Forge and Steel, Page 3

  Should have had everyone go in with sonar up, he told himself, and felt his face flush with shame. Then he checked several Marines and realized they were already using theirs. I really am a green loot. Damn.

  “Head in the game, Bull,” Reaper said as she pulled out a hand laser, more tool than weapon. She began cutting a hole in the wall.

  “That’s the wrong direction,” he replied. “Laser team’s already setting up for the next burn.”

  “Well aware. This is a diversion. The base will feel it and divide its forces.”

  Bull grunted, filing that one away for the future. “Grenadiers, you were slow last time and a man died,” he heard Sergeant Brooks say with a snarl. “I want four through the breach as soon as it opens or I’ll chuck you in myself.”

  The laser lashed out, cutting another hole. This time, grenades flew into the next chamber and exploded before the enemy had a chance to respond.

  Reaper left off cutting and joined Bull at his elbow. “How’s Kang doing?”

  In the whirl of confusion, Bull had forgotten to check. Cursing himself once more – how did she stay so calm with this shitstorm around her? – he tried to contact his platoon sergeant, who should be leading third and fourth squads to attack along a parallel axis. No dice.

  “Can’t reach him,” he replied.

  “I know.”

  Bull almost asked her why the hell she’d queried him, but then realized her question had pointed out his lapse without being a bitch about it. He took a deep breath and spoke to Acosta and Brooks. “Good work. Keep pressing, but watch the flanks.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” they replied in unison, and for the next three chambers, the attack went like clockwork, with no casualties. Bull began to feel as if he was settling into his role, able to see the bigger picture, his mind no longer over-focusing and flitting from thing to thing like a stim addict.

  “Action left!” Reaper barked as they prepared for the next breach. Line Marines just had time to turn and set themselves before three irises appeared in the long wall.

  Bull drew an instinctive bead on the closest enemy and froze...which almost killed him. The Purelings bursting through weren’t bugs. They looked like human Marines, wearing fatigues and carrying pulse rifles. He barely had time for the weapon aimed straight at his faceplate to register in his consciousness, with the gut-punch certainty of impending death, before the man’s chest exploded.

  Not a man, Bull told himself. A programmed clone, no more human than a vat-grown replacement organ.

  Five more enemy nearest Bull met the same fate, center-mass bursts coming so quickly he assumed a fireteam had taken them down, but when he looked behind him, all he saw was Reaper, swapping magazines on her smoking pulse gun.

  “Eyes up,” the woman snapped, and Bull lifted his weapon to his shoulder and flipped the selector lever to rock and roll. The spell broken, he sprayed and prayed, emptying his first hundred-rounder in one long burst at the mass of humanoids.

  One shocking moment later it was over, but six more Marines were down hard, two of them dead, along with at least twenty of the false-flag enemies. Sergeant Brooks nodded bleakly to him as she organized a quick medevac in accordance with the OPLAN. Despite the action so far, they’d only progressed a hundred meters, so it made sense to run the wounded and KIAs back to the sleds.

  “Hold in place,” Bull called. “Security out!”

  Recon gnats buzzed back along the extraction route, and the remaining dozen Marines reorganized. In the lull, Bull toed one of the human Purelings over. The thing’s face stared upward, looking for all the world like a fresh-faced recruit. He felt a creeping sense of unreality and dissociation, as if he stood outside himself and watched.

  Reaper appeared at his elbow. “Don’t beat yourself up. Most of you’ve never fought human troops before. It was natural to hesitate.”

  “They’re not human,” he said distractedly, reaching down to pick up a pulse rifle.

  “Your guts don’t know that.”

  “You’ve killed before. People, I mean,” he said, searching her eyes through her faceplate.

  “Yeah. A lot.”

  “Is this what it feels like?”

  “Worse. Much worse. But like you said, these aren’t people.”

  “Okay.” Even in his own ears, he didn’t sound sure. “You didn’t hesitate.”

  “Lots of practice.”

  Bull thought he detected a bitterness hiding within her even tone. “You gave warning,” he said.

  “Meme walls give a little ripple before they iris open. Hard to spot unless you’re used to it.”

  “And you killed them fast, like a machine,” he said. “Saved my life.”

  Reaper tapped her head. “I cheat, remember? I have Steward-quality wetware. Alters my time sense so everything’s in slow motion. Like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  “Why don’t Marines have good shit like that?”

  “Priority to other units. Expense. Training costs. Eventually you will, but you know how stretched everything is with the war on. Can’t even find a decent black-market beer anymore.”

  “You should be in charge, then.”

  “I am.”

  Bull turned away. “No, I mean, in tactical command.”

  “I wouldn’t have done anything different. We’re in a tough, ugly war here, Bull. You’re going to lose Marines, probably every mission.”

  “I know.”

  “Then snap out of it.”

  Bull had read a hundred books about combat and prepared himself for this mission all his adult life. He’d been sure it’d be different for him. Now he felt like a fool. He reached for something within himself to clear the fog of unreality, the first handy emotion.

  Anger. Not rage, not stim-fuelled fury, but a colder, more useful thing that crept up from the base of his spine and spread along his nerves, leaving his head clear and his mind sharp.

  “Fucking bastards,” he muttered. “Stealing our flesh and making fake people to kill us.”

  “Yup.” Reaper turned to look pointedly at Sergeant Brooks as she and her troops returned from dropping off the wounded and dead. “But remember, you’re not a line dog. You have a mission to lead, Eltee. Your people need you. Man up and get going.”

  Bull shook himself and felt renewed confidence flow into his veins. Snapping orders with textbook clarity, he led and directed his platoon to drive a wedge into the heart of the small base, where Intel had said the prisoners should be housed.

  “Do you think they’ll be alive?” Bull asked Reaper as they cleared the final chamber, a room that looked less organic and more conventional, with hard, vertical walls and floor.

  “Depends.” She said no more.

  “That’s insightful.”

  “Too many variables.”

  “If I were the Meme, I’d have killed them by now,” he said heavily. “I mean, why let us get them back?”

  “Why indeed?”

  Dammit, the woman was acting mysterious again. Trying to make him think for himself? No time for pondering now. He checked his HUD and saw that Kang had Third and Fourth squads deployed in positions behind the central command center in order to block any escape.

  Assuming they hadn’t already gotten the prisoners out. Who knew what tunnels led from the base down into the asteroid?

  Brooks and Acosta prepped the troops that remained to execute the final drill, but this time it wouldn’t be as easy. If prisoners waited behind the final wall, they couldn’t simply lob grenades in. “Single shots only,” Bull reminded them. “No full auto, no napalm unless everything goes to shit. Now let’s go get our people.”

  Two explosive templates had been laid on the hard wall, to the far left and far right. In the center, the laser team made ready to cut, a diversion. Reaper moved up into a position close to the far left breaching charge, the first time she had taken point.

  Bull had to admit she’d stayed out of the way and covered his ass like the pro she was. He considered tr
ying to order her back, but decided it would be pointless. She was obviously the best qualified to enter a rescue situation, where split-second decisions and precision were more important than raw firepower.

  Reaper gave the laser team the signal. Its hot beam sliced into the wall, this time spitting sparks as it chewed through ferrocrystal-reinforced excreted resin rather than rubbery flesh. A three-count coordinated the two breaches, door frames made of shaped explosives cutting man-sized holes through to the other side in flashes of smoke.

  Chapter 4

  “Go-go-go!” Bull heard his squad leaders yell, but Reaper had already moved in. On impulse, he charged forward to follow the assault team on the far right.

  Instead of the expected firefight, he saw a large, well-lit room that could have occupied space in any office building back on Earth. No casualties, enemy or friendly, were visible. Six humans dressed in skinsuits stood, hands raised, covered by multiple Marine weapons.

  “Okay, let’s go. Take them and extract!” Bull snapped.

  “Wait,” Reaper replied, holding up a hand.

  “The Meme could be organizing a counterattack. We need to move!”

  “What does Recon say?”

  Bull took a breath and consulted his HUD. Recon Marines with several gnats each formed a perimeter, and the feeds showed no enemy activity. “Nothing right now,” he said, grudging.

  “Pretty sure we’re good, then, for a minute,” Reaper replied. She lowered her weapon to dangle from its retractable sling beneath her arm and walked forward to face one of the men they’d recovered, popping her faceplate open. “Hello, Dasko,” she said.

  “Top!” the man cried and grabbed Reaper by the shoulders. “God, it’s good to see you!”

  Bull told his people to hold in place, and then strode over to the tableau. “So this is personal? That’s why you’re along? An old boyfriend?” he said, disgust in his voice.

  Reaper’s eyes narrowed as her head swiveled toward Bull and she brushed Dasko’s hands off. “Staff Sergeant Dasko and I fought together at Callisto, Lieutenant. Is that a problem?”

  “Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “So what if I know one of them? I’ve served all over.” Reaper looked pointedly at the other five. “But I don’t know these. Dasko, you vouch for them?”

  “Yeah, Top. They’re all mine. I can tell you their names, their personal histories, when they reported to my unit...everything.”

  “What the hell do you mean, vouch for them?” Bull asked. “They’re our people.”

  “Unless they’re not,” Reaper replied. “Meme can blend with humans. Or given enough time, they can grow clones and upload extracted molecular memories so good even they don’t know they’re copies.”

  The Marines stirred, raising weapons that had been lowered. “I never heard about that,” Sergeant Brooks said through clenched teeth.

  “It’s not common knowledge.”

  “It will be now,” Bull said.

  Reaper shrugged. “Not officially. And who believes scuttlebutt?”

  “Hey, what the hell is this?” Dasko said. “You know me, Sergeant Major, and I know my people.”

  Bull’s comlink beeped for his attention. “Got hostile movement in quadrant four,” one of the Recon Marines reported. “Forty, maybe fifty signatures.”

  “We have to extract, Reaper,” Bull said. “We’ll sort it out in the rear. I’m sure there’s some kind of test to see if they’re real.”

  “Real? What the hell does that mean, real?” Dasko’s voice rose and began to crack.

  “There is, but it takes days. Sometimes weeks. I got a better test,” Reaper said, grabbing Dasko’s skinsuit at the neck with her left hand. With blurring speed, her right lifted an ancient PW5 pistol from its holster and put the muzzle to the man’s head.

  “Woah, Reaper, this is wrong!” Bull said, reaching reflexively for the woman, who swiveled, putting Dasko between them. “We can trank him and the others if you want, but we’re taking them with us. You said yourself the tests take days.”

  The prisoners stood frozen within the scene, hands raised and surrounded by Marines with weapons pointing everywhere – some at them, some at Reaper and Dasko. One woman said, “Please, sir, get us out of here. The things they did to us...”

  “Reaper! Stand down! That’s an order!”

  “You can’t give me orders, Bull. Unless you’re willing to violate your own instructions and threaten me.” Through her faceplate, Bull could see Reaper’s teeth bared in a snarl, eyes hot and skin tight across her cheeks. “Fleet put me in charge and I’m doing this my way.”

  “And what is your way?” Bull asked with quiet menace.

  “Lieutenant, our perimeter is engaging and falling back,” Kang said in Bull’s earbud. “We have to un-ass this AO, post-haste.”

  “One minute,” Reaper said. “One. Minute.”

  “Right. One minute, and all this is on vid for your court martial, or whatever they call it when people like you are prosecuted.”

  “You think I’ve lost it?”

  “Maybe. Fifty seconds.” Bull waved at his troops. “Check your HUDs. Take defensive positions and be ready to support Third and Fourth squads as they fall back.”

  Reaper turned to Dasko and let go of him, using the free hand to remove her own helmet. “You know who I am, Jorgen?”

  “Of course I do, Top!”

  “Then don’t move a muscle.” Reaper’s nostrils flared as she shifted the barrel of the pistol to point at Dasko’s right eye. “What if I told you I had to blow your head off? Right now. For the good of humanity. Because even though you don’t know it, you’re a Pureling.” She deliberately thumbed off the safety and tightened her finger on the trigger.

  Dasko bolted for one of the open doors faster than Bull would have thought possible. Before he brought his own weapon into line, Reaper put two rounds into the fleeing man’s back. He jerked and fell, but continued to writhe on the ground.

  Three of the other former prisoners ran, almost making it to cover, but Reaper knocked them down like carnival targets.

  “Eyes back on the perimeter!” Bull roared as Marines stared at the action. He turned toward the last two of those they’d freed, one male and one female, who hadn’t budged.

  “Sir,” the man said to Bull, “I’m Corporal Hahn and this is PFC Sortillon, Fleet Marines. Take us back and test us if you can.” He swallowed and lowered his head, hunching his shoulders. “But if that endangers the mission, kill us now and burn our bodies. Just don’t leave us to the Meme. Sir.”

  Staring hard, jaw set and eyes filled, the woman next to him nodded.

  Reaper nodded back and holstered her weapon. “That’s the answer I was looking for. Fleet Marines don’t run, and Dasko was one of the best. He’d never have run from me. He’d have stood fast and eaten a bullet if I told him to.” She took four steps over to the fallen Dasko-Pureling, slid her hand onto the grip of the pulse rifle, blew the thing’s head clean off, and then finished the other three.

  Bull said, appalled, “We could have brought them back in irons, or sedated.”

  Reaper stared flatly into his eyes. “Did you know the Meme can load a Pureling with trinary biochemical explosives? Undetectable without a lab. You feel like bringing a suicide bomber back with us?”

  “Glad you’re so sure.”

  “I am. You can steal memories, maybe even replicate a mind. You can’t counterfeit Semper Fidelis.”

  “Always...loyal?”

  “Faithful. To the end. I wish Admiral Absen had made that the Fleet Marines’ motto when he formed the corps, but he didn’t want it to seem too American, so we ended up with By Land, By Sea, By Space.” Reaper looked around, and then back at Hahn and Sortillon. “Do you think the real ones are still alive?”

  Slowly, they shook their heads. “No.”

  “Me neither. Okay, Bull; time to extract,” Reaper said.

  “Extract! Third and Fourth, fall back to ORP-1, no
w!” he snapped. “First and Second, prep to receive passage of your lines under fire. Reaper, secure these two and go to the sleds.”

  “Bull –”

  The steel in Bull’s voice carried across the comlink. “Now, ma’am. Tactical decision. We paid in blood for those two, and you’re going to take them home, because I don’t want anything to do with this shit anymore.” He watched Reaper put her helmet back on and escort the rescued pair rearward.

  Then he reached for his Final Option device, detached it from where it rested beneath his belly armor, set the timer for fifteen minutes, hid it under a heap of debris, and joined the fighting withdrawal.

  After the sleds launched, Bull tapped into the rear cameras and watched as the fusion bomb cracked the asteroid and obliterated the Meme base. He told himself once more that even if the originals had survived, they were better off dead than in some Meme laboratory.

  He felt a piece of his soul die with them.

  In the surreal quiet of the ride home, Bull stared across the assault sled at Reaper when she opened her eyes and spoke. “They’re your Marines now, Bull. They followed you to hell and back.”

  “The ones that made it,” he said bitterly.

  “Ultimate liability clause. Every Marine signs it, not just you.”

  “I could have saved more.”

  “Wasn’t your job to save them. Like you told me, your job is to complete the mission.”

  “With minimum loss of resources.”

  “Survivor’s guilt is a bucket-load of shit you don’t need.”

  “What, you my shrink now?” he snarled.

  “Better me than a Fleet doc. We’ll get good and drunk tonight. Kill some brain cells. Best therapy there is.”

  Bull turned to look toward the bodies strapped to the deck, his eyes unfocused. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”

  “It is well that war is so terrible, else we would grow fond of it.”

  “More of your American quotes?”

  “From one of our best. A guy called Robert E. Lee.”

  “I’ve heard of him. He lost.”

  Reaper shrugged. “Losses teach you more than wins.”

  “Guess I have a lot to learn.” Bull turned back to look her in the eyes. “I’m willing to listen if you’re willing to teach.”