Off World- Ragnarok

by J. F. Holmes

  Papadatos was about to say something else when he heard footsteps hammering up the concrete behind him. Sergeant Johnston appeared, and with a whirl of arms, a broken Gvit lance streaked across the distance to bury itself in the Chinese soldier’s throat. He fell backward, grabbing at his neck, and kicked on the ground, choking, then fell still. Johnson grabbed Papadatos and slammed him to the ground behind a dead Gvit as the bodyguards started firing at them.

  “Sir, always kill the bad guy right away. If they’re talking shit, they’ve got something up their sleeves,” said Johnson, breathing heavily.

  “I suppose you’re right. That was a hell of a throw!”

  “I lettered in track and field, javelin state record holder, Maine, class of ’49. Never thought I’d use it, but my rifle jammed. Oh, shit!” he said, seeing the blood pooling under the officer’s leg. He sat him down and unsnapped the captain’s aid pouch, unwinding the bandage and wrapping it around the wound.

  When he was done, the NCO stood up and said, “I gotta go see who else is alive. It was a fucked-up thing here today, Sir, and something I never want to see again. Here’s two Motrin, drink some water.”

  Papadatos laughed, feeling weak from blood loss, and waved him away. “Check Alvarez first, he was hit, but still screaming, last I can recall.”

  Johnson did find him, unconscious and pale, but with a tourniquet high up on his leg. Specialist Crane sat next to him, smoking a cigarette; everyone else was dead. Johnson sat down and took the cigarette out of his mouth, took a drag, and handed it back to him. Crane leaned on him, putting his head on his shoulder, and said, “Did you do it?”

  “Are you dead, dumbass?”

  “Good point, though I’m hurting like a bitch. You’re gonna get the Medal for all this, you know.”

  “Screw that. Let me get back out in the woods,” said his friend.

  Crane was silent for a moment, then said, “I had a sword fight with a Gvit. Just like in the fucking Princess Bride. Cool shit, except where he stabbed me.”

  “Left handed or right handed?” asked Johnson, stealing his cig again.

  “Neither, that damned sword was so frigging heavy it took two hands to swing it.”

  They were both in shock, and they knew it. Around them were bodies, friends and enemies alike, and in the distance the rumble of artillery had started again. Johnson stood up and walked around, looking for a working rifle and ammunition. He was startled when he heard a muffled sound coming from under the arm of a dead Gvit, something like, “Get this thing off me!”

  The scout ran over to where he’d assumed Private Baird lay dead, crushed under one of the Gvit. He’d been unmoving, covered in blood, and Johnson had been distracted by his friend Running Lance lying a few feet away, eyes open to the sky. Baird moved again, and Johnson pulled and tugged at the huge, dead alien, finally managing to free him. The private gasped and then threw up on the concrete, looked at the remains of his hand, and passed out. Checking his pulse and looking for other wounds, Johnson bandaged the fingers as best he could and left him lying there. Then he picked up Baird’s rifle, stock broken but still functional, found two full magazines on another dead soldier he didn’t know, gave a salute to Crane, and started walking northwest toward the sound of gunfire.

  Chapter 36

  The truck-delivered fuel/air explosive that had detonated in front of the human lines had given them a breather, knocking the Gvit backward, and Captain Santos used every second he could to his advantage. The signal flags from BN HQ said, ‘reinforce left flank’, and he saw the opportunity the FAEs had given him. They could hold the line directly in front of Bravo Company, especially with the Gvit shifting their attack. The hole where Alpha had been needed to be filled, though.

  “XO,” he said, looking at the woman he’d come to love very deeply, “take over command. I’m going to take first and second platoon to block Alpha’s position. Also send First Sergeant Camacho to the rear to try to rally the runners. He has permission to use any means necessary.”

  “Chris…” she started to say, but then stopped at his look and merely nodded. He looked back at her, saying everything he could never say out loud, then turned and ran to gather his men.

  “FIRST PLATOON, SECOND PLATOON, FOLLOW ME!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. As he ran past individual foxholes, he exhorted his men to follow, but didn’t pause. By the time he reached the edge of where Bravo tied in with Alpha, almost forty soldiers were streaming along behind him.

  In front, several of Alpha Company’s troopers were still firing, but most were either dead or gone. The Gvit, recovered from the explosion, were pouring through the gap; several hundred had already passed through toward the city. That’s fine, he thought, there’s a battery of 105s waiting for them. He jumped on top of a covered position, held up his arms, and yelled, “FIRING LINE!”

  The soldiers following him had seen many of their friends killed already and were out for blood. Spreading out on either side, they waited for his order, a drill he’d had them practice extensively. There was something to be said for the shock of a fusillade, if the enemy had any kind of morale. He held his hands straight up, looked left and right to make sure they were online, dropped his arms, and yelled, “FIRE!”

  ****

  Inside his armor, Billy Walters felt like a god of combat. In his mind he was a Rider of Rohan, thundering across the Pelennor Fields, riding to save Gondor. As he forged forward, his aiming computer tied in with the other two suits, and they left a V shaped wake of death. The 4mm sabot rounds delivered an incredible punch, the tiny needle-like penetrators hammering through armor, hide, and flesh, often losing their power inside and ricocheting around in the soft flesh. Most of the Gvit they killed had their backs to them, never knowing how they died. They did, however, burn through ammo at a tremendous rate. Each suit carried ten thousand rounds in a backpack, but there were upwards of thirty thousand warriors crowded on the plain, and not all of the rounds hit their mark.

  The first problem happened when PFC Hemmings, still not totally used to the suit’s movements, tripped over a dead body and went sprawling. She was up and running again in a flash, but the interruption had thrown their targeting computers off, opening a gap on the left side. They quickly came back online, but a corrupted subroutine in the programming assumed that the enemy there had been engaged already. As they ran, a squad of Gvit charged at them, forcing Hemmings to take individual shots. The last one crashed to the earth just in front of her, and she jumped over the dying alien, hurrying to catch the other two.

  Walters didn’t even notice the interruption; his senses had focused down to a point, running toward it faster and faster as enemies were blown out of his way. He was new to combat, had even less training than a regular infantryman, and was suffering from what fighter pilots called “target fixation”. In essence, he was ignoring everything to reach his goal while surrounded by thousands of incredibly deadly genetically-engineered life forms. If they’d been armed as their creators had intended, he’d have died the moment he started his attack. Instead, as they started to react to the assault on their rear ranks, he had to dodge arrows and thrown spears coming at him. At a command, one rank of warriors turned about and presented a shield wall when he was thirty feet from them.

  With a shout of joy that was both battle madness and naïveté, Walters fired and killed two of the aliens, not noticing that these were considerably larger and more heavily armored. His third shot hit angled steel and went whining off into the distance, and the creature rushed forward to meet him, throwing the shield aside and swinging a five-foot-long sword. The millimeter radar on the suit measured the incoming weapon and dodged him out of the way, firing directly into the face of the attacker.

  Walters, however, hadn’t been aware of that subroutine, and the shock of the suit twisting around him wrenched his neck, causing blinding pain. Even as the suit gave him back control, he fell to the ground, lights dancing in front of his eyes. For a second, an eternity in c
ombat, he was out if it, and during that second two things happened.

  First, another axe swung at him from the side. The Gvit were no fools, and knew when one of their own went down, they needed to attack left and right to close the hole in the wall. A shot from Kimber killed one, but the second cleanly lopped the gun housing off Walters’ shoulder.

  Second, a horn blew, and the bodyguard of the corps commander, for that’s who the humans had targeted, charged. Twenty of the biggest sons of bitches Hemmings had seen in her life came at them full on, tons of armor and meat rolling towards them from fifty meters away, intent on trampling Walters into the dirt. Kimber, who was slightly ahead of her friend, dove, rolled, grabbed the cadet and his suit, and literally threw him out of the way over the heads of the charging warriors. Unable to get up in time, she disappeared under the pounding hooves and horns.

  Walters landed with a crash, completely stunned. Hemmings screamed and met the charge with her blade out, swinging furiously left and right, lopping off limbs and heads with equal abandon, yelling her friend’s name.

  ****

  “BY PLATOON, ADVANCE!” yelled Santos after they’d emptied an entire magazine. First Platoon started at a run, changing mags as they did so, while Second Platoon kept up a steady fire. The fusillade had bowled over dozens of the Gvit, and the rest turned in confusion, unsure where the new attack was coming from. Survivors of Alpha Company, who’d hunkered down in their holes as the enemy tore through their position, now rose up and started taking individual shots.

  Now was when the training Santos had put Bravo through paid off. First Platoon moved twenty meters forward, stopped, and engaged the closest warriors, aiming for faces and knees. Second Platoon ran forward and came on line with them.

  “HALT!”

  “RELOAD!”

  “FIRE!”

  And again forty rifles poured out their entire magazines into the now charging three dozen Gvit. It was more than even they could take, and some started to turn and run back toward their main lines.

  In his focus at what was in front of him, Chris Santos didn’t see the charge that crashed through the trenches in front of Bravo Company’s position, or the desperate hand-to-hand fighting that began there. Nor the thousands of arrows that hammered into his old lines, heedless of the casualties they caused among their own troops.

  ****

  Walters stood shakily, looking around him. To his left he could see a furious charge into the human lines. To his right was a confused mess, volleys of rifle fire echoing in his ears. In front of him was a huge Gvit, scarred and heavily armored, with a splash of white painted on the rear of his armor. It was ignoring him, intent on managing the battle, aides blowing on horns to direct troops. Beside the alien, watching the battle, stood a human, also watching the advance through field glasses.

  He heard Hemmings scream over the net, calling Kimber’s name, and spun to target the fight going on behind him. A warning flashed on his screen, WEAPONS SYSTEM ONE INOPERABLE. He saw her flailing in combat with a half dozen Gvit who, despite their size, were very light on their feet, as well as experienced warriors. She’d apparently forgotten her gun, or it wasn’t working, and when he yelled her name, she ignored him, trying to protect her fallen friend. For Cadet Billy Walters, what had begun as a game and a theoretical exercise became suddenly all too real as he watched people he’d led in combat dying in front of him.

  Chapter 37

  So it’s all come down to this, Anna Worthy thought. Four years of West Point, only coming back home to see her parents here on Alpha occasionally. Five years as an infantry officer, including Ranger School and a tour of occupation duty in Iran. She wasn’t the first female infantry officer, but it had always been personal to her. The jokes, the discrimination in what was still an old boys club, having to hide her relationship with Chris. Now was the time.

  She looked out at the Gvit ranks in front of the position. Many had shifted toward the Alpha Company positions, but hundreds more started to press forward, and horns sounded, driving them onward.

  “Top,” she said, for Camacho hadn’t left, despite orders, “make sure you’ve got control of the demolitions. Let’s have them come to us.”

  “Got it, Ma’am.” He liked Worthy, though he always played the hardass to her. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, get me the Chak platoon. I want to talk to them.” He nodded and jogged off down the trench.

  When they came to her, the twenty aliens were subdued. They hadn’t yet had a chance to fight, and had just had to sit and take it from the arrow storm. Their hate had grown throughout the battle, and she needed them to understand her plan.

  “Listen to me, friends,” she said, gathering them around her. The sound of the horns and drums had grown louder, and she knew they didn’t have much time. “I know you want to fight, you can taste it, and you will.”

  They erupted in hoots and growls, banging their swords and axes on their makeshift shields, and she smiled. “But you have to wait. We will use our guns and kill many of them, but there are more of them than we have guns. When I call, and only when I call, you need to come to me and fight.”

  Their leader, a Chak who towered over her and was almost as big as a Gvit, stood, knelt, then offered her his sword. “Somebody’s been letting you guys watch too many Skyrim videos!” She laughed, but then got serious. She reached out, tried to lift the sword, and grinned, putting it back down in his hands.

  “Listen to me! As long as there’s a weapon in your hands, you will never be slaves again!” The Chak roared with approval, and she yelled with them. They might not have been able to speak English because of the way their vocal chords were set up, but they sure as hell understood it.

  “LT,” said her signal sergeant, “Battalion is on the horn!”

  She turned and ran back to their small command post just as a furious volley erupted to her left. Good luck, Chris, I love you, she thought and picked up the landline. LTC Thapa himself was on the line, and his gruff voice was welcome.

  “We’re watching you, and the old man has a plan. You need to hold for maybe twenty minutes, possibly less. I’ll send you what reinforcements I can.”

  “Understood, Sir, they seem to be concentrating on Alpha’s position,” she answered.

  “I’m watching that, too. Twenty minutes, Lieutenant,” and the line went dead.

  She swore and muttered, “Easy for you to say.” But that’s what she got the big bucks for.

  Sticking her head out of the covered foxhole, she looked at the Gvit lines, which hadn’t moved. Camacho slid in next to her, out of breath. “Ammo cross-loaded, and I think the automatic weapons have about as much as they need.”

  “Grenades?”

  “Everyone has at least a dozen, though I hate those stupid things.”

  She laughed and said, “And you call yourself an infantryman.”

  Camacho gave her the finger, making sure no one else could see it, and then said, “He’s going to be OK, you know. Chris Santos is one bad hombre, so just you put it out of your mind. The more you think about it, the more men are going to get killed here.”

  Her response was drowned out by the clatter of rotors overhead, and then the thunder of a full-on Gvit charge. Both scrambled out of the hole, Camacho to demolitions, Worthy to keep an eye on the fight. The Gvit line bore down on them, and there were no more archers firing, because each wanted in on the kill.

  In front of Bravo’s positions the engineers had laid a killing ground, trenches filled with oil, sharpened stakes in pits, and razor wire designed to channel the attackers into kill zones. The Gvit broke on this like a wave, and the humans opened up with a brutal fusillade. Claymore mines detonated with thunderous cracks, AT-4 rockets shot out into the mass, yet they still kept coming. The thousands of the first wave dwindled to hundreds, yet still they pressed on, holding their shields to deflect machine gun and rifle fire, trampling their dead and dying comrades into the mud and blood.

  When they reached
the first trench, Camacho detonated the foo gas mines. Several blocks of C4 had been placed under half a dozen 55-gallon drums of gasoline, and when they blew, each sent a sheet of burning fuel in a spray across the charging Gvit. Their screams and bellows were like nails on a chalkboard, audible even over the gunfire.

  Instead of breaking, though, it seemed to drive them into even more of a frenzy. Burning warriors threw themselves into the trenches, making a path for the ones following to cross. Machine guns hammered at their flanks, killing dozens more, but a core group made up of one of their commanders and several hundred more, charged through and across the killing field. They crashed into Bravo’s position like a thunderbolt.

  “Colonel, we need those reinforcements NOW!” Anna Worthy screamed into the field phone, then slammed it down. She looked over the top of the command bunker again and saw the charge. One of her fifty calibers wasn’t firing, and she saw that both the gunner and his assistant were dead, skewered with arrows. She jumped up, ran to the gun, sat down behind it, and fired off the remnants of the belt, trying to hit center of the mass. Another dozen died before the gun ran dry, and she searched frantically for another can of ammo.

  One of her squad leaders jumped down beside her, yelled, “I GOT THIS!” in her ear, and shoved her away. For a second, fury blazed up in her, but then she realized he was right. Her place was to command and lead, not to vent her rage frantically trying to work a machine gun. She ran back to the CP and met Camacho, who was, along with two privates, hauling several boxes of grenades. He flipped one case open and started pulling pins, then throwing them as hard as he could.

  “Mortars might be a good idea, Ma’am,” he grunted between throws.

  She grabbed at the land line that went to the battalion mortar section, working behind the crest of the hill, and got someone on the phone. “I need you to shift fire to two hundred meters past my position, I think we can hold the rest,” she told the Fire Support officer, then hung up without waiting for his answer. Then she started running from fighting position to fighting position, getting her people out of their holes. “SPEAR WALL!” she yelled, shoving some of them until their NCOs understood what she wanted. If the Gvit made it across the trenches, they’d be killed one by one in their holes. Instead they were to form a wall of spears, like an ancient Greek phalanx with three ranks, each holding a twenty-foot-long diamond- and ceramic-tipped cutting weapon. The humans placed themselves squarely in front of where the most likely breach was to come in the wall of spikes set into the ground.