"I, Mengsk" - читать интересную книгу автора (McNeill Graham)

CHAPTER 8

BLAZING PLUMES OF LIQUID FIRE ROARED UP THE valley as Privates Malik and Utley broke from cover. The two red-armored warriors crunched forward, flaming sheets spraying the rocks and brush of the valley ahead. Arcturus could feel the backwash of heat from their flamethrowers through his armor. Impaler spikes hammered the two firebats, but their armor was thicker and heavier than that of an ordinary marine and the two privates pushed on in the face of the gunfire.

The brush around the enemy gunmen went up instantly, crackling and burning with furious glee.

"Go!" shouted Arcturus, scrambling up the rocky slope beside him. Chun Leung and Dia de Santo followed him, their rifles tucked in close to their chests.

More rattling gunfire blazed from below as Emillian's marines followed the firebats, shooting from the hip as they advanced. One marine was cut down the instant he left covert a hall of razor-tipped spikes splintering his visor and blowing out the back of his helmet.

The others didn't falter and advanced into the teeth of the fusillade.

Arcturus clawed at the rocks, pulling himself up with powerful surges. His armor enhanced his strength and he was able to haul himself over the lip of the canyon walls wilhout difficulty.

He rolled onto his side and brought his gauss rifle up, glancing across to see Yancy, Chuck, and Toby pulling themselves over the rocks and into cover. Below him, the firebats continued to pour flaming gouts of superheated liquid at their foes. One of them—Arcturus didn't know which—was limping badly, his leg armor mangled by gunfire above the knee and blood sheeting down his thigh.

Several other marines were down, but the mercenaries' attention was fixated on the advancing warriors and they hadn't noticed the other inbound enemies. Arcturus opened a link to Dominion section and said. "Get moving, everyone. Fast and low."

"You got it, LT," said Chuck Horner, leading Yancy and Mercurio off. Arcturus nodded to himself. Horner had real potential, naturally assuming command of his small section, and Arcturus made a mental note to see about developing his skills if they survived this encounter.

"Chun, Dia," he said, "let's go."

Arcturus led them off, scuttling forward, hunched over as much as his armor would allow, and keeping to the cover of the rocks. His heart was hammering in his chest as he ran, fully expecting a burst of Impaler spikes to rake him and his soldiers at any moment. Arcturus could hear a near-continual roar of gunfire, screams, and explosions from the canyon and knew the men he'd sent forward were still fighting.

An angry orange fireball mushroomed from below, signaling the death of one of the firebats, followed moments later by a second explosion. The reek of flamethrower fuel filled the air and Arcturus heard more screams of dying soldiers.

Just ahead, he could see a splash of white and recognized the rocks above where their ambushers were fighting. He grinned with feral anticipation, terrified yet exhilarated at the same time.

Arcturus dropped to one knee and jabbed a fist at the while rocks.

"Take up position either side of me," he said. "We get to those rocks and unleash everything we've got."

De Santo and Leung nodded, and Arcturus could see the same relish on their faces he figured they could see on his.

"Let's do this,"" hissed Chun Leung, palling Mayumi's gleaming barrel.

"You got it, Big Dog," replied de Santo, punching knuckles with Leung.

"Let's go," said Arcturus.

He ran over to the rocks, bracing his foot against a low boulder, and looked down into the canyon as de Santo and Leung took up position. Below them was a scene straight from hell, the valley floor aflame and littered with blackened bodies. A few fallen mercenaries screamed and clutched bloody wounds, but Arcturus didn't care about their pain. These men had tried to kill him and his marines, and that made them less than nothing in his eyes.

As he'd suspected, both firebats were dead, as were about half of Emillian's resoced marines, but they had done their job: keeping the mercenaries' attention firmly fixed on them while Dominion section moved around the flank.

Across the canyon, Arcturus saw Horner, Yancy, and Mercurio rise from the rocks and aim their weapons at the enemy below. A few of the mercenaries looked up as Dominion section appeared above them, and Arcturus relished their look of panic.

"Fire!" shouted Arcturus.

Withering sprays of Impaler spikes ripped through the mercenaries, their lighter body armor no match for close-range gauss fire. Arcturus worked his rifle over the men below him, bloody eruptions fountaining where his spikes blew open skulls or tore limbs from bodies.

Caught in the crossfire, the mercenaries had no chance.

They danced in the vicious bursts of gunfire, trapped in the open and unable to fight back. The echoes of rifles were deafening as they filled the narrow defile in the canyon with screaming hot spikes. A few of the mercenaries managed to bring their weapons to bear, but it was too little too late and they were cut down without mercy.

Realizing that to fight on was hopeless, one man threw down his rifle and held up his hands in surrender.

Arcturus cut him in two with a sustained burst of fire.

It was over in a few seconds, and the canyon was suddenly quiet as the marines of Dominion section ceased firing. Acrid smoke drifted from the heated barrels of their guns as they looked at each other in disbelief—shocked at the carnage they'd caused, but elated to have survived and won their first firefight.

"Good job, everyone," said Arcturus, his heart rate only now beginning to return to normal after the thrill of killing these men. The canyon floor resembled an abattoir, shredded flesh and blood mingling in thick, viscous puddles that were already congealing into sticky pools in the heat.

"Man, we killed those SOBs good!" shouted Yancy, his rifle held triumphantly above his head. Chuck Horner sketched Arcturus a salute and even Toby Mercurio looked pleased for once. Beside him, Dia de Santo and Chun Leung butted helmets and he felt them slap the shoulder guards of his armor in triumph.

"You did it, LT!" cried de Santo. "We killed the whole damn lot of them!"

"That we did," agreed Arcturus, only now beginning to appreciate the slaughter he had orchestrated.

He knew that some men experienced a great and terrible guilt over killing other human beings. But as he looked at the ripped-open sacks of meal and bone that had, only minutes before, been living, breathing human beings, he felt nothing for them.

Nothing at all.

Arcturus looked up at the miners' encampment through the optical viewfinders, seeking any sign of weapons technology like the missile turret that had downed their dropship. Sure enough, another pair of turrets with sweeping dishes, not dissimilar to those they'd left behind at Camp Juno, were placed at the forefront of the encampment.

The mining complex was a well-organized collection of modular constructions built on an artificially created plateau at the mouth of a great scar in the mountainside that resembled the lair of some prehistoric monster. The edge of the plateau had been built up into a defended ridge, with sandbagged foxholes and concrete bunkers.

A pair of goliath combat walkers plodded back and forth behind the barricades on their reverse-jointed legs, the rotary cannons on their weapon arms spooling up and the missile systems above the pilot's canopy trained on the sky. Arcturus wasn't too concerned with the goliaths—they were primarily used to engage airborne targets, though the power of their guns wasn't to be sniffed at if you were a grunt on the ground.

In any case, he had just the thing to fight goliaths.

He smiled as he saw the panicked miners and their mercenaries running back and forth, terrified at the sight that had just come into view on the rutted road that led to the main gate of the mine complex.

The siege tank had finally rumbled into the bloody canyon thirty minutes after the conclusion of the fighting. Since the battle's end, Dominion section had been securing the weapons and ammo of the fallen marines and gathering up the dead.

Of the marines who had charged in the wake of the firebats, only five were left alive, the rest arranged in neat rows alongside the eight wounded and those who had perished in the crash. The bodies of the mercenaries were dragged to the side of the canyon and their weapons taken, but were otherwise ignored.

An evac bird was called in to take Captain Emillian and the wounded back to Camp Juno. Once Arcturus received confirmation that it had been dispatched, he and Dominion section, together with the five resoced marines, rode the tank farther up the valley.

After all, they had a job to finish.

"Oh yeah!" shouted Yancy Gray, standing on the tank's frontal glacis and balancing himself by holding on to its enormous cannon. "Not so cocky now, are ya? Not so tough when you see we got ourselves a tank. Yeah!"

The siege tank had the range to engage the miners' camp from where they sat now, its main gun more than capable of pounding the camp to smoldering ruin without fear of reprisal.

But Arcturus didn't want to destroy the mining facility if he could avoid it, not if there was a chance it could be taken and put to use.

"Shut up, Yancy," said Arcturus, handing the optical viewers to Toby Mercurio and removing his helmet. He deposited the helmet on the tank's track guard and dropped down to the ground. "Chuck.,Dla. You're with me. Shoulder those weapons, and make sure they're safed."

Horner and de Santo dropped to the hard-packed ground as Arcturus marched uphill along the road toward the mining complex, his rifle hanging by its sling from his shoulder. After the frenetic carnage of the battle, this was almost peaceful. The road to the mine was relatively shielded from the fierce winds that swept the lowest reaches of the mountains.

Arcturus watched as a group of five men emerged from the complex above. Three were armed—more mercenaries presumably—while the two others had the weathered, permanently dirty texture of dyed-in-the-wool prospectors.

"LT, what you got in mind?" asked Chuck Horner.

"Yeah, I was kinda wandering that too," said de Santo.

"We're going to talk to them," said Arcturus. "And ask them to surrender."

"Surrender?" said Horner. "I gotta say, LT, they don't look like the surrendering kind."

"You leave that to me, Charles."

The two groups met at a bend in the road, some two hundred meters from the camp's gate, and Arcturus felt the hostility of the miners like a blow. One man was short and thickset, his flesh leathery and pitted from a life n hostile environments. The other was similarly squat, but his eyes had a wary quality to them that told Arcturus he wasn't going to be the one doing the talking.

The mercenaries kept back, though they made a point of showing that they were more than ready to use their weapons.

Before Arcturus could even open his mouth, the first man thrust out a sheaf of grubby, oil-stained papers and said. "This ain't your property, Confed. We own this claim fair and square. Go tell your bosses that we got the paperwork and everything. Y'unnerstand me?"

Arcturus nodded politely and said. "My name is Lieutenant Arcturus Mengsk of the Confederate Marine Corps. Am I speaking with the head of this facility?"

The man with the papers looked at him suspiciously and said. "Yeah, I guess you are."

"And you are?"

"Lemuel Baden—not that it makes a damn bit of difference. We ain't got nothin' to say to each other."

"I beg to differ," said Arcturus. "That's not entirely correct. I have a siege tank that says we have one very important matter to discuss."

"Yeah? What's that then?"

"Your immediate surrender and relocation to another planet."

Baden snorted with what Arcturus assumed was laughter. "Surrender? Hell, you got some nerve, boy. What are you anyway, twenty? Twenty-one?"

"Nineteen, actually."

This time both prospectors laughed.

"Go home, boy," snapped Baden. "I ain't gonna surrender. Leastways not to a kid that don't even need to shave."

"Oh, I think you'll surrender," said Arcturus. "In fact I'm sure of it."

"And why's that?”

"Because I have a siege tank and if you don’t surrender. I'll blow this place to hell."

"Don't make me laugh," sneered Baden. "You wouldn't dare."

"Try me," said Arcturus, meeting Baden's hostile stare with one of his own.

Arcturus saw beads of sweat gathering at the miner's temples. He could see courage in Baden's eyes, but also the wariness of not being able to read the young soldier standing before him.

"Right now you're trying to work out if I'm bluffing," said Arcturus. "I can assure you that I am not. I never bluff. If I walk away from this parley without your surrender, you everyone within your compound will be dead inside of ten minutes. I guaranlee it".

"Then maybe we oughta just kill you now," snapped Baden.

"You could, but then my men would kill you and everyone would die regardless," replied Arcturus. "So you see, you really have only one option."

Baden's eyes flicked to his companion, who said. "You goddamn Confeds can't keep doing this to us! This here mine's ours and we ain't gonna let you take it from us."

Arcturus ignored the man's outburst, knowing that Baden was the only man worth talking to in this exchange.

"Easy, Bill, leave this to me," said Baden. The miner looked back lo Arcturus. "Gimme twenty minutes to talk to my people?"

"Of course," said Arcturus. "But if I do not have your surrender after that, you're going to see exactly how powerful that tank is. And trust me, you don't want that."

Baden nodded, then stomped back to the mine complex with his companions without another word. Arcturus watched them go and turned on his heel, marching back down the road to where his marines and the siege tank awaited.

Arcturus banged on the tank's side when he finally reached it. "Stand down the gun."

"You were bluffing?" asked Dia de Santo.

"No," said Arcturus. "As I told Baden, I never bluff. I already know he's going to surrender."

"You sure?" asked Chuck Horner. "He looked like a stubborn mule, that one."

Arcturus nodded. "Indeed. But he isn't stupid."

"Sir?" said de Santo.

"He knows I'll destroy the mine and kill everyone there if he doesn't surrender." explained Arcturus.

Chuck Horner looked askance at Arcturus. "You ain't kidding, are you?"

"No," said Arcturus. "I'm not. And Lemuel Baden knows that."

The infirmary building of Camp Juno was a sterile, antiseptic place in every sense of the word. Its prefabricated walls were gleaming while and faced with ceramic tiles that reflected the unflattering lights strung from the green-painted girders that farmed the roof vault. Its structure resembled a fat tube split down its length and dropped onto the ground.

Pods of beds were spread throughout the open space, with ceiling-mounted extractors trying—and falling—to circulate the stagnant air and diminish the tang of disinfectant. Medics made their rounds of the injured, checking machine readings and administering pain meds, while marines stripped out of their armor and wearing fatigues visited those comrades who weren't too sedated.

Arcturus had expected the infirmary to be noisy, but it was instead subdued, filled with the quiet noise of professionals working hard and a background machine hum. The atmosphere was calm by virtue of the fact that the majority of the wounded marines hen were kept heavily sedated, since many of them were resoced. Numerous studies had shown that extreme trauma could have a negative impact on the strength of the neural reprogramming implanted over a subject's original memories, and no one was taking any chances that these marines might relapse to their previous, murderous personalities.

Having heard the lurid details of some of the more outrageous crimes committed by these marines prior to having acceptable behavioral patterns stamped on their brains, Arcturus was pleased to see such precautions in place.

He spoiled Captain Emillian lying in a bed pod she shared with three other wounded soldiers—two men and another woman—and made his way over to her.

Emillian smiled as she saw Arcturus approaching, then grimaced as she tried to sit up, the framework of silver steel encasing her pelvis and legs making even that simple act awkwardly painful. The swelling around her eyes and jaw had begun to come down and her bruises had turned an attractive shade of puce. Opposite the scar Emillian had received on Chau Sara was another angry red line of sutures.

Each of the patterns in the pod was hooked up to drips and monitored by complicated banks of boxy machinery, and Arcturus carefully negotiated his way through a tangle of wires to get to Emillian's bed.

"Good morning, Captain," said Arcturus.

"Morning, Lieutenant," replied Emillian as Arcturus took a seat next to her bed. placing a portable console at her feet. "You're looking well."

"Sure," said Emillian. "I look like crap. Nobody will give me a mirror. What does that tell you?"

"That even when you are nearly killed, you're still incredibly vain?"

"Watch it, buster," said Emillian. "I may be off my feet, but I'm still your superior officer."

Arcturus raised his hands in mock surrender. "Point taken." he said.

"I hear the rest of the op went well."

"Yes," agreed Arcturus. "We got to the Turanga facility and took it without a shot being fired. Apart from the ones in the canyon after we were blown out of the sky."

Emillian's face darkened at the mention of the crash.

"I don't remember anything of that," she said. "They tell me I smashed my head on a stanchion and broke my helmet open. Damn near crushed my skull."

"You were lucky," said Arcturus.

"Yeah, so everyone keeps telling me."

"At least now you have a matching scar," pointed out Arcturus.

"Gee, that's a comfort."

"Sorry."

"So tell me about the rest of the mission," said Emillian. "I got the gist of it from one of the few of my marines you deigned to bring back alive, but they aren't great with the storytelling, you know?"

"To be honest, there isn't much else to tell."

"When someone says 'to be honest' that usually means they're lying."

"I'll keep that in mind," said Arcturus. "But you probably already know the rest. Lemuel Baden came out after his twenty minutes were up and said his people would be leaving. They deactivated their reactor and powered down the turrets, and I arranged for a pair of dropships to escort them back here for a debriefing before they're shipped off world. We secured the complex, and there's a Kusinis mining team swarming over it already. Which I'd like permission to supervise, Captain."

"Still dreaming of being a prospector, eh?"

"Absolutely," said Arcturus.

"So how'd you convince Baden to bring his people out?"

"Simple. I told him I'd level the place with the siege tank."

"That's it?"

"Yes," said Arcturus. "I was very convincing."

"Would you have opened fire if they hadn't come out?"

"Of course," said Arcturus without hesitation. "What's the point of making a threat if you're not willing to back it up?"

"That would have been a very expensive decision, Lieutenant," said Emillian. "A lot of people with higher pay grades than us were very clear that they wanted that place intact."

"And they have it. Baden knew I was serious, and he didn't want to die. It's that simple."

Emillian shook her head. "No, Mengsk, it's not that simple."

"It's not?"

"No. Remember, I've read your file and I know all about you," said Emillian. "I know that you mean what you say, but you don't always say what you think. You keep almost everything of what goes on inside you close to your chest, and you don't let anyone see what you're thinking unless you want them to. And right then, you wanted Baden to know what you were thinking."

"I suppose so," agreed Arcturus. "It worked, didn't it?"

"That it did," said Emillian. "And just for that I might forgive you for getting most of my soldiers killed or maimed in that canyon."

"It was a textbook maneuver," said Arcturus. "One element kept the enemy's attention fixed while others flanked them."

"Almost textbook. Because the guys providing the distraction for the flankers aren't supposed to get killed. Suppression fire? You ever hear of it?"

"I have, but there wasn't any other way to be sure the mercenaries' attention would be firmly fixed to their front."

"Well, you sure as hell managed that," said Emillian, flicking her hair back from her face and reaching for a cup of water beside her bed. She grunted painfully, and Arcturus swiftly moved to lift the cup into her hand.

"Thanks," said Emillian. "Now tell me why you're really here."

"Excuse me?"

"Come on, you didn't come here just to inspect my latest scar, did you?"

Arcturus shrugged, then realized there was no point in beating about the bush. Emillian had read the truth off him, either in his body language or simply via the instincts of a senior officer.

"There was one thing I wanted to discuss with you, yes...” began Arcturus.

"Come on, spit it out," said Emillian. "You think I've got nothing better to do than sit here listening to you? There's hot Confederate doctors working these wards, and a girl's got to think of when she musters out..."

Arcturus smiled. "And now you're using humor to try and put me at my ease."

"Jeez, way to overanalyze," muttered Emillian. "Pain meds must be kicking in; I'm normally more subtle than that. Okay, so what is it?"

Arcturus lifted the portable console from the foot of her bed and activated it with a touch. A green glow spread over the screen, followed by the insignia of the Marine Corps.

"I observed Lemuel Baden's debriefing," said Arcturus.

"Who was doing the debrief?"

"Captain Graves flew in from Camp Larson to conduct it."

"He's a good man," said Emillian. "Gets the job done quickly and he gets results."

"Well, Baden's debrief was certainly over very quickly. However, whether it could be said that the job was done satisfactorily is another matter."

"What do you mean?"

"Lemuel said the mine legally belonged to him and the other miners, that their claim predated any Confederate interest in Sonyan. He had papers, but it seems they've been confiscated and, wouldn't you know it, no one can find them now."

Emillian shrugged. "Marine Corps admin snafu. Happens all the time."

"I'm sure," said Arcturus dryly, turning the console around for Emillian to see. "The point is, I checked with the Kel-Morian registration database and I found claim dockets for Turanga Canyon registered to one Lemuel Baden of Tarsonis from six years ago."

"What's your point?"

"The first Confederacy ship to make planetfall on Sonyan was the Jonestown in '77."

Emillian crossed her arms. "I see. And you think it matters that they were here first?"

"Doesn't it? If his claim to the mine is legal then haven't we just stolen it from him?"

"You secure that crap, soldier," snapped Emillian. "And don't let me hear you repeat it. Lemuel Baden is part of the Kel-Morian Combine, a bunch of good-for-nothing crooks and pirates. Hell, most of their prospectors are wanted criminals anyway."

"That's a bit of a generalization, surely?"

"Is it? Listen, Mengsk, the core worlds depend on the minerals and fuels extracted from mines like this, so do you really want us to be beholden to Kel-Morian criminals? Sonyan is part of the Confederacy now, and anything on it belongs to the Confederacy. And the Marine Corps will fight to protect our way of life. You got that"

"Yes, but how—"

"But nothing, Lieutenant," said Emillian, leaning forward and keeping her voice level. "If you want to survive in the military, you're going to have to stop acting like some damn Boy Scout. In the Marines you follow the orders you're given. And that's it. Period. You go slicking your nose in places it don't belong and you're liable to get it bitten off. That's what being in the Marines is all about, Mengsk. Orders. We start deciding the orders we want to obey and the ones we don't and you know what you get? Anarchy. And I'm not going to allow that in the 33rd."

Anger touched Arcturus and he said. "Sounds like you want everyone to be like one of your resoced marines. Wasn't that exactly why you brought Dominion section in, because we weren't mindless automatons? Because we could think for ourselves?"

"I brought you in because I need good officers I can trust to follow orders," said Emillian. "I thought you would understand that, Mengsk, but maybe I was wrong. So, you think you're some kind of rebel like your father? Is that it?"

"What does my father have to do with anything?"

"I've watched the UNN," said Emillian. "I've seen your father speaking out against the Confederacy and stirring up trouble on Korhal. Are you like him, looking for trouble when there's no need to?"

"I'm nothing like my father," said Arcturus.

"Yeah? Sure could have fooled me," said Emillian, pointing toward Arcturus's console.

"I'm nothing like my father," repeated Arcturus, more forcefully this time. “He's an embarrassment, stirring up trouble when there's no need for it."

"Just like you're doing here," said Emillian.

Her tone softened, and she sat back. "Look. I'm not trying to rain on your parade, Mengsk, but, trust me, this isn't an avenue you want to go down. The Marine Corps is a machine and we're all just cogs in that machine. You start messing with that and either the machine chews you up and spits you out or it breaks down. You can get yourself spat out if you want, but I'm not going to allow our pan of the machine to break down. It'll be my ass in a sling with Commander Fole if you start pissing off the brass with damn fool questions. You get me?"

"I get you," said Arcturus. "And you're right. I'll stop asking questions."

"Good," said Emillian, searching his face for any sign he was soft-soaping her.

Arcturus knew his captain was good at reading people, but she was dead right when she said that he didn't let anyone see what was going on below the surface. He kept his face utterly blank now, and she relaxed, satisfied she'd quashed his nascent doubts.

"Okay," she said. "Now go enjoy your leave, Mengsk. Go home, relax with the family, eat good food, get drunk, or get laid. I don't care. Just come back with your head in the game. Are we clear?"

"Yes," Arcturus nodded. "We're clear."

"Good, now get out of here, soldier. I need to get some sleep."

Arcturus nodded and pushed back the chair as he stood. He saluted Emillian and picked his way through the tangle of cables and wires from the bedside monitors.

As he turned away from Emillian, she asked. "You got any kids, Mengsk?"

Arcturus shook his head. "You know I don't."

"Just as well, eh?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"With your family, just imagine what they'd turn out like."