Orders of Battle (Frontlines)

by Marko Kloos

  I pull out the modules one by one and stack them up next to my left boot as I go. When I am finished, I weigh the last module in the palm of my hand and look at it for a moment. Thanks to modern solid-state polymer matrix storage tech, the little square module on my palm holds the combined data of the last days of almost two thousand people—every step they took, everything they saw, and everything they managed to say to any nearby microphones, which were in every room of every building in some form. It will tell the story of how they lived their last days, and how their lives ended. I wouldn’t want to go through that data for any amount of money or privileges, but I understand why the intel division would want to get their hands on these modules.

  “All right,” I say. “Divvy these up between Dagger One and Dagger Two. Everyone takes at least one. Tuck them into your dump pouches and treat them like they have two years’ worth of your salary on them.”

  “Are we fucked if we lose any?” Captain Harper asks.

  “Negative. The system writes across all of them at once for redundancy. We lose a few, they can reconstruct the data from the others. Just as long as at least some of us make it back.”

  I start handing the modules to the SEALs behind me, who pass them back down the line. Every SEAL tucks away one of the modules as instructed. Elin takes one as well, and I watch as she slips it into the leg pocket of her suit and carefully seals the cover flap. When I have passed out enough modules for everyone on the team, there are three left sitting on the ground next to my foot. I take a module off the remaining stack and hold it out to Sergeant Rees.

  “You get to double up on the high-value cargo, Rees. Don’t get stomped.”

  “Aye, sir. I’ll do my best.” Sergeant Rees takes the module and slips it into one of the ammo punches at the front of his armor.

  I pick up the last two memory modules and stow them in my armor’s dump pouch, the collapsible fabric bag we all have attached to our chest plates to hold odds and ends during missions whenever we need our hands free.

  “All right. We have secured the goods. Dagger One, Dagger Three, exfil and link up with Dagger Two and Four outside. Move ’em out,” I say.

  We ascend the central stairwell again, a little more quickly than we came down just a few minutes ago. I’ll be glad to leave this basement behind, and I know that Elin Vandenberg and the SEALs feel the same way even though nobody is voicing the sentiment out loud. The building is a crypt now, and the basement levels are the darkest and most unsettling part of it. We are the first living humans in twelve years to walk these hallways, and if we lose the Lanky war, we will also be the last.

  We’re on the landing of the first subfloor when there’s a noise coming from the level above, quick footsteps echoing in the staircase. Then the beam of a helmet light appears above the safety rail of the ground-level landing.

  “Dagger One, Dagger Three,” someone calls down into the stairwell on amplified audio.

  “Turn off the speakers,” Captain Harper shouts back. “Use the comms. We are right below you.”

  “Sorry, Captain.” The voice that comes over the headset of my helmet a second later is that of Sergeant Thatcher, the junior NCO of Dagger Two. “Comms don’t work for shit through these walls. Lieutenant Philips says to expedite if possible. The seismic mines are pinging incoming. Looks like we’re about to get some company.”

  Harper and I exchange a look. Then he turns toward the SEALs lined up in the staircase below us and gives the hand signal for double-time.

  “Lead the way, Thatcher. We are right behind you,” he says.

  Outside, the rain has slacked off a little while we were below, but the visibility hasn’t improved much. There’s a warm, humid mist in the air that is drifting in and out of the gaps between the buildings. When I step off the rubble pile and onto the plaza, my boots splash into deep puddles. As soon as I am beyond the entrance vestibule, my TacLink screen comes to life again and populates with all the data updates I’ve missed while I was shielded behind the thick concrete walls of the admin building.

  The recon flights placed a network of seismic mines on the ground around Willoughby City that activate whenever they detect a ground disturbance. It’s such a new system that I’ve never seen it in action before, but as I check the readouts, I find myself disappointed at the coarseness of the information. I wasn’t expecting precise locations and accurate pictographs of incoming Lankies, but I was hoping for something more concrete than the vague red-shaded sector on my map that forms a wedge extending to the west of the city. According to the map legend, the width of the wedge indicates the approximate number of incoming Lankies, and the intensity of the color indicates the rough distance. I compare the values and feel a swell of dread.

  Ten-plus individuals, five kilometers or less.

  “We have five minutes. Maybe ten if they’re not in a big hurry,” I send to the squad leaders. “Dagger team, double-time back to the pickup point. Threat vector is two seventy degrees, distance five klicks and closing fast.”

  “Copy that. Moving out,” Captain Harper acknowledges. He signals to the assembled squads. “We are leaving, people. The neighborhood’s about to get unfriendly.”

  Next to me, Elin looks pale and wide-eyed behind her face shield.

  “Remember how you said you were hoping to see a live Lanky in the wild?” I ask. “It looks like you may be about to get your wish.”

  We start running after the SEALs, who are already making their way across the little plaza to head for the pickup spot. With the Lankies on the way already, I decide to throw EM emission restrictions to the wind and call down our ride. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do battlespace coordination on the run, and I find that I haven’t really missed the experience.

  “Rapier Three-One, Dagger Actual,” I send to the drop ship. “We need immediate evac. Dagger team is on the way to the LZ. Incoming hostiles from the west, five minutes out.”

  “Copy that, Dagger Actual,” the response comes. “We are on the way. ETA four minutes, twenty seconds.”

  “We are on the central thoroughfare and coming into the LZ from the south. All friendlies are moving on the main drag and within a hundred and fifty meters of the pickup point. If you see any hostiles outside of those bounds when you’re on final, you are cleared to engage.”

  “Copy cleared hot, Dagger Actual. Stand by for pickup.”

  I drop the channel and concentrate on running again. The torn-up roadbed and the omnipresent plant growth makes for tougher going than I would like right now as I have to hop from patch to patch to avoid getting slowed down by debris piles or overgrown patches. Next to me, Elin stumbles when she steps into a deep puddle, and I reach out to help her up again.

  Guess you won’t be collecting any samples today, I think. Sorry about that.

  The LZ is an open space between the rows of housing units and a small cluster of service buildings, uncluttered by vertical obstacles that could range up a drop ship. When we landed, I didn’t pay attention to the signage on the buildings, but as we reach the plaza, it jumps out at me because our helmet lights illuminate the reflective letters on the signs: WILLOUGHBY CITY PUBLIC SCHOOL. From the way Elin’s eyes widen, I can tell that she has seen the signs as well and understands the implications.

  I turn my back toward the building and make myself face west, toward the incoming threat, because I don’t want my helmet light to reach through the windows or the clear polyplast view panels of the nearby doors. The scene in the admin center was dark and hopeless enough for another year or two of recurring nightmares. I don’t need to see what the Lanky gas pods left behind in that school building, where the four hundred and eighty-nine families of this colony sent their children on the day of the attack. Next to me, Elin is still looking at the building as if transfixed by the message on the reflective letters. I touch her shoulder to get her attention. When she turns toward me, I shake my head slowly.

  The SEALs deploy around the pickup spot in a ragged firing line,
rifles pointed to the west. The sky is an angry shade of dark gray, illuminated from the inside in irregular intervals by lightning bolts. The buildings to our west are all one-level residential structures, but the visibility isn’t good enough to even see where the rows of houses end and the surrounding plateau begins. Mist blooms everywhere between the buildings, drifting across our field of view and swirling in the wind like ghostly tendrils.

  “ETA one minute, thirty seconds,” Rapier Three-One sends.

  The wedge extending to the west on my map display is now a good twenty degrees wide, and as I watch, the color changes from a coral red to a dark crimson. “DISTANCE: <1000 METERS.”

  A low vibration shakes the ground a little under my feet, a familiar thrumming that spikes my heart rate. Another follows, then a third, each a little stronger than the first.

  “They’re in the squall just beyond our line of sight,” I send to the platoon. “Weapons free. Engage as soon as you get a fix. Do not wait for effect. They’ll drop when you’ve shot them enough.”

  Next to me, Elin Vandenberg looks like she’s starting to regret some of her recent life choices. I nudge her behind me and check the loading status of my rifle. I want to assure her that she’ll be fine, that we’ll stop the threat, or that there’s a place she can hide if we don’t. But the truth is that these things are huge and immensely strong, and that we usually draw the short end of the stick whenever we have to go toe-to-toe with groups of them at small-arms distance. If we don’t hold the line, Dr. Vandenberg will die with us right here on the spot, seconds away from safety. But that was the choice she made, whether she believed the magnitude of the danger or not.

  In the squall line ahead, a huge shape appears. Then the Lanky is close enough to be distinct against the backdrop of the mists and the shimmering bands of rain, twenty meters of spindly appendages and rain-slick skin the color of eggshells. For a moment, I have a strong sense of déjà vu. Twelve years ago, the first Lanky I ever saw walked out of a similar squall, only a few hundred kilometers from here, in front of the disbelieving eyes of a handful of Corps marines and stranded Fleet sailors. But back then, we were taken by surprise, defeated because we had inadequate weapons and no knowledge of our new foe. Now we know that they can be killed, and we know how to kill them.

  “Light it up,” I shout into the platoon comms.

  The SEALs need no encouragement. The Lanky has taken two long steps out of the rainy curtain of the squall line when sixteen JMB rifles open up all at once. The bright red tracer charges of the rifle bullets look like angry, suicidal fireflies as they streak across the distance to the Lanky in the blink of an eye. Some of the tracers deflect on unfavorably angled skin and careen off into the rainy darkness, but most of them strike true.

  The Lanky falters, stumbles, and lets out its earsplitting distress wail. I haven’t heard that sound in years except in my dreams. It’s the soundtrack of crushing fear and imminent death. Every part of my body wants to recoil from it, crawl up inside itself and refuse to share a reality with it. But instead of obeying my base instincts, I put my target marker on the Lanky’s chest, and I send my own scream back at it, three-round bursts of tungsten and uranium slugs, made to punch through Lanky skin and make a path for the fifty grams of explosives that are piggybacking on each bullet.

  Seventeen rounds left. Fourteen. Eleven. Eight. Five. Two.

  The Lanky falls just as my magazine indicator shows empty. Struck by hundreds of armor-piercing rounds, it crashes sideways into a row of residence buildings, flattening half a dozen concrete domes as it skids along, still wailing its distress call. The new rifle rounds are not as powerful as the silver bullets we used to use, but they make up for it by being much easier to shoot and allowing for much bigger magazines.

  In the squall line behind the stricken Lanky, three more of them appear, walking almost side by side in a slightly staggered line. They seem to pay no mind to their fallen mate. I eject the empty magazine block from my rifle and swap in a full one, then press the button for the automatic bolt mechanism to cycle a fresh round into the chamber. The SEALs engage the newcomers without requiring direction. A new swarm of tracers rises from our position and rushes out to meet the Lankies. I add a whole magazine on full auto to the fusillade, then reload and burn through a third. As I reload once more, I glance over at Elin Vandenberg, who is squatting on the ground with her arms over her head, as if she could plug her ears with the bulk of her suit’s sleeves even through the thick laminate layer of her helmet.

  “Two hundred meters,” Captain Harper shouts.

  As the Lankies close the distance, our rifle rounds become more effective, retaining more energy to funnel into their penetrator points. Another Lanky falls, shrieking and flailing its limbs. The one behind it stumbles over its mate and goes down with it, then starts to right itself and get back to its feet. Beyond the squall line, I see more movement, heralding new arrivals. I know that no matter how many we drop, there’ll be more of them following. Whatever instincts they have, self-preservation has never been among them. Their main tactic has always been to grind us down by sheer attrition and then crush our lines with numbers, and it usually works because they have the numbers to throw away. Sooner or later we will run out of bullets, and if they still have live bodies on the field when that happens, they win by default.

  “Rolling in hot,” I hear over the radio. “Dagger team, keep your heads down.”

  From somewhere in the eastern sky, two insanely fast comet tails streak across the battlefield and smash into the Lanky that is still on its feet and striding toward us. The shock wave from the detonation of the missile warheads rocks the ground beneath our feet, and I lose my footing and go to one knee next to Elin. When I look up again, I see bits and pieces of the Lanky’s torso flying everywhere. Part of one arm sails off into a group of housing domes and bounces off with a sickening thudding sound.

  Then the drop ship is overhead.

  Rapier Three-One swoops out of the low-hanging clouds like a pissed-off guardian angel. The pilot pulls out of the descent and brings his ship to a hover right above our position, fifty meters overhead. A moment later, the heavy automatic cannons mounted on the side of the fuselage open up, sending little concussive shocks from the muzzle blasts rolling across the square and making the water in the puddles jump. The pilot keeps his finger on the trigger button for what seems like half a minute, hammering a storm of tracers toward the remaining Lankies and raining empty shell casings down onto the ground all around us. When the furious thunder finally stops, the Lankies in our line of sight are all on the ground, dead or dying, finally mauled and mangled into submission.

  “There are more incoming,” the pilot cautions. “Setting down for immediate dustoff. Do not dawdle.”

  “Get up,” I say to Elin and pull her up by the sleeve of her suit. “More Lankies in the forecast. We are getting off this rock.”

  She’s clearly shell-shocked, but she nods to acknowledge me even as she looks around wild-eyed to take in the scene. It’s hard for a civilian to fathom just how much death and destruction can be unleashed in a few minutes of combat. I’ve used up over half my ammunition load already, and we have only engaged four Lankies, two of which needed drop-ship assistance to be finished off. Three blocks of Willoughby City are crushed to rubble or blown to pieces in front of us. There is no training in the world that can really prepare a normal, sane human for being in the middle of this much concentrated violence.

  The drop ship descends into the middle of the landing spot, its tail ramp opening even before it puts down. When the skids hit the ground, the SEALs retreat toward the ship, weapons still aimed in the direction of the threat.

  “Go, go, go,” the pilot shouts over the radio, as if any of us need the encouragement.

  I take a knee by the side of the ramp and keep my weapon at the ready as the SEALs rush up the ramp and file into the cargo hold.

  “Go now,” I shout at Elin and point up into the cargo hold. She no
ds and follows the SEALs into the ship. When the last of the Dagger team members are inside, I get up and follow. As welcoming as the drop ship is right now, I am the ranking officer on the ground, and my pair of boots needs to be the first to step onto the planet and the last to step off.

  The cargo hold is abuzz with frantic activity as the SEALs secure their weapons and hurriedly strap into their jump seats. I sit Dr. Vandenberg down in one of the empty seats and strap her in. When I finish, I give her a thumbs-up, and she nods her thanks in response.

  I secure my own harness and give another thumbs-up, this one to the crew chief by the front bulkhead, who looks understandably impatient right now.

  “Three-one, we’re all strapped in,” I say. “Tail ramp clear. Go, go, go.”

  The pilot wastes no time hauling his bird back into the air and out of the reach of angry Lankies. The rain lashes through the open tail ramp and splashes against my helmet as we leave the ground and pick up forward speed. Underneath the ship, the housing units of Willoughby City zoom by, still too close for comfort. Then the tail ramp blocks my view of the outside as it seals into place.