Brink of Destruction, page 19
It looked like the scouts hadn’t actually made contact yet. They were, instead, setting into the last covered and concealed position they could be sure of before they moved up in an attempt to get eyes on the source of the mysterious transmissions.
Draven didn’t know what kind of sophonts would set up on this hell planet, kept warm only by the rampant volcanism. There had to be some reason, some resource they wanted, though, and that meant they were probably dangerous.
Presuming the ghost ships were actually here. If the wormhole had dropped them somewhere else, instead of dragging them along in the ghost ships’ wake, there might not be any aliens here, and they were exploring a barren world. He wondered if this was a parallel situation to Zhogalgan. The human colonists there had settled after a catastrophic failure had left their starship dead in a rapidly decaying orbit.
Able Company’s crawlers worked their way up the hill. Without atmosphere, there was no erosion, but the sheer amount of asteroidal debris in the system—and the volcanos—meant that the dust was deep and disturbed only by impacts or quakes. Several times even the big balloon tires got bogged down, requiring hardsuited soldiers to get out and founder in the dust to free their stuck vehicles, while the scouts dismounted and climbed out of the gully.
Draven had to get out a few times and assist the soldiers in his own crawler. Technically, his rank meant he didn’t need to push and dig with the lower enlisted, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit in the crawler, adding his weight and that of his hardsuit to the mass of the vehicle.
By the time Third Platoon, which had taken the lead, was in position atop the rise, the scouts were already nearly a kilometer from their own vehicles and closing in on the source of the transmissions. They probably should have simply moved up to the hill, because when Draven straightened up and stepped close to the flank of his own crawler, he found he could see all the way across the tableland that had been split by the gully where the scouts had laagered their vehicles.
And through the murk of falling ash from the distant volcano, it was clear where the signals were coming from.
The installation might have begun as an impact crater, but it had been deepened and expanded until it was a steep-walled pit with black structures studding the walls and the rim like malignant blisters. They showed no lights, but they were still obviously artificial.
There were vehicles moving out from one of the larger structures. They looked a bit like beetles from a distance, though when he brought his magnifiers up, he could see that they had either articulated plate wheels or tracks that were shrouded by the curve of their hulls.
Those hulls were as night-black and strangely textured as the ghost ships’.
Once, Draven might have hesitated, let the scouts report in—they were closer and probably had a better view, provided they were keeping their heads up and observing as they moved from cover to cover—but after all he’d seen and been through from Zhogalgan to Dur Udyaanm, he wasn’t going to take the time to wait.
He had the line of sight, so he was going to react.
“Fire Control Central, this is Able Five Actual. Fire mission, immediate.”
“This is Fire Control Central, fire missions are to come from Unit Sixes.” Apparently, the bizarre circumstances that the regiment found itself in had not had the same effect on everyone. Some people adapted quickly, putting aside the unnecessary and focusing on survival. Others clung to the only things that made sense to them in the chaos, and there were plenty of rules and policies that had been “democratically determined” in the Grand Army. Draven often wondered just how “democratic” that process was, considering how universally loathed many of those rules and policies were among the seasoned non-coms.
Captain Breck had no patience for such policy nitpicking. “This is Able Six. Execute the Five’s fire mission. Out.”
There was a pause, presumably as the fire control center’s personnel all looked at each other and looked around for someone else to pass the blame to. They hadn’t expected an officer to tell them to ignore policy and take a fire mission from a non-com, even a senior one.
“Able Five Actual, this is, um, Fire Central. Send your fire mission.”
Draven bit back a curse as he saw the scouts come under fire from the fast-moving beetle tanks, or whatever sort of fighting vehicles they were. Flashes erupted on the ground around the scouts, throwing gouts of yellow dust up into the vacuum, and two of the dismounted scouts simply disappeared as they were hit. If he’d had any doubts that those vehicles were built by the same aliens that had built the ghost ships, they were dispelled.
He called out the coordinates and the description of the vehicles. “Guided penetrator rounds, high angle. ImageRec file sent now.” He pressed a control on the side of the magnifiers, transmitting the image through contacts in his gauntlet to his comm. Image Recognition had taken over as one of the chief forms of guidance lock a very long time ago, as jamming and detection tech had rendered the use of laser or maser target markers suicide. “Full spread. Launch when ready.”
For a second, as he waited for an acknowledgment, he wondered if the fire direction center wasn’t going to obstruct him just to get back at him for getting them in trouble with Captain Breck. It would be insane in a combat situation, which this was, but he’d seen stupider things.
“Full battery, penetrator rounds, acknowledged. ImageRec files being loaded now.”
Draven returned his attention to the fight below. The scouts had gone to ground, trying to find cover, but those vehicles were moving quickly, and even as he watched, two more of the dismounted, hardsuited soldiers died. The hardsuits were supposed to be moderately stealthy, but the enemy vehicles had to have sensors every bit as powerful as their weapons.
Some sporadic weapons fire from the crawlers was starting to kick up dust around the black vehicles, but they didn’t seem to be finding the enemy hulls themselves. The range alone wasn’t quite enough to account for that; the vehicles must be hardened in more than one way.
The scouts, despite the incoming fire, were still trying to maneuver. As Draven watched through his magnifiers, he saw two more cut down, even though they should have been behind cover. The enemy weapons were punching straight through the small hillocks on the edge of the gully.
Those dark, beetle-like vehicles were darting forward, kicking up dust in the vacuum and moving faster than Draven had ever expected a wheeled or tracked vehicle to move. They were almost on top of the scouts, cutting more of them down with bright flashes of weapons fire, when the guided penetrator rounds from the artillery came silently down out of the sky.
Draven thought the first salvo had missed. One of the vehicles all but disappeared in a cloud of smoke, but Draven didn’t see the flash of the shell igniting the shaped charge in its nose, intended to weaken the target’s armor for the hardened penetrator behind it.
As the dust and smoke settled to the ground, the vehicle slid through it, apparently unscathed. Draven frowned as he focused just past it and saw no crater in the ground.
More flashes cut down an additional four scouts. The unit was almost gone, and the vehicles didn’t seem to have taken any damage from the guided penetrator rounds.
Draven shook his head, gritting his teeth as he tried to focus more intently through the magnifiers, as if sheer will would allow him to pierce the smoke, dust, and distance. The surfaces of the enemy vehicles were night-dark and nearly featureless at this distance, though after Zhogalgan, he imagined he could make out the oddly organic texturing on the outer hulls.
There. The divot was almost invisible in the play of light and shadow, against the utter blackness of those hulls, but the vehicle hadn’t gone unscathed after all.
“Fire Central, Able Five Actual. Repeat fire mission, same targeting.”
For a second, there was no reply, and Draven’s already clenched jaw tightened further. Then the fire direction center apparently thought better of playing any further rank games. “Acknowledged. Firing.”
On the airless surface of that desolate rock of a planet, there was no sound besides the comms, and the artillery was too far away for Draven to feel the launches through his boots. Yet the shells came down to impact only seconds later.
This time he did see the flash. And the vehicle shuddered as the penetrator punched through the already compromised upper hull. It kept moving for a short distance, the wound in the armor becoming visible as the dust settled again, the edges glowing with slowly dissipating heat. Two more of the beetle-like vehicles were also struck, the penetrators punching through the upper hulls, one of them destroying a lump that might have been a turret.
“Able Company, echelon right, advance down the hill.” Captain Breck’s voice rasped over the comm. “Engage any targets as they present themselves. Get the scouts to cover.”
“Order of march, sir?” That would be Lieutenant Mixon. With First Platoon’s Lieutenant First Class Schauben having injured himself on Atavisa IV—by a rather humiliating accident rather than combat—Mixon was now First Platoon’s commanding officer. And he seemed to be all the more ambitious for it, resulting in far too much talking and questioning, if only to make sure that everyone around him was aware of his presence.
Captain Breck might have simply shut him down, but unfortunately, it was just valid enough a question that if he didn’t answer it, it might sow confusion and slow down the attack.
“First to Fourth, right to left. Move.” While he didn’t curse the upstart lieutenant over the comm, the tone of Captain Breck’s voice should have turned the younger man’s blood to ice nevertheless. Draven expected that Mixon would face a severe tongue-lashing after this was over.
If he survived it.
The crawlers started moving, and as he got back in his own vehicle, Draven saw that some were moving more quickly than others. The drivers—and some of the vehicle commanders—had seen what had happened to the scouts, and they were nervous about driving right toward that enemy, especially as not all of the hostile vehicles had been destroyed or disabled, and some of that sun-bright weapons fire was starting to lance toward the rising clouds of dust kicked up by the crawler tires.
Captain Breck was still on the comms, though Draven was the only one in the company who could hear him. He was calling down more artillery fire, but this time he left off the guided penetrator rounds, ordering only “dumb” munitions.
Draven wondered at that until he heard the rest of the captain’s instructions.
The first salvo hammered down on the beetle-shaped vehicles, at least one round penetrating weakened top decking and killing another of the crawlers. The others increased their rate of fire as they began to withdraw toward the structure-encrusted crater behind them. Another salvo streaked in with another groundshaking series of impacts, but this time none scored a kill on an enemy vehicle.
With the same quickness that they’d exhibited as they’d assaulted the scouts’ position, the black crawlers raced backward, still raining fire on the advancing Zolarians. Two of Third Platoon’s crawlers exploded silently, the bolts of energy peeling back armor and venting atmosphere while white-hot spalling tore into the hardsuited bodies on the other side.
The hardsuits were required by the Assembly and the High Command of the Grand Army, largely because of fears of the political repercussions from high casualties. Against what those alien crawlers were putting out, those hardsuits might as well have been paper.
Third Platoon’s comm net turned to chaos, and their vehicles lost formation, two falling back toward the stricken wrecks, already spilling armored figures that were trying to find out if any of their comrades had survived. Others slowed in the face of that destruction, while three continued to push. The entire formation was falling apart, the other platoons starting to drift forward and back the same way, individual drivers and vehicle commanders reacting to the destruction with varying degrees of terror and courage.
“Drive forward!” Draven knew that Breck was probably issuing the same order at the same time to his own driver, but he leaned forward, pushing past the gunner and the other soldier in front of him, clapping a gauntleted hand on the driver’s pauldron. “Get us up front!”
Private Hugenon hunched his shoulders, hesitated—even as Draven’s grip tightened on his shoulder—and then accelerated. The crawler rocked over the terrain, kicking up even more dust from beneath its tires, pushing past two of Second Platoon’s crawlers before anyone seemed to notice they were gaining.
A second crawler was almost in the middle of Third Platoon already. Even without a pennant, which regulations would probably have required, Draven knew it was Captain Breck’s vehicle. That was confirmed a second later when the captain’s voice barked over the company net.
“This is Captain Breck. I am continuing to advance on the enemy. If any of you hold back now and we lose, you had best hope that I do not survive.”
While only a few crawlers accelerated to catch up with the captain at first, the gauntlet had been thrown down. Another salvo of artillery slammed down from the sky ahead, though the impacts were mostly short of the retreating alien vehicles. Dust was flung skyward and fragments of metal and rock flew far and wide from the craters blasted in the landscape, but Captain Breck was driving hard for that line of explosions.
Draven realized just what the captain was doing. “Speed up! Catch up with the captain and hug that line of impacts as close as you can without getting hit!”
“That’s suicide, First Sergeant!”
He didn’t know who had said it, but almost as if to punctuate the statement, another crawler detonated, much more violently than before. The explosion practically ripped the vehicle in half. Given the quality of the armor, that had to have taken a truly formidable weapon.
Draven looked up at the armatures rising from the edge of the crater ahead and thought he knew just where those weapons were.
“It’s suicide to stay out here! Advance!” While there might have been a second’s more hesitation, another bolt passing close enough to make the internal displays fuzz and jump seemed to decide the driver, and they surged forward to follow Captain Breck. Other vehicles followed more raggedly, but as the volume of enemy fire mounted, most of it going over and past the lead vehicles, the hesitation evaporated. Draven was right, and all but the most panic-stricken recognized it.
It had not been lost on Draven, though he would never mention it, that the captain’s exhortation had carried far more of a Corvanite flavor than Zolarian egalitarianism.
The next salvo struck slightly closer to the alien installation, and Captain Breck’s vehicle hugged the edge of the clouds of dust and fragmentation. More of the other crawlers were beginning to catch up, even as shrapnel and high-velocity sand and dust scoured the paint from their armor. Firing through that was next to impossible, at least with any accuracy, but a few were still trying, cannon rounds punching through the detritus before it settled back to the ground and lasers flaring brilliantly as they fused sand and dust but failed to penetrate the clouds otherwise.
The alien weapons did not have the same limitations, making Draven briefly wonder just what they were. Brilliant bolts, all but invisible in the vacuum, lit up the fountains of dirt and frag as they punched through to blast fused craters in the ground beyond, though their accuracy was suffering just as much as the Zolarians’.
The artillery continued its bombardment, the line of shell impacts rolling steadily toward the wall of the crater installation, as the Zolarian crawlers spread out into a line abreast, out of both inertia and a newfound enthusiasm—even if it was an enthusiasm born of fear. More artillery was hitting farther back, behind the line of rolling impacts. At least Draven assumed it was artillery, his crawler’s tactical display showing more hits nearer the crater, until he realized it was orbital bombardment from the starships overhead.
Incoming fire slackened, and Captain Breck gave an order over the fire direction net. The bombardment lifted a few seconds later, and as the dust and debris settled out of the sky, Draven looked through the vision blocks in front of the driver to see that they were nearly to the outer rim of the crater, the surviving alien vehicles racing toward the gaping maw of a vehicle lock ahead.
Captain Breck’s vehicle accelerated, pulling ahead of the rest of the formation. This time it didn’t take any exhortation from the captain or Draven to get the rest to move. The fire from the base defenses had lessened, but it hadn’t ceased, and one of First Platoon’s crawlers detonated silently, glowing scraps of armor flying high into the sky before coming down to slam into the dusty ground with terrific force, one segment of hull embedding itself edge-first in the ground, where it stood glowing dully with waste heat.
That alone was enough to make it clear that to stay in place was to die. They needed to get under the arc of those alien weapons as quickly as possible.
Hopefully avoiding friendly fire from the starships above. As more of those alien energy weapons directed their emitters upward, that became more of a concern, as the starships had to commence evasive maneuvers, degrading their targeting.
There was always a tradeoff.
Captain Breck’s vehicle went right by the wreck of one of the beetle-like crawlers that hadn’t quite evaded the incoming artillery, and drove straight into the vehicle lock, sending up rooster tails of dust and making it inside before the strange membrane that had to be the door began to close.
Draven didn’t have to say anything. Hugenon was already accelerating, and the rest of the company was following suit. A glance at the tactical display showed Forge and Gondola Companies closing in behind them, while Horse Company’s tanks took the weapons armatures under fire.
Draven realized that he didn’t know if Captain Breck had received orders or if he had simply led the assault with the expectation that the rest of the regiment would follow.
It didn’t matter. Able Company plunged into the darkness of the vehicle lock, the last crawler barely beating the membrane as it shut behind them, sealing them inside the alien facility.
