Luna Marine. Ian Douglas

hab at one-one-three-zero o’clock.” The lack of a Lunar magnetic field was proving to be a nuisance. Giving firing coordinates by arbitrary clock-face references, instead of by compass degrees, was considerably less than precise. “Take ’em down!”

      Fortunately, the targets stood out like blue-headed bugs on an empty white dinner plate. “I’m on ’em, Skipper.”

      Both UN troops were studying the Marine positions in the trenches, using electronic imagers like Kaitlin’s own. One suddenly spun around, the imager flying from his grasp, a silvery cloud of vapor enveloping his chest. The second UN soldier turned, reaching out…then he, too, toppled, his blue helmet spraying a white jet of fast-freezing vapor.

      “Nice shooting, Paps. Two up, two down.”

      “Thanks, Lieutenant. Like they say, reach out and touch someone.” The expression was a very old one, still common among Marine snipers and slaw gunners. Like so many other favorite expressions in the Corps, no one knew where it had come from or who’d said it first.

      A bright point of light streaked through the darkness from the crater rim, slamming with a flash into the bulldozer that seemed to be providing shelter for a number of enemy troops. Seconds later, another missile was sky-borne, this one zigzagging up from the crater floor and slamming into the hilltop, a hundred meters to Kaitlin’s right. A second enemy missile followed the first, this from a different position. The explosion flashed just short of LSCP-44. The landing craft was shielded from direct line of sight from the base, but a smart missile—or a lucky shot—would find that particularly vulnerable target before long.

      “Man down!” someone yelled over the platoon channel. “Man down! Corpsman!”

      “We can’t slug it out with them for long,” Kaitlin said. “They’ve got too much firepower.” She pressed the button on the left forearm of her suit, opening the com channel to Alfa’s Second Platoon. “Falcon! Falcon! This is Raven. Do you copy, over?”

      “Raven, this is Falcon,” Captain Lee’s voice came back immediately. “Go ahead.”

      “We’ve got a situation here, Captain. Bravo First is pinned down at the base under heavy fire, their bug shot to hell. We’re on the crater rim eight klicks to the west, also taking heavy fire. Enemy is present in force, repeat, in force.”

      She realized that her voice had been steadily climbing in pitch as she spoke. She stopped, drew a deep breath, and tried to bring her voice back under control. Another shoulder-launched missile streaked up out of the crater, angling almost straight toward her before it whipped low overhead. She crouched low as the blast went off somewhere at her back.

      “It looks as though the enemy is preparing to rush First Platoon,” she continued. “We need help, fast. Can you comply, over?”

      “Raven, Falcon. We’re about five minutes out, still over the Mare Tranquillitatus. Can you hold that long, over?”

      “Falcon, Raven. Looks like we’ll have to, doesn’t it? Come as fast as you can. Raven out.”

      “On our way, Raven. Falcon out.”

      Five minutes…an eternity in combat.

      The UN troops were concentrating their fire on First Platoon, and, despite the fire they were taking from the crater rim, it was clear they were going to try a charge, probably within the next minute or two. Kaitlin knew that she had just two choices…to sit up here on her ass and watch half of her rifle company be overrun, or…

      She changed channels on her com. “Listen up, everybody! This is Garroway! Second Squad! Hold your positions. Maintain fire on the enemy. First Squad! Back to the bug, on the double! Get into the airlock, and stay there! Lieutenant Dow! Are you on the line?”

      “Affirmative, Lieutenant. I’m here.”

      “Warm up the fire and stand by to boost. We’re going on a little hop.”

      “Reactor coming up. Pressure okay. We can bounce in two minutes.”

      “Make it a minute thirty.”

      “Whatcha got in mind, Lieutenant?” Yates asked.

      “Making it all or nothing, Gunny. The captain is going to get wiped off the map if we don’t break the UNdies’ attack.”

      “Roger that, Lieutenant. Okay, Marines! Hustle! Hustle! I wanna see nothing but amphibious green blurs!” They started trotting back toward the LSCP, as other Marines closed in from different directions, crowding up the debarkation ramp and into the craft’s airlock.

      “If I may suggest, ma’am,” Yates said, pausing at the foot of the ramp, “you should stay here and direct the covering fire.”

      “Negative, Gunny. If I’m about to pull something stupid, I want to be there to take the blame.”

      She heard the grin. “Understood, Lieutenant. Understood.”

      Together, they hurried up the ramp and squeezed through into the airlock, where First Squad was waiting.

      Seventy seconds later, Dow radioed a crisp warning, then Kaitlin’s knees almost gave way as the LSCP boosted skyward from the crater rim.

      Forza di Intervento Rapido

       Picard Base, The Moon

       0921 hours GMT

      Capitano Arnaldo Tessitore, of the FIR’s Forza Spazia rose from behind the shelter of the excavation he’d been crouching in, holding his imager to his visor. The second enemy landing craft was rising from its hiding place, a clear and easy target less than eight and a half kilometers away. “Zhang!” he shouted. “Target…above the crater rim!”

      “I have, Captain,” the PRC lieutenant replied in his thickly accented Italian. Tessitore listened as Zhang sing-songed a barrage of orders in Mandarin to the Chinese soldiers who’d just arrived at Picard aboard the Millénium, and wished again the mission planners back in Geneva had made up their Lunar Expeditionary Force out of troops from a single country. Too many nationalities, too many languages might have been great for the public image of a truly United Nations, but it guaranteed confusion and misunderstanding.

      Two PRC troops shouldering massive Type 80 launchers rose to their feet, loosing their missiles in almost the same silent instant of flame. One of the men pitched backward a second later, freezing vapor spilling from a black-ringed hole low and in the center of his suit’s cuirass, a victim of the all-too-deadly and accurate laser fire from the nearby trenches; the shot was too late to stop the launch, however. Twin stars, bright as worklights, zig-zagged away toward the rising spacecraft.

      Long before the missiles could hit their target, however, the American craft had vanished below the crater rim, moving under full thrust back toward the west.

      Tessitore blinked, lowering the imager. They were retreating, flying back the way they’d come! The missiles, their radar lock broken, detonated in a pair of flashes against the crater rim.

      Had that last laser shot really come from the trenches near the crashed ship? Or had it come from higher up and to the left, from the crater rim? No…it must have been from the crashed vehicle. The enemy wouldn’t have abandoned a laser team up on that ridge, with only their backpack PLSS units to keep them breathing.

      “Captain. We should use chance! Hit enemy now!”

      “Affermativo, Tenente.” He’d been holding off, hoping to break the enemy with the sheer overwhelming force of massed firepower from prepared positions, or wait for their air supplies to give out while his own troops recharged, a few at a time, in the habs, or, at worst, to work forward through the labyrinth of trenches…but Zhang was right. Enemy reinforcements might be on the way, and they had to strike now, before the battle spread out of his control. The bombardment of the past several minutes must have the enemy troops dazed and completely disorganized. One quick, sudden rush, and it would all be over. “Go! Go!”

      “Zou! Zou!” Zhang yelled. “Kuai! Qianjin!”

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