Battle Station sf-5 Read online

When we quietly deployed in space, spreading out in orbit over a large area, I didn’t order them all to drop at once. Instead, I sent down three squadrons of ships, each with three destroyers carrying landing pods clutched up against the bottom skin of the ship. Like birds of prey carrying precious cargo, our ships dove with alarming speed. Watching the assault via optical systems set up on the satellite and on each of the dropships, I thought it looked more reckless than it had seemed on paper. Here we were, riding in thin, smart metal cans in steep dives toward an alien world that was thronged with unknown numbers of enemy robots.

  We hit the upper atmosphere and the ships began to glow a burnt orange about two minutes into the assault. We kept up the high rate of speed as planned, the pilots had orders not to decelerate until we hit the friction later.

  I’d begun to sweat, when I finally felt the G-forces of heavy braking. Miklos was commanding my ship, and I was with him on the bridge. We both watched our pilot tensely. He was a gifted young man with dark, serious eyes.

  “How are the Centaurs doing?” Miklos asked me.

  I gave a guilty start. I was in command of a full company of native marines, and I’d failed to check in on them.

  “I’ll have a look,” I said. “It’s time to get into the pod for rapid deployment, anyway. Remember your orders, Captain. Do a one-eighty and lift off again as soon as your ship’s arm releases the pod. Any given landing group is less valuable than the ship itself.”

  “I know my orders, sir,” he assured me. “I’ll dump you and head right back into space in less than thirty seconds.”

  I nodded. I climbed hand over hand along the deck plates, using my battle suit’s implanted propulsion disks to make headway against the G-forces. I didn’t know how hard we were decelerating, but even with the inertial dampeners set to maximum, Barbarossa’s powerful engines had me grunting and straining. It had to be more than four Gs, if I had to guess.

  When I reached out and opened the landing pod hatch with a touch, I braced myself. I hoped against hope the Centaurs weren’t killing each other.

  My worries were baseless. Inside, I found a hundred of the aliens in full kit. They stood, jostling against one another and struggling somewhat against the nano-arms that attempted to restrain them. But every one of them was staring with their big round eyes at the view from the massive window I’d installed into each of these pods. As I’d ordered, the pilot kept this window directed toward the brilliant planet itself.

  The moment I saw the view, I found myself as transfixed as they were. Rushing up from nothing, vapors and mist trailed with glowing orange plasmas over our vision. The vapor moved so fast, ice-particles and sparks looked like vivid lines of color. Beyond that, we could see the surface below the cloud cover. We’d hit the friction layer and were coming in at an alarming rate. I’d been in power-dives like this before-but never with a bay window to look out of.

  When I could speak again, I checked in with the unit Captain. He was an old warlord of a Centaur, with one horn and one eye missing. His fur was gray and bristly. I hadn’t argued when they’d assigned him to command my unit. He was clearly experienced, and I was sure assigning him to me was some kind of huge honor for everyone involved. Complaining would have dishonored all of us, and possibly the old goat would have killed himself or something. I’d heard of them doing that sort of thing before-launching themselves off cliffs to fall to their deaths on their satellites because my marines had chewed them out during training. I’d had a number of talks with my noncoms, insisting they curb their natural tendency to abuse recruits.

  Among the Centaurs, apparently the way you rebuked an individual was by ignoring them. If you made no mention of honor, pride, wind, sky-or anything on the laundry list of things they cared so dearly about-then you provided them with no honor. That was acceptable, and the message was clear to the subordinate: they had screwed up. But if you exhibited direct anger toward an individual of inferior rank, well, they just couldn’t handle it. They were shattered, and both the apprentice and the master were embarrassed and sullied in the process.

  The old one-eyed goat had the only headset capable of translating my orders to his team. The rest of them would follow him-either by mimicking him or listening to his commands. We’d practiced the command structure inside the satellites on the simulated open ground, but it was untested in actual combat. I seriously hoped it wouldn’t bite me in the ass, but there was no way of proving the system other than to employ it in the field.

  Before I had time to do more than take in a brief report from the Centaur Captain, we were shuddering and heeling-over.

  “All right, this is it,” I shouted into the com-link. “We’ll be landing in the next few seconds. Everyone fix their masks and set their goggles on auto-we might be going in hot. When the big doors open, get out of the pod as fast as possible. Don’t leave your equipment behind, or it will go back up with the ship. They aren’t waiting around for us to smell the flowers.”

  I had no idea how this translated into Centaur talk. I do know that the Captain was still converting my thoughts into theirs by the time we’d come to a jolting halt. My feet stung in my boots, we landed so hard. The ballistic glass had a crack in it, and I could see rocks and grass pressed down under us. I grimaced at that. I should have put the windows all around on the sides, not one big one in the bottom like a glass-bottomed boat. I relayed the problem to Miklos, telling the pilot to be more careful and telling them all to dump fresh constructive nanites into the landing pod to effect repairs on the glass for the next trip. I didn’t want it losing pressure.

  Then the doors disappeared, and the Centaurs didn’t need any kind of urging. They bounded out into the rainstorm like a herd of fleeing animals-except these animals were armed and were assaulting this world, not running from anything.

  A few of them jostled me as their brown furry bodies zoomed past. They could really jump when they wanted too. I followed them out, checking my kit reflexively. All systems registered green and the power pack was full. The generator on my back hummed into life, and I had my projector in my hands, warmed up and humming. I was ready to rock and roll.

  — 10

  There’s no moment quite as exhilarating in a marine’s life as the first time his boots touch unknown ground in a combat zone. There’s so much noise, you’re blinded by fresh sights, even the smells assault your senses. It’s hard not to feel as if you are dreaming-but you aren’t, you’re really there. As a bonus, the unseen enemy is somewhere nearby, plotting your death.

  We raced away from the landing pod, finding ourselves in an area of brilliantly green rolling hills. The grass was tall. Every blade was as wide as a man’s thumb and reached up past my waistline. A mile to my left was a forest of big, strange-looking lumpy growths-I suppose you could call them trees. They looked more like giant broccoli to me. Closer at hand on our right flank was a lake of icy blue water. Dead ahead the hills continued, a broad swathe of green. We were in a veritable river of tall grasses.

  In the distance ahead, the grassy hills swept up to the edge of a trio of rocky mountain peaks. Those mountains were our destination. Somewhere behind them, the enemy had a major base. Marvin and the rest of our computers had calculated the odds, and they had determined this area to be the most likely location of an accessible Macro dome. As we couldn’t see the actual dome from space, it was assumed to be underground, or disguised in some fashion. Still, it had to be here. The machines kept marching in and out of this region, delivering raw supplies on a continuous basis.

  All around my running company, more ships landed. They dropped their payloads then shot back up into space. We were among the first few thousand to come down.

  “Head for the trees, we need cover!” I shouted.

  After my orders were translated and relayed, the mass of the Centaurs wheeled left and bounded for the trees. I ran after them, but quickly had to take flight to keep up. They could run at a shocking pace, even with bulky kits on their backs. Under my boots the g
rass rattled and fluttered away from my suit’s repellers like green water.

  I opened a channel to the Fleet people above. “Everyone in the first wave make it down okay?”

  Miklos answered. He’d been catching up on current events for me while I was busy humping it after a hundred racing goat-troops.

  “One pod had trouble Colonel-accidental weapons discharge,” Miklos reported.

  “How many?”

  “Six dead, ten wounded, sir.”

  “That’s quite an accidental discharge!”

  “We don’t even hint around about them lying sir-especially when we know they are. The Centaur Captain refused to let the transport take the dead and injured back up. They dumped their casualties on the grass and left them. They said something about serving the winds of-”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I interrupted. “Sky, clouds, honor and all that. Well, I suppose they can at least enjoy dying here on their own planet. Any sign of incoming missiles?”

  “Not yet sir, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  Time. It was the one resource I never had enough of. The second wave was on its way down by the time I reached the protective cover of the broccoli-trees. I saw other units doing the same all along the landing zone. I’d given the individual commanders leeway in terms of tactics in the opening minutes of the drop. Everyone was to survive and move toward the target as quickly as possible.

  Not one minute after we’d reached the tree line, I heard the snap and whine of incoming missiles. “Everyone down, seek cover.”

  I threw myself flat, but noticed the Centaur troopers under my command seemed confused. They milled among the trees and directed their lasers toward the bulbous canopy of dark green pods overhead. I supposed they really didn’t know what to expect when under fire from an aerial bombardment. We’d done little with them in the way of training, other than equipping them with effective weapons systems and figuring out how to get them down onto the surface of this planet without killing each other. We hadn’t trained them in organized infantry tactics. There had been too many cultural and language differences, and most importantly, not enough time.

  With all that said, lying down in the middle of a forest just didn’t make sense to them. They were herd animals that liked to run from danger, not hug dirt when it came. My order hadn’t been clear enough. I thought hard for a few seconds, muttering curses into the fallen, mushy pods that pressed up against my faceplate.

  “I want every last buck to get his tail up close to a tree. Stand there and lean against it. Enemy fire is incoming. Move!”

  I watched as they shuffled around for a few minutes in a tight group, then finally broke it up and went to separate trees. Part of the reason I’d given them the tree order was to break them up. They instinctively bunched up. I didn’t want a single lucky hit to come down and wipe out the entire company.

  When the missiles did finally arrive, they missed us. The barrage peppered the grassy hills we’d just left behind. Orange flashes bombarded the open grasslands in a rippling pattern. Roiling white clouds shot up, and then moments later thousands of clods of black earth showered down. At least they hadn’t thrown a nuke-not yet.

  Fortunately, my marines had been smart enough to clear the area immediately after exiting their pods. The machines hammered our empty LZ. I radioed Miklos, telling him to change the location of the next drop. He assured me new plans were in motion.

  Then I jumped to my feet, calling for my Centaurs to follow. I charged in the general direction of the three mountain peaks. Behind me, the herd played follow-the-leader. It was a game they knew well.

  We made good time, occasionally meeting up with other companies. We were to move as scattered, independent forces toward the mountains and regroup there for an organized assault. The plan had been left deliberately vague, as we hadn’t know exactly what we were in for until we put our boots on the ground.

  Twenty minutes later, I was pleased with our progress. We’d made it halfway to the mountain peaks-a good ten miles-before anything went seriously wrong. At that point, we ran into one of their harvesting machines.

  The systems the Macros used on this world were different than those I’d dealt with back on Earth. In the South American campaign, they’d churned out thousands of small robots that were essentially worker-ants for the colony. Here on this planet, however, they’d built much larger machines to do their harvesting for them.

  The harvester we ran into was the biggest machine I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting while on foot. I’d seen its kind before, however. Back when Sandra and I had taken our ill-fated scouting trip out to the blue giant system we figured was probably Bellatrix, we’d met up with a mining robot on an airless rock full of metals. That thing had been rolling along on spiked spherical wheels and chewing up raw materials it found on the surface. This one had a similar look to it, but it had a cow-catcher sweep in front of the main maw. What it was doing, as closely as we could figure out, was digesting trees from the forest. It scooped them up into its maw like an electric shaver chewing on a man’s stubble. Chopping the trees off low at the base of the trunk, the organic material then ran up chutes and was chemically leeched and burned. Behind the machine, a massive black trail of charcoal as wide as a fresh-laid highway stretched out for miles.

  We’d seen operations of this kind from space. Our reconnaissance didn’t show any of the harvested regions in this area, only virgin forests we’d planned to use for cover. My best guess was that the machine had been redirected here after learning of our invasion.

  It really didn’t matter why the machine was there, what mattered was it was plowing right into my unit and it was incredibly big. I didn’t know what kind of armament it had, and I had no clue as to how we were going to kill it. But I didn’t let these details bother me.

  “Spread out! Circle around behind the machine and shoot it in the rear. Aim for sensory equipment, joints and any weapons systems it might have.”

  The Centaurs followed my orders-sort of. Rather than scattering as individuals or even squads, they broke into two groups which each swept around the machine on either side. I could tell by now they really didn’t like any orders that caused them to separate and act as individuals.

  For my own part, I shot up directly into the air. None of my troops could perform this kind of trick, as they didn’t have full battle suits. I hoped it didn’t have an anti-air pod on its back-fortunately, it didn’t. The machine I’d met up with back in the Bellatrix system had ignored my scouting ship entirely. While this one was acting aggressively, it didn’t really have the capacity to do anything at range.

  As my Centaurs flowed around its flanks, however, it did surprise us. Two side chutes flipped out. These were probably built to cut into groves of trees in hard-to-reach pockets near boulders and the like. Whatever they were for, they ate into my troops like lawn-clippers. A dozen or so Centaurs on each flank were separated from their hooves, in many cases from all four at once. Still alive, the flopping troops fell bleating into the threshing blades as they made a second pass. Blood fountained up and puffs of dark fur floated in the forest between the trunks.

  The troops that survived flashed out with their weapons, burning the machine in a wild crisscross of beams. Vaporized metal puffed up from countless hits, but the machine seemed undaunted. Thirty seconds later, I was on top of the monster and most of my troops were behind it.

  The harvester began a slow, laborious right turn. I could tell it was wheeling, trying to get its blades back into play. Apparently, it didn’t have anything in the rear area other than the exhaust system which laid out the charcoal byproduct. Another machine would probably come along eventually to pick up the material the harvester left behind-but by then I hoped to be miles away.

  “Keep behind it, men,” I said. I realized even as I said it they weren’t men, but old habits die hard. “Keep shooting it in the ass. I’ll try to figure out what to do up here.”

  The Centaurs did as I asked. Beams lashed the
harvester’s hindquarters, to little apparent effect. At least no more of my troops were dying. Perhaps they felt it was dishonorable, not facing an enemy head on like two rams butting heads. But for once, they didn’t complain about that.

  It occurred to me that although the harvester was no longer killing my company, it was successfully delaying us. Could this be the prelude to a more effective attack by military units? I had to disable this thing and get back on track. I thought about the single nuclear grenade I had on my pack. It seemed like a waste to use it now. I only had the one, and I’d hoped to use it on a more critical target.

  Finally, I decided to try an old tactic. I’d had time to examine the harvester from a top view. There were certain data and power lines that looked familiar to me, and they all led down to a central nodule about a dozen feet from the ground on the right side of the machine.

  “All right this isn’t working out. I want all of you to focus your laser fire on this box. Follow my lead.”

  I put my beamer on the box, and let my goggles shade to full blackout mode. If the Centaurs were good at one thing, it was following the leader. More than fifty beams joined mine, and we burned through the module in seconds. Many of the thick cables were severed during the process as well.

  That was it for the harvester. First, its spinning, spiked wheels stopped churning up dirt. Then the blades on the forward scoop stopped making chewing motions. Within a minute, the entire machine halted. I sensed it was still active, watching us from a dozen sensory devices. Moreover, I could feel the thrum of its central driving engine, the vibration still came up through my boots.

  I wanted this thing dead, so we spent another minute or so burning the contents of its brainbox completely away. It was mildly satisfying. When the machine was a smoking wreck, we left it and pressed onward toward our goal.

  We’d gone from being one of the lead companies to being one of the laggers. I pushed my team hard to catch up.