“MMR on! Miniguns to point defense!” he shouted as the first explosion filled the sky, killing the first target in an expanding orange fireball. The second blossomed into life less than a second afterward with the same results. Through the smoke and fire, the third rocket appeared. It corkscrewed away, trailing black smoke. One of the explosions had damaged it, and it veered off target. Slattery continued firing the miniguns, raking the terrain ahead as Laird pulled back on the power. They had to get out of here, and quickly.
The millimeter wave radar popped on, going through its startup tests. It wouldn’t fully energize for another thirty seconds or so. Laird saw the notch he had been looking for ahead. As he went for it, the warning alarm sounded again as the interferometers picked up a sudden temperature elevation. Laird had no problems seeing the incoming missile this time, and it was substantially larger than the trio that had preceded it. The weapon actually calved as it zoomed toward the SCEV’s nose. It was a Starstreak, an anti-armor munition that used kinetic kill weapons to defeat the initial armor resistance, followed a microsecond later by a high-explosive anti-tank round that would fill the interior of the rig with high-temperature plasma.
Laird yanked the control column to the right. “Shoot it, shoot it, shoot it!” he shouted at Slattery, even though there was no way a human could possibly slew the minis onto a target moving at almost twice the speed of sound.
The view port before him shattered as the trio of tungsten rods slammed into it. They defeated even the hard diamond-matrix substance which Laird knew could turn bullets, but the view port absolutely failed beneath the onslaught of the Starstreak’s initial payload. The rods continued on, passing through him, his seat, and the bulkhead behind him. The last thing Jim Laird was aware of was the growing heat of the follow-on HEAT round as it crossed over into the cockpit.
***
Mulligan shouted in shock when he saw the SCEV jerk as a bright blast of orange and yellow light erupted inside the cockpit, blasting out the view ports and sending debris flying through the air. The vehicle continued rolling forward, slowing as it bumped and bobbed over the irregular terrain, its engines automatically winding down to idle speed. As he began running toward the vehicle, another explosion rippled through the machine and the blast vents on the rig’s back flew open—a safety feature designed to minimize explosive forces in a last-ditch bid to save the crew. It was probably as effective as filling a teacup from a fire hose. As the rig slowly ground to a halt, Mulligan ran toward it. Smoke boiled out of the savaged cockpit as a fire broke out. More black clouds oozed out of the open blast vents, roiling in the air like angry black serpents. The rig was starting to burn.
Mulligan knew everyone aboard was already dead, but he kept running toward it anyway.
The clamshell doors on the airlock exploded open suddenly, literally separating from their hinges as they hurtled away from the vehicle. They tumbled through the air and crashed to the ground, sending soil and rock flying. Someone had blown the doors, part of the emergency evacuation procedure. Mulligan had never seen it before, and he was distantly amazed by how far the heavy doors traveled before hitting the deck.
A figure emerged from the blazing hell that filled the rig’s interior. She was on fire. Mulligan saw blonde hair disappear in a puff of flame as Kelly Jordello half leaped, half fell from the open airlock. Her screams were sharp and piercing as her uniform turned into nothing more than a loosely associated collection of blackened fabric that was doubtless melting to her skin. She hit the ground hard, and flailed as she tried to roll.
Faster. Run faster.
Mulligan poured it on, moving as fast as he could. Something cracked past him. A bullet. Another whizzed by, then another and another. As he ran across the butte to the burning rig, enemy forces were opening up on him, the sounds of their weapons dimmed by the wail of the rig’s idling engines and the roar of the growing blaze. He ignored the shooting, even as rounds struck the ground around his feet. He watched as Kelly’s movements began to slow, her screams trailing off. She was burning to death, and Mulligan was too old and slow to save her.
God damn it! He leaned forward and summoned up every ounce of strength he had left. His lungs burned and his big thighs ached, but he was still too far away. He screamed in frustration, a choked, strangled sound that he barely heard above the din that surrounded him.
Someone ripped past him like a track star. It was Andrews. The captain had shrugged off his ruck and his boots dug into the rocky earth as he sprinted toward Kelly’s now-motionless form. Like Mulligan, he ignored the bullets that parted the air all around him. Andrews left Mulligan in his dust, bearing down on the vehicle like Usain Bolt tearing up an Olympic running track. Mulligan drew up short, his boots practically skidding across the ground as he came to a halt and pulled in his rifle. A group of enemy fighters were clustered together a hundred fifty meters away, firing at him and Andrews with old rifles that had seen better days. Mulligan returned the favor, flipping the fire selector on his rifle to AUTO and treating them to twenty rounds of 7.62-millimeter fire followed up with a perfectly placed forty-millimeter grenade. The enemy fighters were stupid. Not only could they not hit a guy standing six foot six who was running through the middle of a mostly open space, they had clustered together so tightly that it wasn’t much of a chore to break up their attack. While the automatic rifle fire fixed them in place and made them keep their heads down, the grenade wasted several of them outright. The noise and shock of the detonation shook even those who hadn’t been injured, and by the time they were back in the game Mulligan had reloaded his rifle and was working them over one at a time. And then fighters from Sherwood came on the ball and hit the group with slanting machine-gun fire.
Fox’s people didn’t last.
Mulligan resumed his sprint toward the burning SCEV. Andrews was still dragging Kelly away from it. Mulligan slung his rifle and hurried to help him. When the stench of burnt flesh and fried hair and fabric hit him, his stomach roiled. It had been a long time since Mulligan had needed to endure the worst smells of the battlefield. He couldn’t keep things together, and he paused long enough to double over and puke up the contents of his stomach in one long rush. That out of the way, he turned to grab Kelly by the ankles. Tendrils of smoke still wafted upward from her smoldering uniform which Andrews had managed to extinguish. Her boots were half-melted, half-fried on her feet. Mulligan felt the heat of her burned clothing through his gloves as he grabbed her and lifted her legs and butt off the ground. He tried to avoid looking at her face, but his eyes were drawn there against his will. Her hair was completely gone, and her skin was blackened and blistered. Bloody mucus bubbled from her nostrils and lips.
Oh my dear God, he wailed to himself.
He snapped out of it a moment later. One did not make it into Special Forces by being put off by a little gore and burnt flesh, even if it was on someone you knew. “Gotta get away from the rig!” he snarled, his throat raw from the shouting, the smoke, and the puking. “Secondary explosions!” Already, minigun ammo was starting to go off as the fire worked on the magazines and feeder chutes. Pop-pop-pop! Pop! Pop-pop!
Andrews blubbered something. The kid’s eyes were wild in his head, but there was still enough sanity and awareness in them to assure Mulligan that he wasn’t responding without thinking. Mulligan felt for him. He knew Andrews and Jordello were tight, and here Andrews was, hauling his friend across the battlefield as she perhaps gasped her last breaths. Mulligan had been there. He knew the cost was high, but it had to be done. And he knew that some troops couldn’t make it back after footing the bill.
He hoped Andrews would not be one of them.
As they carried Kelly away from the burning remains of SCEV Five, Mulligan looked back at the rig. The vehicle was almost fully involved now, emitting columns of black smoke that twisted about in the sky. There wasn’t enough opportunity to look for additional survivors, but he accepted that the results were essentially in. The rig was a write-off. La
ird, Cobar, and Slattery were dead. It wasn’t pleasant, but that was how things had wound up. There was zero chance of pulling out anything other than smoldering, ashen corpses from the rig’s interior. The attack on the SCEV had been immediately effective. The rig was dead on arrival.
As if to underscore the dire circumstances, one of the Hellfire missiles finally cooked off. The explosion was thunderous, and the rear portion of the rig catapulted into the sky. Metal fragments rained down around Mulligan and Andrews as they hauled Kelly away from the flaming morass.
“Move faster!” Mulligan said. “Got to get at least another hundred meters—”
Another explosion tore through the rig, then another. Mulligan hunched over, trying to use his body mass to protect Kelly as best as he could. All around him, heavy impacts sounded as dense pieces of wreckage burrowed into the earth. Mulligan cast a glance over his shoulder. SCEV Five was fully involved with fire now, casting off a great column of gray-black smoke into the morning air. He and Andrews carried Kelly away from the conflagration, joined by fighters from Sherwood who clustered around them. Amanda appeared then, rifle at the ready. She looked down at Kelly’s horribly burned form, her jaw set. She shook her head, then went back to scanning the area. The fighting had tapered off again, to sporadic shots ringing out here and there above the roar of flames and the thunder of exploding Hellfire missiles.
“Sean!” Mulligan shouted. “Griffith!”
“Here!” Sean loped over. There was blood on his camouflage jacket, but it didn’t appear to be his. He grimaced when he saw Kelly’s figure.
“We have to get her back to Sherwood,” Mulligan said. “I want you to get some troops together to help the captain get her down to the trucks.”
“Not happening,” Sean said.
Mulligan and Andrews gently lowered Kelly to the ground. As he shrugged out of his ruck to find his medical bag, he asked, “What do you mean?”
“Sherwood’s under attack,” Sean said. He tapped his walkie-talkie. “Got the word a couple of minutes ago. Main force is hitting the town now.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Sherwood had some time to prepare before the attack began. As the battle on the butte raged on, Buchek remained in the mine at Griffith’s insistence. He listened to the radios and tried to visualize everything that was going on out there. So far, it seemed like things were going well. The team from Harmony Base successfully took out the mortar battery, and his people had taken down the vast majority of Fox’s fighters with precision attacks that left Buchek feeling pretty good, all things considered. He’d been informed that Amanda was on the butte as well, and while that caused him no little angst, at least he knew where she was. Amanda was skilled. She would be able to handle herself.
Then Sean had radioed in that the other friendly SCEV had been killed.
“Okay.” Griffith’s voice was hard and gruff when he finally stirred. He sat on a folding chair next to Buchek, listening to the radios as well. Both men were in what passed as Sherwood’s tactical operations center. There were radios and radio operators, maps which they used to reference positions, and runners standing ready to relay information to the commander of the wall defenses outside. “Okay, shit’s gonna get real mighty fast.”
“Can you tell me why?” Buchek asked.
“Second rig is destroyed, first one is still buttoned up in the warehouse. Fox can maneuver now. They’ll come for us while Andrews and Mulligan are in the field with our best fighters. If they move fast enough, they won’t have to worry about them—they can sack the town and deal with them later.”
“Let’s get some drones out,” Buchek said.
“Only one available right now. Others are still charging, and we’ve lost a few,” Griffith said. “I mean, sure, let’s send it out. But we probably won’t be able to recover it.”
“Send it high,” Buchek said.
“Of course.” Griffith turned on his chair and nodded to one of the runners. “Go get that done, Ronald. And when you’re on your way out, make sure Doctor Grayson is informed that casualties are going to start coming in soon now. All right?”
“On it,” the young man said before darting up the tunnel.
He hadn’t been gone for more than a minute when the radios lit up with chatter. Simultaneously, gunfire began to rage. Buchek looked at Griffith who returned his gaze with a flat calmness that was almost serene. The only sign that the old man was even remotely stressed was that he was clenching the head of his cane very, very tightly.
“They’re fixing the wall gunners in place while they bring up the main body,” Griffith said. “Once they’re in position, they’ll try and breach a wall and come in that way.”
“Can they do that?” Buchek asked.
Griffith nodded. “With that rig and its Hellfires? Yeah. They can do that, Stan.”
***
Fox’s remaining drone powered along at twelve thousand feet over Sherwood, banging away with millimeter wave radar. He hoped that would induce whoever still remained in the hidden rig—the crew chief, he believed—to try and eliminate it with a missile shot. If she did, that would be fine by Fox. By launching a missile at the UAV, the rig’s position would be clear as day. A tradeoff Fox was willing to make.
He had no such luck, of course. No weapon rose up to meet the drone as it loitered over the walled town, flitting between the puffy clouds that slowly rolled across the sky. The sun was rising, and the bad weather that had torn through the area had abated. Once the remaining clouds burned off, it would be a perfect spring day. Fox couldn’t have asked for anything better.
Mulligan’s not dead, he told himself. Don’t get too comfortable just yet.
On the display, he watched as the column of trucks his troops had captured in Idaho and in Beulah rolled toward Sherwood. His soldiers would dismount and reinforce the recon units that had been in position for days, and then they would commence their attack. The good thing about the walls around Sherwood is that it meant the defenders had to climb them to repel an attack. While the elevation gave them a nominal tactical advantage, they would be forced to fight in two dimensions. Fox intended to get the walls loaded up with defenders, then fire a few Hellfires into one section and bring it down. While this would give the defenders of Sherwood some capability to maneuver, it also meant Fox’s troops would have clear firing lanes. They’d bring down other sections of walls which would carve up Sherwood’s ability to defend itself, as well as expose its defenders to multiple angles of attack. The SCEV’s missiles aside, Fox did have some substantial indirect fire capability and he would make great use of it.
So he sat in the second compartment of the SCEV and watched the displays. Lucille manned the command intelligence station, while Macklin sat in the front office watching things from there. For the time being, all Fox had to do was watch as his troops left their column of trucks and moved into their final positions. They were to start their attacks at 0915 and get the walls and guard towers loaded up, and then Fox would start his own attack. Once they fired off their missiles, Macklin would relocate the SCEV to another position where they would reload the missile racks and engage again. Fox was fairly certain that with SCEV Five out of the picture, he had total freedom to shoot and move. The butte was far enough away that there was no way Mulligan or Andrews could ever find him before his forces wore down Sherwood. Once they were inside, they would start to systematically search for SCEV Four, and once they found it, it would be destroyed.
Fox could hardly wait.
He watched as the clock ticked down. At nine fifteen in the morning, as the sun continued its climb into the sky and burned off the remaining cloud cover, his soldiers went into action. And as he had suspected, the fair people of Sherwood reinforced their troops on the walls. Soon, the wall facing his array of forces was loaded up with hundreds of riflemen. Machine guns opened up, reaching out to zap Fox’s people while rifle-fired grenades flashed back and forth. Fox’s soldiers responded in kind, and he let the combat play
out for five minutes without doing much more than watching the drone feed while sipping a fresh cup of coffee.
At nine twenty, he’d had enough. “Okay. Let’s go ahead and crack open that wall.” He moved to the cockpit and slid into the right seat, his fingers moving over the touch screen displays and the track mouse on the center console.
“You want me to start us up?” Macklin asked.
“Not yet. We’ll use batteries to move around until we need to fire up the engines. I’ll let you know when we need to relocate, just get us ready to move on my order.” Fox programmed four missiles for serial launch, then dragged a point of attack onto the screen that contained the drone’s feed. The grid location came up, and he expanded the view slightly. He designated the container wall, and the data was passed to the missiles. Once they were in their descent, their own millimeter wave seeker heads would guide them directly to the target. Fox had to admit, while it wasn’t as manly as kicking down doors and shooting up bad guys with his own rifle, it was a pretty damned convenient way to conduct a forced entry operation.
“Okay. Lucille, make sure the drone stays in its racetrack pos. We’ll be firing soon.”
“It’s not going anywhere I don’t tell it to,” Lucille said from the back.
Fox grunted and opened the missile pod on the back of the rig’s MEP. There was a vague sound of electric motors and hydraulics activating, and then the pod slewed and angled until the six Hellfires it contained were pointing at the sky. It was convenient that the pod could be articulated like that, as opposed to a fixed launching system. He could fire from their current position without worrying about the closeness of the trees and other terrain. The missiles would climb out almost straight up, then make skidding turns toward their target. Flight time would be less than one minute. Fox armed the missiles, set them for sequential launches two seconds apart, and pulled the trigger. A banging roar sounded as the first weapon shot out of the pod and bolted into the blue sky. Three others followed as directed, and just like that, the pendulum started swinging toward Sherwood.
Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues] Page 51
