Solfleet: The Call of Duty (2 page)

Valentino activated his HUD and aimed his rifle around the
corner, but before he could even begin to make any sense out of what the camera
started displaying on his visor, someone—some
thing
—grabbed hold of the
barrel and yanked him forward, off balance. He screamed in terror as he fell into
the open intersection. He let his rifle go, hoping to scramble back behind the
safety of the bulkhead, but he never got the chance. A shower of green-white
energy bolts rained down on him from both directions of the cross corridor,
perforated his torso armor’s thinner side panels and back plate, and
eviscerated him.

Small groups of heavily armored Veshtonn blood-warriors—reptilian
Kree-Veshtonn from the look of them—suddenly appeared through several
previously unseen hatchways on both sides of the main corridor ahead of the
Marines. Firing their weapons seemingly at random, they stepped into harm’s way
without any apparent hesitation and advanced quickly on the Marines as if none
of them cared whether they lived or died. Those Marines fortunate enough to
survive the initial volley fired back, their rifles set to full automatic,
spraying the enemy with a deadly wall of fully energized mini-explosive pulse
rounds. Warriors on both sides fell during the brief but intense firefight, but
in the end the Marines emrged victorious, at least for the moment, forcing the few
surviving Veshtonn to retreat. Apparently not all of them were so willing to
die after all.

“All right, Marines, let’s do this!” Sergeant Harrison
shouted into his pin mike—no point in continuing to maintain radio silence now.
“Take care of the wounded and regroup. We got a mission to complete.”

Privates Harper and Jennings were up. They moved forward,
side by side, and cautiously checked the cross corridor in both directions at
the same time while some of the others slung their rifles over their shoulders
and carried or dragged the dead and wounded back to the relative safety of the
shuttle, where some of the best combat medics in the Corps waited to take care
of those who still clung to life.

With all the smoke and humidity floating on the air, seeing
clearly beyond the first dozen yards or so was beginning to prove difficult and
infrared was useless against the cold-blooded lizards, but the cross corridor
appeared to be free of immediate threats. Harper and Jennings looked back at
each other, shrugged, and then raised their hands and gave the ‘all clear’
signal together. Van Slyke and Bellasario dashed past their positions quickly,
crossed the intersecting corridor, and took up covering positions at the
opposite corners. Then they, too, gave the ‘all clear’ signal.

The rest of the squad raced ahead, rounded the corner, and
made a run for the computer center, but when they reached the circular hatch
that led inside, they found it to be locked down.

Of course, that was exactly what they had expected to find.

“You’re up, Brewer,” Squad Sergeant Graves said, reading
the name on the back of the younger man’s helmet to make sure he got it right.
He wondered what all the guys around him must have thought about taking orders
from someone they didn’t know and had never fought beside, but at the same time
he felt pretty sure he already knew the answer. They didn’t like it, and he
couldn’t blame them.

He still could hardly believe he was there—could hardly
believe the Corps had thrown him into the middle of a major campaign with a
bunch of Marines he didn’t know and hadn’t even trained with before, let alone
fought with. According to all official doctrine, they shouldn’t have. This wasn’t
his unit. He wasn’t even assigned to the
Tripoli
. He’d only been
hitching a ride back to Cirra from Earth when the ship’s captain received orders
to divert to Rosha’Kana and join the battle. He’d received his temporary orders
attaching him to the unit almost immediately afterwards and had asked Gunny
Harrison what happened to the squad’s regular sergeant, but the Gunny had
refused to answer, and all his Marines had followed suit.

Lance Corporal Brewer moved up with a prepared explosive
charge already in hand. He slapped it over the hatch’s locking mechanism and
backed off in a hurry. The rest of the squad took their cue from him and backed
off as well and turned their faces away.

“Fire in the hole!” Brewer shouted. Then he depressed the
clacker.

The charge exploded and the entire hatch literally spun out
of its place in the wall like a coin sent spinning on its edge across the top
of a table until it fell against the opposite wall with a clang. The Marines surged
forward into the lingering cloud of smoke and dust. One after another they
charged single file through the gaping hole in the wall and flooded into the
computer center, where they fanned out and prepared to defend themselves.
Surprisingly, they met no resistance.

“All right, Stevenson,” Gunny Harrison called out, “your
turn.”

Jake Stevenson, a man whose friends had long ago proudly
proclaimed to be the best hacker in the entire Solfleet Marine Corps, slung his
rifle over his back and made a beeline for what precious few other human beings
would even have recognized to be the computer core’s master controls console.
He plugged his HDC, a data thief’s most prized piece of equipment, into the
board and went to work. Less than a minute later he’d hacked through the
security protocols and had gain unrestricted access. “Ready, Gunny.”

“
Tripoli
, this is Bravo Two,” Gunny Harrison sent. “We’re
ready to transmit.”

“
Stand by, Bravo Two,
” the
Tripoli
’s
communications specialist instructed him. Seconds seemed like minutes as they
passed until the specialist finally came back with, “
All right, Gunny,
initiate transmission.
”

“Initiating,” Harrison reported, pointing at Stevenson. Stevenson
threw the switch and nodded in silent confirmation.

“
Receiving,
” the specialist confirmed.

Few things in life made a Marine more nervous than standing
around waiting for a fight in the middle of a major offensive. The anticipation
was enough to make a guy feel sick to his stomach. Stevenson at least had
something to do, but the rest of them could only stand by, stay alert, and wait
for something to happen, nervously twisting and turning, eyes darting back and
forth, rifles pointing in random directions all around them.

“
Bravo... this is
Trip...
,
” the
communications specialist called after a few moments. “
Your ...smission ...cut
off. I ...ot receiving. I say again, ...am not recei...
”

“They’re jamming us!” Harrison shouted. “They know what we’re
doing. Stevenson, cut off the transmission. Switch to high-speed download. Get
everything you can as
fast
as you can. We’re gonna have to bug outta
here fast!”

Private First Class Irons saw it first. “Gunny, look!” he
cried out, pointing up at the corner of the ceiling above where the hatch used
to be. “Something’s leaking!”

Harrison turned to Irons, then looked up to where he was
pointing and saw a billowing cloud of thick, yellow-green smoke expanding
rapidly under high pressure from some unseen source in the ceiling. “Breathers,
right now!” he shouted over the link as he pulled his own down over his mouth
and nose. “Everybody out! Back to the shuttle on the double!”

The Marines all pulled their breathers into place and
scrambled back into the corridor—right into an ambush.

Time seemed to slow down before Sergeant Graves’ eyes. He
raised his rifle, fired, turned and fired again, all in slow motion. The battle
raged all around him, but somehow sounded far off. An energy bolt flashed close
past the side of his head. He saw the creature that had fired at him—looked it
in the eyes as he brought is rifle to bear and fired back. Its throat pulsed,
the back of its neck exploded, painting the bulkhead behind it, and it fell to
the soft, squishy deck like a body slowly sinking to the bottom of a pool.

The Marines fought bravely. They fought not for the
mission, but for each other. Had it been necessary, they would have fought to
the very last Marine. The last
much too young to die
Marine, Harrison reflected
as he dropped the last of the enemy warriors.

“Grab the wounded!” Harrison shouted at those who remained on
their feet, knowing that some of those wounded were probably already K.I.A. “No
one gets left behind! Let’s go!”

The Marines grabbed up their newest casualties and made
their way as fast as they could back through the humid, spongy-decked corridors
to the shuttle. Harrison stepped aside when he reached the hole in the bulkhead
and guided his Marines through it ahead of him. As soon as the last one passed,
he joined them onboard, closed and sealed the doors behind him, and then grabbed
the headset off its hook while the others hurriedly dropped into whatever empty
seats they could find, if any—the wounded were already filling most of them—and
prepared for emergency high-speed withdrawal as best they could.

“Get us the hell outta here!” he shouted at the pilot.

“
Initiating ‘get us the hell outta here’ maneuver!
”
the pilot responded, and Harrison barely had time to brace himself before the
shuttle shot backwards, throwing several Marines to the deck.

They’d made it.

But they weren’t finished yet, Harrison reminded himself. They
still had an HDC full of data to deliver, and until they did, their mission wasn’t
accomplished. All they had to do was make it back across the gauntlet of open
space and back aboard the
Tripoli
. Then and only then they would be able
to relax.

Assuming of course that the
Tripoli
was still in one
piece.

Mandela Station in Earth
Geosynchronous Orbit, Two Days Later

Friday, 16 July 2190

An expectant quiet fell over the crowded auditorium as
Command Chief Master Sergeant Warren Watson, the highest ranking
non-commissioned officer in the Solfleet Naval Forces, emerged from the
backstage shadows beyond the edge of the dark blue curtain and stepped up to
the intricately carved antique wooden podium—a recent ‘thank you’ gift to
Solfleet Central Command from the Congress of the United Earth Federation. Dressed
in the space navy’s new black and tan class-A uniform—the black-and-browns had
proven to be extremely unpopular with Navy personnel and hadn’t even lasted
long enough for their initial issue to be completed—the hulking dark-skinned
Jamaican veteran of more than fifteen years of direct ship-to-ship combat looked
more ominous and intimidating than ever.

“All rise for the arrival of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” he
practically shouted into the microphone without even having to lean toward it.

Almost as one, the entire audience rose to its feet. Those
military members familiar with the command chief’s infamous ability to spot a
slacker in any size crowd, whether in uniform or not, assumed a rigid position
of attention and stared straight ahead.

The Joint Chiefs’ hard-soled footfalls echoed through the
cavernous room, sounding like an entire platoon marching in parade formation as
Fleet Admiral Winston Chaffee, the short, pudgy, balding Executive Officer to
the reportedly ailing Command Fleet Admiral, led the six-officer procession out
onto the stage and across the front of the single row of chairs that had been
set up for them. Each of them was decked out in full Solfleet dress grays, the
long-time symbol of total unity among the once separate branches, complete with
all medals and accoutrements, with only the colored stripes on their charcoal
trousers and their jacket piping to distinguish their individual branches of
the service.

They stopped in front of their chairs, turned and faced the
nearly three thousand officers, senior NCOs, family members, and guests in one
two-step facing maneuver, and then sat down.

“You may be seated,” the command chief announced. Then, as
the audience took their seats and settled in again, he stepped away and
disappeared back behind the curtain.

Exactly three second later, Admiral Chaffee stood up and
approached the podium. The house lights dimmed and the overhead spotlight shone
down on him like a golden ray of glory from Heaven, illuminating the top of his
bald head so brightly that he appeared to glow with an almost angelic aura.
Doing his best to ignore the light’s uncomfortable intensity, he pulled his
handcomp off his belt and set it down on the podium, then folded his hands
behind his back. He cleared his throat, and the microphone picked it up and
transmitted to all the speakers around the room’s perimeter, eliciting grins
and a few snickers from the crowd as it echoed through the entire auditorium.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized quickly, and
straight-faced. “I’ve been trying to clear that hairball for weeks.”

A wave open laughter passed over the crowd—whether that was
because his joke was actually funny, or only because he happened to be the
second highest ranking officer in the entire fleet, who could say?—then quickly
subsided when he briefly held up his hand. Then he opened the ceremony in
earnest.

“Joint Chiefs, fellow officers, N-C-Os, enlisted personnel,
distinguished family members and guests,” he began, glancing down at his
handcomp to make sure he hadn’t left anyone out. “It is not often that a person
in my position gets the opportunity to publicly recognize a fellow officer’s
service above and beyond the call of duty in front of such a large audience. As
most of you know, that honor is normally reserved for the Commander, Solfleet.
So, while I certainly add my prayers to yours in wishing Command Fleet Admiral
O’Shea a speedy and complete recovery, I would also like to take this
opportunity to thank him for allowing me this honor and privilege.”