Gretchen pounded across the deck toward the active gun emplacement, which was firing on the marines below and creating such a cacophony in the confined space that there wasn’t a chance that anyone in the box had heard her approach.
The flamer marine cut loose with her weapon without even looking to see who or what crewed the nest and a blast of sticky flame filled the space. Gretchen released the trigger of the flamer and leapt to the side just as a burning armored merc came running out of the nest before smacking into the opposite wall and sinking to the ground. More screams came from the nest, though were quickly silenced when the ammunition belts of the gun they’d been shooting touched off and riddled their burning bodies with small caliber rounds.
Samuel and Gretchen advanced once the bulk of the rounds had fired off. The squad leader put two shots in the chest of a workman who attempted to raise his rifle. Samuel felt sorry for the men and women who had been forced into this conflict, but if it came down to them shooting him or him shooting them, the choice was simple. A second workman fell to Samuel’s marksmanship and Gretchen fired on another nest just as whoever was inside got the weapon going again.
An armored merc fired on the marines from the far end of the balcony, and his shots hitting Gretchen in the chest and head. As the flamer marine was pushed to the ground by the impact of the shots Samuel returned fire. The marine’s precise burst knocked the merc off his feet and the hostile scrambled back into cover around the corridor. Samuel wasn’t prepared to look at Gretchen’s corpse just yet, no so soon after Marcus, and so he sprinted forward to pursue the merc.
Samuel leapt across the opening of the corridor as he sprayed a magazine’s worth of ammunition on full-auto, hoping he could catch the merc unawares without getting hit himself. As it was, the merc had attempted to flee further into the corridor and Samuel could see the limping man disappear behind a door. When the marine reached it he saw that the merc had shot the lock out. Shouting and shooting started inside the room and Samuel kicked open the door and went in with his rifle at the ready.
Four workmen stood over the body of the merc, each of them carrying various hand tools and one cradling a bloody fire axe in his hand. On the ground alongside the merc were the bodies of two more workmen. At the sight of the marine all of the workmen dropped their weapons and held their hands high.
“We surrender! Grotto right? They forced us to fight! The demons will be back! We’ve got to get out of here!” The workmen pleaded desperately with Samuel in rapid fire chatter. It would have continued that way had the marine not raised his hand and shouted.
“Stand down! Backs to the wall! Now!” The marine quickly zip tied the hands of each workman behind his back and then used his belt cable and clip to thread all of them together.
“Boss, you’d better get out here,” Gretchen’s unexpected voice on the com-bead, gave Samuel a surge of adrenaline shock as he heard the voice of a dead woman.
“Voss?” gasped Samuel at the sound of her voice, “I thought you were…”
“Well, the day’s not over yet,” Gretchen’s replied grimly, “We’ve got trouble coming.”
Samuel returned to the balcony with the four workmen at gunpoint and was greeted to the sight of a helmetless Gretchen working the action of one of the low tech machine guns. The workmen looked out and down at the cove and all of them sucked in their breath with visible fear. Samuel turned to see Gretchen peering down the sights of the gun and finally he followed her gaze to the cove below.
Another aquatic swarm was massing at the mouth of the cove and thrashing toward the beach. The rest of the marines had made their landing and were taking up hasty fighting positions. Some of the marines were already shooting at the creatures.
“Sir, we can fight,” said one of the workmen, “I can feed her the belts for the gun.”
“I’d rather live in a Grotto work camp than get digested by one of those things,” said another, “We’re pretty sure that they eat you alive when they can.”
“Not that they’re picky,” said another.
“They’re worse once they reach land, we think they just use the water to travel through,” said the one who had spoken first. “Pretty sure they live on one of the rock islands out in the swamp. Really, we shouldn’t let them get to the beach.”
Gretchen began firing the machine gun, and Samuel took a deep breath as he used his boarding knife to cut the bonds off the workmen.
For nearly thirty minutes the creatures hurled themselves at the beachhead, only to be repelled each time by the marines. With their boats and flak boards in place the Reapers were able to push back against wave after wave of the creatures, though by the time the frenzy of the enemy was spent, most of the marines had been reduced to using their sidearms. Samuel had exhausted his rifle ammo and switched to one of the assault rifles from a dead merc. The workmen had fed Gretchen’s gun every last round they had.
After the engagement Boss Marsters had sent for the second wave of marines, along with much needed ammunition and a tech crew to assess the viability of the plant. By the time the third wave of frenzied creatures arrived, some twelve hours later, the Reapers had dug in deep and prepared to repel the assault.
Samuel was on the planet surface for several more days as more crew and equipment were brought to bear on the plant, even as more sophisticated defenses were created to stave off the routine assaults by the creatures. Samuel was told by the workmen that they had shipped out as a free-wrench operation, licensed by Wageri Corporation, which revealed to Samuel that indeed it wasn’t just Helion and Grotto looking to claim their piece of necrospace. The free-wrenchers needed a security force, but couldn’t afford the astronomical rates demanded by Merchants Militant contractors, so they hired an unaffiliated mercenary force.
Once the complex had made landfall and gotten production up and going the creatures had begun their regular assaults. Soon, defending their lives and their claim against the monsters was all the people of the complex could do and the plant fell into disrepair. The mercenaries revealed themselves to be little more than pirates, and had been in the process of scrapping the complex so that they could flee with at least some measure of profit. All in all, it had been the sort of deadly expedition that made for the tall tales of loss and woe in the depths of necrospace.
During the debriefing Samuel was informed that after interrogating the surviving plant staff it was determined by Reaper Command that the complex had the potential to be a profit center and a resource for the overall war. The cost of transporting food all the way across the Ellisian Line and to the front had become an expensive endeavor, requiring more and more ships and fuel, not to mention the occasional conflict with pirates or Helion forces during those supply runs. With the plant back online and well defended, Grotto would be able to supplement, and perhaps replace, the food supplies required to keep the war machine running. The cost of staff, security forces, and ammunition paled in comparison to the savings of having a frontline asset that produced food for the fleets.
What had initially been seen as a salvage of opportunity revealed itself to be one of the most profitable claims of the trade war. At the cost of only half a score of Reapers, it was the sort of claim that made careers amongst those in Command.
5. ON THE FRONTIER
When Grotto Corporation declared official trade war against Helion, the entire population was incorporated into the war effort. Some felt it more acutely than others, though all shared in the burden and what a burden it was, for when Samuel received his expatriation rejection and duty station orders the family had been devastated. They were so close to escaping, on the very precipice of the new life that they had fought so hard and so long to have. With their savings, in addition to all of the refunded expatriation fees, there was plenty to keep Sura and Orion living comfortably on Pier 16 for many years, though neither Sura nor Samuel wished that kind of life for their son.