by Marko Kloos
“We’ll meet up with our other platoons at the ops center and do a sweep south,” I tell the Danish lieutenant, who nods and turns around to follow his troops, who have formed up into squads and are trotting up the landing pad in the tracks left in the snow by the Eurocorps mules.
“Actual, One-Five Actual,” I send to the company commander. “The Euros are on the ground. They brought armor and are sweeping the west and east approaches. Request permission to join Fourth Platoon and set up a perimeter to the south with First and Fourth.”
“One-Five Actual, go ahead. We’re coming topside, too. Civvies and wing-wipers are staying down here in the shelter until we know we are clear. Meet up at the southwest corner of the ops center in five.”
“On the way,” I reply. Then I switch back to my platoon channel. “Sarge, we are heading for the ops center to link up with Fourth Platoon. Let’s move it out.”
We leave the shelter of the hangar and venture back out onto the landing pad. As we walk toward the ops center, a hundred meters to our south, we pass the massive body of the dead Lanky our drop-ship pilot killed. I notice that most of the troopers alter their paths a little to increase the space between themselves and the Lanky, which looks menacing even in death. The massive head is turned in our direction, and even though Lankies have no eyes, it feels like it’s studying us as we pass by. The toothless mouth is slightly ajar. Once again the shape of the skull and the way the lower and upper jaws of the Lanky come together in a vaguely birdlike fashion remind me a little of Earth dinosaurs. The mouth is a good three or four meters wide, and I briefly wonder what it would feel like if one of these things scooped me up and decided to test the hardness of my armor with the edges of those massive jaws. Then I shake the thought off and concentrate on my TacLink screen again.
South of the ops center, we see evidence of Lanky activity everywhere. There are deep footprints left by huge three-toed feet, which even the steadily falling heavy snow hasn’t filled in yet. The auxiliary refueling station at the south end of the airfield is smashed to rubble, twisted metal strewn over half an acre. But the creatures who wrecked the base so thoroughly are nowhere to be seen. Their footprints disappear in the white mess to our south and east, and I don’t have the sense of adventure to want to track them down on foot and maybe stumble into an ambush a few kilometers from the nearest hard cover. Thankfully, the HD captain in charge of the company shares my assessment.
“No point chasing after them on foot,” he says. “Let the Euros roll their armor. They can cover ground much more quickly anyway. Secure the perimeter for the reinforcements and wait until this goddamn shit weather clears.”
“You heard the man,” the platoon sergeant sends to the squads, obvious relief in his voice. “Back to the ops center, people. And stay sharp, in case they decide to come back and finish the job.”
An hour later, the joint base is as busy as it probably hasn’t been in years. Our HD company and the Euros are no longer the only boots on the ground. Three more companies have joined us from the NAC mainland—two HD and one SI—and half an armored Eurocorps battalion is now widening the perimeter around the wrecked base. The storm has subsided to merely annoying levels, and visibility is now a hundred meters or more. The drop ships are still flying around on instruments only. By coincidence or cunning, the Lankies picked the perfect time and weather to attack the base while we couldn’t make use of our sensors or offensive air power.
“We are heading back for showers and chow as soon as the next HD company gets here to relieve us,” the captain announces to the platoon leaders. We are keeping an eye on the base’s southern perimeter, and one of our platoons is picking through the rubble of the damaged ops center with what’s left of the garrison platoon to make sure we didn’t overlook any injured or trapped survivors.
I relay the information to my platoon, where it is received with unanimous relief. The wind has slacked off, the storm is dying down, but the outside air temperature is still minus thirty degrees, and the heaters in our suits are working overtime. I always knew the Lankies were incredibly resilient, but if they were able to survive this environment without support for months, they’re even hardier than we thought.
A few minutes later, I hear the captain’s voice again, this time on a private channel.
“Lieutenant Grayson, you’re pod-qualified, right? You’ve fought these things before?”
“Yes, sir,” I reply. “Three hundred drops, give or take.”
“The Euros just found something in the ice twenty klicks north. They’re asking for our SI company. I’m going to send Lieutenant Thiede your way to take over First Platoon. Meet up with the SI company at the drop-ship pad in five, and report to their CO.”
“Copy that, sir,” I send back, surprised. “On my way.”
I pass the news on to the platoon sergeant and check my gear. Then I trot back toward the ops center and the landing pad beyond it. Some of my platoon’s troopers exchange curious looks.
The disappointment I feel at the postponed return to a hot shower and warm food is overshadowed by the new dread in the pit of my stomach. What the hell did the Euros stumble across in the ice that made them call for all the Spaceborne Infantry and podheads in the area?
But as I slog my way through the snow that reaches almost up to my knees, I find that I have a pretty good idea.
Next time I’m out for a morning run, I’m leaving the PDP at home by accident, I decide on the spot.
CHAPTER 3
HUNTING A BEAR IN WINTER
Twenty kilometers to the north of Thule base, the scene looks like some sort of international military jamboree. There are drop ships from the NAC’s Fleet Arm and Homeworld Defense, Danish Eurocorps ships and armored vehicles, and personnel in battle armor with at least five different camouflage patterns. The airspace is almost as crowded as the ground. When I step off the ramp of the drop ship with the SI platoon, there are several flights of NAC and Eurocorps drop ships circling overhead, all with air-to-ground ordnance visible on the external racks. The weather up here is less of a mess than the storm around Joint Base Thule. The clouds overhead are the color of molten metal, but it’s not snowing, and I can see further than my voice will carry.
“Delta Company, hustle,” the company commander sends. “The area of interest is two hundred meters to the northeast.”
The “area of interest” is very obvious even without the visual overlay the company commander puts on our helmet visors. This is the part of Greenland where the ice sheet meets the rocky hills and mountains along the coast, and there are lots of ravines and valleys in the ice and the rock, clefts and canyons that look cold and dangerous and entirely inhospitable. The motley assembly of international forces is gathered on a frozen glacial riverbed, runoff from the nearby glacier making its way to the ocean just a kilometer or two to our west, and kept in icy stasis by the cold winter weather. Up on the northern side of the frozen river, there are wide fissures in the slope that makes up the bank of the ice river, and half a dozen armored vehicles are lined up in front of one of them, gun mounts trained on the gap in the rock.
We make our way up the icy slope. By the time we reach the top of the incline, I am winded, a reminder that I am not yet back in my usual fighting shape after that year of garrison duty shepherding trainees at NACRD Orem. The fissures in the rock wall are a hundred meters away. The ground in front of them is sharply inclined, like a ramp made of ice, and there are many imprints from large three-toed feet on the surface snow.
“Guess we know where they went,” the platoon sergeant says.
“Where’s the fleet guy?” someone in the group up ahead says, and I trot over to the motley gaggle of NAC and Eurocorps troops gathered between the armored vehicles.
“Lieutenant Grayson,” I introduce myself to the highest-ranking officer I see, a major from HD. There’s a captain from the Eurocorps standing with him, a tall guy with an Icelandic flag on his armor. “I’m the fleet guy.”
“C
aptain Clary says you’ve done a shitload of drops against these things,” the major says.
“Yes, sir. A few hundred. I’m a combat controller.”
“Ever seen anything like this before?” he says, and points a thumb over his shoulder at the icy ramp carved out of the glacier surface. The dark crevice in the rock beyond looks forbidding and hostile.
“No, sir,” I say. “They usually build their structures on the surface. I’ve never seen them go underground. Never seen them in this kind of weather, either.”
“We have at least half a dozen separate sets of tracks going into that. The mules are keeping a lid on the perimeter out here, but we need to find out what’s in there. Grab an SI platoon and find me a way down for the armor, and we’ll smoke the fuckers out.”
I look at the gap in the rock again. It’s maybe twenty meters tall and less than five meters wide. It’s hard to believe something the size of a Lanky could have squeezed through there. I don’t feel terrifically enthusiastic about descending into that rocky funnel after them, not even with a platoon of SI at my back. But I’m the only podhead with Lanky experience on the ground right now, and it seems I just got nominated for the job.
“What about drones? Got any RQ units on one of the drop ships? We could send those down there without risking grunts.”
“Those aren’t standard kit on HD drop ships, and we can’t wait for a stocked SI boat to show up. Just poke your head in, and give me some footage for the armor guys. No heroics.”
“Can do, sir,” I reply, and snap a salute that’s way more confident than I feel.
“MARS launchers, one per fire team,” I say to the platoon’s squad leaders as we gear up on the plateau, trading fléchette rifles for M-90 anti-Lanky rifles. “Silver bullets in the launchers, as many as you can grab from the mules and the drop ships. No thermobarics, unless you want to have a thousand tons of rock and ice come down on us.”
“We’re going in there with hand weapons only?” one of the sergeants asks.
“We gotta make sure the mules can fit through there,” I reply. “We poke around a bit and then send in the armor. I have no interest in sticking out my neck for the Euros today, Sarge.”
“Copy that,” the sergeant replies.
With all that firepower lined up on the glacier behind us and patrolling overhead, it seems idiotic to go after the Lankies with unsupported infantry again, the squishiest and least powerful weapons system in the arsenal. But the Lankies went where the mules and drop ships can’t reach them, and so we gear up and start making our way down the glacier slope to the rock crevice in widely spaced formation, lots of room between squads and lots of MARS launchers at the ready. I take three steps on the sheer ice before the cleats on my armor’s boot soles deploy automatically. Even with the triangular spikes of the automatic cleats providing extra traction, I only barely manage not to fall on my ass ungracefully every ten meters. With the fifty pounds of gear strapped to me, I’d probably slide all the way into the rock crevice below us without stopping again.
The slope down to the rock crevice is a hundred meters long. I am with First Squad, which reaches the gap in the rock first. Behind us, Second Squad moves up to join us while Third and Fourth Squads cover our advance with their MARS launchers from halfway up the ramp.
“They won’t show on thermal or infrared, not even in the ice,” I send to my platoon. “Helmet lights, max lumens. You’ll only spot them visually, so make the beam as long as you can.”
Just in front of the rock crevice, the icy ramp makes a hard right turn and dips down at an even steeper angle. This is the seam between the ice of the glacier and the rock walls of the riverbed, and the ramp bends at a sixty-degree angle and follows the course of the rock wall. Ten meters past the threshold where the ramp turns into an ice tunnel, there’s a sharp drop-off.
“Will you look at that shit,” the sergeant next to me says.
In front of us, the ice tunnel’s floor drops a good five meters, continues for another ten, and then drops again. The pattern repeats itself as far as our helmet lights reach into the darkness. I turn on my night vision to see half a dozen steps carved into the ice, a staircase made for creatures ten times our height.
“Son of a bitch,” I say.
“Ain’t no way we’re gonna roll armor in there.”
“No, there ain’t,” I agree. “Mules won’t make that drop.”
I toggle over to the company command circuit.
“Major, the armor is a no-go.”
“Yeah, I see the footage,” the HD major replies. “How in the hell did they manage that?”
“Not a clue. I’ve never seen anything like this. Didn’t even know they could do angles.”
I turn in a circle to give the major a good view of our surroundings through the telemetry link from my helmet camera. We are twenty meters beyond the right-angle turn in the ramp. To the left of us is the sheer rock wall of the riverbed. To the right is the ice of the glacier, and in front of us is the monstrous staircase the Lankies have managed to carve out of the ice sheet, descending into the darkness like a monument from a long-lost culture. There’s nothing moving in the darkness at the edge of our lights, and it’s quiet except for the wind whistling through the crevice.
“Are they that smart?” I wonder aloud, more to myself than anyone else.
“What do you mean, Lieutenant?”
“Well,” I say. Then I turn around and point to where the ramp makes a sharp right turn as it meets the rock wall.
“The drop ships and the attack birds can’t just shoot ordnance down into the hole,” I say. “It’ll just splash against the rock and close the entrance. And we can’t send armor down because they made a big staircase. It’s like they know our weapons and built their hidey-hole accordingly.”
“Goddamn,” the major says. “It’s bunker-building 101. Angle the exits and deny straight shots. You think?”
“Shit, I hope not.” I step up to the edge of the first step and look down. The five-meter drop is just enough to make it impossible for armor to crawl down to the next level without flipping end over end, and it’s too much for infantry to climb down easily without mechanical assistance.
“See if you can recon a little further down that tunnel, Lieutenant.”
“Copy that, sir,” I say. “We’re going to need some help to get down there. Winch cables from the mules. Have them clip a few together. We’ll need about two hundred meters.”
“I’ll send the word,” the major replies.
“You really want to climb down there, sir?” the platoon sergeant asks me over private comms.
“You got any other hot plans today, Sarge?” I ask, and he chuckles.
“I can think of a few things I’d rather do with my day than climb into a dark tunnel after a shitload of Lankies,” he replies. “Sir.”
“No, I’m right there with you.”
“But we’re going in there anyway.”
I look down into the tunnel, past the giant staircase, as far as my helmet light can illuminate the darkness. Nothing is stirring down there, but I know that won’t be the case for long once we climb down those huge stairs.
“Yep,” I say. “We’re going in there anyway.”
Ten minutes later, two steel tow cables are running from the back ends of the mules down the hundred-meter slope and into the tunnel we’re standing in. We’ll all be able to rappel down the Lanky staircase in a hurry, but getting back up will take quite a bit longer.
“I’m going ahead with First Squad,” I tell the platoon sergeant. “Second follows us down as soon as we’re in overwatch position. One squad moves, two squads cover, until we’re all the way down.”
“We have about a hundred meters line of sight down there. Won’t be a lot of time to engage if they come out in force.”
“If they come, they’ll come one at a time, and they’ll be on all fours. Tunnel’s not big enough for them to stand up or go side by side.”
“Let’s get t
his done with, then,” the sergeant says, and I grunt agreement.
I rappel down to the step below with First Squad, a quick and adrenaline-accelerated deployment that only takes ten or fifteen seconds. As soon as my boots hit the ice of the step below, I disengage from the rappel line and pick up my slung rifle again. The SI private who dropped down on the cable next to mine has a MARS launcher on his back, which he shoulders and readies. We move forward to the edge of the step and aim our weapons down the tunnel as the rest of the squad follows us down in three-second intervals, as fast as gravity will let them slide down the cable. The ledge behind us is five meters tall, high enough that we won’t be able to get back up the step without the steel cables from the mules. I can’t suppress the feeling that we just took the first step into a mousetrap.
We repeat the process, leapfrogging squads down the slope until we’re all at the bottom of the staircase except for Fourth Squad, which is keeping an overwatch from the last ledge. The tunnel we’re in measures maybe ten meters between its rough and irregular walls, and the ceiling is at least that high. It’s not enough to let a Lanky stand up on its hind legs down here, but it’s enough to make me feel acutely aware of how much bigger and heavier they are, and how puny a single human form looks in front of a Lanky. We finally have ourselves a bug war, and it turns out that we’re the bugs, I hear someone from my past in my memory.
“Delta Actual, are you seeing this?” I send to the company commander. When the reply comes, it’s riddled with static noise.
