Human Legion: Marine Cadet Part 43

"I know it's dangerous," said Brandt, "but every second we are delayed out here imperils our mission."

But they were spared that horror. Without any warning, the diamond they'd already cut through the wall flew out, landing on the moon's surface and skidding for twenty meters. Luckily no one was in its path.

Blue Squad blasted the far side of the breach with a volley of shardshot.

Arun couldn't see what was inside, because first the air, and then anything in the room that wasn't tied down, exploded out through the breach. Blue Squad was engulfed in a rain of softscreens, hats, empty plastic bottles and other detritus of what Arun guessed was a store room. The water vapor in the air flash-froze and began to fall as snow.

To anyone inside this bridgehead room, the vacuum sucking remorselessly at the air would sound like a howling gale. Outside in his suit, the violent depressurization was eerily silent.

Cutting holes into enemy warboats was fundamental to tactical Marine doctrine, so the cadets knew plenty about depressurization. Through a Marine-sized breach the air would be escaping at about 200 mph. That was plenty to incapacitate any opponents not strapped down and braced for a breach. After about 25 seconds, the wind would have died down to around 80 mph. That was when Brandt gave the order to go in.

The cadets lowered their heads and pushed against the wind. Getting through the hole was the worst part. As the cadets partially plugged the breach, the air pushed at them even harder as it tried to escape. Once they'd popped through the hole there was still enough air to hear alarm sirens above the banshee screech of the wind.

Cadet Caccamo from Alpha Section was first in. At the far side of the bridgehead room the door to an internal corridor was still open. He raced for the door but it shut before he could reach it. The wind dropped abruptly, making the cadets who'd struggled in topple flat on their faces.

Under the illumination of flas.h.i.+ng blue lights mounted in the ceiling, Blue Squad began to form up inside the bridgehead. Even before the rest of squad had made it inside, Hecht was by the door control with Alpha Section ready to advance up the corridor on the far side.

"Brace for depressurization," he warned. "Opening door in 3 - 2 - 1 - now!"

Nothing happened. The door ignored him.

"Could be security lockdown," Del said, "but probably refusing to open into vacuum. Let me see if I can hack it."

"Very good, Lance Corporal Sandure," replied Brandt. Hearing his comrades refer to each other by their rank still felt freaky to Arun.

Del hadn't even reached the control panel when the door suddenly opened and another blast of air rushed out to flash freeze as it entered the depressurized room.

Arun covered the doorway with his carbine but no one emerged. With the swirling mist it was difficult to see, difficult to even stand up against the wind. Then he saw two dark cylinders rolling his way along the floor.

"Grenades!"

Arun dove for the floor. In the low gravity, the maneuver was agonizingly slow. In fact, the wind trying to blow him out of the crude hole in the wall was stronger than gravity. He didn't even make it to the ground before the grenades exploded. The blast smacked him down and skidded him along the floor before slamming him into an equipment cupboard. Gleaming pairs of boots fell off the shelves, showering down upon him in slow motion.

The wind, he realized, had stopped.

As Arun got to his feet, Barney reported that his armor had not been compromised. Idiot monkeys! They'd used high explosive grenades - mining charges, probably. In the near-vacuum, there was hardly any medium for their shockwave to travel through. Someone standing a meter behind Arun wouldn't have felt a thing. He laughed as he got to his feet and immediately found himself in a raging firefight.

He took a moment to read his tac-display. Beta and Delta sections had rolled, knelt or gone p.r.o.ne to take up firing positions to maximize fire on the door without shooting comrades in the back.

Hardit miners - about a half dozen so far - were racing into the room, spraying fire wildly. They were shooting slug-throwers: kinetic weapons that shot metal bullets powered by a chemical explosive.

A hammer blow hit Arun on his chest, which was already bruised from his drop to the moon's surface. He'd been shot by a bullet, but Barney reported his suit's integrity had been degraded but not compromised. A suit unable to cope with a few high energy impacts from small objects was little use in a real s.p.a.ce battlefield.

Arun wanted height. Barney read his intentions, lifting his master gently off the ground and then, with a kick of brutal power, threw him to the ceiling, coming to a shuddering halt, but not so rapid that Arun blacked out. Barney had been Arun's most intimate companion for so many years that the AI knew how far he could fling Arun without breaking him. In a crowded room in the midst of a firefight, speed was vital. Gaining height was a big risk, but so too was staying in the same place when he'd already been hit once.

Arun willed Barney to reorient his visor display so that the ceiling was 'down' and the floor 'up'. Gravity might insist that it knew the correct direction of down, but it was weak enough on the moon that the motive system on Arun's suit could compensate if it operated at maximum power. He shut his eyes, reframed in his mind, and opened them at the same time as bringing his gun to bear on... Osman. His firing solution was blocked by his friend who was attempting the same maneuver. Arun crab-walked out of Osman's way. Osman was cartwheeling through the air, firing as he went. Osman was always flashy like that. Then Osman's aerial dance missed a beat. He was jerked backward, making him fling out his hands in a primitive instinct that made no sense here, upside down on a low-g moon.

Arun watched helplessly as Osman's helmet shattered. In the low-pressure environment of the nearly airless room, the higher pressure in Osman's suit forced out a plume of blood, flesh, and faceplate splinters.

Osman was dead!

Arun braced and fired. Brandt had ordered them to conserve ammo. The pellet supply was limited without reloading but Arun didn't give a d.a.m.n as he sprayed the rebel miners. If he needed to reload, there were plenty of spare SA-71s that no one was in a state to use any longer.

h.e.l.lfire! He'd forgotten the recoil again, thumping away at his shoulder with such violence that he sprayed his fire high, which from his position on the ceiling meant firing down at his fellow cadets.

Arun lifted his finger off the trigger before he accidentally shot his friends. s.h.i.+fting firing position by rolling once to the right - mentally oriented upside-down all the while - he fired again on the Hardits as rapidly as he could.

He got one, he was sure. Shot the little veck until he'd nearly decapitated it, enjoying seeing the Hardit twitch under the flail of the shardshot. Maybe it was the miner who'd killed Osman. He hoped so but in the confusion of a firefight that was more a hope than certainty.

"Cease fire!" ordered Brandt. The firing stopped. The cloud of dust and other debris begun the slow process of settling to the floor, unhurried in the lazy gravity.

Madge issued an additional order. "McEwan, stay at top. Springer, stay low. Secure the corridor."

Arun, acknowledged and moved off for the corridor that led beyond the shattered door. His mind was still reframed so that everyone else appeared to him to be walking upside down. Everyone but Osman. He had to push past Osman's corpse.

Still obeying its last command, Osman's suit AI kept its master's battlesuit positioned with its boots on the ceiling, making Osman's arterial flow spray onto the floor below like a red sprinkler.

Arun s.n.a.t.c.hed a glance at their opponents. They were in simple vacsuits - not combat hardened. He hoped to recognize Tawfiq or one of the other Hardit tormentors of the Detroit Aux, but the suit visors obscured the faces of their wearers. He imagined the faces inside stretched into shapes of agony.

Arun pushed past Springer who was hugging the door frame using it as cover, and advanced 20 paces along the ceiling before taking a p.r.o.ne position behind what looked like an atmosphere scrubber mounted in the ceiling. Blue warning lights were mounted every three meters along the ceiling before it turned right after twenty meters. They flashed a decompression alert. Arun willed Barney to remove the lights from his visor display so they didn't obscure his line of sight.

There was no sign of movement ahead.

Even without air, the corridor wasn't completely silent. A hum of power transmitted itself through the material of the ceiling. Without needing to be told, Barney would be listening tirelessly for the sound of enemy footsteps.

As he waited, Arun's thoughts turned to the weapons he'd smuggled to Alabama. Had he supplied the rebels? He wanted to a.s.sume 'yes', but... Tawfiq had been smuggling SA-71s and combat armor, not these rifles with the simple kinetic rounds.

Thinking of weapons made him realize that a pressure seal somewhere ahead had closed, leaving the corridor in vacuum. There was very little to diffuse a laser beam.

"Setting carbine to pulse laser," Arun said to Springer.

She hesitated - probably considering the power drain from cutting the hole through the outer wall. "Good thinking, Arun."

In his tac-display, Springer was a strong blue dot, a short distance behind him, and with a slight tail on her dot's head, meaning she was a little below him. She'd taken cover behind a trolley, her carbine barrel resting on a pile of water bottles.

"Springer..." Arun said uncertainly.

"What? Osman? Yes... I... I saw."

Never letting his attention slip from the corridor ahead, Arun spent several seconds trying to work out what he wanted to say. He couldn't talk about Osman. Not yet. But there was something else...

Eventually he said, "I'm sorry, Springer."

"Why? You couldn't have saved Osman."

"No, not that. For letting you down about Xin and Scendence. I'm sorry."

"For frakk's sake, we've been over this already. Don't get all weepy on me, McEwan. Keep focus."

"But Osman. Do you think he really forgave me?"

"I don't know, McEwan. But I do know that if you get me killed because you're too busy being sorry to keep alert, I'll never forgive you."

Barney had no difficulty keeping alert. He smeared garish orange over Arun's view of the corridor turning, meaning he'd detected something but was unsure what.

"Contact threat," said Arun.

"Confirmed," added Springer. Her suit AI would probably be giving her the same warning as Barney, but Arun had been drilled to always seek confirmation. Suits could be damaged or make mistakes. Worse, they could be compromised through electronic warfare attack.

Maybe Barney had detected the vibrations of running feet, of heat radiating from a sweating body, of unnatural light fluctuations. Whatever bothered the AI was getting stronger because the orange flash he'd superimposed had turned an angry red. Barney was sometimes wrong in his suspicions, but Arun trusted them enough to place his full concentration on the manual sights of is carbine, braced as he was, upside down behind a ceiling unit.

A Hardit head appeared around the bend, searching the corridor for threats.

Had the rebel seen them? Arun didn't think so because the monkey slunk toward them on three limbs, the fourth holding its rifle stock. The Hardit's tail grasped the weapon's pistol grip.

Barney overlaid the Hardit with a short-tailed red targeting dot, and added two more dots for the two other rebels Barney was now confident were hiding just out of sight.

"Contact three rebels," said Springer.

"Confirmed," said Arun.

"Support required?" queried Brandt. Barney zoomed the tac-display out and up from the advancing Hardits, tilting it so that Arun could see what was happening behind him. One of the Gold Squad cadets had taken up position in the doorway that fed into his corridor, acting as a relay for LBNet.

"Negative," Springer answered. "We can take them out."

The lead Hardit beckoned its two hidden comrades with a wave of its rifle. If the flas.h.i.+ng decompression lights were blinding it, then its targeting capability must be limited to three eyes staring over an ugly snout and out through a dumb transparent visor.

This would be easy!

"I'll take the leader," said Springer.

"Roger." It didn't make sense for them to both hit the same target.

As soon as Barney said he had a good firing solution, Arun opened up. The lead Hardit was just bringing its rifle to bear, its two followers not even as ready as that.

Too late, monkeys!

Using short, cutting motions, Arun fired his pulse laser at the second Hardit.

He knew he'd scored a hit. So had Springer, but then they had to face the difference between a low-power pulse laser and a full laser connected to the additional power packs they usually carried in s.p.a.ce.

Their pulse lasers turned themselves off for a second to recharge.

They were effectively unarmed for what felt like an age. The remaining Hardit failed to make use of its advantage. All it could do was stare in horror at its fallen comrades.

Arun almost sympathized.

Their lasers had gashed open the Hardit suits but left little or no exit wounds. The pinkish spray fountaining out of their compromised suits did more than prove the Hardits had been injured, they were high pressure jets spinning the Hardits off balance. One injured Hardit got off a wild shot before both were on the floor, their weapons dropped.

Arun's carbine had recharged. He killed the remaining Hardit with a headshot, firing simultaneously with Springer.

The other Hardits were still alive, but not worth wasting battery power on.

By the time the jets out of their depressurizing suits had calmed, the Hardits would be too oxygen starved to be any threat.

"Three miners tropied," reported Springer, but no acknowledgment came from the bridgehead. They'd lost LBNet.

What were they playing at back there?

LBNet didn't reconnect for nearly two minutes. When it did, Arun's irritation vanished because Barney updated his tac-display by planting red crosses over the blue cadet dots. Casualties. Lots of them, and they'd only captured one room so far.

Barney had added a double yellow halo to Brandt's dot, meaning he was now tactical commander.

Alice Belville was one of the red crosses.

Oh, h.e.l.l!

"Listen up!" announced Brandt. His speech-making was cringeworthy at the best of times. His voice sounded doubly uncertain now. "We've suffered eight killed, two wounded. We've lost Lance Sergeant Belville, so I have command. Blue-6, reinforce Blue-5 guarding the corridor approach. Gold Alpha and Beta sections will stay behind to guard the bridgehead and the wounded. The rest, grab ammo for yourselves and Blue Delta Section and..."

Brandt's voice faded and Arun groaned. Alice never hesitated like that. If she'd survived, they would be halfway to the base command center by now.

"Medics?" asked Brandt on the open channel. "How long to stabilize the wounded?"

"Three minutes, lance sergeant."

"The rest of us have two minutes to tear this room apart searching for anything useful. Questions?"

No one spoke.

A few seconds later, Madge joined took a position next to Springer, the rest of the Delta Section spreading out around her "Good to see you, corporal," said Springer.

Arun winced. He didn't know what to say to Madge even in a simple greeting. How could he greet the remaining member of his fire team without mentioning Blue-5's missing member: Osman?

When Barney signaled another alert, Arun almost groaned with relief. He was overlaying the view of the corridor turn with a flas.h.i.+ng orange warning.

Seconds later a Hardit head peered around the corner. Arun waited for it to move closer, to get a clearer shot. But this time the rebels weren't playing ball. The head disappeared out of sight. Barney, meanwhile, was firming his estimate. There were more rebels ma.s.sing this time. Many more.

"Contact approx 20 rebels," Arun reported.

"We'll vape 'em easy," said Madge. "Two of you took out three of them with ease. Now there's six of us and they will be choked by the corridor's narrowness."

Arun thought she was talking away her fears. He didn't like the sound of that.

He readied to fire.

Any second now.

But the Hardits stayed around the corner as if waiting for something. Were they inviting the cadets to attack?