“You sure, Ginger?” Private Jackson wheezed. “You don’t think… You don’t think we ought to take a moment to catch our breath?”
Ginger glanced down the line as she ran. Ghost had barely broken a sweat. Duke was a little red in the face but otherwise fine. She reckoned Jackson and Parkins were just looking for an excuse not to breach the city gates.
“Still with us, Private Bradley?” she called over her shoulder.
The teenage private caught up with her. He winced each time he gasped for air. She guessed he was battling a stitch.
“Yes, Sarge.”
“Good man.” Ginger turned back to the two surviving members of Fireteam Tau. “We’re going in, and that’s an order.”
Parkins bristled without slowing her pace.
“Yes, Sergeant Rogers.”
Other squads were inside the walls already, and as Sigma and Tau got within thirty metres of the rubble-strewn opening Ginger began to hear the familiar rat-a-tat-tat of UEC battle rifles being fired. Familiar, but far from reassuring. Still, it was inevitable. It wasn’t as if they’d come to expect anything else.
They scaled the debris without stopping, though the uneven terrain slowed their pace and, in his hurry to clamber up after the rest of them, Duke slipped on some loose pebbles and gashed his knee. He irritably waved away Ghost’s offer to help and carried on. Ginger privately thought this was for the best – pausing in the bottleneck, even for a moment, could have had fatal consequences for all of the marines trying to get through behind them.
Private Bradley stopped at the peak of the rubble and doubled-up in exhaustion. Ginger hurriedly pulled him down the other side.
“Catch your breath after you get in cover,” she snapped, shoving him forwards. “Everyone on me.”
There wasn’t a great deal of room to manoeuvre inside the wall. The stone buildings closest to it had also crumbled in the bombardment, and Ginger found herself wondering if Command couldn’t have designated a better breach point. Before the original bug attack, this had apparently been one of the poorest areas inside Rhinegarde’s walls. It showed. None of the houses were more than a couple of metres from one another, creating narrow, winding lanes and a disconcerting abundance of blind corners.
Ginger led her fireteam to the nearest intact wall, narrowly dodging a rotten board as it tumbled down from the storey above. As she slammed her back against the stone, she watched as the thatched rooftop of the building opposite crashed inwards, spilling dust across the whole lane. The rest of her team joined her in cover. Everyone gasped for air.
“Okay.” Ginger nodded, finally granting the request none of them had the lungs to ask for. “Everyone take a breather. In five, we work from building to building, clearing each one of any roaches before moving onto the next. If we’re lucky, we’ll only need to clean up a few stragglers. Got it?”
Everyone either nodded or gave an exhausted thumbs-up.
“All right.” Ginger cautiously peered around the corner. Aside from another fireteam, the alleyway was clear. “On me. Move!”
“Jesus,” moaned Private Bradley. “I thought she meant five minutes, not five seconds…”
They pushed into the alleyway, rifles at the ready, trying not to let their nerves throw off their aim. Ginger could barely keep her heartbeat from becoming a drum roll. It had been almost two weeks since she last saw a bug up close, and that choking, mind-numbing terror, which had never truly vanished even during the period of relative calm that followed the destruction of the bridge, was climbing to its peak again.
Nothing stirred.
The houses were built so close together, almost everything was cast in its neighbour’s shadow. An old sign creaked overhead. The roar of flamethrowers igniting a few streets over made the skin on the back of Ginger’s neck grow tight.
She nodded towards a door in the side of the house nearest to them. It was little more than six wooden planks nailed together. It didn’t even have a lock.
They all got into position around the doorway – Jackson and Parkins to the left, Ghost and Bradley to the right, and Ginger directly opposite. She nodded again, and Duke booted the door clean off its fragile hinges.
The big guy stepped through, gave the small, dusty room a quick sweep with his rifle’s shotgun undercarriage primed and ready, then backed out again.
“Clear.”
“Onto the next,” said Ginger.
They pressed forward, checking door after door. For the most part, the houses were empty. Full of upturned tables, broken clay pots and the occasional skeleton stripped of its meat, but empty. Ginger supposed there hadn’t been much reason for the bugs to stick around once their food source – the city’s original occupants – was depleted. It wasn’t as if they knew of the city’s strategic importance.
The one time they did encounter a roach, the bug was just as surprised as they were. No sooner had Duke transformed the front door into firewood with his boot than an emaciated and battle-scarred bug scuttled out through a window on the floor above. Its six feet scratched desperate grooves into the daub walls as it climbed towards the rooftop. They immediately opened fire, and a moment later its punctured corpse crashed back down onto the dirt floor. They tossed a grenade through the window it crept out from before moving on, just to be sure.
Other fireteams crossed their path as everyone slowly moved towards the centre of the city. Sometimes whole squads hurried past them with orders different to their own. A few alleys contained the odd wandering roach, and one fireteam blew themselves up busting into an outhouse teeming with explosive egg sacs. The green fire billowed above the peasant district like a miniature mushroom cloud and ignited many of the surrounding rooftops. But all in all, it was quiet… at least until they reached the Kill Box.
The Kill Box was where they were driving all the remaining roaches in Rhinegarde, if all three arms of the invasion had been successful. Given the ease of their own advance, Ginger had no reason to suspect otherwise. The Kill Box was where the bugs would be trapped and systematically slaughtered – an old, open public square in the centre of the city, susceptible to attack from all sides and, if the need arose, above.
Fireteams Sigma and Tau didn’t arrive until nearly half an hour after the human forces first breached the city walls, by which point the battle was supposed to be won. Or well on its way there, at least. Yet they found the public square still teeming with insects. And despite (or perhaps, because of) their slapdash bombardment earlier, Command was apparently hesitant to blitz the area with so many marines still inside.
That’s what Staff Sergeant Baker told them when they found him and one other surviving marine crouched behind a derelict fountain not far from where their rickety lane ended, anyway. They dived into cover beside him.
“We picked off all the stragglers we could,” Ginger yelled over the crackle of rifle fire. “What are our orders now, sir? What do you need us to do?”
Baker ducked as the fountain was subjected to a barrage of alien rounds. He picked one of them up off the cobbled floor and turned it between his fingers. It was shaped like a bullet – albeit with the sharp tip crushed following its dalliance with the stonework – but made from crunchy chitin like a bug’s shell. The same natural brand of ballistic that had eviscerated so many marines back when they tried taking the bug cannons.
“How a bunch of insects can evolve semi-automatic projectiles is beyond me,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “I guess that’s survival of the fittest for you.”
Ginger grabbed him by the shoulder.
“What are our orders, sir?”
“We’ve lost a couple of fireteams over by the gardens,” he said, tossing the chitin shard away. “Get over there and reinforce the line. We’ve got them where we want them, but if the bugs break through, it’ll be chaos. Worse chaos,” he added.
“Got it. Give us covering fire?”
Baker reached over and tapped his fellow marine on the shoulder. When the marine didn’t respond, he pul
led her towards him. Her head rolled back to reveal a bloody, shattered crater where her left eye should have been.
“Bloody hell.” He fell back against the fountain. “Just me, then. I’m not sure what good covering fire is against an enemy that doesn’t take cover, but I’ll do what I can. You ready?”
“Whenever you are.”
“Go!”
Baker popped his head and rifle above the lip of the broken fountain and opened fire on the various bugs swarming around the square. They were confused and enraged, trying to lash out in every direction at once. Ginger assisted him as the rest of her fireteam crouch-ran to the next point of cover – a stack of large, mouldy grain barrels beside a chunk of collapsed real estate. Then it was their turn to provide cover as Ginger hurried across to join them.
“Can we move to a better position?” Ghost shouted above the din of several hundred rifles being fired into the square at once. “If these barrels are empty, they ain’t gonna protect us for long.”
Ginger peered along the line. If it could be called a “line”, that is. Just hundreds of marines taking cover wherever they could and shooting into a crowd of furious roaches they could scarcely see thanks to all the stone and grit flying about. There were even a few fireteams camped up in the higher storeys of derelict shops and inns around the square. Smart if things stayed as they were. Dumb if they hoped to make a hasty retreat.
Half a dozen bodies lay spread across the bloody cobbles between the barrels and the next point of cover – a row of modest flower beds in stone planters under the shade of a thin birch tree (or something that closely resembled one, at least) not far from a wide set of steps leading up towards the main keep. Presumably these were the “gardens” Baker mentioned. In Ginger’s book, a few potted plants did not a garden make. But she supposed in a city like this, they—
She winced as roach rounds peppered the other side of their barrels. It sounded like a full quill of arrows thudding into a Viking’s wooden shield.
Focus, Ginger. Focus.
“Those stone planters will be a lot sturdier,” she said, “and they’ll give us a much clearer line of sight on the roaches in the square. But there’s a lot of open ground between here and there. Doesn’t look like the last couple of fireteams had much luck crossing.
Private Bradley peered out. A quiet whimper escaped his lips. Duke gave him a distracted pat on the shoulder.
“Could toss a smoke,” said Jackson. “Can’t know for sure whether the bugs see using the same spectrums of light we do, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Good idea,” said Ginger. “You got one?”
“No, but I do,” said Sergeant Parkins, readying a grenade. “Where do you want it? Couple dozen feet, one o’clock?”
“Sounds good.”
Parkins popped the pin and lobbed the grenade over the top of the barrels. It clinked against one of the nearest planters and soon began belching out clouds of dark grey smoke.
“Wait for it,” Ginger said as the smoke grew denser. “Wait for it…”
“Now,” said Parkins, gesturing impatiently for Jackson to follow.
“No, wait!”
Parkins and Jackson sprinted towards the concrete planters. Confused, Bradley got up to chase after them. Loyal to Ginger as ever, Ghost and Duke pulled him back down.
“Goddammit,” said Ginger, aiming her rifle over the barrels in case they needed covering fire. But by now the smoke was thick enough to mask their movement. Perhaps she had been overly cautious after all. “Sod it, let’s go. I said go!”
They darted out from behind the barrels one by one so as not to bunch up and make themselves an easy target. Like Jackson said, who knew if the bugs could detect their heat signatures through the smoke. First went Ghost, then Bradley – who Ginger had to admit was doing much better than she would have previously given him credit for – and finally Duke. When none of them were skewered under a hail of chitin bullets, and just as the smoke was starting to blow away in the breeze, Ginger followed.
She skidded into cover and immediately turned to Parkins.
“Never do that again,” she snapped. “You could have got us all killed!”
“Me, get us killed?” Parkins shook her head. “You waited almost two seconds longer than necessary. I was simply following the guidelines we were taught in training. You might be in charge, Ginger, but I won’t let you put what’s left of my fireteam at risk.”
Ginger gritted her teeth and growled so hard in frustration she actually felt her throat burn. Parkins was right, of course – in Ginger’s fear of what lay on the other side of the smoke, she had waited too long. But correct or not, this was no time to pull rank.
The fireteam adjacent to them was subjected to a sustained barrage of roach rounds. They ducked behind the wall of what may have once been some sort of mill before any of their number could get hit. Puffs of dust and mortar exploded out from the stone.
Finally in a position to get a good look inside the bug-infested square, Ginger slowly poked her head above the planter.
“Jesus-H-Christ. What the hell is that?”
Most of the regular roaches were already dead, piled up over the toppled statues and bloody pathways in a great carpet of mandibles and thoraxes. But standing at the base of the steps that led up to the keep was something Ginger had never seen before – not in the tunnels, nor at the bridge. A new breed of bug… an unnatural bug. An organic killing machine.
Standing upright on two powerful hind legs, it was the most humanoid insect she’d seen on New Terra yet. The lower pair of arms sprouting from its abdomen were thin and hung uselessly by its sides, but its upper set were easily as muscular as Duke’s. Disturbingly reminiscent of the bug cannons, they ended not with vicious claws but the gnarly barrels of repeater cannons fused with – or perhaps even more fascinatingly, grown from – its shells, bones and flesh. Bulbous veins as thick as garden hoses snaked up its arms and across its chest, suggesting these weapons were fed rounds generated from within the bullish creature itself. And its face… it was flat, almost human, and yet so ugly and misshapen it was generous to describe it as a face at all. Black, soulless eyes stared across the battlefield from a grey and heavily-carapaced skull. Its thin, malformed mouth looked as if it had been carved onto its head with an axe.
It spotted Fireteam Sigma and snarled. An actual snarl, like that of a rabid dog. They ducked down behind the stone planters just before its projectiles decimated the few flowers still growing from them.
“Now we know what’s been shooting at us all this time, I guess,” said Duke, all the colour draining from his face.
“Those zoology books of yours,” Ghost asked Jackson. “They got any explanation for… well, that?”
“No,” said Jackson, dazed and deadpan. “No, they do not.”
“It’s not alone,” said Sergeant Parkins. “I spotted a second one just like it over on the other side of the steps.”
“And a third closer to the south,” Bradley added nervously, hugging his knees with his rifle.
Ginger inched her head above the planter again. The mutant freak closest to them had turned its attention to the next fireteam along and was spraying their gradually weakening wall with endless rounds from the two cannons fused to its arms. From the chips of stone bursting out in every direction, it didn’t look like their cover would hold together for much longer.
She raised her rifle and fired half a dozen rounds at the horrid creature. They thudded into its flesh and cracked its shell, yet the monster seemed to scarcely notice. It simply let out another anguished roar and turned its cannons back towards their planters.
“Jesus.” She ducked down and checked her magazine. “That thing’s a walking tank. I don’t think normal rounds are going to cut it.”
“We have actual tanks, don’t we?” asked Jackson. “Let them deal with it. Or does anyone have any RPGs?”
“You saw how narrow those alleys were,” Duke replied. “Gonna be ages before the tanks
break through.”
The mutated bug let rip with another torrent of chitin rounds. A fresh fireteam was sprinting down the side of the square in their direction; the arc of biomechanical projectiles cut through them like a scythe through stalks of wheat, dismembering limbs, cleaving torsos in two, and leaving those unlucky enough to survive writhing and screaming on the floor.
“Yeah…” Ghost shut her eyes and shuddered. “Something tells me we won’t last that long.”
A regular roach leapt over their planter and landed a few metres away on the other side, twitching its mandibles erratically as it searched for prey. Compared to its weaponised brethren, it suddenly didn’t seem so intimidating. All six of them – including Bradley, much to Ginger’s astonishment – opened fire until nothing but a reddish-purple stain remained.
Ginger searched the street for potential solutions. No, none of the nearby corpses had been carrying RPGs. She hadn’t expected as much. It was hardly standard-issue. UEC marines couldn’t be trusted not to get themselves killed even without handing out rocket-propelled grenades. And besides, the bug – or whatever damn species that freak belonged to – was much too close. Even a regular grenade was likely to get someone on their team killed.
The second storey was largely missing from a house a couple of doors down from their position, though enough of its front-facing wall remained to provide decent cover. It would make a good vantage point if anyone could actually reach it. Ginger had an idea.
“Ghost, do you reckon you could climb up there?”
Perplexed, Ghost shrugged.
“Sure, don’t see why not. I’ve found my way into worse nests. But there’s no way I’d make it up with that thing shooting everything that moves.”
“Yeah.” Ginger chewed her lip. “The rest of us can keep it distracted for a bit while you climb up. Regular rounds don’t seem to slow it down, but a shot or two from your rifle might do the trick.”
Ghost stared at the ladder of disjointed stone steps sticking out from the wall like broken teeth. She pursed her lips and exhaled sharply.
Sigma (War for New Terra, Book 1) Page 12
