Chapter 8: The Dune Sea

“I can’t see shit,” Cooper complained, peering through his scope as he cycled through view modes using the bulky switches on his console. FLIR, infrared, night vision. Nothing could penetrate the swirling sand that choked the air.

“If this is going to go down like the ambush in the massif, then it’s gonna be like shooting clay pigeons,” the Sergeant replied. “The Rask threw everything they had at us, and they barely scratched our paint.”

“Yeah, well we don’t want to let them surround us either,” Cooper replied. He leaned over to give his commander a tap on the shoulder with his prosthetic arm. “Trust me, mate. Been there, done that, got the bloody t-shirt.”

“Just keep your eyes on the kill zone,” he said. “They’re supposed to be coming in from the West, but they may try to flank to our South.”

Charlie company was at the bottom of a three-pronged defensive formation, with Bravo and Alpha positioned North of them. The three mechanized companies had created a wall in anticipation of the Rask assault, with the Yagda and its accompanying artillery company far to their rear. The Kodiaks were spaced out far enough that they could only just see one another in the haze, positioned hull-down to make themselves harder to hit, their armor covered with camouflaged netting. Between them were dugouts that ran along the crests of the dunes, little more than foxholes that would provide some measure of cover for the huddling infantry, their rifles aimed at the slope below. Their IFVs were nearby, their own netting blowing in the wind as they stood ready to provide support for their squads.

“No satellite imaging, no drones, low vis,” Barry muttered from the driver’s seat below. “How are we supposed to see them coming?”

“God gave you organics for a reason,” the Sergeant replied.

The minutes ticked by, nothing but blowing sand filling Cooper’s viewfinder. The waiting was wearing thin on him, so many hours of nothing, followed by short bursts of frenetic battle.

Something suddenly lit up the swirling dust from somewhere above, Cooper switching to the Kodiak’s external cameras to see what was going on. From far to their rear, a stream of bright tracer fire illuminated the sky, the light diffused by the storm to make it fuzzy and indistinct. It was a CIWS gun, painting glowing trails as it weaved back and forth, trying to intercept something. There was an explosion, glowing like the sun as seen through an overcast sky, slowly fading as he watched.

“What the fuck was that?” he asked. The Sergeant had a finger to his helmet, Cooper waiting for an update.

“The Yagda’s CIWS is picking up incoming,” he replied, “something big just tried to hit us.”

“How big?” Barry asked from below. “The Rask aren’t supposed to have anything big!”

The gun began to fire again, spitting what looked like streams of glowing sparks into the roiling clouds. This time, there was a sound like a thundercrack, followed by a series of explosions that shook the ground beneath their vehicle.

“Got multiple incoming!” the commander yelled.

The CIWS was weaving all over the place, the sky must be full of targets. Cooper watched as there was an explosion off to their right, about where Bravo company’s defensive line should be. The light of what must be some kind of cluster bomb penetrated the storm, a series of brief flashes silhouetting the distant tanks against the sepia haze. More were hitting further up the line, their impacts shaking the dunes, the Marines in the nearby dugout hunkering down in alarm. The sound was deafening, even through the hull of the tank, every impact making Cooper’s seat vibrate. Fires raged in the distance now, at least a few of their vehicles had taken hits.

“They’re hitting our lines with some kind of ballistic missile barrage,” the Sergeant added.

“How do they know where we are?” Barry asked frantically. “How can they see us if we can’t see them?”

“Maybe they can’t?” Cooper suggested. “That last one hit way behind our lines, they might only have a vague idea of our position.”

High above their tank, a dark ring of smoke created a brief opening in the storm, a loud crack that echoed through the desert lagging behind it.

“Heads up!” the Sergeant yelled. The dunes around them seemed to erupt, great plumes of sand hurled high into the air as half a dozen submunitions impacted around them. It felt like their Kodiak was being picked up and shaken by the hand of an angry God, Cooper jostling in his seat as what sounded like shrapnel dinged off their armor plating. A moment later, a shower of sand rained back down on them, Cooper looking through his scope frantically as the smoke and dust began to clear.

The Marines to their right seemed okay, their dugout had done its job, but their IFV had taken a pretty bad hit. There was a massive tear in its hull where a jagged piece of metal had penetrated it, the armor pocked with smaller holes. Some of those submunitions had landed close, too close. Cooper could make out some of the craters that surrounded them, scattered about in a random pattern, most concentrated further down the dune that they were using as cover.

“Is ... is that the end of it?” Barry asked hesitantly.

They waited with bated breath, Cooper clenching his prosthetic hand to stop it from trembling. Only the low rumble of their engine penetrated the eerie silence, Cooper listening to his own labored breathing inside his helmet. He checked his flak jacket briefly, ensuring that the straps were tightly fastened.

Another projectile impacted to their left, only missing the Kodiak by a measure of a dozen meters. It hit the sand with so much energy that it created a brief flash of light that threatened to blow out the cameras on their port side. A blast wave rocked the tank on its tracks, sand hammering their hull like buckshot. When Cooper was able to look again, he saw that the crater the object had left in its wake had filled in with a dark material that resembled reflective, black ice. The intense heat had melted the sand, turning it to glass.

“Railguns!” he yelled, covering his helmeted head as another strike rocked them. They were falling from the sky like a meteor shower, impacting all around them, their intense kinetic energy seeming to turn the world inside-out. One of the Kodiaks down the line to their right took a direct hit, the tungsten penetrator cutting through its armored hull like a hot blade through butter, molten shrapnel spraying. The tank’s chassis immediately ruptured, torn open like pot metal under the immense forces, its massive turret thrown into the air by the impact. The ground beneath it erupted, lifting the entire vehicle a few feet off the sand as though a mine had gone off beneath its tracks, the projectile dumping the rest of its energy into the dune. The turret landed heavily beside the wreck as it began to burn, its fuel cells cooking off, dark smoke billowing into the air.

Another hit one of the dugouts, the huddling Marines simply disappearing in a spray of sand as they were all but vaporized. It was close enough to catch the Kodiak, Cooper gritting his teeth as their tank was lifted off the ground in a spray of melting sand. His stomach lurched, they were in motion, but there was such chaos around him that he couldn’t tell what was happening. He gripped whatever handholds he could reach, bracing himself as he was shaken and jolted.

When they finally came to a stop, and the dust began to clear, he saw that all of the cameras on their right flank had been destroyed. He switched to the view from the commander’s blister instead, realizing that they were now at the bottom of the dune, the deep furrows that they had left in the slope clearly marking their path. The railgun salvo had all but demolished the crest upon which Charlie had been positioned, like kicking over a sandcastle at the beach. None of the other vehicles were in sight now.

“Sarge!” Cooper yelled, reaching over to shake the commander. “Sarge! You alright?”

He shifted in his seat, giving a weak thumbs-up.

“What happened?” he asked, his face obscured behind his visor.

“We slid down the dune,” Cooper explained. “Barry!” he added, stamping his boot on the deck. “Barry, are you alive, you cunt?”

“I’m okay!” he yelled back, “but Sheila’s fucked. The right track is gone, and I’m getting nothing from the bloody engine. That impact must have shaken something loose, or fried one of the motors. Fuck knows.”

“Run a diagnostic,” the Sergeant ordered, taking control of the blister. “Damn it, we aren’t going anywhere with a thrown track. We need to get back into formation.”

“Do we even have a defensive line anymore?” Cooper asked, gripping his joystick as he angled the turret to the West. “The dune is gone, I got no eyes on friendlies.”

“Bloody hell, we’ve lost the right gun pod too,” the Sergeant grumbled. “Fucker was ripped right off. The blister is working, I got the thirty-mil, the grenade launcher, and the mortar online.”

“The turret is fine,” Cooper added. “Left gun pod is still working.”

“They were softening us up,” the Sergeant growled, “breaking our lines before they send in their troops. Where the fuck were they firing from? There are no bases out here. They couldn’t have built any in secret, our satellites would have spotted them.”

“Wait,” Cooper muttered, narrowing his eyes as he saw movement through his viewfinder. There was something in the storm, dark shapes moving just out of view.

“You got something?” the Sergeant asked, turning to his own display.

“Bearing two-eight-five, thought I saw movement...”

The shadows took form, a line of charging Rask emerging from the dust. There must have been two dozen soldiers, their bayonets at the ready as they raced forward, clad in a blend of black Shock Trooper armor and traditional leather. Behind them came a wheeled vehicle, a human flatbed that had been stripped down and crudely rebuilt to accommodate an alien driver. The front of the truck was clearly original, with a pair of sweeping headlights, the hood curved and streamlined. Everything from the windshield back had been crudely welded and riveted together out of thick armored plating, sprayed over with a desert camouflage pattern. Leather saddlebags hung from the chassis, and there was an extra fuel tank attached at the rear, a snaking hose trailing beneath the drive train. The massive shocks bounced as it rolled forward on its treaded tires, more aliens advancing alongside it. On the bed at the rear was mounted an XMR of the type usually wielded by Krell auxiliaries, a massive light machinegun with a gun shield positioned just behind the barrel.

They were headed for what had once been the crest, but the presence of the Kodiak surprised them, the aliens changing direction as they began to point and yell.

“Open up on them!” the commander bellowed, hitting the trigger on his joystick. The thirty-millimeter railgun sprayed the Rask with molten tungsten, tearing through their ranks, the aliens dropping as he cut a swathe through the formation. They were already returning fire, the telltale ring of XMR rounds bouncing off the tank’s armor echoing.

The technical jerked to a stop, rocking on its suspension, the gunner turning the LMG in their direction. The magnetic coils that lined its long barrel began to glow red as it sprayed them, impacting the damaged right side of the Kodiak. A squad of Rask got the picture, taking cover behind the truck, peeking out to take potshots where the armor was weakened.

“These guys aren’t as dumb as the others!” Cooper yelled over the din. “Watch our left, there’s another group flanking!”

The Sergeant swung his turret, warding off a group who had been trying to sneak around them, turning them to red mist. The storm was so dense that they could only see maybe fifty meters in any direction. The enemy could come at them from any angle, and they wouldn’t know it until they were right on top of them.

“Take out that truck!” the Sergeant ordered, Cooper spinning his turret to face the technical. The Rask scattered, recognizing a railgun barrel when they saw one, Cooper pulling the trigger on his joystick. The injured tank shuddered as a sabot was accelerated down the barrel, the projectile obliterating the jury-rigged vehicle, fragments of shattered metal spraying. The charred remains rolled across the ground, a few dismembered Rask who had been caught in the blast staining the sand red.

“We’re running on battery power!” Barry warned. “I’m reading no charge from the fuel cells. There could be a hundred things wrong with it, but we’re not generating any power.”

“How long will our reserves last?” the Sergeant demanded, firing off a mortar. The shell whistled through the air, landing a short distance away, the flash of light illuminating the silhouettes of more advancing Rask.

“No bloody clue,” Barry replied. “Not long!”

Cooper spun his turret, slightly off-kilter thanks to their position on the sloping dune, firing his gun pod at another group who had emerged from the obscuring dust.

“Well, that’s just great,” he complained as the auto-loader moved another sabot into the main gun’s barrel. “What the fuck do we do when we run out of juice?”

“We’ll deal with that problem when we come to it!” the Sergeant replied, his eyes fixed on his display as he gunned down a Rask who had been taking cover behind the twisted wreckage of the truck. “Right now, focus on keeping us alive!”

There was fighting in the distance now, flashes of light, gunfire ringing out. There must be Rask attacking all three companies, taking advantage of the confusion created by their artillery strike.

“Bearing three-fifteen, another vehicle!” the Sergeant warned. Cooper was already traversing his turret to face it, spotting what looked like an old PDF armored personnel carrier emerging from the haze, its tracks churning up the sand. It had been painted with the same slapdash desert camo, its bulky hull reinforced with riveted armor plating. It had no turret, it was little more than a glorified police vehicle. The troops had dismounted, and they were making their way alongside it, using it as mobile cover. Those were not Rask tactics, they had no armored vehicles of their own. Either these cats were Navy-trained, or those who had been through their integration training had passed that knowledge on to others. Were there Rask instructors out here training the locals in UNN tactics?

He selected an armor-piercing sabot, the auto-loader slotting it into place, his prosthetic finger pulling the trigger on his joystick. There was an unusual flash of light from the end of the barrel as the Kodiak rocked, the round creating a shower of sparks as it hit the front armor of the APC, going through it like wet paper. The vehicle rolled to a stop, its squad breaking for cover. Anything inside it had just been turned to pulp.

“I think the bloody plasma compensator on the barrel just fell off!” Cooper said, loading another shell.

“Doesn’t matter,” the Sergeant replied. “Do you see any friendlies nearby? Keep firing!”

“I think our comms were damaged!” Barry called out from beneath them. “I can’t get any reception on the local channels, trying the ad-hoc on my suit.”

“They’re gonna overrun us if we don’t get a call through,” the Sergeant muttered. “We need backup.” There was a thunk as he fired the mortar, the shell landing a dozen meters away from them. Its flash silhouetted another group of Rask, their bodies hurled into the air by the explosion. He followed it up with a barrage of thirty-millimeter rounds, the slugs dismembering a squad of aliens who were trying to charge them, the hypervelocity projectiles severing limbs and creating clouds of red mist. Cooper helped him out, spraying a stream of twenty-millimeter caseless rounds from his gun pod. They weren’t nearly as devastating as a railgun, but the conventional bullets were still deadly against soft targets, a handful more of the aliens stumbling to the sand as green tracers bounced into the air.