Bull ben Tauros received the attack order via the HUD on his upgraded Avenger battlesuit. As the commander of all Marines in the task force, he had extra comm channels as well as a direct link to Conquest’s AI. This latter sometimes made it seem as if Michelle shared his head, despite assurance from the cyberware team that she couldn’t actually read his thoughts.
What she could do was monitor his biometrics, anticipating his needs and orders based on past actions, and he shrugged internally. A commander didn’t have the luxury of turning down systems that increased battlefield effectiveness just because they made him personally uncomfortable.
Bull keyed the general brigade push and said to his battalion commanders scattered across the task force, “Ladies and gentlemen, prep your people and stand by for exo. Take your orders from your ship chains of command. Contact me if you need to, but only you know what you need for your own fights, so ask forgiveness, not permission. Acknowledge.”
One by one, twenty-four green icons lit, and he switched freqs to address only the five battalion commanders aboard Conquest. “All right, Marines. I see from my feed that the old girl has a rash on her skin, and we’re the cure. The flyboys are trying to use the drones to blast the enemy off, but they’re causing incidental damage from missed shots, so we’re gonna need to do the detail work. Get your people to the egress points and ready to go exo.”
Once he’d received acknowledgements, Bull closed the channel and spoke to Michelle. “Warbots up and ready?”
“Yes, Brigadier. They will precede the Marines out onto the hull.”
Bull ran his eyes over his HUD, changing its display to get a picture of the battle for Conquest’s skin. “Looks like the damage is spreading.”
“I estimate you will need to attack in four minutes sixteen seconds.”
“Why not go now?”
“Egressing at the calculated optimum time will reduce casualties by approximately eight percent.”
“That’s four hundred Marines. Will going now kill the enemy faster?”
“Yes,” Michelle said reluctantly. “By approximately half of one percent. But ship acceleration must be reduced as well, which impacts the greater battle.”
“That half percent may be the difference between success and failure.”
“So might four hundred casualties.”
“Most of those will survive and heal. The rest can’t be helped. I want to get out there as soon as possible. Put me through to Scoggins.”
“Yes, Brigadier.”
Bull waited.
“There is a delay reaching the captain.”
Bull snorted. “A delay I think you’re causing, Commander. On my own say-so, then, we’re going in thirty seconds, with or without explicit approval. That’s an order. If you want me to wait, you can put me through to someone with the authority to countermand me. Otherwise, open the damn egress doors.”
Silence was all he heard for tens of seconds, and he began moving toward the nearest assault airlock to override it personally if necessary, when finally a voice came on.
“Absen here. What is it, Bull?”
“I’m trying to get my forces out to clear the hull, sir, but your damned pet AI is slow-rolling me because she’s afraid of the casualty count.”
“Thanks. Michelle, do as my commander of Marines says and stop second-guessing him.”
“Egressing now will limit the ship’s ability to maneuver,” said Michelle.
“We won’t be maneuvering for a while. Do it.” Absen’s voice was firm.
“Yes, sir,” came Michelle’s voice, a bit sulky, Bull thought. “Opening egress locks.”
Bull closed the channel and checked his chrono. Almost three minutes had passed, so it looked like the AI had gotten most of what she’d wanted anyway. He watched in 3D as the icons representing his battlesuited troops streamed up the egress tunnels Conquest had opened within her armor, and then out the airlocks.
Spidery warbots exited first, creating perimeters to guard the Marines as they deployed. Flashes within his HUD, indicating weapons discharge, appeared and disappeared intermittently before the units began moving to stamp out the landed Scourges. Above them, fighter drones withdrew from close aerospace support, turning instead to engage approaching assault craft.
Glad that Repeth had returned from her detached assignment with the Stewards in time for the battle, Bull turned to her and said, “Let’s go, Reap.”
“I won’t bother arguing with you, Bull, but try to remember you’re commanding a brigade, not a company.”
“Leading from the rear is an oxymoron,” he replied.
“You’re the oxymoron if you get yourself killed because you can’t resist the urge to shoot something. If you didn’t want to be a general officer, you should have turned down the promotion.” Repeth grabbed Gunderson and turned him toward the tunnel’s mouth where the warbots waited. “Swede, open her up, textbook deployment. If you let this oversized idiot get scragged, you’re next. Got me?”
“Sure, boss,” the Scandinavian answered. “All right, you diggers, you heard the SMAJ. Anyone who lets the Brigadier get killed might as well defect to the Scourges, because you’ll get more mercy from them than you will from me. Conquest, open the doors!”
The thick clamshell above them opened and the platoon of warbots scampered up and out like the insects they resembled. Squads of Marines followed, hugging the edge of the circular hatch as they exited, spreading out to hunker down on the hull.
Right now, Conquest’s continuing acceleration pressed them down. Bull clambered out after his troops had secured a perimeter and was glad of his magnetics as the apparent slope of the hull threatened to send him sliding. Around him, laser turrets pointed at the sky, twitching this way and that at machine speed to vomit silent energies, reaching to destroy the enemy above.
Bull’s HUD told him he was experiencing at least five Gs, which was far less than Conquest was capable of, and he felt a brief flash of sympathy for the AI. He knew she and the command staff had to balance every tradeoff in combat. Marines on the hull meant the ship couldn’t maneuver violently, but letting the damned Scourges roam free, destroying the vital point defense lasers, wasn’t an option.
In the future, he knew, more antipersonnel guns would be added to the ship’s surface, and more warbots and Marines would be stationed aboard, but for now, five reinforced battalions was what he had.
Bull switched to the general push and said, “We sweep upslope toward the prow first. They’ll be forced to bunch up and be easier to kill. Each battalion, put half your warbots on the flanks to maintain contact with friendly forces and have them cover the edges of the facets where you can’t see.”
“We’re already engaging a strong force in sector six bravo, sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Bryson’s voice replied. “Could use some help.”
Bull checked his tactical picture and saw a mass of Scourges piling into First Battalion. Their lines looked to be holding, but the sooner they finished off the enemy the sooner they could proceed. “Curtin, Miller, advance and turn to strike the enemy’s flanks. Once you’ve finished them off, resume the attack toward the prow.”
Conquest’s elite Marines quickly put the enemy force into a vice, squeezed from three directions.
A human unit would have tried to withdraw from such a trap, but Scourge ground troops never seemed to retreat. Bull was happy to see only three Marine casualties so far, and no KIA. Conquest’s infirmaries and the troopers’ Eden Plague would have them back on their feet for the next battle.
Soon, five battalions ground methodically forward in a vast line that circled the hull. Marines and warbots pressed the Scourges into a smaller and smaller area as they were driven toward the prow of the ship where the six facets met.
“Speed up the advance,” Bull ordered. “Don’t give them time to damage the main weapons array.”
Scourge assault craft continued to land at random, sometimes among his troops. One crashed near him and he lifted his plasma rifle to pour sun-hot blue into the downed craft.
Each such assault boat carried a thousand Scourgelings and a hundred Soldiers, and despite the damage, scores of the critters began scurrying from the wreckage.
“Heavies!” Reaper yelled, but Chief Massimo was already directing the grounding of his semi-portable crew-served weapons, the holy trinity of missile launcher, railgun and laser. Each had a dedicated gunner and three assistants that loaded, carried and serviced the weapons.
With no recoil, the heavy laser was the first to fire as soon as its magnetic feet locked onto the hull. Sparkling orange as its otherwise invisible beam encountered and incinerated falling dust and debris, it lanced out and sliced a Soldier in half. Sweeping left and right, its gunner methodically cut down Scourges at close range.
The missile launcher fired next, throwing its heavy rocket at point-blank range to slam into the assault boat, blowing a quarter of it to flinders and incinerating dozens, possibly hundreds, of Scourgelings trapped in the explosion.
The heavy railgun finally got its four feet locked down, ensuring its tremendous recoil wouldn’t send it careening across the hull. A stream of one-gram bullets, accelerated to flesh-ripping velocity, joined the laser in playing across the disorganized mass of the enemy, tearing apart Soldiers and Scourgelings alike.
With two dozen line Marines and their pulse guns added to the mix, the bugs never had a chance. “That’s how we do it!” Bull roared as chitinous hunks rolled down the slope of Conquest’s armor, spraying ichor as they tumbled. Soon, no more enemy crawled from the wreckage of their assault craft, and the command section resumed its advance toward the prow.
Once the ship’s forward section had been cleared, Bull ordered, “All right, we sweep back down again, maximum safe speed.”
“Bull, this is Scoggins,” Conquest’s captain broke in. “You have one minute to get your people inside or lie on the hull. We have some violent maneuvers coming up.”
“Aye aye, Skipper,” Bull said. He immediately relayed those orders. “Organics in first,” he instructed. “Anyone stuck outside, flat on your backs, magnetics on full.”
“That’s gonna be us,” Reaper said from his elbow. “We’re too far from an airlock.”
Bull could see that was true. “Right. Circle up, hedgehog formation,” he told his command section. “On your backs and clamp onto the hull. I don’t know how bad it’s gonna get.” Following his own advice, he lay down and ramped up his magnetics, pinning him in place but putting him in the best position to resist acceleration.
Abruptly, he felt a violent wrench, and the universe spun around him as Conquest turned to face a new direction. Immediately, the rumble and compression of the ship’s main engines kicked in, squashing him with at least twenty-five gravities. If not for his cybernetics, Plague and nano, he’d have been dead within seconds, his ribcage crushed and his heart burst from the stress. Under this pressure, his body weighed five thousand kilos.
Even with his enhancements, he grayed out, eyeballs threatening to burst in his head. Pain flared all through his body, unrelieved by any drugs, as his suit had shut down all its own moving parts to preserve systems.
When the pressure dropped to three Gs, he punched up Captain Scoggins’ channel, a privilege of his position and rank. His voice sounded ragged even to him. “Skipper, that hurt. Any more jolts coming our way?”
“Not for a while, General. We’ve attritted the swarm enough to turn our asses to them and start extending again, but that also means they’ll be landing more easily. As soon as you can, please move around to the stern and keep it clear.”
“Roger, Skipper. Bull out.” He took a deep breath, feeling his suit stab him with painkillers.
Dialing up a stim, he rolled over with a groan and got to his feet. Switching to his senior warbot controller’s channel, he asked, “Butler, you there?”
“Here, boss,” Butler replied.
“Here, boss,” Flight Warrant Krebs broke in, his grin clear on the audio.
“Shut up, Krebs,” Bull and Butler said simultaneously.
“Butler,” Bull went on, “pass the word to the controllers. Send all warbots out on a general search-and-destroy to clear the forward facets of any stray Scourges. Once all Marines get back out on the hull, we’ll move to the stern.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Bull passed instructions to his battalion commanders, and then checked the casualty count. Contrary to Michelle’s pessimistic prediction, he noted only about two hundred Marines wounded, along with twenty dead, a very good number for everyone but that unlucky score of men and women.