Starfist: FlashFire (22 page)

Not a one of them had a good word for him. And the bad words they had went far beyond simple interservice rivalry.

The Marines lined up in the passageways outside their compartments. A casual passerby might have been forgiven for thinking the passageways were empty. Of course, if the passerby had tried to turn into the empty passageway, he’d collide with something he couldn’t see—and hear the laughter of men he couldn’t see. But the sailors of the
Lance Corporal Keith Lopez
knew the Marines were assembling prior to planetfall and those without an official need to visit wisely kept their distance from the troop areas of the starship.

The Marines wore combat chameleons, uniforms that picked up the color and visual texture of whatever was nearest and were therefore effectively suits of invisiblity.

Ensign Charlie Bass, followed closely by Staff Sergeant Hyakowa and a bosun’s mate third class, stepped into the passageway that ran along the compartments his platoon was billeted in. Unlike their Marines, Bass and Hyakowa were visible. Their heads at least; they carried their helmets under their arms.

“Uncover!” Bass barked.

In a moment, thirty heads hovered at man-height along the sides of the corridor.

“Keep your damn helmets off until I tell you to put them on,” Bass snarled. “I don’t want to have to put mine on to find you.” His look could have been interpreted as, “Who’s the wiseass who told you to put your helmets on?” The Marines wisely chose not to answer the unspoken question.

“Let me hear you,” Bass said. The disembodied heads bounced up and down; the only sound was the soft thudding of boot heels as the Marines came down from their bounces. Bass nodded, satisfied— noises made by unsecured equipment could give away an invisible Marine and at least partially negate the advantage his chameleon uniform gave him. “Everybody have everything?” he asked.

“Yessir,” the Marines chorused. The loudest voices, almost solos in their volume, were those of the squad leaders; they’d already inspected their men and knew they had all their combat gear.

“Then nobody will mind if I check.” Bass slipped off his chameleon gloves and began moving between the two rows of Marines. He touched here and there below the floating heads, not thoroughly inspecting anyone, but checking for one or another item on each Marine.

Finished, he stood at one end of the two lines and looked down them. “I wish I had an update for you,” he said, “but I don’t. All I can do is tell you what I think. Those poor doggies down there are getting beat to hell. The Coalition forces still haven’t shown any sign of having weapons that can knock down an Essay making a combat assault landing, but that doesn’t mean they don’t. So Captain Bhofi is dropping us
two
hundred klicks offshore. That gives us just that much more time to fret over what kind of shit we’ll hit when we cross the beach.” He grinned. “Or that much more time to sleep while we can. Either way, we need to be ready to return fire as soon as the ramps on our Dragons drop.

“Now if this nice sailor behind me will lead the way, we’ll go to the well deck.” Bass turned around and had to laugh at the expression on the face of the junior petty officer who thought he hadn’t been noticed by the eerie Marine officer he’d followed to the passageway. Bass gestured with a stillungloved hand.

“Ah, y-yessir,” the petty officer said. “If you’ll follow me, please, sir.”

Bass followed the sailor, third platoon followed Bass like ducklings. Hyakowa brought up the rear.

Twelve minutes and many turnings later, third platoon emptied into the well deck, where fifteen Essays hulked with their ramps open under the low overhead, exposing the three Dragons each held. The rest of Company L arrived at the same time. The ramps on four of the Dragons were closed; Kilo Company had already boarded. A chief petty officer shouted commands to junior petty officers and ratings, who ushered the Marines into the waiting Essays, where the platoon sergeants herded them into the encapsuled Dragons.

Inside the Dragons, the squad leaders took over, getting their men into the webbing that would secure them during the powered drop from orbit to winged flight. It didn’t matter how many times they’d made planetfall, there was always somebody who needed help with the webbing straps. The platoon sergeants came through and made sure the squad leaders were properly secured, then took their own places, where they and the platoon commanders were checked by the Dragon crew chiefs. As the Marines on each Dragon were checked, the Dragon raised its ramp. The Essays’ ramps remained down until every one was filled with its full complement of Marines.

Loud clicks reverberated across the well deck and penetrated into the Dragons as grappling hooks latched onto the Essays and lifted them into contact with the magnets on the overhead. A warning tone sounded, and a carefully modulated, female voice announced, “Preparing to evacuate atmosphere from the well deck. All hands, vacate the well deck. I say again, all hands, vacate the well deck. You have forty-five seconds to leave the well deck.” There was a pause, then the voice spoke again, “All hands, vacate the well deck. You have thirty seconds to leave the well deck.” The message repeated at twenty seconds, then counted down from ten. Even inside the hermetically sealed Essays, ears popped when the air was sucked out of the well deck.

A bosun’s whistle sounded throughout the starship, and the female voice announced, “All hands, now hear this. Secure for null-G. I say again, all hands secure for null-G. Null-G will commence in thirty seconds.” The seconds ticked by, with another warning at twenty seconds and a countdown from ten. The entire universe seemed to jerk when the
Lance Corporal Keith Lopez
’s artificial gravity was turned off.

A moment later, a subsonic rumble was felt as the well deck’s floor was rolled out of the way, exposing the interior to space. The magnets and grapples holding the Essays released and plungers in the overhead gave the shuttles a downward push. The Essays floated gently out of the well deck, and the coxswains fired vernier jets to control attitude and maintain formation. In their slowly decreasing orbits, the Essays moved ahead of their mother ship. Once they were clear, the landing officer gave the launch command, and the coxswains fired their thrusters, shooting the Essays ahead of the
Keith Lopez
and into a higher orbit until the coxswains fired vernier jets on the Essays’ topsides to point them planetward.

The landing officer’s command and the manipulations of the coxswains weren’t necessary, the launch was controlled by computers, but the command was given and buttons pushed anyway, just in case something went wrong with a computer. Just minutes after being nudged from the well deck, the fifteen Essays were diving under power, directly at the surface of Ravenette.

Most orbit-to-surface shuttles spiraled down, taking as many as three orbits to reach planetfall. But Marines didn’t make planetfall gently, even when they weren’t expecting trouble when they reached the ground. Instead, Marines always made a combat assault landing—powered flight, straight down until it seemed inevitable that they would make catastrophic contact with the surface, before breaking out of the plunge to spin into a tight, velocity-eating spiral and popping drogue chutes, then ultimately gently setting down on the sea. Everybody but the Marines thought they were crazy for
always
making combat assault landings, but 34th FIST
was
expecting a hostile reception, so this time nobody thought the Marines were odd at all. Which didn’t stop the sailors aboard the
Lance Corporal Keith Lopez
from thinking the Marines were crazy for being willing to dive headlong into combat.

At first, the atmosphere was negligible, and all that disturbed the Marines in the Dragons was the shaking of the Essays caused by the firing of the thrusters. Then the density of the atmosphere grew to tenuous, and the Essays began rattling like poorly-sprung landcars speeding on a gravel road; the webbing began to adjust to the tossing and pitching of the Essays. From there on, the atmosphere steadily thickened, and the landcar’s road became potholed, and the potholes steadily grew in size and depth. The Marines had good reason for calling their method of planetfall, “High speed on a rocky road.”

There wasn’t a Marine in 34th FIST who hadn’t made at least three planetfalls; many of them had long before quit counting the times they’d gone at high speed on that rocky road. Still, at least one Marine on at least one Dragon in nearly every Essay gave in to the roiling of his stomach and had to use the suction hose that hovered over each man’s face. A couple didn’t manage to get the cup to their mouths in time, and escaped globules of stomach gunk flitted about the interior of their Dragons, to the severe discomfort of their companions.

When the Essays cut their thrusters and their wings swung open, the bottom suddenly fell out of the powered dive. They leveled off to swoop into velocity-eating spirals. The Essays jerked when their drogue chutes popped open, further slowing their speed and rate of descent.

The Essays, still in formation, splashed down with unexpected gentleness after their violent plunge through the atmosphere and pointed their noses at the shoreline, two hundred kilometers beyond the horizon. Their front ramps lowered into the oceanic swells and the Dragons rumbled off, into the water, and began the swim to the distant shore. As soon as the Dragons were clear, the Essays launched back to mate with their mother ship.

At about the same time the Essays carrying the Dragons touched down, the Essays of the second wave, which had begun spiraling earlier, dipped their noses and opened their ramps to the air. The Raptors and hoppers of 34th FIST slid out then dropped a thousand meters before the Raptors’ engines lit off and they formed up and sped toward land. The hoppers took nearly as much altitude for their engines to light, and almost as much time to gain formation and head landward; they rocked when the air turbulence of the passing Raptors buffeted them.

The
Lance Corporal Keith Lopez
relayed communications between General Cazombi and Brigadier Sturgeon, who was approaching the Bataan Peninsula via hopper. Sturgeon drew up hasty plans and issued orders to his battalion and squadron commanders. There was a hole in the defensive dike that his Marines had to plug as soon as they reached the beach. Drive the enemy away and hold position.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The twenty-four Dragons of 34th FIST’s transportation company hit the beach in two waves. The twenty Dragons carrying the blaster companies of the infantry battalion headed inland in three columns, led by the two command Dragons. The two maintenance Dragons pulled into a prepared laager to set up shop. The FIST’s Raptors were flying endless sorties to hammer a rebel brigade that had broken a hole in the defenders’ main line of resistance. The second line was barely holding on.

It was that hole that the infantry battalion was headed for.

“
Off, off, off!”
the platoon sergeants roared when the Dragons pulled up behind a rise and dropped their rear-facing ramps.

“
Out, out, out!”
the squad leaders bellowed.

The fire team leaders hustled their men out of the Dragons and aimed them at the squad leaders, who stood holding a bare arm high to be seen.

“
On me!”
the platoon commanders shouted, and looked out of their open helmets so their Marines could see them.

Heavy fire sounded from not too far beyond the rise, piercing the rumble and clank of combat vehicles; the louder booms of plasma fire from the cannons of diving Raptors punctuated the battle din.

“You know what to do,” Captain Conorado told his platoon commanders on his helmet comm’s command circuit. “Do it!”

“Third platoon, follow this soldier!” Ensign Charlie Bass said into his all-hands circuit. The soldier designated as third platoon’s guide didn’t flinch from the invisible hand that gripped his shoulder; he was too shaken by the violence with which his position had been overrun for the mere invisibility of reinforcements to faze him. Bass gave the soldier a push, and the man trotted in a staggering gait behind the rise to a trench he led third platoon through.

The battle din crescendoed on the other side of the rise. The guide led the Marines through a maze of trenches until they reached a series of bunkers set into a two-and-a-half-meter-deep trenchline facing the enemy assault.

“Positions!” Bass said into his all-hands circuit. Even with the ears on the helmets of his Marines turned down to damp the battle noise, he had to shout to be heard over it. He transmitted a quickly drawn map to the squad leaders, showing the squads where to take position.

Sergeant Linsman looked at his surroundings to orient himself with the map, then took a quick look over the lip of the trench to check on the disposition of the enemy. He saw direct fire guns moving into position.

“Stay out of the bunkers!” Linsman ordered second squad. “Use the fire step, fire over the trench.”

“You heard the man,” Corporal Claypoole shouted. “Fire over the lip.”

His last words were drowned out by the
crack-sizzle
of Lance Corporal Schultz’s first shot at the soldiers of the Coalition brigade that was advancing by fire and maneuver. An enemy soldier fell and didn’t get back up.

Lance Corporal MacIlargie hopped onto the seventy-centimeter-high firing step six meters from where he’d seen Schultz’s shot, and rose up just high enough to see where he was shooting. Claypoole mounted the step between his men.

Seventy-five meters to second squad’s right, Sergeant Ratliff saw the same situation Linsman saw and knew the direct fire guns would first rain their fire on the bunkers—making the bunkers death traps when the guns opened up—and ordered his men to set up on the trench’s fire step as well.

Corporal Dean positioned Lance Corporal Godenov and PFC Quick and took his own position just in time to see a company or more rise up from a trench less than fifty meters in front of him and charge at third platoon, screaming and laying down fire as they ran.