The trees were coming up fast, and Ryan thought maybe the Tahni at the fence line hadn’t seen them drop, that maybe the ECM was blinding their sensors enough that they missed the insertion altogether. Some small, cynical part of him that had been a Marine too long to believe in fairy stories wasn’t surprised when the coilgun rounds began ripping through the oak trees, throwing wooden shrapnel in hemispherical cones.

  Something smacked into the side of Ryan’s helmet and his ears rung with the vibration but he kept running. He’d felt the impromptu shrapnel bouncing off his chest plate, but nothing had penetrated, and he kept running, praying to his mother’s God, hoping his avowed atheist father had been wrong and that there was a bearded man sitting on a throne in the sky listening. He needed all the help he could get.

  Maybe her God was listening, or maybe the Marine pilots were, because the first two dropships roared by him on screaming turbojets, missiles streaking out of the launch pods tucked under their wings. The massive aerospacecraft were far too slow and ungainly to take on enemy assault shuttles or dual-environment fighters in the atmosphere, but they came in handy as ground support.

  He couldn’t see their target through the oak hammock, but he heard the explosions and the trees stopped exploding around them, so he assumed the flyboys had hit what they were aiming at. If the dropships were guardian angels, though, one of the giant ships threw a huge shadow across them as it labored into a hard turn only a few hundred meters above, flare and chaff spraying desperately in its wake, fleeing something Ryan couldn’t see.

  Until it hit. Fire erupted from the aerospacecraft’s portside engines, and Ryan nearly stopped in his tracks and rubbernecked at the sight of the port wing fragmenting, falling right off the fuselage. Belly jets roared in one last attempt to save the bird, and they might have…but they also made it a hovering target. A second missile slammed into the underside of the dropship and it came apart, tumbling out of the sky in a sea of flames.

  Ryan was terrified the massive, burning hulk would fall right on top of him, but its closeness was an illusion and it crashed nearly a kilometer away, still close enough for the concussion to vibrate right through his feet and throw him off-stride.

  “Was that our ride?” Franks squeaked out, and Ryan didn’t have the heart to chew him out.

  “There’s plenty more dropships that can haul us out of here,” he assured the corporal. “Once we win.” He’d almost said if.

  More dropships rumbled by overhead, more missiles streaking out to targets unseen, chin cannons barking sharply, adding high-explosive rounds to the destruction at the fence line. Ryan added a burst of speed, hoping to reach the wire while the enemy was still distracted, maybe flank them and roll them up. A flashing warning in his HUD told him just how likely that plan was to work.

  “Contact, front!” he said automatically, though he knew the helmet’s systems were supposed to transmit the sensor data back to his whole platoon automatically. “Shock Troopers in platoon strength coming through the trees at twelve o’clock!”

  The thermal sensors had picked them up, though he still couldn’t see them on optical through the tangle of downed trees and the thick haze of smoke from the shuttle crash. But what did the Tahni see? Would they understand the thermal readout, would they figure out just what the humans were throwing at them?

  Let’s try to make sure it’s way too late when they do.

  “First, on me! Staggered file formation and fire as you bear!”

  Which they’d gone over, but he didn’t know if they’d all remember it. Ryan kicked his run into another gear, knowing how fast the armor could move if he cut loose. There was an out-of-control feel to it, like running down a hill so steep that your legs were flying and you just knew if you tried to slow down, you’d go tumbling head over heels and break your neck. You just had to go with the flow and hope things leveled out on the other side.

  Ryan led the squad to the right, curving around the wedge of onrushing enemy exoskeletons. They were running, too, but not as fast, maybe because their armor wasn’t capable of it, maybe because they were hesitant to charge full-tilt into an enemy they didn’t understand. Which, Ryan supposed, made them poor candidates for the Marine Corps.

  Dornan was right behind him, and he would be damned if he knew how or when the platoon leader had caught up to him. The man hadn’t said a word to countermand his order and Ryan could see in his IFF display that the rest of the platoon was following the same arc, with Gunny Packard between Second and Third squad.

  He supposed that meant Dornan approved of his decision, though it could also have meant that Ryan had fucked up and jumped the gun and Dornan had just decided it would be easier and safer to go along with it than to try to countermand it and do the right thing.

  Then he didn’t have any more time to think about it because he could see the Shock Troopers emerging from the smoke. They were firing their KE guns wildly, and if he couldn’t see the actual rounds heading downrange, he could see them hitting the oaks, sending showers of pollen and bark splinters flying. They probably didn’t have the kind of targeting system the Aegis came equipped with.

  The Gauss gun was connected to the backpack with a hardwired connection, immune from ECM, its optics slaved to the helmet processors, the entire system linked to the exoskeleton’s servomotors. It automatically stabilized the weapon and kept it on target despite the motion of the armor…and when that targeting reticle flashed green, Ryan touched the trigger.

  It wasn’t just the first shot fired in anger with the Gauss rifle, it was the first shot any Marine had taken with the weapon in the field ever. And it had been him who’d fired it. That had to be worth some mention in a footnote somewhere. It was also the first kill, because the round was as accurate as the training manuals had promised. Ryan had barely felt the recoil, though he’d also read it was fierce, but the tungsten slug sliced right through the chest armor of the Shock Trooper, sending him tumbling forward, plowing into the dirt, ripping up brush and grass until he collided with a tree and lay still.

  The Tahni had their own set tactical formations and he’d seen them on Eden, studied the intelligence reports that the LT had distributed along with the op order, so he had a good idea of where the next Shock Trooper would be before his sensors even picked up the thermal signature through the two-meter-thick oaks. The problem about firing on the run in an Aegis was, the Gauss rifle needed two seconds between shots to recharge the capacitors, which meant Ryan had to wait for a clear shot while the Tahni just sprayed and prayed.

  When he felt the tug on his left shoulder, he knew he’d been hit, but he felt no pain. Which didn’t mean the round hadn’t penetrated. This sort of war was new to him, but violence wasn’t, and he’d seen men and women who’d been shot and didn’t realize it until minutes later. He hoped he’d have that long, but this guy wouldn’t wait for a battle damage evaluation assessment. Ryan finally had a clear shot for just two seconds, a gap between the trees, and he took it. He hadn’t meant to show off, would have been perfectly happy to aim center of mass, but there was a downed tree laying crossways where the Shock Trooper’s chest would be when he fired, so he had to showboat and go for a headshot.

  But was it really showboating when the armor’s targeting system made any shot this close a guaranteed hit? The Tahni trooper was running in a long, loping pace, so there was no danger of his armor becoming yet another statue in death. When the faceplate of his armor exploded outward in a fountain of red, the Tahni armor collapsed face first, the jagged edge left at the front of its helmet digging into the loamy ground.

  Still no pain. Ryan thought about checking his medical stats but decided against it because the IFF and threat displays were more pressing. He’d led the squad and, as it had turned out, the platoon on a curving course around the Tahni line of advance, but just on the other side of trees was the spaceport road gate through to the town, and enemy troops were still streaming through it. Should he keep moving forward or….

  “Take the gate, Hendrix.”

  Dornan. The man just could not really be a second lieutenant. They were klutzes, wet behind the ears, not knowing enough to even realize they didn’t know anything. Except Dornan wasn’t a kid fresh out of the Academy. He’d been prior enlisted and come up through the OCS program, though that couldn’t explain the way he always seemed to know what was about to happen.

  “The Tahni are pushing straight through into the rest of the company,” Dornan explained, not sounding out of breath despite the pace they were making. “We need to cut them off from the gate and keep them engaged with us.”

  Ryan thought the lieutenant was about to take point, which was even more frowned upon than a squad leader doing it, but Dornan was satisfied to let him stay in the lead.

  “First squad,” Ryan transmitted, “don’t waste rounds into the trees. Only fire if you have a clear target. Keep up with me and don’t get tangled with the Tahni—let the rest of the company have them once you take your shot.”

  And then there was no more time left for talk. They were through the trees and the fence was right there, a hundred meters away. Or what was left of it. The dropship missiles had collapsed the gates, which had pulled down fence pilings on either side, ripped them right out of the ground, and where the coilgun turrets had been there was nothing left but smoking craters. Through the clouds of smoke and particulates, Shock Troopers were charging, not in mass but in squads and fire teams and sometimes individually, running straight down the road towards the port as if they didn’t even notice First squad coming in from the side.

  Ryan wanted to feel sorry for them, knowing they were probably leaderless, their comms jammed, but somehow, he couldn’t muster any sympathy for them, so he shot them instead. Two went down before any of them seemed to realize they were being targeted, and when Ryan saw the first of them turn, he leapt, remembering being shot and not wanting it to happen again.

  This wasn’t the cargo hold of the Herculean, so there were no freight containers to take refuge behind, but standing in one place seemed like a very bad idea, and if flying ten meters through the air was no faster, at least it was unexpected. The Tahni tried to target him, but nothing struck home, and he felt even more certain that their targeting systems weren’t up to the level of the one in his Aegis.

  He fired his M790 in midair, the tungsten round piercing the chestplate of a Shock Trooper at a downward angle, leaving him standing stock-still in the center of the gravel road, his KE gun pointed halfway into the air like he’d been about to motion his fellow soldiers forward and had suddenly lost track of his intentions. Three more of the Tahni were trying to track Ryan’s arc as he descended, and a certainty that weighed down his gut like a lump of lead told him that they would unload on him the instant he touched the ground.

  He braced himself for it, teeth gritted, knowing the capacitor for his weapon would take one second longer to recharge than he had to live. But he’d forgotten that he wasn’t alone. The three Tahni jerked and spasmed like marionettes with their strings tangled, and it took Ryan a beat before he understood that Dornan and Franks and Vazquez were shooting them. The team leader and his battle buddy had caught up with the, somehow. Ryan hadn’t thought Franks could run that fast in or out of an Aegis suit.

  “Move it through!” Dornan barked, managing to sound urgent and calm at the same time, damn him. “Get through the fucking gate!”

  The rest of First and Second were coming up behind them, and it seemed to Ryan as if he’d forgotten there was any more to the platoon besides his squad, that these Marines were strangers who’d just gotten around to joining the battle.

  That’s okay, there’s room enough for all of us.

  Ryan’s head swam as he loped between the frozen Tahni dead, and he wondered if it was the multiple adrenaline dumps or if he had, indeed, been shot and was suffering from blood loss. He was inclined to believe it was the former, since the armor’s med systems had proven bossy and loud-mouthed in training and it would probably have been ordering him to get to a medevac if he actually had a serious wound.

  Convinced it was nothing that would kill him, he ignored it and emerged from the thick smoke left by the missiles. There had been a bunker of some kind thrown up on the other side of the fence by the Tahni, but it was belching dark smoke now, taken out by the dropships and just visible through the clouds of gray haze at its mouth were bodies, some in the remains of powered exoskeletons, some in the light armor of their normal troops, though those were in pieces.

  Which explained why the response had been so haphazard, he thought, since a good number of their leaders and planners had to have been inside the bunker, thinking themselves safe from attack because of their anti-aircraft emplacements and atmospheric fighters…and maybe because they didn’t think the humans were crazy enough to force a landing on an occupied city.

  They’ll learn their lesson after today. We’re all crazy as hell.

  A half a dozen armored personnel carriers burned in a pattern around the bunker, more bodies scattered around them. They hadn’t even made it to the road before the missiles hit. A pair of unarmored Tahni carrying light carbines broke from cover and tried to run. Ryan reached back and pulled out his grenade launcher from over his left shoulder, and the reticle in his HUD switched shapes, letting him know the targeting systems had transferred. Two rounds, that would be enough.

  Thunk-thunk. He’d never heard the sound before, but it sounded right, proper. The explosions were puffs of black smoke in the air above the fleeing enemy, and the fleeing Tahni collapsed, their strings cut.

  Nothing moved.

  “Set up security here,” Dornan ordered Ryan. “We’ll wait for the rest of the company to catch up.”

  “Aye, sir.” He hesitated, not wanting to ask the question, but needing to know. He knew no one from his squad had been hit, but…. “Did we take any casualties?”

  Dornan was just as hesitant with his answer.

  “Third squad ran into the main body of the Shock Troopers on the road. They have two seriously wounded, and…Gunny Packard. He’s KIA.”

  Ryan had been about to order his squad to spread out into a security perimeter, but he froze in place. Gunny Packard was an institution more than a man. He’d been in the Marines since there’d been a Commonwealth Marine Corps. He couldn’t be dead. It was like his mother saying God was dead….

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah,” Dornan agreed, subdued. “Oh, and Hendrix…you’re acting platoon sergeant.”

  Ryan blinked, staring at him.

  Fuck.

  Chapter 11

  The truck’s suspension had seen better days. Or maybe the fabricators that had produced it hadn’t been properly programmed, or the mechanics who’d assembled the pieces hadn’t the expertise needed to work on circa-twenty-first-century dump trucks.

  Or maybe it’s all this fucking armor we hung on the poor thing.

  Not that Johann Brugger was complaining. He rested his carbine on the edge of the ten-centimeter-thick metal shield and leaned into it, letting his knees flex to absorb the thump of the tires on the rutted, gravel roads. One day, if there were still humans on this world, the roads would be paved. Or maybe they wouldn’t be. Maybe there would be sophisticated industry here that would build hoppers and VTOL flyers and aircars and they wouldn’t need roads.

  Hanging over the top of the truck’s cab, going fifty klicks an hour, hell-bent for the gate in the perimeter fence and the coilgun emplacements there, he wasn’t too sanguine about the future of humanity on this planet. He leaned over into Dak Shepherd’s ear and spoke loud enough to be heard over the rumble of the alcohol-fueled engine.

  “We’re gonna die,” he said with more conviction than he’d ever had when he’d told anyone that he loved them. “Those coilguns are going to cut right through this shit.” He banged a knuckle off the side of the makeshift shield demonstratively.

  “Yeah, it’s a definite possibility.”

  Dak had left his sniper rifle behind at the high school after using it to take out three of the Tahni guards left there to watch the vehicles. He’d replaced it with an assault rifle, and the vehicles they’d liberated trailed them a kilometer back, hundreds of them, packed with thousands of civilians, mostly families with children. The adults…well, the ones who weren’t on the armored trucks…would have to make their way out on foot or take their chances. It wasn’t a perfect plan, and Johann was convinced they’d still lose hundreds of dead, but saving thousands wasn’t a worthless thing, even if it meant his death.

  “There’s the gate!” the driver yelled from beneath them in the cab of the dump truck. He was a man named Hrothgar, though he didn’t have the slightest trace of Norwegian ancestry as far as Johann knew. “They’re gonna see us any second!”

  The fence was an obscenity, keeping the colonists inside like animals in a pen, and Johann suddenly wanted more than anything to ram the truck right through it—and he didn’t care that the Tahni would probably kill them in the attempt. He didn’t care about that part at all.

  There. He could see the gate now, the top of it, over the crest of the low hill. No other troops between them. The Marines were landing, and doing it loud and proud, attracting all sorts of attention and most of the Tahni troops, which was the only reason any of them were still alive. Commonwealth assault shuttles and Tahni dual-environment fighters screamed overhead, lashing the sky with thunderclaps as they broke the sound barrier, and columns of smoke rose from the spots in the city and on its perimeter where he knew the enemy had set up their anti-aircraft positions.

  And somewhere, below line of sight, was the chest-deep roar of the dropships, echoing through the streets. Their missiles and cannons were an orchestra of snare drums and the occasional bass, and where they struck, there were billows of smoke and gouts of flame.

  Johann wanted to say it was the end of the world, but his world had ended months before.

  And there, facing outward, waiting for an attack that wouldn’t come, was the coilgun turret. Only one of them, but the only one Johann was worried about, the one that could cover the road in and out through the gate. The Tahni soldiers manning it weren’t Shock Troopers, just their line troops with regular, light armor and carbines like the one he held. Good news, for once.

 

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