Issue In Doubt (22 page)

“Orndoff, get in here and give us some cover,” Martin said.

Orndoff came in carrying the alien’s rifle in his left hand and his own in his right.

“Put the alien weapon down and hold your rifle like you know how to use it, Orndoff,” Mackie snapped.

Martin got on his comm. “Vittori, get your fire team into the dining room, it looks like the alien came through the kitchen from the basement. Cafferata, I want you and your fire team in the living room.” He waited for them to “roger,” then reported to Commiskey.

When he was through on his comm, he joined Mackie to examine the alien corpse. It was sprawled, both arms reaching toward the open basement door. One leg stretched out behind, the other cocked as though it had been pushing itself forward one leg at a time. Blood, a red similar to human blood but somehow not the same red, was pooled around it, but no more seemed to be leaking out of any of its wounds.

“You got your tie downs on you?” Martin asked.

“Always,” Mackie said, handing Martin one of the ties that the Marines used to bind prisoners, or secure anything else that needed to be secured.

Martin looped one end in a hasty knot around the alien’s trailing foot, then backed out of the kitchen. Mackie went ahead of him. In the dining room, with a wall between them and the alien, Martin gave the cord a sharp jerk, then a more steady pull, until he was confident the corpse had moved at least a meter.

“I guess he didn’t booby-trap himself,” Mackie said.

“Always check to make sure,” Martin said. He stood to return to the kitchen, and reeled back, shouting, “Aliens!”

There was no place to go for cover, he dropped to a knee and started firing through the kitchen door.

“Everybody, into the living room!” Martin shouted. “Take cover there.” He kept firing rapidly into the kitchen. It was enough to keep the aliens he’d seen rushing out of the basement from coming farther.

A chittering voice, commanding even though it was in a higher register than a human’s, shouted from out of sight, probably at the head of the basement stairs. Several high-pitched voices answered it, they sounded like protests, enlisted who didn’t want to go into a fire storm.

“Somebody, throw a grenade in there!”

“I got it!” Mackie shouted. He armed a grenade, and bowled it along the floor so that it ricocheted off the jam and spun behind the wall toward the basement door.

The voices in the kitchen erupted in high-pitched jabbering, accompanied by the scrabbling of something hard—claws?—on the floor. The grenade exploded, setting off shrill cries, and more commanding shouts.

Martin took advantage of the aliens’ momentary confusion to dash out of the dining room, into the living room. He got on his comm to report, and only then heard the reports from the rest of the platoon; all three of the houses the platoon was divided into were under attack from aliens that came up from the basements.

“Cafferata,” Martin shouted, “look out the windows, watch for aliens. Mackie, take Orndoff and check the bedrooms, then get back in here.”

Shouts and scrabbling from beyond the dining room announced that the aliens in the kitchen were about to charge into sight.

“Get ready!” Vittori shouted to his men.

“Orndoff, let’s go!” Mackie shouted as he raced for the bedroom hallway. There were three bedrooms along a hallway behind the living room. The first one’s door was halfway open. Mackie slammed into the door to smash anyone hiding behind it into the wall and spun away into the middle of the room, looking all around for aliens. Orndoff was close behind him.

“Orndoff, check the closet, I’ll cover you.”

“Right.” Orndoff darted to the closet and slammed its sliding door to the side. He jabbed into its corners with his rifle muzzle, but met only clothing. As soon as he announced the closet was clear, Mackie dropped down and looked under the bed. It was clear except for dust bunnies. After looking out the windows and not seeing anyone, human or alien, they ran into the next bedroom, anxious to finish their search and get back to the living room, where they heard an increasing volume of gunfire.

“The bedrooms are clear,” Mackie reported to Martin when he and Orndoff returned. “We looked outside. Didn’t see anybody, but it sounds like every occupied house has a fire fight going on inside.” He wanted to ask how things were going here, but the four alien bodies in the doorway to the dining room and continued high pitched shouts from just out of sight told him all he needed to know.

“Do you think you can bounce another grenade in there?” Martin asked him.

“I can give it a try.”

“Just don’t bounce it to someplace it’ll hit us.”

“No sweat.” Mackie moved to his right as he readied a grenade. He judged his angle, then cocked his arm and threw the grenade hard enough to spin wildly out of sight behind the wall where the alien voices came from. Before it went off, three aliens shot through the doorway, faster than the Marines could point their weapons at the rapidly moving forms and fire. In the dining room, voices rose to a new pitch just before the grenade went off. After it exploded, there were far fewer voices.

But three aliens were in the living room with the Marines. One of them leaped on Lance Corporal Fernando Garcia and another attacked Cafferata, trying to get beyond him to the window. The third darted around aimlessly.

Garcia luckily managed to get his rifle up to block the leaping alien that swung talons on the ends of its short arms at him. The Marine’s arms were enough longer to keep the talons from ripping into his chest, but they gouged deep furrows in both of his arms, sending blood shooting out. PFC Harry Harvey, a bare meter away, slammed the butt of his rifle into the alien’s head, knocking it away from Garcia before it could do any further damage to the wounded Marine. Orndoff was close enough that he could reach Garcia before anybody else. He ran to the wounded Marine and yanked the draperies from the windows to wrap around Garcia’s arms to staunch the bleeding.

Dazed, the alien was slow getting back to its feet, but that short delay was all Harvey needed to drop his rifle and get to it to snap its neck over his knee, the way Mackie had killed one of the aliens on Mini Mouse. The alien went into spasms, and its arms and legs flailed about, its head flopping about from the break in its neck. Harvey picked up his rifle, stomped on the alien’s neck just below its jaw, and shot it in the head. Its spasms stopped. Harvey turned to Garcia, and found that Orndoff was already stopping the bleeding.

Cafferata was turning to see what was going on inside the room when the alien jumped at him, so it didn’t hit him with its full force. It was still enough to knock him away from the window. The alien ignored the Marine now that he wasn’t blocking the window; it tried to jump through it, but bounced back—it hadn’t realized the clear glass meant the window was closed—right into Hill, who grabbed it high on its neck and whirled around. Something snapped, and the alien let out a distressed
caw
. It ran about chaotically, its head swinging from its high-held neck, until Cafferata swung his rifle at its legs, taking them out from under it. Hill jumped feet first on the alien’s chest. Bones snapped loudly.

The third alien suddenly stopped its aimless dashing about and looked at the situation it found itself in. Six Marines were facing it, holding their weapons ready to use one way or another to bring it down.

Martin was the only one who hadn’t been involved with the other aliens, and was waiting for the alien to stop long enough for him to get off a shot. He fired just as the alien bolted for the bedroom hallway. He missed.

Mackie heard the shot and turned to look. The alien was jinking side to side as it sped down the hallway, but the hall was narrow enough that it couldn’t dodge widely. Mackie began firing after it, as did Martin. They were never later able to tell which of them hit the alien, but it crashed to the floor, bleeding profusely. Mackie ran to it, knocked its weapon out of reach, and put a bullet through its head.

“Cease fire!” Martin ordered. When everybody stopped shooting, he listened very carefully. Gunfire and the shouts of Marines in battle came from other houses, but he didn’t hear any noises in his squad’s house other than the small noises his squad was making.

“Mackie, give ’em another grenade.”

“Aye aye, honcho.” Mackie stepped to the side of the dining room door and threw a grenade hard around the jam. No cries, no scrabbling joined the
thunking
of the grenade as it bounced in the room, no cries followed the explosion.

Martin got on his comm to report to Commiskey. It took a moment for the lieutenant to answer his call.

“Report, One,” Commiskey said over the background sound of gunfire.

“We seem to have beaten them off, Six. What the hell’s going on over there?” Martin replied.

“Same as with you, One. Everybody got hit. We’re driving them back.”

Martin shuddered. “Do you have any casualties?”

“Only one. Doc’s patching him now. How many do you have?”

“Also one WIA.” Martin looked at Garcia; the bandages on his wounds seemed to be holding. “I think he’ll be all right until a corpsman can get to us.”

“It shouldn’t be a long wait.” It sounded that way to Martin, the fire was slackening off.

“I’ll let you know when Doc’s on his way. Have you checked the entire house yet?”

“No, sir, that’s my next step.”

“Do it, then report back. Six out.”

Martin looked at Mackie, nodded toward the dining room and said, “Take a look.”

Mackie took a deep, steadying breath, and flung himself through the doorway, to land prone on the floor next to the dining table, facing the kitchen and aiming his rifle at the door.

“Second fire team, collect the weapons,” Martin ordered.

Vittori and his two men gathered the aliens’ weapons, first the ones in the doorway, then the ones near the dozen dead or dieing in the dining room. They piled the weapons in the living room, away from the dining room door, and stacked the bodies at the end of the dining room opposite the kitchen. Two of the aliens were still alive. Martin ordered their hands tied off, and for them to be placed back to back, with their elbows lashed together.

“Think they’ll survive?” Vittori asked.

“I don’t give a good goddam,” Martin said. He glanced at the two, bleeding from multiple wounds. “How’s Garcia?” he asked Orndoff.

“He’s been better.”

“I’ll be fine as soon as a corpsman dresses my wounds,” Garcia said.

“Sure you will,” Martin said, but he didn’t believe it. Garcia’s voice was weak, and he looked pale from blood loss. “Doc’s on his way.”

Turning to the rest of the squad, Martin said, “All right, let’s check out the kitchen and the basement. If these two are still alive after that, we’ll see what we can do about stopping their bleeding.”

There were another five bodies in the kitchen and three more on the stairs to the basement.

The basement was one large, bare room.

“All right, where’d they come from?” Martin said. There weren’t any exits other than the stairs the Marines had come down. “Nobody was here when we moved in. So how the hell’d they get down here?”

Nobody had an answer.

“We need the engineers to check this place out.”

They had killed nearly twenty of the aliens and captured two more. Garcia was the only wounded Marine. They had trouble believing their good luck.

“We had experience from Mini Mouse,” Martin told his men. “If it hadn’t been for that, we most likely would have lost more men just now.” He looked at the stacked corpses. “Maybe none of them had combat experience.”

Chapter Sixteen

Expeditionary Air Field, Jordan, Eastern Shapland

Lieutenant Colonel Ray Davis, commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, watched from inside the operation center as four speeding dots resolved into four Marine Kestrels that took station orbiting the expeditionary air field a couple of hundred meters above the ground, ready to pounce on any threat. Another division of four Kestrels began orbiting higher up, watching for any threat that might approach on land or in the air. A C126VEC “Bulldog,” VIP transport/electronic warfare/command and control aircraft following the Kestrels touched down and came to a stop a hundred meters away from the OpCen. Only then did Davis step outside. He did his best to ignore the buffeting wind, even though the wind was what had kept him inside until nearly the last minute. The hatch on the side of the Bulldog opened just as a short stairway rolled up to it. A Marine appeared in the open hatch, looked around, fixed on Davis, and marched down the stairs. Another Marine, and a third followed him and marched just to his rear and left when they reached the field’s decking.

Davis met them halfway, came to attention and raised his right hand in salute. “Welcome to Marine Corps Station Jordan, sir,” he said. The wind almost blew his words away.

Lieutenant General Bauer crisply returned the salute, paused for 1st Marines’ commander Colonel Justice Chambers to trade salutes with Davis, then gripped his hand with both of his to shake. Chambers returned the salute of Bauer’s aide, Captain Upshur.

“You beat them all off successfully?” Bauer asked without preamble as the three started toward a waiting ground car—they had to lean into the wind.

“My men did, sir.” Davis shook his head. “Most of the action was inside the houses where individual squads were billeted. There was very little I or any other officers could do to affect the fighting—especially as most command elements were also under attack and fighting off the aliens.”

Bauer shook his head. Not in disbelief, but in something closer to awe. “It was a squad leader’s war.”

“It certainly was, sir. Even when they hit in Officer Country, the command elements had to fight like squads.”

“Most of the command elements were attacked?”

“Nearly every one of them, sir.”

“And every attack came from inside the houses?

“From the basements, yes, sir.”

The driver of the ground car stood holding the door firmly with one hand to keep the wind from banging it against the vehicle’s side. He didn’t stand at attention or salute, and his rifle was in his other hand while he looked around for threats. The three officers entered the car, Davis then Chambers with Bauer last.