Starfist: Kingdom's Swords Read online

  Four Dragons, almost enough to carry an entire company, arrived. The dead Marines were stacked in one, and the wounded were divided among the other three, where corpsmen kept them stabilized on the way out of the swamp. The remainder of M Company watched the Dragons leave, then hurried to catch up with the rest of the battalion. This time, six alert Marines kept watch on their rear. Halfway to the swamp’s edge, with no threat warning, two of the Dragons ferrying casualties to safety erupted.

  It wasn’t done officially, but word of M Company’s firefight and the flashes from the enemy positions quickly filtered through the battalion.

  “Skinks,” Schultz said on the squad circuit when he heard.

  Nobody objected; everyone in third platoon was convinced. Those beings were fanatical fighters with horrible weapons, who attacked for no known reason and never attempted communication.

  Most Marines of Company L, however, knew firsthand about one alien sentience, a culture whose existence was kept secret. But that sentience’s culture, which they’d come across on Avionia, was birdlike, primitive, a thousand years behind human development. It was no threat, and unlikely to ever become one. But the Marines of third platoon had encountered a different sentience, one that did attack with neither warning nor reason. The Skinks. And they knew in their bones that they were up against that menace again.

  When a wave radiates out from a point and hits something, it reverberates back to everywhere it’s already been, but it somehow changes character on the bounce. So it was now. Company L’s third platoon took the telling of M Company’s firefight and changed it into a fight with Skinks. “Skinks” radiated back through the battalion. And turned to fear.

  Kilo Company’s rearmost Marines were hyperalert, the last two men in each platoon walking backward to cover their trail—they weren’t going to be surprised like M Company. Not to be outdone, the Marines on Kilo Company’s left flank were equally alert; they knew that if it was possible, they’d hit an enemy unit from the flank. So, uncharacteristically, it was Kilo Company’s pointmen who were least alert. The points were slow to recognize as threats the relatively faint, man-sized heat signals their infra shields picked up. By the time one of them remembered that the Skinks were supposed to have a lower body temperature than humans, they were within range.

  Again the swamp echoed with the screams of Marines whose flesh was being eaten away. Again steam billowed and rose from mud and wet foliage struck by the plasma bolts of the Marines’ blasters. Once more the darkness of the swamp was lit by brilliant flashes when plasma bolts struck home.

  When it stopped, the Marines found no bodies to show they’d had an impact on the enemy. Eight Marines from Kilo Company were down, dead, or hideously wounded.

  “Hold where you are,” Brigadier Sturgeon ordered Commander van Winkle. He had to evacuate the casualties without losing more Dragons, and he couldn’t commit hoppers for the mission. Not with whoever was in the swamp—he wasn’t yet ready to say they were Skinks—able to kill his aircraft without warning. What made the situation worse was that the string-of-pearls satellites weren’t providing the information Sturgeon needed to direct his FIST. The swamp’s canopy was dense enough to block the string-of-pearls infrared scanning. It picked up his Marines, vaguely, but didn’t show who they were fighting. This was another datum in favor of Skinks being present; on the ground they showed up faintly in infrared. Sturgeon was, effectively, operating blind. That blindness was costing Marine lives. It was time to use his heavy weapons. But where do you shoot when your target can be hidden anywhere in a large area?

  Within minutes the remaining Raptors began using Jericho missiles to clear a path to the infantry battalion’s location for Dragons to evacuate the M Company casualties. Simultaneously, the six guns of the FIST’s artillery battery commenced what was once called “harassment and interdiction” fire to the front and sides of the infantry battalion. Classic H&I dropped rounds onto routes known or suspected to be used by the enemy to disrupt movement. But there were no known routes through the Swamp of Perdition, and the enemy was known to pop up anywhere. The battery used scatter munitions—rounds that burst open above the target and scattered large numbers of smaller munitions that exploded just above the ground. Later, when the infantry moved out again, the battery would drop delayed action scatter munitions behind the battalion. Those would explode at random intervals after dropping to the ground, or into the water, or when their built-in motion detectors picked up movement by a man-sized body within the killing radius.

  Nobody had any idea of the range of the undetectable weapons that had killed two Raptors and three Dragons, but they hoped they were line of sight. The Raptors stayed behind a row of hills and locked their Jerichos into the string-of-pearls guidance system and fired them into the swamp. Jerichos weren’t tactical nukes, but except for the lack of radiation, there wasn’t much difference in effect. They were named that because they “brought the walls down.” They cleared a half-kilometer-wide swath of swamp of all vegetation and animate life. The barrage stopped only a few hundred meters from the infantry position. The Dragons waited for the temperature in the cleared area to drop to the boiling point of water before they went in. The traumatically dried ground crumbled and crackled under their fans and flew wide in chunks. This time the Dragons carrying the casualties made it back out. Sturgeon ordered the battalion to continue its advance. The artillery battery dropped scatter munitions a safe distance to the front and sides of the infantry.

  Corporal Doyle was as frightened as he’d ever been in his life. Check that, he’d never been so scared before. Not even when he’d been one of the eight Marines who had to face hordes of fierce warriors on Elneal. That time, nothing seemed to matter because he knew deep inside that he was dead anyway. Besides, he could see the hordes of Siad warriors.

  Here, though . . . Here he couldn’t see anyone. Here, a Skink—they really were Skinks, weren’t they?—could be right next to him and he wouldn’t know it until the thing popped up and killed him.

  M Company had been hit from behind. Doyle knew that. He knew that Kilo Company was hit from the front. He saw a pattern developing—the next attack would happen on Company L’s right flank. He was on the right flank! That meant the next contact would be on him! And he couldn’t and wouldn’t see the Skinks until they fired!

  Corporal Kerr saw the same pattern. Though he thought the pattern was more happenstance than deliberate, he also expected the next contact to come on the right flank. He was concerned, but not unduly so. His first combat after returning from rehab was against the Skinks on Waygone. He remembered very clearly how the acid from their weapons ate through flesh and bone. But was that more terrible than the plasma bolts fired by the Marines’ blasters? Only in kind, not in degree. And their weapons, at least the ones they’d used on Waygone, were short-range—he peered into the swamp—not that the shortness of range mattered much here. The Skinks had been relatively easy to kill—if a blaster hit anywhere on one of them, it went “poof,” vaporizing it in a flash of light. As fierce and fanatical fighters as the Skinks were, they weren’t hard to beat. The other two companies got hurt as badly as they did because they were surprised by Skinks who were willing to die in their attacks. Third platoon, Kerr was convinced, was more aware of what they were up against and less likely to be taken by surprise.

  But what had Kerr concerned was that the Skinks seemed able to sense where the Marines were. He didn’t think they saw in the infrared the way the Avionians did, nor did he think their eyes gathered light more efficiently. No, he didn’t think it was a visual sense that allowed them to detect the Marines. Neither did he think they used a form of echo-location: they weren’t that precise in knowing the Marines’ location. The Skinks must have some sort of sixth sense . . .

  Kerr shivered.

  Lance Corporal Schultz tamped down all thought of who the Skinks were, the hideousness of their weapons, and how they could know where chameleoned Marines were. If he had thought of those
things, he would have had to remember how badly the Skinks had shaken him on Waygone. Not that he’d been aware of it at the time; then he’d been too busy fighting and staying alive. He hadn’t known how badly the Skinks frightened him until Company L was on its way to the quarantined world called Avionia and they were briefed on their mission. When he learned they were on their way to protect aliens from humans, his reaction had almost gotten him into serious trouble with Gunny Bass and Top Myer. At that time, he thought all aliens were evil and had to be exterminated. Actual contact with the birdlike sentience on Avionia convinced him otherwise. Or so he thought. Now they were facing Skinks again, and he knew he was up against a fearsome opponent.

  Schultz concentrated his awareness on the fact that there were beings in that swamp who wanted him abruptly and violently dead, and if he wanted to remain alive, he had to find and kill them first.

  “RIGHT!” The voice that shouted the warning over the platoon circuit was almost drowned out by the crack-sizzle of blaster fire that accompanied it.

  “Echelon right!” Corporal Kerr shouted. His fire team, still on the point, had continued responsibility for the front even when they faced the danger on their right flank. He dove into the mud under a bush a couple of meters away and swept his blaster from side to side, looking for a target along its barrel as it moved. As he looked he spared a quick glance at his HUD to make sure Doyle was moving to the right of where he’d been. The HUD display showed Doyle taking position almost as sharply as Schultz. Now the three of them were at an angle and could shoot to both the platoon’s front and side without having to shoot over each other.

  To his right, Kerr heard the cracks of blasters and could see steam rise from blaster strikes on foliage and mud. He thought he saw the fading afterimage of the flash made by a hit Skink.

  “Second squad, volley fire, ten meters!” Sergeant Bladon ordered.

  Kerr pointed his blaster at a bushy shadow ten meters away, where someone could be hiding, and fired a bolt at it. Steam rose, but there was no answering flash from the bush. He shifted his aim to the left and fired again. He saw a bolt from Doyle’s blaster strike a couple of meters away from his aiming point. Keep it up, Doyle, he thought, you’re doing fine.

  “Second squad, up five,” Bladon ordered. Kerr shifted his aim five meters deeper into the swamp in the disciplined fire pattern the Marines used when they couldn’t see what to shoot at.

  “Second squad, heads up,” Staff Sergeant Hyakowa’s voice came over the comm. “Guns are joining you.”

  “Kerr, I see you,” Corporal Stevenson said. “Got you, Chan.” The assault squad’s second team dropped into place between the two fire teams.

  “Where do you want it?” Sergeant Kelly, the assault squad leader, asked.

  “Join my volley,” Bladon replied. “Second squad, up five.”

  The bolts from second squad’s ten blasters fired deeper into the swamp, but were almost lost to view in the flash-flash-flash of the stream of bolts from the two assault guns as they stitched bolts along the squad’s entire front and beyond. There were no answering flares.

  “Up five,” Bladon ordered.

  Twice more they lengthened the range of their volleys without seeing or hearing any indication of a hit foe.

  “Cease fire!” came Gunny Bass’s command. “Third platoon, cease fire. Report.”

  “Doyle!” Kerr said.

  “H-Here.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I-I think so.”

  “How’s your batteries?”

  “I’m—I’m all right.”

  “Schultz!”

  “Okay. Enough ammo.”

  “Second fire team, no casualties. Batteries all right.”

  “Roger, Kerr.” The other two fire teams also reported no casualties and sufficient battery power remaining.

  “Effect?” Bladon asked.

  Kerr hadn’t seen sign of damage inflicted on the enemy from his position. Neither had Corporal Chan.

  “MacIlargie saw one and shot it before it opened fire,” Corporal Linsman reported.

  “Hold your position,” Bass ordered. “First squad’s coming through for a sweep.”

  A moment later first squad came through second squad’s line and advanced into the still-steaming killing zone. When they passed through the steam it blocked them from view, though they maintained constant comm. In fifteen minutes they were back, after finding nothing more than the scorch mark from the Skink MacIlargie had killed.

  The battalion’s advance resumed.

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  FOURTEEN

  Lewis Conorado could not sleep. He was thinking about Marta. Always before, their separations had left him missing her and the children terribly for the first few hours. Then, very quickly, he’d be absorbed into the myriad details of commanding his company, and thoughts of his family would sink into the recesses of his consciousness. But this time it was different, because of the anger of their parting, and because there was so little to do on board the Cambria to occupy his mind.

  The other passengers, it seemed, adjusted quickly to the enforced idleness. Captain Tuit did offer each of them—at their own risk, of course—the opportunity to be placed in stasis for the entire voyage, but all declined. Only the most advanced stasis units were designed to prevent the skeletomuscular problems that sometimes developed after long periods of unconsciousness. The Cambria’s units were the old-fashioned kind, designed to stabilize a person who’d experienced severe trauma, and only until definitive medical care was available. None of the passengers on this voyage wanted to risk the months of physical therapy that would be required on Earth to get their atrophied muscles working again. But the Cambria carried a vast array of entertainment resources, from physical exercise rooms to virtual reality chambers where her passengers could refight the Battle of Hastings or have sex with anything their fertile imaginations could devise. Most, however, preferred entertaining themselves in the company of their fellow passengers with card games, conversation, tours of the ship’s unrestricted areas, and the like.

  “The hour is now 3:57 A.M.,” a tiny female voice whispered as Conorado wearily turned onto his other side. The onboard computer system, dubbed “Minerva,” or “Minnie,” by the crew, could sense when the compartment’s occupant was awake, but as long as he was physically inside his sleep module, all it would do was softly announce the time. He had considered turning that feature off, but after years of paying very strict attention to the time of day, he realized he’d be uncomfortable not knowing what time it was. He sighed and decided to give up. With a tired groan, Conorado swung his feet onto the floor. As soon as his legs cleared the edge of his bunk, the lights and various utilities went on. “No coffee and turn the music off,” he said. The music he’d selected to start each day was “Bonnie Dundee,” on the pipes and drums, as once played by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.

  “Ship’s status?” the Minerva asked.

  “Not right now.” Conorado had set that feature so he would not have to listen to the long recitation of the Cambria’s operational status. That was required listening for each crew member, but still, when he wanted to know about the ship—which he often did because it was his nature to want to know what was going on around him—all he had to do was ask.

  Captain Tuit would be on the bridge, listening to his music and drinking his coffee. Conorado and the old navy man had hit it off immediately, and during the last two weeks they’d spent much time together, reminiscing about past voyages, deployments, and the colorful people they’d known in the Confederation’s service. Conorado slipped into his clothing and stepped out of his compartment. As soon as he was through the portal, everything back inside went dead, to lie silent against his return. He turned up the companionway toward the bridge, half a kilometer forward.

  A starship in the “night,” or the time when most of her crew and passengers would be sleeping, was a fascinating world. He walked slowly along the compan
ionway, savoring the comforting sounds of a vast machine working perfectly. He stopped suddenly. “When do we reach Siluria, Minnie?” he asked.

  “Eight days, standard, Captain Lewis Conorado.”

  Conorado decided to have some fun with her on the long walk to the bridge. “Are the whatsits and the thingamabobs in order, Minnie?”

  “I am sorry, sir, please repeat the question. And, sir? Please call me ‘Minerva.’ ”

  Conorado smiled. “What’s the price of fish in Denmark, Minnie?”

  “Please bear in mind this data is more than one year out of date,” Minnie began immediately, “but depending on species and size, the average prices obtained on the Copenhagen market are as follows . . .”

  Minnie’s voice was soft and feminine and reminded Conorado a bit of Marta. “Thank you,” he said when she had finished reeling off the desired information.

  “You are welcome, sir. But sir, you asked a question earlier that I was not able to answer for you. Would you please rephrase it so I may be of service to you?”

  “Forget it.”

  “I am sorry, sir, but it is impossible for me to forget anything.”

  “Okay. When’s the last time you got laid, Minnie?” It just popped out.

  “I do not understand that question, sir,” Minerva responded, a note of perplexity in her voice, “and besides, that was not the one you originally asked.”

  “I withdraw both questions.”

  “Thank you so much, sir,” she replied. Conorado raised an eyebrow at the response; he thought he heard relief in the damned thing’s voice!

  Captain Tuit was not in his customary position when Conorado stepped onto the bridge. The only officer present was the systems engineer, Miss Lenfen. “Really, sir,” she said as soon as Conorado walked in, “you shouldn’t try to confuse Minerva like that.”