Stark's Crusade (16 page)

Reaction rippled through the company, the members of Second Platoon grinning with delight.
Then
Conroy stood. "I'll be leading in First Platoon. The same way. Rosinski, you get Third Platoon all to yourself."

"Lucky me. I gotta walk in, too?"

"That's up to you. How's your command presence feel today?"

"It's been better. But it should be enough to handle a bunch of apes from Second Brigade."

"Good," Stark grunted. "Anything else?"

After a long moment, another corporal stood. "Sergeant. I gotta tell you, some of us are worried about these, uh, special rounds for the rifles."

"They'll work, Corporal. They've been tested on battle armor. Don't worry about that."

"With all due respect, that's not the worry." The corporal looked around, licking his lips at the stern, questioning expressions on the faces of the senior enlisted. "Some guys are wondering . . . well. . ."

"Spit it out."

"How do we know these ain't normal lethal rounds and we're going in there to really take down these guys permanent?" the corporal blurted.

Stark held up a hand to suppress the angry murmurs that followed the question. "I take it my word ain't good enough?" The corporal gulped, but shook his head. "Well, you got guts to ask that question. Who else is worried about that? Show me hands. I mean it." Slowly, hesitantly, another score of hands raised.
Twenty. Twenty-one counting the corporal. I can't afford to leave that many people out of this op. The odds are too bad as it is. How can I reassure these guys? Breakin'open another magazine wouldn't convince them. What would? Oh. Well, if you gotta, you gotta.

Stark took four steps to the side, away from the display, sealed his armor's face shield, then turned to face the other soldiers again, spreading his arms out slightly. "Okay, you apes are worried about the nano rounds killing your buddies. So shoot 'em at me." Stark could feel the incredulity radiating from the company. "I mean it. I trust 'em enough to let you pump rounds into me if you want to. I can't give you any more assurance than that."
And Anita, for God's sake don't you shoot the first soldier who raises a weapon at me.

No one did. The corporal grinned, nodded, and sat down. "That's good enough for me."

"Good." Stark raised his face shield again, relieved that he didn't have to worry about fitting himself into another set of battle armor on short notice. "Now, let's kick some butt."

"In a gentle, nonlethal fashion?" Sergeant Rosinski asked.

"Hell, you can beat on 'em all you want, 'Ski. Just don't shoot any of 'em if they ain't in armor."

Everything looked deceptively quiet at Chamberlain Barracks. The mutineer barricades resembled the piles of furniture dumped in the hallways whenever the solid lunar rock floors in the living quarters were resealed. It was just past normal dinner hour, when everyone should be relaxing. Stark glanced back at his platoon and smiled with an odd degree of contentment for someone about to walk head-on toward fidgety mutineers packing rifles loaded with bullets that would kill. "You ready, Corporal Gomez?"

"
Sí.
Feel's good, don't it? All us together again."

"Damn right. I wouldn't want any other squad, any other platoon with me, not if I could choose from anywhere and anytime." He felt a bit awkward after saying that, as if it were too much, but the truth behind it reassured him.

Stark checked the time, counting down the last seconds on his HUD. "Okay, everybody. Let's go. By the numbers." Gomez was right. It felt good, leading a small body of soldiers again, responsible for only a limited number of bodies in a limited area.

Stark unsealed his face shield, raising it fully so his face could be seen. Holding his rifle at loose port arms, he began walking toward the main entrance of the barracks. Above the door, an embossed image of a soldier, wearing a high-necked uniform adorned with stars on the collar, gazed severely downward, his big mustache seeming to droop in disapproval of the activity inside.
So that's Chamberlain. A general, I guess. Wonder what he did, and when he did it? I oughta find out, someday.

The mutineers manning the barricade had noticed Stark's slow, casual progress. Rifles came up, aiming toward him. Twenty paces behind, the platoon followed, not in formation, not dispersed for combat, but ambling along in a nonthreatening manner. At the other entrances, he knew, Conroy and Rosinski were doing the same thing.

"Halt!" The command sounded firm enough, but Stark kept coming. "Halt! We'll shoot!"

Stark didn't halt, continuing his steady, measured pace, but he began talking. "This is Sergeant Ethan Stark. You know who I am, and you know you can trust me. I don't care what somebody else might have told you. I won't lie to you. Put down your weapons and nothing has to happen." Some of the rifle barrels wavered. "We've got plenty of real enemies out there. We don't need to be fighting each other. If you guys have got grievances, you'll get a hearing. I promise."

"He's lying!" The corporal apparently in charge of the barricade rounded on his troops. "You can't trust him. He's just out to be dictator, over our bodies! Our blood! How many of you have lost friends in one of Stark's little wars?"

The weapons aimed at Stark drifted a little further, none directly aimed at him now.
That's it. Keep 'em talking. I'll just keep walking. Any second now they'll notice the platoon behind me. . . .
"I don't start wars, Corporal. I end them. I'm trying to end the one we've been fighting up here. I don't see how fighting each other helps anyone but our enemies." He was almost at the barricade, measuring the hesitation among the mutineers.
A couple more steps—

"Nail him!" the corporal ordered, but his fellow soldiers hesitated, looking at each other. The corporal cursed at his troops, then leveled his rifle at Stark.
Okay. Game over.
Stark jumped forward and to the side, keeping just high enough to clear the barricade, his rifle swinging to line up on the corporal as Stark fired a short burst directly into his target. He pulled his face shield shut as he dropped on the far side of the barricade, landing on his shoulder and bringing the weapon to bear on the mutineers from the back.

The near-silence of a moment earlier shattered into a million harsh sounds as some of the mutineers tried to target Stark while others returned fire at the members of Stark's platoon. The shock of rifle fire echoed from the walls, oddly disturbing to soldiers who'd grown used to combat in the airless silence of the Moon's exterior. Flash-bang grenades exploded with disorienting light and concussion effects. Most of the mutineers simply broke and ran, some leaving their weapons. Amid the confusion, Stark lay flat where his jump had landed him, carefully targeting each mutineer firing a weapon. Bullets sparked off the wall near his head, throwing chips of rock out in tiny sprays, then the soldier responsible stiffened and fell as Stark's own rounds caught him and froze his battle armor.
Love those nanobots.
His HUD screamed a warning, highlighting a mutineer fumbling with her weapon, and Stark dropped that one as well.

As quickly as it had erupted, the firelight ended, any remaining mobile mutineers dropping their weapons in surrender. "Anita! Detail a guard for these guys. Let's go!" Stark ran down the hall, his armor's microphones picking up the sounds of mutineers fleeing before him and the clatter of most of the platoon following in his wake. "Spread out when you hit intersecting corridors. Keep 'em guessing." He came up against a corner, breathing heavily, taking the barest moment to pull back his scan to see how the other platoons were doing. Rosinski's was apparently stalled near the loading dock, but Conroy's force was streaming into the barracks just like the platoon with Stark.
That's one damn good lieutenant. Shows what you can do if you train an officer up right.

Stark went around the corner, hunched over and moving fast. Shots spanged into the rock around him as he rolled to the far wall. Behind him, other soldiers followed, returning the fire. He felt a thrill of fear, knowing he was too exposed, but unable to fall back without drawing more attention.
Been out of tactical ops too long. Gotten rusty. Didn't think this one through.
The only thing saving him was the apparent reluctance of the mutineers to risk being hit. They were keeping down and firing without aiming carefully.

"
Sargento
, you okay?"

"Yeah, Anita. But I ain't happy. Is there anybody in position to get behind those mutineers?"

"Sí.
Any second now." A flurry of shots ahead of Stark, and then firing ceased as the small pocket of mutineers surrendered to the soldiers hitting them in the flank.

Stark surged back up despite the little voice in the back of his head insisting that he was being an idiot.
Gotta get to Vic. If they're gonna shoot anybody, it'll be her.
Another scan of the barracks as he ran down the hall along with a small group from Second Platoon. The symbols crawling through the 3-D representation of the barracks were frustratingly confusing. As Stark watched, a scattered patch of symbols tagged with First Platoon's ED converged on the red symbology representing the mutineers that were keeping Third Platoon tied down on the loading dock. The red symbols fell away rapidly, some freezing in place and marked as incapacitated, others lost as they ran into halls and rooms where the individual sensors on the battle armor couldn't spot them. "Corporal Gomez."

"Sí, Sargento
."

"You've got some people close to the central comm relay for the barracks. If you take that, we can see anywhere in here again."

"I'm on it."

It was a very good thing to be able to trust someone so absolutely in combat. Stark put the comm relay out of his mind as he studied the diagram again, letting some of the other soldiers dash past him.
Okay. Figure a big room so they can minimize the number of guards. A big room with only the two exits required by fire code.
There were four possibilities, all briefing rooms. Stark headed for the nearest, watching for any surprises. He was alone now, the other soldiers from Second Platoon scattered in search of targets.

A pair of armored figures came around the corner. Everyone pointed weapons, but the tweaked IFF pronounced them members of First Platoon. "Sergeant Stark?"

"Yeah." Even as Stark answered, his HUD bloomed with new symbols as the barracks comm relay began forwarding data from every room to his battle armor. "You guys getting the full picture now, too?"

"Yessir. Hey, there's a couple of those Fifth Batt guys one room down."

"You take 'em. I'm heading the other way."

"No problem!" Stark left the others, heading down the hall with more confidence now that his HUD showed what must be most of the mutineers.
I can't assume somebody hasn't worked some bypass on their room's sensors.
Soldiers did that, to cover up illicit activity, or just the presence of a visitor sharing legal but intimate activity. The briefing rooms all showed blank, not bypassed, but openly disabled.
So they
are
being used to hold people. And those people got unhappy enough about that to knock out the sensors. I'll bet that ticked off the "Enlisted Council.'

A briefing room far from Stark blossomed with detections, as some soldiers from Third Platoon burst in. "This place is full of privates," one reported. "Unarmed, looks like."

"Was the door locked from the outside?" Sergeant Rosinski demanded.

"That's affirmative, Sarge."

" 'Ski," Stark broke in. "It looks like maybe a company worth of enlisted in there. Those'll be some of the ones who didn't go along with the mutiny, but keep an eye on them until we're sure. There's probably another company locked up in another one of the briefing rooms. You copy, Lieutenant Conroy?"

"I copy. Any sign of the senior enlisted?"

"I think I'm about to find some," Stark replied, pausing outside the room he had been heading for. Inside, he could hear shouting, some of it amplified by battle armor and in the angry, panicked tones of a person who thought they were losing control of a situation.

Stark came through the door in a rush, sweeping the room with his rifle as he moved. In front of him, an armored figure hesitated, its IFF tagging it as a mutineer. Stark put a short burst into it, then pivoted to focus on where Vic Reynolds and a couple of other sergeants were struggling for the weapon of a second guard. "Get clear!" Stark bellowed over his outside speaker, and as the sergeants dropped away obediently Stark planted two rounds in the guard's armored chest. The guard tried to bring his own weapon around, then fell.

Stark scanned the room again, carefully, but saw no other threats. "Vic? That the only other guard?"

She was staring at him with a mixture of shock and outrage. "You just shot them both? That casually? What the hell—?"

"I asked you if those were the only guards, soldier!"

Vic stopped speaking, then nodded. "Yes. Those were the only two."

"Good." Stark checked his HUD for any signs of other mutineers in the area, but the few red symbols still active were some distance away. He leaned over the second guard. "Don't get all in an uproar, Vic. He ain't hurt for real." Unsealing the guard's face shield, Stark revealed a sweating face with wide eyes. "Mind you, if this clown had killed anybody in here, I might've left him in his armor until he starved to death."

Private Billings from Stark's old squad came storming in, her weapon at the ready, then halted, sweeping the room. "You okay, Sarge?"

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"Wow. Thanks. Corporal Gomez would've eaten me alive if anything'd happened to you."

"What? Explain that."

"Uh . . . well, Corporal Gomez told me to stick with you no matter what and make sure you didn't get hurt. But I lost you during one of the firefights. You move awful fast for an old guy, Sarge."

"Thanks a lot. You and Gomez oughta know I can take care of myself."

"Okay, Sarge. Um, they're doing a sweep through the rooms, so I guess I should—"

"Yeah. Go ahead. And, Billings?" She paused in mid-step. "Thanks. I mean it. See you around."