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

now.”
    “Hell, Alistair, we’re all lookin’ for a way out of this friggin’ hole!” Sturgeon laughed.
    “Well, let me know if you find it.” Cazombi grimaced, as close as he ever came to allowing a full smile, and left them.
    The three Marines had all served together at one time or another and enjoyed that easy camaraderie of men who knew each other well and had shared the same hardships and triumphs. For a while they traded memories, talked of men they’d known and places they’d been. Then General Godalgonz got to the point. “Tell me about this Billie.”
    Sturgeon shook his head. “He’s a disaster, Kyr, a pure disaster. And he hates Marines.”
    Godalgonz nodded. “Anders warned me of that when I talked to him before coming out here. Is he that bad, Ted?”
    “Worse. He’s snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” Sturgeon answered bitterly. “He has fucked up this war and gotten a lot of good men killed, and he’s fixing to get some more killed, mark my words.”
    Godalgonz did not show the surprise he felt. This was Ted Sturgeon, for heaven’s sakes, morale on the floor. Things had to be bad if Sturgeon felt like this. “Well, Ted, we’ve been through shit like this before and survived. We’ll pull through again. Hell,” he said, changing the subject, “remember that navy captain who was in charge of that troop transport—what the hell was his name? The most unmitigated disaster ever to wear a uniform?”
    “They should have put Cazombi in charge of this mess,” Sturgeon muttered. “The way General Billie hides out down here, there’s no chance the enemy will oblige us with a change of commanders.”
    “I’m beginning to get the picture,” Godalgonz replied. The morale had to be extremely low, he realized, if a man like Ted Sturgeon was giving in to talk like that. “Buck up, Ted! Now that I’m here, we’re going to kick some ass. I’ll handle this Billie guy, you bet!”
             
    “Balca”—Billie leaned back comfortably—“I’m gonna rid myself of these damned Marines.”
    “Sir, that might be easier said than done,” Major General Sorca replied.
    “Mebbe not. Look.” Billie called up a 1:100,000 vidmap of the battle theater. “See here, Lyons’s got a full division here, at Phelps, and another one here, at this little town just outside Gilbert’s Corners. Those troops are locked and loaded; Lyons’s reserve as well as the protective screen for the Coalition’s government. I’m gonna take this hard-charging three-star and the 17th, 29th, and 34th FISTs and send them on a raid against Gilbert’s. They’ll be outgunned and outnumbered. Keep them busy out there saving their asses from annihilation and out of our hair while we prepare the main thrust. What do you think?”
    Major General Balca Sorca hesitated before he replied. “Well, um, sir, that would mean we’d have to sacrifice some of our own men, just to get them out of the way?” That was as close as Sorca would ever come to questioning an order from his mentor, but privately he was beginning to wonder if he’d hitched himself to the right set of stars in this army.
    “It’ll also pin down those reserves and disrupt the Coalition government. Come on, Balca! You play chess. You know that to win you have to sacrifice pieces, even some valuable ones!” Billie regarded his chief of staff through a cloud of cigar smoke. Was Balca losing his nerve? Was every officer in this hole except Jason Billie himself unable to see the Big Picture? “You chop wood, Balca, you get chips. Issue the order.”

CHAPTER FIVE

    At a hundred-plus kilos and standing only about 180 centimeters, Major General Golda Clipper was almost as broad as he was tall. But once given a mission, he pursued it like a boulder rolling down a mountainside.
    “Mr. President”—General Clipper ran a hamlike palm over his closely cropped head as he spoke; it came away wet with perspiration mixed with the dust of the road he had