“This is Alpha One-Six,” Lieutenant Lucy Amoyo replied.
“Smoke but don’t engage. We’re going in. Out.”
The last sentence seemed to indicate that Amoyo was planning to lead the evolution personally in spite of Santana’s instructions to “. . . send the fi?rst squad up.” And a quick check of the ITC confi?rmed that impression. A fraction of a second passed while the company commander considered the pros and cons of pulling the platoon leader back. Then, having decided that no great harm was likely to come of Amoyo’s decision, Santana let the matter go. Alpha Company was up to full speed by that time, closing with the enemy at a combined speed of thirty miles per hour as chits on both sides of the valley continued to fi?re on them. Having called for air support, Dietrich gave a grunt of approval as a pair of navy Daggers roared overhead, and banked over the dam. Triple A burst all around the fi?ghters. One of them lost a wing and tumbled into a cliff, where it exploded. Consistent with their instructions, the second fi?ghter made a run at the tanks. A stick of bombs fell, explosions blossomed, and one of the beetle-shaped monsters took a direct hit. “This is Rover Four-Zero,” the pilot said laconically, as she passed over the company. “I’m running on fumes—sorry we couldn’t do more. Over.”
Dietrich thought about the pilot who had just lost his or her life. “You did good, Four-Zero, real good. Thanks. Over.”
Meanwhile, having arrived at a point halfway between the Ramanthians and Alpha Company, Amoyo took a sharp right-hand turn and led the fi?rst squad toward the west side of the valley. That was more diffi?cult than it sounded because there were irrigation ditches, dry-fi?tted stone walls, and other obstacles to leap over. Not to mention the Cyon River, which was a good six feet deep at that point, and moving at a steady fi?ve miles per hour.
But the T-2s were more than up to the challenge and were moving so fast that, when the enemy tanks opened fi?re on them, the chits inside the big, beetle-shaped machines weren’t able to traverse their secondary weapons fast enough to catch up with the agile cyborgs.
So as geysers of soil and rock followed the legionnaires across the valley, Amoyo and her bio bods were free to sow smoke grenades like seeds. Each bomb produced a cloud of dense black smoke that would not only prevent the bugs from seeing Alpha Company but block targeting lasers and enemy range fi?nders as well. And, thanks to the tiny bits of burning plastic that were ejected by the grenades, the screen was at least partially effective against thermal-imaging devices, too. Amoyo swore as her T-2 jumped into the ice-cold river. The water had risen all the way up to her waist before the cyborg made it to the other side, where he splashed up onto the bank. The good news was that her mission had been accomplished, but now she was on the west side of the valley, and cut off from the rest of her platoon. Suddenly she understood why Captain Santana wanted Staff Sergeant Briggs to take the fi?rst squad out. And, as if to reinforce the lesson just learned, the company commander put Dietrich in charge of the rest of her platoon. His voice fl?ooded the company push.
“Alpha Six-Two will take command of the second squad, fi?rst platoon. Out.”
Amoyo heard Master Sergeant Dietrich say, “This is SixTwo. Roger, that. Out.” That left her with no option but to wheel toward the enemy and thereby reinforce the company’s right fl?ank.
Santana saw the change on the ITC and grinned as the wall of black smoke gradually blew toward the south. “This is Alpha Six. Let’s hook the bastards! Out.” Everyone in the company knew what Santana meant, because the “buffalo horns”
formation dated back to the Zulu War of 1879, and involved the use of fl?anking elements or “horns” to at least partially encircle the enemy, while the “chest” or main force came up the middle. In this case, the main force consisted of two badly outgunned quads. Had Bravo Company been present there would have been four quads and something like parity. Still, it wasn’t as if Santana had a choice, given the fact that the bugs weren’t likely to surrender. As the Ramanthians rolled into the smoke, the fi?rst and second platoons circled around them, turned inwards, and immediately came into contact with the enemy’s APCs. The troops weren’t all that dangerous, not so long as they remained sealed inside their durasteel boxes, but the vehicles they were riding in carried grenade launchers and machine guns. The automatic weapons chattered madly as the T-2s entered a hellish world of drifting smoke, blazing guns, and fi?ery explosions. A place where Santana, like the bio bods all around him, was reduced to little more than baggage as Deker went to work. The key to survival inside the war fog was speed and agility. Deker cut between two dimly seen APCs, fi?ring both his fi?fty and energy cannon as he ran. The bullets failed to penetrate Ramanthian armor, but one of his energy bolts scored a direct hit on a track, which brought one machine to a halt.
In the meantime, even though Santana was being thrown back and forth like a sack of potatoes, it was his job to monitor the ITC and make sure that the melee didn’t get out of hand. “Watch for friendlies,” the company commander cautioned. “We have enough opposition without shooting at each other. Out.”
But the cautionary advice came too late for Private Steelgrip Cutright, who was decapitated by an energy bolt fi?red by Corporal Bin Han. So that, as Cutright’s T-2 continued to fi?ght, his headless body fl?opped back and forth, spewing blood in every direction. Nor was Cutright the company’s only casualty. Because some of the enemy APCs had discharged their troops by then, and bio bod Kai Hayasaki and cyborg Bin Batain both lost their lives when a shoulderlaunched missile struck them. Fortunately such incidents were rare thanks to all the smoke and the speed with which the T-2s could move.
But speedy or not, the smaller war forms had been unable to so much as scratch the Gantha tanks as the Ramanthians opened fi?re. The fi?rst rounds fell short of the quads but threw columns of dirt high into the air, which meant that the Seebos riding inside the quadrupeds could hear what sounded like a hailstorm as rocks and soil rained down on the metal above their heads. It didn’t take a genius to know that the big war form was being targeted, and that wasn’t fair. Not to Lieutenant-620’s way of thinking. Because having survived the horrors of the crater—the offi?cer felt that he and his men deserved something better than death in a metal box.
Of course, both Lupo and Xiong had been killed before, and had no intention of dying again, at least not so soon. So they answered the Ramanthian attack with a salvo of four heat-seeking missiles, followed by a blinding fusillade of energy bolts as all eight of their combined cannons began to fi?re. One of the enemy tanks exploded as two missiles hit it. A second lost a track, and began to turn circles, but there was no stopping the third. And that was scary, because as highexplosive rounds continued to go off around the quads, they both knew it was just a matter of time before one or both of them took a direct hit.
But only if they were stupid enough to attack the enemy head-on. Much had been written about the advantages and disadvantages inherent in the quad design, but there was one thing that no one could dispute, and that was the fact that the huge cyborgs could step sideways. Something tracked vehicles couldn’t do.
So the quads began to move away from each other—
thereby forcing the Ramanthian tank commander to choose between two targets. And, with each step they took, the quads could see more and more of the Gantha’s sloped fl?anks, where the machine’s reactive armor was slightly thinner. Then, when a suffi?cient amount of black metal was visible, the legionnaires loosed another salvo of missiles. The weapons hit, punched their way through the Ramanthian armor, and sent jets of hot plasma into the crew compartments. A powerful secondary explosion sent the Gantha’s turret soaring high into the air. It seemed to hang there for a moment, as if held aloft by an invisible hand, before falling on a burning APC. It was an important accomplishment. Because now, with the tanks out of the way, there was nothing to prevent the legionnaires from attacking the STO emplacement. But before Santana could give the necessary orders an all-too-familiar voice fl?ooded his helmet. “This is Zulu Six. Hold where you are. I’m three minutes north of you and I’ll be there shortly. Out.”