Starfist: Kingdom's Fury (19 page)

"Zechariah," Consort whispered, "at least wash the dirt off your face. You look like a savage."

Zechariah regarded his wife silently for a moment. "No, Connie, I am going to preach as I am, straight from the field of battle. We are the new Children of Israel.

We are at war, and our Lord is a Man of War."

Zechariah called the others around him in a tight little circle. "Friends, in a moment I am going to bury Samuel. With my own hands, over there." He pointed to a grove of trees a few meters from where they were standing. He would mark them and later come back to the place and retrieve his son's remains. "I must speak quickly. When I am done, we will move on. We're going on the same course we set for ourselves this morning, across that stream back there and home, to New Salem. You will see the battlefield where Samuel died, and we will take the weapons the devils left behind and use them."

Consort Brattle watched her husband as he spoke. His beard had grown longer these past days, giving him a wild, prophetic aspect, and his clothes and hands and face were smeared with mud, but as he spoke and as she was carried away by the power of his words, she forgot about his wild appearance.

"A long time ago one of our forebears preached a sermon in the days immediately following the deaths of his loved ones. I want to remind you now of what he said on that occasion: we live in the midst of death. We die daily, but in dying, we draw out the bitterness of death itself. A good man is a strong man who has the strength of character and faith to find consolation in his adversity. But I confess to you now, friends, I wish and pray the Lord would take this cup from me! I do not know if I have the character of that good, strong man. My want of it is perhaps the bitterest dreg in this cup I have been given to drink from. All I can ask of you, dear friends, is that when you yourselves press after this strength of character, that you remember me, and pray for me, that I may share it with you and therewith find my consolation."

The people gazed upon Zechariah Brattle raptly and many wept. "Amen," Hannah Flood whispered.

"And now, friends, I have a mournful duty to perform, and when that is done, be prepared to march!" He drew his hand-blaster and held it above his head. "We are men of war now! And our Lord is a Man of War!"

Consort Brattle leaned on her daughter's shoulder and wept silently. She had never loved Zechariah more than she did at that moment. She was crushed by her son's death but exhilarated by her husband's courage.

And she was very frightened.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Captain Enkhtuya, commander of Charlie Company, 26th FIST, thought again of how he'd had to reorganize his company. He didn't like it any more now than he liked it when he first got his orders. Two reinforced platoons, consisting of the smaller Marines in his force, would conduct the actual raid inside the cave while the rest of the reinforced company stayed outside for security. He believed that breaking the normal chains of command by shifting his men around according to size would reduce their combat effectiveness. Just as bad—if not worse—he had to stay outside the cave to command the defense. Recon said he was too big to easily fit through the cave. Who ever said being a Marine company commander was supposed to be easy?

He was also unhappy about having to break his company into platoons, each guided by one of the recon Marines who'd investigated the cave, and reinforced with an assault section, to infiltrate to the cave entrance. Together, his 170 Marines were a formidable force; broken into four scattered units, they wouldn't be able to support each other immediately if they ran into a Skink force. Sure, the smaller units were less likely to be spotted by the Skinks than the entire reinforced company if it was together, but he could lose too many Marines if a lone platoon ran into Skinks.

Still, he was a Marine. He had his orders and he'd carry them out. Nobody said he had to like them.

"Sir," Enkhtuya's comm man said, interrupting his disgruntled reverie.

"What?"

The comm man handed him the UPUD. The display clearly showed first platoon, which his command unit traveled with. It also showed the movement of bodies a hundred or more meters off to the platoon's right, headed in the direction of the Haven defenses. Whatever was moving over there didn't show in infrared. He looked in that direction but couldn't see anything; the platoon was in an area just heavily wooded enough that there were few sightlines a hundred meters long.

"Quietly, get down," Enkhtuya murmured into his all-hands circuit as he handed the UPUD back. "Movement right, one hundred."

Almost without a sound the Marines stopped and lowered themselves to the ground. Two men from each squad faced to the left instead of the right to guard against a surprise attack from that direction.

"How many?" Enkhtuya asked.

"Looks like about fifty," the radioman replied.

Fifty. Hardly more than the forty-plus Marines he had. He almost wanted the Skinks—it had to be Skinks—to change direction and come at him. His Marines could score an easy victory against them. But if the Skinks encountered the platoon, his position would be compromised, and that would endanger the entire mission.

Enkhtuya gritted his teeth and willed the Skinks to stick to their route.

They kept going. He waited another ten minutes, then reported the movement to Battalion HQ and gave the order to resume the march.

Each of the four units had to stop at least once while Skinks passed by, heading in the direction of the Haven defenses, but all managed to avoid detection. They rendezvoused near the cave entrance.

Captain Enkhtuya lay in the muck on the opposite bank, observing the cave mouth. Next to him was Staff Sergeant Wu, who had guided his platoon.

"Doesn't look like anybody's been here," Wu said after several minutes'

observation. "Time for a closer look." He slithered away from the bank.

A safe distance back, Wu rose to a crouch and moved upstream until he could approach the streamlet out of sight of the cave mouth. Across it, he moved into the forest and zigzagged back, looking closely at the ground and low foliage and stopping frequently to listen. He reached the cave without seeing any sign of Skinks.

He spoke into his helmet comm; none of the other recon Marines had seen sign either. Lance Corporal Sonj joined him, and the two entered the cave. Except for small animal tracks, the dirt on the cave's floor looked unchanged from the vid they'd taken when they left after their first patrol. They went fifty meters in before turning around and going back out.

Wu rejoined Enkhtuya and reported. "Looks clear, sir. You can send them in anytime."

"Right," Enkhtuya said, still looking at the cave mouth—it certainly looked big enough for him to get through.

The captain's feelings came through so clearly in his voice that Wu said, sympathetically, "I won't be going in, either, sir. It gets a lot smaller inside. There are spots that are just too tight for me to get through fast." Wu was taller than the captain, but Enkhtuya was wider. He knew the captain would find movment in the cave even more difficult than he had.

Enkhtuya grunted, then spoke briefly into his command circuit. In a moment his infra screen showed him the red splotches of the first of the eighty Marines who were going in. He clenched his jaw in anger and frustration, then forced himself to relax. He whispered, "Good hunting."

Lance Corporal Sonj, the smallest of the recon Marines, led the way. The cave had just as many twists and turns, rises and drops, as the previous time he'd been in it.

But movement was faster because they didn't have to pause as often while men struggled with spots that were barely big enough for them to squeeze through. In good time he saw the faint glow of red light in the distance and stopped.

He leaned his head back so Lieutenant Eggers could touch helmets with him.

"We're at the final checkpoint," he said when he felt contact.

Eggers, Charlie Company's executive officer, in command of the raid by virtue of being the smallest officer in the company, said, "Let's take a look," and signaled the sapper section chief, Staff Sergeant Larose, to come along. The three padded around the bend to the narrow crack in the wall. One at a time they looked through it.

The cavern beyond was still filled with stacks of crates. They didn't see or hear anybody inside. Sonj and Eggers moved beyond the crack so Larose could examine the stone.

The sapper chief's examination only took a couple of minutes. "Better go back now," Larose said when he was satisfied that he could widen the crack without causing the tunnel to cave in. He stood flat against the wall and exhaled to make himself as thin as possible so the others could squeeze past. As soon as they were gone, he began pulling things out of pockets. In a minute he had several pieces of explosive tape strategically placed on the wall. He headed back to where the raiding party waited.

Larose leaned past Sonj to touch helmets with Eggers. "Ready anytime you are,"

he said.

"Do it."

"Aye aye."

A blast, not nearly as loud as Eggers and Sonj expected, rumbled along the tunnel, raising clouds of dust in its wake. Alarms echoed in the distance.

"Go, go, go!" Eggers shouted. He raced up the tunnel, pushing Sonj and Eggers ahead of him. Blind in the dust cloud except for the infra blotches of the two Marines ahead of him, he bounced off the sides of the narrow tunnel as he ran. He would have missed the entrance to the logistics chamber if Larose and Sonj hadn't stopped when they reached it and shoved the Marines behind them through the hole.

Only a few meters inside the chamber, the air cleared of the billowing dust and Eggers was able to see again. He raced to the far side of the vast chamber, looking around as he ran. It was exactly like the rodent's-eye vid he'd studied, save that some of the stacks of material might have been smaller. He could only guess at the distance, but the dim red lights strung out along the main tunnel's ceiling went straight for what looked like more than two hundred meters before turning. A lesser, unimproved tunnel without lights led from the chamber's opposite end. It didn't appear to run straight for any distance. The alarms were much louder inside the chamber, and they all seemed to come from the main tunnel.

On the far side, he stopped and looked back at the Marines who were still pouring through the break in the wall. He didn't have to give any instructions. They'd all studied the vid and rehearsed the raid—they knew where to go. One section from the assault platoon scaled the stacks on the near side of the chamber and set its guns to cover the main tunnel leading into the chamber. The other section did the same on the far side. The gun squads from the blaster platoons covered the lesser tunnel. The blastermen scattered to their assigned positions and started breaking crates open.

Before the fighters were all at their assigned positions, the sappers were already placing charges.

New sounds intruded into Egger's consciousness: the whine of motors, the clank of treads, and shouted voices from down the main tunnel.

"Stand by for company, main tunnel," he said into his all-hands circuit.

Throughout the chamber, squad, fire team, and gun team leaders gave hurried last minute instructions to their men.

"Keep them busy, we need a few more minutes," Staff Sergeant Larose said into the command circuit.

In a moment the whining motors and clanking treads were closer, loud enough to drown out most of the shouting voices accompanying them.

"Vehicle coming," reported Ensign Qorn, the assault platoon commander.

"Can your guns hit it?" Eggers asked.

"Can do."

"Do it."

An instant later the chamber was filled with the booming, popping sizzles and brilliant lights of the three big assault guns. Two hundred fifty meters down the tunnel the plasma streams converged on an oncoming mover vehicle similar to the one the recon Marines had seen the supply workers use. If the Skinks who were visible on it flared, their flashes were lost in the incandescence of the blaster streams.

The motor whine shrieked and stopped, and the vehicle yawed and swerved sharply.

Chunks of white-hot metal broke off when it slammed into the wall. It crashed ponderously onto its side and lay half blocking the tunnel.

"Got it," the platoon sergeant laconically reported.

"Put intermittent bursts down there to discourage anybody else who wants to investigate," Eggers ordered.

"Roger."

The assault gunners began putting one-second bursts of plasma down the tunnel at irregular intervals. The sounds of motors, treads, and voices continued, but nothing more came around the bend. The surface of the rock wall at the bend began to glow, but the plasma bursts weren't sustained enough to make it slag and run.

"We're done in here," Staff Sergeant Larose reported. The sappers had placed half a dozen plasma bombs in strategic points around the chamber. When they went off, they would briefly fill the space with star-stuff, long enough to destroy most of the supplies, and damage what they didn't destroy. The bombs would also set off chemical explosives the sappers had set in weak spots in the walls in the expectation of bringing some of them down.

"Start pulling out," Eggers ordered. "Blastermen, bring your goodies."

The Marines began withdrawing. The dust was much thinner now. The blastermen of the two platoons left by squads, each Marine carrying something from the crate he'd been assigned to open. The assault platoon sergeant led one section into the escape tunnel, followed by the two gun squads with their lighter weapons.

"Set the timers," Eggers ordered.

"Aye aye," Larose replied, then relayed the order to his sappers. When the sappers reported themselves ready, he said to Eggers, "Fifteen minutes." There was little margin for error, but they were almost home free.

The sappers left. Eggers and one assault section remained, one squad keeping up intermittent fire down the main tunnel while the second rigged its big gun to fire automatically—they were leaving it behind to cover their withdrawal.