Starfist: Wings of Hell (26 page)

Lieutenant Bass got the message and immediately passed it on to Captain Conorado, who relayed it to the rest of the command post group. With the rail gun out of action, the defenders were able to rise up enough to take aimed shots at the Skinks.

The firefight at the Company L CP was soon over. And then it was time for the butcher’s bill.

The Skinks’ only previous contact with the Marines on Haulover was the Force Recon unit that had been on the planet for the past several months. Their only other ground contact with the “Earthmen” was when their air attacked the XVIII Corps and drove it back with heavy losses. When they discovered a small Marine unit inside one of their subterranean bases, they thought it was something similar to the Force Recon elements they’d already fought. So the Skink battalion that went in pursuit of third platoon was absolutely unprepared to run into the infantry battalion of a FIST.

Thanks to the alertness of Corporal Wilson of Company L’s first platoon, the Marines were able to begin fighting the Skinks well before the Skinks could begin to fight back. As a result, the Skinks were wiped out almost completely. The only casualties the Marines suffered were among the men in the Company L command post, which a Skink company had managed to outflank.

The entire three-man crew of the command Dragon was killed when the second rail gun opened up on it.

Commander Usner, Thirty-fourth FIST’s longtime operations officer, was killed when a pellet from that second rail gun hit his helmet with devastating effect.

Sergeant Flett and Corporal MacLeash were both wounded by shrapnel when a short burst from the rail gun pulverized their UAV control center.

Commander Daana, the FIST intelligence officer, suffered a massive burn through his left wrist when a streamer of acid hit where he had carelessly left a gap between his sleeve and glove. HM2 Ronault could see that with a hole all the way through and sizeable pieces of muscle, bone, and nerve tissue eaten away, the injury was severe enough that Daana was probably going to require weeks of regeneration before his left hand would be functional again. Ronault used a pain blocker as well as a painkiller on the officer.

PFC McGinty was also wounded when a tiny drop of acid oozed through the improperly sealed chameleon screen on his helmet. The wound was painful but the regeneration treatment to prevent permanent disfiguration could wait until after the operations planetside, and he could return to duty without being evacuated.

The casualties would likely have been much worse had Sergeant Kerr and Corporal Claypoole not gone off to flank the rail gun on their own.

“Write them up,” Daana said to Captain Conorado when the painkiller that HM3 Hough had given him took effect. “They deserve medals for what they did. I’ll endorse your recommendations.”

“Aye aye,” Conorado answered. He agreed that Kerr and Claypoole deserved medals.

A Master, a Leader, and three Fighters were brought bound into the Grand Master’s hall and roughly flung to the mats before his dais. The Grand Master glowered at the five for long moments before rasping out a demand to know if these five cowards were the only ones who had not properly died for the greater glory of the Emperor. The Great Master who commanded the division from which the destroyed battalion had come stood behind the five, legs akimbo, sword gripped hilt and blade in his hands, and affirmed that the others in the battalion had given their all for the Emperor. The Grand Master considered the groveling five for a few more moments before rasping out his desire to know what happened.

The bound Master struggled to get his knees underneath himself and rhythmically pounded his forehead on the matting while he recounted his story: that the hated Earthman Marines were present in much larger numbers than the Over Master commanding the pursuit battalion had imagined and that the Marines caught the battalion in an ambush from which there was no escape, and in which victory was impossible. The Master had no answer to give when the Grand Master demanded to know how, if there was no escape possible from the Earthman Marines’ ambush, he and the other four had escaped. After a few more questions, the Grand Master concluded that an entire so-called FIST had been waiting for the pursuit. He snapped his fingers at a nearby Senior Master and gave him instructions on what to do with the five cowards before him: They were to be taken to a hillside exposed to the sun and then staked out with their gill covers cut off, and left to die.

He then turned his attention to the Great Master commanding the division that had dispatched the failed mission. He ordered the Great Master to hand over command of the division to his assistant division commander and order him to take the entire division after the Earthman Marine FIST. And when that transfer of command was done, to return to the hall and disembowel himself.

Of course, when the division reached the area where Thirty-fourth FIST had killed the Skink battalion, the Marines were no longer there and the division couldn’t find them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A second gator fleet arrived in Haulover orbit and began landing XXX Corps. General Aguinaldo came down with the first wave and brought army engineers and Marine combat engineers and much of their equipment with him.

“General Aguinaldo, sir!”

Aguinaldo, stepping off the Dragon that carried him off the Essay that had brought him from orbit to planetside, instantly turned and strode toward the voice, extending his hand.

“General Carano,” Aguinaldo said.

“Welcome to Beach Spaceport, Haulover, sir,” Carano said. He added ironically, “And right over there is beautiful downtown Sky City.” He waved at the battered cityscape of Haulover’s capital.

Aguinaldo barely spared the city a glance and a quick, sympathetic shake of his head. “Show me your air base.”

“This way, sir.” Carano directed Aguinaldo to a waiting army Battle Car. The two generals climbed in and minutes later dismounted at Naval Air Station George Gay, where they were met by Captain Hahley, Fourteenth Air Wing’s commanding officer. Hahley’s face showed the strain of the past few days’ one-sided combat.

“How bad is it, Captain?” Aguinaldo asked.

Hahley didn’t know Aguinaldo personally but he did know him by reputation, and that reputation said that the former Commandant of the Marine Corps wanted the straight scoop, no matter how bad the news was.

“It’s almost as bad as it could be, sir,” Hahley said. “The only reason I have a few aircraft left is we managed to erect a few revetments on our first day planetside.”

“How many aircraft do you still have?”

Hahley grimaced. “A baker’s dozen.” Thirteen surviving aircraft out of an initial force of ninety-six Raptors. “My mechanics are busting tail, cannibalizing aircraft to assemble as many more as they can and make them combat ready.”

“Does your number include FIST aircraft?”

“No, sir.” Hahley grinned wryly. “General Carano allowed the Marines to keep their aircraft—over my strenuous objections.”

Aguinaldo looked at Carano for an explanation.

“Part of the strength of the Marines is their combined-arms organization. I wanted my best units to be able to operate at their peak abilities. That meant letting the Marines keep their aircraft—no matter what my planetside air commander wanted.” He paused, then added, “The Marines have lost seven Raptors and five hoppers.” Out of twenty of each. “I guess the Marines were more prepared for the Skink rail guns. At least some of the pilots had encountered ground-based versions of those weapons before.”

“What about the Twenty-sixth Air Wing?” That was off the carrier CNSS
Jebediah S. Hawks.

“Still in orbit, sir,” Carano said. “I didn’t want to risk them until I had proper air defenses in place.” He gestured at the perimeter of NAS Gay. “I’ve got some antiair artillery in place now, but neither my corps nor the carriers have enough engineers or guns to properly protect the air station from as much airpower as the Skinks have.”

“Well, you’ve got the engineers now,” Aguinaldo said. “And more AA guns are being brought planetside by the next wave of Essays.”

The Grand Master sat in his great hall, sipping a warm beverage from a delicate cup while he listened to the reports of his intelligence and air commanders, who knelt on the reed mats at the foot of his dais. The Earthmen were landing a second task force from another amphibious fleet. The first troops planetside appeared to be engineers and they were directing their heavy equipment to the Earthmen’s military airfield. While the Earthman air forces had suffered better than 80 percent losses, there were now three carriers in orbit, with as many as three hundred additional aircraft aboard them—possibly more. It was only a matter of time, and a short time at that, before the additional aircraft were ferried planetside. If the observed engineers properly strengthened the airfield’s defenses, and the three hundred additional aircraft made planetfall together, that could possibly turn the tide of the air battle.

The Grand Master listened and absorbed the information. When the reports were complete, he needed no time to deliberate. His voice rasped as he gave his orders:

All combat aircraft were to launch immediately.

Half would proceed to the Earthman military airfield, where they would slaughter the engineers.

The other half would attack and destroy the orbit-to-surface shuttle craft as they attempted to make planetfall, and thereby destroy the Earthmen’s ability to land additional aircraft—or ground reinforcements.

The army engineers and Marine combat engineers of XXX Corps had barely started building revetments to shelter the aircraft coming from the carriers in orbit when sirens screamed and one hundred and fifty Skink aircraft attacked in three waves. The first wave launched acid at the workers, firing rockets that burst twenty meters in the air and spreading rapidly falling clouds of greenish droplets groundward. The engineers scattered, the Marines faster than the army engineers, heading for whatever cover they could find. Most of them made it.

Sergeant Regis Alfonse, Corps of Engineers, leaped out of his earthmover and dove under it when the Skinks began their first strafing run. He’d paid close attention when his company had been briefed on the Skinks and their weapons and he had no desire to be in the line of fire. He was sure, pretty sure, that his machine would shield him from the acid guns—the trids of injuries caused by Skink acid on some world he’d never heard of had been quite vivid, and he didn’t want to be anywhere near that stuff without something tough between him and it. He’d quailed at the trids of armored vehicles that had been hit by the Skink rail guns, but was sure, pretty sure, that his earthmover was stronger and more massive than an armored vehicle, so it wouldn’t get completely pulverized even by a direct burst and would effectively shield his very unarmored body.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the first Skink aircraft shrieked away, but his relief was very short-lived. They were only the lead planes of the first wave. Others followed quickly, staggered between the first, and their missiles sent sprays of acid where the leaders hadn’t.

Sergeant Alfonse screamed when a dollop of acid from a missile that burst and dropped a stream of acid that splattered just shy of his earthmover struck the top of his right boot and began eating through it and into his leg. He remembered the briefing: The acid had to be dug out of a wound or it would continue eating at flesh and bone and sinew until there was nothing left to dissolve. He drew his utility knife and tried to twist around to get at his lower leg, but his machine was too low and there wasn’t room for him to reach his injury and see what he was doing. No more aircraft seemed to be coming now, so he scrabbled into the open, where he was met by the sight and sound of men down on the ground, crying and screaming from their wounds, and army medics and navy corpsmen racing from one casualty to another, rendering aid and calling for litter bearers to take the wounded to the dispensary.

Despite his own pain, it seemed to Alfonse that the wounded being tended and the others waiting for assistance were more badly injured than he was, so he didn’t immediately call for a medic. Instead, now that he could reach his lower leg and see what he was doing, he used his utility knife to cut away the top of his boot. He went faint when he saw the bubbling hole in the side of his leg right at the bottom of the calf, but he steeled himself and began cutting around the glowing greenish fluid in the bottom of the hole. He gritted his teeth when the point of his knife scraped against bone, flinched when the knife’s edge nicked the tendon, and closed his eyes to the red blood that filled the hole when he flicked away the last of the greenish fluid. Seeing the blood flow into and over the hole made him faint again, but he retained enough composure to yank field dressings from the emergency medkit on his belt. He wrapped one dressing around the wound and then another when the first was quickly stained red. Only then did he remember the painkiller in the kit and stab himself with the injector. The severe pain quickly ebbed. He looked more dispassionately at his dressing and decided to apply the third and last dressing from his medkit.

The acid gone, the pain quelled, and the bleeding stanched, Alfonse looked around again to see if a medic or corpsman was available to see to him.

To the north he saw more aircraft approaching. They didn’t look like Raptors in pursuit of the Skinks but instead seemed to be on a ground attack approach. He glanced quickly back at the wounded still being tended in the open and, without thinking about it, hoisted himself to his feet and gingerly clambered aboard his earthmover. Those wounded soldiers and Marines and the medics and corpsmen caring for them needed protection from more enemy fire, or they would all die!

Alfonse applied max power to his earthmover and drove it between the men in the open and the oncoming aircraft, digging into the ground, pushing a high line of earth into a long berm to give some cover to the men. He’d gone more than a hundred meters before the first rounds from the oncoming wave began impacting the air base, disintegrating buildings and knocking machinery into tiny pieces with their rail guns. Some of the rail gun pellets hit the berm behind Alfonse and raised such huge clouds of dust and dirt that he couldn’t tell whether his hasty shelter held at all.

Without thinking, he turned back to build the berm anew. One of the trailing aircraft fired at Alfonse’s earthmover but it was inside the dust and dirt cloud and the Skink’s aim was off. Still, the massive machine shuddered at the impact of the pellets moving at two-tenths of the speed of light—almost sixty thousand kilometers per second—and bits of metal flew off it before the last Skink flew over and away.

No more aircraft were coming at the airfield just then, but the sounds of aerial combat sounded to the north. Alfonse thought it was just a matter of time before more aircraft came to pound the base and kill men. He climbed awkwardly to the top of his cab and looked around, over the cloud of dust and dirt that was beginning to settle, looking for any place that could use a berm. Looking slightly downward, he could see that the berm he’d pushed up was largely still intact. Many of the wounded had been removed and most of those still in the open were about to be removed to safety—if there was any place safe on the base. He saw a small cluster of low buildings still intact and headed for them. Perhaps he could build a berm high enough to protect them when the next wave came in. He was sure,
very
sure that there would be another wave.

And there was, but it was much smaller than the first two and caused far less damage to the base. Still, the damage and injuries caused by the first two waves were very great.

When Alfonse finally drove to the dispensary, he needed help dismounting from his earthmover. His dressings hadn’t held completely and he was pale from loss of blood. The medical personnel, and many of the wounded who had survived because of his actions, treated him like a hero. But he didn’t care about that. He just wanted to sleep.