Star Soldier

Sigmir’s smile vanished. He studied Marten. “How is it that you feel qualified to make negative comments regarding High Command’s strategies?”

“Through logic, I suppose.”

“Logic!” spat Sigmir. “Say rather: a sheep’s bleating.”

“I take it we’re to be reinforced then.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“A second orbital laser platform will be dedicated to us?”

With a thick finger, Sigmir stabbed the location of the merculite missile battery. “I must be the one to storm it.”

Marten lifted an eyebrow. “Just you? I’m impressed.”

Sigmir grinned madly. “The Slumlords and I. They, and you, will join in my glory.”

“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear it.”

“Does glory mean so little to you, Lieutenant? Then fix your thoughts on gaining higher rank.”

“Never mind the glory or the higher rank. I’d just like to survive Japan.”

Sigmir sadly shook his head. “What a pale goal you’ve given yourself, especially when so much is offered you.”

“Offered me?” Marten said, perhaps too impudently.

Kang looked up, and then quickly peered at the map again.

Marten understood it as a warning, but he didn’t care. The endless fighting reminded him too much of the Sun-Works Factory around Mercury, of his mother and father who had died there. That caused the carelessness that had landed him in the slime pits. “I’ve never been offered a real choice.”

“No?” asked Sigmir.

“If I’ve gotten anywhere it’s because I acted in my best interests, never because of the choices offered me.”

“Well said! Once the Slumlord Battalion realizes that its best interest lies with me they will strive to join me in my glory.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Sigmir frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t believe so.”

“The Slumlords are the Colonel’s battalion.”

A twitching smile played upon Sigmir’s lips. “Yes, today that is true.”

“Today? You’re not suggesting—”

Sigmir held up an admonitory finger. “Have a care, preman. One word from me and you’ll be bound for a penal regiment.”

Marten knew of those. They were given the jobs the other side reserved for its Kamikaze squads. Sigmir’s threats were never idle. Still…

Marten leaned on the table, studying the plex-screen map. Sigmir had used a stylus to mark the enemy lines and formations in blue. The red-circled merculite site was far behind those enemy sites. He peered at the brain- damaged ‘superman’ who dreamed of glory and high rank, saying, “The merculite battery is over a kilometer from here.”

“Yes.”

“The only way you’ll get there is by riding on our bloody carcasses.”

“Perhaps you’d like to be point man, to show me the way, as it were.”

“Is that the prize for telling the truth?”

Sigmir’s dark eyes glittered dangerously. “Truth! Here is truth: do as I order, when I order and you may live. But know this, preman, that the day I die and am not resurrected is the day a posthumous letter requests the Colonel to have you shot for insubordination.”

Kang’s ever-slit gaze widened minutely as he studied the map.

Marten stepped back. He ached to draw and shoot Sigmir, to kill him and have done with it. It galled him that if he tried, if he even dared touch his holster, that Sigmir could probably kill him before the pistol was halfway out.

“Why not have me shot now?” asked Marten.

“Because you can fight, because you have zeal and the killer instinct. I’ve told you before how rare that is among your kind. For now, I use you. But the day you are no longer of use….” Sigmir smiled. “That’s the day the rabid dog dies.”

10.

Day and night, the orbital laser platform sought the thickest concentrations of enemy artillery tubes. Then a thick red beam stabbed out of the sky, burning, exploding and destroying the carefully deployed guns. Japanese tanks, headquarter commands, choppers, thick knots of troops humping over the hardscrabble, all tasted the fury of the space-borne laser. At times VTOL fighters screaming over the city simply vanished in the laser’s wash. Newly opened tunnels to the deep city melted, air vents exploded and armored personnel carriers became coffins on wheels. Relentlessly, the Highborn eliminated the war-machines and war-fighting capacity of Tokyo’s beleaguered armies. More and more it was simply the soldiers themselves who were left and the weapons they could carry. Food trucks were destroyed, radio beacons turned into slag. Rather than a coordinated army throwing itself upon the enemy, the vast horde of Japanese felt isolated, demoralized and bewildered. Still they fought. Grimly, new squadrons of Kamikazes launched themselves at targets of opportunity. The last bio-tanks were dug in and camouflaged.

Two weeks after their grand assault, the Tokyo soldiers lacked almost any artillery, tanks or coordination. Mortar tubes became highly prized weapons, along with captured flamers. The infantry dug-in as they prepared to hold what they’d taken. In the mass of rubble and ruin, they had the perfect defensive terrain. Hungry, thirsty, bitter and terrified, they’d put up as stubborn a defense as anyone had on Earth.

“Time,” Field Marshal Kitamura told them. “You’re fighting to give Earth time. So you must hang on and fight!”

Only one high-tech weapon was left them: the massive merculite missile battery. Space-borne lasers couldn’t harm it, or the orbital fighters dropping from the stratosphere and launching APEX missiles against it. The four- thousand-ton clamshell of ferroconcrete shrugged off every attack. Then, at just the right moment, the clamshell whirled open like a man lifting his visor. Out flew heavy missiles at the retreating orbital fighters as they roared back into the heavens. The missiles had shot down enough of them so that now the orbital fighters flew less over the dying city. Sometimes the heavy missiles were targeted at the submarines off shore. After that, the orbital laser station and hastily deployed anti-missiles were given the mission of stopping the merculite missiles.

Two and half weeks after the initial Japanese counterassault, High Command ordered the 4th and 7th FEC Armies and the 5th Panzer Corps to go back onto the attack and retake Tokyo. They had perhaps three-quarters of their original troops. The Japanese had maybe a little under half of theirs, and that included the two hundred thousand of the second wave assault. The worst casualties for the FEC formations had been in 4th Army, the 10th FEC Division particularly. Units there had been merged and reformed.

Despite their losses, the 93rd Slumlord Battalion led the way into the city; Captain Sigmir eternally enthused at the prospect of smashing into the merculite missile station. When his numbers dwindled, as they did with sickening regularity, re-patched soldiers from the infirmaries found themselves sent there instead of returned to their original units. The few reinforcements to get through from Australia also went there. Sigmir refined the tactics. Marten, Omi and Kang best understood and executed them.

The unit of decision had grown very small indeed: the storm group. Each storm group was composed of several assault groups of six to eight men. Marten commanded the most decorated storm group, with Stick and Turbo as his assault group leaders.

Together, leapfrogging each other, slithering through rubble, blindsiding an enemy strongpoint, they broke repeatedly into the selected building. Dirt-covered and terrified, their throats raw from roaring battle-oaths and screaming for help they fired flash/bang grenades through doors and then rushed through right behind, or they