Tangos two and three crouched down behind the same abutment, out of sight. Now was the moment they’d be loading some type of rocket to take out the crawler, and at this range, the ECM might not have the time to do its job again.
Marks dumped the pulse rifle’s charge all into one shot. Then he waited, scope resting on their last known position. Half a minute later, as the Savage gunfire reached a cacophonic level of chatter and the pulse rifles spat out staccato bursts of barking whines in reply, one of the Savages in the recoilless rifle team surfaced like some ancient submarine.
Just the head.
Spotter, thought Marks. The guy turned his shapeless helmet back and forth across the line. The helmet was dull and mirror-smooth all around, nothing to distinguish the front from the back. Marks watched through the medium-range engagement scope as the Savage inclined his head to the left. Like he was talking to someone. Someone below the abutment.
Some things never change.
No matter how post-human you dream of becoming.
Human communication is hardwired into the DNA.
Marks shifted the scope to that position. To the spotter’s left.
Number three popped up with the recoilless launcher, boxy and hexagonal, resting on his shoulder, readying for a firing solution on an identified target.
His shoulder? thought Marks in some distant part of his mind.
Who knew? Could be a her.
It was unimportant. They’d given all that up when they became Savages. To Marks, they were things now. Animals.
He pulled the trigger on the pulse rifle, pre-set to dump the whole charge, and vaped the shooter in a spray of blood, brain matter, and armor.
The rest of Fourth Platoon was coming up alongside to join First.
Marks rolled over onto his back and yanked his battle board off his ablative chest plate. He filed an intel report with all leaders on target acquisition. Head shot is a kill. Use more rounds center mass to take them down. Three at least.
Send.
He looked at the roster for Headquarters Company. Most of the officers had stuff to do right now. Interfacing with cav coming off the Porter, redistributing supply. Getting the intel drones up in the air.
Captain Forrester was KIA.
But the First Platoon leader was still alive.
Colonel Marks activated his comm. “Lieutenant Milker.”
Ted Milker was on the far side of the arch, fighting from an alcove with a heavy pulse rife team. Directing fire as the strange-limbed shadows, like spiders or octopuses, then like men running, shifted and moved closer.
“Milker here, sir.”
“Promoting you to captain. Headquarters is yours. Do not fall back.”
“Can do, sir. Won’t forget nothin’.”
Which was the old motto of the Martian Light Infantry. Over the long years, it had found a home in far Spilursa.
05
With Headquarters now under control and the first wave of Savages fought off—nothing more than a probe, it seemed—the colonel set off to connect with the other four surviving companies and get their defenses linked up. Sergeant Major Andres accompanied him, as did a young PFC who served as the sergeant major’s messenger.
They found Charlie Company first. Charlie had fought off a counterattack on the flank in which the Savages had tried to come through the stadium’s lower levels. The flank attack had been easily driven off, but there had been some casualties.
Still, they weren’t hurt as badly as Delta. At the north end of the stadium, Delta had been hit hard. Fifty percent of the company had been killed or wounded, and they were already low on charge packs for the pulse rifles.
Bravo was the only company in great shape, with almost no casualties.
The sergeant major went with his aide and an ad hoc recovery team to check on the ruin of Alpha’s crawler, and when he returned, the news was not good.
“Hunnert percent casualties, sir. No salvageable assets.”
On the field inside the stadium, the massive Porter remained down. With anti-air in the area, it was deemed best not to take off until the Indomitable could get air cover up.
Marks and the captain of the Porter, along with Colonel Dippel of the Three-Six Cavalry, connected via comm with the admiral aboard the Indomitable, which had finally been joined by her Rigelian escorts. They were on station at nine thousand feet east of the main metropolis, out to sea, and preparing to commence air operations within the next thirty minutes.
“Less than an hour before daylight,” muttered the sergeant major. “Be nice to have a look at the city before we go poking around for a fight.”
After the initial Savage outbreak six weeks before, the city had gone dark. Little to no intelligence had been acquired since.
“My job is to get out there and find civvies,” said Colonel Dippel matter-of-factly. “My troops are ready to go, but I’d feel much better with drone recon and full daylight.”
“What about Angel?”
Everyone looked to Marks. Though he was relatively unknown to them, he knew his introduction into the strike force at the last minute had caused a lot of speculation as to who he really was. He was used to that. He’d been told, many times, that there was something about him that seemed older, wiser. More knowledgeable. Did that. Been there. Stacked the bodies.
Which, of course, he had.
Angel was the next insertion wave of the strike force. A heavy assault carrier would make a low pass and drop the rest of the ground units across the city along designated lines. The idea was to link them up and form a cordon inside the metropolis to commence rescue and assessment operations while engaging the Savages in combat.
Rescue the civilians.
Assess the degree of Savage infection.
Terminate the Savage presence.
Marks switched comm to the Pathfinder captain. He got the platoon sergeant instead.
“This is Bullfrog Two. Bullfrog Actual is KIA, sir.”
“Bullfrog,” said Marks, “do you have the drop plot for Angel?”
“Negative on plot at this time, sir. We caught it hard with Delta when the Savvies came through over there. Just me and one other left, and I’m hit. Sorry, sir.”
Marks cut the comm.
“That’ll be a bad insert, sir, if they got no jump markers,” cautioned the sergeant major. “We gotta make sure they come down around the stadium at a minimum, otherwise our lines won’t hold.”
Dippel strapped his helmet on. “That’s us then. Recon in force. We’ll go out two blocks from the stadium and drop markers.”
That was when the next Savage attack came against Delta. They hit hard and fast. Again.
“We’ll exit through Headquarters,” said Dippel as he ran to link up with his troop.
“Be quick about it, Matthew. You have less than an hour to have those markers in place,” warned Colonel Marks.
“Yes, sir,” Dippel said, nodding. He continued on, almost sprinting to his objective.
With enough men like that, Marks thought, I could beat the damn Savages all the way back to the ruins of Earth.
06
Three-Six Armored Cavalry (Fast Attack)
Attached to Coalition Strike Force Warhammer
New Vega
Staff Sergeant Michael Greenhill was riding in the third vehicle of the lead element of Colonel Dippel’s recon when they passed through Headquarters perimeter, squeezing by the big crawler guarding the tunnel. They passed the wounded at the casualty collection point, the dead laid out nearby and covered with their own ponchos. A thing no one had thought to use before the operation, as the weather report said no rain for the next three days. But the senior NCOs had known why you always brought your ponchos.
Now a young sergeant like Greenhill knew why, too.
“Sucks to be them,” said the d
river. Curts.
Greenhill said nothing from the TC position inside the Leopard ATAV. Above their heads, the gunner swiveled the heavy pulse gun from left to right and watched the streets to the sides. The lead two vehicles were covering forward.
Dawn was in the east and not thirty minutes away when they made their first contact.
Civilians.
They came out of the dark from one of the taller buildings, surging forward and waving. Dirty and bedraggled. About what the troopers of the Three-Six had been told they would find. Some looked hopeful. Some were crying and dragging dead-eyed children forward as though they were running for their lives.
From the lead vehicle, Colonel Dippel called a halt and directed the second vehicle, carrying the company commander, to move forward and cover the far end of the street. Greenhill’s ATAV pulled up short of the surging crowd.
“Stay frosty, Burke,” Greenhill reminded the gunner atop the Leopard.
Greenhill had fought on Kimshana. He knew you could never trust crowds. And he knew what to look for. The true believer with the thousand-yard stare mixed in with the desperate rest. The man on a mission. He watched closely as the colonel stepped from the vehicle, covered by his gunner, to interact with the crowd.
“He better jes’ tell ’em to walk the hell on back to the stadium, ’cause we on a mission, Sarge,” said Curts.
Greenhill said nothing. He was still trying to find the man-on-a-mission guy. Studying the crowd and scanning faces.
And he saw him. Her. The him was a her.
He saw, but he didn’t see.
Because when the voice, the whisper, tickled at the back of Greenhill’s head, he didn’t pay attention. Or rather, he had too much to pay attention to in that sudden moment of chaos. And this woman, this pregnant woman who looked like she was going to heave all over the place… she didn’t qualify to the sergeant as a man on a mission.
She detonated not five meters from the colonel.
Who knows why?
Greenhill should have keyed in on how fast she was approaching. Practically throwing herself through the crowd. Her face screaming while her body moved like some kind of marionette automaton.
She went off like twenty sticks of dynamite and cratered the street. Everyone was killed. The colonel. His driver and gunner. All the civilians.
The impact glass of Greenhill’s ATAV spider-webbed, but it didn’t turn into a typhoon of flying fragments. And the vehicle didn’t overturn; it jumped once and settled down. Glass blew out in the buildings here in what was probably some New Vega financial district.
Greenhill’s bell was rung. For a moment he sat there hearing nothing. Nothing but a dull hiss in his ears that quickly turned into a whine.
“… whole thing is just gone, man!” said Curts. He was apparently referring to Colonel Dippel’s vehicle. It was indeed gone.
And the company commander’s vehicle was being overrun by more of those black-spider-crawling-and-then-running Savages. They came in so fast the captain’s gunner didn’t even have a chance to fire before Savages were hauling him and the captain out.
The captain fired his sidearm point-blank. He misted one Savage’s helmet.
Two others tore him apart half a second later.
“Light ’em up!” screamed Greenhill at Burke up top.
When Burke didn’t fire, Greenhill turned to see nothing but Burke’s boots and bloody legs leaning against the side of the turret.
Greenhill moved fast. Talking on the comm and crawling back into the gunner’s hatch, never minding the blood and gore of what used to be Specialist Burke. He’d been through worse.
“All units push forward. Ambush. Say again, ambush! Follow my lead!”
And it was true.
Savages were firing from the buildings on both sides. The vehicle behind Greenhill’s was frozen. No one was moving. Other vehicles were trying to get around it.
Greenhill opened up on the Savages ahead. Firing a full burst of twenty heavy pulse shots at the Savages—the armored spiders who sometimes walked like men—that were… feasting on the bodies of the men from the lead vehicle. Tearing out big chunks and holding their faceless helmets either beatifically skyward or down in some almost prayerful posture before some type of blender in their hands spun and eviscerated the flesh they’d torn free.
The shots from the heavy blaster tore into the once-humans. The heavy pulse cannons atop the ATAVs did significantly more damage than the lower-powered pulse rifles every infantryman carried, even to the armored bodies of the Savages. Shots sizzled straight through their armor, leaving massive gaping holes. In some cases they simply tore the upper torso right off the almost humanoid body.
Greenhill turned and waved for the convoy to move forward.
“Follow the map to the next marker placement!” he shouted at Curts.
There was a slight pause before Curts mashed the pedal and the Leopard jumped forward with an almost ethereal hum.
“We gotta fall back!” yelled one of the other TCs at Greenhill over the comm. “Colonel’s dead. Mission is compromised, man!”
As Greenhill worked the barrel across the street, firing into the Savages and cutting them down, he ignored this and all the other horror-struck comm traffic.
“Negative,” he barked harshly. “Stay on mission.”
With Greenhill on lead, the convoy blasted its way through the ambush, leaving with more than seventy percent of its troops. They reached the next marker objective and deployed a beacon with less than twenty-three minutes to the next drop, designated as Angel.
“Hard left!” yelled Greenhill over the whine of the Leopard’s engine. “Pick up the intercept for the next marker. Big park down the street.”
The dawn was rising in the east, and the morning air was hot and humid. And despite the forecast for no rain, to Greenhill—who could tell such things from all his years in long-range recon—it smelled like rain was coming.
Beyond the park was the massive hill that topped New Vega City, a place named the Hilltop District by the colonists who first landed here centuries ago. The base of the leviathan Savage starship—designated “The Nest” in operations briefings—lay just below Hilltop, to its left, yet it towered over the spectacular Hilltop super towers at the heights of that neighborhood.
When Three-Six arrived at the large park sprawl, they found that it was on a slope—not entirely free of the hilltop grade. Something the map hadn’t been clear about. Greenhill noted it for the marker’s packet upload, hoping the loadmaster and the jumpmasters would take the time to interface and give a heads-up to whoever was going to drop on this particular loc. There wasn’t much time to do more. Not if all the OBJs were going to get tagged.
“Are you seein’ that?” said a sergeant from one of the remaining vehicles.
Greenhill was busy inside his battle board activating the marker, but he looked up. He saw the monster coming down toward them.
Or that was what it looked like.
Moving along one of the broad highways of the seven massive thoroughfares that led down the hill, crushing all manner of buildings as it went, was the largest mech Greenhill had ever seen. None of the Coalition worlds had ever produced anything even remotely close to being as big and ready to fight as the beast that was now coming his way. Even the Sinasians, the mech masters, the ones who had pioneered mech technology, had never built anything that even came close to what the Savages had fielded.
The thing was easily five or six stories tall, and it moved on four massive articulating spider’s legs. A central flat command disc rose up from its center, and from this jutted two wicked-looking heavy artillery pieces. And now that Greenhill was paying attention, he realized the ground was rumbling with each strike of its legs.
“No time,” said Greenhill. “Moving on to the next marker drop. Spot report it to Fleet Intel. We gotta keep
moving before the—”
The sky overhead broke like sudden thunder.
Greenhill had seen streams of such things happening before. Usually pro-military oorah patriotic stuff designed to scare the colony worlds into submission. But to be beneath it in real time… that was a whole other thing.
The old United Worlds’s most iconic piece of military hardware was indeed something awe-inspiring to behold.
Troopers within the column, parked in the shadows of the park at dawn’s last blue, the sun rising red and violent in the east, watched as the massive super-carrier Hyland G. W. Washington reentered from jump right into the atmo west of the city, streaking into the dawn on a descent profile. Drop hangars and doors were opening all along her sides and belly.
When you absolutely must scare the living daylights out of the natives, send in the super-carrier.
Successive sonic booms caught up and cracked the skies wide open.
“We can win this!” shouted Curts as he dragged on a smoke.
And Greenhill, who wasn’t necessarily a pessimist, more of a realist, wondered if indeed they could get out of this without having to go all Tyrus Rechs on another world.
After all, there were only so many worlds left.
Even that nightmare mech, the massive walking spider heading down into the fray, a definite game-changer, had to pause and watch as the incredible carrier, diamond-shaped from this angle, began dropping units all over the city.
They were awe-inspiring. But they were early.
The timetable wasn’t perfect.
Things would be messy.
But it was still an incredible sight to behold.
Heavy armor was dropped by screaming repulsor pods. Drone gliders landed the heavy artillery. Sticks of infantry and light vehicles came down by chute. Other units by fixed-wing cargo literally fell out the back of the super-carrier and then flew on their own. Strike fighters and bombers were shot from catapults off the top of the massive starship.
Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Page 3