Fields of Fire (Frontlines Book 5)

by Marko Kloos

  “Got it.” She looks over the scene all around us, the wrecked drop ship, the bodies strewn everywhere. “I’m scared as hell, sir, to be honest.”

  “I am, too,” I say. “Battle sucks. Don’t let the grunts tell you otherwise. It’s unnatural. Anyone who isn’t scared of it is a fucking psych-ward candidate.”

  “I’ll never bitch about my boring S4 job again, that’s for sure.”

  I grin at her and nod over to the west. “Let’s hit it. Your hot shower is waiting.”

  We set out from the science facility, leaving behind a small but bloody battlefield with dozens of dead Lankies and humans on it. The ATVs are made for Mars conditions, so they have big, knobby honeycomb tires and a bit more ground clearance than their terrestrial counterparts, but that makes them slightly more top heavy, and I almost end up flipping into a ditch before I get used to the handling.

  We are going off-road, which on Mars means driving across a hilly, rocky landscape that looks like the places on Earth usually labeled “Badlands” or “Death Something-or-other.” The ATVs can go eighty kilometers per hour at full throttle on a paved road, but out here, that speed would be suicidal. So we weave our way among rocks and across gravel fields going thirty, forty, sometimes fifty. I keep scanning the horizon for Lankies, but for a good while, I don’t see anything except for rocks and dust devils. The ATVs spool off the kilometers dutifully, the battery status bars on our displays steadily depleting as the high-density cells discharge. Every few kilometers, we stop and compare map fixes, to make sure we’re not following each other blindly off-course.

  We see the first Lankies on this run when we’re on the north slope of Hill 1818. They’re moving across the plains to our north a kilometer in the distance, roughly away from the spaceport and toward the science outpost we just left half an hour ago. If the comms link in my bug suit worked, I could call in help from the air units we keep hearing above the cloud cover and rub the bastards off the map, but I’m as helpless as I’ve ever been on a recon run. Thirty klicks to our west, there’s a base with dozens of drop ships and ground-attack birds, and they might as well be in orbit around Luna for all the good they’re doing us right now.

  As we come around the side of Hill 1818 and start to descend its western slope, we almost run into a group of Lankies that are coming up the hill in the opposite direction. We don’t see them until we are around the bend of the slope and heading downhill, and we both hit our brakes and come to skidding stops. The Lankies, a hundred meters away and stomping up the slope, seem to sense us at the same time. There are six of them, and the two in the lead change their direction slightly to head straight for us.

  “They can sense the electric engines!” I shout to Sergeant Crawford. “Go right, down the hill; hook left when you’re at the bottom. I go left. We split them between us.” I underscore the commands with hand signals that I hope to be unambiguous. That way, double-time. Sergeant Crawford looks terrified, but she nods and throws her ATV back into gear. Then she shoots off down the slope, and I shift my ride into drive and turn up the throttle to go left.

  The ad hoc plan works—in a fashion. The Lankies split up to go after the radiation signatures from our vehicles. Two move to the left to intercept my ride. Four more angle to the right and go after Sergeant Crawford, who is kicking up long rooster tails of red dirt with the tires of her ATV as she’s flooring it downhill. I correct my course to the left some more. We have the speed advantage because we’re going downhill, and they’re just now moving laterally on the slope. I don’t need a ballistic computer to see that I’ll outrace the Lankies on my way down the slope, but I can also see that it’ll be close. Too late, I realize that doubling up on one ATV would have let one of us shoot while the other drives, but we also would have lost top speed and redundancy. Right now, all that’s left for me to worry about is that window of space and time ahead of me, the invisible square I have to pass through with my ATV in the next ten seconds to make it out of the Lankies’ reach. The two to my right quicken their pace, but they’re not as fast as they’re on level ground, because they’re walking with the elevation lines on a twenty-five-degree slope. At their size, there are easily ten meters of height difference between their right and left feet, which gives an awkward, shambling quality to their gait.

  The ATV shoots downhill much faster than I’d ever dare to drive without Lankies chasing me. One of my front wheels hits a cluster of rocks, and the bump makes me fishtail wildly for a few terrifying seconds. I bring the ATV back under control, keenly aware how close I just came to flipping over. If I do crash, I hope I break my neck instantly so I’m dead before a Lanky can stomp me flat or rip me in half.

  I make it past the Lankies with very little leeway. The lead Lanky swings a giant arm at me to knock me off my ATV. It parts the air next to the vehicle, so close that I can feel the gust of changing air pressure. I straighten out the ATV and change course very slightly to my right, to make the angle unfavorable for them if they try to turn and follow me. I don’t dare to check my mirrors. Like a pod launch through a minefield, I keep my focus on what’s right in front of my nose so I won’t know if death is about to catch up with me. Ten seconds pass, then twenty. The slope of Hill 1818 transitions into the plain beyond at a gentle angle, but there’s a ravine at the very bottom of the slope, and I have to slow down if I don’t want to make the ATV sail over the edge. I throttle back and turn the steering bar to cut across the edge of the ravine at an angle. When I take a second to look sideways, I see that the Lankies are still halfway up the hill. They’ve resumed their climb, apparently having decided that the bounty isn’t worth the effort.

  Sergeant Crawford’s data link is off-line, so I can’t see her blue icon on my tactical map, and as I drive down into the ravine, I have no eyeballs on anything except the rocky slope in front of me. I drive up the other side of the embankment and go full throttle again, in case the Lankies change their minds about my desirability as a chase target.

  A kilometer from the ravine, the ground levels out again, enough for me to see more than a hundred meters ahead. I slow down and look to my right. Off in the distance, eight or nine hundred meters away, I see a lone ATV speeding across the rock-strewn plain, and I let out a small sigh of relief.

  Out here, the surface is flat enough that I can see the outskirts of Olympus City on the horizon, fifteen kilometers away. I check my TacLink screen and determine that I should be in data range in another five kilometers. I mark the last-known location of the Lankies we ran into so the computer can upload the data to the tactical network the second I get a link.

  Behind me, the Lankies I dodged continue their climb up the slope of Hill 1818, slowly and steadily, as if they have all the time in the world. I put the ATV back into gear and open up the throttle. Maybe I can make it back into data range quickly enough for some nearby air support to see those orange icons pop up on TacLink and ruin the Lankies’ day.

  I’m just a little over ten kilometers out from the spaceport when two bad things happen almost at once. I spot another troop of Lankies coming out of a ravine and walking across the plains toward Hill 1818, and my ATV lurches as the power output of the electric engine fluctuates. My full-throttle speed drops to thirty kilometers, then picks up again to fifty. When it drops again, I am rolling along at a mere twenty-five kilometers per hour, not enough to outrun a Lanky, and three of them just popped up on the plateau not two kilometers in front of me. I don’t know if they’ve sensed my presence yet, but even if they haven’t, their current course to Hill 1818 is going to take them right across the patch of ground where my ATV is currently starting to barf out its electric innards.

  I know that Sergeant Crawford is a few kilometers to my northeast and going all out at fifty kilometers per hour, but there’s a small crest cutting our line of sight, so she won’t see me even if I make noise and wave like an idiot. I steer the ATV to my right to get out of the Lankies’ line of advance, but I make it barely two hundred meters away from my or
iginal straight course before the electric engine simply quits without noise or drama. The sudden absence of electric drive whining is quite loud. The oversized tires crunch in the Martian gravel as the ATV comes to a stop.

  My TacLink shows a lot of air traffic taking off and landing on the spaceport’s runways and VTOL pads. With my comms online, I could call in close fire support from a drop ship or a flight of Shrikes and wipe the approaching Lankies off the map, but all I have is a data link, and TacLink transmissions only reach eight to ten kilometers in ideal conditions. I am just outside the maximum range for the near-field data link to connect to the nearest NAC units, and most of the air traffic is going out away from me, toward Orange Beach. I want to shout for help, but I don’t have a voice that will reach far enough for anyone to hear me.

  I get off the ATV and unlash my rifle from the backseat. Crawford had the good sense to take a MARS launcher, and I curse my judgment for not packing one myself. Just one silver-bullet rocket would help even the odds against the three Lankies ambling toward me across the plain, now a kilometer and a half away and closing in without hurry. But I only have the M-95 rifle and a few magazines of ammunition, and that will have to do the job.

  I rest the rifle on the seat of the ATV and point it in the direction of the Lankies, towering over the ochre-colored gravel field even at this distance. Then I chamber a round. My radio is busted, and the data link is reduced to the near-field transmitter, but my suit’s environmental controls still work, and the ballistics computer is online as well. I let the targeting software sort out the maximum effective range based on air pressure, gravity, temperature, and a dozen other factors.

  “OUT OF RANGE,” my computer display informs me.

  “Not for long,” I reply.

  There’s a small box of emergency gear mounted on the frame of the ATV underneath the saddle. I let the rifle rest on the seat and pop the emergency box open with some fumbling. Inside, there’s a first aid kit, a thermal blanket, a two-liter bladder of water with a standard suit adapter, and a flare gun with five rounds of high-intensity pyrotechnic signal munitions.

  “DISTANCE 1,258M,” my helmet display reads, the rifle’s targeting reticle firmly on the first of the approaching Lankies. They walk in their usual unhurried pace, heads swinging slowly from left to right, covering dozens of meters with each stride. They’re not yet close enough for me to feel the vibrations from their steps, but I know it won’t be long.

  If I start shooting signal flares, it’ll be like lighting a huge billboard over my head, a blinking arrow pointing straight at my location. But in a few minutes, they’ll be close enough to spot the ATV anyway, and there aren’t many terrain features out here to hide in.

  I decide I won’t be stomped flat while I’m running away from those bastards, and if the close-air units notice my flares, a drop-ship or attack-bird pilot may decide to give the area a closer look. I pluck the flare gun from the box, load it with one of the signal cartridges, and aim it roughly at the area between Sergeant Crawford’s line of travel and the spaceport. Then I pull the trigger. The flare round arcs into the sky and explodes in a dazzling red burst of pyrotechnic wizardry. There’s a sound component to the flare round as well, a sharp thunderclap that rolls over the Martian landscape like the report from a small artillery shell. I know that the flare also has components I can’t see—an electronic signal flare that will pop up on every TacLink screen within a ten-klick radius and a radio noisemaker that’s noticeable on comms gear even further away. I take the other four shells out of the emergency box and shoot them into the darkening Mars sky one by one. The cracks from the charges echo back from the nearby mountainsides.

  The Lankies, now a kilometer away, react to the detonations of the emergency flares by swinging their heads toward the spot in the sky where the brilliant colors of the charges bloom, impossible to miss in a five-kilometer range unless you’re blind and deaf. However they make sense of their environment without eyes, they can sense us and our mechanical and chemical toys just fine. They alter their strides, quickening their pace, and shift their course slightly over to my right. With the flare gun empty, I toss it aside and kneel behind my propped-up rifle again.

  “DISTANCE 944M. OUT OF RANGE.”

  The anti-Lanky rounds have ballistic nose caps over the nasty-looking penetrator needles, but they are heavy and don’t have a massive propellant load, so they can’t reach further than about four hundred meters in direct fire if you still want to hit a Lanky, as big a target as they make. I keep my aim pointed on the lead Lanky and watch the skies for friendly air support that may have spotted the flares.

  Come on, I think. How could you miss those fireworks?

  The Lankies close to eight hundred, then seven hundred, then six hundred meters. I take the spare magazines out of the pouches to speed up the inevitable reloads I’ll have to do. Nobody has ever stopped three Lankies in the field with just a rifle, as far as I know. The penetrative power of the anti-LHO rounds drops with range because of the physics involved, and once they’re close enough for the rounds to have consistent effect, the Lankies are usually too close to make a solitary defense against more than one or two survivable. I scan the area around me again for cover. There’s a shallow ditch starting thirty meters to my right and leading diagonally away from my position, and I resolve to burn through my ammo load in rapid fire and then duck into that ditch with my camouflage suit turned on. Hopefully the ATV will distract them enough to stop looking for the occupant once they reach this spot.

  When my computer’s distance readout shows “600M OUT OF RANGE” in my helmet display, I take a deep breath.

  “Fuck it,” I say, and take aim.

  The Lankies stride on, more quickly but every bit as relentless and unconcerned as before. At maximum magnification, I can see their features in great detail—the massive cranial shields that are half again as wide as their skulls, the toothless mouths that look like something from a prehistoric stegosaurus, the tall and spindly bodies with the three-toed feet and four-fingered hands. They all look so similar to each other that I’ve never been able to tell any two apart, no variance in size or color or even behavior. It’s like they were made in some gigantic biological three-dimensional printer to an exact and unchanging template. And you don’t fully realize how enormous and powerful they are unless you are close to them and can see the amount of dust they kick up with each step, the deep impressions they leave on the soil, and the span of their arms when they stretch them out.

  I put the target marker on the chest of the leading Lanky and override the “OUT OF RANGE” determination of my ballistic computer. Then I aim just a little higher to account for the extra two hundred meters of range and pull the trigger. The rifle barks its sharp, authoritative report, and the muzzle blast kicks up the dust around the ATV. I can see the first round hitting the dirt twenty meters in front of the Lanky with a puff just a few seconds later. I adjust my aim for the next shot—Up a body height and a half, I think—and pull the trigger again. The second round hits the Lanky in the hip midstride. It falters and stumbles a little when its foot comes down. With the range dialed in, I empty the rest of the magazine in quick succession, one round every two seconds, one—two—three. One round kicks up dirt right next to the Lanky’s foot, but two more fly true and hit it in the upper body. For the first time, it shrieks its warbling wail as it stumbles again, but then it rights itself and keeps walking.

  By now, the Lankies are four hundred meters away and have definitely located the source of the annoyance. They are purposefully striding toward the spot where I am huddled behind the little ATV I’m using as a rifle rest. I eject the empty magazine, insert a fresh one into my rifle, and work the charging handle to chamber a round. Finally, my computer concurs that I may have a faint chance of hitting stuff reliably and displays “RANGE 385—OPEN FIRE.”

  With the computer in the loop, I fire the next five rounds as quickly as the rifle will settle back down from the recoil, a second pe
r shot. The computer actuates the servos in my armor to assist with the aim. All five rounds hit the Lanky square in the center of the chest, and this time they do more than just annoy it. At least three of the penetrators go through its hide and dispense their payload inside the Lanky’s chest. Then three thousand cubic centimeters of aerosolized explosive gas ignite together and blow the Lanky’s chest out from the inside. It lets out a tangled wail that is cut off when the thing crashes to the Mars floor, kicking up a billowing cloud of red dust.

  The two other Lankies have closed to two hundred meters, and I have about ten seconds to figure out what to do next. I reload the rifle with my hands on autopilot, then jack a round into the chamber. At two hundred meters and closing, they are so imposingly large, so enormous in scale, that it feels like arrogant hubris to think you have a chance in battle against them.

  Then I look past the arriving Lankies, and my heart sinks. Six more of them are coming the same way, five hundred meters behind the first group, heading for me like a twenty-meter wall of gray bio-matter. Even if I drop both Lankies in front of me, I won’t have the ammo or the time to take on six more. But at this point, I can’t run or hide, so I take aim and rip off five more rounds at the next Lanky.

  This area has been secured for hours, I think. Where the fuck do they keep coming from?

  The second Lanky goes to its knees when the salvo hits it, gas rounds spaced one second apart. One round hits the cranial shield and careens off. Two more hit the torso, one in the shoulder and one where the hip would be if they had human anatomy. One blows off the Lanky’s lower right arm, and the fifth one misses altogether. I’ve hurt it badly—it stumbles and crashes to its knees with an earsplitting wail—but it isn’t dead, and I won’t have time to engage the last one, which is now less than a hundred meters away, four or five steps for a pissed-off Lanky. I eject the empty magazine and fumble for a new one, knowing full well that I won’t be able to get the gun ready in time. I stumble backwards as I seat the magazine and grasp the charging handle, hoping that the Lanky will take an extra second or two to crush the ATV between us and give me just a little extra time.