Battlespace (23 page)

Of course, it was now known that the Sirius Stargate had a mass of .05 Sol, and was responsible for those perturbations. According to Franz and other sources, the Dogon had known
about Sirius C all along, and claimed, in fact, that
that
was the star the Nommo called home.

Perhaps what the Nommo had been trying to tell their human friends was that they'd come through a
stargate
circling Sirius B? Warhurst knew that the young, hot, and radioactively exuberant Sirius system had never seemed like a good candidate for habitable planets. That, of course, was part of the whole Nommo mystery.

Warhurst disconnected from the data and leaned back at his desk, thoughtful. Should he recommend that every Marine have access to this information? He wasn't going to suggest that the data be downloaded, as Franz demanded; Marines had enough information to juggle through their implants and they didn't need to know most of this stuff.

But it was possible to key it so that any Marine could access it, could download it on demand.

One of the things about the American military that had always impressed Warhurst was its basic respect for the individual man or woman in the ranks. Throughout history, soldiers of hundreds of nations and empires had been ordered into battle, usually with very little idea of what they were fighting for—or why.

Since the time of the American Revolution, the American soldier had been different. Hell, during the nation's earliest wars, many units had
elected
their officers and there'd always been a stubborn streak of independence and a demand to be well-informed that had caused more than one U.S. military officer considerable grief.

The same was true for modern Marines, for all the jokes about “jarheads” being dumb as rocks. They followed orders, yes, but they did so better and more efficiently and with better results when their COs leveled with them about what was really going down.

“Cassius?”

“Yes, Major.”

“I want to make a recommendation about this report by Dr. Franz. You have it in your memory?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. Here's what I want to suggest we do….”

2
APRIL
2170

Alpha Company, First Platoon,
B Section
TRAP 1-2
Approaching release point
1220 hours, Shipboard time

This time it was different.

Again Garroway was suited up in full battle armor, squeezed shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee with nineteen other Marines, waiting for whatever was about to happen. They'd wedged themselves into place four hours earlier and had been waiting ever since.

Just like the dry hump last time, when they'd sat out the battle in the TRAPs. Just like a dozen training sessions before that, back at Earth's L-4.

But this time it
was
different. Two days before, they'd not known for sure that they were going in. They'd not known for sure that the enemy, the vague and amorphously indistinct presumptive owner of the stargate, was even an enemy, that he would fight back.

And the Marines had had no idea what they were up against.

Now, at least, they knew there was a war on. The Wiggles had fought back and every man and woman in the TRAP knew they were at the gate now, waiting for the Marines to get there.

The Wiggles
. Garroway smiled behind his helmet visor at that. Everyone in the company had looked at the new material that had come online the other day. At least they'd downloaded the pictures, the comp-graphic simulations of what the enemy might look like. Kat had pronounced them cute, which had led to much laughter and derision, of course. Regi Lobowski had called them
marshwiggles
, from a character in an old children's fantasy story, and the name, shortened to
Wiggles
, had stuck.

Putting a face, even a purely theoretical one, to the enemy had transformed the Marines' attitudes in a number of ways. Until that defining moment, the Wiggles had been nameless, faceless, monstrous…the indistinct and dread stuff of nightmares. The closest the enemy had come to having a distinct identity was when the Marines would speculate about whether or not they were the fearfully mysterious Hunters of the Dawn.

What we're scared of most is what we don't know
, he thought.

Of course, soldiers from the time of Sargon the Great had worked hard to depersonalize the enemy. Gooks, krauts, rebs, slopes, lobsterbacks, slants, a thousand other derogatory names all were aimed at making the guy in your sights a
thing
, not a person. Maybe
Wiggle
was just more of the same.

The ridiculous name certainly seemed to steal some of the mystery and dread from an enemy none of the Marines had as yet actually seen in person.

It helped, somehow, knowing that Alpha Company was packed into its TRAPs in order to go fight the damned Wiggles.

“Final systems check, everybody,” Gunnery Sergeant Dunne announced. “Five minutes to go/no-go.”

Five minutes. The CTV-300 transfer pod had already been positioned for the drop and was drifting slowly toward the Wheel at a scant five meters per second. The cargo bay
clamshell doors were opening now, flooding the waiting Marines with cold starlight. Garroway leaned back so he could look out through the widening opening, could see the Wheel with his own eyes instead of through his implant, silhouetted against the stars.

TRAP 1-2 was now less than a kilometer and a half from the release point, a little less than ten from the DZ on the black and pitted surface of the Wheel itself. Through the open bay doors, he could see about a third of the Wheel arcing across the sky. A scattering of lights looked like windows, but there was no other sign of occupancy—or of a defense.

He tore his eyes away from the sight and focused on completing his systems checks.

“Ooh-rah,” someone called over the company channel. “There go the fly-boys!” He looked up in time to see a flight of Marine Wasps, garishly painted in black and yellow stripes, pass between the Wheel and the TRAP. A blaze of white light blossomed on the Wheel's surface as the Wasps began their close-in bombardment.

“Okay, girls and boys,” Dunne said. “You all know the drill. You've done this before. Just do it by the book, keep your heads, and remember your training. The bad guys shouldn't even notice us in all the commotion down there.”

Garroway wondered if that were true. The Wheel's automated defenses apparently didn't see spacecraft—or armored men—approaching at velocities of only a few meters per second, but if there were any organic defenders in there—Wiggles or otherwise—they surely wouldn't ignore a company of Marines incoming, no matter how slowly they moved.

Even more worrisome than Wiggle defenders, though, was the knowledge that in combat
nothing
was certain—and
anything
could go wrong. He remembered the training session
back in Sol space, at Earth's L-4…and nearly dying when Houston had accidentally hit his visor with a round from his pistol.

“One minute! Stand up!”

He rose in place, gripping his LR-2120 in his right hand, grasping a hand-hold on the Marine to his left with the other. They were in zero-G, of course, but kept their boots anchored to brackets set into the deck.

Garroway remembered the botched release at L-3 that had scattered Marines all over the sky.
Please don't let that happen
, he thought.
Not here, not this time
. There were no fighters or work pods standing by to pick up anyone who missed the DZ and drifted into space.

They're just Wiggles
, he thought.
Oversized salamanders that can hardly stand up to hold a weapon
.

He knew he was fooling himself. Hell, they couldn't even know that it was the Wiggles who they were up against, and if it was, there was no assurance that they were the weak and comic creatures in Dr. Franz's simulation.

“Thirty seconds! Release foot holds! Steady, now! Just like in training!…”

SF/A-2 Starhawk
Talon Three
Approaching Sirius Stargate
1225 hours, Shipboard time

From out here, ten kilometers from the faceon surface of the Wheel, Captain Alexander had a magnificent balcony's view of the entire panorama of the assault. Closer in, sixteen TRAPs, carrying the eight platoons of Alpha and Charlie companies—about 350 Marines all together—were drifting slowly toward the Wheel broadside. Invisible optically, but marked by drifting green icons on his noumenal
display, sixteen Wasps drifted back and forth a scant few hundred meters above the Wheel, loosing rockets and chain-gun fire.

The Wasps of 7-MAS, the Black Reapers, had been sent in first. The Starhawks of 5-MAS had remained at a distance, drifting slowly toward the Wheel at five meters per second, as a combat reserve. If the Wasps stirred up anything too hot for them to handle, the Starhawks were in position to ride down to the rescue.

The enemy's response had been scattered and slow, but they were opening fire from hard points on the Wheel's surface. So far, as hoped, they'd ignored the sixteen TRAPs inbound, concentrating instead on the Marine Wasps and on a small cloud of decoy drones and surveillance probes filling the volume of space between the Wheel and the release point eight kilometers out.

“
Angel Five, Angel Five!
” a voice called over the Sky Net, the web of lasercom communications linking 5-MAS with 7-MAS and with CIC onboard the
Chapultepec
. “
I've got a cluster of positron batteries at Hotel-Echo Three-three-niner! Give me some help here!
”

“
On your four, Angel Eight! I got the ones to the right!
”

“
Copy that
!
I'm on the left
!…”

“
Fox three
!
Fox three
!”

Explosions of static punctuated each burst of positron fire as the powerful electromagnetic pulse accompanying each shot momentarily interrupted radio communications.

“
This is Angel One-three
!
I'm getting heavy fire from the DZ's southwest quadrant! We need some support fire in here
!”

“
CIC copies, Angel One-three,
” another voice said. Starwatch was the handle for the Marine Aerospace CIC, back onboard the
Ranger
. “
Talon Flight, this is Starwatch
.
Close with the objective and support Angel Flight
.”

“Copy that, Starwatch,” Major Gauthier replied. “That's our cue, people. Let's move it!”

Alexander thought-clicked an icon and his plasma drive gave a short, hard burn, momentarily squeezing him back into his couch. Then he was in zero-G again, angling in toward the fight. In his noumenal vision, the sixteen TRAPs spread apart, growing larger, then flashed past and dwindled astern.

He kept checking his readout feeds. At the halfway point, he would flip his Starhawk end for end and give a sharp deceleration burn, timing things so that he would arrive close to the Wheel's surface with only a small lateral vector component remaining. He would be able then to maneuver above the DZ with only small bursts from his thrusters.

At least that was the way they'd simmed it back onboard the
Ranger
.

Of course, no battle plan
ever
survives contact with the enemy….

Alpha Company, First Platoon,
B Section
TRAP 1-2
Approaching release point
1226 hours, Shipboard time

The TRAP's dorsal thrusters fired, cutting its velocity toward the Wheel, and Alpha Company's second section drifted free, sailing through open space at five meters per second. Emerging suddenly into the harsh light of the two Sirian suns, Garroway squinted until his visor polarizers could darken the input a bit.

Things seemed anomalously quiet with little to suggest that a battle was raging around him. Five kilometers away, in closer to the Wheel, something flared brightly in a silent, deadly blossom of flame. Garroway couldn't see the enemy's positron beams or the laser fire from the Marine fighters, but
he was aware of individual explosions that popped into view and as quickly winked out, one every few seconds or so. They must have been bright indeed to be seen through his polarized visor.

What the hell are they shooting
? he wondered.
We only have thirty-two fighters
!

No, fewer than that. He'd heard 5-MAS had lost four in the battle the other day.

Then he realized that the space between him and the Wheel must be filled with decoys and battle area surveillance drones.
Lots
of targets.

I just hope there are enough targets that they end up ignoring u
s. He was relying on the ancient principle of safety in numbers.

A pair of bright stars sailed past on Garroway's right, flashing past almost too swiftly for the eye to register their passage, but seeming to slow as they dropped toward the Wheel. The slowing, he realized, was an effect of distance. Those were missiles fired from one of the support ships, still a hundred kilometers or so away.
Daring
and
New Chicago
were keeping up a steady bombardment of the objective with lasers, missiles, and railgun projectile fire.

Twin gouts of white light appeared on the Wheel, bright enough to momentarily blot out perhaps a quarter of the DZ. The Wiggles were taking a hell of a pounding. That knowledge was oddly comforting, even though Garroway knew that there was no way the Marines could be sure that the bombardment was having any effect on the enemy whatsoever.

Odd. It didn't feel as though he or the other Marines were moving at all. He released his grip on Eagleton, the Marine on his left, and felt Anna Garcia let go of him on his right. The twenty Marines of Bravo Section, First Platoon, slowly drifted apart, but there was nothing about their surroundings
to suggest they were otherwise in motion. The TRAP seemed to have suddenly dropped away from their feet. Ahead—“above”—the Wheel was fully visible now, covering most of that side of the sky, but not appearing to get any closer.

They were still eight kilometers from the Wheel's surface. From this vantage point, the Drop Zone—highlighted by a green rectangle overlaying his vision—was located at about seven o'clock on the Wheel's circle. It was a large enough target; the Wheel was a kilometer wide, or a bit more, so they were looking at about a million square meters of potential landing space.

From where he was at the moment, though, it didn't look like very much at all. Garroway remembered a historical allusion, used by aerospace aviators coming in to land on seagoing aircraft carriers a couple of centuries ago. To them, touching down on a carrier deck was like trying to land on a postage stamp in the middle of the ocean. Garroway wasn't sure what a “postage stamp” was, but the comparison made it sound like something very small and very precarious in the middle of a great deal of emptiness.

Exactly like Alpha Company's DZ.

He checked his dosimeter reading…a pair of red-highlighted numbers in the lower right corner of his noumenal vision. That made him as nervous as the thought of actual combat. This volume of Sirius space had a relatively high background radiation count—as high or higher than on Europa, which circled Jupiter just beyond that giant's van Allen belts. On Europa, most human activities were restricted to portions of the worldlet naturally shielded from particulate radiation by the moon itself, and all ships and surface buildings were protected by magnetic fields to shunt aside incident radiation.

The ships of the MIEU squadron were similarly protected,
but a man outside in vac armor picked up a steady dose of hard particulate radiation, poured out by the two fiercely hot stars in the vicinity. That dosage was small, but it was cumulative. The Marines had been given a four-hour exposure limit. After that, they would have to get under cover—back onboard the
Chapultepec
or the heavily shielded TRAPs, or inside the stargate structure itself where, presumably, the habitable spaces were kept that way by unknown high-tech means.