Off World- Ragnarok

by J. F. Holmes

  His commo sergeant tapped his shoulder and interrupted his thoughts. “Sir, signal flag from Battalion. Withdraw all civvies back to the city.” He was a good man, having run the scout’s report up on the semaphore as soon as it came over the field phone.

  The captain blew a whistle, two short blasts, and waved his arms. Most of the civilians dropped their tools and picked up their rifles, though a couple just walked away to the rear. Better now than in the fight, he supposed.

  Five miles, say, eight kilometers roughly. Gvit stood about nine feet on average, and had a long stride. Their infantry could cover enormous ground when put to the whip, so they had maybe half an hour. Time enough to think hard about what came in the afterlife, and if Jesus could find their souls on a planet four light years from home.

  “Rally on me!” he called over the loudspeaker to the two-hundred-odd men and women who formed Bravo Company. They put their shovels down and shouldered their rifles, leaving the few crew-served weapons in their pre-sighted emplacements. He waited until they were all gathered around before speaking. Thank God we don’t have to worry about indirect fire, he thought, then laughed to himself. Although Santos had been in combat before, he’d never faced an artillery barrage. The fight against the Gvit last year had been straight up attacking, without an arrow storm, and he didn’t know what he didn’t know.

  “Listen up, people. The rhinos are coming at us, full bore, about three divisions. That’s sixty thousand of their best warriors, all looking to take home a human head on a pike as a trophy.” He smiled, his light-brown Hispanic skin looking ruddy in the red dawn light. “That’s OK, because, even though I’d make a very pretty trophy, I have no intention of giving them my head.” There were a few laughs, but the tension was too great. Many of them had dealt with the Gvit, or other creatures on Alpha Centauri, and knew they were in for a serious fight. Maybe their last.

  “Remember,” their commander continued, “what we have over them is teamwork, not technology. We work, we fight, we live as a team. I expect some of you to want to run. Hell, I want to run right now. But I won’t, and you won’t, because we are humans, and brothers. This is our home now, Earth is far away, and we intend to stay.”

  He paused, looking at the sea of faces. The older ones were veterans, at least of the Battle of the Bridge. The younger ones, though, well, they had the energy and the blessing of not knowing. “So after the artillery and mortars are done pounding the shit out of the rhinos, we’re going to show them what team work is all about. Remember to fire low; a 5.56 round is just going to piss them off if you hit their chest or face carapace, so go for the legs. An immobile wounded rhino is one out of the battle. If it comes to hand-to-hand, use your spears like you’ve been instructed. Our steel is better than their iron, and we move faster.”

  There was a hoot from the back of the ranks, and a platoon of Chak, their native allies, raised their war axes over their heads. They were clad head to toe with plate mail made from scrap steel; the Chak were evolutionary related to the Gvit, but lacked the massive natural armor and were slightly smaller. Not really as smart, either, truth be told, but they were loyal to their human allies, and knew that they fought for their freedom.

  “Yes, we’ll save some for you, brothers!” Santos called back, and they started banging their axes on their shields and hooting in their strange language. The Gvit Confederation had hunted their cousins mercilessly, driving them into the swamps to eke out a miserable existence. That had all changed when humanity kicked in a quantum door to their world.

  Over the clamor, the captain shouted, “LET’S DO THIS!” The response was a roar of approval from two hundred throats. A ripping sound tore through the sky, 105mm rounds on their way out, and the detonations shook the earth and made muffled crumps seconds later.

  Thing was, there were only so many artillery rounds. The ones they had to fit the 105’s came from Earth, thirty-three pounds of high-carbon steel, high-explosive and technologically sophisticated fuses. That, and the Gvit had learned. Instead of a massed formation designed to break through enemy lines by shock, a self-contained cavalry charge, they’d changed to columns separated by more than fifty meters, making it harder to hit them in groups. Sure, many fell, the hot shrapnel ripping through armor, but they were driven forward by the ceremonial whips of their sergeants and feudal lords. Not that they needed them; each of the common Gvit strove to engage in combat and win the chance of glory and a mate.

  Their leaders had learned, too. No longer did they go into battle wearing gleaming ceremonial armor, to be easily targeted by human snipers with Barret .50 rifles, or even three round bursts by the mounted M2s. Instead they wore common armor with a splash of color on the back for their troops to rally on.

  “They’re getting smarter,” muttered Captain Santos.

  “Yeah, well, at least they’re still reacting to us instead of us to them,” said Lt. Worthy. His XO had her own binoculars to her face, watching the approaching columns.

  “Are the tanks ready up?” asked her boss.

  “Nope. Engines are fucked. It’s just the poor bloody infantry.”

  “OK, well, we’re probably screwed then. How I wish we had real air support.”

  Santos looked back over his shoulder, glancing at the helium balloon hanging a thousand feet over the battlefield, giving eyes on, but being swarmed by wildlife in range of one of the huge longbows the Gvit carried, maybe, maybe not. An Apache would be nice.

  “Yeah, well, you aren’t General Halstead, gotta trust the man, Sir.” They worked well together as a team, Santos and Worthy. They’d said their goodbyes last night, and today was all business.

  “Anna, remember, keep it professional. Hate has no business in war, you know that.” Santos looked at her seriously, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze, still staring through the binos. “All the hate in the world won’t bring your parents, or anyone from Shoreham, back.”

  “I know, Chris. Doesn’t mean I have to like the fucking rhinos.” She turned the nickname into a curse. One that put all her fury at the destruction of her home three years earlier into it. “If I hadn’t been deployed in Shitistan, I could have…”

  “Could have died with them.”

  That brought silence, or as much silence as there could be with the artillery rounds ripping overhead. They felt the impacts through the ground, growing closer, until suddenly the barrage stopped.

  “Redleg, Rounds Complete,” came the radio call. There were still several hundred available for a final protective fire, but if it came to that, it would be too late. “Good luck, grunts. See you in hell. Redleg out.” Five kilometers to the rear, on the approaches to the causeway, the artillerymen lowered their barrels to almost horizontal and set fuses for super quick.

  The oncoming Gvit shouted, a great roaring sound that carried the fifteen hundred meters to the human positions, and quickly, professionally, formed into rows for the assault. Beneath their feet, Santos and Worthy could feel the ground start to tremble under them, like an oncoming freight train. When they passed the stakes twelve hundred meters away, the dance started

  From the Battalion CP, a hundred meters up the hill from Bravo Company’s position, another signal flag went up. Emplaced machine guns opened fire, first fifty caliber, and then smaller 7.62 mm. A horn blew, and as one, the front ranks of the Gvit raised huge shields, four-inch-thick hammered iron. Though the heavier fifties punched through, they were often slowed so much that they lacked the kinetic energy to crack the heavy armor. The 7.62 rounds merely glanced off the angled shield.

  “Well, that’s a new one,” said Santos, and he yelled, “MORTARS!” His signal sergeant waved the red flag, and the thunk thunk thunk of the smaller infantry mortars started sounding, accompanied by the faster 40mm Mk-19s. The mortars reached far into the back of the horde, the smaller grenades arching out into the front ranks, taking one grenade to knock down an individual Gvit, and they often rose again, bleeding pale blue. Not enough before they’d be on them.
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br />   The Gvit reached the thousand meter aiming stakes, and the snipers came into play. Heavy booms of Barrets and the sharper crack of .308s came from the hill behind Bravo, the Battalion Recon Platoon trying to hit the much less visible lords. Santos didn’t know if they had any effect; the huge aliens didn’t slow.

  Five hundred meters, and the machine guns ran dry. There were still thousands of the huge creatures, screaming battle cries and blowing war trumpets. In the back huge drums sounded, driving the shock troops into a mad frenzy.

  Fear began to assault the human troops, and before the battalion commander could give the command to fire, a man from Alpha Company, on Bravo’s left, turned and ran. Their first sergeant shot him down, but the company, which had far more civilians in it than Bravo, melted as the Gvit came even closer. Not waiting for the order from Battalion, Santos yelled, “FIRE!” at the top of his lings, as the signal sergeant raised the red flag and the enemy passed the three-hundred-meter stake in the ground.

  A thunderous crackle of small arms fire roared out, and the first wave of Gvit crashed down to earth, either hit in the legs by soldiers with lighter M-4 rifles, or in the chest by civilians firing bolt action hunting rifles. This was the moment when everything hung in the balance, and Santos expected it to go similar to the battle across the river last year. The aliens would keep pressing forward, like French knights at Agincourt, to be mowed down by riflemen. It would only be a question of numbers, and the two Stryker gun trucks held in reserve would move forward at the critical moment, using their canister shot to break up any remaining large groups.

  With a curse, the infantry captain saw that this time, things would be different. Instead of swarming over their own dead, the horns rang out and the entire remaining force, thousands of the half ton predators, shifted right, aiming for the now platoon-sized Alpha company. He watched in shock as the Gvit broke every rule he knew about fighting them and crashed into the defenses guarding the Battalion’s flank. The kill zone of gas-filled trenches and enfilading machine gun nests that lay directly in front of Bravo Company was empty, and the ring of steel started to replace the sound of gunfire, mixed with human screams.

  “HOLD!” yelled Captain Santos, ignoring the look Worthy shot him. “GODDAMNIT, I SAID HOLD!”

  He stood out in the open, disregarding the six-foot-long arrows that started to drop among their positions from a company of Gvit archers, who’d set up behind their dead. “HOLD YOUR POSITIONS!” he yelled, and grabbed the landline. “KEEP FIRING!”

  “Two Six, this is Bravo Six, we’re being flanked!” he called out, trying to keep the panic out of his voice, and wondering if he’d made the right call. He watched as the attackers streamed past him.

  “Roger, we see it. Hold your positions, do NOT advance into their flank, I say again, DO NOT! Seek cover ASAP, Plan Olympic, Two Six, out.”

  “Seek cover? That’s insane,” he said out loud. “They’ll overrun us in ten minutes! HOLY SHIT, PLAN OLYMPIC!” Then he saw the two five-thousand-gallon fuel trucks bouncing and jostling their way forward in front of their lines, getting nearer and nearer the massed Gvit. Even as he watched, one of the drivers bailed out, tumbling across the ground and tearing ass for the human lines.

  Santos started running from position to position, ordering his men and women to take shelter in their fighting holes. “XO! GET THE MEN DOWN!” he yelled. Worthy saw what he was doing, and though she had no idea why, she added her voice to his, then dove into an empty foxhole. Suddenly there was a flash that lit everything like a camera, and her lungs felt like someone was sitting on them. Then the ground heaved under her, and a roaring, deafening sound that disappeared to be replaced by a ringing noise. The air rushed over her, away from the blast, and it was hot, far hotter than the normal Alphan day. Then it rushed back, almost cool, carrying debris and dirt with it.

  Chapter 32

  Lt. Thrace still sat in a chair, high up in the observation tower above Firebase Glory. Around her the six-foot-long shafts of Gvit arrows stood out like pins from a cushion, but none had hit her. Down below, though, the body of Captain O’Shea lay splattered across the roof of the TOC. In one of those stupid accidents of war, he’d leaned too far out the window to fire his own rifle at the enemy, slipped, and fell, screaming, to land with a dull thud.

  She sat and smoked a cigar; her part in the war was over for now. Occasionally she called reports of the battle down to the TOC, but with the landlines cut to Fort McHenry, there really wasn’t much she could do. A radio would be nice, but one powerful enough to reach the base would’ve been wrecked inside of a minute, with all the carrion feeders wheeling around the battlefield. It was actually kind of pleasant a hundred feet up in the air, with a nice breeze. She guessed she was in shock from watching the slaughter below.

  One thing she did watch for was signal flags from the base, but after a half hour of nothing, her attention wandered to the piles of dead in front of the base. They were laid out in their thousands, in a fan shape away from the guns, and along a line to the bridge. The bridge itself still stood, though there were no Gvit on it now. An even bigger army had piled up behind some siege machines, blocking the way across. She idly wondered how she was going to die; from starvation, thirst, or arrow when they got around to actually taking the firebase. Maybe she’d go out in a blaze of glory, emptying her magazine as she jumped down on a horde of fucking rhinos below her, last to die in the base.

  “Geez, you sound like an emo teenager,” she said out loud to no one. The promised fire support team had never shown, doubtless having joined in the gunplay below, and her orders were to wait and observe.

  Looking away to the north, she watched as the main Gvit force slammed into 1-9‘s defenses. That, she admitted, was probably a complete shit show. Then her glance caught sight of the frantic red “incoming signal” on the Fort McHenry observation tower. “SHIT!” she exclaimed, wondering how long it had been flying. She raised the answering green flag and started copying the semaphore message. “F-R-Y-I-N-G” she muttered outload, trying to figure out the flag positions, distorted by the heat and the dust. The next word was “C-A-R-U-M-N”.

  “Great, the old man has lost it,” again, to no one in particular, then read watched and translated again. This time it made more sense, sort of. FLYING COLUMN. She repeated the massage back, then received another. D-E-S-T-R-A-X B-R-U-D-G-E.

  “Holy crap!” exited her mouth as she figured it out, but she was already moving. The field phone ringer spun in her and, and she waited impatiently for the operations center to pick up. When no one did, she ran over and looked down. Soldiers were milling aimlessly about, some moving ammo, most listlessly. Like her, waiting to die.

  “HEY!” she yelled to get their attention. “HEY, YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS!” followed when no one looked up. She grabbed her pistol and aimed carefully downward, putting two rounds in the dirt at the feet of a major she recognized. He flinched and looked around wildly, so she fired again. He looked up into the sky and saw her almost hanging out of the tower. Thrace pointed north and yelled, “SIGNAL!” The man ran inside the TOC, and seconds later the phone rang. It was Lieutenant Colonel McClellan himself, whom she’d seen walking on crutches into the TOC, heavily bandaged, half an hour before.

  “What have you got, LT?” he asked calmly.

  “Sir, message from McHenry follows, FLYING COLUMN, DESTROY BRIDGE.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you, Captain.”

  “Lieutenant, Sir,” she corrected him.

  “CAPTAIN Thrace, get your ass down here and assemble your fire support teams. Mission briefing in ten minutes. I want you riding with us, using radios, wildlife be damned, and I want a fire plan that covers all possible targets between here and the bridge, with an option of hitting the enemy’s flank with small arms, one battery here providing covering fire.”

  The line went dead, and she looked at it. Well, promoted in combat. The new captain wasted no time climbing down the ladder and running for where her FST tr
oops should be.

  ****

  David Halstead stood on the roof of his command Humvee, looking out into the distance with binoculars. The hill he was on allowed a view of the bridge and the masses of enemy beyond. Siege engines, he noted. Catapults, trebuchets, scorpions. Whoever their Chinese advisors were, they’d been smart. No need to build up an explosives industry or train them on cannon. The machines were simple wood, muscle, and torsion, something the Gvit had in plenty.

  “Jack,” he said to the governor, who stood next to him, watching through his own field glasses, “we may have to evacuate the base back across the causeway. Can you at least get all civilians out? I wish we had had time to build walls around the city.”

  “Another month would have been good,” his friend agreed. “OK, I’ll give the orders. Good luck, Dave.” He offered his hand, and they shook tightly. Governor Conklin jumped down and climbed into his own Jeep, headed back to the city.

  “Major Tongas, are we ready?”

  The beefy Samoan grinned, showing startling white teeth. “Best we can do in a scratch. Firebase Glory acknowledged.”

  “OK, move ’em out. I don’t think the column from the firebase will make the bridge, but you never know.” He looked behind him, where three companies of infantry, the entire 1st Battalion, was crammed into every military vehicle and civilian truck they could find that would cross uneven ground. Maybe thirty in all, from Jeep Cherokees to 5-ton LMTV trucks, intermixed with three Stryker gun trucks. Rifle barrels pointed out windows, and in many cases, windows had been smashed out to allow firing. He winced at how this was going to hurt the colony in the long run if indeed they’d been cut off from Earth, but needs must when the devil dances.

  At the rear of the column, Lieutenant Colonel Ibson raised his signal flag, and beside Halstead, the signal sergeant acknowledged, then gave the ‘GO’ signal. His wished he could be with his old friend, but command and control of the battle was his job, not riding out like some glory-seeking cavalryman. Leave that to the kids, he thought, though he wished desperately he was about to enter the fight.