I opened a channel to the Fleet people above. “Everyone in the first wave make it down okay?”
Miklos answered. He’d been catching up on current events for me while I was busy humping it after a hundred racing goat-troops.
“One pod had trouble Colonel-accidental weapons discharge,” Miklos reported.
“How many?”
“Six dead, ten wounded, sir.”
“That’s quite an accidental discharge!”
“We don’t even hint around about them lying sir-especially when we know they are. The Centaur Captain refused to let the transport take the dead and injured back up. They dumped their casualties on the grass and left them. They said something about serving the winds of-”
“Yeah, yeah,” I interrupted. “Sky, clouds, honor and all that. Well, I suppose they can at least enjoy dying here on their own planet. Any sign of incoming missiles?”
“Not yet sir, but it’s only a matter of time.”
Time. It was the one resource I never had enough of. The second wave was on its way down by the time I reached the protective cover of the broccoli-trees. I saw other units doing the same all along the landing zone. I’d given the individual commanders leeway in terms of tactics in the opening minutes of the drop. Everyone was to survive and move toward the target as quickly as possible.
Not one minute after we’d reached the tree line, I heard the snap and whine of incoming missiles. “Everyone down, seek cover.”
I threw myself flat, but noticed the Centaur troopers under my command seemed confused. They milled among the trees and directed their lasers toward the bulbous canopy of dark green pods overhead. I supposed they really didn’t know what to expect when under fire from an aerial bombardment. We’d done little with them in the way of training, other than equipping them with effective weapons systems and figuring out how to get them down onto the surface of this planet without killing each other. We hadn’t trained them in organized infantry tactics. There had been too many cultural and language differences, and most importantly, not enough time.
With all that said, lying down in the middle of a forest just didn’t make sense to them. They were herd animals that liked to run from danger, not hug dirt when it came. My order hadn’t been clear enough. I thought hard for a few seconds, muttering curses into the fallen, mushy pods that pressed up against my faceplate.
“I want every last buck to get his tail up close to a tree. Stand there and lean against it. Enemy fire is incoming. Move!”
I watched as they shuffled around for a few minutes in a tight group, then finally broke it up and went to separate trees. Part of the reason I’d given them the tree order was to break them up. They instinctively bunched up. I didn’t want a single lucky hit to come down and wipe out the entire company.
When the missiles did finally arrive, they missed us. The barrage peppered the grassy hills we’d just left behind. Orange flashes bombarded the open grasslands in a rippling pattern. Roiling white clouds shot up, and then moments later thousands of clods of black earth showered down. At least they hadn’t thrown a nuke-not yet.
Fortunately, my marines had been smart enough to clear the area immediately after exiting their pods. The machines hammered our empty LZ. I radioed Miklos, telling him to change the location of the next drop. He assured me new plans were in motion.
Then I jumped to my feet, calling for my Centaurs to follow. I charged in the general direction of the three mountain peaks. Behind me, the herd played follow-the-leader. It was a game they knew well.
We made good time, occasionally meeting up with other companies. We were to move as scattered, independent forces toward the mountains and regroup there for an organized assault. The plan had been left deliberately vague, as we hadn’t know exactly what we were in for until we put our boots on the ground.
Twenty minutes later, I was pleased with our progress. We’d made it halfway to the mountain peaks-a good ten miles-before anything went seriously wrong. At that point, we ran into one of their harvesting machines.
The systems the Macros used on this world were different than those I’d dealt with back on Earth. In the South American campaign, they’d churned out thousands of small robots that were essentially worker-ants for the colony. Here on this planet, however, they’d built much larger machines to do their harvesting for them.
The harvester we ran into was the biggest machine I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting while on foot. I’d seen its kind before, however. Back when Sandra and I had taken our ill-fated scouting trip out to the blue giant system we figured was probably Bellatrix, we’d met up with a mining robot on an airless rock full of metals. That thing had been rolling along on spiked spherical wheels and chewing up raw materials it found on the surface. This one had a similar look to it, but it had a cow-catcher sweep in front of the main maw. What it was doing, as closely as we could figure out, was digesting trees from the forest. It scooped them up into its maw like an electric shaver chewing on a man’s stubble. Chopping the trees off low at the base of the trunk, the organic material then ran up chutes and was chemically leeched and burned. Behind the machine, a massive black trail of charcoal as wide as a fresh-laid highway stretched out for miles.
We’d seen operations of this kind from space. Our reconnaissance didn’t show any of the harvested regions in this area, only virgin forests we’d planned to use for cover. My best guess was that the machine had been redirected here after learning of our invasion.
It really didn’t matter why the machine was there, what mattered was it was plowing right into my unit and it was incredibly big. I didn’t know what kind of armament it had, and I had no clue as to how we were going to kill it. But I didn’t let these details bother me.
“Spread out! Circle around behind the machine and shoot it in the rear. Aim for sensory equipment, joints and any weapons systems it might have.”
The Centaurs followed my orders-sort of. Rather than scattering as individuals or even squads, they broke into two groups which each swept around the machine on either side. I could tell by now they really didn’t like any orders that caused them to separate and act as individuals.
For my own part, I shot up directly into the air. None of my troops could perform this kind of trick, as they didn’t have full battle suits. I hoped it didn’t have an anti-air pod on its back-fortunately, it didn’t. The machine I’d met up with back in the Bellatrix system had ignored my scouting ship entirely. While this one was acting aggressively, it didn’t really have the capacity to do anything at range.
As my Centaurs flowed around its flanks, however, it did surprise us. Two side chutes flipped out. These were probably built to cut into groves of trees in hard-to-reach pockets near boulders and the like. Whatever they were for, they ate into my troops like lawn-clippers. A dozen or so Centaurs on each flank were separated from their hooves, in many cases from all four at once. Still alive, the flopping troops fell bleating into the threshing blades as they made a second pass. Blood fountained up and puffs of dark fur floated in the forest between the trunks.
The troops that survived flashed out with their weapons, burning the machine in a wild crisscross of beams. Vaporized metal puffed up from countless hits, but the machine seemed undaunted. Thirty seconds later, I was on top of the monster and most of my troops were behind it.
The harvester began a slow, laborious right turn. I could tell it was wheeling, trying to get its blades back into play. Apparently, it didn’t have anything in the rear area other than the exhaust system which laid out the charcoal byproduct. Another machine would probably come along eventually to pick up the material the harvester left behind-but by then I hoped to be miles away.
“Keep behind it, men,” I said. I realized even as I said it they weren’t men, but old habits die hard. “Keep shooting it in the ass. I’ll try to figure out what to do up here.”