Ian Douglas - Star Corps (The Legacy Trilogy, Book 1)

S TAR C ORPS

B OOK O NE OF THE L EGACY T RILOGY

Ian Douglas

v1.0 (2011.05)

C ONTENTS

Master Sergeant Gene Aiken leaned against the sandbag barricade and

The trio of TAV Combat Personnel Carrier transports came in

And further still from Earth, some 780 million kilometers from

Colonel Ramsey lay snug within the embrace of a linking

Like a large and exceptionally ugly beetle, all angles and

Now I want you maggots off of my busmove! Move!

Come on, Moore! Theyre coming over the north wall!

Theyre coming in over the walls now! the Marine cried

Garroway! Center yourself on the hatch!

Sir, Recruit Garroway, reporting as ordered, sir.

Crawl, you sand fleas! Crawl! You will become one with

Garroway!

Maybe we should get up, Ramsey said. The days half

Garroway grinned at Lynnley. You know, this would be a

Launch

and fourand threeand twoand onerelease!

The Dragon skimmed broken rock and black sand, flashing across

Another Dragon gone, snapped out of the air by a

Second Squad had been ahead of the others when the

Within the link, Ramsey looked down on Ishtar from space

Everyone back to your landers, Captain Warhurst called, his voice

The Dragon descended over the Legation compound, depositing the lander

Garroway rolled off Hanson, snatching up his rifle and taking

He was Lance Corporal Garroway now. Funny. Hed not even

Lets go, Marines! Take em down!

But it didnt end.

You know, they used to call this kind of party

Lance Corporal Lynnley Collins floated in the wonder of the

P ROLOGUE

12 May 2138

Firebase Frog

New Summer

Ishtar, Llalande 21185 IID

72:26 hours Local Time

Master Sergeant Gene Aiken leaned against the sandbag barricade and stared out across the Saimi-Id River. Smoke rose from a half-dozen buildings, staining the pale green of the early evening sky. Marduk, vast and swollen, aglow with deep-swirling bands and storms in orange-amber light, hung immense and sullen, as ever just above the western horizon. The gas giants slender crescent bowed up and away from the horizon where the red sun had just set; its night side glowed with dull red heat as flickering pinpoints, like twinkling stars, marked the pulse and strobe of continent-size lightning storms deep within that seething atmosphere.

The microimplants in Aikens eyes turned brooding red dusk to full light, while his battle helmets tactical feed displayed ranges, angles, and compass bearing superimposed on his view, as well as flagging thermal and movement targets in shifting boxes and cursor brackets. The sergeant studied Marduks blood-glow for a moment, then looked away. At his back, with a shrill whine of servomotors, the sentry towers turret swiveled and depressed, matching the movements of his head.

He could hear the chanting and the drumming, off to the east, as the crowds gathered at the Pyramid of the Eye. It was, he thought, going to be a very long night indeed.

Hows it going, Master Sergeant?

Aiken didnt turn, not when he was linked in with the sentry. His battle feed had warned him of Captain Pearsons approach.

All quiet on the perimeter, Captain, he replied. Sounds like the Frogsre pretty riled up down in the ville, though.

Word just came through from the embassy compound, Pearson said. The rebel abos have seized control in a hundred villages. The High Emperor of the Gods is calling for calm and understanding from his people. The way he said it, the title was a sneer.

Abos, abs, aborigines; Frogs, or Froggers. All were terms for the dominant species of Ishtar ways of dehumanizing them.

Which was a damned interesting idea when you realized how not human the Ahannu were.

Do you think theyll attack us?

It could happen. The ambassador still hasnt answered Geremelets ultimatum.

A gossamer flitted in the ruby light, twisting and shifting, a delicate ribbon of iridescence. Aiken lifted the muzzle of his 2120 and caught the frail creature, watching it quiver against the hard black plastic of the weapons barrel in bursts of rainbow color. Other gossamers danced and jittered in the gathering darkness, delicate sparkles of bioluminescence.

Theyre not talking about surrendering, are they?

Not that Ive heard, Master Sergeant. Dont worry. It wont come to that.

Yeah. The Marines never surrender.

Thats what they say. Keep a sharp watch. Thereve been reports of frogger slaves trying to gain entrance at some of the other bases. They might be human, but we cant trust them.

Aye aye, sir. The Ahannu slaves, descendants of humans taken from Earth millennia ago, gave Aiken the creeps. No way was he letting them through his part of the perimeter.

Good man. Give a yell if you need help.

You dont need to worry about that, sir. He hesitated, looking up at the vast and seething globe of Marduk. Hey, Captain?

What?

Some of the guys were having a friendly argument the other night. Is Ishtar a planet or a freakin moon?

Pearson chuckled. Look it up on the local net.

I did. Didnt understand that astrological crap.

Astronomy, not astrology. And its both. Marduk is a gas giant, a planet circling the Llalande sun. Ishtar is a moon of Marduk but if its planet-sized and has its own internally generated magnetic field and atmosphere and everything else, might as well call it a planet, right?

I guess. Thanks, sir.

Pearson walked off into the gloom, leaving Aiken feeling very much alone. He turned and looked into the southern sky, where the first stars were beginning to appear. Eight light-years from home had not much altered the familiar constellations, though the dome of the sky was strangely canted against the cardinal directions. There was a bright star, however, in the otherwise dim and unremarkable constellation Scutum, not far from the white beacon of Fomalhaut. Aiken might not know astronomy from astrology, but hed pulled downloads enough to know what he was looking at now. Sol. Earths sun. As always, the sight of that star sent a small shiver down Aikens spine. So far away, in both space and time

Eight point three light-years. Help from home could not possibly arrive in time.

2 June 2138

Giza Complex

Kingdom of Allah, Earth

0525 hours Zulu

The trio of TAV Combat Personnel Carrier transports came in low across the Mediterranean Sea, avoiding the heavily populated coastal areas around El Iskandariya by crossing the beach between El Hammam and El Alamein. Skimming the Western Desert at such low altitudes that their slipstreams sent rooster tails of sand exploding into the pale predawn sky, the TAVs swung sharply south of the isolated communities huddled along the Wadi El Natrun, dumping velocity in a series of weaving banks and turns. Ahead, silhouetted against the brightening eastern horizon and the lights of Cairo, their objective rose like three flat-sided mountains above the undulating dunes.

The defenders would know that something was happening; even with stealth architecture, the three transatmospheric vehicles had scorched their radar signatures in ion reentry trails across the skies of Western Europe as theyd descended from suborbit, and the mullahs of the True Mahdi had been expecting something of the sort. The only question was how long it would take them to react. Captain Martin Warhurst, CO of Bravo Company, sat hunched over in his travel seat in the rear of CPC Deltas red-lit troop compartment, crowded torso to armored torso with the men and women of 1st Squad, First Platoon. There were no windows in the heavily armored compartment, no viewscreens or news panels, but a data feed painted a small, brightly colored image within his Helmet Data Overlay, showing the outside world as viewed through a camera in the TAVs blunt nose. There wasnt a lot to see, in factabstract patterns of light and darkness wheeling this way and back with the TAVs approach maneuvers. The area beyond the Giza complex, along the west bank of the Nile, was brightly lit. The extensive archeological digs behind the Sphinx and between the two northern pyramids, those of Khufu and Khafre, were bathed in harsh spotlights reflected from aerostats hovering high above the ground-based beam projectors.