“Dreen!” Nicholson shouted.
Berg dove for cover behind one of the alien machines, a cylinder about ten-feet tall and whose purpose was totally unknown to him, and started pumping rounds into the doorway. The room only had one hatch and Dreen filled it, scrambling over each other to get through the narrow opening.
The Marines hammered the attackers, piling up the dead in the doorway, but as many as they killed, more seemed to be trying to fight through. But it was clear, as thorn-throwers were shot multiple times, that there was more than enough firepower to hold the room.
“Two-Gun, Smith, cease fire,” the staff sergeant said. “Two-Gun, you got any grenades left?”
“Four, Staff Sergeant.”
“See if you can get any over those guys and into the corridor.”
The first grenade Berg threw hit one of the thorn-throwers in the head and landed on the pile of Dreen bodies, detonating more or less harmlessly except for chewing up the pile. The second, through, he managed to slip through the narrow open area at the top of the door. The detonation on the other side sounded less than harmless. Thorn-thrower and dog-demon bodies gushed into the room. The corridor on the far side had to be packed.
“Christ, how many of them are there?” Nicholson asked. “I’m getting low on rounds!”
“Just fire steady and accurate,” Hinchcliffe advised. “Just keep firing. But use your rounds carefully. If we can hold them in the doorway we’re going to be here a while. If not, we won’t care anymore.”
“These are all volunteers, First Sergeant?” Captain Zanella said, looking at the group.
“Yes, sir,” the first sergeant replied. He did not add that the entire remaining company had volunteered. “Gunnery Sergeant Neely, because it’s his platoon. Chief Warrant Officer Miller, because he outranks me. At that point, I had to start picking and choosing.”
“I see you’re taking the sole survivor from the last mission and our spare armorer,” the captain said, looking at Seeley and Lyle. “The rest?”
“Alpha and Bravo team, Second Platoon, sir,” the first sergeant said.
“I see eight people,” the Marine CO commented, dryly. “And we have nine boards. Whoever is going to use the ninth?”
“That would be me, sir,” the first sergeant replied firmly.
“I consider that unwise, First Sergeant,” the CO said, then held his hand up to the protest. “But I have to keep in mind the adage that my first company commander told me: Never get between your first sergeant and beer, women or any mission they’ve set their heart on. Load ’em up, Top.”
“We’ve got five blown-out doors,” the first sergeant said as the ship prepared to transition. “Go for the one most forward. There’s going to be a lot of fire. Think about whipping around in space while heading for the ship. Get down close to it and they can’t fire at you. Then get in the bay. We’ll figure out how to get farther in from there.”
“Jeff,” Miller said over the command freq. “This is purely going to suck, you know that.”
“You can feel free to unvolunteer, Chief,” the first sergeant replied.
“And let you jarheads call me a wuss?” Miller scoffed. “No joy. See you in hell, snake.”
From the exterior of the ship, the view as the battlewagon closed was even more disorienting than watching it on the screens. Miller actually started too soon, slamming into the warp bubble before it opened. The Dreen battlewagon was pouring out a mass of fire. There was no way they were going to survive it all. They were kamikazes without even the benefit of big bombs.
The warp bubble dropping, the ship moving sideways, it all happened too fast for him to comprehend; the human brain was not designed for milliseconds. All he knew was that suddenly he was in free space, looping in and out of more torrents of fire than he had ever seen in his life or ever wanted to see again. He’d once been pinned down by multiple rocket launchers in Mogadishu. This was worse because he didn’t even have a concrete trough to hide behind. Not to mention the fact that by comparison, a 20mm antitank rocket was a popgun. Plasma blasts were going by so close the static discharge was frying his radio and one wash even got close enough to raise the temperature in his suit. Given that heat did not propagate through space, that meant it had actually touched him.
Unbelievably, he found himself suddenly about to slam into the Dreen battlewagon. A quick mental flip and he was flying alongside, trying to stay between the still firing guns. There was actually smoke wreathing the death-spewing battlewagon. The entire experience was unreal.
He spotted the damaged hangars, like rows of empty eyeball sockets, and darted down towards them, lining up and finally settling in the evacuated compartment.
“You’re two,” Powell said from the rear of the compartment.
In the end, they were six. Staff Sergeant Jim Revells, Lance Corporal Eric Hough and Lance Corporal Francisco Cestero never made it. And Sergeant Norman was effectively useless, given that something had ripped off his machine gun.
“Lurch, I figured you for a goner,” Powell said as the former armorer finally showed up.
“I was just checking out those guns, Top,” Lyle replied. “I want to get my hands on their schematics. They’re traversing so fast they have to be on magnetic bearings. I’ve been trying to get them to switch to magnetic bearings for the Wyverns ever since I first saw the specs.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll worry about that later,” Powell replied. “Let’s figure out how to get out of this bay.”
“Found a window and a door,” Chief Miller said. “And methinks I just saw the silhouette of a dog-demon through the window.”
“Lock and load.”
“Conn, Tactical, we have a problem.”
“Besides the fact that the crew’s starting to fall out?” Spectre muttered. The continuous transitions were taking their toll. He’d hoped that the chill-down would help, but being in free-fall had only enhanced the nauseating effects and the disorientation. Crew were beginning to report hallucinations and four crewmen had been tranquilized at this point. He really didn’t want to think about what Miss Moon, who had no resistance to free-fall nausea, was going through.
“Go, Tactical.”
“The remaining Dreen task-force has disengaged from the Caurorgorngoth and is moving insystem towards the main Hexosehr refugee fleet.”
“Maulk,” the CO muttered. The Dreen had taken the bait for less than an hour. And the main Hexosehr fleet was slow. They had more than two days’ transit to their next jump and even the cumbersome dreadnought would catch them short of it. A few of the faster, lighter vessels might escape, but the main bulk of the remaining Hexosehr population, the millions of scientists, technicians, poets and philosophers wrapped in hibernation sleep, would be blasted into constituent atoms. And with them any hope of humanity adapting their technology to Earth’s defense.
“Roger, Tactical,” Spectre replied. He was trying like hell not to show that the repeated warps were getting to him. Fighter pilot training was, not surprisingly, helping him again. He’d felt much worse after major furballs. Of course, they rarely lasted this long.
“We continue to harry them,” Spectre said. “We took the carrier out. We have Marines onboard the Dreen battlewagon taking the fight to them internally. We will continue the mission. Pilot, lay in a course to intercept Sierra Five.” The Dreen cruiser was the closest ship, starting to apparently interpose itself between the small but seemingly invulnerable Blade and the capital ship.