Star Marines

PFC Gwyneth Istook was a pale, red-headed youngster from Sebree, Kentucky. Private Randolph C. Lowey was a black kid from Manchester, Georgia. “Doin’ okay, Gunny,” Lowey said.

“Yeah,” Istook added. “Ooh-rah!”

“I want you both to stick close to me, understand? No heroics. No wandering off.”

“Right, Gunny.”

“Okay, Gunny.”

“This is not a suicide mission. You will follow me in, place your devices, and follow me out. Got it?”

“Got it, Gunny.” Istook’s mental voice was level and hard.

“Good.”

He wished he could be as sure of that as he sounded.

“Uh … Gunny?” Lowey asked. “What if that thing collapses while we’re in there?”

It was a question for which there was no answer. Marines had boarded a disabled Xul huntership once before … and escaped moments before the black hole that apparently powered the thing had devoured the entire mile-long hulk.

“Then we’re dead,” he replied, his voice cold. “But we’ll be dead so fast we won’t even know what hit us. And we know the bastards won’t take the rest of humanity with ’em. Right?”

“Right, Gunny. It’ll be quick?”

“Faster than an eye-blink.”

He didn’t add that it would also be quick if they all went out in their own nuclear fireballs. They knew. In a way, it was a kind of blessing. Most Marines Garroway knew were more afraid of being seriously wounded or mutilated than they were of a fast and clean death. There was scuttlebutt—only scuttlebutt, he reminded himself—that if the Xul captured you, it was neither fast nor clean.

Casualties in the unforgiving vacuum of space tended to be fatal, and rapidly so, in any case. But right now, he thought, every man and woman in the autie must be thinking about the alternatives.

“Five minutes!” sounded over the command channel. “Everybody strap in!”

Garroway made his way back to his seat, squeezing the bulk of his CAS into the bucket between Corporal Visclosky and Sergeant Bonilla.

“Think they’ll have the front door open for us?” Chrome asked him over a private channel.

“Damfino,” he replied as the grabbers snugged him in. “Wish we’d had time to load on some IMACs.”

“Roger that. This whole fucking op feels like the brass is making it up as they go along.”

“Yeah. What if we can’t breach the objective’s hull?”

“Then we’ll do it the Marine way,” Garroway told her. “Improvise, overcome, and adapt.”

“We can use Will-kill’s head as a battering ram.”

Garroway let that pass … and hoped, for Chrome’s sake, that Wilkie wasn’t monitoring the private channels. Chances were, though, that the lieutenant had other things on his mind right now.

Like how the hell the RST was going to get inside the Intruder if its hull hadn’t been breached.

Garroway, along with most of the Marines in this compartment, had studied the intelligence data gleaned from studies of the Singer, found almost three centuries before beneath the ice of the Europan world-ocean, and from the battle with a Hunter-of-the-Dawn starship at the Sirius stargate 144 years ago. The Xul Hunters possessed a technology that made human starships look like stone axes by comparison.

But that technology could be overcome. The ship that had emerged through the Sirius stargate had been protected by an electromagnetic force field of some kind, designed to divert charged particles, but it had been crippled by the field expedient of turning the plasma drives of seven starships against it. That concentration of charged particles had evidently overwhelmed the Xul vessel’s shielding and breached the hull, allowing a small Marine boarding party to enter.

A boarding party, Garroway thought with a dark smile, that had included one of his Marine ancestors—his great-granduncle Corporal John Esteban Garroway.

According to the records, studied in almost obsessive detail by generations of Marines since, the Xul starship had been destroyed by a rogue micro-black-hole released by its own disabled drive, literally collapsing into a gravitational singularity of its own manufacture. Before that collapse, however, the Marine boarding party had been able to tap into the equivalent of the Xul’s computer net, information that was still being studied, translated, and argued over.

This time, the Marines would be going in to make sure the Xul monster was destroyed.

The big question was whether they would even be able to get on board. Intelligence data suggested that the Xul’s outer hull was a nanufactured synthetic tougher than diamond, resistant to nuclear explosions and other forms of large-scale mayhem. IMAC pods were designed to use special nanodisassembler docking cuffs that would eat through anything, even Xul hulls. In the absence of fresh IMACs, though, the Marine RST was going to have to wing it. Four Marines were equipped with portable disassemblers; it would be a lot simpler if whatever had disabled the Xul starship had also burned a hole through it.

What had they used? The XEL pods orbiting Mars, and in the Asteroid Belt? The HELGA platforms in solar orbit? Or had someone gotten lucky with an antimatter warhead?

Well, they would know in a few more minutes. If the Xul were disabled enough not to be aware of their approach.

Damn it, this op was suicide … or close enough as made no difference.

We Who Are

Asteroid Belt

1417 hrs, GMT

The Lords Who Are were … frustrated.

The group mind that comprised the guiding intelligence for the huntership did not understand, could not understand, emotional responses such as fear or anxiety, any more than it could comprehend concepts such as individuality. From their studies of various organic beings—the vermin that infested so many planetary bodies—they understood that there were such things, but they could never experience emotions for themselves.

But the Lords Who Are did understand that peculiarly unpleasant inward disturbance, that inner conflict of desire and acceptance, that arose when a planned and expected outcome was thwarted by unforeseen events. Indeed, that might be the closest We Who Are could ever come to experiencing anything like emotion.

They experienced it now, however, as they took stock of the current situation. The local system’s vermin had somehow managed to overwhelm the huntership’s shielding, and blind it as well. Analyses of the vectors of several nearby vermin spacecraft suggested that the locals were going to try for an intercept. That could not be permitted.

Another concept We Who Are rarely needed to deal with was the idea of hurry. Time, generally, was simply another factor to be worked into the equations of the moment. But it was imperative, now, that repairs be completed in a very great hurry indeed. Clearly, the locals should be classified as a’amv’yet, meaning a serious threat to We Who Are.

A threat requiring the immediate sterilization of this entire star system.

Assault Detachment Alpha

Autie Navy Sierra 1-1

1417 hrs, GMT

“Three … two … one … grapple release.”

Garroway felt the jolt as the autie was cast clear of the Commodore Edward Preble. They were falling free through empty space once more.

“We’re clear,” the mental voice continued. “And … primary ignition in five … four … three … two … one … ignition!”