The Infinity Brigade #3, Stone Breaker Read online

  My friend, in his typical reckless fashion had decided he would engage his stealth systems and walk casually up to a Gator mortar emplacement and drop a frag grenade into their dugout. What he failed to consider was the size of their stock-piled ammo, and more to the point, the size of the resulting explosion as the hair-triggered tactical nuke they had sitting next to their other ammunition went off.

  Ground-pounding was warfare made personal.

  I knew that ultimately JJ would be alright… or at least as alright as his psychological profile would allow… but it was still irritating that he was going to be out of the fray until his replicated body could meet up with us at a rally point in about twenty-four hours… that and the fact that he was going to get a hot meal and a warm shower… I would kill for either at this point. I suppose the biggest source of my irritation was the nagging belief that JJ had walked up to that mortar emplacement fully expecting the Big-D… ergo the frozen smile.

  We were about half way to our goal of reaching the Ashtoreth Capital. I knew once we got there the real fun would start when we began to fight building to building.

  The Gators had put up a strong, if unimaginative, defense. They had nuked us six times. The shielding on a Stark suit… especially these new models, was impressive but getting a nuke dropped on your head tended to spoil your day. The good news was the effective kill range for a tactical nuke against a fully armored Marine was only about a half a kilometer. The worst part of the nukes was that the blast wave tended to displace nearby marines by the better part of a kilometer and sometimes buried them under a couple of tons of dirt and rock. It wasn’t a big deal, but it took time for powered armor to dig out of the rubble.

  Time was always the enemy in war. Time allowed your opponent to pull back and regroup. Time allowed your opponent to charge and pressure your line. Time was the one thing you either did not have enough of… or, conversely, you had too much of.

  “Move forward!” I bellowed.

  In fairness, my Marines were already moving out, but it never hurt to let the men and women in the trenches know you were with them and not sitting back in the rear eating bonbons and sipping lemonade.

  “Harrison. Take over Second platoon. JJ got careless with a nuke.”

  “Again?” Harrison answered from about two clicks to my right. “I think he’s sweet on your Doctor friend, Sir.”

  Doctor Janice Pulaski and I had a thing going. There were days I thought it might go the distance… and then there were times, like now, that I wasn’t so sure. She was one hell of a surgeon and also our foremost authority on the bio-generation chambers.

  That said, it seemed every time I popped the lid to step out of one she took it as a personal affront that I had gotten myself killed again. I tried to explain that war, was by its very nature, a dangerous activity… but my protests fell on deaf ears.

  I knew, however, that JJ would not be meeting up with Janice. She had turned the bio-generators over to Doctor Kevorkian. She was down on the planet’s surface supervising a massive field hospital we had setup for the civilian casualties. The Ashtoreth might not give a damn about their people, but we did… and the medics in the rear would do all they could to save as many of them as was possible.

  Sadly, when the local militia was tossing around tactical nukes like they were party favors… there tended to be a lot of collateral damage.

  I checked my battle status display. It overlaid my field of vision. There was a little rectangular area near the top that gave an overview in the form of green, yellow and red dots on our side and blue and white dots for aggressors and civvies respectively. The bulk of the display scrolled as I looked left and right. Here it was possible to dive down into much more detail. I could see the green dot associated with Harrison moving to take command of JJ’s platoon.

  This scrolling… it was just a little thing that had changed between the Mark-15 and Mark-16 Stark suits but I had quickly found it to be invaluable. The other neat things the boffins in the weapons lab had done was to cause the display to fade out if my eyes were focused on the battle itself rather than the display. I had my AI setup to impose the display if it detected a major change in the field of battle.

  I lifted my primary assault rifle over the top of the wall I was squatting behind. The wall wasn’t much in the way of protection… at least not against the stuff the Gators were tossing our way… but it did offer protection from line-of-sight.

  My rifle’s scope provided a better view of the crap-storm taking place than either my tactical display or my mark-1 God-issued eyes. No sooner had my rifle poked over the top then a series of kinetic rounds began to punch through the wall I was hiding behind. The EM blasts from all the low-yield nukes had pretty much fried my active shielding. Which meant my only protection, at the moment, was the dragon-skin adaptive armor in my Stark suit. It had enough stopping power for the kinetics the Gators were using but without the momentum dissipation systems in play it was like being hit in the kidneys with a jackhammer. Translation… it hurt like hell.

  I decided it might be a good time to switch out my AO before some overly ambitious Gator decided it would be a good idea to nuke my position. Fortunately, my armor’s fusion generator was better shielded then my nano-armor skin. I flexed my legs and sprang a good fifty meters straight back. It must have surprised the Gators because they only winged me in the leg twice. Did I mention the Jackhammer and pain thing?

  After a few more jumps and one round that pinged my head I was finally far enough back that I wasn’t such an easy target. My head was still ringing from the last hit. My guess was I’d have a concussion. Fortunately, my medical nanites would take care of that once they reinitialized. Yeah, the numerous EM waves had taken them out too.

  I told my suit’s AI to administer an analgesic and did my best to ignore the pounding in my head. At the end of the day, it was my own fault. I should never have been that close to the enemy position, but I had wanted to see first-hand how they were staging their defense.

  “Sergeant McMillian, grab two men and get a heavy team up on that knoll in sector A14. See if you can’t put some pressure on those Gators that just tried to fit me with a new anal orifice. We need to force them to keep their heads down if we want to advance to their right. They have a perfect field of fire on that gully we have to pass through.”

  “Roger that, Sir,” McMillian barked back a moment later. He was a good kid… I expected he would go far… If I could keep him away from bad influences like JJ.

  “Come on boys… its clobbering time!” McMillian yelled.

  I toggled my comms to a private channel. Sergeant Peters status icon was flashing yellow which meant his Stark suit had taken some serious damage.

  “Peters, you still sucking down air son?”

  “Affirmative, Commander. I’m afraid that last nuke did a number on my left leg but I’m still marginally effective.”

  “Define… ‘did a number’?”

  “Well, Sir… it’s pretty much gone… as well as most of the right leg. I got the Gibson twins to prop me up on a rock, so I can continue to frag some Gators with my sniper scope… but once they make my position… well it’s not like I’m going to run away.”

  “Understood,” I answered. “How’s the pain?”

  “Better living through chemistry, Sir” was the only answer I got.

  “OK, son. Give’m hell for as long as you can and then I’ll see you on the other side of the Big-D.”

  The fighting remained intense for another forty-eight hours. I had maxed out on stims several times and without my medical nanites. I knew my liver must look like swiss cheese. I expected another stern look from Janice Pulaski… but hey… what’s a guy to do. It’s a proven fact that it’s hard to sleep when people are shooting at you. It’s just the way the universe works.

  JJ managed to get himself fragged one more time… within ten minutes of arriving at the rally point. This time I really couldn’t blame him. A resupply shuttle got taken out by an
EMP blast and literally landed on top of him while he was powering up his Stark suit. Antimatter-Fusion hybrid power systems are vulnerable for a few seconds as they initialize. As it turns out, thirty kilotons of ‘dead-stick shuttle’ is enough to destabilize them during this initialization process.

  I’m told that the resulting explosion was quite impressive.

  I didn’t see JJ for another twenty-four hours. When I did, I was tempted to kill him myself. There was something about a smug and clean marine that I found off-putting. Perhaps it was a character flaw on my part… it was hard to say.

  You have to understand, I had been for the better part of two weeks without a shower and a hot meal. The shower I could do without. My now fully functioning medical nanites kept my skin reasonably clean and free from excessive odors and dried sweat. The meals were a bigger issue.

  I longed for something that didn’t come out of a toothpaste-like tube. Forever MREs, affectionately called ‘mealworms ready to eat’ came in several different flavor enhancements but were all essentially the same. Special nanites within our Stark suits recycled (yes, you read that correctly) our organic waste and presented the resulting nutritious mush in tubes that we could suck on. It came pretty close to making a Marine in a powered Stark suit a closed system with our fusion generators providing the only energy input into the system.

  The best that could be said about the process was that it worked. But, ultimately, it was like a dancing dog. You clapped because it danced… not because it danced well.

  JJ was the picture of a happy Marine. His face was shaved. His hair was clean. His Stark suit was in perfect shape with no dings and dents. On top of it all he felt a perverse need to talk about how top notch the prime rib had been in the Yorktown’s mess hall the night before.

  The only thing that kept me from a deliberate live-fire accident involving my dear friend was the sure knowledge that JJ would once again be eating steak. Therefore, as his commanding officer, I made it my mission in life to make sure JJ had every crap detail that provided a modicum of safety.

  Today, that included taking a visual inventory of our ammo supplies and requisitioning replacements as necessary. It was something our AIs could easily handle but I always felt a set of mark-one eyes were a good means of confirmation.

  Our battle line extended a good ten kilometers in a semi-circle around the Ashtoreth capital, and as we pushed forward our supply lines extended. As I said, it was supposed to be a duty that afforded a modicum of safety. What I failed to properly account for was JJ’s natural talent for finding trouble.

  The right side of our offensive butted up to and ultimately passed a small lake. We had scouted the lake as we made our way forward. It seemed the Gators had a few tricks up their sleeves. We should have known… Gators like water. They apparently had a submerged base that was protected from a casual inspection. In short, we missed it.

  As JJ inspected the mobile supply depot that had been set up near the lake… the Gators decided to come up for a visit. Did I mention JJ’s natural talent for finding trouble?

  ***

  The sun was a class III mid-life yellow dwarf. Processing Unit Five-One-Three made the determination according to data stored in his memory banks by Fabricators that had died many hundreds of years ago.

  There were signs that the rebels had occupied one of the worlds in this system, but its indigenous population seemed to have evicted them. This seemed strange in as much as the level of technology employed by the natives seemed far inferior to what Fabricators had led the Processing Units to expect would be necessary to deal with the rebel forces.

  Processing Unit Five-One-Three would have to consider the potential implications of this anomaly.

  Chapter 3: Barbecue at the beach…

  I hate it when the enemy gets creative. I mean it’s not like I don’t appreciate creativity in general… it’s just when the bad guys do it… it tends to screw up my carefully laid plans. Sadly, it’s a known fact that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

  “We’ve got ourselves a party here!” Lieutenant Jeremy James Hammond yelled over the comms. “I got Gators swimming up to shore near Depot Sixteen. I triggered the shield on Sixteen but I’m goin’a need some assistance entertaining this many party guests.”

  I quickly toggled my comms. “Hold out as best you can JJ. I’m sending support to your AO now.”

  I had two reserve platoons in the rear catching some shuteye. I called the Lieutenant in charge of the closest one.

  “Henderson, I need you to roust your guys and get them over to Depot Sixteen… post-haste. We have a surprise incursion. JJ and the guard squad are engaging the Gators now but based on what I’m seeing on the TacVid they are outnumbered about three to one.”

  “On it, Sir. The boys and I are hot suited, so we can be there in five mikes,”

  “Make it three Lieutenant.”

  “Roger that, Sir. Henderson out.”

  I turned to my aid, Sergeant Davis. “Tommy, apparently we have a Gator party over at the beach by Sixteen. Wanna go to a barbeque?”

  “You knows me, Sir. Can’t never turn down a good barbeque!” Tommy replied in his typical Cajun accent.

  It took us about ten minutes to travel the twenty or so klicks. The Stark suits could have gotten us there in less than half of that but there was a lot of nasties dropping on us from the Gator lines. At one point, I called down a kinetic from the orbiting Yorktown. I hated to use them because of the potential for collateral damage but the Gators had already pissed in their bed by nuking the area they were currently occupying earlier. Any civilians that had been there were well and truly dead already.

  A KEW dropped from orbit is impressive. Ours are designed with a heat-resistant outer layer and an iron core. They tend to heat up and hit the designated target with enough of a wallop to simulate a tactical nuke. All of the fun of an atomic without the radiation. Of course, because the Gators had already nuked the target area, the KEW splattered the existing contamination for several kilometers in every direction. The few trees that had somehow survived were now just so many splinters.

  The scene when we got to Depot Sixteen was straight out of Dante’s Inferno. The Gators were tossing their favorite low yield nukes, from about ten kilometers away, at the energy shield that was covering the depot. The hyperfield dome was set to repel both energy and matter so for the moment it looked like a massive dome shaped mirror covering the depot.

  Several of the tactical nukes were deflected by other nukes before they could be detonated. They landed closer to us than I would have liked. The sergeant and I ended up spending several minutes digging ourselves out of a pile of hot molten rock. The armorer was going to be pissed-off at the state of my Stark suit. Many of the systems had overloaded and would need some TLC before they came online again. Fortunately, the power systems and augmented muscle systems were still online but my AI showed the latter was iffy.

  The energetic splash back from all the nukes was turning the ground around the shield into molten lava. As it was… an extremely hot, radioactive and solidifying splash wall was forming on one side of the mirrored dome. It would make an impressive display if it was allowed to harden before the shield was turned off.

  On the other hand, if the Gators kept the nuke party up, they would create such an impressive pool of molten rock that the ammo depot would be at risk of sinking or more likely shifting dramatically once the shielding was turned off.

  I doubt this was the Gator’s intent. It seemed more likely that they were trying to overload the shield generators.

  Good luck with that, I thought. Those shields were powered by much larger versions of the hybrid power systems our new Stark suits used. Still, that didn’t stop the Gators from trying. In the few minutes that I had been watching they had lobbed no less than twenty of the small nukes at the shield… seriously, who does that?

  I tried to see where our Marines were but the EM waves coming off all those nukes was playing havoc with m
y sensors. I suspected my active shields and medical nanites had been knocked out as well. I had that queasy kicked in the gut… I’ve just been nuked… feeling.

  I tried using my quantum commlink but the circuits that fed it were fried. Surprisingly, my local comms were still working. I didn’t think about it at the time… but the loss of my quantum communication link meant I was no longer transmitting engram updates to the Yorktown. If I had to cycle through the bio-generators, everything that happened to me in the next little while would be lost to my memories.

  My AI’s diagnostic function failed at that point. This was no big deal, but it meant I no longer had any idea what was failing on my suit. As all of the construction and repair nanites were already toast, it didn’t really matter.

  “Let’s pull back and circle to the left,” I told Tommy. “If I know JJ, he’s up on that bluff waiting for the Gators to stop with the pyrotechnics so he could move in to inspect the damage.”

  One thing was sure, the Ashtoreth soldiers tossing the nukes wouldn’t risk coming closer than a few kilometers. The armor they wore was nowhere near as sophisticated or capable as ours and the RAD count was through the ceiling.

  At ten klicks, they would not have a good view of the devastation they were creating. There was some serious nuclear ash floating down like black snow. It made me wonder why they were continuing to lob the nukes. By rights they should have no idea whether the dome was still up or not.

  My answer came when we finally located my good friend and tormentor, Lieutenant JJ Hammond.

  As we made our way up the side of the bluff that was facing our ammo depot some four klicks to the south, my marginally functional sensor suite finally cleared up. I got a hazy TacVid picture of the situation.

  Henderson and his platoon were arrayed in a loose defensive circle surrounding a camouflaged B660-A8 Bigalow shelter. There were four heavies with overlapping fields of fire. As far as I could tell, there were no enemies in sight. I tried calling him, but my radio was only operating at 25% capacity the last time I had been able to check. It could be even less than that now.