A crimson alarm winked at her from the tactical holo, then became a swathe of red when she failed to respond immediately. Cursing, she slapped a tile and fired a burst of flechettes directly into the path of a razor-tooth missile that streaked up from the surface.
“Incoming!” She yelled into the comm. “Surface-to-air. All landing craft, be ready to deploy countermeasures.”
There was a quick round of acknowledgement from the rest of the drop squadron, yet still she saw a brief burst of orange-black as a lander ahead of them took a direct hit.
She gritted her teeth, and tried not to scream with frustration.
“This is Bullseye Actual. We have eyes on the el-zee. All landers, track to my beacon.”
Eilentes flicked her eyes rapidly between her descent manager and the landing zone marker that Volkas had sent to her mapping system. She swore under her breath when she saw how far off the mark she was.
“Everyone back there had better be strapped in,” she muttered, and slammed the lander into a tight curve.
More missile warnings erupted in front of her, and she fired off burst after burst of countermeasures. When tracers flashed past the forward canopy, her scalp tightened and the skin on her face and arms prickled and flushed in a white hot instant. She hoped this descent would not end like the one on Woe Tantalum. With this entry angle, and at this air speed, they would definitely not survive a crash landing.
She realised Volkas was speaking again over the squadron’s channel. “—already picking up a number of enemy units on the ground. Be ready for a hot landing.”
“Damn it Volkas,” she said to herself. “We’re supposed to be coming down in a quiet spot.”
The terrain below expanded rapidly, details becoming clearer with each passing second. She could see the entire sprawl of the city of Naddur, and even as she watched the swelling vista her eyes began to resolve thin columns of black smoke rising from the buildings amongst the outskirts.
And from the buildings which fringed their landing zone, grey smoke and flashes of light.
“Great!” She hissed through clenched teeth, then hit the comm again. “Bullseye Actual from Lima Bravo One; that landing zone is crawling with hostiles.”
“I see them, Bravo One.” Volkas’s voice crackled with interference. “We don’t have time to relocate. We’re going to come in fast, and release the swarm directly over them. I’m tasking our decoys to assist.”
“Acknowledged.” Eilentes closed the channel.
The ground and buildings were rushing towards her, expanding faster and faster, and her hands ached to hit the controls and pull up the nose of the craft. But not yet. Not yet. Not until Volkas sends the word to—
“Release swarms.”
Eilentes’ hands jabbed at the controls, and the lander slowed its descent rapidly, lifting its nose as the powerful vertical lift engines started air braking. She hit tiles on the tactical holo, and the lander’s mission pods popped open.
Two at a time, the lander jettisoned a cloud of area clearance drones. The swarm dropped towards the ground, each drone kicked in its own turbines with less than fifty metres to go, and they burst outwards to sweep the area around the landing zone.
The lander came down over flat parkland, near to the civic district. Short, bulbous native trees lined the avenues, and Eilentes made sure she touched down in an area that was screened off by as many of them as possible. The building line was on the far side of one of the nearby avenues, and when the engines began to power down she could already hear the sound of weapons fire even through the thick canopy. The swarming drones — those from the other landers as well as from their own — circled the zone at high speed, firing off short, vicious bursts of small-calibre rounds each time they picked up enemy movement.
Eilentes popped the exterior hatch and climbed down quickly, delaying her exit only to grab two rifles from the rack behind the piloting seat.
On the ground, she saw that the rear hatch had already been opened. MAGA troops were spilling out, taking up defensive positions in a perimeter around the dropship. Other landers were coming down around them — the remains of their particular drop squadron — and spilling out soldiers of their own.
She spotted Caden and Throam and headed over to them. As she approached, she prompted her amour to skinprint to the same urban design that they were already wearing, and her outer layer mimicked the environment automatically.
Caden was pointing out a terrain feature on Sergeant Chun’s holo when she arrived.
“I need to be here,” Caden was saying. “Eyes and Ears have positively located their staff at the emergency bunker beneath the commerce hall, and it’s likely they have secured the Proconsul there too. From our descent it looks like there’s not much conflict around that area, but getting there might be a problem.”
“Why the commerce hall?” Chun asked.
“Secondary fall-back,” Caden said. “The Viskr assumption will be that people of significance or status will remain near their posts. They would never think to check such a mundane building.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Hold this position. The swarm is doing a pretty good job of sterilising the perimeter, but that won’t last. Once the Viskr notice a dead zone behind their lines they’ll move more squads in.”
“How long?”
“Say a couple of hours? Chances are we’ll be cut off from you very quickly. If we don’t come back in five, pick up everything and fall back to a more defensible position.”
“You want Daxon’s team again?”
“If you can spare them.”
“Spare them? Fuck Caden, please take them off my hands. Seriously — keep them.”
“You ever worry that you might start believing your own joke?”
“Nope.”
“Fair enough.”
There was a rushing noise above them, and Eilentes found herself dropping towards the ground instinctively. She looked up in time to see a wing of Viskr fighters streak across the sky, chased by the roar of their engines.
“Enemy tac-fighters,” she called out to Caden and Chun. “They’ve probably pegged the landing zone.”
“They’ll be coming around for another pass,” Caden said. “Any air support?”
“Not yet,” said Chun. “The Viskr have their own anti-air down here, and we think they now control the city’s air defences too. The main expeditionary force needs to grind them down before Fleet will even risk going for air superiority.”
“That’s going to be a problem.”
“Yeah. But it’s my problem, not yours. We’re unloading our Gorillas now, which will help. You should get going before they hit us.”
Eilentes fell in with Caden and Throam, and jogged back towards Daxon and his fire team. The soldiers were waiting patiently, standing around one of the Kodiak armoured transports that had rolled from their lander.
“Eilent–es.” Norskine dragged out the last syllable. “Ready to make use of all that practice, sister?”
“You know it,” she said. “Ambrast is all warmed up, and ready to go.”
“Ambrast…” Throam chuckled. Eilentes shot him a look, and he stopped at once.
“Taliam, I’m sorry about… you know. The 951st Battalion.”
Norskine looked at Eilentes with misty eyes, but smiled weakly. “War is hell, right?”
“All aboard that’s coming aboard.” Daxon dragged back the Kodiak’s sliding side door.
“No, we go on foot,” said Caden.
“You sure about that?” Daxon asked. He kept his hand on the side of the vehicle.
“I realise we’ll lose the armour, but we’ll gain discretion. The Kodiak is far too visible from the air. Without a Gorilla to cover our asses, it would just take one good hit to kill us all.”
Eilentes grimaced. “Wouldn’t call that a good hit, exactly.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Okay troops, you heard the man. We go on foot. Bruiser, you take
point.”
Bruiser nodded at Daxon, and pulled his GPMG from the mag-tag on his armour. Eilentes had never known anyone else even attempt to stow such a heavy weapon across their back; not even Tankers were proud or stubborn enough to try. The Rodori made it look as though the effort were truly trivial, but she knew that a general purpose machine gun was anything but lightweight.
As the team moved off, Caden fell in beside Daxon, followed by Throam. Eilentes took up her customary position a short way off the flank of everyone else, watching the far building lines and rooftops for the slightest signs of trouble. But she could still hear the hushed conversation through her link, even over the nearby popping and thumping of gunfire and bombardment.
“Our main force is going to be engaging the Viskr barricades on the south bridge and the west gate, both of which lead to the civic centre,” Caden was telling Daxon. “That should draw the bulk of their resistance, but they won’t leave their rear unguarded. We’ll take the most direct route we can along the eastern edge, then cut in towards the commerce hall. I expect we’ll find trouble, but it shouldn’t be anything we can’t handle.”
They hurried quickly across the park, through rows of the squat trees, and soon arrived at a gravelled boulevard that divided the edge of the park from a continuous row of tall buildings. Expanses of blue-black glass fronted most of the white stone buildings, and double doors a storey tall were set into many of them. From the look of them, Eilentes guessed they were at the edge of the financial district.
The group moved off east towards the nearest junction, hurrying along the boulevard right at the foot of the building line. When they reached the end of the row of buildings, Bruiser dipped his head around the corner quickly, then pulled back.
“Looks clear,” he said. “Wait.”
Bruiser dashed into the north arm of the junction, and took cover. Nothing happened.
Eilentes moved up with Caden and Throam, and peered down the road. Everything was still, despite the sounds of battle that seemed to ricochet from the streets all around them. Other than a few shattered windows on the first couple of floors, and a barely visible veil of drifting dust, the fighting seemed to have passed this street over.
Bruiser was crouched behind a large stone planter. A row of identical planters ran down the central reservation of the road, placed at intervals, and each one contained a taller, thinner version of the stubby trees from the park. The street itself was paved with the white stone favoured by Imperial town planners, with raised kerbs which looked as though they held back a flood of glossy black gravel. As soon as she stepped on one, Eilentes realised it was a continuous, fused surface.
Bruiser broke cover and moved farther in, ducking down again behind the next planter. The others followed, by ones and twos, while Eilentes stayed glued to the building line. She was perhaps more exposed than the others, but as they moved down the street, bit by bit, she had every chance of covering most of the hiding places they passed.
A trio of fighters screamed over them, headed back the way the group had come. Eilentes ducked into cover along with everyone else, even though her experience told her the pilots would never have noticed people in the street below. Not when they were zeroing in on another target at such high speeds.
“You know they’ll probably have set down skulkers all around the city,” Daxon said. “Those horrible bastards are perfect for ambushes in these urban spaces.”
“I can do without all that nonsense again.”
“You and me both, Caden. You and me both.”
Despite her gritted teeth and steely glare, Eilentes found that her stomach knotted itself at the mere mention of skulkers. Just the thought of the vicious, brutal devices made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up, made her skin flush cold.
If anything suddenly whirred into life as they approached it, or began tumbling and rattling across the ground towards them, threshing at the air with razor-edged rings of cold metal, she was afraid her scream would bring all the enemy’s forces straight to them.
“Word up.” Bro was right behind her. “FOB’s been established. I’ve got accurate coordinates for the lines of engagement.”
“We all good?” Caden asked.
“Yeah, they’re a good ways off. Shit…”
“What is it?”
“Kinda sorry we’re missing it. It sounds seriously brutal!”
“All in good time, Bro,” said Daxon. “We got a job to do here for the moment.”
“Hold it guys,” Eilentes said. “Bruiser’s stopped.”
She peered at the Rodori, wondering why he had dropped to one knee behind one of the stone planters. There was a cross-roads ahead, with buildings forming blind corners, but he was nowhere near close enough to have seen a threat off to either side.
“What’s the problem, Biggun?” Caden asked.
“Mines, I think.”
“You sure? I’m not seeing anything.”
“That’s because you don’t see heat.”
Caden pulled down his helmet visor, and Eilentes did the same. Sure enough, there were faint spots of heat on the ground ahead. They were barely warmer than the ambient temperature, but far too uniform and regularly spaced to be random fluctuations.
“What sort of shitty-ass mine glows with IR?” Norskine said, snorting.
“One with a core that can blow a crater the size of our lander,” Caden replied grimly.
“Visors, everyone,” Daxon said. “Don’t get anywhere near those hotspots.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Bro said.
“Bruiser, Norskine; take the junction.”
Bruiser waited while Norskine moved forward cautiously. When she had caught up, he moved to the left building line. She mirrored him on the other side of the road, hugging the right wall, and they advanced together. They inched forwards, sneaking quick glances into the road which crossed theirs, then peering out more slowly. They each scrutinised the stretch of road opposite their own position, for the widest possible view.
“Forty metres, no obstructions. No hostiles; right clear,” said Bruiser.
Norskine followed up. “Seventy metres, obstruction fifty metres. No hostiles; left clear.”
“Move up,” said Daxon.
Bruiser held his machine gun in both hands, hunched over it as if that would somehow make his huge frame smaller, and jogged through the intersection to the other side. He threaded his way through the hotspots, coming no closer to them than was absolutely necessary.
Daxon moved up to replace him at the junction, keeping watch for any Viskr or their machines.
“Caden; go,” said Daxon.
Eilentes watched Caden follow in Bruiser’s footsteps, with Throam just metres behind him. The counterpart would shadow him wherever he went. She wished for a moment that he would do that for her, then squashed the thought down.
“Norskine, after me.”
Daxon bolted across the space, and Bro moved up to replace him. The private gestured to Eilentes.
“You and Norskine go next, yeah? I’ll bring up the rear.”
“Okay.”
Eilentes saw Daxon reach the far side, and before she knew it Bro was hissing “Go!”
Norskine had set off at a jog and was a quarter of the way into the crossroads before Eilentes even began moving. She hunkered down low, following Norskine’s path, wondering how the hell the soldier could keep up that pace and still make out the faint heat readings on her visor.
Eilentes heard a sharp crack, and saw Norskine’s head and neck jerk to one side. The trooper stumbled sideways, landing on the ground in the middle of the junction and rolling onto her front. She didn’t move.
“Sniper!” Daxon hissed into the group channel.
Eilentes dropped onto one hand, kicked her feet in a circular motion, and scrambled back to cover with Bro.
Another crack, and a plume of stone dust sprang from the ground near Norskine’s motionless body.
“Norskine!” Bro was s
houting into his link. “Yo Taliam, you still with us?”
There was no reply.
“I see them,” Daxon said from across the way. “Eilentes, they’re on your left side. Three hostiles at about forty metres. Behind partial cover on the wall nearest you.”
“You’ll have to take them,” Caden said. “We pop out of cover long enough to get the shot, they’ll have us.”
“Give me a moment,” Eilentes said. She steeled herself, getting her nerves under control, then stole a brief glance around the corner. “That’s fifty metres, Daxon.”
“Fifty, forty: same thing.”
Eilentes realised with a start that the cover was probably the same obstruction Norskine had noted just before declaring the junction clear. The street they were crossing was heavily damaged down near the Viskr position, with rough chunks of masonry littered across the flagstones. The cover itself looked as though it had been the entire ground floor frontage of a building, which had somehow sloughed off and collapsed — mostly intact — across the pavement and half of the road.
She dropped to one knee. “Give me a distraction.”
Bruiser ducked out of cover and fired a quick burst into the street. Three geysers of powdered mortar burst from the wall behind him, a split-second after he began moving back.
Eilentes was already in action. In one movement she leaned out of cover, brought Ambrast from an upright carry almost to horizontal, fired off a single round, and ducked back.
“One,” she said.
Several rounds raked the ground at the mouth of Eilentes’ junction. There was a pause, then another shot hit the ground near Norskine. Eilentes could not tell if the shooter lacked a clear line of sight to where Norskine had fallen, or if the pot-shots were taunts.
“Doubt they’ll fall for that again,” Daxon said.
Eilentes agreed silently, and she turned to face Bro. “I need you to be a decoy.”
“You aren’t serious?”
“Listen, I know it’s a risk. But Norskine is laying there possibly bleeding out, so don’t take too long agreeing.”
“Fuck. Yeah, you’re right.”
“And don’t forget the mines.”
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 39
