Havoc Squad: Armor Brigade Book 2, page 6
“Move! Move! Move!” Cosmo shouted to the diplomat’s guards. They were almost to the hovercart.
The alien horde spread out around the upright ring they had come from. It seemed obvious to Cosmo that they were protecting the artifact. Still, their high-powered laser assault was making short work of the flying monsters. Some tried to attack Cosmo directly, but he easily brought them down. His bulky rifle was beginning to glow from the heat pumping through the barrel.
“Switching to plasma,” he shouted.
“Ditto,” Dyson cried, as the Battle Troopers reached the hovercart.
They flung the diplomat across the open backside of the vehicle which was normally used for moving cargo. One of the troopers climbed on and held the bleeding man fast, while the other jumped behind the simple controls. But before they could race away, both troopers reacted strangely. One doubled over, and the other stiffened, almost standing upright. Then they looked around as if they had no idea what was happening. They brought their weapons up and shot each other dead.
“Whoa, man! Did you see that?” Dyson shouted.
“Yeah, we need to pull back fast,” Cosmo said, already ordering his HAVOC drone to retreat. “We can’t stay here.”
“What happened?” Dyson said. “Why’d they fight each other?”
“I don’t know,” Cosmo said. “Can Nut grab the hovercart?”
The HAVOC drone held the huge rifle up with one arm and reached out with its pincer. It was just about to take hold of the hovercart when the diplomat in the back sat up. The man moved with such speed it was hard to believe. He jumped from the vehicle as if he wasn’t wounded and snatched up one of his guards’ weapons. Laser fire stitched across the drone, but its thick armor absorbed the energy without damage.
“Left backhand strike!” Dyson ordered his drone.
It swiveled at the hips with amazing speed. The diplomat raised his rifle to block the blow, but the drone was too powerful. The rifle dented, flew out of Gruber’s hands, and struck him in the side of the head. He toppled over, dazed.
“Grab him!” Cosmo shouted. “We’re running out of time!”
The hordes of gargoyles continued to rush from the portal. They had been timid at first, but it was like word had reached them of the danger waiting on this side of the alien device. They rushed forward, spotted the two-man, two-drone combat squad, and hurled themselves at Cosmo’s position. Nut picked up the diplomat with its pincer. He was still barely conscious and dangled from the drone’s hand as it began to move backward, covering their retreat.
The HAVOC drones utilized their Brony 88 rifles and their array of lasers. Cosmo and Dyson were shooting and swapping out magazines as fast as they could, barely managing to stay ahead of the aliens.
The LA6 had ammunition magazines with forty plasma cartridges each. Cosmo worked the trigger as fast as he could. The small projectiles broke open on impact. The gas inside reacted to the oxygen in the air and turned to superheated plasma gel in a fraction of a second. Each hit splattered the plasma across the target and onto the surrounding aliens. It burned through skin and bone, eating its way into the gargoyle bodies, which spewed oily black smoke into the air and sent the aliens wailing to the ground. Many of the wounded were crawling back toward the portal, howling and wailing in agony, especially those hit with the plasma, which continued to burn fiercely hot for a long time.
It was chaos, but fortunately a team of MECHs was ordered forward to cover HAVOC Squad’s retreat. They stayed a full hundred meters from the hill and fired their lasers in concert. It was a massacre. The aliens had no projectile weapons, but they had greater numbers. They weren’t foolish either. Some dropped behind the hill for cover, then rushed around in hopes of flanking Cosmo and Dyson. Fortunately, the two HAVOC Troopers could move, shoot, and direct their drones all at the same time. Hundreds of the aliens did die, but more were coming through the portal every second.
“We have to hit it,” Cosmo shouted.
“With what?” Dyson asked.
“Try the RPGs,” he explained. “Target the device.”
“Copy, dialing it in.”
They controlled the drones through voice commands in the battle helmets. Both men dialed up the RPGs that were mounted on the back of the drones, which bent forward just before launch. Cosmo did his best to target the alien portal device, but there were so many gargoyle creatures around it that getting a shot through would be nearly impossible.
“Weapons hot!” Dyson yelled.
“Fire!” Cosmo shouted.
The drones launched two rocket-propelled grenades each. They shot from the big walking weapons platforms with barely a second between them, each one streaking forward at just below the sound barrier. But none found their mark. The aliens must have sensed the danger and converged in front of the flying explosives. The results were spectacular, but did nothing to stem the tide of creatures coming through the portal into Fiona Grand.
“No luck,” Dyson said. “You got a better idea?”
“If it were up to me I’d nuke this place,” Cosmo said. “But then we’d all be dead.”
“Yeah, I don’t like that plan. Better come up with something else.”
Cosmo was the first to reach the MECHs, the big battle suits with human pilots. MECH Troopers were the elite forces of the Fiona Grand military, and usually the only units that had any real impact on the Ma’Tis forces. But the alien crab-like beings hadn’t been an issue since the portal broke into the Fiona Grand atmosphere. And they had leapt at the chance to destroy the flying, serpentine dragon, the first one through the portal, when Cosmo and Dyson took it down in the ocean, in return for having slaughtered many of the Ma’Tis’s own.
The MECHs were heavily armed and powerful, but slow and clumsy. Where the MECHs relied on the pilot’s intuition and fighting ability, the HAVOC drones could be operated from a distance. They were still on the front line of the attack. The enemy creatures rushed to engage them, but got slaughtered for their effort. The hillside was covered with their dead and dying.
“All units pull back,” Major Zukov ordered over the command frequency of their com-links. “Heavy ordnance inbound.”
“It’s about damn time,” Dyson said.
“They didn’t want us getting cooked by friendly fire,” Cosmo said.
“I’ll take my chances,” he replied.
They were a hundred and fifty meters from the hill when the first plasma mortars fell. They streaked in from above, whistling as they came. When the shells hit the ground they exploded, spraying superheated plasma gel in every direction. Cosmo knew immediately that the tactic was flawed. The mortars were falling at the base of the hill, not the summit.
“They aren’t targeting the device,” Cosmo said.
“How can you tell?” Dyson asked.
There was dark smoke everywhere. The dirt was burning, and the stones heated so much they melted. But the gargoyles were too smart. They blended in with the smoke, which was a dark and dirty gray color, and flew up into the air. The falling mortars took out a few of them, but most got up above the blasts at the base of the hill.
“Captain, this isn’t working,” Cosmo said.
“Not our call,” Swift replied. “Get to the command trailer. We need to reload those drones.”
“This is a nightmare,” Dyson said.
“I hope they call in backup,” Cosmo said.
“Better call in the whole damn army,” Dyson replied. “If we don’t take that portal down, we could lose the entire planet.”
“Let’s just hope the brass sees things your way,” Cosmo said. “Till then, let’s gear up. We’ve got work to do.”
CHAPTER 10
“There’s something going on down there,” Billy Kimes said.
“Something’s coming out of it,” Julio Gonzalas said.
They were still forty klicks out, circling slowly as they waited for orders. They had already burned through half their fuel and no call for action had come. Allura wanted to do something, but she knew that if they were called in, that would mean there was fighting on the ground. And Cosmo was down there somewhere. She didn’t like to think of him risking his life, but he didn’t have a choice.
“Can you see what it is?” Noi asked.
“No,” Billy said.
“Something dark,” Julio said. “Looks like a swarm of ants from way up here.”
They were in the bubbles that were mostly used for spotting, with powerful binoculars to keep tabs on how accurate bombing runs were. In the past, those bubbles were used for machine gunners, and the weapons had been reinstalled for their mission just in case their aircraft was attacked the way Allura’s shuttle had been. The memory of that night weighed heavily on her mind. To her, anything coming through the portal was bad news.
“I think I see fighting,” Billy announced. “Yes, that is laser fire. No doubt about it.”
“There are so many of them,” Julio said.
“And so few of our own,” the pilot replied.
It was hard to be stuck in the bomb bay, which had a great view directly below the aircraft, but the wide doors made seeing the site where the artifact was located nearly impossible. For the next twenty minutes Allura had to make due with reports from the others, and they were still too far out to make out many details.
“Artillery is engaging,” Julio said. “They ain’t playing around, either.”
“Is it affecting the alien artifact?” Allura said, feeling a sense of hope that maybe it would be destroyed and the danger would be over. “Have they destroyed it?”
“Negative,” Billy Kimes said. “Looks like they aren’t even targeting the device.”
“It’s cover fire,” Julio said. “They’re pulling back their forces.”
“There’s still hundreds of creatures down there. Maybe thousands,” Billy said. “It’s a swarm of some kind.”
“We’ve got a green light,” the pilot cut in, his voice clear through the headset Allura wore. “Command is requesting thermobarics with altitude triggers. Set your munitions to one hundred meters. We’re setting up for our bombing run.”
“Copy that,” Allura said. “Thermobaric bombs.”
“Making the adjustments,” Noi said. “One hundred meters.”
“Is that too soon?” Billy Kimes asked. “Won’t they just blow up above the site?”
“Apparently, that’s what they want,” Noi said.
“The fire will drop down,” Allura said. “Just without the concussive force of the explosions.”
“They’re trying to spare the device,” the co-pilot said, speaking up for the first time.
“That figures,” Noi said.
Allura felt cold, and not just from the frigid air temps at ten thousand meters altitude. She had only been in the Fiona Grand Air Force for a few months, but already she felt a growing sense of frustration with the officers in charge. Why, she wondered, did it seem like they cared more about alien tech than the lives of their own people?
“Descending to three thousand meters altitude,” the pilot called out, “slowing to sixty knots.”
“We have wind from the north at six knots,” the co-pilot added. “Humidity is seventy-two percent.”
“Copy that,” Allura said. “Calculating munitions drop. Time to target?”
“Six minutes,” the pilot said.
The bomber was still circling, but she had slowed into a gradual descent that would make their bombing efforts more effective. Noi had to set the mercury triggers manually. It was a time-consuming process and very old-school. The Ma’Tis anti-electronic haze made it impossible to use modern weapons. The mercury detonators had to use the force of gravity to ignite the bombs while they were still falling. And Allura had to make the complicated bombing formula on the go, without the aid of computer technology. She didn’t know if the new aliens would produce a similar field around them as the Ma’Tis, one that would render electrical devices unreliable, but the Air Force was taking no chances.
“Alright, I’ve got six thermobaric warheads set for altitude detonation of one hundred meters. Moving them into position now,” Noi announced.
Allura couldn’t hear the racks rotating, but she could feel the vibrations through the bomber as the bombs were shifted into the chute that would allow them to slide out of the aircraft. She rapidly finished her calculations based on their flying altitude, speed, the force of the wind, and the humidity in the air.
“My God,” said the co-pilot. “Look at them.”
“They’re monsters!” Billy Kines said. “Some sort of flying creatures.”
“Right out of a horror show,” Julio said.
“Target calculated,” Allura announced. “Permission to release.”
“Granted,” the pilot said.
It took a few more seconds. Allura’s hands settled on the button that would send the bombs dropping out of the aircraft. Each of them, cigar-shaped devices with four fins at the back, weighed two hundred pounds. When she released them they would drop out of the rack and into freefall, their tapered noses with the altitude detonators angling down. Her calculations gave her a two second window of time to drop the six bombs. She focused on the hands of the stopwatch built into her console, counting down the seconds. Her entire body tensed as the moment arrived.
“Bombs away!” she shouted, pressing the button.
Six thermobaric warheads dropped out of the ship. They would explode at one hundred meters, and the chemicals inside would expand rapidly once that happened, the fire spreading from the explosion to cover the maximum area. She gripped her console and waited for the report. It only took the bombs a few seconds to fall from three thousand meters to the one hundred meter altitude.
“Hit, hit, hit,” Julio called out from the rear observation bubble. “It’s raining fire. Hard to make out what’s going on. Too much smoke.”
“Let’s prepare for another run,” the pilot called out.
“We only have four more thermobaric bombs,” Noi replied.
“Copy that. We’ll see what ground control wants from us,” the pilot said. “Stand by.”
The bomber continued on course for several minutes. The incendiary bombs were terrible to behold. And it would take the wind a while to blow the oily black smoke the chemicals produced and clear the area.
“The entire hill is on fire,” Billy announced as the bomber started to make a slow, looping turn.
“Weapons were effective,” Julio said. “But it looks like there’s more coming through that portal.”
“Where are they coming from?” Noi asked.
“Who knows,” the pilot said. “Ground forces want us to hit them again. They are reporting mass casualties from the first run.”
“Hell yeah!” Billy said.
“It doesn’t do us much good if they just keep coming through the portal,” Allura said. “We need to take that thing out of commission.”
“Not our call,” the pilot said. “Prepare for the drop.”
They did the work all over again. The second time four bombs fell, spreading fire on a different axis than the first drop, but the aliens were smart. Many rose up into the air above the detonation altitude. The bodies of the dead burned, sending up clouds of dark smoke, obscuring everything, including dozens of the creatures who were slowly ascending toward the bomber.
“Alright, we’re dialing up fragmenting munitions,” the pilot said after the second bombing run. “Set detonators to one hundred fifty meters.”
“Copy that, one hundred fifty meters,” Noi repeated.
“Will we be clear of the blast radius at two thousand feet?” the pilot asked.
“Affirmative,” Allura said. “We’ll be clear of the danger, but you can increase air speed if you like.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” the pilot replied. “Increasing speed to ninety knots. Looks like we’ll be passing through the smoke. You might want to mask up back there.”
Allura didn’t want to put on the oddly-shaped mask with its dual air filters that made her look like some kind of robot donkey, but she understood the danger if she didn’t. The belly of the bomber was wide open. The smoke could fill her compartment and choke her to death if she wasn’t careful. And she wasn’t the only person in danger either. If the chemical smoke was thick enough a single pass through it could fill the entire aircraft. Only the cockpit was pressurized with its own air filtration system. The rest of the crew had to rely on more direct ways to deal with the smoke.
“Copy that,” Allura said. “Bombing crew, mask up and prepare for possible air contamination.”
She pulled her own mask out of the bin beside the stool she was perched on. Two tethers connected to her flight suit, and she had to remove her headset to pull the mask on and secure it snugly around her face. The air outside was screaming, the entire plane vibrating as the fragmentary bombs were rotated into position. Allura checked her calculation and made sure she could read the stopwatch she had already set before pulling on her mask. It was clear and easy to read. So she didn’t hear the warning that the pilot called out when he spotted movement in the smoke. She was just reaching for the headset with its thickly padded ear cuffs when the first of the aliens flew into the bomb bay through the open doors.
CHAPTER 11
They were only a few seconds away from dropping the bombs, and now had to deal with the sudden group of demons in the bay. Allura didn’t hesitate. She pulled the standard issue scatter gun from the rack on the side of her console. It was a Morgan twenty-gauge tactical rifle with a folding stock, loaded with large caliber, non-lethal rubber pellets. In terms of fighting inside an aircraft, stray bullets could be catastrophic to a plane’s systems and airframe. But the Morgan’s rubber bullets wouldn’t penetrate the bulkheads or rip through the vital systems. And each M-Tac, as they were often called, held eight shells. After that, if Allura was still threatened, she would have to use the rifle like a club to beat off the assailants.
