No Price Too High (Warp Marine Corps Book 2) Read online

  “We can speak freely,” Hewer said to his second-hand man. “Just lowered the Cone of Silence.” Both men were just old enough – they’d both celebrated their two hundredth birthdays a good while ago – to chuckle at the joke.

  “Yes, sir, Mister Presidente Vitalicio, sir,” Tyson said as he poured himself a drink.

  “That gag got stale decades ago, Ty.”

  “I’ll keep making it as long as you keep running for reelection.”

  “Just to keep me on my toes?”

  “Just to remind you this wasn’t supposed to be an Eternal Administration. The Puppies chose to help the US, not North Korea.”

  “You know how it goes. Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in.” Another joke only pre-Contact Ancients would get.

  “Heh. You had to quote the worst Godfather movie of the bunch.” Tyson shrugged. “I know all your excuses by heart, Al. ‘Nobody else can do the job.’ ‘Look at the pack of idiots vying for the White House.’ ‘After this crisis is over, I’ll retire – but, wait, here’s another crisis.’”

  “I almost quit after we settled the Risshah’s hash. Then the Crabs tried to fill the void they left. And after they’d been taught their lesson, along came the Horde. The Gremlins, may they all burn in Hell. And so on and so forth. And now it’s the Lampreys, Vipers and the Goddamn Galactic Imperium. You really want to switch horses in the middle of this shitstorm? We may lose the war before the next election anyhow. We don’t do posthumous swearing-in ceremonies.”

  “You don’t sound too optimistic,” Tyson said. He’d been to the same briefings as the President, and he knew the situation wasn’t just terrible, it was close to completely hopeless. But the one good thing about Al was that the man had no quit in him. To hear him spout defeatist crap was worrisome.

  “We’re stretched too thin,” Hewer said. “We don’t have the manpower and production capacity. A little under two billion of us, counting immigrants and probationary citizens and every living being that will salute the flag, plus two billion Pan-Asians and about two billion from everyone else, mostly from Africa. There’re still less humans in the galaxy than before First Contact. Even with the longevity treatments helping things along. It’s depressing.”

  “We’re about due for a population explosion,” Tyson pointed out. “People are finally figuring out the kinks of being able to live for centuries. Now, they save enough money to take twenty years off, raise a litter of kids, then go back to the grind. We’re going to double in size in about a generation, and double every thirty years of so after that.”

  “But we don’t have a generation. Each member of the Tripartite Galactic Alliance can outgun and out-produce us, let alone as a group. This time, we get to play Imperial Japan during the Second Big Mess; it doesn’t matter how good we are if they can bury us in bodies. Or starships, in this case. Especially if they come up with new tricks for a change. Those missile ships are bad news. They play straight into their strengths. Ton by ton, a missile is more expensive than a starship; that volley they fired at those poor bastards at Melendez cost more than the fleet that launched them. They can afford the expense, though. It’s just the kind of stunt we used to pull back when we were the industrial powerhouse of the world. Spend a million bucks to put a smart bomb through some poor dumb bastard’s window. Except now we’re the poor dumb bastards.”

  “So you’re telling me we turned the US into a banana republic for nothing.”

  “Not a banana republic, an unofficial parliamentary monarchy. Temporarily. We’ve kept the trappings of a republic and I aim to see the republic restored after we’re secure. Assuming we live that long. And no, I’m not surrendering. I just don’t know if we can win this one.”

  “You never know, Al. Vegas odds were that the Snakes were going to eat our lunch, and we made them extinct. We’ve always been the underdog and we’ve done pretty well despite that.”

  “Not like this. Even with the Wyrms weighing in on our side, the numbers look terrible. And the Wyrms will quit on us as soon as things get tough. They know they can negotiate their way out of this. We can’t. The Days of Infamy made it clear they don’t want a few concessions from us, or even to reduce us to client status. They want us gone from the galaxy, root and branch.”

  “Then we need to get the Puppies on board.”

  “They have agreed to help out: lots of supplies, all ‘sold’ to us with insanely generous credit terms, and a few extra ships, some of them crewed by ‘volunteers.’ Figure an extra ten percent in firepower, twenty in logistics. Not enough. The House of Royals at the Doghouse is evenly divided, and the High King has decided to stay officially neutral, for now. He’ll slip us as much aid as he can without provoking a declaration of war from the triple assholes, but that’s about it. It won’t make a difference.”

  “There is the Lexington Project. That’s just about ready.”

  Even as he spoke, Tyson knew he was whistling in the dark. Lexington was a ‘super-weapon’ project that looked good enough to fast-track, but that didn’t mean much. Ordinarily, he’d have considered it a waste of time and money: the resources spent in developing and fielding new weapon systems could have produced a lot more ordinary, tried-and-true ships, missiles and the logistics necessary to keep them running. Problem was, they couldn’t match their enemies’ production capacity no matter what. Their only hope was to try to come up with some innovation that would overcome the ETs’ numerical and industrial superiority.

  And who tried to do just that, historically? The Confederacy, with the CSS Virginia and those suicide subs. The Germans in WW2, with all their Wunderwaffe collection. And what did all that inventiveness get them? A big steaming pile of nothing.

  Of course, he reminded himself, in those same wars the winners had also come with a few new toys of their own. Toys like the USS Monitor, or Fat Man and Little Boy. But the winning side had also fielded the most battalions and ships. If you went by past history, the US was screwed.

  Guess we’ll have to make our own history.

  “Yep. Lexington is coming on line,” Al said, sounding about as enthusiastic as Tyson felt. “Going to take at least a couple of years to fully implement. A year minimum for any kind of deployment, and those new gizmos will be crewed by newbies, with zero combat experience. As likely to get slaughtered as to make a difference. Same with all our other tricks. I don’t know if we can produce enough new gadgets, not in time to turn the tide.”

  “So we buy some time.”

  “We will try. You heard what the JCS had to say. A few good ideas, but most of them are long shots. The biggest thing going for us is that the Tripartite Alliance isn’t coordinating worth a damn. Each bunch is making its own push into our star systems, and the Imperium has been downright halfhearted so far. And the sad thing is, each separate push might be strong enough to steamroll us.”

  “We play the hand we were dealt, Al. We put it to the touch.”

  “To win or lose it all. Yeah, maybe I should use Montrose’s Toast during the next State of the Union address. That’ll cost the Eagle Party a dozen seats in the midterms. People are getting risk averse in their old age. Nobody wants to hear the ‘lose it all’ part. I sure don’t.”

  “Buck up, Al.”

  The President looked him in the eye. “We’re going down fighting, Ty. But I think we’re going down.” He shuddered, despair clearly written on his homely features. “Not that I’ll let it show when I’m out in public. Never let them see you sweat. And who knows? Maybe the horse will learn how to sing.”

  Tyson shrugged. That would have to do; Al was getting punch-drunk with the steady stream of bad news coming from every direction, but he would fake it till he made it, and that should be enough for now. Tyson would keep doing his job, of course. There were a few surrender-monkeys in Congress that needed to go, for one. Luckily one of them was into child porn and most of the others had been feathering their nests for a good while. He’d had files on them for a little while and been waiting
for the need to use them. Removing those assholes wouldn’t even require any wet work. His people in the press would take them down in quick succession, and that would encourage the others not to obstruct the new war plans.

  It was going to get ugly, both internally and externally. Wars to the knife were like that.

  One

  New Parris, Star System Musik, 164 AFC

  Charlie Company, Battalion Landing Team, 101st Marine Expeditionary Unit, led the way towards the cauldron of battle.

  “Dammit, where’s Charlie-Three?” USWMC Captain Peter Fromm said, resisting the impulse to slam a gauntleted fist against a console in the command vehicle. The rest of the company was due to start moving forward in about thirty seconds, a bounding overwatch maneuver that required his weapons platoon (Third Platoon, a.k.a. Charlie-Three) to set up and provide cover for the advance.

  Artillery from both sides was already in action; the dull roar of distant explosions was getting closer as the defending Vipers struck out at the three battalions trying to destroy their ground base and the American tubes ‘prepared’ the area by trying to smash all enemy strongpoints. Speed was vital when going on the offensive: staying still only made you a better target. And the overwatch platoon was behind schedule, holding up everyone else.

  “Lieutenant O’Malley sent two squads forward to check for possible snipers,” said First Lieutenant Hansen, Fromm’s executive officer. “He’s confirmed the position is clear and the platoon is deploying. Five more minutes, he says”

  To wait would mean delaying the entire battalion’s advance. O’Malley’s timidity had already cost them ten minutes while he hunted for imaginary snipers. He’d probably caught some ghost sensor reflection and reacted with his typical over-cautiousness. Third Platoon’s sergeant would make sure the weapons sections took their positions as quickly as possible, but they were running out of time.

  The modified Land Assault Vehicle that served as the company’s mobile command post enhanced Fromm’s computer implants, enabling him to watch what was happening from multiple angles, from the godlike view afforded by recon drones to the personal helmet sensors of every soldier in his unit. A quick look showed him that the weapons platoon was just beginning to dismount from their vehicles and set up their heavy weapons. Five minutes was an optimistic estimate.

  Fromm made a decision. “Send out the Hellcats and Charlie-Two,” he ordered, placing icons on the tactical map. “Move Charlie-One over that ridge to the east, have their LAVs set hull-down to provide overwatch while Third gets its head out of its collective ass.”

  “Roger that.” Hansen began to relay the orders while Fromm watched the unfolding situation and prepared for his next move.

  Enemy shells were blasting the narrow mountain pass separating the 101st from its primary objective, a Viper Planetary Defense Base. The terrain being traversed by the battalion was a rocky desert plain broken by scattered mesas that rose up to two hundred feet in places. Sections of it were still smoking, indicating spots where defending units had been caught and destroyed by the artillery preparation that had preceded the attack. They were going to have to rush forward and hope the dug-in aliens had been neutralized by the rain of high explosive and plasma that had descended upon them. Intelligence estimated the pass was defended by a company of Viper Crèche Defense fighters (an alternative translation for the alien designation was ‘Child Protective Services’). There would be some survivors even after the extended barrage and the longer they left them be, the more likely it was they would try to do something about the invading force.

  Movement to contact against unknown and likely strongly-held enemy positions wasn’t the kind of thing any commander wanted to do, because the butcher’s bill was guaranteed to be high. But the remfies in charge had decided it needed to be done that way, and now it was time to do or die, with any questions to be saved for the after action report.

  If things had gone according to their OPORD, Charlie-Three should have been providing cover for the rest of the company from the heights of one the mesas, hitting possible enemy positions with mortars while their missile and heavy gun sections took out anybody trying to engage the American forces. Their slow deployment meant First Platoon would take their place instead of joining in the advance.

  The sixteen Hellcats that comprised Fourth Platoon rushed forward. The Mobile Infantry suits looked like mechanical headless felines: four-legged, nine feet long and no more than three feet high at the shoulder, or a foot lower when lying fully prone. Suit and wearer together weighted about two thousand pounds, but they exerted only slightly more pressure per square inch than a standing trooper in normal combat armor. Shields and armor nearly equal to a Land Assault Vehicle’s, and enough weapon pods to rival a heavy weapon section completed the ensemble. The Hellcats could run at up to a hundred miles an hour, and their power packs allowed for thirty-six hours of sustained operations.

  To Fromm’s surprise, the mechanical kitties were performing as advertised. He’d spent the last eight months integrating Charlie-Four into his company, and he still didn’t have a good feel for the powered armor systems – or a good feeling about them.

  Heavily armed and armored battlesuits had entranced visionaries since long before First Contact. Reality kept disrupting those dreams, however. Once you added enough armor and weapons to justify their use, the artificial musculature necessary to move them at more than a walking speed, and the energy supply required to empower both, what you got was something too tall and bulky to be anything more than a better target. The more armor and shields you added, the better a target it became, until you ended up with a tank rather than anything even vaguely humanoid. After many failed prototypes, a team of designers had realized that, if a bipedal suit of armor wouldn’t work in open field combat, maybe a different body plan would. Something like, say, a dog or a cat. The end result now led the way.

  Second Platoon followed the Hellcats, five LAVs carrying its three rifle squads, command element and an area field generator that created an invisible umbrella with a three-hundred-yard radius. The troop carriers were long, angular vehicles with a topside bubble turret holding an assortment of support weapons and a boxy four-shot missile launcher on each side. They floated a foot or so off the ground, driven by gravity thrusters at a steady 150 k.p.h. Despite the protection afforded by their heavy force fields and sixty millimeters of carbyne-steel composite armor, any vehicle that stayed in the open for too long risked immediate destruction.

  Enemy rockets and shells fell upon the two advancing platoons. Gatling air-defense lasers mounted on the vehicles’ turrets went into action, exploding about half of the barrage mid-flight. The surviving munitions detonated against the area force field and went off harmlessly over the advancing vehicles as they pressed forward towards their objective, a clump of massive boulders a quarter of a klick away.

  Two hundred and fifty meters – less than three football fields long – isn’t a long way when you’re dashing forward at over ninety miles an hour. It took Charlie-Two’s vehicles and their picket line of Hellcats a little over six seconds to reach their rally point.

  It took a lot less for two camouflaged Viper anti-tank teams to emerge from hiding and engage the Marines.

  Camo blankets were thrown aside; their spoofing systems had made the Viper’s dug-in positions look like a harmless pile of rocks, and they had survived the artillery barrage and evaded detection by the drones orbiting overhead. The closest unmasked position was a grav-gun emplacement; it swung towards one of the Hellcats, but its target caught the sudden movement and managed to shoot first. The MI trooper walked a long burst of 15mm AP rounds into the Viper position before it could line its shot, the plasma penetrators tearing gun and gunners to undistinguishable bits of plastic, metal and charred flesh.

  The second team sprang into action a couple of seconds later, and whoever was watching that sector didn’t react in time.

  A cage launcher holding a quartet of hypervelocity missiles popped out
from its concealed position like a jack-in-the-box and fired at Second Platoon’s lead LAV. Four depleted uranium darts, propelled with enough acceleration to reach escape velocity in under two seconds, hit their target. The short range meant their speed at the point of impact was a mere five thousand meters per second, but that was enough. The attack had come from inside the area force field’s perimeter, so only the vehicle’s own shields protected it. They shed one of the missile hits and were overloaded in the process; its tough hull armor sent a second dart flying into the air, leaving a blazing contrail in its wake. The other two penetrated. The LAV spun in place before dropping inertly to the ground. Fromm’s tactical display showed the troop carrier’s status carat change color from green to red, switching a second later to black. The view from the drones showed the vehicle disappearing in a blossoming fireball. Sixteen men had been inside; their personnel carats all turned black at the same time.

  The Vipers didn’t live long enough to enjoy the success of their ambush. Less than a second after they fired, they were obliterated by a barrage of plasma and graviton blasts from First Platoon’s LAVs. None of that mattered to the dead Marines, of course.

  They pressed on. Once Charlie-Two and -Four were deployed defensively, the rest of the company moved forward, except for Third Platoon, which was finally ready for action and had the range and visibility to provide overwatch from their current position while the rest of the company moved to its next objective. About time they were ready to do their damn jobs, Fromm thought bitterly. He’d commanded Charlie-Three during the siege of Kirosha’s legations, a brutal extended battle which had shown him the quality of the troops in that unit. They could do better than that.

  The Vipers’ artillery barrage was intensifying, and they were using coordinated time-on-target shield busters, multi-stage munitions that unleashed half-mile-long plasma jets after an initial explosion meant to weaken or breach the area force fields protecting each platoon. Once the advance reached one of the taller mesas ahead, their bulk would obstruct most of the incoming. Only a few more seconds and they would be safe…