“Well,” Berto says. “There ya go.”
The slope leading up to the far side of the ridge is carpeted in creepers.
Berto brings us back down to five hundred meters and swings out over them in a slow, broad turn. They’re advancing in neat rows in a formation at least two hundred meters wide. The first ranks are made up of smaller ones, packed in so tightly that I can barely see ground between them. Behind them come what looks to be at least a thousand that are more the size of Speaker. They’re spread out a little better, with a meter or two between each row. The formation is flanked by thirty or forty spiders on either side.
“Guess we didn’t get them all, huh?” Berto says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Guess not.”
We loop around over the rear of the formation, then sweep back up to the top of the ridge.
“So,” Berto says. “I’m guessing the plan is that they send our people down first to soften things up, huh? And then when we’re out of ammo and getting ripped to pieces, the drones go in to do the real fighting, with the big ones coming in at the end to clean up the mess. Does that sound about right?”
I check the comm link. He’s speaking over an open channel. Our people can hear everything he’s saying. He realizes that at almost the same moment I do. “Cat—” he begins, but she cuts him off.
“Save it, Berto. We’re not idiots. You’re not telling us anything we didn’t already know.”
He closes his eyes, and his hands tighten on the controls.
“I know,” he says finally. “I’m sorry.”
He mutes our end. We drop another hundred meters or so and then circle back over the creepers again as they move up the hillside like an incoming tide.
“I make at least twenty-five hundred of them all told,” Berto says. “Gods, Mickey. Why do they even need us?”
I think again of the crèche.
“I don’t think Speaker’s people have so many of the big ones, but they’ve got a shit-ton of the little guys, and I’d guess the defender has a big advantage in tunnel warfare. Speaker said the collective didn’t have the strength to push them out alone. I think it’s pretty much just like you said. They’re counting on us to attrit Speaker’s people down to the point that they can come in and overwhelm them. They let our folks do as much damage as they can, then sweep in when we finally get overrun and butcher the survivors. Human militaries back on Earth used to pull the same basic move with colonial troops all the time.”
“Right,” Berto says. “So we’re not cannon fodder, exactly. More like shock troops? Berserkers? The bottom line is that our people are definitely gonna end up dead before this is over.” He pauses, does something with the controls that brings us around in another broad pass across the front of the creepers’ formation, then looks down at his hands and mutters, “This better be worth it.”
We settle into a hover a few hundred meters above the peak of the ridgeline and watch in silence as the creepers advance. On the other side, our people are gathered in a ragged cluster a hundred meters or so below the tunnel entrance.
“We’re here,” Cat says over the comm. “Are you gonna tell us when it’s time to go?”
I unmute our end of the line.
“Sit tight,” I say. “You should be able to—”
“Oh … shit.”
The first ranks of the creepers have just crested the ridge.
“Mickey?”
“Yeah, Cat.”
“There are a million fucking creepers coming over the hill at us.”
“I make twenty-five hundred,” Berto says. “Three thousand, tops.”
“And with those kind of numbers, they need our help? How many of them are there down in those tunnels, Mickey?”
“I don’t know, Cat. At least as many as there are out here. Probably more. Maybe a lot more.”
After a long moment of silence, Cat says, “This really is a suicide mission, isn’t it? You’re sending us down there to die.”
“No, Cat. It’s not … I mean … I’m not the one sending you.”
“Oh. Great. Thanks, Mickey. You’re a real friend.”
I look down. The Security officers are forming themselves into a phalanx. The reserves are milling around in a cluster behind them.
My ocular pings.
<UNKNOWN>: Are we allies?
Cat again: “Mickey? What are we doing here?”
Berto cuts in. “Mickey’s spaced. I think maybe he’s in touch with them now.”
<UNKNOWN>: Are we allies?
Berto nudges me with one hand. “Mick? You need to make a call here.”
<Mickey7>: Yes. We are allies.
“The ones on the hilltop,” I say. “Hit them, Berto. Everything you’ve got.”
He turns to stare at me. “What?”
“Hit them,” I say. “Do it now. Cat—form up and get ready to fire. You’re not going into the tunnels. You’re fighting the ones coming over the ridge. We’ll clear as many of them as we can, but we probably won’t get them all.”
“I’ve only got eight cluster bombs in the tubes,” Berto says. “What do you think we’re gonna accomplish here, Mickey? Those are the ones we’re supposed to be helping down there, right?”
The leading edge of the creepers’ formation is descending now, maybe two hundred meters shy of Cat’s position.
“Now, Berto. Before they get too close to our people. Do it!”
“Mickey?” Cat says as Berto swings us down and around and accelerates into a strafing run over the creepers’ front ranks. “What the hell are you doing?”
Berto looses his first two missiles. They strike an instant later, erupting first into twin fireballs fifty meters apart and then into hundreds of secondary explosions, fifty or sixty meters behind the leading creepers. The reaction is chaos. The first ranks continue on as if nothing had happened. The ones closer to the explosions, though, look less like disciplined soldiers now and more like panicked animals, scrambling around and over each other to get away from the centers of the blasts. We accelerate again, swing into a tight turn, and drop another fifty meters. Our second pass is farther back, near the first of the bigger creepers. These ones seem to understand the danger before we strike. They try to scatter, but there isn’t either time or space for them to escape. The missiles hit, and the air around us is suddenly thick with smoke and debris and bits of chitin. The ones we missed on the first pass are closing with our people now, but the Security folks have opened up, and I can see individual creepers shattering as the accelerator slugs strike them.
“There are too goddamn many of them,” Berto says as he swings around for a third run. I can see that he’s trying to focus on the largest grouping of the bigger ones this time, but the mass of creepers looks like a kicked anthill at this point and they’re spreading out as quickly as they can, making it more difficult to kill them en masse. The explosions when he launches kick up gouts of rock and soil again, but it’s hard to tell how many creepers he’s getting. We swing around one last time. Berto drops his last two warheads just behind the front ranks, close enough to our people now that Cat lets loose a string of curses over the comm when they hit.
“Sorry,” Berto says. “I was trying to give you some breathing room.”
When the field becomes visible through the smoke again, the creepers are scattered over a swath of hillside at least three hundred meters across. At first they move frantically, chaotically—but as I watch, a wave of order spreads from the back ranks, where the remaining bigger ones are forming back up. The surviving ancillaries stop scrambling, fall back in line, and move forward more or less together.
They’re not focused on the tunnel now. They’re entirely focused on our people.
“We did some damage,” I say. “How long to reload?”
Berto shakes his head. “An hour, minimum. No point, is there?”
He’s right. Those last two warheads bought Cat’s people some time and space, but the remaining creepers are surging through the craters now, converging on the little knot of humans.