Starfist: Wings of Hell (23 page)

Crouched again, Schultz ran on the balls of his feet to the next turn and listened and watched as he had at the first turn before lowering himself to peek around the corner next to the floor. The tunnel now ran straight as far as he could see. A few dim lights were visible at approximate fifty-meter intervals along the tunnel, at the junction of ceiling and wall. Something indistinct on the right wall caught his eye and he slid his magnifier screen into place. He studied the blemish for a moment; it appeared to be a door frame set in the wall. He slid the magnifier back up and resumed his advance. The long corridor didn’t have as many crates along its sides as the entry corridor had. Schultz walked along the side of the corridor, taking as much advantage of the cover the crates offered as possible. At least so far, that stretch of tunnel didn’t feel as
wrong
as the first section had.

Schultz took it slow and easy, constantly checking everything in sight or hearing, and letting his senses move out, seeking anything out of the ordinary that he might sense but not see or hear. Claypoole followed a few meters behind, watching beyond Schultz. Lance Corporal Ymenez came behind Claypoole, watching the display of the motion detector he carried. Sergeant Kerr inserted himself between his second and first fire teams, and Corporal Doyle’s third fire team brought up the squad’s rear. Then came the platoon’s command group and the three sappers. First squad followed. The gun squad remained outside covering the back door.

Moving as cautiously as he was, it took Schultz several minutes to cover the hundred meters to the doorway on the right. As the Force Recon minnie had seen, the door looked fairly flimsy, as though it could easily be knocked open with a firm kick. He stopped and listened to the door; nothing sounded from inside.

“Check the lock,” Kerr’s voice said on the squad circuit.

Schultz tried the door. It gave slightly to pressure but didn’t give way. “Locked,” he reported.

“Keep moving forward,” Kerr ordered.

Schultz didn’t give the door another look, but continued toward the next doorway, which was dimly visible on the left side of the tunnel a hundred meters beyond. While he advanced, all senses alert for danger, he puzzled over the first stretch of tunnel. Why did he feel danger there, but not in this stretch, which was even deeper into the enemy complex? He found no answers.

Lieutenant Bass signaled the sappers to put a booby trap on the door to the beans-and-bandages chamber when they reached it—he didn’t want to risk anybody’s coming through the door after the platoon passed and surprising them from their rear.

When they were closer to the second door, Bass said over the all-hands circuit, “Second squad, keep going when you reach the door; get to that second doorway and set security. First squad, when the sappers have the first door open, you go in with them to provide security. Acknowledge.”

“First squad,” Sergeant Ratliff acknowledged. “We go in as soon as the sappers open the door. Check it out and provide security.”

“Second squad, we have security beyond the doorway,” Sergeant Kerr said.

Bass hadn’t needed to remind the men of what to do; they all remembered the plan. But it never hurt to make sure.

Both blaster squads moved into position: first squad ready to rush into the chamber beyond the door as soon as the sappers opened it, second squad in positions beyond the doorway. Bass stood, crouching out of the way of the sappers. Like the previous door, this one gave slightly to pressure. The lock was simple, and the sappers were able to get through it without making much noise. The door slid into a recess in the wall with barely a rumble.

“Three, go!” Ratliff ordered, and Corporal Dean darted through the open doorway with Lance Corporal Godenov on his heels and PFC McGinty immediately behind Godenov.

“One, go!” Corporal Dornhofer and first fire team raced in behind third. Ratliff followed them and ordered “Two, go!” as he was moving through the doorway himself.

Inside the large, roughly square cavern, Dean led his fire team to the side wall with the two entrances. The three Marines scrambled up a stairway so steep it was almost a ladder to where a balcony wrapped around the room and along the wall to the door there. He put his helmet against the door with his ears turned all the way up and listened. He heard nothing outside the door. He took the motion detector from Godenov and positioned it to seek movement in the space beyond the door. He positioned his men to cover the door; they were ready to capture or kill anybody who opened it.

Corporal Pasquin led second fire team to the door on the lower level, below third fire team’s door, and checked for enemy on the far side. Satisfied that nobody was there, he set his men to cover the door.

Corporal Dornhofer set his men in the middle of the chamber, in position to cover all entrances.

There were no stalagmites or stalactites in the cavern, though blemishes on the ceiling showed where stalactites had been removed. Dean discovered that the walls of the cavern were fused and rippled in the same manner as the tunnel walls.

As Commander Usner had said, the room was filled with racks holding the canister-on-packboard arrangements that the Marines who had been with third platoon on Society 437 or Kingdom well recognized. The weapons were stored on racks stacked as high as the Marines’ chests, with three shelves of empty racks above them, awaiting more weapons. The racks were constructed of wood, with some sort of twine binding them together. Along the wall of the chamber near the lower door were stacks of lumber the same sizes as the risers and shelves that held the weapons and rolls of twine. It looked to Bass as though there was enough wood and twine to double the height of the existing racks.

Bass shook one of the racks and found it surprisingly stable. He climbed to the top of it and stood to look around the chamber. One thing he wanted to do was estimate how many weapons were in the room. First he counted the racks, then multiplied that by the average number of filled shelves in the nearby racks, and that by the average of weapons per shelf. He estimated the one cavern held enough of the weapons to arm two units the size of army brigades, with enough open shelves and parts for more shelves to hold the weapons for two full divisions.

How many Skinks
are
there in this complex?
he wondered.

The three sappers hurried about, deciding where to place their charges to do the greatest damage; thermal charges that would burst in great balls of burning plasma, calculated to melt acid-containing canisters and explode canisters of compressed air. The sappers were careful to place their charges where they’d have the best chance of making the exploding canisters cause other canisters, beyond the reach of the plasma heat, to explode. Bass dropped off the racks and grabbed a packboard. While he was adjusting the straps to give him room to shrug into it, he had Lance Corporal MacIlargie also take a packboard. He didn’t have MacIlargie try to wear the weapon.

On the all-hands circuit, Bass asked, “Has anybody seen the hose and nozzles for these things?” He swore when nobody had; the tank-and-packboard arrangement couldn’t be used without the nozzle and the hose that connected it to the canisters. He didn’t think just the tanks would be of much intelligence value.

It took the three sappers almost ten minutes to place their charges and set them to go off in twenty minutes. Then Bass ordered the platoon to withdraw from the chamber as far as the beans-and-bandages chamber, where the sappers could set their remaining charges.

None of the Marines noticed the tiny eye of a miniature camera tucked away in a corner of the ceiling.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Masters and Junior Masters who were supposed to be supervising the Leaders in the security chamber were riveted to the visuals coming back from the aircraft raiding the Earthman spaceport, military airfield, and city; they neglected to notice that the Leaders they were supervising were also glued to the visuals of the attacks, instead of to the monitors that showed various unguarded spaces within the tunnel and cavern complex. Even the Senior Master overseeing the Masters and Junior Masters was enthralled by the devastation being wrought on the Earthmen and their constructs. The Masters cheered every time a grounded Earthman aircraft was pulverized by a bolt from a rail gun, a building disintegrated after a burst of rail gun pellets, or Earthmen writhed on the ground in their death agonies after being sprayed by the acid from the aircrafts’ missiles. The Leaders refrained from cheering—they knew better than to call their officers’ attention to the fact that they were watching the action instead of their assigned monitors.

So it happened that by the time a Leader looked at his monitor and saw a door to the weapons storage chamber—to which he was supposed to be devoting his attention—as it closed, the door was closing behind the exiting Marines. The Leader, of course, didn’t know that. He only knew that a door to a chamber under his watch was closing and that nobody was supposed to be there. With great trepidation, he got the attention of the Junior Master who was his supervisor and told him what he’d just seen.

Furious at the Leader’s negligence, the Junior Master struck him across the head, hard enough to break the skin and draw blood. Harshly, the Junior Master demanded that the Leader replay what he had observed. The Junior Master watched while the door slid open for a short time, then closed again, seemingly on its own, as no one had entered or left the room while the door was open. Cursing at the Leader’s stupidity and incompetence, the Junior Master ordered the Leader to play back in time and soon found the door opening and closing once more without anybody coming or going.

The Junior Master blinked at that. He played the image forward at double normal speed, and saw something that made his throat constrict and his gill covers tighten—one of the empty shelves suddenly sagged, as though an unseen weight sat on it. A couple of moments later, the shelf righted itself. This time, when the door opened and closed the second time, he saw something he hadn’t seen before; it was just a flash and only partial, but he saw the corner of a packboard go through the doorway. Just a corner, as though something unseen was blocking his view. And he knew.

The Earthman Marines had penetrated the complex. He didn’t think of the consequences to himself for his failure to properly supervise this Leader; proper supervision would have told him immediately that something was amiss. He called for the Senior Master in command of the security observation room. It was only as he was playing back the image for the Senior Master that the Junior Master realized that he was in as much trouble for dereliction as was the Leader under his supervision. It was no consolation to him when he realized that the Senior Master was in just as much jeopardy.

The Senior Master knew right away the punishment likely to be meted out to all in the observation room, and took immediate action. He swiftly drew his sword and chopped at the Leader’s neck with enough force to nearly sever it. Then he spun at the Junior Master and, with one clean slice, disemboweled him. He copied the bubble that had recorded the opening and closings of the door onto his reader, and raced from the room without taking time to assign a Master to take charge, leaving everyone in the room wondering what had happened. By the time one of the Masters played back the moving images showing the visit of the invisible Earthman Marines, the Senior Master was in the Grand Master’s hall, prostrate before his lord, showing him the image and explaining its meaning.

The Grand Master took a few seconds to order one of his Large One guards to decapitate the Senior Master, before he ordered an attendant Over Master to make haste with as large a force as he could quickly gather to the unguarded entrance to the complex.

A hundred meters back down the tunnel, second squad again took position to cover the platoon from deeper inside the Skink complex. The sappers opened the door to the beans-and-bandages cavern even more quickly than they had the weapons chamber. First squad entered and gave the chamber a quick going over to make sure it was unoccupied by enemy before the sappers went in to set their charges. While the sappers were doing their work of emplacing plasma charges, Lieutenant Bass had first squad break open a few crates and grab samples of their contents. They didn’t have orders to take samples, but he thought S2 or G2 might learn something from them. He also thought, if they had enough time, that he’d have his men take samples from the crates in the leg of the tunnel leading outside.

Just as they’d had point coming into the Skink complex, second squad’s third fire team would have rear point on their egress. Lance Corporal Schultz wouldn’t have had it any other way. The three Marines took positions where they could guard the platoon’s rear while first squad and the sappers were inside the beans-and-bandages cavern.

Corporal Claypoole was behind a crate, looking over it, with his ears turned up all the way, listening for anything he couldn’t see. To his rear he heard the faint sounds that first squad and the sappers made returning to the tunnel. At the same time, he heard Schultz say into the fire team circuit, “Coming.”

“I didn’t tell you to come,” Claypoole said an instant before he realized Schultz meant Skinks were coming. He switched to the squad command circuit. “The Hammer says the bad guys are coming,” he said.

“Stand by,” Sergeant Kerr replied. Seconds later Kerr was back on the squad circuit. “Second squad, listen up. Schultz says someone is coming. As soon as first squad reaches the dogleg, we’re bugging out of here. Wait for the word.”

The Marines of second squad waited for a tense minute while the rest of the platoon reached the turn and got around it.

“Second squad, on the double!” Kerr ordered.

“Go!” Claypoole ordered, and took a last look beyond Schultz. He didn’t see anything before he twisted around and raced from shelter behind the crate. He heard Schultz coming with staggered steps—the big man kept twisting around to look to his rear.

Claypoole was only a few strides away from the corner when he heard the
crack-sizzle
of Schultz’s blaster, immediately followed by the high-pitched whine of a rail gun, and saw bits of the wall he was running toward shatter and fly about with razor-sharp edges. At the same time he heard a distant explosion somewhere beyond the corner.

Claypoole dove to the floor and twisted about, slamming his infra screen into place. “Hammer, you okay?” he shouted into the fire team circuit. Schultz didn’t answer with words, but instead with three spaced plasma bolts from his blaster. Claypoole’s infra showed him that Schultz was prone, firing from behind a crate on the other side of the tunnel. At Schultz’s firing, three red blotches almost three hundred meters distant flashed into a brilliance that blanked out Claypoole’s infra screen for a moment. When he could see again, he didn’t see anybody at the far end of the tunnel where Schultz had flared the three Skinks.

“Hammer, pull back,” he ordered. “I’ve got you covered.”

Schultz fired three more quick bolts, trying to angle them to ricochet around the far corner, then jumped up and bolted past Claypoole’s position. “Rock, go,” he shouted when he took a fresh position past Lance Corporal Ymenez.

Claypoole got up and sped past Ymenez and Schultz to the corner and dropped down where he could shoot down the length of the tunnel. “Ymenez, to me!” he ordered, and held his fire while Ymenez ran past Schultz, and then around the corner.

Schultz, meanwhile, kept a steady stream of spaced bolts going to prevent the Skinks’ turning the corner. On Claypoole’s command, he headed to his fire team leader’s position and muscled him out of the way so he could continue keeping the Skinks away.

With both of his men out of the tunnel, Claypoole took the time to ask his squad leader about the explosion he’d heard when Schultz opened fire on the Skinks.

When first squad and the sappers had reached the dogleg of the tunnel, Lieutenant Bass ordered all but one fire team to wait for second squad to clear the long tunnel.

“Rabbit,” he ordered, “send one fire team to get some samples from the crates in that tunnel. I’d like to see what the Skinks are storing there.”

“Aye aye,” Sergeant Ratliff had said. “Dean, go see what’s in those crates. Get some samples for the boss.”

“You got it, Rabbit.” Dean switched to the fire team circuit. “Third team, we’re going to collect some samples for the boss. Let’s go get them.”

Lance Corporal Godenov led the way around the corner, followed by Dean, with PFC McGinty bringing up the rear.

“Go halfway, Izzy,” Dean had said. “Find a bunch together that look alike, then open one in the middle.”

“Will do,” Godenov had said back. He trotted down the tunnel toward the exit. Thirty meters down he found a line of six low crates stacked two high and stopped. He’d slung his blaster and drew his knife. He pounded the blade into a seam on the middle top crate and began levering the lid up.
“Oh, shit,”
he murmured when he heard a faint click from the lid. He let go of his knife and dove away.

An explosion caught Godenov and drove him into a corner where another large crate met the opposite wall. Three sharp splinters of wood, one almost the size of a man’s wrist, shot into him; the point of one went all the way through his shoulder and imbedded itself in the crate he was against. Dean wasn’t as close, so the blast only tumbled him backward—but two large splinters also found him and sunk in deeply. McGinty was far enough away that he was only knocked down by the force of the explosion.

“Dean, report!” Ratliff shouted into the squad circuit. When Dean didn’t answer, he ordered, “Third fire team, sound off!”

“I-I’m all right,” McGinty answered a moment later—he sounded dazed.

“Damn, damn—
damn
!” Ratliff swore. Then to Bass, who was demanding to know what was happening, he said, “I think I’ve got two men down. I’m on my way to check it out.”

“Let me know as soon as you find out.” Bass sent Lance Corporal MacIlargie to assist with the casualties.

“Will do.” By then Ratliff had reached McGinty, who insisted he was all right. A few meters beyond him, he found Dean unconscious. Dean’s uniform was trying to stanch the bleeding but was having trouble making a proper seal around the splinters. “I need a stasis bag,” Ratliff said on the platoon command circuit. Then he reached Godenov and couldn’t tell whether he was alive or not, because his bleeding had almost stopped, and Ratliff could see that Godenov’s uniform hadn’t made a seal around the splinters. “Make that
two
stasis bags. On the double!” To Bass he reported, “It looks like Izzy was opening a crate, but it was booby-trapped and went off on him. He might be dead; I’m not sure.”

Just then a tossed stasis bag landed next to him. He flipped it open, then as gently as he could, drew the splinter in Godenov’s shoulder out of the crate and put the lance corporal in the stasis bag. By then MacIlargie and McGinty had put Dean in another stasis bag.