by Jack Colrain
Then the planes were past, but Daniel knew they’d be turning around as soon as possible, and the Super-Bradleys’ orientation meant that when they came back from the opposite direction, the attack planes would have the full length and width of both vehicles’ roofs in their sights. “Torres, Palmer, floor it to the other side of the hill!” Neither driver had waited for Daniel to finish his sentence before throwing the APCs into motion as if they were in a combined drag race and rally. “Any hits, Beswick?” Daniel asked next.
“No chance, guv. They’re too bloody fast for the turret. Maybe we can scare them off if they know we’re not gonna take anything lying down.”
“Permission to engage air units, sir?” Stewart asked.
“Go ahead. You too, Cole. They already know we’re here. Short controlled bursts; make shots count, and don’t waste ammo.”
“Roger.”
The APCs were still moving and still not angled correctly when the planes’ engines reached a crescendo again. This time, the two Big Mikes ran to either side, raising their fists and opening fire with their larger railguns into the path of the oncoming fighters. Both turrets opened up, as well, meaning that the planes were hurtling at high speed towards the intersection of four cones of fire, and a potential face-full of dense, high velocity metal.
One fighter pulled up and away, veering aside while the second dipped below the humans’ aiming point and opened fire with its own guns. Plasma bolts crackled through the air, blowing dirt into the sky before stitching across both APCs.
Daniel’s APC lurched, and one wall and ceiling boomed but didn’t buckle. The force pushed the vehicles down so low on their suspensions that soldiers were thrown out of their seats when the APCs sprang back up. “Our hull armor is holding,” Hope called, “but I don’t know for how long.”
“We need some options for getting out of the line of fire. We can’t stay here, we’re sitting ducks.” Daniel switched comms. “Sydney, this is Greyhound. I need that air support!”
“It’s on its way, Greyhound,” CAG Jameson said. “Four fighters are inbound to you.”
The APCs were moving again, and Daniel was confident that both Torres and Palmer knew by now what their best strategy was. More blasts shook the APC, one of them lifting up the whole rear left corner; when it fell back to ground, the noise was so loud that Daniel was sure the hull armor had been breached. It had actually still held, he saw a moment later, but the interior of the vehicle was getting stiflingly warm. “What’s their ETA, CAG?”
“Five to ten minutes; Gresian fighters are engaged with them and in pursuit.”
“Not soon enough; we’re already under fire.”
“As soon as the Gresian fighter is off their backs—”
“I need them off mine!” Daniel snapped.
Then, Daniel realized that the reason why one Gresian aircraft had broken off under fire hadn’t been fear, but to work a deliberate tactic: now, whichever side of the hill the APCs could be most sheltered on, one of the planes would be attacking on the side on which they were exposed. But at least that was still better than being caught between them at an angle where either vehicle presented its broadest side as a bigger target.
Worse, a few small knots of Gresian infantry in blue and silver armor were loping in from the forest, shooting at Cole and Stewart. One of the soldiers in Big Mikes—Daniel couldn’t tell which—fired an explosive round back, sending Gresian limbs flying, while the other actually grabbed a nearby Gresian bodily, which almost managed to break free from the super-strong Big Mike before being hurled back into the trees.
“I appreciate it’s not easy, CAG.” The APC snapped to a halt an instant before a storm of plasma fire sliced across the hillside in front. “What about the possibility of an orbital bombardment? Which is the nearest ship over our position?”
“Greyhound, at the moment, the Shenzhen is in position for an orbital assault.”
“Good. I’m uplinking you some coordinates. I want a large spread across that range.”
“Done,” a new voice said from the Shenzhen. “Targeting now.”
“Shenzhen, you have us pinpointed on the ground, right?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. We have you at grid—”
“OK, I need a tactical strike at my coordinates.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that correctly.”
“I need a tactical strike on my own coordinates,” Daniel repeated.
The Shenzhen’s officer hesitated. “If you understand what you’re asking and are certain you wish to proceed—”
“I know exactly what I need, what I’m asking, and what I’m proceeding with!”
“Be aware the missiles and warheads the Shenzhen carries in its own batteries are designed for large capital ships. They’re big pieces of ordinance.”
“Unless the aircraft is taken out, my team is dead, Stravinsky is dead, the mission is dead. You know what that means for Earth, right?”
“I’ll have to clear this with the ship’s XO.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake...” Daniel grumbled.
“Sorry, sir. The XO has cleared the main batteries for ground strike. We’re on it. Stand by.”
Daniel desperately wanted to open the hatch above him so that he could look out and check on the location of the attacking planes, but he wasn’t stupid. This time, dents appeared in the roof of the APC when it was hit. “Stewart and Cole, you ready to run?”
“Yessir,” they echoed in unison.
“Everybody else, hold on tight. Button up the hatches. Torres, Palmer, hat on, and spin a one-eighty.”
“Back the way we came?”
“That’s right,” Daniel confirmed with a nod. “We’re obviously not going to outrun those fast-movers, but maybe we can dodge incoming fire for a little while.”
Torres gunned the engine and the APC leapt into life, heading back away from the forest with the second APC following. Cole and Stewart were jogging backwards, firing at the approaching aircraft. Nobody was dumb enough to waste ammo on the Gresian footsoldiers who had emerged from the trees and were now falling rapidly behind and out of range. The Gresian planes opened fire, battering the transports.
Explosive rocket rounds and plasma bolts slashed across the column, punching holes in dirt, steel, rubber, and flesh alike, and Sergeant Cole yelled out in pain and stumbled. Daniel thought for a moment that he’d fallen permanently, but he picked himself up and limped onwards, still shooting back at the enemy aircraft. “Cole!” Daniel yelled.
“I’m still up and running, more or less.”
“Then run!”
They’d already made it a mile and a half when the tactical officer from the Shenzhen spoke to Daniel. “Greyhound, your missile is inbound on your designated coordinates. Better hustle.”
Immediately, Lizzie confirmed that the Shenzhen had commenced orbital bombardment. In orbit, Daniel knew, the Shenzhen was launching huge 100kg tungsten alloy slugs, accelerated to around 0.01c. The ground around the transports shook with the force of the impacts, bouncing the APCs around like hailstones in a storm. Daniel couldn’t tell whether the peals of thunder that echoed across the hills were the sonic booms of the projectiles splitting the air or the tremendous forces vibrating through the ground below.
The bombardment’s projectiles slammed into the ground with a force of approximately 450 terajoules—the same energy release as the detonation of a tactical nuclear weapon, but with no radiation release or fallout.
As the rounds fell across the wide expanse of forest, shaling the APCS even at this distance, towering mushroom-shaped plumes were unleashed into the sky and terrific gouts of earth and dust hurled into the air in the Gresian fighters’ flight path. Holding onto a handgrip for dear life, Daniel saw both of the Big Mike suits stagger and fall from the vibrations shaking the earth under their feet.
The Gresian aircraft looped away, trying to get out of the blinding dust and the risk of rocky debris being hurled into their paths. Within seconds, however, an
other object streaked across the sky and suddenly flashed into nothingness. For a moment, the APCs’ instruments flickered and went out, but then they rebooted a moment later. The Gresian fighters had no such luck, falling helplessly from the sky.
In a moment, everything was deafeningly silent apart from the sounds of soldiers recovering their breath, shaky and slightly disbelieving. “Uh,” Kevin Bailey said at last, “Geiger sensors show some rads in the atmosphere. Nothing too serious, and won’t affect us.”
Nobody asked whether it would affect any Gresians.
Daniel got on the comms. “Headcount, sound off!”
“Trap Two,” Hope replied, “all personnel safe and ready to go. Minimal damage, and the nanites are on it.”
“Mike One,” Sergeant Cole called in. “The suit’s ankle fees a bit weird, but I’m ready.”
“Mike Two, no damage,” Stewart completed the set.
“Roger that, folks,” Daniel acknowledged. “Shenzhen, this is Greyhound. Bombardment and EMP strikes successful, thanks.”
“Where to now?” Torres asked.
“Now we cross the forest,” Daniel said grimly.
Torres shrugged and set the Super-Bradley into motion once more. Hope’s vehicle and both the Big Mikes followed, Cole’s mechanized suit visibly slower and limping. In a few minutes, they had returned to where they’d first seen the forest, and the gunners in both vehicles were scanning the terrain ahead suspiciously, as if waiting for Gresian infantry to leap out at any moment. None did, and when they had returned to their previous vantage point, they realized why.
Where once there had been a vast forest stretching from horizon to horizon, now there were two forests, one stretching to each horizon to the left and right. In between, though, separating the forests by a couple of miles, was a cratered plain of ash and earth that would be easily traversed by the vehicles. And Daniel’s suit’s targeting system wasn’t tagging any movement. “The way through the woods...” Daniel said.
“What woods?” Wilson breathed out with a tone of horror that Daniel couldn’t deny was appropriate.
“No more woods,” Daniel said. “And no more Gresians to ambush us in them.”
Palmer’s voice commented, “People use the word awesome a lot for things that don’t cause a feeling of awe. But this… I’m definitely feeling awe, but wouldn’t call it awesome.”
“I know what you mean,” Daniel admitted.
Doug Wilson shook his head sadly. “It’s… quite disturbing.”
Daniel wasn’t about to contradict him, but he didn’t think Wilson was looking at it the right way, either. “Look on the bright side; we’re still alive to feel awed or disturbed.”
“Yeah, still being alive is what matters,” Palmer agreed.
“We’re also behind schedule,” Daniel said pointedly, “and that’s something I fucking hate being. Let’s get our asses in gear. Move forward.”
Fourteen
Things had been relatively quiet for an hour or so, during which time they’d made it through the demolished forest and another fifteen or twenty miles beyond that. Neither the Gresians nor Doug Wilson had caused any trouble or gotten in the way. Daniel had no idea what the Gresians were doing right now—hopefully heading for the main landing zones where battalion-strength forces were arriving—but Wilson was glued to his notes and records on a tablet reader. For once, Daniel didn’t think he was being egotistical for going over his own material, as it seemed eminently practical and sensible to keep refreshing the brain with the knowledge and ancient language that he would have to make use of when the Hardcases reached their objective.
The landscape over which they rattled and bumped, even when the ground wasn’t heavily bomb-cratered, was at best rural, though Daniel thought it was more like wilderness and Beswick kept comparing it to the Yorkshire Moors in England.
They had actually just left the far side of the forest when they felt a tremendous, ground-shaking impact some miles behind them. When Daniel turned in his hatchway to look back, he witnessed some of the biggest smoke clouds he could imagine, dark and roiling gray and brown, formed into thick mushrooms. “The New Delhi has begun bombarding the proving grounds installation,” Lizzie reported.
“It’s about time,” Daniel muttered.
“If we weren’t in the way, they could do the whole area with a meteor, you know. I’ve found that’s actually pretty effective,” she added blithely.
Daniel shivered. “Let’s just thank our lucky stars they’re holding that back now that we are here.”
Shortly afterwards, a couple of the Gresian drones flew overhead with their distinctive stuttering whine, heading towards the mushroom clouds at high speed.
“Recon drones,” Hope warned. “They’re heading west, away from us. Do you think we’ve dropped down their priority list?”
“Maybe,” Daniel replied. “Or they think we were toast at the forest and haven’t realized their mistake yet.”
“That’s actually pretty likely, I’d think.”
Kinsella snorted. “I’m not egotistical enough to be bothered about the Gresians not making me a priority, if you know what I mean.”
“You and me both, Sergeant,” Daniel agreed. “I’m perfectly happy for them to not attack us before we can get in and make our play.”
“You think someone ought to tell them that it’s our job to attack them, not the other way around?”
“We could always send them a text.”
After another hour, Daniel called a halt. It was clear that Sergeant Cole’s damaged suit wasn’t working properly, and if it had to be checked out, Daniel would rather do it when things were quiet. When he spotted an abandoned barn-like structure, Daniel knew this was his best chance to pause and do so. A couple of the same grounded, four-legged moth-like creatures they had passed earlier were nuzzling at a group of raised food dishes, and Daniel realized they were some form of Gresian farm animals.
Kinsella, Pipsqueak, Jefferson, and Svoboda disembarked from the APCs and carefully scouted out the barn on foot. Finding no signs of life, and with there also being no sign of any residence nearby, Daniel had both transports park under the ageing roof. As he got out, he noted that the barn had a concrete floor, and suspected it was probably meant to store and maintain farm vehicles, though none were present.
Sergeants Stewart and Cole stood their armor in one corner and emerged as themselves. Freed of the mechanics, Cole stumbled, sinking into a sitting position with a groan. Daniel led their medic, Kit Gregory—a young man who looked too much like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo even with regulation grooming and uniform—over to see to Cole. Whether the problem was with an injury to Cole that his Exo-suit hadn’t properly healed or damage to the Big Mike armor, Daniel wanted to know, because where Stewart could run over rough terrain at upwards of fifty miles per hour, Cole had been limping and only managing half that speed.
“I’m slowing you up, sir,” Cole acknowledged immediately upon his approach.
Daniel didn’t want to tell him so, but also didn’t want to patronize him or insult his intelligence. “Some,” he said.
“That’s a problem. An advance is only as fast at its slowest man.” Cole shook his head with a sigh. “Malik can keep up with you, but you’re all having to keep down with me.”
Daniel nodded and let Gregory examine him. The guy had been a paramedic before being drafted, so Daniel knew he knew his stuff. “What’s the damage?” Daniel asked at last.
Kit stood. “Well, he’s been hit three times.”
“I’m OK, more or less,” Cole interrupted.
“I wasn’t asking you,” Daniel said, not unkindly.
“The Exo-suit has worked fine on the physical damage to the body, and healed him from those injuries reasonably well,” Gregory continued. “He’s tired, because healing takes energy out of the body, but some protein and chow should deal with that.”
“So, is that what’s been slowing him up?”
“It’s not impossible—I ain
’t a specialist in the field—but I’d say it’s more likely the armor than him.”
Daniel nodded and turned back to Cole. “How are you feeling? Yeah, this time I’m asking you.”
Cole managed a lopsided smile. “Hurts like a motherfucker, and I guess I feel a little shaky in places, but… these nanites are something else.”
“Without them, he’d be in an ICU for days,” Gregory added.
“Yeah, but right now, I can stand, walk, and shoot. Just sore and...”
“A little weirded out?” Daniel asked.
“Yeah. But I’ll get over that.”
“Good.” Daniel turned to Malik Jackson. “What do you think, Sergeant?”
Jackson sighed. “His armor’s been hit in a number of spots with air to air weaponry. More powerful stuff than a hand-held railgun or plasma rifle.”
“Is it toast?”
Jackson shrugged. “Hard to say, sir. It’s definitely still functional, if limited, and the weapons systems are fully functional, but it doesn’t feel right.”
Daniel thought about that for a few moments. “OK, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll give the two of you ten minutes to check it out and see how limited this Big Mike’s functionality is. If it’s got a serious problem, let me know whether or not you can fix it. Then get some food into Cole, whatever the verdict.”
“I wish the nanites could generate food the same way they clean out the waste products,” Cole grumbled.
“You wouldn’t be able to taste it then. You’d miss it... trust me.” Daniel turned around to the rest of the Hardcases. “Everybody else, take ten. Get some chow if you need it, and hydrate even if you think you don’t need it. That part’s an order. As soon as we get going again, we’re going to push as hard as we can toward the objective.”
Outside the barn, he found Erik Palmer looking in the direction of the New Delhis’s bombardment through binoculars. “The New Dehli has stopped firing,” Daniel reminded him.
“Nice to have a bit of peace and quiet. Either that or I’ve gone deaf from the battering we took earlier.”
