Instead of stomping it flat, the Lanky kicks the ATV at full stride and catapults it through the air toward me. I flinch and duck away instinctively, and the vehicle flies past me and tumbles across the Mars soil in the distance. I can hear it breaking apart and spewing bits and pieces everywhere. I swing the rifle up at the Lanky, which is now mostly obscured by a big cloud of red dust, and I know that the next kick will have me as a target. But unlike in my dream, I know that the impact will not be painless.
Behind me and to my right, I hear the pop-whoosh of a MARS rocket launch. A very fast and angry firefly zooms past me and hits the Lanky high in the chest, near the vulnerable crook of the neck. The rocket can’t be anything but a silver bullet, because the effects are instant and dramatic. The warhead pierces the Lanky’s thick hide and explodes after a very short delay. A MARS rocket has a diameter of eighty millimeters, and the rocket’s payload is almost ten times bigger than those of the rifle rounds. The dull explosion of the aerosolized and ignited gas inside the Lanky almost decapitates the creature, struck as it is in one of its vulnerable spots. Its momentum carries it forward, and it falls toward me without any semblance of control. I leap to my right, dropping my rifle in the process, and barely clear the bulk of the Lanky as it slams into the Martian ground. The impact lifts me off my feet and propels me ten or fifteen meters, and I crash to the ground myself in a graceless and uncontrolled manner.
When I get to my knees again and turn around, Sergeant Crawford has lowered her MARS launcher and is detaching the empty rocket cartridge. She has another round strapped to the back of the ATV that’s parked twenty meters behind her, but I know how close that second group of Lankies must be by now, and there are six of them for just one more MARS round.
“Saw your flare!” she shouts at me. “I came as quickly as I could. Almost got stuck in a ravine.”
“You did great!” I shout back. “Forget the reload. Six more coming our way. Let’s get the fuck out of here, now.”
We run to the ATV. She gets into the driver’s seat, and with me having to take the backseat, there’s no space for the MARS launcher or the spare round. She chucks the launcher tube into the dirt while I unlash the spare round and throw it away as well. Then I swing myself onto the ATV behind her and pat her on the back of her armor.
“Go northeast, and hook around to the west in three klicks!” I shout. “And don’t let up on the throttle.”
By now, the new group of Lankies is close enough for me to feel the ground bounce with their strides. I don’t dare try to look past the corpse of the Lanky that Sergeant Crawford just dropped with a well-placed silver bullet from a MARS. Sergeant Crawford wastes no time. She throws the ATV into drive and guns it to the northeast, tires spinning in the red-brown gravel and dirt.
Overhead, a four-ship flight of Shrikes comes thundering out of the clouds. They make a low-level pass over the plateau and split up as they zoom overhead, two peeling off to the north and two to the south. Thirty seconds later, I hear the unmistakable roaring of the Shrikes’ multibarreled, big antiarmor cannons ripping across the landscape, and the rapid firecracker sound of impact explosions follows a second or two later. In the distance behind us, the Lankies on the plateau shriek as they get pelted by heavy-caliber cannon shells, caught in a deadly rain with no protection or shelter. The cavalry has spotted my flares and arrived, and as usual they were a minute too late. Without Sergeant Crawford, those Lankies would still be dead, but I’d be a bloody smear on the Martian rock somewhere back there right now.
We roll into the perimeter of Olympus Spaceport twenty minutes later, with a low-battery warning blinking in red on the ATV’s control display and a “LOW OXYGEN-19%” alert on my helmet visor screen. The runways are a giant staging area for SI and SRA marines, hundreds of them. Overhead, the aerial ballet has not abated—drop ships of all nationalities coming in and depositing their human cargo on the airfield, then taking off again to repeat the trip into orbit and back. I don’t know which wave we’re currently dropping, but we’re still landing troops, so the offensive must still be in full swing.
Sergeant Crawford steers the ATV over to the VTOL landing pad from where we started the rescue mission. A dozen drop ships are refueling simultaneously from the underground tanks. I hear portable power units humming everywhere. Nearby, a bunch of haggard-looking civvies are boarding a drop ship.
When the ATV comes to a stop, I climb off and stand on the tarmac for a moment on shaky knees. Sergeant Crawford gets off the ride as well and gives the saddle an affectionate pat.
“Good girl,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say to her. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you’re a podhead now. I don’t know too many troopers who have two confirmed Lanky kills.”
“I did what needed doing,” she says. “But to be totally honest with you, I am looking forward to wrestling databases again. I don’t know how you grunts do it. All the time, I mean.”
“Be careful out there. I hope to see you back at Gateway when this is done, Sergeant.”
“I hope to be back at Gateway when this is done. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“Me, neither,” I say. “Now go grab that hot shower.”
We don’t exchange salutes as would be proper considering our rank difference. Instead, we shake hands. I watch as she walks over to the staging area set up in a nearby hangar, hot food and ammo resupply stations set up along the walls, and wish we had about a thousand more like her.
I walk up the ramp of one of the refueling ships and commandeer spare battle armor from the ship’s armory. Then I use the airlock between cockpit and crew compartment to depressurize my broken bug suit safely and change into the armor. It’s not fitted to me, but each drop ship has half a dozen spare suits in predefined stock sizes, and a size 5 usually comes close enough to a proper fit whenever I don’t carry extra garrison flab.
Once I’m in my new battle armor, I plug my battered admin deck into the suit and log into TacLink with my combat-controller access. “Red Beach C2, Tailpipe Red One, come in.”
“Tailpipe Red One, this is Red Beach C2. We had you written off, Lieutenant.”
“Not quite yet. Pass me on to Ground Force Red Actual.”
“Stand by.”
There’s a pause on the command channel, and the C2 officer comes back on the line a few moments later. “Red Actual is tied up, but he says for you to get your ass over to the C2 post.”
“Copy that,” I reply, feeling mild irritation. “Be there in five.”