2

       1506.1111

       First Platoon, Bravo Company

       Cluster Space

       0635 hrs, GMT

      “Enemy targets bearing ahead and behind,” Smedley reported in maddeningly calm tones.

      “Here they come again, boys!” Captain Black warned. “Let ’em have it!”

      “Ooh-rah!” Second Lieutenant Cooper yelled over the Net. “Kill the bastards!”

      The defenders of Xul ships and bases tended to act and react in predictable ways. Assaults were en masse, wave attacks with thousands of units moving forward as one in an attempt to overwhelm Marine perimeter defenses. Once the Marine defenders had killed enough of the oncoming Xul combat units—estimates suggested the number ran around twenty-five to thirty percent of the total number of the attackers—the remainder would break off and disappear, usually by vanishing back into the walls of the structure’s interior passageways and compartments. Some minutes would pass while the Xul built up their numbers once again, bringing in fresh combatants from deeper inside the target, and then the assault would be renewed.

      That was what was happening now, as the passageway once again filled with black metallic egg shapes and flickering, writhing tentacles, coming in from both directions. Garroway crouched behind the pillar and aimed his weapon, thought-snapping the firing command, the plasma gun’s link with his armor electronics triggering bolt after searing bolt of man-made lightning.

      Garroway let himself settle into the rhythm of combat, picking out targets and burning them down. The riflemen needed to buy a few precious minutes for the special-weapons boys, and then they would be able to withdraw.

      Xul ships and space fortresses had often been compared to organic structures, like the physical bodies of immense living organisms kilometers across. While no one knew how true this might be, the comparison was unavoidable. The masses of alien circuitry making up much of their internal mass appeared to have been grown rather than constructed, and there were nothing like crew compartments or quarters on board these things. Rather, the Xul appeared to be electronic life forms uploaded into the circuitry of a titanic computer. When any part of the structure was damaged, robotic devices the size of a human fist appeared in clouds swarming through the damaged area, appearing to extrude themselves into new circuitry in the same way that medicos used nanochelation to plate out circuitry inside the human brain and nervous system, but on a much larger scale.

      These tentacled combat robots the Marines were engaging now appeared to be analogues of white cells and other immune-defense systems in an organic system. If that was so, the passageways like this one, which seemed to riddle all Xul structures with labyrinthine complexity, could reasonably be compared to a body’s circulatory system, to blood vessels and lymphatic ducts serving as conduits for robotic devices designed for a variety of tasks including both repair and defense.

      And to carry the uneasy comparison just a bit further, that meant that the Marines of 1MIEF were microbes, invaders penetrating the Xul’s giant circulatory system with the intent of killing it.

      At least in the human organism, bacteria didn’t come in the form of platoons of Marines, heavily armored and carrying plasma and antimatter weaponry.

      As with armchair discussions of 1MIEF’s strategy and tactics, the topic was often discussed in Marine squad bays during off-duty hours. For now, Garroway’s thoughts touched on the image only briefly: Let’s give this fat bastard one hell of an upset stomach! The rhythm of targeting and firing fell into an almost automatic process, guided by his training and the mental conditioning of weiji-do.

      The two heavy gunners, meanwhile, rapidly completed setting up their weapons, one aiming forward, into the advancing mass of Xul warriors, the other aimed into the attackers in the opposite direction. A moment later, the weapons rocked in their mounts, and a pair of silvery shapes, each roughly the size of a big man’s forearm and fist, flashed from the muzzles and, accelerating on their microgravitics, streaked into the surrounding darkness. One slammed into the side of an advancing Xul warrior, knocking it aside and continuing to accelerate as it flashed out of sight.

      Designated RD-260, the weapon was popularly known as the RAM-D, for Remote Antimatter Detonator. Each round contained nearly a kilogram of antimatter suspended in hard vacuum and an electromagnetic bubble, preventing it from coming into contact with the containment cylinder’s poly-ceramic and steel walls.

      The gunners began reloading, hauling new RAM-D rounds out of the carry-satchels mounted on the hips of their armor. Tactical doctrine called for loosing three rounds apiece … if the enemy gave them that much time.

      Sergeant Dixon, meanwhile, was laying down the back-up, a Mk.17 backpack nuke. He had it up against the overhead close beside one of the chamber’s pillars, holding it firmly in place while the nano coating on the device’s back formed an unbreakable bond with the surface of the alien composite. Dix’s nuke was the mission’s back-up guarantee … just in case the Xulies intercepted the other packages.

      Garroway kept up a steady fire, frying Xul combat machines as quickly as he could target them. The microgravity environment within the confines of the passageway, however, was becoming clogged with drifting bits of debris, everything from glittering particles the size of grains of sand up to the three-meter shells of almost-intact Xul warriors burned out by Marine marksmanship. Clouds of nano-D adrift in the area were dissolving the larger pieces, but left behind a gritty, clinging dust that illuminated the enemy’s laser beams as they flashed and probed through the gloom.

      The Marines’ armor was deflecting most of the incoming lasers, the outer layers of nano redirecting and scattering each flash harmlessly in a cascade of brilliant iridescence. Laser bolts repeatedly struck the pillar Garroway was half sheltering behind, striking with sharp, silent flashes and puffs of white vapor.

      Some of the enemy fire was getting through, however, striking Marine armor on bare patches not covered by nano—on sensors and joint lines and link connector pads. Corporal Tomkins was down, air and boiling blood spraying from a severed lower arm until the suit’s autosealers and nanomedibot injectors could kick in. “Corpsman! Corpsman front!” In seconds, Doc Huston was with the wounded Marine, dragging him out of the line of fire, putting his own armor between the wounded man and the enemy as he hauled the man back toward the pods.

      Then PFC White was hit, half of her visor charred, cracked and leaking air. Doc Billingsly had her in seconds, slapping a sealant patch over her visor before it could crack further, and pulling her back out of the firefight. The Marines continued putting