No Price Too High (Warp Marine Corps Book 2) Page 7

  Heather hadn’t seen much of Spacer First Class Karl Jürgen during the trip. The taciturn operator had been a quiet professional who’d done his job as the platoon’s heavy machine gunner as well as could be expected. And now he was lost, along with one of the platoon’s three heavy weapons.

  No time to ponder how that loss would affect the mission, let alone mourn the dead. The team had arrived in two groups. Heather and the eight operators on First Squad had emerged in a formal dining room: she recognized the layout from the virtual simulations they’d all trained in. The main difference between the training holograms and reality was that this room’s furniture and elaborate decorations had been destroyed by the warp emergence.

  Second Squad’s landing point had been right inside the building’s communications room, which contained the planet’s only store of quantum-entangled transmission particles. QE telegrams were the only way to send instant messages across interstellar distances. The warp intrusion destroyed everything in the room and killed the night crew manning the QE-telegraph. That had been the most important part of the mission, since an Imperium fleet was stationed only forty warp-minutes away from the system. Now there was no way the locals could alert anybody of the raid until the next scheduled starship visit, six weeks away.

  “Move out.”

  First Squad headed out towards the database core while Second Squad secured the Legionnaires’ barracks and dealt with any on-duty sentries. Alarms were blaring out: their keening was beyond a human’s hearing range, but their suit systems translated them into something they could perceive, just to add to the sense of urgency everyone already felt. Heather followed the team into a wide carpeted hallway, much wider than they would be in a human building, its walls decorated with elaborate native tapestries depicting heroic historical events. The raid had been timed to strike late at night, at the local equivalent of three a.m., when diurnal metabolisms were at their lowest ebb. They were halfway towards their objective before they ran into the first local.

  The Doklon native wore a servant’s livery, a simple purple-white-tunic with six sleeves or trousers. It came from around a corner, froze at the shocking sight, and was cut down by Petty Officer Deveraux. Her carbine fired a burst of subsonic rounds that struck the servant with a trio of barely-audible pops. Despite being almost as large as a Terran horse, the centaur dropped like a rock under the impacts: the 3mm slugs delivered a fast-acting neurotoxin, guaranteed to kill any Class Two species in the space of a heartbeat. The squad moved on while the unfortunate Doklonite kicked feebly a couple of times before expiring.

  The Core Room was around a corner. The point man caught a couple more natives rushing towards its entrance and turned their graceful gallop into a crashing mess of tangling limbs with two center-of-mass bursts of poisoned bullets. Heather watched the killings from a vid-feed up on one corner of her field of vision as she moved up. She turned the corner in time to see one of the operators kicking down the door.

  A lone Imperium civilian was inside, a member of the Taro species, bulky purple-skinned bipeds with a forest of twisting sensory cilia on their heads filling the role of ears, eyes and nose. The alien was sitting by his desk, apparently doing nothing, but Heather’s imp caught a stream of information emanating from his cyber-implants, sending out instructions to wipe out all data inside the data cores in the room. He caught two bullets in the chest and one in the head for his troubles, but the systems were already self-destructing.

  Unfortunately for the brave Imperial, Heather had come prepared for such an eventuality.

  Even as the systems running the data cores began to comply with the now-dead ET’s final command, Heather used her implants to hack into them. Access codes that had taken years and millions of dollars to acquire stopped the wipeout orders in their tracks before they could erase more than a fraction of a percent of the priceless data.

  An Imperium Data Core contained all the information needed to run a major settlement and provide it with the equivalent of Earth’s old Internet, as well as the contents of public libraries, databases and government files. And the confidential files of assorted government agencies. Not everything, only what the local Satrap would need to know, but that was more than enough to justify risking a special operations starship, a platoon of SSEALs and a CIA agent.

  Heather pushed the corpse off the desk and placed the portable device on it, letting it do the rest of the work. Reams of data flowed into the little case at a transmission speed of hundreds of petabytes per second. The download would take three minutes.

  And from the volume of energy fire coming from outside, that might be more time than they had.

  She peeked through the visual feed of one of Second Squad’s operators, Petty Officer Hernandez, who was busily laying down fire with his Squad Automatic Weapon. The SAW spat short bursts of 4mm plasma-tipped bullets that chewed through force fields and the flesh and bone beneath them: a squad of centaurs in deep blue uniforms went down, their bodies torn apart by multiple hits. There were more aliens behind those, but they quickly realized that rushing forward was suicide. They leaped behind cover and began to fire their lasers.

  The sepoy weapons fired single laser pulses and could not unleash bursts or continuous beams. They were more than deadly enough to suppress any rebels on the primitive planet, but the SSEALs’ personal force fields could handle multiple hits without going down; their return fire tore through walls and vehicles and found the shooters hunkering down behind them.

  The Imperium hadn’t wanted to equip the local levies too well, just in case they decided to turn their weapons on their new masters. The Doklon Imperial Levies were meant to be at a distinct disadvantage against Starfarer enemies. Which was exactly what they were facing now.

  The squad of Imperial Legionnaires protecting the Satrap’s Office had been asleep in their quarters when the raid began. Those soldiers would have been a much greater threat if they’d been ready to fight, but Second Squad had murdered them in their beds. All that remained were lightly armed and shielded natives.

  Of course, quantity always beat quality if the quantity was large enough. Heather had learned that the hard way on Jasper-Five. A scan of the local military communication grid confirmed her worst fears: the two regiments stationed nearby were being hastily readied for action and moving with commendable speed. It wasn’t common for garrison troops to be in such a hurry to stick their proverbial dicks into a not-so-proverbial meat grinder, but the Levies were recruited from the planet’s most warlike societies, young males whose entire sense of self-worth was based on showing courage in the face of death. Combine that courage with even second-rate equipment, not to mention the heavy weapons held at the battalion level, and the SSEAL Team’s life expectancy could be measured in minutes – along with one jumped-up CIA intelligence officer.

  Heather strapped the now-priceless portable computer to her chest place and checked the charge on her carbine. She was supposed to leave the fighting to the operators, but if the damn evac didn’t show up in time, she might have to join in the fun, for whatever that was worth.

  “First Squad, move to the courtyard,” Commander Najle ordered, using the slightly-too-calm tone of a professional facing a near-desperate situation. “Second Squad, fall back into the building. It’s considered sacred by the local Eets, so they’ll probably won’t blow it up. Move it!”

  They ran through the deserted corridors as the staccato reports of supersonic plasma-tipped bullets and the whine-crackle of lasers thundered not too far away. The Satrap’s Office building had been originally built as a temple complex for the local priest-kings, and it had a large central courtyard once used for ceremonial purposes. Fortunately for the SSEAL team, it was also just about the right size to accommodate an orbital shuttle. Warp drops were one-way trips; their ticket out would have to be conventional.

  Doklon-Three didn’t have planetary defenses, being a backwater in a peaceful sector of the Imperium, but some of the sepoys’ heavy weapons could take
down a shuttle. Not easily – their targeting systems were deliberately primitive – but that wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to take chances on. Fortunately, the USS Narwhal was prepared to deal with the problem.

  Just as Heather reached the courtyard, the dark magenta night skies of Doklon-Three glowed with dozens of new ‘stars’ as a barrage of missiles from the covert ops starship entered the planet’s atmosphere. The sight made her shudder: the hapless people of Earth must have seen something very similar during First Contact when death rained from the heavens.

  The effect of this orbital bomb run was far less extreme. Except for those actually killed by it, she supposed.

  The missiles targeted the signature emissions of any heavy weapon emplacements capable of threatening the shuttle. Since the ship didn’t have the time or equipment to conduct detailed scans, at least some of the targets were civilian communication systems. Heather tracked the fire mission with her imp: twenty-three installations and vehicles were struck; the intelligence estimate was that there were no more than fifteen weapon systems capable of threatening an orbital shuttle. Fifty missiles struck, each delivering enough explosive force to turn a city block into a flaming crater. The ground shook under her feet; some of those explosions had been close. She tried not to think of the hundreds, likely thousands of soldiers and luckless civilians consumed by the expanding fireballs turning the night into hellish day.

  War was death and mutilation, most of its victims guilty of nothing worse than doing their jobs or being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Heather hated war. But once she was in one, she intended to do her best to win. The only thing worse than a battle won was a battle lost. Some general had said that; she reminded herself to Woogle it later.

  “Pelican One inbound for pickup. Hunker down, boys and girls. Danger close. Repeat, danger close.”

  Pelican One looked like an ordinary orbital cargo shuttle, the ubiquitous craft able to maneuver in and out an atmosphere and ferry passengers and as much cargo as it could fit inside its three-hundred-ton displacement. This particular stubby, ugly ship had hidden attachments for weapon and shield mounts that gave her almost as much protection and firepower as an assault shuttle. It lashed the area around the Satrap’s Office with a storm of plasma and hypervelocity missile fire. The starship missile barrage that immolated the Doklonian heavy weapons had felt like a distant earthquake; the sharp impacts of the shuttle’s weaponry were sharp thunderbolts. Windows shattered and flames rose up over the edges of the building, drowning out the natives’ small arms fire.

  First Squad reached the LZ a few seconds before the shuttle arrived. Everyone was there, but two operators were being carried in. Heather did a quick status check: their wounds were critical but the men would likely survive until they reached the Narwhal and its well-outfitted sick bay.

  The platoon poured into the ship in hurried order and it lifted off before its cargo hatches were fully closed, regaling Heather with a first-hand look at the capital city. Whatever it’d looked like before the American raid was impossible to tell: everywhere she looked was filled with uncontrolled fires, overturned vehicles, and patches of darkness between the flames: one of the missiles must have hit the local power plant, causing a blackout, or maybe the locals themselves had turned the lights off.

  Gunboat tourism. No fun for anybody involved.

  She hoped the contents of her computer were worth all the carnage and chaos she’d helped inflict.

  Four

  Aboard the USS Mattis, 164 AFC

  Heinlein-Five has fallen.

  That wasn’t what the news reports said, of course. The AP newsfeed merely asserted that ‘heavy fighting against the Nasstah invaders continues throughout Heinlein System.’ Problem was, none of the stories mentioned Fifth Fleet, which had been tasked to protect the system. You learned to read between the lines; if Fifth Fleet was still around, it would have been featured in the reports. Which meant it wasn’t around anymore: destroyed or fled, it didn’t make a difference for the system. Heinlein-Five wouldn’t last very long without a fleet covering it. The planet wasn’t heavily fortified: a handful of Planetary Defense Bases wouldn’t hold off an armada that had eliminated or run off a major naval formation.

  The commander of the 101st MEU had announced an impromptu meeting of all company and attachment commanders, fifteen minutes from now. Fromm would get the real story then. It was probably worse than he expected.

  We are losing.

  Heinlein-Five was a large US colony, and its fifteen million inhabitants made it one of the largest outer settlements of the country. Barely thirty percent of the US population had settled beyond Earth and a handful of core planets, despite all efforts to stimulate colonization. Most people preferred to stay home and be fat and comfortable in the great cities of Sol, Wolf 1061 and Drake. Those likely dead colonists were a huge loss to the country. And worse, a ley line connected Heinlein directly to an even larger system: Parthenon, with two habitable systems and a combined population of over thirty million, not to mention being a major warp nexus that led towards the heart of US space. If Parthenon fell, the Vipers could cut off half a dozen systems, to be taken at their leisure, and threaten Wolf 1061, one of the core worlds, with a population in the half-billion range and the second largest industrial base in the US. Lose that system and the war would be just about lost. And Earth itself was a mere thirty warp-minutes away from Wolf 1061.

  Space war depended on defense in depth. You wanted to control all the warp pathways leading to your core worlds, the planets containing the bulk of your population and economy. The best way to do that was to establish colonies or bases on all known connecting points, providing supplies and rallying points for your defensive fleets. Most Starfarers’ central systems lay dozens of warp jumps away from their nearest neighbors, requiring attackers to overwhelm the defenses waiting for them every step of the way. To get to that point took centuries or even millennia of expansion, however. Earth had a bit over a century to spread out; it wouldn’t take too many defeats before an enemy fleet could make it to Sol System.

  Given all that, Fromm had a good idea where the Mattis and the rest of Sixth Fleet were heading. The only question was how bad things were going to get once they arrived.

  The officers and NCOs in the briefing room all looked like attendees at the funeral of some beloved relative. Smiles were rare and seldom lasted more than a few seconds. Most people were sitting down quietly. Fromm nodded at Lieutenant Hansen and sat down next to him as the rest of Charlie Company’s leaders arrived. They didn’t have to wait long.

  Colonel Marvin Brighton stepped up to the podium. He had been in the Corps for close to a century, and in charge of 101st MEU for a good twenty years, and in the months since joining the unit, Fromm had learned he was a practical, no-nonsense leader, concerned primarily with results; a fighter and doer with little interest in rising any further in the ranks.

  “The stuff you’ve been hearing is partly true,” he said. “The Vipers kicked us out of Heinlein System. Fifth Fleet gave them a hard time, but in the end it had to withdraw. They had no choice: if we lost the fleet, the Vipers would have had a straight shot to Parthenon. As it is, they lost a lot of ships, maybe more than we could afford. But forget about the rumors that the fleet was destroyed.”

  Fromm felt a surge of relief. Even a badly-mauled fleet was better than nothing.

  “They are going to have to pull back to refit, however, so we are going to take their place. The GACS’ full Space Defense Force is relieving us at New Jakarta so we can proceed. Our is simple: we must hold Parthenon against all attacks. As long as we have forces in the system, the Vipers cannot spread to the rest of American space; if it falls, our situation will become critical. Our orders are to hold at any cost.”

  Parthenon-Three was a ‘full-goldie’ planet with thirty million inhabitants spread around a couple dozen cities and a hundred towns and villages, protected by eighteen heavily-armed Planetary Defense Bases as well as a r
ing of orbital fortresses and an impressive fleet of monitors. Parthenon-Four, on the other hand, was too cold and dry for human tastes. Only some two hundred thousand humans dwelled there, concentrated around four terraforming stations and a handful lesser facilities.

  “The hundred-and-first and the rest of Landing Squadron Three will be deployed to Parthenon-Four to protect and assist the evacuation of all American personnel there. When that mission is complete, we will relocate to Parthenon-Three to supplement the local garrison.”

  Some of the Marine officers sneered at that. The local defense forces would be Army and National Guard formations, recruited mostly from non-warp capable humans born in-system. Their training wasn’t bad, although most Corps officers would disagree, but their equipment would be largely outdated, and their logistics wouldn’t be great. There just wasn’t enough money for everyone, and most federal and state funds were allocated to the PDBs and space fortresses. If it came down to ground combat, the Corps would be expected to do most of the heavy lifting. However, the Marines just didn’t have the manpower to defend an entire planet; Sixth Fleet could field about one division equivalent of ground troops, hardly enough to cover the twenty-four PDBs that were all that stood between Parthenon-Three’s millions and a fiery death.

  People often forgot that the Warp Marine Corps’ combat forces only comprised some two hundred battalions and a handful of formed brigades and divisions, a little over four million troops all told, compared to fifty million Navy personnel and about thirty-five million in the other branches of the service, including the Guard, volunteer militias and so on. Marines could launch strikes and seize relatively-small patches of ground, but to hold or defend entire planets, you needed the Army.

  Fromm discreetly used his imp to fill in the details while Colonel Brighton went on. The planet’s defensive forced included six Army divisions (mechanized infantry for the most part), five National Guard divisions (mostly support), and ten militia brigades; the latter were volunteer weekend warriors, loosely-organized and poorly equipped. Over a hundred and eighty thousand troops, of which some twenty thousand would be actual fighting soldiers, the rest being in support roles.