Ian Douglas - Star Marines

But the Lords Who Are did understand that peculiarly unpleasant inward disturbance, that inner conflict of desire and acceptance, that arose when a planned and expected outcome was thwarted by unforeseen events. Indeed, that might be the closest We Who Are could ever come to experiencing anything like emotion.

They experienced it now, however, as they took stock of the current situation. The local system’s vermin had somehow managed to overwhelm the huntership’s shielding, and blind it as well. Analyses of the vectors of several nearby vermin spacecraft suggested that the locals were going to try for an intercept. That could not be permitted.

Another concept We Who Are rarely needed to deal with was the idea of hurry. Time, generally, was simply another factor to be worked into the equations of the moment. But it was imperative, now, that repairs be completed in a very great hurry indeed. Clearly, the locals should be classified as a’amv’yet, meaning a serious threat to We Who Are.

A threat requiring the immediate sterilization of this entire star system.

Assault Detachment Alpha

Autie Navy Sierra 1-1

1417 hrs, GMT

“Three … two … one … grapple release.”

Garroway felt the jolt as the autie was cast clear of the Commodore Edward Preble . They were falling free through empty space once more.

“ We’re clear, ” the mental voice continued. “ And … primary ignition in five … four … three … two … one … ignition! ”

A giant’s hand slammed down on Garroway’s chest, pressing him back into the thinly padded seat. The AUTs—like the Preble , and like most human-crewed spacecraft nowadays—made use of Oannan drivefield technology, but that only reduced the effects of inertia, allowing higher accelerations and more violent maneuvering than would otherwise be possible with a human payload. The effects of acceleration were still felt, and they were still unpleasant.

The autie boosted hard for two minutes before the blessed relief of zero-G again enfolded him.

“C’mon!” one Marine griped over the platoon channel. “When do we get to see where we’re going?”

“Belay that,” Garroway snapped. Every Marine on the autie was keyed to the breaking point. It was the platoon gunnery sergeant’s job, his job, to make sure they didn’t actually snap. “When they have a feed, they’ll give it to us. For now, keep hitting your weapons checktext. Ooh-rah?”

“Ooh-rah.” But the response was scattered and weak.

In fact, the team had been over its weapons and equipment checks time and time again already. They were as ready as they could be … as ready as any military strike force could be flying blind into an unknown tactical situation.

“How about it, Lieutenant?” he asked, using the private command channel. Wilkie was on board the autie, though he wasn’t on the cargo deck with the rest of the Marines. As CO of the op, he would monitor things from a console-couch in the AUT’s cockpit. “They haven’t told us a fucking thing. Right now, morale sucks and our performance is going to suffer for it. When do we at least get to see where we’re going?”

“Like you just told them, Gunny,” Wilkie said. “When they decide to give us something to look at. In the meantime, we have to be patient.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, ‘patience,’” Garroway replied, falling back on an old joke. “How long will that take?”

Wilkie didn’t reply, however.

Garroway was concerned about the lieutenant. He was almost as new to the Marines as Lowey, Atkins, and a couple of the other newbies were. According to the man’s personnel files, he’d commanded a platoon Earthside out of Annapolis, but that had only been for three months, until he’d been assigned to SCS, Space Combat School. After that, he’d been sent straight to RST-1, and that had been just two months ago. Garroway had no doubts whatsoever about Wilkie’s technical qualifications. But he did wonder about his ability to lead Marines. In his two months with the RST, Wilkie had seemed … remote, somehow. Nothing Garroway could really put on the table and criticize, but his abrupt manner was worrisome, sometimes. Distracted. And inflexible. A good Marine officer textened to his senior NCOs carefully, even let himself be guided by them. Wilkie, somehow, seemed driven by his own agenda, with a single-mindedness that had won him the nickname “Will-kill.”

The joke was that no one knew who his single-mindedness would kill—the enemy, or the Marines under his command.

But that was outside of Garroway’s control. A good platoon gunny got his people through all kinds of obstacles and problems—including those presented by obstinate or know-it-all junior officers.

Damn it, though, this time it was worse than usual. No information was coming down from the top … and that made Garroway’s job a hell of a lot tougher.

The minutes dragged by, as stress—measured by the bio readouts for each member of the platoon—grew to near-intolerable levels.

Only in the last couple of minutes did the Marines see what was awaiting them.

The datafeed, according to the peripheral alphanumerics, was coming from an unmanned drone approaching the Intruder. That , he thought, is why the delay. We didn’t have anything close enough to send us a picture .

The alien was definitely a twin of the Xul starship that had come through the stargate at Sirius a century and a half ago—two kilometers long, a slender needle forward, gently swelling into bulges and protuberances of unknown purpose farther aft, the whole gleaming gold in the weak light of a distant Sol.

And—the God of Battle be praised—it looked dead.

Looked . That was the operative word. The HELGA lasers had slashed into the rear quarter of the ship, leaving that end raggedly truncated and surrounded by a slowly expanding cloud of dust, frozen mist, and debris. Much of the golden hull forward was scorched and blackened.

Still, he’d studied recordings made at the Battle of Sirius, and this didn’t look as bad as the damage that had taken out the other Hunter vessel. The Marines would have to assume that whatever passed for crew over there were very much alive and ready to defend their property.

Garroway heard the mingled comments of several of the watching Marines.

“Jesus! Look at the size of that thing.”

“Hey, Cowboy. Size doesn’t matter. You should know that!”

“What are we gonna do … fly up its ass?”

“You got a better way to goose that bitch?”

Abruptly, the image winked out, raising an angry chorus of complaints and grousings.

“Hey! Who turned it off?”

“Let us see, damn it!”

“Texten up, people,” Wilkie said over the platoon channel, overriding the grumblings. “They just passed the word that they’re going to trigger two XELs in a minute. It’ll be like a preliminary bombardment, giving us some cover going in. They switched off the drone’s feed to save its optics.”

The grumbling abated somewhat, but not entirely. For Garroway, though, that was good news. Hitting the Xul intruder again, moments before the RST boarded it, might make the difference between survival and death.

And if we’re real lucky , he thought, they’ll overdo it and the damned thing will be vaporized! He found he didn’t mind at all the possibility that this operation would be aborted at the last minute.

Battlespace

1443 hrs, GMT

The X-ray laser platforms in extended orbit about Mars were under the control of an artificial intelligence named Artemis. She was, in fact, a software clone identical in most respects to Kali, who was handling the long-range targeting of the Xul intruder at HELGA Three, but she was resident in the military computer network that embraced Mars, Deimos, and Phobos, as well as several of the warships currently within a few light-seconds of the Red Planet.