Annihilation (Star Force Series) (22 page)

“What happened to the men?” Kwon asked. I could see the whites of his eyes in his helmet. He stared up at me, looking at me from an odd angle. I figured this was easier for him than turning his head.

“Most of them lived, surprisingly. They had lots of problems, of course. And they tasted metal in their mouths for the rest of their lives.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve got that right now.”

I nodded. “Can you get up yet?”

“No sir. That’s going to take a while.”

I knelt and frowned down at him. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m pretty sure my neck is broken. I’m paralyzed. Sorry about that, Colonel.”

“It’s all right.”

Over the next half-hour, we were in emergency recovery-mode. No follow-up assaults came from the seas or the Macros that we knew were crawling all over the other islands in the region. I prepared to inject Kwon with a pasty mixture of nanites and microbial “sauce”, a medical concoction we used for serious injuries. The package said “bone injury” on the side, so I hoped it could handle cracked vertebrae. I was more worried about his spinal cord damage, but couldn’t find anything that referenced that.

The needle on the syringe was about six inches long and as thick around as a ballpoint pen. Kwon looked at it, his eyes rolling in concern.

“I’m not going to feel that, right?” he said hopefully. “I mean, I can’t feel my arms or legs.”

“Sure,” I lied, and jabbed him in the neck with the needle. The bulb at the end of the syringe was smart metal. It sensed it was go-time and started pumping beige fluids into his flesh.

Kwon squinched up his eyes and made a hissing sound. “I hate needles.”

I patted his helmet and pulled the dripping needle out of his neck. “You’ll be fine in an hour.”

I left him there, flat on his back in the foxhole. I figured it was the safest spot available at the moment.

Next, I sought Captain Gaines. He’d been taking in reports and we went over some numbers together, which we reported back up to Captain Sarin. She was in a better position to see the entire battlefield situation, so I put her in charge of ops—with guiding suggestions from me.

“We lost about eleven hundred men due to missile strikes,” she said. “Added to those lost in the initial drop and various mishaps, such as the mining machine, that totals up to about fifteen percent of your total force, Colonel.”

“Not bad,” I announced, “not bad at all.”

I looked around and was mildly surprised when I realized my command staff didn’t share my enthusiasm. They weren’t wreathed in smiles. They obviously didn’t agree with my assessment. I tried not to notice their sour moods, but after a few seconds, I grew angry with them.

“Did you people come here not expecting to take serious losses?” I demanded. “We just hot-dropped on an uncharted planet. That takes huge balls, and so far, I figure we’ve been lucky.”

Captain Gaines lifted his hand. “I didn’t expect heavy losses so early, sir.”

I glared around at the rest. Majors and captains shifted uncomfortably. Some appeared about to speak up, but thought the better of it and remained silent.

“Some of you might be under the impression we dropped too close to the enemy lines. But we had no choice. We’re less than ten miles from the enemy concentrations because we
couldn’t
drop at a safer distance. These islands are the only scraps of available land.”

“But so many lost…” Captain Gaines began.

“Back in World War Two,” I said, interrupting him, “the Americans lost twenty four hundred marines on Omaha Beach in a few hours. During the invasion of Okinawa, over a hundred and fifty thousand died on both sides. The lesson here is that beachheads are often hard to establish. Quit whining.”

No one was actually whining, but they still managed to look glum. I turned away from them and continued planning the next stage of the assault. I gathered a few nearby officers and connected the rest up via their HUDs. Captain Sarin was there in a virtual sense, as were a number of others.

“Now, it’s time to bring down the second wave. I want those three battalions water-dropped off the beach, here,” I said, working a thin, flexible computer screen that looked pretty much like a piece of shelving paper. The sheet was impregnated with photo-reactive nanites that knew their jobs well. Activated by my touch, they collected data from networks that reached all the way up to the ships in orbit.

“So soon, sir?” Captain Gaines asked.

I glanced at him in surprise. He was a junior officer in the extreme, having been a lieutenant earlier in the day. I was somewhat taken aback to be second-guessed by a man who barely deserved to be this meeting.

“Yes. Why not?”

“They just hit us hard. They’re probably preparing their follow-up. If we land in the middle of a second missile barrage, we’ll take high losses again.”

“Presumption, Captain,” I said. “Incorrect assessment. The enemy is well-known to me. In their mechanical brains, they marked that last attack down as a failure. They expended a great deal of missiles hoping to take us out early. They lost a lot of ordnance and only killed fifteen percent of our overall ground force. To them, that’s a failure.”

Gaines shrugged. “So why not do it again?”

“Because they don’t like to repeat the same mistake twice in a row. They’ll adjust their plans and do something else. That’s pretty typical for the machines. They like to hit hard, but they don’t hit hard the same way unless it worked the first time.”

Gaines nodded. “If you say so, sir.”

I stared at him flatly for a second. “I just
did
say it. What we need to do now is get all our forces down out of space onto the ground, where they can do some good.”

Gaines raised his hand again. I felt a surge of irritation, but suppressed it. Due to the virtual conference setup, most of the staffers were listening in. They were staying quiet, while this man was interrupting my presentation of the plan with regularity. I could tell he was green and had been fooled by the fact only a few of us were standing here in the dirt together. He was behaving as if it was just he and I on a hill, having a chat.

Reluctantly, I recognized Gaines with a nod.

“I’m assuming we’ll now focus on digging in and preparing for their next assault, right Colonel?” he asked.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “We’re going to attack. That’s how we’ll cover the water-drop and make sure they make it up onto the beaches, by giving the Macros something else to think about.”

Gaines’s mouth was open, but there wasn’t any sound coming out. I kind of liked him that way. For the first time, I saw a new look in his eyes. It wasn’t fear exactly…I would describe it as extreme alarm.

“Are we ready for that, sir?” he asked finally.

“No, of course not. Most military commanders never feel they’re entirely ready to attack. But we’re going to do it anyway. It will throw the enemy off, and grab the initiative. If they’re worried about us coming at them, they can’t plot our deaths so easily.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir.”

I’d had enough by now. “Look, Gaines, I’ve cut you some slack because you’re new to operational command. Let me put it to you this way: should I be losing confidence in you? Do you feel unfit for the duties assigned?”

“No sir,” he said quickly.

“All right, then shut the hell up. We’re all Star Force Marines, and you have the particular misfortune of being directly associated with Riggs’ Pigs, meaning whatever unit I’m marching with. My Pigs, whoever they are, aren’t known for crouching in holes on mountaintops waiting for enemy assaults. You can read the wiki on that one.”

Gaines just nodded. I figured he was going to keep quiet for a while, so I turned my attention to the rest. “I want to hear any other objections the rest of you are bottling up. I want to hear them right now.”

Perhaps it was my tone of voice, which was gruff and angry, but no one spoke up.

I showed them their positions, gave them an hour to get their men back on their feet, and broke up the meeting.

A minute or two later my com light was blinking. It was Jasmine Sarin.

“Yes, Captain. What is it?”

“Sir, I wanted to discuss the battle plans with you.”

“I just finished rolling up the damned map. Did you think of something else?”

“Well, no sir…I wanted to give you my input concerning the morale of the staff. It’s low, sir.”

“Yeah. People are always deflated when their team loses one. I’m trying to give them a win now, so they can feel good about themselves again. That’s what I am, you know, a glorified grief counselor.”

She was quiet for a moment. I could tell she didn’t like my sarcasm. Suddenly, I felt a touch of remorse. I liked Jasmine, and I didn’t want her to doubt me.

“Is something wrong, sir?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, sighing. I checked to make sure the channel was a private one. I didn’t want to accidentally broadcast even a single second of self-doubt.

“Just between you and me,” I began, “Every time I have dealings with the Thor system—with the Lobsters—I end up feeling like I’ve been duped somehow. I’ve felt like a puppet since we came out here. At this moment the Crustaceans are hiding in their underwater holes, and by some voodoo they’ve gotten us to fight battles for them. They didn’t even give us a guarantee of an alliance when this is all over.”

“These people have suffered grievous losses,” she said.

“Yeah. That’s about the only thing that allows me to tolerate them.”

“You’ve allowed them to get away with this, because you want them to join us so badly. Perhaps you could contact them and demand commitment.”

“I’ve thought about that, but rejected the idea. I’ll do it after I show them some victories. They won’t respect anything less. That’s a big part of my frustration. So far, we’re not looking like big winners on Yale. That means we have no leverage with the Crustaceans.”

After we broke off the conversation, I returned to the foxhole with Kwon. I sagged down into it and slumped back to rest. My helmet had repaired itself and was functioning normally, and I was able to set an alarm to wake me up ten minutes before go-time. Soon, Kwon and I were both snoring.

-19-

When my alarm went off, it was a gentle, beeping sound. This soon rose and rose to a shriek. I woke up, slapping at my helmet. This did nothing of course, as the controls were all inside the helmet.

The suit detected that my eyes were open, however, and canceled the alarm. Sourly, I struggled to my feet. I almost fell over Kwon as I checked on him. It was funny how tired a good bombing could make a man once you were used to them. When I got into battle-mode, I tended to shut down for sleep whenever there was a lull in the fighting.

Kwon’s eyes snapped open as I regarded him.

“You’re ugly,” he said.

I snorted. “Same to you, big man. Are you okay? Can you move, First Sergeant?”

Experimentally, he rocked his head from side to side.

“Feels a little crunchy—in my neck area.”

“Yeah. That’s the dead microbials. They’ll drain out of you over the next few days.”

Kwon heaved, and managed to sit up. I reached out a hand, but he pushed me away. “No sir,” he said, “let me do it.”

He climbed to his feet and swayed.

“How old are you Kwon?” I asked him.

“I don’t know sir,” he said. “I mean—I’m not sure right now. I guess I’m about thirty. Haven’t thought about that in a long time. Dates don’t mean much when the sun is crazy in the sky. Sometimes, there’s no sun at all.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. We’ve been on so many worlds, I don’t think about little stuff like birthdays anymore. But I think I’m forty.”

“We should throw you a birthday party. I’ll find some black candles somewhere.”

I laughed. I clapped him on the back and he winced.

“Sorry,” I said. “Still tender back there?”

“I’ll be fine.”

I knew Kwon was worried he’d be left out of the action to come if I thought he was too injured to fight. He obviously was, but I knew he hated to miss a fight against the machines. I figured it would probably be another hour or two before we made contact with the enemy. That was plenty of time for a nanotized marine with a fresh batch of juice in his blood to recover. Hell, an hour ago he’d been crippled.

“Okay then,” I said. “Let’s march.”

Kwon put on his best show, beating his gauntlets together and bellowing for people to move. I could hear a twinge of pain and weakness in his voice, but I doubted anyone else caught it. Even while half-dead, Kwon was more of a marine than most of them.

Our battalion gathered itself and moved in loosely grouped companies downslope. The machines were concentrated around the beaches in most cases. There were no domed factories on this big island, but then there weren’t as many machines per square mile as there were on the other scraps of land. That was one of the reasons I’d landed here.

“Okay,” I said over command chat, “you all know the plan. Move in battalion-strength groups down from the mountains to the nearest beach and begin to sweep. Destroy every gathering machine you find. We’ll clear this island quickly, then identify our next objective.”