Starfist: Kingdom's Fury (12 page)

Kerr raised his shields to make his face visible and turned from side to side, looking at the Kingdomites. It took a strong effort, but he got his breathing under control and swallowed the lump that had grown in his throat.

"You see that?" he said loudly. "You beat them. The Skinks set an ambush to kill you. They set it on their ground, and you beat them. You beat them once, you can do it again."

Several of the Kingdomites smiled weakly; they wanted to believe him. A few cheered weakly.

Their morale was rising, they weren't as frightened. Maybe, if the Kingdomites could regain confidence, Kerr thought, he could defeat his fear as well.

He got on his comm and called company headquarters with a report. Acting Lesser Imam Sergeant Linsman ordered him to bring the casualties in.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Despite what Corporal Claypoole thought, the Marines given leadership positions in the Army of the Lord and sent out on patrol that day weren't simply to take the Kingdomite soldiers out and get them killed; they were to search for isolated groups of Skinks and kill them. They were also to locate entrances to caves used by the alien, and plant sensors around them. Corporal Dean's platoon of the Lancelot Guardians of the Faith had the good fortune to traverse farmland lined with woody windbreaks, the kind of terrain in which the Kingdomites, not the Skinks, had the advantage. So, though terribly frightened, Dean's soldiers weren't absolutely convinced they were going to lose an encounter with the Skinks. As it happened, they made their way to their destination—across fifteen kilometers of farmland, mostly patrolling along treelines—without seeing any sign of the strange invaders.

Their destination was a rift, an area of risen ground with a fast-running, boulder-strewn creek bed at the bottom. At that season, the creek filled only half of its bed.

Lance Corporal Godenov, with the lead squad, said into his helmet comm, "Let me check it out."

"You got it, Izzy," Dean replied. He turned his attention to deploying the rest of the platoon into a defensive perimeter. It only took a few seconds before he noticed he had the entire platoon, not just two squads. He flipped his infra screen into place and saw one red splotch nearing the creek bed in the bottom of the rift—Godenov hadn't taken first squad the way Dean thought; he'd gone alone.

"Dammit, Izzy," Dean said into his helmet comm, "you already proved the answer is yes. Take your squad."

All his life Isadore Godenov—now Lance Corporal Izzy Godenov—had been plagued by the question, "Is he good enough?" The question followed him when he joined third platoon, where he finally answered it with an emphatic "Yes!" on several deployments.

"No can do," Godenov answered. "Too many bodies. One man can do this recon better." He moved upstream, stepping from rock to rock along the side of the creek bed.

"Quick, take over the platoon and get them into defensive positions," Dean ordered. "You," he indicated half a dozen Soldiers of the Lord, "come with me."

PFC Quick aye-aye'd. Muttering to himself, Dean led the frightened soldiers down to the creek bed.

Water had run through the rock long enough to cut a three-meter-deep channel into it. Above the rock the ground rose steeply, but not so sharply that it couldn't be plowed and planted; grain covered the slopes. At any other season, the cut would have been a deadly place to be caught in a flash flood; just then, the creek's shallow water burbled in the middle half of its bed, pooled here, eddied there. Fishlike creatures swam in the water. Occasionally one broke the surface to snatch an insectoid.

Godenov paid the swimmers and their prey no attention, his constantly moving gaze fixed on the walls of the cut. Somewhere, there should be the mouth of a cave, according to the string-of-pearls. Finding it wasn't easy. The rock walls were pitted in many places with openings that only went a meter or two into them—and every opening had to be checked.

Godenov grunted his way over a boulder as tall as his waist and peered at yet another opening in the wall. It was partially blocked by a boulder about the size of the one he'd just climbed over, but enough still showed above for a man to easily slip through. He picked his way to the side of the opening and slid his light-gatherer shield into place before looking into it with his blaster at the ready. The hole seemed to be only a few meters deep, but an irregularity at its end caught his eye. Blaster first, he slid over the boulder into the cave. The overhead was high enough for him to stand crouched over. Pointing his blaster where he was going, he moved inward.

In a few steps he saw that the irregularity was a sharp turn in the tunnel. Leading with his blaster, he eased around to where he could see where it went.

He pressed the firing lever on his blaster and jumped back just in time to avoid three streams of acid that flew at him from the clot of Skinks he'd seen. The flash from a flaring Skink almost blinded him and he blinked frantically to clear his vision as he rapidly scooted backward. Harsh jabbering from around the bend grew rapidly louder, and he fired three more rapid shots to keep the Skinks from charging him.

As he followed Godenov, Dean stopped here and there to plant a sensor behind a rock or under a shrub. Still, he and his half-dozen soldiers had almost caught up with Godenov when the Marine crawled over the boulder into the cave mouth.

"Wait here," Dean told his soldiers, and followed Godenov. He was almost at the cave's entrance when there was a quick flash of light in the darkness and Dean heard the crack-sizzle of a blaster. He dove toward the opening and poked his blaster over the top of the blocking boulder. His light-gatherer shield showed Godenov backing rapidly toward him while firing.

"Izzy!" he shouted. "What is it?"

"Cover me," Godenov answered, and spun about to race from the cave. As he was scrambling over the rock a Skink appeared out of the side of the cave. Dean fired, the Skink flared.

"It turns back there," Godenov said breathlessly. "That's where they're coming from."

"How many?"

"Damned if I know. A bunch." He and Dean simultaneously fired at another Skink as it turned the corner.

Dean considered what to do. The tunnel was narrow enough that he and Godenov could hold off any number of Skinks for as long as their power packs held out. But there could be more openings nearby. They had to withdraw. But first Dean used the UPUD to register the location of the cave mouth. He thought about a way to slow the Skinks down when he and Godenov pulled back, and turned to the Kingdomites he'd left behind, seeing only four of them.

"Come here," he shouted. "Stay to the side." He exposed his arm and signaled where he wanted them to go. The soldiers reluctantly stood and moved forward until Godenov fired again and a Skink flared. Two of the soldiers began to bolt, but Dean threw his blaster into his shoulder and fired a bolt at the rocks in front of them. They skittered to a stop.

"Up here!" he shouted. They came, keeping to the side of the cave mouth.

"Yessir," one of them gasped when they arrived, looking fearfully at where he thought Dean's face was.

"Grab some boulders and shove them into this opening, I want it blocked." Seeing how frightened they were, he added, "The Skinks are around a bend. They can only come around it one at a time, and the tunnel's narrow enough that we can't miss.

We'll keep them off you. Now move, like this." He hefted a flat rock almost a half meter across and plunked it heavily on top of the boulder in front of the entrance.

The Kingdomites picked up rocks and stacked them in the opening. Godenov shifted to the side, then back from the cave mouth as the opening shrank.

"Let's go," Dean ordered when the last rock went into place. It wouldn't take the Skinks long to knock the barrier down, but it would hold them long enough.

"Izzy," he said, "you and me, leapfrog and keep it covered. If it looks like they're trying to push it open, blast away to move them back. You go first."

"Right," Godenov said, and headed back downstream. The Kingdomites were already gone.

Dean remained by the blocked opening, ready to fire through any chink that began to appear.

"They're running away!" Quick's excited voice came over the command circuit.

"Who?" Dean asked, confused. How could Quick know what the Skinks in the cave were doing?

"The platoon!"

"Fire a warning shot, tell them you'll flame anyone who doesn't stop." Damn cowards! he swore. He heard a distant crack-sizzle, then Quick's voice again.

"They stopped." He snorted. "You gotta see this. They're squatting with their hands on their heads like prisoners."

Angry, Dean snapped, "Good! Keep them like that until I get there."

"I've got you covered, Corporal Dean," Godenov broke in.

Dean slid his infra into place and turned around. Godenov's red splotch was fifty meters away. Dean found a way that kept him out of the other's line of sight to the blocked cave. Fifty meters beyond Godenov, he took a position and told Godenov to back off. Just before the Marine passed him, Dean saw one of the rocks shift.

"Keep going," he said to Godenov, then snapped three bolts at the barricade. The rocks stopped moving.

As they approached the platoon, he checked his UPUD. The real-time infra download from the string-of-pearls showed faint splotches of red that could be many bodies moving a hundred meters to the north, on the other side of a treeline windbreak. A quick glance told him the Kingdomites were still squatting with their hands on their heads.

"Quick! Get the platoon in position facing north," he ordered on the command circuit. "Company's coming."

"Roger." Quick shouted orders to the platoon. They were in position in a windbreak by the time he and Godenov reached them. Dean checked his UPUD

again. This time he didn't see any movement to the north, nor did a real-time download from the string-of-pearls show any particular infra signal, though the windbreak treeline had a slight pinkish cast.

"They're in there," he said on the command circuit. "We need to flush them out."

The Skinks were far enough away that their acid guns couldn't reach the Marines and their Kingdomite platoon, but if they had a buzz saw with them it was all over—the tree line wasn't old enough to have built up a thick berm. He shouted for everyone to hear, "Take aim on the tree line to the north. On my command, open fire on it. Shoot at the base of the trees, into the brush . . . Take aim, FIRE!"

The three Marines started putting out disciplined fire, shifting their aim after every shot. The Kingdomite fire was ragged. Only about half of the fléchettes went where they might do some good; most of the rest were high, some so high they went over the tops of the opposite trees. A couple of flashes of light in the tree line met the Marine fire—Dean had been right, the Skinks were there. If there were few enough in the tree line, they had no chance of getting close enough to fire their acid guns; all they could do was withdraw.

But what if they have a buzz saw? he wondered. He couldn't get that possibility out of his mind.

"We can't stay here, honcho," Godenov said, breaking in on Dean's thoughts.

"Those Skinks we left behind are going to break out soon."

Damn! Dean realized he'd forgotten about the Skinks at the cave mouth. "Izzy, do you have the map?"

"Affirmative." Godenov had the HUD map of their assigned patrol route stored and could bring it up on command.

"Lead the platoon out, follow the assigned route. Quick and I will cover your withdrawal and catch up. Drop a few sensors on your way."

"Aye aye," Godenov replied. He began shouting orders at the Kingdomites. By force of voice—and one warning bolt from his blaster—he managed to keep the withdrawal from becoming a rout.

"Quick, we'll give them five minutes," Dean said.

"Five minutes, right," Quick muttered. He'd followed Dean and Godenov's withdrawal from the cave mouth on his helmet comm. He wondered if they had five minutes before the Skinks they'd left behind broke out of the cave and reached them.

He kept up the fire on the tree line, shifting his aiming point between bolts, looking toward the cut between shots.

Only two minutes passed before a line of Skinks crested the lip of the cut.

Dean saw them first, twisted around and fired. His initial bolt missed, but the second flashed a Skink into vapor with an audible whoosh. Quick heard the change in Dean's fire and looked. He snap-fired and got another, but his second bolt missed. About twenty Skinks ran screaming toward the Marines, trying desperately to get in range of their weapons. Three more flared up before they got close enough to open fire. The streams of greenish fluid mostly fell short of Dean and most were wide, but he knew it would be mere seconds before they started hitting close.

Whatever sense they had that told them where chameleoned Marines were had a short range—and they were almost within that range.

"Quick, cover me," he ordered, and scooted back a few meters, firing as he went.

When the two nearest Skinks were flared, he jumped to his feet and sprinted past Quick. He heard the repeated crack-sizzle of Quick's blaster and the whoosh of more Skinks going up. Twenty-five meters beyond Quick he stopped and began firing offhand at their pursuers. The casualties the Skinks took didn't slow them down; they kept running at the two Marines.

"Quick, got you covered. Leapfrog."

Quick spun around and started running. The closest Skink splashed him, but the protectant in his uniform protected him from harm.

He stopped twenty-five meters beyond Dean to cover him. The first wave of Skinks was down to five, but another, larger wave was closing in behind them. Half a dozen of them were huge and carried swords in their hands, and the nozzles of acid guns banged against their hips. Dean blinked. Swords? Who the hell carries swords?

he wondered. The Skinks all wore khaki uniforms. Thirty more Skinks, the ones they'd had pinned down in the tree line to the north, were charging across the field toward Godenov and the Kingdomites.

"How fast do you think they can run?" Quick cried into his helmet comm.