by Nick Cole
Two koobs spring from around the corners of adjacent huts, looking to light up Wraith in convergent fields of fire. Effortlessly, Lieutenant Ford double-taps his N-4 and hits each koob center mass, dropping them. He continues unabated in his loping stride, clears the final field wall, and streaks across the plain toward the ridge.
Men from Hyena fan out and make sure every last koob is eliminated while the rest of us do our best to keep up after Wraith. I can hear the booms of fraggers and blaster fire from the Hyena leejes behind me. Twenties is busy from his spot, too. Every single shot he takes removes a dot from my HUD.
I reach the field. Wraith has stretched his lead to over sixty yards.
“South wall is secure!” comes the call over the mission channel.
Boom.
That fast.
Most beings in the galaxy aren’t going to stand up well against legionnaires in an open fight, even a species as warlike as the koobs.
Running in the craggy field is difficult. Snaking beneath the wind-whipped sea of ankle-high grass is some kind of an old riverbed. It must have zigzagged quite a bit, because I can distinctly feel my boots curve around the smooth river rocks, like they can’t quite get a firm footing and are always slipping just a little bit. It’s definitely slowing me down, and by the number of green dots on my HUD, it’s slowing down the rest of the force, too.
Except for Wraith. He’s going to storm the ridge by himself if this keeps up.
Just in case I couldn’t tell that I was a step slow, my visor issues a stream of text, the temporary block I’d placed earlier now expired.
LS-55, Sergeant C.Chhun.
Advisory: Suboptimal speed.
Legionnaires of DOOMSDAY squad are moving 7.82% slower than their last standardized PT stress run.
Log for infraction review? Y/N
“Combat override DS8-RV6!” I shout into my mic. Thankfully, these sorts of messages don’t pop up on every leej’s visor, otherwise our armorer would need a kip shuttle full of assistants to fix all the shots we’d absorb while barking cancellation codes. No, Repub-Tek just installed the software in the buckets of rank sergeant and above. The joys of being a squad leader.
Combat override acknowledged. A record will remain on file for 15 days. This log to be transmitted to your OIC, Captain S. Devers.
Joke’s on you, technological embodiment of meddling bureaucratic overreach. Point is dead.
I expected we would lose at least two combat sleds before we reached the ridge. As I get within four hundred yards, I realize that the tank hasn’t fired a shot since it scored a hit on the empty sled just before the assault. Maybe Devers wasn’t far off and the koobs used all the shells they had access to.
Or maybe…
I flick open the Doomsday comm with my tongue. “Twenties,” I say between panting breaths, “tell me about that tank.”
“On it, Sarge.”
There’s a pause as Twenties looks through his scope at the archaic MBT, shrouded behind rock and branch. “Yeah, it ain’t interested in the sleds no more. Be advised, trajectory forecasts show that the main gun is looking to fire on advancing legionnaires.”
“Roger.”
I switch back to the assault comm channel. “That koob tank is looking to send some heat our way! Don’t group up!”
The green dots on my HUD spread out. Still, I see a concentration of about three legionnaires, all with the laughing skull of Hyena Squad painted on the sides of their buckets. I turn around for visual and see they’re bottlenecked by a series of boulders. Evidently the koob tank gunner sees the same thing. The tank rocks backward from the massive blast of its cannon, and the ground around the Hyena Squad trio explodes. It looks like a portal just opened up from the hells of the Arcturus Maelstrom. A grim rainfall of dirt, rocks, and pieces of legionnaire falls back to the ground.
The tactical L-comm floods up with shouts.
“Stay spread!”
“Get some pressure on that ridge!”
“Who has mortar bots?”
“Mortar bots were on that last sled that blew.”
“Oba!”
The tank is looking for targets in the field of legionnaires, but there aren’t any groupings of leejes as sweet as that first one. As I move closer, I can see that the tank is equipped with a coaxial MG—slug thrower of course—but they must not have the needed caliber of ammunition. The gunner is trying to snipe us with high-explosive incendiary shells.
The main gun booms again, and I can feel the force of the air as the shell blisters above me, exploding much too close behind me. I feel the ground shake. The heat from the torrid blast penetrates my armor’s cooling system. I feel like a skillet left out over a fire.
That was too close.
“This is Specter-1, I’ve reached the base of the ridge.” Wraith doesn’t even sound tired.
Twenties’s voice comes up on the L-comm. “Copy, I have eyes on you, Lieutenant Ford. Looks like the koobs know you’re down there, too. They’re looking for an angle to engage.”
“Copy.”
The koobs don’t seem to be able to find a good line of fire on Wraith. But they’re right out in the open, croaking orders at each other, looking for that magic view that will kill them a legionnaire. These muck buckers have been pinned down for most of the assault by our rear line and sleds, but once our assault force got close to the ridge, the suppressive fire slowed for fear of leej-on-leej casualties.
Unable to get a clean shot at Wraith, the koobs unleash a hellish volley of PK-9A blaster fire and slug-throwing machine guns on those of us still advancing. Red blaster bolts sizzle overhead, and bullets fly thickly. I’ve gotten used to the sensation of a nearby blaster bolt—the air sort of sizzles as the burning shot scorches by you. But having slugs flying around you is a totally different experience. The air seems to snap and crack each time a bullet whizzes past. More than the blaster bolts, this gets my adrenals fired up, and I run even faster to join Wraith at the base of the ridge.
“Be advised,” Twenties says calmly from his position in overwatch. “I see a pair of koobs climbing a tree fifteen degrees left of Specter-1.”
Krak-bdew!
Twenties fires his N-18. “One koob eliminated, Specter-1, but I can’t get a shot on the other.”
“Copy,” Wraith answers. “I’ll see if I can spot him.”
Wraith rolls out away from the ridge’s sheer base and drops to a knee. His N-4 points upward in a fluid motion, graceful like a ballet dancer at Uynora Hall. He fires two blaster bolts into a part of the tree thick with green, triangular leaves, and spins back against the cliff. Koob counter-fire kicks up the dirt where he stood only moments before. A koob corpse falls out of the tree all the way to the bottom of the ridge.
Wraith puts another round in it. Just to be sure, I suppose.
I’m the third legionnaire to reach the base of the ridge. We found out later that the koobs call it Kr’kik Ridge in their language. I had no way of knowing that this was the beginning of an onslaught endured by Victory Company of the 131st Legionnaires. No way of knowing that the cost we would pay in blood and lives would make us famous throughout the galaxy.
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