Starfist: FlashFire (31 page)

“Hammer, can you fire off hand and leave room for both of us?”

A noise rumbled up from somewhere deep in Schultz’s chest; Claypoole took it as a yes.

“All right,” Claypoole said, “Wolfman, you go prone. I’ll kneel and fire over you. Our own people are in front of us on both sides, be careful you don’t shoot them.”

Schultz slid his infra screen into place as he turned his head to watch the fleeing soldiers and saw Corporal Barber setting his gun team. “Back,” he growled, and shoved Claypoole and MacIlargie out of the doorway, back into the room, seconds before a long burst of fire from the gun streamed down the corridor past their position.

Claypoole yelped when he saw the plasma bolts blur past. “They could have hit us!” he exclaimed.

“What’s going on?” MacIlargie yelled. “Barber’s too good a gun team leader to make that kind of mistake.”

“I don’t know,” Claypoole snapped. He looked toward Schultz, who stood placidly, watching the plasma bolts from the gun and the laser flashes from the rebels race past. The plasma bolts seemed to be winning, especially when first squad opened up from the other side of the corridor.

Then the gun stopped firing and the laser fire picked up. Schultz was in the doorway firing at the enemy before Claypoole even began to order his men into the tight space to begin fighting.

Even before Lance Corporal Tischler and PFC Yi pulled Corporal Barber’s body to safety and resumed firing down the corridor, the rebel advance was stopped by the massive fire put out by the blasters of third platoon. Nearly all of the Coalition troops in the corridor down which the Marines fired were dead or wounded and out of action. Only a few of them, no more than three or four, could fire from the far corner, and their fire was ineffective.

When the rebels fired their lasers, the light beams harmlessly disappeared into the rough surfaces of the tunnel walls. The Marines’ plasma bolts sometimes spattered when they hit the walls, spitting sparks of star-stuff in all directions; sometimes they melted tiny rock protrusions and flung the molten metal around. The Marines weren’t suffering more casualties, but the rebel troops were getting dinged and worse.

Ensign Charlie Bass did a quick assessment of the situation and raced to first gun team’s position, carrying four Straight Arrows. He spared a quick look at Barber, whose helmet had been pulled off by Tischler. Barber’s eyes were open, looked surprised, his jaw was slack. Blood trickled from a small hole in his forehead. Bass looked away, expressionless. Barber had been with him for a long time, but he’d have to wait until the battle was over to mourn the Marine.

“Here’s what we’re going to do . . .” Bass said into his all-hands circuit. When he finished, he waited a moment while the squad and fire team leaders checked to make sure everybody got the word, then stood and trotted along the middle of the tunnel, unslinging one of the Straight Arrows as he went.

“You shouldn’t be doing this, Charlie,” Staff Sergeant Hyakowa said over the platoon command circuit, “you’re the boss.”

“I can’t ask someone else to do something I won’t do myself,” Bass replied. The Marines ahead of him were giving him covering fire, firing blasters as fast as they could. They were all using their infras, and as he passed each fire team’s position it stopped firing to avoid hitting him.

“You’ve already done enough,” Hyakowa insisted.

“Enough to some, maybe,” Bass said when he was halfway to the cross tunnel. He dropped to one knee and sighted the tank killer a few meters short of the end of the wall to the right of the turn. With a bit of luck, the missile would ricochet off the wall and make it around the corner before its warhead exploded. If nothing else, it would send a shockwave and some fragments past the corner.

It was if-nothing-else, and he heard screams from one or two men who were out of sight when the missile exploded when it hit the wall.

Bass was off and running again, his footfalls a counterpoint to the screams. He had another Straight Arrow unlimbered and ready to fire when he reached the cross tunnel. He stepped into the tunnel on the right to get the sharpest angle he could on the corner. He tried too hard for the angle, the missile struck the wall just before the corner and glanced off to impact against the far wall. Its shaped charge sent most of its explosive energy into the stone. Still, it threw out shards of rock in all directions, and there were more screams.

Bass got completely out of the line of fire and ordered the platoon to send everything it had down the tunnel. In an instant, plasma bolts from eighteen blasters and one gun turned the length of the tunnel into a dazzling light show that nothing could live through.

Bass gave it fifteen seconds, then called a cease-fire. He cranked his ears all the way up and listened. He heard a few moans coming from around the corner, and the sound of retreating footfalls.

“First—no, make that second squad, with me,” Bass ordered. “Kelly, get both guns to the intersection and be ready to give us covering fire if we have to come back in a hurry.”

Bass gave second squad a few seconds to join him, then waited a few seconds more for the two gun teams to reach the intersection, then ordered second squad to wait until he called them up, and pelted down the corridor with a Straight Arrow ready to fire. Halfway to the corner, he stopped and fired his third tank killer. This time, the missile barely missed the corner and exploded where he wanted it to.

“Second squad, move up!” he ordered. He laid the last Straight Arrow down and drew his hand-blaster. When he heard second squad almost on him, he jumped to his feet and dashed forward. He hit the deck and slid the last couple of meters into the corner, turning his head to his left and pointing his hand-blaster in the same direction.

In front of him were the dead and the wounded the Coalition troops left behind. The survivors had already vanished beyond the next bend in the tunnel; their footsteps were growing faint with distance.

“Third platoon, on me!” Bass roared into the command circuit. The enemy was on the run, and he intended to keep them that way.

A short while earlier, the defenders had panicked and run in the face of a powerful assault. Now the earlier victors were panicked and running from a smaller but potent force. Bass stopped the pursuit when third platoon reached the defensive positions from which a battalion of the Confederation Army’s 27th Division had been routed. He only stopped there because Captain Conorado said the order to hold came directly from Brigadier Sturgeon.

It was only dumb, bad luck, the kind of unfortunate accident that happens in combat, that put Sergeant Linsman’s throat directly in the path of a parting shot that reflected off a mess kit left behind by a fleeing soldier. The laser beam sliced through his throat from the right jugular vein to the left carotid, cutting through his windpipe on its way. He had bled too much to save by the time Doc Hough reached

him and put him in a stasis bag.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Grabs, what do you hear on the streets these days?” Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant asked. Covered only by a sheet, she lay faceup on Dr. Karla Grabentao’s portable treatment table. Soft music from Grabentao’s private collection filled the office. During the last few months, since she had been made aware of the benefits of massage therapy, the President made time for the doctor’s visits, no matter how busy her schedule. But she could not spare the time to take massage therapy at Dr. Grabentao’s clinic, the Fuller Sports Medicine Clinic (named for her late husband, Dr. Breton Fuller, inventor of the popular Myofascilator glove). So the doctor came to her.

While the President’s private office was comfortable in a utilitarian way, it was nothing like the private treatment rooms available at Grabentao’s clinic, where her clients relaxed in an atmosphere conducive to massage therapy: soft lighting, soothing music, and the aroma of fragrant herbs. But the doctor did her best to import that atmosphere into Chang-Sturdevant’s work environment. The President’s staff obeyed the inflexible rule that once a week, during the hour she was under Dr. Grabentao’s care, she would not be disturbed.

Dr. Karla Grabentao was not a big woman but she had strong shoulders, arms, and hands, developed over the years as a massage therapist before she obtained her license as an orthopedic surgeon. Now she ran one of the most respected sports-medicine clinics in Fargo. Dr. Grabentao was one of those health-care professionals thoroughly dedicated to practicing the healing arts. She also made house calls and, when she wasn’t in surgery, would personally perform massage therapy on certain clients, President Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant being one of them. That had its practical side, because being able to claim the President of the Confederation of Human Worlds as a client was not bad for business.

“Skin is the human body’s largest organ,” Grabentao had explained during their first session, as she worked on the flexors in Chang-Sturdevant’s right arm. “If you could spread it out you could make a rug out of it,” she said wryly, “because it covers in all about two square meters and makes up about eighteen percent of your total body weight. Pardon me for talking so much today, but I just think my clients need to know the basics of this type of therapy. How does that feel? Too much pressure?”

“No, no, pretty good, actually.” Chang-Sturdevant had complained about soreness in her arm before the session started. She was instructed to let her arm relax completely as Grabentao worked on it and gradually the soreness began to disappear. “I was just thinking about the rug made of human skin when I grimaced.”

“Excuse me. I guess that does present a pretty grim image,” Grabentao admitted. “But you see how important skin is as an organ? Well, I don’t need to tell you how sensitive it is. Did you know there are as many as three million touch receptors in your skin, three thousand alone in one fingertip? So it’s very receptive to all kinds of stimulation. A simple touch can reduce your blood pressure, for instance. And during intensive massage therapy that stimulation produces endorphins, pain suppressors. People have known this for thousands of years, since at least as long ago as ancient China.” She smiled, but Chang-Sturdevant’s eyes were closed as by degrees she began to fall under the spell of Grabentao’s therapy. “There is no substitute for the human touch. That’s why I don’t ordinarily use the Myofascilator glove—you know, the device many chiropractors and therapists use to deliver deep electrical stimulation to the muscles and connective tissues. I use my hands and my arms, as you’ll see if we continue these sessions.” And they had continued regularly, for months now.

“There’s a lot of tension in your shoulders today,” Grabentao remarked.

“Matches the tension in the world, I guess,” Chang-Sturdevant murmured. She was already beginning to relax as Grabentao’s strong hands, using long, relaxing strokes, worked the tension out of her muscles. During most sessions neither woman said a word throughout the entire hour and often by the time Grabentao was finished with her full-body massage treatment, Chang-Sturdevant would be asleep. Other times they would talk the full hour. Today Chang-Sturdevant wanted to talk.

“Are you doing those exercises I recommended for the tendinitis in this shoulder?” Grabentao asked. Chang-Sturdevant winced slightly as Grabentao manipulated her left shoulder.

“Whenever I can, Grabs. Well, dammit, I don’t have the time to do them! Think I’ll just have you replace the whole shebang.”

“Sure, when you have the time,” Grabentao laughed. “I just love to cut on people, even when they don’t need it, even when the difficulty is caused by their own negligence.”

“Touché.”

As Grabentao manipulated the President’s neck and shoulders, Chang-Sturdevant thought, as she often did during their sessions, how easy it would be for a therapist to murder someone by breaking their neck. Just snap her neck and leave quietly while her victim lay there stone dead. She chided herself for allowing this paranoia to spoil the atmosphere. It just was that she realized there were a lot of people who really would like to break her neck. “I hope you’re a member of my party,” she murmured. This had become a standard joke with them since these sessions began. Actually, her orthopedic problems were very minor; she valued the therapy because it relaxed her. If she had the time she’d devote an hour a day to this treatment.

“So what do you hear?” Chang-Sturdevant asked again.

Grabentao chuckled. “Madam President, if I tell you, I’ll have to double your bill for this session. You know my rate for developing vital intelligence!” Chang-Sturdevant laughed out loud. During the course of Grabentao’s day, which was always long, she met all kinds of people, people from all walks of life, and they talked to her, talked about their personal lives, their hopes and fears, their aches and pains, the weather, the economy, and politics. Over the months Chang-Sturdevant had been her client, Karla Grabentao had proved a better source of public opinion than anyone in her cabinet.

“The people I’ve talked to recently generally oppose your war with the Coalition.” Chang-Sturdevant winced at the words “your war,” but she let it pass. “The people who’ve mentioned the war to me don’t understand what harm could come to the Confederation if the secessionists are allowed to go their own way. They just don’t see the Coalition as a threat to them or anyone else.”

“Mmm,” Chang-Sturdevant murmured. Grabentao moistened her hands with an aromatic eicosene copolymer petrolatum-based mineral oil crème of her own invention, adjusted the bolster under her client’s legs, and started working on her feet. She worked there for several minutes in silence, taking heated pebbles and applying them gently to the bottoms of Chang-Sturdevant’s feet. “They’re a little dry today, ma’am,” she reported, “use the crème at night just before bed, and have a podiatrist look at that callus on the ball of your left foot. I think it’s getting bigger.” Foot massage was an important phase of the treatment Grabentao offered her clients.

And it was effective; Chang-Sturdevant could literally feel the tension draining from her body. She sighed. “How are things at home?” she asked.

“Fargo is my home now, ma’am. But you mean back on Wanderjahr? I left there before you overthrew the oligarchs,” she pronounced the world “oligarchs” sharply. “That was the best thing that ever happened to my people.” She started working on Chang-Sturdevant’s right lower leg.