by Isaac Hooke
DVs touched down all around us, unloading more men. The Marines raced toward the amtracs in controlled, purposeful units. None of the enemy Avengers had followed us down—the fighters weren’t built for atmospheric entry.
Two square-cargoed Builder shuttles landed to my left. Once we secured the designated spot outside Shangde City, the Builders would deploy and construct a forward operating base.
Skullcracker held out a gloved hand as he jogged. “Rad levels are fairly high. Probably have to juice up when we get back.”
If we got back.
“Please tell me this place looked like this two months ago,” Bender said.
“It didn’t,” Facehopper said from his position at point. “The moon used to be called ‘Fragrant Meadow.’ ”
The bleak, shale-covered landscape was the furthest thing from a fragrant meadow you could get. Above, the sky was dim, just as if it were the onset of twilight on Earth, though the pinprick dot of the sun was high in the sky. Tau Ceti had a G-class star, just like Sol, but because of its lower mass, size, and surface temperature, it had roughly half the illumination. The off-color rays cast everything in a pale hue, giving the planet’s surface the look of a graveyard of crushed and blackened bone.
In the distance, the immense Skull Ship ate up the sky like some ominous cloud, sheathing the landscape from the bottom of the horizon to the utmost heavens.
Around it, the gas giant consumed the rest of the sky. The planet, which dwarfed even the Skull Ship, made me feel quite insignificant. Those swirling swaths of blue and white were very much like the strokes of a paintbrush, and offered a smooth, natural beauty that was in sharp contrast to the ugly, alien design of the Skull Ship.
Nowhere up there could I discern the shapes of the battling fleet in orbit. They would be too far, and too small, to be visible. I did see closer objects streaking through the sky however, and I knew those were the ATLAS 5s and the booster rocket payloads the mechs needed to return.
A quick glance at the HUD map told me one-third of the ground assets and troops were SK. All our equipment had to be reprogrammed to tag them as friendlies: green dots, not red. I didn’t trust them, but their ships had fought alongside our own in orbit so I guess they were on our side.
For now.
The remaining ground assets were FI and UC. Humanity’s finest specimens, as far as I was concerned. Especially after surviving a harrowing drop like that.
Robot support troops fanned out ahead of us, including the humanoid Centurions and their Praetor leaders, the Equestrian automated tanks, and the flying Raptor drones. There were also countless Hover Squad Support System (HS3) drones. The metallic, basketball-sized spheres hovered among the units in such perverse quantities that everywhere I looked I saw one.
“It’s like a city of robots,” Tahoe complained. “Am I the only one who has a bad feeling about this?”
“Command believes the benefits of the robots far outweigh the potential harm, mate,” Facehopper said.
“And what do you believe?”
Facehopper glanced at him over his shoulder. “If they’d asked me, which they didn’t, I’d have told them to take their robots and melt them down at the nearest ammunitions plant. We could always use the spare ammo. What we can’t use is robots turning on us in the middle of battle.”
Objects smashed into the ground some distance from the rest of the convoy, sending up plumes of black dust. From the plumes walked the massive forms of ATLAS 5s. There were roughly ten of us for every one of them. Normally I’d be feeling pretty invincible with them at my side, but today I felt only dread.
So far, there was no sign of enemy air support. Intel had told us to expect some possessed Raptors, which was why our own air support fanned ahead at this very moment.
Facehopper halted beside the open ramp of our designated amtrac and motioned the rest of us inside. The tall treads reached just over my head, but the remainder of the vehicle wasn’t much taller. There were turrets on top for two gunners, shielded by black-tinted TAGS (Transparent Armor Gun Shields).
I rushed inside and sat down, closing the buckle, which had big grips to make for easier handling via jumpsuit gloves.
“The order is coming down the line,” Facehopper said over the comm. “Open up your masks and don your aReal visors. Air’s still breathable. No indication of viral toxins or other bioweapons.”
“Still breathable?” Bender said. The robot support troops he operated would be on autopilot right now, moving into position on their own. “What are you talking about? I thought the probes detected elevated levels of carbon monoxide and chlorine? No indications of toxins my ass.”
“There are only trace amounts present here,” Facehopper said. “Save your oxygen until you really need it.”
I opened my face mask. The polycarbonate and aluminum oxynitride lens wouldn’t provide much protection against modern armor-piercers anyway.
I lowered my aReal visor. With my Implant offline, I couldn’t uptick the power of my exoskeleton. Even so, before I’d deactivated the Implant I’d boosted the output of my suit to the max. That meant while I now had the strength of three men, the drain on my jumpsuit battery was also three times as great. Forget about saving oxygen—I would run out of suit power long before I ran out of oxygen.
The amtrac started up and proceeded across the black rock with the rest of the convoy. On my HUD map, I could see the ATLAS mechs interspersed among the vehicles, along with the Centurions, Equestrians, and HS3s. Several remote-controlled M1A5 Abrams tanks brought up the rear.
Sitting there, waiting for the true battle to begin, I couldn’t help but ponder the fate of the fleet in orbit. If all the allied vessels were disabled or destroyed, there was no going home, not for any of us.
“Don’t know why they made us open up our face masks,” Bender said, drawing me out of my ruminations. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Smells like FAN in here.” Feet, Ass, and Nuts.
“You think this is bad?” one of the Marines said. “You Meat Eaters should try rooming in the barracks with us sometime. Brings new meaning to the phrase shit hits the FAN.”
I leaned back, resting my head against the bulkhead.
“Stop that,” Tahoe said, looking right at me. He was clearly annoyed.
“What?” The moment I opened my mouth I knew exactly what he was talking about. My foot was fidgeting.
With effort I stilled the muscles.
I glanced at the faces of the men who sat in the amtrac with me. My brothers.
Would all of these men survive this day?
Would I?
I listened to the relentless hum of the engine, and the milling sound as the heavy treads of the vehicle ground across the black rock. The terrain was getting bumpier, I thought. I glanced at the map. The city wasn’t far ahead. Maybe ten klicks.
“Holy shit, man,” one of the Marines said into the tense silence. “Just received word, we’ve lost contact with the fleet.”
“You shouldn’t be broadcasting that information, private,” Facehopper said. “We have a mission to perform. We don’t need unnecessary distractions.”
“Unnecessary distractions?” the Marine said. “I’d say it’s necessary, man. Without the fleet, there’s no going home.”
Tahoe spoke up. “They’ve probably simply moved out of comm distance. The Skull Ship messes with the range of our InterPlaNet nodes.”
I hoped he was right, because the alternative was the destruction or capture of the fleet. But I couldn’t think about that now, because like Facehopper had said, I had a mission to focus on.
“Hang tight!” came the frantic voice of the driver.
The amtrac slammed to a halt, swinging sideways.
On the HUD map, I saw the vehicles around us swerving wildly. They were struggling to slow down and avoid hitting each other—indeed, the trailing amtrac a
lmost smashed into us.
“What’s going on?” one of the Marines said when all the vehicles had stopped. “We’re still three klicks from the city.”
Facehopper held up a hand, calling for silence. When he looked up, his expression was dark. “A sinkhole has opened up at the front. We’ve lost three amtracs.”
I glanced at my HUD map. At the head of the bunched convoy, red dots started to appear in a circular pattern. First only a few. Then tens. Hundreds.
“Uh, Facehopper?” Skullcracker said.
“Form a defensive front on the amtrac.” Facehopper flipped the vehicle’s manual release latch, and the back ramp fell open. “Deploy!”
I followed Facehopper and Bender outside. We formed up in front of the amtrac along with the rest of the MOTHs and the Marines. Tahoe was right beside me.
Ahead, past the jumble of vehicles, ATLAS-sized crabs were assaulting the front of the convoy. I lifted my rifle and was about to engage, when from behind the crabs a huge tower of flesh launched heavenward.
It was a slug. One of the superbehemoths. The size of a dreadnought starship. Its skin was white hot, and steam rose from its flanks. “Burrowing” mode, as I called it.
The wall of flesh just kept coming and coming, with no end in sight. It was like a skyscraper rising from the depths of hell. The crabs were drawn upward with it, dragged along by the umbilicals that connected them to the slug.
Some of the troops and tanks were firing at the massive slug, launching missiles and grenades, to no apparent effect.
Higher and higher the behemoth rose until its form blotted out the sun and cast a shadow over the entire convoy.
Its upward motion finally ceased. The massive slug hung ponderously for a few moments as gravity nullified its momentum.
Instinctively, all weapons fire from the convoy ceased, as if we were all holding our collective breaths. Even the robots stopped firing.
Gravity kicked in, and the behemoth started to fall.
Sideways.
Toward the convoy.
Some of the amtracs in its path steered away frantically, slamming through the maze of halted vehicles. Other drivers and occupants wisely abandoned their amtracs and used their jetpacks to get the hell out of the way as that tower of flesh came tumbling down.
“Move, move, move!” Facehopper said.
I activated my jumpjets in a series of evasive bursts.
I was roughly thirty meters to the right when the superbehemoth collided with the surface. The shockwave from the impact literally knocked me to the ground.
I clambered upright and glanced over my shoulder, looking for Tahoe, my “buddy” for the mission. He’d landed just a few meters to my left.
The massive slug had crashed right down the middle of the convoy, separating us from the SK units on the opposite side and taking out a good portion of the amtracs in the process. Most of the ATLAS mechs and other jetpack-enabled ground units, robots and humans alike, on our side seemed to have emerged unscathed.
The alien behemoth lifted its head and swung it ponderously from side to side, howling. The shriek was earsplitting, and I found myself flinching.
I wasn’t the only one.
“Damn,” Bender said. “Someone’s got PMS this morning.”
The crabs launched from its white-hot skin, leaping like parachutists as the thin cords that connected them to the host unwound. The black, multiheaded beasts were as big as ATLAS 5s, and their bodies were translucent so that I could see their hell-black hearts beating within.
I set my rifle to full automatic mode, and fired at the cords, which were quite thick on these crabs—sometimes the size of tree trunks. It took a few bursts to cut each one, but it was worth it because every severed cord killed a crab. The alternative was to fire at the crabs themselves, in the spot where the eyestalks joined the carapaces, which was tricky given the speed and size of the creatures.
“Get back, people!” Facehopper roared. “Air strike!”
Hellfires slammed into the slug from above as the Raptors homed in.
None of us had time to clear out, and the shockwave from the blast threw us far back.
A shuttle roared past, dropping a load of Napalm D along the slug’s entire upper surface. The adhesive flames coated the behemoth’s skin, burning intensely, but the thing seemed unconcerned. The Napalm would have been far more effective against the crabs, but the shuttle couldn’t drop it on them, not while the creatures swarmed our ranks.
Of course, others around me had no reason not to release their own local incendiaries against the crabs. Unfortunately, the things merely became frantic when the sticky flames engulfed them, and in their rampaging ended up rubbing the jellied gasoline onto amtracs and even mechs, spreading the flames and basically using our own incendiaries against us. Luckily, severing the cord would instantly drop a thusly afflicted crab, putting it out of its misery.
A bunch of human-controlled M1A5 Abrams tanks, UC and Franco-Italian models, rolled past me. The tanks formed a defensive half circle around the behemoth’s right flank and unleashed hell, aiming into the wounds caused by the hellfires. The gunners assigned to the turrets of the surviving amtracs joined in, concentrating fire on the smaller crabs, protecting the tanks.
From where I stood with my unit on the far flank of the slug, I could see huge black spots marring the previously unspoiled white skin. Those spots gushed a thick, dark blood. On the upper flanks, the Napalm still burned brightly.
“Bender, Equestrians are requested in a support capacity,” Facehopper said.
“On it.”
The Equestrians, the AI-driven tanks drone operators like Bender babysat, came forward and joined the Abrams, firing in unison at the superbehemoth. Normally the robot support troops would have been sent ahead first, but because of the unexpected nature of the attack, the convoy hadn’t been properly deployed. If I was in charge of the convoy, I would have sent the Equestrians to scout far ahead of us. But what did I know? I was just a grunt.
I glanced at Bender. I knew he was observing the battlefield on a higher plane beneath that visor of his, directing the robots under his command like the pieces of a life-or-death gameboard. He probably had at least three of the twenty Equestrians with us under his direct control, not to mention numerous Centurions and Praetors.
“Forward, people!” Facehopper said. “Protect the tanks from the Worker crabs. Aim for the cords.”
My platoon mates and I rushed forward with the Marines, taking cover behind one of the amtracs about three ranks from the front. The vehicle was Franco-Italian, judging from the paint.
I fired above the horde of swinging mandibles and pincers with my rifle, aiming once again at the tree-trunk-sized cords.
Tahoe had great success beside me with his heavy gun, and he mowed down those cords just as well as the gunners in the turrets and the ATLAS mechs. All that gunfire going off around me sounded like fireworks.
The massive slug was taking a battering from the tanks, and started to phase out from existence—one of its defense mechanisms. The tanks had to stop firing, lest they take out some of the SK friendlies on the other side in the crossfire. Indeed, some of the units on both sides took shelling before the allied parties realized what was happening.
The crabs connected to the main body didn’t phase out with the host slug, and kept up their relentless assault.
Most of the tanks focused their attention on the crabs now, switching to Gatlings.
I threw a grenade, and got a crab, sending its pieces flying in three directions. Then I mowed down a cord.
A crab came up behind our amtrac, but Tahoe was there, drilling its underside with his heavy gun. The thing backed away, and I fired at its cord. The stringy organic umbilical split open, spewing black blood over the amtrac, and the crab keeled over.
The superslug began to fade back in. I
t had slithered forward during its absence from this universe, and it reappeared now over some of the Abrams and amtracs, consuming said vehicles. That was good, I thought, remembering when I myself had plunged inside one of the smaller slugs while it was still fading into existence—I’d tunneled my way out in a stream of gore, killing it.
Except this time all that happened was we lost several of our Abrams, Equestrians, and amtracs. The creature was too huge for the engulfed tanks to make much of a difference.
The flanks of the behemoth towered roughly ten meters above me. Thanks to the interdimensional shift, the Napalm D flames on the creature’s upper flank had gone out entirely, when the fire should have lasted at least another ten minutes.
The men around me unleashed rockets and launched grenades. I decided now was as good a time as any to put the Carl Gustav I’d brought along to use. Officially known as the M7 Multi-Role Anti-armor Anti-tank Weapon System, those recoilless rifles packed a mighty powerful punch.
I swung the recoilless rifle down and fired it. I manually loaded the next two rounds, firing them off in succession.
The behemoth was almost completely black now, from all the wounds. Yet it fought on.
I almost respected the thing for its fighting spirit, its refusal to give up.
Almost.
Bullets started to come in at me from the far right, closer to the sinkhole. At first I thought the attack was accidental cross fire, because when I glanced that way, I saw a bunch of ATLAS 5s and Centurions outlined in friendly green. But when those units kept advancing and firing into our ranks, I realized the truth.
They were possessed.
“Take cover!” Facehopper said.
I sheltered on the far side of the amtrac, away from the incoming bullets, along with the rest of the unit. I quickly scanned the black surface around me, searching for any Phants in liquid form, but I didn’t see any.
For the most part I’d mentally blocked out the firework-like noises of the gunfire around me, but I knew something was wrong, sound-wise. I realized what it was: the gun turrets on the amtrac we sheltered behind weren’t firing.