Fields of Fire (Frontlines Book 5)

by Marko Kloos

  Let’s hope our good luck lasts for just a little while, I think, knowing good and well that it never does.

  The ride through the nighttime Martian landscape has a surreal quality to it, and not just because of the green tinge from the low-light magnification. Lieutenant Stahl pulls ahead of the column until we are almost ten klicks in front of the pack, far enough out to provide ample warning to the tank company once we find trouble.

  “Whatever you did, it worked,” Brigade Command sends. “Orange Beach is reporting that the Lankies in their sector have stopped their push. They are moving southeast from LZ Orange and heading your way.”

  “Copy incoming from the direction of LZ Orange,” I reply. “Do we have a head count?”

  “They report several hundred individuals,” C2 replies. “Be advised that Ground Force Orange is too depleted to pursue, and they have lost most of their close-air support. They’re staying defensive for now, so it’s all on you. Make contact, and give them something to chase south, but don’t get into prolonged exchanges. You don’t have the numbers to stem that tide.”

  “Copy that,” I say. The tank-company commander sends back his curt acknowledgment as well.

  “You’re our tripwire,” the company commander tells me. “You make contact, we’ll get into blocking position, and you lead them back to us. No heroics.”

  “Not interested in any above-and-beyond shit today, sir,” I send back, and he laughs.

  “We’re still looking good. Seventy percent ammo, sixty-five on fuel, and another half hour of close-air coverage. We may yet make it out of this in one piece.”

  CHAPTER 19

  47 NORTHING

  The terrain works in our favor. It’s flat enough for the optics to pick up the first elements of the Lankies coming toward us from several kilometers away. They stride across the plains with purpose, but in no terrible hurry, kicking up puffs of Mars dust with every step.

  “Incoming hostiles,” I report on the company channel. The TacLink screen starts painting orange icons at the very edge of our visual detection range. “Bearing two-ninety degrees. Five thousand five hundred and closing in.”

  “All platoons, halt and assume defensive posture. Reload your magazines from the spares while you have time. We fire from max range and fall back two klicks. Shoot and scoot,” the company commander orders.

  The tank company halts and forms up in a long firing line. I see the icons of individual soldiers emerging from the vehicles as the troopers get out and set up firing positions in the spaces between the mules.

  “Here we go,” I say to the other two members of the Weasel’s crew. “You’ll finally get something to shoot at, Dmitry.”

  “Maybe this day will be some fun, after all,” Dmitry replies. He grabs the control stick of the gun mount. I hear the mechanical ratcheting sound from the machine-gun mount on top of the vehicle as Dmitry cycles the bolt remotely and readies the gun for action. He seems to need very little instruction when it comes to operating large-caliber weaponry.

  “Two-thousand-meter range on the main armament,” Lieutenant Stahl reminds him. “I will try not to get closer than fifteen hundred.”

  With the Weasel’s polychrome camo, we could probably get much closer to the Lankies without being spotted, but this is about getting their attention, not staying hidden. Lieutenant Stahl aims the vehicle at the center of the advancing line of Lankies and goes full throttle again.

  “Remember, Mars gravity!” I shout. “Don’t flip this son of a bitch.”

  “Eurocorps has purchased comprehensive insurance on this vehicle,” the lieutenant replies.

  Dmitry laughs. “German humor,” he says. “I did not think it exists.”

  The gap between us and the tank company opens as we race toward the approaching Lankies at top speed. We are thirteen kilometers in front of the mules and their guns, and we have to coax the Lankies to within five thousand meters. I keep my eyes glued to the distance readout. The gap between us and the Lankies shrinks too fast for my comfort. Three kilometers, two and a half, then two. When the distance readout shows 1,800 meters, Lieutenant Stahl hits the brakes and swings the Weasel around.

  “Weapons free,” he says.

  Dmitry lets out a satisfied little grunt. He flexes his hand and flips up the safety cover on the control stick’s trigger. Then he holds down the trigger, and the heavy machine gun on the roof mount hammers out a burst toward the Lankies in the front of the advancing pack.

  The German gun is astoundingly accurate even without laser ranging, which doesn’t work on Lanky hides anyway. The first burst from the gun hits a Lanky square in the upper chest, very close to the relatively vulnerable throat area. The gun has a smaller caliber than our autocannons, but the rounds have a much higher muzzle velocity and cover the range in a little over a second. The Lanky stumbles and drops to its knees. Dmitry follows up the first burst with a second one, which mostly hits the cranial shield of the now-crouching Lanky and sends ricochets everywhere. Dmitry shoots a few more short bursts along the Lanky line—not enough to drop one reliably with the smaller machine-gun rounds, but enough to inflict injury and hopefully piss them off. Then Lieutenant Stahl accelerates away from the Lankies.

  We repeat the same process at every one-kilometer grid line. They are marked in northings on the TacLink map, a standard measuring unit for grid squares in the absence of other navigational references, and we started engaging the Lankies at the 60 northing line. We stop and shoot at 59 northing, then 58, 57, and 56, each time expending a hundred rounds of MG ammo and causing the occasional full-on casualties among the Lankies. The armor company has their battle line drawn up at 47 northing.

  “You have them walking right into your guns,” I tell the company commander.

  “Keep doing what you’re doing,” he says. “When they make that little ridgeline between 54 and 53, we have them in the bag.”

  “Just mind your fire,” I reply. “This thing can’t take more than a stray hit or two.”

  In theory, the computer controls on the mule guns shouldn’t allow the mules to fire at a positively identified friendly target blaring NAC or Eurocorps IFF ID, but at the ranges we’re engaging, autocannons aren’t exactly sniper rifles. As we speed toward the 54 northing ridgeline, I hope that the mule gunners are all experienced and alert, because one of those thirty-five-millimeter shells would wreck the Weasel comprehensively.

  “TacAir, stand by to drop the hard stuff,” I send to the drop ships overhead. “Dmitry, tell the SRA attack jock to stand by until they cross the ridge and we have them in the kill zone. Don’t want to run them off before they can get into gun range.”

  “Remember: short, controlled bursts,” the company commander says to the platoons. “We lay everything we have on them, then retreat to 45 northing. Repeat and leapfrog two northings until they stop coming.”

  Lieutenant Stahl seems to have the Mars gravity dialed in now. We shoot over the low ridgeline at 54 northing, and the Weasel momentarily catches air. We bounce back onto the dirt a moment later, the vehicle staying true on its track and absorbing the shock from the landing. It’s definitely geared for recon, not hard combat, but for the job we’re doing right now it’s absolutely perfect—small, very agile, and with an outstanding sensor package. If I had a dozen of these for SOCOM, we could survey a planet the size of Arcadia or Mars completely within five days, and in air-conditioned comfort. I bet they even have the capability for a great sound system.

  “Red Hat Express, we have you in sight,” I hear on the company channel when we’re across the ridgeline. The speed readout on my screen reads 110 kilometers per hour, the fastest I’ve ever gone off-world in anything that didn’t have wings bolted to it.

  Not quite a minute later, the Lankies come pouring over the low ridgeline, dozens of them in the leading group, and hundreds more right behind them. The tank platoon waits patiently until the bulk of the Lanky crowd is over the ridgeline and half a kilometer into the kill zone.


  “Red Hat Express, break left to reading ninety and come around behind us.”

  “Understood,” the German lieutenant replies. “Going around from bearing ninety degrees.”

  He corrects the course of the Weasel until we’re almost parallel with the advancing front of Lankies a kilometer and a half behind us. Dmitry stows the gun again with a look of mild regret on his face behind the Euro helmet’s visor.

  “All units, switch fire control to autonomous. Weapons free, weapons free.”

  Just like back at the Lanky village, fourteen cannons open up with burst fire. The muzzle blasts from the thirty-five-millimeter cannons are enormous despite the flash dissipaters on their muzzle ends. From our perspective, over to the right side of their formation but still in front of the guns, the blasts from the guns look alarming. But the computers on the mules stay true to their programming, and the heavy shells streak over our low-slung ride and into the advancing Lankies.

  For the next thirty seconds, the plateau is a shooting range with live targets. The cannons mow down Lanky after Lanky. The dual-purpose rounds from the thirty-five-millimeter guns are so powerful that Lanky limbs get torn off by direct hits on occasion, a very satisfying sight. Some of the Lankies assume their defensive postures, advancing at a crouch so their cranial shields cover most of their spindly bodies from the front, and I’m amazed to see that even the cannons from the Bastard mounts can’t pierce those skull shields reliably. Lankies stumble and fall out of the group with fatal injuries right, left, and center, but the ones behind them simply climb over them and continue the advance into the murderous hail of fire coming from the mules.

  I don’t get it, I think. They retreated earlier at the village, showing self-preservation impulses, but these out here on the plateau aren’t perturbed by clearly effective gunfire. We’ve already dropped over a dozen, but the others come surging forward, around or over their own dead, and advance on the mules. Then they’re close enough to make the company commander concerned, and he blows the retreat signal.

  “All units, cease fire. Load up the legs and fall back to 45 northing.”

  The mules stop shooting, let their infantry passengers board, and make quick 180-degree turns almost as one. Then they race away from the Lankies, back toward the 45 northing line two kilometers away. We shadow them in the Weasel on what is now their left flank, now that we’re moving in the same direction as the Lankies. The cluster of orange icons behind the company has thinned out some, but not enough. We’ll have to do this half a dozen times to take them all down, and the mules only have a limited supply of cannon ammo. The Weasel has a lot of rounds on board because the rounds are small in comparison to those fired from the Bastard mount jackhammers, but even with judicious burst fire, we’ve gone through half the ammo load on the machine gun just with our harassing fire earlier. When the company lines up at 45 northing again a few minutes later and repeats the process, I start to get the feeling that we are trying to put out a massive wildfire with handheld extinguishers.

  “One or two more of these, and we’ll have to disengage,” the company commander says, echoing my thoughts.

  “Not quite yet,” I reply. “Bringing in close air on the next stop.”

  “Hallelujah,” he replies.

  “All air units, I am marking target reference point Alpha.” I draw a big red box around the gaggle of orange icons on the plateau. “You are cleared hot. Everything north of 45 northing is hostile and a priority target. Weapons free, weapons free.”

  The drop ships come thundering out of the clouds somewhere over 44 northing. They line up in a four-abreast formation and ripple-fire all their remaining external ordnance at the approaching Lankies. A dozen missile trails streak out from the wings of the Wasps and scream into the Lanky formation. The Lankies that take direct hits to their bodies go down hard and tangle up the advance in their general vicinity. Some of the missiles hit the ground between the Lankies, and the explosive force is still enough to topple them over or make them stumble. The drop ships follow up the missile strike with long bursts from their cannons, which rake the Lanky lines and kill yet more of them. We are dropping them as they advance, and they are paying for each hundred-meter stretch of the plateau with half a dozen of their own. But they keep coming.

  “Cadillac Flight is Winchester on missiles and close to bingo fuel,” the pilot in charge of the drop-ship wing tells me on the TacAir channel. “We can give you one or two more gun runs, and then we have to RTB.”

  “Captain, we’re going to get another strafing run at most,” I tell the company commander. “I suggest we use it for cover fire while we haul ass out of the area.”

  “We’ve gotten our licks in,” he sends back. “All platoons, cease fire and prepare to head south. Let’s hope we pulled enough of these bastards away from LZ Orange.”

  The mules do their 180 again. The drop ships line up for one more attack run. This time, they come in from the northeast, perpendicular to the line of Lankies that is spread across several kilometers of the plateau and still surging toward us relentlessly and undeterred. The cannons drop a few more, maybe eight or ten, but there are too many left for those casualties to make much of a dent in their lines.

  “We are bingo fuel, and Winchester on cannons. Cadillac Flight is RTB. Good luck down there,” the leader of the attack-bird flight sends.

  “That’s it. We’re out. All units, disengage,” the armor-company commander says.

  On the southern edge of the Weasel’s sensor range, an orange icon shows up. It’s joined by another, then a third. Within a minute, there’s a line of orange icons to our south that’s easily as long and dense as the one to our north.

  “Enemy contacts, bearing one-four-five, distance eight kilometers. One hundred plus individuals,” I inform the company channel, even though everyone has the same icons on their TacLink screen right now because my suit shared the data with the whole neighborhood.

  “Where the fuck did they come from?” I say. “That area was cleared. We just went through there thirty fucking minutes ago.”

  “Ambush,” Dmitry says. “They pull us away from village. Only pretend to flee so we go north right away. Then spring trap behind us.”

  We thought we were luring them into a trap, I think. And all along, they were luring us into theirs. Threw away dozens of their own to get us out in the open like this. Just like Greenland all over again.

  The TacLink display is a tactical nightmare. Our line of mules is now sandwiched between two long battle lines of Lankies, and they are closing in on us like the pusher plates of a garbage compactor. We’re hemmed in by a steep hill to the northeast, which leaves only the southwest end of this vise as an escape route, but the Lankies are already advancing their southern lines to close that gap, too.

  It’s a pincer movement. They know formation tactics.

  The company commander has come to the same conclusion. He marks the shrinking gap between the Lankies’ southern lines on the map.

  “All platoons, make best speed for that map grid,” he says. “Haul ass. Drive for your lives, people.”

  The whole column swings south, and the mules go full throttle. Our Weasel is up on the northern flank of our advance, by the foot of the hill hemming us in, and the rocky slope is run through with deep cracks and looks way too steep to climb with the recon car. So Lieutenant Stahl points the Weasel south and opens up the throttle to catch up with our mules, which are racing south for dear life.

  With nothing else to do other than hang on and hope the lieutenant doesn’t roll the vehicle, I train the sensor mast on the Lankies approaching us from the southeast. They’re not moving at a leisurely pace. In fact, they are striding as fast as I’ve seen them go, ten yards per step, covering a kilometer in a minute. The group is as big as the one closing on us from the northwest, and they are coming up the very same path we took only half an hour ago to catch the other Lankies from behind. The area between the village was completely clear of Lankies, and I know that
the mules moved faster than any Lanky can run.

  Where the hell did they come from? It’s like they popped out of the earth behind us.

  Suddenly, I have a pretty good idea how they managed to spring this trap, and I hope I’m not right, because if I am, it means that this offensive is going to take it in the face hard, and not just in this sector.

  The lead mules are rushing ahead with their engines at full throttle, but I can see that the southern pincer they’re setting up will close on the escape route just before we get there.

  “Don’t let up,” the captain orders on the company channel. “Don’t stop to shoot. Drive right through them if you have to.”

  The first two mules reach the Lanky line just as they close ranks and march inward. The first mule makes it through the gap between two Lankies and shoots off into the darkness beyond. The second mule can’t quite make the gap, and the driver decides at the last second that ramming speed is an adequate last fuck-you. He aims for the legs of one of the Lankies and plows right into them, twenty tons of wedge-shaped armored fighting vehicle against a creature that weighs hundreds of tons. The center of gravity difference favors the mule, but the laminate-composite armor on the nose of the vehicle isn’t meant to survive that sort of high-speed impact against something so solid. The Lanky goes down, but the mule flips sideways, spewing armor panels everywhere, and rolls across the plateau violently around its longitudinal axis. I flinch at the sight—even if the grunts in the back were in sling seats, there’s no way anyone’s walking away from that under their own power.

  The remaining mules have given up all semblance of coordinated formation driving. Everyone tries to find a gap in the wall of Lankies closing in on us. Some of the mules stop and open fire with their cannons, ignoring their commanders’ order while trying to blast a hole into the ranks. Several Lankies fall, but others take their place almost instantly. I watch as a Lanky strides swiftly toward the firing vehicle from the side. Before the gunner can turn his turret mount around, the Lanky kicks the mule over, sending shards of armor flying. Then another steps on top of the overturned mule and starts crushing it methodically with its huge feet. Another mule opens fire from a different spot and hoses the Lanky off the wrecked mule with a long burst of cannon rounds.