Issue In Doubt (19 page)

“Admiral Avery!” Bauer said sharply. “Time enough for that later. Right now we need to rescue everybody who can be rescued and recover those who can’t. We need to fully assess the damage to our forces, and prepare to fend off the next alien attack. There
will
be another attack.”

Avery flinched as though slapped, but pulled himself out of the depression he’d been sinking into. “You’re right, General. You’re in command, what are your orders?”

“All you have left for planet defense is your flagship, the big carrier, and three frigates. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“What about the two destroyers you had pursuing the missiles?”

“They are still en route to what remains of ARG 17.”

“Good. They can aid in the search and recovery.”

“Yes they can.”

“Next, you have inter-stel comms, I don’t. So I need for you to send a preliminary report to the Joint Chiefs.”

“I will pass my message by you before transmission.”

Bauer waved that away. “I trust your judgment, and you’re better able than I am to tell the Chiefs the status of the Navy forces here, and request what you need. Tell them to start feeding Second Army here.”

Avery nodded his acceptance of Bauer’s instruction.

“And I want you to find the aliens’ ground bases on Mini Mouse. Also, commence satellite reconnaissance of Dumbo. If the aliens had bases on the smaller moon, they probably have installations of some sort on the larger one as well.”

“I’ll give the orders as soon as I leave your command post.”

“Excellent!” Bauer exclaimed, rising to his feet. “Can you think of anything else that needs to be done at this time?”

“No, sir. I think we covered everything.”

“Good. Keep me up to date on what’s happening with the search and recovery operations, and what you’re finding on the moons.”

“Aye aye, General.”

Bauer held out his hand, and was relieved at the firmness of Avery’s grip. If Avery’s grip had been weak, Bauer would have relieved him of command and passed it to the senior surviving captain in either fleet.

Now, to prepare his Marines for the next ground attack by the aliens. One thing that wasn’t mentioned in his meeting with Avery, but that Bauer knew full well: the engagement on Mini Mouse demonstrated that, in close combat, his Marines were the superior fighters, and they could beat greater numbers.

Remembering the vids he’d seen of the original attack on Troy, and the little from Force Recon, Bauer knew it would be a very tough fight when it came. It would be a fight that might well be decided by numbers.

Unknown was how many soldiers of VII Corps survived the attack on ARG 17, and the state of their morale. High morale and belief in yourself and your comrades was of incalculable value in battle. They were what doctrine and field manuals called “force magnifiers,” the intangibles that increased a military unit’s ability to fight and win without increasing its size or weapons.

“Sir.” A firm knock came on the frame of Bauer’s office door. He looked toward it and saw Lieutenant Upshur.

“Come.”

Upshur stepped inside the room. “Sir, satellite observation reports a wormhole opening twenty degrees above ecleptic, one point starboard of galactic east. Half a light minute distance.”

Galactic east was almost opposite the direction to Earth, and no other human colonized worlds were in that direction.

Damn Navy. Why do they have to use “points” to give direction?
Bauer thought but didn’t say. He, like most Marines—and just about everybody else for that matter—had to translate points to degrees. A compass point was one thirty-second of a compass rose, slightly more than five and a half degrees. It was good that this wormhole was only one point off galactic east; figuring seven points would have taken more time.

Bauer waited for more.

“So far, nothing has exited the wormhole,” Upshur said.

“I need to know instantly when something does.”

“Yes, sir. I will inform you immediately when something exits.”

“And get me Brigadier General Porter, ASAP.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Upshur wasn’t at all surprised by the “ASAP” rather than the more common, “At his earliest convenience.” The just-opened wormhole could only mean the aliens were about to make an appearance.

Less than a minute had passed since Bauer told Upshur he wanted his chief of staff, and the man was already there.

“You must have been waiting for my call.”

“As soon as I heard about the wormhole, I knew you’d need me.”

“You found out about it before I did? Upshur is
my
aide, he should report to me first.”

Porter shook his head. “He didn’t tell me. I was in the comm shack when the message came in from orbit.”

“Where do we need to aim to hit a target one point to starboard of galactic east?”

Porter shrugged. “Sometimes it seems the Navy thinks they’re still at sea in wooden ships with canvas sails.”

Bauer grunted. “Well, defending against starships coming from one point to starboard is going to be their job. We have to defend the ground from both land and air attack. Assemble the staff.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Briefing room, 1st Marine Combat Force Headquarters,

Near Millerton

Word of the new wormhole traveled fast, and it was only minutes before every member of the 1st Marine Combat Force’s primary staff and their seconds were assembled, along with the commanders of all the major subordinate units.

“Gentlemen,” Bauer began, “we don’t know when the aliens are going to exit the wormhole or in what force. What we do know is, when they do come we can expect a most serious fight. Using only missiles launched from Mini Mouse, they killed or severely injured three quarters of ARG 17, and a third of TF 8. Along with the ships of ARG 17, the aliens killed or damaged more than half of VII Corps before those poor soldiers could even see the world they were on their way to. The surviving ships of the ARG, reinforced by some of the warships of TF 8, are currently undertaking a massive search and recovery mission where the ships or ARG 17 were killed or wounded.

“The Navy believes that the aliens no longer present a threat to their shipping from Mini Mouse. Perhaps they’re right, at least in terms of the aliens having attack-capable warships there. But their ground attack on the squads we sent as security on the SAR missions to Mini Mouse suggests that they have an unknown but possibly substantial ground force still present on the small moon. The Navy is currently investigating, via satellite, both moons, looking for anomalies that could indicate alien installations.

“The Navy, incidentally, refers to them as ‘the enemy,’ almost as though they are in denial that they aren’t human. We’ve all seen the vids, we know they aren’t human.

“For all we know, the aliens are still right here on Troy, hidden in underground facilities. Many times in the past, the ancestors of our Corps went up against enemies who lived and fought in caves. And died in them when Marines went in to dig them out. We have seen nothing to rule out the possibility that the aliens are underground.

“To that end, I want 3rd MAW to apply all possible resources to locating anomalies that could indicate caves or other sub-surface structures.” That he directed at Major General Reginald Myers, the commander of 3rd Marine Air Wing. “G-2, use local geological studies and reports to locate possibly usable caves within one hundred klicks of Millerton.” That was to Lieutenant Colonel Wendell Neville, his intelligence chief.

“In light of the fact that the remnants of ARG 17 and VII Corps are still in planetary space and not about to make planetfall, we will be on our own for the foreseeable future. So the rest of you, prepare your units to defend against attacks such as we saw in the vids of the initial invasion, and to attack when the aliens show themselves. At a time to be chosen by the enemy, we will be engaged with a foe of unknown strength and capabilities. I intend that the First Marine Combat Force will win.

“Brigadier General Porter, take over.”

With that, Bauer marched out of the briefing room. Everybody rose to their feet and stood at attention until Porter called out,

“Seats!” and began giving his instructions.

Chapter Fourteen

Stasis Station A-1-53/S, NAUS Juno Beach

Second Lieutenant Ted Greig awoke; the commander’s stasis unit in the station Greig had led his platoon to automatically woke its occupant after two hours, unless ordered to wake him at an earlier time.

As with the other two times he’d been in stasis, Greig needed a minute to clear his mind before he could move, or do anything other than groan. He pried his eyes open and sat up. A look around that wasn’t as quick as he would have liked told him nobody else was waking yet. He levered himself out of the coffin-like stasis unit and stood on legs that quickly remembered how to stand and, eventually, walk.

Stasis can be a life-saver,
he thought,
as long as you don’t have to wake up fighting.

He stretched, twisted left and right, and did a couple of deep knee bends to get himself moving again. Then he checked the time. Two hours since he’d locked his platoon down.

Two hours. The automatic commander’s wake-up.

Where was the company commander, why hadn’t he roused him, or the rest of the platoon? Or was that the responsibility of one of the ship’s officers?

He tried his comm, but all he got was static. Things couldn’t be
that
bad though—the ship’s gravity was still on.

Greig looked to his left. Sergeant First Class Quinn’s stasis unit was still closed; the platoon sergeant was still out. That needed to change, right now. Whatever Greig did, he was going to need help, and Quinn was the best help available.

In two steps, he was at the control panel for Quinn’s unit. Waking him would be child’s play: there were two pads on the panel, a green one with the word “UP” blazoned on it, and a red one labeled “DOWN.” If “UP” didn’t mean, “Rise up from stasis,” whoever designed the panel didn’t have a very good working knowledge of English. He tapped the green pad and was rewarded by the faint sounds of machinery from within the unit. After a moment the lid rose and he saw Quinn begin struggling to sit up.

“Take it easy, Sergeant,” he said, putting a hand on Quinn’s shoulder to keep him down. “Let it come naturally.” He felt the sergeant’s muscles relax.

Quinn worked his jaw, building saliva so he could speak. “Who’s up?” he croaked.

“I don’t know. Nobody answered my comm.”

“Maybe your comm’s broken?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Greig didn’t think so; the comm units were field hardened, supposed to stand up to the rigors of combat. His hadn’t had any rough treatment at all.

“I don’t think so either.” Quinn took Greig’s silence as disbelief of the comm being broken. His voice was stronger now, and he managed to sit up with little difficulty. “Gimme a hand.” He reached, and Greig grasped his wrist and pulled him out of the unit. “You want me to wake the troops?”

Greig shook his head. “Not until we have a better idea of the situation. As soon as you’re ready, let’s go exploring.”

“How much exploring can we do by ourselves? The ship has what, ten levels?”

“All we really have to explore is this deck, this is where our battalion is billeted. Only three decks are troops, the rest of the ship is ship operations and crew, or cargo.”

“You’re sure of that, LT?”

Greig nodded. “The
Juno Beach’s
layout was covered in an officers call a couple of days before we left Earth. So like I said, we only need to look at this deck.”

“Where are the vacuum suits?”

Greig looked a question at his platoon sergeant.

“We were under attack, LT, and nobody answered your comm. At the very least, the ship might have been holed and the atmosphere in the passage has gotten very thin.”

When Greig didn’t say anything, Quinn went on, “At worst, the ship’s been destroyed and this station is drifting in vacuum.

Greig flinched. “Is that what you think happened? That the ship was destroyed, I mean?”

Quinn shrugged. “One thing I’ve learned in almost twenty years in this army is, when it comes to troop transports, anything’s possible.”

Greig gave a nervous chuckle. “I’m sure you’re right. Let’s find the vacuum suits.”

The vacuum suits were right where they should be. The station had four rows of “coffins” with a locker at the ends of each row. The lockers held six vacuum suits apiece. The suits were intended for emergency use only, and were strictly intended for short time use. They came in four sizes that almost guaranteed that nobody could find one that fit properly. The one that Quinn got into was a marginally better fit than the one that sagged on Greig. The suits didn’t look like the ones he’d seen sailors wearing when they went on EVA missions. They were far less form-fitting, and, instead of helmets, had hood arrangements with broad face plates that allowed the wearer’s face to be clearly seen from outside.

“Are you ready, Sarge?” Greig asked over the suit’s short-range comm once the two had attached the breathers to their backs.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, LT.” Quinn was less than two steps from the compartment’s hatch. He ignored the display next to it and braced himself against the possible outrush of air if there was vacuum outside. He was staggered only slightly when he hit the “open” button and the airtight slid into a recess on the bulkhead: the atmosphere outside the compartment was thin enough that they needed the breathers, but far from vacuum.

Greig started to say, “I’ll lead,” but stopped when Quinn put out a hand to stop him and stepped into the doorway. Leaning so only his head and shoulders were outside, he looked both in both directions along the passageway.

“The emergency lights are on, but that’s all I can see.” He looked over his shoulder. “Which way, sir?”

Thinking quickly, remembering the basic plan of the ship, he said, “Go right.” Right was forward, toward the front of the ship. The troop command compartments were forward of the troop compartments, the stasis compartments were aft, toward the rear. “There’s another stasis compartment on the other side of this passage. Let’s check it out first.”