by David Poyer
A clatter tattooed along the bulkheads. Suddenly he whirled and fell, rolled off the ramp, and vanished.
Hector grabbed Slamet with one hand and the CHAD that had been eyeing him with the other, dragging them forward. Toward the gray light, the battering sound. Each step forward took an age. But they couldn’t stay here. Another burst would wipe everyone out. The steel walls were a trap now. “Get out or die,” he screamed. “Tell them, Private. Get out or die.” Four steps to the edge of the ramp. Three. Two.
He drew a deep breath and jumped down into the foaming surf.
It was shockingly cold, and much deeper than he’d expected. His face went under and he struggled, choking, drowning. A hundred pounds of pack, weapon, ammo, and gear weighed him down as if four anvils were strapped to his back.
Then the jelly armor inflated, automatically buoying him up. He shrugged off his pack and ditched his helmet and entrenching tool. Got his boots on something soft underneath him, maybe the sergeant major, and pushed off. He got a hand on the stalled APC. Bullets clanged off it, lacerating the hull, ricocheting into the landing craft, where the Indos were still crowding the ramp. Some fell. Others jumped. They all vanished under the black sea, in the glimmering surf. A few fought their way back up, without weapons, and stumbled or swam after him. Hector looked for the CHAD, but the robot had sunk like a stone. He waved the platoon forward, then faced front again.
The beach was blazing with what looked like a hundred Fourth of Julys going off at once. Laser beams searched here and there through the smoke, focused to burn out retinas and flash-sear skin. Hector clawed his way around the stalled armored carrier, ducking almost too late as the forward machine gun began firing, then began wading toward the distant beach, angling left in case the guy in the gunner’s seat depressed his aim too far. He remembered his rifle and lifted it above his head, then changed his mind and lowered it to shield his chest.
Tracers floated lightly above the surf, like fiery fairies. The din built as the flashes ashore turned blinding white flecked with sparks of blue. A familiar smell freighted the wind. The stench of explosives and burning vegetation.
Two hundred yards out from the beach the sandy bottom dropped away under his boots and he went under again. This time he felt heavier. Or weaker. Underwater the sounds were muffled. Bullets went pock and zzzip. He fought free of his mag pouch, leaving him only the thirty rounds in his rifle. Came up again, gasping for air, vision hazed and burning with red floaters he couldn’t tell from tracers or lasers or something damaged inside his eyes.
Shallower now … close to the beach … he turned again and saw their heads, helmets gone, most of them, black heads bobbing in the surf. Others, just corpses, each wave body-surfing the dead on toward the land they’d striven to reach in such agony in their last moments.
This was worse than Itbayat. Much worse than Taiwan. The enemy had learned from those defeats. He was putting everything into decimating the first wave, hoping that discouraged the rest, persuaded them to go to ground or retreat.
Hector staggered forward, each impossible step consuming him. The sand seethed at his knees. Then at the tops of his boots. A wave rolled in and shoved him forward, almost toppled him onto his face. He staggered on, boots digging and slipping in wet sand.
Then at last found dry ground, hard footing. He forced a last floundering run from quivering waterlogged limbs and stumbled thirty yards to higher ground. He hit the deck and hugged the sand for a long time; seconds, minutes, sucking air. Until he was able at last to breathe, get his head up again, and peer around.
To their left flank, beach houses, a development, burning fiercely, the flames squirming shadows all along the beach, smoke blowing low and dense along the surf-line. Farther away, the white towering of high-rise apartments or hotels. Now and again something exploded like fireworks, throwing green sparks and heavy black smoke. Beyond them blue flashes rippled steadily, like a string of giants’ firecrackers. To the right, a rise, MG fire flickering from it. Along the beach lay a dark wave of stranded troops, a little above the high water line, like seawrack cast up by a storm. Behind them floated the dark hulks of wrecked, burning APCs and landing craft. Zeroed on by the enemy’s artillery and missiles, it didn’t look like a single piece of armor had made it to the beach. Above them, the threatening buzz of quadcopter drones, imminent as hornets.
Hector hoped the drones were friendlies. For the moment, at least, they didn’t seem to be firing on the marines. He was timing the muzzle-flicker ahead, waiting for the belt to run out, when a cicada buzzed against his throat. He flinched away, then recalled: the detection alarm. Silent, so it didn’t give away your position.
“Gas,” he yelled, and the cry, in English, went along the wrack of troops. The men rolled over in the sand, pulling frantically at mask carriers, fitting black goggle faces over their own. Others, maskless, fought their comrades for them. Rifle butts rose and fell. Men scrambled up and bolted back toward the sea. The MG cut them down as they ran. They flung out their arms as they were hit, falling in splashes in the red firelight to lie at rest at last in the embracing ocean.
Hector was too occupied to care. The mask first. He snapped the soft curved rubber over his face and sucked. Tight. Ripped open the protective suit. Pulled it on in a sort of controlled frenzy. It had to go on fast. But it was easy to tear. Finally he sealed the last seam.
The belt ran out and the gun ahead fell silent. He grabbed his rifle and jumped up, or at least lurched up, and ran along the line of troops. Looking for someone, anyone, who’d gotten some weapon ashore heavier than a rifle. To his astonishment another trooper rose too and ran four paces behind him. Private Slamet, still alive, still with him, faceless in the black mask, helmetless like Hector, but with the hood pulled up over his head.
Hector found a beefy Papuan Javelin gunner with his missile and tube still bagged in green invasion plastic. He’d lost his ammo bearer, but Hector clapped him on the shoulder and signed follow me.
Leaving Slamet to organize covering fire, he and the gunner rushed and dropped, sweating and suffocating in masks and suits, until they were behind the wrecked pier. They rested for two minutes, panting, then worked their way toward a parking lot.
Asphalt, good. Hector kept peering to the right, looking for another bunker or post or maybe a tank, because you set up for interlocking fire, but the prep must have taken it out because he couldn’t see any. The noise was still rumbling away, flashing and quaking the ground, but it had moved inland, walking ahead of them. Good.
A roar in the sky, and heavies came in, shaking the earth in russet flashes all along the beach. He reeled back off the lot and burrowed into the sand as the salvos walked over him, tearing apart his mind. He screamed into the black din. Again. Harder. He couldn’t remember who’d told him to scream. The heavies in Taiwan … this was even worse. The noise was catastrophic. Objects wheeled through the air. Bodies. He squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in the sand. Dirt cascaded over him. He screamed. The cicada chirruped at his collarbone. He was starting to salivate. He pulled the mask tighter and extracted two injectors from his pocket. He jammed one into the Papuan’s round ass as the man lay ahead of him, the other into his own thigh. He kneaded it, distributing the injection.
When the barrage slackened his ears rang so loud it sounded almost quiet. He pushed off the dirt, along with something heavy and soft he didn’t want to look at, and low-crawled up onto the lot again. The Papuan was behind him now, both men low-crawling for all they were worth.
A huge crater, a smoking hole. They skirted it, creeping from abandoned car to car, the wrecks perforated like rural stop signs, gas tanks burning with a sputtering roar, until he spotted what might be a clear line of sight to the bunker. But even on a paved surface, the backblast would highlight their position. And he was still edgy about drones. But they might get off one shot.
He squeezed his eyes shut again, then shook his head to clear them under the mask. He was weeping. Drooling.
The cicadas chirruped, chirruped. Dawn was darkening back into night. His lungs felt like dishrags being wrung out. His mother’s strong hands, wringing out a wet towel. He coughed, trying to get a clear breath. But fluid seemed to be bubbling up nonstop from a thick spring deep in his lungs. His hands shook violently. He dropped the rifle, groped for it, dropped it again. Dug for another autoinjector and jammed it into his other leg.
A CAS drone screamed over. For a second he thought it might be after the bunker, but it screamed on inland, weaving between burning buildings until it suddenly exploded in a gigantic fireball that sputtered with red sparks and spun from the sky in a spiraling pinwheel of white smoke lit from within as if welders were at work. Hector hadn’t seen what had shot it down, but there might be enemy troops over there, ahead.
The darkness receded a little. He clawed down a halfway decent breath. Then another. The tightness was still there, but he could get air past it. For now.
Okay, the bunker … bent double, they rolled behind a white SUV with bullet holes riddling the doors. He tilted a side-view mirror and spotted the bunker. A line-of-sight shot into its firing slit? Even if the Javelin missed, fragments and blast might take out the gunners. If there was a human in there. This could be automatic, or teleoperated. Maybe overhead mode would be better. He positioned the big Papuan behind the rear quarter of the vehicle and got him set up. He checked their rear, slapped the guy’s shoulder, and yelled, “Fire in the hole!”
The Papuan fired. Click. The missile blooped out and his upper body jerked back, absorbing the initial recoil. The projectile lofted twenty yards, then the booster ignited with a white flare and it powered upward.
Rocket-smoke shrouded them, but not for long. Hector grabbed the guy and pulled him up into a trot away, headed for a yellow dumpster on the far side of the lot. As they ran, wheezing, staggering, he glanced back over one shoulder, through the warped fogging lenses. He tensed. The fucker was heading off downrange … no … it reoriented itself a hundred yards up, twisting in the air. At the same moment a long burst from the bunker found the SUV. Projectiles ripped through the passenger compartment, shredding it. Glass blew out, and the car rocked on its springs before exploding into flame.
Above it the missile, still tailed by white fire, straightened, plunged. Exploded in a modest distant thud on the roof of the bunker. Gray smoke and dust mushroomed up. The gun fell silent.
With a cheer, a line of soggy-uniformed, sand-frosted troops in masks and suits surged up off the beach, yelling and firing. They stormed the bunker, swarming to the firing slit and triggering magazine after magazine inside. Tossing in grenades. Hector panted, bent over, elbows on his knees, drooling, wanting to yell at them to stop wasting ammo, but couldn’t force the words out. And he’d lost his fucking terp back somewhere after the parking lot.
The colonel had shown him the division plan earlier. After taking the beach, they had about a klick to the firstphase line, “Bullet,” on the far side of a north–south road and along the crest of a series of defensible rises. Stop there and wait for air support to clear any obstacles, then advance up the road to the reservoir. There they’d link up with the Vietnamese, who were landing on the far side of the main base. Meanwhile the follow-on waves were supposed to be bringing in reinforcements, med teams, ammo.
But looking out to sea, which surged now a sullen and dreary black under a first light dulled by smoke the color of an unsheathed bayonet, he didn’t see any armor. Other than the burning hulks. And without them, how could there be any follow-on waves?
Which meant they were on their own. Stranded. Still, they had to press ahead. He kept looking for officers, but if any had made it ashore they were keeping their heads down. Blending with their troops. Not exactly inspiring leadership. But to be fair, this was the first time these guys had been under fire. Things had been pretty fucking confused on Itbayat too. The first time the Corps had hit a defended beach since Inchon.
But nobody else seemed to be taking charge, so he waved together whoever would follow and led them down a depression with an open culvert at the bottom. They passed two light tanks, enemy 105s with cage armor. Something had burned through one hull, gutting it from the inside. It was still smoking so he snaked his guys around it, giving it a wide berth in case it felt like exploding. The other looked undamaged, but didn’t move. One of the hatches was open. He considered manning it, trying to get it rolling, but he was no tanker. They grenaded it and moved on.
They seemed to sort-of get his hand signals, so he vee’d his fingers to show them: Form wedges. Where the fuck was the private … he sure could use a translator … finally he gave up and just trotted on at point, keeping a sharp eye out for cover and defilade.
The detector had stopped vibrating. He took a knee and tugged the mask off. Coughed, spat, wiped his eyes, and scrubbed dirt over the rubber. Noticing, as he stowed it back into its carrier, that a pack of the disk-drones had picked them up and were escorting them on both flanks. “Cool,” he whispered. A large air support UAV howled over, heading inland, and he felt even better. If only the CHADs had made it ashore … or the armor … but they had Javelins and the Belgian MGs and air and drones. They could still make it.
Close with and destroy the enemy. The gut-level credo the Corps drummed into you from boot camp on.
But where was contact? Where were the fucking Chinese?
The king fucks the queen.
He was still thinking this when ahead of them something … assembled itself, as far as he could tell, from beneath the ground itself. It straightened, grew, lurching erect, like strung-together sticks picked up by a puppeteer, and began striding around their flank on long spiderlike legs. It vented a white plume that blew down toward them. Some of the Indos fumbled their masks back on again. Hector decided to wait. It smelled sulfury. Antitargeting smoke. He crouched in the ruins of a bungalow, peering at the thing. Nada. Just glimpses of something large lurching around out there. The Papuan said some urgent-sounding words, crouched beside him. He’d discarded the empty launcher and picked a rifle up somewhere.
Hector fought the desire to pull the world down on his head and cower. More and more Indos reached him, sprinting in short bursts down into the depression. “Shit,” he muttered. He was gathering them into a perfect target. Whatever that thing was, or if enemy observation spotted them, one mortar shell would take everyone out. He kept trying to signal the Indos out onto the flanks, but they only huddled, as if in shock. Sure. The noise, for one thing. His own ears rang with ghost sirens. But he’d been on a battlefield before.
A taller guy he didn’t recognize rolled over to face him. His dirty face was streaked with sweat. “I am Captain Andarwulan. You are the American.” Hector nodded. “What is that thing like spider?”
“I don’t know.”
“We cannot stay here.”
“Ya, pak,” Hector said. “Do you have comms? Connectivity?”
“Nothing works. Jammed. We have to advance. Do you know where?”
Hector pointed where he figured the axis of advance lay. The watery smoke obliterated all sight, as if they floated in some milky netherworld that didn’t really have sharp edges anywhere. “But if we get out of defilade, then what?”
“Then what?” The guy looked expectant.
“That’s what I don’t know,” he shouted, suddenly impatient with this idiot, who seemed even denser than the usual officer.
Adarwulan hesitated, gripping a pistol. A fucking pistol? Hector thought. Seriously.
At that moment his hearing, sorting through the clamor, caught the unmistakable shriek of barrage rockets being launched.
The officer hurled himself to his feet and charged up the slope, yelling and brandishing the handgun. Hector grabbed for him, but hesitated an instant too long. If the meat robot wanted to self-destruct, let it.
Adarwulan stood atop the depression, shouting at his men, waving them forward.
The rockets screamed down, and he vanished in smoke and noise an
d fire.
This barrage bracketed them, then walked behind them, toward where some of the troops still lay prone, figuring probably they were sheltered. But just from the sound of the projectiles bursting Hector knew even before the detector began chirping. “Gas,” he yelled again. His hands operated independently, jerking the mask out, spreading the thongs, snapping it on again. Around him the Indos were struggling with their protective gear, those who still had it. Those who didn’t crouched as if struck dumb, or scrambled toward the rear. A crackle of fire meant they’d been quickly dealt with.
The lurching thing loomed through the smoke again, it or another like it, and he saw it clear just for a fraction of a second. A sleek, metallic insect-body, teardrop-shaped, with spiky antennas and a dozen bug-eyed oculars spaced around it. Not enough room in there for a man. Autonomous, like the CHADs. A bag or tank slung beneath, from which something was spraying. Needle-thin, only sporadically visible beams shot out from it through the smoke, searching its surroundings. One reached for him and he shrank back, ducking.
When he poked his helmet back up it was striding along on long black legs, many more than it seemed to need, insectile and obscene, the beams fingering the ground around it. Searching for victims. It moved with a dismaying fluid effortlessness even as it jerked from one microdecision to another. Something flashed overhead, spearing downward, but the silvery central body crouched with incredible quickness, hunkering down flat. The missile flashed past and buried itself in the soil before going off, throwing up clods of dirt. Only adding to the din of battle.
As the spider erected itself again Hector got his optic sight on it. He took the slack out of the trigger. But as if sensing the threat, it suddenly wheeled and stalked off, submerging, once more, into the smoke.
Hector stabbed at his cell again but got nowhere. It was all in Indonesian. He was going by guess and topo contours, trying to figure out where the phase line was. A road across their front. Hit that, dig in, wait for reinforcements. Maybe like what they’d done in Korea. Halt, sucker the enemy in, wait for the counterattack. Cut them to pieces with air and drones and arty. Maybe.