The 18th Race: Book 02 - In All Directions Read online

  The18th Race

  Book II

  IN ALL DIRECTIONS

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  In All Directions

  PROLOG

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  David Sherman

  DTF Publications

  Howell, NJ

  PUBLISHED BY

  DTF Publications

  an imprint of Dark Quest, LLC

  Neal Levin, Publisher

  23 Alec Drive,

  Howell, New Jersey 07731

  www.darkquestbooks.com

  Copyright ©2014, David Sherman

  “At the Wall” Art Copyright ©2014, Mike McPhail

  “Second Wave” Art Copyright ©2014, Mike McPhail

  ISBN (trade paper): 978-1-937051-92-1

  All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

  All persons, places, and events in this book are fictitious and any

  resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyediting: Keith R.A. DeCandido

  Design: Mike and Danielle McPhail

  Cover Art: Mike McPhail, McP Digital Graphics

  www.mcp-concepts.com

  www.milscifi.com

  This book is dedicated to the memory of:

  Hospital Apprentice First Class

  David E. Hayden

  Awarded the Medal of Honor

  While serving with 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines

  Battle of Saint-Mihiel

  September 15, 1918

  On being told that his regiment was surrounded at Koto-ri

  during the withdrawal from the Chosin Resevoir,

  Colonel Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller,

  commander of the 1st Marine Regiment,

  is reputed to have said,

  “We’ve got them right where we want them.

  Now we can shoot in all directions!”

  Acknowledgements

  I want to thank the members of 17th Street Writers of Fort Lauderdale for their very helpful comments during the writing of In All Directions, particularly Anita, Christopher, Fatima, Gregory, Mona, Pat, Roy, and Stu—the irregulars.

  PROLOG

  A wormhole, 30 AU from the Semi-Autonomous World Troy

  A non-human fleet began disgorging from the wormhole.

  Because of its location before the Scattered Disc of Troy’s system, and due to the fact that the fleet waited until all of its ships were assembled, it was nearly a month before the human fleets close to the planet noticed it.

  Chapter 1

  Firebase Zion, Company I, Third Battalion, 1st Marines, West Shapland, Semi-Autonomous World Troy

  “First squad up!” Sergeant James Martin called as he approached his squad’s area. Two nervous-looking strangers carrying rifles and full field packs followed him. The packs looked new.

  It took little more than a minute for the ten Marines of his squad to gather in front of their leader. They cast curious glances at the new men.

  “Listen up,” Martin said. “We’re a skosh bit under strength. Or we were. This is PFC William Horton.” He indicated one of the strangers who stood off to one side behind him.” He’s the replacement for Zion.” A cloud briefly washed across his face at his mention of the Marine who’d been killed in an earlier action. He looked at Corporal William Button, the second fire team leader. “Can’t give him to you, Bill. Two Williams in the same fire team might make for confusion.” To Horton, he said, “The William we’ve already got has been here longer, and he’s got stripes on you. So if we use first names, you’re Billy. Got that?”

  Horton grimaced, but nodded and said, “All right, Sergeant, I’m Billy. But I’d rather just be ‘Horton’.”

  “Good, that’s settled. Mackie, he’s replacing a man from your fire team, that makes him yours.”

  “But Sergeant Martin,” Corporal John Mackie objected, “Zion was in first fire team, I’ve got third.”

  “Shitcan that, Mackie. What was first fire team is now third. You and Orndoff are still in the same fire team, and you’re short-handed. I already gave you Cafferata, now you get Horton to get back to full strength. No more crap. Got it?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Mackie said. “You,” he pointed a finger at Horton, then at his feet, “over here.” He ignored the look Martin gave him.

  “Continuing,” Martin said, “Button, you get PFC Herbert Preston. Go,” he told Preston, and gestured toward Corporal William Button, the leader of second fire team.

  Martin looked at his squad, at full strength for the first time since their initial combat on Troy. “You’re probably wondering where these replacements came from. No, more Marines haven’t joined us. Lieutenant Colonel Davis is reassigning support personnel to keep the rifle companies up to strength. Horton was a clerk in the battalion headquarters company, and Preston was a mechanic in the battalion motor pool.”

  He raised a hand and patted the air to quell any protests before they were voiced. “As you were, people,” he said loudly. “No matter what their duty was yesterday, they’re Marines. Remember, every Marine is a rifleman. It’s been like that ever since Marines were climbing the rigging of wooden ships on water seas and firing down at the decks of enemy ships, shooting enemy officers and cannoneers. Every Marine goes to the rifle range every year to fire for requalification, so you know that they know how to shoot.”

  “But do they know how to duck?” Lance Corporal Hermann Kuchneister blurted.

  “Don’t sweat it, they’ll catch on in a hurry,” Corporal Joseph Vittori said.

  “Duck, hell,” Mackie said, looking askance at Horton. “Do they know how to snoop and poop?”

  “As you were!” Martin roared. “They’re Marines, they’ve been trained. They know what to do.”

  “Trained but inexperienced,” Lance Corporal Cafferata whispered to Mackie.

  Martin ignored that and other quiet remarks from members of the squad. “They’re with us now,” he said. “We’re back up to strength. I want you to return to your positions and get acquainted with the new Marines.” His mouth twisted before he added, “Your lives might depend on how well you know the new men.”

  Their positions were three bunkers, one per fire team, inside the wire of Camp Zion, which was named after the first member of India Company to be killed in action on Troy.

  “Inside, Horton,” Mackie said when third fire team reached their bunker.

  Horton dropped into the beginning of the entrance tunnel, a meter-deep pit. The tunnel itself went in two sandbags deep before taking a ninety-degree turn for a meter and a half, then another ninety-degree turn to the interior of the bunker.

  Mackie followed Horton while Cafferata and PFC Orndoff went around to the front of the bunker and sat on its forward edge, facing the land beyond the perimeter.

  “Stow it there,” Mackie said, pointing at an unoccupied section of wall. “There’s the grenad
e sump.” He pointed at a hole dug in the floor of a corner. Any hand-held explosive thrown into the bunker could be knocked into the hole and its explosion contained. That was the theory; none of the Marines ever wanted the chance to test it.

  Horton dutifully dropped his pack where Mackie indicated, then uncertainly stood waiting, hunched over because of the low overhead.

  Mackie studied his new man in the dim, uneven light that the bunker’s firing aperture offered. “You were a clerk, huh?” he said before the silence became uncomfortable.

  “That’s right, Corporal Mackie.”

  “Just Mackie. Unless an officer is nearby. We don’t stand much on formality here.”

  “Right, Corp—, ah, right, Mackie.”

  “Do you have any combat experience?”

  Horton shook his head. “No.”

  “Did you even come under fire anytime?”

  Another headshake, another, “No.”

  Mackie stared at him for a moment. “Pay attention to me, Cafferata, and Orndoff. Do what we do, and obey my orders immediately. That’s your best chance of making it through alive and uninjured. I already lost one man. I don’t want to lose another.”

  “Yes, Corp—,ah, yes, Mackie. I’ll do my best.”

  Mackie nodded curtly. “Let’s go topside and meet the rest of the fire team.”

  Horton’s meeting of the rest of the fire team was brief, not very in depth, and not in any particular order.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Illinois.”

  “Have you ever been in a rifle company before?”

  “No.”

  “Are you married? Do you have a steady girl?”

  “I used to, but she broke up with me right before we got orders to Troy.”

  Nobody remarked on that, but they all thought it was a bad sign. A Marine who just lost his woman might make a serious mistake that could get him or someone else killed. Or maybe it wouldn’t be a mistake.

  “Who were you with before Three/One?” Mackie asked before Cafferata and Orndoff could dwell on Horton’s recent break up.

  “I joined Three/One right out of school.” They understood the school was Marine administrative training, not Horton’s civilian school. And it begged a follow up question:

  “How long have you been in?”

  “Twenty-one months.” Which explained why 3/1 was his first duty station; he hadn’t been in long enough to complete a tour at one station.

  “How do you like getting assigned to the real Marines?” To most infantry Marines, anybody who wasn’t a trigger-puller—infantry, recon, artillery, pilots and air crew of armed aircraft, and anybody else whose duties put them in the line of fire—wasn’t a real Marine, no matter what uniform they wore or how much rank they had.

  “Kind of nervous. It’s why I enlisted in the Marines, but now that it’s real....”

  “Damn skippy, it’s real. It doesn’t get any realer than this.”

  “What did you qualify as on the range?”

  “High Sharpshooter.” That was the second highest marksmanship level.

  “You’ve seen the vids of the Dusters?”

  “Yes.”

  “They move too fast for you to aim at them, but you have to do better than just spray-and-pray,” Ordnoff said. “Spray and pray,” put out enough rounds fast enough and you’re bound to hit something sooner or later.

  Then it was time for chow. The sun had almost reached the horizon by the time first squad finished eating and moved into their overnight defensive positions, which were the same bunkers they slept in, the same bunkers facing the perimeter and the cleared ground beyond.

  Overnight

  “Have you stood much perimeter duty?” Mackie asked Horton once third fire team was in its bunker; he’d assigned first watch to himself and the new man.

  “Not since Infantry School.” Horton swallowed to moisten his suddenly dry mouth.

  Every new Marine, even cooks and bakers and clerks, went to Infantry School to learn how to be a rifleman before going on to whatever other school might be his destination. The women, many of whom were cooks and bakers and clerks and pilots, also went to Infantry School. If you didn’t know how to fight as a rifleman, the Marines didn’t want you.

  “Then you probably need a refresher course,” Mackie said. “The first thing about perimeter duty is knowing what’s in front of you, so you can recognize anything that doesn’t belong in the middle of the night.”

  “Right, I remember.” Horton looked at Mackie’s profile. “Look at all the shapes out there. Watch them as night falls so you know what they look like in the dark, so a shadow doesn’t have to move for you to know if it belongs or not.”

  “That’s right. You’re doing a good job so far. Or you would be, if you were looking outboard instead of at me.”

  “Ulp! I—I’m sorry, Corporal Mackie. It’s just that it’s been....” Flustered, Horton jerked his head to the front and tried to memorize the shapes that were turning into shadows.

  “I know, it’s just that it’s been so long since Infantry School.” Mackie looked away from the darkening landscape to his newest man. “That’s why I’m giving you a refresher course. Now pay attention and do it right.”

  Two hours later, Mackie woke Orndoff to take the watch while he and Horton got some sleep. Two more hours, and Orndoff woke Cafferata. After Mackie and Horton had four hours sleep, Cafferata woke them for another watch.

  Half an hour into their second watch, Horton tapped Mackie’s shoulder, pointed, and whispered, “Does that look right?”

  Mackie couldn’t tell exactly where Horton pointed, but he’d seen the same shadow jitter. “Wake Cafferata and Orndoff,” he whispered back. He toggled his helmet comm to the squad freq and notified everyone awake that something was making movement at his eleven o’clock, distance undetermined.

  Cafferata and Orndoff took their positions at the firing aperture. They’d made less noise waking and moving into position than Horton had in moving to wake them.

  A couple of minutes later, Sergeant Martin came on the squad freq. “My motion detector shows multiple movements, two hundred and fifty meters out. They’re all across the squad’s front and lapping onto the rest of the platoon.”

  Seconds later, Second Lieutenant Henry Commiskey, the platoon commander, spoke on the platoon’s all-hands freq. “Everyone is reporting movement all around the firebase, we’re surrounded. That also means they’re in a circular firing squad formation. Stay low, and they’ll be shooting each other. The Skipper is ordering illum. Don’t fire until the lights go on. Acknowledge.” The other platoon commanders gave the same order.

  Then began the ritual: junior men reported to fire team leaders that they heard and understood the company commander’s order, fire team leaders reported to squad leaders, squad leaders to platoon commanders, and back to the company commander. It didn’t take many seconds for every man in the company to report up the chain of command that he had received and understood the order.

  “They’re closing slowly,” Martin said on the squad freq. “Maybe they don’t realize we know they’re there.”

  “Stand by in five,” Captain Carl Sitter, India Company’s commanding officer, said on the all-hands freq.

  Five seconds later, there was a series of muffled booms from the middle of the firebase. Just a couple of seconds later, sharper bangs sounded in the sky above, and brilliant light flooded the ground outside the perimeter, exposing hundreds of nightmare forms coming toward the wire.

  “Fire!” Sitter shouted, and all around Marines began blasting away with rifles, machine guns, and grenade launchers.

  The Dusters were caught off guard, unaware that the humans had detected them, so they didn’t start moving instantly when the flares turned the pre-dawn night into a flickering noon-day brightness. That cost them casualties. The rate of casualties slackened when they began jinking and dodging, too fast for the Marines to take aim.

  “Don’t shoot where they ar
e,” Mackie shouted over the clatter of his men’s firing, “shoot where they’re going to be!” He saw the flash of a Duster twisting to change its direction and fired a three-round burst into the space he expected it to head. One bullet clipped the base of the Duster’s tail and spun it around. He fired off another three, and the Duster staggered, and tumbled to the ground, dropping its weapon as it fell.

  He rapidly shot bursts into spaces he thought Dusters were headed into, but usually missed. In his peripheral vision he saw his men firing three-round bursts the same as he was. Most of their bursts also missed, but a few hit. It didn’t seem to have much impact on the numbers coming at the perimeter.

  Mackie was vaguely aware of projectile hits on the bunker’s face, but the Dusters’ aim was far off because of their own rapid movement, and nearly all of their shots missed the bunkers altogether.

  “Incoming!” Captain Sitter shouted on the all-hands freq.

  Over the cacophony of fire from the Marines and Dusters, Mackie made out the whistle of artillery rounds hurtling toward the ground. “Down!” he shouted, and ducked below the lip of the firing aperture.

  “Get down!” he shouted again, and grabbed Horton by the arm and jerked; Horton was still up and firing his rifle.

  “What?” Horton looked confused.

  “Incoming!” The word was drowned out by the sudden eruption of artillery rounds exploding beyond the perimeter. The noise was so great that the impacts of fragments slamming into the front and top of the bunker were felt rather than heard. Mackie was looking away from the barrage, and was able to see the blur of a chunk of jagged metal that flashed through the aperture, to impact against the bunker’s rear wall.

  The barrage stopped, bringing the bunker to a stunned silence. The noise had been so great that Mackie felt as though his ears were stuffed with cotton. He yawned wide and worked his jaw side to side to clear his hearing. His body felt like it had just gone several rounds with a boxer from a higher weight class. It took a lot of effort for him to force himself up to look out.

  “Up!” he shouted when he saw outside. He threw his rifle into his shoulder and began firing again. Almost instantly, Cafferata was also up and firing. Orndoff took a few seconds to rouse himself and resume fighting. Horton remained curled on the bunker’s flooring, his eyes wide and mouth gaping.