Chapter 6: Major Hurdles

The IFV bounced over the craters and trenches, mud splattering its hull, Evan watching the scenery flash by beyond the external cameras. They were encountering no resistance on their way towards the mountain. It seemed as though the Bugs had completely abandoned the outer defenses beyond their ditch. The company was advancing in their usual formation, the tanks leading the pack in a loose arrowhead, the troop carriers following after them. The other companies flanked them to their left and right, extending into the distance, the rain making them fade away beyond a few hundred meters. The Yagda was floating along behind them, lifting small pieces of debris and clumps of wet mud with its gravity field, then depositing them on the ground again as it passed. If the Crocodiles didn’t have the firepower to make it through that wall, then the repulsor certainly would...

“I’m not seeing any defenses on the wall,” Evan mused, examining the towering mound of earth in the distance. “I expected them to try to mount some plasma guns up there, at least.”

“I’d call it strange if their plan wasn’t so painfully obvious,” Jade replied. “They’re clearly waiting for us to get bogged down trying to cross the ditch before they attack. Any tank commander who isn’t an idiot will have their guns trained on that wall, ready to drop them as soon as they show their faces.”

“Is it still a trap if we’re walking into it on purpose?” Evan asked with a shrug.

“That all depends on how it goes down,” she replied skeptically.

The convoy ground to a halt as the ditch came into view, the tanks forming a protective cordon as the three Crocodile engineering vehicles that had joined the company drove forward, lowering their plows. After appraising the work for a few minutes, they began to push dirt into the gap, filling it in. The going was slow and methodical, but the hastily-dug trench relied more on its steep slopes than its depth, so it didn’t take as long as Evan had expected. Still, there was no resistance from the Bugs. No mines, no mortars, no waves of infantry.

Before too long, the Crocodiles had created a narrow bridge that would allow one vehicle to cross at a time. One of the tanks inched its way across slowly, sinking a little as it compacted the earth beneath its tracks, but it made it to the other side without incident. One by one, the rest of the company followed, until they were all safely on the far side. Evan watched in amusement as Sunny simply slid down the incline, then climbed up the other side, leveraging the mobility of her bipedal suit. Her counterparts further down the line were doing the same, splashing through the little stream that was starting to form inside the hole.

“The UAVs aren’t picking up any enemy signatures on the other side of the wall,” Simmons mused, checking his display. “It’s close enough to the base of the mountain that they could have pulled all of their forces back inside.”

“You think they’re planning to fight the rest of the battle in the tunnels?” Collins asked. “That would give them a pretty big advantage.”

“Maybe,” Simmons replied, shaking his head in frustration. “But, why go to all this trouble to build the wall and the ditch if they expect us to make it to the mountain anyway? No, I expect they’re all going to come flooding out once we get closer. They’re probably just trying to stop us from shelling them.”

“They might have worked out the range on our artillery, too,” Jade added. “They know that we can’t drop shells on our own heads, so they’ll wait until we’re closer before they attack.”

“Whatever happens, we’ll probably be sitting this one out,” Simmons said as he relaxed back into his seat. “There are no more trenches to clear, tunnel running isn’t our job, and there’s nothing we can do in a tank battle. Once the Kodiaks have done their thing, our job will just be to secure the perimeter while the Trogs do their work.”

The three Crocodiles at the front of the formation lined up side by side, aiming their stubby cannons at the wall. First, they fired off a series of line charges to ensure that there were no mines planted in the hundred or so meters of land that separated the wall from the ditch, the explosions rocking the IFV. Next, they began to fire their main cannons, blasting holes in the obstacle. The Crocodiles were designed to breach fortifications, and their demolition guns were loading HESH sabots – rounds that expanded on contact with a surface before detonating to maximize the kinetic energy that they transferred. The result was massive holes being blasted out of the wall, throwing torrents of soil inward.

It wasn’t long before they had cleared a gap wide enough to get two or three vehicles through at a time, the Kodiaks taking point once again as they crossed the short distance. Much of the company held back, anticipating the counterattack that would no doubt begin once the proverbial rock hit the hornet’s nest.

“Here they come, right on time,” Simmons said as enemy targets began to appear on the shared network. The UAVs were picking up a flood of contacts that were spilling out of the tunnels at the base of the mountain, thousands of Drones swarming, Scuttlers and Warriors marching out of larger openings that might serve as garages. They began to climb the far side of the wall, the obstacle no challenge for the six-limbed infantry and the walking armor, the Scuttlers scaling the steep incline without breaking stride.

As soon as they crested the top of the wall, the vehicles opened up, mowing them down with fire from their blisters. Scores of Drones were torn apart, their ruined bodies sent tumbling back down the other side of the barrier, what Scuttlers and Warriors that emerged succumbing to withering fire from the Kodiaks. Most of them were taken out before they could even level their plasma cannons to get a shot off, the burning wrecks crushing more of the Drones that were trying to advance behind them as they slid down the slope.

“I get that the Bugs don’t surrender, but this is suicidal, even for them,” Garcia muttered as he watched the chaos unfold. “Are they really so desperate that trying to stop a thirty-mill with their face seems like a viable plan?”

“Maybe this really is all they have left to throw at us,” Hernandez replied. “The Queen is on the ropes.”

The Kodiaks began to drive backwards, retreating closer to the edge of the ditch. There was no reason to be so close to the wall when they could shoot the Bugs at their leisure. More of the insects tried to crowd through the breach created by the Crocodiles, but all that accomplished was funneling them into a bottleneck where they were cut down in swathes.

The massacre was interrupted as Borzka’s gravelly voice got their attention.

“The Yagda ... why does it fire into the air?”

Evan turned his head, looking behind them to see that the massive repulsor’s dual CIWS guns were shooting at a high angle, sending streams of tracer fire arcing into the air above them. One of its missile tubes popped open, sending an interceptor jetting into the sky on a plume of smoke. It looked like it was firing at something on the mountain. More Kestrels were joining it from further down the line, the anti-air guns swiveling into position. As he looked through the cameras on the roof of the IFV, he saw a cloud of dark shapes silhouetted against the clouds, growing larger.

“Incoming!” he yelled.

The IFV shook as one of the objects embedded itself into the ground like a javelin some distance away, showering the nearby vehicles with mud and dirt. Evan only had to look at it for a moment to realize what it was. The blend of resin and carapace, the tapering shape, the twenty-foot length. It was a drop pod.

“The Bugs don’t have drop pods!” Garcia stammered, quickly reaching the same conclusion. “We destroyed all their ships!”

“The mountain!” Sunny gasped, turning her suit’s cameras skyward. “They’re launching their drop pods from the mountain!”

The rest of the salvo began to land, the pointed vehicles slamming into the ground all around the formation. There was a sound like a giant hammer striking an anvil as one of them collided with an IFV off to their left at what seemed to be terminal velocity, spearing the troop transport on its pointed tip. The hull buckled under its weight, the IFV’s rear wheels lifting off the ground as it was practically bent double by the impact, the forces at play enough to rend steel like it was no stronger than foil. The drop pod fared little better, its carapace shattering, the two wrecks blending into a twisted mass of flesh and metal as they dug a crater into the wet earth.

There was a brief moment of stillness as the dust settled, punctuated only by the gunfire from the vehicles, then one of the nearby pods popped open. It fired off a piece of carapace with enough force that it bounced off the side armor of a Kodiak, rocking the tank on its tracks. The interior was similar to the one that had carried Sunny’s replacement suit to the surface, its walls lined with a glistening layer of padded flesh that would presumably lessen the violent shock of the landing. Something stirred within, an imposing figure stepping out of the opening, its familiar profile filling Evan with a cold stab of terror.

It was a Supermajor. The armored creature stood ten feet tall, its body covered in heavy, overlapping plates of carapace that bristled with sharp spines. Atop its raised collar, a helmet the size of a man’s torso turned to take in its surroundings with its array of eyes, the wicked chelicerae of its mouthparts flexing. It had the basic four-armed body plan of a Drone, but it was many times the mass of its smaller counterparts, its clawed foot sinking deep into the mud as it stepped out of the pod. In one pair of hands, it wielded the deadly rifle that Evan had encountered during his last run-in with the creatures, its long barrel lined with heat vents that resembled the gills of a fish. In its secondary pair of arms, it held a weapon that he had never seen before – something akin to a long pole made from resin. It had no blades or hammerheads that he could see, just a mass of flesh and electronics that were clumped around one end.

More of the things were emerging from their pods, striding out into the midst of the company’s vehicles, already close enough to reach out and touch their hulls. Blisters and turrets turned to track new targets, but the trap had been sprung, and the Supermajors were already moving.

Evan watched as one of the Supermajors strode away from its pod, approaching the nearest Kodiak from the right flank. The tank was forced to turn its attention away from the swarms on the wall, the blister atop its turret switching targets, bringing the glowing barrel to bear on the giant insect. It got off a short burst, the slugs blowing a trio of bleeding holes in the Supermajor’s shoulder, making it twist as it advanced. It shrugged off the blows, raising its anti-materiel rifle, shooting the blister right off the turret with a single round. The gills that ran down its long barrel split open, venting steam, making the air around them shimmer with heat.

The Supermajor placed a clawed foot on the tank’s hull, pulling the rifle tight against its shoulder, then began to fire. Once, twice, three times – the recoil rocked the ten-foot creature. The rounds sparked off the armor, digging craters in the ceramic plating, but failed to penetrate. Its rifle spewing jets of steam, the Supermajor turned its head, clicking its chelicerae as it watched the barrel of the Kodiak’s cannon swing towards it. The Bug was inside the weapon’s radius, too close for the cannon to fire on it, but the barrel hit it like a swing from a hammer. The creature weathered the impact, pushing back with its shoulder as it dug its feet into the mud, sliding on the wet ground. The Kodiak’s gunner wasn’t trying to use the cannon – he was trying to get a bead on the thing with one of the cheek-mounted guns.

The alien brandished the pole that it was wielding, the implement as long as it was tall, the blob of machinery on the top end making it look like a giant cotton swab. There was a flash of light, a stream of glowing plasma jetting from its tip like a cutting torch, the wavering flame taking shape as it was molded by a powerful magnetic field. It formed the roiling plasma into a blade the length of a man’s arm, the superheated gas flowing through the field like a liquid, a cloud of mist enveloping it as it turned the falling rain to steam around it. It swung the weapon like a glaive, sweeping it upwards towards the Kodiak’s cannon. The shroud that protected the vehicle’s barrel slagged, molten metal dripping to the ground, a shower of bright sparks flying as the blade bit into the electronics beneath. The creature jerked its weapon upwards and away, severing the barrel down the middle, the front half dropping to the mud below with a thud.

The creature spun the pole with practiced precision, aiming the wavering edge down, then drove it towards the hull of the Kodiak like it was spearing a fallen animal. Where the rifle had failed to penetrate, the plasma blade created a soup of bubbling, steaming slag. It held the weapon steady, letting the intense heat do the work, sparks bouncing off its carapace as it pushed the blade deeper.

Without the barrel in the way, the vehicle’s turret was able to rotate further, bringing its cheek-mounted missile launcher to bear. It fired, sending a salvo of rockets shooting out of the pod. They were below the minimum arming distance, so they couldn’t explode, but the Supermajor was knocked back as half a dozen missiles slammed into its abdomen at point-blank range. With another impressive flair of its glaive, it sliced through the pod, disabling the weapon as the still smoking missiles fell around its feet. It brought its wavering blade back to the cooling pool of molten metal, resuming its work, sinking the weapon deeper in search of some vital system.

One of the hatches on the turret flipped open, the commander emerging with his sidearm at the ready, aiming it at the Supermajor. He fired at its face, the thing raising an arm to protect its head as it recoiled, the slugs digging through its carapace with splashes of ichor.

The commander emptied his magazine, but as he began to slide down back inside the turret, the Supermajor leveled its rifle. It cut him in half, the round turning his upper body to red mist, leaving a streak of blood on the turret behind him. What was left of the body slumped back down into the crew compartment, the Supermajor readying its glaive again, fluids leaking from the bullet holes in its helmet.

The severed barrel of the Kodiak’s cannon rotated to face it, leveling to aim its chest, the commander’s handgun having forced it back just far enough to give them a clear shot. There was a sound like rending metal, what remained of the severed cannon exploding into a cone of molten shrapnel, its conductive rails peeling back like the skin of a banana as the magnets forced each other apart. They had fired the cannon, the sabot impacting the cooled slag, turning it into a tumbling mass of debris that threw the Supermajor back like a shotgun blast. It was joined by an arc flash as the unshielded electronics ionized the air, what looked like a lighting strike forking out to char the creature’s carapace, dancing across the Kodiak’s hull. Most of the sabot’s mass tore a chunk out of the Supermajor’s chest, shrapnel and flecks of molten metal peppering it, the dying beast slamming into the IFV behind it with enough force to lift its wheels a good few inches off the ground.

The Puma had taken a hit too, the sabot leaving a significant dent in its armor, even after dumping most of its energy into the Supermajor. The Kodiaks couldn’t fire their cannons at these ranges, not without a clean shot that they weren’t going to get with the Supermajors wading between the vehicles.

A dozen of the towering creatures were cutting a swathe through the company, using their blades to carve through the armor where it was thinnest on the sides and rears of the vehicles, firing at exposed machinery and weak spots with their rifles. They were met by blisters and turrets, but what had begun as a firing line was now a melee.

“Pull us back!” Simmons ordered. “Get us out of range of those fuckers!”

“We can’t retreat any further!” the driver shot back. “The ditch is behind us!”

“They’ve trapped us between the ditch and the wall!” Jade snarled. “There’s nowhere for us to go.”

Evan turned to look back at the dirt bridge that had been created by the Crocodiles. One of the IFVs was reversing across it, but it was effectively blocking the way, and no orderly retreat was going to be happening under these circumstances. Worse, the gunfire that had been keeping the Bugs on the wall at bay had now been redirected to the more immediate threat of the Supermajors, allowing Drones to flood over the obstacle. They were going to be overrun at this rate if the Supermajors didn’t finish them off first.

“Just try to focus your fire!” Simmons added. “There aren’t that many of them!”

Evan watched through the feed as one of the Supermajors made a beeline for Sunny, the Jarilan raising her shield as it aimed its rifle at her. The heavy projectiles rocked her, but she weathered the blows, her plasma field melting the conventional rounds enough that they couldn’t make it through the thick chitin. She brought the railgun that was mounted on her shoulder to bear, the weapon positioned high enough that it could fire over the barrier.

“On my target!” she barked over the radio, Evan feeling a tremor as the blister on the roof of their IFV joined her. The vehicle immediately to their left followed suit, the streams of tungsten from the three railguns converging on the same Bug, tearing it apart where it stood. Even a Supermajor couldn’t withstand that kind of firepower, the molten slugs blowing gaping holes in its carapace, punching through its redundant organs. Chipped away piece by piece, it collapsed to the ground, falling face-first in the mud as wisps of smoke rose from its wounds.

Everyone inside the IFV ducked reflexively as they heard a series of hammer strikes impact the outer hull, only their helmets preventing their eardrums from bursting. Simmons lifted his head, turning to glance out at a nearby Kodiak that had fired its blister straight through a target that had been standing between them.

“For fuck’s sake, watch your fire!” he bellowed. “You’re gonna kill us faster than the Bugs!”

Ahead of them, one of the Supermajors was using its glaive to slice through another Kodiak’s rear armor. It seemed to hit something important, because the turret abruptly stopped its rotation, its guns going silent. As the creature began to burn into the crew compartment, a nearby IFV lurched into motion, rapidly accelerating towards it. The vehicle rammed into the Supermajor from behind, sandwiching it between the two hulls, crushing its legs. Its blister unloaded on the Bug as it collapsed backwards onto the sloping prow of the Puma, the projectiles creating showers of sparks where they hit the Kodiak, its armor too thick for them to penetrate.

The Supermajors were starting to thin out, but the damage had been done. Several vehicles were disabled, and the Drones were almost upon them. They flooded down the hill like a red wave, crashing against the Crocodiles at the front of the formation, spilling over their hulls. There wasn’t much that they could do to damage the tanks, wrenching off ceramic panels and bending the comms antennae, some of them trying to pry open the hatches in a bid to get inside. Still, it was another distraction, more sparks flying as the vehicles cleared each other’s hulls with gunfire. One of the Crocodiles lowered its plow, starting to drive into the crowd, crushing half a dozen of the Bugs beneath its tracks.

The Drones seemed to think that Sunny might be an easier target, but their rifles couldn’t penetrate her armor, the Jarilan swinging her shield to knock them over like bowling pins. She leveled the suit’s plasma cannon, the weapon spewing a stream of superheated gas at the Drones, filling the space between two of the Kodiaks with emerald fire.

Chaos was erupting all around them, but all Evan and his squad could do was sit inside their IFV. If they opened the troop ramp and tried to help, all they would accomplish was giving the Drones a way inside and providing softer targets for the Supermajors.

Another one of the ten-foot monsters strode towards Sunny, the smaller Drones parting before it to avoid its thundering footsteps, communicating perhaps through pheromones. It shouldered its rifle, but she took the initiative, charging towards it with her shield raised. It only managed to get off a couple of rounds, neither of which penetrated her defenses, Sunny shouldering into it like a freight train.

The Supermajor stumbled back a few paces, its claws sliding in the mud. It bumped into the flank of an IFV, tall enough that it could place a lower hand on its hull to steady itself. The vehicle’s blister spun around to aim at it, the sound of the whirring motors alerting the creature, who severed the turret with a swift swipe of its glaive in what almost seemed like annoyance. Its attention was focused solely on Sunny. Whether it saw her as the largest threat on the battlefield or simply recognized her as a Betelgeusian from a rival hive, Evan couldn’t say.

“Sarge, I’m not gonna be able to get a clear shot at that thing if they’re ballroom dancing!” the gunner announced.

“God damn it, focus fire on the Drones and try to cover the other vehicles!” Simmons snapped. “Sunny can handle herself!”