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Star Corps
Ian Douglas
In the future, earth's warriors have conquered the heavens. But on a distant world, humanity is in chains…Many millennia ago, the human race was enslaved by the An – a fearsome alien people whose cruel empire once spanned the galaxies, until they were defeated and consigned to oblivion. But a research mission to the planet Ishtar has made a terrifying – and fatal – discovery: the Ahanu, ancestors of the former masters, live on, far from the reach of Earth – born weapons and technology … and tens of thousands of captive human souls still bow to their iron will.Now Earth's Interstellar Marine Expeditionary Unit must undertake a rescue operation as improbable as it is essential to humankind's future, embarking on a ten-year voyage to a hostile world to face an entrenched enemy driven by dreams of past glory and intent once more on domination. For those who, for countless generations, have known nothing but toil and subjugation must be granted, at all costs, the precious gift entitled to all of their star-traveling kind: freedom!
Table of Contents
Title Page (#ue4b97c6d-aab3-50cd-bb06-9377a71a6583)
Eight Light Years From Home (#u99d10621-37e8-51fa-80df-f8dcb3170877)
Prologue (#u9be99400-d987-5ec9-a1cc-98bd2fe85a26)
Chapter 1 (#ua7186861-da64-5a9c-a27c-f9b7bb1f3484)
Chapter 2 (#uc5662cdf-74ee-5c6e-85dd-047c42e45dcc)
Chapter 3 (#ube58ee9b-0111-591a-8a88-b1fc6aa9b436)
Chapter 4 (#u5ee5e70d-b12a-5aa0-8166-bbda9e0aa799)
Chapter 5 (#ufed1a171-84ad-5fdb-88c6-d6c55127d861)
Chapter 6 (#ubefe974b-8a45-5b14-af53-ade2c96dedb9)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Books in the Legacy Trilogy by Ian Douglas (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHT LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME
“All is quiet on the perimeter, Captain,” Aiken said. “Sounds like the Frogs’re pretty riled up in the ’ville, though. Do you think they’ll attack us?”
“It could happen,” Pearson replied. “The ambassador still hasn’t answered Geremelet’s ultimatum.”
“They’re not talking about … surrendering, are they?”
“Not that I’ve heard, Master Sergeant. Don’t worry, it won’t come to that.”
“Yeah. The Marines never surrender.”
“That’s what they say. Keep a sharp watch.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Aiken turned and looked into the southern sky, where the first stars were beginning to appear. Eight light-years from home had not much altered the familiar constellations, though the dome of the sky was strangely canted against the cardinal directions. There was a bright star, however, in the otherwise dim and unremarkable constellation Scutum, not far from the white beacon of Fomalhaut.
Sol. Earth’s sun. As always, the sight of that star sent a shiver down Aiken’s spine. So far away, in both space and time.
Eight point three light-years. Help from home could not possibly arrive in time …
Prologue
12 MAY 2138
Firebase Frog
New Summer
Ishtar, Llalande 21185 IID
72:26 hours Local Time
Master Sergeant Gene Aiken leaned against the sandbag barricade and stared out across the Saimi-Id River. Smoke rose from a half-dozen buildings, staining the pale green of the early evening sky. Marduk, vast and swollen, aglow with deep-swirling bands and storms in orange-amber light, hung immense and sullen, as ever just above the western horizon. The gas giant’s slender crescent bowed up and away from the horizon where the red sun had just set; its night side glowed with dull red heat as flickering pinpoints, like twinkling stars, marked the pulse and strobe of continent-size lightning storms deep within that seething atmosphere.
The microimplants in Aiken’s eyes turned brooding red dusk to full light, while his battle helmet’s tactical feed displayed ranges, angles, and compass bearing superimposed on his view, as well as flagging thermal and movement targets in shifting boxes and cursor brackets.
The sergeant studied Marduk’s blood-glow for a moment, then looked away. At his back, with a shrill whine of servomotors, the sentry tower’s turret swiveled and depressed, matching the movements of his head.
He could hear the chanting and the drumming, off to the east, as the crowds gathered at the Pyramid of the Eye. It was, he thought, going to be a very long night indeed.
“How’s it going, Master Sergeant?”
Aiken didn’t turn, not when he was linked in with the sentry. His battle feed had warned him of Captain Pearson’s approach.
“All quiet on the perimeter, Captain,” he replied. “Sounds like the Frogs’re pretty riled up down in the ’ville, though.”
“Word just came through from the embassy compound,” Pearson said. “The rebel abos have seized control in a hundred villages. The ‘High Emperor of the Gods’ is calling for calm and understanding from his people.” The way he said it, the title was a sneer.
Abos, abs, aborigines; Frogs, or Froggers. All were terms for the dominant species of Ishtar … ways of dehumanizing them.
Which was a damned interesting idea when you realized how not human the Ahannu were.
“Do you think they’ll attack us?”
“It could happen. The ambassador still hasn’t answered Geremelet’s ultimatum.”
A gossamer flitted in the ruby light, twisting and shifting, a delicate ribbon of iridescence. Aiken lifted the muzzle of his 2120 and caught the frail creature, watching it quiver against the hard black plastic of the weapon’s barrel in bursts of rainbow color. Other gossamers danced and jittered in the gathering darkness, delicate sparkles of bioluminescence.
“They’re not talking about … surrendering, are they?”
“Not that I’ve heard, Master Sergeant. Don’t worry. It won’t come to that.”
“Yeah. The Marines never surrender.”
“That’s what they say. Keep a sharp watch. There’ve been reports of frogger slaves trying to gain entrance at some of the other bases. They might be human, but we can’t trust them.”
“Aye aye, sir.” The Ahannu slaves, descendants of humans taken from Earth millennia ago, gave Aiken the creeps. No way was he letting them through his part of the perimeter.
“Good man. Give a yell if you need help.”
“You don’t need to worry about that, sir.” He hesitated, looking up at the vast and seething globe of Marduk. “Hey, Captain?”
“What?”
“Some of the guys were having a friendly argument the other night. Is Ishtar a planet or a freakin’ moon?”
Pearson chuckled. “Look it up on the local net.”
“I did. Didn’t understand that astrological crap.”
“Astronomy, not astrology. And it’s both. Marduk is a gas giant, a planet circling the Llalande sun. Ishtar is a moon of Marduk … but if it’s planet-sized and has its own internally generated magnetic field and atmosphere and everything else, might as well call it a planet, right?”
“I guess. Thanks, sir.”
Pearson walked off into the gloom, leaving Aiken feeling very much alone. He turned and looked into the southern sky, where the first stars were beginning to appear. Eight light-years from home had not much altered the familiar constellations, though the dome of the sky was strangely canted against the cardinal directions. There was a bright star, however, in the otherwise dim and unremarkable constellation Scutum, not far from the white beacon of Fomalhaut. Aiken might not know astronomy from astrology, but he’d pulled downloads enough to know what he was looking at now.
Sol. Earth’s sun. As always, the sight of that star sent a small shiver down Aiken’s spine. So far away, in both space and time …
Eight point three light-years. Help from home could not possibly arrive in time.
1
2 JUNE 2138
Giza Complex
Kingdom of Allah, Earth
0525 hours Zulu
The trio of TAV Combat Personnel Carrier transports came in low across the Mediterranean Sea, avoiding the heavily populated coastal areas around El Iskandariya by crossing the beach between El Hammam and El Alamein. Skimming the Western Desert at such low altitudes that their slipstreams sent rooster tails of sand exploding into the pale predawn sky, the TAVs swung sharply south of the isolated communities huddled along the Wadi El Natrun, dumping velocity in a series of weaving banks and turns. Ahead, silhouetted against the brightening eastern horizon and the lights of Cairo, their objective rose like three flat-sided mountains above the undulating dunes.
The defenders would know that something was happening; even with stealth architecture, the three transatmospheric vehicles had scorched their radar signatures in ion reentry trails across the skies of Western Europe as they’d descended from suborbit, and the mullahs of the True Mahdi had been expecting something of the sort. The only question was how long it would take them to react.
Captain Martin Warhurst, CO of Bravo Company, sat hunched over in his travel seat in the rear of CPC Delta’s red-lit troop compartment, crowded torso to armored torso with the men and women of 1st Squad, First Platoon. There were no windows in the heavily armored compartment, no viewscreens or news panels, but a data feed painted a small, brightly colored image within his Helmet Data Overlay, showing the outside world as viewed through a camera in the TAV’s blunt nose.
There wasn’t a lot to see, in fact—abstract patterns of light and darkness wheeling this way and back with the TAV’s approach maneuvers. The area beyond the Giza complex, along the west bank of the Nile, was brightly lit. The extensive archeological digs behind the Sphinx and between the two northern pyramids, those of Khufu and Khafre, were bathed in harsh spotlights reflected from aerostats hovering high above the ground-based beam projectors.
He knew the mission orders, knew the lay of the land and the location of the company’s objectives, but it was almost impossible to make sense of what he was seeing on his HDO display. Balls of yellow and red light floated up from the ground—fire from enemy antiaircraft positions. Colored lines and symbols glowed among alphanumerics identifying targets, way points, ranges, and bearings. His cranialink provided analysis, based on data jacked through from the CPC’s combat computer. He could see the area marked as the platoon’s drop-off point, midway between the Sphinx and Khafre’s pyramid.
“Captain Warhurst,” the phlegmatic, female voice of the TAV’s AI pilot said in his helmet receiver. “Thirty seconds. Hot LZ.”
“I see it,” Warhurst replied. His grip tightened on his weapon, a General Electric LR-2120 Sunbeam pulse laser, with its M-12 underbarrel 20mm RPG launcher and data hotlink to his Mark VII armor. He’d been in the Marines for six years and made captain two years ago, but this would be his first time in combat, his first hot drop, his first time in command with a live enemy.
God, don’t let me screw it up. …
The TAVs made a final course adjustment, shrieking low above the sands between the middle and southern pyramids, their dead-black hulls slipping through crisscrossing targeting radar beams like ghosts, evading hard locks. Air brakes unfolded like ungainly wings as their noses came up, and billows of sand exploded from the hard-driving plasma thrusters arrayed at wing roots and bellies.
“Hold on,” the AI’s voice said, as deceleration tugged at Warhurst’s gut and the steel deck tilted sharply beneath his booted feet. “We’re going in.”
“Hang onto your lunches, boys and girls,” he called over First Platoon’s comm channel. “We’re grounding!”
A jolt … a moment of suspense and silence … and then another, harder jolt as the TAV decelerated on shrieking thrusters to a slow-drifting hover. With a shrill whine of hydraulics, the first CPC was extruded from the side of the TAV’s fuselage on unfolding davits as raw noise banged and shrieked inside the sealed troop compartment. Plenum thrusters already spooling howled now as all four onboard hovercraft personnel carriers swung free of the floating TAV and detached their cables. Sand blasted around the hovercraft as they floated half a meter above the surface, skittering sideways to clear the overhang of their huge, black transport while the TAV engaged full thrusters and rose clear of the drop zone. “Good luck, First Platoon,” the AI pilot’s voice announced.
“We’re clear of the TAV, Captain!” Lieutenant Schulman, the CPC commander, yelled over the vehicle’s comm system. Hammer blows clanked and pinged and sang from the hull outside. They were taking small-arms fire. “Objective in sight, range two-three-five. Moving!”
