The Heart of Valour (28 page)

“Whatever it takes to get the job done, Gunny?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fulfill the mission objectives; see that you kill as few Marines as possible?”

Because he’d phrased it as a question, she answered.

“No, sir, that’s your job. My job is to fulfill the mission objective in such a way that my people survive.”

“Semantics.”

“Perspective. Sir.”

To her relief, he smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile, but his mouth moved in roughly the right directions. “I stand corrected, Gu… Son of a bitch!”

“Sir?”

Eyes clamped nearly shut, both palms at his temples, he scowled up at the falling snow. “Damned low pressure system is playing hell with my head.”

And their doctor, his doctor, was trudging through a fake settlement carrying enough explosives to flatten the very real walls of the fake power station.

“Are the fireteams in position?”

“One/two and three/one are still on the move sir. Both teams have a ways to go yet…” She glanced down at the doctor’s position. “…but they’ll be there in plenty of time.”

“What about the staff sergeant’s drone ID?”

“Sorry sir, McGuinty hasn’t been able to tease it out yet. He’s still working on it though and with any luck we can upload it to the rest of the platoon before we move out.”

He watched Dr. Sloan’s progress a moment longer. “Which won’t be happening any time soon.”

“No, sir.”

“Hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait.”

Torin waited in turn for some sort of punch line, but it never came. Collar up and scanner down, Major Svensson settled down in the snow like the rest of the platoon—pack on, weapon resting diagonally across his body. Combats and bodyliners would keep them warm and dry, and field rations required nothing more than a free hand. The only difference between the major and the platoon was that they watched the sky darken and the snow fall while he watched her, the shimmer of his scanner barely visible across his face.

Seemed like a good idea to ignore him. “Ayumi, put your Goddamned helmet on.”

* * *

Three/one moved around the south edge of Dunstan Mills, heading for the river and the third sentry Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had marked on her sketch of the settlement. It was a long way to hump based on the gunny’s assumption that there’d be a drone at that point needing removal, but then, Stone figured other Marines had humped farther based on other gunnery’s sergeants’ assumptions, so no harm, no foul. And, besides, the one thing he’d learned for certain after 120-odd days of training was that the gunny’s job was to know things and his job was to do what he was told.

Technically that applied to sergeants and above, but specifically it was all about the gunny.

Given the size of the trees around them, it was a good bet that the nearly knee-deep powder now covered more soil and less rock. The branches overhead, in spite of being bare, were interlaced thickly enough to keep out most of the falling snow which, unfortunately, also kept out a lot of the ambient light.

Scanner down, Stone felt like he was back in the quarry, dust forcing him to operate his loader by way of the readout on the screen. The scanners the Corps used were more complex but essentially the same, and it had surprised him a little that a number of recruits washed out because they couldn’t adapt to seeing their immediate surroundings through a tech filter.

Up ahead, Vega on point and Jonin right behind her showed on his scanner outlined in a nice friendly green, camouflage and light levels making them nearly invisible to the naked eye even though Jonin was almost close enough to touch. On the lower left corner of his screen, his scanner noted that another Marine followed three paces behind. He knew it was Alison Carson, the fourth member of the fireteam, even if the scanner didn’t.

Stone frowned as Jonin stumbled, boots catching on something under the snow. Not good. Picking up his pace, he closed his hand over the di’Taykan’s shoulder and shook him none too gently. “Hey. Get your mind back in the game.”

Jonin twisted out from under his grip and turned just enough to glare. “I’m not…”

“You are,” the big man told him calmly as Vega stopped and came back six paces to see what had stopped them. “You’re walking like you’re Human, covering ground with your head up your ass.”

“Up Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s ass,” muttered Carson from behind Stone’s shoulder. When Jonin switched his glare to her, she snorted, “Oh, come on, Jonin, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.”

“We’ve got some distance to cover before we’re in position,” Stone continued, ignoring the interruption, “and I think we need to know now if you’re fit to go on or if it’d be safer for all concerned…”

“That being us,” Carson added.

“…if you head back.”

“To Staff Sergeant Beyhn.”

“Shut the fuk up, Carson. I know it’s some kind of biological imperative thing you guys have got going,” Stone continued, his scanner showing that Carson had taken half a step back, “but if you can’t get past it—well, I’m not dying for your biology.”

Jonin’s eyes were dark—hardly surprising given how many receptors he’d need open to see—and he was wearing the
I’m a hot-shit aristocrat
expression that training had pretty much slapped out of him by day seventeen. Being the focus of the other di’Taykan in the platoon had not been good for him.

“You’ve got to put the staff sergeant down,” Stone said levelly, wondering if the gunny had sent three/one on the long hump not because they were the only intact fireteam with a shooter but to get Jonin away from species issues. “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr seems to think you’re good to go or she wouldn’t have sent you. Now, if she hadn’t, I don’t know if she’d have sent us out one short or if she’d have sent another team, but me, I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell her she was wrong because I have a feeling the survival rate for…”

“Shut up, Stone.” His eyes were lightening, and the di’Taykan aristocrat had been replaced by someone who looked tired and pissed off about equally. “You made your point. Quit beating it to death. I can do this.”

Now
he could.

Stone nodded and said, “Okay.”

* * *

“Well, McGuinty?”

McGuinty quickly swallowed the butt of his stim stick and shook his head. His helmet wobbled, sending clumps of accumulated snow falling down onto his shoulders. “Sorry, Gunny. It’d take me weeks to separate out the staff sergeant’s program for the drones. It’s wound in and around too much other crap.”

Torin tucked Beyhn’s helmet under her arm. It had been worth a shot, worth taking the time from the attempt to regain control of the CPNs. But now…

“I’m back on it, Gunny.” He held up the staff sergeant’s slate before she could speak.

“Good work, Marine.”

* * *

Temporarily attached to one/two, Duarte followed in Cho’s footsteps, the indentations of his boot prints in the snow showing briefly, palely green in her scanner. di’Lammin Oshyo was dead and she had replaced her in the fireteam and that was just a little creepy.

Oshyo is dead, and I am her.

No one was supposed to die on Crucible. Wish they were dead, yes. Actually die, no.

Her boots felt like they weighed ten kilos each and her nose was running again. She wiped it next to the frozen snot already on the back of her mitten and wondered if being chosen for the walk around to the north side of the fake settlement actually meant anything, or if she had just been standing closest to the three remaining members of one/two when the gunny’d had to make a choice.

* * *

Each of the three potential sentries—and two of them would remain potential until two/one and three/one had gained their positions and marked them—had been assigned one of the recruits who’d shot Expert. Stone, Cho, and Lirit. Kichar was fine with that; it made sense that Major Svensson and Gunnery Sergeant Kerr were making use of the skills they had available. She, herself, had shot three points under Expert and that might have had some bearing on why her team had been chosen to back up Lirit who was on her own what with McGuinty still working the staff’s slate trying to crack the system and Piroj ordered to stick to McGuinty and Ayumi staying with the Staff Sergeant.

The only problem was that Lirit’s target was the sentry first spotted by Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, the sentry closest to the platoon’s position. The team would be going in well within range of the gunny’s scanner.

Gunnery Sergeant Kerr would be watching her… their every move.

They could have been sent to one of the farther positions if not for Hisht, but the Krai’s short legs had made the day’s march harder on him than anyone but Piroj and Sergeant Jiir. Kichar glanced over at Hisht, the pouch of rations he was eating giving away his position without her needing to use her scanner to determine which of the mounds of snow and camouflage was him. It probably hadn’t helped that Krai weren’t fond of the cold.

She was not going to turn and look at Gunnery Sergeant Kerr although she thought she could feel the gunnery sergeant looking at her.

Inside her mittens, her palms were sweating.

* * *

“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, this is Private Stone. Three/one is in position and have targeted enemy eyes. Over.”

“
You’ve got about a half an hour if Dr. Sloan maintains speed. I’ll ping you before the fireworks start.”

“Roger, Gunny. Out.”

Nice to know the other two sentries were exactly where she expected they’d be. It raised the odds they’d be right about the rest of the drones gathered in the power station.

It turned out to be closer to forty-five minutes, Dr. Sloan visibly tiring as she covered the final kilometer back to the platoon, the circle of light her sleeve cast on the snow skittering sideways at odd moments, the red line looping to both sides of the green. The moment she was far enough from the sentry, Major Svensson went out to meet her, nearly carrying her the last few meters.

Torin had objected and then shut her mouth about it. She hated waiting, too.

“Next time,” Dr. Sloan panted, dropping onto the rock ledge the major had cleared of snow, “you can just go yourselves and get shot. I honestly don’t care.”

“Next time,” Major Svensson agreed, dropping to one knee so he could look into her face. When he was satisfied with what he saw, he handed her a canteen.

She took a long swallow, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and said, “You know you have a bunch of Marines down there by those trees, right?”

“They’re at the ZP,” he told her. “The Zero Point. Any closer and the enemy sentry would have to do something about them.”

“What? The drones know we’re here?” Leaning forward, she punched him in the shoulder. Torin glared at the watching Marines until they stopped smiling. “I thought the whole point of my little trek through the twelfth circle of hell was so the drones wouldn’t know we were here.”

“No, it was so they wouldn’t know we were planting explosives. They know we have Marines at all three ZPs. They know these Marines won’t attack because attacking a sentry over that distance, a sentry that’s aware of you, is stupid at best and suicide at worst. While we’re covering the distance, they’d have nothing to do but shoot at us.”

“I thought they couldn’t kill you.”

“They can’t. But the ETGs only ensure nonlethal until the programming changes, and we don’t know when that’ll happen, so we can’t risk…”

Dr. Sloan raised a hand, cutting him off. “I get that we don’t want the programming to change,” she said wearily, “and I’ll take your word for the rest.”

“Sorry. The point is, they’re dug in and defensible, they can afford to be lax.”

“They’re not lax,” she sighed. “They’re programmed. They’re drones.”

“Ah, but they don’t know that.”

It took her a moment. She frowned as meaning pushed past exhaustion. “You people…”

When she let it lie there, the major patted her arm—not unsympathetically, and stood.

“Make it happen, Gunny.”

“Yes, sir.” Torin turned to face the settlement. It wasn’t necessary; she could detonate the charges no matter which way she faced, but she preferred to look the enemy in the eye—or sensor array—even if the gesture was purely symbolic because of the dark. A tap on her comm to make sure the entry teams were listening. “Heads up, people…” Behind her, she could hear the sound of Marines readying their weapons. “…we’re about to blow.”

Both sergeants, Torin, and Major Svensson had all done demolition training—although only Torin and the major had applied that training in combat. A quick run over their options and they’d agreed to err on the side of caution and use all the available charges. Training platoons didn’t travel with an abundance of explosive power; privately, Torin hoped they’d have enough.

The sound wasn’t as loud as she’d expected; a series of distant bangs when she’d been hoping for
blam.
Turned out the
blam
had been momentarily delayed. The power plant lit up the night sky, painting the settlement with streaks of orange and red.

“Holy crap,” someone observed.

Either the drones were extraordinarily explosive with only a little encouragement or the charges had gotten stronger since she’d taken her last course.

* * *

Three squads at the ZPs. Another three ready to move in a direct line to the anchor. Get it. Hold it. The final three squads, including the walking wounded, to remain in place, guarding the doctor and injured. Torin and the major were going in with the second wave. It only made sense; together they had more combat experience than everyone else in the immediate area combined, and if the bulk of the drones hadn’t been destroyed with the power station or if the Others managed to reprogram before they had the platoon under cover, they needed to be on the scene and able to make the necessary decisions.

Individually
, they had more combat experience than everyone else in the immediate area combined. Using the information Torin sent him, the major could make the necessary decisions safely back beyond the ZP. Unfortunately, the major didn’t see it that way.

Jiir lost the toss and remained with the reserve squad.

The explosion was not only intended to destroy the majority of the drones but also to pull the enemy sentries out of their defensive positions. In Torin’s experience, there was nothing like an attack inside the perimeter, the sudden, explosive evidence of failure, to throw sentries off their game.