Star Strike

“Listen up, people,” Lieutenant Jones’ voice said over the platoon net. “We’re three minutes out, and about to drop below the cloud deck. Remember your training, remember your mission downloads. Keep it simple! We secure the spaceport, and we hold until relieved. Ooh-rah?”

“Ooh-rah!” the platoon chorused back at her.

Seconds later, a loud thump announced the release of the battlezone sensor pods, and the main tactical feed came on-line as thousands of thumb-sized microfliers were shot-gunned into the skies ahead of the assault group. Ramsey opened a mental window, and entered a computer-generated panorama of ocean, and the coastline to the north. Red pinpoints illuminated the coast, marking generators, vehicles, and other power-producing facilities or units. The spaceport was marked in orange, the Fortress in white, with sullen red patterns submerged within the graphics, indicating the main power plants.

As he watched, more power sources winked on. That might be an illusion generated by the fact that more and more BZ pods were entering the combat area, but it also might mean the enemy had been alerted and was waking up.

But so far, the skies were quiet, save for the flash of lightning and the sweeping curtains of rain.

Remember your training. Yeah … as if that were a problem. Remember your downloads. Their mission parameters had been hard-loaded into their cephlink RAM. It wasn’t like you could freaking forget. …

Keep it simple. Secure the spaceport. Hold until relieved.

Nothing new there, either.

The question was whether the landings would be enough. Alighan was a heavily populated world in the Theocracy of Islam, with over two billion people in the ocean-girdled world’s teeming cities. The Marine assault force codenamed Green 1 consisted of the four companies of the 55th Marine Aerospace Regimental Strikeforce, a total of 580 men and women … against an entire world.

True, they were exceptionally well armed and armored men and women, and they seemed—for the moment at least—to have kept the element of surprise. Even so, fewer than six hundred Marines against a population of two billion …

Impossible.

Ridiculously impossible.

But the United Star Marines, once the United States Marines, specialized in the impossible, as they and their predecessors had done for the past eleven hundred years.

Alighan. The name was derived from the Arabic term for “God is Guardian,” and the name suited the place. The system of five rocky planets orbiting a K0 star was strategically positioned along the New Dubai trade route, a channel for ninety percent of the interstellar shipping between the Heart Worlds and the Theocracy. Control Alighan, and you controlled access to the Islamic state … or to the Heart Worlds, depending on which way your battlefleet was headed. Scuttlebutt had it that the Terran Military Command wanted Alighan as an advance base for deeper strikes into Theocratic space.

The key, of course, was the planetary starport, AI Meneh, “The Port,” which doubled as the system capital. The battle-ops plan called for the Marines to seize and hold the starport. Within a standard day—two at the most—the Navy transports would arrive from Kresgan, bringing with them the Army’s 104th Planetary Assault Division, the 43rd Heavy Armored Division, and elements of the 153rd Star Artillery Brigade and the 19th Interstellar Logistical Support Group.

And the Marines, those who’d survived, would be off to their next planethead.

Five hundred planetary assault Marines against two billion Muslim fanatics. …

Ramsey shook his head, a gesture unseen within the massive helmet of his 660-ABS. In fact, the vast majority of the local population would not be fanatics. Most of the population down there would be ordinary folks who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, especially by their own government.

But experience gained so far in the present war—and in other wars fought against the Theocracy and similar governments over the past eleven centuries—taught that the ones who did fight would do so with all their heart and soul, with no thought of quarter, and with no mind for the usual rules of war.

They would fight to the death, and they would take as many Marines with them as they could.

So far as the Marines of the 55th MARS were concerned, they would be happy to help the Muzzies find their longed-for medieval paradise.

Without going with them.

USMC Recruit Training Center

Noctis Labyrinthus, Mars

0455/24:20 local time, 1513 hrs GMT

“Gods and goddesses, Jesus, Buddha, and fucking Lao Tse! Those fat-assed bastards up in Ring City are trying to fucking destroy my Corps! …”

Gunnery Sergeant Michel Warhurst stopped his pacing in front of the ragged line of recruit trainees and shook his head sadly. “You maggots are trying to fucking destroy my Corps! My beloved Corps! And I am here this morning to let you know that I will not stand for that!”

Recruit Private Aiden Garroway stood at a civilian’s approximation of attention, staring past the glowering drill instructor’s shoulder and off into the velvet, star-riddled blackness of the Martian night. After a brief flight down from the Arean Ring, he and his fellow recruits had been unceremoniously hustled off the shuttle, herded into line by screaming assistant DIs, and were now being formally inducted into Recruit Company 4102 by the man who would rule their lives for the next sixteen weeks.

He was actually enjoying the show, as the drill instructor paraded back and forth in front of the line of recruits. Three assistant DIs stood a few meters away, two glowering, one grinning with what could only be described as evil anticipation.

He’d been expecting this speech, of course, or something very close to it. For the past two years, ever since he’d decided to escape a dead-end jack-in and shallow friends by enlisting in the United Star Marines, he’d lived and breathed the Corps. Boot camp, he knew, would be rough, and it would begin with exactly this kind of heavy-handed polemics, a strategy honed over the centuries to break down the attitudes and preconceptions of a hundred-odd kids with civilian outlooks and build them back up into Marines. It was part of a tradition extending back over a thousand years … and it self-evidently worked.

And getting through boot camp, he’d decided, wouldn’t be all that tough, not for him. After all, he knew what it was all about. He knew …

“What the fuck are you daydreaming about, maggot!?”

The DI’s face had appeared centimeters in front of his own as if out of nowhere, contorted by rage, eyes staring, mouth wide open, blasting into Garroway’s face with hurricane force. The sheer suddenness and volume forced him to take a step back. …

“And where the fuck do you think you’re going, you slimy excuse for an Ishtaran mudworm? Get back here and toe that line! I am not done with you, maggot, not by ten thousand fucking light-years, and when I am done you will know it! Drop to the sand! Give me fifty, right here!”

Startled, Garroway swallowed, looked at Warhurst, and stammered out a “S-sorry, sir!”

The senior drill instructor’s face blended fury with thunderstruck. “What did you say?”

“I’m sorry, sir!”

“What did you just call me? Gods and goddesses of the Eternal Void, I can’t believe what I just heard!” Warhurst brought one blunt finger up a hair’s breadth away from Garroway’s nose. “First of all, maggot, I did not give you permission to squeak! None of you will squeak unless I or one of the assistant drill instructors here gives your sorry ass permission to squeak! Is that understood?”

Garroway wasn’t sure whether a response was called for, but suspected this was one of those cases where he would get into trouble whether he replied or not. He remained mute, eyes focused somewhere beyond Warhurst’s left shoulder.

“Give me an answer, recruit!” Warhurst bellowed. “Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

“What?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Second of all, for your information my name is not ‘Sorry.’ So far as you putrid escapees from a toilet bowl are concerned, I am sir!” He turned away from Garroway and strode up the line, bellowing. “In fact, so far as you mudworms are concerned, I am God, but you will always address me as ‘sir!’ If you have permission to address me or any of the other drill instructors behind me, the first word and the last word out of your miserable, sorry shithole mouths will be ‘sir!’ All of you! Do I make myself abundantly clear?”

Several in the line of recruits chorused back with, “Sir, yes, sir!” A few, however, forgot to start with the honorific, and most said nothing at all, or else mumbled along.

“What was that? I couldn’t hear that!”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

“What?!”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

Warhurst turned again to glower into Garroway’s face. “Third! Recruits will not refer to themselves as ‘I’! You are not an I! None of you rates an I! If for any reason you are required to refer to your miserable selves, you will not use the first person, but you will instead say ‘this recruit!’ That goes for all of you! Is that clear?”