Star Strike. Ian Douglas

hull could shield those on board from the searing heat of atmospheric entry, but a mag-driven needle or even a stray chunk of high-energy shrapnel could puncture its variform shell with shocking ease. Ramsey had seen the results of shrapnel impact on a grounded Specter before, on Shamsheer and on New Tariq.

      The Specter jolted hard, suddenly and unexpectedly, and someone vented a sharp curse. They were falling into denser air, passing through the cloud deck, and things were getting rougher.

      “One more of those,” Sergeant Vallida said, her voice bitter, “and Private Dowers gets jettisoned.”

      “Hey, Sarge! I didn’t do anything!”

      “Don’t pick on Dowers,” Adellen said. “He didn’t know.”

      “Yeah, but he should have. Fucking nectricots. …”

      It was rank superstition, of course. Even if it went back over a thousand years. Maybe it was the sheer age of the tradition that gave it so much power. But somehow, back in the twentieth or twenty-first century, it had become an article of faith that if a Marine ate the apricots in his ration pack before boarding an alligator or other armored transport, the vehicle would break down. Over the centuries, the focus of the curse had gradually shifted from apricots to genegineered nectricots, but the principle remained the same.

      And Ela Vallida had walked in on Dowers back on board the Kelley just before the platoon had saddled up that morning, to find him happily slurping down the last of the nectricots in his drop rats. Dowers was a fungie, fresh out of RTC, and not yet fully conversant with the bewildering labyrinth of tradition and history within which every Marine walked.

      “Fucking fungie,” Vallida added.

      “Belay that, Sergeant,” Lieutenant Jones growled. First Platoon’s CO wasn’t evenly physically present on the squad bay deck; the eltee was topside somewhere, plugged into the C³ suite behind the Specter’s cockpit, but she obviously was staying linked in on the platoon chat line. “Chew on him after One-one Bravo craps out, and you have something to bitch about.”

      “Aye, aye, sir,” Vallida replied. But Ramsey still heard the anger in her voice.

      Likely, he thought, it was just the stress. This was always the roughest part of a Marine landing, the long, agonizing wait, sealed into a tin can that was flying or swimming toward God-knew what kind of defenses. Did the Alighani Muzzies know the Marines were coming? What was waiting for them at the objective?

      How many of the men and women sealed into this Specter were going to be alive an hour from now? …

      Don’t even think about that, Ramsey told himself. It’s bad ju-ju. …

      Not that he actually believed in luck, of course … or in the power of nectricot curses. But he didn’t know anyone who’d survived the hell of modern combat who didn’t engage in at least a few minor superstitious behaviors, and that included Ramsey himself. He never went into combat without a neumenal image of his Marine father watching from a minimized mindwindow. Totally irrational, he knew.

      His mental gaze shifted to the tiny, mental image of Marine Master Sergeant Danel Jostin Ramsey, resplendent in his dress blacks … an image recorded just days before the landings on Torakara.

      The Specter gave another hard lurch. According to the feed from the cockpit, it was raining outside now, and lightning flared behind the clouds ahead. The mission planners had chosen to insert through a large, tropical storm, taking advantage of lightning and rain to shield the assault group’s approach for a precious few seconds longer.

      “Listen up, people,” Lieutenant Jones’ voice said over the platoon net. “We’re three minutes out, and about to drop below the cloud deck. Remember your training, remember your mission downloads. Keep it simple! We secure the spaceport, and we hold until relieved. Ooh-rah?”

      “Ooh-rah!” the platoon chorused back at her.

      Seconds later, a loud thump announced the release of the battlezone sensor pods, and the main tactical feed came on-line as thousands of thumb-sized microfliers were shot-gunned into the skies ahead of the assault group. Ramsey opened a mental window, and entered a computer-generated panorama of ocean, and the coastline to the north. Red pinpoints illuminated the coast, marking generators, vehicles, and other power-producing facilities or units. The spaceport was marked in orange, the Fortress in white, with sullen red patterns submerged within the graphics, indicating the main power plants.

      As he watched, more power sources winked on. That might be an illusion generated by the fact that more and more BZ pods were entering the combat area, but it also might mean the enemy had been alerted and was waking up.

      But so far, the skies were quiet, save for the flash of lightning and the sweeping curtains of rain.

      Remember your training. Yeah … as if that were a problem. Remember your downloads. Their mission parameters had been hard-loaded into their cephlink RAM. It wasn’t like you could freaking forget. …

       Keep it simple. Secure the spaceport. Hold until relieved.

      Nothing new there, either.

      The question was whether the landings would be enough. Alighan was a heavily populated world in the Theocracy of Islam, with over two billion people in the ocean-girdled world’s teeming cities. The Marine assault force codenamed Green 1 consisted of the four companies of the 55th Marine Aerospace Regimental Strikeforce, a total of 580 men and women … against an entire world.

      True, they were exceptionally well armed and armored men and women, and they seemed—for the moment at least—to have kept the element of surprise. Even so, fewer than six hundred Marines against a population of two billion …

      Impossible.

      Ridiculously impossible.

      But the United Star Marines, once the United States Marines, specialized in the impossible, as they and their predecessors had done for the past eleven hundred years.

      Alighan. The name was derived from the Arabic term for “God is Guardian,” and the name suited the place. The system of five rocky planets orbiting a K0 star was strategically positioned along the New Dubai trade route, a channel for ninety percent of the interstellar shipping between the Heart Worlds and the Theocracy. Control Alighan, and you controlled access to the Islamic state … or to the Heart Worlds, depending on which way your battlefleet was headed. Scuttlebutt had it that the Terran Military Command wanted Alighan as an advance base for deeper strikes into Theocratic space.

      The key, of course, was the planetary starport, AI Meneh, “The Port,” which doubled as the system capital. The battle-ops plan called for the Marines to seize and hold the starport. Within a standard day—two at the most—the Navy transports would arrive from Kresgan, bringing with them the Army’s 104th Planetary Assault Division, the 43rd Heavy Armored Division, and elements of the 153rd Star Artillery Brigade and the 19th Interstellar Logistical Support Group.

      And the Marines, those who’d survived, would be off to their next planethead.

      Five hundred planetary assault Marines against two billion Muslim fanatics. …

      Ramsey shook his head, a gesture unseen within the massive helmet of his 660-ABS. In fact, the vast majority of the local population would not be fanatics. Most of the population down there would be ordinary folks who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, especially by their own government.

      But experience gained so far in the present war—and in other wars fought against the Theocracy and similar governments over the past eleven centuries—taught that the ones who did fight would do so with all their heart and soul, with no thought of quarter, and with no mind for the usual rules of war.

      They would fight to the death, and they would take as many Marines with them as they could.

      So far as the Marines of the 55th MARS were concerned,