Starfist: Kingdom's Fury (6 page)

A new voice came on the comm—that of the Marine duty officer. "All hands, listen up. We have multiple reports of movement to the division front. All units, stand to and be prepared for company. Acknowledge."

"Roger, Foot Six. Charlie standing to."

The other two company headquarters also acknowledged the alert order. The entire 82nd Division of the Army of the Lord was moving into position.

Macque slapped his helmet on and toggled the squad all-hands circuit. "Up and at

'em," he said. "Look alive, we might have company in a couple of minutes."

Seconds later high-pitched buzz saw whines came from beyond the perimeter and things with speeds too great to be deflected by the slanted faces of the reinforced ferrocrete bunkers shattered against them, gouting holes in their surfaces, sending chips flying, and raising dense clouds of dust.

The 82nd Division and its commanders from 26th FIST were bunkered into Heaven's Heights Ridge and two hills, Hymnal and Psalm, that guarded the northeast approaches to Haven. The entire ridgeline and Hymnal Hill came under simultaneous assault. The dust clouds blocked the vision of the defenders—not that many of the Soldiers of the Lord were willing to look through their bunker's apertures.

More of the buzz saw guns opened fire, not at the bunkers, but on the ridge and hillsides in front of them. At the same time, sappers moved purposefully on the flat below the heights. One by one, symbols blinked out on displays as the sensors feeding them died. The defenders were doubly blind—from the dust clouds they couldn't see through and the displays that no longer showed movement.

Skink Fighters wearing full body armor with interlocking helmets had been infiltrating all day, crawling under the trees slowly and quietly enough that neither the motion nor the audio detectors picked them up. Sappers had already noted the positions of the visual detectors, and the Skink infiltration routes avoided them.

Also, the creatures showed poorly on infra. Now, with most of the detectors dead, the Over Master in command of this phase of Operation Rippling Lava gave the command, and ten thousand Fighters rose to their feet and trotted in orderly lines to the foot of the ridge and the hill that were under attack. There, they awaited the order to begin mounting the heights.

The Over Master gave another order, and his guns raised their aim from the slopes of hill and ridge to impact with devastating effect on the slopes of the bunker faces.

"I want artillery on those guns, and I want it now," Commander Van Winkle ordered.

"But Archbishop General, those guns are not firing at our defenses," Archdeacon General Crucifix, commander of the 104th Division, objected. "We must preserve our artillery fire to defend our own defense sector!"

"Go to your quarters and stay there!" Van Winkle said coldly. He was not going to waste any time arguing with the man whose position he was filling. The Haven defenses were under heavy attack, and the attack had to be repulsed now.

Ignoring Crucifix, who stood sputtering, he turned to the Marine artillery observer.

"Sergeant, send that fire order to FIST artillery. Tell them they'll have proper authorization by the time the guns are ready to fire."

"Aye aye, sir." The artillery observer was smiling as he began to speak into his hardwired comm unit.

"Get him out of my sight before I have him clapped in irons," Van Winkle ordered.

"Certainly, sir," replied Gunnery Sergeant Hu, the battalion's assistant personnel officer. He turned to Crucifix and gestured toward the command room door. "After you, sir."

"Bu-Bu-But . . ." Crucifix sputtered.

"Sir, I do believe he means it."

Crucifix looked around the command center. His own soldiers outnumbered the Marines, but none of them were armed. All of the Marines were—and they looked ready to use their weapons. Gathering as much dignity as he could, he turned and marched out.

Gunnery Sergeant Hu followed closely, to make sure Crucifix went to his quarters as ordered. As he walked he spoke into his personnel comm unit and gave orders for a supplyman to meet him with tools and a padlock. Hu had been around long enough to know that a lot of generals thought orders didn't apply to them; he was going to make sure Crucifix stayed in his quarters as ordered.

Van Winkle didn't see Hu escort the Kingdomite division commander out of the command center. He was too busy ordering the Kingdomite artillery liaison officer to relay the fire order to his regiment, and contacting Brigadier Sturgeon to get authorization for the artillery fire mission he'd just ordered.

Within the bunkers no one could tell what was happening outside. The crashing and battering impact on the bunker faces reverberated inside with a din so loud it allowed for awareness of nothing beyond itself. The sonic overload beat men down, opened their mouths in silent howls, bled them from their ears. On the entire twelve-thousand man front, only the 350 Marines whose helmets were able to muffle the noise were capable of fighting—if they could see through the thickening clouds of pulverized ferrocrete dust.

The Over Master spoke a command, and his ten thousand armored Fighters, urged on by Masters and Leaders, began their climb.

Brigadier Sturgeon didn't hesitate to issue authorization for the fire mission Van Winkle had ordered. It arrived at 34th FIST's artillery battery seconds before the guns were ready to fire. The six guns of the battery finished locking their guidance systems into the string-of-pearls and fired. The string-of-pearls, which had so much difficulty picking up infrared signals from the Skinks, had no problem seeing their horrid weapons. Seconds after the guns of 34th FIST's battery fired, six canisters of scatter munitions burst open above six Skink buzz-saw weapons. The hundreds of submunitions the canisters expelled spread over a wide area and exploded before they reached the ground. Shrapnel tore the crews of the weapons to shreds. The crews of six other weapons had died moments earlier, when the guns of 26th FIST's battery fired. Both batteries fired again, and twelve more weapons fell silent.

The twelve dozen guns of the two Kingdomite divisions also fired. But they couldn't tie into the string-of-pearls guidance system, and their fire wasn't as accurate. They didn't have scatter munitions either, so rounds that hit more than a hundred meters from Skink positions had no effect on the devastating fire, and most of the Kingdomite rounds landed more than a hundred meters away. The Skinks had two thousand weapons firing at the defensive line. They held more buzz saws in reserve.

"Each of you, get two Raptors in the air," Brigadier Sturgeon ordered Brigadier Sparen and Colonel Ramadan. "I want Jerichos on those weapons."

"Aye aye," the FIST commanders replied. They contacted their squadrons, gave orders. Ramadan told his air people to instruct 26th FIST's air wing on the tactics they'd developed to use against the Skinks.

In moments two Raptors from 34th FIST's squadron lifted off and headed for Heaven's Heights Ridge, staying well below the ridge top. They hovered a kilometer behind Heaven's Heights and locked their Jerichos onto the string-of-pearls guidance system. One at a time, four Jerichos belched out from under the wings of each Raptor, swooped up over the ridge, and hit their targets. Each Jericho wrought the destruction of a tactical nuke, leveling an area half a kilometer in diameter. Their areas of destruction overlapped. A three-kilometer-long swath of forest and wetlands was cleared of the monstrous Skink weapons.

The pilots from 26th FIST's squadron had to wait a few minutes before taking off because they needed extra briefing in the tactics. They headed for their firing position behind Hymnal Hill and locked in. One of them wasn't tucked behind the hill well enough. His Raptor had just fired its second Jericho when the threat warning shrilled in the pilot's ears, just before his Raptor disintegrated. The other Raptor got off all four of its Jerichos, then dropped altitude and sped back to base less than fifty meters above the ground. The Skinks knocked three of those six Jerichos out of the air before they reached their targets.

The Over Master issued two prearranged commands. One command halted the fire against the bunkers, began the withdrawal of those weapons, and led the ten thousand Fighters who were just short of the heights—still undetected by the dazed and blinded defenders—to close the final gap and begin their killing. The second order sent sappers along the line of killed weapons, to set fire to the corpses and fragments and to retrieve the weapons.

Silent until now, the Skink Fighters shrieked and barked as they charged the final twenty-five meters. They jammed the nozzles of their acid guns into the apertures of the shattered and cracked bunkers and let them spray.

The stunning, ear-ringing quiet that fell when the Skinks stopped battering the bunkers lasted only seconds. It was replaced by the screams of Kingdomite soldiers whose flesh was being eaten by the acid.

All along the line, Marines began firing back. The flashes of dying Skinks lighted the bright afternoon even more brilliantly. Enough of the Marines had the presence of mind to radio reports to their command elements that they were being overrun, so Brigadier Sturgeon and his staff recognized the severity of their situation. In moments new fire orders were issued, and all the artillery began firing on the defensive line. The Marine cluster munitions mowed Skinks down by scores, but more of them survived because of their body armor and helmets. The Kingdomite artillery, by dint of numbers, killed just as many. But shells from those guns also hit bunkers already weakened by the Skink fire and collapsed them, wounding or killing the defenders inside.

"Regimental artillery, cease fire!" Sturgeon barked as soon as he realized the Kingdomite fire was killing Marines. The rumble of the Kingdomite guns slowed and stopped. There weren't enough Marine guns to do the job on the ridge and the hill, and he didn't dare send any Raptors up. What could he do to stop the Skinks from taking Heaven's Heights and Hymnal Hill?

"Cooks and bakers?" he asked Sparen.

"I can have them on the move in five minutes," Sparen replied.

"Ram, can you get anybody there sooner?"

"Van Winkle's been rotating his line companies off the line," Colonel Ramadan replied.

"Have whoever's available hit Hymnal Hill."

"Aye aye." Ramadan picked up the comm to his infantry commander.

"Who else is available to move?" Sturgeon wanted to know. "We need to get more Marines up there."

Meanwhile, the Marine artillery kept pouring its scatter munitions on the high ground.

CHAPTER FOUR

"THIRD HERD, SADDLE UP!" Staff Sergeant Hyakowa bellowed as he raced into the park where the Marines of the platoon waited tensely, watching the fight on the heights above the city.

"Fall in," Hyakowa shouted as he skidded to a halt.

In seconds the Marines were in formation, all with their weapons and gear, though the new men were still shifting everything into place.

"Squad leaders, report!"

Sergeant Ratliff looked to his side. "First squad, all present!"

Sergeant Linsman didn't pause; he'd taken stock as he ran into formation. "Second squad, all present!"

"Guns, locked and loaded," Sergeant Kelly sounded off.

Hyakowa pointed at the nearest height, Hymnal Hill. "We're going up there," he said, "as soon as some Dragons get here."

A muffled roaring came from behind a nearby building.

"That's probably them now." Hyakowa looked toward the sound in time to see two of the armored, air-cushioned, amphibious beasts slip around the corner of the building.

The drivers reined in their mounts and reared about so the ramps faced the Marines when they dropped.

Lieutenant Rokmonov poked his head out the rear of one of the Dragons and called out, "Mount up!"

"Ah, shit," Ratliff muttered, and glanced toward the hill. He remembered too well the Dragons that had been killed in the Swamp of Perdition, and the Marines whose lives were lost when they erupted. Hymnal Hill was close enough so they could reach it in ten minutes or less if they ran. But orders were orders.

"First squad, move out!" he shouted, and led the way onto the Dragon Hyakowa pointed him at.

Less than a minute after they stopped in front of third platoon, the Dragons were loaded and headed for the rendezvous point to meet the Dragons carrying the rest of the company.

There was no time for planning. A squad and a half of Marines were on top of Hymnal Hill fighting for their lives against hundreds of Skinks. Commander Van Winkle relayed the order from Colonel Ramadan as soon as he got it, immediately ordering six Dragons to pick up Company L. Captain Conorado linked into the string-of-pearls and began studying the situation even as he pulled on his sidearm and gear.

"All hands, listen up," Conorado said on his all-hands circuit. He could tell by changes in pitch in the faint rumbling that came through the Dragon's armor that the six vehicles were on line, speeding toward the reverse slope of Hymnal Hill. He transmitted the sitmap to his platoon commanders and platoon sergeants.

"Some Marines are going to die up there if we don't get to them right now," he said. "The little bad bastards that are overrunning them outnumber us by at least ten to one. "We'll off-load just below the topological crest and go over it on line. Volley fire downslope as soon as we reach the top crest. Everybody, chameleon shields in place, shirt necks closed, sleeves down and cuffs tight, gloves on. No exposed skin.

I don't want any casualties because someone let that acid get inside his uniform." He hoped the new uniforms really were impervious to the Skinks' acid sprays. "And plasma shields up. We're going to have a lot of fire up there, let's not have any Marines killed by Marines! Make sure your Marines understand. Do it!" He plugged into the vehicle's comm to give orders to the Dragons.

In the Dragons, the platoon commanders and sergeants transmitted the sitmap to the squad leaders, who in turn projected them for their men to study. They relayed Conorado's orders while the Marines examined the projected maps. But they listened more than they looked; the maps only showed the slope of the hill and the line of bunkers thirty meters down the hill's opposite slope. Adrenaline coursed through every Marine in the Dragons and sweat bathed them. Most of them had fought the Skinks more than once, and most of them had lost friends to the Skinks' ghastly weapons. Some had suffered wounds at the hands of the Skinks. They were going up against better than ten to one odds! Were even Marines that tough? Those who held belief in a deity prayed to whatever god they believed in.