Battlespace (26 page)

In the twenty-second century, the name was applied to the M-30D7 shoulder-fired antiarmor weapon, and, like the original, it had a nasty kick. It looked a bit like a TOW launcher out of the twentieth century, with a complex sighting suite and a bipod forward to steady the thing. The Marine operator tucked a shoulder up under the padded shoulder grip, pressed helmet to optics—or downloaded a sight picture straight from the weapon's targeting computer—and thought-clicked the trigger icon once to lock on, twice to fire.

The 1.2-meter-long 7-kilogram missile was an autotargeting high-velocity penetrator round with an inner core of depleted uranium that flashed into star-hot plasma on impact, creating a jet that theoretically could burn through damned near anything short of a meter or so of high-density polylaminate. Few armies fielded tanks on Earth any longer, so the weapons were used against bunkers and other field fortifications, as well as buildings, reinforced gates, and low-flying aerospace craft. It had an effective range of twelve kilometers, though the operator needed either to be able to see the target to lock on or have a data feed from either a human or an AI forward observer. The missile's onboard AI was bright enough to recognize a variety of targets, steer a terrain-hugging course with a popup at the end, and a terminal trajectory designed to kill the target from above, where its armor, presumably, was thinnest.

He clambered onto the metallic plateau, keeping low as he moved forward with both Cavaco and Geisler on his right.
Kat and Sergeant Morton were in front of them, sheltering behind a low, flat-sloped wall. And beyond them…

“My God!” Geisler said over the squad channel. “Look at them all!”

They were hard to see—flat, oddly angular, and as black as the surrounding metal from which they seemed to have sprung. Garroway's helmet range finder threw figures up against one corner of his visual field. The nearest of the objects was a kilometer away and approaching at something close to ten meters per second. The longer he looked, the more of the oncoming objects he saw, until it seemed as though the Wheel's far horizon was alive with the things.

“Target acquired!” Morton yelled over the channel. “Lock! Fire one!”

A silent double flash strobed from his weapon, one flash at the muzzle, the other at the breach. The missile streaked low across the terrain, weaving back and forth, then abruptly launching itself into the sky, over, and down. The explosion was also silent, and most of it was contained by the target vehicle, but Garroway saw a crater ripped open in the top and large chunks of orange-hot metal erupt from the blast. Most of the fragments escaped from the low-altitude gravity field and kept glowing as they sailed off into space.

“Scratch one!” Kat shouted, her voice ragged with excitement.

Other Onager missiles were snaking out from the marine lines now, making the final popup before descending on their chosen target, smashing inside, and detonating in brilliant, silent eruptions of light.

Kat was reloading Morton's Onager, slipping a fresh missile from the bulky carry case at her side into the breech and slapping the back of his helmet to tell him he was good to go. He chose another target, triggered the weapon, and sent another hunter-killer on its deadly way.

The Onagers, Garroway was relieved to see, were cer
tainly effective against the Wiggler vehicles. There was just one problem that he could see.

The enemy had far more of the floating gun platforms than the Marines had missiles for them…and at the moment it appeared that every damned one of them was heading straight for Garroway's position.

Point Memphis—Beachhead HQ
Sirius Stargate
1305 hours, Shipboard time

Major Warhurst both watched and listened as the battle data came flooding back. The Onagers were scoring kills…dozens of them. Unfortunately, the Marines' supply of M-30 missiles was sharply limited. At this rate, they would be out of tank-killer ammo within another minute or two, and the enemy gun platforms were still coming.

And coming
fast
.

Unless they stopped or turned, they would be among his Marines within another two minutes.

“Colonel Nolan!” he rasped, watching the stream of red icons lancing toward the Marine perimeter. “Now would be a
very
good time for some close support.”

“We're on it, General. Seven-MAS is on high guard. The Redtails are dropping in close and hot.”

“Good man.”

But Warhurst was still worried.
What other surprises can the enemy spring on us?

Alpha Company, First Platoon,
B Section
1306 hours, Shipboard time

Garroway took aim at one of the oncoming Wiggler vehicles, flat, boxy-shaped, something like an inverted dinner plate with angles instead of curves, half-glimpsed against the black and angular landscape. The thing was within easy range of his 2020—less than five hundred meters. He thought-clicked, the impulse transmitted from cerebral implant to helmet electronics to the computer in his weapon faster than the neurochemical signal could have traveled from brain to trigger finger. There was no recoil, of course, and no visible beam, but he saw the splash of the hit in his noumenal view of the target. Instantly, the hostile platform slewed right, pivoting.

“Incoming!” Garroway shouted as he rolled hard to the left. The strange ground beneath his body bucked and a three-meter slice of black metal where he'd been lying an instant before vaporized in a silent blast of plasma and fragments. Static shrilled over his comm suite.

“Gare!” Cavaco yelled. “You okay?”

“Yeah! Watch it! Those things react fast!”

He snuck another look at the vehicle. As far as he could tell, the pulse from his laser hadn't even marked it. It had certainly sensed him, however, and sent a particle beam blast back up the laser's path.

“Keep your heads down, people!” Dunne ordered over the company frequency. “The fly-guys are coming in!”

He glanced up, but saw only stars. He wasn't particularly concerned about friendly fire from an airstrike; once, the Marine pilots would have been guided by a forward air controller with the troops on the ground, using laser target designation or even colored panels set out on the ground to indicate the enemy. With Sky Net and CCN online, however, the Marines in the strike fighters overhead could see the noumenally pinpointed location of each Marine on the ground as easily as could General Ramsey, or Lieutenant
Gansen, for that matter. Weapons systems were smart enough now to avoid own-goal incidents, at least for the most part.

But Starhawks and Wasps packed a hell of a lot of fire-power in their weapons pods, extremely
intense
firepower, and they were about to deliver it on a target now less than one hundred meters from the Marines' front lines. It should prove to be an interesting show….

White light washed across the eldritch landscape, casting sharp-edged and shimmering shadows from men and terrain features. For long seconds, Garroway's helmet visor polarized black, so brilliant was that strobing chain of silent detonations. Again, he felt the rumble and thump of vibrations transmitted through his vac armor. The entire Wheel was shuddering under the multiple impacts.

Goddess
, he thought.
What happens if they punch through to those black holes they say are moving around inside this thing
?

Well, a hell of a lot of good it did worrying about that. If it happened, it happened. Meanwhile, all he could do was stay down and wait for the all-clear.

The explosions dwindled away, then reintensified as the fighters made a second pass. From the feel of it, and from the pounding the little red icons on his noumenal display map were taking,
nothing
could survive that bombardment.

The explosions tapered off again, and his helmet visor cleared. “That's it, Alpha!” Dunne said. “End of the run!”

He lifted his head and felt a stab of disappointment. The enemy vehicles were still coming—many fewer now than before, and moving more slowly as they picked their way across parts of the Wheel surface blasted and cratered by the aerospace fighters' strike—but
coming
. It looked like the aerospace jockeys had taken out a third, maybe even half of the attackers.

But new attackers were joining the stream moving toward the Marine lines. They appeared to be emerging from the Wheel's surface itself.

Garroway shifted uneasily, clutching his laser rifle. These guys weren't playing by the rules, damn it. According to the tactical and historical data downloaded through his implant, proper battle tactics required supporting armored vehicles with foot soldiers. Old-style tanks could be deadly in combat, but they had to be protected from troops with tank-killer weapons—hence, the historical battlefield symbiosis between armored vehicles and support infantry.

The Wheel's defenders, though, were sending in these tanklike floating vehicles with no infantry that Garroway could see. Was that because the hostile tanks were so good they didn't need infantry support? Or was it simply the application of a completely alien combat doctrine?

There was no way to know. Garroway and his fireteam were here, however, to protect Kat and Morton from enemy infantry while
they
killed tanks. With no enemy infantry to go after, Garroway, Geisler, and Cavaco were pretty much reduced to the role of
targets
.

Point Memphis—Beachhead HQ
Sirius Stargate
1306 hours, Shipboard time

Major Warhurst ground his teeth in frustration. The air strike had taken out at least thirty enemy vehicles, but Cassius was counting forty-three still out there, with new ones popping into the sensor net every few moments. Where the hell were they all coming from?

“Patch me through to the General, Cassius,” he said. “Full visual.”

“Channel open, Major.”

In his mind's eye, he floated above the battlefield at Ramsey's side, knowing that Ramsey, back aboard the
Chapultepec
, was seeing the same illusion he was. Flat and angular vehicles skimmed through the artificial valleys of the Wheel's face, converging on the Marine lines at three points now.

“I don't think we can hold them, General,” he said. “The aerospace strike clobbered them, but they're still coming. The fighters are accelerating back to the
Ranger
, now, to rearm and refuel. They don't have the R/M to stay over the DZ. Ground teams are reporting they're almost out of antiarmor rounds for the Onagers. It's going to get
real
up-close and personal in a few more minutes.”

“Understood,” Ramsey said. “You're going to have to get off the surface.”

“Underground, you mean,” Warhurst said. “We're working on it, sir.”

He knew Ramsey wasn't calling for an evacuation. Not yet. The way the battle situation was developing, he doubted that the Marines could mount an evacuation if it became necessary.

They would face that when the time came.

“Let me see,” Ramsey said.

With a thought, Warhurst took Ramsey back to the center of the Marine perimeter, close alongside the crater now serving as a beachhead HQ. A double dome stood on the black surface of the Wheel there, its chameleonic outer coating turning it as black as its surroundings. The virtual presence of the two men floated through the shell and into the brightly lit space inside, where a half-dozen armored figures were working around something like an overturned steel bucket on the deck.

“Giotti!” Warhurst called. “What's the story?”

One of the armored men looked up, though in reality, of course, he couldn't see the two ghostly presences. “We've
got penetration, Major,” Giotti said. “So far, the samples look like breathable atmosphere.”

“Hurry up, damn it. We have a situation outside.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Giotti said, continuing to work.

One man in each platoon of the assault force had been designated as an engineer, and given specialist downloads before the drop. They'd been taken from volunteers from every platoon so that an unlucky hit wouldn't take out all of the unit's engineers in one blow.

The bubble was a portable airlock designed for VBSS operations—Vacuum Boarding Search and Seizure. Air was injected between its double walls and it became rigid when fully inflated; a nanoseal in the deck melted its way into the surface of whatever the Marines were trying to enter—usually a space craft or space station, but in this case the face of the Wheel itself. The engineers could then cut an opening through the hull, filling the interior of the primary airlock dome with whatever atmosphere was inside; the second, smaller dome served as an airlock access from the vacuum outside to the pressurized interior.

It was one way of cutting into an enemy vehicle without risking depressurization. Usually, that wasn't a high priority for Marines boarding an enemy spacecraft, but it was during rescue operations when the ship's crew was disabled, or if enemy forces were holding hostages on board. In this case, no one knew what to expect inside the Wheel, and the decision had been made to preserve the thing's structural integrity as much as possible.

“How long, Giotti?” Ramsey asked. “How long until we have full access.”

“I don't know, General. The Wheel structure is almost two meters thick at this point. We drilled through with a laser-nano combination—seven minutes for a two-millimeter shaft. It'll take a lot longer for a three-meter door.”

“We don't have a lot longer, Marines,” Warhurst said. “Pick it up!”

“Aye aye, sir.”

But Warhurst could almost hear the man's mental grumble. Some things could
not
be hurried and that included the laws of basic physics.

The Marines on the perimeter were going to have to buy the engineers time.

And that wasn't going to be easy or pretty.