“I agree,” Cash said. “Get us set up at the ambush point, then you can fall back to the compound.”
“No,” Angel said. “You’ll need me.”
“My guys have done this before,” he argued. “We’re a team. We can handle ourselves.”
“It’s not happening, Staff Sergeant,” Angel said. “I won’t leave you in harm’s way while I sit back in safety. Why the hell do you think I’m here in the first place?”
“I just assumed you were ordered like the rest of us,” he replied.
“When I was recruited I was promised that I would never have to leave the solar system. I could have fought the assignment, but I believe in what we’re doing. The ARC suits work and this is our chance to prove that.”
“Don’t,” Cash said, “you don’t have to prove anything to us, or anyone else.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything,” Angel said. “I’m here to help. You’ve seen what I can do. I won’t be benched, not when I’m needed most.”
They fell silent as they approached the ambush site. They had been traveling up a wide valley, but mountains on either side rose up much closer along what looked to be the high point of the pass. There was less than a hundred meters of open ground between the mountains on either flank.
“Is this it?” Angel asked.
“Yes,” Cash replied. “A natural ambush site.”
It seemed larger than it should have been, and Angel wished again that they had more time. But they needed more of everything, not just time, but weapons, ammunition, and fighters.
“Tell me what you think, Staff Sergeant,” Angel said.
“Three men per side,” he replied. “About a hundred meters up. That will put us at a safe distance. Our weapons will be firing down at them, which is an angle that might throw them off.”
“How do we stop them?” Bolton said. “The six of us can shoot the bastards like fish in a barrel, but if there are thousands of them, we won’t make a dent before they charge past.”
“We set off charges,” Cash continued. “On either side of the pass. Just enough to bring down some rock and debris.”
“They’ll dig through,” Ruiz complained.
“Not when you’re shooting at their queen,” Angel replied.
“Our objective is to get them to turn back,” Cash said. “We don’t have the fire power to stop them cold. But we might be able to turn them around if we put enough pressure on.”
“It’s the only hope of saving the co-op,” Angel said.
“And if they start coming up the mountain to engage us?” Hays said.
“That’s when we use the rocket propelled grenades,” Cash said. “Aim halfway between our position and the canyon floor. It should be enough to trigger a minor avalanche down on the swarm trying to get up to us.”
“What if it brings the whole hillside down?” Billy Jones asked.
“Then we’re screwed,” Cash said, but I don’t think that will happen. There’s a lot of loose soil and rock on the lower portion of the hillside. But higher up the mountain is more solid.”
“How are we going to climb that high before they get here?” Vancini asked.
“Use the thrusters in your suit,” Angel said.
“It all sounds good,” Ruiz said. “But what makes you think we’ll have any luck when no other attack has succeeded? What do we have that a whole battalion didn’t have?”
“Me,” Angel said. “Once the fighting starts, I’ll engage the swarm.”
“That’s too dangerous,” Cash said. “We have a good position here. It will be enough to turn the tide.”
“Six guns… against thousands of aliens?” Ruiz said, clearly not convinced.
“Eight guns,” Beemus said. “Once we blow the explosives to trap them in the pass, my airmen will operate the belt fed machine guns.”
“It’s still not enough,” Hays said. “We can’t even identify the queen. For all we know they might tunnel right beneath the rock and keep on going.”
“It’s the best chance we’ve got,” Cashman said.
“It’s the only chance to save the co-op,” Angel said.
“Well hell, you only live once,” Billy Jones said. “Might as well go down swinging.”
“The surfer philosopher,” Ruiz said with a smirk.
“We got our orders,” Bolton said. “BJ, Van, you’re with me on the right flank. Ruiz, Hays, you’re with the staff sergeant on the left flank. Get up high and spread out.”
“And don’t waste ammo,” Cash ordered. “Make every shot count.”
Angel used face gestures to toggle over to the command channel in her smart helmet as the platoon spread out. The airmen were setting the explosives twenty meters up on either side of the pass, while the marines moved up the sides of the mountain in bounding leaps, powered by their ARC suits.
“Daniels, this is Lieutenant Murphy. Do you read, over?”
“Loud and clear, Lieutenant,” the petty officer replied.
“Do we still have eyes on the swarm?”
“Yes ma’am, they’ve slowed a little in the mountains, but they’re following the pass. My best guess is they’ll be on your position in fifteen minutes.”
“That’s the information I needed,” Angel said. “Any word from the FOB?”
“It’s still a mad house over there,” Daniels said. “I’ve radioed, but they aren’t listening.”
“Keep trying,” Angel ordered. “Someone needs to know what we’re up to.”
“Roger that, Lieutenant.”
Angel looked around. Everything was coming together, and there was nothing left for her to do but wait. She wasn’t a patient person, and part of her just wanted to get things started, but she hoped they had more than fifteen minutes before the swarm arrived. It would be better to have too much time than too little. A strange peace had come over her. She had done all she could. Perhaps their little ambush was a useless effort, but she was a CSF marine and it felt good to know that they were doing something. She didn’t want to die, but the fear of dying seemed to have lost its frightening power over her. There was a tranquility to the moment. Even in the ARC suit, with her body completely encased in the armor, she felt a new sense of awareness. She could see the beauty of the mountain grandeur and the wonder of the foliage springing up around them on the colony world light years from Earth. Even the dirt and rocks somehow looked wondrous and she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t noticed it before.
There was a powerful sense of purpose in being a human on a world other than Earth. It was as if they were opening up something new, something profound, and not just for themselves, but for every person, every member of the human race. They couldn’t be pushed back, confined to one tiny planet. They needed room to grow, to expand, to ensure that humanity, despite all its struggles, survived no matter what. Angel was part of that, part of something much larger than she could have imagined, and it felt right. She was right where she needed to be, and if she died in the effort, then so be it, but she was full of hope. The swarm hadn’t seen anything like Angel in her ARC suit. They wouldn’t know what had hit them, and by the time they figured it out, it would be too late.
38
Cattle Trail Pass, McDuall Mountains, Hoover District
Neo Terra, Tau Ceti system
“I have eyes on target,” Cash said.
Their ARC smart helmets had zooming capabilities that were as effective as any binoculars the special forces staff sergeant had ever used. He could see the swarm moving up the long pass. Cash was at least a hundred meters from Hays, who was another hundred meters from Ruiz. Across the narrow valley, which was only fifty meters wide at the closest section along the peak of the trail, Bolton, Vancini, and Jones were staggered between Cash’s men.
They watched as the aliens approached, seeming oblivious to the marines in sniper positions on the mountains to either side of the pass. The ARC suits weren’t camouflaged, but they covered the humans completely so that no skin showed, and perhaps
even their scent was masked. Not that the swarm ever seemed to be deterred by humans, marines or not.
It was Cash’s first time actually seeing the creatures in person. The video feeds, usually from surveillance planes thousands of meters overhead, didn’t do the creatures justice. Cash could see the large bone plates that covered their heads. Their bodies were less protected, and they had massive hind legs. Their forelegs looked like webbed feet, which was surprising to Cash. He guessed they burrowed into the ground using the plow-shaped bones over their faces, pressing forward with their powerful hind legs and sweeping the loose dirt and rocks with their webbed feet on their forelegs.
“Comms check,” Cash said over the command channel.
“I read you, Staff Sergeant,” Gunny Bolton replied.
“All clear,” Ruiz said.
“Ditto,” Hays added.
“Five by five,” Vancini said.
“Here,” said Jones.
The airmen checked in, as did Petty Officer Rhonda Daniels back at the compound. Angel was the last to reply. Cash had no idea how the young officer was handling things. He had his doubts about her, not because she was a woman, or even because she was barely nineteen years old, but because he had seen combat break people. No one knew how they would respond the first time they faced death. No amount of training could prepare a person to face their own mortality. But Angela Murphy had grit. She had faced down her fears and done the right thing.
Cash didn’t expect to survive the battle. He didn’t even expect to succeed in turning the horde away from the co-op, but he was desperate to make the bastards pay for the lives they had stolen in Port Gantry and the other battlefields where CSF marines had given their lives to stop the aliens. It was every warrior’s hope that if they died, it would be in a battle that was remembered long after they were gone. Cash didn’t know if their ambush in the mountains would be remembered, but he felt like one of the fabled 300 Spartan warriors at Thermopylae.
“Comms systems check out across the board,” Lieutenant Murphy said. “Prepare the initial detonation on my order.”
Cash hoped they had gotten everything right. His team knew how to use explosives to blow locked doors open, or destroy transports. Bringing down mountains was a different animal altogether. At the very least, Cash hoped the explosions would distract and confuse the swarm. The airmen were in elevated positions out past the blast zone. Their long range machine guns would fire over any rubble that clogged the mountain pass, but their main objective was to stop any of the aliens who broke through
“Almost there,” Cash heard his lieutenant say.
He had no idea where she was. Part of him wished she had gone far, far away. He hated to think of her getting hurt, but he didn’t have the authority to order her to leave. And he admired her strength. In fact, he more than admired her. Deep down he knew he had romantic inclinations for his superior, even though she was younger than he was and an officer to boot. Nothing could ever happen between them, not as long as she was his commanding officer, and he was certain he had hidden his feelings for her quite well. Not to mention that they would both probably be dead soon, he thought to himself, but he wanted to go out being honest with himself. Angela Murphy was a fine woman, and under other circumstances he would have pressed for more than just friendship. He had no way of knowing if she felt the same way, but at least he was being honest with himself.
“On my mark,” Murphy said. “Three…”
Cash felt pressure on his chest. There was no turning back. The narrow pass was filled with the alien swarm, and from his vantage point he could see that less than half their total number had reached his position.
“Two…” she continued counting down.
Cash reached up with his thumb and checked one last time to ensure that his rifle was in semi-automatic mode with the safety latch in the off position.
“One…”
He took a deep breath, raising his rifle and taking aim.
“Mark!”
The blast was like the crash of thunder, rumbling through the mountain, as four geysers of soil and rock shot out from the mountains on either side of the trail. The flying rubble was minor, but the rock and soil broken loose below the charges was extensive. Dirt and dust billowed up, and the falling debris sounded like an out of control locomotive coming off the rails.
The alien swarm rippled as the shock of the attack surprised them. Cash couldn’t see the damage caused by the charges, the dust was too thick, but it was clear they had surprised the enemy and the wily staff sergeant took full advantage of it.
His TA 71 popped as he fired it, the report sounded tiny and weak after the huge explosions that had echoed through the pass. The swarm was chattering and screeching, with very little room to maneuver in the pass. Cash fired round after round, targeting the aliens just behind the bony head plate. The frags flew true and ripped ragged holes in the thin exoskeleton of the alien bodies. Most dropped where they had been standing, dead before their bodies hit the ground, but a few flipped over, writhing in agony from the wounds.
For almost a full minute, longer than it took Cash to fire all seventy-one rounds from his assault rifle, pop his magazine, and slam a fresh one home, the swarm seemed unsure of what to do. Cash never shot in the same place twice. He was hoping to find the queen, but the aliens weren’t responding the way he had expected them to. Up to that point, none had moved to protect their leader.
Suddenly the chatter from the big .50 caliber machine guns echoed through the pass, the loud reports resounding from the mountains. The big belt fed guns fired tracer bullets every five rounds. The pyrotechnic charge was visible through the swirling dust as the bullets slammed into the aliens in a spray of death. The big caliber bullets punched through the bone plates on the alien heads, and none were safe in the mountain pass as death rained down from all sides.
Several of the aliens jumped into the air, trying to draw the fire of the machine guns, but the airmen weren’t fooled. They were far enough from the throng to know they were safe from the leaping creatures, and didn’t change their aim.
“Yahoo!” Hays shouted. “They’re dropping like panties at a frat party.”
“Keep giving it to them,” Cash ordered.
“There’s so damn many of them,” Ruiz complained.
“Where’s their queen?” Bolton asked. “They all look the same.”
It was a massacre, and yet it didn’t seem to be making a difference. Cash had hoped to see the aliens turn and retreat, looking for a different path through the mountains, but instead they continued marching into the hot zone, undeterred by the fiery death his squad was dealing out.
“Our ammo won’t last much longer at this rate,” Vancini said.
As if the aliens could hear and understand the marine corporal, a group of the aliens began climbing up one another. They used their bodies like a living ladder, focused on reaching Van’s position. They moved quickly, scurrying up and over the others.
“I’m on it,” Hays said. “RPG is away!”
The rocket propelled grenade fired with a pop and whoosh. Cash glanced over and saw the exhaust trail as it shot across the pass and slammed into the mountain just above the aliens. Several of the creatures leaped away from the rock that was blasted off the hillside like shrapnel, but the real danger was the loose rock that went cascading down into the valley. It was an effective tactic, taking out the aliens climbing over one another to reach the sniper, as well as burying even more that were crowded into the pass.
Another build up of aliens was forming beneath Cash’s position. The staff sergeant saw the danger, but didn’t stop searching for the queen. He pulled a grenade from the grain sack where his munitions were stored. He bit down on the thin, wire pin, jerked the grenade away from his face, flicked the safety bar off of the baseball-shaped explosive device, and tossed it down the mountainside. The aliens below him scattered, and the grenade exploded with minimal damage to the enemy.
“Well that didn’t w
ork,” Hays complained.
“How the hell do they sense them coming?” Ruiz asked.
Cash didn’t respond. Instead he raised his rifle and took aim at another alien before lightly squeezing the trigger. The assault rifle felt like a toy in the staff sergeant’s ARC suit, which absorbed the recoil. Cash’s aim was spot on, but the alien he had shot at reared out of the path of the bullet. At first Cash thought it was just a coincidence, but when a second and then a third alien dodged his shots he knew something had changed.
“What the hell?” Ruiz shouted.
“They’re dodging our damn bullets,” Hays said. “That’s impossible.”
“Apparently not,” Vancini said.
“Stay focused!” Bolton ordered.
“They’re building up again!” Jones warned.
Cash saw the aliens crawling up the mountainside toward him. He fired his rifle down at the horde, and saw several drop before his slide rammed back into the locked position indicating that his magazine was empty. He grabbed another, realizing it was his last.
“Let them build up,” he ordered. “Then hit the group with your RPGs.”
The tactic worked. Bolton fired across the expanse at the aliens trying to reach Cash, and he did the same for his gunnery sergeant. Both pillars were knocked down by the debris from the mountainside, although it was impossible to guess how many were actually killed from the blast.
“I’m on my last mag,” Vancini called over the comlink.
“Make every shot count,” Bolton replied.
“We’ve got to find the queen,” Cash said. “Save your Traggers and use up everything else.”
It was less than a minute before Cash heard the unmistakable report of a shotgun being fired.
“We’re out of ammo!” Beemus called over the command channel. “Sorry.”
“Get out of the pass, CWO,” Angel ordered the airmen. “Take your people and get away.”
“What about you?” the chief warrant officer replied.
“It’s time we find out what these suits can really do,” the lieutenant replied.
ARC Angel (ARC Angel Series Book 1) Page 21