Europa Strike(65)
“How about Marine Recon?” Hastings said, still glowering. He was wearing an olive-green T-shirt that looked like it had been painted across impossibly massive muscles. “They go out and follow the damned snake…and get lost!”
“Okay,” Lucky agreed. “I’ve known some Marine Recon guys. I’ll buy that! But then ya got your Army Special Forces. This guy goes in alone and makes contact with the snake. He talks to it in snake language. Builds a goddamn rapport with it, wins its heart and mind…and then teaches it to go out and kill other snakes!”
“Military Intelligence!” Pope called out. “They locate the snake using a spy satellite. They study the snake scale by scale and watch its movements. They draw up an extensive report on snakes, snake scales, snake lice, snake shit, and snake movements, and send it up the line to the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, and the National Security Advisor. Meanwhile, the snake disappears, and no one can find it again!”
“I got a better one,” Staff Sergeant Rubio said. He’d been designated the company supply officer, a position he regarded with about as much enthusiasm as a snake in the barracks. “Army Quartermaster Corps! This guy captures the snake, paints it with an NSN, and implements an FOI, after which he has the base commander sign for one snake, green, with scales, poisonous, on a nonexpendable hand receipt. Later, after claiming he doesn’t have any snakes, he ships it out to a company deployed in the field. Unfortunately, what they asked for was one rake, with handle, for area, policing of.”
Everyone in the barracks was howling with laughter over that one, when the deck hatch opened and Major Warhurst clambered up the ladder.
“Attention on deck!”
“Carry on!” he snapped before the Marines could come to their feet. “What the hell’s the commotion?” He didn’t sound angry. Merely…interested.
“Sir, we’re talking serious tactical snake-killing doctrine here!” Lissa said, laughing.
“Yeah!” Pope added. “Lucky’s got the whole damned Armed Forces figured out, Major.”
“Really? Well, maybe you’ll explain it to me sometime!”
“Hey, Lucky!” Sergeant Bannacek called. “What about the Marines? What do they do with the snake?”
“Just like always,” Lucky replied, “they improvise, they adapt, they overcome! They hunt the snake down in its own backyard and kill it from air, land, sea, and space!”
“Yeah,” Lissa put in, “and then the President declares the deployment a police action, with the Marines, as the Navy’s policemen, no less, responsible for enforcing the laws about snakes!”
A harsh braying alarm echoed through the compartment. “Major Warhurst! This is Walthers, in C-3! Where are you, sir?”
Warhurst walked to a bulkhead intercom and pressed the talk switch. “I’m here, Lieutenant. Squad bay. What’s up?”
“We got hostiles incoming, sir. OP-Igloo just called in the report. One Fat Boy, coming in at five kilometers, ETA two minutes!”
Warhurst spun from the intercom. “All right, Marines!” he bellowed in a DI’s stentorian bark. “Saddle up! We got snakes to kill!”
“You heard the Major!” Pope added. “Suit up! Suit up! Move it! Move it! Move-move-move-move-move!”
Lucky was already dragging his Mark II armor from its squad bay ready-rack and stepping into the bulky legs. All around him, the other Marines swiftly made the long-practiced moves to don their suits, grab their weapons, and move toward the ladder leading up to the airlock and the outside.
This is it, he thought, wildly if unoriginally. The moment…
He had never been so terrified in his life.
TWELVE
17 OCTOBER 2067
Chinese People’s Mobile
Strike Force
Near Ice Station Zebra, Europa
1541 hours Zulu
Descending Thunder No. 4 bucked and kicked as the pilot cut in the four main engines, killing the spherical craft’s velocity and gentling it to an unsteady hover above the icy plain. Clouds of vapor boiled away beneath those invisible blasts of white-hot plasma as landing legs extended, reaching for the vehicle’s slow-crawling shadow.
Colonel Yang Zhenyang was strapped into the command seat, a complex-looking barber’s chair tucked into an alcove on the flight deck just off the cramped bridge. With leads jacked into his skull and wrists, he could follow the situation directly as it unfolded.
For millennia, the so-called fog of war had dominated every battlefield, and “no plan survives contact with the enemy” was war’s prime postulate. That was changing now, though, with the advent of AIs and virtual linkage. The images flickering in his head now were crude—grainy and shot through with static—but they could give him simultaneous views from a dozen cameras carried by troops or vehicles. At the moment, only one camera was active, showing the panorama to the east as the lander settled slowly to the steaming, fuming ice. The crater holding the CWS base was visible only as a slight rise against the endless blue-white flat of the Europan landscape. There was no sign of any immediate military response. It was certain that the enemy knew they were here, however. The Descending Thunder No. 3 had been fingered by radar and painted by laser ranging beams from the moment they’d swept in over the horizon.