Chapter 20

The criticals from our tunnel mission were to be back to duty before we dropped to the other hemisphere. There were many briefings on the destruction of a main hive. Thankfully I was not in them. They had Amy and she was certainly easier on the eyes than me, but I suspect her being an officer was more important than the ugly factor.

"Are you okay?" Amy asked me on the private channel after we had cleared the drop zone.

"Yeah. Same shit different day."

"Not this, asshole. I mean you've been off, even more fatalistic than usual since we got the briefing from Santiago."

"It won't work Amy."

"What? We can't capture their stupid unicorn?"

"No."

"The truce?"

"Yeah."

"How do you know?"

"I just do."

"Maybe you're wrong?"

"Yeah, maybe," I said placating her.

"Do you think we will find a unicorn?"

"Maybe we got lucky and roasted them all with the TBX," I said lying to her.

"Maybe. They seemed a little more disorganized than usual."

"Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth."

It came right on schedule.

"Whisky, operation Unicorn is a go," Cpt. Simmons announced over the company band.

I pulled up the main tactical grid on the battlecomp and saw the peacocks, the one white I did my best to ignore down to a thousand green with the vanguard of black gators.

"Seeing all them still does something to me. It's like primal. I'm not really so much scared. I'm more scared and alive at the same time. What do you think?"

I couldn't tell her what I really felt. I did my best not to think about it or acknowledge it and for the most part was successful. To survive I blocked it all out. Detached and calculating kept me alive. It was just a job. But somehow I found myself telling her anyway. Santiago telling us that the eggheads were aware of it had shaken me and I was worried.

"I can feel them. The excitement. Lust. Hunger. They all need to die. There can be no peace. I can feel them and they know it. It scares them and infuriates them." I said seeing the horde as we topped a rise.

"Thad?" Amy asked clearly worried. She has asked how I manage it. Fighting them and facing death countless times in the last twenty nine years. I had told her I don't take it personal. My hate had burned itself out long ago. I discovered that hate devours the hater along with the hated. That silly stuff about love and forgiveness gets you devoured even quicker. Just do your job.

But I had lied to her, to myself. I did hate them. It did not burn in me anymore. That was part was true. The fire had burned itself out long ago but I knew it had changed me. The Dragons, the RAS, the judge, the experiments all lifers endured back in the beginning, all the time spent bubbled up, it all had changed me. The hate had settled down deep in my bones as a cold malevolent thing. I felt a dreadful purpose whenever any Lizard was in front of me but, the Dragons felt wrong. I knew I needed to destroy them. It was getting harder to push away.

Her voice penetrated and I gave myself a good mental shake and snapped out of it. Pushing everything back I regarded the mass rushing towards us. Almost absently I noted that the Navy was starting to clear the air.

"Are you okay," she asked.

"Yeah. Just tired."

"I know. I love you."

"I love you too."

It was not a repeat of the last battle with them. Instead of several swarms rushing at us all at once there was this oversized one, which the battlecomp had at just under six thousand, where a more typical one had roughly three thousand.

Santiago's plan was fairly simple. Drive up the middle of them with three battalions and two split off at the end to flank hoping to meet it the middle. It's not what I would have done but he was not asking for my input lately. This swarm was different and had a different goal. There was no way to tell him that without telling him more than I wanted anybody to know. Maybe even Amy.

They wanted me and the officers. Hell they probably had the same idea we did. Capture some senior ranks. Only the Lizards weren't interested in any kind of truce. They wanted to roast their enemies publically and eat them. Capturing a Marine in armor was impossible, but did the Lizards believe this? But they wanted me. A Dragon in charge of a swarm like this focused the chaotic mess. As long as its will prevailed they would be more focused. The stronger the Dragon the longer it held control. At some point it would slip though. They always did.

My slip focused them on me. They had the same sort of resources we did and probably had the exact grid point I was on, but my slip let them feel. I had not slipped in a very long time, at least around any Dragons. The Gators were dumb and didn't seem to react very strongly.

Now they were moving with a purpose. I didn't care what Santiago thought of it so I was not snooping on the command channel. Hopefully he saw the difference in their movements. Even if he did and asked me though I wasn't sure I would tell him.

"Stay close," I told Amy.

"What are they doing?"

"Hunting."

Two thousand eight hundred and nine Marines met five thousand nine hundred seventy nine. They were not disorganized. Most of the time, as a Marine skipped past a gator it gave chase or got confused with the pace as another Marine appeared only to end its confusion permanently. That was fairly normal. These gators were not so easily confused. They had a narrow purpose. They focused on what was in front of them.

This is what a swarm of lizards is supposed to be like. All their lizard brains focused on a single goal. It was a terribly beautiful thing. Even in my hate I could admire their savage purpose.

When the Marines met the first rank of Dragons in green and skipped past the greens ignored the Marine unless the Marine misjudged and was within sword range. They only focused on those in front of them and only so much as they were in the way.

Amy saw it right away.

"What the fuck are they doing?"

It was a subtle difference but it should have forced a change in our tactics. We could use that against them with devastating effects, but as the tics rolled past, no change in movement came. Whisky was near the end of the formation that was driving up the middle. Santiago wanted to thin the ranks out before we tried to capture our prize. I could see officers going yellow at a much higher rate than usual. Santiago would be scrambling to maintain command and control.

"They're coming for you aren't they?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Tighten up 1st platoon," Amy said.

Given the situation I was not sure what would be best, staying with Amy or pushing ahead. She was at a greater risk as an officer. I wasn't concerned with surviving myself if I could do something to ensure she did. There was little doubt in my mind that she would push on until she confronted command's prized unicorn. I could kill it by myself most likely, but that wouldn't stop Amy from facing the same problem next time and I would most likely not be with her.

"Amy," I said but was interrupted right away.

"Shut up. I'm not letting you leave."

"When we get to them have the platoon focus on reds and lower. I'll deal with the rest."

"Oh. You sure? I'll be next to you, you know?"

"I know. We'll deal with the rest. But I tell you to get away you do it. Understood?"

"Okay, ' was her reluctant response.

A few tics later Gators started to trickle through. Then more until we hit the first ranks of green Dragons. With most Force Recon companies Lizards did not do so well. Far fewer made it past in general. Whisky liked to think it was some of the very best. It was. The numbers showed it for the most part even if you factored mine out. Whisky got more difficult missions so the numbers didn't tell the whole story.

When those ranks of Greens ran into our zone they were cut down. All of them. Amy must have said something to Simmons because the ROF was adjusted and everybody was sending slugs downrange at higher than Santiago's general guidelines. Even with the initial ranks of greens cut down the rest of the kindergarteners were right behind them. I could feel the White's control over the rest. Dragons are smarter than Gators and Lizards but they also have a more refined sense of self-preservation or at least when left to their own devices. These Dragons were firmly in the control of the unicorn.

The other ranks with yellow, blue, red, and purple were not so segregated. Dragons lead from behind so the whites and golds were safely behind the others. The dragon mid-grades were more mixed up, almost in platoons and squads.

We could see on the battlecomp that they were closing in their ranks on us. If they managed to stop our advance we were in trouble. Simmons was bunching us up in response to their closed ranks. It appealed to the cave man in our genes but against a force with such greater numbers it was not a good idea when they were so focused on one goal, me. We needed to play to our strengths and their weaknesses.

"We need to stay loose. This isn't a game of chicken, Sir," I sent over the company band.

"Right. Bravo five, repeat bravo five," Simmons said.

The nine squads in the three platoons split. Roughly half went port and the other half starboard. It surprised them. The Navy had cleared enough of the sky that the Lizards had lost much of their bird's eye, or bug's eye in this case, view. I made sure I was fully in control so the Dragons would have trouble finding me. It had become so ingrained and automatic that losing control earlier had me a little worried. As the Company seemingly went every direction we continued to fire with the battlecomp keeping us from shooting each other.