Chapter 4: Day at the Beach

“Please call the Russians and ask them why the Pavlov has turned an eighteen square kilometer patch of forest into a parking lot,” Vos muttered, watching the railgun barrages on his feed. “They do realize that we’re here to take the moon intact, right?”

Fielding entered the observation deck, approaching from behind him, Vos turning off his holographic display with a wave of a gloved hand. He greeted the captain, the two of them taking a moment to watch the red forests roll past beyond the windows.

“How goes the campaign?” Fielding asked, passing the admiral a steaming mug of coffee. Vos took it, giving him a grateful nod before taking a long draw.

“Progress is steady,” he replied, turning back to the scrolling feed of battlefield reports. With another gesture, he brought up a floating representation of Kerguela, the three-dimensional hologram flickering as it hovered in the air. The moon’s surface had been split into color-coded sections, and there was a cloud of IFF tags floating around it. Fielding leaned in a little closer, noting the dotted lines that gave some idea of where the various battalions were landing. “It’s a little difficult to keep track of sixty-four assault carriers, but the operation has been running smoothly. They’ve been running raids around the clock, striking ground targets and infrastructure, using their mobility to keep the Bugs on their toes.”

“How is the enemy responding?” Fielding asked.

“There’s not a lot that they can do. Despite their numbers, they can’t be everywhere at once, and there’s no way for them to get advanced warning of our attacks after we destroyed their global comms. In some regions, we’re just burning crops and collapsing tunnels for no strategic reason other than to divert their attention and stretch their resources. Friendly casualties have been within expected parameters, except in very specific areas,” he added as he waved his hand through the hologram. It shifted, displaying a handful of small, red circles.

“What are those?” Fielding asked, walking around the wavering globe.

“One of the UNNI agents assigned to the mission ran a statistical analysis of the raids that saw the highest casualties and the toughest resistance,” he explained. “She correlated the highest results from the data set, and what do you know, they create a very distinctive pattern that’s confined to specific regions.”

“The Kings?” Fielding suggested, Vos giving him a satisfied nod.

“There’s one in each of the five regions, and by using the data that the agent provided, we can track their previous movements. It’s a reasonable guess that they’re traveling in the company of large entourages that are able to respond more rapidly and with considerably more lethality to any battalions that happen to make landfall nearby. Most of them have been trying to protect vital infrastructure targets. We just had to pull the Musketeer’s battalion back into orbit after they encountered stronger than expected resistance at a tunnel nexus in the green zone. We suspect that the Green King launched a counter-offensive. By the time we brought in orbital assets, they were already gone.”

“Then, we’re honing in on them,” Fielding mused as he examined the display. “Every time they mount a counter-attack, we’ll be able to see where they are.”

“And to think that they told me Polar Borealans would make terrible spies,” Vos said, chuckling to himself. “The longer the campaign goes on, and the more we force them to react to our incursions, the easier it will be to pinpoint their locations. We just have to keep hammering them.”

“What about the Queen?” Fielding asked, glancing over at the admiral. “Do we have any idea of where she might be yet?”

“No,” he sighed, shaking his head. “She’s their most valuable asset, so we expected her to be well hidden. The plan right now is to focus on the Kings first. Once they’re all taken out, the zones they’re responsible for will fall into chaos with no command structure to keep them organized. That should make hunting down the Queen an easier prospect.”

“She’ll have control over her own region,” Fielding warned. “Those things are wicked smart.”

“Nothing we can’t handle,” Vos replied. “We’ve killed Queens before. That’s what the Trogs specialize in.”

“I see that you’re assigning another mission to the Omaha,” Fielding said, pausing by one of the data feeds. “How’s that ghost company of yours doing?”

“I don’t believe in luck, but I do trust my gut,” Vos replied. “Delta company has proven themselves to be unusually survivable. I think they’re prime candidates for some unconventional field work.”

“What did you have planned?”

“The Valbaran captains that the Ensi left in charge before she departed on her field trip are just as stubborn as she is,” Vos grumbled. “They’ve located a prime target – a biofuel plant in the blue zone that seems to be manufacturing a good chunk of the enemy’s fuel supplies – but they insist on taking it out themselves. I managed to convince them to let me send a battalion to support them, and the Omaha is my first choice. Destroying the plant from orbit would pose a serious environmental hazard, so the site will have to be secured from the ground before being safely decommissioned.”

“This should be interesting,” Fielding said, gazing down at the swirling clouds below. “Do you think the raid will force the Blue King to play its hand?”

“We won’t know until they respond,” Vos replied. “I’ll make sure we have assets available to support them if big blue makes an appearance.”

“So, what was it like?” Hernandez asked. He leaned a little closer to Evan, sliding his metal dinner tray across the table noisily. It was early morning, and the mess hall was packed today. The companies that had been deployed to the ground had returned the night before, and rumors were already circulating that they were going to be redeployed soon.

“I don’t know if she’d want me telling you,” he replied, keeping his voice low. “It’s kind of ... personal.”

“Come on, man,” Hernandez complained. “You might be the first guy to ever make it with a Jarilan. You gotta understand my curiosity, at least.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Evan continued, giving him a friendly nudge. “Your advice was spot-on. Neither of us really knew what to do, but we kind of ... felt our way through it together, and it all worked out.”

“Of course it did,” he chuckled, settling back into his chair. “How do you think I even survived a night with a Borealan? I know what the ladies want, man, be they scaly, furry, or covered in shell.”

“Uh-huh,” Evan replied with a smirk. “It went well, I’ll leave it at that.”

“I know it went well, ‘cos you guys were gone all night,” Hernandez added as he chewed on a spoonful of creamed corn. “Where is the lucky lady, anyhow?”

“She’s gone to pick up a new chest piece,” Evan explained. “They have to make them to spec, so she has to wait for her carrier to ship her a replacement every time one gets damaged.”

“What, do they grow ‘em in a vat or somethin’?”

“I dunno,” Evan replied with a shrug. “They’re made to fit each individual Drone.”

Loud footsteps drew Evan’s attention, and he turned his head to see Tatzi striding over to them, the smaller Marines making way for her. She sat down beside Hernandez, slamming a metal tray piled high with what looked like roasted meat onto the table, ringing it like a gong. Her chair was spring-loaded, her weight sinking it down to a more reasonable height, bringing her just about level with her neighbors. She began to stuff her face noisily, taking large, wet bites of something that resembled a leg of mutton. Hernandez sank into his seat as she reached over to ruffle his hair with a hand that could have encompassed his skull, a gesture that was at once rough and affectionate.

“Eat more,” she insisted, hooking one of the slabs of meat in her sharp claws. She deposited it on his tray, splashing his coveralls with droplets of grease. “You cannot fight on such a meager ration.”

“What even is that?” he wondered, giving the juicy meat a prod with his fork.

“Good meat,” she replied, taking another bite pointedly.

“If you insist,” he muttered, struggling to carve off a piece with his plastic fork.

“Evan,” Tatzi said, her low voice enough to make his bones shake. “You shared your bed with Jade last night, did you not?”

He almost choked on his meal, sputtering as he tried to compose himself.

“W-who told you that?” he demanded, red-faced.

“Her scent is on you,” the Borealan explained, pausing to chew. “This is good. A Borealan pack is tightly-knit, bonded. Our team will grow stronger because of it.”

“Always with the scent,” Evan muttered to himself as he stared at his tray, wide-eyed. “Gotta take a fucking shower every five minutes around here.”

There was a beep from his wrist, Evan looking down at his device to see new orders scrolling across the display. After a moment, Hernandez and Tatzi got them too, the Borealan grumbling as she wolfed down another mouthful of meat.

“I just sat down. Can it not wait even a moment?”

“That’s us,” Evan said, rising to his feet. “We’d better get our gear and report to the stern gate.”

“Any idea where we’re goin’?” Hernandez asked.

“Nowhere good,” Tatzi growled.

Jade returned while the team were donning their equipment, a pair of almost identical Jarilans following her into the armory. The more time that he spent with her kind, the more Evan had started to notice the small details that set them apart, letting him pick Jade out easily. The shapes of their branching horns seemed random at first, but they were just as identifiable as a human face once one knew what to look for. There were also subtle differences between their facial features, the sizes of their antennae, and the colors of their eyes. Presumably, they’d all have different colors of carapace if it wasn’t for the camouflaged paint that covered them from head to toe, too.

Everyone greeted them save for Foster, who stood conspicuously apart from the rest of the team, turning away from the newcomers as he secured his ceramic chest piece. The two new Jarilans seemed surprised by the relatively friendly welcome, Jade giving them a satisfied glance as if to say I told you so. She made her way over to Evan, giving him an affectionate pat on the shoulder. He could tell that she wanted to embrace him, but not in front of the others, even though most of them probably knew about their burgeoning relationship already.

“Glad you made it,” he said, slotting on his helmet. “I thought we might have to leave without you.”

“Jarilans are always on time,” she chuckled. “This is Aster and Cardinal. They’re filling in for my old team.”

“Hey, we finally got some reinforcements,” Hernandez said as he fastened the straps that held his shin plate in place. “You can never have too many Jarries.”

“Happy to help,” the one named Aster said with a nod.

Jade helped Evan put on his chest rig, securing the straps over his armor, using all four arms in tandem. It gave her an excuse to get closer so that they could whisper to one another.

“I see you got your new chest piece,” he said, Jade’s antennae brushing against his visor as she fastened one of the clips on his harness. “Try to keep this one intact for more than one deployment.”

“You weren’t complaining about me wearing that tank top last night,” she chuckled, her fingers skirting his crotch as she gave his belt an exaggerated tug to tighten it. “You were complaining even less about what was underneath it.”

“Maybe save that kind of talk for when we have a private channel,” he chuckled. “I’m pretty sure the Borealans can still hear us.”

“They can smell me on you anyway,” she replied with a smirk, sliding his sidearm into its holster in a way that was oddly suggestive. “Can’t hide anything from their noses.”

“Yeah, I found that out the hard way over breakfast.”

Hernandez leaned in to interrupt them, sliding open his visor.

“If you two are done makin’ out, we got a dropship to catch.”

Sergeant Simmons joined them at their IFV as it waited on its sled, now fully repaired after its brush with the Warrior. It was oddly fitting that even the squad’s vehicle had taken hits and had come straight back to the fight. Evan’s gloved hand moved to the back of his neck, feeling the outline of his implant through his pressure suit as he mulled over the idea.

“Is your implant hurting?” Jade asked, using a private channel through their helmets.

“Nah,” he replied, moving his hand back to his weapon. “I was just thinking about how our IFV is a real part of the team now. It’s about as busted up as the rest of us.”

The vehicles in front of them were loaded onto the dropships one by one, the team jogging alongside the IFV when their turn came up. It slid along the rails in the deck, slamming into place inside the vessel’s troop bay. They went through the practiced routine of securing themselves into their seats, the craft breaking away from the carrier, starting to fall towards the moon’s surface.

The anxiety that Evan usually felt during a drop was somewhat muted now. He had so much more to lose since the last time they had set foot on Kerguela – so much had happened in the interim – yet the night that he had spent in Jade’s company had filled him with a kind of vigor. The threat of death was ever-present. He could meet his end today, and he didn’t even want to consider what might happen if Jade got hurt, but there was a kind of catharsis in having already expressed everything that he had wanted to tell her. Everything was square, and he could march into battle without any regrets. It was a wonderful and somewhat novel feeling to not be wishing that he’d had the courage to make a move, or that he’d missed an opportunity that he should have taken.

“Bit of a late briefing on this one,” Simmons said, his voice coming through Evan’s helmet radio. “We’re being deployed to an island on the equator where Fleetcom has located some kind of fuel depot. Our job is to take it intact, because it’ll blow sky-high and dump toxic chemicals into the environment if they try to knock it out from orbit. We’re supporting the Valbarans, so watch your IFF tags.”

Turbulence buffeted the dropship as they hit the upper atmosphere, deceleration pressing Evan into the padding of his seat, the main thrusters shaking the deck beneath his feet. He felt the craft touch down with a thud, the ramp dropping like a ton of bricks to let bright sunlight flood into the bay. The IFV slid down the rails on its sled, kicking up a cloud of white sand, the squad leaping to their feet as they followed after it. Brooks, Donovan, McKay, and Garcia fanned out ahead of them, Borzka and Tatzi bounding down the ramp after them. Jade and her two new counterparts came next, followed by Simmons, Evan, and Hernandez, with Collins and Foster bringing up the rear. They covered the three vehicle crewmen as they climbed into the IFV, its engine roaring to life.

Evan glanced down the beach, his visor tinting automatically to shield him from the sun. They were standing on the shore of a large island, a band of pristine, white sand curving into the distance in both directions. It was big enough to make a suitable staging area for the dropships, some of them rising into the sky on plumes of flame as more descended, the familiar sight of tanks and transports freeing themselves from their sleds as they drove out onto the sand greeting him. Gentle waves lapped at the beach behind them, a few more islands visible on the horizon.

Their dropship took off again, creating a miniature sandstorm that made Evan glad of his helmet, the airborne grains whipping against his armor. When he turned to watch it climb, he noted that the sand had turned to glass beneath its four downward-facing thrusters, leaving a perfect pattern of shining craters.

Ahead of them was more forest, the plants here adapted to the equatorial environment. They resembled giant ferns and cycads with stout, prickly trunks. Their leaves branched out in wide fronds like those of palm trees, but their red and orange hues shattered that illusion pretty quickly. As always, the gas giant dominated the sky above them, bands of bright green and blue auroras streaking across the heavens. It would have been a view straight out of a dream if not for the tank companies that were assembling around them, their treads churning up the beach.

“I thought this planet didn’t have any oceans?” Hernandez said, Evan’s helmet dampening the chorus of revving engines so that he could hear him.

“It’s not an ocean, it’s a lake,” Simmons explained. “Freshwater.”

“What the fuck is that?” Collins asked, pointing to the edge of the forest. Evan followed his gaze to see what looked like a golf cart racing its way towards them. It was a small, squat vehicle with four wheels, its frame covered over with light armor plating that was painted in autumn camouflage. The thing couldn’t have been more than about three or four meters long, and its roof was about the same height as Evan. It had an angular windshield, along with a couple of oddly placed headlights that seemed too close together, situated behind a bullbar. There was a blister on the roof that sported a mounted railgun small enough that a human could probably have carried it without much difficulty. It bounced on its springy suspension, its honeycomb tires kicking up sand as it made a beeline for the company command vehicle.

When it skidded to a halt, four sets of panels swung upwards like the doors of a high-end sports car. There were two for the driver and passenger, and two larger panels for the four seats in the rear. Six Valbarans piled out of it, clad in tight-fitting pressure suits that were camouflaged with the same colors as their vehicle. They walked over to talk to one of the tank commanders with an odd, bobbing gait that reminded Evan of a chicken.

“Pretty sure I’ve seen ridin’ mowers bigger than that fuckin’ thing,” Hernandez chuckled, apparently amused by the tiny vehicle. He was exaggerating, but the buggy was still extremely compact. Perhaps the Valbaran dropships were more limited in terms of their carrying capacity than the UNN equivalents.

It only took another fifteen minutes for the rest of Delta company to make landfall, and by then, the Valbarans were apparently done talking to the company commander. They hopped back into their little buggy, powering up the beach and back into the forest, weaving between the spiky trunks of the trees with surprising agility.

Simmons put a finger to the side of his helmet, receiving new orders, which he soon relayed to the squad.

“Saddle up!” he said, waving them forward as the IFV’s troop ramp began to open. “The Valbarans are preparing to move on the depot, and they need heavy support from our Kodiaks. We’re going to push through the outer perimeter, then make our way inside the compound. We’ll be clearing the complex room by room, or whatever the fuck the Bugs use as rooms.”

They loaded into the vehicle, strapping into their seats, the three Jarilans gripping handholds on the ceiling as they stood in the aisle. Evan connected his helmet to the external camera feeds, watching as the procession of vehicles rolled out. They began to crash their way through the tropical forest, the trees here spaced wide enough that they didn’t pose much of an obstacle for the tanks.

As they proceeded deeper, Evan began to spot signs of a recent battle. The IFV drove around a smoldering wreck of a Bug anti-air tank, its eight legs lifted into the air like a dead spider lying on its back, its fuel and fluids staining the nearby ferns in mucous-green. There was a squad of Drones, too, their colorful ichor splattering the trees nearby. They had been torn apart by what looked like a high-caliber railgun, their bodies dismembered, wet pieces of them scattered around the forest.

“That explains why they didn’t try to shoot us down at the beach,” Garcia muttered. “Looks like the Valbarans cleared the LZ for us.”

There was more carnage the further they went, a few Valbaran vehicles joining the piles of dead Bugs. Evan spotted a Warrior slumped limply over one of the little buggies, crushing the frame beneath its weight. There was a tracked vehicle of unknown configuration, too, little more than a charred husk now. Whatever Valbaran casualties there were must have already been evacced.

Through the palm trees in the distance, Evan spotted a row of vehicles. They were hull-down, dug in behind the gentle slopes of a dry riverbed. They seemed to be hiding from whatever was on the far side, only their turrets peeking out. There were maybe a dozen of them, and there were just as many of the small buggies that they had seen earlier parked behind them. The crews of these buggies had dismounted and were taking cover between the tanks, lying prone as they aimed their XMRs over the lip of the natural trench.

As they neared, Evan got a better look at the alien vehicles. They were absolutely tiny compared to the monstrous Kodiaks, maybe four meters long and no more than two wide. They couldn’t have weighed more than four or five tons. Like the buggies, they were covered in sloping, angular armor plating that had been painted with autumn camouflage. Many of them were covered in cargo netting and bustle racks that were strapped to their hulls, filled with equipment and supplies, presumably because there was no space to fit them inside the things.

There were two varieties of turret that he could see. One of them was a thirty-millimeter railgun of the kind usually mounted as a coaxial weapon on many UNN vehicles – a high-caliber, automatic weapon used for anti-materiel purposes. The second was a twin-barreled missile system of some kind with blocky launch tubes and what looked like a radar system mounted between them.

The company pulled up behind the little tankettes, the twelve Kodiaks and eight IFVs rolling to a stop.

“Alright, everybody out,” Simmons barked. “The Valbarans are running the show on this one, so remember – they work in flocks. That means there is no one commander, and five or six of ‘em all share the same rank and responsibility.”

They filed back out of the IFV, milling around beside it. Evan noted that each of the other IFVs in the company had been assigned their own team of three Jarilans. They must have been reinforced at the same time that his team had.

Behind one of the tankettes, a little hatch swung open, a group of four Valbarans piling out. Hernandez gave him a nudge, prompting him to switch to a private channel.

“Fuckin’ clown car,” he said, chuckling inside his helmet.

The four little aliens bobbed over to them like a flock of pigeons, more squads crowding around, moving over from their own vehicles to attend what looked like it was going to be a briefing. They popped open their helmets, the visors opening like jaws to expose their scaly snouts. They looked like little velociraptors to Evan, their bright feathers currently concealed in something resembling rubber hoses that hung from the backs of their heads. Delta’s company commander had left his Kodiak and was making his way over to speak to them. Unlike the Marines, the vehicle crews wore only a flak jacket over their pressure suits.

There was another group of Marines that drew Evan’s eye, dismounting from a modified, six-wheeled IFV that looked distinctly out of place in the company. Unlike the reds and oranges of the vehicles that surrounded it, its hull was painted jet-black, and there was a full-blown turret on its roof instead of a blister. It wasn’t anywhere near as large as the ones on the Kodiaks, but it let the vehicle mount a far larger gun, probably an autocannon. It was bristling with tech and weapons. Evan could see a radar antenna, a blister mounted on top of the turret that had its own coaxial gun, and a guided missile launcher. There were smoke launchers and active armor systems all over the thing, along with slat armor that formed a kind of cage around it. It was expensive – that much was obvious at a glance.

As the men approached, he realized that they weren’t Marines. Their equipment was just as unorthodox as their vehicle, their mismatched armor and pressure suits colored in the usual UNN black. Some had heavily customized XMRs, while others were wielding older, caseless weapons that were not standard-issue. No two were exactly alike, but what they all shared in common was a full set of prosthetic limbs. They came in varying styles – some little more than skeletal, functional frames, while others were more elaborate to make them less jarring. There wasn’t a man among them who had lost one, two, or even three limbs. These guys were SWAR – a Navy special forces team.

“Listen up!” one of the Valbarans began, the strange flanging in her voice making her sound like a songbird imitating human speech. “Beyond this riverbed is a Bug defensive line. They’re dug in deep, with fortified earthworks and plasma nests protecting the perimeter of the chemical plant. We cleared the beach, but we don’t have the firepower to push through.”

“That’s where you come in,” another added, the two switching roles as though this had been rehearsed. “We need your Kodiaks to destroy those nests and punch a hole through the defensive line so that our Cozat’li tankettes can push through.”

“The Gue’tra armored vehicles will need protection as they move into the compound,” another added, presumably referencing the buggies. “Once we make it inside the perimeter, we’ll need to send troops inside the structure to clear it out and safely disable their systems. An uncontrolled explosion here would be devastating – it would spill millions of liters of contaminants into the surrounding lake. We know that they’ve been manufacturing fuel here, but they could also be making chemical weapons, so watch your fire.”

“Tune down your voltages for low-pen once you get inside,” the company commander added. “I want the Kodiaks loading hard-target munitions. Focus on the nests and try to minimize the return fire. The IFVs will move up behind the tanks. I want Marines and auxiliaries prepping for clearing operations. If the Bugs are as dug-in as we think, that means you might have to clear some tunnels and bunkers.”

“Trogs for a day,” Hernandez grumbled.

“We already lost two Cozat’lis trying to break through,” one of the Valbarans added. “They’re using plasma emplacements with a high rate of fire, and they likely still have some Scuttlers held in reserve. Those things can punch through even a Kodiak’s armor, so don’t get complacent.”

“Do we have CAS?” one of the Marines asked.

“Not so close to the facility,” the company commander replied. “One bomb or orbital strike goes astray, and the whole place will go up like the fourth of fucking July.”

“That’s everything we know right now,” another of the Valbarans chirped. “We can’t hole up here forever – so get ready to roll out.”

“Fleetcom thinks that Big Blue might be operating in this area,” one of the SWAR operatives added, his face hidden behind a visor that was patterned with a stylized decal of a cockroach. His helmet was covered in supplemental optical equipment, as well as a conspicuous comms package that jutted out above it. Curiously, his IFF tag didn’t list a name or a rank, just Roach. The rest of his team were the same. It looked like they were using callsigns. “Expect strong resistance, and call out any sightings of unusual Warriors or especially large Bugs. That could be our target.”

That meant that one of the Kings might be responsible for defending this facility, then. Evan flashed back to the ambush on the convoy, remembering the tall creature that had stepped out of its Warrior suit, how it had lifted that dead Marine to inspect him as though he weighed no more than a doll. If one of those things was on this island, then the Bugs would be more coordinated than those that they had faced in their previous engagements.

They dispersed, everyone returning to their respective vehicles, Evan joining the rest of his squad as they piled into their IFV again. Once he was secured inside, he could see through the external cameras that the Valbarans were mounting up, climbing into their tankettes and buggies. Their vehicles might be small, but so were the little reptiles.

The Kodiaks began to drive up the riverbank in a loose line formation, their weight collapsing parts of it, their treads churning up the soil. The IFVs followed behind them, then the Valbaran vehicles brought up the rear.

After only a few minutes, the ruined hull of one of the tankettes came into view, its armor slagged by what looked like concentrated plasma fire. The trees and foliage all around it were scorched, blackened by fires that had subsequently petered out in the humid environment. Almost as soon as the Kodiaks passed it, bright green streams of enemy fire began to pour out of the forest ahead. The glowing bolts splashed against the tree trunks, igniting the fronds of the ferns, impacting the front armor of the tanks. They weathered it, their turrets swiveling into position, recoil making them rock on their tracks as they returned fire. Evan couldn’t even see what they were shooting at from his vantage point, but he saw the torrents of earth that they kicked up in the distance, billows of flame rising above the treetops.