled the air. For a few moments the cavern was plunged into an abysmal darkness, but power lines from the Deep Core regrew themselves in moments, and the light, with uncertain flickers, returned. Slowly, slowly, the quakings died away, though ominous rumblings continued to filter down from the upper levels of An-Kur, many
salet
overhead.

A full sixty Ahannu were gathered in the Chamber of Seeing, resting in couches recessed into niches in the circular stone walls, and these, Tu-Kur-La knew, were only a few of
the minds comprising an active
Zu-Din
, a Godmind. Some hundreds of others were scattered throughout the region, some as far away as the city of Shumur-Unu.

Across the chamber, dimly seen through sifting dust and wavering light, Gal-Irim-Let rose from its couch. “The Mountain of the Gods is no more,” it said.

“Kingal!”
Tu-Kur-La cried, rolling from his own couch. He drew a breath, then sneezed sharply in the dust. “Kingal,” he said again. “We have lost the Sea of Knowing!”

“The Sea shall return,” the Kingal An-Kur replied. “It has been injured but will regrow. But we can do no more here.”

“What do you advise, Lord?” a high-ranking warrior named Sha-Ah-Il asked.

“The fight will center now on Shumur-Unu,” Usum-Gal told them, interrupting. “We will travel there with all we can find and gather here beneath An-Kur. There, we will find more of the Abzu-il. There we will continue the fight.”

“Death to all untamed Blackheads!” someone cried, and the others took up the cheer, a throaty, almost growled susurration filling the Chamber of Seeing more completely than the dust.

“Quickly, god-warriors!” Gal-Irim-Let cried. “To the Deep Ways!”

Shouting and hissing, the Ahannu filed from the chamber.

Combat Information Center
IST
Derna,
Ishtar orbit
0022 hours ST

Lighting was restored, a fitful gleam from emergency battle lanterns at first, but a full-blown artificial daylight as the emergency power plant finally came on line. Moments later the slow tumble of the crippled starship was arrested as automatic thrusters fired. As the ship's spin slowed to nothing, gravity faded away. Ramsey drifted in the wreckage of the CIC with General King, Ricia, and a handful of techs.

“Cassius!” he called, using his cerebralink. He felt, heard, sensed only a dull and faintly horrifying emptiness. Damn. The net was down, the noumenon lost. Still, Cassius would be online within
Derna
's ship computer…
should
be, anyway, assuming the central processor complex hadn't suffered serious physical damage.

“I've got a radio link to Cassius,” Ricia told him. She was floating next to one of the CIC consoles, clinging to a desktop with one hand and working the controls with the other.

“Give me audio, Major,” he said. “Cassius?”

“I am here, Colonel,” the familiar AI voice replied.

“Give me a sitrep.”

“Affirmative, Colonel.
Derna
has taken serious damage from an impact with a piece of wreckage from the
Algol
, a mass estimated at 215 kilograms, traveling at 12.4 kilometers per second. The debris passed through our reaction mass tank near the rim at Section Nineteen, causing explosive loss of reaction mass and radical destabilization of our trim. Secondary debris damaged our main power plant, heat radiator fins, high gain antenna and comm laser unit, carousel drive, and an estimated four supply modules. Ship remotes are still assessing damage while beginning repairs on major ship systems.”

“But are we going to make it?” King asked.

“Probability of survival is high,” Cassius replied, “barring further attacks by the Ahannu planetary defense system. Since there is nothing we can do here to prevent further attacks, our efforts now should be directed at damage control. Of more immediate concern from a tactical perspective, the MIEU data net is offline, as you have ascertained, and we have lost contact with the ARLT.”

Cassius fell silent. “What is it?” King demanded.

“Easy, General,” Ramsey said. “Cassius has his figurative hands full right now.”

“One moment,” Cassius added. “One moment…”

Ramsey pushed off from the bulkhead and drifted across the CIC cabin, catching himself on the console alongside Ricia.

“I have additional information,” Cassius said after a moment. “Ship sensors have detected a low-yield subsurface nuclear detonation at the location of Objective Krakatoa. I surmise that the ARLT has acted on its own initiative and destroyed the enemy planetary defense network.”

“Thank God,” Ricia said.

King sighed. “Amen to that. I guess that means Norris isn't going to get his toy for PanTerra.”

“At this point I don't give a damn about Norris and his toys,” Ramsey said. “Cassius, expedite efforts to reestablish a working net. At least get me radio contact.”

“Not immediately possible, Colonel. Our exterior antennas were damaged by the collision. Furthermore, the LZ is about to pass below the horizon, and without our constellation of communication satellites in place, we will be unable to maintain line-of-sight contact for radio or laser communications.”

“Estimated time to bring the net back online.”

“Unable to provide an estimate, Colonel,” Cassius said. “But at what humans might call a very rough guess, I would say that we are talking about a matter of several days, at least.”

“Okay, Cas. Highest priority to regaining ship-to-ground communications. Let me know what you need in the way of human assistance to facilitate repairs.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Ramsey rotated in space to face King. “With the net down, sir, we're going to be flat-out useless up here. I suggest we consider transferring your flag to the ground.”

“You mean…to New Sumer? Has the assault force taken it yet?”

“I don't know, General, and we won't be able to know until we come around the planet in…” He consulted his inner clock. “…seventy-one minutes. But I'll say this much…”

“Yes?”

“If our main assault doesn't take that city within the next hour, we might as well go downstairs anyway. I don't know about you, but I'd just as soon die on the ground as up here.”

“I see what you mean, Colonel,” King replied thoughtfully. “Even if we get the
Derna
fully repaired, we're trapped here.”

“That's right, sir. With our reaction mass gone and the main drive dead, we're a space station, not a starship. We won't be going home again anytime soon.”

“So our only hope is with the Marines on the ground,” Ricia said.

“Yup,” Ramsey replied. “Things
could
be a whole lot worse.”

26
JUNE
2148

Lander Dragon Three
New Sumer, Ishtar
0032 hours ST

The Dragon descended over the Legation compound, depositing the lander module on the broad plaza in front of the old xenocultural mission. The doors swung up, the ramps came down, and Garroway stumbled into the murky twilight of a city engulfed in battle. It was, he decided, a good thing that the landing was already under way and the situation well in hand; he was feeling dazed after the hurried evac and the destruction of An-Kur, and he would have had considerable trouble snapping to if there'd been anyone here to fight.

In fact, there'd been little fighting in the Legation compound. The first LMs had touched down twenty minutes earlier to find the entire walled-off area deserted. In fact, the purple-red nakaha vines and hairmoss-alga clinging to the facades of many of the buildings, the doorways still gaping open, the holes in walls and windows unrepaired, all contributed to an almost oppressively lonely feeling of utter desolation and abandonment.

A few Ahannu bodies lying in the courtyard behind the main gate gave evidence that the compound had not been completely undefended, but most of the Frogs who'd been here, seemed to have fled.

Outside the compound it was a different matter. The city
of New Sumer—Shumur-Unu, according to remembered downloads—was a vast and teeming sprawl of low buildings, conical huts, flat-topped pyramids, and labyrinthine walls of mud brick extending north and west of the compound on both sides of the slow meander of the Saimi-Id River. Though most of the native inhabitants appeared to have fled, a fairly steady gauss-gun fire from snipers in the tops of pyramids and the taller buildings kept things interesting for the landing force. Primitive rockets hissed through the early dawn sky, exploding randomly within the compound walls with loud reports and clouds of black smoke. Beyond the walls, smoke billowed skyward from five different locations where Marine assault teams or aircraft had already suppressed particularly annoying sniper strongpoints.

“With me!” a waving figure called. “Advance Recon Landing Team, with me!”

Garroway, Vinita, Garvey, and the rest from Lander Three jogged toward the figure, where the other ARLT Marines were gathering as well. Without the net to connect them on a subconscious level, Garroway couldn't tell the man's rank, but when the Marine reached up and removed his battle helmet, he recognized him.

It was Captain Warhurst, the ARLT CO.

“Listen up!” Warhurst called as they fell into ranks before him. His face looked haggard and pale. “The main assault force has the situation well in hand. We're being put into ready-five.” That meant they were in reserve, ready to go into action on five minutes notice. “Your orders are…stay in armor, keep your weapons ready and powered up, and remain in this general area in front of Building 12. I'll pass the word if we're ordered up.

“I know you're all wondering what the hell is going on since the net went down. I can't tell you a whole lot myself, but here's what I do know: the
Derna
has been damaged but is still in orbit. I don't know how bad that damage is or whether it will affect the ship's ability to transport us home, but I will remind you that we have an international relief
force on the way in our tracks, maybe six months behind us. We are
not
—I repeat,
not
—stranded here, so you can belay that scuttlebutt right now.

“I've heard one piece of scuttlebutt to the effect that there's not enough Earth-type food here. Although one of the robot freighters, the
Algol,
was destroyed an hour ago, the other, the
Regulus
, is undamaged. We can assume she's being unloaded now and that fresh supplies, food, and ammo are on their way.

“In addition, let me remind you all that there is a sizable human population here on Ishtar and has been for at least one hundred centuries. Our ethnoarcheologists have been telling us for some time now that most of the edible grain crops and domestic animals that appeared suddenly in the Middle East ten thousand years ago were gene-engineered by the Ahannu as a part of their colonization effort. Apparently, they use the same nutrients we do. There are Earth-native crops in the surrounding region, and we can eat most of the local food crops as well. We are
not
—repeat,
not
—in danger of starvation.

“And finally, Marines, I have a special announcement.
Comp
'ny, atten-
hut
!”

Garroway came to attention, along with the hundred or so other Marines in ranks.

“Attention to roll,” Warhurst intoned, his voice solemn, slow, and deliberate.

“Sergeant Alicia Jane Couture…

“Sergeant Kathryn DaSilva…

“Sergeant Nathaniel Easton Deere…

“Staff Sergeant Kenneth K. Feltes…

“Gunnery Sergeant Athena Horst…

“Lieutenant Joseph Edward Kerns…

“Sergeant Laurel Knowles…

“Sergeant Jacob Wayne Lowenthal…

“Corporal Jarrett Luttrell…

“Sergeant Abram Muhib…

“Sergeant Carol O'Malley…

“Staff Sergeant Krista Ostergaard…

“Staff Sergeant Frank Edward Stryker…

“Gunnery Sergeant Maria Ann Valdez…

“These fourteen Marines sacrificed their lives in order to safeguard the
Derna
and this mission. At tremendous personal risk, they reentered Objective Krakatoa when the enemy defense complex reactivated, in an attempt to reach and reprogram the nuclear device planted in Objective Krakatoa's control center. When they could not reach the device due to time limitations and massive enemy assaults, they instead served as a communications relay for the triggering signal to detonate the weapon, destroying Objective Krakatoa.

“By calling friendly fire on their position, they saved the IST
Derna
and all of the Marines and other assets still on board from near-certain destruction, at the cost of their own lives. We will observe now a moment of silence in the memory of fallen comrades.”

Garroway stood at rigid attention with the others. The silence was not complete, certainly. The cracks and bangs of scattered combat continued to sound beyond the compound walls, a freshening wind sighed among stone buildings, and, nearer at hand, NCOs bawled orders at running Marines. A pair of Marine Wasps, boldly painted black and yellow strike fighters, howled overhead, banking toward the sprawl of New Sumer on the far side of the river.

Somehow, the noise of battle was part of another world, remote in time and space. Here, there was only the still introspection honoring dead heroes and friends.

“It is my intention,” Warhurst said, breaking the moment's silence, “to recommend all fourteen members of Task Force Kerns for the Medal of Honor in recognition of their bravery, self-sacrifice, and service above and beyond the call of duty, all in the finest tradition of the United States Marine Corps.

“That is all.
Comp
'ny, dis
missed!
”

The ranks began to dissolve into individual Marines once more. Garroway turned then, looking west. He could see An-Kur, a slumped, black mound beneath a pillar of angry, gray-black ash dominating the horizon. The cloud nearly obscured the swollen globe of Marduk hanging above what was left of the mountain.

Gunny Valdez, dead? Goddess! He'd talked to her an hour ago…had wanted to join her. Shit, he'd known then that whatever she was doing, it was likely a one-way deployment. She'd turned him away, and somehow the rejection was a sour bitterness, burning throat and eyes.

Of their whole squad, only he, Womicki, Dunne, Garvey, and Vinita were left. Five out of twelve. Shit, shit,
shit.
He felt as if he'd just lost his family.

And, he thought, he had. His mother was far away now and ten years older than when he'd last seen her. Goddess alone knew where Lynnley was. The only family he knew now was the Corps, and seven of his eleven closest relatives had just been whisked away in the space of a scant few hours.

By what quirk of the universe, by what
right
, was he still alive and breathing and, worst of all,
thinking,
while they were all dead? It wasn't fair.

He felt as though the waves of loneliness just outside his circle of personal space were threatening to crash through and engulf him.

He became aware of a presence…no, of two presences, at his side—Garvey and Vinita, both still in armor save for helmets and gloves, their faces smudged with smoke and grime acquired at some unhelmeted moment in the past hour.

“It doesn't seem fair,” Vinita said. Her grief was tangible.

“No one promised us fair,” Garroway said.

“Yeah,” Garvey said, “but you know? Sometimes the universe just outright sucks big, slimy rocks.”

“Maybe so,” Garroway said. “And maybe we just have to pretend it all makes some kind of sense.”

Trade Factor's Quarters
Legation Compound
New Sumer, Ishtar
1015 hours ALT (Arbitrary Local Time)

Gavin Norris surveyed the mess that had been the PanTerran office with growing anger, then slammed his fist down on the already cracked case of a computer monitor. The large windows overlooking the compound had been smashed in, and the stringy-fuzzy purplish stuff that passed for vegetation here had invaded the open room. There was water pooled on the floor…and cabinets that once had held data storage crystals had been overturned and scattered everywhere. Mold grew on the walls and ceiling, and parts of the wall showed black streaks indicating an old, old fire. A desk safe gaped open and empty.

If Carleton had left any corporate records here, they'd been utterly destroyed by Ahannu mobs and ten years of the wet local weather. Damn it, it wasn't
fair.
…

Not that he'd been counting on Carleton's efficiency. His briefings back in New Chicago had begun with the assumption that he would have to basically start over. But if the man had just thought to leave a note scrawled on a wall, perhaps with a clue or two as to the location of a fireproof lockbox with a stash of backup storage crystals…

He would have to begin again here, from scratch.

“Did you find what you're looking for?”

He turned at the voice. Dr. Hanson stood in the doorway that had been smashed open a decade ago by rampaging alien mobs.

“No,” he replied. “My…predecessor didn't keep a very tidy office, it seems.”

“Don't blame him. Blame the company he kept. Looks like the Ahannu pretty well trashed the place when they broke in. I'm surprised they didn't burn it to the ground.”

“They burned a number of buildings, I gather.” He looked
around the office in disgust. “Damn it, what brought all this on? We had a solid rapport with the local nabobs. Things were going so
well!
”

“It's beginning to look like a classic case of Alexander's First Law.”

“Alexander's…First Law? What's that?”

“An important xenosociological concept,” Hanson replied. “Advanced by the guy who came to be known as the Father of Xenoarcheology, back in the twenty-first century. It states that the members of any given culture will understand the customs, attitudes, and worldview of another culture solely within the context of their own.”

“I don't get it.”

“There were Native Americans who encountered Europeans for the first time who thought the foreigners were traveling inside gigantic black water birds with huge white wings. Sailing ships with sails, you see? And the ancient Sumerians thought the Anunnaki—‘Those who came from the heavens to Earth,' as they called them—were gods.”

“Well…sure. That's pretty obvious, isn't it? Primitive savages are going to think that a computer or a flashlight is magic direct from the gods, right?”

“If their culture allows for the possibility of gods and magic, yes. The point is,
no
culture is free of its own cultural bias. Including ours.”

“What are you getting at? I don't follow.”

Dr. Hanson sighed. “No. You wouldn't. I think your people are the ones who brought this on.” She held up the remnants of a notebook—a low-tech pressure-sensitive paper version. The cover was badly burned, the pages partially charred and water-soaked, but some words could be made out here and there. “I found this in Dr. Moore's lab.”

“Dr. Moore?”

“One of the xenobiologists stationed here at the Legation. Looks like she took all of her electronic records with her, but I did find this. It says, ‘We've been suckered by Alexander's
First Law. The autos aren't Aztecs and they're not Chinese. Who do they say they are? Who do they say we are?'”

“‘Autos?'”

“Autochthons. The Ahannu. There's been a major debate going on Earth for years now as to whether their culture could best be compared to that of the Aztecs, back in the early sixteenth century, or to the nineteenth-century Chinese at the time of their contact with modern Europeans. Dr. Moore is warning us not to let our culturally biased perspective distort our picture of who and what the Ahannu are.”

“That they're not primitives?” Norris gave a dry chuckle. “They proved
that
with that shooting mountain of theirs.”

“Their technology isn't the point,” she replied. “It's how we think of them…and how they think of us. We tended to see them as primitives compared with us, with a complex culture and some high-tech toys left over from the time when they were starfarers. They see us as the slave species they gave civilization to a few thousand years ago, maybe as slaves who got too big for our britches.”

“Yeah…okay. Who are you saying is right? They
are
primitives.”

“No. Neither viewpoint is right, because both viewpoints are locked up inside of the cultural context that created them.