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But as he turned back to the controls, a thorn-thrower managed to survive just long enough to put five rounds through the side of his armor.

“Top, Seelman is down,” Berg related emotionlessly. “Termination signal.”

“Got that,” the first sergeant responded, just as emotionlessly. Seeley was one of the very few Marine survivors of the first mission of the Vorpal Blade. He wasn’t going to be making another cruise. “Two-Gun, you’ve got to get that rhino to fire.”

“What?” Berg nearly shouted. “Say again, First Sergeant?”

“When they fire, they roar,” the first sergeant replied. “You can see them charge up. Hell, you can tell when they’re about to fire. Shoot it. It won’t kill it but it will piss it off. When it gets ready to fire, duck into that compartment. The walls will reduce the blast. Then Lurch and I will finish it off.”

“First Sergeant, point of order,” Berg replied. “This compartment is filled with Dreen-spread fungus. That series of actions is suicide.”

“Sergeant Bergstresser,” the first sergeant replied, “it was not a request.”

“Aye, aye, First Sergeant,” Berg said, firing a long burst into the rhino-tank. “Semper Grapping Fi.”

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.