Elite troops or not, the Lampreys had taken their own sweet time deploying and moving forward. They’d kept their Battle Bugs close to the infantry as well, spreading the armored combat vehicles among the entire front to act as mobile artillery pieces. That would bolster their firepower while reducing their speed. At the rate they were moving, about five kilometers per hour, they wouldn’t make it to the hill before the Marines had reached and occupied it. Maybe they figured they had enough strength to steamroll over the opposition. The enemy response couldn’t be better – for him.
Which probably meant things weren’t as good as they seemed. Watching his step as he kept trudging forward, Fromm ran a quick enemy force estimate and came up short. About twenty troops short, two squad equivalents to be exact. They might have left earlier, probably using stealth fields to fool his drones. Those two squads could be trying to outflank the Marines, and they had the firepower to do some damage, or even roll up his line. That was the sort of maneuver the Lampreys excelled at. Trickery and misdirection were their preferred qualities.
Best to be prepared. Fromm had the squads on either flank pick up the pace, ditching some of their extra equipment along the way. ‘Firtest’ was more important than ‘mostest,’ and the Marines could retrieve the abandoned packs later on. He also moved his swatters to the flanks, using them to deny the enemy the chance to spy on his troops.
“Let’s see how good you really are,” he muttered, as much to himself as to the enemy.
* * *
“Fuck this shit,” Lance Corporal Howard ‘Suckass’ Montero grumbled as he manhandled his Squad Automatic Weapon up the steep hill. The mad dash forward, even after they’d dropped half of their loads, had been a bitch and a half. He was almost out of breath, and he spent what little he had cursing his bad luck. “This sucks ass. Fuck this shit all to hell.”
“Less whining and more climbing, Suckass,” Sergeant Weiner said through the imp. Howard had forgotten to shut off the squad channel.
“I’m almost there, Sergeant,” Howard said by way of apology. A second later, he was in position, in the shade of an alien plant that looked like a cactus and a palm tree had made some babies. He had a nice view of a game trail cutting north by northeast. PFC Barton was right behind him, huffing under the weight of the extra ammo for the SAW.
“Good. Looks like we beat the Lampreys to the punch. They should be showing up any second.”
Assuming they showed up at all. There was supposedly a stealthed squad of Fang-Faces running around, and they might be coming this way. Or maybe someone was jumping at shadows. They’d find out soon enough.
“Is that them?” Barton said. Howard looked at the spot his loader had highlighted. There was some movement alongside the game trail, but he couldn’t see shit, even when he went multi-spectrum. Somebody was moving over there all right, but they were the next thing to invisible. He knew what that meant.
“Yeah, it’s them. Sergeant, we seen them. Lampreys are in stealth mode, just like higher said.”
“Stupid fucks.”
Stealth mode meant tuning your shields so they blocked your heat signature and bent light around you, making you impossible to spot via infrared or regular vision. Two problems with that, though: first, it got fucking hot inside the force field after a while, and, most importantly, your shields became extremely brittle, very easy to punch through. The Marines’ suits didn’t have that capability; when they needed to hide themselves they used camo blankets instead. Stealth systems worked okay in some kinds of terrain, but moving in dense underbrush, they were useless. You could be invisible, but your movements would still disturb the local shrubbery. The ETs had been trying to sneak up on the Marines, and now they were going to pay the price of doing a half-assed job.
“Everybody’s ready. Let them have it, Suckass.”
“Roger that.”
Tak-tak-tak. Tak-tak-tak. Howard couldn’t see his targets, but he fired his three-round bursts towards the moving brushes. The 4mm plasma-tipped bullets were bound to hit somebody.
And they did. A Lamprey appeared out of thin air; his personal force field went down in a shower of sparks when a glancing hit overloaded it. A second tango popped into sight as the alien turned his shield back into defense mode.
“Gotcha,” Howard said, servicing both targets with multiple bursts. The two aliens went down.
“Uh, Lance?” Barton said as Howard looked for more targets. “Something’s wrong.”
“What?” he said after he fired another burst at some movement. No luck: the other Lampreys had scrambled behind cover. That was okay; Sergeant Weiner and the fireteam leaders would make it rain 20mm plasma, right over the survivors’ heads.
“The ETs you hit,” Barton went on.
“What about them?”
“They ain’t moving.”
“So they’re playing dead. That’s what I’d do if I’d gotten administratively killed in an FTX. Lie down and take a nap.”
“One of them ain’t breathing no more.”
“The fuck you talking about?” Howard growled, momentarily taking his eyes off the suspected enemy position and checking the ETs he’d tagged. They were lying down and their vital signs were ebbing fast, just like Barton had said. He watched incredulously as one of them flailed around with all six limbs and then went still. It was wearing a transparent helmet – all these aliens did – and its mouth was frozen in a surprised-looking O-shape the Lampreys only made when they kicked the bucket He froze with his mouth open himself, stunned by the realization somebody had fucked up big time, and it could well be him.
“Oh, shit.”
The crack of multiple 20mm bomblets snapped him out of it. Unless he missed something during the briefing, they weren’t supposed to kill the ETs for real.
“Sergeant, I think we’ve got a problem.”
* * *
“I repeat. We have two confirmed, no shit, actual kills. As in those Lampreys are not going to get any better. Ever.”
The video feed from Second Squad showed two alien bodies, and they were either very dead or doing some damn fine acting.
“Check fire! Check fire!”
The order stopped the Marines engaging the enemy with direct fire, but most of the mortar rounds Third Platoon had launched in support were already on their terminal paths. Fire and smoke rose up behind the hill where the enemy squad had taken refuge. If those had been live rounds, at least half those aliens would be casualties.
“Who the fuck issued live ammo to the unit?” Lieutenant Berry roared.
“Nobody, sir,” Sergeant Weiner said in the tightly controlled voice of a pro who knew the shit had well and truly hit the fan. “We’re loaded with blue rounds. All training-rated, nothing lethal. Only way to hurt anybody with those loads is to club them with the guns, sir.”
“Then why are those Lampreys dead, goddammit!”
“No idear, sir.”
“Getting some comm chatter from the tangos, sir,” Staff Sergeant Navarro said; he’d been monitoring the enemy’s transmissions. “They sound pretty upset.”
* * *
“What is the meaning of this?”
Syndic Boosha all but leaped from its recliner and turned towards the grinning Priestess.
“My soldiers have been killed! The humans are using lethal weapons!”
“My dear Boosha, that is just not so,” the Hierophant said from the human room. “The American soldiers are using simulated ammunition, just like your own warriors. We decided to raise the stakes a bit, that is all.”
“What did you do?” Secretary Goftalu all but shouted herself.
Before the Tah-Leen leader could answer her, two Marines’ status carts went black. One of the display screens showed the soldiers being transfixed with several heavy lasers when they accidentally exposed themselves to enemy fire. Heather realized with a sinking feeling that those kills weren’t simulated, either. On another screen, one without special effects to disguise the truth, she could see the bo
dies didn’t have any visible injuries.
“Whenever the simulation’s arbiter system decides a fatality has been inflicted, the verdict is carried out by an Executioner device,” the Priestess explained in the sudden silence that followed the second set of deaths. The troops on both sides stopped shooting when it became apparent they were inflicting real casualties on each other. “Otherwise this whole thing would be a farce, don’t you agree? We are here to watch warriors fight, not to perform some silly dance.”
“You lied to us!” Boosha said. Heather knew the exact translation was something closer to ‘You were caught in a blatant lie.’ Lampreys didn’t consider lying to be wrong in itself, as long as you got away with it.
“It was deemed necessary to mislead you somewhat to preserve the integrity of the game,” the Priestess replied. “I trust that, moving forward, this will motivate both sides to win the battle.”
“This is unacceptable,” Goftalu said. “We will not slaughter each other for your amusement.”
“What better reason for slaughter, Madame Secretary? Amuse us well enough, and you will get what you want. The same, of course, applies to your worthy counterpart.”
“As the representative of the Lhan Arkh Congress and People, I accept the revised situation,” the Syndic said, nimbly setting aside its previous protests. “I will order the Combat Nest to resume hostilities.”
“Excellent! What about your troops, Madame Secretary? Will they fight, or will they allow themselves to be killed without resisting? Rest assured, those are the only options available.”
Sec-State hesitated for several seconds before answering. “Our troops will defend themselves by all means necessary.”
“That is all that is required. Let the games continue.”
* * *
“I got movement along my sector,” Lieutenant Berry said. “The survivors from the ambush, plus a Battle Bug squad and extra leg units.”
“Fire at will,” Fromm replied. His next words went on the company channel. “Proceed with the mission. Repeat, proceed with the mission. Keep using training munitions but be advised casualties will be real. It’s kill or be killed, Marines, just like regular combat. Let’s wipe out those Lampreys.”
“You know what, sir?” First Lieutenant Hansen said when Fromm was done. “This may be fucked up, but I like this better. I didn’t sign up to play games with the goddamn Lampreys.”
“Agreed,” Fromm said. “But I still don’t like being some ETs’ dancing bear. Might be we can do something about them.”
No time for that now, of course. He had a battle to fight.
Second Platoon was the first to open fire fully knowing the situation. A squad of four Battle Bugs skittered into an open clearing and was engaged by a barrage of Light Missile Launchers and 20mm anti-armor munitions. One of the Lamprey war machines ground to a halt, smoke and fire pouring out of several breaches on its hull, at least according to the simulation’s visual input; the rest retreated hastily, all with some damage. Further back, ET infantry took Second Platoon under fire with their lasers. His drones had been swatted out of the area; Fromm couldn’t see where the rest of the enemy light armor had gone, but he figured they were trying to flank his force. One way to find out. He raised Third Platoon’s commander.
“Conduct fire recon on coordinates as follow,” he ordered Lieutenant Chambal, highlighting the area in the map he wanted struck with a six-round barrage. The bombs carried their own sensor packages and they would give him a quick peek over the most likely path taken by the surviving Battle Bugs.
A few seconds later, the mortars delivered their loads. Fromm’s imp processed the information gathered during the munitions’ brief flight time and converted it into something useful. Eight Lamprey mobile units and about a platoon of infantry were indeed moving along a dip in terrain that masked their approach as they tried to circumvent the American lines. The mortar munitions were all detonated in mid-air by the aliens’ air defenses before they could inflict any damage, but the information was more than worth it. A squad of Hellcats was already watching that possible path; Fromm reinforced it with most of First Platoon and an attached weapons squad. They should contain that thrust easily enough.
At this point he was well ahead on points. He couldn’t see any way the Lampreys dislodge his troops from their positions. Everyone was digging in, and he had more than enough forces to contain any attempted breakthroughs.
A sudden series of explosions over the advancing Mobile Infantry squad and the infantry follow-up forces forcefully reminded him that plans never survive contact with the enemy.
* * *
“Incoming!” Russell shouted. He, Gonzo and Grampa all hit the ground as an artillery barrage blew up the Hellcats they’d been on their way to reinforce.
One of the four MIUs had an air-defense laser mounted on one of its weapon pods. The multi-barreled weapon spat out twenty light pulses per second and exploded about half of the ordnance about to land on the unit’s heads. That helped, but wasn’t enough. The other ten shells detonated about thirty feet aboveground, showering the Mobile Armor suits with shrapnel and focused plasma blasts. Russell’s display indicated that the area force field protecting the Hellcats had collapsed. One of the armored troopers’ icon went yellow.
“What now?” Grampa asked after the barrage was over.
“This way,” Russell said, marking the spot on the fireteam’s imps. A heavily-wooded area across a burned-out clearing. That was where the Hellcats were supposed to fall back, and they’d be able to cover their retreat from there. “Move it!”
The troops rushed up the hill and spread out, using digging charges to set up a defensive line between several massive trees. Grampa, Russell and a couple other guys from the other fireteam hastily assembled their two portable force fields, setting them up in an umbrella config that would help a little if the enemy artillery switched to their position. A little. They didn’t have any area defense lasers, or wouldn’t until the Hellcats got back there, and his teams’ area shields were much weaker than the ones the Lampreys had just knocked down.
“Fuckers ain’t supposed to have arty,” Gonzo said.
“Looks like the game masters decided to give them some regimental batteries to play with,” Russell explained after his imp gave him the updated tactical overview. “Guess that’s what a Lamprey company normally gets for support. One or two stonks.”
“Be nice to know if it’s exactly one or two,” Grampa commented. “Because if it’s two, it’s not going to be good.”
A second barrage went off ahead of their position, along the path the Hellcats were taking to get back there. The yellow icon blinked red, then black. PFC Fiorello had bought it. Another one went from green to yellow.
“Well, that’s two,” Russell said. “I think they blew their wad.”
“Let’s hope they don’t get a third one,” Lance Corporal Bruno said from where he and his fireteam were set up. “Or we’re all dead.”
“Here come the kitties.”
The headless mechanical cats ran into sight, going full tilt, fire and smoke rising behind them. There were only three of them, and one was limping on three good legs. The alien cannon-cockers had taken out almost half of the MI squad.
“And here come the B-Bugs,” Bruno added.
The Lamprey war machines – four of them – must have been rushing right behind the short barrage to try and catch the fleeing Hellcats and get to the Marines’ rear. They were about to get a surprise of their own.
“Light them up.”
Each fireteam and an infantry squad took a Battle Bug under fire. Bursts of 15- and 20mm plasma penetrators stuck in unison, digging through force fields and composite armor to get to the flesh and circuitry underneath while a steady downpour of lighter round washed over both targets like a swarm of angry hornets. Both bugs came to a stop, spewing smoke, just as the mortar section dropped twenty-four bomblets on the entire area and finished them off. That left two relatively inta
ct BBs, though, and they lashed the Marines’ positions with continuous beam lasers and half a dozen medium missiles.
“Fuck!” Russell screamed. Everyone hit the deck when the enemy volley tore through their perimeter force fields and turned the massive trees around them into kindling. Chunks of wood moving at bullet speeds peppered him from behind. A case fragment from one of the missiles went through his personal shield and struck his back plate but didn’t penetrate. At least, that was what his imp told him. He knew the whole thing was fake, just virtual multisensory input from the simulation program, but if the computers decided that the fragment had gone through his body armor and cracked open his spine, the fucking Xanadu aliens would turn him into a real corpse.
The enemy stopped shooting after a few seconds. He didn’t have to lift his head off the ground to find out why, as the take from the Hellcats’ sensors was available. The two intact ‘cats had circled back and taken the surviving Bugs on the flank. The alien death-machines were dead, or rather their pilots were; the Tah-Leen assholes running the show had murdered them. Either way, they were down.
“Grampa, get a new power pack for the area shield. Gonzo, watch the other side of the clearing. Lamprey infantry’s supposed to be inbound.” The mortars were hitting the aliens’ path, so maybe they wouldn’t get this far, but it was best to be ready.
“Reloading,” Gonzo said.
“Gotcha.” Russell thumbed in a new six-pack of 20mm munitions while he kept an eye out for more ETs. He heard the Hellcats taking positions on his right. If the aliens showed up, they were going to get a hot reception.
Nothing about this felt right. He didn’t mind killing Lampreys, but the idea some other Echo Tangos were jerking off to it royally pissed him off.
* * *
“We found it, sir,” Hansen said. He and First Sergeant Goldberg had been playing with the company’s sensors since the battle had turned deadly, trying to uncover the device killing Fromm’s people. “They are using some sort of grav-wave transmission to kill the designated casualties. Way more powerful than anything I’ve seen before. G-waves don’t have enough energy to hurt anybody, but these ones manage it just fine. Looks like they have two versions, one designed to kill Lampreys, the other calibrated for us.”
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 78
