Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer (39 page)

With that much time, Repeth felt safe to ask, “We have twelve railguns and nineteen targets?”

“Seventeen now,” the sergeant replied as the warrant officer ignored them, his eyes on the countdown. “The beam array is picking off one rock at a time. They’ll take out their targets and then spread out to help us with ours.”

“Is there any chance we’ll miss?”

The sergeant shook her head. “Not unless something freakish happens, knock on plastic.” She rapped her knuckles on her console. “These babies are rock-steady and extremely accurate.”

“Shut yer gobs,” the warrant snarled, still watching as the numbers fell.

Repeth patted the sergeant on the shoulder with her armored hand, then stepped back to let the crew concentrate.

At time zero the man’s thumb mashed down on the button and control room vibrated with a bass sound as of a dozen train locomotives running over a track joint.

Above their heads, the Behemoth flung thousands of steel balls upward in controlled bursts. As they impacted the incoming asteroid, pieces peeled off in waves. Short pauses between groupings allowed the plasma to disperse and the shot to reach the solid rock, slamming repeatedly into its surface.

Twenty-five seconds to impact, the young sergeant gave a small cheer, pointing at one of her screens. “It’s breaking apart!” she whooped.

“Spread the pattern. Requesting laser targeting,” the warrant said tersely.

The sergeant did as ordered, widening the gun’s narrow focus, turning her weapon from a rifle into a shotgun in hopes of further breaking the large chunks. “Optical,” she said, pointing at a screen.

“We got some light,” the warrant said, and on the visual screen some of the flying gravel flared redly as one of the central array’s massive lasers reached out to turn it into hot vapor. “Getting a few hits from the pattern.”

“Not enough,” the sergeant mumbled, worried.

“Continuous autofire,” the warrant snapped. “Seal up.” He sat back into his crash chair and it folded over him. The sergeant’s did the same just a moment later.

Repeth immediately passed a similar order. “Seal suits. Everyone back up into the tunnel.” The squad performed an about-face and trotted down the access corridor and deeper into the living rock of Callisto, huddling close, the best defense for armored troops against cave-ins and earthquakes.

Just as she stepped in and crowded up against her troops, a ground shock knocked her off her feet. Fortunately there seemed only one, and then the vibration settled.

Jumbled among armored bodies, Repeth gently pushed upward in the low gravity and triggered a maneuvering jet to shove herself feet-first out of the tunnel and into the corridor. Her troops sorted themselves out and got back on their feet. A moment later she looked into the control room.

As she did, the clamshell crash chairs opened up, revealing the two uninjured crew, who immediately lunged for their boards. “We’re down,” the sergeant said. “Hard impact on number four strut.”

“Requesting emergency repair. Putting our power onto the grid. We won’t need it for a while.” The warrant slapped his console with disgust, sitting back.

“How are the rest of the guns?” Repeth asked.

“We’re the only one that took a significant hit. Shit,”’ the sergeant groused. “We did everything right. Just bad luck.” She turned to Repeth. “Think you’ll see any action?”

“You’d better hope we don’t,” Repeth replied. “If any kind of ground troops land here, you guys just seal up tight, dog the hatch and hope to hell our weapons are effective against whatever they throw at us.”

“You don’t know what they’ll be?” the sergeant asked with surprise. “Didn’t the alien tell us?”

“She gave some guesses, I hear, but remember her information is four thousand years old. And she’s not an alien. Not more than half, anyway,” Repeth replied. “Mostly she just seemed like an impressive lady everyone in sight would like to get to know better.” She waggled her eyebrows within her helmet. Waiting for something to happen always brought out her amateur comedian.

“You’ve met her?” the warrant asked with an edge of disbelief.

“A few times, when I was on Admiral Absen’s security detachment. Seemed pretty human to me.” Normally she didn’t drop names but in this case, she might as well provide some entertainment while they waited for the repair crew to come up from the deep bunkers and take a look.

“I hear there are more Blends among us, trying to take over and let the Meme in, like that colonel,” the sergeant said. “Traitors.”

Repeth shrugged her armored shoulders. “You know, people say a lot of things. When the Eden Plague was first released, people said everyone who got it would turn into some kind of peacenik zombie pod people. They interned us in camps.”

“Aw, that couldn’t happen today,” the sergeant scoffed. “Society has progressed.”

“So you wouldn’t lock up all the Blends you found? No matter what their loyalties? Just in case?”

The sergeant fell silent while the warrant shook his head, at what Repeth was not sure.

“I guess that answers why she and her son don’t come down to Earth much,” Repeth said.

“Repair crew’s up on the surface.” The sergeant seemed glad to change the subject, pointing to a screen that showed a utility vehicle disgorging several suited figures next to the structure of the railgun tower. That looked like the articulated skeleton of a skyscraper, ferrocrystal and steel framing that held the four magnetic rails in place.

Those rails had to be aligned precisely with one another so the hundreds of ball bearings per second would accelerate properly, shooting upward with the enormous surges of electromagnetic energy. Panning the camera, the sergeant pointed. “See. Strut four.”

It appeared a chunk of rock had struck the ferrocrystal support a glancing blow, bending it sharply as it expended its final energy. The resulting plasma burst had melted the ordinary steel surrounding it. “They’ll have to replace that, and then test it,” the warrant said. “Gonna be more than an hour.”

“You can’t fire with only three supports?” Repeth asked.

“Sure we can. Once, for about a millisecond,” the man replied in disbelief. “Then the whole thing will come apart and the entire external structure will need replacing. Might get five, maybe six rounds through before it fails.”

“Like firing a rifle with a bent barrel,” she replied.

“A big rifle, yes,” the man said drily.

“What’s that?” Repeth pointed at the large display that showed the synthesized battle overview. “Those two groups of icons.”

“Looks like they’re down under nine thousand rocks,” the warrant replied, tapping the cloud of enemy objects screen with a finger to illustrate. “Now it gets interesting. This here’s the Pilum missiles lining up on the rocks, there. Got about thirty seconds before they detonate.”

“Detonate?” Repeth asked. “Why don’t they just go for impact?”

The warrant shrugged. “A fusion fireball five hundred meters wide is more likely to do damage than one kinetic missile, they say. Also hope the heat will kill the Meme guidance package, or at least hurt it enough to keep it from adjusting course. All we need is a little uncorrected nudge and a rock will miss its target.”

“Right,” Repeth said. She wondered if the man knew what he was talking about, or he was just running his mouth. Each seemed equally possible.

The three watched the screen as the cloud of rocks overran the lines of Pilums. One moment they approached the missiles, and the next, the enemy objects had swept through them. On the screen the entire swath of human warheads disappeared, along with some of the incoming kinetic asteroids.

“Got almost one thousand of them. Not bad.” The warrant tapped the screen where the estimated count read 7800. “One more pass.”

“What pass?” Repeth asked.
Keep the man talking, keep my troops listening. Nothing better to do right now.

“The Aardvarks.” The warrant tapped the concave crescent that represented the attack ships. They stood across the plotted path of the rock cluster. “They may take out a few, but not many.”

“Why?”

“According to the plan, they won’t use up any more missiles. They’re saving those for the Destroyer. But they’ll take shots with their masers.”

Repeth nodded, watching as the icons overlapped momentarily, and then the rock cloud flew on, seemingly unaffected. She looked at the estimated object count, and it did not change.

The warrant shrugged. “So few the system can’t sort it out. Oh, well. That’s not what they are for anyway.”

“What’s next?”

“Against the rocks?” The warrant manipulated his controls and recentered the display on an area farther along the objects’ path. “There’s a group of seventy asteroidal weapons arrays right here. They should take out a few hundred, maybe another thousand.”

“Why was there one array forward, and sixty-nine back a bit?”

The warrant’s face turned bleak. “What are sentries and pickets for? To force the enemy to engage and reveal his plans. To force him to commit, and to get some intel on his tactics, and see how effective our own fire is. I’d have thought a Marine would get that.”

“Thanks for explaining it.” Repeth refused to be drawn into a clash with someone senior to her. Times like these she wished she had hung onto Chief Warrant rank.
He’s just frustrated that his gun is down
, she told herself, and then chuckled at how that sounded in her own head.

“Something funny?” he snapped.

“No, sir,” Repeth replied, blanking her face. “Just a random thought.”

“Marines aren’t paid to think,” the man replied with a sneer. “Leave that to us.”

Asshole
.
This is one of these times I wish I had kept that warrant’s rank.
But then I wouldn’t be a company first sergeant. At best I’d be honchoing a section of heavy weapons.
“Yes sir. Will that be all, sir?”

“Right. Shove off. You’re distracting us.”

Repeth fell back into the corridor to confer with Sergeant Dasko, the squad leader, switching to Marine channels so the crew could not hear. “I’m off to check on the rest of the company. Don’t engage the gun chief there; he’s a bit testy.”

The squad laughed as Sergeant Dasko replied, “We’ll keep away from the squiddies, Top.”

“Just keep your ears open in case you’re needed. Stay on max alert. We should hear something within the next hour about what the Destroyer is doing. If we’re lucky, he’ll send something to kill us.”

“Lucky?” Dasko seemed disbelieving.

“Yes, Sergeant, lucky. I don’t want him to just fly past. I want him to expend resources against us. After ten years of waiting, I want to close with the bastards and kill some of them. Don’t you?”

“Oo-rah, First Sergeant. Thanks for explaining it to us dumbshit Marines that ain’t paid to think.” That brought more laughter from the squad, easing the tension of waiting.

“Oo-rah. On the HUD and on the bounce.” Repeth flipped down her faceplate but did not seal her armor, preserving its internal air supply, and then pushed past the troops in the corridor, who spread out along the wall. Her HUD stuttered and fuzzed, until after a short distance she reached an intersection with the large circular accessway that ran in a huge ring under the base. There it cleared up.

“Dasko,” she called over her suitcomm, “fall back to this main intersection and hold in place. The datalink is wonky in the access tunnel anyway, and you’ll be in a better position to react.”

“Aye aye, Top,” came Dasko’s voice.

Not waiting any longer, Repeth took off with gliding low-gravity bounds, her suit jets stabilizing her now and again. After years on Callisto, she didn’t need much help.

She could see Bravo Company spread out on her HUD, eight squads and the crew-served weapons section covering half of the ring. Charlie Company held the other half, and Alpha was positioned in the center of the spoked wheel of tunnels, beneath the beam array.

Delta Company had the shitty end of the stick, occupying heavily fortified positions in the base complex above. They would be first to engage, if there was some kind of landing. They were also the most exposed if a heavier bombardment came.

Dasko’s Fourth Squad, Second Platoon had one end of the company’s arc, so Repeth made her way up the main tunnel. Every hundred meters or so she found a squad, right where her HUD said they should be, and in the middle, between the first and second platoons she found the CO and reported in to her on a private channel. “Ma’am, Second Platoon is good to go. Making rounds on First now.”

“Very well, Top,” Captain Miller replied, her steady black eyes roving over her HUD. “Carry on.”

Good officer
, Repeth thought,
which right now means one who is not dicking around with the plan at the last minute.
The company was deployed to guard the perimeter, contain any breach and still be able to rapidly redeploy along the underground corridors, reinforcing any point in three dimensions.

As she glided unhurriedly along toward First Platoon’s closest position, her HUD lit up with the command net icon. “This is Ruchek,” the harsh voice of the battalion commander came. “Base tracking confirms second set of estimated four hundred objects inbound this base. Destroyer released these objects and they are maneuvering at high G, generally decelerating toward us. Unknown at this time whether they are ships, missiles, or something else entirely. Weapons array is engaging, but effectiveness assessment indicates more than ninety percent will get through. Will pass more information as it becomes available.” The battalion CO’s voice cut off, leaving Repeth back on the Bravo company net.

“Anything we can do?” Repeth asked.

Miller shook her head. “Just wait. The boss will make the call to pull out Delta and evac us to the bunkers if it looks too hot.”

“Right. I’m off again.” Off she went.

This similarity was not lost on them, but was so routine as to be completely unremarkable, even for Meme bored with their own duties. Of course everything they dealt with resembled living forms. Mostly, they
were
living forms.