Free Starfist: Firestorm by David Sherman & Dan Cragg Page A

silently when he realized what that probably meant, and which fire team was to his right. Sergeant Kerr confirmed his suspection a moment later.
    “Doyle,” the squad leader said on the squad circuit, “Kilo Company’s coming up on our right flank. Tie in with them.”
    “Me?” Corporal Doyle squeaked. “M-Me tie in with Kilo?”
    “I didn’t stutter, Doyle, you heard me. You can do it. Take a look, here they come.”
    Doyle looked to his right rear. His infra showed red blotches that weren’t Marines of Company L approaching. “R-Right. Tie in.” He thought for a couple of seconds, then said, “S-Summers, identify y-yourself to the Kilo flanker and m-maintain contact w-with him.”
    “Roger,” PFC Summers said crisply.
    In moments, 34th FIST’s entire infantry battalion was on line, advancing on Gilbert’s Corners and past its sides. South of the village, the Raptors of all three of the FISTs on Ravenette plunged down in their firing runs, to bounce back up for another go. The sounds of the fight on the ground grew.
             
    Lieutenant General Kyr Godalgonz was in a most uncomfortable and unaccustomed position—pinned down by enemy fire. It had been a long time since he was last pinned down; he’d been a squad leader at the time. Even though he’d survived it without injury, that did nothing to alleviate the discomfort he felt this time. Which could be due in part to the fact that he’d been a captain the last time he’d been exposed to sustained fire, and a brigadier the last time he’d faced fire of any sort.
    “Lieutenant generals should get on the front lines more often,” he grumbled. “Either that or stay away from the fighting altogether.”
    Nobody heard his grumbling, though. He was alone, pinned behind a heap of rubble that had been piled up when the debris from the Force Recon raid was being cleared out. He had full communication through his helmet with his battle staff and with his subordinate commanders, and he could monitor their communications with their subordinate commanders. But he was frustrated; he couldn’t do anything to affect the course of the battle. His communications man, carrying his UPUD Mark III—Universal Positionator Up-Down Link—lay ten meters away, across bare ground swept by continuous fire from an automatic defensive weapon system. The sergeant hadn’t moved since he’d gone down, and hadn’t responded when Godalgonz called to him. Godalgonz thought the Marine must be dead. With the UPUD out of reach, he didn’t have a picture of the battlespace.
    Where the hell was Cooper? He twisted around, looking for Ensign Cooper Rynchus. Where was the man? He was too old and tough a Marine to be a casualty, either dead or unconscious. Godalgonz knew the man could take injuries that would kill a lesser man, and keep fighting and leading Marines. That was how he’d won the Marine Medal of Heroism at the Siege of Mandelbaum.
    “Tough Guy, this is Killer,” Godalgonz said into his battle staff circuit. “Where are you?”
    No reply.
    He tried again, then to his battle staff, “Has anybody seen Tough Guy?” All replied in the negative.
    Godalgonz looked at the UPUD, only ten meters away, but it might as well have been in orbit. Only ten meters, but those ten meters were regularly showing puffs of dirt rising from the ground being pelted by fléchettes shot by the automatic defensive system that covered the area where Godalgonz was pinned down. As near as he could tell, the weapon covered an arc seventy-five meters wide. And it traversed fast, too fast for him to wait for its fire to pass and bolt to the UPUD between sweeps. The fire would reach him again before he could regain cover.
    The loud thud of a heavy body hitting the ground next to him. He half rolled away, moving his hand blaster into position, and looked just in time to see Rynchus raising the screens on his helmet to show his face. A chewed-up area of his helmet near his left cheek was