David Sherman & Dan Cragg - Starfist 08 - Kingdom's Fury

PROLOGUE

Almost loud enough to drown out the crash of thunder in the middle distance, the

raindrops spattered on the leaves. They slid and rolled down twigs, aggregated into

dribbles and flowed into runnels, some of which reached major branches and flowed

to tree trunks, where they sluiced to the ground below. Or they fell onto the heads,

shoulders, and backs of Fighters who slip-walked stealthily through the sodden

forest. The Fighters didn't mind the rain; they were genetically accustomed to being

wet. Now and again one of them got so wet that the gill slits on his sides opened to

extract life-giving oxygen from the water.

This, the Fighters minded. There wasn't enough water running over their bodies

for their gills to function properly, and their lungs cut off when the gills began

working.

The Leaders and Masters with the Fighters wore coverings over their gill slits so

rainwater couldn't tease the slits open. But the receptors that lined their sides were

exposed on all the aliens, so they easily sensed the listening posts the defenders of

Haven had established.

In columns of twenty Fighters each, each column headed by a Leader, four

hundred Fighters penetrated the outer line of listening posts. A Master followed

every fourth column, and an Over Master was in overall command. The Over Master

didn't expect to have much to do on this raid. It was well-planned, and he had drilled

his Masters thoroughly. Their first task was to assemble the columns of fighters

behind the line of listening posts, in front of a section manned by the regiment of the

Army of the Lord that was led by Earthman Marines newly arrived on the mudball

they called Kingdom. The Great Master in command of the Kingdom operation

sought to instill fear in the newly arrived Marines. The Army of the Lord was already

terrified. The Earthman Marines who had been fighting for months were sorely

wounded, with many casualties, and their morale suffered.

The Over Master listened with satisfaction to the splash and thunder of the storm;

so much noise totally masked the sounds made by his Fighters.

"Acting Colonel Deacon, sir?" Second Acolyte Burningbush, assistant intelligence

officer for the 842nd Defense Garrison, stood in the doorway of the garrison's

situation room. He darted an apologetic glance at Colonel Deacon Hosanna, the

proper commander of the garrison.

"Come." Ensign Wolfe, commander of the second platoon, Company B, 26th

Fleet Initial Strike Team, Confederation Marine Corps, didn't look up from the

situation reports he was reviewing with the officer whose command he held.

"Sir, the LPs are reporting anomalies." Burningbush hesitantly held out a thin sheaf

of papers, not sure whether to give them to his real commander or to the infidel

usurper.

Hosanna's face was expressionless as he inclined his head, meaning Burningbush

was to give the papers to Wolfe.

"What kind of anomalies?" Wolfe muttered as he took the papers. He skimmed

them quickly, then read again more slowly. "Full alert," he said halfway through. "All

hands. Everybody awake and in fighting positions."

"Why?" Hosanna demanded. "Don't you know what this is?" He read the papers

over Wolfe's shoulder. He saw the anomalies, small figures moving toward the city,

and assumed they were lizard- or small mammal-like animals moving to higher

ground from flooded-out burrows, and he said as much.

"Colonel Deacon, have you ever seen the recordings of the traces made by those

creatures?" Wolfe replied, looking at the Kingdomite commander.

Hosanna blinked. Of course he'd seen the electronic signs of migrating animals.

"I have. It was part of the orientation for all officers and noncommissioned

officers of 26th FIST when we first arrived. The Skinks have a lower body

temperature than humans, they give infra signals just like smaller animals." He looked

directly at Second Acolyte Burningbush. "Why haven't you passed the order yet?

Do it. Now!"

The junior Kingdomite officer jumped at the shouted word. He cast a fearful

glance at his rightful commander as he darted out of the room.

"You may be right," Wolfe said harshly to Hosanna, "but I'd rather be

embarrassed by ordering a full alert over a lemming run than be caught sleeping by a

Skink attack."

"As you wish," Hosanna said, his face expressionless.

"If I'm right, I hope your men know how to fight," Wolfe growled. He checked to

see that he had a fresh power pack in his sidearm as he strode from the situation

room to the command center.

Alone, Hosanna allowed an expression to fix on his face. It was a combination of

hatred and fury. Archbishop General Lambsblood had a great deal to answer for,

putting the off-world infidel junior officers and swords in command of units of the

Army of the Lord over more senior officers, officers pure in their faithfulness.

The Over Master transmitted a halt command to the Masters, the Masters relayed

the command to the Leaders, the Leaders, in turn, halted the advance of the Fighters

and moved them out of ragged columns into a staggered line facing the defensive

positions.

The Fighters couldn't see the positions, and the receptors on their sides could not

pinpoint the bunker locations; they weren't close enough. But they knew there were

many camouflaged a short distance ahead because their Leaders had told them they

would form on line when they were just out of firing range.

On command, the Fighters lowered themselves to the ground, elevated the nozzles

of their weapons enough to keep them from getting clogged by anything on the

ground, and began slithering forward through the muck. Very soon the largest

bunkers became visible, hulking black-on-black out of the stygian darkness. After

the Fighters entered their weapons' most extreme range, their side receptors began to

detect minute electrical impulses radiating from the bunkers.

Suddenly, their receptors overloaded by massive electric discharges all along the

defensive line, the Fighters were disoriented. Lights as brilliant as a small sun lit them

up. Then surprised shouts came from the bunkers, followed quickly by fléchette fire

studded with plasma bolts from the blasters of the few Confederation Marines

positioned among the soldiers of the Army of the Lord.

The Over Master shrieked orders, Masters shrilled them in turn, Leaders screamed

them out. The Fighters damped their receptors and regained equilibrium. They

pointed the nozzles of their weapons at bunker apertures and fired. Many streams of

a viscous, greenish fluid spattered harmlessly against bunker walls, but some

disappeared though the apertures. Agonized cries echoed out. But attackers were

quickly being shredded by fléchettes or flashed into vapor as the Fighters wriggled

deeper into the mud and returned fire.

The Over Master transmitted an order; a half-dozen Large Ones on the right flank

rose to their feet and charged a silenced bunker. One flashed into vapor when a

plasma bolt grazed his shoulder. The flame that flared from him ignited a Large One

who ran by too close. The other four made it past safely and ran around the bunker

to its rear. They peeled off, two to one side, two to the other, and headed for the

rear of those bunkers that still fought. One pair was quickly pulped by long bursts

from fléchette machine guns in the second line of bunkers. The other pair made it

into the entry tunnel of a bunker. They burst into the bunker room behind the

soldiers firing through the apertures.

As he heard trampling behind him, a Marine spun around, brought his blaster to

bear, squeezing the firing lever when he saw the color of the huge figures. The nearer

one flashed up, but as fast as the Marine was, he wasn't fast enough. The nearer

Large One had been swinging a sword at him even as the Marine spun about. After

the Large One flared up and ignited its partner in the closed space, the sword

completed its arc, chopping deeply into the Marine's neck. The heat from the two

flaring Large Ones singed the defenders, sucked the oxygen from the air, and

immediately burned their lungs.

As more of the defenders obeyed the commands of the Marines and opened up

on the attackers, the rate of fire from the bunkers increased despite those no longer

in the fight. The fire from the attackers slowly ebbed as their numbers dwindled

under murderous fire from the bunkers.

On the attackers' left flank a Fighter with a genetic defect that afforded him more

intelligence than Fighters were bred for realized that he and his mates would all be

killed if something wasn't done about the lights. He understood that the Earthmen

needed instruments to detect them when they couldn't see. It was time for him to

take a risk. He raised his head and shoulders high enough to allow him to aim

carefully, then fired a deliberate spray into the aperture of the bunker almost directly

in front of him. Screams immediately came from the bunker, and fire ceased. He

sprayed another, longer stream. The screaming stopped.

Pleased, the Fighter slithered to where he'd last known his Leader to be and came

upon his body. He rooted through the Leader's belt pouches, found what he was

looking for, stuck it into the waistband of his loincloth, and returned to his position.

"Fighters, to me!" he called out, his voice a raspy gargle.

Fighters to his left and his right looked at him uncertainly. He was a Fighter like

them, not a Leader. But their Leader was dead, along with half of their mates. And

this Fighter did call to them in the voice of a Leader. So, uncertain or not, they

edged closer to him to hear and obey his next order.

"With me!" the Fighter shouted when he saw seven Fighters ready to follow him.

"Between the two dead bunkers. Now!"

He leaped to his feet and sprinted forward. Seven Fighters ran with him. Fléchette

fire took down one. He skidded to a stop with his back against the nearer bunker,

next to the aperture, and signaled one of the other Fighters to do the same at the

other dead bunker. When that Fighter was in place, the Fighter who had taken charge

signaled again and waited until he saw him spraying acid into the bunker. Then he

stuck the nozzle of his own weapon through the aperture of his bunker and sprayed

from side to side.

Satisfied that they'd truly killed anybody who might have been left alive, he

signaled his remaining Fighters to lower themselves to the ground and spread out in

the space between the dead bunkers. The low humps that were the second line of

bunkers were just out of range. More important, he could see that the lamps were

mounted on spindly towers between the two bunker lines.

He shouted, and the Fighters slithered forward until they were within range. He

shouted more orders, and his six remaining Fighters began spraying two by two at

three of the bunkers in the second line. He didn't fire with them; instead, he slithered

toward the nearest lamp tower.

Withering fire converged on the Fighters he left behind, but one second-line

bunker stopped firing, then another. No fire came near him, and soon he was in the

dark, below the outward-pointing cone of the lamp's light. He found a thick cable

lying on the ground, parallel to the line of lamp towers. Directly beneath the tower a

cable ran upward from the cable on the ground. Emanations from it tingled his

receptors. Slithering as low as he could, he followed the cable to the left until he

reached a junction that led toward the second bunker line. He briefly pondered the

situation, and decided it might be where to kill the lights. He backed off out of

splashback range, then sprayed toward where the cable lay. Almost immediately, the

changes in the discharges he sensed told him the acid was eating away the cable's

insulating covering.

Without further warning, lightning flashed and deafening thunder cracked. When

the Fighter who had taken charge could see again, the lamps were out. He smiled

grimly and slithered as fast as he could back to where he'd left his companions. One

of them was still alive, whimpering, one arm almost torn off. Hastily, he tore the

breechcloth from a Fighter corpse and wrapped it around the arm to stanch the flow

of life fluid.

"Go back," he ordered.

The wounded Fighter whimpered again, but crawled away.

The Fighter drew his dead close to each other, then got out the fire maker he'd

taken from his Leader's corpse and touched it to one of the dead Fighters. Jumping

up, he ran as fast as he could before the flare could catch him. Between the first two

bunkers, he paused to flash the Fighter who'd fallen there. By the time he got back to

his own position in the line, more flares were lighting the night. Masters and Leaders

ordered the flaring of the dead and the withdrawal. Moving quickly, the intelligent

Fighter flamed all the dead from his section, then joined the exodus. Three times

before the attack force was safe from pursuing fire, he had to stop again to flame

more of the newly dead.

The Over Master in command of the raid reported more than thirty bunkers killed,

at least six of which held Earthman Marines. He further reported more than 250

Fighters along with seven Leaders and two Masters died gloriously in the great

victory. He did not report the Fighter who assumed the role of a Leader. He didn't

know what to make of that; a Fighter assuming the role of a Leader was unheard of.

CHAPTER ONE

Captain Conorado, just returned from his court-martial on Earth, nodded when his

officers and senior noncommissioned officers finished bringing him up to date. "All

right. Mac," he said, addressing Lieutenant Rokmonov, the assault platoon

commander, "you take over third platoon. Wang," to Staff Sergeant Hyakowa,

acting platoon commander of third platoon, "you're back to platoon sergeant again.

Top," First Sergeant Myer, the company's top kick, "you've got the roster of

replacements. Let me know how you assign them. Some of your Marines are going

to move into billets above their rank. As soon as I have your new rosters, I'll pass

the names up to Battalion for promotion. And make sure Souavi gets those new

uniforms issued.

"In the meanwhile, 26th FIST is relieving us on the line. Tomorrow we begin

kicking some serious Skink ass!"

The officers aye aye'd and headed to their platoons. The platoon sergeants

followed the first sergeant to get their replacements and find out what the "new

uniforms" were about.

"Siddown," Myer growled when he and the platoon sergeants reached his desk.

They pulled up chairs and sat close. "Wang, remember that sample of acid third

platoon brought back from Society 437?"

Hyakowa nodded. "Yeah. That doctor we had with us thought it had a phosphoric

base with some sort of organic solvent."

"Well, someone at Headquarters, Marine Corps, came up with a good idea for a

change. They figured sooner or later Marines would run into the Skinks again and

we'd need some defense against that acid. They analyzed the hell out of that sample

until they knew what it was. Then they sent it to Aberdeen to develop an antidote and

a retardant." He shook his head. "They haven't managed to come up with an

antidote, so we're stuck with the old ways of dealing with the acid on flesh: small

doses are to be cut out of the flesh before they eat all the way through; larger

amounts will eat flesh and bone until they kill, unless you immediately amputate the

limb. If it's a trunk or deep head wound . . ." he paused, and shook his head again.

"Aberdeen did manage to develop a retardant, an impregnator for the chameleons. It

won't protect flesh, but it will stop the acid from eating its way through the

chameleons so a Marine wearing an impregnated uniform is protected."

"Does it really work?" Hyakowa asked. The other platoon sergeants had the same

question. Almost anyone with combat experience knew that more than half of the

"technological advances" or "improvements" in weapons or equipment didn't work

the way they were supposed to when they were subjected to the harsh realities of

combat.

Myer shrugged. "Who the hell knows? The retardant was tested against acid the

chemists at Aberdeen cooked up, but nobody knows if that acid is the exact same as

the Skinks'. We aren't going to know until a Marine wearing impregnated chameleons

gets hit by the real thing."

"What effect does it have on the chameleon effect?" one of the other platoon

sergeants asked.

Myer glared at him. He didn't like being asked questions he didn't have answers

for. "What'd I just say? The damn things haven't seen combat yet. But they claim it

has no effect, the chameleon effect still works." He shook his head. "Not that

chameleons seem to give a hell of a lot of protection against the Skinks. Maybe they

can see in the infrared like those bird-creatures on Avionia. Maybe they have some

other sense that allows them to sense us some other way."

"Whatever." Myer sat back and slapped a palm on his desktop to end the

discussion. "Twenty-sixth FIST brought an extra thousand sets of chameleons,

enough for everybody left in 34th FIST to get one, with some extras." He shook his

head sadly; he hated losing Marines. "We had more casualties than they realized.

Anyway, send people to Supply this afternoon, Sergeant Souavi will have them in

stock. Your people can pick up one for each of your Marines. The new men already

have theirs. Speaking of which—" He picked up a few slips of paper from his

desktop and handed them out. "—these are your new men. Don't spend them all in

one place, it's liable to be a long time before we get any more."

He took them outside to where the new men waited and called them out to join

their new platoon sergeants. Rokmonov was waiting for Hyakowa. As long as he'd

been with Company L, he was a new man too, with third platoon now.

The general mood in 34th FIST was, if not jubilant, at least relieved. After months

of combating an implacable enemy who was hellishly difficult to find, and suffering

the heaviest casualties most of them had ever experienced, they were finally

reinforced and had replacements for their losses. Not that the new men could fully

replace their dead. Close friendships had ended with the lost lives. Although new

friendships can grow just as close as old ones, the new friends can never truly

replace those lost.

The mood in Company L of 34th FIST's infantry battalion was perhaps higher

than anywhere else. Captain Conorado was back. Lieutenant Humphrey, the

company's executive officer, was well-liked and had filled in admirably during

Conorado's absence, but nearly everyone in the company had been through multiple

operations and deployments with Conorado. Nearly every man in Company L

trusted their company commander to a degree they trusted no other officer.

So it was a jocular third platoon that greeted its newcomers when they assembled

in the shell of a building that had been nearly demolished by the Skinks' antiarmor

weapon. The shell was a couple hundred meters inside the perimeter. Even though

they were surrounded by evidence of how far the Skink weapons could reach, just

being off the defensive line made them feel they were out of danger, at least for the

moment.

The men of third platoon took the assignment of Lieutenant Rokmonov as their

new commander with equanimity. If lost friends could never be fully replaced,

neither could their late platoon commander, Gunnery Sergeant Charlie Bass. But they

all knew Rokmonov. The grizzled officer had been a gunnery sergeant before he was

commissioned. If they didn't think he was going to be as good a platoon commander

as Charlie Bass had been, well, nobody was that good, but Rokmonov was

probably as good as they came. Like Charlie Bass, he'd been filling a platoon

commander's billet on a semipermanent basis. Rokmonov finally broke down and

accepted an ensign's silver orbs when 411th FIST, which he was then in, had a

sudden influx of company grade officers, one of whom got his platoon. He didn't

want to ever again lose his job to a man who had probably recently been junior to

him in rank—most Marine officers were sergeants or staff sergeants when they got

commissioned.

Third platoon didn't get enough replacements to fill all of its eight vacancies so

maybe Sergeant Bladon and Corporal Goudanis would return. For some men of

third platoon, the arrival of the new men was cause for celebration.

"Rat," Rokmonov said to Corporal Linsman, the acting second squad leader since

Sergeant Bladon was evacuated, "the paperwork goes in today to get you your

sergeant's stripes."

"Welcome aboard, Rat," Sergeant Ratliff said. He slapped Linsman's shoulder

with his left hand while flexing his right fist.

"Thanks, Rabbit." Linsman grinned, but cast a wary eye at Ratliff's fist. The

Confederation Marines still "pinned on the stripes," so every newly promoted man

was punched in the shoulder once for each chevron by any enlisted man who held

the same or higher rank.

"Way to go, Rat!" Corporal Dornhofer called out.

"Ya mean I got to call you ‘Sergeant’ now?" Corporal Pasquin cried.

The others added congratulations, even Corporal Kerr. Linsman was the second

corporal in the platoon to make sergeant who had been junior to Kerr when Kerr was

almost killed and had to spend nearly two years in recuperation.

"We need a new gun team leader," Rokmonov said when he thought the

congratulations had gone on long enough. "Taylor, you don't have to hump the gun

anymore, your new corporal's chevrons will be enough weight."

Lance Corporal Taylor grinned widely and happily accepted congratulations for

his promotion to gun team leader.

Rokmonov looked at Hyakowa and nodded for him to take over.

Hyakowa stepped forward and studied the platoon roster for a moment. "This is a

sad day for third platoon," he finally said. "We need two fire team leaders, but

nobody thought to give us experienced corporals." He shook his head morosely.

"What I'd really like to do is make Schultz a fire team leader, but we all know how

he'd react to that." Schultz was a career lance corporal; if anyone tried to promote

him, he'd turn it down—angrily and, some feared, violently. "As hard as it is to

believe, the only other lance corporals we have in the blaster squads are Claypoole

and Dean." He looked apologetically at Ratliff and Linsman. "I'm really sorry to have

to do this to you, but do you think you can manage if I give each of you one of them

as a fire team leader?"

Ratliff grinned wolfishly as he waited for the hooting and laughter to ebb slightly,

then said in a parade-ground voice, "Gimme Dean. I'll break him in or break him."

Dean's face was a flickering mix of joy and indignancy.

"What?" Linsman squawked. "You mean you're going to stick me with Clay—

Wait a minute. If Rabbit gets Claypoole, that means I get stuck with Dean." He

worked his face into a grandly overacted fury and shouted at Hyakowa, "Are you

trying to ruin my promotion?"

Claypoole first beamed, then shot a furiously offended look at Linsman, which set

off fresh gales of hoots and laughter.

Hyakowa looked at the second squad leader blandly and said in a calm voice,

"Corporal, soon to be Sergeant, Linsman, may I remind you that you are a Marine

noncommissioned officer? As such, you are supposed to do more with less than

anybody else in Human Space. And make it look easy. I fully expect you to take

Claypoole and turn him into just as good a fire team leader as . . . as . . ." He shook

his head again. "What am I saying? No, it's not possible to turn him into as good a

fire team leader as Kerr, or even Chan." He nodded sagely. "But you can turn him

into a reasonable facsimile."

Claypoole glared at Hyakowa; he didn't think that was funny.

"Rabbit," Hyakowa returned to Ratliff, "I have full confidence in your ability to

turn Dean into . . ." His eyes went distant and he shook his head again. "I'll talk to

the Top. Maybe I can get him to give us a corporal from one of the other platoons."

It was Dean's turn to glare and endure the hoots and laughs.

"As you were!" Rokmonov shouted after a moment. "We have some new

people." He nodded toward six Marines who stood slightly apart from the platoon

and hadn't joined in the laughter. "I'll let Staff Sergeant Hyakowa introduce them to

you while I give the promotion recommendations to the Skipper. Staff Sergeant, the

platoon is yours."

"Sir, the platoon is mine. Aye aye." Nobody bothered to call the platoon to

attention; they weren't even standing in formation. Not when at any instant they might

have to bolt back to fighting positions on the defensive perimeter. Hyakowa watched

Rokmonov head for the company command post, then turned back to the men.

"We have one new lance corporal, name of Zumwald." He gestured for the gangly,

redheaded new man to identify himself. "Lance Corporal Zumwald was in the

security company at Headquarters, Marine Corps, when he got pulled for this

assignment." He glanced at the roster. "So were PFCs Gray and Shoup." He looked

back at the platoon. "Don't let their ranks and latest assignments fool you. All of

these Marines have a couple of combat deployments with FISTs under their belts.

No cherries here. Rabbit, you've got those three. Put one in each fire team."

"Roger," Ratliff said, nodding. He crooked a finger at his three new men.

"I'm giving you Longfellow as well. Sorry about that," he added to Linsman.

"Good," Ratliff said. Longfellow hadn't been with the platoon long, but Ratliff had

seen enough to know he was a good Marine. Linsman merely shrugged at losing

Longfellow.

"Linsman, you get Little and Fisher."

"Right." Linsman waved his two new men over.

"Hound," Hyakowa said to Sergeant Kelly, the gun squad leader, "move your

a-gunners up. Sorry I only have one humper for you, but that's all they gave us. His

name's Tischler.

"One more piece of business," Hyakowa said when Tischler moved to the gun

squad. "We've got new uniforms coming. I want one man from each squad to go to

Supply to pick them up. They're chameleons that are supposed to be impervious to

the acid in the Skinks' shooters. From now on you will wear them." He looked at the

men to see if anyone had a pressing question. None seemed to.

"That is all," he finished. "Squad leaders, let me know how you reorganize your

squads."

The squad leaders took their men aside.

"Now I've got all my troublemakers together where I can keep an eye on you,"

Sergeant Ratliff said when he gave Godenov to Dean.

Linsman said the same thing when he assigned MacIlargie to Claypoole.

Claypoole's expression showed he was a bit put out. Not because he had

MacIlargie, whom he liked, but because he only had MacIlargie in his fire team.

Corporal Kerr didn't show it, but he wondered why he retained Schultz and

Corporal Doyle instead of getting a new man. Did Hyakowa and Rokmonov really

think Chan could do a better job of integrating two new men into the squad than he

could?

Nobody but the new men wondered why Corporal Doyle wasn't given a fire team.

Both as the more senior brigadier and as the man with the local experience,

Theodosius Sturgeon, commander of 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team, was in overall

command of planetside operations on the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and

Their Apostles, more commonly called "Kingdom." As such, he wanted to get 26th

FIST involved as quickly as possible and gave it patrol duty its second day

planetside. Brigadier Johannes Sparen, commander of 26th FIST, was relieved he

didn't have to ask Sturgeon to give his FIST a mission beyond the defensive

perimeter they were fed into as soon as they debarked from the Dragons that had

ferried them from the orbital shuttles.

"Jack, the Skinks may have an innocent sounding name," Sturgeon said, "but

they're exceptionally dangerous. They have horrible weapons, and they're

unpredictable. I want you to put out patrols in force tomorrow, platoon size. And I

want them in constant radio contact with Battalion. My staff is very familiar with the

situation here." The situation here on Kingdom was unlike any he'd been in before.

"Until you're familiar enough, I'll instruct my Infantry Two and Three shops to give

any assistance yours request. Just until your people are familiarized with the

situation. My infantrymen will relieve your platoons on the line before dawn

tomorrow so your people can get an early start."

"You're in command, Ted," Sparen said. His calm voice belied the excitement he

felt at getting into combat with an enemy alien sentience he'd only learned about on

his way to Kingdom.

"Do this thing, Brigadier."

"Aye aye, Brigadier!"

David Sherman & Dan Cragg - Starfist 08 - Kingdom's Fury

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