Starfist: Wings of Hell (22 page)

Each gun team has a sergeant as gun chief, a corporal gunner and assistant gunner, and a crew consisting of one more corporal and two privates first class. Brigadiers Sturgeon and Sparen had integrated their AA teams and set them up on the north end of NAS Gay in such a way that if there ever was an attack from the air they could put up a devastating umbrella of plasma bolts through which any enemy would have to maneuver. If the Skinks mounted a ground attack against the station, the Bowmans could be employed as deadly antipersonnel weapons in support of the infantrymen in their ground security role.

“Well,” Hamsum drawled, “just hold your pants up, Jack. My guess is once the XXX Corps gets here and we move against the Skinks, we’ll mount up and go out with the infantry. We’ll get into it, never you fear. Who knows, maybe the little bastards grew wings since we kicked their asses on Kingdom.” He glanced at his watch. It was 7:48, almost time for chow. He yawned and stretched.

“Hey, Sarge,” Corporal Rushin called from his radar console, “I’ve got a large blip comin’ in from the south—damn, from the north, too!”

“Ain’t the Twenty-sixth Wing due in today?” Newman asked, shifting his cigarillo to the opposite side of his mouth as he spoke. For some reason a cold chill raced up his backbone. He came alert now.

“That’s
not
the Twenty-sixth!” Hamsum shouted. “Get the gun on line! Call the lieutenant! We’re being attacked!”

In the next few minutes, NAS George Gay turned into a seething cauldron of fire and death as the field was raked from two directions by fast-moving attack aircraft, their onboard rail guns firing a devastating hail of pellets into the Fourteenth Wing’s Raptors, all neatly parked and fully exposed on the apron; the maintenance facilities and fuel dumps also went up in greasy clouds of billowing fire. But the revetments Sturgeon and Sparen had ordered built by the army engineers worked. And the Skinks did not use acid.

The damage would have been far worse that morning if the Skink preattack reconnaissance had been up-to-date. Evidently they were not sure of the exact positions the XVIII Corps had established upon their landing, which had taken place only two days before the attack. So the waves of aircraft that struck that morning were after military targets of opportunity. Unfortunately, the Raptors of the Fourteenth Wing afforded them that opportunity.

When it was all over, the six men in Hamsum’s team could only gaze with unbelieving eyes at the destruction. “We got some,” Newman croaked. “The vids will confirm that, but we got some, chief, we got some. We’re Aces now, Marines.” But there was no elation in his voice. The other men were too awed to say anything.

Hamsum stared at his assistant. His cigarillo had long since gone out, but throughout the fight it had clung stubbornly to the corner of his mouth, where it still dangled incongruously. That’s the image of the raid on NAS Gay that stuck in his mind ever after. For his own part, Newman resolved never to question his gun chief again. “Yeah,” he said at last. “The goddamned lizards wised up since we kicked their asses on Kingdom.”

The attack had lasted less than ten minutes.

Unnoticed by the six Marines in their gun position, huge clouds of smoke and flames hung over Sky City on the horizon. Targets in the city had been carefully marked by Skink reconnaissance. Civilian casualties were very heavy.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Newly promoted Lieutenant Charlie Bass, Staff Sergeant Hyakowa, and third platoon’s squad leaders joined Captain Conorado at Company L’s command post when Commander Usner, Thirty-fourth FIST’s F3 operations officer, came to brief them on their raid into the back door of the Skink base. Conorado sat on the ground next to Usner. Three sappers stood behind them. The five Marines from third platoon formed a semicircle in front of them. The Marines all had their helmets and gloves off and their sleeves rolled up so they could see one another in the visible.

“You need to know up front,” Usner said, looking each of third platoon’s leaders in the eye, “that Brigadier Sturgeon selected Lima Three for this mission. You have the most experience of anybody fighting Skinks and taking them down in their own caves. He absolutely did
not
choose you because you are in the least bit expendable. Got that?” He held each one’s eye until he got a nod.

“Good. Now, the defile seems to be clear at this time. At any rate, the string-of-pearls doesn’t show anybody in it.” He showed them the live infrared satellite feed on his UPUD’s display, a clear view of a cut in the mountainside where recon had discovered a back door to the underground complex. “Unless the Skinks have done more tunneling, we know their layout. This is the section we want to go into.” He projected a hologram map onto the ground in the middle of their ellipse and oriented it so that the entrance faced Bass. “Captain Conorado already has a copy of this and he’ll give it to you at the end of this briefing,” he told them.

“This area is beans and bandages,” he said, using a pointer to indicate a large cavern with an entrance two hundred meters inside the cave, beyond a dogleg turn. The cavern was perpendicular to the tunnel and ran deep under the mountain. The map didn’t show any other entrances to it.

“We’re more interested in this one.” He pointed out a cavern on the other side of the tunnel. Its entrance was a hundred meters beyond the first. “It’s filled with canister-on-packboard arrangements that we believe are compressed air and acid for the Skink small arms. We want a sample, and we want the weapons in the chamber destroyed—that’s why these sappers are going with you. On the way out, if you have time, we also want the sappers to do some serious damage in the beans-and-bandages cavern.

“You’ve got your chameleons, so there shouldn’t be any danger of you getting spotted—the back door was unguarded on both occasions recon was there, and the tunnel in that area seems to be lightly traveled except for a few Skinks occasionally taking an outside break. And if anybody does come along, the tunnels have crates along the walls; you can duck behind them. Given what’s going on right now, the Skinks all seem to be staying in.”

Usner noticed the quizzical looks he got, and explained what he meant. “Right, I guess you haven’t heard. The Skinks are running waves of air attacks on Sky City and the XVIII Corps positions around the city. That’s why the brigadier and the Corps CG think this is a good time to hit their base. The Skinks don’t know that we’re here, and all their attention is focused to the south. So this should be quick and easy.”

Usner looked at the Marines from third platoon. “Questions?”

“Yes, sir,” Bass said. “I see four entrances to that armory. How are they secured, or are they open?”

Usner rotated the hologram. “This entrance is on a higher level.” He indicated one of two entrances on the far end of the cavern. “It has a secured hatch. The others are closed with simple wooden doors with primitive locking mechanisms. A firm kick should be all it takes to open any of them. But you’ll only need to open this one.” He indicated the nearer entrance off the tunnel.

“Anything else?” Nobody had further questions. “In that case, do this thing.” Usner nodded at Conorado, collapsed the hologram, rose to his feet, and left.

“Stand by to receive,” Conorado said when the F3 was gone. He transmitted the map of the operational area of the Skink complex to Bass’s and Hyakowa’s comps. They’d copy the map to the squad leaders and probably the fire team leaders as well. He checked the time and said, “Be ready to move out in thirty. Take the sappers with you.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Bass said. He signaled the sappers to come along, then turned and led the way back to third platoon’s area. Along the way, he put his helmet on. Hyakowa and the squad leaders followed suit; they knew their boss wanted to discuss the upcoming mission privately.

“This mission isn’t going to be the cakewalk the F3 implied,” Bass said on the platoon command circuit. “If it was, he’d send a squad along with the sappers, not a whole platoon.”

“He didn’t mention passive security,” Hyakowa said. “Vid cameras, motion detectors, sniffers, booby traps.”

“I have trouble believing that we can just slip in, watch the sappers set their charges, and slip back out without anybody noticing,” Sergeant Ratliff said. “We’ll probably have to fight.”

“Skinks don’t show up very well in infra,” Sergeant Kerr added. “We learned that on Society 437. We’ll need to be on the lookout for them when we go into the defile.”

“So we better be ready for anything,” Sergeant Kelly said.

And then they were back where Lance Corporal Groth, the platoon comm man, and Lance Corporal “Wolfman” MacIlargie, acting as platoon runner, held down the command post in the platoon area.

“Fire team leaders, gun team leaders, up,” Bass ordered on the platoon circuit. He took off his helmet and raised an arm to let his sleeve slide down his arm so the corporals could see where he was.

Hyakowa transmitted the map to the squad leaders’ comps while they waited.

“Take a close look, memorize this,” Bass said when the fire team and gun team leaders joined them; he projected the hologram map. “Here’s what we’re going to do…”

The “back door” of the underground Skink base wasn’t on the reverse slope of the mountain; it was the easternmost entrance to the tunnel system. But it was small and situated in a narrow defile. The minnies sent into the cave and tunnel complex by recon hadn’t found any tunnels or chambers east of the back door.

The defile was narrow and steep-sided, with a dry seasonal streambed in its bottom. Its sides were lightly wooded; it was too steep for trees of any size to hold on, though fallen trunks showed past attempts. Lesser bushes made up the vegetative deficit. The cave entrance was barely visible seven meters above the bottom of the defile, and it would have been difficult to spot had it not been for scuff marks left by the Skinks who used it to sun themselves in the defile.

The vegetation was thin enough that a few minutes of observation by Bass and the squad leaders was enough to reassure them that no Skinks lay in wait outside the cave mouth. It took them longer to be certain that there wasn’t a post just inside the cave. They used all of their detectors to search for security devices but found none. That didn’t mean there weren’t any well-camouflaged passive detectors; truly passive detectors only
received
signs, they didn’t emit any signals.

“All right, let’s do it,” Lieutenant Bass said on the squad leaders’ circuit.

The four Marines slid back from the top of the wall and returned to their positions with the platoon. Sergeant Kelly took his guns to the top and set them up to cover the two blaster squads and the sappers on their approach to the cave mouth. Lance Corporal Groth stayed with them. Sergeant Kerr and second squad went downhill before crossing into the defile, and approached the cave from the downstream end. Sergeant Ratliff led first squad, Bass, and the sappers uphill, then over and downstream. Once they were in the defile, the Marines used all their senses, natural and augmented, to look for passive detectors. Lance Corporal Schultz had the point of second squad, and even he didn’t spot any.

“Doesn’t mean,” Schultz said on the squad circuit. He didn’t feel the need to finish the sentence: “that there aren’t any.”

Schultz was also the first man up to the cave mouth; that was the way he wanted it. He believed he was the best able to spot danger, and the fastest to take the best action when he did—he always wanted to be in the position that was most likely to meet a threat first. Everybody else in Company L believed in Schultz, and they were always more confident when he held the most dangerous position anytime they were opposed by a live opponent.

Schultz had his ears turned all the way up when he reached the cave mouth and tilted his head to listen inside. All he got back was the hollow sound of empty space. He slid his light-gatherer screen into place and lifted his head above the lip of the narrow opening, just far enough to see inside with one eye. He made out a natural tunnel that had been enlarged and roughly finished. Crates of various sizes could be seen along its length. A light glowed dimly a hundred meters or so away, barely illuminating a blank wall where the tunnel made a sharp turn to the left.

“Clear,” he murmured into the squad circuit. Then he slithered up and into the tunnel. He rose to a crouch and moved in a few meters to make space for Corporal Claypoole to join him. He would have crouched to make a smaller target of himself even if the lowness of the tunnel ceiling hadn’t forced him to. Schultz was a big man, and the Skinks were smaller than an average human; the Skinks had enlarged the tunnel but only to their own dimensions.

Once Claypoole was in the tunnel, Schultz began to move forward. But something didn’t feel right, starting with the fact that he didn’t understand why the Skinks would leave an entry to their cave system unguarded. He reached the first crate along the side of the tunnel and stepped behind it. The crate was wide enough to cover him completely, and low enough to allow him space to look over its top. He left his ears turned up all the way but raised his helmet screens to look down the tunnel with his bare eyes. He saw even less than he had with the light gatherer, and nothing seemed out of place. He tried with his infra and nothing showed up.

“What do you have, Hammer?” Claypoole’s voice came over the fire team circuit.

“Nothing.” Schultz lowered his light gatherer before he stepped from behind the crate and resumed his slow movement down the tunnel. But something still didn’t feel right.

The crates weren’t all an equal size; some were almost too high to fit inside the tunnel, some were not quite knee-high, and others were in between. There was as much as ten meters between them, and an occasional stretch where several in a row were touching or almost touching. Schultz took time to quickly examine each before he passed it; they all seemed to be properly sealed—no one was hiding in them. Neither were there any sensors on the surfaces he could see, or wires leading into the crates, so he didn’t think they were booby-trapped. But the sappers might find something when they took a closer look.

There was one other thing Schultz thought curious—the surface of the walls seemed to ripple. When he was concealed behind a crate, he removed a glove and ran his bare hand over the wall. It was smooth, with ripples that seemed to run down, almost like partly melted wax. He thought the walls must have been somehow heat-treated, so they were fused. That would explain why there was no visible shoring to keep parts of the ceiling and walls from falling. He didn’t know if that was important, but it was interesting, so he reported the fused walls on the squad circuit. Sergeant Kerr agreed that it could be important, and passed the word to Lieutenant Bass. Schultz stopped paying attention to the walls and watched ahead. He moved forward.

He stopped and listened where the tunnel turned, watching the light on the walls where they met at the corner. He saw his own shadow in front of him, but no other variation in the dim light. The hollow absence of sound here was subtly different from what it had been in the entry tunnel, but nothing in it indicated anybody was near. He slid his chameleon screen into place and hunched himself up until the top of his helmet grazed the tunnel roof, then eased his head far enough to see around the corner with his right eye. A light burning where the ceiling met the walls at the next turn, and another midway between the turns, provided enough light to show that the hundred-meter tunnel leg was empty. There weren’t even any crates lining the walls to provide potential hiding places.