21
“I heard that they’re hooking up drones with the shit, like old-fashioned crop-dusters,” Fyr said.
“Crop dusters? Why is it that everything we use against the tin-asses seems like old tech? First, rockets, now grenades and crop dusters?” Cricket asked.
“A Moray isn’t exactly old tech,” Tomiko pointed out.
“Shit. The Chinese had rockets three thousand years ago.”
“Not like a Moray.”
Cricket waved his hand in dismissal. Tomiko was right, however. The Moray might be a missile, but it was no more the same as a Chinese rocket than a blunderbuss was the same as the mag-ring M-49. But that didn’t mean Cricket had a point as well. With the viral bioweapon, Rev thought there had to be better ways to deploy it, ways that didn’t pose so much risk to the ground pounders.
The drones were something new, but at the moment, getting the virus to the Centaurs was the job of the infantry, Raiders, recon, combat engineers, and sappers—the first three with the grenades and the last two with boobytraps.
That meant that as they sat around the E-Club, Cricket, Yancey, Orpheus, Tomiko, and Rev were the pointy end of the spear, and Udu, Bundy, Ten, and Fyr were now supporting arms. Their places had been reversed.
“It’s not like we can fire the stuff with our meson cannons, Cricket,” Bundy said.
“But you’ve got real guns that can shoot shells,” Cricket said, not wanting to let it go.
Which was true. Each Marine tank had a 20 mm machine gun, and every tank battalion had a company of Rayburns, a smaller tank that fired 120 mm hypervelocity shells.
“The virus can’t take the impact velocity of the twenties. It breaks down their cellular walls,” Bundy said as if lecturing to a student who just didn’t understand the lesson.
“What about a Rayburn? That’s a hundred and twenty millimeters, and all we got with the grenades is forty. And what’s the range on that thing? Forty klicks?”
“If the virus won’t survive the impact of a twenty, then it can’t take a Rayburn’s hypervelocity shells, either. That’s why we’re looking at forty mike-mikes and drones.”
Cricket opened his mouth, but Udu put her hand on his arm and said, “Just let it go. This is what we’ve got now. More’s probably coming down the pike at some point in time.”
Cricket scowled, but he wasn’t going to argue with his fiancée. He looked at Rev’s half-drunk beer instead. “You going to finish that?”
Rev pushed it across the table. Restricted to base and on an eight-hour tether, Marines were allowed one alcoholic drink per day. With only one drink, it was barely worth the effort to him.
“I did hear one thing,” Ten said in a quiet voice.
All eyes swiveled to her. Ten was the quietest one of them, but when she had something to say, it was usually worth listening to.
“Word is that on Lleitletter, the Frisians aren’t deploying the virus.”
Lleitletter was one of the major Frisian worlds, and they were in a major battle with the Centaurs at the moment.
“Too late to get it there?” Fyr asked.
Ten looked around to see who might be listening before she said, “No. They’re afraid of contaminating the planet.”
That silenced the table.
“But they said it isn’t dangerous to Earth-based life. I mean, with long-term stuff,” Tomiko said.
“Yeah, they said that. But if that’s true, then why wouldn’t the Fries use the virus on Lleitletter?” Cricket asked.
Cricket could be somewhat of a conspiracy theorist at times, but Rev had the same question.
The virus was being heralded as a Union development, and knowing about the Centaur he and Tomiko had found, Rev could accept that. But as the war went beyond the Union, the weapon had been distributed to other nations. The Frisians probably didn’t have much on hand yet. Labs were supposedly ramping up to create greater amounts of the bio-ordnance, but even within the Union, only select units had been armed with it so far.
Even considering, however, that they might have limited amounts, why wouldn’t they use it on Lleitletter? Were they willing to let more of their citizens die and rely on other nations to try and get the virus into the Centaur population?
Damn. I’m sounding like Cricket now.
But then there was two days ago. The Centaurs had hit Eveready, a densely populated Union world. The New Hope Marines had expected to be deployed, but they were still sitting on alert status.
There could be lots of reasons for that. There might not be the spacelift necessary to move them. There were other Marine units closer. There could be another virus-armed unit being sent in. They could get the call in ten minutes that they were going after all.
But with Ten’s news, if it was true and not just another baseless rumor, Rev had to wonder if there was something more to it. Was the virus more dangerous than admitted? Did the powers that be not want to somehow ruin the major worlds, even at the cost of more normal destruction and death?
If that was the case, then just when and how would they be deployed? And how would that affect them as the ones spreading the virus?
No one said a word as it sunk in. It wasn’t that there was a lack of trust as to the intentions of the Council . . .
Who am I kidding? Of course, there’s a lack of trust.
“Crap,” Bundy said, breaking the silence. “I wish they’d let us have another beer.”