“Yes, ma’am.” I switched to the company net. “Delta, move out.”
That was when it hit me. Up until that point, things had been going too fast, just one thing after another since the second we’d been within sight of the spaceport. Taking the first step along the retaining wall, sending Vicky and Bang-Bang ahead of me leading my platoon, the whole company following my orders, not just as a temporary measure because we were separated from the Skipper, but because he was dead…that just brought everything together in one package and slammed it into my chest. The Iwo blowing up, the drop-ship on fire, the isolation, the fusion reactor, Captain Covington’s sacrifice, each of them a body blow, setting me up for the knock-out punch.
I kept going, mostly because I knew Vicky would take over if I didn’t. Maybe she’d do a better job of it, but I didn’t want to make her or the others think the less of me for not stepping up when it was my turn. I loved her, but I wasn’t thinking of her as my lover at that moment, I was thinking of her as a sister Marine. She had the right to expect me to pull my weight.
I don’t think the Tahni force expected the attack. I think they were ready for Geiger’s over-the-top assault, because when she and her Marines began laying down covering fire, the response was overwhelming, an unending barrage of every weapon the enemy had, like the planet itself was exploding behind us. But nothing jumped up to meet our flanking maneuver, no rounds came in above us. The first we saw of the enemy was when we hit the service road.
The High Guard troops were in about company strength, maybe a little more. The Tahni equivalent of a company was smaller than ours, so maybe this had started out as two companies before the casualties they’d taken. They were behind the cover of some sort of industrial machinery, tracked vehicles with rollers and jets attached to tanks that I thought maybe had something to do with surfacing the landing pads. The machines were scored and burned and twisted, but they’d protected the High Guard troopers from the brunt of our fire…from the lines on the wall. They did nothing to stop my flanking force.
Delp was on point, but the rest of Third Platoon was spreading out to the side into an echelon right as we swung up the curving road to hit the High Guard troops, and the first shots were unleashed in an almost-simultaneous barrage at under a hundred meters. High Guard suits disappeared in flares of burning metal and we’d achieved surprise if we could keep it.
Behind me, back in Kovacs’ platoon, two Marines went down, their IFF signals fading to black, maybe the mecha, maybe the bunkers finally figuring out where we were and what we were trying to do. I couldn’t even take the time to read their names, to grieve for them. They were gone and all I could think was that his platoon was down six Marines now, nearly a whole squad, and I would have to keep that in mind before I tasked him with anything else. It felt cold, calculating, someone else’s thoughts intruding on mine.
And I was utterly lost running even as far back as the rear of the lead platoon. The battle was taking place on another planet, displayed on the screens of a simulator and I ached to fire, to target the enemy and kill them, but by the time I reached the enemy, they had retreated or already lay dying. I’d expected the High Guard to retreat toward the mecha. It would have made sense for them to take the fight into the mutually supporting fields of fire from the artillery piece and the bunker turrets, and we’d planned for it. We were going to stick close so the enemy couldn’t target us without killing their own people.
I guess that’s why they’re called aliens, because they didn’t think the way we expected them to. Instead of heading out into the courtyard and support, they ducked into a side entrance to the spaceport administration building and I was left with my first major decision and about three seconds in which to make it.
“First and Fourth Platoons,” I barked, “split off and go around the rear of the building. First, look for another entrance and see if you can flank them. Fourth, head to the other end and support the Recon team.”
And that was it, our fates decided by a guess, a hunch with a fifty-fifty shot of being right. I should have gone with First and Fourth, should have preserved my ability to call the plays, but I made another guess. The action was going to be inside and so was I.
I hadn’t noticed how light it was getting outside until the shadows of the interior shut out the gathering dawn. The helmet optics kept it as clear as high noon, but there was a qualitative difference between actual daylight and enhanced imaging, just another of the little things I had come to notice during my time in the suits. The entrance was broad and four meters tall and led to what seemed to be a garage for industrial vehicles like the ones lined up outside. Maybe the Tahni had pulled them all out to provide cover, because the garage was mostly empty, a single resurfacing vehicle sitting partially disassembled in a corner.
Which left plenty of room for the rear guard of the Tahni troopers to turn and make a stand. If the chaos of battle seemed confusing in the open spaces of the port, it was incomprehensible inside the confines of the garage. Thank God it was Third going through that door and Vicky and Bang-Bang in charge of them. The natural thing to do, the thing I would have expected from most platoons, would be to pile up, to get on First squad’s
