“Move!” I yelled, useless and redundant but I couldn’t help it. The word burst from my lips and I couldn’t think of a single order to give that would save the rest of us.
At least not one I could give to someone else. I hit the jets, just hopped a couple dozen meters up, high enough to get the damned mecha’s attention the only way I knew how, by shooting at it. The plasma burned away a centimeter of armor over its chest, but it had centimeters to spare and it returned the favor with a tantalum slug the size of my fist.
I could have died right there. Most Drop-Troopers would have. But there was a feeling I’d developed, a sense of where I should be, and it told me to give the jets an extra half-second burst before I headed down. The slug from the coil gun passed centimeters beneath my feet, where I should have been if I’d just let the natural arc of the blast take me back down.
I touched down already running and didn’t feel the slightest twinge of fear from the near-miss. I wondered if that was because I’d just been overloaded with adrenaline in the last hour—had it even been an hour, yet? It hadn’t been much, but it had bought us extra seconds, and a second in combat was forever. The company was behind the cover of the wall now, and more importantly, the mecha couldn’t take any more shots at us without risking hitting his own troops.
It had been stupid and reckless, and I couldn’t take chances like that anymore as a platoon leader, much less a company commander and blah, blah, blah. Fuck it. If they were going to stick me with this many Marines and tell me to keep them alive, I was going to do whatever it took.
“Stay low,” I ordered, probably repeating what the platoon leaders were already saying but not caring. “Don’t let them force you over the wall. Curve wide if you need to, but don’t go up.”
Delp was the first one to hit them, the first sign the High Guard troopers had that we were there. I was too far away with too many troops in-between us to have a good view of the contact, but I saw the flare of his plasma gun. An electron beam slashed wide and then the rest of First squad was curving around Delp, firing their plasma guns in a rolling volley as they went.
Four of the enemy went down in as many seconds, and the rest broke. I hadn’t expected them to run, given how fanatical the High Guard had been at the reactor, but maybe having the mecha and the bunkers as a backstop was enough to make them feel confident that they could withdraw and still win this battle. It wasn’t a bad assumption. We were hitting them with everything we had, throwing every force available into this attack, but the margin for error was thin and it had already been cut to the quick. Let the battle for Deltaville drag on too long, give the defense ships time to organize a counterattack in orbit, and the war would be over, all right. We’d lose it.
The quickest way to end a war is to lose it. I couldn’t remember who had said it, but I remembered hearing it at OCS, along with a lot of other pithy quotes on the subject.
“Don’t pursue,” I cautioned Vicky, not that I expected her to. “Delta, fill in the lines beside the rest of….” The rest of who? I hadn’t even figured out who we were relieving. The IFF signals were all over the place, but I thought it was Bravo Company, by a narrow margin, and Captain Geiger was the only officer present above second lieutenant. “…the battalion,” I finished, though it seemed an exaggeration.
“Is this Delta?” I knew the voice, with or without the IFF transponder. Captain Geiger didn’t come out to meet me, no less intimidated by the threat of the mecha than anyone else, but she moved over to offer me a spot behind cover when I arrived. There was a habit Drop-Troopers developed after a while. At first, I thought it was just me, but Scotty had assured me it was universal. When I talked to Geiger, I didn’t see her suit’s featureless grey helmet, I saw her face as if it was projected over it.
“Where’s Captain Covington?” she demanded.
“I’m afraid he’s KIA, ma’am,” I told her. “So’s the XO. I’m acting company commander for the moment. Delta took down the fusion plant and since the jamming hasn’t lifted, I brought us here hoping someone would be carrying out Battalion’s primary mission.” I hesitated. “Have you seen Captain Cronje? He still has most of Alpha with him, last I saw.”
“No, I haven’t,” she told me, and I wasn’t sure if the bitterness dripping from her words was because of the news of the Skipper’s death or disgust with Cronje’s absence. “Besides us, you’re all I’ve seen of the battalion.” She motioned with her suit’s left hand at a line of Force Recon troops hugging the side of the retaining wall, nearly buried under loose dirt. They looked more scared than I had ever been. “We picked up most of a platoon of straight-leg Recon troops who barely got out of an emergency landing in their drop-ship, and that’s it. And this is a major clusterfuck, Alvarez. We’re never going to take out that fucking mecha without air support and we’re not getting air support until we take out the anti-aircraft batteries.”
“And we’re not taking out the anti-aircraft batteries with that mecha there,” I
