Fields of Fire (Frontlines Book 5)

by Marko Kloos

  “That impact will be an air burst for all intents and purposes,” the C2 officer says. “You may not have enough time to get clear.”

  “There is no alternative, Phalanx. We need nukes on that ship now, or we all die today.”

  “Affirmative.” The C2 controller pauses for a moment. “We passed the TRP data to Kirov. You have seven minutes to clear the area and get to cover.”

  “Copy that. Tailpipe Red One out.”

  I turn to Dmitry. “Talk to your pals on Kirov, and ask what kind of yield they’re going to dial in for that nuke. Tell them to make it at least twenty kilotons. A hundred would be better.”

  Dmitry is on the radio for a quick and terse exchange. “Two megatons, single warhead,” he says afterward.

  “Shit,” I say. “That’s a big bang.”

  “Russian targeting systems are not so good as Commonwealth. We have to make up with bigger warhead.”

  “Get us out of here, Lieutenant,” I say to Stahl, who is already spooling up the Weasel’s engines.

  “Where are we going?” Stahl asks.

  He looks terrified, probably because he’s never even been close to a nuclear warhead, never mind a detonation. The Euros declared themselves nuke-free seventy years ago, and to them an atomic warhead is some mystical angel of death. I’ve had enough shot into my general neighborhood to know their limitations well. They make a big bang, but the effects are predictable and avoidable if you know where to squat.

  I check the topographic map and point to a spot on the other side of the hill from where we are parked right now.

  “That ravine. Get us there in less than seven minutes, or our day is going to go to shit very quickly.”

  “Is already shit,” Dmitry says.

  As Lieutenant Stahl turns the car around and gooses it, I take one last look at the seed ship, which is now almost entirely out of the three-kilometer depression it left in the Martian soil. The latticework structure we dubbed the “village” has mostly fallen off the top of the hull, like withered roots that are no longer needed. There is something remarkably different about this seed ship—all the other ones I’ve ever seen have been obsidian black, but this one has the orange-red-ochre hue of the Mars soil that surrounds it.

  “Shots out,” Phalanx reports two minutes later. “Nuclear strike inbound to your TRP, splash in three minutes, forty-five seconds.”

  We are racing around the hill and down the slope at the same time, aiming for the shelter of the ravine that will be on the opposite side of the five-hundred-meter hill from the nuclear detonation. I know from experience that we will ride out the strike down there just fine unless the Russians misdial the yield selector and drop twenty-five megatons instead of two, but the German lieutenant is clearly scared shitless.

  “I thought nukes don’t work against a seed ship,” he says, his eyes glued to his heads-up display again.

  “They don’t work in space,” I reply. “Without an atmosphere, you don’t have a shock wave, or thermal effects. And the Lanky ships have hulls that are twenty meters thick. They block out the hard gamma rays. Nukes aren’t very effective in space. But down here in atmo, it’s a different story.”

  Or so I hope anyway, I think. If our biggest stick can’t even hurt them on the ground, then we are truly fucked, because we can’t shoot Orions into planets and moons we intend to keep for ourselves.

  Three minutes.

  Lieutenant Stahl races the Weasel down the thirty-degree slope on the other side of the hill, as straight a line as possible without making us somersault at eighty klicks per hour. Even with the hillside between us, I can hear the humming roar of the seed ship slowly gaining altitude. I didn’t see fusion-rocket nozzles, or anything resembling the systems we use to achieve atmospheric or space flight. Our capital ships can’t even make atmo landings or takeoffs, and they have to be built in orbital fleet yards. And the Lankies seem to be growing theirs in the ground of whatever world they take over. There are dozens of recorded Lanky “settlements” on Mars, which means there are dozens of seed ships under the soil, waiting to burst forth and make orbit. I send a priority message to Ground Force Red C2 and apprise them of the situation as well, so they’re not surprised when they see the mushroom cloud from a two-megaton nuclear explosion on the horizon in a few minutes.

  Two minutes.

  We reach the bottom of the hill. The ravine is narrow and has very steep walls, and Stahl almost flips the Weasel when we roll down into it, but he catches it just in time. I mark the best spot for us to ride out the nuke, and he navigates through the ravine around rocks the size of mules.

  “Please tell me this vehicle is equipped with full nuclear-protection capabilities,” I say to Lieutenant Stahl.

  “Of course,” he says. “It has overpressure systems and filtration, and an automatic decontamination system.”

  One minute.

  “Stop here,” I tell the German lieutenant. “Set the brakes. Park it tail-on to ground zero. Hurry, hurry.”

  Lieutenant Stahl does as he’s told and then checks the tightness of his safety harness, as if that would make a difference if we got caught in the blast wave in a ten-ton scout car.

  “Ready, Dmitry?” I ask. The Russian doesn’t look a tenth as nervous as Lieutenant Stahl, but Dmitry rarely looks upset or agitated about anything.

  “Is Russian artillery strike,” he says.

  “Hits mostly in the right spot,” I finish for him, and he grins. We both know that if the warhead hits the wrong side of this hill, we’ll be gone in a millisecond anyway, and there will be no time for pain or regrets.

  The Russian warhead hits its target on the other side of the hill as promised, only four seconds after the predicted time-on-target. Two-megaton detonations pack a wallop. I’ve only ever ridden two out that were bigger, a five and a seven, but this doesn’t seem much less powerful. We are shielded from the blast and heat waves behind millions of tons of Martian rock, but the sound is still world ending in its magnitude. There’s nothing that sounds like a nuke exploding when you’re close to ground zero. It sounds like the planet is rending itself in half. The shock wave transmits through the rock and bounces our little scout car around to the point where I’m glad for the excellent five-point harnesses on the Eurocorps vehicle. On the dash, a bunch of warning lights for the environmental system go ballistic as the vehicle’s computer detects the alarmingly rapid changes in outside temperature, air pressure, and radiation.

  I am used to riding out nuclear strikes in nothing but a bug suit, and I know that Dmitry is experienced in that field as well, but the German is very unnerved. For several minutes, there’s nothing to see outside as the massive radioactive dust plume from the detonation makes debris ping off the hull of the scout car. The sound from the nuke rolls over the landscape and gets reflected back from the surrounding mountains, so it washes over us again and again.

  When the effects have rolled over us, I tap Lieutenant Stahl on the shoulder. “Go back around and up to five hundred. I want to do a poststrike assessment to make sure we got the bastard.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait a bit for everything to pass?”

  “The worst is gone, and the radiation will be around for a while. Besides, you don’t want to miss your first atomic-mushroom close-up.”

  We drive back around the hill to the spot we had occupied before. The valley and the plateau below us aren’t visible to the naked eye because the air is thick with red-and-brown Mars dust bounced off the ground by the low-altitude detonation of the atomic warhead. I switch to alternate view modes until I have an infrared/thermal overlay. Lieutenant Stahl can’t seem to stop gaping at the evil-looking black-and-red mushroom cloud that is roiling into the sky just seven or eight klicks in front of us.

  Below, the seed ship is a shattered hull half its original size. Parts of it are still glowing white-hot with the energy from the point-blank nuclear fireball that evaporated the top half of the three-kilometer-long hull. The ship has crashed back to the
ground and back into the depression from which it rose a few minutes ago.

  “Phalanx, Tailpipe Red One. Poststrike assessment.”

  “Go ahead on poststrike.”

  “Direct hit, target destroyed. Pass it on to the gunnery department on Kirov. They just bagged themselves a seed ship.”

  “Copy that, Tailpipe Red One.”

  “And pass the word on to the task force. They need to put all the remaining nukes onto the settlements we’ve charted. I think they all have seed ships under the surface.”

  “Be advised that we already have that in the works.”

  “We are heading to LZ Red for dustoff. Tailpipe One out.”

  I kill the comms and nudge Lieutenant Stahl to draw his attention away from the mushroom cloud.

  “Head for the spaceport,” I say. “We need to get there before the last drop ship leaves.”

  “Two megatons,” Lieutenant Stahl says, wonder and awe in his voice. “That’s a bit of overkill, is it not?”

  “Is no such thing as overkill,” Dmitry replies. “Anything worth breaking is worth breaking a lot.”

  CHAPTER 21

  GETTING OFF THE BEACH AT HIGH TIDE

  It takes us two hours to get back to Olympus Spaceport. The Weasel is very fast, but the area is lousy with big groups of Lankies moving in the same direction, and Lieutenant Stahl has his hands full weaving a course between them that keeps us at a safe distance.

  “Well, that’s gonna be a no-go,” I say when I see the scene on the plateau in front of the spaceport.

  The vista reminds me of the ancient western movies they used to play on the Networks in the shitty hours of the morning—natives circling the wagon trains of the intrepid settlers. There are many hundreds of Lankies on the perimeter of the spaceport, all pressing in and trying to overcome the defenses. There are drop ships in the air and attack birds making runs from higher altitudes, but our presence in the skies seems greatly diminished from when the fourth wave arrived and the base operations were in full swing. From ten klicks away, I see gun emplacements on the tarmac, autonomous SRA autocannon mounts next to crewed NAC autocannons, mules with twenty-five-millimeter gun turrets, and lots and lots of infantry in firing positions between the buildings and hangars. Inside the base, at the drop-ship pad, there are Wasps and Akulas taking off without engaging Lankies, and I am guessing they’re loaded with civvies and troops for the evacuation that must have been ordered while we were busy with calling in the nuke on the seed ship and the long drive back to the base.

  “We will not make it past the Lankies,” Lieutenant Stahl says. “And if we do, we may run into friendly fire.”

  I get on the brigade channel and contact C2. The officer who answers the radio sounds very stressed.

  “C2, this is Tailpipe Red One. I am ten klicks outside the wire with the Russian combat controller and our Eurocorps liaison, and there’s about a thousand Lankies in our way. Any way you can send a drop ship to pick us up?”

  “Uh, that’s a negative, Tailpipe Red One. All our birds are committed to attack runs or evacs. You’re going to have to run the gauntlet. But be quick about it. The evac window is only open for another sixty-five minutes, and Phalanx is out of missiles, so there won’t be any more holes in the minefield.”

  “Well, fuck me.” I decide not to argue with the C2 officer. It takes a drop ship forty minutes just to make it up into orbit, so we have twenty-five minutes to hitch a ride or be stranded on Mars until our air supplies quit. “On our way. Save us three seats.”

  “I have bad news for you, Lieutenant,” I say. “No pickup from our side. How about yours?”

  “Eurocorps has already evacuated,” he says, a hint of dejection in his voice.

  “Dmitry?”

  The Russian just shakes his head.

  “Okay, then. We have twenty-five minutes to make the landing pad if we want to get out of here alive.”

  “You take gun, and I drive vehicle,” Dmitry suggests. “Is like busy traffic hour in Moscow, remember?”

  “I cannot let you drive, because you have no official clearance on this vehicle type,” Lieutenant Stahl says. Dmitry and I grin, and my grin turns into a short laugh when I realize that the German lieutenant isn’t joking.

  The air base has two access roads, one from the north and one from the south. We are coming in from the north, using the smooth pavement to bring the Weasel up to maximum speed. Three kilometers before the main gate, a group of Lankies block the road, but their attention is turned away from us.

  “All units, all units!” I shout into the local defense channel. “You have a friendly MAV coming in on the north road, so check your fire.”

  Lieutenant Stahl swerves around the Lankies, who react too late to keep up with us. The Weasel has an honest-to-goodness warning horn, and the German lieutenant honks it as we zoom past the Lankies, emitting a loud and jaunty three-note warble from unseen amplified speakers. Dmitry just shakes his head and grins at me.

  We could be running under stealth, but then our own troops won’t see us and may mistakenly put cannon fire into us, so Lieutenant Stahl leaves the camo off and relies on his speed and agility to make it across the beaten zone in front of the airfield’s runways. We are dodging groups of Lankies while tracers and cannon shells are coming our way from the direction of the hangars. I feel like I just drove into a live-fire range from the wrong end. Belatedly, I hope that the SRA cannon techs have added Eurocorps and NAC vehicles to the List of Things That Aren’t Enemies to Be Shot to Ribbons in the targeting computers of their autonomous sentry guns.

  A cannon burst streaks by our right side on the way to some unseen Lanky behind us, and more than once I hear rifle fire pinging off the lightly armored hull of the Weasel. To his credit, Lieutenant Stahl drives his vehicle like Halley flies a drop ship. He bobs, weaves, and anticipates the moves of the Lankies in front of us so he can thread the needle with the agile little scout car. With nothing to shoot at or spot, all Dmitry and I can do is to sit tight and hope we don’t have cannon shells exploding in our laps before we’ve made it back to the ever-shrinking patch of friendly territory surrounding the hardened spacecraft shelters.

  A kilometer before the outer edge of the defensive line, there’s a loud explosion at the front of the scout car, and something blows up one of the Weasel’s tires. The vehicle jolts violently and starts fishtailing, and Dmitry and I hold on to the grab handles above our seats, expecting the ride to tumble and flip any second. But Lieutenant Stahl manages to get the Weasel under control after a few terrifying seconds. When he opens the throttle again, there’s a distinctly broken sound coming from the front-left quarter of the Weasel, a grinding scrape combined with a rhythmic thumping that tells of a shredded wheel at least, and probably a broken axle or suspension. Every time we hit a depression in the ground, the front end of the Weasel thumps hard enough to jar our teeth. With eight hundred meters to go to friendly lines, we may even make it at a run if we’re forced to abandon the scout car, but the idea of climbing out into that much outgoing gunfire makes my stomach clench with fear.

  Finally we are through the beaten zone and across both runways. Lieutenant Stahl lets off the throttle a bit. From my position in the right rear of the Weasel, I can see that his face is drenched in sweat. We’re all breathing heavily. Dmitry reaches out and pats Lieutenant Stahl on the shoulder.

  “Excellent driving. I take back the durak. For this, you can come drink with me on Kiev any time.”

  The infantry between the hangars gradually pulls back, letting the sentry guns and the few close-air-support units overhead do the work of holding back the surge of attacking Lankies. Hundreds of them are strewn across the beaten zone in front of the runways, but hundreds more are advancing. Evac window or not, this base will fall in the next thirty minutes unless we get relieved by a fresh regiment and a few dozen Shrikes.

  We roll over to the drop-ship landing pad, where hundreds of people are trying to get into fewer than a dozen remaining d
rop ships. We get into the line for one of the ships, a Dragonfly, and the crew chief ushers us in. The seat rows are already packed with troops, most of them exhausted-looking SI troopers with thousand-yard stares. I take a spot on the floor and strap myself into the cargo eyelets set into the deck. I’ll still get bounced around if it gets choppy, but at least I won’t free-fall through the troop compartment and break my neck on the tail ramp. The Dragonfly, made for forty-odd troops and gear, has almost twice as many in it. Belatedly, I realize that I forgot my rifle inside the Eurocorps scout car, but it’s not like it would do me any good in here. If we get shot down by a proximity mine, I’ll be dead with or without a gun, and right now I am way too exhausted to care. Dmitry and Lieutenant Stahl are in different aisles, and I can’t see them from where I am strapped down, but I know they’re on board, so our fates will be intertwined for just a little while longer.

  “Hey, Lieutenant,” a familiar voice says from the row of seat slings to my right. I turn to see Sergeant First Class Crawford, the trooper who did the breakneck ride from Tuttle 250 back to the spaceport with me on the ATVs.

  “Sergeant Crawford,” I say. “Glad to see you made it to pickup.”

  “You, too, sir. You look like hammered shit, by the way. No offense.”

  “Rough day,” I say. “Did you ever get your hot shower?”

  “Not yet. Maybe up on the carrier.”

  “They have to run you through decon anyway.”

  “Well, there you go. First bright spot of the day.”

  “No, it ain’t,” I say. “You’ll get to strip in front of the whole flight deck.”

  “At this point,” she replies, “I’m so fucking tired that I wouldn’t care if they broadcasted that live to the whole fleet.”

  We are the second-to-last drop ship to take off from Olympus Spaceport, the battered and tired remnants of First Brigade. Red Beach will be crawling with Lankies in a few minutes, but we left none behind except for our dead. I know we’ll be passing through the hole in the minefield at the very end of its safe window, and if the Lanky mines have regrouped themselves a little ahead of their usual schedule, we’ll all be frozen corpses in space in thirty minutes.