“Bird Seven is away,” Captain Parker calls out on the company channel. “Fall back by fire teams, cover and move. Go, go, go!”
At least ten Lankies are still alive and coming our way, and the closest one is less than fifty meters from our forward line of defense. None of the troopers in front of me make any attempt to fall back. All of them fire their rifles at the charging Lanky. I can see by the impacts on the Lanky’s body that the riflemen are shooting regular ammo-piercing rounds, not silver bullets, and the Lanky absorbs half a dozen rounds before it stumbles and drops to one knee right in front of us. Amazingly, one of the SI troopers sprints up to the Lanky before it can recover, aims an M-95 rifle upward, and rips off four quick shots into the underside of the Lanky’s jaw, the only part of their huge skulls that isn’t armored like a fucking battlecruiser hull. The armor-piercing rounds don’t have the penetration to exit the top of the Lanky’s head, but they have enough punch to mess up whatever is inside. The Lanky flops to the ground instantly in a spray of red dirt. I can’t tell whether the incredibly brave or crazy trooper got clear of the Lanky’s body before it went down, but there are Lankies thundering past my position to my left and right, and my attention is now elsewhere. One of the Lankies swings a foot and sweeps aside the whole SI fire team in front of it, sending them flying through the air and into the billowing cloud of red dust that’s now covering the plateau. I take aim and shoot the Lanky in the side, right underneath its arm. It shrieks and turns halfway in my direction, giving me a clear shot at its midsection. I cycle the bolt of my M-90 and shoot it in the chest, then cycle again, shoot again. My rounds are silver bullets, half-inch hypodermic needles with 1,000 cc explosive gas cylinders behind them, and they pierce the Lanky’s thick hide and explode their payload inside the body. The Lanky is reaching out for me with a long, spindly arm when the gas rounds detonate. It wails and crashes onto its side. I don’t stick around to see if it will recover enough to keep going after me. Instead, I turn and run toward the last remaining drop ship, which is just now goosing its engines and raising its cargo ramp.
The drop ship is fifty feet in the air and climbing quickly when one of the Lankies reaches up and slams an arm against the tail boom assembly. The ship jolts and spins around its dorsal axis violently. The pilot tries to recover, but the Wasp is way too low to the ground. The starboard horizontal stabilizer grinds into the rocky soil, and then the drop ship flips over and crashes into the ground, engines still running at full thrust. The Lanky doesn’t let up. It stomps down on the tail end of the Wasp with its massive three-toed foot and pins the ship to the ground, crushing the entire aft end flat. I aim at the back of the Lanky and pull the trigger, but my weapon is empty. I scream a curse, eject the empty magazine, and pull a new one off my harness. Then I slam it into the rifle and chamber a new round.
The drop ship explodes with a cataclysmic bang. The shock wave from the detonation flings me backwards, and I smack hard into something solid. The red Mars dust is now so thick in the air that I can’t see my own hands in front of me. On my heads-up display, multiple yellow and red warnings pop up to inform me of various damaged suit modules. Belatedly, I remember the polychrome camouflage feature of the bug suit. I activate the control for the camo and hope that it’s not one of the suit systems that just took a hit. But my visor overlay dutifully changes color to let me know that I am now mostly invisible, and when I lift my hand in front of my helmet, all I can see is an outline.
The explosion slammed me into the remnants of a building’s wall, a stub of ferroconcrete no more than a meter above the ground. I hoist myself over the obstacle and drop down behind it. Then I lie still and close my eyes to take stock of my appendages and their status. The armor caught most of the impact, but the bug suits aren’t built for much protection, and my hip and back are badly bruised.
On the other side of the wall, the noise of the battle subsides. There are no more gunshots, no more Lanky wails, no more engine noise. Seven ships made it off the ground at least, I tell myself. I hear and feel the heavy footsteps of the remaining Lankies as they walk across the site. One of them slowly steps up to where I am hiding. I search for my rifle, but it’s gone, ripped from my hands in the drop-ship explosion. I don’t even try to go for my sidearm. I wouldn’t be able to hurt the Lanky with it anyway, and I don’t want to give myself away through movement, electronic camouflage or not.
The Lanky steps over the building ruin and puts a foot down on the other side of the wall, so close to me that I could reach across and touch the thing’s leg. Then it crosses over me and strides off.
I stay motionless on my back until I hear no more Lanky footsteps in the distance. Then I decide to remain still just a little longer, for good measure. My TacLink screen shows the seven drop ships in the air, rushing west toward Olympus Spaceport and relative safety, with the Eurocorps attack birds escorting them close behind. But on the ground, here at Tuttle 250, I am the only blue icon remaining.
I get up fifteen minutes later and peek over the edge of the wall remnant. The dust from the battle has mostly settled now. The drop ship that exploded is no longer in recognizable shape. Bits and pieces of the Wasp are strewn over a hundred meters of ground, and some of them are still burning. There are bodies scattered on the ground, some charred beyond recognition, and bits and pieces of human remains, the ugly debris aftermath of high-energy detonations.
I tap into the company channel and then the local TacAir, but there’s only silence. I run a diagnostics check on my bug suit, and my suit computer informs me that my comms suite is off-line and that the internal oxygen feed has a slow leak the self-sealing lining can’t plug completely. My oxygen is at 70 percent, but falling more quickly than normal—the computer predicts 10 percent per hour at low-exertion-level consumption. I’m fifty kilometers behind enemy lines, with no way to talk to my allies to let them know I’m still alive, and not enough air to make it back to friendly territory.