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

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      Garroway nodded inside his helmet and focused on the mental code that activated the appropriate NNTs. He felt an inner rush, a kind of emotional flutter in his gut, and then he drew a sharp, deep breath. He could still feel the horror of Pressley’s death, but it was cocooned somehow, more distant, less immediate. He felt the strength coming back into his legs and belly, felt the shaking stop. “Thanks, Gunny,” he told Valdez.

      “Keep moving, Marine,” she told him. “We have a mountain to take.”

      She moved off without looking back. He picked up his weapon and followed.

       ARLT Command Section, Dragon

       One

       Objective Krakatoa, Ishtar

       1642 hours ST

      Captain Warhurst remained harnessed inside Lander One, though he was almost completely unaware of his surroundings. As CO of the ARLT, he was expected to stay safe and give orders, coordinating the attack from the presumed security of the armored LM. The training invested in modern military officers was simply too expensive, too valuable, to allow them to lead from the front; indeed, they’d not done so for two centuries or more.

      Warhurst listened to the rattle of small arms fire off the lander module’s hull and wondered who they were kidding with that kind of blatant rationalization. The LM was a definite target—a large and quite attractive one, in fact—while individual Marines wearing stealthy armor were able to literally fade into their surroundings and become very hard to hit.

      And that too, he realized, was his own form of rationalizing things. The fact was, he wanted to be out there with his people right now, not stuck behind in this glorified tin can, watching an AI run the data link switchboard and holding the collective hands of the command staff still on planetary approach.

      His noumenal awareness was crowded with images, feeds, and downloads. With a thought-click he could tune in on the helmet sensor array of any of his Marines. At the same time, he was aware of several members of the command staff “riding his link,” looking over his virtual shoulder from the Derna’s CIC. Majors Anderson, DuBoise, and Ross were all there, as were Lieutenant Colonel Harper, Colonel Ramsey, and both General King and Admiral Hartman. The electronic ghosts of a dozen other command staff officers and technicians were there as well, sifting through the flood of incoming data. Theoretically, they were there to offer advice and watch to see that he didn’t miss anything. In practice, it was a micromanagement cluster-fuck waiting to happen. Warhurst concentrated on doing his job and ignoring that particular unpleasant possibility.

      An aerial view of the LZ was spread out beneath him in his noumenal awareness. Robotic drones, battlefield management probes, and the sensor feeds from the Marines outside all contributed their data streams to build up a more or less coherent picture of the engagement as it unfolded. Four landing modules—one hundred Marines—were on the ground now and advancing toward an apparent door in the side of the mountain. Two more were angling in from opposite directions, north and south. Enemy resistance was heavy—twelve Marines dead so far, plus fifteen HK-20 robots knocked out—but the troops were advancing. The worst danger at this point of the assault was that the Marines would be pinned down, unable to move; instead, they seemed to have momentum enough to carry them into the mountain, despite sleeting small arms fire.

      “We’re taking heavy fire from the mountainside,” Warhurst said, uploading to the Derna CIC. “We need air support!” The Marines on the ground needed firepower, and they needed it now.

      “Major DuBoise,” Ramsey said. “Scrape that mountainside clean!”

      “Aye aye, sir.”

      Warhurst heard the orders being given over the air support net. All that remained was to wait for them to be carried out.

       Kikig Kur-Urudug

       Deeps of An-Kur

       Third Period of Dawn

      It was called the Abzu, a word constructed from aba, the sea, and zu, to know, and meaning, roughly, “the Sea of Knowing,” or possibly “the Sentient Sea.” Ancient Sumerian texts had spoken of the Abzu as a land beneath the sea, or as the “Lower World,” the place where the god Enki ruled. Perhaps, Tu-Kur-La thought, the Abzu had once been a physical place on far-off Kia, one of the scattered Anu colonies on that world before the coming of the Hunters of the Dawn. The old records read that way.

      Or perhaps it had always been this, an artificial construct representing the collective unconscious of all of the gods. The records, even the Memories passed down across the ages, often broke at key places, with information forever lost or rendered corrupt. Sometimes it was hard to tell what the old memory texts truly meant.

      Rarely, though, was an exact interpretation of the records necessary. The spirit of what was meant, of the information transmitted across the centuries—that was the heart and soul of the thing.

      Interpretation of the records was best left to others.

      Tu-Kur-La relaxed as the Sea engulfed him. Physically, he was within one of the lower chambers of the Kikig, the command center for the Mountain of the Gods. The Abzu-il, the Gateway to the Lower World, oozed slowly from the cavern walls around him, enveloping him, penetrating him, its artificial nervous system forging billions of connections with his physical brain on countless levels, drawing him swiftly under.

      To Tu-Kur-La’s senses, the Abzu seemed to be a physical place like any other, a kind of green-lit cavern with dim and far-off walls all but lost in soft fog. Reality coalesced itself from that fog. He saw images … other Ahannu … and heard voices, as the battle in the world above raged. Information was here for the asking, within a kind of library of the mind. And he could see whatever he willed himself to see. …

      “Welcome, Tu-Kur-La,” a voice said within his mind. “We welcome your soul to the Circle of An-Kin.”

      “Thank you, Lord,” he replied, startled. The voice, the towering figure before him, was none other than Gal-Irim-Let—Kingal An-Kur, the Great Commander of the Mountain of the Gods. An-Kin was a council of the gods, a meeting to determine the future course of the gods’ will. Why would the Kingal itself want the advice of a mere second-level god-warrior?

      “We desire the advice of all those who faced the Zah-sag-ura two cycles ago,” the voice said, answering his question before he could voice it. “Your experience will help us decide how best to bring them down.”

      “To that end,” another voice said, “we bestow upon you the rank of uru-nam, that you may take your place with us.”

      This second speaker was Usum-Gal, a title that was both name and rank—the Great Dragon, the Lord of All. The Sag-ura of Kia referred to it as the High Emperor, a strange and meaningless term.

      “I … I thank the Great Lord,” he stammered. “I will strive to be worthy of the honor.” Uru-nam! It meant Guardian of Destiny; this made him a minor kingal in his own right.

      “You are one of the gods,” Usum-Gal replied, “a Guardian of Destiny by nature. It is no honor to do what is your nature, but simple personal responsibility. Now, Uru-nam Tu-Kur-La, tell us how we might destroy the invaders.”

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