Tenacious

57

General Juan Montoya did one final check of his lead platoon. All were as ready as they ever would be.

The battle-armored space suits were primed and ready. Their weapons were locked and loaded.

Jack signaled the Sailor, herself in an unarmored space suit, and the hull of the pinnace opened up a hole in it the size of a double door, which sealed to the aliens’ hull. A Marine applied a laser torch to the revealed metal. In less than a minute, a huge chunk of plate drifted off where it was pushed.

Another Marine combat engineer put tape on the sharp edges of the cut. The battle suits were tough, but there was no reason to ding them unnecessarily.

Jack motioned, and a sergeant led the first fire team through the hole. As the last trooper of that four shot aboard the station, a second team followed.

Jack had promised Kris that he would not lead from the front. With eight Marines of his battalion aboard the station, he figured he would no longer be in the front, and slipped himself into line as the third fire team of the squad went in.

It was strange how a man trained to be a Secret Service Agent changed his idea of a man’s job when he spent all his time with combat Marines.

Well, them and a certain Longknife.

Jack forced his head back into the game and faced what he knew would be waiting for him.

Gunny’s warning was hardly enough for what he faced.

Bodies drifted, thick as seaweed on a kelp bed he’d swum in as a kid. There were men and women, elders, kids, and infants.

So many of the bodies were tiny.

Most stared at him with eyes frozen in some hard stare that the poison had brought. A few of the kids almost seemed asleep.

Jack wanted to puke.

Instead, he did his best to ignore what he saw and ordered a follow-up fire team to sling weapons and shove bodies forward.

What they were after was aft.

“Up here, sir. I think I’ve found what we’re looking for.”

Jack found a purchase and shoved himself off for the aftward bulkhead. It stretched far around, showing clearly that the station’s outer wall had been the floor when it spun. The bulkhead went high up for these people, a good fifteen meters.

Possibly they would have put in an extra deck as their population regrew. Apparently, they’d built large, expecting a lot of kids.

From the proportion of the dead, they’d had a population boom in the year since Kris had clobbered them.

Again, Jack had to force his mind to focus on what he had been sent here for.

Ahead of him was a hatch. A hatch with a wheel lock and a window that let you look in.

Jack peered in, shining a light to help him see all there was to see. It wasn’t much. Some two meters away was another hatch with a lock and window.

“Kris, I’ve found an air lock. I think they intended to keep this place airtight. It looks like hurried work.”

“Does that sound as much like a trap to you as it does to me?” came in the form of a question, but Jack doubted that Kris as an admiral or as a Longknife intended it to be taken as such. Certainly not Kris as a wife.

“I’m ordering up the air lock we brought along,” he said.

Did he hear a whispered “thank you,” in response?

Four Sailors came up, their suits equipped with jet packs. Each handled the corner of a large room equipped with airtight hatches. A combat-engineering type had been taking soundings of the bulkhead. He signaled the Sailors, and they adjusted their drift.

The temporary air lock settled into place, and the Marine with the welder quickly locked it down against the wall. As he did that, the Sailors expanded out the lock, tripling its size.

Two squads began filing into the lock. Jack included himself.

Only when the aft lock was sealed down did one of the sailors open up the Smart Metal^TM of the forward bulkhead and turn aside for a Marine to put a long, thin bead of explosives along the station bulkhead. He covered it with armored cloth.

“Get ready to shout folks. I’m using the smallest explosion I think I can use, and the cloth should direct the force inward, but if your ears are precious to you, shout on three.”

The count was quick. All had taken themselves off net as Jack had. With the armored space suits, the overpressure was merely annoying, although Jack distinctly felt kicked where he preferred Kris to fondle.

The wall blew in, and the first rank of Marines rolled through the newly created hole.

Jack was in the second rank.

He joined the rest of his Marines, standing there, dumbfounded.

“Are you getting this?” he said, then remembered he’d killed his sound and video feed before the explosion.

“Kris, are you getting this?” he repeated after clicking himself back onto the net.

“My God, Jack,” Kris breathed.

The scene was enough to make even a Longknife resort to prayer.

In front of Jack, an old, gray-haired woman stood. She held a knife to her throat as if ready to drive it up into her skull.

Behind her, over a dozen children, ranging in age from maybe twelve to at least three, stood. Each of them held a knife at his or her throat, just like the woman.

Some of the bigger kids helped the smaller kids hold their knives.

There were tears running down the cheeks of the kids.

There were no tears in the old woman’s eyes. The face she presented Jack overflowed with rage and vicious hatred.

~Vermin will never touch us,~ she spat in a dialect that was just barely understandable.

Jack struggled to remember what Kris had said. What she’d say in this situation.

He signaled his Marines to hold their ground, chinned his mic to the speaker in the suit and thought. SAL, YOU AND YOUR MOM BETTER HELP ME GET THIS RIGHT.

WE’RE ALL ON IT.

WE ARE NOT VERMIN, Jack began thinking and Sal translated and spoke. WE ARE TALKING TO YOU. WHAT VERMIN CAN USE YOUR OWN WORDS?

The woman actually seemed surprised, but that did not stop her rage. ~Vermin may mouth the enlightened words of the people, but it is still an animal,~ she spat.

YOU HAVE FOUGHT US IN NUMBERS FAR MORE THAN WE EVER HAD, BUT IT IS YOU WHO HIDE HERE, LICKING YOUR WOUNDS.

The woman’s eyes grew wider, but the knife never wavered from its place at her throat.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Kris whispered softly on net. “Marines, prepare to fire sleepy darts on my word. Keep going, General.”

IT IS WE WHO HAVE COME TO SEEK YOU OUT. IS THAT THE PATH THAT VERMIN WALK?

“Fire,” Kris ordered.

Jack felt the pressure from the volley of sleepy darts. Maybe some of the soft pop did come up through the soles of his feet.

Now the old woman showed shock. She tried to drive the knife up into her skull, but her arms would not obey her.

Obey her full will.

When the knife tumbled from her grasp, there was blood on the tip.

One or two of the older children tried to follow their elder, but they were less ready to kill themselves, or maybe less enthusiastic at the prospects. All of them collapsed on the floor, with no blood on their knives.

“Kris, we need a doctor here. Doc Meade, how fast can you get in here?”

“I’m on the outside waiting,” came the woman’s soft voice. “Can I use this hatch?”

“Have a combat engineer check it for booby traps.”

A minute later, the doctor was in the room, checking one patient after another. She extracted the sleepy darts from the youngest children. Marines had already policed up the sharp stuff and bound the hands and feet of the older kids and the old woman.

The children were evacuated, youngest to oldest, in survival packs that looked like nothing less than an oversize beach ball, one Marine towing a pack.

Doc Meade came to the elderly woman last. She checked her vitals, then left the darts in her and checked her bindings. “This one is very vexed, even under sedation. Keep an eye on her.”

“They will all be on suicide watch,” Jack said.

“If we can, try to get some of the youngest kids off to another ship. We don’t want them running into any of the older ones. The big kids might kill the little ones.”

“You think it’s that bad?” Jack said.

“I think she had a lot more she wanted to spit at you,” the doc said. “I think you interrupted her grand exit. I suspect she and these kids were intended to send us a message that you interrupted. By the way, I guess our grasp of their language is as good as we thought.”

“Thank Nelly and her kids for that,” Jack said.

“You’re welcome, my mother says,” Sal said.

“Well, let’s get the kids where they’re safe; and then let’s get the hell out of here,” Doc Meade said. “This place gives me the willies.”