Queen of Jarilo

They wouldn't keep this up for long, they had to know that mortars weren't much use against fortified positions and their ammunition would be limited to what they could carry with them through this rough terrain.

There was another whistle, but no explosion this time. Instead, an ominous canister embedded itself in the soil towards the far end of the courtyard with a dull thud. Noxious, yellow-green gas began to pour from it, quickly forming an expanding cloud. It was probably phosgene. It was colorless under normal circumstances, but the Bugs used chlorine to help spread the denser and more lethal compound. It was no danger to anybody wearing a suit and using a rebreather, as it reacted with the mucous membranes to cause irritation and suffocation, but it was commonly employed as an area denial weapon to force the enemy to abandon their cover. The whole damned base would be contaminated, they would have to thoroughly clean everything and everyone that had come into contact with the substance. What a pain in the ass...

Another canister landed wide, the yellow cloud wafting between the trees to his left.

"Airstrike, get down!" Walker heard someone shout. He ducked below the lip of the wall and covered his head, bracing himself against the metal. No way had they dispatched fighter-bombers already, the Thermopylae must be gearing up for a precision strike with her railgun batteries. He hoped to God that whoever had called in the coordinates knew what they were doing.

There was a flash of light that lit up the sky like a sun, fading slowly. Walker violently pulled down the Marine beside him who had foolishly raised his head to peek over the wall. Almost immediately a blast wave hit them, the wall shaking in its foundations, soon followed by a hail of debris that hammered them so hard that it rang against the metal like machine gun fire.

"Stay down!" he shouted over the din, the Marine scrambling to get lower. Those railguns hit with the force of a small meteorite, releasing the equivalent of several tons of TNT in kinetic energy. That strike had been dangerously close.

He waited, the Marine looking to him in confusion, and then there was another rain of dirt and small rocks that had been thrown up into the atmosphere from the force of the blast. They came down hard, showering the base, dinging off helmets and clattering on the roofs of the prefab buildings.

Walker let the Marine up, joining him as he glanced over the wall, a pillar of smoke rising from the forest a few miles away. If the mortar position had been anywhere near that blast, then they were toast. They would have set up far from the main force, however. The defenders could not rely on the carrier for more support.

"You gotta give the shit that the railgun impact throws up time to fall back down," he explained, the Marine nodding his head vigorously. "Don't get up until then, or you might get clocked by a rock."

"Y-Yes sir, thank you."

He couldn't really be blamed, there weren't many scenarios where orbital railguns were used as close fire support. Walker had half a mind to go find whoever had suggested it and shove their transmitter down their throat.

"Get ready, they're coming," Kaz hissed.

Dozens of flashlights joined the larger searchlights from the guard towers, illuminating the treeline in a white glare, casting dark shadows between the trunks that effectively did little to improve visibility. The Bugs had tested them with the mortar fire, probing for weaknesses in their defenses, so where was the main force? Why were they delaying their attack?

There was a flash of green light from somewhere in the adjacent treetops, one of the soldiers down the line to Walker's right tumbling backwards off the platform, his head snapping back violently with the force of the impact as a plasma bolt hit him square in the face. It must have broken his neck, as he didn't scream when the bubbling plasma melted through his visor and seared his flesh, his limp body falling to the metal grates below with a thud.

There was a moment of silence, the calm before the storm, and then a chorus of weapons fire and battle cries rang out.

"They're in the trees!" Walker heard someone shout. "Aim for the trees!"

The chatter of automatic railguns was deafening, his helmet dampening the sound and attempting to filter through those that the algorithm deemed more important, perhaps thirty soldiers opening up on the forest.

They were answered by more sniper fire, flashes of green light betraying the enemy positions amongst the branches, more of the winged Betelgeusians no doubt. Railgun slugs impacted the tree trunks to send splintered wood flying through the foliage like shrapnel, glimpses of iridescent shells visible where the light of their torches caught them, the Bugs firing back with their long rifles. The aliens favored plasma over solid projectiles, their guns accelerating a magnetically-contained bolt of plasma to comparable velocities, with the added benefit of transferring the heat from that ionized gas to the target. The plasma burned at thousands of degrees centigrade and would melt ceramic armor like it was made of paper. Their suits actually did a pretty good job of dispersing the heat, all things considered, but a direct hit was never going to be pretty.

A few of the Marines were using plasma too, the XMRs had interchangeable receivers that could be swapped out to handle different munitions, as both methods could make use of the same barrel and underlying components. Railgun slugs were accelerated magnetically, while plasma was contained using magnetic fields and then fired through those same means, which meant that a trained Marine could switch receivers in a few seconds and be ready to fire whatever ammunition the situation called for. Everyone carried a spare receiver and two kinds of ammunition on them at all times as the Bugs were fond of using handheld shields that could stop a solid projectile, but could be overloaded by concentrated plasma fire.

The blue bolts of plasma from the UNN side splashed against the trees, quickly starting fires, the high oxygen content in Jarilo's atmosphere fanning the spreading blaze. The two guard posts on the forward wall fired their belt-fed grenade launchers, thirty-millimeter shells hammering the treetops in short bursts, knocking down branches and impacting the thick trunks in puffs of white smoke that were quickly carried away by the wind. Some of the thinner trunks were split in two, falling to the ground and bringing the fronds of green pine needles with them, Walker spying a couple of broken Bugs hitting the dirt as the branches came down around them.

A bolt hit the wall in front of the Marine to his left and made it ring like a bell, the metal sagging inward and glowing molten orange. Fortunately, the material was thick enough to prevent the plasma from melting all the way through. The Bugs were good shots, but they had lost the element of surprise, and the return fire was shredding them.

Walker rested his rifle on the wall, one hand on the trigger and the other on the buttstock, giving him a lot of stability as he closed his left eye and his computer switched his view to the sight. He searched for activity and spied something orange and shiny between two trunks, then fired, the slug hitting the target dead center and spraying green ichor along with fragments of its shattered carapace. It tumbled out of the tree, a Bug with a striking, orange shell and two horns protruding from its head that reminded him of a stag.

Unlike with humans, a headshot might not kill a Bug outright, their brain stem extended into their torso. The best way to drop one was to aim for the solar plexus, right between the two sets of arms.

Some of the Bugs were changing positions, they were indeed capable of flight like the one that had followed Walker and Kaz through the forest for so many miles. Walker pumped a few more rounds into the trees for good measure. His scout rifle was semi-automatic, suppressing the winged snipers as they tried to fall back. It was to no avail, however. The concentrated firepower had sealed their fate, licking flames spreading from tree to tree as they were pounded by grenades and hypersonic projectiles.

They were in full retreat, and cries of victory rang out through the compound, but Walker knew that the Bugs wouldn't just send a handful of snipers to assault a UNN stronghold. As the cheering died down, a new sound came from deep within the forest, a chittering that grew louder and louder until it became a cacophony. It sounded like rain on sheet metal, beads in a maraca, a sound that Walker was all too familiar with.

The glow of energy shields lit up the forest, a phalanx of flickering ovals, colorful plasma contained and shaped within magnetic fields to form a protective barrier. Drones, the foot soldiers of the Betelgeusian armies, swarming between the trees in all of their myriad hues. They each carried a shield in one arm and a plasma pistol in the other, their lower set of arms hovering near ceremonial daggers that were sheathed in molded recesses in their armored thighs, ready to be drawn once they closed into range.

They fired on the troops defending the wall, bolts of plasma splashing against the metal, lower power and velocity than their longer barreled counterparts but no less deadly. The Marines returned fire, but the superheated plasma that made up their shields melted the tungsten slugs harmlessly on contact, showers of sparks and flecks of molten metal spraying from the impact points. A few of the shots hit their mark, blowing out the legs from under the Bugs or slipping past shields to glance a shoulder. Walker and Kaz were already switching out their receivers, the Marine to their left doing the same, slower and less practiced than the seasoned scouts. Walker took a canister about the size and shape of a soda can from his belt, slotting it into the new receiver like a magazine. The container was full of the ionized gas that would be used as ammunition.

"Focus fire on the shields!" he called out over the noise of battle, "overload them!"

The Bugs marched towards the wall, at least a hundred of them, interlocking their shields over their heads like Roman legionnaires. More covered them from the relative safety of the woods, popping out from behind the trees to lay down suppressing fire with their rifles.

One of the Bug shields overloaded under the focused plasma fire, flickering and fizzling out, half a dozen bolts of ionized gas splashing against the Drone beneath and making it melt like a plastic toy in a microwave. The hole in the formation was quickly filled, there were so many of them crossing the open ground between the base of the wall and the forest, their iridescent shells reflecting the flashlight beams.

"They're movin' up to the door," Kaz hissed, her six-foot long XMR braced against her shoulder as she fired it into the crowd below. The projectile was accelerated to such a high velocity due to the length of the barrel and the number of its magnetic rings that it knocked the target Bug off its feet, the creature falling on its back as Walker plugged a couple more rounds through its chest for good measure.

The exchange of fire was constant, green and blue plasma bolts shooting back and forth like strobe lights, the thirty-millimeter grenade launchers in the guard towers scattering the Bugs as they kicked up clouds of dust and smoke. It sounded as if similar gun battles were going on at each of the four walls. The Bugs were keeping them busy, but their target had to be the reinforced door.

They reached the concrete barriers and swarmed over them with relative ease, reaching the steel doors and piling on top of one another as they raised their shields to protect those below.

"They're doing something to the door!" one of the Marines down the line called out. He leaned over, struggling to aim his weapon directly down, more of the Bugs forming up to shield their fellows. Many of the defending soldiers turned their attention to the door, noticing that the Bugs were trying to breach it, but the line was thrown into chaos as half a dozen winged Drones descended on them from above.

They dropped from the sky like paratroopers on their gossamer wings, plasma pistols and wicked knives drawn as they waded into combat, getting the jump on a few Marines and butchering them before they had a chance to defend themselves.

One dropped down beside Walker, its three-toed, chitinous feet landing heavily on the metal grate that made up the raised platform. He had been looking through his scope and reacted too slowly to its arrival, one of the razor-sharp, ceramic knives plunging towards his neck as the amber-colored alien lunged forward.

Kaz was on it in a flash, leaping over Walker on her spring-loaded legs, half a ton of angry Borealan knocking it to the ground. She pinned it with her immense weight, the insect grappling with her, surprisingly strong despite its small stature. One of the detriments of using a long gun was that it was unwieldy in close quarters, but that was where Mad Cats were most at home, Kaz tearing into the thing with her claws. It was very nearly holding its own, peppering its furry assailant with cuts and stabs, but such injuries were of no more concern than a paper cut to her kind. Her claws glanced off its curved shell, unable to find purchase, and so she drew her Bowie knife and plunged it into the Bug's chest. She put all of her strength into the blow, cracking the armor where she punctured it, ichor the color and consistency of mucous bleeding from the wound as the Drone ceased its struggling. The Marine to their left watched the scene, his visor down, but Walker had no doubt that his eyes were wide with shock. The damned thing would have diced the both of them if she had not been there to stop it.

She moved down the line, more of the Borealans abandoning their positions on the wall to tackle the winged Drones, bestial snarls and the cracks of smaller caliber sidearms ringing out across the compound.

"Watch your goddamned fire!" someone shouted, no doubt alarmed by the impromptu firefight that was going on around them. The defensive line on the wall had turned into a fucking mosh pit, but Walker tried to focus, turning his attention back to the crowd of Bugs by the door. They were up to something, and the flying Drones had provided enough of a distraction that most of their shields were still up. He opened fire on them, watching one of the insects lunge to put itself in the way of his plasma, deflecting the bolts with its crackling shield. They were piled on top of each other, at least three Bugs deep, swarming and moving incessantly.

They really needed to put a stop to whatever the roaches were trying to do, but the thirty-millimeter grenade launchers couldn't hit them at that angle, and many of the troops on the forward wall were too busy engaging the flyers. He glanced to his right, watching a male Borealan skewer a Drone on its bayonet, lifting it clear off the ground before firing off a round directly into its midsection. The Bug blew apart, split in two as the soldiers around it were sprayed with green goo and fragments of its ruby-red shell. Just behind him, a wounded Marine was pulling one of their ornate daggers from his ribs, unloading a handgun into his prone assailant.

The Drones must have known that they couldn't prevail and yet they had sacrificed themselves, likely as a diversionary tactic. Damned zealots.

Walker pulled a grenade from his belt and primed it, many of the other Marines getting the same idea, and they pelted the roiling pile of Bugs with the explosives. Many were deflected by shields, but a couple of them found their marks, Walker ducking behind the wall as a series of blasts shook its foundations. He peeked back over the lip of the fortifications, seeing that the pile of Bugs was still mostly intact. Those on top had shielded those below from the shrapnel and had died in their stead. It was at times like this that Walker wondered if these aliens were even sentient, if they had any concept of individuality or whether they just functioned on instinct alone.

There was a flash of light beneath him, as if the rays of a sun were bleeding through the doorway, and he instinctively averted his eyes as the tinting function on his visor took a fraction of a second to kick in. He had expected shaped charges, some kind of explosive, but the steel doors sagged and melted under the heat as if they had been made of wax. It must have been some kind of directed energy weapon, probably plasma-based knowing how much they seemed to love it.

The Krell guarding the door backed away as the intense heat washed over them, their heavy ballistic shields raised. Fortunately, the breaching weapon seemed to have a very short range, and so they were not charred to a crisp. As the doors slagged and fell inwards, the Bugs swarmed over the glowing metal, the heat seemingly of no concern to them. They piled into the compound, the Krell moving forward and blocking them with their shields, firing their light machine guns into the crowd. The slugs tore through the enemy ranks, ichor and fragments of colorful exoskeletons spraying, the insects falling by the dozen under the sustained fire. The Bugs were defenseless in such close quarters, but they kept coming, climbing over their dead as more of them formed a bottleneck on the outside of the wall.

The Marines on the raised platforms fired down into the swarm, the Bugs lifting their shields above their heads in an attempt to protect themselves, and then Walker heard a cry that made his blood run cold.

"Warriors!"

More Drones were streaming in from the forest, and amongst them were two gigantic creatures, standing head and shoulders above their smaller counterparts. They were as tall as a Borealan but far wider and heavier, their bodies protected by thick, layered shells that ran down their backs to give them the appearance of a bipedal lobster or a shrimp. Their wicked mandibles moved ceaselessly, the compound eyes that protruded from their comparatively small heads glowing like those of the helmeted Drones. The monsters sported four crab-like claws that looked as if they could have peeled open a tank as if it was a can of tuna. They had shown up fairly recently in the war, first encountered on Kruger III. It seemed that the Bugs had engineered them as an answer to the increased Borealan presence on the battlefield. The Drones had previously enjoyed dominance in close combat, but the introduction of Borealan auxiliaries into the UNN ranks had turned the tide. Not even a Mad Cat could stand against a Warrior, however. They had to be taken down with heavy weapons, preferably at range.

"Why are there so fuckin' many of them?" Kaz asked, her rifle rocking against her shoulder as she fired down into the crowd of Bugs. "How many critters did they cram into that hive ship?"

The Krell were holding them at the door for now, knocking them back with their heavy ballistic shields and cutting them down from the hip with their machine guns, but the sheer number of Drones would surely overwhelm the handful of defenders before long.

The grenade emplacements were firing on the Warriors, but the monstrous insects hunkered down, absorbing the shrapnel with their thick shells as the smaller Drones that surrounded them were blown off their feet. Even the railgun fire from the XMRs was not penetrating deep enough to stop them, plasma splashing almost harmlessly on their thick carapaces. If they didn't bring some heavier weapons to bear soon, they would surely be overrun.

The Drones were spilling past the Krell now, and so the Borealans began to jump down from the platform, engaging them on the ground. It looked like a medieval battlefield, knives, claws, and bayonets flashing as they tore into each other. The Krell were usually slow and plodding, but they were capable of incredible bursts of anabolic speed when the situation required it. The giant reptiles flew into a frenzy, knocking down swathes of Drones with their shields and their long tails, using their sheer weight as a weapon to crush and smash.