Terms of Enlistment

Chapter 23

The newcomers don’t simply follow the path of the previous visitor. Instead, they pause at the very edge of the mist line, and then fan out in a widely spaced line abreast, as if they are aware of the fate of their fellow traveler and the limitations of our hand-held weapons. When they finally start to cross the rocky terrain toward the station, they fan out even more, until there are several hundred yards between each of the approaching creatures. Their battle line now takes up half a mile, and they advance in a more urgent stride than the one that came before them. With only fourteen troops split up into three teams, and three quarters of our ammunition already expended, I know at once that we don’t have a chance of stopping this new assault.

On the right side of the roof, the autocannon crew opens fire again. The big ammunition canister attached to the gun is made of see-through polymer, and even from a hundred yards away, I can see that the level of remaining shells is very low.

“Left flank!” Corporal Harrison shouts. “Shoot the one all the way to the left. Fire at will!”

With the newcomers spread out, our teams are forced to split up their fire. Our fireteam around Corporal Harrison starts pouring rounds into the creature on the left flank of the approaching line. Like before, I switch my rifle to fully automatic mode, and start dumping my magazines into the advancing alien.

“Don’t you fucking miss with that rocket,” Corporal Harrison tells his MARS gunner. “Wait until he gets closer. Cohen, grab that last rocket and reload for him as soon as that tube’s empty. Make ‘em count.”

To our right, a cheer rises from the location of the autocannon team. We look over to the right flank and see that the cannon crew is aiming at the legs and feet of their target, instead of trying to score a hit on the torso like before. Their effort seems to be working. The creature’s sure and steady gait falters as the tracer rounds start slamming into its lower extremities. Some of the tracers deflect off its hide and careen into the darkness like embers in a breeze, but some clearly punch through. The creature lets out an awful, eardrum-shattering wail, and stumbles. Then it crashes to the ground with all the grace of a collapsing building.

“Shoot the legs,” the call goes out over the common channel. “Aim low and shoot the legs!”

We shift our fire and aim at the legs of the alien that’s striding across the plateau toward our corner of the building. Through my optical sight, I can see our flechettes and grenades churning up the dirt in front of the creature’s huge, three-toed feet. What worked with the high-velocity cannon rounds doesn’t seem to work with our pitiful arsenal of small-bore weapons, however. I know that most of my bursts are finding their target, but the alien strides on, undeterred. Then our MARS gunner launches one of his two remaining rockets. I hear the familiar popping of the launcher tube’s caps, and raise my head over the sights of my rifle to observe the flight path of the rocket. It strikes a glancing blow to the outside of the creature’s upper leg, and then bounces off to explode in the mud behind the alien.

“Fuck!” the gunner exclaims. Another Marine lifts up the last rocket cartridge, and shoves it into the back of the launcher, performing the fastest MARS reload I’ve ever seen. He pops the locking latches shut, and pats the gunner’s shoulder.

“Up!”

The gunner takes aim once more. By this time, the creature is so close that I could hit it with a well-thrown rock. The launcher booms again, and the rocket leaps out of the tube. A fraction of a second later, the explosive warhead strikes the left upper leg of the alien dead center between what looks like knee joint and hip. At this range, the pressure from the blast is enough to make me stumble back a step or two. The alien falters, and goes down on its injured leg with a shriek. It hits the corner of the building with its shoulder as it falls, and I get knocked off my feet. The surface of the roof is lined with mercifully soft rubber, but my head still hits it hard enough to make me see stars. When I regain my senses a moment later, my rifle is gone from my hands.

“Get the fuck back,” one of the Marines shouts. “It’s getting back up.”

The Marines cramble back from the edge of the roof. A pair of hands grabs the collar of my borrowed Marine fatigues, and I turn my head to see Halley crouching over me.

“Let’s go, Mister,” she shouts.

To our right, the two other fireteams failed to duplicate even our modest and temporary little victory. The two creatures that made up the center of the alien line have reached the building. The shield-like tops of their heads just barely clear the edge of the roof, but their long forelimbs can reach way beyond it. I see a three-fingered hand coming over the rooftop ledge and clawing into the rubber coating of the roof, the structure underneath yielding to the grasp of the enormous hand like the metal foil cover on a meal tray. The other creature doesn’t even bother with such a probing approach. It merely brings down a huge arm on top of the roof, where it lands with a bang that sounds like an exploding artillery shell. This time, everyone left standing on the roof is knocked to the ground. Over to our right, there’s suddenly a trench in the roof between us and the spot where Commander Campbell and Sergeant Becker’s fireteam took up position.

I scramble to my feet and pull Halley along with me. The surface of the roof is now slanted toward the spot where the alien creature tore a gash into the rooftop. My rifle lies on the ground a few yards away, but when I start toward it, the creature we downed just a few moments ago reaches over the edge of the roof and buries its three fingers in the rubber of the rooftop in front of me, clawing for a hold.

“Screw the gun,” Halley shouts, and pulls me away. “We need to leave, right now.”

I can’t see if the Commander and Sergeant Becker are still alive, but I don’t want to wait around for instructions while the alien behemoths are taking apart the building under our feet.

The run back to the access door seems to take a lot longer than the dash out when we arrived up here, even though it feels like I’m running about twice as fast. Behind us, it sounds like someone is dropping frigates onto the hard ground from high orbit.

When we get to the door, there’s a momentary traffic jam as ten of us are trying to squeeze through the hatch at the same time.

“Where’s the damn shelter?” Halley yells through the din.

“Down the stairs, basement level,” one of the Marines shouts back as we duck through the door and run down the first flight of stairs. “Bottom of the stairs, take a right.”

We thunder down the stairs like a herd of spooked animals. I have a brief flashback to our countdown line-ups in front of the building back in Basic, and find that mortal danger is an even better motivator for a speedy descent than a pissed-off senior drill instructor.

Just as I reach the landing at the top floor, a huge jolt shakes the building, and most of us are knocked off our feet once again. I manage to hold on to the handrail with both arms, and avoid cracking my head on the metal latticework of the access staircase. Overhead, the lights flicker once, and then go out altogether.

“The fuck?” someone demands. “How can they cut the power? This place is a fucking fusion plant.”

“Keep moving, moron,” another Marine replies. “Don’t fucking matter right now.”

We rush down the stairs to the basement level. The building above our heads is shuddering with every new impact. With the power gone, the basement hallway is only lit by red emergency lights, which paint the scene in an eerie glow. On one of the levels above, something big crashes to the floor with a thundering racket that makes the walls shake. I feel like one of the little pigs in the storybook, running away from the big, bad wolf who has come to blow the house down.

The door of the emergency shelter is a small armored hatch set into a recessed section of the hallway. The traffic jam from before repeats itself down here in the semi-darkness as a dozen people converge on the little alcove all at once. The Marines at the front of the pack start pounding on the hatch with fists and rifle butts.

“Lieutenant Benning, open the fucking hatch,” Halley shouts into the headset of her comms unit.

“Affirmative,” comes the Lieutenant’s muffled reply over the common channel. “Stand back, that hatch opens out.”

The Marines clear the area in front of the hatch, and someone inside unlatches it and swings it open. The hatch itself is almost a foot thick, and the concrete walls of the shelter are at least twice as thick, but after the display I witnessed on the roof, I have my doubts about crawling in there and letting our visitors stomp around on top of us. Part of me wants to run off, find an exit door, and make for the hills. Then the Marines behind us push me along, and we file through the narrow doorway and into the shelter.

The emergency bunker is a small room that’s already crowded with all the civilian techs working at the station. The sudden and rapid influx of another dozen people in bulky battle armor turns the room into tight quarters worthy of an enlisted berth on a Navy ship. Someone behind me closes the hatch, and the awful crashing and rumbling sounds coming from above diminish a little.

“Everyone make it down okay?” a voice asks, and I recognize Commander Campbell’s gruff baritone.

“Head count,” Sergeant Becker shouts.

“Rivers and Okuda are still topside,” someone replies. “They were over by the autocannon. Can’t raise ‘em on comms anymore.”

“Well, shit.” Sergeant Becker checks the loading status of his rifle, and shoulders his way through the crowd. “Two of you come with me. McMurtry, Gonzales, you’re it.”

“Belay that order,” Commander Campbell says. “You keep that hatch shut right now.”

Sergeant Becker turns around, and glares at the Commander, who is standing at the other side of the room.

“We don’t leave Marines behind, sir. If I still have men out there, I need to go and get them.”

“You’d get turned into paste for nothing. That whole corner of the roof is gone. I saw them rip it right off, cannon mount and all. Your guys are KIA, Sarge. Stand down.”

There’s a general grumbling in the ranks of the garrison Marines, but the XO is by far the highest-ranking person in the room, and McMurtry and Gonzales seem rather relieved by the Commander’s order. Halley and I make our way through the cluster of armored Marines by the access hatch, and join the Commander and Lieutenant Benning at the far corner of the room.

All around me, there’s a sudden swell of conversation as the civilians want to know what happened on the roof, and the Marines are more than willing to share. Commander Campbell fills in the details for Lieutenant Benning, who only got a very sketchy view of the short battle through our sporadic radio messages.

There’s sudden, massive jolt, much stronger than the ones before it, and the emergency lights in the room flicker briefly. I can hear an eerie groaning sound, and deduce that a good part of the building structure overhead is collapsing on top of us. Then the first jolt is followed by another, this one even more bone-rattling, and it sounds like the Chinese just dropped a thermobaric artillery shell into the hallway just outside the shelter’s hatch. Most of the Marines hit the deck, shouting and cursing. Halley and I crouch down and look up at the ceiling.

The shelter is a square room, maybe thirty by thirty feet, and largely devoid of furniture. There’s a comms console on a table in the back of the room, and the walls are lined with metal benches that are bolted to the concrete floor. There’s another door near the comms station, this one fitted with a privacy partition rather than a steel hatch. I walk over to the second doorway, and move the partition aside to find a smaller room, taken up mostly by a chemical toilet and a stuffed supply rack. There’s nothing in this shelter solid enough to crawl under if our visitors manage to crush the roof over our heads.

Just to my left, the comms console suddenly starts squawking. Whoever used the comms suite last left the volume cranked up to maximum level, and the sudden noise right beside me makes me flinch.

“NAC personnel, NAC personnel. This is NACS Manitoba, on the emergency channel. Any NAC personnel reading this transmission, please acknowledge.”

The talking in the shelter ceases at once, as three dozen pairs of eyes turn to the comms table. There is a moment of absolute, shell-shocked silence in the room. Then Commander Campbell dashes to the console, and sits down in front of it.

“Manitoba, this is the XO, Versailles. Do you read?”

“Loud and clear,” the other party replies. The transmission from the Manitoba is as clear as if the broadcast is coming from the next room. “What is your status down there?”

“Manitoba, we read you five by five. We are holed up at Terraforming Station Four-Seven, and we’re under attack. Send us some close air support, and a few SAR birds. Our head count is three-eight personnel, but that’s likely to drop in a hurry if we don’t get help soon.”

“Understood, sir. Stand by to pass on coordinates and enemy disposition. We’ll see what we can shake loose up here.”

“Outstanding,” the Commander replies. “Manitoba, be advised we have non-terrestrial presence down here, and they’re huge. You may want to watch yourselves up there, ‘cause our ship got broad-sided in orbit, and we have no clue what they have waiting for you up there.”

“We’re already on it, Versailles. Stand by for data.”

There’s a general cheer going through the room, and even Commander Campbell can’t quite suppress a grin.

“In the nick of fucking time,” he says to the Lieutenant, who merely nods in agreement.

“That’s one thing that went right today,” Halley says to me. “Looks like that disaster buoy made Alcubierre, after all.”

“Hey, Commander,” Sergeant Becker asks the XO. “What kind of boat is the Manitoba?”

“Commonwealth-class assault carrier,” Lieutenant Benning answers for him. “Not the biggest thing in the fleet, but pretty damn close.”

“Those don’t go anywhere without a full battle group,” the Commander says. “They sent a lot of hardware to come and look for us. I’d say our troubles are at an end.”

Overhead, there’s a tortured groan of failing metal as yet another part of the building’s framework collapses under the methodical assault of the alien creatures, as if they want to put the XO’s assessment to the challenge.

For the next few minutes, we listen to the ongoing demolition over our heads as the CIC crew up on the Manitoba sets things in motion.

“Willoughby Four-Seven, this is the Manitoba. We have a Shrike flight and a pair of drop ships inbound to your datum right now. ETA for the CAS birds is seven minutes. Their call sign is Hades, and they’ll check in with you for target verification when they’re close. The SAR flight will come in once the Shrikes have cleaned up.”

“Copy that,” Commander Campbell replies. “CAS is out seven minutes, call sign Hades.”

A few minutes later, there’s a new voice on the emergency channel, this one with the racket from large engines at high throttle setting in the background of the transmission.

“Willoughby Four-Seven, this is Hades Three-Zero, inbound hot. Tell me who’s who down there.”

“Hades Three-Zero, we are holed up in the basement shelter of the station. Just drop on everything that moves around topside. Repeat, all the good guys are in the shelter. You can’t miss the ugly bastards—they’re about the size of a ten-story building.”

“Copy that, Four-Seven. Stand by, and you may want to plug your ears down there.”

There’s no more conversation in the shelter as everyone tries to listen to the noises up on the surface, where the racket has diminished a little. It still sounds like a bunch of drunken sailors having a brawl in a mess kitchen, but the noise has moved off toward the back of the complex, where the fusion reactor and central heat exchangers are located.

There’s no warning, no engine noise to herald the arrival of the assault ships. The first indicator of the CAS flight’s presence is the low, rumbling roar of a large autocannon spitting out shells at an incredibly high rate of fire. Overhead, we hear a string of rapid explosions, and what sounds like hail on a metal roof. The Marines let out muted cheers as one of the creatures shrieks an obvious cry of distress in the distance.

“Go, Navy,” Corporal Harrison says. “Leave ‘em smoking.”

The sequence of sounds repeats itself several times as the Shrikes make multiple strafing passes. At one point, a burst wanders across the ground directly above our heads, and the impact of the high-velocity rounds shakes up the dust on the concrete floor of the shelter.

“Dropping the hard stuff,” the pilot of Hades Three-Zero warns us over the radio. “You fellas make sure you’re hanging on to something, ‘cause it’s going to rumble in a second.”

Everyone scrambles to find a spot to sit or crouch. Halley grabs me by the arm, and pulls me down to sit beside her in the doorway of the storage room.

“Hope they don’t overdo it,” she says. “I don’t think this place can stand up to a three-kiloton nuke.”

“They wouldn’t nuke this place,” I reply, without conviction. “Too much money up in smoke.”

“Let’s hope you’re right.”

A moment later, a pair of explosions shakes the ceiling over our heads, and it’s the loudest sound I’ve ever heard, even louder than the fuel-air explosion of the marooned drop ship back in Detroit. The floor heaves underneath our feet, knocking Halley and me into the privacy partition behind us. It gives way with a crack, and we tumble into the storage room beyond. I feel something raining down on my face, and look up to see a crack in the ceiling that’s at least as wide as my hand. I know I’m shouting by the sound resonating in my skull, but my ears aren’t working anymore. For a moment, I am convinced that Halley’s fear was justified after all, and that the Shrikes just dropped some tactical nukes onto our heads. Then the emergency lights go out, and the place goes completely dark.

For a little while, I’m blind and deaf. There’s an acrid smell in the air that’s making me cough. Some of the Marines out in the main room dig out their battery-operated field lights, and I shove the remnants of the broken privacy screen aside to let some light into the storage room. Halley is on the floor next to me, her hands folded on the top of her head. I nudge her to make sure she’s alive and conscious, and she looks up at me and exhales sharply.

“Gee, thanks, Navy,” she says with a cough. “What the hell did they just drop?”

“No idea, but we should be going now, I think. Something smells broken in here.”

Above our heads, the sounds of steady demolition have ceased. As my hearing gradually returns to normal, I can hear the Marines coughing and cursing in the next room, and the faint roar of the assault ships’ engines overhead. The low drone from the environmental system is gone, and the comms station has gone silent as well.

“Backup power’s out,” one of the civilian techs says.

“No shit,” one of the Marines replies.

“Open that hatch, or we’ll all suffocate. All we have left is the air in the room.”

“Check the other side first,” I caution, remembering our troubles getting out of the NNC on the Versailles. “You got a fire in that corridor, we’ll suffocate right now instead.”

“Hold up,” Halley interjects from behind me. “There’s a shitload of NIFTIs on the shelf over here. I wonder if they’re still any good?”

The civilian emergency rebreathers aren’t quite as sophisticated as the NIFTIs on Navy ships. The civilian versions are little masks with built-in oxygen supplies and filters, but they lack the thermal imaging component of their military counterparts. Halley and I start passing the sealed emergency packs out into the main room, and for once, we have enough essential gear for everyone. We all don our masks, and prepare for egress. When Sergeant Becker opens the shelter’s hatch, I duck behind the Marine in front of me, but nothing dramatic happens. The first group of Marines swarms out into the dark corridor beyond, and we get the all-clear only moments later.

“No fires. We’re good to go.”

We file out of the room behind the Marines. The corridor is only sparsely lit by a few hand-held lights. The Marines can see in the dark with their helmet-mounted sensors, but the rest of us are all but blind, and we follow the Marines cautiously, stumbling over bits of concrete in the dark.

After what seems like a fifteen-minute procession through rubble-filled basement corridors, we reach a set of double steel doors. The Marines signal for us to stand back, and open the doors in textbook urban combat fashion, one fire team providing cover as the second team goes through. As soon as the double doors swing open, daylight comes flooding into the basement hallway, and we shield our eyes against the sudden brightness. The Marines file out of the corridor and through the open door in pairs, rifles at the ready.

“Holy shit,” we hear from above.

“What’s the word, Sarge?” Commander Campbell demands.

“It’s clear, sir, but mind your step. Lots of broken stuff everywhere.”

“Any sign of our friends?”

“Well,” Sergeant Becker says, and pauses briefly. “Sort of. It’s hard to tell, really.”

There’s a staircase beyond the double doors that leads up to the surface. To the right of the stairs, there’s a ramp for vehicles, too steep to walk up even if it wasn’t littered with broken metal and concrete. We walk up the stairs and into the light of the local morning sun.

The destruction on the surface is breathtaking. I turn around at the top of the steps to look back at the building, only to find that there’s no structure left on this end of the station. The Shrikes didn’t drop tactical nukes, but whatever they used did a number on this facility. There are steel girders and chunks of concrete strewn as far as I can see. What was once the front third of the terraforming station Willoughby Four-Seven is just a pile of smoking rubble now. A hundred yards away, part of the remaining building has collapsed, the floors pancaked into each other like the layers in a sloppily made sandwich. A multitude of fires is pouring dark smoke into the dark and rainy morning sky.

“‘Holy shit’ is right,” Commander Campbell says in an awed voice when he surveys the utter devastation. “This place is officially off the grid now.”

“They blew up my ride,” Halley says.

To our right, there’s only a barren, smoldering patch of ground where the administration building and the landing pad used to be. I can see smoking bits and pieces of what may have been a drop ship once, scattered over a wide area in front of the destroyed station.

“Fuel-air munitions,” Lieutenant Benning suggests.

“Anyone got the flyboys on comms?” the XO asks.

“Uh, that’s a negative, sir. The comms went out when those bombs hit. Marine field comms are a different band,” Sergeant Becker replies. “We’re down to bedsheets and smoke signals if we want to talk to the Navy again.”

“Where’d our new friends go?” Halley asks, shielding her eyes as she scans the area.

“I think that’s one of them over there,” one of the civilian techs says. He points to the partially collapsed section of the building, where something large and tan-colored is buried under a pile of burning rubble. “Part of it, anyway.”

“Where’s the one we dropped? The one that went down right in front of the building?”

I look over to the spot where the edge of the building would have been just a few minutes ago. When we abandoned our fighting positions on the roof, there was a motionless creature splayed out in front of the admin building, not a hundred yards away from the station, but now I don’t see anything bigger than a mess table in that area.

“Damn,” I tell Halley. “Those attack jocks don’t fuck around, do they?”

A few moments later, the Shrikes appear in the cloudy sky above the ruined station again. Without radio contact, we can’t tell them where we are, and for a very uncomfortable moment, I’m convinced that we’re in the middle of another bombing run. Instead of releasing ordnance, however, the two Shrikes just buzz the site at low altitude and waggle the tips of their stubby wings as they pass us overhead.

I walk over to a large chunk of concrete, sit down on it, and feel a sudden urge to just lie down in the wet dirt altogether. Halley walks up next to me and sits down with a grunt, not even bothering to use something solid as a makeshift seat.

“I have had my fucking fill of near-death experiences today,” she says.

All around us, the wind blows flaming debris around. The air is acrid with the smell of burning stuff, and no matter where I look, the ground is covered with bits and pieces of the building that was our shelter and fighting position just ten minutes ago.

“I hope this counts as a defeat,” I say to Halley, “because if this is a victory, I’d really hate to see what it looks like when we get our asses kicked.”