“All vehicles!” roared Greenhill into the comm. “We are exiting the AO. Follow me!”
“Where we goin’, Sarge?” asked Curts.
“Gun it now, Private!”
Curts didn’t hesitate, and a second later the MTAV was racing away from the park. Half a block down, Greenhill told the driver to cut hard for a narrow side street. The top-heavy MTAV went up on three of its six ceramic wheels and barely threaded the narrow alley.
Greenhill switched on the vehicle’s rear camera and tried to make out how much of the unit was following. He could see three other MTAVs before his view was blocked by the rest of the platoon.
“Kill it!” he shouted.
The MTAV idled in place as more of the platoon followed inside the alley. The high buildings on either side would provide a sort of baffle against the drones, forcing them to fly in from fixed entry points—if they pursued at all.
“This can’t be it, can it?” Greenhill asked his driver.
“Looks like everyone’s dead or hunkered inside the alley,” answered Curts. “At least in here, them drones can’t maneuver well.”
That was true enough. Hitting the right panel would be much more difficult.
“Three-Six,” Command announced over the comm. “Proceed three blocks west. The 931st Artillery needs an assist.”
“Here we go,” Greenhill muttered, resisting the urge to shake his head. Curts was staring at him like he hoped the sergeant would tell him they were staying put in the alley.
But that’s not what you did when your brothers needed help.
“You heard ’em, Curts. Let’s roll.”
12
Colonel Marks linked up with his sergeant major once the impromptu meeting with Admiral Sulla came to an end. The sergeant major’s face told Marks that things had gone to hell, all without saying a word.
“Details,” Marks ordered.
“It was an anti-personnel strike, sir,” replied Andres. “We got mass casualties in Charlie and Bravo. Delta was almost no good after the landing. So that leaves us with most of Headquarters. Here’s what we show from the feeds.”
Colonel Marks watched as images of the drones came in quickly, swarming away from the old colony ship and striking as many of the exposed as they could find. Those in vehicles, or under cover, had survived for the most part. But those in the open had been torn to pieces by the high-speed deadly drones.
The colonel looked at his unit roster display. The battle board’s readouts showed him a lot of needless waste. A lot of dead who’d never needed to die in the first place so that a bad plan could be tested.
He nodded to himself.
He would let them go as far as they could. But he’d brought something along to make sure the job got done in the end.
“We still go to hit the LOD in thirty minutes, sir?” Andres asked.
Marks set his jaw. That idiot Ogilvie still wanted everyone to cross the Line of Departure in thirty minutes. But that wasn’t something he could communicate down the chain of command.
“Affirmative, Sergeant Major,” said Marks.
“And we’re on foot, right?” asked the sergeant major, like that was the worst idea in the world after what had just happened. “No crawlers.”
“Roger that. We pick up a company of Espanian Sentinels and follow the right flank in.”
Well…” said Andres slowly. Thinking things over. “I don’t like it, sir. I mean havin’ them big ol’ Sentinels and their main guns is nice if we meet some more armor, but another drone strike and we gotta go for cover real quick like. That’s fine and all if we in the city itself, but if we get caught out in the open, we’re gonna lose a lot of my boys.”
“I agree, Sergeant Major,” said the colonel. “So we’ll do our best to stick near cover as we move. I need you to cannibalize the surviving companies. Move everyone into a new combat team I’m setting up now. Should be on your screen.”
Andres tapped through some screens slowly. Tech was not his strong point. “This it, sir… Uh… Strike Team Ranger.”
“Affirmative, Sergeant Major. That’ll be our designator going forward.”
13
Three-Six Armored Cavalry (Fast Attack)
Twenty-Second Street and Zonda Road
What remained of the 931st Artillery wasn’t much. Most of the guns had been disabled during the Savage drone strike. The Three-Six Cav, in convoy now with seven vehicles left from the original recon force, rolled up on what had been the 931st’s established perimeter around a grand fountain at a massive intersection just outside the downtown financial district.
After the bad drop, the 931st’s commander had ordered the unit to deploy its massive counter battery guns until the next bugout. The gun bunnies, Sergeant Greenhill’s term for artillerymen, had deployed the automated guns and set up the command interface fire request network.
A few sentries were dispatched in teams to set up defensive heavy machine-gun positions guarding the access points into the main square where the massive guns were slowly unfolding skyward. When the drone swarm swept through the streets, it slaughtered the sentries in one pass. Seconds later the teams setting up the main guns were similarly dispatched, and then the drones, having identified the military equipment, set about to ramming themselves into the guns in order to disable the field pieces. As they slammed their ceramic explosive-laden bodies into the fire control comps, they knocked out some of the big guns. Barrel strikes didn’t bother the behemoths in the least, but the destroyed targeting computers effectively killed the weapons. Operationally speaking.
Once the remains of the cav troop showed up, Greenhill ordered a dismount and a check for survivors, though he didn’t have high hopes. This once-ordinary intersection, typical of many such in all the colony worlds, was littered with dead bodies.
At the center of all the carnage was the fountain that commemorated the colony’s founding. A small stone ship rose from the hands of various long-dead people who seemed to hold it upward toward the stars. If the city’s water and power had been on, the fountaining jets of water would have looked like exhaust thrust.
Or something along those lines, thought Greenhill absently as he stared at all the death and waste and tried to figure out where to begin. His job, as a cav scout, was to find the enemy so that the enemy could be destroyed. Not find his own dead people.
“Schoolhouse, this is Four-One,” he said once he’d dialed into the CIC intel comm channel. “We got total unit kill on the Three-Nine-One. Guns most likely ineffective.”
Then from over near one of the big guns, one of the cav troopers shouted, “We got one!”
Apparently someone had survived.
14
Team Ranger
Crossing the Line of Departure
The colonel was forward with the lead elements of the new team, and Sergeant Major Andres was at the rear. The surviving infantrymen of the Twenty-Fifth had formed into two columns on opposite sides of the roadway they’d been assigned as their lane for the coming assault into the Savage-held portions of the city. New elements, platoons, fire teams, and special teams had been broken down and filled. Team Ranger was slightly under company strength, but it was heavily armed, carrying as much as the men could manage, loaded for bear.
Marks gave one order over the comm before they crossed the line of departure: to shoot, move, and communicate as a team. Kill everything in their way with extreme and maximum violence, and protect the massive Espanian Sentinel tanks they would pick up ten blocks forward.
The route through the business district, along the main body of Strike Force Warhammer’s right flank, would take them into an industrialized neighborhood called the Hopps, where the Espanian armor had been dropped by a heavy lifter squadron. That armor wouldn’t move until it had infantry support, so of course Ogilvie had sent the disrespectful Colonel Marks off to shepherd
the armor into the game.
Fine, the colonel had thought. What he really wanted to do was turn the whole place into a glass parking lot, but in lieu of that, the Espanian armor could do a lot of damage if it was left in peace to operate. His infantry could provide that service.
“Sir,” said Maydoon, the LT from Delta who’d held the forward position and was now acting as the colonel’s executive officer. Marks had selected the kid because he was the most professional officer the colonel had met since taking charge of the unit—and because there was every chance Marks himself was going to get killed advancing against the colony ship. If so, well, this kid was a killer, and a capable leader, and maybe he’d get the job done instead.
Getting the job done was all the colonel cared about.
And that job was killing Savages, regardless of what the politicians said.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“I’m talking with the air boss team and we’re low on priority for tasking.”
The colonel gave him an enigmatic look.
Maydoon didn’t miss a beat. “I just wanted to make that clear in case we get into something. We probably shouldn’t expect artillery support.”
“Good to know,” said the colonel. “Because we are going to get into something. Trust me on that.”
The next ten blocks were hot and silent.
They passed no dead civilians. A few wrecked pieces of drone. And crossed a lot of hot streets. The Savage artillery had fallen occasionally, decimating whole buildings and laying waste to blocks. The late morning air was warm, muggy, and incredibly still, like it was waiting for something. Wallowing black smoke was still drifting out and off to the west of the enormous mech, in the distant foreground of the enemy hulk. Apart from that, the city was a graveyard.
The colonel kept his eyes forward and moved along the street just behind a two-man point team thirty meters ahead of the main column. The heavily armed infantry to his rear were spoiling for a fight, or complaining about the heat. Or watching the shadows nervously. Everyone burned off the fear of an approaching fight in their own specific way. And whereas the colonel had been a hard charger since taking command of the unit in the hours before the operation began, he let this slide and ignored their jokes, chatter, and nervous silence. They would need to get themselves ready for what was coming, and it was too late to teach them anything else.
He called a halt after an hour.
Sergeant Major Andres sent out a comm for everyone to get off the street and swap out their socks. It would be a long day and a lot of walking. Many of them, according to him, probably hadn’t changed their socks since they left Spilursa Naval Weapons Station on Omaron.
The colonel found himself with the primary assault team. Riflemen overloaded with fraggers and flashbang bandoliers to pin down the enemy and give the heavy-weapons teams time to set up and lock in some support fire. All of them were sitting in the darkness of the clothing store they’d designated for cover during the halt, leaning against the walls, except the platoon sergeant, who was watching from the shattered doorway.
It was silent, hot, and still among the clothes the store had offered in the days before the Savage invasion six weeks ago.
The colonel sat down and dutifully changed his socks. Leadership began at the top, and though he might be in charge, it was the sergeant major who really ran things. And so everyone needed to see him, the colonel, obeying the orders of the toppest of cats. Change your socks.
One of the assault team members muttered in the darkness, “Shoulda done the whole planet with an orbital strike, or one of them trigger-nukes. I’m way too short to buy it on this rock.”
A few of the others laughed. It was always the guys whose enlistment was up soon that got worried the most. That was as old as time itself.
“Yeah, for a war criminal,” said one of the other soldiers, “Tyrus Rechs sure does know how to do things up right.”
“War criminal?” said another. “Who says? Spilursa ain’t part of that little confederacy, and they got no power to go around decidin’ for the rest of us how things got to be done proper. Hell, hand me a few dozen trigger-nukes and I’d do this hellhole myself right now and wouldn’t bat an eye. Biggs is right. I’m too short to get killed today. I been savin’ up for a scout ship. Was gonna get myself my own planet out along the edge.”
“You can’t even fly, Dozz. You’ll end up in a sun somewhere. Or cooked by the zhee. They all up and over those worlds out there along the edge.”
The rest laughed at Dozz until the platoon sergeant told them to “Shut the damn hell up and get your gear tight.”
“I’ll learn,” Dozz promised them in a whisper.
And then the halt was over, and they were on the march again. They had a date, and destiny didn’t like to be kept waiting.
Neither did death.
A few tense and quiet blocks later, they linked up with the command team for the First Royal Espanian Armor. Captain Alvaruz de Macha was a tall, lanky man who used long strides to cover lots of ground. He wore armor and a helmet and carried the standard TS-85 blaster, subcompact variant for tankers, on a sling around his chest.
Colonel Marks was heartened by what he saw. The man didn’t rely on his massive tank to protect him. He didn’t take chances, and he moved quickly in a businesslike manner. If any of them were to survive the next few hours, excellent skills and good habits might make the difference. Or at least, that had been the colonel’s experience in the dozen or more wars he’d fought in. He’d lost count of the individual battles a long time ago.
“We are five Sentinels,” announced Captain de Macha in accented Standard, a language once known as English on old Earth. On Espania they spoke a mix of old Romance languages that had all eventually succumbed to a Spanish variant, but de Macha seemed to know his Standard well; it was the language of the galaxy. “Our weak point is our flanking armor and weapon arcs. I try to keep the men good with the co-ax machine gun on top of my beasts, but they often put too much… how do you say… faith… in the forward armor and the very mighty main gun. That is where we are muy mejor… the best.”
“Good,” said Marks. They had come inside the perimeter of the tanks, and now Team Ranger was breaking down to assist each tank with protection along the flanks and rear. “We’ll keep a point team forward and to the right of each tank. Please tell your men not to fire unless my troops have a heads-up from your track commanders. Just have the TC identify and state ‘engaging forward’ over the general comm. That should get them down and covered. The rest will trail the tank and react to any fire or attacks from the flanks.”
The commander flipped out his battle board, making it suddenly three fully integrated screens, and pointed. “Command wants us to follow this road right off the main body. That should put us up on Hilltop, where we can provide cover and overwatch once the main assault begins on the Objective.”
The ancient Savage colony ship, the ship the philosophers who’d set up this mission to save New Vega from an apocalyptic solution had called the Nest, had been tagged here as Objective Black Widow.
15
Four streets farther south, they met their first refugees coming out of an industrial warehouse along the street. Under heavy guard, the refugee leader, a man who identified himself as Jhan Carstairs, a doctor with the University Hospital at New Vega, was allowed through to meet with Colonel Marks and Captain de Macha. One of the medics came forward to give him water and check him over. The rest of the men watched him and the other refugees suspiciously.
“It’s been horrible,” said the trembling man. “A living nightmare since the dreams began.” His eyes were haunted and far away.
He was still under guard, as were the thirty-odd refugees huddled under the watchful barrel of the main gun of the lead Sentinel.
The colonel had heard Captain de Macha order his gunner to burn them with a Spitfire round if a
nyone made a false move. Reports of refugees exploding or attacking the strike force during the first engagements after the carrier drop had circulated enough that Ogilvie had issued a directive toward vigilance when handling refugees. Marks had been in the Tactical Operations Center and had seen how much duress the man had needed to be put under—protesting about the optics—for his troops to remain safe.
The deciding factor came when one of Ogilvie’s staff officers assured him that needless casualties would play as badly in the media as dead refugees—and that higher casualty reports might result in subscribing members of the confederacy backing out if their troops unduly bore the brunt of such suicide assaults.
And that would be his, Supreme Coalition Commander Ogilvie’s, fault.
So he’d reluctantly issued the directive.
“We knew something was up at the hospital the first night, over seven weeks ago,” continued the haggard doctor as he gulped at the water in the canteen he’d been given. “Sure it was a full moon, always crazy, but the usual reports of bizarre behavior were off the charts. Within hours our predictive data algorithms identified that a vast majority of our cases involved law enforcement and government personnel. That didn’t make any sense. We had a council member come in, hallucinating and in full tachycardia. She attacked two security guards and killed them both with her bare hands.”
“Say again?” said Marks.
The doctor nodded in a tired, haunted manner. Like dwelling on the memory fatigued him. “Ninety-pound woman. Then she just stroked out. Wasn’t right, and at first I suspected some kind of virus.”
“But no longer?” asked de Macha.
“I’m pretty sure, now that I’ve had time to think about all this while we’ve been hiding, that they were using some kind of targeted nanovirus keyed for specific DNA. The Savages, I mean. And you know what that means…”
Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Page 6
