Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1) (50 page)

Hellfire! 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. Shifting 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 snatched 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 prone 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 assume ‘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 flashing 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 space.

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, hell!

“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 flashing 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 massing 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?

Why was no one giving orders? This wasn’t a waiting game. It was a race to save his home from obliteration.

“Contact, 90 hostiles,” he heard over LBNet.

Confirmation soon came from LBNet. Out on the moon’s surface, the rebels had retaken their trenches and were shooting through the breach and into the bridgehead.

The cadets were pinned down and outnumbered. Surely they had to take the fight to the enemy without delay. And who was nearest to the enemy?

Arun was.

Cold fear struck through Arun’s heart. He wanted his combat meds.

Brandt’s voice entered Arun’s helmet. “Gold Squad will defend the bridgehead. Blue will push through the enemy in the corridor. Blue Delta Section. You’re point.”

Arun took a deep breath. The moment he reached the turn in the corridor a dozen rifles would fire at him.

“Blue-5, advance along the ceiling,” ordered Madge. “Take the corner. Blue-6, give pulse laser covering fire. Aim low. Ready on my mark.”

Arun wanted to say something — anything — to Springer. But everything he could think of sounded demoralizing. So he kept his mouth shut and tensed his legs in readiness.

“Wait!” Madge ordered.

Arun didn’t understand until he glanced at his tac-display. The Hardits were advancing.

“Fire on my command!”

The last Hardit attack had been hesitant. This time the Hardits came at the cadets in a rush.

Three of them had come round the corner. Five of them. Seven. And they weren’t carrying rifles. They had SA-71 carbines. Oh, frakk!

The leading rank of rebels launched grenades.

“Fire!”

As he pressed the trigger to release the laser bolt, the enemy grenades exploded, filling the corridor incredibly quickly with thick smoke. Had the laser shots got off in time before the smoke grenades scattered them to harmlessness?

All he knew was that he couldn’t see the end of his barrel but Barney insisted the Hardits were still coming.

Switching to shardshot, he raked the corridor. He extended his assault teeth too.

The Hardits were firing back. Fragments of the scrubber unit he was sheltering behind flew past his face. He felt a kick in his left chest, just below the collar bone.

Then the firing stopped, all sides unwilling to fire into the fog, fearful of hitting their own side.

Barney used the brief respite to inform Arun that he had been shot. That kick he’d felt was a kinetic dart passing through Arun’s body. Barney insisted he’d fixed the suit breach and anesthetized the wound. Nothing to worry about.

Good enough
, though Arun. Out of the choking mist a looming blur rapidly solidified into a Hardit rebel, carbine at the ready.

He — or she — might be better armed than the first line of Hardit defense, but not better trained. The rebel scanned ahead for targets but wasn’t looking up at the ceiling.

Arun spun his assault teeth and thrust down in to the rebel’s shoulder.
Let’s see how you like that!

The needle-like teeth sank in through the vacsuit embedding into the soft tissue beyond. Then Arun set the teeth spinning at 1000 rpm, ripping a jagged hole through the suit that released a geyser of pulpy, red spray.

Before the dying Hardit had finished slumping to the floor, another attacker pushing forward through the mist stumbled over its comrade. Arun jabbed at it with his assault teeth, but the rebel tripped before he could connect, falling headlong. The unexpected motion confused Arun. He missed. More rebels were passing beneath all the time.

The atmosphere scrubbers must be pretty powerful because the smoke was starting to clear.

When they did, they would reveal Arun to be alone in a sea of rebels.

He glanced behind him, convinced he was about to be stabbed in the back.

With a last blind jab from his carbine, he snapped his attention back to his front. No one there either, just the thinning smoke.