Human Legion: Marine Cadet Part 42

Seven other cadets were there already. He kept away from the others, keeping alert for anyone else in Delta Section to appear. Extended order drill demanded a minimum of five meters between each cadet and ten meters between sections, but that was difficult to make sense of when hardly anyone was here yet.

Some of the others appeared to be praying. Had their morale crumbled so easily?

Then he remembered about the shardshot ammo and realized they were filling their gun stocks with dirt. He joined in, using the rocks he'd grabbed out of the s.h.i.+eld. Ore not moon dust. Barney gave Arun a virtual thumbs up, confirming that the s.h.i.+eld pebbles were mineral-rich tailings. They would make excellent shard bullets.

Arun looked up and noticed Stok Laskosk from Blue Squad's command section was nearby. He looked lost.

Arun walked over and patted Laskosk on the shoulder.

"Hey, Stopc.o.c.k. Nervous?"

Heavy weapons specialist Laskosk, or Stopc.o.c.k as he was universally known, looked at Arun as if trying to decide whether this was an insult. He shook his head. "It feels wrong. I always imagined I would have my missile launcher over my shoulder. Instead..." He held up his carbine. "We're firing chewed up wads of moondust. Not what I expected."

"Look on the bright side," offered Arun. "Without your launcher you're no longer a prime target for snipers."

"What's your problem, McEwan?" It was Lance Corporal Narcisco, also from the command section.

"Nothing, lance corporal."

"Good. Then p.i.s.s off like a good little boy. You're bad luck, McEwan. Keep away from me."

Arun retreated, almost stumbling into Springer.

"Don't mind them, Arun," she said. "Stopc.o.c.k is scared, that's all."

"Are you?"

"No."

Arun laughed. "Me neither. Well, scared of letting down my buddies. Not scared of getting killed."

"Seventeen years of brainwas.h.i.+ng and drugs and re-engineering didn't go to waste after all. Guess we're not so different from everyone else." She paused. "I'm glad you've got my back, Arun. I think that fights off the fear."

"I'm glad you're here too, Springer."

"Me too," said Osman who'd just arrived. "I mean... now the shooting's about to start. I guess I can't stay angry at you, McEwan."

"Keep minimum five meters separation," snapped Majanita to everyone in Delta section, once they had all a.s.sembled in the depression. Privately she added for Arun's benefit: "I know it's not your fault that bad luck's followed you around, McEwan. Right now, I don't care. I think you're a liability. Since I'm stuck with you, I want you to do everything you can to prove me wrong. Can you do that?

"Yes, corporal."

"Good. The first thing I want you to do is shut the frakk up. I don't want a peep until we contact the enemy."

Arun shut up.

Above him, the black sky was dominated by Tranquility's huge disk, its planets.h.i.+ne bright enough to cast shadows even though it was day on Antilles. An angry ripple spread out from a hole in the froth of cloud cover as the first enemy projectile broke through the planet's defensive s.h.i.+eld. The fireball on the planet's surface briefly lit up the clouds in shades of orange and red.

As ordered, Belville made them wait until Force Alpha had launched its attack.

It wasn't difficult to see when that was.

Two b.a.l.l.s of hot violet light exploded over the ma.s.s driver a pair of plasma grenades. The explosions spread fingers of jagged light in an arc over the driver but never reaching closer than about fifteen meters from the target.

"Frakk! That's some force field. Didn't even scratch it."

The words came from Force Alpha, the handful of veteran Marines deployed separately by the Yorktown. Until this point they'd been undetectably silent, but now they were noisy. In fact, they were making as much of a clamor as possible. Keeping the enemy's attention away from the hidden cadets.

"Power drain must be staggering," said another Marine. "If only we could get to the power source and shut it down."

Arun winced because that was such a clumsy hint to the cadets. But then, as he reminded himself, his time as a Hardit slave had taught him most aliens weren't interested in human languages. He had to hope there were no traitor humans listening in.

"Keep silent," Madge reminded her squad. Then: "Advance to a.s.sault positions."

The cadets scrambled up to the lip of the depression, ready to move out.

Sticking your head over a parapet was a surefire way to get your brains blown out. The designers of the ACE-2 battlesuit had solved this by providing periscope worms: an optical cable that extended out the top of the helmet. The cable was so thin that if an enemy could detect your periscope, you were as good as dead anyway.

Arun extended his periscope worm, and he saw for himself what the cadet scouts had already reported.

Gold and Blue Squads were deployed in an old quarry pit several hundred meters to the north-west of the rebel mining facility. The nearby pits had long been mined out but the buildings remained to service the ma.s.s driver. The driver was situated in a natural crater on the far side of the complex. A simple platform rested on the shallow slope of the crater. Superconducting hoops were mounted along the platform's length.

Arun watched those hoops accelerate another ore package to such speed that even if the rock s.h.i.+eld hadn't hidden its progress from view, the projectile would have disappeared over the horizon within a handful of seconds, to make travel in a sub-orbital arc around Antilles before emerging behind them a few seconds later as it escaped the moon's gravity on its brief journey toward Tranquility.

Between their position and the mine base, they could see trenches zigzagging in a ring around the buildings and extending out toward the ma.s.s driver.

Keeping to LBNet denied the cadets eyes in the sky. All they could tell was that some kind of defensive positions had been prepared for them. They might be facing an unoccupied trench, or a defensive hive protected by AI controlled GX-cannons and combat drones.

They hadn't a lot of choice either way.

From the enemy positions concentrated around the driver, dozens of streaks suddenly shoot toward the Force Alpha Marines.

The missiles. .h.i.t, lighting up the horizon with a series of explosions.

Force Alpha had launched two grenades. The rebels had replied with at least thirty missiles.

Arun jumped inside his suit when Barney unexpectedly lifted the worm's eye to look up into s.p.a.ce. The silver bullet of the ma.s.s driver's previous launch reappeared overhead. It had traveled in a slingshot around the back of Antilles and was now on its way to his home planet.

From where he waited sinking in to the dust of Antilles surface, the projectile's silent journey looked serene. It was difficult to believe that if this glowing spark reached Tranquility's surface the impact would flatten a city.

"Look!"

It was Springer on a private channel.

Arun cut the feed from the worm and followed her finger pointing at the ma.s.s driver. He didn't understand. Not daring to break Madge's order to be silent, Arun raised a hand palm-up in a gesture of confusion.

"Look at their counter-fire."

He watched as the rebels dug in around the ma.s.s driver fired another volley of missiles at Force Alpha. This time he saw what Springer meant. The missiles didn't jink in the way that Stopc.o.c.k's would if he had his shoulder-mounted launcher with him. Instead the rebels' missiles were traveling in straight lines, which meant they were crude rockets, not intelligent missiles. And rather than spread them out in a barrage pattern, the rockets were being fired straight at the firing positions the Marines had used to launch their grenades.

Didn't they realize that the Marines would have hopped and rolled away to new positions the instant they'd fired?

"The rebels don't stand a chance," said Springer. "They're strictly amateur."

Arun was beginning to agree, but then they saw movement from the enemy positions facing them. Rebels moving through the trench system to reinforce the defenses around the ma.s.s driver.

Arun laughed at his enemy. They looked so ludicrous. They'd dug these trenches but the idiots were in such a hurry that they were bouncing in the low-g, making their torsos pop into sight and then disappear as if they were on trampolines. It looked like some kind of virtual game for kids. Arun wanted to play. Doubly so because he could see the aliens were Hardits, and he had a score to settle. He itched to bring his carbine to bear and try out this new pulse laser setting on the bouncing monkeys.

But the order never came.

Arun estimated 40 rebels had moved off to tackle Force Alpha. How many remained to face the 50-odd cadets of Blue and Gold Squads?

"Go!" ordered Madge.

Time to find out.

Arun scrambled over the lip of crumbling moondust and charged the enemy trenches.

Miniature explosions of dust erupted all along the enemy trenches. This was the suppressive fire from the even-numbered cadet fire teams, and it was doing its job of keeping the enemy's head down because Arun didn't see any return fire.

Arun's team had to charge forward as fast as he could for two hundred meters before taking cover and providing rapid suppressive fire to s.h.i.+eld the even-numbered fire teams as they caught up.

He wasn't scared. He hadn't time to be because all his concentration was spent on making progress without bouncing high into the sky.

One thing he did notice, though, was a missile corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g from Force Alpha's position toward the mining complex.

It didn't get far.

Anti-missile defenses sprang into action from three points around the ma.s.s driver. Scores of ultra-fast missiles lifted from the ground to take out the invader. The Marine missile was nimble but not enough to evade this level of defense. It was blasted from the sky.

Arun hadn't time to mourn its loss. He'd reached his first objective. He spotted a small crater and dived into it. At half a meter deep, it wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

As he readied to fire, Arun checked his tac-display. Madge, Osman, and Springer had all taken up positions a short distance away. Barney wasn't reporting any other casualties, but he hadn't time to check beyond his comrades in Blue-5. He was zooming his visor display onto the enemy trench, about two hundred and fifty meters away, when Madge gave the order: "Shardshot. Rapid fire!"

He couldn't see any rebels, so Arun picked a segment of trench opposite him and opened up.

Frakk! The gun had given him a slap of recoil like a nuclear explosion.

He'd intended to rake the enemy position, with fire but had squeezed off one aimed shot and a handful so high they were probably heading up into orbit.

If he hadn't been in armor, the d.a.m.ned thing would have broken his collar bone.

He braced himself more firmly and set to work. He couldn't call it rapid fire, but it was as fast as the recoil would allow without sacrificing accuracy entirely.

"Overwatch," ordered Madge. Arun ceased firing and kept a close watch on the enemy trench, ready to shoot at any rebel brave enough to present themselves as a target.

But Madge's order confirmed what he'd already guessed. The enemy had either abandoned their trench, or were luring them into a trap.

If this were a trap, they were headed right into its jaws because the cadet fire teams made their leapfrogging advance until they reached a stopline fifteen meters from the enemy trench.

The enemy had not returned fire.

From the far side of the mining complex, Force Alpha's battle against the rebels continued its noisy progress.

The veteran Marines yelled into Wide Battle Net for backup. They fired more missiles at the mining buildings, only to see them shot down, and they gave orders to imaginary units to make flanking maneuvers. For all their efforts to pretend they were more of a threat than they actually were, Barney estimated there were only five Marines in Force Alpha. Six tops.

Then Madge gave the order to close the distance to the enemy trench and Arun forgot Force Alpha. All he could think of was what he would find waiting for him.

Blue Squad would use a boost from their suits to leap over the trench, while Gold Squad would a.s.sault inside the trench.

He sailed over, covering the trench line with his SA-71, but it really had been abandoned.

Trench warfare was the opposite of the flexibility of zero-g s.p.a.ce combat that was the focus of Tactical Marine training. Even with his limited training on the matter, the trench looked to Arun like a hastily constructed channel. Crude cover and recently built. A far cry from the defensive warren an attacker would be faced with if they tried to a.s.sault the Detroit base from the ground.

Arun advanced, making for his next target: a cuboid segment of the mining complex that looked grafted on to the main building. This was to be their route inside.

Behind him, Gold Squad reported that they had secured the trench. There weren't any b.o.o.by traps - at least no explosions - but perhaps there had been motion sensors or watching cameras because moments later a volley of rockets streaked into the trench "Remain on LBNet," ordered Belville. "They know we're here now, but not how many of us are here. And once we're inside they will lose us. Blue Squad, hurry up and get me a breach."

Arun didn't hear Belville's orders for Gold Squad, but his tac-display showed them abandoning the trench, crawling a short distance toward the building to take up a defensive line near Blue Squad. Marines instinctively distrusted static defenses. Hiding behind a trench or rampart wall robbed you of maneuver options and surrendered initiative to the enemy. Marines won their battles by attacking, and no one launched an attack while cowering in the bottom of a ditch.

With rocket explosions raining down rock fragments behind them, Blue Squad got to work.

Brandt marked out a flat section away from any bulges or exterior features, and ordered Corporal Hecht's Alpha Section to break through. Alpha tried using a.s.sault teeth, but the monofilament spikes extending from their carbine muzzles were optimized to cut through flesh and bone, the modern equivalent of the ancient bayonet. The rotating spikes skidded against the wall, scarring it, but snapping and blunting the a.s.sault teeth.

Next they tried melting their way through using their carbines on the new pulse laser setting. New to them, anyway.

Brandt a.s.signed each section in his squad a portion of a diamond shape large enough for an armored cadet to pa.s.s through.

If Arun were in charge he would have concentrated the lasers on a single spot. Not a hole large enough to pa.s.s through but maybe after a breach the pressure escape would rip away a large chunk of wall. At least they would know how much laser power was needed to push through.

But Brandt wanted an entry point from the get go. They burned deep scores into the fabric of the building but they were burning deeper into their carbine power packs. Barney reported power had depleted by 80% already and falling rapidly.

Belville brought over a section from Gold Squad The mining building had s.h.i.+elded them somewhat from the enemy rocket volleys. But the rebels must have moved to a better position, because a fresh volley of explosions rocked the ground behind him. Their fire was increasingly accurate.

Barney marked two red crosses to show Gold Squad casualties.

It got worse. The dust thrown up was already causing laser bloom - scattering the beams aimed at the outer wall, robbing them of power.

"Move closer," ordered Brandt. "Get those lasers within ten paces of the wall."

Arun moved to obey, very conscious of what would happen if he were standing too close to the section of wall when it blew out.