Starfist: Kingdom's Fury (20 page)

Suddenly, the chamber filled with the horrifying, ripping sound of a Skink buzz saw from the mouth of the lesser tunnel. The three Marines of the squad firing their gun simply dissolved in a mist of red. Their gun became a cone of debris scattering down the main tunnel; only the tripod mount remained intact.

Eggers drew his sidearm as he dove for the dubious shelter of a stack of crates.

The gunner and assistant gunner of the assault squad rigging its gun made it to concealment before the buzz saw let out another rip that pulverized the squad leader and gun. Ensign Qorn and the third assault squad were already going out through the break in the chamber's wall when the buzz saw first fired.

"Back," Qorn shouted. "Set up!" The three Marines remounted their assault gun on its tripod, angled toward the lesser tunnel. Qorn bellied toward the edge of the stack he lay behind and peered around its corner. He immediately scuttled backward so fast he felt he must have set a new Human Space record for the reverse crawl—and he was none too fast. The entire corner of the stack he'd been behind went up in a cloud of dust, and the stack beyond it collapsed like a building at nuclear ground zero. He thought fast—he had to get his remaining gun in position to flame the Skinks he'd seen manning the buzz saw. There were four of them; he hadn't seen any others. But how could the gun get into position, aim, and fire before the Skinks spotted the Marines and killed them?

"Qorn, is that you?" Egger's voice came over his helmet comm on the all-hands circuit.

"It's me."

"You got the gun with you?"

"Third squad, yes."

"First squad, who's left?"

The second squad gunner and assistant gunner replied.

Eggers thought fast. He had himself and three other Marines left, aside from the one remaining assault squad—and only one of them was armed with a blaster. The other three carried hand-blasters.

The buzz saw ripped, and two more stacks were pulverized—the Skinks were firing randomly, hoping to hit hidden Marines.

"Qorn, how much time does your gun need to set up, acquire its target, and take it out?"

Qorn thought. This was a good assault squad and their gun was already set up. It only needed to be moved into position. "Six seconds from go," he said.

"How much of that exposed?"

"Three." The first three seconds would be movement under concealment.

The buzz saw ripped again, sending more stacks to oblivion.

"On my command," Eggers said, "Qorn and first squad, fire at the Skinks. Move fast, fire again, move, fire. Assault squad, while we're distracting them, you do your thing. Everybody understand?"

No sooner had the Marines acknowledged than the buzz saw ripped again.

"GO!"

A blaster and three hand-blasters fired almost as one. An instant later the buzz saw struck at the stack from which the first squad gunner had fired, but the gunner had already moved. The four Marines fired again from new positions as the buzz saw shifted its aim to Eggers's former position. The assault squad got its gun into position and was bringing it to bear on the buzz saw when the four Marines fired again. The buzz saw crew was shifting aim to one of those positions when its leader noticed the assault gun and screamed the command to fire at it. He was too late—a heavy stream of plasma engulfed the buzz saw and its crew before they could fire.

Another rip echoed through the chamber; a buzz saw firing from the main tunnel.

First squad's assistant gunner was the only Marine in position to quickly return fire. He twisted around on the top of his stack and rose up to sight down the tunnel.

His bolt and the buzz saw's rip passed each other midway. But the Marine's aim was better—the Skink gunner flared, and the assistant gunner plummeted through the cloud of dust and debris that had been the stack he was on. That gave the assault squad just enough time to move its gun again and fire down the main tunnel. The buzz saw was out of action, and the Skinks moving up behind it were vaporized.

"Get that gun ready!" Eggers ordered.

Qorn set the remaining gun himself. It began to fire down the main tunnel on its own.

"Report!" Eggers commanded.

First squad's assistant gunner was dazed from his fall, but otherwise the remaining Marines were uninjured.

"Pull out, now!"

The Marines scrambled for their exit.

Lieutenant Eggers hesitated for a second, then raced to the lesser tunnel. There were no Skink bodies by the badly damaged buzz saw; he hadn't expected to find any, it was the weapon he was interested in. The buzz saw was too big for one man to carry through the tunnels to the outside, it would even slow down two men. The charred remnants of a bag lay on the tunnel floor next to the buzz saw. What appeared to be a spare barrel for the weapon lay in its ashes. Eggers grabbed it and raced to catch up with his Marines.

They had rounded three bends when the tunnel behind them lit up brilliantly and a wall of heat slammed into their backs. Seconds later the earth rumbled and shook.

Rocks fell from the tunnel roof and sides. They ran faster.

Looks like you've got yourself a souvenir, Lieutenant," Captain Enkhtuya said when the raid commander finally exited the cave and joined the command group for a quick debriefing.

"Skipper?" Eggers hadn't brought out the spare barrel, or whatever it was, for himself. He intended to hand it over to the F-2 for analysis. If they could figure out what the weapon was, maybe they could develop a means of countering it.

"You aren't chameleoned anymore." Enkhtuya put a hand on Eggers's shoulder and turned him. The entire back of his uniform was blackened. "What the hell happened to you?"

Eggers twisted his neck and looked at his shoulder. "I guess I wasn't far enough away when the plasma bombs went off. Damn!" If the wave of heat that had hit him when the bombs went off was hot enough to destroy the chameleoning on his back and scorch the material, he was lucky he hadn't been badly burned by it.

Enkhtuya had his comm man raise the battalion and FIST intelligence officers, then listened while Eggers, Wu, and Qorn quickly described what they'd found in the chamber and what they did there. It was a short debriefing. More details had to wait until they were back inside the perimeter. So would mourning for the four Marines killed during those last, manic moments.

"Saddle up, we're moving out," Enkhtuya said into the all-hands circuit. This time they were moving as a reinforced company instead of individual platoons. He hoped they ran into Skinks again—if they did, they wouldn't have to hide; now that the mission was accomplished, they could fight.

The company pulled out in two columns, far enough apart that they wouldn't shoot each other if they ran into trouble, close enough to give mutual support if one had to fight.

Halfway back to the Marine lines, the point man on Charlie Company's left column froze, then slowly lowered himself to the ground.

"Movement ahead," he murmured into his helmet comm. "Coming fast."

Seconds later his squad leader eeled up alongside him. "What do you—" Sergeant Henry began, then changed to, "Great Buddha's balls!"

Skinks, seemingly hundreds of them, were racing through the wetlands toward the Marines across the entire front the Marines could see. Some were on line, others in line. More were in clumps. They weren't assaulting the Marine point, they weren't holding the nozzles of their acid guns in firing position.

"Charlie Six," Henry called over his helmet comm, "Charlie Two-one." He didn't wait for his call to be acknowledged. "The Skinks are withdrawing from Haven and we're in their path." He put his blaster into his shoulder and sighted on a Skink.

"Two-one," Captain Enkhtuya came back immediately, "are they going to pass us?"

"Not the ones right in front of us." He switched to the squad circuit. "First squad, get on line right now!"

"What's their disposition?" Enkhtuya asked.

"All the way across as far as I can see," Henry answered. "We've gotta fight." To both sides he sensed his squad getting into position.

"First squad, straight ahead, volley fire. FIRE!"

Ten blasters fired and seven Skinks flashed into vapor.

"Pick your targets!" Henry ordered, then flared a Skink that was almost on him. A wave of heat washed over him and dissipated. He looked past his sights, seeking another target. Gouts of flame and light danced over the marsh in front of him, Skinks flared by his squad. The Marines had flamed all of the Skinks to their immediate front. He looked to the sides. The Skinks continued the race toward their caves. None of them turned to fire at the Marines who'd just flared their mates.

Henry heard loud Skink voices shouting commands—the leaders were urging their troops to continue past the Marines. He saw a shouting Skink and flamed him. The Skinks maintained their course.

Behind Henry the trailing platoons opened fire. As far as he could see to the left, Skinks flared. He looked to the right and saw even more Skinks flaring, caught in a crossfire between the two Marine columns. Then the Skinks were past and the Marines ceased fire.

Captain Enkhtuya agonized for a full seven seconds before deciding that it was more important to return to Haven with the objects they'd taken from the supply depot than to pursue the Skinks and risk running into an ambush or a heavily defended position.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Brigadier Sturgeon was silent as he rode through the half-destroyed city streets.

Ambassador Jayben Spears, sitting at his side, was also pensive. Their driver was a soldier from an Army of God infantry outfit Sturgeon had borrowed for the occasion. He'd have preferred one of his own men, but due to the recent bombardments, the city streets were choked with rubble and roadblocks, and since this man was a native of the place, he knew how to find the right detours.

"Reminds me of old flat pictures I've seen of Berlin in 1945," Spears said at last.

Even after four centuries, the destruction visited upon Nazi Germany during the Second World War was still an icon for the complete devastation of a society, instantly recognizable to all educated people.

"What was that, Jay?" Sturgeon asked.

"The Skinks have done a job on this place," the Confederation Ambassador to Kingdom said. They passed disconsolate citizens picking through the ruins, work crews busy removing the debris from the most recent bombardment, others trying to go about their business in horse-drawn vehicles. While the Skink weapons appeared to fire line-of-sight, the upper floors of all the higher buildings, minarets, and church steeples had been destroyed, as well as all the structures on the hills in and around the city.

Sturgeon shrugged. "My mind is elsewhere." He turned then to Spears and grinned. "We're going to kick some Skink ass, Jay."

"Is that what you're going to tell these bozos?" He nodded toward Mount Temple in the near distance, where the Convocation of Ecumenical Leaders was in session.

They had been called before them that morning to deliver a situation report on Brigadier Sturgeon's plan to break the siege.

"Yes, but that's all I'm going to tell them."

"You're obligated to tell them something, Ted. Me too, if I knew what. We're obligated by agreement to treat the Convocation of Ecumenical Leaders with the same respect we'd treat the delegates of any other sovereign government."

"Jay, you know I don't take very well to fools," Sturgeon replied. "Too many times throughout my career I've had to kowtow to goddammed politician fools, and I'm getting tired of it. These religious ‘leaders’ are some of the worst of the lot. I'm going to talk to these idiots only because I have to, and it's going to be short and not too sweet, I can tell you that. You know how they rule this world, Jay. They're about as ‘ecumenical’ as Heinrich Himmler. That Collegium of theirs is worse than any secret police organization. Christ's bloody piles, Jay, this whole lot of goddammed whining pulpit thumpers disgusts me!"

Their driver, unused to such bold language, lost his concentration and the vehicle nearly rammed into the traffic ahead of it.

"Easy, lad, easy," Spears said to calm the enlisted man's nerves. He glanced nervously at Sturgeon.

"Wish to hell we could deal with this convocation bunch the way we did with those goddammed oligarchs," Sturgeon muttered.

Spears smiled. He remembered with deep personal satisfaction how Sturgeon had handled the oligarchs of Wanderjahr. Yes, the rulers of Kingdom deserved the same kind of treatment. But . . .

The driver pulled into the sally port at the base of Mount Temple, and the pair took the elevator to the council room just below the surface. Fortunately, the Skinks seemed unaware of the importance of Mount Temple. Once their weapons had destroyed all the structures on its surface, they had ceased firing on it except for random interdictory fires that proved more a nuisance than a threat.

All the leaders were assembled, along with aides and other staff. Dominic de Tomas, the Dean of the Collegium, sat by himself near the main entrance. The chairman, Ayatollah Jebel Shammar, nodded at the pair as they entered and gave Ambassador Spears a grimace that passed for a greeting.

"Watch out for him, Ted," Spears whispered to Sturgeon, nodding toward de Tomas.

Sturgeon glanced back in de Tomas's direction. "He's not my problem, Jay. But I'll squash him if he gets in the way."

"Gentlemen, let us come to order," Shammar intoned. Sturgeon and Spears took seats at one end of the conference table.

Sturgeon surveyed the convocation leaders. There was Cardinal Leemus O'Lanners, of the Fathers of Padua, leader of a radical Catholic sect that had established itself on Kingdom about a hundred years before. The sect was best known for its denial of the transubstantiation of the Host. Next to him sat the inimitable Bishop Ralphy Bruce Preachintent, head of the Apostolic Congregation of the Lord's Love and Devotion. Preachintent was best known for a stentorian voice that thundered fundamentalist texts having to do mostly with sin and hellfire.

Then there was the inscrutable Venerable Muong Bo, the chief Buddhist monk on Kingdom. He seldom said much in meetings; probably, Sturgeon thought, because the man actually might have a brain between his enormous ears. Next to him sat Swami Nirmal Bastar, leader of a large Hindu sect whose people still practiced suttee, for which they had been banished from the Indian subcontinent over three hundred years before.