Troy Rising 3 - The Hot Gate (45 page)

Meanwhile, the rest of the flight, all the “clerks and jerks” from the flight clerk to the supply PO, were lining up outside the tube.

Then the seats started flying. There were just enough support personnel to reach the supply room for the chairs. They began chaining them to the tube where the chairs were then moved hand over hand to the shuttles.

The problem, as always, was that this was micro. And somebody inevitably missed a catch.

“Dutchman chair!” Dana caroled, hooking both feet to both pass her current chair and grab the one floating down the tube. That required some pretty complicated three dimensional maneuvering “Who owes a shot?”

“Garcia!”

“Wasn’t me! Panchez threw it past me!”

“Referee says?” Dana called.

“Panchez,” Diaz replied. “Bad pass.”

“PANCHEZ BUYS THE SHOTS!”

The engineer’s job, starting from Boat Forty and working back, was to “simply” flip the chairs into the cargo compartment. The problem was, they had a definite inertia “down-tube” and getting them to change it was…difficult.

Since the final pass was from coxswain to engineer, some of the One-Four-Three crews had tended to make a game of it, adding a good bit of velocity, or spin, to the final pass to mess up their engineer’s pass.

It was one thing that Dana had put a stop to, fast, in her division. An all hands chair load meant things were about to hit the fan or at least practice for it. Not only did they need to concentrate their efforts on loading and loading fast, the last thing a shuttle needed was two people having a fight over who did a bad pass when they were going into combat.

Chief Barnett had, back on the Troy, once waxed fairly philosophical about what, to Dana, was a pretty obvious maneuver. She called it “a classic example of systemology” whatever that was. “The fine tuning of the smallest tasks to ensure systemology software integrates smoothly with hardware.”

All Dana cared was that she’d finally gotten Angelito to quit putting English on the chairs. And when the heat had come down, hard, slowly the rest of the unit followed her example.

Moving the chairs down-tube was easy enough and could be done from a well-balanced two point connection with one of the monkey bars.

To pass to the shuttle required a three point connection. Two feet on a monkey bar, left hand holding on. Catch the chair with one hand, decelerate and redirect into the interior. It took about the same effort, if different muscle groups, as tossing hay bales. Which meant very aerobic. And working up a sweat in a space suit was never fun.

As the end boats got filled, the crews moved into the boats further “up-tube” helping the crews get their chairs in. When and only when all boats were loaded, divisions worked together getting them dogged down.

As far as Dana knew, there was no task specifically designated “Chair loading.” There certainly wasn’t a condition and standard in the SOP. But she thought that the One-Four-Three was getting pretty good at it.

Once all the shuttles were filled, Deb got the remnants of her division back onto their boats and started latch down procedures. They usually used two crews on one shuttle, more were a bother rather than an aid, so she had Twenty-Two and Twenty-Four team up while she and Angelito worked on Twenty-Three.

The chairs had mostly stopped moving due to air drag. So she took “toss” and Angelito took “catch and lock.” Another way that she’d got him to quit messing around since she could be brutal with a chair toss in the cargo compartment.

Instead, starting from the front of the compartment, she’d just nudge a chair at him and move on to the next floating box. Angelito, meanwhile, was locked down to the deck, doing the “grav thump” walk.

“And latch…”

Click, thump.

“Incoming…”

“And latch…”

Click, thump.

“Incoming…”

“Need a hand?” Palencia said.

“And latch.”

“Valdez, Tarrago and Sans,” Dana replied. “Incoming… You go check the scuttle bucket. We’re going somewhere. I’d kinda like to know where.”

“Will do.”

“And see what Velasquez and Vila’s status is. Incoming…”

“Why are we going anywhere?” Angelito asked as the other three came swarming into the boat. “Don’t we have boarders?”

“Yep,” Deb said. “And I hope they’re enjoying the rat maze.”

“Come to the cheese little Rangora,” Sergeant First Class Mat Del Papa said.

The maintenance tunnels of the Thermopylae and the Troy were, somewhat intentionally, a labyrinth. They ran in zig-zags, created by placing mirrors so SAPL beams could mine them out. Quite often a tunnel would lead nowhere. Sometimes that was because that portion of the plan was unfinished. Sometimes it was because some joker of an engineer thought it would add to the maze.

If the Pathans didn’t know them like the back of their hands, they knew them pretty well. General Denny figured that since they were Islamic, meaning they couldn’t party, they had nothing to do but train. So the brigade had spent about sixty hours a week in the tunnels.

Despite that fact, and that the only gravity was the extremely minor pull of the Thermopylae, they weren’t all that good in micro. The reason that they weren’t good in micro was that somewhat early in the unit’s career a private had developed an extremely odd method of movement. Called “grav skating,” it was at first strictly prohibited then later accepted and encouraged.

The grav boots of the suits had various adjustments. One was a combination of repulsor and tractor that could maintain a specific distance and acceleration from a surface. Del Papa had no clue what it’s original purpose was, but the Pathans used it to skate. By adjusting so that the “pull” was relatively low, but high enough to keep them near the surface and so that they never could quite contact the surface with the full boot, they could “kick” with the sides of their boots and slide along at about the same height as an air-hockey puck.

“They’re coming,” Private Sarban Khan said.

He slid down the corridor at about nine meters per second, slid up the opposite bulkhead to bleed off speed then over the top and down to the hatch. With a flip he was in the side tunnel.

“You’re gonna kill yourself doing that, Sarban.” The kid made most skateboard junkies look tame.

Like the Koreans Del Papa had also worked with, the Pashtun seemed to only have about three family names. Major Sangar Khan, First Sergeant Daryab Khan, Sarban Khan… So they got used to using first names.

“You should leave, Sergeant,” Lieutenant Olasyar Khan said. “We are faster than you.”

“One burst,” Del Papa said, starting to “skate” down the tunnel. Badly. “Just one. Do not try to hold this ground.”

“With what they have waiting for them?” Lieutenant Olasyar said. “Allah forbid.”

Del Papa, for all he tried, just could not get the hang of grav skating. The best he could do was to sort of push himself along with one foot and his nav-pak.

One flailing hand reflected a burst of red light and his local channel caught the giggles. It was just one of fifteen or twenty odd things about the Pathan. They tended to giggle when they shot someone.

“Two shots,” Lieutenant Olasyar said, skating past him on the bulkhead. “We got their point so we must show them the way, yes?”

“Yeah,” Del Papa said.

“Make way for the advisor,” Lieutenant Olasyar said as Del Papa reached the joint tube. Three of the Pashtun had already slithered into it.

The joint tube looked like a laser tube. Why it was there Del Papa had no clue. Maybe it was used to move mirrors or something.

The important point was that it didn’t seem to go anywhere but in fact connected to another main corridor through about five meters of NI.

The team slithered into the tube one by one, like so many snakes, and was gone by the time the furious Rangora platoon made it to the corridor.

* * *

“They went down there, Lieutenant,” Private Bifen said. “They killed Alosho then took off down this corridor.”

“Sergeant Wuththuy,” Lieutenant Lanniph snapped, “New point team.” He tossed a sensor ball down the corridor just to make sure they weren’t coming back.

Fighting in this maze of corridors had been an eggdream. Automapping systems were slowly building up a picture of the combat zone and it was apparent that the humans were either quite crazed or had deliberately set out to make their maintenance tunnels mazes. From the fighting either might be the case. The worst part was that they simply would not stand. It was all like this. Lose a point man. Chase them down. Lose them in the tunnels. Try to find a more direct route to the central zones. Lose a point man.

Frankly, though, it was effective. Current estimates were that they were losing five Rangora for every human. And now they were encountering explosive traps. It took a lot of explosive to damage a Rangora combat suit. It was apparent the humans had been expending a good bit of resources on explosives.

“Ilugach, Zhogiruv.”

“Shells of the Emperor, why me again?”

“Because you complain about it.”

Lanniph tuned it out. He was a cracker, what humans would call a “mustang,” a former enlisted who made the very difficult jump to the officer class after Tuxugah. Making the jump was difficult in the Empire. You either were officer class or you were not. He’d never have many messmates. But if he could survive long enough to make it to colonel, and reproduce, his offspring would be permanently in the officer caste.

Ambition could wait. Survive was the operative word. Which was why he damned sure wasn’t going to lead by example.

“Move “em out, sergeant.”

* * *

Pathans were not shock infantry. The USMC concept of “you’ve won if one Marine is standing on the hill and ninety-nine are dead on the slope” was anathema to them. Their entire war culture was based around raid and ambush. Which was what had made them such lethal guerillas against the Russian and NATO forces.

Back in the “old, old days” when they fought the British, they’d been master shooters. But, possibly because of the losses in the Soviet War and the decided lack of game, they’d sort of lost the pure Pathan marksmanship the British had so admired.

However, their great grandfathers against the Soviets and grandfathers against the Americans had made up for it by becoming really good at IEDs. The battles against the “Crusaders” had attracted some really great “engineers,” explosive experts, from around the world. Many of whom, at least those that didn’t blow themselves up or run afoul of a Predator drone, eventually settled down and raised a passel of little ticking time bombs. It eventually got to the point that IEDs were sort of the national sport. Pathans thought of them the way that American kids thought of football and Halo.

General Denny was definitely a “take that hill” kind of guy. But he’d also recognized that Pathans weren’t, by and large, going to walk into laser fire just to soak it up.

So the battle plan played to their strengths. Get the Rangora turned around. Get them angry and frustrated. Then lead them into the kill zones.

“There they are…” Lieutenant Olasyar whispered.

“They can’t hear you,” Del Papa pointed out.

“Are they going to go for it?” Sergeant Mashal asked.

“We’ll see…” Del Papa said.

* * *

“Looks clear…” Line Private Zhogiruv commed, doubtfully. “No sign of the enemy force. Corridor is open. Slight bend at about sixty meters. No laser signatures, no power emissions.”

“Keep moving,” Sergeant Wuththuy commed. “Got your back.”

“It’s my front that has me worried,” Ilugach muttered.

“What was that, Private?”

“Fully rass-ki, Sergeant!” Ilugach commed. “Just totally involved in this mission. Being on point. Again.”

“Just shut up and keep your sensors up…”

The Rangora had some awesome systems for detecting IEDs. Any trace of power systems were likely to be detected.

Which was why this IED was based entirely around chemical systems and a single, molecule thin, line of nanotube.

Line Private Zhogiruv didn’t even feel the gentle brush of the microscopic trip-wire.

Nor the impact of the far bulkhead on his helmet’s faceplate.

* * *

Rangora infantry fought in unpowered partial armor, a multi-weave suit of high tensile composites and heavy plates of carbon nanotube. The Terran Marines, with access to Glatun advanced technologies and fabbers, used nanotube armor with fullerene plates giving them about a thirty percent armor advantage on the Rangora.

Neither of which would have helped when an entire wall full of heavy explosive shaped charges detonated in the middle of the platoon. They were cleverly hidden behind a thin sheet of nickel iron which degraded their effect slightly. But not enough to help. Especially given that they were wrapped in high explosive for added effect.

Lieutenant Lanniph came to in the original corridor. There was a slight hissing by his ear, indicating a breach in his helmet. But as he listened he could hear the auto repair systems sealing it. Checking his air, he hadn’t lost much. A few breaths at most.

What he had lost was his platoon. Readouts indicated only three functional suits. His and the point team’s.

A power signature appeared in the corridor and a sensor ball came bouncing out of a narrow tube that looked as if it was for cabling. Considering it carefully, he realized the miniscule humans could have fit into it.

The sensor ball bounced on the floor and started its programmed search.

“Crack you,” Lanniph muttered, zapping the thing with his laser. “Cracking mammals!”

* * *

“Two meters apart and staggered,” Del Papa said. “Ten meters between the point and the main body. Exactly according to their manual. The only thing they did out-of-spec was their platoon leader was at the rear. Not the act of a natural leader, that.”

“Good shot,” Lieutenant Khan said. “Didn’t like the sensor ball.”

“Neither did your grand dads,” Del Papa said. “Okee-dokee. Company, Team Six.”