Manxome foe john Ringo &

26

"Main support frame cracked forward of missile compartment," the XO said. "Communications section destroyed. Science section destroyed. Marine berthing destroyed. Torpedo rooms destroyed. Sickbay vented temporarily, then they got a seal in place. Two injured killed by depressurization. Forty-seven casualties, nine WIA, the rest KIA. About the only areas that haven't taken a straight hit are Conn, Tactical and main Engineering. Oh, and your quarters survived the hits that got the torpedo room."

"Boo-yah," Spectre said. "And three destroyers toast."

"That leaves two more with the battlewagon," the XO pointed out. "And let us not forget the battlewagon. It has begun extremely long-range fire at the Hexosehr fleet."

"Let's hope they have some marginal maneuvering," the CO said. "I want to go in and hit its consorts. Come in from their flank and keep them between us and the battlewagon. Take them out one by one. Tactical, you got that?"

"Aye, aye, Conn," the TACO replied over the intercom.

"Set it up and get me a course," Spectre said, leaning back in his chair. "It's like a good luck thing. As long as my quarters make it, we're still in the fight."

"Aaaah," Red screamed as the medic slammed him onto the table.

"Plasma burn," the corpsman said, panting. He was still in his suit because once out of sickbay the whole ship was vented. "Right leg."

"What right leg?" Dr. Chet said, patiently. The machinist's leg was severed just below the knee and the flesh seared well above it. The knee was most effectively cooked by transmission from the sun hot plasma. The corpsman injected another morphine ampule through the machinist's suit as the doctor reached for a set of bone-saws that were still bloody from the last amputation. "At this rate we might as well replace his whole body with prosthetics."

Nonetheless he hummed as he brought down the laser scalpel. Say what you will about the pleasures of high-end neuroscience, there was nothing like a good amputation to make a surgeon's day.

The rhino had been looking directly at Berg, as if assessing the worthiness of him as a foe. So Berg had no choice but to shoot it on its massively armored front.

All of the rounds sparked off, naturally. The only possible target was one of the slit-narrowed eyes and the slits were actually narrower across than the size of the round. But they apparently had the desired effect. The rhino, without any directly noticeable action, seemed to focus on the suit of armor and lightning crackled between its horns. A ball of green fire started off as a pinpoint but swelled rapidly and Berg ducked back and to the side, hoping to avoid the fungus, hoping to survive, hoping to live to see Brooke again.

"Lyle, Move!" the first sergeant ordered as Berg ducked back. He was standing right behind the cannoneer and pushed him forward so that the two bounded into the corridor nearly side by side. For a brief moment they were the target of every thorn-thrower in the ranks ahead of them, then the world went white.

The explosion lifted Berg's heavy Wyvern armor and tossed it against the far wall like a child tossing a ball. It threw him right into the bulged out mass of Dreen-spread fungus, the dreaded scourge that still turned up on Earth. The only known Class Six Pathogen, it actively attempted to escape custody, generated enzymes and acids that worked at any containment, cut through Wyvern armor slowly but inexorably and was nearly impossible to eradicate. The primary method of eradication was fire, the red hot kind usually with gasoline and kerosene mixed with aluminum and lots of it.

So, in a way, Berg was in luck. Because when the plasma round hit the doorframe he'd been standing by, the temperature in the compartment raised several thousand degrees and crisped the fungus long before it could become a threat to his armor.

Of course, his internal temperature soared as well. He was slammed into a wall at thirty miles per hour, the room was roasting, the inside of his armor was literally the temperature of a baking oven, the fungus was fully engulfed and he was wreathed in flames and smoke. The last thing Berg clearly remembered was the bright white flash.

The first sergeant took the explosion on his armor and rolled. The blast was hard enough that he found himself on his face, back in the intersection of the corridor. But there just weren't any enemies between himself and the open area that held a rhino-tank. He had only a moment. The tanks seemed to assess the results of their fire and then roar in triumph. He had just that brief moment to get to his feet, charge forward and get one shot. Just one.

There was just one problem. The corridor was trashed. The blast had smashed both bulkheads, the deck and the overhead. Strands of wire blocked the way and the deck was open to the next section down: it was a maze he could make his way through with luck and time. Charging was out of the question. But he charged. There was a narrow lip on the port side. If he could make it across . . .

He could hear the chuff-chuff of the rhino. He'd heard it before, recalled the stench of burning uniforms, burning skin—some of it his own—surrounded by dead Marines, a young sergeant in a battle he didn't understand and couldn't seem to win. He was not going to lose this one . . .

And he slipped. The ledge was just that narrow. There was no way that the bulbous armor could make it past and he grasped the edge of the smoking hole with the arms of his suit as he slammed into that edge. And knew that he'd lost. Again. That that fucking rhino was going to kill all his Marines again . . .

He saw a smoking, stinking, blazing apparition. There was very little that could burn on a Wyvern suit. Normally. But being in near proximity to a plasma blast was not "normally." Space rated joints and aluminum exterior fittings smoking, the very ammunition chain firing in the exploding back-magazine, but this the Wyvern, nonetheless, strode out of the fire and smoke of the compartment, two massive pistols unwavering.

There was a roar.

There were, in fact, other ways to kill a rhino. The chief just hadn't had any time to practice one of them. Like any tank, it could only be heavily armored in certain directions. Most of it was up front.

There was, in fact, one small patch on the back of the head that was vulnerable to just about anything. Oh, it had enough armor to protect from secondary effects, but a high velocity rifle round would cut through it. The problem was getting up and behind a rhino-tank.

But, leaving Gunny Neely in place and fighting his way through the remnants of the dog-demons facing them, the chief trotted down the corridor. It was a ship and it was surprisingly humanlike. Oh, somebody bigger than humans but they seemed to think alike. SEALs trained a lot in the layout of ships. One of their main missions was to take them down, after all.

He found the elevator right where he expected, took it up one level, headed back. He'd used the same system as the first sergeant to examine what Two-Gun was looking at as the sergeant received his suicidal orders. And they were good orders. Top knew what had to be done and he ordered it. Miller admired that in a leader. But there was such a thing as a back-up plan. And while Miller wasn't going to steal First Sergeant Powell's thunder, wasn't going to undercut his authority, it wasn't like Top outranked him.

So he trotted down a corridor and found what he thought he'd find, a walkway looking down into something that looked one hell of a lot like a quarterdeck. You had to have some place to assemble troops. You tended to put it near the bridge, so the CO or the admiral didn't have to walk too far. And you set it up so people could watch. Whoever built this thing thought a lot like humans.

There was a dog-demon guarding it. On the other hand, it was watching the fray below. Like their larger cousins, because biologists had determined that the two were closely related, the dog-demon had this little patch right behind its armored head . . .

And so there was no longer a dog-demon guarding the walkway. Miller ducked back as the rhino fired. No reason to stand around when plasma was going off.

He stepped back out as it chuffed, took aim, stopped and waited as Two-Gun—what a kid!—stumbled out of the smoke and flames of what should have killed him by all rights and blazed away with his two cut-down Barretts. Of course, the kid couldn't see. Most of his optics had to have been blasted out and the vision plate on the front of his armor was covered in soot. But it was a game show, really game. Damn that kid was good. Miller couldn't like him more unless he was a SEAL.

The chief shook his head inside his armor and fired one round from the 14.5, blowing out the brains of the preparing-to-charge-and-fire-again-I'm-going-to-smear-that-suit-of-armor rhino. Which dropped like a pithed frog just as Two-Gun's pistols clicked back empty. Really, unless you looked real close the damage from a 14.5 through the back of the head wasn't going to look all that different than a .50 through the soft palate of the mouth.

Berg collapsed and the SEAL chief warrant officer ghosted back down the corridor, unnoticed.

"And that sounded expensive," Spectre admitted as the ship dropped out of warp. "What do you think, Command Weaver? Over or under a billion?"

In space, nobody can hear you scream. But you could hear a ship scream, it transmitted through the feet of your boots, through hands gripping stanchions and controls. And the Vorpal Blade was screaming a death knell.

"Under a billion," Bill replied.

"XO? Damage report."

"We just lost the tail," the XO said over the command freq.

"You mean the towed array sonar?" Spectre replied. "No big deal. Sonar is not a necessary component at the moment."

"No, Captain, I mean the tail. The ship just broke apart aft of the main engine room."

"Good, Commander Weaver owes me a dollar," the CO said. They'd just lost the very expensive towed array sonar, yes. But also the propellers, the turbines that drove them, the reducing gear and just about everything that made a submarine capable of being a submarine. "However, we don't use any of that stuff in space. It was just more target area. Any casualties?"

"Not on that run," the XO replied. "But if we take a round through the sickbay it's going to get ugly."

"Agreed. How's the neutrino generator holding up?"

"The tribble is still successfully duct taped to the phaser, Conn!"

"Good," Spectre said uncertainly. "Prepare for another run."

"Now that was something that I hadn't expected," Weaver said, chuckling.

"And that was?"

"That Commander Belts-And-Suspenders was a Voltaire fan. Somehow I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that image."

"The philosopher?"

"Musician. It's a long story, sir."

"For later then," the CO said. "Pilot, engage."

"Oh, grapp me," Berg muttered. "Hello?"

He was roasting. The inside of the suit was like an oven; it had to be over a hundred degrees, maybe two hundred.

"Hello?" he yelled.

"You there, Two-Gun?" a voice sounded through the armor. A claw scrabbled at the vision port and then another came into view. He found himself looking at the first sergeant through the two thick panes of aliglass.

"Top?" Berg yelled. "I think everything is out on this thing." He pushed at his actuators and managed to get an arm moving but it was like lifting weights.

"I've been checking it out," the first sergeant yelled. "All your motivators are out but it's functional in manual mode. Drink some water, though. You're going to dehydrate fast until it cools down."

Berg sucked at the water nipple, then shrugged.

"I think the bladder burst from the heat," Berg said, coughing. "That would explain the steam."

Even without motivators it was still possible to roll a Wyvern upright. Not easy, mind you, but possible. But when he got to his feet, he started to sway and shimmy.

"What the hell?" Berg shouted.

"Look at Two-Gun disco," a voice boomed from behind him. "Welcome to the manual version of the Wyvern. They suck and I say that as someone with way too much time in them."

"What happened?" Berg shouted back, turning stiffly to see the chief standing behind him. Unlike his own and the first sergeant's, the chief's armor was pristine, with the exception of a splotch of blood on one claw.

"You got it, son," First Sergeant Powell shouted. "You got it. Good job."

"Great," Berg said. "How? My machine gun's off-line."

"Here," the first sergeant replied, holding out Berg's pistols. Both were locked back. He didn't even recall firing them.

"Oh," Berg said. "Great."

"Hang on," another voice boomed. "Just hold still."

"Do I got fungus on me?" Berg yelled, suddenly. "Get it off if I do!"

"Crisped," the first sergeant replied.

"Fried to cracklin'," the chief added. "Seriously burned up totally. Not an issue."

"Okay," Berg shouted, suddenly realizing he'd heard the last clearly. "Lurch?"

"I've got the commo module replaced," the former armorer replied. "How's that?"

"Great," Berg said normally. "Motivators?"

"Harder," Lurch replied. "Those I don't have spares for."

Berg's armor rocked forward and his machine gun came into view.

"You can fire one of these things offhand," Lurch said, handing him the 14.5. "But they're kind of heavy without motivators. And your ammo's—"

"Blown up," Chief Miller finished. "Seriously, son, you should see the back of your armor. It's almost funny. The good news is the blow-out panels work."

"Great," Berg said. "What now, First Sergeant?"

"You are going to secure this corner," Top said, chuckling. "Patrol this area and try to avoid contact. Got it?"

"I'm all for that one, First Sergeant," Berg admitted. "You guys can feel free to drive the grapp on. I'll happily assume my guard of this position until your return. How long do I give you?"

"One hour, then retreat to the holding area," the first sergeant replied. "Do you understand your orders?"

"Aye, aye, First Sergeant," Berg said.

"Come on," Top said, looking around at the remaining four. "Let's go."

Berg watched their retreating forms and reached up to scratch his face. He felt like he was peeling from a sunburn. Which probably meant burns which he shouldn't scratch so he stopped. Except for his eyebrow which was really . . . there wasn't any hair, there. The claw of his suit, nonetheless, continued to scratch across the face of his trashed sensor pod as he considered his predicament.

All his usual sensors were down. He had external audio, two way, and commo, two way. Weapon traverse out, manual movement only, no cameras. Basically, he could lurch around, look through the soot-covered porthole to see where he was going and maybe lift and fire the machine gun. No water, and the heat from the suit was dehydrating him fast. Internal gravity, which he'd hardly noticed before, seemed over Earth normal. So not only was the suit hard as hell to move, he was trying to do it in a heavy gravitational field.

Maulk.

The machine gun was heavy as hell and there weren't but twenty rounds for it so he leaned it against the bulkhead. He scratched his eyebrow again and considered the bottom of his suit. There was water pooled down there. He was pretty sure it was mixed with urine but drinking your own urine was actually recommended by some doctors, so at the very least it wasn't going to kill him. And he was really thirsty. The problem was, there was no way to get to it inside the suit. What he needed was a straw. A really long straw.

There was a power feed that led from the reactor to the sensor pod up the starboard side of the armor. It was accessible through a box he could just reach . . .

"Heh," he muttered. Wasn't going to be using that insulator as a straw. The entire compartment was one mass of fused wiring, and opening it increased the already serious ozone level in the suit by an order of magnitude. "Grapp."

He picked up the machine gun again, with difficulty, and paused at a skittering sound. Like . . . claws. On metal. Like . . .

He stood stock still as, across the open area, a group of dog-demons headed aft in the direction of the Marines that had just left. When they were past, he backed up, as quietly as he could in an unpowered suit, and fell through the hole in the deck.

"Grapp," he muttered again, looking up at the hole. He must have made a noise that could be heard back on Earth, two hundred light-years away.

He'd been in some seriously grapped situations, but this one was starting to take the cake. He hated the idea, but he needed to hide. Find a compartment the Dreen didn't seem to be using, or escape and evade back to the recycling compartment and link up with Norman and Priester. His suit, at this point, was more grapped up than theirs. Actually, that sort of cut out E&Eing back to the recycling compartment. He could barely lurch along the corridors like a zombie; escape and evade was going to have to emphasize minimum distances.

He stumbled down the corridor to a T intersection, listened for movement, then looked both ways as carefully as he could. But it necessitated getting in the corridor and moving around in a circle, like an old time helmet diver. Careful was a relative term.

It also was a terrible place to hide because both corridors terminated in hatches that looked as if they went to lifts. And both the control pads glowed light violet. They'd run across those before and they always meant the door was locked.

He turned around again, trying to figure out which way to go, and heard the skitter of claws on metal from the way he'd come. He backed down the corridor, figuring he'd put his back to the elevator at the end of the port corridor and make a last stand. As the claws approached he hefted the machine gun, trying to get a sight picture through the soot-covered porthole.

Just as he figured the approaching Dreen were on the last stretch of corridor before his, he heard a whooshing sound behind him. Turning with difficulty, he found the previously locked elevator was now open, lit by a blue glow.

He stumbled into it and the door closed automatically . . .

"This grapping sucks," Miller snarled. They'd found two routes that indicated headed to the purple area, both of them locked. Which just meant they were probably on the right track. "There's got to be a way to blow this door down."

"We might need to figure that out fast," Gunny Neely said from the end of the short corridor. "We've got Dreen closing our position."

"Chief Warrant, if you'd try to convince this door to open, I'd appreciate it," the first sergeant said. "I'm going to join Corporal Lyle and the Gunny in securing this corridor."

"On it," Miller replied. "This time I brought demo."