20
It was a sober crew and passengers that entered orbit above New Hope. Rev, along with most of the Marines, had a hard time coming to grips with what had just happened. All of them had been prepared for the rigors of battle, for knowing that they could and probably would lose comrades in arms, but not like this. Not even reaching the site of the fight, yet losing so many.
Marines had been defeated before. Rev’s first fight on Preacher Rolls had been a horrendous loss, with two regiments almost wiped out. But they’d been active participants in that fight. This time, no Marine in the relief force had fired a shot in anger, yet they’d paid the ultimate price.
Rev mourned them all. These were people he knew, people with whom he’d shared a beer. And with Wheng, he’d lost a protégé, someone about whom he’d had such high hopes.
Master Gunnery Sergeant Tuala formed them up on the tarmac after the shuttle dropped them off. “Everyone, once we get back to the barracks, no one leaves. No one calls home. You’re under a strict blackout until we get some guidance.”
“And so, the cover-up begins,” Hussein muttered.
The master guns wheeled on him. “We lost Marines out there. You want their families to find out through the rumor mill, Hussein?”
“No. I just meant—”
“I know what you meant. But we go by our SOP. Families need to be notified properly. And, when all is said and done, if the top brass feels we do need to cover up, then we’ll fucking well cover up what happened. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Master Guns,” Hussein stammered out.
Rev had been thinking the same thing, and now he was glad he hadn’t voiced that. He still avoided the team leader’s eyes as he boarded the hoverbus that had been locked on to take them back.
The ride back was eerie. Rev didn’t know if they had purposely been returned at night, but the camp was quiet as if it were abandoned. It wouldn’t last, he knew. The Centaurs were still out there, and wherever the enemy was, the Marines were sure to be sent.
* * *
Rev was right. The quiet didn’t last. Within a day, the rest of the surviving deployed forces had returned, and there was a new and revitalized sense of determination. Training was increased as recruits were rushed through boot. The rumors were back that the Union was considering instituting a draft for the first time in its existence. That would take a change to the Charter, but it was quite obvious that relying on volunteers and criminal conscripts wasn’t going to replenish the ranks fast enough to keep the Navy and Marine Corps at fighting strength.
A week after their return, the news hit that Beacon was classified as lost. One of the charter members of the Union, with nineteen billion souls, was gone. Rev hoped that there were large numbers of citizens who had managed to escape into whatever the planet boasted as wilderness, but for the time being, Beacon was no longer a military objective. It was a psychological blow, but the right strategic decision. With the other nations fighting in their territory, the Union had to marshal its forces to fight where they could have the biggest impact.
The question of where and when they were to be deployed next was a major topic of conversation and conjecture.
“It will be Earth and Titan. Mark my words,” Hussein said.
“They haven’t been close to the home system yet,” Tomiko countered.
“They hadn’t been close to Mistake or Beacon, either.”
“Fair enough. But Beacon didn’t have the combined might of all the different navies protecting it, either. What do you think, Rev?”
Rev thought that Hussein might be right. The Centaurs were popping up all around human space in a pattern only known to them, but several key planets had been lost. The human navies hadn’t had much luck in turning them back. If they wanted a moral and emotional blow that could shatter the human alliance, taking away the Mother would be a sound strategic move.
Even the thought made Rev shudder. He’d never been to Earth, of course, and he never expected to be that lucky. But the Mother was embedded in the human psyche—she was what bound them together.
“We don’t know where they’ll hit next. All we know is where they are now, and that’s bad enough.”
Tomiko gave him a frown, probably upset that he hadn’t supported her. But he knew he was right. In the Union alone, five planets had been taken or were about to fall, and Trainor Station had been destroyed with all hands lost. Across human space, the Centaur targets on this push reached past hundred and counting.
“So, what about us? Where will we go?” Tomiko asked.
“Nowhere. I mean, nowhere currently being attacked.”
“Not even Toriyama?” Strap asked.
“It’s already lost. They just don’t know it yet, Mother be with them. By the time we can load out and get there, it’ll be over. No, the tin-asses aren’t done with us, and the next planet they hit, that’ll be our destination. So, be ready for an immediate loadout, because when it comes, it’ll be short-fused.”
“Rev’s right. That’s why we’re restricted to base and have our tethers,” Nix said. “So, for now, concentrate on our training. Treat every hour as if it’s our last before we ship out, because that’s what it might very well be.
* * *
All eyes of the platoon were on the master sergeant as he opened the white case, the same one or a twin to the one that had been loaded onto the shuttle taking them up to the LaSalle. He picked up one of the grenades. The body looked identical to the normal 40mm grenades but white with a red circle and 93 on the side.
He held it high so everyone could clearly see it. “Marines, this is the MG(B)-93 Forty-millimeter Rifle Grenade. This will now be your primary weapon against the tin-asses.”
“That’s not going to punch through a paladin’s armor,” Gunny Okafor, who’d taken over Second Team when Top Thapa switched to First, said.
The master sergeant glared at the bunny and said, “Please hold your questions until after I’m done.
It wasn’t a question.
But Rev was pretty sure that this wasn’t some super-duper shape charge. That briefing they had what seemed like a decade ago had been about bioweapons. Given the color and the biohazard symbol on the side of the case, and given their testing at the range before, he was pretty sure that grenade contained a biological agent of some sort.
“Now, as I was saying. This will be your primary weapon against the tin-asses. the “B” in the designation stands for “biological.” Think of this as a delayed-action weapon, and your job will be to get this little gem close to the tin-asses.
It’s not going to kill your target right away. Maybe not for a week or more, in fact.”
“Uh . . . Master Sergeant Thanh. We are to deploy this weapon, but it won’t kill the tin-asses until later?” Captain Omestori asked.
Just what I was wondering.
The master sergeant might have wanted to wait until later for questions, but he couldn’t ignore a captain.
“I was going to get to that after I showed you how to operate it, but I’ll skip to that part.”
He probably meant it as a SNCO to officer put-down, but Rev knew the captain didn’t care. He just wanted an answer to the question he knew every other Raider wanted to ask.
“This weapon was not designed as a tactical weapon. It probably couldn’t be given what we had to work with. From what I’ve been told, given super incubation prowess, death could occur within twenty-to-thirty minutes. Not quick enough to make an immediate impact on the battlefield. So, it was reengineered with a longer incubation period. We’re not trying to kill that paladin or riever. We’re trying to make that paladin a weapon, one who will go back and infect others.”
He paused for a moment to let that sink in.
“If we can make it into a pandemic, we think that we can turn the course of the war. Indications are that they are not a numerous race.”
“A shitload of them are hitting us all over the galaxy right now,” Gunny Okafor blurted out.
“Back in World War II, in the Twentieth Century, the Germans were able to mass a huge attack during the Battle of the Bulge despite their armed forces being seriously depleted.”
The Germans didn’t lose that battle because of a lack of soldiers,” the captain said. “They lost because they couldn’t project their logistical train far enough to support the combat troops.”
The HQ master sergeant frowned and said, “OK, I’m not a history buff. That was just the example I was given in case that question was asked. But whatever happened in history, Intel doesn’t think there are huge numbers of tin-asses in existence. And they think we’ve got the potential to cripple them, or at least their military, right here.”
He held up the grenade once more.
“A forty-mike-mike grenade? With all our armor, mech, air, Navy, you’re telling us it’s a piece of infantry ordnance that’s our holy grail?” Master Gunnery Sergeant Tuala asked.
“Master Guns ain’t buying it,” Tomiko whispered.
Rev ignored her. He wanted to hear the response.
“Not just the grenade. But what’s in it. We’re modifying several munitions to deliver the virus. This is just the first. More will hit the fleet within a couple of weeks.”
Something was bothering Rev. He’d been fine with letting the captain and the senior SNCOs ask the questions, but it was obvious that the HQ master sergeant’s carefully prepared brief was out the window.
“Master Sergeant, don’t the paladins, coursers, and rievers have filters on their armor. Our tanks and mech do. Wouldn’t they?” he asked.
“Probably. But I’ve been using the term virus because I need a name. To be more precise, what is in this grenade are modified alien virus analogs, and they’re even smaller than our viruses. The originals were recovered, to the best of my knowledge, inside tin-ass armor.”
There were more murmurs at that. After the accusations from the Frisians, and now with that comment, Rev wondered how many of his fellow Raiders suspected by now that the Union had Centaur bodies.
“So, the hope is that while they probably have some sort of filtration system, our little killers will slip through. But if not, they’ve been designed to clump together on any surface, like the outside of a paladin. The tin-ass crawls out, and voilá. It’s infected.”
“So, this grand plan of yours is that we line up, fire a bunch of grenades, then sit back and wait for them to carry the infection home?” the captain asked.
“All of this will be in the SOP that you should be getting within the day, Captain. But to cut to the chase, you will still be using standard grenades. You’ll be using Morays. Tanks and mech will be trying to kill tin-asses. These grenades will be interspersed, hidden among the others, in effect. Together with what the sappers emplace, they’ll hopefully not be noticed as anything different in the attack. Just one more ineffectual human weapon.
“If you kill some tin-asses, all the better. But don’t wipe them out. The best situation would be for them to pull chocks and abandon the planet. But you retreating would still work. Let them think they’ve won.”
A bunch of hands shot up, the master sergeant said, “I’m not a grunt, and I’m the wrong person to ask about details. Captain, like I said, you’ll be getting all of that soon. All I’m here is to run this fam fire. So, if I can, let me go over this with you.”
He held the grenade up for the third time. “The MG(B)-93 Forty-millimeter Rifle Grenade is fired essentially like any other forty mike-mike grenade. However, unlike those, this one must be armed. At the moment, the virus capsule is isolated from the outside world for safety reasons. Before you fire the grenade, you have to arm it, which means releasing the virus into the warhead.
“You do that like this.” He mimed twisting the warhead around the body. “And that’s it. You can now load and fire the round like any other. But, if, for some reason, you do not fire, then do not take the round back to a ship or other enclosed space. You will be given a disposal bag. Seal it inside, bury it, and record the coordinates.
“Don’t take it inside a ship? So that leads me to ask how dangerous is it? To us, I mean.” Tomiko asked.
“Fair question. And the answer is we don’t know.”
There were some rumbles at that.
“I mean, we don’t know the long-term effects. You will be given nose filters, and the amounts you may be exposed to out in the open should be minimal enough not to be fatal or to cause serious injury.”
There were more mumbles, louder this time, and Master Gunnery Sergeant Tuala shouted out, “At ease!”
Captain Omestori asked, “You didn’t answer the question, Top. How dangerous is this to us?”
The master sergeant sighed, then said, “Honestly, we don’t know. Getting the liquid on you is probably going to mess you up. Breathing in the droplets, the same thing. But from all the models we’ve run, for humans, the effect is immediate, but not on a chronic level.”
“Top, I think you might need to explain that to everyone,” Doc Paul said.
“OK, this is how it was explained to me. Think of it like fire. If you touch it, it burns, right? And that can even kill you. But if you survive the burn, it isn’t going to stick with you and continue to get worse.”
But the captain wasn’t done. “You’ve said models. I take it this stuff hasn’t been tested on humans?” The master sergeant shook his head. “And you know we’ve all been augmented, right? And we’re susceptible to the rot. Has that been modeled?”
The master sergeant shook his head. “I really don’t know, sir. I didn’t have anything to do with the development. I’m just the guy tasked with bringing these to you.”
“Look, Top. We’re Marines, and we’re not going to shirk our duties. The situation is dire, and we’ll do everything in our power to help turn back the tide. But I think we deserve the true scoop, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
“OK, then. We’ll go through this fam fire with you now, but I want you to get back in touch with your bosses and find out the answers to our questions.”
“Aye-aye, sir. I’ll make sure I get some answers for you.”
The captain stood and turned around to face the platoon. “Then let’s hold further questions until Master Sergeant Thanh can get back to us. Let’s do this fam fire and get back. We’ve still got the P303 training to get through today.”
The top nodded in relief and motioned for the rest of the contact team to come forward. Several jogged 500 meters downrange where an old hulk was set up at the target. Four large rectangular objects had been placed around it. The Marines turned them on, and it became obvious that these were giant filters, sucking in air from around the target.
“That makes me feel confident,” Tomiko said as they waited in the line to get full-hood gas masks, not the promised nose filters.
While the contact team Marines jogged back, the team put on the hoods and sat back down in the bleachers. After they got back, the Range NCOIC called the range hot and then called for the first team to approach the firing line.
“First Team, we’re up,” Top Thapa said.
They lined up by the grenade case. Top was first. Under the watchful eyes of the HQ master sergeant, he twisted the grenade live, fed it into his launcher, and stepped up to the firing line. He fired, the grenade launching out in an arc, coming down to hit the target with a puff of mist. There were a few cheers as he cleared his weapon, turned around, and made a dramatic bow to the rest of the Marines.
The target was smaller than a paladin, so it would have been a direct hit unless the Centaur blasted the thing out of the air. But if the HQ master sergeant was right, that really didn’t matter much. The closer, the better, but as long as any of the virus reached the vehicle, there was a good chance that it would eventually infect a Centaur.
If they were really vulnerable.
If the vehicles didn’t go through decontamination procedures before the Centaurs exited their armor.
If they didn’t have the medical foresight to run bio scans that could detect the viruses and then eliminate them.
If there weren’t a hundred other ways this effort could go wrong.
But the Marines had to trust the system to work. Otherwise, it was all a waste of time and effort.
One by one, the Marines armed and fired a single grenade. Some of the Marines were better shots than others, hitting on or near the target. Others, like Gizzy Incrit-Kole, were way off, her grenade landing outside of the safety air filters, the rest of the Marines hooting at her effort.
Private Harisa’s shot was dead on, and she received subdued applause. She was still an anomaly within her team, and Rev didn’t think they knew how to react to her. Rev still thought that if she was going to be returned to the Raiders, it should have been with Second Platoon out of Camp Kamachi.
And then it was Third Team’s turn. With the master guns dual-hatted as the team leader, the Marines of First and Second Teams were going to watch their shots closely.
Rev checked his M-49. He hadn’t fired it lately, and he hadn’t fired one with a grenade launcher attached since boot camp, so he was slightly nervous. He wanted to nail the target. Nothing else would do.
The master guns said he’d go last, so Rev watched Nix, Hussein, and Badem fire before it was his turn. He stepped up to receive his grenade when the sergeant handing them out asked, “You Pelletier?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t get one.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because you’re not on the list.”
Rev turned around in confusion and called out to the master guns. “He says I don’t get to fire.”
The team leader walked up to the sergeant. “What’s going on here?”
“The top told me Corporal Pelletier doesn’t fire.” He took a step to his left and called, “Top, can you come here for a moment?”
The HQ master sergeant stepped off the firing line and approached.
“This is Corporal Pelletier, and the master gunnery sergeant wants to know why he’s not firing.”
“You haven’t been briefed yet?” the master sergeant asked.
“You just briefed me,” Rev said.
“I mean, because of, you know . . .” he said, pointing at Rev’s social arm.
Captain Omestori noticed the conversation and started over to see what was up.
“I won’t be using this in combat,” Rev said, holding the arm higher.
“Yeah, that’s the point, Corporal. Your mission isn’t going to be to infect tin-asses.”
“I don’t understand, Top. Then what is my mission?”
The master sergeant looked at the team leader and platoon commander, a worried look in his eyes before he turned back to Rev.
“Well, it’s like this. You’ve got to attack the tin-ass with enough force for it to think it’s real and focus its attention on you so the others can get a ninety-three in close enough to do some good.
“You’re the decoy.”