Europa Strike (33 page)

He followed close behind her. Tiny ice particles began coating his suit and rifle almost at once; clouds of steam, freezing almost instantly to fog-ice as it hit vacuum, roiled past from the hole blasted in the ice by the improvised A-M torpedo. The black hull of the Manta was already largely covered. He watched where he stepped, following a rough-surfaced tread line in the CB
₂
F weave of the hull, where fuselage blended smoothly to wing.

Three meters ahead, the tread ended with the wing, and he leaped off into whiteness.

The crater blasted into the ice by the International Gun was perhaps a hundred meters across, and with a fairly flat slope to the rim. The Manta had surfaced on the eastern side of the crater floor. As he kept moving, he cleared the fog, and saw the rest of the squad strung out ahead in a ragged line, moving toward the eastern rim, about thirty meters away. Sergeant Lang was just ahead, running across broken, packed ice to join the others.

Damn it, where was the enemy? Was it possible that the Chinese LZ had been abandoned, that all of the PRC troops were now elsewhere—either in orbit, or, far worse, at Cadmus?

Jeff moved around the beached Manta, checking the anchor lines secured by Wojak and Cartwright. The submarine was resting on ice that appeared to be composed of many head-sized chunks and blocks refrozen together, but the surface seemed solid enough to support the vessel's weight. He informed Carver of the fact by radio, then started following the rest. Their radio chatter crackled over his helmet phones.

“
Hey, looks like nobody's home!
”

“
Nah, they'll have left someone behind to tend the fires
.”

“
Mind the chitchat, people. EM discipline!
”

“
Hey! Will ya lookit
that!”

Garcia was pointing back the way they'd come. Jeff turned in time to see a black shape rise like a breaching whale from the depths, sunlight glittering from its wet curves and in the cascade of white spray exploding into vacuum.

Manta Two cleared the surface and the fog, flying toward the icy beach well to the north of Manta One. It hit solid ice and skidded forward, sluing to the side as it came to rest thirty meters from the steaming hole.

“Welcome to Asterias Linea,” Jeff called over the command circuit. “How was the trip?”

“A bit on the rough side,” Lieutenant Biehl said. “What's the sit?”

“No sign of hostiles. Secure your boat and come on out.”

“Roger that! On our way!”

“Target alert!” Carver's voice called. “I have incoming, straight up! Uh…bearing one-five-three relative, eighty-one degrees! Range…two-three-five-five meters, descending!”

Jeff stopped and looked up. The sun was almost directly overhead, blinding enough to darken his visor, despite its shrunken size. The Chinese had set up their camp on the side of Europa that never sees Jupiter, and the sky seemed strangely empty without the bloated world hanging overhead.

Then he saw what Carver had spotted with the Manta's radar—the tiny, round shape of a Chinese Descending Thunder, crescent-lit by the sun as it fell slowly toward the LZ.

“Take it, Amberly!” he shouted.

Ahead, Sergeant Roger Amberly dropped to one knee, his ungainly Wyvern laid across his right shoulder, the muzzle pointed almost straight up. “I got lock! I got tone!”

“Watch the backblast, Rog!”

“I know. Firing!”

Flame splashed on the ice almost directly behind and beneath him, but dissipated in a cloud of white steam. The missile, its exhaust a dazzling white pinpoint, arrowed skyward, sluing from side to side as it went to active tracking and homed on its target.

The missile vanished—and much too soon. The Chinese lander must have spotted the launch and used its a point-defense laser to take the Wyvern out. But Amberly was already lock-snapping a fresh missile load tube home and taking aim again. And Peterson was going to one knee nearby, putting the second Wyvern into action.

“
Tone!
”

“
Tone! Fire!
”

Two missiles streaked into the sky, and this time the target was considerably lower. One missile vanished, but the second connected, a startlingly white flash clearly visible from the ground.

The lander continued to descend, apparently unharmed.

“Move up to the top of the rim,” Jeff ordered. “Get those missiles working against the grounded landers!”

Trotting through rough and broken ice, Jeff reached the crest of the crater rim. Beyond, the ice in frozen, undulating waves stretching off toward the east. The surface level was considerably higher outside the crater than within, the elevation of the rim no more than a few meters. Five kilometers away, six Descending Thunder landers rested on the ice, steam wreathing two of them from open exhaust vents; close by was a scattering of pressurized habs, surface storage sheds, tractors and excavating equipment of various types, and several of the ubiquitous
zidong tanke
robots on patrol.

Jeff raised his rifle, using the 580's optics as a zoom lens to magnify the center of the base. There were a few space-suited troops about, and a lot of activity near the base of two of the landers. It looked like they were getting ready to disembark their passengers.

“Pick your targets!” he told the others. “Take down those troops!”

The Marines spread out along the rim, lying prone, triggering their weapons. The beams weren't visible in vacuum, of course, but in the magnified view through his rifle's optics, Jeff saw enemy soldiers pitch, drop, spin, fall…

Two missiles streaked across the ice, swinging sharply into the sides of the two recently grounded transports. White light blossomed; apparently, the point defense systems had been shut down, or someone wasn't paying attention. The two reloaded and fired again. One of the landers suddenly erupted in incandescent violence, a savage detonation that devoured its lower half, fragmented the upper, and sent huge, curved sections spinning through the sky, all in perfect silence.

Squad Bay, E-DARES Facility

Ice Station Zebra, Europa

0750 hours Zulu

 

“What the hell are they
doing
out there?” Lucky demanded.

“Overriding the airlock controls,” Melendez replied from C-3. “I'm trying to block them, but they're bypassing the computer lockout and using the manual controls. Hang on down there. It looks like they're going to try to open both doors at once.”

“Shit!” Pope said. “They'll evacuate the whole facility!”

“We're sealed down here. We should be okay if you guys are buttoned up.”

“We're suited and sealed,” Lieutenant Graham said. “But when that door opens, there's going to be quite a—”

A shrill whistling pierced their ears as the inner airlock slid open. The whistle grew to a roar, then crashing thunder as the air inside the Squad Bay blasted out into Europan emptiness. Four soldiers in white armor and colored helmets were visible inside the airlock, safety lines clipped to their combat harnesses as they crouched against the howling gale. As soon as the inner door was halfway open, they began to fire, sending a fusillade of full-auto rounds hammering into the squad bay.

But the Marines had used the last few minutes to drag equipment racks, lockers, tables and chairs, and everything else that wasn't bolted down into the middle of the bay, where they'd created a makeshift redoubt. As the wind howled around them, a chair fell from the stack and slid across the deck, but the rest held firm as bullets cracked and snapped—almost unheard beneath the thundering wind—past the waiting Marines.

“Fire!” Pope yelled, and bullets were met with hissing, snapping lasers.

Asterias Linea, Europa

0751 hours Zulu

 

The enemy was trying to get sorted out, but complete chaos had descended on the Chinese base. Men ran for cover, cowered in the shadow of the landers, or crumpled and died. A trio of robot tanks started trundling toward the crater, but Nodell and Campanelli took aim with their Sunbeam M-228 Squad Laser Weapons, set to rock and roll at five 10-megawatt bursts per second. Tanks that small couldn't carry armor more than a centimeter or so thick, and the staccato rattle of bursts each equivalent to 200 grams of high explosives quickly degraded armor, shredded tracks, punched through to vital circuitry. One of the tanks stopped, frozen in place. Another skidded to the side and pitched, nose down, into a missile crater. The other backed away into cover.

Jeff risked another look up. The lander overhead was still descending, passing well toward the southeast now. It didn't appear outwardly damaged, and was still under power. Amberly sent another missile toward it, but its antimissile defenses were engaged and the Wyvern SAM flashed into white vapor halfway to the target and vanished.

Moments later, the ten-meter sphere lightly touched down on the ice half a kilometer away. One of its landing legs, however, didn't support the craft's weight as it settled, and the sphere pitched to the side, the useless leg crumpling beneath its weight. The leg's hydraulics must have been ruptured by the hit. The sphere lay almost on its side, its main hatch blocked shut by the ice and the ruin of the leg.

Several Marines cheered. “Keep firing, damn it!” Jeff yelled. “
Hurt
them! Hit 'em where it hurts!” Seconds later, a Wyvern streaked low through the encampment, baffling the tracking radars aboard the ships, swinging suddenly left and flying right up the ramp of one of the Descending Thunders. The interior cargo bay of the vessel flashed brilliantly, and then all of the internal lights winked out.

The Marines cheered again. One of the seven landers was destroyed, three more either destroyed or badly damaged and certainly out of the fight.

Lieutenant Biehl reached the crater rim at a jog with his eleven people, but the tide already seemed to be turning. With surprise lost, the Chinese were beginning to return fire, both from robot tanks and from the point defense laser weaponry mounted in ball turrets on the upper hulls of the landers. Carver warned of more incoming, two more landers at high altitude, and they appeared to be maneuvering to stay clear of the deadly crater.

“Major Warhurst!” Biehl said, striding to the top of the rim. And then the upper quarter of his body was gone, vanished in a sudden burst of light and fine, red mist. His M-580, his gloved hand and forearm still grasping the pistol grip, landed on the ice half a meter from Jeff's boots. Fifteen meters away, Peterson fell back from the rim, a gaping hole opened in his chest. Wojak scooped up the dropped M-614, locked in another round, raised the weapon to his shoulder, and fired. The missile slammed into a pressurized hut on the ice, detonating with savage brilliance.

More and more eruptions flashed and strobed along the ridge as heavy lasers pulsed from the Chinese camp, spraying them with ice. The Marines returned fire, sending missile after missile into the base, setting off dozens of explosions. Whitehead and Jellowski, from First Platoon, kept launching missiles after Wojak and Amberly both ran out of reloads. Then Klingensmith and Brighton were hit by laser fire from the enemy landers.

“Carver! Anderson!” Jeff called, radioing the SEAL pilots of the two subs. “Things are getting hot here. How're preparations for embarkation going?”

“Almost done, Major,” Carver replied.

“Same here,” Gunners' Mate First Class Leslie Anderson added. “We'll be ready to blow this place in ten minutes.”

“Okay. We're going to start pulling back now. Get things ready to pop as quick as possible.”

He began giving new orders, directing the Marines to start falling back in twos. Second Platoon had been on the line longer, so they withdrew first, leaving only BJ and Nodell to keep their SLAWs working, hammering away at enemy tanks, troops, and buildings.

Another Descending Thunder was coming down. Chesty, tracking the craft on radar, alerted Jeff through the comm net. It appeared to be shifting its landing coordinates to bring it down very close to the crater. Possibly it intended to pass low enough overhead to try to fry the Marine raiders with its plasma torch.

Jeff directed Jellowski and Whitehead to begin putting missiles in the sky in an attempt to drive the lander clear, then told First Platoon to start falling back.

The survivors, he saw, were dragging along the bodies of the Marines who'd been killed, as well as their discarded weapons. A Marine was
never
left behind by his buddies, no matter what.

27
OCTOBER
2067

Two of the Chinese assault troops were down, fist-sized holes burned into their armor. The remaining two unhooked their safety lines and crawled into the Squad Bay, spraying the redoubt with gunfire. Lieutenant Graham's helmeted head snapped back, a bright white star centered by a small round hole slashed across his visor.

More Chinese troops were crowding through the open airlock now. The hatch leading to the E-DARES's lower levels was dogged and sealed, so the air in the Squad Bay was rapidly thinning, the roar of its exit dwindling into a thin flutter of escaping atmosphere. Another PRC soldier collapsed, sprawled across the combing of the lock hatch. The man behind him stretched his arm back, then snapped it forward, throwing something.

A small, green metal sphere bounced wildly along the deck.

“Grenade!” Lucky shouted.

The explosion, almost silent except for a thin, high pop, didn't carry as much of a concussive punch as Lucky had expected; the air was so thin it couldn't carry the shock wave. But shrapnel sleeted across the barricade and punctured the metal back of an upended locker. Jagged metal sliced across Christie Dade's shoulder, ripping the outer SC fabric and scarring the ceramic surface of her armor underneath. “I'm okay!” she shouted, continuing to fire.

Two more grenades exploded, one of them behind the barricade. Lucky felt something
bang
off his PLSS, and prayed that his life-support system was still intact. No red lights on his HUD yet.

Two more PRC troopers crumpled, blocking the open lock hatch. “Fall back!” Pope shouted. “Fall back to the core tube hatch! I'll cover you!”

 

Asterias Linea, Europa

0803 hours Zulu

 

They kept falling back to the Mantas, moving from position to position, providing overwatch support with textbook precision. Finally, only the four SLAW gunners were left on the crater rim, and Jeff told them to start leapfrogging back to the subs. There was no sign of pursuit; it would take the enemy at least an hour to cross that five-kilometer gap to the crater.

The descending lander would be in position to inflict some serious damage on them much quicker, and that had become their main worry now. At an altitude of 3,000 meters, it began strafing the crater floor with its point defense lasers. They were small, only about five megajoules, but one bolt caught Garcia on the top of his helmet, splitting it open in a splattering burst of melted plastic and red mist. Jeff picked him up under one arm and kept moving, dragging him back toward the subs.

Finally, however, the lander's pilot seemed to decide that the better part of valor was to touch down safely somewhere with its load of reinforcements, not exchange laser fire with Marines until some critical system was hit and he was knocked out of the sky. With the SLAW gunners and SAM launchers still pouring fire into it, it nosed over and began descending toward the Chinese base. With a magnified image, Jeff thought he could see vapor spilling from the craft's side—a possible hit on an expellant tank.

Carver and Anderson were outside the subs as Jeff approached with the last of the men, and he was surprised to see both Kaminski and Ishiwara outside with them. They were planting cutter charges—half-meter tubes filled with C-280 and a radio detonator that could be rammed or pounded deep into the ice, and which had been used by the Cadmus science team to cut holes in the ice. The four men were just finishing the placement of twenty-four cutter charges in a broad circle around each of the submarines.

He stood with Kaminski on the ice as the last of the Marines clambered up ladders onto the Mantas' wings and filed inside.

“What are you doing out here, Frank?”

“Hey, I'm fine, and you didn't think I'd let you have all the fun out here to yourself, did you?”

“Your head better?”

“Yeah. S'funny. I think the ice blocks the effects, pretty much. Up here, I just feel a kind of a gnawing…I dunno. An itch? A prickly kind of fear I can't put my finger on. Down there, it's lots worse.”

“We're going to have to go past that thing again.”

“I know. I can handle it.”

“You'll have to. We'll take the longer way 'round, this time, but you'll still have those things buzzing in your head.”

“Knowing what it is ought to help a lot” was Kaminski's reply.

Nodell and BJ, and the two First Platoon SLAW gunners, Glass and DiAmato, had taken up covering positions east of the Mantas, while the rest of the Marines got on board.

Shigeru approached Jeff. “How went the operation?”

Jeff's shrug was lost in his armor. “Not as well as I'd hoped. Those landers are better protected than I thought. But the way we shot up their base, I think we put a few holes in their boat.”

“You shouted something as you were leaving the submarine. Devil dogs?”

“An old, old name for Marines.”

“A strange one. It doesn't sound…flattering.”

Jeff chuckled. “In World War I, a German unit broke into a chateau in France and found themselves being held at bay by some very large, very mean dogs—mastiffs, or something just as nasty. The Germans called them
teufelhunden
, ‘devil dogs.' Not long after that, they came up against U.S. Marines for the first time at Belleau Wood. They started calling
us
devil dogs, and the name kind of stuck.”

“It never fails to amaze me how you Americans can glory in the strangest…
down!
”

Both men hit the ice as rifle rounds struck, sending glittering sprays of ice chips flying. Nearby, Sergeant Lang screamed and collapsed, clutching her side.

Jeff spun around in time to see a dozen white-clad Chinese soldiers coming over the crater rim to the southeast. They must have found a way to clear the cargo hatch on that crashed lander—or else Descending Thunders had more than one door. The SLAW gunners were already in action. Jeff and Kaminski joined in with a withering, deadly fire, knocking the attacking troops down as fast as they could shift the targeting reticles and press the firing buttons.

The attack broke, the PRC troops scattering and taking cover. Kaminski stood, 580 raised, continuing to lay down a brutal covering fire as Jeff crawled over to Vickie Lang. She was still alive, her hands pressed over the foaming, bubbling thumb-sized hole in her armor.

He slapped a sealer patch in place to stop her from losing any more pressure, the only field first aid available to him. Slinging his rifle, he scooped her up in his arms—tricky with the shove her suit gave his as he grabbed her PLSS handholds. Mark II armor and all, she weighed less than twenty kilos. It was an awkward carry, especially with the repulsive forces between their suits, but they crossed the uneven ice quickly, hurrying toward Manta One in a series of low, bounding skips.

“C'mon, Frank!” he called. “Back to the sub!”

“On my way, skipper!”

Helping hands reached down to take Lang from his arms, to help him up onto the wing, to help Kaminski as he rounded the sub's nose, still firing at the advancing PRC troops.

“Are the anchor lines in?”

“Yes, sir. We're ready to blow.”

“Let's get aboard, then.”

Inside the Manta, Jeff took his place next to the pilot's console. “Everyone's on board,” he said. “Punch it.”

“Roger that.”

The ice here was less than a meter thick. During the op planning, they'd been concerned about the mechanics of exfiltrating the crater; once the Mantas were beached, how could the Marines get them back into the water again?

One scheme had involved beaching only one of the craft, while the other, tow cable in place, continued to circle under water. Twelve Marines, however, was too small a number to throw at the Chinese base; twenty-two wasn't much better but at least gave them a chance. And without small boats or ready-made docking facilities, there was no other way to get ashore than literally beaching the entire craft on reasonably solid ice.

The CWS science team's inventory had come to the rescue again. The cutter charges they used for punching holes in the ice for their various probes and soundings had been perfect for cutting firing positions and foxholes, and even for digging the holes for the A-frame that had supported the International Gun.

Now the Manta was surrounded by twenty-four cutter charges pounded deep into the ice. Carver sent a command through the VR helmet. There was a sharp shock followed by a rippling shudder through the Manta's deck, and something
pinged
off the outer hull. The compartment tilted suddenly as the sub's balance shifted, and Jeff grabbed Carver's seat back to stay on his feet.

Nothing more happened

“We're not moving!” Wojak called, looking up at the overhead.

“Maybe we should all jump up and down,” BJ suggested.

“Steady,” Jeff said. He could hear the creak and pop of ice now, transmitted through the hull, could feel the sub's position shifting.

Suddenly, the deck dropped from beneath his feet. He landed again with a thump, flexing his knees and clinging to Carver's seatback as the Manta plunged through shattered blocks of ice and back into the much warmer embrace of the sea.

“I think we caught a few bad guys there,” Carver said, pulling on the sub's control stick. “They were pretty close when the charges blew.”

“Just so we're clear.”

They were sinking, nose high, but the MHD drive was spooling up with its shrill whine, and the helm began answering. They were under power once more.

“Manta Two is in the water,” Carver said, turning his helmeted head to stare at something to the left unseen by the rest of them. “They signal they're under power. I think we made it, Major!”

“Yeah. We made it.” With the fighting over, he could feel the adrenaline rush that had kept him moving out there fading, could feel his knees growing weak, his heart pounding, exhaustion rising from inside like a black wave. “Get us the hell out of here!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

In the sea once more, the eerie embrace of the Singer made itself known, a multi-harmonied ululation throbbing up from the depths.
Siren's song…

Kaminski was looking in a bad way again. The Singer. They still had
that
gauntlet left to run.

Connector Tunnel,
    E-DARES Facility

Ice Station Zebra, Europa

0805 hours Zulu

 

“What d'ya think?” McCall asked. “Are they going to kick in the door?”

They were back in a full standard atmosphere now but had left their suits sealed against the possibility of another breach. The E-DARES facility was essentially a long connector tube with a stern-upper assembly at one end, a bow-lower complex at the other. The hatch leading down from the compartment designated as the Squad Bay led to an internal airlock—numerous locks were located throughout the structure, against the possibility of a pressure loss occurring in any area—and then to a shaft connecting the two ends of the structure. The shaft housed an elevator but included a vertical crawlway with rungs set into the side of the tube. The descent was made in a number of stages. What had been transverse bulkheads when the E-DARES was horizontal were now multiple decks when it was vertical. Locking themselves through, they'd climbed five meters down to the first tube deck and waited there now, eyes on the hatch overhead.

“Maybe they've given up,” Christie Dade suggested.

“Hardly seems likely, after what they've been through already,” Owenson said.

“Talk to us, Captain,” Pope called. “What are they doing?”

“They appear to have closed the outer lock, and are now repressurizing the Squad Bay from the emergency reserve tanks.”

“How many?” Doc McCall wanted to know.

“Can't tell. The security cameras in there are out. I think they shot them up. Wait a second. Watch it. They're starting to work at jiggering the hatch to the central corridor. They'll be coming through pretty soon now.”

“We're ready for 'em,” Lucky said. He lay down on the deck, behind the cover of a plastic storage crate, his rifle held out in the open, the crosshairs in his HUD centered on the locked hatch five meters above.

 

Chinese People's Mobile
    Strike Force

Asterias Linea, Europa

0810 hours Zulu

 

General Xiang stood in the midst of devastation. The attack had been so sudden, so completely unexpected, it was still hard to understand exactly what had happened. Four Descending Thunder landers were destroyed, including three of the new ones arriving with General Lin's force from the newly arrived
Xing Feng
. Seventy-six men dead. Four
zidong tanke
vehicles, five APCs, two tractors, four hab modules holed and useless, six storage sheds…the list of destroyed and damaged equipment went on and on.

The People's Mobile Strike Force had just suffered an incalculable setback.

But
not
a defeat. Not a final defeat. The last communiqué from Major Huang indicated that the defenses left in place at Cadmus base were very weak. Huang's first assault had overrun the crater, and now had the enemy penned up inside the CWS base.

It was now only a matter of time, as Huang's assault troops worked their way down the length of the CWS structure, one level at a time—dirty, deadly, agonizing work, but sooner or later successful.

In a way, perhaps, the defeat here at the LZ could be justified as the diversion that had made the victory at Cadmus possible. At least, that would be a good way to present it when he made his report to General Lin.

Lin Shankun was one of the old guard of the PRC's senior military line. He'd fought as a child in the Great Civil War that had divided China between north and south and grown up to become one of the leaders who'd overseen the Reunification. The man did not like failure, could not accept it for any reason. During the Chengchou Campaign, he'd made a name for himself by shooting five subordinates who'd failed in their orders.