The Complete Legacy Trilogy: Star Corps, Battlespace, Star Marines. Ian Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ wasn’t a lot to see, in fact—abstract patterns of light and darkness wheeling this way and back with the TAV’s 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.

      He knew the mission orders, knew the lay of the land and the location of the company’s objectives, but it was almost impossible to make sense of what he was seeing on his HDO display. Balls of yellow and red light floated up from the ground—fire from enemy antiaircraft positions. Colored lines and symbols glowed among alphanumerics identifying targets, way points, ranges, and bearings. His cranialink provided analysis, based on data jacked through from the CPC’s combat computer. He could see the area marked as the platoon’s drop-off point, midway between the Sphinx and Khafre’s pyramid.

      “Captain Warhurst,” the phlegmatic, female voice of the TAV’s AI pilot said in his helmet receiver. “Thirty seconds. Hot LZ.”

      “I see it,” Warhurst replied. His grip tightened on his weapon, a General Electric LR-2120 Sunbeam pulse laser, with its M-12 underbarrel 20mm RPG launcher and data hotlink to his Mark VII armor. He’d been in the Marines for six years and made captain two years ago, but this would be his first time in combat, his first hot drop, his first time in command with a live enemy.

       God, don’t let me screw it up. …

      The TAVs made a final course adjustment, shrieking low above the sands between the middle and southern pyramids, their dead-black hulls slipping through crisscrossing targeting radar beams like ghosts, evading hard locks. Air brakes unfolded like ungainly wings as their noses came up, and billows of sand exploded from the hard-driving plasma thrusters arrayed at wing roots and bellies.

      “Hold on,” the AI’s voice said, as deceleration tugged at Warhurst’s gut and the steel deck tilted sharply beneath his booted feet. “We’re going in.”

      “Hang onto your lunches, boys and girls,” he called over First Platoon’s comm channel. “We’re grounding!”

      A jolt … a moment of suspense and silence … and then another, harder jolt as the TAV decelerated on shrieking thrusters to a slow-drifting hover. With a shrill whine of hydraulics, the first CPC was extruded from the side of the TAV’s fuselage on unfolding davits as raw noise banged and shrieked inside the sealed troop compartment. Plenum thrusters already spooling howled now as all four onboard hovercraft personnel carriers swung free of the floating TAV and detached their cables. Sand blasted around the hovercraft as they floated half a meter above the surface, skittering sideways to clear the overhang of their huge, black transport while the TAV engaged full thrusters and rose clear of the drop zone. “Good luck, First Platoon,” the AI pilot’s voice announced.

      “We’re clear of the TAV, Captain!” Lieutenant Schulman, the CPC commander, yelled over the vehicle’s comm system. Hammer blows clanked and pinged and sang from the hull outside. They were taking small-arms fire. “Objective in sight, range two-three-five. Moving!”

      “Roger that!” Warhurst’s helmet display feed had shifted automatically to a pickup on the CPC’s hull now that the hovercraft was free of its ride. He could see the flash and wink of gunfire in the darkness, the streaking tracers of heavy automatic weapons. Somewhere in the distance a round of HE went off with a deep-throated crump, briefly lighting the dune shadows nearby. The CPC’s turret shrilled as it rotated in its collar above and forward of the troop compartment, and Warhurst felt the steady thud-thud-thud of the 50mm autocannon slamming high explosive rounds into an enemy gun position.

      The armored Marines remained strapped in their seats, weapons muzzle up between their knees, silent while boiler room noise boomed and banged around them. Once, the CPC lurched heavily to the left as a near miss rocked the hovercraft over on its plenum skirts like a boat listing in heavy seas, but Schulman righted the stubborn, tough-hulled machine and swerved hard as armor-seeking missiles strobed in dazzling cacophony outside.

      “Coming up on the drop-off, Captain!” Schulman warned. “Ten seconds!”

      “Roger that!” He checked the map on his HDO. They were on target. With a focused thought, he shifted to the platoon freak. “Ten seconds, people! Go to IR!”

      With a thought focused through his implant, Warhurst engaged his helmet’s infrared overlay, and the red-lit shapes around him faded into gloom, nearly invisible, with only enough heat leakage from joints and peripheral gear to give each Marine in the compartment a faint, ghostly aura.

      The hovercraft slewed sideways, and the aft hatch opened up, ramp dropping and shields unfolding to reveal a cold black sky above the grays and midnight blues and black-greens of a chill desert landscape painted in infrared. Warhurst hit the quick release on his harness and was on his feet, ducking to step beneath the hatch. “C’mon, Marines!” he shouted. “Ooh-rah!”

      In a double line, twelve Marines stormed down the drop ramp and onto the sand as point-defense lasers on the CPC’s upper deck tracked incoming mortar rounds and flashed them to metallic vapor. Warhurst raced ahead, conscious only of the press of the Marines around him, of the rattle and pop of weapons fire, the flicker of muzzle flashes in front of him.

      He threw himself down on the slope of a dune, scrambling up and forward until he could bring his weapon to bear. The 2120’s sighting camera was linked by computer to his helmet display. A red-glowing reticle crosshaired whatever the laser’s muzzle was pointed at, together with flickering numbers giving range, bearing, and probable target ID. He took aim at the muzzle flashes fifty meters to his northeast and thumbed the lever to engage his RPG autolauncher. He let the weapon’s sight record the target—dimly seen shapes of yellow emerging from the inky blue-green backdrop. His computer tagged the guns as teleoperated sentries, but the body heat of a dozen enemy soldiers showed as vague shapes through the dune itself and as pillars of moist heat moving above the sand. Field sensors detected the RF leaked by electrical systems, probably the sentries’ motors and power packs.

      Good enough. He squeezed the trigger. The boxlike hard plastic case of the weapon vibrated within the grip of his gloves as he loosed a burst of grenades, cycling at twelve rounds per second, fanning eight rounds in a spread along the crest of the sand dune ahead. Accelerated to eight hundred meters per second by the launcher’s mag driver, each round unfolded in flight, a tiny ramjet engine kicking on as microvanes steered the projectile toward its chosen target. Like steadily glowing fireflies against the night, the string of ramjet-propelled grenades streaked through the darkness, rising high above the sand dune sheltering the enemy gunners, then angling suddenly and sharply down, detonating behind the ridge in a chain of explosions, each as powerful as the blast from a fist-sized lump of CRX-80.

      Shrieks and screams rose from the target area as clouds of sand geysered into the sky, mixed with chunks of plastic, metal, and more grisly debris. A running figure showed briefly at the crest of the ridge; Warhurst thumbed his weapon to laser and triggered a pulse. The target flopped out of sight, but Warhurst wasn’t sure whether he’d scored a kill or not.

      Explosions continued to thump and boom all around them. The other members of First Platoon had spread out along the dune, laying down a devastating curtain of explosive firepower, driving the enemy gunners to cover.

      With a thought, he engaged his helmet’s data link with the CPC. What’s up ahead?

      The CPC sensors were far sharper and more observant than those packed in a Mark VII combat armor suit. In addition, Lieutenant Schulman had by now deployed a small army of recon floaters, marble-sized СКАЧАТЬ