Luna Marine(44)

“Chinks, eh?” Whitworth said, nodding. “Right. As senior officer present, I am officially taking charge of this action.” He stared down at the map table for a moment. “Where…where are my troops on this thing?”

“There, Colonel,” Kaitlin said, pointing to two of the blue symbols denoting Habs Two and Four. “Those are the quarters they’ve been assigned to. But, with all due respect, I think you should—”

“Young lady!” Whitworth barked. “Are you presuming to tell me how to run a battle? Or are you simply telling me what to do with my troops?”

Kaitlin fought down a burst of anger. “No, sir. But you should know—”

But Whitworth was not listening. He turned to the communications personnel. “You, there! Get me an open channel to Captain Bladen, in Hab Two!”

“Aye, aye, sir,” one of the technicians said, his face carefully expressionless.

“These UNdies can’t know that the Green Berets are here, in force! We’ll goddamn teach the bastards a lesson!”

“Sir!” the Marine at the radio called. “Captain Bladen.”

“About goddamn time!” He strode to the com console, snatched the mike from the Marine’s hand, and began talking.

Kaitlin exchanged a long look with Gunny Yates. “I don’t like this, Lieutenant,” he said, keeping his voice low. “It’s going to get damned sticky out there!”

“Granted, Gunny. But he is senior officer aboard. Pass the word to your people to be careful about IDing their targets.”

“Roger that. But it’s not going to be easy!”

“What’d you expect, Gunny? A goddamn walk in the park?” She stared at the map table, where small green squares were spilling across the contour-marked terrain. Red squares—the enemy—appeared and vanished as trackers identified them and fed the data into the Marine battle-management system. Most of the red symbols were ghosted, indicating probable positions based on last confirmed reports.

There’d been six Marines outside when the alert had first been sounded, in three widely separated two-man OPs. No…make that seven, counting Kaminski, who was supposed to be hustling his civilian charge back inside. A ready force of Second Platoon Marines had been waiting, however, already suited up and ready to go except for gloves and helmets, on the lower decks of Habs Three and Five, and they were spilling out through the airlocks and onto the lunar surface right now. Every Marine had an IFF transponder mounted in his or her suit; the coded signal from each IFF was picked up by the antenna arrays atop Hab One and fed into the battle-management system. The BMS, in turn, displayed the positions and identities of all of the Marines in the action. Ranging data picked up from the Marines’ laser sighting systems on their ATARs located the unidentifeds—the probable UN troops.

The problem was that Whitworth was now giving orders to some forty Army Special Forces troops to join the battle. There’d been no time yet to set their IFF transponders to frequencies recognized by the BMS; hell, she didn’t even know yet if the Army suits had transponders. When those troops stormed out onto the crater floor, there would be no way at all to separate them from the enemy.

Yates was right. This could be real sticky.


The Dig, Picard Base

Mare Crisium, the Moon

1456 hours GMT

David started to pull himself to his feet once more, but Kaminski was lying across his legs. “Stay down, dammit!” the Marine shouted, before adding a perfunctory “Sir!”

“But I can’t see!” Try as he might to lever the front part of his suit higher, David could not find a position that would let him see what was happening. Kaminski seemed to be shooting at something; David could feel the jarring against the legs of his suit as the Marine’s ATAR recoiled.

A battle. He was smack in the middle of a battle once again, though the eerie silence, the lack of crackling gunfire and explosions, gave a surreal, almost dreamlike feeling to the engagement. He could hear distinct voices over his radio, though for the most part they were all but unintelligible. They might have been kids playing some backyard game utterly beyond the ken of listening adults.

“Delta-one, this is Five! Heads up, on your six!”

“Copy, Five, I see ’em!”

“Clear! I gotta lock! That’s fox!”

“Ooh-rah! Hey, UNdie! Special delivery from the Corps!”

Those voices sounded so young.

War might arise from the failings of old politicians, but always it was the young who paid war’s price. The average age of the SAG Marines, he’d heard during his trip out from Earth, was twenty-two—a little over half David’s age—and it was as old as that only because SAG included a higher-than-usual proportion of seasoned NCOs than the typical Marine rifle company back on Earth.