Dark World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 9), page 28
Harris clapped me on the shoulder. “Isn’t it a sight to behold? From out here, it looks pretty cool. But trust me, it isn’t nice inside. Hell no. It’s full of tricks and traps. That’s how we got caught the first time—at least, that’s what they tell me happened. I can’t remember because once you go into that mound, your radio will cut out and you’ll be on your own.”
“I’ll be on my own?”
Harris grinned. “That’s what Winslade said in the briefing you missed. Scouts go in first, light troopers only. This must be your lucky day!”
He walked off, laughing and shaking his head. I’d gotten a lot of grief like that on this drop. Every trooper who’d come down the first time and gotten skunked assaulting an anthill like this one seemed bitter. They were all under the impression I’d been lounging around while dead in the revival queue.
Winslade sidled up to me next. He wore a smug expression.
“Have you heard the news, then?” he asked.
“That I’m going up there to the top? Yeah, I heard about it. Isn’t that what the cohort did before when you got wiped?”
“Not quite,” he sneered, clearly unhappy to be reminded of the previous invasion, which had turned into a disaster. “Anyway, we’ll all circle the nest, staying under cover until every unit is in position. Then, Graves will give us the final word on when to attack—if the bugs don’t make their move preemptively.”
“The Vulbites might hit us first?” I asked.
He released a disgusted snort. “You really don’t read your briefings do you?”
“Well, sir, I was…”
But I was talking to his back. He’d spun around and stalked off to harangue the other adjuncts.
“Damn these people,” I muttered. “Cooper, get over here.”
He crawled back from his forward position, where he’d been observing the hill from under a leafy canopy on the edge of the forest.
“Cooper,” I told him, “no one seems to get that I wasn’t down here the last time, and that I didn’t have time to do much reading while I was dead.”
“Yeah…” he said. “Okay, I’ll give you the run-down. Up there, the bugs are watching us. They’ve got instruments of some kind. Organic lenses in the dirt, listening systems, I don’t know what else. But this smooth mound—it’s not just a random hill of dirt. It’s full of traps and maybe buried enemy defenders.”
“That’s great,” I said. “The Vulbites always were a sneaky bunch. What happened the last time the legion surrounded a hill like this?”
“We bombarded the top, trying to tear it open. That succeeded to some extent. Then, the lights rushed uphill.”
“Okay… what next?”
“I got up to the top, but then I died pretty fast. That’s all I remember. You’ll have to talk to the heavies about the rest.”
I grunted unhappily, and I signaled Sargon. He was a weaponeer, and he wore armor.
“It went like this,” he said when I’d explained my confusion. “The lights were the bunny-rabbits. We followed them to lend strength. The Vulbites let them get inside the top—it’s kind of like the cone of a volcano up there. But most of the heavies didn’t make it. The ground gave way under us. At first, I thought it was because our armor was too dense and caused us to break through—but I was wrong. The bugs had been busy, digging mantraps under the surface.”
He gave a shudder at the memory. That wasn’t normal for Sargon. He usually didn’t fear anything—not even a grim death.
“It was bad down there,” he continued. “Full of burrowing things—not just Vulbites. The ones we’re used to seeing are the worker-types, I think. There are more varieties inside their mounds. Eventually, I was captured inside some lightless hellhole. More than a few of us men were eaten. I must have had a good signal, because I remember that they were chewing on me when your shells came down—thanks for that, by the way.”
He stumped off, shaking his head. I stared after him. He was the first one who seemed happy about my role in the aerial bombardment—but it was clear he wasn’t happy to be on Dark World again.
About then, I heard a flapping sound. The troops looked up, and they all raised their rifles to their cheeks.
“One final thing I forgot to mention, McGill,” Cooper shouted to me. “The flying things. They’re kind of like big steaks that can fly in this low gravity. Don’t let them get on your air hoses or into your faceplate. They’ll take the skin right off a man.”
Firing began, and I spun around, trying to get a good look at one of them.
Finally, I spotted what they had to be talking about. It was maybe as big as a frying pan. It did look like a slab of meat. Bent in half, the flapping monstrosity didn’t appear to have eyes or any other sensory organs I could make out—but it seemed to know right where we were.
Ripping fire went up from a dozen rifles. The creature tore apart in mid-air, shredded by snap-rifle rounds. It burst and blood sprayed everywhere. It was as if the creature had been a loose sack of red liquid.
One was down, but there were a lot more flapping noises now. I turned back toward the forest, and then I saw it: a gigantic flock hovered over the beet-forest. The flock rose up like a storm cloud.
There had to be thousands.
-40-
“Unit! Circle-up!” Winslade ordered. “Fire into the central mass, but be ready with your knives when they get in close!”
I rolled onto my back and fired a steady series of bursts. Set for mid-range tactical fire, a snap-rifle released ten rounds at a time. You could put a lot of metal in the air fast that way without losing control of your weapon due to recoil.
Each burst kicked up my rifle’s muzzle a little, but I brought it back down again, keeping it more or less on target while sending a hail of destruction downrange.
The mass of flapping things swept over us. Soon, they descended, spreading out and swooping low. They plunged into the forest and came zooming through it to attack us from every angle at once.
Tracking one at a time, I stayed with my ten-round burst setting. Every few seconds, I fired and tore apart another flapper—that's what my troops called them: flappers. Sometimes, one of the beet bushes was damaged, and a branch fell.
A giant leaf drooped over me, obscuring my vision. Angrily, I pushed the leaf away—but the flappers were already on me.
Two of them slapped onto my suit. One was working on my faceplate, trying to tear it open. I could see the veins in it, the pulsing muscular mass. It seemed to have a very thin skin, so you could see the working guts and pumping fluids inside. It was like being attacked by a living mass of tissue.
The thing was strong, too. My gauntlets were on it, fingers prying, trying to get under the edges of the flaps to rip them away. My faceplate was slimed up, and I already heard the hissing sound of escaping air.
“Son of a bitch!” I said, and I gave up on the strategy of prying it off.
Instead, I drew my combat knife like Winslade had suggested. I stabbed and sliced, trying not to gouge my own faceplate.
The flapper at last relaxed and I managed to scrape it off and sit up.
Oddly, I was still hearing the hiss of leaking air—in fact, it was louder now.
“McGill,” Sargon said, “you’ve got one on your air hose. Don’t let it burn all the way through.”
I panicked a little. I slashed at it, over my shoulder—and I cut my own damned hose.
Cursing, I killed the flapper and was left standing there, panting, with an air leak. Fortunately, the air here was breathable, if a little oxygen-rich for humans.
“Here, let me help you with that, sir,” Sarah said, coming near and patching my hoses up.
Looking around, I saw no more flappers.
“Did we really get them all?” I asked.
“No way,” Cooper said. “That was just a test. It was the same way last time. The nest likes to probe us first, to see what works.”
“How many did we lose?”
Checking into it, I found we’d only lost one light trooper and two others in the unit.
“That’s better than last time,” Harris told me. “We freaked out when those flapping shit-bags hit us and lost nine men. Nine, and we hadn’t even marched up the frigging death-hill yet.”
The death-hill.
My eyes couldn’t help but stray to the rising mound, the artificial mountain we’d encircled. Looking at it, I began to realize why no one in the unit had blamed me for blasting the last nest—and most of our legion—to fragments with Nostrum’s broadsides. I was wishing someone else would do the same favor for me.
But I wasn’t so lucky. The belief among the brass was that we could do better this time around as we’d already experienced the worst this enemy could dish out.
It was all about Deech’s ego, in the end. She didn’t want to lose, and we were going to have to suffer as a result.
Turov herself kicked off the big attack with what amounted to a pregame pep-talk.
“Soldiers,” she said, “we’re all in position now, and we’re prepared to assault the Vulbite mound.”
I found this to be an ironic statement. We were watching her on our tappers, and it was as plain as day to see that she was still aboard Nostrum. The glowing walls of a conference room on Gold Deck were in the background, just in case any of us weren’t certain.
“This time, things will go differently,” she assured us. “We’ll surge in with greater force and superior planning. Rather than rushing up the mound in units, lights first followed by heavies, we’ll employ a new tactic.”
The camera angle shifted, and I could see we were now witnessing a vid-streaming feed from Dark World. The green leafed, purple veined plants were in abundance. Standing in a clearing was a pair of gateposts, and Primus Graves was standing beside them.
Two techs activated the jump-gate, and immediately soldiers began to march out.
The soldiers weren’t human—not exactly. They were Blood-Worlders.
First came a full unit of slavers. Tall, lanky beings with limbs a full two meters in length, they skulked out of the jump-gate and moved up the hill. They fanned out and picked their way up the slope, testing and probing the soil.
The intelligence of this move impressed me. The slavers were the scouts of Blood World. They had better senses—vision, hearing and sense of smell—than normal humans did. Possibly, they could detect a trap before it was sprung.
After this, heavy troops rolled out of the jump-gate. Dozens, then hundreds, then so many I lost count. They kept marching, and they never seemed to stop.
“I love it!” Harris said next to me. “This is the best damned idea Turov ever had! She’s going to pave over the hill with their bodies, instead of ours.”
I wasn’t so happy. These men were faithfully following orders, and sure, they looked and acted like aliens—but they weren’t. Not really. We were still genetically compatible. They were our cousins, at the very least.
More importantly, every time one of these Blood Worlders died, they’d be permed. There was only one revival machine aboard Nostrum that could handle someone of their size. That was going to be nowhere near enough.
The litter mates formed up ranks of nine and marched off to the sides, fanning out behind the slavers.
“Now,” Turov said from my tapper. Her face filled the screen. “When the mound is fully encircled, the Blood World troops will advance first. They’ll take the brunt of the initial casualties and with luck, the slavers will locate the traps. Either that, or the heavy troopers will fall through and find them all due to their weight. Each one weighs almost as much as a full human squadron.”
“Genius!” Leeson said, running over to me and showing me his tapper. “Are you watching this, McGill, or are you sleeping?”
“I’m watching—but I don’t like it.”
“What? Are you high, boy? This has to be the smartest thing Turov has ever done!”
I glared at him. “Leeson, those men feel pain the same as we do. They’re going to be permed when they die—not just inconvenienced until tomorrow.”
“Heck, boy! That’s what they’re for!” he shouted at me, exasperated. “Why the hell do you think we took over their baked-rock of a planet? They’re cannon-fodder, and it’s time to feed the cannons!”
He stalked away back to his platoon, shaking his head and muttering about Blood-Worlders not feeling anything and what a fool I was.
About three thousand of them formed up, and when the signal came, they all rushed the mound. We played sniper, laying down covering fire from the base of the hill. A few Vulbites poked their snouts up, but we pegged them the moment they did so. Soon, they’d vanished back into the cool recesses of their gigantic nest.
The plan worked pretty well at first. The slavers used flags to mark spots where they’d detected a trap and the littermates skirted these.
It wasn’t until they made it about halfway up that things got interesting. As I watched, one of the slavers vanished. Then another.
“Something’s happening!” I called out.
“I saw it too!” Harris said. “Have we got buzzers up there?”
We did. Kivi fed me her stream, and I watched as a wary slaver was sucked into the earth. There was nothing left but a divot of sifting dirt and a tiny puff of dust to show where he’d been.
“Stop the attack!” I called out, but Winslade flapped a hand at me in annoyance.
“Don’t lose your nerve so easily, McGill,” he said. “You’ll demoralize the troops.”
More slavers marked the spots where the first rank vanished, and they moved up further. They were now about three quarters of the way to the top.
That’s when the first rank of the heavy troopers began to sink—all at once. How was this coordination managed? I couldn’t tell at a distance, but I suspected Vulbites were lying in wait, and they’d let the slavers go by.
Reacting to the heavy boots of the littermates, they uncoiled and wrapped themselves around the second rank of Blood Worlders. Croaking in dismay, the men hacked around themselves with their massive swords. The fighting was too close and intense for rifles.
Some of the big men managed to lift their attackers from the dirt swirling around their waists and hold them high. Bulging muscles flexed, and the Vulbites were torn apart by sheer strength.
My unit cheered, and I cheered with them.
Still, our march up to the summit was faltering. It had turned into a dusty, vicious struggle on the slopes of the mound.
“Next wave, advance!” Turov ordered.
“You heard the lady,” Graves said. “Lights, you’re going to play the part of the slavers in that last rush. The Blood Worlder heavies will back you up. Move out!”
Surprised, I realized I was in the game again. I got up and trotted into the field. My lights were at my back, spreading out in a broad line.
Behind them, our unit’s Blood Worlders wandered up, looking confused. I expected Harris to lead them—I honestly did.
But instead, he sent out our squid liaison, Sub-Veteran Silt. Harris stayed back inside the tree-line, and he gave me the finger when I waved him forward.
“Come on, Adjunct!” I shouted back at Harris.
He retreated with his human troops under the forest canopy.
“What a pussy,” Cooper said next to me, and I pretended I didn’t hear him.
The new line-up was sub-optimal. We had about the same numbers as the first wave, but light trooper humans don’t have super-senses. Any traps that weren’t marked we immediately found—with our feet.
Still, as most of the traps had been sprung, we managed to reach the high ground where the Blood Worlder charge had floundered. We passed them and pressed onward to the top. I ordered my heavy troops to help their brothers where they could, dragging them out onto the surface. Due to these actions, we reached the summit with more soldiers than I’d started off with.
Silt came up behind me as I hesitated near the top of the hill.
“Have you lost your bravado?” he asked.
“Nope. I’m trying to think of the best way to proceed.”
“Indecision. Hesitancy. Defeat is fraught with these terrors.”
I turned to face him. “You want to charge in there in the lead, squid?”
“It wouldn’t be appropriate. I’m only a sub-veteran.”
“Yeah… but you’re getting on my nerves.”
“My translation box—”
“Translate this: shut up, squid,” I said slowly.
He got the message and slid away from me.
“Cooper!” I shouted. “Go over that ridge and look down into the cone.”
“That’s me, sir!” he said brightly. “The human equivalent of a buzzer!”
“Half of Kivi’s buzzers have been lost—they set off some EMP blasts on the way up. I’m saving the rest for when we get into that nest.”
“So, I’m less valuable than a buzzer,” Cooper said, “good to know.”
I watched him advance on his belly. I could have given him a hard time, but I didn’t have the heart. When a man knows he’s been given a deadly assignment, Varus tradition allows for some bitching as long as he does his best to carry out his orders.
The kid slithered up like a snake and went over the rim. The rest of us hugged the dirt just below the crusty summit.
For about ten seconds, I didn’t see or hear anything. We were pretty far above the forests of beet-bushes which stretched out as far as the eye could see. There was a light wind blowing up, but we didn’t dare open our faceplates.
A sudden scrabbling caught my attention. Cooper launched over the crest toward us—but he was sucked back down again. Carlos and I lunged forward, caught his wrists, and dragged his sorry ass up and over the rim.
“Grenades out!” I shouted. “Every third man, activate and throw on my mark! …Mark!”
My troops scrambled forward, twisted the caps on their grav-grenades, and tossed them into the cone of the hole.
A series of brilliant blue flashes went off. There were no screams, but there was some hissing and thrashing.
