Luna Marine(145)

At the top, several blue-helmeted suits lay sprawled about like limp rag dolls, while the two Marine escorts and another Marine, with a Second Platoon shoulder patch, waited, ATARs at the ready.

Someone had already blown the ship’s airlock hatch, which gaped open. The inner hatch was closed, but a bulkhead panel had been torn open, and a hot-wire box clipped on. Jack had seen the device demonstrated and explained at Quantico; rather than cycling a few people through at a time, the outer hatch would be kept open, with the inner hatch safeties overridden. Each time someone wanted to pass through, the inner hatch would be opened; the ship would lose some more air each time, and eventually be left in vacuum, but the method was a hell of a lot faster than the depressurization-repressurization cycle they would have to use otherwise.

“How many inside already, Marine?” Bueller asked the Second Platoon guard as he mounted the catwalk.

“Four, Gunnery Sergeant,” the man replied. The name on his chest read NARDELLI. “Lieutenant Garroway and three others. It’s…it’s all that’s left of us!” His eyes were wide and frightened behind his visor.

“Hold your post, Marine. Rest of you, with me!”

A puff of vapor exploded from the torso of Diane’s suit and she toppled backward, dropping her ATAR. She almost went over the edge, but Jack reached out and grabbed her arm, hauling her back from the edge and lowering her to the catwalk. “Sniper!” Jack yelled, pointing in the direction from which the laser shot had come…high up on the flank of the mountain, above the base. Nardelli, Bueller, and the others opened up with their ATARs, firing full-auto, but Jack couldn’t tell if they could even see the target.

Dillon stared at him from inside her helmet, looking very frightened. “I…what happened?…Jack?”

“You took a laser bolt, Diane,” he told her. The hole, just below her left breast, was only as wide as a pencil, but blood was bubbling through, steaming and freezing at the same time as it hit vacuum. He decided to lie. “Doesn’t look bad.”

He fumbled in an external pouch for a slap-stick patch and brought it down on the hole, sealing it over.

“It…hurts.”

“Ramsey!” Bueller shouted. “Let’s move!”

Nardelli held up a morphine gun. “I’ll take care of her,” he said.

“Do that!” He patted Dillon’s shoulder. “You’ll be okay!”

“Crack the fucking code, Jack,” she told him, clinging to his arm with a gloved hand. “You and Sam…crack the fucking code!”

“You got it! I’ll tell you all about it when I come back!”

Rising, he hurried after Bueller, who was waving him on from inside the airlock.

When all four Marines were ready, Bueller pressed the hot-wire box, and the inner hatch slid open. Air burst from within, a hurricane that threatened to sweep all five of them out of the lock and back onto the gantry at their backs, but Bueller leaned against the gale and waded in, as loose papers and a copy of Playboy in French whirled past and into the night.

Inside lay the body of a Marine, PFC Juarez, his helmet shattered.

Jack wondered how many Marines had been killed or wounded already in this impossible, insane attack…and how many were left….


Général de Brigade Paul-Armand

Larouche

UNS Guerrière, Tsiolkovsky Base

0110 hours GMT

In another few moments, it won’t matter. General Larouche dragged back the charging handle on his MAB-31 autopistol and set the selector to full automatic. He heard a loud thump and the clatter of metal on metal below the small bridge. They would be here, soon. But the ship knew what to do….

He hadn’t heard from d’ André in a long time. He’d sent him aft to organize a defense of the main locks, but that line of defense had obviously failed. Three times, the bridge alarms had gone off, warning of dropping pressure as the enemy breached the main lock, then resealed it. Air pressure aboard the Guerrière was down to about half normal, and the sounds picked up by his suit’s external mikes had a curiously flat and tinny quality to them.

He exchanged a glance with the other two space-suited men in the compartment, a pair of North Chinese special forces troops who’d taken refuge on the bridge a few moments ago. Unfortunately, Larouche did not speak Mandarin, and they seemed to speak no French, German, or English. Their dark eyes, deep within their black helmets, gave nothing away when they looked at him. He wondered if they knew what he’d done, that there was no hope now for any of them.

A stream of positrons, released from the alien generator but not focused and directed by the main weapon’s magnetic channels, would destroy the entire ship…and probably a fair portion of the base as well. The countdown had already begun. He checked his helmet time readout. Four minutes, forty-eight seconds. No, not much longer at all….