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  The general mood in 34th FIST was, if not jubilant, at least relieved. After months of combating an implacable enemy who was hellishly difficult to find, and suffering the heaviest casualties most of them had ever experienced, they were finally reinforced and had replacements for their losses. Not that the new men could fully replace their dead. Close friendships had ended with the lost lives. Although new friendships can grow just as close as old ones, the new friends can never truly replace those lost.

  The mood in Company L of 34th FIST's infantry battalion was perhaps higher than anywhere else. Captain Conorado was back. Lieutenant Humphrey, the company's executive officer, was well-liked and had filled in admirably during Conorado's absence, but nearly everyone in the company had been through multiple operations and deployments with Conorado. Nearly every man in Company L trusted their company commander to a degree they trusted no other officer.

  So it was a jocular third platoon that greeted its newcomers when they assembled in the shell of a building that had been nearly demolished by the Skinks' antiarmor weapon. The shell was a couple hundred meters inside the perimeter. Even though they were surrounded by evidence of how far the Skink weapons could reach, just being off the defensive line made them feel they were out of danger, at least for the moment.

  The men of third platoon took the assignment of Lieutenant Rokmonov as their new commander with equanimity. If lost friends could never be fully replaced, neither could their late platoon commander, Gunnery Sergeant Charlie Bass. But they all knew Rokmonov. The grizzled officer had been a gunnery sergeant before he was commissioned. If they didn't think he was going to be as good a platoon commander as Charlie Bass had been, well, nobody was that good, but Rokmonov was probably as good as they came. Like Charlie Bass, he'd been filling a platoon commander's billet on a semipermanent basis. Rokmonov finally broke down and accepted an ensign's silver orbs when 411th FIST, which he was then in, had a sudden influx of company grade officers, one of whom got his platoon. He didn't want to ever again lose his job to a man who had probably recently been junior to him in rank—most Marine officers were sergeants or staff sergeants when they got commissioned.

  Third platoon didn't get enough replacements to fill all of its eight vacancies so maybe Sergeant Bladon and Corporal Goudanis would return. For some men of third platoon, the arrival of the new men was cause for celebration.

  "Rat," Rokmonov said to Corporal Linsman, the acting second squad leader since Sergeant Bladon was evacuated, "the paperwork goes in today to get you your sergeant's stripes."

  "Welcome aboard, Rat," Sergeant Ratliff said. He slapped Linsman's shoulder with his left hand while flexing his right fist.

  "Thanks, Rabbit." Linsman grinned, but cast a wary eye at Ratliff's fist. The Confederation Marines still "pinned on the stripes," so every newly promoted man was punched in the shoulder once for each chevron by any enlisted man who held the same or higher rank.

  "Way to go, Rat!" Corporal Dornhofer called out.

  "Ya mean I got to call you ‘Sergeant’ now?" Corporal Pasquin cried.

  The others added congratulations, even Corporal Kerr. Linsman was the second corporal in the platoon to make sergeant who had been junior to Kerr when Kerr was almost killed and had to spend nearly two years in recuperation.

  "We need a new gun team leader," Rokmonov said when he thought the congratulations had gone on long enough. "Taylor, you don't have to hump the gun anymore, your new corporal's chevrons will be enough weight."

  Lance Corporal Taylor grinned widely and happily accepted congratulations for his promotion to gun team leader.

  Rokmonov looked at Hyakowa and nodded for him to take over.

  Hyakowa stepped forward and studied the platoon roster for a moment. "This is a sad day for third platoon," he finally said. "We need two fire team leaders, but nobody thought to give us experienced corporals." He shook his head morosely. "What I'd really like to do is make Schultz a fire team leader, but we all know how he'd react to that." Schultz was a career lance corporal; if anyone tried to promote him, he'd turn it down—angrily and, some feared, violently. "As hard as it is to believe, the only other lance corporals we have in the blaster squads are Claypoole and Dean." He looked apologetically at Ratliff and Linsman. "I'm really sorry to have to do this to you, but do you think you can manage if I give each of you one of them as a fire team leader?"

  Ratliff grinned wolfishly as he waited for the hooting and laughter to ebb slightly, then said in a parade-ground voice, "Gimme Dean. I'll break him in or break him."

  Dean's face was a flickering mix of joy and indignancy.

  "What?" Linsman squawked. "You mean you're going to stick me with Clay— Wait a minute. If Rabbit gets Claypoole, that means I get stuck with Dean." He worked his face into a grandly overacted fury and shouted at Hyakowa, "Are you trying to ruin my promotion?"

  Claypoole first beamed, then shot a furiously offended look at Linsman, which set off fresh gales of hoots and laughter.

  Hyakowa looked at the second squad leader blandly and said in a calm voice, "Corporal, soon to be Sergeant, Linsman, may I remind you that you are a Marine noncommissioned officer? As such, you are supposed to do more with less than anybody else in Human Space. And make it look easy. I fully expect you to take Claypoole and turn him into just as good a fire team leader as . . . as . . ." He shook his head again. "What am I saying? No, it's not possible to turn him into as good a fire team leader as Kerr, or even Chan." He nodded sagely. "But you can turn him into a reasonable facsimile."

  Claypoole glared at Hyakowa; he didn't think that was funny.

  "Rabbit," Hyakowa returned to Ratliff, "I have full confidence in your ability to turn Dean into . . ." His eyes went distant and he shook his head again. "I'll talk to the Top. Maybe I can get him to give us a corporal from one of the other platoons."

  It was Dean's turn to glare and endure the hoots and laughs.

  "As you were!" Rokmonov shouted after a moment. "We have some new people." He nodded toward six Marines who stood slightly apart from the platoon and hadn't joined in the laughter. "I'll let Staff Sergeant Hyakowa introduce them to you while I give the promotion recommendations to the Skipper. Staff Sergeant, the platoon is yours."

  "Sir, the platoon is mine. Aye aye." Nobody bothered to call the platoon to attention; they weren't even standing in formation. Not when at any instant they might have to bolt back to fighting positions on the defensive perimeter. Hyakowa watched Rokmonov head for the company command post, then turned back to the men.

  "We have one new lance corporal, name of Zumwald." He gestured for the gangly, redheaded new man to identify himself. "Lance Corporal Zumwald was in the security company at Headquarters, Marine Corps, when he got pulled for this assignment." He glanced at the roster. "So were PFCs Gray and Shoup." He looked back at the platoon. "Don't let their ranks and latest assignments fool you. All of these Marines have a couple of combat deployments with FISTs under their belts. No cherries here. Rabbit, you've got those three. Put one in each fire team."

  "Roger," Ratliff said, nodding. He crooked a finger at his three new men.

  "I'm giving you Longfellow as well. Sorry about that," he added to Linsman.

  "Good," Ratliff said. Longfellow hadn't been with the platoon long, but Ratliff had seen enough to know he was a good Marine. Linsman merely shrugged at losing Longfellow.

  "Linsman, you get Little and Fisher."

  "Right." Linsman waved his two new men over.

  "Hound," Hyakowa said to Sergeant Kelly, the gun squad leader, "move your a-gunners up. Sorry I only have one humper for you, but that's all they gave us. His name's Tischler.

  "One more piece of business," Hyakowa said when Tischler moved to the gun squad. "We've got new uniforms coming. I want one man from each squad to go to Supply to pick them up. They're chameleons that are supposed to be impervious to the acid in the Skinks' shooters. From now on you will wear them." He looked at the men to see if anyone had a pressing question. None seem
ed to.

  "That is all," he finished. "Squad leaders, let me know how you reorganize your squads."

  The squad leaders took their men aside.

  "Now I've got all my troublemakers together where I can keep an eye on you," Sergeant Ratliff said when he gave Godenov to Dean.

  Linsman said the same thing when he assigned MacIlargie to Claypoole.

  Claypoole's expression showed he was a bit put out. Not because he had MacIlargie, whom he liked, but because he only had MacIlargie in his fire team.

  Corporal Kerr didn't show it, but he wondered why he retained Schultz and Corporal Doyle instead of getting a new man. Did Hyakowa and Rokmonov really think Chan could do a better job of integrating two new men into the squad than he could?

  Nobody but the new men wondered why Corporal Doyle wasn't given a fire team.

  Both as the more senior brigadier and as the man with the local experience, Theodosius Sturgeon, commander of 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team, was in overall command of planetside operations on the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their Apostles, more commonly called "Kingdom." As such, he wanted to get 26th FIST involved as quickly as possible and gave it patrol duty its second day planetside. Brigadier Johannes Sparen, commander of 26th FIST, was relieved he didn't have to ask Sturgeon to give his FIST a mission beyond the defensive perimeter they were fed into as soon as they debarked from the Dragons that had ferried them from the orbital shuttles.

  "Jack, the Skinks may have an innocent sounding name," Sturgeon said, "but they're exceptionally dangerous. They have horrible weapons, and they're unpredictable. I want you to put out patrols in force tomorrow, platoon size. And I want them in constant radio contact with Battalion. My staff is very familiar with the situation here." The situation here on Kingdom was unlike any he'd been in before. "Until you're familiar enough, I'll instruct my Infantry Two and Three shops to give any assistance yours request. Just until your people are familiarized with the situation. My infantrymen will relieve your platoons on the line before dawn tomorrow so your people can get an early start."

  "You're in command, Ted," Sparen said. His calm voice belied the excitement he felt at getting into combat with an enemy alien sentience he'd only learned about on his way to Kingdom.

  "Do this thing, Brigadier."

  "Aye aye, Brigadier!"

  Once outside 34th FIST's headquarters in Interstellar City, Sparen had to restrain himself from running to his HQ.

  The honor of 26th FIST's first contact with the Skinks fell to first platoon, Alfa Company. The platoon was strung out in a line about two hundred meters long in a moderately dense forest along the edge of a marshy area when Lance Corporal Ransfield, the platoon comm man, said softly, "I have movement."

  "Hold up," Ensign Cainey, the platoon commander ordered into his helmet comm's all-hands circuit. "Where?" He asked Ransfield.

  Ransfield didn't look up from the UPUD Mark III's display as he pointed to his right front. "About two hundred fifty meters."

  "Right front," Cainey said into the all-hands circuit. "Anybody got anything on infra?" Nobody did. He projected his preloaded situation map onto the inside of the chameleon shield of his helmet. The map confirmed what he already knew—no friendly forces within two kilometers of first platoon's position.

  "Send a report to Battalion," Cainey ordered Ransfield. "And get an updated sitmap."

  "Aye aye," Ransfield murmured. He requested the map and showed it to the platoon commander when it downloaded. No friendly forces where the UPUD picked up the movement—nor did it show anybody else in that area. Movement by people undetected by the string-of-pearls was ominous; all the briefings the Marines of 26th FIST had about the Skinks told them the creatures were almost impossible for the surveillance satellites to detect. Now what should he do? He could call in artillery on the movement, but what if it was some farmer's gaggle of geese? That would be bad for relations with the locals. But if it was Skinks, they didn't know a Marine platoon was here and he could ambush them.

  "Tighten up," Cainey said, giving the all-hands order. "Echelon right, on me." Immediately, the first platoon Marines began to close their interval and move on an angle—those behind Cainey swung in an arc to his right rear, those ahead of him to his left front. He knelt, facing the right front. The ground was damp under his knee.

  "Closing," Ransfield said. "Two twenty-five." He kept his attention on the UPUD, a device that combined satellite communications, geoposition locator, and motion detector. It also could receive a variety of data, including real-time situation maps such as the one he'd just downloaded.

  "How many?"

  "Not sure. Twenty, twenty-five."

  "Keep me posted at twenty-five meter intervals." He listened for vagrant noises, but all he heard in the direction of the movement was the gentle sloshing of water. He saw a fish jump in the marsh and heard the splash as it fell back. He saw tiny light reflections off flitting insectoids over the water.

  "Aye aye," Ransfield replied.

  Cainey quietly issued orders to his squad leaders on the command circuit. "Fire teams, close to contact. Ten meters between teams. Gun teams second from end. Get behind something."

  "Two hundred," Ransfield murmured.

  "Full shield rotation," Cainey said into the all-hands circuit. In each fire team and gun team the Marines obeyed; one man used his infra shield, one his magnifier, one his light gatherer.

  "One seventy-five."

  "Anything from any other direction?" The platoon was now closed to a line little more than a hundred meters long.

  "Negative." Ransfield wasn't as certain as he sounded. There was still too much movement toward the ends of the platoon, which might interfere with the UPUD's ability to detect movement farther in those directions.

  "One fifty."

  "How many?"

  "Same, twenty, twenty-five. Can't be positive. The movement flickers in and out."

  "Anybody have anything visual?" Cainey wasn't concerned when none of his Marines reported seeing anyone—or anything. Sight lines in the lightly wooded marsh hardly ever reached a hundred meters. He looked to his flanks. He could see his Marines only when he used his infra shield. All of them appeared to be behind cover, so they should be safe even if the approaching Skinks had that other weapon he'd heard about, the thing that turned trees into kindling and men into shreds of blood and gristle.

  "One hundred."

  "Heads up, they should be entering visual range." Should be, but still nobody reported seeing them.

  "Seventy-five."

  Something was very wrong. "Is that thing working?" If the Skinks were that close, he should see them in the marsh. Twenty or twenty-five people couldn't move that well-concealed in an area that semi-open.

  "Diagnostics say yes."

  "Run the diagnostics again. See if you pick this up all right." Cainey spoke into his helmet comm, "Two-three, make a move for the UPUD."

  Second squad's third fire team was the farthest to Cainey's right. "Roger, Six Actual," Corporal Ascropper, the fire team leader, replied. He rolled onto his side and hefted his blaster into the air.

  "I got that," Ransfield said.

  "Secure, Two-three."

  "Aye aye."

  "Tell him to stop moving, he's confusing the signals," Ransfield said a few seconds later.

  "Two-three, secure from movement and stand tight."

  Corporal Ascropper blinked. He'd lowered his blaster and resumed his position as soon as Cainey told him to secure. "Roger, have done," he answered.

  "I'm still getting movement from his direction," Ransfield said.

  "Two-three, check your three and your six. We're picking up movement from your location."

  A moment later Corporal Ascropper reported, "Flank and rear secure."

  "Movement to the front?" Cainey asked Ransfield.

  "Negative. Front movement stopped." He paused as he studied the UPUD display. "Movement to the right stopped."

  "Any movement anywhere?" />
  "Negative."

  Ensign Cainey lay lost in thought for a moment. He'd heard scuttlebutt, rumors, that the UPUD Mark II had been so sensitive it picked up gnats in the air in its highest setting and burned out. The Mark III hadn't been around very long, maybe that bug hadn't been completely worked out.

  "What's your sensitivity setting?"

  Ransfield flicked his eyes at the settings. "Mid-range," he replied.

  "Have you changed it since we stopped?"

  "I haven't touched the settings since we left the perimeter."

  "Run it up to most sensitive."

  "I'm getting movement right here!" Ransfield had to force himself to keep his voice low instead of shouting.

  "Show me." Suddenly pumping adrenaline sounded in Cainey's soft voice.

  Ransfield looked up from the UPUD's display for the first time since he first spotted movement 250 meters to the right front. "Great Buddha's balls," he murmured. He rapidly looked back and forth between the display and a point less than two meters away. "It's picking up that bug." He pointed.

  Cainey looked where the comm man pointed and saw something that resembled a small dragonfly wafting about in the breeze. He breathed a deep sigh. That did it; there had to be something loose inside the UPUD that made the sensitivity of the motion detector change.

  "Damp it back down to normal." Then on the all-hands circuit, "False alarm, equipment failure. Prepare to resume patrol."

  "Sir?" Ransfield said as Cainey stood. "The UPUD showed that bug at less than two meters. It showed the first movement at two fifty."

  "The UPUD has a history of failures in the field," Cainey said. "This is another failure. On your feet, we're moving out."

  Ransfield glanced at the display again before standing, and that probably saved his life. "Movement right!" he shouted.

  A high-pitched whine, like that of a buzz saw, came from beyond the right end of the Marine line. Seven of the dozen Marines who had already reached their feet were knocked off them: one had an arm torn off just above the elbow; two fell with most of their torsos blown away; one, sideways to the line, stared down in horror at where his abdomen had been before he fell dead; another tried to take a step and collapsed when one leg detached itself at the hip; the Marine closest to the whine flopped legless to the ground, his feet up to mid-calf still standing. Ensign Cainey's head erupted in a mist of pulverized blood, bone, and brain.