by Travis Hill
Another massive explosion to the north made me look up. I growled when I realized the 300’s marker was offline. I couldn’t see the damage to the building from my location, but I could see the glow and the smoke. Seconds later, another explosion blanked out Monohan’s marker. The sound of Terran Marine plasma rifles came from behind us, on the western end of the park. I took a step toward them before Lowell signaled me to stop.
“Come on, Private. There’s about a hundred more of these assholes up north.” He switched to the squad band. “Vasquez, meet us here.”
A red dot began to flash on my HUD at an intersection eight blocks to our northeast. Lowell ordered Talamentez down from her perch so she could move her 300 into a better position. I checked my Tac-Comp overlay, wondering if the third turret had been knocked out, but the gun’s marker was still hovering three blocks from me. The number of red triangles seemed too small for the estimate Sergeant Lowell had announced. I hoped our Tac-Comps weren’t malfunctioning or being hacked by the enemy.
We linked up with Sergeant Vasquez and began to work our way north. That crawling, anus-tightening feeling came back, mostly because with all of the fighting going on around the little town, the three of us were in a bubble of solitude. Near the northern edge of the city, each of us took shelter in one of the buildings facing the short, flat plain and the mountains beyond. I opted for the second floor of the small mechanical shop, and was pleasantly surprised to find it had easy access to a flat roof. It was a challenge to crawl along on my stomach in a fighting suit, but I was an expert after years of combat and easily pulled myself to the edge of the roof.
Two klicks to the north, two Kai troopships straddled the highway leading into the mountains. I watched while holding my breath, noting the red triangles that had lit up in Lowell’s Tac-Comp. I frowned when the Tac-Comp assigned at least twenty blue Xs to some of the Kai.
“What the fuck, Sarge?” Jordan asked from wherever he was engaging the enemy. His marker showed him to still be with Hollingsworth, Goldman, Kirilenko, and McAdams at the park. “Are they our people?”
“Negative,” Lowell answered. “They’re not Marines. These assholes have a bunch of civilians out there.”
“What the fuck?” Jordan asked again.
“They’re baiting us,” Vasquez said. “They know we’re somewhere in the area because of the Vipers we wasted. They know we’ve got stealth technology, and either they can’t beat it, or they don’t need to beat it because they’re sure we’ll do anything to save our own kind.”
“We didn’t do shit to save Missoula,” Jordan snapped.
“Or Salt Lake, or anywhere else,” Kirilenko said.
“Or maybe,” I said, “they’re a bunch of aliens, not humans, and they just do shit because that’s the way they do it, and we shouldn’t try to strategize as if they’re a bunch of dumbass human soldiers.”
“What’s your status, Krista?” Lowell asked, cutting off our argument.
“Mopping up,” Sergeant McAdams answered. “They might have more in the area, but none of our Tac-Comps show anything.”
“Knock them out and bring everyone north. Bishara, grab a 300 and head back south. Keep an eye out in case they do this shit down there. Talamentez, bring your 300 up with the squad.”
“What do you think they want?” Kirilenko asked after arriving at our makeshift rally point.
“More importantly,” Hollingsworth said, “is how the fuck we’re gonna go about this without wasting our people?”
“No one knows,” Jordan said, answering Kirilenko’s question before turning to Hollingsworth. “And no one gives a shit. They’re going to be the first ones wasted when we start the party.”
“Corporal,” Hollingsworth asked, the irritation in her voice heavy enough to make me wince, “do you hate humanity, or are you just that big of an asshole?”
“I used to be a tree-hugger like you, Hollingsworth,” Jordan said. “Then I joined the Marines to save humanity instead of sitting on my ass, watching the war play out on the holo.”
“So, you don’t give a shit that the civilians out there are going to die the instant we light up their captors?”
“No.”
“How the fuck can you not care?”
“Because they’re dead no matter what we do. What if we perform a miracle and kill all the Kai, and save all the citizens? We can’t shit out a new suit for each of them, then spend weeks training them how to use the suit at least enough to not kill themselves or one of us. We can’t herd and protect them anywhere. They’re going to die, and that’s too fucking bad.”
“But not you?”
“I’m gonna live forever.”
“Fuck you, Tyler. You make me sick.”
“Enough,” Lowell growled. “We’ve got enough trouble with the Kai trying to kill us. Those civvies, they’re toast. They’re too close to the ships to not eat plasma or shrapnel. The Kai might have their necks wired with explosives and at the click of a button, pop goes the weasel. Even if one or more of them lives, they’re on their own. It’s harsh, but like the corporal said, we ain’t got suits or foods. Now, everyone shut the fuck up and pay attention. Notice on your Tac-Comp overlay the various markers. Now notice as I turn off all those pesky blues.”
I blinked when the blue Xs disappeared. We weren’t allowed to override the Tac-Comp when it came to marking human civilians.
“Now also notice that I’m painting a target for each of you. You’ll know it’s yours because it will have your name on it.”
Ten seconds later, two dozen red triangles on my HUD winked out, leaving only three, each with a number above it alerting me to that target’s priority. My previous commanders had used the Command Link features in battle before, but either the features Sergeant Lowell discovered (or simply learned during the endless marching) were brand new, or none of the COs before him had bothered to use more than the most basic features.
“Sarge,” Grummond said. “If we woulda had this shit a few years ago, we’d be the ones marching them into the ovens.”
“It’s pretty handy,” Lowell agreed. “But we’ve always been a stronger ground power because of tech like this. If we’d ever figured out how to utilize something like this for our ships…”
“Fucking Navy,” Vasquez grumbled, getting a laugh from most of us.
“Fuck you,” Kirilenko said, setting us off again.
“Calm down,” Lowell ordered, and we became silent again. “Here’s how it’s gonna go. Vasquez is going to pop two G-60s at the same time we’re gonna open up with the 300 on ship number one, which is going to be the same moment you pick your targets off, in order if possible. I want this done in thirty seconds, because if it goes on any longer, that’s bad for us. Get in position. Two minutes. Go.”
***
I counted twenty-seven Kai visible in front of us. There were bound to be more inside the two troopships, though not more than another dozen or two, since the troopships weren’t much larger than our squad carriers. I zoomed in on my first target, using the camera’s night enhancement software to paint a detailed picture. The Kai stood as still as statues, looking off to the south, but not in our direction. My first target turned its head to the right, as if one of his buddies had engaged him in conversation.
Both of the Kai soldiers lowered themselves about half a meter into a crouch, which made my own knees hurt just watching them do it. The Kai had two legs, but they also had two “knees,” both of them bent in the opposite direction as a human knee. The way they walked always produced an odd sensation in my head, a kind of strange urge to rush up to one of them and bend its knees back in the proper direction. Just before jamming my rifle in the fucker’s weird-looking mouth and pulling the trigger.
“Line ‘em up,” Sergeant Lowell said.
I thumbed the active targeting sensor on my Harper-640, praying as always that the Kai couldn’t see the infrared lasers suddenly crawling all over the area. My target raised himself up to his full height of t
wo meters, his face forward again. If he saw me lighting up his chest armor, he gave no indication. I used my HUD to set my rifle to single shot, then checked to see where my other two targets were. I closed my eyes and began to count, opening them at five.
“Fire,” Sergeant Lowell ordered when my silent count reached fourteen.
I squeezed the trigger, immediately swinging the rifle a few degrees to the left without bothering to verify I’d hit my first target. The sound of the KTL-300 unleashing its salvos on the first troopship reminded me of a buzzsaw grinding into a solid hempsteel beam. I squeezed the trigger a second time, then a third, all three rounds finding their targets. It was hard to miss with the suit’s Tac-Comp and the rifle’s targeting sensor working in tandem. I switched back to burst fire and waited for the troopships to disperse their contents.
The first carrier folded in on itself in a heap of burning metal as two G-60 rockets and the 300 slagged it. The second carrier’s bay doors burst open and at least two dozen more Kai tried to escape. Half of them died instantly as McAdams unleashed the 300 on the second ship, the other half to me and Kirilenko as we let loose with a continuous, steady stream of plasma into the doorway. The ship belched fire then exploded, showering the lower valley with shards of glowing armor and a large number of body parts.
“Walk it in,” Lowell said.
I left my firing position and began making my way toward the burning wrecks. A few Kai survivors had gathered their wits and were firing in our direction. With our stealth units enabled, we looked like unholy ghosts drifting across the open ground, the software unable to match the environment patterns fast enough to keep up with the flash of weapons fire all around us. Jordan and Grummond fell in line ten meters to either side of me as we cut down a trio of Kai soldiers. All three spun and danced until we focused on another group of Kai trying to escape on foot to the northeast.
A blinding flash from my right caused my visor to black out. Grummond and I instantly turned to let our Tac-Comps query the area. A second flash was followed by Grummond exploding into chunks of flesh, fiber, and composite armor.
“Contact!” I screamed. “Zero-nine-seven at eight hundred meters. Heavy weapons!”
The five of us exposed on the open ground hit the dirt without thinking. I hadn’t been able to get a good look at what was shooting at us, but it wasn’t standard Kai infantry weapons.
“I need an active ping for the 300,” McAdams said, her voice as cool and calm as ever.
“That’s a shitty idea, Sergeant,” Lowell replied. “Might as well turn off our stealth units and light a flare above our heads.”
Another flash blacked out our visors again. My suit’s external temperature monitor produced a worried squelch in my ears, warning me that the air outside had risen to almost two hundred degrees before dissipating back into the lower hundreds. We still had ten green markers, so the Kai hadn’t hit anyone else, but with five of us pinned on the ground, the Kai could simply begin shooting their big guns in a pattern until they fried one or all of us.
“You want them taken care of or not?” McAdams asked. I could hear the muffled sounds of her disassembling the 300 to move it to a new location.
“Lofgren, you heard the lady. Give her a ping.”
My scrotum shrank about six sizes too small to hold my testicles. I blinked, licked my lips, and acknowledged I’d get the job done.
“You owe me, Sergeant,” I said as I steeled myself to stand up and alert the entire Kai army, if that’s what was waiting for us. By the way, I thought, I’m an easy target, and here’s a giant neon sign with an arrow pointing at my chest!
“Roger that,” McAdams and Lowell said in stereo.
I laughed aloud, queued my suit to actively ping the valley in front of me, then closed my eyes. At five, I opened them and stood up. I swept my helmet along a horizontal arc, watching my HUD create a 3D image from the multiple radar, ladar, and T-stream signals rebounding from solid surfaces. I ground my teeth together, hearing the growl in my throat turn into a scream as my suit’s energy shield began to overload from the small arms fire. The last few degrees of the arc stretched into hours.
I spent the time wondering if I would feel anything when the Kai heavy energy weapon treated me like it had Private Grummond. I’d read that even after the heart stops beating and the blood stops pumping, human consciousness lives on for up to ten minutes before fading out. A cold fear blasted through me at the horror of being dead but still aware of the physical world for a few more minutes.
“Locked,” McAdams said.
I dove to the dirt and began to roll to my right. Multiple flashes lit up the night. All I saw was a strobe of light-dark in an endless pattern, the world around me tilting and diving as I tried to slow my inertia. The grind of the 300 filled my helmet’s speakers, but I didn’t know if it had hit anything. I exhaled loudly when my suit left the ground for a second then crashed back down, then shot me off into space for at least three more seconds before I slammed into the dirt.
“Lofgren, status?” Vasquez asked.
“Marfle,” I mumbled, trying to get my brain to stop spinning now that my body had finally come to rest. “I’m up,” I said, trying again.
I scuttled toward the remains of the barricade, putting it between me and whatever was firing at us. An explosion above me made me look back once I cowered behind the rocks. Another Kai troopship burned as it fell to the earth three klicks to our southwest.
“I’m out,” Sergeant Vasquez announced.
“I’m down to my last salvo,” Jordan added.
Another green marker went dark in my HUD. I blinked. Sergeant Vasquez had just casually informed us he’d used his last rockets, and three seconds later, there was no more Sergeant Paul “Pedro” Vasquez. I gritted my teeth and watched seven friendlies leapfrog toward the burning troopships blocking the road. I poked my rifle out from the barricade to hopefully give some covering fire. The 300 shredded the landscape, the sparks and explosions of Kai armor briefly lighting up the night in a three hundred meter line. Another explosion behind me was followed by a curse from McAdams.
“Focus fire, focus fire,” Lowell called out.
My HUD showed me where the sergeant had targeted, and I began laying down a steady burst pattern, my visor growing dim to compensate for the bright glow of concentrated plasma. Lowell gave the order for the rest of us to move now that the Kai heavy weapons seemed to have gone silent. Just as we reached the road, the first downed troopship belched fire one last time and exploded. The squad dropped to the ground again, continuing to pick off the last few pockets of Kai soldiers who gave their positions away by shooting at us. I listened to bits and pieces of the troopship hit my suit and the ground around me. I didn’t want to think about a heavy bulkhead or an engine stabilizer falling out of the sky on top of me, as my CR-31 would fold like an accordion.
It took us another six minutes to cover the distance to the smoking remains of the two Kai light tanks. They’d been dropped in or dropped off while we had been fighting near the park. It was worrisome, to say the least. Kai light and heavy armor units were as nasty as ours, the main difference being our operators and commanders were more skilled, more cunning. Again I had to wonder: were we the masters of ground warfare simply because we’d been practicing it for thousands of years, while the Kai were superior starship pilots because they’d been practicing that for thousands of years?
Humans were daring, sneaky, and did strange, unpredictable things because we could get away with it in our wheelhouse. Ground warfare was our meat and potatoes. I imagined that it was hard to be inventive, to think outside of the box when it came to piloting million-plus ton warships in a vacuum, where battles took place over hours as each side waited for ordnance to reach their enemies across vast distances. Besides, our species had only been doing such things for less than a century. It also made me wonder why the Kai didn’t just translate a super-bomb or something into our planet’s core, or at least, translate mass-death we
apons a kilometer under the soil of each major city.
“Pay attention, Lofgren,” McAdams said, slapping me on the back of my helmet on her way by.
“—for Vasquez,” Lowell was saying. “Talamentez, status?”
“Sarge, I’ve got at least six armor units and a thousand infantry spreading out to the south. Maybe more.”
“Shit,” Lowell said.
“And at least four heavy mech units,” she added in a small voice.
“Quadruple shit,” Lowell muttered.
“You’ll be happy to note that not a single civilian lived,” Hollingsworth’s voice chimed in.
I looked up, seeing her marker back at the two destroyed troopships.
“Noted, Specialist,” Lowell said.
His voice sounded like I felt. I wasn’t happy that our fellow humans had been killed, but I wasn’t sad about it. Better to go quick like this instead of taking a walk into an oven. It frightened me that I didn’t seem to care that we’d just killed at least twenty of our own kind, and it frightened me more that only Hollingsworth seemed to care enough to check for survivors. The rest of us hadn’t taken a second glace once we’d checked to make sure all the Kai were down.
“Private,” Lowell said to Talamentez, “are they moving in?”
“Negative, Sir. They’re hanging out. Like statues.”
“I don’t get it,” Lowell said to himself. “Why not just smash us to bits with everything? What is this bullshit they’ve started with hostages or whatever it is our people are supposed to be?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but Lowell cut me off.
“Don’t give me any of that ‘we don’t understand them because they’re aliens’ bullshit, Private. That’s the last thing I want to hear.”
I shrugged, which didn’t translate well because of my fighting suit.
“All right,” he said, standing up. “Fuck these assholes. If we engage, we’ll lose more people. Even if we kill them all, there’s millions more that will show up. We’re going to run some more, but let’s see if we can mess them up. They think we’ll go either north, east, or south, since those are the easy ways in and out of here. Instead, we’ll head directly west.”