yards ahead. It growled and ran away.
By the time they reached the DMZ, the Avatari had become as solid as our tanks and bullets and weighed nearly two thousand pounds, these walking statues of alien stone. Their weapons had already formed into chrome cylinders, and the light of the ion curtain reflected off the barrels of those guns like sunlight shining off mirrors.
They entered the minefield.
At this point, every man in Valhalla knew that nothing but massive trauma would stop the aliens. One of the bastards marched straight into the electric fencing and pushed right through it. Sparks popped in the air around it. It looked like a miniature fireworks display, and it went unnoticed. The alien avatar paid no attention to the electrical air show as it trampled the fence and continued.
The Army and Marines deployed every available man. With all of the casualties we’d taken, my company had compacted its three combat platoons into two, and now we sent our support platoon into battle as well. Other companies had fared worse than us. Some were down to a single platoon, and some platoons were down to a single squad.
I watched the video feed of the Avatari entering the demilitarized zone from inside my helmet in a small window on my visor.
“Ten minutes to showtime,” Major Burton told the entire company over the interLink. Every man in the company heard Major Burton’s announcement, but only commissioned officers had access to the video feed. Somebody had decided that ignorance equated to bliss for the enlisted ranks.
“Harris, report,” Moffat demanded.
“The company is ready, sir,” I said.
Thomer ran one of my combat platoons, and Philips ran the other. I no longer worried about how he would react in battle; it was between battles when his self-destructive tendencies showed. Once the fighting commenced, all of his horseshit stopped, and he cared only about achieving objectives and keeping his men alive.
Philips’s virtual dog tag showed above his helmet—Name: Mark Philips, Rank: Sergeant, Serial Number: 59682136029. I didn’t need the virtual tag to recognize him, even when he was hidden in combat armor. The casual but efficient way he handled his firearms, the trademark of a veteran Marine, gave him away. Philips fussed about his men like a mother bear, slapping Marines across their helmets to get their attention, bullying them into safer slots, shaking his head as he walked away from young Marines who made stupid mistakes.
Thomer, a far steadier platoon leader, trusted his men. He did not fuss over them, but when I listened in on his communications, I heard him giving plenty of direction. He was a natural leader. Had he been natural-born, he might have risen to general.
I had promoted Herrington so he could lead the support platoon in battle. They needed a leader with experience. He did not like his new responsibilities as a sergeant. Corporal Boll, Herrington’s best friend, assisted with the platoon. As I listened in on Herrington’s frequency, I caught him chatting with Boll.
“Hey, Trevor, you think these Mudders are ever going to send a bigger army? I mean, they keep dribbling in small numbers, and we keep mowing them down,” Herrington said.
“Man, I know what you mean. It doesn’t make sense. If they’d sent more men, they could have had us last time,” said Boll. “I’ll tell you what, though, those bastards are wearing us down.”
“Tell me about it,” Herrington said. “You seen Lieutenant Harris? The guy looks like the walking dead. We better keep an eye on the poor son of a bitch just in case.”
“Darn straight I’m keeping an eye on Harris; he’s the only thing standing between us and that ass-wipe Moffat,” Boll said.
“Stow the unnecessary chatter,” I said over an open frequency that every man in the platoon would hear. “Let’s keep the Link open.”
“Think he heard us?” Boll asked.
“Not a chance. They always say that before the fighting starts,” Herrington said.
“That goes double for you, Herrington,” I said.
“Shit,” said Herrington.
Boll did not respond.
The entire company save one member was stationed in the hotel district, hidden in a park. It was a small park, no more than five or six acres. Monolithic skyscrapers surrounded us on every side. When I looked back over my shoulder, I could see the outline of the Hotel Valhalla against the sky.
The only man not present was Lieutenant Moffat. He and several other company commanders sat in a conference several blocks away. Even now, with humanity’s back to the wall, when push came to shove, the natural-borns were sending us out alone.
I dug the men in along the crest of a hill. The ground in front of us was a marsh. I could see the still surface of the water through canes and reeds, plants that had gone dormant for the winter. The sludgy water reflected the ionically charged sky above it, with the added effect of a rainbow streak caused by a minor oil slick.
“Lieutenant Harris, are you watching the feed?” Major Burton spoke to me over a direct link.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Those bastards danced through four thousand volts like it wasn’t there,” Burton said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. I wasn’t really listening to him.
From my perch on this hill, I could see far enough down the street to spot the Avatari. At this distance, I needed telescopic lenses to make them out, but I could see them tramping forward. Thanks to the hot-spot- identifying sensors in my visor, I saw thousands of fire red dots marking the spot where mines had been laid on the street ahead as well.
Walking point, a yard or two ahead of its comrades, one of the Avatari stepped on a mine. With my visor zoomed in on the bastard, I enjoyed the carnage as much as I would have if I were only a couple of yards away. I watched its foot come down on the virtual dot that marked the location of very real explosives. I watched the ground burst. Dust, rock, concrete fragments, and who knew what else, shot up like a pillar. The explosion tore the alien’s leg from the rest of its body and it flew twenty feet through the air. The remainder of the body flew backward, flipping through the air and smashing into the Avatari behind it.
A whoop of victory echoed across the city.
“At least they’re not mine-proof,” Burton said. On the video feed, I could see that maybe as many as a hundred Avatari had stepped on mines. The rest of their army paused and studied the field for a moment. This was the first time they had ever shown the slightest concern about their surroundings.
An alien stepped forward, pointed its rifle at the street ahead, and fired. Watching the feed on a small window in my visor, I saw several other Avatari doing the same thing. I expected the rifle to fire a bolt of light into the street, but it fired a long string of light instead. There was a silent moment in which I decided that nothing would happen, then the entire street vanished in a mass explosion.
Working frantically with the optical controls in my visor, I rewound the explosion and watched it in slow motion. In one frame the Avatari stood before a perfectly normal street. In the next frame, the surface of the street began to crack in a thousand different locations. In the next frame, pieces of concrete began to sprout in the air. And in the frame after that, a thousand individual geysers of smoke, dust, and rubble appeared. The force of their simultaneous explosion sent the entire street flying in the air, where it shattered, crumbled, and turned to dust.
The explosion reverberated through the city. The ground shook beneath me as if it might break open. The buildings between us and the Avatari shook. Windows exploded. The base of one of the buildings at the edge of the park caved in—a hundred-story cloud shredder, falling in on itself, flushing a flashflood of dust and debris in every direction.
“Lieutenant …” Thomer and Herrington both tried to contact me.
“Stay focused,” I said over a platoon-wide frequency.
“Harris, they’ve disarmed the minefield,” Moffat said over a company-wide frequency. He sounded so specking calm. “Prepare to attack.”
The cloud of dust, dirt, and smoke washed across the space between the buildings like a river breaking through a dam. It flooded the open ground of the park, then splashed into us and moved beyond.
“What the hell was that?” Philips asked on the company-wide frequency. The conscripts did not have access to the video feed, they were in the dark about what was happening up the street.
