Indomitable (37 page)

As Charlie BAT dropped, Promise refused to don her helmet, not until her stomach caught up with her mechboots. Because she knew she'd never get the smell out. Not completely. It was bumps all the way down to Combat Outpost Danny True. She sighed deeply as the dropship settled into its cradle, and only after taking a few deep breaths did she unstrap from her webbing. The mild sense of nausea that always accompanied a drop passed quickly enough. She donned her helmet and dropped the visor, and watched her HUD come online. The engines began to cycle down as canned air filled her helmet. Her jaw flexed to equalize the pressure in her ears. Thankfully light attack craft and dropship engines didn't breathe air. Otherwise, the landing would have been aborted.

“Seal confirmed,” her AI said. “I'm tracking all points from Victor-Two. Victor-One will be dirtside momentarily.”

“Excellent, call the roll.”

Promise's Marines were out of webbing and on their mechboots before a five-count. They started “pinging in.” While Promise kept one eye on them she did a visual check of all her weapons.

Her recently upgraded Kydoimos-6 Mechanized Infantry Combat Battlesuit, or mechsuit, still didn't feel right. She'd added extra articulating plates of armor on her shanks and shoulder blades, which brought her up to 230 kilos total: skin, beegees, and armor. Without her beegees, or underarmor, her overarmor would have rubbed her raw. You didn't break in new armor as much as it toughened you up. The calluses were hard-won, aged like good wine. The added weight was throwing her balance off a bit, which meant her suit's gyroscope needed more calibrating. For now she'd have to live with the slightest list. She didn't want to think about using the head while suited, at least not until she'd installed the new latrine mods. She'd just hold it. The internal shoulder pads were still cutting into her traps and the HUD was a bit too sharp thanks to a recent upgrade.

The air still smelled funny. “Mr. Bond, I thought I told you to clean the scrubbers.”

“You need to break them in, ma'am,” Bond said. “Another four to six hours should do it.”

Or I could just break you in,
Promise thought in response.

“All right, people, look lively,” she said over the company battlenet. Her heads-up display was wide-awake now, all members of her half company called and accounted for. Two toons were with her amidships, their green icons burning on her HUD, their articulating hulks the apples of her eye. Two more toons were aft of her position, out of sight in the rear compartment of the dropship. Four toons of five brought her up to twenty Marines total, a half-strength company. Captain Yates had designated Promise's half Victor Company Two, or Victor-Two. Victor-One was with Yates in the next dropship, which had yet to put down.

“Considering the lovely weather we're having, I doubt the Greys will try something,” Promise said. “Don't count it.” She drew one of her auto pistols loaded with high-yield penetrators and racked the slide, and then repeated with the other before holstering it too.

“Weapons hot. Drain it, dump it, pack it up, wolf it down. We go in five mikes.”

Her HUD started counting down as she bypassed the energy rifles and carbines, and grabbed a minigun from the recessed weapons rack in the starboard bulkhead. She linked the feed from the minigun to her mechsuit and carefully swung her arm from side to side to make sure the feed didn't hitch. It was on the bulky side for a heavy weapon but the captain wanted to go in as heavy as possible. About face level a second recess opened to reveal five specially designed ammunition packs. Promise selected the second hump from the right and strapped it on over her armor. She felt the magnetic locking clamps engage between the shoulder blades of her armor, and then a suited fist pounded her back twice. She turned her head and saw Private Race Atumbi grinning beside her. Promise thanked him with an energetic thumbs-up and a big smile. The young Marine beamed through his visor. He was learning, and had just knocked on her suit to tell her the hump looked green-to-go. Promise linked a second feed from the minigun to the pack, and her HUD confirmed the pack was secure and plugged into her mechsuit. The interlocking jewels of her right gauntlet undulated as she pulled the trigger of the minigun (with the safety on and the feed disabled, of course). Six conjoined barrels twirled madly about their peristeel axis. It was the most beautiful whine she'd ever heard.

“
The lieutenant sure loves her weapons,”
Lance Corporal Kathy Prichart said over the battlenet, her armored back facing Promise's. Kathy was running a gauntlet down the row of weapons, deciding on the one for her.
“Hm … I don't know. A carbine would be prudent, don't you think? The atmo sucks and it'll screw with pulsed energy fire. Oh well. There's nothing in the 'verse quite like a tri-barrel.”
Maxi was to her left and his carbine appeared to be jammed. Prichart had a gift for irony considering her preferred choice of rifle. The tri-barrel was as heavy as the minigun Promise had selected, and Kathy never suited up without the grossly overpowered energy weapon. Not ever.

“Look who's talking, Lance Corporal,” Promise said. “Your Triple-7 isn't exactly economical.”

Prichart grabbed a carbine and then changed her mind and handed it to Maxi.
“Here, this looks like your speed.”
Then she hefted the tri-barrel out of its rack with both gauntlets, cradled it in one arm while stroking the barrels with the other.
“Weps aren't supposed to be economical, ma'am. They're supposed to drop targets.”

“Ooh-rah,”
came from a chorus of jarheads.

Promise shook her head and smiled.

The RAW-MC's battle cry was as primal as it was difficult to explain. Ask any toon of Marines what “ooh-rah” meant and you'd get three different answers back. Forward, kill, get some, make 'em pay. Yet every one of hers knew exactly what it meant. They were mostly smart enough to keep their smirks about the lieutenant's weapons to themselves too. Except for Prichart, who could get away with it.

“Ooh-rah,” Promise said to herself as she squeezed the trigger of her minigun again, relishing the high-pitched howl of her six-shooter. She loved, loved, loved the sound of that weapon. The M-1306 spewed hypervelocity darts at roughly four times the speed of sound, at about five thousand rounds per mike if you asked the weapon to put out for you. Otherwise, you kept a light touch on the trigger, and held it back when it really mattered. It was an effective weapon against mechsuited infantry, lightly armored vehicles, and small aircraft, and positively devastating against skins in unpowered body armor.

The chrono on Promise's HUD ticked under four mikes to go-time.

Promise toggled the link from the hump to the minigun and felt the penetrators shunt through the feed. The weapon's status updated on her HUD, went hot. Her palms started sweating, and her suit immediately wicked the moisture away and into her suit's reclaimed water supply.

Most of her Marines had already moved toward the starboard and port-side hatches, forming themselves into two predetermined columns, but a few were still selecting weapons and checking ammunition feeds. Atumbi was overstuffing his suit's compartments with throwing grenades, again. Prichart snagged a third auto pistol, but couldn't find a place to put it. Lance Corporal Nathaniel Van Peek stepped out of line and backtracked to add a carbine to his weapons mix. He already had a railgun in hand.

“Mr. Bond—run a system-wide scan and give me a verbal on my weapons mix.” Promise walked through her people and joined Prichart at the front near the bulkhead hatch.

Bond read her weapons manifest like narrated nonfiction:

•   “Shoulder-mounted Hordes—ready.

•   “Mini-1306—ready.

•   “Auto pistols—ready.

•   “Triple-7 Carbine and Flexible Grenade Launcher—ready.

•   “Force blade charged and ready.

•   “Ammo feeds are green-to-go.”

There was a momentary pause before it finished,
“All systems nominal, Lieutenant.”

“Very well. Run it again.”

Bond didn't sigh but Promise heard the unvoiced complaint anyway. She never ran an op without checking twice. Never. Not since that time when her HUD had died in the midst of a firefight. She hadn't had any tracers, either. She never wanted to operate blind again.

“Aye, aye, ma'am. Please stand by.” Now Bond sounded put out.

Her HUD told her the pressure inside the dropship had equalized with the standard atmospheric conditions on the ground.

Because of all that ash and burning cinders in the air, energy weapons had a much reduced range of fire, which is why most of the boots of V Company had ditched their e-weapons in favor of conventional arms. Most of Promise's Marines were double-checking their FS-7.77s or Triple-7 Carbines, one of the standard duty rifles of the RAW-MC. A Flexible Grenade Launcher hugged the rifle's frame in an over/under configuration. The Triple-7's latest upgrade accepted a flexible ammo feed called a snake, which was similar to the one her Mini-1306 used. It could get tangled up—even knotted—without impairing function. In theory. The Triple-7 had its own external ammo pack too, which was squared instead of rounded, and it could engineer ammo on-the-march, from the necessary raw materials: armor-piercing; explosive; armor-piercing explosive; tracers in case your HUD glitched in battle; and more. Each of her Marines carried two backup pistols that only a mechsuited human would dare fire. Try it in skin and you'd break your arm or your skull from the recoil; you never forgot the training vid for that one. Throwing grenades. Plenty of those, and some of them got up and ran if your throw was off. The force blade was for melee, and Horde missile launchers, one perched on each shoulder, when you needed to swamp the enemy. In all, it was enough firepower to prosecute a little war.

Prichart sidestepped around Promise and returned a moment later with a second tri-barrel slung over her back and secure in webbing.

“Seriously?” Promise shook her head.

Three mikes to go-time. Kathy gave her a stern look.

“Are you finished?” Promise made sure she sounded exasperated. “We're about to pop the hatch. Now is not the time to stuff your face.”

“Almost, ma'am,”
Prichart said with her mouth full.
“Hunger waits for no jane.”
Prichart turned toward Promise and smiled through her visor. She canted her head toward her drink tube and pulled mightily.
“Ah, better.”

“Mute yourself.”

“Roger that,”
Kathy said as a drop of goo ran down her chin.

Promise wrinkled her nose. “What is that, anyway?”

“Starch and modified proteins—all slow-release. You should tank up too,
ma'am
.”
The “ma'am” was slightly emphasized with the faintest hint of command authority, and pitched respectfully. Kathy was Promise's subordinate, not the other way around. Kathy was also Promise's guardian, and in very specific situations Kathy could disobey Promise's orders if her life depended upon it. Kathy had done it once and saved Promise's life.

“Caf will do.” Promise preferred an empty stomach during an op, maybe a cup of hot caf too. The less she put in, Promise figured, the less could come out.

“First rule of survival, ma'am,”
Kathy added and took another loud sip, and then another slurp of goo.

“Copied that,” Promise said with emphasis. Not “copy that,” but “
copied
that,” because they'd had this conversation more times than Promise cared to count.

Her HUD dropped below two mikes to go-time.

Kathy pivoted on her heels to face the hatch, knees slightly flexed, ready for the jump to the deck below.
“I won't need much range in this mess,”
she said as if she'd read Promise's mind about her choice of weapon.
“Just a solid lock and a millisec to squeeze the joy. Can't leave my baby.”

“Nuh-uh,” Promise said, and held out a hand. “Carbine please.” The next moment a Triple-7 was sailing through the compartment toward her. Promise caught the weapon with one hand and locked it into place on Kathy's back next to her backup tri-barrel pulse rifle. “Backup, for your backup, just in case.”

“Suits in motion?”
Kathy asked.

“Negative, stand by for my order,” Promise said, holding up a metal finger as she heard something crash behind her.

Sergeant Sindri and Private Atumbi had decided to move toward the same weapon at the same time.

“Ah, ah, ah,”
Maxi said over the battlenet as he snagged the last minigun from the rack. His voice sounded tinny to Promise's ears.

“You're not old enough to handle one of these, Atumbi
.”

Maxi being Maxi,
Promise thought. His tone carried an edge instead of its usual humor, and that wasn't like him.

“Now, now, Sergeant. Give the private a break,” Promise said. “He'll be a PFC before you know it.”

“Good, I'll let him hold the mini then,”
Maxi said without taking his eyes off the minigun. He backed up a pace, spun around, and headed toward the hatch on the port side of the vessel. Took up his position as the port point man. Maxi was acting strange.

“Atumbi, take this.” Promise handed the young Marine another carbine and swapped him ammo packs, and then double-checked his feed. Punched him lightly in the chestplate. “Green-to-go.” She opened a private link and said, “Watch where you point it. Finger off the trigger until it's time to slag something, okay?”

“Roger that, ma'am,”
Atumbi said. Promise could see his head bobbing up and down inside his helmet.