Dominant Species (5 page)

The junior Marine continued passionately, oblivious to the stillness. "We'll have to root the bastards out of every cranny along this part, and in the slim chance the whole bloody dunny doesn't fall on our heads, we still have to--"

Taz paused, suddenly falling as silent as the room around him. His eyes screwed shut as he muttered under his breath, "Oh bollocks."

Ridgeway suppressed a grim smile. "Intermittent failures of military protocol" was how it read in the personnel file. But the often volatile Marine's history had been equally marked by uncanny scores in marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat. In replacing Caslin, Ridgeway wasn't screening for decorum.

On the other hand, he mused, gritting his teeth against the grin tugging at his cheeck, maintaining professionalism was one of a Sergeant's many tasks, and one which Monster took as a personal measure of excellence. Even now Monster's entire mass flexed as he leaned forward only slightly, his right hand closed the arm of the chair. Metal and grey plastic creaked pitifully.

With the slow deliberation of someone reversing out of a minefield, Taz eased back into his chair. Both Merlin and Stitch shifted their gaze back to the hologram and remained motionless.

"It all hangs on the feint." Darcy placed a thin datapad on the briefing table as she spoke with analytical authority. "If the Rimmers don't spook when the mortars start falling, we're screwed. But if they slam the door, we're screwed as well."

Ridgeway glanced at Darcy with unspoken admiration, recognizing the none-too-subtle diversion she had thrown on Taz's behalf. While nothing would get him completely off Monster's hook, it spared the new guy a longer squirm on center stage.

Ridgeway snapped back to the plan. Regardless of her motivation, Darcy's conclusion was dead-on. He answered the implied question with a tone of confidence. "That's why the mortars have to come down right on top of us. Nowhere to run means no time to think."

Another rumble of questions erupted and Ridgeway fielded them in turn. The difficulty was undeniable, but while he shared his team's concern about the make-or-break nature of the entry, Ridgeway also understood what was at stake. He stood abruptly.

"Listen up!"

The room fell silent and Ridgeway paused for emphasis. "This is it folks, there is no Plan B. We get one shot with a couple thousand Marines betting their ass that we've got what it takes."

Darcy looked around the table. Two crescents of soft blonde hair framed her face, her good looks a disarming feature that had caused many to underestimate her. With a devilish smile she summed up the moment. "Well hell, boys, sounds like just another day in RAT-land."

A wave of testosterone-laden endorsement rippled around the table. Stitch extended a slow fist towards the sniper, who responded by rapping his knuckles with her own.

"Too right," Taz spat with a fierce nod. Merlin joined in with a hearty "Oorah."

Ridgeway silently watched the bravado, a mechanism for dealing with tension. As he shared their hungry resolve, his gaze made contact with each Marine in turn. The look carried a silent question.

Not an eye wavered in response. The solemn nods said they would follow him to the end. Ridgeway's gusto softened for an instant under the weight of that trust. It never got any lighter.

Ridgeway slammed the door on his emotions and shifted gear into wrap-up mode. "Anything else?"

Darcy grinned as she pulled a heavy railgun into her lap, her right hand stroking the massive scope that ran the receiver's length. A predatory gleam flashed across her blue eyes. "Sniper has everything she needs, sir."

Another muffled "oorah" resonated from Merlin's side of the table and Ridgeway smiled in spite of himself.

"Then it's a wrap." Ridgeway clapped his hands and the RATs quickly dispersed, each to their appointed preparation.

Ridgeway glanced at the clock. Stealth drop planetside in six hours, another fifteen to reach the phase one insertion point. Two hours to get sealed up, then to wait for their cue.

Monster was right about one thing, Ridgeway thought, a dark furrow creasing his brow. This is definitely gonna be a real bitch.

CHAPTER 4

Jenner poked tentatively through the coarse carpet of hair and winced as his fingertips bumped along the raw furrow in his scalp. He was stained, rumpled and badly in need of a stiff drink.

Slumped in the decently-lit garage at Cathedral's southern end, Jenner's composure slowly returned. By his own reckoning, his mood had upgraded from sheer panic to mere dismal surliness.

"Talk about a shit day for the books," Jenner scowled. The black nylon backpack sat between his feet, his jumbled belongings draped out of the top like guts from a disemboweled carcass. Half his shit was either damaged or lost back in the tunnel. Jenner prodded listlessly at the small digital music player, its clear acrylic surface cracked and filled with moisture.

Anger overcame a well-built foundation of self-pity and Jenner hurled the ruined device, which shattered against the rear of the truck. Grumbling under his breath, Jenner allowed his gaze to sweep along the length of the metal behemoth.

The truck was a monstrous creature, over twenty meters from nose to tail. At it's highest point, he figured it had to be almost five meters tall. The drab grey chassis looked to have started life as an industrial hauler, but the resemblance ended there.

The windows were covered with the same thick armor plate that shrouded the rest of the cab. Heavy steel panels curved over the nose and down the skirt, enclosing the forward gravitic coils. Along the sides, Jenner recognized something from his brush with basic training; double-stack plates mounted on explosive bolts. His eyes narrowed.

Reactive armor, the stuff you need when someone caps a missile at your ass. Jenner felt his jaw slack. Oh that can't be good.

Most of the vehicle's mass was its storage tank. Oval in cross-section, the tank was reinforced at intervals by thick metal bands that belted its girth. The outer surface of the tank, arguably a sandy beige at some point, was now discolored and pitted. Corrosion streaked down from every valve. Of the numerous messages once stenciled across the trailer, only a few were still legible. One, the designation MC-631, appeared just above a black and white diamond-shaped placard with a dissolving human hand depicted in its center.

Three dome turrets sat evenly along the tank's spine, each bristling with an array of faucets and handles. A group of braided-steel hose lines ran along the top of the trailer. Jenner could make out the word DECON stenciled along one set, and COOLANT emblazoned just beneath another.

Jenner kneeled to peer at the undercarriage. The storage tank sat on a pair of grease-covered rails that would allow mechanics to slide an empty tank off in exchange for a full one. Hex, they had repeated endlessly, was best handled slowly and carefully.

Hex; hydrogen hexafluoride. The Mother of All Acids. Jenner's gut had curled into a ball when he heard that one.

Frowning, Jenner wiped his hands across the front of his shirt as he moved to the cab. He climbed onto the running board and tapped the silver release. With a pneumatic whine the heavy door gull-winged open to reveal a dark, cluttered interior.

The cabin exuded a disconcerting blend of smells that embodied both decay and disinfectant. The sickly-sweet odor of antifreeze seeped up from the badly stained floor mats while the upholstery reeked of old cigar smoke.

"S'matter boy? Lose the keys already?"

Jenner practically jumped from his seat at the unexpected voice. The figure at the door looked to be in his early sixties, though his physique still carried the lean hardness of someone familiar with work. Swatches of grey at his temples were well on their way to overrunning the last vestiges of brown tenaciously holding ground on his skull. His skin had the texture of tanned leather left too long in the sun, although how anybody could catch a few rays down here struck Jenner as something of a mystery.

Too surprised to reply, Jenner watched mutely as the old man fished a soiled red rag from his pocket for what seemed to be the sole purpose of exchanging the grime on his hands for older grime that had been saved on an earlier date. Neither the rag nor the hands came away any cleaner, but the hand rose up and reached into the open doorway.

"Briggs. Hank Briggs." Stained teeth remained clenched on the wreck of an old cigar.

"Hey," Jenner took the offered hand, thankful at the moment just to have some human company. "Uh, I mean, Private Jenner, sir." He fumbled to follow the handshake with a sloppy salute, the two gestures colliding haphazardly.

Briggs snorted. "Don't ‘sir' me boy, I'm a sergeant, I work for a living." Then, a little more casually, "Briggs'll do just fine."

Like most things in Jenner's new career, the rebuff seemed to reflect some tidbit of military culture beyond his understanding. But the fact that Briggs didn't make a federal case out of the whole rank thing was a good sign. The sergeant didn't seem at all like the ORA hardliners, most of whom Jenner felt took themselves and their little army routine far too seriously. Looking at Brigg's rumpled figure, Jenner wondered if all the fuck-ups got flushed to the garbara heap at the bottom of the mine.

Without waiting for comment or invitation, Briggs climbed into the cab and launched into what seemed a well-worn lecture. Briggs' job was to handle all the complicated equipment while Jenner drove. The apparent simplicity of that assertion failed to deter the sergeant's obviously hell-bent desire to point out every switch, dial and display in the cluttered cockpit.

Jenner's mind glazed over six minutes into the diatribe. His gaze meandered up a cluster of instruments on the cab's ceiling and fixed on a small hinged cover made of red plastic. He half-heartedly reached up to see what was hidden beneath.

"Don't even think about it." The icy tone stopped Jenner in mid-reach.

The private snatched his hand back as though from a snake. "What, what?"

Briggs eyed him with a flat, cold stare as his square jaw worked steadily on the cigar. Several seconds passed in dead silence. Jenner had become familiar with the tactic; authority figure trying to decide if a lecture was warranted. In his mind Jenner paced off a silent cadence.

One thousand one, one thousand two--

At one thousand six, the sergeant spoke. Jenner felt a twinge of relief when Briggs went straight into the answer without a nagging preamble.

"Detonator."

Any onset of relief vanished in an instant. "Detonator?" Jenner's tone jumped a full octave, "you mean like for a bomb?"

In mute reply, Briggs reached forward and tapped a switch on the dash. With a soft hiss of compressed air, the back wall of the cab slid open to reveal a sizable compartment, as wide as the vehicle and roughly a meter and a half tall. The inner walls were lined with yet another layer of armor plate, keloids of welded metal marking the seams where panel edges met. The left and right walls carried an impressive array of electronics. In the darkness, a myriad of tiny diodes flashed in ever-changing colors.

"You're looking at a sleeper cabin before the MIL-spec mods." Briggs slid into another bout of technical show-and-tell. "I made the bunk bed myself, rigged it together out of an old G-couch. These babies were designed to protect fighter pilots from the stress of all that violent hot-shit maneuvering."

Jenner looked incredulously at the huge piece of equipment and couldn't imagine how Briggs wedged the damn thing there in the first place. The slate-grey couch looked like it was made out of a smooth, high-impact plastic. A braid of cables stuck out from one end, clipped nubs splayed like multi-color porcupine quills.

"The main block isn't powered but I got Delkins in the motorpool to run a low-voltage line to the gelpacks. Talk about a bed that fits like a glove. A fellah lookin' to goldbrick for a few hours would be hard-pressed to find a better hiding place."

Briggs rolled a critical eye at Jenner. "Only don't even think about pulling that shit on me ‘cause that's the first place I'll look."

Jenner nodded his concession, seeing no gain to be made with a verbal response.

Briggs continued in an offhand tone. "Anyway, some of that commo shit back there is pretty hush-hush, stuff they don't want falling into enemy hands. If you look under the G-couch you'll see how serious they are about it."

Jenner craned his neck to get a look beneath the gloss grey frame. Nestled in a coil of heavy black cable sat a bundle of bricks that looked like off-white plasticine clay. Each brick was wrapped in clear cellophane and carried the bold designation THERMALITE. A narrow metal cylinder, about the diameter of a drinking straw, had been driven through the wrapper and deep into the center of each brick. Wires ran from the exposed ends to a tight bundle that swept back behind the couch.

"That, boy," Briggs said, "is a twenty-kilo package of military-grade incendiary. As ‘cindies go, Therms' the real deal. It'll do zero to three thousand degrees in a hundredth of a second. That's enough heat to turn steel into steam. If things go south in a big way, the last thing we're supposed to do is hit the magic button and the whole rig goes up in a puff of smoke."

Jenner's sense of comfort, much like a puff of smoke, evaporated. A foul edge crept back into his mood as he peered at the stack of incendiary. Three thousand degrees.