“Ooah!” shout the men over the comms.
“Legionnaires,” says Wraith, “terminate L-comm.”
22
A group of leather-winged lizards are fighting over a piece of koob. The battlefield is full of these mean little scavengers. They hiss and bare rows of tiny, sharp teeth while they jockey for feeding positions. No matter where you go in the galaxy, you see the same type. Different species, different animals, but the same type. When it comes to flying carrion-eaters, I prefer the feathered sort. Just feels like home, I guess.
Masters watches an enhanced view of the wildlife before bringing his field mags down to his waist. “Well, that’s disgusting.”
I’m sitting in the shadows of our foxhole, dreading the time when the sun positions itself directly over my head. It’s already too hot without my bucket there to help regulate the temperature. I drain the last bits of a unit of water. “At least the wind is blowing out. Not that it would bother you. I’m the one who would have to smell it.”
Masters shrugs and goes back to his nature documentary. I stand up and dust off my gloves. “I’m gonna walk the line. Watch for living koobs, too. Not just the dead ones.”
As I move down the line, legionnaires clean their rifles while basics do their best to stay cool in their uniforms. I’m making my way toward Exo’s sled when my comm chimes. “Lieutenant Chhun, can you hear me?”
“Andien? Miss Broxin?” I’m surprised to hear her voice. Does she have a status update on Rook? Is relief coming?
“Yes!” she exclaims. “I figured out a way to recalibrate the L-comm frequency from the outpost, but I wanted to make sure it worked before I adjusted all your comms. You can’t communicate with anyone else until they get on the same frequency—this overrides any preset encryptions. Didn’t want the entire company unable to communicate by comm…”
I frown. But a gust of wind brings some slight relief from the heat, enough to curb my annoyance. I got for mild sarcasm. “So you just risked cutting me off. Thanks.”
“I’m sorry.” There’s an impatience in her voice that cuts away at the sincerity of her apology. “You’re the only legionnaire whose name I recognized from the database. But now I can start patching in the others, so long as there’s someone who can give me an exclude list. Specialist Kags has a good handle on who’s there from the regular army, but not the Legion.”
This is promising, but it will need to be done quickly. I don’t want half our force to be cut off from the chain of command if the attack comes mid-transfer. “Can you switch us back if something goes down?”
“I can.”
I look out for any sign of an advancing enemy. They didn’t come at daybreak, when we most expected them. Maybe Wraith’s warnings were heeded after all. “Recalibrate Captain Ford. He may be listed as a lieutenant.”
“Updating now…”
As soon as Wraith is looped in, I get him up to speed on what Andien is doing.
“Good work,” Wraith says to Andien. “Did you hear anything back after sending the transmission?”
“No, but I don’t expect we would. We got the message out by amplifying the bot’s deep-space communicators, but Outpost Zulu isn’t capable of receiving a deep-space comm relay without a Capital ship in orbit.”
“Understood.” If Wraith’s disappointed, his voice doesn’t betray it. “And you’re sure that Kublaren-controlled L-comm won’t receive this update?”
Andien sounds certain. “No. Not as long as I don’t push the recalibration to whoever’s device they own. I have a database listing all the legionnaires from Victory Company, but I don’t know who’s… well, I don’t know who’s with you. If you have someone who can give me a list of men needing the update…”
Wraith assigns the task to his senior NCO. “Sergeant Powell can tell you who else to add.”
“I’ll get right on it. Oh, and Lieutenant Chhun? Your squadmate is still holding on, in case you were wondering.”
I feel a sudden flush of shame. When Andien first came over the comm, I meant to ask her. Maybe it’s unfounded, but I’m bothered that she was the one who brought up Rook’s condition instead of me. “Glad to hear it.”
“I’m going to inspect the left flank’s AP setup,” Wraith says. “Let me know when the comm system is up, and I’ll inform the men.”
Another billow of wind pushes past me, sending small pebbles skipping and causing the dust to swirl. I still need to check on Exo. Need to be sure he and everyone else are prepared for an attack that could come at any time. The TT-16 observation bots show that the koob force is still out there, holding its position about eight kilometers away, but it won’t take long for the trucks to make that distance. We’ll need to be prepared to hit them the moment they’re in range.
I find Exo leaning in the turret of his operating sled, arms crossed and facing the general direction of the enemy position.
“Hey, Exo,”
“Hey, Lieutenant.”
More wind kicks up, causing some of the dust to brush across my face. I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for it to pass. I blink away the silt from my eyelids and reach for a pair of polarized goggles from my kit. If this wind keeps up, I’ll need them. “Just checking in. What’s your status?”
“Uh…” Exo looks around, double-checking that everything is as it should be before giving me an answer. “Good to go, LT. Got my launcher down here to keep the dust out, got enough missiles to take down a destroyer, and my crew all know where the casualty collection point is. All I need now are some koobs to kill. Maybe a beer. Did you bring any of those down from O-Z?”
“Sorry, forgot to check.”
Exo leans his head back. “That’s the problem with you, Lieutenant. Priorities get all out of order.”
I smile and put on the goggles in anticipation of another cloud of dust I see pushing toward us. “We figured out a workaround to the L-comms. We should have private squad and company links before much longer.”
“Kind of enjoyed the silence, sir.”
I nod out at the horizon before turning to head back to Masters. “Wouldn’t last.”
By the time I reach my foxhole, the wind has become a sustained howl, almost a gale. My armor clinks from the tiny pebbles and grains of koob-dust peppering it. I pull my shemagh over my mouth and nose to keep from choking. I drop into our dugout and pat Masters on the back.
“This sucks, sir!” he yells above the gusts.
“I don’t like it, either,” I reply, ducking below ground to talk with him. “But we need to get back up there.”
Masters drops his head. “I knew you’d say that.”
“Think tactically. If we were assaulting an enemy position that had a range advantage…”
Pulling himself to a standing position, Masters finishes my sentence. “This is when we’d hit ’em.” He looks into the ever-thickening storm of dust. “I can barely see the ground twenty meters in front of me.”
“That’s twenty meters more time to react than we’d have just sitting around.” I shake out the dust that’s settled into my ear, then adjust my scarf in an attempt to keep any more from getting in.
The all-comm chime sounds over my headset.
“Victory Company, this is Vic-1. Someone up at Outpost Zulu was able to re-secure the L-comms, so we’re back in business. I want you all on high alert until this dust storm dies down. Expect an attack. Also, some good news: Pappy regained consciousness, and it looks like he’ll pull through. You can visit with him whenever our rescue ship arrives. Vic-1, out.”
I squint behind my goggles at the maelstrom. Exo’s voice comes over the comm. “You guys think this storm is bad, wait until Pappy finds out what the point was up to.”
“Maintain comm discipline,” I chide, cutting off snickers from the other legionnaires.
“Yes, sir,” Exo agrees. “I was just testing the Doomsday Squad channel. It works, everyone.”
There’s more laughter, then the men settle into a quiet vigil. The dust storm s
wells into a rolling mass of tan, arid topsoil that boils up to the silver cloud sky. The noise is intense, my ears filled with the howling of the wind and the pounding of dirt and pebbles. I’m not sure that even with a bucket on I’d be able to hear anything other than the storm. From within the roiling wall that sweeps across the field, my eyes continually spot shapes that prove to be phantoms. Like a child seeing animals in the clouds, I keep thinking a koob truck or MCR tank is moving my way.
The wind changes directions and blows stiffly at our backs. The storm pushes away from us, the sudden crosswind halting its intensity. Most of the open field lying beyond our line is still hidden from us, but our visibility is improved. We can see reliably to one hundred meters, with the promise of more if the clean wind continues to push down from the cliffs and over our backs.
My comm pops alive with Twenties’s voice. “Hey. I see something. Looks like lights inside the storm.”
Squinting, I see the same thing. I announce it over the L-comm. “Doomsday-1 to Victory Company. We’re seeing what looks to be lights moving our direction through the storm.”
“Copy,” Wraith answers. “Leejes, be ready.”
I stare at the pair of dual lights bouncing toward us. They grow in intensity, and then a white koob truck bursts out of the dust storm as if emerging from behind a curtain. The vehicle is loaded heavy with koobs, all of them wrapped in their linen garments so that only their eyes are exposed.
“Here we go!” Exo screams, the whoosh of his aero-precision missile capping his battle cry like an exclamation point. The ordnance tracks the koob vehicle even as it attempts evasive maneuvers, drilling top-down into the truck and sending it—and its payload of koob soldiers—up in flames.
More vehicles break out of the dust storm, and more AP missiles go after them. It soon becomes clear to the koobs that the drivers aren’t going to be able to avoid getting cooked, so they begin to jump from the moving vehicles preemptively. Other insurgents, running toward us on foot, are met with a storm of Republic counter-fire—and as the koob trucks emerge suddenly from the storm behind them, the drivers find themselves in the middle of chaos, running over their own foot soldiers.
This has all the makings of a koob disaster, which is just fine with me.
“Don’t let up!” Wraith orders.
We pour more fire into them, halting their advance. The drivers of the trucks fishtail their rigs sideways and jump out. We pepper those on foot as they take cover behind flaming wrecks. The koobs form a line behind their trucks, sending ineffective blaster and slug-thrower fire in our general direction.
I key up the squad comm. “Exo, save the missiles unless you see a truck trying to break past that line. It looks like the vics out this way are all personnel transport.”
“Copy, boss. My N-4 was feeling neglected anyway.”
I catch my first glimpse of humans and yellow-skinned, spike-covered kimbrins from the MCR. They arrive on the field through repulsor transports. They don’t appear to be military-grade or equipped with gun emplacements, but a few leej heavies hammer them with AP missiles. The rebels finally wise up and start disembarking before their vehicles break the wall of dust that shields the main force from our weapons.
“Outpost Zulu,” I call into the L-comm. “See If you can pick up and decrypt any other comm signals out there. MCR is using something we can spook.”
“Um…” Andien says. Her uncertainty at being roped into battle intelligence is evident in her voice. “Okay, I’ll try. Yeah. I think I can do that.”
“Once you decrypt,” a rough and raspy voice says over the comm, “patch the feed to me, and I’ll sort what’s important to Captain Ford and Lieutenant Chhun. You’re doing a hell of a job, legionnaires. Keep it up. KTF.”
Holy strokes, that’s Pappy’s voice.
The moment he goes off comm, the men—who already were giving the joint force of koobs and MCR more than they could handle—step up their game. Insurgent after insurgent is dusted as they run for the cover of the abandoned trucks. I don’t care how many of them there are, once this storm lets up—and it’s already noticeably dying down—the only thing that will stop us from dusting them all is if we run out of charge packs.
More insurgents run through the dwindling dust storm and struggle to reach the front line survivors. The sled guns rage out their steady dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat, rising above the noise of blaster rifle fire. The koobs and their co-conspirators fall in heaps. They tumble head over heels, are struck square, and drop. They spin and twist and dive and fall. Some crawl, bellies against the ground, digging their three-fingered hands into the soil in an attempt to reach sanctuary before they’re struck dead by blaster fire from multiple angles.
Beside me, Masters is shooting with a controlled fury, selecting his targets, killing, and finding the next koob. I leave him to it and set off along our line, calling our opportunities and repositioning firing teams to keep the aliens at bay. To fulfill Wraith’s warning that death is all that awaits those who come for us.
I’m beneath Maldorn and Twenties’s position when I hear an incoming buzzing, followed by an explosion in the area between us and the enemy. It’s followed by four more rapid crumps.
“Koob mortars!” someone calls out over the comm.
I duck down instinctively, memories of the barrage on the village coming immediately to mind. I’d really prefer we not have to take that volume of incoming fire.
Another mortar whizzes through the sky, but instead of detonating near us, it falls short, landing next to one of the burning koob trucks and sending an insurgent flying. Are they blind-firing through the storm? If so, they’re welcome to keep it up.
The next round of mortars remains ineffectual, but they’re closer to our line than the previous ones. Not good.
Pappy’s voice comes over the comm. “I know enough kimbrin to understand that there’s a spotter on this side of the storm, helping the firing crew walk their shots forward. Have your snipers find and eliminate.”
“Copy,” I answer. “Maldorn! Someone—probably kimbrin—is helping the mortar teams home in their fire. Spot ’em and take ’em out.”
“On it, sir.”
I pull up my field mags and join the search. I see a kimbrin crouched next to a destroyed repulsor transport who looks to be speaking into a handheld comm. I paint him with my mags. “I think this is our guy.”
“Yeah,” Twenties says, his voice not betraying the adrenaline rush I hear from the rest of the squad. “I see him. He’s pretty well covered by that transport, though. I don’t have a clear shot. Anyone else see this space rat?”
“Yeah,” Exo answers. “I see him. Definitely out of N-4 range.”
I move toward Exo’s position. “Let’s find a way, guys.”
I arrive just in time to hear the whoosh of Exo’s AP rocket. I jerk my head to watch its trajectory, thinking for a moment that more vehicles are attempting to drive hard in our direction. Instead, I see the rocket free-fire toward the kimbrin spotter. Exo used his weapon like a heavy-duty sniper rifle, and his aim is perfect.
“Forward spotter eliminated,” I report over the comm. “Looks like the storm is dying down, too.”
The wind reduces to a breeze, and the wall of dust sprinkles back to the earth. Visibility gradually improves, allowing those with buckets to switch to infrared and begin dusting targets farther into the cloud. I watch through my field mags as the mortar crews, their positions no longer hidden, are picked off by our snipers.
With the storm’s passing, we can finally see the mass of MCR and koobs on the battlefield. They waver under fire and begin to withdraw, diving behind rocks and scurrying off behind distant hills. If we had Capital ship support, now is the time we’d call down tri-fighters to pound them into vapor. If we had a secure forward operating base, like Camp Forge, we could paint their hiding spots and coordinate an orbital strike… with the Capital ship we don’t have. Instead, we watch them go, and prepare for another attack.
My comm beeps. It’s Twenties. “Lieutenant Chhun, you want me to pick ’em off until they’re out of range?”
“How are you on charge packs?”
“Green. But I’ll be black before much longer, sir.”
I wrinkle my nose, like I somehow don’t like the smell of what he’s telling me. Unlike the sleds, which have self-contained recharging cores for their weaponry, our blasters need charge magazines to work. Once we’ve depleted what we’ve got, that’s it. Our blaster rifles become little more than expensive clubs. “Better hold off.”
My comm chimes again.
“Go for Chhun.”
“Lieutenant, it’s me,” Masters says. “Checked with the guys. Most of ’em are green for blaster charges, but a few are almost black. I’m gonna see if I can redistribute some charge packs. You got any extras on you?”
I look down at my munitions satchel. I have about eight charge packs left. It’s an unusual feeling to give these up—I’m already fighting against the instinct to stand and bang away during the fight—but my role is to coordinate Doomsday Squad for optimum battle efficiency. “I can give you six.”
“Be right there, sir.”
Again my comm chimes. The lull in the fight has everyone scrambling to tie up loose ends. “Go for Chhun.”
“Lieutenant Chhun,” Wraith says in his cool battlefield voice. “Specialist Kags made the climb down the mountain while we were slinging blaster fire at the koobs. He wanted to get in the fight, so I sent him your way.”
“Copy.”
The incessant chime of my comm sounds yet again. “Go for Chhun,” I say, careful to hide the annoyance in my voice. I haven’t been able to take more than two steps without getting a call, and it’s starting to piss me off.
“Got something here.” Twenties’s voice is almost trembling; he’s either terrified or excited. “HUD has a positive ID on the head koob from the village. He’s talking to some humans, squatting behind cover. Not well enough behind cover, though. It’s a long one, but I have a shot.”
“Mark the target and take the shot,” I order.
Legionnaire Page 19
