Fields of Fire (Frontlines #5)

The first flight of drop ships shows up ten minutes after the Shrikes, and I use my radio to guide them in toward the undamaged VTOL landing pads on the southern end of the base. They are followed in short intervals by a second, third, fourth, then fifth flight, and more are coming in every minute. I pick deployment points in sensible locations for every four-ship flight and guide the pilots in by TacLink. A very busy half hour later, thirty-two drop ships have disgorged their infantry payloads, and Red Beach has an entire regiment of troops securing it in all directions. One flight of drop ships has landed near the foot of the little control-tower hill, and I see from the tactical markings that it has a company of combat engineers on board, precisely the people I need in this location right now. With the first wave on the ground and the drop ships starting to head back to pick up the next wave of troops, I upload the latest TacLink data to the fleet and run down the staircase to the bottom of the tower, taking four or five steps at once. Outside, the combat engineers are unloading their gear from their drop ships. Their company commander, a captain named Coonradt, comes forward to meet me as I approach the drop ships.

“A cold LZ,” Captain Coonradt says after we exchange our brief introductions and courtesies. “I don’t mind that at all.”

“It wasn’t so cold an hour ago,” I say. “We dropped about a dozen. One of Kirov’s kinetics cracked the easternmost runway open, but the rest are whole. If I can suggest a priority list, let’s get the power for the control tower and the refuelers online, and we can turn those birds around a lot more quickly.”

“I have no issue with that list,” the captain says. “But we’ll have to bring in aux power for your consoles up there, ’cause that reactor over there ain’t fusion-powering shit anymore.”

Captain Coonradt summons his squad leaders and starts issuing orders. I trot up to the crew chief of the nearest drop ship.

“I lost my rifle in the orbital strike a little while back,” I say. “Mind if I borrow some of the gear from your boat’s armory?”

“Not at all, sir. Help yourself,” the crew chief replies.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

I make my way up the ramp, through the cargo hold, and into the space between hold and cockpit, where the small armory of the ship is located. Every drop ship carries more than enough spare guns and ammunition to equip the embarked platoon with weapons and basic ammo loadouts all over again. To my dismay, this drop ship’s armory has lots of fléchette rifles and MARS launchers, but very few anti-Lanky rifles, and the ones they do have on the racks are older models, M-80s and M-90s. I grab an M-90 because it uses the same magazines as the M-95 I lost, and I already carry three spare magazines on my armor that will fit the gun. Then I replace the magazine I expended earlier with a fresh one from the ammo locker. I have to resist the temptation to take one of the MARS launchers out of the vertical wall racks along with a few of the new silver bullets, the eighty-millimeter gas-filled anti-Lanky rockets. My job down here isn’t to kill individual Lankies, as satisfying as it would be to one-shot them with those gas rounds.

Outside, the combat engineers have started to set up shop. Two of them are hauling a portable power pack to the base of the tower, where a third engineer is wrenching the cover off the universal connector panel on the outside of the building. I go back inside and climb the stairs to the control room again. Upstairs, Sergeant Dragomirova is looking out of the north-facing windows and talking in Russian on her radio while working on her admin deck, which is propped up on the windowsill. I clear off a space on a nearby console and set up my own admin deck. Because it’s an NAC facility, I can connect my system to the computers in the control center once the power is back and run the show off the big holographic display on the center console instead of the small screen of my admin deck.

With every flight of drop ships that puts down in the landing zone, another company of troops is on the ground to reinforce the LZ and prepare to advance on our next objectives. My tactical screen, which was sparsely populated with friendly blue icons when we landed, is getting busier every minute, individual trooper icons organizing themselves into platoons, and then platoons into companies.

“We are go on power down here,” Captain Coonradt sends from outside. “Say when, and we’ll flick the switch.”

“Go ahead on power,” I say.

A few moments later, the overhead lights turn on, and all around me, I hear the hum of restarting electronics. Outside, not fifty meters from the west-facing windows of the control tower, the combat engineers’ flight of drop ships takes off again one by one in five-second intervals, rattling the windows with the engine noise. I plug my admin deck into the main control console and fire up the systems. The Lankies smashed the radar and the fusion plant, but some of the auxiliary comms gear is still in one piece, and the data link works as well.

“Olympus Spaceport is back in business under new management,” I tell the combat engineers. “Keep hooking up the lines, and I’ll keep waving ’em in.”



Sergeant Dragomirova and I spend the next hour directing units into the spaceport and keeping the airspace as organized as possible. The base has no active radar, so we have to keep everything tangle-free and direct dozens of drop ships and attack birds with nothing but data links and eyeballs while the cloud cover hangs a mere two thousand feet over the ground. In Combat Controller School, they called the ATC sections of the training “icon-pushing.” I’ve learned over the years that pushing around icons on a screen can be just as stressful as being under fire if the spacecraft represented by those icons have forty or fifty people on them that will die a fiery death if you push one of those icons the wrong way at the wrong time.

“Tailpipe Red One, Red Beach C2. Come in.”

When I get the call on the tactical channel, it’s a distraction, but a welcome one from the high-stress monotony of directing air traffic.

“Red Beach C2, Tailpipe Red One. I read you; go ahead.”

“There are two drop-ship flights on landing pad Charlie that are about to take off for civvie evac thirty klicks east of the LZ. They want a combat controller to ride shotgun in case they run into LHO presence out there.”

“Copy that. You gonna send someone up to the control tower to take over ATC duties?”

“We will switch to local control for the time being. Can’t have the only red hat in the LZ pushing tin all day. You are authorized to leave without relief by Ground Force Red Actual.”

“Copy. Advise Actual I’ll be at landing pad Charlie in five,” I reply, glad at the thought of getting relieved of the important but tedious and boring air-traffic-control duty.

I let the local traffic know they’re on their own until Fleet sends another ATC up here, and then tell Sergeant Dragomirova I’ve been called off for a different assignment. Just to make sure the translator didn’t mangle my explanation beyond recognition, I also keep Dmitry in the loop.

“We have situation under control,” Dmitry says. “Many Alliance gunships around. We get trouble, I can manage.”

“See you when it’s over,” I reply. “Don’t get killed.”

“I will try,” Dmitry replies. “But is not entirely up to me. Good luck.”

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