Minnie:
or 2
nd
gen. battleskins. i am afraid we do not have the resolution to confirm, though.>
General Milton:
‘i think the fact that you cannot effectively track them only proves the point further, minnie. ok, assuming that’s what we are looking at then there are … wow … ok, so they have quite a few of them. minnie, please try to calculate a force estimate, please.’
They watched as Minnie’s AIs sought and found more and more examples of the streaking black lines. They were coming up fast from many points along the line, stretching back for miles along the seemingly endless column.
General Milton:
‘i think it is safe to say we are looking at the bulk of their ground-based tech ten force.’
He would not say it, but if this wasn’t, then the one-sided feel of the fight so far was about to swing wildly in the other direction. Avoiding an avenue of thought that would only lead to despair, the general went on.
General Milton:
‘so assuming they are focusing their counterattack, then i am going to follow major toranssen’s lead and match our troop deployments to his.’
Ayala:
‘agreed. globemaster three is nearly at john’s position. i am diverting globemaster two there as well. we can deploy fully two-thirds of our ground force to reinforce squadron charlie. then, after globemaster two has dropped its troop complement to join globemaster three’s, it can go on to quavoce’s position and drop its command boxer there.’
General Milton:
‘confirmed, ayala. make it so. that will leave globemaster one to split its force at the other two locations, and still leaves a boxer unit at each location to provide command and fire support.’
No one mentioned that when they spoke of the armored boxer units, and specifically the one aboard Globemaster Two, they were also talking about the all-terrain unit that carried Ayala. But the general knew it, and he was quietly happy that Ayala hadn’t insisted on dropping her Boxer into the explosive brew that was fast fermenting at John’s location.
- - -
Five minutes later the Globemasters were coming up on their first drop zones, and not a moment too soon. Things on the ground were heating up.
For Quavoce, in the time between dispatching the bulk of his fighters and the two from Jack’s squadron reinforcing him, the Russian column had been able to consolidate their force, and was now returning a solid blanket of fire.
Quavoce:
‘bravos three and five, pull back. i don’t want any of you anywhere near the border.’
Caution was becoming a necessity. The bulk of the Russian column still across the border in the Ukraine was starting to throw up a blanket of fire into the sky. Not targeted, not yet, just a swathe of flak and lead, buffeting the StratoJets from every direction.
Quavoce:
‘bravo squadron, let’s pull back to the firewall. we will continue our enemy force reduction from there.’
Force reduction. It was a cold term, and it was bloody work. The remaining four jets in his squadron stopped targeting units along the entire column and instead pulled back to focus their fire on its lead units, obliterating each in turn.
The tactic worked. The surviving Russians on the ground became even more distraught at the change in tactic. The fire was no longer random. Now the threat became manifest, a tangible thing, a flaming, death-dealing beast lumbering thunderously back along the column toward them, consuming all in its path. The sight of it would have broken anyone, and their instincts changed from fight to flight.
Back across the border in the Ukraine, though, the bulk of the Russian force were becoming emboldened, and the many units capable of taking their guns and missile launchers off road started to fan out along the border, firing with all their might as they went.
It was getting messy, thought Quavoce, a slaughter on the ground and a hail of thundering fire in the air. He needed support, and not just the two planes now arriving from Jack’s unit to even out their squadrons.
He needed ground support. It was not far behind.
Globemaster One:
‘bravo squadron, this is globemaster one, i have a delivery for you.’
Quavoce:
‘not a moment too soon, globemaster. give our position a wide birth, please, it is getting pretty hairy down here. but if you could drop off that package at drop zone xeta-five, i would certainly appreciate it.’
Globemaster One:
‘xeta-five, confirmed. inbound and dropping package in 5, 4, 3 …”
As he watched his Spezialists start to fall from the back of the cargo plane, another call was coming in.
Ayala:
‘quavoce, globemaster two is not far behind as well. i assume you know we have repurposed your ground troops to john’s position, and have split jack’s between locations alpha and beta.’
Quavoce:
‘received and understood, ayala. i know you are inbound in boxer two. looking forward to having you come up that road.’
Ayala:
‘me too.’
General Milton:
‘quavoce, jack, i want to confirm, now that things are taking shape and we are focusing on position charlie, i don’t want alpha and beta getting heroic. that means you two. you are force diminished. focus on holding the line until we have suppressed position charlie. then we can get you what you need to push alpha and beta back into ukraine … and back into the stone age while we are at it.’
They all smiled ruefully and agreed. Hold the line.
Quavoce reached out to his thirty ground troops as they landed and began to come up the road. Meanwhile, the twenty-two-ton Boxer Two came to ground with an elephantine thud, its three huge parachutes bellowing around it.
It did not wait for them to fall, jettisoning them without emotion, its great wheels already engaging, driving it outward, through the shattered debris of the small tree it had obliterated. Up, out, and over a small hillock and onto the road. It accelerated hard as it hit the tarmac, its fusion cell driving its powerful electric motors as it accelerated after the shock troops even now vaulting and sprinting along the road ahead of it toward the fight they were all longing to get to.
At Quavoce’s bidding, they formed into a wide, line, staying nimble and reactive. They used their agility to physically dodge the incoming artillery and missile fire now coming from the vast Russian army ahead of them as they faced off against their goliath foe. And they taunted the Russians, punishing them with ruthless fury whenever they dared to try and advance.
To the south, though, the Russians were forming a line of their own. Not quite as capable, perhaps, but far, far larger, and with very real teeth.
John Hunt:
‘charlie squadron, here they come. we are three minutes to estimated engagement.’
They had endured the first volley of air-to-air missiles from the coming Russian fleet. It had been massive, a sea of explosives rushing at them, but at this distance they had been blind, coming in searching, seeking the elusive blackness of the StratoJets.
John’s fighters had taken almost all of them out, but the Russian attack had not been without strategic forethought, and once they did find target purchase, the remainder of the two hundred missiles had focused on three jets at random and come at them without mercy. The whole of John’s now eighteen-jet squadron had tried to save their colleagues in the final seconds, but only one had survived the three clouds of fire that had erupted around the unfortunate pilots.
Two StratoJets down. Not much, perhaps, given the thousands of casualties they must have already inflicted on the Russian forces, but a blow nonetheless.
Ayala, watching from her cradle to the north, mobilized her ground troops in response.
Ayala:
‘ground force charlie, i want you moving on these points. fire free, you are to put down anything that moves.’
Their minds filled with her tactical choices and they were moving a moment later, seeking the Russian ground forces they knew were out there, ready to engage. Like Ayala, the Spezialists on the ground were hungry: hungry for blood, hungry for retribution, hungry to avenge their friends in the Recon Teams who had been so brutally massacred. They wanted a rematch.
They were going to get it.
The Russians troops were also bracing for all out war. They were no longer equipped with just the assault rifles of their first encounter with the TASC Spezialists. They still carried nothing like the tri-barrel flechette guns of the TASC forces, but they did now have something that could help them bring down the terrible StratoJets above, or so they hoped, and as the massive inbound fleet of Su-27 and Su-35 fighters came thundering up from behind, to the cheers of the beleaguered Russian regulars, the dispersed shock troops unleashed their most deadly weapon.
It was a wall, a horde, a swarm of black needlepoint signatures suddenly rearing up out of the woods ahead of them, filling their views.
There were hundreds of them. No, thousands, John’s pilots saw with horror. Thousands of tiny missiles. Tiny pointed balls of fury, suddenly accelerating with hypersonic madness at the StratoJet fleet.
John half thought it, half said it: ‘ENGAGE!’ and the fleet opened up with everything they had, targeting with mad fury as their forces on the ground did the same, firing ribbons of flechettes into the sky at the armada of strange, black-blue missiles coming at them.
It did not take long to see that once again, the Russians had focused their attack, and six StratoJets quickly resolved as the targets of the hail of fire. What was also quickly apparent was that these were no ordinary missiles.
They ducked and dodged in the air, providing infuriatingly slippery targets. At first the salvo was so huge that the jets’ fire eroded them by weight of lead alone. But the final couple of hundred were proving harder and harder to kill.
They did not spare much thought for analysis, but somewhere in the pilots’ minds the question begged to be asked: what the hell were they firing at? One among the pilots knew what these were, though. He had feared their use, and had warned of it, but had hoped Mikhail would not dare give away such insipid creatures to a madman like Svidrigaïlov.
John’s response to the swarm came not as words, but as an engagement of machine order, a giving of a reflex to the six pilots being honed in on.
John Hunt:
The six-targeted StratoJets were instantly rearing back, their blue fusion jets tugging them backward with full force even as they each fired furiously into the cloud of terror coming at them. Their friends in the air and on the ground were fighting for them as well.
But the missiles came on, and for the six targeted pilots, a view began to emerge in the final milliseconds before impact. One of Minnie’s own planes was among the targets, and she shared that view with the world, showing everyone what she and her five doomed colleagues were seeing as the wasp swarm closed.
They were each about the size of a rugby ball, the rear half all nozzles, propelling them erratically this way and that as they surged at their targets, while their front half was a point of razor sharp claws, closed now, but, as they made contact opening and gouging into the StratoJet’s skin, using their thrusters and articulated talons to drive them toward a specific point of vulnerability.
They were still dying in droves even once on the jets’ surface as the milliseconds passed, the surrounding forces targeting them with precise care and excising them like ticks from the skin of each jet, but they moved with an insane speed and agility, climbing in droves toward the engines. Trying to get inside their intakes, trying to deliver their munitions to the only place that would definitely cripple the armored jets.
Ayala screamed with fury as she watched through Boxer One’s cameras. Watched as the first of the six jets lost its battle and one of the vile little insect-like creatures got into its portside jet and detonated. The fusion cell ripped apart and instantly the finely tuned StratoJet lost its balance forever, its other engine still firing wildly, trying to control it as it started to spin ever faster. In moments its pilot was killed by centrifugal pressure alone, crushed in his seat, inside his own skull.
The plane would eventually crash a mile away in a ball of blue and orange flame. It would not be alone. A second went. Then a third, and a fourth, before they finally wiped out the last of the swarm.
And when they had finally cleansed the sky of the hellish wasps, they watched in horror as another wave flew up.
But General Milton was already reacting, as was Ayala.
General Milton:
‘john, get your forces the hell out of there, now! ayala, i want your …’
Ayala at General Milton:
‘… don’t worry, darling. my spezialists are already moving. we will find them. and we will end them.’
She sent it to him personally, her message laden with all the cold fury he knew she was capable of, and it sent a shudder down his spine.