CHAPTER NINETEEN
Like most of the planets the Unified Authority chose to colonize, New Copenhagen was almost exactly the same size as Earth. It orbited its star from approximately the same distance that Earth orbited the sun, and both planets rotated at nearly the same speed. The term “day” on New Copenhagen meant just about the same thing that it meant on Earth—at least it did until the aliens “sleeved” the planet in a curtain of light.
It does not matter if there are people in the forest when a tree falls, the event still produces the vibrations that humans, animals, and audio equipment register as “sound.” It did not matter that the ion curtain made the sky so bright that we could not see beyond the atmosphere, the sun still shone.
Three days after their first attack, the Mudders returned.
The scream of Klaxons woke me out of a largely dreamless sleep. I leaped out of bed, pulled on my bodysuit, then clapped on my combat armor, the whole process taking less than a minute.
I grabbed my M27 as a matter of course. That was the default weapon of a U.A. Marine, sturdy, durable, and accurate. As I headed out the door, though, I saw my particle-beam pistol lying on the writing desk beside my bed. Wanting to travel light, I had not taken that weapon on the last mission. We generally did not use particle-beam weapons in a normally breathable atmosphere, they were a high-maintenance nightmare. If you accidentally closed the outtake valve, they overcharged and exploded in your hands. If you jostled the lenses and they fell out of alignment, the gun would simply refuse to shoot. Bullets had always been effective enough when the enemy was human, but battering the Space Angels with bullets had proven ineffective in our first meeting. A particle- beam weapon, which disrupted the target at an atomic level, seemed like less of a gamble. I grabbed the pistol but still held on to my M27 for good measure.
As I left my room, I joined a stream of men racing through the halls. We all knew the pecking order. Majors and up, heading to command shelters and wearing service uniforms instead of armor, went for the elevators. Mere lieutenants, like me, did not need to be told where we fitted into the hierarchy. I joined the mass of armor- wearing junior officers sprinting down the stairs to the lobby.
As I entered the stairwell, I saw one of the Klaxons that Command had installed near the door. The little specker was no bigger than a saltshaker, but it screamed loud enough to shake the walls, and the engineers had placed one at the top of each flight of stairs. If not for the protection of my helmet, I might have gone deaf running down the stairs.
A cavalcade of men in combat armor poured down the stairwell, not stopping for oncoming traffic, their boots clanking against the concrete steps, the joints in their armor rattling.
We trampled down the stairs and out into the plush hotel lobby. As I entered the lobby, I received the same instructions issued to every Marine in the hotel. “This is not a drill! Companies, form up in the parking lot. This is not a drill!”
The lobby of Hotel Valhalla was jammed as multiple regiments of Marines rushed through. All told, nearly twenty thousand men were billeted in that hotel.
Long lines of trucks formed in the parking lot. Officers in service uniforms segregated us into battalions as we ran, directing one battalion this way and another battalion that way. By the time we reached the trucks, they were breaking us down into companies. Our briefing—whatever briefing we would receive—would come as we drove to the front.
As I headed for the trucks, I saw Ray Freeman running with a field bag dangling over one of his shoulders. Being a full foot taller than any of the clones around him, he stood out.
“You have any idea what’s going on?” I asked Freeman, as he got into the back of a truck. Other men climbed into trucks, Freeman simply stepped onto the bed.
“Nobody’s talking,” Freeman said. His voice was so low I felt it as much as I heard it.
I climbed in behind him. Across the bed of the truck sat Lieutenant Moffat, our intrepid company commander. As his executive officer, I took the seat across from him and waited for orders. Freeman sat beside me.
“Harris, get me a head count,” Moffat ordered.
They’d squeezed an entire platoon into the back of the truck—forty-five men, including Moffat, Freeman, and me. As I scanned the men crammed in around me, I was relieved to see Philips among them. I radioed to our other trucks and asked for a head count.
“Is every man accounted for?” I asked my platoon leaders. Once all three combat platoons radioed in the affirmative, I relayed that message to Moffat and the briefing began.
“Listen up,” Moffat, the kind of CO who enjoys reminding his men who is in charge, shouted as if we were not wearing equipment which automatically controlled the audio volume in our helmets. “The Mudders are back. An Army tracking station picked them up seven miles west of town. They’re headed north-east toward Valhalla. From what we can tell, the dumb bastards plan to hit the exact spot they attacked three days ago.”
They could have gotten us to the battle more quickly in helicopters, I thought. Then I remembered the ruined gunships on the battlefield and decided that the trucks seemed like a good idea.
“We’re going to try to come in behind them,” Moffat said. “Command is sending two light infantry divisions to keep the Mudders pinned down while we flank them from the west. When we are in position, we will launch a counterattack, dividing their line in two.
“Once we have broken their lines, our objective is to finish the bastards off before they can retreat. That is all.”
I looked over at Freeman. He sat, his helmet on, leaning back against the wall of the truck, his huge body rolling along with the truck’s bumps and jounces. “You think they’re going to bring more men this time?” I asked.
“Fifty thousand,” Freeman said.
“Fifty thousand?” I asked.
“Fifty thousand, just like last time,” Freeman said.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I just heard from the Science Lab,” Freeman said.
“You’re in touch with the Science Lab?” I asked. Freeman did not bother answering.
The trucks rolled fast. We took a main artery out of Valhalla, then followed a highway deep into the forest. Somewhere out there, the fighting had begun. I could hear the rumble of handheld rockets in the distance. We were too far away to hear the rifles.
We drove for less than an hour before the trucks pulled off to the side, and everybody got out and fell into ranks. I did not realize the sheer size of our convoy until I climbed out the back of the truck. A line of two hundred trucks stretched out behind us, each carrying a platoon with forty-two men. Bringing tanks into this battle would have done us no good because the forest terrain was too overgrown for heavy equipment. I did see smaller vehicles—missile-bearing ATVs and Jackal attack vehicles.
We formed into companies and headed away from the road. The grounds around us were virginal. We trudged through deep drifts and air powdered with miniscule flakes of snow. A layer of clouds floated below the ion curtain, but the clouds cast no shadows. Just as the air was bright under the trees of the forest, the space under the clouds had its own illumination.
We marched into the trees, ten thousand men strong. My company belonged to the Second Expeditionary Marine Brigade. The first brigade and several other units would pour into the forest from other directions. Our heavy-artillery units would act as a hedge to keep the enemy from reaching the city limits while we flanked the aliens. If everything went according to plan, we would break their lines and cut off their retreat. Everything hinged on the numbers. The Army reported the enemy force at a mere fifty thousand troops. If their report held true and the aliens returned as understaffed as they arrived the first time, the battle would end quickly.
While the rest of us prepped our M27s, Freeman brought out his sniper rifle and loaded a magazine into
