LITMIR.BIZ

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wondered how the guy was feeling now, with his implants switched off.

      It was actually a pleasant respite, a chance to simply stand and breathe. Warhurst waited a few minutes more, until the last tail-end Charlie straggled over the top of the ridge and took his place in line.

      “Glad you could join us, Dodson,” the DI said with a sour growl to his voice. “Okay, recruits, listen up. A few hours ago, we let you see a Marine action now taking place on Alighan, a few hundred light-years from here. We’ve just received a feed from USMC Homeport. The Marines on Alighan report both the starport and planet’s capital city are secure. Army troops are now deploying to the surface to take over the perimeter.

      “Lieutenant General Alexander, in command of the Marine Interstellar Expeditionary Force, has reported that the op went down according to plan and by the book. He singled out the 55th Marine Aerospace Regimental Strikeforce, which spearheaded the assault on the planethead, saying that despite heavy casualties, they distinguished themselves in the very best traditions of the Corps.

      “So let’s give a Marine Corps war-yell for the Fighting Fifty-fifth! Ooh-ra!”

      “Ooh-ra!” the company yelled back, but the response was ragged and weak, the recruits still panting and out of breath.

      “What the hell kind of war-yell is that?” Warhurst demanded. “The Marines fight! They overcome! They improvise! And they fucking kick ass! Let me hear your war-yell!”

      “Ooh-ra!”

      “A good war-yell focuses your energy and terrifies your opponent! Again!”

      “Ooh-ra!”

       “Again!”

       “Ooh-ra!”

      “Oh, I am so terrified.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Children, I can tell we have a lot of work to do. Down on the deck! One hundred push-ups! Now!”

      The respite was over.

       Green 1, 1–1 Bravo

       Meneh Spaceport, Alighan

       1158/38:22 hours, local time

      An enemy sniper round cracked overhead, striking the side of a building a hundred meters away with a brilliant flash and a puff of white smoke. Ramsey looked up without breaking stride, then glanced at Chu. “Five,” he said. “Four … three … two …”

      Before he could reach “one,” a blue-white bar of light flashed out of the heavily overcast sky and speared a building nearly two kilometers away. Six seconds passed … and then another, much louder crack sounded, a thunderous boom with a time delay. By this time, remote drones and battlefield sensors had scattered across some hundreds of square kilometers, and any hostile fire or movement was instantly pinpointed, tracked, and dealt with—usually with a high-velocity KK round from orbit.

      “You’re a little off on your timing,” Chu told him. “Count faster.”

      “Ah, the guys in orbit just want to make liars out of us.”

      “Not guys,” Chu said, correcting him. “AIs. That response was too fast for organics.”

      “Even worse. We’re into the game-sim phase of the op, now. No combat. Just electronic gaming. The bad guys poke a nose out of hiding, the AIs in orbit draw a bead and lop it off.”

      “You sound bitter.”

      “Nah. I just wonder how long it’ll be before they don’t need us down here on the ground at all. Just park a task force in orbit and pop bad guys from space, one nose at a time.”

      “Never happen,” Chu said. “Someone’s gotta take and hold the high ground, y’know?”

      “That’s what they taught us in boot camp,” Ramsey agreed. “But that doesn’t mean things won’t change.”

      Despite the scattered sniper fire, the worst of the fighting appeared to be over, and the Marines of the 55th MARS had emerged victorious. Not that there’d been doubt about the outcome, of course. The enemy’s technological inferiority, tactical and logistical restrictions, surprise, and morale all had been factored into the initial ops planning. The only real question had been what the butcher’s bill would be—how many Marines would be lost in the assault.

      The two Marines were walking across the ferrocrete in front of one of the shuttle hangars at the spaceport, still buttoned up in their 660 combat cans. Off in the distance, an enormous APA drifted slowly toward the captured starport, hovering on shrill agravs. Another APA had already touched down; columns of soldiers were still filing down the huge transport’s ramps.

      Smoke billowed into the sky from a dozen fires. The damage throughout this area was severe, and they had to be careful picking their way past piles of rubble and smoldering holes melted into the pavement. Nano-D clouds had drifted through on the wind hours before, leaving ragged, half-molten gaps in the curving walls and ceiling, and the shuttle itself had been reduced to junk. A large area of the floor had been cleared away, however, and the structure was being used as a temporary field hospital, a gathering point for casualties awaiting medevac to orbit. Several naval corpsmen were working in the hangar’s shadowed interior, trying to stabilize the more seriously injured.

      Staff Sergeant Thea Howell was in there someplace. After that last firefight atop the tower, Ramsey had crouched beside his wounded friend until a combat medevac shuttle had arrived, then helped load her aboard. That had been three hours ago. As soon as Army troops had started filtering in from the starport, Ramsey and the others from 1–1 Bravo had hiked back to the port. Ramsey had located Howell on the platoon Net, and was hoping to see her.

      “Ram! Chu! What the hell are you guys doing here?”

      The two Marines turned, startled. Captain Baltis had a way of appearing out of nowhere. “Sir!” Ramsey said. Neither he nor Chu saluted, or even came to attention; standard Marine doctrine forbade ritual in the field that might identify officers to enemy snipers. “One of our buddies, sir. Howell. We’d like to know if—”

      “Haul your ass clear of here and let the docs do their work,” Baltis snapped. “We’ll post the status of the wounded when we get back to the ship.”

      “Yes, sir, but—”

      “We will post their status when we get back aboard ship.”

      Ramsey sagged. “Aye, aye, sir.”

      “Get your asses over to the Fortress. We’ll be disembarking from there.”

      “Aye, aye, sir!”

      The Fortress—what was left of it—loomed above the skyline of Meneh not far from the ocean. It was called El Kalah, which in the creole-Arabic spoken throughout the Theocracy meant “fortress.” Originally a vast dome half a kilometer across bristling with ball turrets, each turret mounting plasma, A.M., or hivel accelerator weapons, El Kalah had been the first target in the pinpoint orbital bombardment of the planet, and there was little left of the complex now save the shattered, jagged fragments of dome enclosing a smoking ruin open to the sky. The weapons turrets had been neutralized in rapid succession, and the remaining complex pounded for hours with everything from antimatter to tunneler rounds to knock out any deeply buried bunkers. Much of what was left had melted in the nano-D clouds.

      Close by the Fortress was an area that had been a residential zone, stone and cast ‘crete housing set in orderly rows among parkland and market squares. At least that was how the downloaded maps described the area. Though the region had not been deliberately targeted, it was now an almost homogenous landscape of rubble and partially melted stone.

      As they picked their way through the wreckage, Ramsey and Chu came upon a scene of nightmare horror.

      Several Marines in armor

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