Swapship Troopers

by Walker Long

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks.” Damnit! He missed Hardaway. God, it would have been amazing to see him. Maybe find some time alone to hold each other. What a disappointment.

  But Hardaway was thinking of him! He really did care.

  “What’s up, Q?” Potter put in. “You expecting another medal or what?”

  “Uhh,” Quantrill floundered. He was acting suspiciously! He needed to cut that shit out before someone noticed. “Yeah,” he said casually, trying to play it cool. “I’m thinking a Fleet Cross this time. Maybe a promotion to General, too.”

  “In your dreams, twerp,” Potter laughed.

  The Marines got their gear together and then climbed the ladder to the center of the ship. The docking bay was packed as four separate platoons of Marines jostled around to find their assigned landing craft. The men were quiet, intense. There were no jokes or laughter or playful banter. This was serious business, and they all knew it. Today was the day, one way or another.

  Eventually Quantrill got onboard the landing bird and found a seat. He strapped himself in and watched the hatch. After the rest of the platoon was accounted for, Hardaway floated through the hatch. Quantrill smiled – there was no one he would rather go into battle with.

  “We have thirty minutes until we come out of the jump,” Hardaway announced. “Then we drop.”

  “Hurry up and wait,” Jordan grumbled.

  “Embrace the suck,” Quantrill agreed. He kicked back in his seat and tried to get comfortable.

  Lieutenant Hardaway went around the platoon to inspect the men as usual. He stopped to talk with each Marine in the platoon – to provide encouragement, to give advice. Quantrill now knew how much those troopers meant to Hardaway. He genuinely cared for his platoon. The man had a heart the size of a buzzard. Quantrill focused on his boots keep from staring at the CO like a lost puppy dog.

  Finally Hardaway worked his way to Quantrill. He spent what seemed like an eternity chatting with Jabara – asking his opinion on the design changes for the next generation heavy machine gun, chatting about his family. Quantrill sat and listened with barely contained impatience. Then he heard the Lieutenant’s familiar voice say, “How are you feeling, Q?”

  “Sir!” Quantrill said immediately. “Good to go, Sir.” He looked up and found himself staring right into Hardaway’s deep, blue eyes. The Lieutenant checked over his battle armor, tugged on a few straps, then gave him a nod and moved on.

  Quantrill sagged. That was all? They hadn’t seen each other in days and that was all he got? Hardaway talked to Jabara for longer, for Chrissake.

  Then Quantrill rolled his eyes and shook his head. What the hell did he expect? The Lieutenant was going to tear his clothes off right there in the troop carrier? No! They had to keep things professional. They’d be royally fucked if Fleet Command ever heard about how they had .. well … fucked.

  He happened to look down and saw something shiny tucked under the strap of his ammo vest. He was sure it hadn’t been there before. When he pulled it out he saw it was a flat, silver bar about the size of his finger tip and twice as long as it was wide. On the back there was a pin and clasp, like the sort you might use to pin it to your shirt. Of course! It was the Dress Uniform rank insignia of a First Lieutenant! How did he end up with a Lieutenant’s bar stuck to his armor?

  Hardaway! Quantrill looked up and saw his commander watching him from the front of the transport. Hardaway gave him a barely perceptible nod and a wink and then looked away. Quantrill closed his fist around the bar before anyone could see it. It was Hardaway’s! He wanted Quantrill to have it – wanted him to have a memento to take into battle.

  Quantrill was so touched he might have cried. He felt warm all over, like he was back at the pool with Hardaway beside him and the soft sunlight streaming over his skin. He knew he couldn’t actually wear the insignia – he wasn’t entitled to the rank – but the fact that Hardaway thought of him in this moment meant more than anything. He unlatched his chest plate and pulled at the collar of his t-shirt. After looking around to see that no one was paying attention, he pinned the Lieutenant’s bar to his shirt and tucked it back under his body armor. He could feel it there against his skin and smiled.

  Just a few seconds later, Major de Coverly floated through the entry hatch. He was in full battle armor – apparently the big boss was hitting the dirt with them this time. Hardaway and de Coverly shared a few words, then Hardaway turned to the platoon. “About five minutes!” he called out. “Secure and prepare for drop!”

  The Lieutenant closed the docking hatch and then he and de Coverly sat down. Quantrill watched the two officers carefully strap in. Should they be honored to have the Major pick their platoon to tag along? Or was de Coverly afraid they would fuck up and wanted to keep an eye on them? Probably he just didn’t want to chase Formids all over the plateau with the other platoons.

  “Everyone hold on tight!” Hardaway called out. “This might be a rough ride.”

  “When do we ever get a smooth ride?” Quantrill wondered under his breath. At that moment, the landing craft dropped. First he felt the ordinary bump from letting go of the Jericho, but that was immediately followed by a violent dive that flung Quantrill against his restraining straps. Then the bird banked hard right and he was shoved against the back of his seat. It felt like he had a 100 kilo stone parked on his chest, trying to squash him flat.

  Seconds later Quantrill was pushed the opposite direction as the lander turned. Then they went up, then down again. After that Quantrill lost track of which direction they were going as he was shoved in every direction. If they hadn’t been strapped in, the Marines would have been thrown around the inside of the bird like socks in a wash cycle.

  Finally, after a bruising descent, the bird slammed into the ground and came to rest. The platoon leaped to their feet and charged down the landing ramp. They emptied the lander in record time – not out of eagerness to fight, but to get off that crazy ride.

  “Mother fucker,” Quantrill breathed. His first look at Angkor was breathtaking – but not in a good way. The place was like something out of a nightmare. They had set down on a wide, flat plateau of solid rock. The ground was gritty and black and undulated with irregular grooves that must have been carved by wind and erosion over thousands of years. A thin, noxious vapor hung in the air and collected in the low lying areas like fog. Huge, jagged peaks thrust up from the rocky ground like blackened fangs.

  The overcast sky was dotted with hundreds of buzzards. The giant, flying Bugs lumbered along like rush-hour traffic. Fast attack fighters weaved in between and occasionally peppered the ground with blue-hot tracer fire. Quantrill couldn’t see what they shot at, but he hoped they blew the shit out of it.

  In the distance two more landing craft came rattling out of the sky. They twisted and rolled to evade the rows of buzzards that were clogging up the flight path. The two birds parked on the LZ to drop off the other platoons while their own lander spun up its engines and took off. With troops on the ground, the fighters turned their attention to scattering the buzzards. Going after the big, slow Bugs was like shooting fish in a barrel for the quick fighters. But there were a whole lot of fucking fish.

  “Let’s move out,” Vanlanding commanded over the squad channel. “We’re on the right flank.”

  The squad moved into position behind Corporal Vanlanding. Guan’s squad was on point with Lieutenant Hardaway and Tsien’s guys on the left side. Harper’s squad brought up the rear. They were moving through unknown territory, but Hardaway had them double timing it. They had to get to that washout before Formid reinforcements arrived. The whole operation depended on it.

  The Formid resistance was light – for a change. The Bugs hadn’t gotten themselves organized yet. Now and then one or two stragglers would charge the platoon, but they were brought down quickly and with little fuss. Once they even saw two dead Bugs that had been turned into bug pudding by the strafing fighters. The holes punched into the solid rock were still steaming with t
he heat of the impact.

  “Damn,” Jabara said in awe. “I need me a gun like that.”

  “Yeah, that’d be great,” Quantrill replied with sarcasm. He had to smile at the image of the big marine carrying one of the massive 20mm cannons from a fighter. “Only weighs about half a ton.”

  “Well, I never said I was gonna keep it in my back pocket,” Jabara shot back.

  They made it to the washout after about fifteen minutes of hard marching. Vanlanding’s platoon was set up at the furthest edge of the plateau. They overlooked the washout and the area at the foot of the cliff. Anyone who wanted to come up that ramp would have to stroll right under their noses – and through their rifle sights – for a hundred meters or more.

  Guan’s squad was sent down the washout to plant remote grenades along the approach. The rest of the platoon took up positions at the crest of the incline, ready to direct fire at the slope from all directions. Anyone who decided to climb up there was going to have a very bad day.

  They started to see action not long after. Two or three Formids at a time came charging along the rocky ground toward the incline. Quantrill and the rest of the squad picked them off before they got anywhere near the plateau. Some Bugs would try coming straight at them up the sheer cliff. They could climb walls like no creature that big had any right to, but the vertical wall still slowed them down and made them pitifully easy to pick off. Even when groups of five or six Bugs started showing up the lookout squad fragged them before the rest of the platoon had a chance to fire a shot.

  “Hey, leave some for us, will ya!” Kowalski eventually yelled.

  “You’ll get your chance,” Quantrill said under his breath. The Bugs were slow to get organized, but they were definitely on the way.

  Not long after that, Kowalski got his wish. A crowd of a dozen or more Formid warriors rushed at them. The squad gave them hell – Quantrill personally killed three of the Bugs – but several still made it to the washout. The concentrated fire of the rest of the platoon made short work of those, but another dozen were right behind.

  Things were getting interesting. After that wave was beaten down, the Formids attacked in a continuous stream. Quantrill fired off bursts as fast as his finger could pull the trigger. He slapped a third and then a forth fresh magazine into his rifle and kept on shooting. The platoon had killed hundreds of Formid warriors, but more were right behind. They still held the washout, but it was increasingly tenuous.

  A tremendous roar overhead made Quantrill turn and look. Two of the Army’s stadium-sized Heavy Assault Landers settled at the center of the rocky plateau with an earth-shaking crunch. The cavalry had arrived.

  “About time you guys got here!” Jabara yelled into the distance.

  It wasn’t a moment too soon either. The Bugs were getting reinforcements, too. They packed the rocky ravine like maggots on rotting meat. Quantrill was still blasting them – it was almost impossible to miss – but for each one he dropped two seemed to take its place.

  “Fire in the hole!” Hardaway shouted after giving the order to detonate the remote grenades. The grenades were dialed up to 10 and went off with an ear-splitting thud. Quantrill was hit with a shock wave that wrung the air out of his lungs and would have knocked him over if he hadn’t already been in a prone firing position. Even from fifty meters away, Quantrill was peppered with rock dust like rain. The huge blast dismembered dozens of Bugs, but it only slowed their attack for a minute or two. The Formids were swarming – there was no stopping them.

  “Prepare to fall back!” Hardaway ordered. His order was met with another resounding thud – this one from behind them. Quantrill turned and saw a gigantic artillery piece with a six-meter long, smoking barrel. After a split second the artillery shell streaked down onto the Bugs with a high-pitched whistle and an explosion threw apart their ranks once again.

  Two more resounding booms echoed over the plateau and the attacking wall of Formids began to crumble. “Belay that order,” Vanlanding told them over the squad channel. “We’re going to hold this position after all.”

  A large, self-propelled cannon rolled up to the edge of the cliff, set down a pair of stabilizer feet, and unleashed a torrent of fire into the Formids down below. Bug exoskeletons were shredded like wet cardboard under the heavy fire. For only the second time in his entire military career, Quantrill saw the Bugs retreat.

  Chapter 20

  Hill 54

  The platoon spent the next hour watching a parade of military hardware unload from the big Army transports. There were massive T9 tanks and the smaller T5 –any one of them big enough to crush a Formid under their steel treads as easily as a man stepping on a cockroach. They rolled down off the plateau and chased the Formids out into the barren landscape.

  “Man,” Potter exclaimed. “We are gonna own this rock. Look at all this hardware!”

  “Still pretty ugly out there,” Quantrill remarked. He was watching a field ambulance unload wounded men at the mobile hospital unit. They were dirty and beaten, most with missing limbs wrapped in bloody bandages.

  The hospital had been assembled in twenty minutes from a half-dozen bus-sized modules. Next to that was a command center and communication bunker. There were two armories and a supply depot. It was like a small town had sprung up in less than two hours.

  “LT wants us,” Vanlanding announced. “Come on.”

  The platoon gathered around Lieutenant Hardaway near a stack of supply crates outside the command center. Hardaway’s rifle was leaning against a cargo container beside him and he held his helmet under one arm. “We’re moving out,” he told them. “The guys holding onto Hill 54 need reinforcements.”

  “Hill 54?” Sergeant Prince asked.

  “It’s out that way.” Hardaway pointed into the dark, forbidding landscape. “If that hill falls, our whole left flank could collapse. We need to get there ASAP.”

  Hardaway had already insisted on the men picking up fresh ammo from the mobile armory, so they were ready to march in minutes. Hill 54 was only six klicks from the staging area, but they made terrible time in the rough, uneven terrain. At least tanks had already come that way and shoved some of the largest rocks out of the way.

  They moved in a narrow column, with the Lieutenant and Vanlanding’s squad in the lead. Tsien was right behind with Guan and Harper bringing up the rear. After about an hour of rough going they were within sight of Hill 54, a long, narrow ridge rising out of the rocky ground like the back of an enormous lizard. It was surprisingly quiet. There was supposed to be a pitched battle going on here – why weren’t they hearing any weapon fire?

  They did hear yelling up ahead. “Don’t shoot!” someone called out. Five infantry soldiers sprinted into view from the direction of Hill 54. They were a motley bunch – armor plate cracked and bent, blood splattered over their uniforms, and only two of them actually had weapons. “Please don’t shoot!”

  The men skidded to a stop just in front of the Marines. “Thank God, you’re here!” one of them gasped.

  “Are you with Company C?” Hardaway demanded. The men looked at one another then back at the Lieutenant. One of them nodded. “Let’s go join up with your company. We will …”

  “Sir,” one of the soldiers interrupted. He looked so frightened he might literally wet himself. “We … this … we are the company, Sir. There’s no one else.”

  “What?” Hardaway snapped. “How could your entire …” He didn’t finish that question, because at that moment Hill 54 was overrun with hundreds – maybe even thousands – of Formids. They came up from the other side and covered the hill like a carpet. There were so many and they were packed to tightly it was hard to distinguish individuals – they were a wave, washing over the landscape.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” someone said solemnly.

  Hardaway slowly turned away from the hill. His gaze locked on Quantrill. There was a strange look in his eyes that Quantrill hadn’t seen before. Was it fear? Was the Lieutenant afraid? Quantrill was afra
id, he knew that. He was scared shitless. But Hardaway was … he was Lieutenant Hardaway! He couldn’t be afraid.

  The two Marines looked at one another for two or three heartbeats more, and then Hardaway’s face went hard and he turned away. “Van!” he yelled and pointed back in the direction they had come. “Take the point! You’ll lead us back to the LZ.”

  “Yes, sir!” Vanlanding agreed.

  “Phan! O’Neal! Lopez!” the Lieutenant went on. “I want remote grenades there, there, and there. Dial them to 10.”

  Quantrill and the rest of the squad hustled to the back of the line. They would be at the head of the column for the retreat. Having the rest of the platoon between him and that sea of Bugs seemed like a good thing – but was Hardaway purposely trying to protect him? Quantrill wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to that question. If any of his fellow Marines were killed, he didn’t think he could handle the guilt.

  “We’re going to move fast, but stay together,” Vanlanding ordered. “The most important thing …” he started to say, but was interrupted by a loud crunching sound. It sounded like someone chewing potato chips into a microphone.

  “What the fuck is that?” Jabara wondered.

  “It’s coming from underground,” Quantrill realized. The Marines looked frantically at the hard-packed gray dirt all around them. They couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but the noise kept getting louder.

  Then a few steps ahead of them – in the direction of their retreat – the soil shifted and churned and then dropped away to reveal a hole more than a meter wide. A Formid warrior burst out of the ground and charged at the men with mandibles gnashing.

  Before anyone could react it clamped its powerful jaws onto Vanlanding’s right arm. The Corporal screamed and tried to pull away, but was held fast by the huge Bug. Quantrill was the first to respond. He fired a burst into the monster’s head, piercing the hard carapace with 5 AP rounds. His fire was joined by others. He heard the staccato roar of their weapons, but didn’t see any damage on the Formid. How could they miss at this range?