“Targets in the open,” I call out. “Multiple LHOs at forty-five hundred meters and closing in fast.”
The mules don’t need any encouragement to open fire again. The automatic cannons that were firing twenty-round probing bursts just a moment ago switch to automatic control, with the computers all linked and the command vehicle’s TacLink node calling the shots. It’s a brutally effective method for coordinating fire—the computer shoots every single round, and no human gunner wastes ammo by engaging a target that’s already under fire by another mule. Our firing line stretches for over half a kilometer, a mule every forty meters, and the guns fire in long, precisely calculated bursts. From up here, the streams of tracers cutting through the darkness and into the advancing Lankies look like laser beams from old Network movies. There are sparks whenever a round hits the ground or glances off the hard cranial shield of a Lanky, but most rounds find their mark, and the Bastard mounts are chopping them down one by one.
Overhead, I hear the wail of a drop ship’s engines—not our Shrike, but an SRA attack bird. It starts firing its cannon even before it breaks through the cloud ceiling, and more Lankies drop to the hammer blows of armor-piercing cannon shells. Next to me, Dmitry is giving the pilot cool and precise-sounding instructions in Russian. Then I see the glowing fireflies of rocket motors from overhead, and dozens of unguided rockets pour from the sky and plow into the Lankies at a high angle. All their size and strength, all their resilience isn’t doing them any good against our ranged weapons and the fire we can rain on their heads from the sky. With their seed ships keeping our air and space units away, against infantry with hand weapons, they are terrifying and overpowering opponents. Without their protector ship in orbit, facing attack craft built to obliterate armor columns, they are hard-to-miss targets. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction as I watch the slaughter, and I’m sure almost everyone on the ground with me feels the same way. We have lost so much to them, suffered so many casualties, had our lives upended so often, that seeing them die by the dozens is a grimly joyful experience. The SRA attack bird pulls out of its run, and another follows it with the same attack pattern. The tide of Lankies coming from the village seems to stall, then reverse itself as the creatures try to retreat from the withering fire.
So they’re not completely suicidal, I think. Whether by instinct or conscious decision, they aren’t willing to run into effective gunfire.
“Team Yankee, advance as a company and engage on the move,” the company commander orders.
Down on the plateau, the line of mules starts moving toward the village again, closing the distance meter by meter, their cannon mounts popping off bursts at retreating Lankies as the computers spot them. Gradually, the fire from the tank company slacks off until all guns are silent again, their targeting systems having run out of moving targets to shoot at. They close to three thousand, two thousand, then a thousand meters. A flight of four drop ships comes swooping from the sky, takes up formation above the tank column, and soars over the Lanky village. On the far side, five hundred meters from the southern edge, they drop cluster kinetics and fire their cannons. I hear the piercing wails of the stricken Lankies all the way at the top of our observation hill, five kilometers away. On the ground in front of the Lanky village, the mules’ battle line gets untidy as individual mules have to swerve around the massive bulks of fallen Lankies.
“There’s an opening wide enough for armor,” I hear on the company channel. “Two hundred meters northeast.”
I zoom into the spot with the magnified view from the Weasel’s sensor mast. There’s not a trace of movement beyond the opening in the latticework.
“It’s clear from up here,” I tell the company commander. “No activity.”
“We’re rolling in,” the company commander replies. “Second Platoon, take the lead. Then First and Third. Go in pairs. And be ready to back out.”
The platoon commanders toggle back their acknowledgments.
I spend a few pulse-pounding moments watching the first pairs of our armor column drive up to the opening and disappear inside the structure. From up here, I can see them turning on their infrared illuminators and targeting lasers. One of the lead mules turns on its external high-powered searchlight, and the others inside follow suit. I can see the light from the beams bleeding through the holes in the latticework and drawing dancing shadows onto the ground in front of the structure.
“It’s empty,” one of the platoon commanders sends. “Looks like they all cleared out the back. I repeat, the structure is empty. There’s nobody home.”
“That was little too easy,” Dmitry says.
“I don’t mind easy,” I reply. “But yeah. I know what you mean.”
I relay the information back to Ground Force Red Actual, the general who’s calling the shots back at the spaceport a few hundred kilometers to our southeast. We have only a sliver of the available ground forces up here for this diversion, all the personnel that fit into the back of the mules, a hundred troops total. A full brigade has thirty times that manpower, but even three thousand troops stretch thin when you have to cover many square kilometers of ground with them. Our beachhead has expanded steadily, but now we’re stretched to the limit, even with the reinforcements thrown in. If the line breaks anywhere, it’ll be like someone sticking a needle into a balloon.
“Advance and recon in force; then swing northwest until you make contact with the Lankies pressing the attack on Orange Beach,” the general orders. “But don’t get in over your heads. Your job is to draw them back towards you and relieve the pressure on Ground Force Orange.”
“Affirmative,” our company commander replies.
“We are rolling,” I add. There’s not a Lanky in sight anymore, and the mules in the structure are advancing without resistance, but I feel reluctance when Lieutenant Stahl puts the Weasel into drive and turns off the polychromatic camouflage.
“Maybe now we use weapons a little,” Dmitry says, and pats the handle of the fire-control system.