Three-Six was in the third rank, so-to-speak, of the defense. Three-Fourteen was ahead and slightly to their right, and One-Three was in the front rank and slightly to the left of Three-Six’s position. The hope was that the seemingly weak spot between the battalions would canalize the Grubs into a winding advance, which would slow them down and open them up to more enfilade fire. It risked splitting up the Marine forces, but that was a risk the command had decided to take.
Hondo felt his pulse quicken as the Grubs rushed toward the Marines. They held steady, not veering to their right to bypass the defense.
At 12 klicks out, the first company of tanks opened up with their new guns—and had an immediate effect. Four of the slow-moving “Lightening” shells managed to penetrate the Grubs’ shielding, and what were essentially mini-power stations came online for an instant, but that was long enough to fry the cellular circuitry of the enemy.
A cheer went up and down the lines. The tanks got off three volleys before the light spheres launched, and immediately the tanks stopped firing and powered up their shielding, which was related to Faraday cages. The cages took immense amounts of energy, which precluded them being used by PICS, but the Mannies had power to spare. Hondo held his breath as the spheres shot forward and released on the tanks. Alpha Company consisted of 17 battle tanks. When the light sphere hit them, seven were destroyed.
Shit!
The hope was that the shielding would protect the tanks, and they would wreak havoc on the Grubs. It did protect them, but not completely. In one moment, almost half of the tank company was gone.
The remaining tanks dropped their shields and fired two salvos before bringing them back up again. At the same time, the combat drones started firing. The drones were equipped with guns, energy weapons, and a missile whose warhead worked on the same principle as the tanks’ Lightening shells. The air was filled with fire, and the Grubs answered back. Drones were dropping out of the sky, but not before another eight Grubs were killed.
Mobile artillery opened fire, the unmanned tubes on automatic. As more light spheres launched, the tubes joined in with the tanks in engaging their shielding. Light tendrils splashed against the tubes, knocking 75% offline after 30 seconds of sustained fire.
“Look at the numbers, BK. The Grubs are blowing through their energy,” Hondo passed on the P2P.
He’d been watching the numbers on the energy feed, and the Grubs were expending energy at a furious rate. Some of the Grubs massed 25% less over the last ten minutes. Drones, tanks, and artillery tubes had been destroyed, but the shielding meant that the Grubs were expending more energy for each kill.
“That’s one good thing,” BK passed back. “Maybe they’ll be the size of puppies by the time they reach us.”
Not bloody likely, Hondo thought.
The disposition of the Marines was designed to disburse the Grubs, but that meant some relatively untouched Grubs would make it to the battalion’s position. There wasn’t going to be any rear echelon forces in the battle.
As the Grubs closed in, Marines opened up with their mid-range weapons: missiles, mortars, and heavy machine guns. None of these had the powerpacks to manage the shielding, so the missiles were offset to the Marines firing them. The hope was that when the Grubs took out the launchers, they wouldn’t realize that the Marines 20 meters to the side were the ones who’d just fired them.
“Pompeii’s on the move,” Sergeant Mbangwa passed. “Now we hold them.”
Hondo could see the Confederation-led force start to move into the high ground. So far, everything was going roughly according to plan—and that was worrying him. No plan ever survived contact with the enemy, so he was waiting for things to go to shit.
At three klicks, the energy cannons opened up. Hondo still didn’t have a direct line of sight to one of the Grubs, but on the feeds, it looked as if the Grubs were bathed in coronas of blue light that fairly danced off their skins. The Grubs seemed to put the advance into a previously unobserved gear as they fairly leapt forward, seemingly intent to simply bowl over the front line of Marines.
One-Three—along with the other battalions arrayed across the 30-klick front—would have something to say about that. The Marines opened up with their entire array of weapons.
And the Klethos didn’t like that at all.
Many of them swerved to the sides, light tendrils reaching out to engage individual Marines. A second wave of combat drones swept over the high ground on either side, peppering the Grubs with incendiaries as they engaged the Marines. The hope was to overload the Grubs, but they didn’t seem to have their offensive power diminished. Hondo gave a quick look at the energy display. The Grubs were still in full attack mode, but they were burning up mass.
With the Marines fighting—and dying—twenty or thirty Grubs pushed through the gap between One-Three and Two-Seventeen, two of the three battalions on the front line. If they turned to flank either of the battalions, things were going to get dicey, but they kept advancing, right at Three-Six.
“Come on, Jaegers! Make your momma’s proud,” the battalion CO passed on the net
Not that memorable, but not bad, either, Hondo thought as he ran through his PICS stats one more time. With power still at 93% and a full combat load, he was as ready as he was ever going to be. He ran a quick check on his fire team. The other three Marines were combat-ready, too.
From above them, drones launched a salvo of both missiles and meson beams. Traces reached down from the sky to impact on the Grubs, but they kept advancing. Several troikas merged their light tendrils to shoot beams into the sky, knocking down drones. While no Grub was killed, they were expending energy, and the two Mannie platoons located within the Three-Six AOR opened fire. Hondo didn’t know if it was because the Grubs had been depleted by the drones or if the Mannies were simply too powerful, but three Grubs exploded, their final reservoir of energy released all at once.
And then the rest of the Grubs hit the battalion’s lines, and Hondo’s world contracted down to three Grubs that merged their tendrils to take out one of the Mannies and then charged Kilo Company’s position. The PICS Marines opened up with their mid-range weapons, needing the Grubs to close in before the new flamethrowers and the grappling hooks could be deployed.
One of the Grubs veered to the side and started rumbling right at First Squad.
“Ain’t no thing, boys and girls. Just like back on the Purge,” Sergeant Mbangwa passed, his voice devoid of stress.
Except there’re no do-overs here, Hondo noted as the Grub closed the distance.
His readouts said the Grub was at 59%, but it looked huge to Hondo—huge and mighty pissed off. And it was heading right at Valúlfur. He couldn’t let her take the brunt of the attack.
“Shift right,” he ordered the fire team. “Now!”
Hondo side-hopped, something the PICS was not designed to do, but it got him into the path of the Grub. He powered up his shoulder launcher and and fired his RPR, the 20mm rocket plowing into its fleshy side. Hondo could see the Grub’s skin heave around the spot as the warhead exploded.
The Grub raised its front up again, and Hondo could swear it was looking at him. He started to bolt to the right when a tendril of light hit him, this display almost blinded.
“Let’s get more on him!” he passed before he realized his comms were fried. On his display, his shielding was dropping like a rock.
He caught a glimpse of a grappling hook as it flew over the beast, the line draping it.
“Come on, people! I need some help here!” he shouted, oblivious to the fact that no one could hear him.
His alarm went off, a beep-beep-beep telling him that he was redlining.
“I know, I know, he shouted, trying to dodge out of the way but the tendril followed him like a martin on a squirrel. He wasn’t going to shake it.
The beep turned into a steady alarm. He had seconds left. He tried to dart to the left, but his PICS refused to move. It was dead, and unless something happened, so
would he.
He still had his grappling hook. He knew he didn’t have enough time, and the range was long, but he wasn’t going to go out without a fight. He opened his visor shield and started cranking up his PICS arm. He got it aligned with the Grub up ahead and pulled back on the release. Nothing happened. The hook didn’t launch. He tried again with the same result.
As much as it might seem to Hondo, though, the battle wasn’t just between the Grub and him. His fellow Marines were attacking, and flames enveloped the Grub. It writhed and raised its front quarter, turning towards a charging Marine and unleashing a torrent of light tendrils that haloed the Marine in a bright corona.
Hondo didn’t wait to see what happened to the Marine. He pulled the emergency molt, pulled up his legs, and slid out the back of his PICS. Hitting the ground hard, he then rolled to his feet, trying to orient himself. The air crackled with energy, his nose burning with ionization. A flash of heat hit him from the side.
Hell, second time in a row I lose my PICS. OK, Hondo. Time to step it up.
He didn’t want to calculate the odds of losing his PICS two battles in a row, and more importantly, surviving the experience. Feeling naked in his long johns, he sidled to the front of his motionless PICS. The grappling hook was loaded and ready, and at first glance, he couldn’t see why it hadn’t fired. The why, though, wasn’t important now. He needed to employ it.
The new grappling hook was a modular weapon with launcher and hook attached to the PICS’ weapons jack. As with all weapon pods, it was designed to be quickly interchanged with another system. Hondo gave it a shake, and then he reached around to the base of the arm and grabbed the release lever. The armorers had a tool to flip the lever, a tool that Hondo didn’t have.
No matter. Marine elbow grease would have to do the trick. He jammed his fingers under the tip of the lever and pulled. It might have budged, but that would have been hopeful thinking.
Something clanged off of the chest carapace of his PICS, making him duck. The battle was still raging around him. A hundred meters away, the Grub had at least a dozen light tendrils deployed.
Hondo jumped up on his PICS’ extended arm. Squatting, he jammed the fingers of both hands under the lip of the lever, then with a huge grunt, pushed up with his legs. The lever gave, flipping open and smacking his left hand as Hondo fell over backward to the ground.
His hand was bruised and bloody, but he couldn’t tend to it now. He scrambled back up to the arm, then lifted the grappling hook pod and dropped it to the ground. He jumped down, then bent to lift the module.
There was a reason that Marines fought in PICS—well many of them, but one being that they increased the strength of a Marine. The grappling hook pod was small as PICS weapons modules went, but it still massed a good hundred kilos. Hondo was by no means a weak Marine, but still, it was a heavy load. With a grunt, he lifted it to what Marines for some reason called the “John Wayne” position, catch assembly at his right hip, left hand outstretched and holding the handle over the stock.
Marines were all around him—some were fighting, some were motionless. At least one Marine was molting from a PICS, but Hondo didn’t have time to help out. He had a target, a besieged Grub 100 meters ahead.
Part of the white skin had tinges of brown, like toasted coconut. Hondo felt a thrill course through him. Marines around him, probably his friends, had died, but it was obvious that the Grub was in a bad situation. It was visibly smaller, and its light tendrils seemed more haphazard. It shook its head back and forth, as if panic was setting in—if Grubs even felt panic.
A light tendril swept passing him, missing his feet by a meter, the air snapping with ionization. Hondo darted to the side, too late to have done anything. If he felt naked before, that feeling just quadrupled. He had no shielding, and 20 microns of polyamilyn long johns weren’t going to do much. One touch, and he’d be KIA.
He pushed that thought out of his mind and forged forward. He didn’t have sights on his grappling hook, so he’d have to rely on Kentucky windage to get it on target. The closer in he was, the better chance he’d have to hit the damned thing.
A Marine in a PICS rushed past him, almost knocking him aside as his flamethrower engulfed the Grub. If the enemy was in panic mode, that didn’t seem to affect its ability to defend itself. Three tendrils struck the Marine, and as they converged, the bluish light turned a searing white. Tiny filaments of light bounced off the Marine toward him, and Hondo hit the deck, bouncing painfully off the grappling hook module. Ten meters away, the Marine’s outgoing fire quit, and a moment later, his PICS seemed to slough apart, almost turning molten.
“You son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted, getting back to his feet.
He dodged around the dead Marine, his focus locked onto the Grub, which was now slowly backing up. “Slow” was relative. It was still faster than Hondo was on foot, lugging the grappling hook. It was pulling away from him.
He was now about 70 meters away, within range, but farther than he wanted to be. But the gods of war had dealt the cards, and Hondo was going to have to play them.
He came to a stop, took two deep breaths, and adjusted the muzzle of the launcher. The hook would fire in an arc, and he had to make sure that not only was he on target laterally, but he had to make sure he didn’t over or undershoot.
Now or never, Hondo!
He pulled the trigger release . . . and nothing happened. He looked down to see what was wrong, but everything looked fine. Then it hit him. The release was designed for the PICS power, not Marine-power. He’d have to put some muscle into it.
He aimed again, and with a stronger effort, yanked on the release. With a clunk, the string shot forward, sending the grappling hook into the air. The effort he’d made, though, jerked the launcher just enough so that he thought he’d missed, but a blast of something hitting the Grub in its left side made it swerve right into the path of the hook. The metal tines sunk into its side, and the charge was released. Hondo could see flesh shudder, and for a moment, the light tendrils failed.
That was enough. Marines converged on it, firing every weapon they had. More grappling hooks reached out, and several hit almost simultaneously. A high-pitched wail made Hondo wince, and it took a moment for him to realize that it was the Grub making the noise, the first time he’d known they could make a sound. Light tendrils still emanated from it, but most seemed to be haphazard without a specific target.
“Shit, it’s going to blow,” Hondo said as he turned around to run.
He made it barely five meters before a bright white light hit him from behind, but without a punch. He turned back, and the Grub, or what was left of it, was collapsing in on itself. It may have tried to explode, but something had interfered, making it more of a fizzle.
Regardless, the thing was dead, and Hondo wanted to shout to the sky. They’d taken it out . . . no, that was too sanitary a phrase. They’d killed the mother fucker.
He wanted to celebrate, but the battle was not over. This was just one engagement. The battle was probably over for him, though, at least offensively. Without a weapon, he was simply a spectator.
He looked back at the half-melted PICS. Curiosity mixed with dread, he stepped over to see the name tag embossed on the carapace.
Part of it was melted away, but the last few letters were still visible: “. . .úlfur.”
Oh, hell, Sunrise.
The feeling of warrior exuberance fled as he looked at the mass of junk that had been one of his Marines.
His Marines.
As a fire team leader, he only had three Marines in his mini-command, and now Sunrise Valúlfur was KIA. He was supposed to make sure she survived in one piece, that she got back home on Percy to her family, to her younger brother who wanted nothing more than to join her in the Corps.
He wondered if he was the only survivor, and that filled him with guilt.
“Nice shooting, Hondo!” someone shouted at him.
He wheeled around, and as if on cue, BK, also in he
r long johns, was waving at him from 30 meters away, her combat knife clasped in her hand. Relief swept through him. At least she had survived as well. He ran over to her, and she enveloped him in a hug, slapping his back.
“Way to go, Hondo. You nailed the sucker, and I think that was the turning point.”
“Sunrise didn’t make it. That’s her,” he said, pointing at the slagged PICS.
“Oh, shit. That’s fucked up. What about Xeras?”
“I don’t know. I’m kinda without comms, now.”
“Yeah, me, too. I feel naked out here now,” she said, making a sweep with her arms to indicate the light show surrounding them. “Second time me and you are in a fight in just our long johns. Is this becoming a habit?”
Hondo shrugged and said, “I sure hope not.”
“So, what do we do now? I mean, we can’t very well fight, right?”
“We stay out of the way unless we can figure out something. Maybe try and salvage another weapons module on one of the KIA?”
“Copacetic. Should we check . . . uh, you know?”
Hondo looked back to Sunrise. He doubted there was anything there they could salvage, and even if her flamethrower was still functional, which he doubted, he didn’t think they could man-pack it. Still, it was worth a shot.
The two looked over the PICS. It had been breached, and the smell of cooked flesh hit them hard. Hondo had to fight to keep his gorge from rising.
“Why were we able to survive and molt when she . . . ?” he asked, not finishing the sentence.
“The gods of war, Hondo. You know that.”
But he didn’t “know that.” Hondo thought there was something else involved, something they needed to figure out.
The two Marines jogged over to the next downed PICS. It looked relatively whole, but it hadn’t molted. The Marine was still inside.
“Do we open it?” BK asked, voicing what Hondo had been asking himself.
Alliance (The United Federation Marine Corps' Grub Wars Book 1) Page 15