Into the Maelstrom

by Loren L. Coleman

  The Union formation took shape slowly. Too slowly to suit Savoign, who watched the range counter scroll down until a half kilometer separated the Ares unit from the Neo-Soviet advance vehicles. Well within range for the Harbingers carried by Ares Seven and Ten, and at the point where his own Lucifer might track in accurately enough. Still he waited. And just in case his companions thought to fire early on, or the coordinator decide to retake remote control in the silence, he whispered, “Wait for it. Let them in.”

  The Typhoons released one poorly coordinated wave of missiles, then another. The missile carriers bouncing nearly out of control in the now-light gravity contributed to a wide spread. Nothing an Ares had to worry about except for that freak chance of misfortune. The Earth-quality soil, transplanted at great expense, erupted in geysers of black dirt and shredded sod. One missile caught Savoign’s heavy assault suit in the right leg, another just below the left-shoulder shield. He rocked backward, the hard-hitting punches threatening to topple him from his feet. The Ares’ gyro and Savoign’s own stubborn determination kept him on his feet.

  “Center on the lead Typhoon,” he said almost casually. “On my mark. Now!”

  Two rail gun ingots slammed into the forward Typhoon, peeling away armor and punching through to the internal carriage before detonating. The vehicle was already in the process of disintegrating when Savoign’s plasma weapon detonated ten meters in front of it, the devastating eruption slamming into its front and stopping it as if it had hit an invisible wall. The nose crumpled inward even as the fireball from the explosive rail ingots bulged out the armored sides and then finally erupted out through the top-mounted missile launcher, the ammunition detonations adding to the fiery force.

  Savoign had his reasons for the overkill, trading off what might have been at least two separate kills to shatter the nose of the Neo-Soviet formation. As the other Typhoons peeled away radically, none wishing to risk that kind of violent death, the backing Blizzards were thrown into a confused state as they scrambled to avoid hitting either a Typhoon or each other. On a direct charge, the Neo-Soviets might have ridden over the Ares formation and laid waste to the small Union force. Already in retreat, though, thoughts of self-preservation overrode any fanatical leanings, and the entire column broke apart.

  And, as Savoign had hoped, exposed the Zephyr command transport at the center of the column.

  “There’s our target! Lock on to the Zephyr and fire.”

  He followed his own order, visually tracking in and caressing the trigger to send first one plasma discharge off down the middle and then bracketing it at twenty meters to either side with follow-up shots. The Lucifer’s high-pitched hum shifted into a complaining drone at the rapid rate of fire. Savoign almost backed off, but his desire to bring down the enemy commander overrode safety concerns, and he fired another two shots in overhead paths.

  Apparently, he was the only one who had considered the fact that Zephyrs had VTOL and limited flight capability. When the first rail ingot tagged the command transport in its side, chewing away armor and ripping away a side door to expose the interior, its pilot threw open the thrusters and hopped the vehicle into the air. It sailed over the first plasma pulses with no more trouble than some light understructure damage.

  It might have avoided the second pair as well, except that Ares Seven managed to correct its aim at the last instant to clip the Zephyr’s tail thruster with another rail ingot. The explosion did little more than ruin the thruster port and throw the transport into a temporary aerial slide. It was enough. One of Savoign’s plasma discharges caught it on the forward-right post, bursting in a shock that tore into the Zephyr with lethal effect, driving it back down toward the lunar surface. The crash finished the vehicle for good, breaking it into two major pieces, though it continued to bleed metal scraps over the landscape.

  The loss of the Zephyr was the final straw. The Neo-Soviet column shattered beyond repair, each vehicle making its best speed in escape.

  “Beautiful work, Ares Auxiliary.” Not the coordinator from before, but a new voice. Calm and commanding. Savoign had heard Brigadier General Hayes’s voice often enough to recognize it.

  “Ten, Two, and Three, pursue to the edge of Tranquillity Base and take targets of opportunity. Seven and Twelve, if you’re done playing, we could use your help getting weapon consoles up and running. There is also the small matter of tasking Station Freedom’s weapons.”

  Watching the retreating Neo-Soviet forces on his virtual monitor, Corporal Savoign knew a moment of loss that he would not be able to pursue, a sensation quickly replaced by the pleasure of the general’s request for assistance. An Ares might lend its pilot a titan’s command of the battlefield, but there was also something to be said for tasking battle-station weapons against the Neo-Soviet empire.

  “Copy, General Hayes. Heading in to Tranquillity Command.”

  Variety, after all, was the spice of life.

  27

  * * *

  S ergeant Tousley found a perverse kind of satisfaction in watching the Neo-Soviets expend rank after rank of Rad Troopers and its larger mutants to hold back the Sleeper’s symbiot army. They had replaced their uranium-tipped ammunition with stock ammo, as firing such bullets into the Sleeper or its symbiots fed the aliens’ reserves as much as it damaged them.

  With their ammunition weakened and their numbers near useless in the face of so strong an enemy, the Rad Troops seemed all the more pitiful wrecks of men and women now sacrificed to creatures better evolved to live with the effects of radioactive debris. Mutants, stronger and tougher than the massed shock troops, fared better, but the aliens held the advantage even against them. Symbiots returned to the Sleeper’s protection, working their way into folds in the chitinous carapace, as fresh replacements took their place. Mutants and Troopers took their wounds and kept fighting until they finally dropped. No quarter asked and certainly none given.

  The very way Neo-Soviets should be treated, in Tousley’s opinion.

  His own abbreviated squad and four other units from the Seventy-first Assault Group held a small rise just opposite the Chernaya Gora compound entrance, an immense tunnel cut back into the mountainside. A thick vault door had been dropped over the entrance, fronted by Colonel Romilsky’s Zephyr. She stood in the midst of her remaining Vanguard and the disparate special forces left to her Striker. Tousley estimated that the door would stand up to maybe two of the Sleeper’s nuclear-flash charges, but Romilsky and her Vanguard not at all, even with Union support.

  First-column Brevet-Captain Matthew Dillahunty commanded the Seventy-first’s forces placed this side of the defile. He had arranged the four assault squads into ranks that would take turns offering covering fire to the advancing Neo-Soviets, but otherwise held position, waiting for orders. Two full infantry squads, cobbled together from shattered units, an untouched Draco heavy-assault team, and Tom Tousley’s makeshift unit. In the far back a trio of weapons specialists prepared a like number of Dragon automated defense drones, their flame-thrower turrets currently retracted and cold.

  The call came, and Tousley moved his squad up. Nash and Maria Carr. Jim Nicholas, walking wounded but refusing to take a medical relief from the fight. Corporal Loveday, pressed into service with a Pitbull and also advising Captain Dillahunty on any CBR-related issues that cropped up.

  Tousley sighted his Bulldog support rifle in on the Sleeper’s head as it thrust all the way through the defile, its vertically slit maw shrieking out its rage and hunger. Tousley punched into it with one of his two launched grenades and a good forty rounds of eleven-millimeter ammunition. The bullets stitched small holes into one side of the Sleeper’s cobra hood, ignored.

  The grenade found the nest of bloated pustules and tentacles crowning its head—the organs responsible for its electrical defense. It exploded into the mass of yellow-green flesh, shredding and ruining them. The Sleeper screeched in pain. Lightning jumped around its head and flowed back over its carapace, arcing out into a Cyclops
that had pressed through the symbiot line. The lumbering mutant fell over, the armored supports encasing its legs spot-welded into immobility. The immense hooded head pulled upward and back, but not before Tousley saw new tentacles growing up from the crown as the Sleeper regenerated its defenses. Its body remained solidly wedged into the defile.

  “You hurt it,” Maria Carr shouted over the din. It was easier to cry out to someone nearby than worry about opening a frequency.

  He nodded, thinking how it still wasn’t enough. Squeezing a figure-eight burst of fire into a slithering symbiot that had angled toward the Union contingent, he prepared to pull his squad back and let another up forward. It was never enough, and he tired of falling back.

  Colonel Sainz surprised him, overriding all Union channels. “Station Freedom reports missiles tasked and launching,” he announced with barely subdued excitement. “We need that thing out in the open. Captain Dillahunty, bloody its nose!”

  The captain’s voice rode in immediately on the back of that order. “Third squad, advance. Four, load up and hold fire. Cover fire for the rest. Go, go, go!”

  The Union detachment rose up and surged forward, Tousley’s squad on point protecting the full Draco squad at their immediate back. Dillahunty advanced the rearward fire-support teams.

  “Colonel Romilsky,” he called. “We need those symbiots cleared. Let them through.”

  Rad Troopers fell back almost at once, the smaller alien creatures swarming after them back toward Chernaya Gora’s last line of defense while the Seventy-first’s squads and fire-caster ADDs forced a wedge between Sleeper and symbiots. It was a dangerous plan, sandwiching the Union contingent between the Sleeper and its symbiots, which were, in turn, trapped between the Union anvil and the Neo-Soviet hammer. A desperate plan. But to drive the Sleeper back into the open canyon beyond, the assault group squads had to get up close.

  Just how close the Union soldiers learned seconds later as they reached the head of the defile. With another of its soul-grating shrieks, the Sleeper’s head thrust back through the full defile and into the lower reach of the draw.

  “Down,” Tousley yelled, as the head swung over them, and he dived for a stretch of hard-packed dirt amid the tumble of broken rock scattered over the ground. The maw slit hovered over them, the high-pitched screech accompanied by the crackling of dry tentacles and chitinous plates rubbing together. A foul, acrid stench almost suffocated them. Tousley rolled over onto his back, firing up into that toothy darkness.

  The Sleeper suddenly rocked back, its head high in the air and shrieking in what now sounded like pain. Tousley’s squad clambered to their feet and moved forward. He noticed the creature’s body twisting about, saw its flat-armored tail swing up over its back and come smashing down on forces behind it.

  Something back there was disturbing the Sleeper, giving the Union force this side of the defile a chance to get into position. Dillahunty’s fire teams were setting up to hold back the symbiots in a cross fire with the Neo-Soviets. Tousley rushed forward, the Bulldog bucking in his hands, firing a steady stream of bullets into the Sleeper’s ridged neck.

  Just then a pair of bullets caught him from behind, in the right hip and upper leg, slamming into him and spinning him roughly to the ground. Three more shots ricocheted off nearby rocks.

  Though treacherous, the attack actually saved Tousley’s life, coming as the Sleeper’s head slammed back down from the defile and brought with it an avalanche of broken rock. Several big boulders landed in front of him. The next nearest soldier, PFC Nash, had remained on his feet to ready his Draco launcher. The tentacles whipping out from the Sleeper’s gaping maw wrapped about the man’s body, lifting him from the ground. He screamed in fright and pain.

  “Fire! For the love of God, fire!” Tousley yelled back to the following Draco squad, one hand clapped over his bleeding wounds. Despite the pain, he swung his own Bulldog up. One-handed, he selected for a grenade and fired up into the dark mouth and saw the thirty-millimeter shell explode back inside the monstrous throat.

  Brevet-Corporal Maria Carr had noticed her sergeant’s fall, and now crabbed over with a first-aid kit to slap field compresses over the wounds. Over their heads, the Draco squad fired a concentrated salvo of eight missiles at the Sleeper’s body. Three of them detonated early as a charge of lightning whipped the air, but half slammed home, cracking through the carapace and digging large chunks out of the base of the neck.

  “Reload,” ordered Draco squad Sergeant Hess.

  With Carr tending to his injury, Tousley used both hands to continue pumping grenades into the Sleeper. When the chamber clicked dry, he switched back to automatic fire with the ten-millimeter assault rifle. He didn’t bother looking back to see who had fired on him; he knew who’d ordered the attack. It was no surprise that Romilsky had lived up to his low expectations. But he had a larger enemy to defeat just now, and a man to save.

  PFC Nash actually saved himself, regaining his courage just long enough to sight in his Draco rocket launcher against the underside of the Sleeper’s cobralike hood. The heavy infantry weapon drew a short path of smoke upward, and a fiery explosion blossomed. The Sleeper thrashed about in pain-filled rage, its long neck whipping about violently and slamming the armored back of its hood against either side of the defile. Rocks tumbled down, and among them PFC Nash, who had been thrown free. A boulder smashed into two of the Draco squad, crushing them. Loveday also took a glancing blow against his shoulder and the side of his helmet, knocking him down and out of the battle.

  “Loose!” Sergeant Hess ordered behind Tousley’s position, and another brace of rockets screamed forward to bury their explosive heads in the Sleeper’s bulk. Five of the six found the Sleeper, scattering a handful of destructive blossoms over its wide carapace.

  The fleshy gobbets that made up the alien’s radioactive blood poured out to pool on the rocky ground. Gray-green fluid leaked from a score of wounds as well as spitting from the Sleeper’s mouth. Now it began to retreat, slowly, its body twisting about as if unable to decide which way to turn. The head pulled all the way back through the defile, tearing loose a new avalanche of rock.

  Tousley fought his way back to his feet and limped forward with Maria Carr at his side, stopping only to eject one clip and slam home a new one. His leg flared with pain at each step, but he set his jaw against it, continuing to work at the spots where the armored carapace had been smashed by rockets. A new symbiot slid free to challenge the advancing infantry. A dedicated burst was enough to put it down.

  Daylight once again intruded between the alien colossus and the sides of the defile, revealing the reason for the Sleeper’s agitation and pain. A double-squad of Neo-Soviet Chem Grunts came at the Sleeper from its right flank, their chemsprayers releasing determined jets of green toxic wash. A few slid through the gap, placing themselves between the Sleeper and the safety of the defile. Their caustic streams worked in past broken and splintered chitin. The two large tentacles separated from the Sleeper’s back and each wrapped about a Grunt. It tossed one a good hundred meters up into the air. The second one the Sleeper pulped against the cliff face.

  But that also ruptured the Grunt’s tanks, spilling a great gout of the toxins down the unarmored side of the tentacle. The exposed, creamy white flesh singed black in reaction, whiplike hairs curling back in as they died. The Sleeper shied off toward the other side, toward the main advance of the Seventy-first. And that gave Tousley an idea.

  Sainz broke back in before he could follow up on his idea. “Missiles imminent. Canyon forces, fall back now. Captain Dillahunty, you hold that defile. Whatever it takes.”

  “As the colonel orders,” Tousley whispered.

  Grinning savagely, he hunkered down within the mess of rock and boulders now clogging the defile and sighted in at the back of a Chem Grunt that had made the lower defile. He triggered a short burst directly into its pressurized tanks. The Grunt ceased to exist as the metal tank ruptured with the force of several grenades. T
he putrid wash splashed over the lower defile, the other Chem Grunts, and the Sleeper, which shrieked further displeasure and retreated farther.

  Maybe Sainz would have another stripe from him for this, but Tousley wasn’t thinking about that. He was in the field against the enemy, which included more than just the Sleeper, as witnessed by the bullets fired into his right side.

  Sighting in at another of the Grunts, this one flailing as the splashed chemicals from its companion worked their way past protective gear and bandages, he ended the Grunt’s misery with another controlled burst to its chemical tanks. Behind him he heard Captain Dillahunty overriding Sergeant Hess and directly commanding the Dracos.

  Through the pain in his leg and confusion of heavy fighting, Tousley made no sense of the orders. Then the warm rush of acrid wind swept over him, the backblast of a concerted rocket launch. It was several long seconds after the violent explosion before he noticed that the rockets had not passed him overhead. That same instant a shot ricocheted off a nearby rock, close enough that he heard the snap of its hypersonic passage just before the high-pitched spang of the deflection. He checked his latest burst and swung about.

  Romilsky’s Zephyr burned, the cockpit of the Neo-Soviet command vehicle smashed in and gutted. A Draco hit, no doubt about it—two, very likely. From smoking gouges in the blackened earth, the rest of the rockets had torn into the shrinking line of symbiots struggling to return to their mother colossus. It wasn’t possible that a pair of rockets could misfire by so great a margin. The ruined Zephyr was intentional. But what did that do for the battle except . . . make sure Romilsky did not escape!

  The realization temporarily burned off the fog of pain in his brain, and Tousley took another look at the developing fight. The trio of flame-thrower defense drones had set up a wall of fire that held the symbiots back from the Seventy-first’s detachment, but Dillahunty’s fire squads were no longer hammering at them. They were exchanging fire with the forward-most Rad Troopers while back behind them the Vanguard milled about in some confusion. A few snapped off quick bursts toward the embattled Seventy-first’s position, but most seemed unwilling to commit against these former allies—still in the midst of battle with the Sleeper, no less—without exact orders to that point.