Queen of Jarilo

Her ears swiveled forward, and her feline pupils dilated, shouldering her rifle and aiming it into the forest. Walker followed suit, and after a moment he heard it too, the unmistakable sound of something moving through the brush. They took cover behind a massive tree trunk, it must have been twenty feet around, and Walker closed his visor. He shut his left eye, activating the wireless scope on his XMR and poking it around the trunk to get a view of the enemy without exposing himself to fire.

"What do you see?" Kaz whispered.

Walker flipped his visor back up and breathed a sigh of relief, dropping his weapon to let it hang from his chest on its sling.

"I see a squad of Marines, looks like we made it."

He stepped out from behind the tree, waving to the soldiers, a group of half a dozen UNN Marines clad in black body armor emerging from the woods.

"It's nice to see something with four limbs," he called out, and a few of the Marines flipped their own full-faced visors open to greet him.

"The brass said you guys needed some backup," one them said, stepping forward to shake his hand. He must have been the squad leader. "You look like shit Sergeant. Wachowski, get the man some water. I'm Sergeant Andrews by the way, seventy-fifth expeditionary."

"You guys meet any roaches on your way in?" Walker asked as he took the canteen that was handed to him and unscrewed the cap. Kaz stepped forward to stand beside him, resting her long rifle on her shoulder as she appraised the newcomers.

"No sign of any Bugs, no."

"We've got one tailing us. Couldn't shoot him, everyone in the valley would have been alerted to our position."

"Tailing you?" The squad leader looked confused, and Walker shared the sentiment.

"Yeah, I've never seen anything like it. He's in the trees, out of range of my .45. He hasn't attacked, and he hasn't gone off to get reinforcements, as far as we know he's still up there."

"What the hell is it doing in the trees?"

"Must have crawled up there, who knows. Kaz thinks he might be following us back to base, but now that we're close to home we can shoot the fucker down."

"I hear that," the squad leader said as he waved a couple of his men forward, "won't do to let the flyboys have all the fun."

They aimed their XMRs at the treetops, searching for signs of the Betelgeusian scout, and there was a sudden rustling in the branches.

"There he is!" Walker shouted, seeing a flash of blue exoskeleton between the green pine needles. "Get him!"

The Marines lit up the canopy with automatic railgun fire, pieces of broken branches and pine needles raining down, but the insect was almost impossible to get a bead on. It was a hundred feet up and concealed by foliage, darting between the trees like a manic squirrel as the supersonic crack of their projectiles rang out. Walker expected to see its ruined body fall heavily to the ground, but as they ceased fire, he heard a loud buzzing that sounded like a motorcycle engine. As he scoped in his own weapon to take a shot at it, through the aperture, he saw the Bug rising into the sky. Its back had opened up into two halves like the shell of a beetle, a set of gossamer wings that must each have been four or five feet long moving so fast that they were little more than a blur. The damned thing was flying.

He took careful aim, but it knew that it had been rumbled and it was weaving back and forth in the air like a housefly. He exhaled and took the shot, a loud crack emanating from his gun as the copper-colored rings of the long barrel accelerated a tungsten slug to Mach fifteen. There was little recoil compared to a conventional weapon, and so he was able to keep the sights trained on the Bug, cursing under his breath as he missed it. It was just moving too erratically. It quickly vanished over the trees, Walker lowering his weapon.

"It...flew away," he said, unable to mask the shock in his voice. "Flying Bugs, I've never seen anything like it."

"A Betelgeusian with wings?" Kaz asked. "We need to call this in as soon as we can."

"We should get back to Charlie first," Andrews said, "I don't like being out here with no intel."

"Agreed," Walker replied, "my gut tells me that something big is coming and I don't want to be out in the bush when it happens."

"We'll escort you in," Andrews said as he waved for his squad to turn about. "Eyes open men, I don't want anything getting the jump on us."

CHAPTER 5: CHARLIE

They arrived at Charlie as the sun was setting. A twelve-foot wall ringed the outpost, the comms center and guard towers rising above them. They had put up Hesco bastions around the base of the wall to protect it from explosives, mesh and fabric containers that could be filled with dirt and gravel to act as sandbags. They did a pretty good job of stopping projectile weapons and shrapnel. The group approached the fortified entrance, concrete barriers shielding the two guards who were on duty, and they waved them through the open door. It was a forward operating base, with the Thermopylae acting as the main operating base for all of the outposts on the planet's surface, supplying and reinforcing them as necessary. For the moment at least, the carrier was untouchable, but they still needed boots on the ground if they were going to drive the Bugs off Jarilo.

Walker stepped through into the courtyard, his boots clanking on the metal grates that served as a floor and would stop the enemy from tunneling under their defenses. There were a series of prefab structures that had been dropped from cargo landers to serve as field hospitals, armories and the like, with the barracks and mess hall being comprised mostly of rigid tents. There was a guard tower on each of the four corners of the walls and raised platforms that would allow the soldiers inside to fire over it in the event that the Bugs attacked them. There were more bastions spaced at intervals between the buildings, separating them and diminishing the effects of any mortars or explosives that might make it over the wall.

The first line of defense against incoming mortars was the C-RAM system, an automatic turret with an onboard radar that could be deployed as a single contained unit, dropped into the middle of the compound. The gun itself was mounted atop a beige cube that contained all of its sensors and computers, about three by three meters, the turret on top able to rotate and pivot in order to track incoming projectiles. Once it detected a threat, it would use its gatling gun to fire a stream of twenty-millimeter, high explosive rounds that would hopefully destroy the target before it did any damage.

There were two landing pads, one of which was occupied by a dropship that was currently unloading its cargo of nondescript crates, and all around them were UNN personnel going about their business.

"Go get yourselves a hot meal and a bunk," Andrews said, "I'll report to Fleetcom and tell them about the flying Bug."

"I'm the ranking officer, I should file the report," Walker said. Andrews shook his head.

"All due respect Sergeant, you look like you're ready to keel over. You're no good to anyone if you're exhausted."

"He's right," Kaz added, taking him by the upper arm and steering him towards the mess hall. "Let's get some food in us."

Walker conceded, letting Kaz lead him over to one of the tents. She couldn't have know the layout of the base, as these structures had been erected only after they had set off on their mission, but she no doubt smelled the food. They stepped through the door, the interior fairly spacious with a ceiling high enough that Kaz didn't need to crouch, green fabric suspended on a metal frame making up the roof and walls. There were two rows of tables along the length of the mess hall, some of them occupied by soldiers, and a counter at the far end where a couple of cooks were serving food. They collected metal trays and waited in a short line, one of the cooks spooning bean soup into one of the recesses along with mashed potatoes and gravy, a couple of dinner rolls and what might have been turkey or chicken. To his surprise, Kaz didn't get very much more than he did. The fleet must be rationing until they could secure a supply line back to UNN space.

They shrugged off their packs and took a seat at one of the tables, the benches reinforced to handle the weight of a Borealan or a Krell, but not especially comfortable. The exhausted scouts ate in silence, too ravenous to waste valuable chewing time on conversation. Hunger was a spice that could make even the most basic meal taste like gourmet food, and so they didn't complain about its bland taste. The bustle and chatter around them was comforting. As much as Walker liked being out in the wild, the safety of the walls was a welcome reprieve after their unnerving run-in with the winged Bug. He was looking forward to a soft bunk, although at this point he could have slept like an angel on a bed of rocks.

Their meal was interrupted by a siren, the Marines around them dropping their cutlery and jumping to their feet, Walker pausing with a spoonful of mashed potato an inch from his mouth. He looked to Kaz, shaking his head in exasperation, then dropped it unceremoniously into his soup.

"No rest for the wicked," he grumbled.

They joined the soldiers as they flooded out of the tent, leaving their packs behind but keeping their weapons handy, what must have been a hundred Marines along with a couple of dozen Krell and Borealans filling the courtyard. The troops manning the guard towers were scanning the terrain beyond the walls with searchlights. Night had fallen, and all that illuminated the base were floodlights mounted on the interior walls and the glow from the buildings. The entrance that they had come in through was now sealed tight with a reinforced door that looked as if it could have withstood a damned nuke.

The noise of the siren and the speculation of the soldiers around them fell silent as Colonel Fischer stood on a crate to get their attention, waving for them to be quiet. The base commander wore UNN-blue fatigues and sported a bushy mustache that was greying with age, his breast adorned with his rank and insignia.

"Two of the sensors in the valley have been tripped," he announced, with a subtle German accent that betrayed his country of origin. "The delay between the sensors being disturbed and the timing indicates that the enemy is moving towards the base at a rapid pace. We expect them to arrive within two hours."

"Two hours?" Walker whispered to Kaz. "It took us the better part of a day to march back here through that terrain."

She shrugged, turning her attention back to the Colonel.

"I want men on the walls," he ordered, his hands clasped behind his back. "There are flashlight attachments for your XMRs in the armory for those who don't have one already, don't let them use the darkness to their advantage. With any luck, you'll blind them too. You've all fought Bugs before, you don't need me to tell you how to do your jobs. One more thing. We've had reports from one of our scout teams that Betelgeusian units capable of flight have been sighted, and while we've not been able to verify these claims, you should make no assumptions. Keep an eye on the sky, don't let them take you by surprise. Dismissed."

The crowd of soldiers fanned out, some climbing ladders and taking up their positions on the raised platforms that let them fire over the wall, others jogging off to the armory to retrieve their weapons and gear. It was easy to see the aliens, standing head and shoulders above their human counterparts. The Borealans leaped up onto the platforms with their long rifles, clearing the distance easily on their powerful legs, their bodies adapted to far higher gravity than that of Jarilo. The Krell were hefting their enormous shields, half a dozen of them taking up positions behind the sealed door. If the Bugs managed to breach it, then they would face an impenetrable wall of giant lizards armed with light machine guns.

Walker found himself wondering where the other scout teams were, and if any of them had made it back yet. If the encroaching Bug army came across them in the forest, then they'd have no chance of escaping.

He and Kaz were already locked and loaded, and so they took up positions on the forward wall, Walker trying to blink away his fatigue as he closed his visor and checked his rifle. In the field Kaz worked as his spotter, but there would be no carefully calculated shots taken at extreme range during a siege, and so she joined the line beside him. She rested her long rifle on the wall, dropping to her knees due to her exaggerated height, as standing upright would make the eight-foot Borealan an easy target. The searchlights from the guard towers played across the treeline, white circles sliding slowly across the terrain, perhaps fifty feet of blasted soil between the walls and the forest left over from the carrier's bombardment. It reminded Walker of the Somme, an ancient battle fought by now defunct empires that had left a landscape of ruined trees and cratered earth in its wake.

The soldiers to either side of them settled in, clad in black armor that contrasted with the scout's forest camouflage. Their XMRs were painted tactical black, while those of Walker and Kaz were colored to match their clothing. Now the wait would begin.

Recordings of battles and the outlandish movies that were shown to boost morale and improve public relations told of heroic engagements, Marines striding through enemy fire like actions stars, designed to capture the imagination and the attention of the audience. What you didn't see in the movies was the waiting, hours and hours of sitting around, twiddling your thumbs as you waited for an attack that could come at any moment. You could never relax, never let your guard down, and it could take days of tension and anxiety before it all came to a head in a short and brutal engagement that might only last minutes.

"Should have gotten a coffee when I had the chance," Walker grumbled, the man beside him chuckling beneath his protective visor.

"I wouldn't be so disappointed sir, the coffee here tastes like ass."

"Figures, that's how it was on Kruger too. The instant coffee packets that came with the MREs tasted better than the gritty shit they gave us, so we'd save them. I tell you, the guys who didn't like coffee were drowning in junk food and cigarettes."

"There's a battleship in orbit that can destroy planets," the faceless Marine mused, "but the Navy can't design an espresso machine that makes a decent cup of joe."

"Another glorious day in the Corps," Walker replied sarcastically.

***

Walker wasn't sure how much time had passed, the minutes felt like hours, and his tired eyes played tricks on him to form shadows that lurked between the giant trees. His leg was starting to cramp, he had been standing in the same position for too long, and he needed a piss. He shook his head violently, slapping his cheek with a gloved hand, trying to keep himself awake. He needed to be alert, but the trials and tribulations of the last couple of days had drained him, he felt as if he was about to collapse. He wouldn't of course, he had trained for this, and he remembered an engagement on Kruger III that had seen him go for seventy-two hours without rest. They had pills in the survival kits that could keep you operating for long periods of time without sleep or food, but the Marines were heavily discouraged from taking them unless they were in a life or death situation. You'd have to weigh if staying active was worth destroying your kidneys, and the UNN preferred that you didn't get transplants on their dime if they could avoid it.

Kaz yawned widely, exposing her sharp teeth, shifting position and trying to get comfortable. Crouching for that long must be playing merry hell with her legs. The boredom was palpable, many of these Marines would have much preferred to go out into the forest and hunt down the enemy, but the most satisfying solution was rarely the wisest.

"Incoming!"

A Borealan voice rang out through the compound, the alien's finely tuned senses alerting him to something that the humans had not yet noticed. Along the line, many of the personnel pulled down their visors. The Borealans had them too, though they preferred not to use them unless necessary, and the Krell had hoods on their armored ponchos that they could pull over their elongated heads to protect them from environmental hazards. Some Bug fleets had been known to employ chemical weapons when plasma proved ineffective, and so all UNN ground troops were equipped with rebreathers of some kind.

You could have cut the anxiety in the air with a knife, Walker glancing to his right to watch Kaz affix her helmet and drop the full-faced visor. There were two slots for her round ears that let them protrude from the top, with caps that could be fastened to create a seal in a vacuum.

The whir of the C-RAM echoed through the compound, the turret spinning on its axis to track an unseen projectile, and then it began to fire. The barrel spun, spitting out so many tracer rounds that it looked like someone was drawing lines in the dark sky with a celestial pencil, so fast that it sounded more like an angry insect than a cannon.

Walker watched as it found its target, the trail of orange points impacting a mortar shell and causing it to explode in mid-air with a bright flash. The rest of the rounds continued on over the horizon, the line slowly fading. It was far from done, however. Almost as soon as it had destroyed its first target, the computer locked onto a second, another line of orange dots streaming up into the sky. This was a full on mortar attack, and Walker worried that it might not be up to the task of stopping them all.

His fears were confirmed when he heard a whistling sound coming from somewhere above them, and something exploded far behind them with a force that shook his teeth. He turned to glance back, seeing a cloud of dust and smoke rising from the trees beyond the far wall of the base. A mortar round had gotten past the C-RAM, the first shot had gone wide, but they had probably been range finding. They would no doubt try to soften the defenses before starting their main assault.

The automatic turret was going wild, twisting this way and that as it frantically tried to defend the base, loosing a short burst of gunfire and then switching targets again. The sky was a patchwork of tracer rounds, like the scribbles of a toddler with a crayon, slowly fading from view as they arced through the air. They must be throwing a lot of shells at the base if the C-RAM was having so much trouble. Just how many mortar teams were out there?

After a few moments, there was another high pitched whistle, this shell exploding violently inside the base towards the rear. It landed by one of the many Hesco bastion walls that had been erected to minimize damage in just such a scenario, much of the debris and shrapnel embedding itself in the tightly packed dirt.

Two more whistles pierced the night, shortly followed by two more explosions, one landing just beyond the forward wall. Walker felt the shock wave, the line of soldiers that manned the defenses ducking behind the fortifications in alarm and covering their heads as red-hot fragments of metal peppered the wall below, soil that had been thrown up by the blast raining down on them from above. The second scored another hit, this time landing right on top of the mess hall tent, tearing it to shreds and throwing shrapnel about the compound. The bastions didn't stop all of it, and Walker heard somebody cry out as they were tagged by debris.

He turned his attention forward, but the smoke from the mortar rounds was already forming an obscuring cloud, making it hard to see. He cursed and tapped at the side of his helmet, cycling through his visor's view modes until he reached infrared. It let him see through the smoke to an extent, and he watched the cooling crater where the round had landed below, hot metal scattered about to look like flecks of red paint through his thermal filter.