The 18th Race: Book 02 - In All Directions Page 13

  Yes, the Dusters were very fast on their feet, much faster than a human could run. But were they faster than the Marines’ armored vehicles? Commiskey didn’t think so.

  “Far, Near, you said ‘lots.’ How many is ‘lots’? Over.”

  “Nearsight, Farsight, I didn’t have time to take a count, and the trees obstructed my view. But I’d say half a battalion. Could be more.”

  Half a battalion. Half the size of a Marine battalion could be the four or five hundred that fled from the air facility. Far too many for Commiskey’s platoon of Marines to take on, even with the added fire power of the armored vehicles. And the Dusters had antiaircraft weapons. Did they also have antiarmor, or could their AA be used against armor? Commiskey remembered from his studies of history that AA artillery was sometimes used very effectively against armor.

  Before Commiskey could respond to the size of the approaching enemy force, Fleming said, “We’re making another run on them. I’ll let you know what else we learn about their strength. Out.”

  Commiskey ordered the armored vehicles to halt and get on line facing toward the Dusters, to give maximum firepower if the aliens came at them.

  The four aircraft maneuvered at low altitude to strike the Dusters from different directions, crossing them in a narrow “X” to hit the widest possible number. Commiskey watched through the periscope.

  The first two Eagles flashed toward each other on parallel courses, firing their guns and launching rockets as they flew. The Dusters’ return fire was late, and missed by wide margins. The second two followed quickly, cutting across the path of the first pair. This time the AA artillery was ready, and began firing even before the two birds were overhead.

  Farsight Three was hit, and pirouetted like a top before staggering away, trailing smoke, in the direction of the air facility. An explosion erupted in the trees, large enough to rock the Scooters, still several hundred meters distant.

  The remaining two aircraft orbited to the rear of third platoon’s vehicles.

  “Nearsight, Farsight,” Fleming said after a moment. “If you’re going back, you may have to pick up Farsight Three. I’m not sure he can make it all the way. Can you do it? Over.”

  “Farsight, Nearsight. I will if possible.” If we’re still alive, was what he meant.

  “Nearsight, Farsight, we need to rearm, so we’re disengaging now. Good hunting. See you soon. Out.”

  “Right,” Commiskey said to himself. He got on the comm to Captain Sitter to ask for instructions.

  “Dismount,” he ordered after he got orders from the company commander. “On line between the vehicles.”

  “What is this happy horseshit?” Mackie demanded as he shuffled his men into line along with the rest of the squad between two of the Scooters. “There’s bad guys up ahead, and we don’t have any cover here.”

  “You got trees for cover, Mackie,” Martin snapped. “You’re a Marine non-commissioned officer, now act like one and knock off the bitching.”

  Mackie flinched, like he’d just been slapped in the face. But he knew Martin was right; as a corporal and a fire team leader, he had to set the example for his men. Complaining the way he just had was a bad example; it could have a negative effect on his men’s morale.

  “Sorry,” Mackie said. “So what are we doing, honcho?”

  Martin held up a finger, signaling for quiet. Commiskey’s voice came over the all-hands freq.

  “Listen up,” the platoon commander said. “The airedales say there are at least four hundred Dusters a third of a klick to our front, and coming this way. It could be the same ones that made the mess at the MCAF. The airedales put a hurting on them, but couldn’t stop them. I talked to the Skipper. When the Dusters get inside two hundred meters, we’re going to hit them with everything we’ve got, then mount up and get the hell out of Dodge. Wait for my signal before you fire.

  “Does everybody understand?”

  “You got that?” Mackie asked his men. All three replied in the affirmative, and he reported to Martin that third fire team was ready.

  Seconds later, the roar of an Eagle’s rotors sounded above the platoon. Mackie looked up and saw one hovering several hundred meters up and slightly ahead of the platoon’s line. A moment later, two more joined it and they began raining fire into the forest beyond the platoon’s front.

  Then came the order:

  “Fire, fire, fire!”

  The command was repeated by Guillen, Sergeant Binder, and the squad leaders.

  Mackie screamed, “Fire, fire, fire!” at his men.

  Along the line, forty-two rifles, two sidearms, two machine guns, and the cannons and guns of three Scooters and two Hogs blasted death into the forest.

  Shrieks and caws and skrees cut faintly through the sounds of gunfire from the depths of the forest. Immediately, fire came back at the Marines. But it was wild, unaimed—point and jerk fire—most of which went too high to be any danger.

  After thirty seconds of blazing fire, Commiskey shouted on the all-hands, “Mount up, mount up!” and the Marines of third platoon jumped up and scrambled to reboard the armored vehicles.

  “By squads!” Guillen bellowed.

  “By fire teams!” the squad leaders shouted.

  “Cafferata, Orndoff, Horton, with me!” Mackie cried, looking side to side to make sure his men were with him.

  In the air, Eagle Two got hit, and spun toward the rear, dropping rapidly. The fire from the remaining two converged on one location, and an explosion erupted where their impacts joined—they killed the Duster weapon that had wounded Eagle Two.

  “There they are!” Orndoff shrilled as he reached the rear of the Scooter right behind Horton, and scrambled aboard.

  Mackie, standing slightly aside to follow his men, looked into the forest and saw the maniacally skittering Dusters coming through the trees. He grabbed Cafferata’s arm and almost threw him aboard before jumping in himself. He turned around to give Martin a hand just in time to see the squad leader struck in the chest by a shot from a Duster’s rifle. Martin fell backward, but Mackie managed to grasp his wrist and pulled him forward, into the Scooter.

  Corporal Vittori, now the senior uninjured man in the squad, grabbed the intercom and told the Scooter commander to button up, that everyone assigned to the vehicle was aboard. The rear gate clanked shut and the Scooter twisted around on its center, then headed away from the charging Dusters.

  Mackie, having pulled Martin aboard, and being the closest to him, shoved his rifle aside and clamped his hands on the wound where the Duster’s projectile had found its way through a chink in Martin’s body armor. Mackie was sickened by the feel of blood pulsing against his palms, trying to spurt out. “Stay with me, honcho! Don’t you dare go into shock, you hear me?”

  “Here’s a field dressing,” someone said, and shoved one at him. Mackie didn’t look to see who it was, but the dressing was already open. He pulled a hand off Martin’s chest to grab the dressing, then the other while he slapped the bandage onto the wound. “Another!” Then: “Talk to me, Sergeant,” and reached for another dressing.

  It took four field dressings, one stacked on another, to staunch the bleeding from Martin’s chest.

  “Is he still alive?” Corporal Button asked in a hushed voice.

  “Yeah,” Mackie said, feeling the side of Martin’s neck for a pulse. “He lost a lot of blood, but he’s still alive. Now we’ve got to keep him warm so he doesn’t go into shock.”

  The Scooter jerked to a stop, and its ramp dropped down.

  “Make room,” a voice from outside called. “Four more coming aboard.”

  “Watch your step!” Mackie shouted, hunching over Martin to protect him from the four Marines in flight suits and helmets with side arms holstered on their hips who piled into the Scooter. They were the crew of Farsight Two; one had a bandaged arm.

  “We’re lucky, he’s our only casualty,” one of them said, pointing at the red-stained dressing. He looked down at Martin and the p
uddle of blood he lay in, and saw how much worse things could have been. They crammed in, giving Martin enough room.

  The Scooter’s ramp slammed shut and the vehicle lurched forward. Bullets from the pursuing Dusters pinged off the closed ramp. The Scooter didn’t return fire; its guns couldn’t reverse. But the Hogs’ turrets could and did, sending streams of explosive twenty-millimeter rounds into the pursuing aliens.

  The Marine vehicles gradually increased the distance between themselves and the enemy. After a few kilometers, the Dusters stopped chasing them.

  Chapter 15

  Marine Corps Air Facility, Jordan, Eastern Shapland

  During the short time third platoon had been on its recon in force, the rest of India Company moved forward and occupied the minimal defensive positions that had been constructed on the west side of the air facility. They didn’t only sit in place once they arrived, they engaged in building up the defenses. Combat engineers who came to bury the Duster corpses also brought wire and erected a barrier fence along the west side of the facility, and dug a broad but shallow trench on the inboard side of the fence. The wire was stacked three meters high, and the bottom of the trench was studded with short spikes intended to trip up and impale any Dusters who made it across the wire. And they dug a waist-deep trench fifty meters back from the barrier, a trench for the Marines to fight from. The company brought along a two-gun squad of M-69 Scatterers.

  The armored amphibious convoy carrying third platoon flowed through a section of the barrier fence that had been left unfinished awaiting their arrival, and the Marines immediately disembarked. Doc Hayden supervised moving Sergeant Martin and the platoon’s other wounded to the hastily-repaired field dispensary where a flight surgeon who had come with India Company waited with a nurse and two more corpsmen.

  “Mr. Commiskey, put your platoon in the trench, on the right flank,” Captain Sitter ordered on his comm. “First platoon’s in the middle, link with them. Then join me in the CP.”

  “Aye aye,” Commiskey answered. He turned to Guillen and told him to put the squads in place, then headed for the command post.

  “Vittori,” Guillen shouted to the acting leader of first squad, “link up with first platoon on the left, and guns on your right. Two-man positions, five-meter intervals.” After seeing that Vittori was positioning his men, he continued to the gun squad leader, “Kocak, put a gun to first squad’s right. Linked with third squad on its right. You hear that, Mausert? Your squad is in the middle. Same as first, two-man positions, five-meter intervals, with a gun team on each flank. Adriance, you’ve got the corner. Hold on to it, don’t let the Dusters turn it.”

  In hardly more than a minute, third platoon had taken position in the fighting trench. The engineers were busily closing the gap in the fence the convoy had come through, and completing the shallow trench inside it. Finished with the barrier to the front, the engineers began laying wire along the defensive flanks, enclosing the CP and medical dispensary.

  Then they waited.

  India Company’s Command Post

  “We lost contact with them twenty-two klicks back,” Lieutenant Commiskey reported. “I don’t know whether or not they continued following us after we broke off.”

  Captain Sitter nodded. “When they overran this facility they destroyed the satellite link. So until the link gets reestablished, which means a new antenna installed, we don’t have the satellite view. Which means we need air. Colonel Chambers and Lieutenant Colonel Davis have convinced Major General Purvis to lean on Major General Bearss get us continuing air cover from MAG 14. Comments?” The question was directed at Commiskey.

  “Sir, those Eagles from HMM 628 did justice by us,” Commiskey said. “If we’d had an entire squadron, we could have put a serious hurting on the Dusters.”

  First Lieutenant Edward Ostermann, the company executive officer, snorted.

  “A more serious hurting on them,” Commiskey corrected himself.

  “Sir, a message just came in,” Sergeant Richard Binder interrupted excitedly as he turned from his comm unit.

  “Tell me,” Sitter said.

  “Sir, MAG 14 is sending an AV 16 (E) from VMO 251 to give us some eyes.” The AV 16 (E) was the electronic warfare version of the AV 16 Kestrel.

  “Good!” Sitter said.

  “I hope it has a shooter with it,” Commiskey said. “The Dusters had anti-aircraft guns, and knocked two of the Eagles with us out of the fight. The Eagles tried, but they might not have killed all of the AA guns.”

  Sitter looked at Binder, who shook his head. “Sir, 14 didn’t say anything about a shooter, just the Echo unit.”

  “Get their ops for me.”

  It took a few minutes, but Sitter was connected to the operations center at MAG 14.

  “We really appreciate the Echo, it will be a tremendous help here,” he told the operations officer. “But I’m concerned about its safety. The Dusters have triple-A. Without a shooter to give cover, the Echo will be a sitting duck.”

  The operations officer chuckled. “You must not be fully aware of the capabilities of the AV 16 (E). That baby’s jamming set will screw up the Dusters’ trip-A controller so badly it just might shoot itself. The latest 16 Echo doesn’t need an escort to protect it against ground troops. And the bird on its way to scout for you has a primo driver. If anybody needs to be worried about this aircraft, it’s any bad guys coming at you.”

  “You sound awfully confident.”

  “I am, I am. Now, if that’s all, I’ve got other missions to run.”

  Sitter thanked the operations officer and signed off. The look he gave his officers and top NCOs gave no indication of what he was thinking. “You all heard the man, we don’t have to worry about the Echo not having an escort.”

  Nobody else said anything, they didn’t even look at each other. But every one of them had doubts.

  AV 16 (E), call sign Troubadour, over MCAF Jordan

  First Lieutenant Christine A. Schilt turned her Echo Kestrel in a lazy circle at one thousand five hundred meters above the air facility. Using her visual mags, she eyeballed the situation. What she saw made her whistle between tightly held lips and teeth. She’d seen the vids, of course, but pictures, even moving pictures, couldn’t convey the enormity of the damage to the airfield. Everything was wrecked; aircraft were visibly damaged and unflyable, buildings were holed and partly collapsed, the runways were pocked with holes too big and close to each other to allow a fixed wing aircraft to taxi, much less land or take off. Debris choked the passages. And there was blood staining everything.

  “India, India, this is Troubadour, above you at one-five hundred,” she said into her local comm. “Do you copy? Over.”

  “Troubadour, this is India,” said Sergeant Bender. “I hear you five by. Over.”

  “India, Troubadour, are you Six Actual? Over.”

  “Negative, Troubadour. Wait one.”

  A moment later, Captain Sitter was on the comm. “Troubadour, this is India Six Actual. Over.”

  “Six Actual, Troubadour. I’m at your disposal. What do you want me to do?”

  “Troubadour, India Six Actual. We’ve got some bad guys out there. Last seen twenty-two klicks to our west. First thing is I need to know where they are now. Over.”

  “Six Actual, Troubadour, your wish is my command. On my way toward the setting sun. I’ll let you know as soon as I see anything. Over.”

  “Roger, Troubadour. I await your report with bated breath. India Six Actual, out.”

  Troubadour, heading west from MCAF Jordan

  First Lieutanant Schilt climbed to an altitude of three thousand meters and went thirty klicks west of the damaged air facility and the company of Marine infantry guarding it before she began her search for the Dusters. Her first step after turning on her ground-searching sensors was a leisurely, ten-kilometer-diameter, counter-clockwise circle back toward the MCAF. Her first sweep picked up nothing, so she did it a second time ten klicks farther east. Again no result
s, so she tightened the circle to seven klicks diameter and moved it ten klicks east, overlapping her first circle. At the easternmost arc of the circle she picked up something, but couldn’t tell exactly what as it was at the very edge of her sensor range. She considered that it could be a small heard of ungulates, or a pack of wolf-like hunters.

  Did Troy have such animals? She couldn’t remember what the briefings had said about native lifeforms, or what Earth-animals might have gone feral. More likely, she thought, the traces she picked up were the Dusters she was looking for.

  She tightened her circle to five klicks, moved it four more klicks east, and dropped to a thousand meters. At that altitude she might be able to get visual as well as instrumental identification of the trace.

  The side-scanning radar showed several hundred man-size forms moving toward the MCAF. Schilt knew the Marines on the ground would need more information than that, so she had her comp make the necessary calculations and called in a report.

  “India Six, Troubadour. Do you hear me? Over.”

  “Troubadour, India Six Actual, go,” the reply came immediately.

  “Six, Troub. I have approximately eight hundred, I say again, eight-zero-zero probable Dusters coming your way. They are twenty klicks to your west. At their current rate of movement, they should reach you in about seventy-five minutes. I say again, seven-five minutes. Over.”

  “Troubadour, India Six Actual. You say ‘probable’ Dusters. Can you confirm? Over.”

  “Six Actual, Troubadour. Wait one while I get a visual.” Until now, Schilt had only used her instruments to check the movement on the ground. Now she used her VisMag.

  The magnified visual image showed the distinctive bent-at-the-hip posture of the aliens, who seemed to be skittering more than trotting. She clearly made out the multi-pouched, leather-like straps that seemed to be their only garments, and the feathery structures that adorned their bodies and tails.

  Tails and feathers on sentient creatures? Schilt shook her head in wonderment. But then, she only had humans for comparison. For all she knew, feathers and tails were more common on sentient creatures throughout the galaxy than were hair and sweat glands. What she did know was that sentience must have been fairly common in the universe. After all, in the small part of the galaxy so far explored by Homo sap, seventeen other sentiences had been found. Or the remains of their civilizations had, she wasn’t very clear on the details. Hey, she wasn’t an exobiologist or xeno-anthropologist to know such things.