The Complete Legacy Trilogy: Star Corps, Battlespace, Star Marines

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King missed the exasperation in Ramsey’s mental tone—or chose to ignore it. “Do you think we’ll have to use the cork?”

“Too early to tell, sir.”

“Damn it, Ramsey, you’re no help. Who’s the ARLT commander. … Warhurst, is it?”

“Yes, sir—”

“How do I raise him directly? Ah … there’s the command channel. …”

Ramsey felt King opening up the private link with Captain Warhurst.

“Warhurst? This is General King. You are not to use the cork unless I give explicit orders to that effect.”

Ramsey didn’t hear Warhurst’s reply. Abruptly, he pulled out of the noumenon, returning his full awareness to Derna’s CIC. King was floating on the other side of the compartment, secured in his harness. “General King. A private word, sir? Outside the noumenon?”

After a moment, King’s eyes blinked, then opened. Ramsey unsnapped his harness and pushed off from his console, drifting across the compartment to a point near King.

“This is highly irregular, Colonel,” King told him as Ramsey caught a hand grip on the overhead and pulled himself to a halt.

“And everything we say over the noumenal link is recorded by Cassius and the Derna’s AI,” Ramsey replied. “I wanted this to be private.”

King arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Sir, we have to let our people down there do their job. Anything else is micromanagement bullshit and is going to jeopardize the mission. Let’s let it play out and see what happens. Sir.”

“I could order you to stand down, you know,” King told him. “Insubordination! Those aren’t our people on Ishtar, Colonel. They’re the Marine Corps’ people, and since I am the senior Marine officer within eight light-years, they are my people. Is that understood?”

“With all due respect, General, that’s not how the chain of command works. As regimental commander, I have authority over my units, and that includes Captain Warhurst and the ARLT. You have overall command of the MIEU, and it is your job, therefore, to determine overall strategies that you then implement through me. Sir.”

“Are you telling me my job, Colonel?”

“I am reminding the general that our people at the LZ know what they’re doing and that micromanagement will only confuse, slow, and hamper operations. Sir.”

King opened his mouth as if to argue, then seemed to think better of it. “The success of this mission, our very survival, depends on Warhurst and the ARLT, Colonel. At the same time, however, my orders require me to secure certain potential assets on Ishtar, assets of considerable value to … to Earth. Using a cork would guarantee the destruction of that planetary defense complex down there. But if we can find some sort of control center inside that thing, or access the computer that controls it. …”

“The ARLT officers and senior NCOs have all been well-briefed, sir. And we have ten people down there with special download programming for dealing with any instrumentation they may find. If there’s any way to capture the facility intact, they’ll manage it. If not. …” He shrugged, the motion turning him slightly in zero g. He pulled himself back to avoid bumping the general with his feet. “If not, they use the cork in another four hours. That’s the plan, as we all agreed to it.”

“God help us if this goes wrong, Colonel. God help us all.”

King, Ramsey noticed, was sweating heavily, the droplets of moisture beading up and drifting through the air like tiny, gleaming words when he moved his head. He’s terrified, Ramsey thought. What the hell is going on with this guy?

ARLT Section Dragon Three

Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar

1715 hours ST

Garroway had stopped feeling much of anything. His emotions during the past few minutes had seesawed wildly between terror and elation, and Hollingwood’s death had left him feeling utterly spent. He watched in numb emptiness as a spidery-looking walker picked its way over the steaming piles of Ahannu bodies and vanished into the gateway crevice.

“Garroway,” Valdez said. “You okay?”

“I … think so.”

“Brandt bought it. I’m moving Sergeant Foster to the PG team. From now on, you’re with my fire team. Understand?”

He nodded, then realized his squad leader couldn’t see the nod in his helmet. “Uh, yes, Gunny. Aye aye.”

“Good man.”

The import of Valdez’s words was only now beginning to sink in. Second Squad had been organized as four fire teams of three Marines apiece. His fire team had consisted of Hollingwood and Sergeant Cheryl Foster. Lance Corporal Brandt had been teamed, along with PFC Cawley, with Honey Deere and his plasma gun. Brandt’s death put a hole in the plasma gun fire team, which needed three experienced operators—gunner, assistant gunner, and spotter/security. Foster was filling that hole, which left Garroway without a fireteam. Valdez’s trio, called the squad command team, included Dunne and Pressley. Now he was replacing Pressley in the SCT.

The reshuffle made sense, he supposed, given the need for three experienced hands on the plasma gun. Still, he felt a nagging worry that Valdez was doing it this way just to keep a close eye on him.

“TBC in place and ready to fire,” Valdez called over the tac net. “Fire in the hole!” An instant later the crevice in the mountainside lit up with a fierce, blue-white light. The shock wave washing over the Marines crouching outside was as thunderous as the detonation from Krakatoa’s peak.

Rock was still clattering down the mountainside when Lieutenant Kerns shouted, “Go! Go! Go!”

Garroway scrambled to his feet and advanced toward the crevice. “Mind the walls,” Valdez warned. “They’re still hot.”

Hot enough, indeed, to melt any part of Garroway’s armor that happened to touch them, though the special insulation on his boots would let him cross the entrance floor without burning his feet. The rock underfoot was oddly plastic, clinging to him like heavy mud with each step. The Thermal Breaching Charge, teleoperated into the gateway by a small remote walker, had momentarily concentrated the heat of a small star against a portion of the blocking door less than a millimeter across. Much of the gate, as well as several tons of surrounding rock, had been turned into plasma and a great deal of energy, leaving behind a larger, gaping hole with walls and floor still incandescent. Air roared into the tunnel as the Marines filed through, entering the larger chamber beyond.

“We’re looking for a control center of some kind,” Valdez told her squad. “But stay alert. These passageways’ll be full of Frogs.”

Garroway thought-clicked his light and heat sensitivity up a few notches. It was dark in the high-vaulted cavern beyond the entrance, with only a dim, reddish glow filtering down from somewhere high overhead. With enhanced vision, he could dimly see the far walls of the place, black and rippled, as though the rock had momentarily flowed like water before hardening into something like glass.

The TBC’s effects hadn’t reached this far inside the mountain, he knew. These chambers in the heart of Krakatoa must have been melted out of the solid volcanic rock millennia ago by a technology at least as advanced as what humankind currently possessed. He overlaid his surroundings with a virtual image drawn from the maps of the tunnel complex stored in his helmet memory, and dim green ghosts of passages and rooms and chambers floated in the darkness around him, beyond the shadowy rock walls. Hot spots from his IR sensors pinpointed places where some of those tunnels opened into the main chamber. Other Marines were already fanning out in several directions to seal those potentially lethal doorways.

He kept looking ahead, though, wondering if some of those tunnels up there connected with the core of the mountain. Could the Frogs vent some of the titanic fury of their big weapon into these passageways? Not a pleasant thought …

“Second Squad,” Valdez called. “With me!”

Garroway trotted along after Valdez and Dunne, trying to look in all directions at once. This was a wonderful place for an ambush, if there was going to be one. …

It was then that a portion of the chamber wall dissolved and the Marines were enveloped by hordes of Ahannu warriors.

And this time they had no hope of help from air support.

ARLT Command Section, Dragon

One

Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar

1725 hours ST

“They’re coming! Open fire!”

“Third Squad! First Squad! Form perimeter! Second Squad, get your asses the hell back here! You’re going to be cut off!”

“Mathorne! Where’s Mathorne?”

“Get those PGs firing, damn it!”

“Corpsman! Marine down!”

“Second Squad! Damn it, you’re being cut off!”

Captain Warhurst listened to the excited shouts and commands coming from inside the mountain and wondered if he could pull the plug.

The “plug” was a Mark XVII laser-plasma-fired backpack fusion demolition device. There were six of them assigned to the ARLT, and four were currently being worn by four different Marines inside the mountain—Gunnery Sergeants Mathorne and Valdez, Staff Sergeant Ostergaard, and Lieutenant Kerns. The remaining two were stored on the lander modules for Dragon One and Dragon Six. Any or all could be detonated by the Marine carrying one, with the appropriate firing codes provided by one of the LM AIs, by Warhurst himself from Lander One, or by the Command Constellation still on board Derna. It was believed that one device, with a yield of 0.7 megaton, detonated inside Objective Krakatoa, would collapse enough of the entire mountain to render the Ahannu planetary defense complex useless.

The plug was decidedly an option of last resort, one to be used only if there was no other way to protect the incoming transports. The things could be given a time delay or triggered immediately. The hope, of course, was that one of the Marines could leave a warhead where it would do enough good and give the ARLT time to evacuate to a safe distance, but no one in on the planning for Operation Spirit of Humankind believed that escape would be possible. The plugs turned the ARLT assault into a suicide mission.

Worse, from Warhurst’s point of view, only the Marines actually wearing the deadly packs knew what they carried. The rest of the Marines down there didn’t know, and that was just plain wrong, Warhurst thought. A man or woman who was going to die when a friend thought-clicked a command trigger ought to know what was going to happen … and that instantaneous incineration meant success for the rest of the invasion.

But knowledge of the Mark XVIIs had been locked under need-to-know restrictions. Someone higher up the chain of command had decided that knowing about that part of the operation might degrade unit combat efficiency.

That still didn’t make it right.

Four warheads were inside the underground complex now, totaling 2.8 megatons. If he was ordered to fire those warheads in the next few minutes … could he? No problem if everyone inside was dead when he punched it, but combat rarely worked out that neatly. There would be survivors in there, not to mention the Marines still outside the mountain who might be caught in the blast. None of them would know. …

And as the battle inside the mountain increased in fury, Warhurst knew the moment of decision was almost on him.

Damn the waiting … and damn the fact that he was stuck out here, instead of inside that mountain with his people.

18

25 JUNE 2148

ARLT Section Dragon Three

Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar

1727 hours ST

Second Squad had been ahead of the others when the Ahannu warriors began boiling out of hidden entrances on all sides of the underground chamber. As a black sea of leaping, thronging figures swirled around them, they were in serious danger of being cut off from the ARLT main body.

Garroway dropped to one knee between Well Dunne and Gunny Valdez, pumping 20mm grenades into the horde of attackers, using single shots to conserve his dwindling ammo. Many of these new Ahannu, he noticed, were different from the ones outside—taller, more muscular, and much darker in color, the green-black of their skin making their large, golden eyes even more prominent in the dim light.

These attackers, in fact, were quite different from those he’d studied in downloads on board the Derna. A different species? There wasn’t any data on the topic one way or another. Their body armor looked heavier, more ornate … and seemed to provide better protection from shrapnel and laser bursts.

But they could still be killed. Explosions chopped and tore through the packed ranks of the attackers. The onslaught wavered as the Ahannu in the lead ranks hesitated, unwilling to press in closer to the deadly ring of fire laid down by the hard-pressed Marines.

Then Garroway’s M-12 chimed a tone indicating it was out of rounds.

He reached for his belt pack and pulled out his last forty-round magazine. “I’m almost out of grenades,” he told the others. “One mag left!”

“Same here,” Vinita added.

“I’m out,” Chuck Cawley said. “Nothing left but light!”

The attacking wall surged closer. And beyond the massed ranks, Garroway saw a larger shadow, a hulking, humanoid form rising above the smaller Ahannu like a giant, with massive forearms, stooped shoulders, and gold eyes tiny compared to the broad swath of face, almost hidden deep within bony sockets. It carried a long and clumsy-looking weapon, another gauss gun of some kind, but so long that no smaller Ahannu could have wielded it.

“My God!” Garvey screamed. “What the hell is that?”

“Just kill it!” Foster barked. “Pour it on!”

Laser fire snapped and flashed across the monster’s heavily armored form, eliciting a scream like doomsday. It raised its weapon; Garroway felt the high-velocity round shriek low overhead, felt the concussion behind him.

“Second Squad!” Honey Deere yelled. “Hit the deck!”

Garroway threw himself forward, landing facedown on the rock floor. An instant later lightning snapped and glared overhead with a stuttering burst of thunder. Outside, he’d not noticed the squad’s plasma gun in action in all the swirling noise and confusion. Inside this enclosed chamber, however, the rapid-fire bolts of charged plasma banished darkness in a dazzling explosion of light and sound.

Garroway felt the noise fade out as his helmet compensated, and his visual feed darkened as the input filters snapped in. Deere’s plasma gun loosed bolts in such rapid succession that the effect was of a single flickering bolt of lightning.

And whatever that lightning touched vanished, exploding in clouds of vapor and sprays of blood and charred tissue. The giant Ahannu collapsed in a heap; smaller Ahannu were scrambling back, falling over one another in their rush to escape.