The HD troopers file out of the ship, weapons at the ready. I’m in the back of the bus, so I have to follow the grunts out of the boat. I unbuckle my seat harness, grab my M-90 out of its holding clamp, and follow the last few troopers down the ramp at a run. At the bottom of the ramp, I work the charging handle of my rifle and chamber a fifteen-millimeter anti-Lanky round.
Outside, my line of sight is maybe thirty meters in the driving snow that is swirling all around the drop ship. My computer overlays my visor display with all the available TacLink information. The company is deploying in a widely spaced firing line as the drop ship behind us roars off into the sky again to provide for support from above. There are blue silhouettes to my left and right—troopers I can’t see with the naked eye but whose position is known to my suit’s computer, which talks to everyone else’s over our short-range tactical network.
“Move out toward the complex,” I order, and mark the nearby building clusters on the tactical map. “And go thermal. You won’t see Lankies that way, but you’ll spot people.”
I toggle through my own helmet’s visual overlays until I have thermal vision, warm colors of orange and red pinpointing heat sources in the featureless white mess before us.
“One-Five Actual, I can’t see shit up here except for you guys,” the pilot sends from above, where my computer shows a three-dimensional representation of the drop ship hovering two hundred feet over our heads.
“Movement left,” one of the troopers calls out, and a fresh surge of adrenaline floods my already-wired system.
I can feel the Lanky through the soles of my boots before I can see it. They’re not nearly as heavy as we first thought, but they still weigh several hundred tons, and when one walks around nearby, the tremors generated by its feet hitting the ground give its presence away to anyone in a quarter-kilometer radius. These tremors are harsh and quick—a Lanky on the run.
On our left flank, something huge and white materializes out of the snow squall. The MARS gunner on the end of our firing line swings his launcher around, but the Lanky is too close and too fast. It swings a spindly arm and sweeps it across the ground right where the MARS gunner has just brought his weapon to bear. It knocks him away, and he disappears in a spray of snow and ice, flung into the storm by something thirty times his size and a thousand times his weight. The MARS launcher and the priceless silver bullet, a third of our anti-Lanky rocket stock, disappear with the unlucky TA trooper in a blink.
I don’t need to shout orders to re-form the line to the left and open fire. Several M-90s blast their gas-filled projectiles at the silhouette of the Lanky even before the cloud of snow from the impact settles. The Lanky takes two, three, then four rifle rounds to its torso, a target that’s almost impossible to miss at this range. It stumbles and staggers forward with an earsplitting wail. I fire my own rifle at it, pulling the trigger until the magazine is empty and the bolt locks back. The cannons on the drop ship above our heads open up with a long and noisy burst, and shell casings fall out of the sky like steel rain. The Lanky tries to right itself, and it almost makes it back to its feet despite the hail of shells peppering its body and kicking up little geysers of ice all around it. Then a MARS launcher booms behind me. The angry firefly glow of the rocket streaks toward the Lanky at the speed of sound. It hits the creature dead center in the torso and explodes with a dull, wet-sounding thump. The Lanky’s loud wail turns into a drawn-out gurgling that sounds disturbingly like a human’s death rattle as it falls forward into the snow.
“Burlington One-Five, cease fire!” I shout into the air-support circuit. “One down. Save your shells.”
“Copy that.”
The gunfire from above ceases. According to my computer’s chrono, the entire engagement took less than twenty seconds from the moment the Lanky appeared out of the snow squall, but I am out of breath and winded as if I had fought all morning.
“We’ll get stomped out here in the open,” the platoon sergeant sends. “One silver bullet left. Range that short, the rifles aren’t stopping ’em fast enough.”
“Head for the hangars over there, double-time,” I order. “We’ll use the space between the hangar as shelter and work our way out from there.”
The platoon dashes for the relative safety of the aircraft shelters, which are over a hundred meters away. As we run across the frozen concrete of the tarmac, I try to pay attention to the telltale vibrations of the ground under my boots that will announce the approach of another Lanky. I’m used to fighting them at a distance, where I can see them and take advantage of the reach of our weapons. Stumbling around in a blizzard with unseen Lankies prowling nearby makes me feel like I’m back to being very small prey. I change the magazine in my rifle at a run and release the bolt on a fresh cartridge. Overhead, the roar from the drop ship’s engines shifts as the Hornet keeps pace with us and covers us from above.
“Local defense, local defense, any units on this channel, please respond,” I send, trying not to pant into my helmet mike.
“Burlington One-Five, copy. This is Lieutenant Selbe, Homeworld Defense.”
“What’s your location, Lieutenant? I don’t have you on TacLink.”
“We’re in the shelter below the control center. They wiped out the guard platoon. Half the guys down here aren’t even in armor.”
“How the fuck did they let themselves get jumped by a bunch of twenty-meter critters?” the platoon sergeant with me wants to know over the platoon comms. We are filing into the space between two concrete hangar domes, and I hunker down next to one of the hangars, mindful to keep an eye on my surroundings.
“Would you expect Lankies out here?” I reply. “They were sitting at morning chow in the middle of a fucking winter storm. On the frozen ass end of Earth.”
On the TacLink screen, the control center looks to be another two hundred meters away from the hangars, on the other side of the airfield’s big VTOL landing pad for drop ships.
“Sit tight,” I tell the HD lieutenant. “We have a company on the ground, and more are inbound. Did you get a head count on the Lankies?”
“Negative. They showed up and started taking apart the complex right when the storm picked up. Best guess from TacLink is maybe a dozen.”
“Fucking awesome,” I murmur without transmitting. Hunting down a dozen Lankies in this mess with just infantry and without standoff air support is a near-suicidal task.
“Burlington Actual, come in,” I send to the captain in charge of the company on the top-level command channel.
“One-Five Actual, this is Burlington Actual, go ahead.”