Fields of Fire (Frontlines Book 5)

by Marko Kloos

  I can only wait for the close-air-support ordnance to arrive, so I shoulder my own rifle and fire off a magazine into the charging group of Lankies. I know there are too many of them for us to stop them with hand weapons or even the rotary cannon turrets on the Wasps. Every time a Lanky falls, another steps over it and fills in the gap, and their line stretches a hundred meters or more. The third drop ship takes off, followed by the fourth, and now the lead Lankies are only a hundred meters from the remaining drop ships. There’s no way the grunts will be able to make the ships in time, and I know that nobody would try even if they could. Every Lanky we kill is one less threat to the civvies on the remaining ships. I don’t have time to get angry at Captain Parker for his call to put all drop ships on the ground at the same time and forego an aerial overwatch. I may have made the same call in his spot, and it doesn’t matter in the end anyway. I am in the back because I want to update target data for the fighters until the last possible moment, but I can already see that I may not make that last drop ship if help doesn’t arrive fast. The Lankies are surging on like a twenty-meter tsunami, slowly but unstoppably powerful. Like so many battles, this one turned on just a single decision made in a second.

  The SI troopers on the ground are mostly green, young privates and corporals just out of training, led by sergeants without much combat experience, but they stand their ground and do as they were trained. Facing the relentless wave of Lankies coming toward them, they probably feel like infantry of the Middle Ages facing a massed cavalry charge. They keep their firing lines between the drop ships and reshuffle their formation whenever another drop ship takes off and leaves a gap in the line. But the line gets shorter the more gaps they have to fill, and the Lankies aren’t dropping fast enough even though rifle rounds and silver bullets from the MARS launchers thin out their lines at the rate of one every few seconds.

  This is what death looks like, I think. There’s a bunker behind me, but I don’t even consider ducking into it for shelter to avoid the flood of Lankies that is going to flatten us in thirty seconds, grind us into the Martian dust like pesky insects. There’s no air left to breathe and wait out yet another rescue, and even if the oxygen tanks were full, my place is out here with the SI troopers. At least we’ll go quickly under an open sky instead of getting buried in the dark.

  Hope you make it, I think in Halley’s direction. At least we made them pay for it.

  “Shorten the line!” the captain shouts into his radio. “Fall back fifty meters by fire teams, bounding overwatch! Let’s go, let’s go!”

  The ordnance from the Euro ships arrives in dramatic fashion before I can even see the launching units on my TacLink display. I hear the distinctive dull bursts of disintegrating cluster munitions containers high over our heads, and then many little explosions go off a thousand feet up in the air. A second or two later, the ground in front of our firing line is churned with impacts from many hundreds of kinetic penetrators. The effect on the attacking Lankies is immediate. Dozens of them crash to the ground, pierced by superdense, sharpened tungsten rods shooting from the sky, taking other Lankies with them as they fall, and many of the ones that are still advancing twitch and shriek their high-pitched wails as the submunitions injure them. But there are still too many left, and our rifle and rocket fire isn’t thinning out the remaining line quickly enough. So many Lankies. We are like a formation of rabbits trying to stop a herd of charging bulls down here.

  “On target!” I shout into the TacAir channel. “Do that again.”

  “Too close for cluster kinetics,” Eagle One-Four replies in his German accent. “We have a visual on your TRP. Commencing strafing run.”

  The cannon rounds arrive before I can hear the reports from the ground-attack fighters that fire them. They’re not the devil’s ripsaw sound of the Shrike antiarmor cannon, but a higher-pitched bark at a slower rate of fire. The cannon bursts from two attack craft carve a swath of small explosions through the remaining Lankies, and more of them drop to the ground, screaming and flailing their limbs. The fifth and sixth drop ship are off the ground and roaring off to the south at top speed right above the deck, safe from the approaching Lankies but depriving the remaining grunts cover and the fire support of their chin turrets. The Eurocorps attack birds thunder across the leaden sky overhead, two hundred feet above the deck, sleek machines with gray paint jobs and Iron Crosses painted on their wings and fuselages.

  “Bird Seven is away,” Captain Parker calls out on the company channel. “Fall back by fire teams, cover and move. Go, go, go!”

  At least ten Lankies are still alive and coming our way, and the closest one is less than fifty meters from our forward line of defense. None of the troopers in front of me make any attempt to fall back. All of them fire their rifles at the charging Lanky. I can see by the impacts on the Lanky’s body that the riflemen are shooting regular ammo-piercing rounds, not silver bullets, and the Lanky absorbs half a dozen rounds before it stumbles and drops to one knee right in front of us. Amazingly, one of the SI troopers sprints up to the Lanky before it can recover, aims an M-95 rifle upward, and rips off four quick shots into the underside of the Lanky’s jaw, the only part of their huge skulls that isn’t armored like a fucking battlecruiser hull. The armor-piercing rounds don’t have the penetration to exit the top of the Lanky’s head, but they have enough punch to mess up whatever is inside. The Lanky flops to the ground instantly in a spray of red dirt. I can’t tell whether the incredibly brave or crazy trooper got clear of the Lanky’s body before it went down, but there are Lankies thundering past my position to my left and right, and my attention is now elsewhere. One of the Lankies swings a foot and sweeps aside the whole SI fire team in front of it, sending them flying through the air and into the billowing cloud of red dust that’s now covering the plateau. I take aim and shoot the Lanky in the side, right underneath its arm. It shrieks and turns halfway in my direction, giving me a clear shot at its midsection. I cycle the bolt of my M-90 and shoot it in the chest, then cycle again, shoot again. My rounds are silver bullets, half-inch hypodermic needles with 1,000 cc explosive gas cylinders behind them, and they pierce the Lanky’s thick hide and explode their payload inside the body. The Lanky is reaching out for me with a long, spindly arm when the gas rounds detonate. It wails and crashes onto its side. I don’t stick around to see if it will recover enough to keep going after me. Instead, I turn and run toward the last remaining drop ship, which is just now goosing its engines and raising its cargo ramp.

  The drop ship is fifty feet in the air and climbing quickly when one of the Lankies reaches up and slams an arm against the tail boom assembly. The ship jolts and spins around its dorsal axis violently. The pilot tries to recover, but the Wasp is way too low to the ground. The starboard horizontal stabilizer grinds into the rocky soil, and then the drop ship flips over and crashes into the ground, engines still running at full thrust. The Lanky doesn’t let up. It stomps down on the tail end of the Wasp with its massive three-toed foot and pins the ship to the ground, crushing the entire aft end flat. I aim at the back of the Lanky and pull the trigger, but my weapon is empty. I scream a curse, eject the empty magazine, and pull a new one off my harness. Then I slam it into the rifle and chamber a new round.

  The drop ship explodes with a cataclysmic bang. The shock wave from the detonation flings me backwards, and I smack hard into something solid. The red Mars dust is now so thick in the air that I can’t see my own hands in front of me. On my heads-up display, multiple yellow and red warnings pop up to inform me of various damaged suit modules. Belatedly, I remember the polychrome camouflage feature of the bug suit. I activate the control for the camo and hope that it’s not one of the suit systems that just took a hit. But my visor overlay dutifully changes color to let me know that I am now mostly invisible, and when I lift my hand in front of my helmet, all I can see is an outline.

  The explosion slammed me into the remnants of a building’s wall, a stub of ferroconcrete no more than a meter above the
ground. I hoist myself over the obstacle and drop down behind it. Then I lie still and close my eyes to take stock of my appendages and their status. The armor caught most of the impact, but the bug suits aren’t built for much protection, and my hip and back are badly bruised.

  On the other side of the wall, the noise of the battle subsides. There are no more gunshots, no more Lanky wails, no more engine noise. Seven ships made it off the ground at least, I tell myself. I hear and feel the heavy footsteps of the remaining Lankies as they walk across the site. One of them slowly steps up to where I am hiding. I search for my rifle, but it’s gone, ripped from my hands in the drop-ship explosion. I don’t even try to go for my sidearm. I wouldn’t be able to hurt the Lanky with it anyway, and I don’t want to give myself away through movement, electronic camouflage or not.

  The Lanky steps over the building ruin and puts a foot down on the other side of the wall, so close to me that I could reach across and touch the thing’s leg. Then it crosses over me and strides off.

  I stay motionless on my back until I hear no more Lanky footsteps in the distance. Then I decide to remain still just a little longer, for good measure. My TacLink screen shows the seven drop ships in the air, rushing west toward Olympus Spaceport and relative safety, with the Eurocorps attack birds escorting them close behind. But on the ground, here at Tuttle 250, I am the only blue icon remaining.

  I get up fifteen minutes later and peek over the edge of the wall remnant. The dust from the battle has mostly settled now. The drop ship that exploded is no longer in recognizable shape. Bits and pieces of the Wasp are strewn over a hundred meters of ground, and some of them are still burning. There are bodies scattered on the ground, some charred beyond recognition, and bits and pieces of human remains, the ugly debris aftermath of high-energy detonations.

  I tap into the company channel and then the local TacAir, but there’s only silence. I run a diagnostics check on my bug suit, and my suit computer informs me that my comms suite is off-line and that the internal oxygen feed has a slow leak the self-sealing lining can’t plug completely. My oxygen is at 70 percent, but falling more quickly than normal—the computer predicts 10 percent per hour at low-exertion-level consumption. I’m fifty kilometers behind enemy lines, with no way to talk to my allies to let them know I’m still alive, and not enough air to make it back to friendly territory.

  I look around for a weapon. There are plenty of rifles and MARS launchers strewn about. Some of the SI troopers must have tried to make that last bird and got caught up in the explosion, because I can only find eight bodies in battle armor. I collect an undamaged-looking M-95 rifle and have my suit check its function electronically. When it checks out, I remove the empty magazine and forage spares from the harnesses of my dead comrades.

  Over by the body of one of the fallen Lankies, I see some movement, and I bring my newly acquired rifle around. But the source of the movement is an SI trooper, crawling out from the debris. It’s the trooper who felled the Lanky by shooting it in the skull from directly below. I walk over to the trooper, who turns toward me at the sound of my footsteps in the rubble. The trooper looks up at me, and her face is about as exhausted looking as I feel.

  “On your feet,” I say, and hold out a hand.

  She grabs it and lets me pull her upright.

  “You in one piece?” I ask.

  She nods and looks around on the ground. “Can’t see my rifle.”

  “It’s probably under that thing’s head,” I say, and nod at the dead Lanky. “That was the most inspired kill I’ve ever seen.”

  “You saw that?” She smiles weakly. The rank stripes on her armor are those of a sergeant first class, and her name tape says “CRAWFORD, K.”

  “Got it on visual record. If we make it back, I am putting you in for some tin.”

  Sergeant Crawford smiles weakly. “That and a twenty will get me a cup of coffee at the NCO club.”

  “Check your armor, and see if you have comms and air.”

  She pays attention to her visor display for a few seconds. “Got oxygen; comms and data are fucked.”

  “Same here, mostly. My near-field data link is still up.”

  “So what’s the plan, Lieutenant?”

  Sergeant Crawford takes a few steps, then stops and bends over slightly with a wince.

  “You hurt, Sergeant?”

  “Suit says I cracked a few ribs. The meds should kick in momentarily.” She continues and walks the way I just came. After a few moments of searching, she picks a rifle off the ground and checks the loading status.

  “Near-field data’s got a twenty-klick range at best,” I say. “The plan is we hoof it west until we get to within twenty kilometers of our forward line of battle. Hope someone sees us pop up on Tactical and comes to check things out.”

  “Through Lanky-controlled territory,” Sergeant Crawford says. “With two rifles and two busted suits.”

  “Just another day in the infantry,” I reply.

  “I’m not infantry,” she says. “Not usually. They assigned me to the infantry three months ago. Not enough grunts to go around.”

  “What’s your primary MOS?”

  “Oh-one-five-one. Administrative clerk. I run databases over at battalion S4.”

  “Logistics.” I grin. “That Lanky got its clock cleaned by a logistics clerk.”

  Sergeant Crawford looks over at the dead Lanky she brained with four armor-piercing rounds from her rifle. “Uh, I guess so. It seemed like a good thing to do at the time, sir.”

  I laugh out loud. “Today, you’re not a supply clerk. You are a podhead now.”

  CHAPTER 17

  DANGEROUS GROUND

  We search the area for usable gear and supplies before we head out into open ground. None of the dead SI troopers have intact armor left, so I can’t just change out of the bug suit and into standard battle armor. At least there’s plenty of spare ammunition. Neither Sergeant Crawford nor I want to encumber ourselves with a MARS launcher, because the things weigh close to thirty pounds and are a bitch to carry around when you have to move quickly, and if we get jumped by ten Lankies, I doubt having an extra rocket or two would greatly influence the outcome. So we fill our magazine pouches and refill our water supplies from the suits of our dead comrades. I make sure I collect the dog tags of the dead out in the open, both the electronic ones and the physical metal ID disks each trooper wears around the neck. We don’t bother sifting through all the bodies in the drop-ship wreckage because neither of us has the stomach to spend a few hours separating SI troopers from dead civilians. There were some kids in the crowd, and I don’t want to find out whether some of them were on that last drop ship. The Lankies don’t give a shit, of course—the difference between an adult and a child would be insignificant to them even if they could tell—but my earlier smidgen of empathy for the Lankies has melted away like an ice cube on a sunbaked armor plate.

  “Let’s check the bunker while we’re at it,” Sergeant Crawford suggests.

  “Won’t be much in there,” I say. “They were running on fumes before we got there, remember?”

  Then I recall a few details from when we opened the airlock and I got a look at the interior of the bunker earlier. “Hold on. Maybe we can save ourselves a whole lot of running, after all.”

  The comms unit in the bunker is toast. Whoever evacuated the station when we arrived did a by-the-book job and took out the hardware-encryption module and then gave the control console a few whacks with a fire axe. We can’t use the station’s radio to call for a ride. But there are four electric ATVs parked by the main airlock. They look dusty, but their charging umbilicals are still plugged in.

  “I sincerely hope they kept these topped off for emergency use,” Sergeant Crawford says.

  “You and me both. I’m not a fan of long hikes through enemy territory.”

  Sergeant Crawford swings herself on top of one of the ATVs. Then she activates the vehicle’s control screen.

  “Hallelujah,�
� she says. “Eighty-nine percent charge. Sixty klicks at sixty per.”

  “Outstanding,” I reply. “Consider the day saved.”

  “No offense, sir, but the day ain’t saved until I’m taking a nice hot shower back at the base,” she replies.

  We load up two of the ATVs with our weapons and spare ammunition. Sergeant Crawford is smaller than I am, so she has space for a MARS launcher and two silver-bullet rockets, which she lashes to the seat behind her with elastic cords. The ATVs are made for two passengers, but we each take our own to have a backup in case one breaks in the middle of the Martian plains. I haven’t driven an ATV in months, but Sergeant Crawford hasn’t been on one in years, and she needs to take a few practice runs around the research compound to get familiar with the controls again.

  “I think I got the hang of it,” she proclaims when she pulls up next to my ATV a few laps around the block later.

  “Is your map overlay still working?”

  She checks her suit computer. “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay.” I consult my own map. “The spaceport is fifty-one klicks away at two hundred sixty-nine degrees. We’ll have to go a bit longer than that because of the topography. See that hill halfway and ten klicks to the south, the one labeled eighteen eighteen?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “We’ll go around the north slope, just high enough that we can keep an eye on the valley to the north. We go full throttle when we can, but don’t flip that thing on a rock or into a ravine. And we keep each other in line of sight. Without radios, we won’t know if the other breaks down or falls behind if we can’t see each other. Standard infantry hand signals. Remember those?”

  “Yes, sir,” she says again.

  “And if we get Lankies on our ass, point that thing downhill. The ATVs can outrun them, but only barely. If we get separated because of enemy contact, don’t hang around for me. Head for the base, and have them send out some close-air support.”