C2, the brigade’s command-and-control center, is in the back of a hardened spacecraft shelter halfway between the drop-ship pad and the control tower. On my way there, I roll the ATV past drop ships that are unloading mules, the SI’s eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicles. We rarely ever take armor along on missions, because it’s not weight efficient, but someone upstairs decided to throw the whole kitchen sink at Mars. The mules have modular weapons stations on top, and the ones rolling off the drop ships right now are fitted with what the armor guys call the Bastard, a large turret containing a thirty-five-millimeter automatic cannon and twin guided missile launchers. Nearby, several SI squads are geared and lined up to board their rides.
I drive the ATV right into the shelter and park it over to the side, out of the way of the troops rushing in and out of the place. The commanding officer on the ground is a brigadier general, quite a few pay grades higher than the field commanders I usually deal with on drops. The brigadier general has a bunch of staff and junior officers around him, there’s a field-comms relay, and they even dragged out a portable holotable that’s displaying the tactical situation in this section of the northern hemisphere.
I don’t know the SI general in charge. The face behind the visor of his helmet is thin and haggard, but his eyes are sharp and alert as he looks me up and down. He has gray beard stubble, and on the whole, he looks to be about twenty years older than any brigadier general I’ve seen before. His name tag says “STERLING, P.”
“Lieutenant Grayson reporting back from Tuttle 250, sir,” I say, and salute. “I’m the red hat you sent along with the rescue birds.”
The general returns the salute. “Those ships left for the carrier over an hour ago, as far as I know.”
“All but one, sir. The Lankies got one bird on the ground when they overran the position.”
“And you made it out? Holy hell, son.”
I shake my head. “I was already out, calling in close air on the Lankies. The bird they took out had no survivors. Sixty KIA, mostly civvies. And Captain Parker. I got back here with another survivor. Sergeant First Class Crawford. Once we’re done with this mess, I want you to put her in for a Silver Star at least. She took out two Lankies with hand weapons in close combat. Saved me from getting stomped into jelly.”
“You and Sergeant Crawford hoofed it all the way back here on foot?”
“We took a pair of ATVs from the facility, sir. Had a close call or two along the way.”
“I bet you did,” the general says. “We’ve got Lankies crawling around on this rock in every direction. Well done, Lieutenant. I’d love to tell you to get some rest, but I’ll have to send you back out. It’s going to be a long day yet.”
“Yes, sir. What’s the situation outside of our LZ?”
“We’re pushing the Lankies back wherever we meet them, but the low cloud cover is a bitch for proper close-air support. Our guys are in the weeds so much, we’re using fuel at four times the projected rate. Thank the gods we got this spaceport intact. Without the fuel tanks down here, we’d have to send all those birds back into orbit and through the minefield to refuel. Phalanx is already down to less than half her missile load.”
He steps back and waves me over to the holotable. Then he zooms into the display and spins it around so I can see the map sector he has magnified.
“We’re expanding out from Red Beach pretty steadily, but the Lankies are pushing Orange Beach hard. We’re going to use our armor and see if we can take the pressure off LZ Orange. There’s a Lanky town right here”—he points to its marker roughly halfway between Red and Orange Beach—“and we’ll push at it from the south to make them pull back their line to reply to the threat. You’re going in with a forward-observer team. Insert will be here, and you’ll set up shop on this hill. Once the armor gets close, you call in the thunder on whatever they manage to draw out of that settlement.”
“I won’t have much mobility up there,” I say. “If the tactical situation changes, I won’t be able to keep up with the flow of battle.”
“The Euros have graciously provided us with one of their shiny new recon MAVs, Lieutenant. You are riding with their red hat and the one from the SRA. Kirov and Westfalen are repositioning themselves in orbit right now so they can support our push. Close air will be your job because most air assets at Red Beach are NAC, but orbital bombardment will be SRA and Euro bailiwick. Dustoff is in thirty-five minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“Dismissed, Lieutenant, and good luck.”
I salute and turn to leave but stop halfway through my heel turn. “Uh, sir?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Do we have word on the other LZs? My wife is flying a drop ship at Purple Beach.”
The general looks at me for a moment. Then he turns back to the holotable and pans out the map until it’s a large-scale hologram of the entire planet. He rotates it so that the southern hemisphere points up.
“The Lankies overran Green because the space control cruiser for Task Force Green hit a mine and couldn’t keep the hole in the minefield open after the first wave. We’ve consolidated Blue and Purple and sent reinforcements through their joint beachhead. Last word I got, they’re still holding the line, but the Lankies are pressing hard.”
I think of Halley, ferrying wave after wave down to the beach and then flying close air for her troops, in a hotly contested LZ, and I try not to recall the images of the shattered wreckage of the Wasp back at Tuttle 250.
She’s the best at what she does, I think. She’s fine. Probably having the time of her life, mowing down Lankies.
“Thank you for the intel, sir,” I say. Then I repeat my salute and walk off to leave the general to his strategic business.
One Lanky mine, and an entire landing zone is overrun. One brigade of troops, four battalions, almost three thousand men and women, wiped out because of a single proximity mine hitting the wrong ship in the wrong spot. Whoever planned this thing left the margins way too thin, and Halley and I are riding the edge of those margins. But three thousand more troops in LZ Orange are about to suffer the same fate if we don’t relieve them, so there’s no alternative but to saddle up and pick up the spears again.
CHAPTER 18
RED HAT EXPRESS
Dmitry is standing on the drop-ship landing pad with Lieutenant Stahl when I arrive on my ATV. Before all of this happened, I never thought I could be so glad to see an SRA marine’s face. Just as I pull up on the pad, the battery of the ATV dies completely, and I roll to a stop. I disengage the electric motors from the drivetrain and roll the ATV off the landing pad so it’s not in the way of the next drop ship.
“You are still alive, Andrew. This is good. What happened to insect armor?”
“It broke,” I say. “Seventeen million Commonwealth dollars down the drain. Where’s our ride?”
“Our ride will be here in two minutes,” Lieutenant Stahl says. “We will not have much time for our mission briefing.”
“The general gave me the idea,” I say. “They drop us off in your MAV, we climb the hill, and we spot targets for the armor and the flyboys.”
“That is the rough plan. You will both have to learn very quickly, though. The flight to the drop zone is only thirty minutes,” Lieutenant Stahl says.
“Learn what quickly?” I ask.