“True, you can’t use flak on the flying antithesis. We’ve seen it doesn’t work. It’s just using a grenade in the air, really. First you have to get the range and timing just right, which isn’t easy. Then you have to hope the models don’t dodge. Finally, as soon as you kill a couple with one, the flock will spread out and make it useless. Or they’ll dodge. Those things are smarter than a sparrow: they don’t have to stay together.”
“And don’t forget the collateral damage. You really only have to worry about Model Ones down close to the ground, where you are. You’re likely to take out and ally with the shrapnel that low.”
“Yes, and higher up, the Model Elevens are too tough for the shrapnel to matter. You’re better off with a missile against those.”
--Youths exiting a theater after watching Gojira22: Kaiju In Motion. 2047
***
The warning flashed across my visor in semi-transparent orange letters.
INCOMING CLOSE
Half a second later, it flashed again, in red. The message came from Junior, who had caught an immediate threat in its scan of the drone feeds. Hard on its heels came several other warnings.
[“Oh my god, Marcus! Missiles”] Ginny’s scream was distorted with digital compression from hitting the conference’s volume controls. My mini-map showed a fan of red dots rapidly heading towards the arrayed army.
Looking up, I saw a wave of head-sized balls race over the field from the distant caves.
“Cover!” I yelled as I crouched down. The first wave hit us before I could even raise the Deuce.
A ball hit near my feet and engulfed me in flames, blocking out the battlefield. My arms and legs screamed in pain where the flames found the gaps in my armor. And on every side, I heard troopers scream, some calling for help, others inarticulate in their pain.
The flames lifted up on air currents from their own heat, and dozens of the balls came into view. Using the lower barrel, I fired off a long burst of flechettes. Where needles met globes, the balls burst in the air, harmless in their distance. I continued firing, pushing back the waves. To my right a ball broke into clumps that tumbled to the ground.
“Sevens!” someone called out, and I heard panicked gunfire from the same direction. In the corner of my eye, I saw the small aliens crawling toward the line of troopers. But the alien artillery continued, wave after wave, and most of my attention went to guiding the flechettes to destroy the incoming rounds, giving most of the front a little breathing room. The incoming fire was relentless and rapid. Ten seconds in, I’d shot down eight waves, with no pause in sight.
“Rogers! Can you deal with the Sevens? Or should I weed them out?” I asked in the command channel.
[“All of CILS is down.”] Ginny’s voice was calmer but still shrill.
[“The troopers are handling the Sevens.”] Tara still held her detached calm like she always did when working with the drones. [“The Albatross are far enough out they still work, and I see the troopers shooting at the ground near themselves.”]
“Counter missiles in three seconds,” Gangnam said. I guess the Samurai chat had some reinforcement from Vanguard tech to push through.
I shut up and held on, but even these rapid-fire exchanges taxed my concentration enough that a few of the balls slipped through. One burst a few meters away, washing a nearby crater turned foxhole with a thick liquid. A single trooper screamed, and a chill went down my spine when I recognized Tarkan’s voice.
I was once again thankful for the speed that I could talk with Corie.
--Acid, probably enzymatically enhanced.
Between the rapid cracks of the Deuce’s fire, I heard the can land, and I kicked it to the foxhole, trying to save the young man. But the moment’s distraction proved fatal. I missed another ball, and this one burst right beside me, sending out large spikes in all directions. I felt several hammer into my armored side and two sliced into my unprotected arms.
--Bionites activated.
The screams beside me silenced, cut off with a final gargle. A chill ran down my spine, but I didn’t have time to look with more of the artillery coming. I stepped closer, half into the foxhole.
--I’m sorry, Marcus, but he’s gone.
A cold fury settled in my gut at her message, even as dozens of tiny missiles launched from behind me, flying out to intersect the incoming balls and burn them in fire. Gangnam, finally in position, had launched his volley of counter missiles.
Gangnam’s missiles pushed back the waves of flying balls, followed by a second volley of missiles. With the waves pushed back, I had enough space to switch to the upper barrel. The longer reach made up for the slower rate of fire, and it let me eliminate the alien artillery at a safer distance. That also let me use HE rounds to prevent more of the sevens from being a problem. If I could keep up.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
To my left and right, rifle and machine gun fire rang out, combined with the occasional boom of a tank’s heavy cannon. Out of the side of my vision, I saw the horde of smaller models still being held back by the combined arms fire.
Meanwhile, I continued the impossible juggling act of intercepting the incoming artillery with just a single-shot rifle. Once in a while one of the projectiles intercepted a string of tracers and burst apart.
“Can you close the tunnels?” I asked in the Samurai channels.
“Too far. I could hit them, but it’d cost too much payload to fit the fuel for the range. It might tickle them?”
“Then get the Twelves; I have the shield for now,” I said in the Samurai channel. “Army needs its comms.”
“I have Sevens protection! Come and get it!” I yelled. “Safely!”
I slowly lost ground to the waves. The price of sticking to HE rounds to kill the Sevens-balls was the threat creeping ever closer, where more could leak through. The sky filled with random explosions as I shot the balls down, a fragile dome of defense protecting us all.
Several large thumps fired out from where I’d last seen Gangnam. “EMI counters away,” he said.
The missiles streaked out and up before plummeting and impacting the ground around the hive. Plumes of dirt flew into the air, followed seconds later by the deep thuds of underground explosions.
The command chat came alive, with officers all talking over each other, orders to the troops around them stomping on larger movements. At the same time, CILS flickered through a dozen floods of color, as stacked-up commands overwrote each other in a strobing kaleidoscope effect. After a couple confusing seconds, it settled down, and I ignored the resulting fire lanes, too busy with eliminating the incoming balls of death.
“All hands, All hands,” Khan triggered an override as she trampled on everyone else to broadcast on all channels. “Bunker down and prepare for an airstrike; danger close. Repeat. All hands but Samurai, bunker down and prepare for an airstrike. Samurai: Keep up the defense; help is coming in 5 minutes.” The message also flashed on my visor, passed on by CILS. The black cave mouths on the far slope, which had been ringed in blue, changed to an eye-searing orange that blinked rapidly.
I held my dance against the artillery, fighting not to win, but simply to lose slowly. Between Gangnam and myself, we’d beaten them back enough that we could see the balls coming out of the eight secondary caves. Then suddenly, the sky was clear: no more balls in flight. I scanned the sky again, not believing that they had given up on the strategy that had us pinned down for no reason. xxxGrammar
[“Movement in the creek bed, something rising up.”] Tara was the first to spot the reason for the change. Climbing up from where a creek had cut deep under the plateau, a cloud of flying antithesis rose.
Thirty, forty, maybe more of the giant leather-winged Model Elevens, with their long beaks and sharp talons, took flight. As they rose, I could see that the body of each was covered in black, moving forms: a coat of Model Ones ready for delivery.
Beneath them, huge flocks of their smaller cousins took flight, filling the sky like a locust swarm. They swirled once before pulling out and heading my way. The distance and the size of the swarm made their flight appear ponderous, almost lethargic, but I knew that each individual flew faster than a swallow.
Soon their numbers would block out the light—already it covered a quarter of the sky. I aimed at the flying beasts but held back; at this range, I’d waste too many bullets for too few alien deaths.
“Air Force Central, this is Hive Strike Command. Status change.” Khan said in the command channel, causing me to jump. I forgot I had that channel open.
“Hive Strike, Air Force Central, I copy.”
“Central, be advised, we have aerial models taking flight. You do not, I repeat, do not have air superiority.”
“Hive Strike, I copy. Operational control is in the hands of your strike team, Talon Six.”
My heart caught in my throat on hearing the name of the air squadron.
“Hive strike, Talon Six here.” A new, familiar voice came on the channel, confirming my fears. “We have a hot payload that needs a home, and I’m told you can’t advance without it, so you better tell those flying sandwiches to make a hole, ‘cause we’re coming through.”
My stomach dropped. Talon Six. My sister’s squadron. It made sense to send them; I’d send one of the top squadrons too, but I wished with all my heart someone else was up there. Because no way would they trust this important a strike to remote drones. Not with thousands of soldiers’s lives on the line.
[“Is that your sister on the strike team?”] Kaitlyn asked, her voice barely over a whisper.
I gulped. [“Yes, and she means what she said.”] I flicked a thought at my hind-brain and a timer showed up in my visor, counting down until time for the air strike: four minutes, thirty seconds. My thoughts raced through the options: Try to tell her off? No, she’d never flinched from her duty, ever. Could she delay? Probably. Would she? No way. Every second she delayed would mean more soldiers dead, either from the flying models or the return of the artillery. to fly
“I can get the big fliers.” Gangnam said in the command channel. “I have missiles specialized for that, but that’s going to release all those zillions of Model Ones. Are those jets capable of taking that?”
“No, they’re not.” I said, remembering how a goose in the intake could destroy any jet in the air.
--Yes, there’s several options, from Hyper Compression rounds, to frags, monowire, and even electrical effects. But they are all going to be 20 mm plus in diameter.
--Assuming they don’t spread out and they don’t dodge, you would average ten Model Ones per shot. That makes it 7 minutes unless they change tactics.
“With that many, I won’t have capacity for any flak—they’ll just tickle the Elevens.” Gangnam continued. “And we won’t have a reserve in case the ground models dig something up. The more missiles I launch, the longer it takes me to reload.”
I thought for a second about how fragile the Ones were reported to be and how the flechettes excelled at through-and-through multi-target kills.
“I might be able to clear at least some of the M-1s, maybe most if they come in range. But that’s about two hundred meters. I’ll have to draw them in close to me.”
--You have earned several tokens and have points to spare. There’s some tricks I can do to increase your range, but it will have consequences.
--Not that bad, but you might be down a barrel.
“In that case, I’ll have to wait for the last minute too. Otherwise the Ones might spread out too much.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Commander, I’m about to become a major hot spot.” I started sprinting out into the field. Fortunately, the army had continued hammering back the ground Antithesis, who even now streamed out in droves. “I’ll need some cover fire. Feel free to go danger close.”