Hunter, Warrior, Commander

by Andrew Maclure

  “How in Satan’s name are we going to see what’s going on when we get down there?” Sah Lee asked Si’ir Monn over a private link on the mission comms.

  “It’s unlikely the Ants will deploy until they’ve got some vision. There is a steady wind blowing across the target area, so the dust should move away fairly quickly. The wind is something to do with weather systems at the terminator.”

  “The terminator. That sounds ominous.”

  “It’s just the line between the sunlit and dark area of the planet. Have you studied celestial geometry? The terminator is where a line from the star is at a tangent to the planet. Does that make it clear?”

  “I didn’t understand any of that, but I’ll take your word for it.” As she watched, the hexagonal Ant landers lifted off and moved out of the dock. As her lander moved to follow the Ants out, she looked down and saw the area the Ants had bombed. It looked insignificant in the rolling semi-desert of Forness Two. The dust cloud was showing signs of movement, the top moving more quickly than the lower part, forming a streamer that looked like it was tugging at the main cloud.

  They followed the Ant landers down, settling behind them, five hundred meters from the edge of the main dust cloud. The two equipment and supplies landers dropped down just behind, the hospital landers behind them.

  The ramp slammed down and Sah Lee led her troops out at a run. As she ran towards the Ant landers she broadcast across the mission comms to the whole brigade: “Get into positions! Make sure your dust filters are working and your oxygen feeds are on.”

  They ran through the Ant landers and saw the Ants getting into formation. Auto trolleys loaded with mortars, drones and surface-to-surface missiles followed right behind them. Just behind the trolleys, medi-bots and automated gurneys came up.

  An Ant with a large caliber KE weapon attached to a harness on its left and a magazine fed RPG launcher on its left raced straight at Sah Lee. She held her breath and braced for impact. The Ant, which wore a sleek mask covering its eyes that left its mandibles and antenna free, skidded to a halt just in front of her. “Sah Lee, where do you want me positioned?” Ti’rrk asked.

  Breathing out slowly, Sah Lee said “On my right. Bynor will be on your right, Si’ir Monn and Kar Fen will be on my left. If any of our troops need support, I will send one of my team to support them. You and I will stay together.”

  “Yes Major. I am under your command now.”

  “You’re a civilian, you’re not even a soldier in your own army. I could enlist you as militia, but I think it’s better if you keep your status as it is. I want you to follow my orders though. And please call me Sah Lee.”

  Ti’rrk chuckled. “I think we can work with that arrangement, Sah Lee.”

  She received confirmation from Si’ir Monn and Dorsh that the troops were all in position behind the Ants. She told Ti’rrk, who passed it on to the Ant commander. After a few minutes the Ants moved off. Sah Lee sent the order to launch a swarm of drones. These weren’t just for reconnaissance, some were armed with anti-personnel missiles, some with contact explosives, some were ‘suicide’ drones to target enemy drones. A few enemy drones came through the dust and there was a short automated battle which soon left only battalion drones in the dust filled sky, but with visibility too poor to gain any advantage from them.

  The Ants normal pace was equivalent to the army standard running speed. The battalion soldiers broke into a run, keeping in their five-person formations. They traveled almost a hundred meters into the thinning dust cloud before they encountered outcast hostiles.

  The Ants cleared everything in front of them. A few hostiles panicked and ran when they saw the Ants bearing down on them, but most stood their ground and fell to the Ants onslaught. As they pushed through and got to the edge of the bombardment zone, they came across clumps of soil and rocks thrown up by the impacts of the hypersonic tungsten rods. A little further on they ran into the churned-up ground that had been directly hit. At first there were scattered deep, wide craters which the Ants easily traversed on their six legs, but Sah Lee’s troops were mostly bipedal and skirted round the craters where possible. As they progressed further into the dust cloud, the ground became more broken with deeper holes where the tungsten rods had impacted existing craters, excavating lower levels of subsoil and bedrock. Even the Ants struggled through this devastated terrain; the battalion troops were losing formation with many falling behind.

  “Ti’rrk, can you get your soldiers to stop while we catch up and get back into line?”

  “I have passed your request to our mission commander, but I fear they are driven by fighting frenzy and won’t stop now until they have reached their objective, the outskirts of the buildings.”

  The Ants charged onward, skidding in the loose earth and churning it up even more where they passed, not slowing or deviating from their path.

  “Keep in line, we’ll have to let the Ants get ahead of us.” Sah Lee sent to Si’ir Monn and Dorsh. She knew there was a risk that hostiles might get though the Ant lines and attack them from the rear or reform and be ready for the extended and thin line of the battalion when it reached them, but she thought it unlikely that anything could have survived the cataclysmic bombardment that had shattered the landscape so thoroughly. She shuddered as the thought struck her that most of Aarn must look like this now.

  The battalion moved forward at a slower rate, but in a proper fighting formation rather than the disorganized rabble they had become trying to keep up with the Ants.

  When they caught up with them, the Ants had set up a line of sentries facing the building line. The majority of them stood in groups, waving their antenna at each other. One Ant made their way to Sah Lee.

  “Greetings Major Sah Lee. I am Bry’ak, the Ant mission commander. I apologize for moving more quickly than your troops could. We had not allowed for our ability to move faster than you bipeds over broken ground.”

  “Greetings. Should I address you as Commander Bry’ak?” Sah Lee asked.

  “We do not have military structures as you would understand them Major Sah Lee, so Bry’ak would be the correct form of address.”

  “Please call me Sah Lee. No harm was done. Nothing seemed to survive the bombardment, but it has gone a bit beyond the planned boundaries.” She surveyed the smashed and crushed buildings on the forward edge of the settlement.

  “It is unfortunate, but to be expected. It is not possible to be millimeter accurate from orbit. We will stay in position while your troops enter the buildings and attempt to locate Tk’ng Dach Rm. We will be ready to reinforce you if required. Your battalion is half the strength we calculated would be required to accomplish your task with minimal casualties.”

  “Thank you Bry’ak. As we suffered no casualties on the way to the settlement and not all of it is still standing, I believe we have sufficient numbers to complete our mission, but I will not hesitate to call upon your resources if needed.”

  “May your enemies fall before your onslaught.” Bry’ak answered.

  “That is a traditional Ant salute. The appropriate response is ‘Victory is our destiny.’.”

  Sah Lee responded, Bry’ak waved her antenna and left.

  “You are very diplomatic Sah Lee. I was not aware that you possessed such skills.” Ti’rrk said.

  ‘Nor was I.’ Sah Lee thought.

  Chapter Ninety Nine

  Assault On The Buildings

  The battalion lined out waiting for the medi bots and automated gurneys to catch up. Si’ir Monn had gone to command a squad of his own, eleven soldiers joined Sah Lee to bring her team number up to fifteen. As soon as the medi bots and gurneys came into sight, she gave the order to advance. The sixteen squads moved forward in line. As they reached the ruins, they searched for survivors and scanned the scattered remains of the dead for a DNA match for Tk'ng Dach Rm.

  Sah Lee heard a brief burst of fire from a KE weapon on her left. It would have come from a hostile; her troops dispatched any surviving host
iles with their blades. She and her team crossed a crater where a small building had stood. It had taken a direct hit and there was little sign that there had ever been a building there, but the small single story domed building ahead was mostly intact. The windows had been blown in and were as dark and forbidding as empty eye sockets, the empty doorway gaped like a screaming mouth. A large gash tore across the roof, ripped open by a piece of flying debris. A thick layer of the dark red dust, sparkling with small ice particles, that was still dropping out of the air covered everything. Inside the building smashed furniture lay, flung around by the blast. Amongst the ruins they found five broken and twisted bodies of outcasts, all wearing body armor of mottled dark red and brown that blended with the landscape of Forness Two. There were no DNA matches.

  They exited the building onto a what looked like a wide and well-trodden dirt road running left to right. On the opposite side of the road most of the buildings were made of prefabricated modules of a composite material like the ones they had just passed through, but some were made of blockwork and had a more permanent look to them. Sah Lee could see other squads leaving the first rows of buildings and coming on the road to her left and right. KE weapons fire broke out from the buildings at several points along the road and groups of the battalion troops ran forward to engage the hostiles. “Five right, five left, four with me. Go!” Sah Lee called out to her team. They split into groups as Sah Lee ran towards the block built building in front of her. A grenade flew through a broken window, followed by two more from different windows. KE and beam weapon fire came from all the windows. Ti’rrk fired rocket-propelled grenades through two of the windows, the rest of her team fired their weapons as they ran.

  “Ti’rrk, we need to identify Tk’ng Dach Rm and take him alive if possible. We can’t do that if we’ve blown him to pieces!” Sah Lee said over the mission comms.

  “We do, but it will not be possible if we are dead. Our first priority is to stay alive to complete the mission.”

  ‘She has a point.’ thought Sah Lee.

  Kar Fen reached the door first and kicked it open at a run, firing as he ran in. Ti’rrk followed close behind, firing her KE weapon as soon as she was inside. Sah Lee, a beetle shaped insectoid soldier called Dessen and Bynor each leapt through a broken window, seeking targets and firing as they landed. Sah Lee landed and rolled over onto her feet between two hostiles who had been crouching by the window. They stood and turned to fire at her. She swung her right leg up and kicked the one on the right in the side of its face, knocking it off its feet. The second hostile had its beam weapon up and was firing at her as she dropped her foot down and regained her balance. Her field armor easily deflected the attack. She dropped her GSA20, dipped down and sprung up close to the hostile, thrusting the heel of her right hand up and connecting with its chin, snapping its head back. She continued pushing upwards and back, then seized its head, wrenching it round, snapping its neck. Swinging round to face the first hostile again, she found it sweeping a long-bladed knife at her, aiming at the weak point in her body armor at the back of her armpit. She was too late to stop it and the knife tore into her armor but didn't make contact with her body. Rolling with the blow she grasped the back of the hostiles neck with her left hand and pushed it down while reaching behind for her hunting knife. She thrust it down striking the hostile at the base of its skull. The tip of the blade thudded into its body armor, only penetrating a few millimeters. A green line appeared higher up and to the side of its neck as her AI overlaid onto her vision the vulnerable point in its armor and she plunged her knife in up to its hilt.

  Yanking the blade free she spun round it time to see Ti’rrk separating a hostiles head from its body with her powerful mandibles while Kar Fen fired a short burst of KE fire into another hostile. Bynor ran over to join them and Dessen scuttled over.

  “You do realize that if you had tried the neck breaking move on an insectoid instead of a vertebrate it wouldn’t have worked?” Sah Lee’s AI asked.

  “No, I hadn’t thought about it. Lucky it was a vertebrate I guess.” she answered.

  “Make sure all remains are DNA scanned, including anything that may have been shredded by Ti’rrk’s grenades.” Sah Lee told her team, turning to scan the two hostiles she had killed.

  “All the remains have been scanned, Tk’ng Dach Rm isn’t amongst them.” Ti’rrk said. “Your body armor is damaged Sah Lee. You must be injured.”

  “No, the blade missed me.” she answered.

  Sah Lee called Ren Deel, the Corporal who reported to her. “What’s your status?”

  “We’ve got one dead, four too badly injured to continue and being taken to the field hospital landers by gurney. A few minor casualties are being patched up now. We’re pretty much ready to go. How’s your team?

  “I’ve got one dead, one just leaving on a gurney. Hold your station, we’ll go when we’re all ready.”

  She broadcast to Si’ir Monn, Dorsh and Auross: “Situation report please. Progress and casualties.”

  Si’ir Monn was the first to come back. “My teams have two dead, five who won’t be fighting for a while and nine being patched up by medi bots. No traces of Tk’ng Dach Rm. We’ll be ready to move out in a few minutes. How are your team?”

  Dorsh was next, “We’ve eight dead, six of them from one squad so I’ve reorganized the squads. Five are being given emergency treatment by medi bots and are on their way to the hospital landers, there are a few being treated by other soldiers for minor injuries. My squads will all be ready to move out in about ten minutes. Does that fit in with the other units?”

  “We should be ready to go in ten, I’ll advise shortly.”

  Auross came on: “Three dead, one badly wounded. We've treated all the minor injuries, we’re ready to go.”

  “Wait for my mark, we’ll all be ready in about ten and it will give time for the returning gurneys and medi bots to get close.”

  Sah Lee paused a moment, thinking, then spoke to Ti’rrk: “These outcasts are tougher than I expected. If we’d had as many troops as you requested I would be confident of our ability to complete the mission with minimal casualties, but with what we have got, our success is not certain. I’d like a contingent of Ant troops to move up ready to support us if we need them. I don’t want them to engage, my troops would be vulnerable in front of them, but if I lose too many soldiers, I’ll need the Ants to backfill for them to maintain the line. Would Bry’ak agree to that?”

  “Yes Sah Lee. It would put her and her soldiers in a subordinate position to you, but your proposal is sound, and Ants are pragmatic. I do not believe she will have a problem with that. Would you like me to put it to her?”

  “Yes please, but she must be aware that if we need her soldiers, they will be under my command - assuming I am still alive.”

  “Of course. Please wait.”

  Ti’rrk stopped all movement, even her antenna, which were normally permanently waving, frozen in place. After three minutes Sah Lee was concerned that Bry’ak wasn’t as amenable as Ti’rrk said she would be.

  At last Ti’rrk’s antenna started to wave gently again. “Bry’ak is sending troops now. They will take up position in two ranks, the first twenty meters behind you, the second rank fifteen meters behind them. Each rank will have a separation between soldiers of four meters and they will keep pace with your line. Bry'ak instructed them to be in protection mode, so they won’t develop the fighting frenzy unless you direct them to attack. Although they may seem to you to be robotic, Ant soldiers are highly intelligent and quite capable of self-determination on the battlefield, but they are very single minded about achieving their objective. They will take deployment orders from you which I will relay to them either individually or as groups. They will recognize you as their mission commander, so even if they are in a fighting frenzy they will not harm you and will sacrifice themselves to protect you. Do you understand and approve of this?”

  “Yes, it sounds perfect.” She grinned at Ti’rrk. �
��I think I should have joined the Ant army instead of the Galactic Saviors.”

  Ti’rrk gave one of her throaty chuckles. “We’ll have to get you into the body of an Ant first, but I think you are too independent minded to integrate into an Ant colony.

  “Maybe. Can you tell me when they are in place please?”

  Sah Lee broadcast to Captain Auross, Sergeants Si’ir Monn and Dorsh, and the Corporals Bekkreshan, Ren Deel, Touren and Raddet Baal, explaining what she had done and why. She could sense the unease about having Ant soldiers deployed behind them. She broadcast to the entire brigade, “Listen up! I have requested two ranks of Ant soldiers to line up behind us. They are under my command and will only act on my orders. They are there for our protection and will only engage the enemy on my orders. If you have concerns about the Ants, speak to your squad leader. Move out!”

  Chapter One Hundred

  Mixing It With The Ants

  As the battalion moved out and across to the next set of buildings, they came under fire again, accompanied by grenades. Almost immediately Si’ir Monn called on the missions comm link for Ant reinforcement - one of his squads had been decimated by a focused attack by a group of hostiles who had broken out of their defenses and overrun the soldiers. The units either side had suppressed the hostiles, but he now had a gap in his line. Sah Lee’s team encountered stiff opposition and took another fatality. Sah Lee, Ti’rrk, Bynor and two soldiers were now pinned down by a group of hostiles who had taken cover behind a reinforced wall across a courtyard. She was beginning to regret her decision not to bring any of the sticky grenades with her and had already used seven of the twenty-four army issue fragmentation grenades she had packed. The hostiles seemed to have no concerns about running out and a steady stream of grenades came flying at their position. More calls for Ant support came through from the embattled squads as the hostiles fought back fiercely.