Galactic Corps. Ian Douglas
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indicated that the other three charges were continuing on course, moving swiftly into the fortress’s depths. Perhaps the Xul hadn’t noticed them yet. Or perhaps they didn’t yet know what they were, and had just snagged the one in order to find out.
And that meant the explosion could come at any time. Tampering with a kilo of antimatter was never a good idea. …
Marines and corpsmen began loading the strike force’s dead and wounded onto the medevac Ontos. Still moving section by section as their squadmates covered them, Marines began scrambling up into their waiting M-CAPs. Corporal Fitzhugh yelled a warning at the same time Smedley flashed a new alert—targets emerging from the passageway bulkheads in all directions. Again, Garroway chose a target and commenced fire, burning down one oncoming Xul machine … then another … then a third as the shadowed distance seethed with black movement. The Marines were pumping out an incredible volume of fire—plasma bolts, lasers, nano-D rounds, high-velocity mass-driver slugs, pounding and slashing away at the advancing wall of Xul robots, filling the broad two-meter space between overhead and deck with spinning chunks of metal and ceramic. Garroway’s plasma gun flashed an overheat warning to his helmet display, and he switched to his mass driver to let the primary weapon cool. How long, he wondered, could they keep this up? …
Well, it wouldn’t, it couldn’t last much longer. With the RAM-Ds well on their way into the fortress’s interior, it was, as the ancient adage put it, time for all of them to get the hell out of Dodge. Garroway wasn’t sure what “Dodge” was, but he knew the sentiment behind the expression well.
The open ramp on the Ontos was closing, the slender gap of light visible from the cargo deck narrowing to a slit, then winking out. The shielding nano on the transport’s surface created a shimmering effect and, once again, the massive intrusion of the Ontos’ hull became, not invisible, but eye-wrenchingly difficult to look at.
“Everyone clear!” 2nd Lieutenant Cooper called over the Net. “Medevac lifting off!”
With a jarring vibration felt through the deck, the Ontos lifted clear of the Xul fortress, leaving a swirling tumble of debris in its wake. In twos and threes, the M-CAPs were pulling free of their entry holes, following the Ontos into the void.
There were only a dozen Marines left on board the Xul station now. This was the most deadly part of any board-and-destroy op, with most of the assault force already off the target, and the last few on board trying to make their escape as the bastion’s defenders closed in.
PFC Armandez was still a bit ahead of the main Marine line. She’d been falling back toward the M-CAPs when the Xul attack had begun anew, and dropped down behind one of the sheltering pillars to fire on the enemy. “Nikki!” Garroway called. “Get the hell back here! We’ll cover you!”
She was starting to turn toward Garroway when a pair of Xul lasers struck her low in the back, at the seam between her torso armor and her power pack. Part of the energy was dissipated by her armor, but he saw a puff of vapor and that was a sure sign her suit had been breached and was leaking air into vacuum. She slumped and went into a tumble.
The medevac Ontos was already gone. Garroway pushed off from the deck, diving in a flat trajectory through the narrow space to snag Armandez and awkwardly grapple her into his arms. Triggering his suit gravitics, he propelled the two of them together back past the Marine perimeter.
A solid wall of Xul warriors surrounded the handful of Marines. “Everyone get out!” Garroway yelled. According to his helmet electronics, he was the senior man present, and it now was up to him to get the last of them out.
“How are we gonna get Nikki out?” PFC Lauden yelled, slashing at the oncoming tide with his mass driver.
“Never mind, damn it! Just clear out! Now!”
“Aye, aye, Gunny!”
The other Marines began clambering into their pods.
Marine histories were full of stories of valiant last stands, of a last Marine who stayed behind to cover his squadmates as a tide of enemy fighters rolled over his final position. Garroway had no intention of becoming another.
He also wasn’t leaving Armandez behind. Towing her along, following the homer beacon flashing in his mind, he made his way to his M-CAP, still imbedded in the passageway’s overhead.
The problem was that M-CAPs were definitely one-Marine vehicles. Two people might squeeze into one together, if they were real friendly … and if neither was wearing their bulky Type 664 combat armor.
Working quickly, Garroway stuffed the unconscious form of the wounded Marine up into his M-CAP, literally stuffing her as far up the narrow opening as he could manage. The nearest Xul warriors were almost on him. …
Again, he triggered his slicers, extending the ultra-hard, ultra-thin blades to their full extent. Positioning himself directly under the opening to his pod, he slashed hard with his left arm … then his right …
His own legs, severed high up on the thighs, spun to either side, trailing globules of rapidly freezing blood and lubricant. The pain didn’t hit him immediately, wouldn’t hit him, he didn’t think, for a few precious seconds, if he didn’t let it. …
He did immediately feel the shock of falling pressure, like a hammer blow to his lungs. Air shrieked out of his armor into the surrounding hard vacuum until his suit’s inner layer, reacting automatically to the falling pressure, sealed over the gaping stumps of his legs. Garroway was already pulling himself up into his pod, as biting cold and lung-searing decompression threatened to drag him back into unconsciousness … and death. He had to struggle to work his torso up past Armandez’s legs; even minus his own legs, he wasn’t sure there was enough room inside the bottle for two.
It was starting to hurt now. A lot. …
His armor’s built-in medinano dispensers were already firing swarms of microscopic healers into his bloodstream, however. Anodynes began dulling the sharp shriek of pain; fluorocarbons began picking up where the near-vanished oxygen had left off; artificial coagulants began sealing off the wounds, stopping blood loss while cerebral monitors blocked the onset of shock.
It was a near thing. The inside of his helmet visor was iced over, and he was having trouble seeing. By feel, he found the pod’s linking plate and slapped his open palm across it. Numbers and status readouts flickered through his mind, but he ignored them, triggering the hatch seal.
He felt the hatch iris shut just below his sealed-off stumps, the scraping sensation threatening to override the anodynes. A warning light flickered on in his mind, followed by a verbal readout. “M-CAP hatch seal failure. M-CAP hatch seal failure.”
Damn. Even with his legs gone, he wasn’t in far enough to let the bottle’s hatch seal shut.
The hell with it. The bottle wasn’t supposed to accelerate with a hatch open, but he overrode the watchdog circuit and thought-clicked the launch command. There was a grating rasp, then a sudden shock as the pod broke free, accelerating clear of the Xul fortress.
For a moment, he half feared sliding out an open hatch beneath him as the pod accelerated on its way, but he appeared to be well wedged into place. Exploring with his gloved hands, he decided that the bottle’s outer hatch had, indeed, cycled closed; it was the inner hatch that was blocked open by the stumps of his legs, and that was what was causing the alarm. The bottle’s rather narrow-minded AI didn’t think the craft was sealed and ready for flight unless all hatches were shut, sealed, and locked.
He dismissed the irritating alarm. There was nothing he could do about the cause, and he appeared to be safe for the moment.
Well, safe from the threat of being left behind, at least. His warning indicators showed enemy fire passing close by his craft.
He goosed it, ordering full acceleration and praying the inertial dampers were working well enough to shunt aside the fearful pressures of a high-G boost. There was no time, no place for subtlety in the escape. With the fortress fully alerted