“Contact front!” Cardona announced on the squad net.
“Got it! One more.” Scrap crawled beneath the fire to the next IED.
Rounds snapped and whizzed high overhead as Rizer lay prone at the base of a tree, firing occasionally at sensor blips and glimpses of enemy far off in the bananas. They appeared to be falling back gradually into town. Doom was about 150 meters from the field’s edge. No IEDs appeared past the one Scrap worked on.
“Incoming!” Stubs yelled on the squad net.
A mortar shell crashed down behind Doom, close to Cardona and fourth team at the rear. Small pieces of shrapnel and dirt rained down on them. “Hurry the fuck up, Scrap! They’re registering rounds!”
“If you can do it faster, be my guest,” Scrap responded with unflappable robotic cool.
“Just get it done!”
Another round came whistling in with a boom, landing closer this time, sending buzzing fragments through the air.
Shit, shit, SHIT! An enemy forward observer might be secreted in the trees under sensor-scattering gear or perhaps they had an observation drone. Whatever the case, the enemy’s next move would be fire for effect at battery strength. Rizer figured they had a minute tops before the rockets rained down.
“Okay, I’m finished,” Scrap said. “Rest of the field looks clear.”
“Move out!” Rizer did not wait for Cardona’s order.
They reached a spacious, well-manicured lawn at the edge of the banana field, the back yard of a rambling, two-story manor of stucco and tile adorned with many terraces, arches, and statues. A couple hundred meters to Doom’s left, Ghost cleared insurgents from several farm outbuildings in an intense battle.
“Fan out along the tree line! Don’t bunch up!” Cardona shouted.
Heavy projectiles and laser cannon fire ripped into the banana field the instant Rizer dropped into cover behind a trunk. “Suppressive fire! Get the heavy MG up here!”
A large muzzle flash drew his aim to a second-story picture window. He squeezed off several rounds that shattered the remaining glass and kicked up clouds of debris, the red-white bolts tearing into the building’s façade. Hood let a barrage from the M-470 automatic grenade launcher fly at the window, but the rounds exploded harmlessly against the lower part of the house, falling short. Leone and Cpl Zimmer lit up the house with the light machineguns for first and second team, but they couldn’t keep up accurate fire through the tempest of rounds and beams that tore into the earth, cut limbs from trees…
And blew men apart.
Hood’s scream grabbed Rizer’s attention. The PFC lay beside a toppled banana tree, the skin beneath his armor afire at his shoulder, his arm largely separated from his body. With Cardona still on the move forward, Rizer again took the initiative, calling for mortar fire on the house.
“What’re you doing, Rizer?” Cardona demanded.
“We can’t charge this fucking place; we’ll all die! Fall back!” Rizer stood—Suicide!—and ran in a crouch to where Hood lay.
“I missed…” Hood gasped.
Rizer raised Hood’s visor and grabbed his remaining hand. “It’s all right; you did good. Stitches is on the way!”
Hood smiled peacefully, blood coating his teeth. “Nah…” was all he said. He closed his eyes.
Rizer shook him, “C’mon, man; stay with me!”
Shit! Rizer took Hood’s grenade launcher, crawled from the tree line to await the mortar barrage, and prayed as he moved that the laser cannon wouldn’t give him a colonoscopy.
PFC HOOD KIA flashed on his visor. God dammit!
Rizer hoped the mortar sections had the home’s location preregistered as a known point, for he’d ordered them to fire for effect, no time to register rounds.
Pulling back from the tree line proved a prudent move. Enemy mortar shells rained down on their former position, uprooting trees and setting leaves afire. The air reeked of scorched bananas and high explosives.
Seconds counted on Rizer’s HUD as they awaited their mortars. White-hot tracers snapped overhead and flayed the dirt in front of the Marines. The green beam from the heavy laser cannon hiss-cracked between power cycles and felled entire trees, as if cut by some giant scythe, spraying Rizer’s team with flying splinters. Leone took a glancing shot to the shoulder; a tree fell on LCpl Hogue from third team. Marines scrambled to free him while enemy fire continued to snap and pop around them. Doom fired at the mansion as they waited, but their shots did not silence the heavy machinegun and laser cannon, which were well fortified.
PFC GIACOMO KIA. A boot on fourth team, this had been his first and final taste of combat.
SHOT AK6328-4996 OVER, came a text from the mortars.
SHOT OUT, Rizer responded. A laser blast blew off the top of a nearby tree, quashing his feelings of relief. MEDBOT DISPATCHED PFC BACH. Fucking guy can’t buy a break!
Keening wails sounded as the rapid-fire mortar rounds whistled in. Three of four HE rounds scored direct hits on the house, the explosives blowing holes in the tile roof. A second later, four more rounds burst in the air above the roof, unleashing streaks of fire trailing white smoke that fell upon the structure. Rizer hadn’t requested HE and white phosphorus, known in artillery as a “shake and bake”; targeting computers had chosen the combo for him based on the target. Great call.
It wasn’t enough. Smoke rose through the roof holes, yet the laser cannon and machineguns fired on.
REPEAT OVER, Rizer texted the mortars. He sighted on the picture window with the grenade launcher, a 200-meter shot according to his HUD. Long, yet within effective range. Here goes nothing.
The shot sailed straight and true, right through the window to explode in a gout of fire, silencing one the machineguns. “Yes!” he shouted over the radio.
“Good shot, boss!” Stubs responded.
Two machineguns and the laser cannon remained when the second, identical mortar salvo struck. One HE round detonated within the house, scattering thousands of pieces of hot osmium shrapnel that caused a massive secondary explosion, completely destroying a third of the house. Rizer figured the round had struck a munitions cache. Flames shot through the roof and crawled up the walls; all enemy fire ceased within seconds
About fucking time!
“Advance! Take out any survivors!” said Cardona.
“Let’s get ’em!” Stubs bellowed, leading the charge with Leone’s machinegun. She’d been hit twice, minor wounds, but she wasn’t up to handling the M-251. He blasted the first enemy to run out the door onto a terrace, a soldier in Union-issue power armor that he caught completely by surprise. Red-white beams sublimed the man’s armored torso; blood and body parts showered the terrace.
More enemy poured through the two back doors onto the lawn. Some were afire; all were disoriented and coughing on black smoke. Cpl Green from weapons platoon had the heavy plasma machinegun set up; he and the light machinegunners mowed down insurgents like so much wheat. Rizer took great satisfaction in the carnage, in how they had persevered to turn the tables on the enemy.
Civilians inevitably appeared. The first person—Rizer couldn’t identify their gender—ran down the back steps in flames, screaming. He hit the burning mass with a mercy shot, the best he could do for the poor creature, silencing him.
They wasted more insurgents and put a few more burning civilians out of their misery as they lay screaming and writhing on the lawn. Two civilians, with minor burns and wearing scorched servant’s livery, ignored the Marines’ shouts and waves signaling them forward. Terrified of the Marine presence, they ran instead around the house, bound for the town. They’ll only get more of the same there.
The scene went quiet but for the roaring flames and shots from Ghost on their left flank. “Around the house, Doom, head for the square,” Cardona ordered. He transmitted his status to SSgt Len, receiving the reply, AFFIRMATIVE. NEARLY DONE HERE.
Doom double-timed onto the lawn, their powerful, armored footst
eps churning up the manicured grass. As they went to skirt the house, a final civilian exited—naked and screaming, a little girl covered in third-degree burns, blistered red skin literally peeling from her body.
Head down, she ran directly at Rizer, who stopped and stared in dumbstruck horror. “Stitches!” he cried. “Get up here!” No screams had ever punctured his eardrums like the girl’s. Rizer stooped to her level as she approached. “Easy, it’s okay,” he gasped. He raised an empty, reassuring hand. Though he knew he couldn’t touch her—that would peel more skin off her—he wanted to help her somehow. Burn blanket. Surely Stitches carried a couple.
She stopped before him, stamped her feet as she marked double-time, screeching and going nowhere.
“It’s all right, we’re not gonna hurt you.”
Their eyes met for the first time. Reflected in his mirrored visor, she recoiled, screaming. Her wail turned his blood to ice water, but the tears running from his eyes felt like boiling oil.
***
Armor requested by SSgt Len now glided through the streets of Harkness, moving a step behind Doom and Ghost, providing direct fire support. The hovering behemoths blasted apart buildings identified as insurgent strongholds defended by heavy weapon crews, leaving the infantry to concentrate on enemy who engaged them in the open.
Doom had just split up. Sgt Cardona led second and fourth teams north through an alley, bound for the rally point at the town square, while first and third moved east down a street toward the next block, where they would turn north to parallel Cardona’s route.
Cpl Hagel’s third team remained intact; Rizer moved only with Stubs. They had left Leone, too injured to continue after taking a shot to the leg, at the back of a blind alley to await med bots or the end of the battle, whichever came first. She had a good field of vision from her cover behind a dumpster, and two drums of ammo to fend off insurgents. Doubt she’ll see any. Though not completely secured, the southern end of town was in ruins, dead insurgents lying in the streets. Lt Snider and two squads from first platoon had advanced into town along with a couple plasma throwers to root out remaining Vics.
For the first time since coming to Verdant, Rizer didn’t want the battle to end. Plotting his next move and engaging the enemy were the only activities that could keep his mind off the burned girl.
Hagel reached the end of the block, peered around the corner of a building and down the street toward the square, then checked out rooftops and upper-floor windows. Rizer joined him. The street offered sparse cover: a couple of wheeled cars, some garbage cans that couldn’t conceal them. Columns of smoke rose beyond the square, the handiwork of Evil and Fury squads. Rizer glanced back to the south, where a Marine hover tank sat in an intersection five blocks away.
“I don’t see shit,” Hagel muttered.
“Do we have any more drones?” Rizer asked.
“Nah, lost the last one a couple minutes ago.”
Rizer wasn’t surprised. Their small scout drones—vulnerable to direct fire, jamming, and electromagnetic pulse weapons—were often targeted first. Larger drones equipped with thicker armor were usually reserved for dedicated reconnaissance, command and control, and forward observation for tanks and artillery.
“I don’t like it,” Hagel continued, gazing up the street. “Too quiet and jack shit for cover.”
“Let’s take to the rooftops, advance from there,” Rizer said. “It’ll give us a good view of the upper-floor windows across the street.”
“Brainiac, got the gears turnin’.” Hagel issued a huff, either amused or impressed. “Let’s do it.”
They engaged thrusters, jumped to the first pitched roof and got moving, checking sensors as they went and occasionally pausing behind a parapet or AC unit to scan windows across the street. Hogue shot at an insurgent fleeing down a street two blocks away but missed. They moved on, jumping between rooftops, the square just a few buildings ahead.
“Cover!” Stiglitz shouted as a minigun opened up with a rip.
The tracers made long blue streaks as they zipped by at chest height in front of Rizer and Stubs. They dove behind the roof coping, breathing hard, as the other Marines scrambled for cover. The slugs carved out chunks of brick from the roof and the tinkle of glass marked shattered windows below them.
“Fuck, that was close!” shouted Stubs.
“Yeah, too damned close,” Rizer said. When two explosions sounded from the northwest, he asked, “What the fuck was that?”
Two red rectangles indicating enemy armor appeared in the square on Rizer’s map overlay, followed by the message LCPL BYRD KIA.
Fuck, they have armor!
“Murder elements, Murder 6 Actual, be advised enemy armor units have been detected in our AO,” Captain Carr said over the company net, as if on que. “Identify and relay grid coordinates.”
“Hey, nobody fucking said anything about tanks,” said Hogue, his voice tense.
“Get a grip. We need to move forward and get eyes on them. Move out!” Rizer ordered.
Engaging his thrusters, he bounded over the remaining rooftops, his armor allowing him to easily jump from one to the next. He shuddered when he saw what awaited them—armor, yes, but not hover tanks. These gargantuan machines stepped forward on two legs.
Mechs!
The computer in Rizer’s helmet identified them as 25-ton LSM-1C scouts and automatically updated the information on every Marines’ HUD. More intimidating in person, Rizer knew their basic specs from SOI: armor at least 15cm thick, fusion powered, and limited jump capacity. Their formidable arsenal of weapons included a swivel mounted 15-millimeter minigun, twin thirty-millimeter laser cannons, and a plasma thrower for close-up work.
The mechs stood like green hulks in the square, one in the northwest corner and another at the east side, the latter an easy shot from Rizer’s position. Both concentrated laser fire on Cardona and his men, who were holed up at the end of the alley accessing the square.
A whole side of a building collapsed as the twin green lasers of the far mech sliced into a corner of the building. Dust and debris rained down in the square.
“We can’t fight those. We need to fall back!” Hogue cried in terror.
Rizer turned on him. “Our guys are pinned down! We need to help them!”
Hogue continued to stare at the monstrosities down below, fear in his eyes.
When he started to back away, Rizer grabbed him by the harness and slapped him hard across the face shield. He pulled Hogue until their visors touched. “Pull your shit together, Marine. We don’t bail on our buddies. Now, are you with me?”
Tears stream down Hogue’s face as he finally met Rizer’s eyes. “Yes,” he croaked.
“Good. Let’s do this!” Rizer shouldered his tube and opened fire on the closest of the intimidating mechs. Its thick reactive armor activated; the explosive pack redirected the energy of his round and despite the huge ball of fire that swirled around the side of vehicle, the remaining armor below was scarred but not compromised.
LCpl Hogue, who still had the two launchers issued him, let fly as the mech turned and directed its guns toward Rizer’s position. One rocket hit, a glancing topside blow that staggered the mech while not taking it down. It stood practically undamaged when the flames cleared.
“Rooftops, we gotta move!” Stiglitz yelled.
“Get up there, Doom!” said Cardona.
A cry flooded the radio, then: “Zimmer didn’t make it!”
“Go down and get him, Stitches!” Cardona shouted.
The closest mech fired four laser blasts at the Marines as they landed on the rooftop next to Rizer’s team. Three struck the building’s meter-high parapet, blowing apart brick. The mortar began to burn, adding an odor of hot lime to the air. Most of the Marines ducked away in time. Caught flatfooted, Hagel took the fourth shot in the upper back as he turned away. His remains dropped from the sky onto the roof, a clack of sundered and burnt armor plating, a heavy
thud of falling limbs. One leg followed another; then came an arm and part of a shoulder. His head, other arm, and most of his torso were MIA, vaporized by the beam’s energy.
Covered with his friend’s blood, Rizer lay stunned for a heartbeat, not believing, as the mech blasted more brick from the roof’s edge. He’d known Hagel for as long as he’d been in the Corps. In memoriam, the words CPL HAGEL KIA appeared on his display.
“Get up!” Stubs shouted. “We gotta get those fucking things!”
Fuck, how? Not expecting enemy armor, the command hadn’t equipped them with heavy lasers packs or portable gauss anti-tank weapons. Rizer called for armored support, the only element capable of dealing with the mechs. Cardona followed Rizer’s lead and made a second call.
“Gimme that!” Stubs ripped the final rocket from Hogue’s grasp.
Stubs low crawled to the roof’s ragged edge, prepared to take the shot, and peered over. The mech unleashed its minigun; a lengthy blue spark flew when a round ricocheted off Stubs’ helmet. Rizer dived to grab Stubs by the ankles and pull him back as more projectiles flew overhead. Stubs had a serious groove in his helmet.
“Fuck!” He threw open his visor. “Stubs!”
The man lay dazed, blood trickling onto his brow.
“He’s concussed as fuck!” Michaud said.
But Stubs was alive—a low moan attested to that.
“Where the fuck is our armor?” Rizer asked no one in particular.
CPL ZIMMER KIA. MEDICAL BOT STITCHES DESTROYED.
Just fucking great!
More rounds streaked over them, sporadic rifle shots and machinegun fire as opposed to the mech’s minigun. Rizer’s HUD showed an enemy infantry squad entering the square from the north. “Concentrate on the infantry! Michaud, MG over there!”
“Right!” She crawled toward an undamaged section of the parapet to set up her machinegun next to a large condenser unit.
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