Jack Campbell - Guardian

The Marines kicked off hard on every possible projection, changing direction and bursting into the compartment, which was unrecognizable to Geary despite his previous visit because of the dust filling it. He realized why the grenades had been set to turn their coating into fine powder: that nullified the advantages of the Syndic stealth gear. Figures appeared in the swirling clouds as shots tore through it. The image from the Sergeant’s armor jerked wildly as the Marine took a hit, ending up tilted and drifting along one side of the compartment.

Geary hastily switched Marines, picking up the corporal who was now the squad leader. Two more shots resounded in the compartment, then it was silent as the Marines combed it for any remaining foes.

“Sarge is down! Looks bad.”

“See what you can do,” Corporal Maksomovic ordered. “What about Tsing?”

“Dead.”

“Damn. Any Syndics left alive?”

“If they are, not for much longer—”

“Dammit, Caya, if you and the others find a Syndic still breathing, you keep them breathing! We got orders to get prisoners for interrogation, and you will damn well obey those orders!”

“All right, all right, Mack. Hey, this one’s still— Never mind.”

Geary could see Corporal Maksomovic floating beside a figure in Syndic armor on which all stealth features had failed. “Can we do a revive and recover?”

“Not with a hole that big in her. I don’t know how she lasted as long as she did.”

“Hey, Mack, I found that nuke we was looking for!”

“Don’t touch it, Uulina!” The image moved hastily, focusing on a squat cylinder anchored in one corner of the compartment. On the corporal’s helmet display, his combat system automatically identified the enemy weapon and popped up critical information. “Major, we got a confirmed nuke munition. Fusion pack.”

Major Dietz sounded both relieved and worried. “Is it armed?”

“Uh. Arming switch.” Corporal Maksomovic’s helmet display highlighted part of the weapon he was gazing at, providing a schematic with on and off positions for the arming switch helpfully shown. “No, sir. Arming switch has not been thrown.”

“What about the timer?”

“No, sir. Timer is not running.”

“Good job. Guard that thing yourself while we get a weapons engineer on the line to tell you how to deactivate it. And watch out for any Syndics trying to regain possession.”

“Yes, sir. Major, we got a casualty—”

“We saw. There’s another squad on the way with two fleet medics. Don’t let the Syndics regain possession of that nuke.”

“Thank you, sir. Understand; we guard the nuke at all costs. All right, you apes,” the corporal said. “Even-numbered fire teams guard the open hatch, odd-numbered fire teams guard the closed one. Don’t bunch up and make killing you all easy for them! Spread out! Kilcullen, see what you can do for the sergeant until those medics get here.”

“Where you going, Mack?”

“I gotta stay next to madam-nuke-your-butt. You watch for more Syndics, and I’ll watch it.”

Another voice came on, Geary realizing that he was hearing the Marine senior-command circuit. “How’s it going, Vili?” General Carabali asked.

“I’ve got it in hand,” Major Dietz replied. “Command area secure and counterattack under way. We have decoy main engineering control and are preparing to retake the decoy bridge.”

“I saw. All right, everybody. Major Dietz remains the on-scene commander. Take your orders from him as you board Invincible .”

A chorus of replies came from the captains and lieutenants commanding the companies and platoons being fed into Invincible from Typhoon . Major Dietz began calling out orders, sending units to different decks and passageways to form a cordon that would sweep through Invincible . “Unit of maneuver is squads,” Dietz said. “Nothing smaller is to operate independently.”

“Squads?” a captain questioned in a startled voice.

“You’ll understand why as you get deeper into the ship,” Major Dietz said. “Maintain a full platoon at the air lock the Syndics used to enter the ship and be ready for some of them to come out.”

“Come out? To what? There were some shuttles hanging around, but the space squids are blowing them away.”

“You’ll understand when you get inside the ship,” Major Dietz repeated. “The Syndics are going to be wanting to get out. Be prepared for them to hit you and be prepared for them to attack all out as they try to reach the air lock.”

“Major, we got the decoy bridge!” a lieutenant reported in. “There’s another nuke here, but no Syndics.”

“Say again? No Syndics?”

“No, sir. I formed my people into a deck-to-overhead wall and moved them from one side of the compartment to the other. There are no Syndics hiding here.”

“They abandoned a nuke?” a captain asked, astonished. “They, um, what the hell? What’s that? What’s there?”

Geary checked the captain’s position, seeing that he was well within Invincible ’s hull.

“Major, what else is in here with us?” a very worried voice demanded.

“Nothing that can hurt you,” Dietz replied. “Stay in squad-strength formations. General, the new troops aren’t acclimated to the environment inside Invincible . That may be a bigger problem than we anticipated.”

“Merge them,” Carabali commanded. “Make your smallest unit of maneuver platoons and keep the Marines in each platoon in physical contact with each other.”

Admiral Lagemann spoke to Geary. “War in a haunted house. I didn’t think war could be any worse, but we found a way. The first nuke, in decoy engineering control, had a force of six Syndics with it. If the other group had that same number, it would have been too small to handle the mental pressure of the Kick ghosts, or whatever the phenomenon is.”

“You think they just bolted?”

“I think it’s likely. Look what’s happening to the new Marines coming aboard, and they were in squad strength everywhere, about twice as large a group as the one the Syndics probably left with that second bomb.”

Alerts popped to life in several places. In some, Marines were battling Syndic infiltrators. In others, the Syndics must have been firing at ghosts and giving away their locations to the Marines hunting for them.

The Marines who had charged aboard Invincible from Typhoon moved much more cautiously now, pivoting often to check all about them as they pulled themselves through the deserted, dark passageways of the captured alien warship, and occasionally letting off their own bursts of fire at possible enemies who turned out to be nonexistent.

“We got alerts!” someone was calling.

Geary shifted views again, seeing through the helmet of the Marine lieutenant whose platoon was guarding the air lock. One of the lieutenant’s Marines was gesturing frantically. “Three or four of them from the movement! They’re coming so fast the gear can pick them up kicking off the walls.”

“Smoke that passageway,” the lieutenant ordered.

Smoke in this case meant more dust, the grenades going off in a series of bangs that briefly illuminated the dark passageway leading to the air lock before the dust blocked any light from penetrating it. Seconds later, the dust swirled as figures came flying through it.

The Marines opened fire, killing three Syndics, whose bodies were knocked aside to drift lifelessly.

“What the hell?” the platoon sergeant asked the lieutenant. “They didn’t even try to shoot. Just flew at us.”

“Got more coming! Same passageway!”

“They’re retracing their route in,” Major Dietz cautioned.