When the Zodarks looked to be about a kilometer from their positions, Royce turned to his squad leader. “Deploy the Guardians,” he ordered. Their newest platoon weapons were small suicide drones about the size of a fist. A single soldier would program in what the Guardians should attack and then release them into the air via a launch tube. Each launch tube contained ten drones, so they didn’t need to blow their entire complement of Guardians when they only needed a handful.
The Guardians were nasty little buggers. They used a sophisticated facial recognition software to identify their prey and then zoom in to attack them. When the suicide drones hit a meter away from their intended target, they would either shoot a single projectile into the enemy’s head or detonate a small explosive device, spattering the target with shrapnel. With several hundred Zodarks preparing to assault their position, Royce ordered all sixty of their Guardians launched. He wanted them in place for the coming battle.
Royce heard the familiar sound of a transport craft landing and turned to look behind him. Exiting the rear ramp were eight of the Republic Army mech fighters. Special Forces seldom ever fought with these big clunky beasts. They were meant for large pitched battles. Come to think of it, this was shaping up to be a very heavy fight, so maybe it was a good thing the higher-ups had sent some down to help him.
A platoon of regular RA soldiers joined the eight mechanical beasts. Their platoon leader trudged up to him. “Sir, I was ordered to report to you. Where would you like my men and our mechs to deploy?”
Nodding in acknowledgment, Royce told the lieutenant where to deploy his mechs and where to have his soldiers filter in to support his own positions.
Moments after the reinforcements arrived, Royce’s platoon sergeant shouted, “Here they come! They must have completed their war dance, or whatever it was they’ve been doing for the last ten minutes.”
In the distance, Royce saw the mob of Zodarks sprinting out of the tree line, full of bloodlust and rushing toward Royce’s hurriedly prepared positions. The horde was three hundred meters to their front with only a smattering of trees, bushes, and other underbrush between the two opposing forces. It wasn’t a lot of cover for the enemy to hide behind. Still, the Zodarks weren’t exactly known for using cover to assist them in their charges. They seemed to just bum rush an opponent and hope their howling and screaming would scare the defenders into making mistakes.
Had this been the first time Royce and his operators had fought a Zodark, their reckless charge and horrendous screams just might have caused them to break ranks and run, but this was now the seventh time they’d fought these beasts, so he was becoming adept at dealing with their tactics.
On the digital map on his HUD, Royce watched the enemy continue to close the distance. They were now using their blasters, sending brilliant streaks of light at his ranks. Some of the shots would hit a tree and blow a chunk off or hit a stone and shatter it. Some of the shots unfortunately met their mark on one of the RA soldiers, often killing them.
Royce’s forces started firing, sending their magrail rounds back at the enemy. “A little closer, a little closer,” Royce mumbled to himself.
Royce linked himself with Adam and sent the message. The toasters needed to launch their attack now. He monitored the map on his HUD as the two flanking groups of toasters rose to begin their assault. They closed the distance rapidly, cutting off the Zodarks’ path of retreat.
Returning his gaze to what was going on in front of him, Royce realized he probably hadn’t watched what was going on as carefully as he should have. The first rank of Zodarks was now less than thirty meters from his position. His men and the toasters were doing their best to cut them down, but they weren’t thinning their ranks fast enough.
Lifting his rifle to his shoulder, Royce fired several aimed shots at the Zodark nearest him. He hit the beast several times in the chest, causing him to stumble and fall to the ground, dead in his tracks.
To his right, Royce heard more screaming. He turned to see what was going on and saw four Zodarks jump into the fighting position two of his Deltas had dug. One of the Zodarks plunged one of its two shortswords into one of the Delta’s guts and slashed him wide open. The man’s bowels spilled out of his ripped-open abdomen. With the second blade, the Zodark severed the man’s head.
It then turned and looked right at Royce, hatred and savagery in its eyes. It screamed that telltale horrible shriek and charged right for him, blood still dripping from its shortswords.
Royce swung his rifle to the right and fired two quick shots, hitting the Zodark once in the chest and a second time in the face. The beast went down, hard. But his remaining friends were still in the fight.
Another Delta in that fighting position killed the Zodark he was grappling with and then took a blade to the side of the third Zodark’s rib cage. Royce fired a single shot from his rifle and nailed the beast right in the head, ripping his skull clean off his body.
“Look out, Lieutenant!” yelled one of Royce’s soldiers.
Instinctively falling to one knee as he turned to his left, Royce saw a Zodark charging right at him, two menacing-looking shortswords in his hands. Anchoring his right foot and lowering his left shoulder, Royce braced for the impact that was fractions of a second away.
As the Zodark’s massive ten-foot body slammed into Royce’s, he used the forward momentum of the big beast and his exoskeleton combat suit’s added strength and lifted the Zodark up and over his shoulders. Royce threw the beast a few feet through the air and then swirled around to meet him head-on.
The enemy was now in too close to keep using the magrail on his rifle. Royce reached for his four-inch knife and charged the Zodark as he was clambering to his feet. Hitting the beast hard with his shoulder, Royce lunged his knife into the creature’s midsection and then twisted it as he pulled up with all the strength he could muster.
The Zodark howled in agonizing pain as one of his four arms swung down hard, hitting Royce across his right shoulder with a force Royce didn’t think was possible. He heard an audible crack, and a fiery string of pain flooded his brain. He knew the beast had either broken his collarbone or shoulder. In either case, Royce was in trouble.
Using his neurolink, Royce told his combat suit to inject him with a nerve block, a shot of adrenaline, and a shot of nanites to stop any internal bleeding. In fractions of a second, the pain completely disappeared. The adrenaline gave him the energy needed to thrust his knife right back into the Zodark’s chest. This time he twisted it first to the right, then to the left to kill the big blue beast. The Zodark grunted and then collapsed to the ground.
Covered in bluish gore, Royce turned to see a wounded Delta a few feet away, resting against the side of a tree. Moving towards the man, Royce reached for the first aid pouch on the side of the Delta’s chest rig. He grabbed it and pulled out the first nanite auto-injector. “This might hurt,” he told the wounded man.
The Delta was losing a lot of blood from the wound to his side. Royce jabbed him with the nanite injector, sending ten times the number of nanites into his body as the regular implants in their combat suits.
While Royce waited for the tiny medical devices to do their trick, he reached for his rifle that was still hanging from the side of his suit and looked for a target.
Over to his right, Royce saw one of the RA’s mech units tearing the Zodarks apart. The fifty-caliber magrail gun was like a scythe. Every time the soldier inside would sweep it right or left, it cut down a vast swath of enemy soldiers as they advanced. Then to his horror, two Zodarks managed to flank the killing machine and pounced on the mech’s back. One of the Zodarks used two of its four hands to pound on the glass front of the machine the operator used to see out. The beast couldn’t break through the bulletproof glass. The operator inside was trying to toss the beast off, but this also meant it wasn’t using its primary weapons to keep attacking the enemy that was on the verge of overwhelming them.
One of the Zodarks placed an explosive dev
ice in the rear of the mech, and then they both jumped off. Seconds later, the mech blew apart, killing the operator inside. A swarm of Zodarks rushed forward now that the one obstacle between them and their human prey had been eliminated.
GW, if you have some air support for us, now would be a good time for it, Royce said over his neurolink to their command element back on the ship.
Grabbing for his rifle again, Royce saw a pair of Zodarks ripping one of the toasters apart. He took aim and fired several shots, hitting them both. The terminator was done, though; both of its mechanical arms had been sheared off by the Zodarks shortswords. They were still glowing red as they sat there on the ground.
Royce wanted to look at his HUD and figure out how the overall battle was doing, but he couldn’t spare even a few seconds. The enemy was in their ranks. The Zodarks were all over the place, and it was now a life-or-death fight.
Then he heard the very welcome sound of one of their VTOL ground attack craft or Reapers. The Reaper swooped in and unleashed a torrent of anti-personnel rockets into the center of the Zodarks, exploding amongst them. Zodark bodies were tossed about by the series of explosions ripping through their ranks.
The armored bird then flew in low and slow over Royce’s men as its nose gun and two side gunners opened up on the enemy. The roaring sound of propellent-fired weapons was something Royce never got tired of hearing.
The Reapers were a cross between twenty-first-century American V-22 Ospreys and Apache attack helicopters. They had a single tiltrotor on each side sheathed in an armored ring for protection. They boasted a 20mm chin gun and two-door gunners who operated the M134 miniguns. Unlike the older twenty-first-century weapons, these used a liquid propellant, which allowed the aircraft to carry a lot more ammo on board.
The Reapers also packed two rocket pods on either side of the body, each carrying thirty-six 60mm anti-materiel rockets. In case they ran into any air or armored threats, they carried twelve dual-use missiles. The missiles could be used against aircraft or tanks and had a range of twenty kilometers. They could also carry eight passengers behind the door gunners.
“Woohoo!” shouted several RASs and Deltas—not one but four Reapers now swooped in overtop of their positions.
The attack aircraft spat out rockets and machine-gun fire on the remaining Zodarks, breaking up their attacks before they could overrun them.
A handful of Zodarks fired their blasters at the Reapers. A couple of their shots bounced off the Reapers’ armor. Then a couple of the incoming blasts hit one of the Reapers’ side rotors. A few more rounds hit that section of the VTOL and caused the entire sheathed rotor section to blow up. With half its wing and fifty percent of its lift capability gone, the Reaper spun out of control and tumbled to the ground. The aircraft landed with a hard thud, sending a plume of black smoke into the sky.
Seeing the aircraft go down reminded Royce that this adversary wouldn’t give up; they’d fight on even when they should throw in the towel. Just a few seconds ago, their air support had been slaughtering them. That had changed in the blink of an eye when the Zodarks had turned their blasters and anti-air missiles on them. The remaining Reapers accelerated quickly and rose in altitude to get out of range. From a much higher position, they circled and fired down into the enemy positions.
That lasted for all of a minute before the Zodarks fired off a missile at one of the VTOLs. The aircraft being targeted spat out flares and dove for cover to try to throw the missile off. The Zodark missile whipped past the countermeasures and slammed right into the Reaper, blowing it completely apart. Wreckage fell to the ground, still smoking and burning.
The last two Reapers zoomed away to return to the GW.
Looking at the battle in front of him. Royce watched the toasters he’d been skeptical of earlier throw themselves right into the middle of the Zodark positions. The two platoons’ worth of terminators were locked in hand-to-hand combat.
Those killing machines are relentless; that’s for damn sure, Royce thought as he raised his rifle to his shoulder and did his best to snipe at a few of the Zodarks.
Royce knew he needed to get back to managing the battle. He was, after all, the ground commander. But part of him was drawn to be in the thick of the fight. To be locked in mortal combat with the enemy was an adrenaline rush and thrill nothing could replace.
Royce’s left shoulder still wasn’t fully functioning, despite the nanite injection. He had limited use of it. It was mostly his combat suit that was enabling him to use it at all.
Once Royce had made sure his immediate surroundings were as safe as they were going to get, he pulled up the HUD in his helmet and looked at the overall situation. On his right flank, the Zodarks were being wiped out. That reinforcement of toasters just before the battle started had saved their bacon. The left flank was still iffy; the toasters were still fighting, but they’d lost more than half their numbers. Now the center—that was the section of the line that concerned Royce the most. Five of his ten Deltas displayed as KIA, while the other five, including himself were all injured.
The platoon of RA soldiers had also taken a beating, with nearly half their platoon wiped out. All four of the mechs the RA had brought were dead. The Zodarks had made taking them out a real priority once the battle had started. Royce knew they couldn’t keep fighting unless they got reinforcements, and reinforcements from the GW weren’t an option—at least not in time to make a difference.
Adam, order your squad attacking the Zodark rear position to leave and reinforce the left flank. How copy? Royce ordered over their neurolink.
Lieutenant Royce, if I do that, the Zodarks will escape to fight another day. We should keep them trapped and finish them off right here, Adam in responded.
Adam, this is an order. You are to pull your squad blocking the Zodarks’ retreat. Acknowledge.
Acknowledging order. Withdrawing the second squad now.
When the toasters broke ranks and ran to the left flank, the Zodarks seized the opportunity to extricate themselves from the battle. They filed out of the fight and retreated deeper into the woods, away from the human forces. In five minutes, the last of the Zodarks had withdrawn.
When they were gone, Royce had the toasters fall back to his position. He then called for a medical transport to pick up his wounded and dead. He wanted to get them off the moon and back to the ship ASAP.
When the first medical shuttle arrived, it offloaded another platoon of RA soldiers and two more mechs. The soldiers looked all gung-ho and ready to fight until they saw the ground littered with dead Zodarks and the bodies of their comrades.
Then a larger transport landed, bringing with it additional reinforcements. It offloaded eighty additional C100s, fresh from the mothership in orbit. Once they linked up with Adam, the toaster in charge would share their collective knowledge of the last couple of days of battle. The newly arrived toasters would absorb the information and work it into their programming to benefit from the experience of the previous batch.
One of the men who got off the transport walked up to Lieutenant Royce. It was Colonel Hackworth.
Nodding as he approached, Royce asked, “Sir, how can I help you?”
Hackworth smirked as he surveyed the carnage all around them. “I’m here to relieve you, Lieutenant. Hell of a job—you fought well. Actually, you fought better than I thought your group could have, but you, along with everyone in your squad, are injured. Your squad is relieved and will head back to the GW to get fixed up. I’ll stay down here with a couple of toaster platoons and a platoon of RA pukes to clean things up and finish the job. You’ve earned your pay. Go get patched up.” The colonel motioned with his head for Royce to get on the shuttle.
Since he was wincing at any slight movement, Royce knew his shoulder needed a permanent fix, not a short-term patch. “Thank you, sir. Good hunting.”
Royce ordered the rest of his squad to get on board. Their fight was over. Now it was time to get fixed up and say a few words about their comrad
es that had died on Pishon.
*******
Lying on the bed in the medical bay of the George Washington, Lieutenant Brian Royce was glad he was getting his shoulder fixed. The doctor said a couple more days and the nanites should have his collarbone fully healed along with the torn tendons and muscles. He’d be back to normal in no time flat.
The downtime in the medbay gave Royce some much-needed time to catch up on paperwork. God knew the military would collapse if it didn’t have its i’s dotted and its t’s crossed. With sadness, Royce looked over the roster of soldiers needing enlisted performance reports or EPRs, physical fitness tests, or other mandated appointments. Nearly a quarter of the names on the lists were no longer with them. They had died on Pishon.
We’ve lost so many people since we first discovered New Eden, he thought, feeling a heaviness in his chest. Half of my buddies have died in this bloody war…
Royce tried his best to maintain a strong façade. He was an officer now, in charge of a platoon of Special Forces soldiers. It was his job to fight the enemy and keep as many of his people alive as possible. He missed being a sergeant. Back then, his job had revolved around killing the enemy. Giving orders that he knew would likely get some of his people killed unnerved him. For the life of him, Royce couldn’t understand how a general—or a ship captain, for that matter—could make so many decisions that could lead to the deaths of their subordinates or even the loss of their ship.
Maybe I’m not cut out for a command position, he thought.
Snapping himself out of those dark thoughts, Lieutenant Royce resumed his paperwork. He opened up the EPR for his platoon sergeant, Master Sergeant Joe Tanner. Tanner was an outstanding NCO, a true leader. Royce wrote up the bullet points that would help him make his next promotion.
Into the Battle Page 24