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“Copy that! Okay, gyrines! You heard! Brace for impact!”
Booth fired the main thruster; Carmen nearly dropped to her knees with the sudden acceleration, and she heard a grinding shriek somewhere aft, like metal tearing.
Then the bug crumpled into the Lunar surface, almost upright, with the shock taken up by the folding of its six, splayed legs. This time, Carmen did hit her knees as the deck slammed up against her legs. The cockpit tilted heavily back to the right, and she had to cling to the acceleration couch to hold her place.
“The Eagle has damned well landed,” she muttered. They were down, at least more or less in one piece. She felt shaken, but unhurt. The tiny whirlwind of escaping air at her feet had become a hurricane, but a short-lived one as the last of the bug’s air shrilled out into space. Carmen was already fumbling at one of the pouches attached to her suit harness, pulling out a self-sealing vacuum patch which she slapped over the hole in the side of Booth’s suit. There was not a lot else she could offer in the way of first aid. The inside of his visor was smeared with blood and a bright, pink foam, and she could barely see his face. Damn! Why didn’t these Marine-issue armored suits come with external life-support readouts? She couldn’t tell if the man was alive or dead.
Light flared silently outside…another shoulder-launched missile strike somewhere close by, she thought. The people who’d shot down LSCP-30 would be closing in pretty quickly now.
“Captain!” Jaclovic’s voice called. “Captain! Are you okay?”
“I’m in one piece. Get the platoon out of here, Gunny! Perimeter defense. On the double!”
One of the square-paned windows of the cockpit’s greenhouse canopy suddenly bore a small, round hole surrounded by a frosting of tiny white cracks. She wondered why she hadn’t heard the shot or the impact—then remembered that she was in vacuum now. No sound. Over her helmet radio, though, she could hear shouted orders, calls, and the hiss and puff of heavy breathing as the platoon scrambled clear of the grounded craft.
The bug must be under attack by UN troops outside. They had to get out and get clear of the wreckage, or risk being trapped inside. The best thing she could do for Booth, she decided, was leave him where he was. If he was dead, there was nothing more she could do; if he was wounded, there still wasn’t much she could do, except arrange to get him inside one of those habs out there as quickly as possible, where his suit could be removed and his wounds treated.
“I’ll be back for you, Ken,” she said, not knowing if he heard her or not. “Just sit tight!”
The deck had folded enough in the crash that she almost didn’t make it, suit, PLSS, and all, through the circular hatch that lead down to the forward end of the bug’s main compartment. There, deck had risen to meet a descending overhead, and she had to crouch low to make her way aft through cramped, near-total darkness, groping for the entrance to the airlock. She switched on the light mounted on the right shoulder of her suit and let the pale circle of illumination it cast flicker along both sides of the compartment. Several still, space-suited bodies lay there, two on the deck, three more still strapped to their bulkhead supports up forward. Lieutenant Machuga was one of those still strapped to his bulkhead support, the front of his suit peeled open in jagged leaves to expose pale bone, glistening black blood already freezing, and a fist-sized hole going clear through the platform at his back and the deck underneath. Next to him was HMC Strigel, the company’s corpsman, his visor shattered. Shrapnel from the missile strike must have sleeted through the forward end of the compartment.
Stopping only to retrieve an ATAR from a bulkhead storage rack, she kept moving aft, squeezing through the misshapen airlock hatch, then through the lock and out onto the still, vast quiet of the Lunar surface, crawling on hands and knees to squeeze through the outer door.
The bug had come down at the edge of the crisscross of trenches and excavated pits, the spider’s legs twisted and snapped by the impact, the frame crumpled badly on one side. Clouds of vapor jetted from a dozen holes in the reaction-mass tanks; as the water escaped into space, it froze, creating clouds of glittering ice particles that gradually settled toward the ground. In the shadows of the crater floor, quite a bit of ice had built up, where water reaction mass had escaped the tanks and frozen almost immediately.
She rose unsteadily to her feet, breathing hard, then leaped for the nearest trench as silently blossoming puffs of dust stitched across the regolith a few meters to her left and black holes appeared as if by magic in the LSCP’s hull metal.
She landed almost on top of three Marines, their reactive camo armor black in the blackness of the ditch. “Shit! Watch what the fuck you’re doing!” one of the Marines barked as she hit his leg. Then he did a clumsy double take, reading name or rank tabs. “Uh, sorry, Captain.”
She ignored the outburst. “Where’s Gunny Jack?”
A black figure crouched farther along the trench raised an arm, signaling. “Over here, Captain.”
“I’m coming to you.”
“Watch your head, ma’am! They’ve got an MG over there somewhere!”
“Roger that!”
She squeezed past the three Marines and moved toward Jaclovic’s position. The trench was a meter deep and only about a meter wide; to stay concealed, she had to crawl on her hands and knees, and even so she wondered if the back of her PLSS was showing enough to make an inviting target.
As she neared Jaclovic, the NCO raised himself above the lip of the trench, aiming his ATAR from the shoulder. The Advanced Technology Assault Rifle employed electronic optics in the sighting mechanism to place a crosshair on the firer’s visor, targeting whatever it was aimed at, but long habit had Jaclovic firing from a perfect kneeling stance, even if his suit and helmet didn’t allow him to sight his weapon directly. He loosed a quick burst of triplet shots, then dropped back behind the cover of the trench as the enemy’s machine gun returned the fire in silent puffs of dust.
“H’lo, Captain,” he said as she dropped to the floor of the trench beside him. “Ain’t we got fun?”
She twisted about, raising her helmet above the rim of the trench. “Where’s the fire coming from? I can’t see.”
“Stay down! Uh, ma’am.” He made a slicing motion with one hand, pointing. “That tall radio mast, call it twelve o’clock. We got a machine gun at about one o’clock, near the big bulldozer, and a slaw in the dirt pile at about eleven. The hab at ten o’clock, I think there’s a guy on top of it spotting. There’s also troops, maybe ten, maybe twelve, covering in the trenches over closer to the habs.”
“Trench warfare!” she said. The thought was almost funny.
“Yeah. Lasers. Spaceships.” He raised himself up again and loosed another silent burst toward the habs. “And we’re back to shootin’ each other from the trenches.”
Carmen unslung the ATAR she’d picked up in the bug, flicked on the optic sight, plugged in her suit connector to get an HUD link, pulled the bolt to chamber a round, and flicked the selector to three-round burst. As Jaclovic took cover again, she rose to her knees, swinging the assault rifle toward the bulldozer where he’d said the machine gun was hidden. A bright green crosshair tracked across her helmet’s visor, showing where she was aimed at the moment. She adjusted the weapon until the crosshairs were centered on the bulldozer. Carmen waited, watching for movement…and then a puff of gray dust exploded across her visor as a round plowed into regolith a few centimeters away. She jerked back down under cover, without having taken the shot.
“Touchy, aren’t they?” she said.
“Gotta watch yourself, Captain. They got us covered six ways from—”
“Incoming!” someone shouted over the channel, and a second later a bright light blossomed from the direction of the grounded LSCP. Bits and pieces of rock and metallic debris showered over the trenches.
“Forgot to tell you, ma’am,” Jaclovic added. “They got slams out there, too.”
“This is fun. Can we work some people over that way, try to get behind them?”
“I sent Second Squad that way soon as we got clear, ma’am. They got pinned…about there. We salvaged one Wyvern from the crash, and both squad lasers, but we haven’t been able to see a target long enough to hit it. Somethin’ else, too.”
“What?”
“From the volume of fire we’ve been taking, I’d say we’re facing more than a handful of troops out there. They’ve got, I don’t know…dozens, hidden in the trenches all along from there…to there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had more people positioned to move in from the flanks or behind. These guys have it organized, and right now, I’d say they have us just about where they want us.”
She rose again, this time simply pointing her assault rifle in the general direction of the bulldozer and clamping her gloved forefinger down on the trigger. The gunfire was silent, of course, but the butt gave a reassuring triple-thump to her shoulder before she dropped behind cover once more. She couldn’t possibly have actually hit anything, but at least the gesture felt good.
“Communications?”
“No problem there. We’ve got an open channel with Second Platoon, on the crater rim about eight klicks that way. And an L-2 satlink to Fra Mauro. But I don’t think either of those are gonna help us.”
“Why not?”
He jerked a gauntleted thumb over his shoulder, toward the habs and the concealed UN soldiers. “Because they’re getting in position to rush us, and there’s not one damned thing we can do about it.”
LSCP-44, Call sign Raven
Picard Ringwall, The Moon
0919 hours GMT
Kaitlin Garroway held the viewer of her electronic imager against her visor, pressing the button that zoomed the view in to maximum magnification. With light enhancement, she could peer right down inside the trenches below, where a large number of black-helmeted figures were massing in huddled-down groups, weapons very much in evidence. Scanning slowly, she noted the main enemy groupings, the gun positions, and even a pair of suited figures atop one of the habs—probably an OP.
“What do you think, Gunny?” she asked. “Forty…fifty of them?”
“At least, ma’am” was Yates’s radioed response. “Looks like they came in on that black transport that just bugged out.”
“Yeah, but from where? Earth? The bastards could’ve warned us!” She shifted back to the trenches, then pivoted slowly, zeroing in on the enemy OP atop one of the habs. “Pap! You on the slaw?”
“Hot and ready, Captain.”
“Target. Two UN spotters on top of the hab at one-one-three-zero o’clock.” The lack of a Lunar magnetic field was proving to be a nuisance. Giving firing coordinates by arbitrary clock-face references, instead of by compass degrees, was considerably less than precise. “Take ’em down!”
Fortunately, the targets stood out like blue-headed bugs on an empty white dinner plate. “I’m on ’em, Skipper.”
Both UN troops were studying the Marine positions in the trenches, using electronic imagers like Kaitlin’s own. One suddenly spun around, the imager flying from his grasp, a silvery cloud of vapor enveloping his chest. The second UN soldier turned, reaching out…then he, too, toppled, his blue helmet spraying a white jet of fast-freezing vapor.
“Nice shooting, Paps. Two up, two down.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant. Like they say, reach out and touch someone.” The expression was a very old one, still common among Marine snipers and slaw gunners. Like so many other favorite expressions in the Corps, no one knew where it had come from or who’d said it first.
A bright point of light streaked through the darkness from the crater rim, slamming with a flash into the bulldozer that seemed to be providing shelter for a number of enemy troops. Seconds later, another missile was sky-borne, this one zigzagging up from the crater floor and slamming into the hilltop, a hundred meters to Kaitlin’s right. A second enemy missile followed the first, this from a different position. The explosion flashed just short of LSCP-44. The landing craft was shielded from direct line of sight from the base, but a smart missile—or a lucky shot—would find that particularly vulnerable target before long.
“Man down!” someone yelled over the platoon channel. “Man down! Corpsman!”
“We can’t slug it out with them for long,” Kaitlin said. “They’ve got too much firepower.” She pressed the button on the left forearm of her suit, opening the com channel to Alfa’s Second Platoon. “Falcon! Falcon! This is Raven. Do you copy, over?”
“Raven, this is Falcon,” Captain Lee’s voice came back immediately. “Go ahead.”
“We’ve got a situation here, Captain. Bravo First is pinned down at the base under heavy fire, their bug shot to hell. We’re on the crater rim eight klicks to the west, also taking heavy fire. Enemy is present in force, repeat, in force.”
She realized that her voice had been steadily climbing in pitch as she spoke. She stopped, drew a deep breath, and tried to bring her voice back under control. Another shoulder-launched missile streaked up out of the crater, angling almost straight toward her before it whipped low overhead. She crouched low as the blast went off somewhere at her back.
“It looks as though the enemy is preparing to rush First Platoon,” she continued. “We need help, fast. Can you comply, over?”
“Raven, Falcon. We’re about five minutes out, still over the Mare Tranquillitatus. Can you hold that long, over?”
“Falcon, Raven. Looks like we’ll have to, doesn’t it? Come as fast as you can. Raven out.”
“On our way, Raven. Falcon out.”
Five minutes…an eternity in combat.
The UN troops were concentrating their fire on First Platoon, and, despite the fire they were taking from the crater rim, it was clear they were going to try a charge, probably within the next minute or two. Kaitlin knew that she had just two choices…to sit up here on her ass and watch half of her rifle company be overrun, or…
She changed channels on her com. “Listen up, everybody! This is Garroway! Second Squad! Hold your positions. Maintain fire on the enemy. First Squad! Back to the bug, on the double! Get into the airlock, and stay there! Lieutenant Dow! Are you on the line?”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant. I’m here.”
“Warm up the fire and stand by to boost. We’re going on a little hop.”
“Reactor coming up. Pressure okay. We can bounce in two minutes.”
“Make it a minute thirty.”
“Whatcha got in mind, Lieutenant?” Yates asked.
“Making it all or nothing, Gunny. The captain is going to get wiped off the map if we don’t break the UNdies’ attack.”
“Roger that, Lieutenant. Okay, Marines! Hustle! Hustle! I wanna see nothing but amphibious green blurs!” They started trotting back toward the LSCP, as other Marines closed in from different directions, crowding up the debarkation ramp and into the craft’s airlock.
“If I may suggest, ma’am,” Yates said, pausing at the foot of the ramp, “you should stay here and direct the covering fire.”
“Negative, Gunny. If I’m about to pull something stupid, I want to be there to take the blame.”
She heard the grin. “Understood, Lieutenant. Understood.”
Together, they hurried up the ramp and squeezed through into the airlock, where First Squad was waiting.
Seventy seconds later, Dow radioed a crisp warning, then Kaitlin’s knees almost gave way as the LSCP boosted skyward from the crater rim.
Forza di Intervento Rapido
Picard Base, The Moon
0921 hours GMT
Capitano Arnaldo Tessitore, of the FIR’s Forza Spazia rose from behind the shelter of the excavation he’d been crouching in, holding his imager to his visor. The second enemy landing craft was rising from its hiding place, a clear and easy target less than eight and a half kilometers away. “Zhang!” he shouted. “Target…above the crater rim!”
“I have, Captain,” the PRC lieutenant replied in his thickly accented Italian. Tessitore listened as Zhang sing-songed a barrage of orders in Mandarin to the Chinese soldiers who’d just arrived at Picard aboard the Millénium, and wished again the mission planners back in Geneva had made up their Lunar Expeditionary Force out of troops from a single country. Too many nationalities, too many languages might have been great for the public image of a truly United Nations, but it guaranteed confusion and misunderstanding.
Two PRC troops shouldering massive Type 80 launchers rose to their feet, loosing their missiles in almost the same silent instant of flame. One of the men pitched backward a second later, freezing vapor spilling from a black-ringed hole low and in the center of his suit’s cuirass, a victim of the all-too-deadly and accurate laser fire from the nearby trenches; the shot was too late to stop the launch, however. Twin stars, bright as worklights, zig-zagged away toward the rising spacecraft.
Long before the missiles could hit their target, however, the American craft had vanished below the crater rim, moving under full thrust back toward the west.
Tessitore blinked, lowering the imager. They were retreating, flying back the way they’d come! The missiles, their radar lock broken, detonated in a pair of flashes against the crater rim.
Had that last laser shot really come from the trenches near the crashed ship? Or had it come from higher up and to the left, from the crater rim? No…it must have been from the crashed vehicle. The enemy wouldn’t have abandoned a laser team up on that ridge, with only their backpack PLSS units to keep them breathing.
“Captain. We should use chance! Hit enemy now!”
“Affermativo, Tenente.” He’d been holding off, hoping to break the enemy with the sheer overwhelming force of massed firepower from prepared positions, or wait for their air supplies to give out while his own troops recharged, a few at a time, in the habs, or, at worst, to work forward through the labyrinth of trenches…but Zhang was right. Enemy reinforcements might be on the way, and they had to strike now, before the battle spread out of his control. The bombardment of the past several minutes must have the enemy troops dazed and completely disorganized. One quick, sudden rush, and it would all be over. “Go! Go!”
“Zou! Zou!” Zhang yelled. “Kuai! Qianjin!”
To either side of Tessitore’s position, dozens of suited figures rose from the trenches and the shelter of heavy equipment scattered across the crater-floor site; all wore black space helmets, instead of the usual UN light blue, and each wore the bright red arm patch marking them as members of the Hangkong Tuji Budui, the PRC’s elite Air/ Space Assault Force. “San Marcos!” Tessitore called, summoning his own FIR troops by the name of their parent regiment, the San Marco Marines. “Forward!”
He scrambled up out of the excavation, then hesitated as his own troops rose from hiding all about him. He drew in a deep breath, then waved his Beretta M-31 assault rifle above his head. “Il più forte!” he shouted. That battle cry of the San Marco Marines had first been spoken by Gabriele D’Annunzio, speaking of the regiment’s defense of the Cortelazzo Bridgehead in 1917. “The strongest!”
Still waving the rifle, he started lumbering toward the enemy position, marked by the crumpled, ice-and-vapor-wreathed shape of their crashed lander a hundred meters away. His suit was clumsy and made running difficult, but once he got moving, it was mostly a matter of guiding himself under its inertia. He reached a trench and sailed across, skimming above a surface of fine, gray powder; a Chinese soldier to his right suddenly folded over but kept drifting forward for several meters before he finally hit the ground in an explosion of dust and cartwheeling legs and arms. Things—people—fell slowly in the Moon’s one-sixth gravity, and the wild charge held the slow-motion quality of a dream.
His heart pounding with exertion and fear, Tessitore kept bounding ahead, unable to swerve left or right or to stop, moving on sheer inertia, though the terror that at any moment his suit or—far worse!—his helmet visor would be breached, emptying his air into space, hammered at his brain. Enemy troops were rising ahead, aiming their assault rifles, and more UN troops were falling. Perhaps it would have been better, after all, to have tried working ahead through the trenches…but, no, that would have taken too long and raised the risk of having his troops pinned down as badly as the enemy was now. No, this was better. One quick rush…One quick rush…
And then still more Chinese and Italian troops were falling; one of his men, the red-and-gold emblem of the San Marco Marines displayed on his arm, suddenly stumbled as his backpack PLSS exploded in whirling fragments and fast-freezing vapor. That shot had come from behind….
He bounced to a stop, taking several long, dust-plowing steps to slow, turning in place as he came to a halt. Behind them, almost directly over the point where he’d started the charge, an American spacecraft, an ugly, angular, spindle-legged contraption, was drifting out of a black sky, descending gently toward a landing. A space-suited figure was visible in the open airlock; dust blasted from beneath the settling lander as plasma thrusters chewed into regolith.
“San Marcos!” he shouted over the regiment’s channel. “Take cover! Take cover!”
Other UN troops were noticing the incoming spacecraft now, stopping in their tracks, jumping into nearby trenches. A few dropped their weapons and raised their hands, surrendering.
The Chinese troops, Tessitore noted, continuing their blind charge, were almost to the American lines now, but there were far fewer of them than before. Zhang had started the battle with thirty-two men; fewer than ten were still on their feet as they sprinted the last few meters to grapple with the enemy.
