behind a row of statues near the barricade and fired nonstop into the trees. The lieutenant bounced into the tree canopy and vanished from visual, but Tommy could still see him in the QM and IR sensors. Then the canopy exploded, and the sniper fire stopped. The second lieutenant was blasted out of the trees like a rocket, and he rolled and tumbled to a stop just south of Tommy.
'You okay, LT?' Tommy asked him.
'I'm good, Gunny. Keep moving.'
'Yes, sir, LT!' Tommy bounced to his feet and over the barricade and joined in the rest of the squad as they mopped up the rest of the Arcadian infantry and security detail guarding the door—most of those poor bastards didn't have any weapons serious enough to do the AEMs real harm, unless they were willing to drop grenades into their own laps. And Ramy's Robots certainly weren't going to give them time to figure that one out.
They moved in closer to the door, and Bates popped it with a few rounds then kicked it open. They stepped back, then carefully charged in like a bunch of damned rhinoceroses—armored rhinos with big fucking guns and HE.
The interior hallway and foyer of the mansion had been blown to shit from all the grenades. The AEMs scanned the room and quickly cleared the first floor.
'So, if I were a control room to an orbital QMT facility, where would I hide?' Colonel Roberts asked.
'Not sure, sir.' First Sergeant McCandless shrugged her armored shoulders.
'Well, Top, let's figure it out ASAP.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Sir, my QMs are reading a dead spot behind that wall,' Tommy said. His sensors had plotted a three-dimensional map of the house in his head, but there was a spot just beyond the far wall that was blank. That meant his sensors were blocked.
'You know the only thing that can block the QMs, Gunny?' Nelms asked with a smile that Tommy could see through his visor.
'Uh, no training on the physics of QM tech, LT.'
'Well, Gunny, SIFs are the only known tech that stop the QMs. You can jam the electronics and fool them, but if they are working right, the QM sensors can see through anything but structural integrity fields,' the lieutenant informed them.
'Well, then, we should take a look,' Roberts ordered.
'Tommy, give me a hand,' Top ordered him. The two of them dug their armored hands into the wall boards and ripped them off.
'Hey, Marines, you off duty or something?' Tommy said to Bates and Howser. They joined in tearing out the wall, flooring, ceiling, wiring, plumbing, anything that was in their way.
After about two minutes of that the wall was gone, but there was an opalescent blue glow in its place. Tommy tapped it with his knuckles, and it felt as solid as armored deckplating from a supercarrier, or harder.
'Here.' Bates pulled up his HVAR and started to fire a round into it. The railgun round vaporized into the field and splattered plasma back in his face. Had he not been wearing his visor, he would have been blinded and maybe even killed.
'Corporal, do you have a fucking death wish?' Top shouted at him. 'Stand the fuck down!'
'Sorry, Top.'
'Can we blow it with HE?' Tommy asked.
'No. We don't carry anything that would take out a field like that. And even the most precise strike from one of the carrier's DEGs could easily destroy not just the field, but everything inside it as well.'
The lieutenant turned to the colonel. 'Sir, my master's thesis was on the military application of SIFs for the infantry. I studied them considerably. It'd take a half kiloton or more explosive to take it out.'
'Did you say a half kiloton, LT?' Tommy grinned.
'Oh shit,' Bates said. 'Here we go again.'
'Well, Gunny?' Roberts laughed. The rest of the squad did as well—except the new second lieutenant. 'Looks like you're up.'
'Fire in the hole!' Tommy ducked behind the riverbank down into the water with the rest of the AEMs. But they were in suits. He was in his UCUs. All good marines carried a minimal change of clothes in the suit packs. He actually had a layer of light armor and his cover, too. He hated having to actually blow his suit, but at least he wasn't wearing it this time. And there was atmosphere to breathe, so he didn't have to have his suit to survive. But to an AEM, not being in his suit was damned near torture. Besides that, he had to duck under water and hold his breath for as long as he could once his suit's power core went critical. He hated not being in the suit.
They had tried to get an HE bomb from up top, but the QMTs were all to busy moving wounded and fighting equipment around. Besides that, it would have taken too long to rig a
