Swapship Troopers Page 6

  “Gear inspection at oh-eight-hundred!” the Lieutenant shouted as the docking clamps clanged against the hull of their lander. Quiet groans rose up from the platoon. Time on the ship was no vacation for combat Marines. They had PT daily and combat drills in the virtual simulators. In between, they were stuck doing menial jobs all over the ship that the spacers were too busy to bother with. Things like scrubbing carbon residue off the hyperspace coils and sorting pallets of supplies.

  The worst part, though, were the inspections. There were four platoons of Marines attached to the Jericho and every single one of them was inspected from the top of his regulation chopped hairdo to the soles of his combat boots on a regular basis. It could have been worse – Hardaway didn’t run as many inspections as some other CO’s in the company. The Lieutenant professed to have little interest in how the men maintained their bunks. He did, however, inspect their weapons and battle armor with an eye for detail that was almost obsessive.

  Quantrill grabbed the handholds along the wall of the cargo bay and pulled himself toward the docking hatch. His feet slowly floated up off the floor and he flexed his arms to lever himself back downward. He had always hated the feeling of his boots leaving the ground. It felt loose, unstable. Like he might drift away and never come back. He knew that was nonsense – he was still safe inside the ship – but he preferred the sensation of solid, metal floor under his feet all the same.

  “Heads up!” he heard someone yell. Quantrill turned just in time to see Kowalski – all 100 kilos of him – floating across the crowded landing craft in his direction. The big Marine smashed into Quantrill, who bounced off and collided with the wall beside him. His helmet banged into the metal hull with a resounding clang. “Hey. Sorry, Q,” Kowalski told him.

  “Yeah,” Quantrill nodded. He was more than a little annoyed. Who was Kowalski trying to impress? At least he got an apology. That was more than somebody like Kowalski – big enough to break Quantrill in half with his bare hands – would have bothered with before the Marines. “So I guess you’re not applying for Fleet anytime soon,” Quantrill added with a smirk.

  “Fuck no,” Kowalski agreed. “Fuck this floating around in space shit. Give me a gun in my hand and the dirt under my feet any fucking day.”

  “Amen to that.” Quantrill raised a fist and Kowalski lightly tapped it with his own. Membership has its privileges.

  Chapter 6

  Antioch

  Quantrill hadn’t been onboard the Jericho for more than ten hours when the crew alert system sounded General Quarters. That was irritating, but not a big deal. Marines mostly just had to stay out of the way when Jericho went into action.

  Minutes later, however, Vanlanding came around and announced the platoon was being deployed. That was a big deal. Fleet policy gave them at least three days of downtime between deployments. If the platoon was going back in the dirt already, it could only mean something was seriously fucked up. Had they missed some Bugs on C224A? Did those orange suits get massacred?

  “Where are we going?” he asked in a voice rough with sleep.

  “Antioch,” Vanlanding answered. “Third platoon got into trouble. We have to go pull them out.”

  “Fuck,” Quantrill replied. He swung down from his rack as quickly as possible. He was on the top level with Jabara and Jordan below him – space was at a premium on the starship and Marines were regularly stacked three deep in the sleeping berths.

  “Bad fucking news,” Jabara mumbled. The big Marine was up and around and tossing together his battle pack.

  “No shit,” Quantrill quietly agreed. Antioch was a colony on the outer edge. It wasn’t a large colony, but there were probably thirty thousand people living there. Men, women, children. People who would be easy prey for attacking Formids. A single Bug could kill dozens of unarmed civilians – literally rip them to shreds in minutes. And the good people of Antioch were apparently being visited by enough Formids that a whole platoon of Marines was having trouble dealing with them. Bad fucking news indeed.

  “Look alive, you deadbeats!” Vanlanding groused. “We drop in twenty minutes!”

  Quantrill pulled on his armor chest plate and clicked the seals in place. All around, Marines were scrambling to pull on their gear. He tried to move as quickly as possible without getting rushed and making a mistake. Every minute they wasted getting deployed could mean another jarhead buying a farm.

  There was no doubt, either, that the platoon would drop on time whether or not all the men were onboard. Hell, Hardaway wouldn’t be afraid to drop alone if he had to. Hitting the dirt a man or two short wouldn’t trouble him in the least. Of course, you would not want to be in the straggler’s shoes when the LT got back and wanted to know why you missed the drop.

  Once the squad was suited up, they followed Vanlanding up to the sixth deck. From there they grabbed a spoke of their giant wheel and started climbing. Each spoke was a metal tunnel 50 meters long with a ladder running its length. As the men climbed upward, the force of rotation steadily decreased. By the time they were halfway up, they were in near freefall – holding the ladder only for guidance as they floated toward the central axis of the ship.

  “Oh, shit,” a voice grumbled from up ahead. “Here come the jarheads. Watch out.”

  Quantrill burst into the open right behind Vanlanding. The corporal wasn’t able to slow himself down and smashed into the opposite wall. Quantrill tried to land on his feet, but couldn’t twist around in his rigid combat armor and ended up ramming his knees into the bulkhead instead. Jabara came careening along right behind and flattened Quantrill against the wall.

  The men behind saw the train wreck at the end of the tunnel and were able to slow down in time to make the turn. When Quantrill dragged himself out of the pile of armored troopers, he heard hysterical laughter. The spacers had come down to fuel up the lander and saw the Marines make their grand entrance.

  “Fucking gorillas,” one spacer said with a shake of his head. “Always good for a laugh.”

  “Listen here, asshole,” Jabara growled. The big Marine was tensing his muscles for a charge. Of course, fighting with a spacer in freefall was like chasing a monkey up a tree – it was only going to entertain the monkey.

  “Yep, we’re a laugh a minute,” Quantrill said in the most jovial tone he could muster. He put a hand on Jabara’s shoulder to steady his friend and stop him from making a further fool of himself. “You should come down dirt-side with us. It’s sure to be loads of fun. I think we have some extra seats in the lander.”

  The self-important grins on the Fleet jockeys’ faces faded. It was one thing to act tough on a safe, cozy starship. Going toe-to-toe with a Formid was another story. “Like we would ever waste our time with you grunts,” the first spacer finally retorted.

  “What’s the matter?” Jabara put in. “You boys afraid of a few little ole’ Bugs?”

  “I hate to break up this chat,” a familiar voice barked. Lieutenant Hardaway emerged from the tunnel and glared at the assembly. “But we have a job to do. Get your asses onboard.”

  The spacers’ smug grins returned as they watched the Marines shuffle onto the lander. They had the look of a little brother who had just gotten his older brother in trouble. Hardaway turned his glare on them. “Is my bird ready to fly?” he demanded.

  “Uhh, yes,” the spacer replied deferentially. “Yes, sir. All fueled and ready to go.” Spacers as a rule had little respect for Marines, but even the most experienced button-pusher in the Fleet would quail under the glare of Lieutenant Bale Hardaway.

  “Then what are you still doing here?” Hardaway barked.

  “Just leaving, sir,” Quantrill heard them reply as he climbed through the hatch onto the landing craft. He gave Jabara a smile and a nod.

  Once the whole platoon was on board, Hardaway began going over equipment. Because of the emergency deployment the Lieutenant found many more fuckups than usual. On the other hand, he seemed less irritated than usual too. Maybe he understood that t
he troops had suited up so fast they were bound to screw a few things up here and there. Or maybe he expected some of them wouldn’t be returning from this mission.

  “No, Tor,” he told Private Torvaldson patiently. “Link up the armor plate before you latch the seals.”

  “Yes, sir,” Torvaldson replied sheepishly. The big blond leaned over to reattach his armor.

  Hardaway moved on down the line and checked each man in turn. He looked over Quantrill and slapped the smaller man on the shoulder, “Good man, Q,” he said and moved on. Quantrill nodded and felt his tension ease, just a little.

  “We will be coming down in a populated area,” Hardaway announced when he had finished his last minute inspections. “The locals have taken shelter, so hopefully they will be out of the way.” All colonies built emergency shelters into their larger buildings. They were usually reinforced concrete bunkers deep underground, like air raid shelters from the old days. Of course, Formids could dig tunnels like gophers on speed. Those hidey-holes wouldn’t be safe for long.

  “We will move on foot down the main street,” the Lieutenant went on. “And join up with third platoon near the city center. The LZ is quiet for now, but be on alert.”

  Quantrill nodded. If they were dropping into a populated area there would be plenty of places for the Bugs to lurk and wait to pounce. If they ended up fighting house to house there would almost certainly be casualties. It would be ugly.

  “Take your reds and be smart,” Hardaway concluded his briefing. Quantrill clicked a red pill from his dispenser and popped it into his mouth.

  The bird came down nice and easy. When the ramp dropped, the platoon followed Lieutenant Hardaway out onto the wide, main street of a small town. Shops lined the street on both sides and several ground cars were parked along the curb. The buildings seemed to be built out of either rough masonry – probably the only locally available building material – or recycled shipping containers stacked one on top of the other. There were no signs of people anywhere. Everything was quiet and abandoned. It was a ghost town.

  “We’re taking point,” Vanlanding instructed over the squad radio. The Lieutenant led the way down the road and Quantrill and the rest of the squad fell in behind. Guan and his squad were on the right. Corporal Tsien was on the left. Harper’s squad brought up the rear.

  Antioch was dry and hot. The planet’s binary suns beat down like they meant to burn the skin right off the unfortunate Marines. The empty street was like an oven. Even through his heavy combat boots, Quantrill could feel the heat of the pavement.

  His armor had a built in cooling system, but it was meant to keep him from overheating, not to keep him comfortable. Sweat was running freely down his back after a few minutes in the brutal heat. It was amazing to think that back on Earth people thought being sent off to a place like this was a privilege. He might have been dead broke back home, Quantrill reflected, but at least he could go outside in bare feet without getting first degree burns.

  On the bright side, the Marines hadn’t hit any resistance. The Bugs didn’t know the platoon was there and Quantrill hoped it stayed that way. If Hardaway’s men could meet up with the third platoon and surround the Formids, the Bugs would be wiped out before they knew what hit them.

  Quantrill stopped and turned his head to the sky. He thought he heard something – a soft buzzing sound. The buzzing gradually grew louder and more Marines turned to look in the direction of the sound. “Buzzard!” Quantrill yelled on the squad channel.

  He dropped to one knee and pointed his rifle skyward. Sure enough just a few seconds later an enormous creature flew over the roofs of the surrounding buildings. It looked like a beetle with a shiny black shell and short stubby legs. Only this beetle was twice the size of a school bus. Quantrill could feel the wind from its enormous wings as it flew overhead.

  “Hold your fire,” Vanlanding entreated over squad radio. “Hold your fire!” Quantrill didn’t need to be told twice. His little AR316 wouldn’t even tickle a creature that enormous. Buzzards weren’t dangerous in and of themselves either. They were huge, but didn’t have any weaponry to speak of. With these creatures, it was what’s inside that counted.

  Buzzards were how Formids got around. Under the hard outer shell, each Buzzard had between ten to fifty hollow pockets. Each pocket was just big enough for a Formid warrior to curl up inside. The flying Bug would land somewhere, drop off a gaggle of fighters, and fly off. A buzzard was a living, breathing troop carrier.

  The damn things even went into deep space. Their half-meter-thick carapace could withstand hard vacuum and radiation and insane extremes of temperature without a scratch. How they propelled themselves through space was a mystery that no one had figured out, but they sure as hell did. They seemed to be able to swim through hyperspace like a fish in water. When they came into the atmosphere they would crack open their shell and extend a set of wide, translucent wings like a monster-sized dragonfly.

  “Damn,” Jabara grumbled. “Bugs are getting reinforcements, too.”

  “Looks like it,” Quantrill agreed. The Jericho should be giving them cover star-side, but the Formids could still be sneaking through somehow. It would mean a pant-load of trouble if they were.

  “We’re moving. Let’s go,” Vanlanding ordered over the squad channel. The men resumed their march down the deserted street. Lieutenant Hardaway resolutely headed off in the direction the buzzard had disappeared and the platoon followed.

  Quantrill watched the dark windows of the surrounding buildings even more intently than before. The buzzard had surely seen them when it flew over. That meant the Formids would be expecting them. They may have even sent out a welcoming party.

  The platoon didn’t have to wait long. Just three blocks later, the silence of the empty town was shattered by the unmuffled roar of automatic weapon fire. Quantrill whirled around and saw Guan’s squad fighting off an attack on the right flank. A dozen or more Formids had come out of a side alley and more were still pouring into the street.

  “Head into that alley,” Vanlanding ordered over the radio.

  “The alley that’s jam packed full of Bugs?” Quantrill exclaimed.

  “Cut the back chatter, Q,” Vanlanding barked. “The LT wants us to take the fight to the Bugs and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

  Sure enough, Lieutenant Hardaway was out in front, charging into the Formid attack. Quantrill sprinted after him. The rest of the squad was close behind. In minutes, Hardaway reached the line of Bugs streaming toward Guan’s squad. He fired and injured one Formid. It turned and charged the Lieutenant with mandibles gnashing.

  Quantrill was three steps behind. He shouldered his rifle and fired without breaking his stride. From a combination of luck and long-practiced muscle memory, he put a five round burst into the monster’s eye socket. It dropped almost at Hardaway’s feet.

  “Nice shooting, Q,” Hardaway said without looking away from the charging Formids.

  “How did you know it was me? Sir?” Quantrill asked.

  “Who else?”

  Seconds later the rest of the squad arrived. Most of the Bugs continued to charge at Guan’s squad, but a few broke away and came after Hardaway and the others. They fought back the attack and were soon looking at a clear path to the alleyway.

  Hardaway made a run for it and the squad followed. As they ran into a narrow alley between two tall, mortar buildings Quantrill expected to face a solid mass of charging Formids. Instead the space was empty!

  “How did he know … ?” Quantrill asked no one in particular.

  “Fucking psychic, man,” Jabara said with a laugh. “The LT is a pure mother-fucking psychic.”

  “Jabby! Q!” Hardaway barked. The two Marines rushed to the Lieutenant’s side.

  “Sir?” they asked in unison.

  “I need you two to keep that off our back until we get the platoon into the alleyway,” he ordered and pointed up the main street in the direction the platoon had been marching. A solid mass of Formid
warriors were rushing down the road toward them. There had to be more than a hundred! The attack from the alley had been a feint. The real attack was coming from straight ahead.

  “Oh, shit,” Jabara said softly. Both Marines ran forward and took up positions behind a parked car. Quantrill supported his rifle on the wide metal roof of the car and pointed it into the approaching mass of Bugs. They were so tightly packed into the street it was impossible to miss. Even so, Quantrill took especially careful aim. He wanted to make each shot count.

  Jabara fired his heavy SAW and sprayed the forward edge of the assault. He didn’t get a kill shot – they were still too far off – but the attackers slowed noticeably. Quantrill took the opportunity to zero in on the head of one of the leading Formids. He fired a five round burst and the target went down.

  The Formids behind swerved to go around their fallen comrade, causing more than a few collisions. Several Formids went down in a tangle. Quantrill hoped a few of their long, spindly legs were snapped in two as well.

  The two Marines kept firing. Quantrill brought down six – and then seven – of the Bugs but the line kept advancing. In seconds it would be on top of them. He risked a look around. Harper’s squad had swung around and cut off the attack from the alley. That allowed Guan and his squad to get between the Formids and the alleyway. As he watched, both teams fell back into what had become their only escape route – the alleyway where the original attack originated.

  Lieutenant Hardaway and Potter and Jordan joined Quantrill and Jabara in trying to hold off the advancing Formids. The sheer number of Bugs, however, made them impossible to stop. They continued coming forward. Soon they were so close Quantrill could hear the gnashing of their razor sharp mandibles in between the bursts of rifle fire.