“With time, sir,” he said. “We we can drill down in a spiral to your level and come out nearby, safely.”
Kwon waved to me, pointing out toward the floor of the cavern. My vision had adjusted somewhat. The coral-like growths occasionally puffed smoke. The enemy was hiding out there, like crawling snipers in a forest. They were moving around on the open floor of the cavern to flank us. If they kept moving, they would soon have a clear shot at my men, with no cover between us and the incoming fire.
“Explain your current situation, Captain,” I said. As I spoke, sniper fire spanged off a nearby dead marine’s reactor unit. I wasn’t surprised, the Worms tended to shoot dead bodies. They didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference between a live man and a dead one. I ducked down to avoid further fire, and Kwon knelt beside me.
“I’ve backed the tanks down the tunnels about a hundred yards,” said Roku in the calm voice of a man who sat confidently in his tank. “The last cave-in was caused by the combined weight of the two forward drill-tanks. If we drilled down and around-”
“Forget that, Captain,” I said, cutting him off. “That will take an hour or more. We’ve been exposed to the enemy. They are already on the move, and more of them will gather every minute. Soon, they will probably hit you from behind up in that tunnel and assault us frontally in this ditch we’ve dug for ourselves down here. Somewhere in the middle of this cavern is our target. I need your tanks and men down here pronto, to help us finish this thing.”
“Sir? How do I do that, sir?” he asked.
“You’ll figure a way, Roku. I can’t micromanage what I can’t see.”
“What if I can’t do it, sir?”
“Then I’ll be calling you Lieutenant from now on,” I said. “I’ll get my marines out of your path and take some cover in that coral forest looking mess on the cavern floor. We’ll give the snipers something to think about while you get your asses down here. You have ten minutes. Riggs out.”
I thought I heard him mutter something about
“Thanks for pulling me out of there. I’m not sure I could have done the same for you.”
“But you would have tried,” Kwon said.
I nodded and crawled to the top of the trench line. Dirt popped twice around me, the snipers were getting testy. I ducked back down. “Let’s get some suppression fire on those marked sniper positions. We’ve got about fifty men down here. I’ll take the first half down to the forest. You cover me.”
Kwon nodded. He turned toward the men we could see hunkering up in the tunnel mouth. As yet, none of them had moved. Whatever Captain Roku had in mind, I hoped he would get a move on.
“Listen up!” Kwon boomed up at them, dialing up his external directional speakers to an ear-splitting level. “Suppress those frigging snipers, NOW!”
“Well done,” I said, gathering up a platoon’s worth of marines. Their officer and the company’s second sergeant had been buried along with a number of others. I went from man to man, tapping every other one and jerking my thumb. Soon, I had a pack of them following me.
My left arm burned and tingled now. I knew from too much experience that it would start working again soon. The nanites were almost magical, but they had a terrible bedside manner. They never cared much about the patient. Sometimes, they might build the nerve endings last, or cut them during the healing process. Other times, a marine might suffer in agony for a long while before an injury was healed. As part of their symbiotic relationship, they were capable of cutting nerve-damaged areas to prevent pain from becoming overwhelming and causing a marine to thus become ineffective, but it didn’t always happen that way. When they were healing a man, they repaired whatever was the most expedient portion of flesh first. Every man hoped they did the nerves last, but it was a matter of luck, really.
I took my team down to the site of the wrecked drill-tank first. I stepped on something hard that was buried under the tank. I reached down and smeared away a mass of dirt. I found the sensor array that Jensen had dragged down the tunnel with him. I eyed the cracked screen. I hissed in anger. He had dialed down the range to the minimum.
Moving around the base of the tank in a crouch, I found Corporal Jensen next. He’d been right up there with the tank, and it wasn’t surprising he’d gone down with it. Half his head was missing.
When we were gathered in the shelter of the wrecked tank, I realized we were never going to make it to the corral forest on foot. It was more than a hundred yards of open ground away, and the enemy fire was increasing by the minute, cover or no. Overhead, lasers flashed into the forest and Worm rifles puffed back. Sometimes a Worm thrashed in the coral-looking stuff, flipping and burning. Sometimes one of my marines pitched back, screaming. But they had us pretty well pinned down.
“Captain Roku!” I shouted into my command channel. “What do you have for me?”
“We’ve got a plan, sir.”
“Talk to me.”
“We’ll roll each tank out of the tunnel with a rope-a nanite rope-attached to it. With our marines and another tank holding onto it, we should keep the momentum down to a slow roll. I should have the first tank down there in another few minutes.”
I nodded to myself. He wasn’t going to get down here within ten minutes. In fact, it sounded like it would be closer to half an hour. But I doubted he could do any better. “Okay, do it. But what is the state of this tank down here? Is your pilot alive in there?”
“Yes sir, he’s injured, compound leg fracture. But you don’t really need your legs as a tanker.”
“Good point. Name?”
“Warrant Officer Sloan, sir.”
I opened a private channel with Sloan. “Can you run your machine, Sloan?”
“Yes sir, but the enemy are out of range at the moment-”
“I don’t want you to shoot. I want you to throw out your flanges. I want you to head right toward the forest and let us get behind you. Take us right into the forest.”
“I’m on it, sir.”
Within a minute, Sloan managed to glide his tank forward. I watched it transform, puffing up around the forward section like a cobra puffing up its hood. The tank listed noticeably to the right. I could tell his gravity- repellors on that side were shot, but he could still drive it. I ran behind the tank, and my troops followed me. This maneuver we’d practiced hundreds of times back home. First employed by the Germans in World War II, this tactical maneuver provided moving cover for infantry on an open battlefield. We hugged the spread shields of the slowly rolling tank, using the cover from enemy fire to the front. When we reached the enemy lines, we would spread out and mop up. As long as the enemy didn’t have any heavy weaponry of their own, or outflank us, we should be able to take them out.
The first fifty yards went well. It was about then, I think, that the Worms realized what we were doing. They stopped firing at the tank, which was immune to their small arms. They began to dig instead.
“Watch for Worms,” I said. “They might dig under our feet.”
The big gun on the tank spoke then, flaring up with a tremendous glow of heat. Swathes of coral-like growth blackened and curled. Worms caught by the fantastic heat and power of the big, short-range cannon exploded into vapor and twisted remains. It was as if we’d applied a blow torch to a squirming nest of maggots.
When we were very near the coral forest line, we learned what the enemy had been up to. They’d dug tunnels in the earth in our path, right below the surface. When our tank glided over one of them, it collapsed and the right side of the vehicle sank down with a sudden, sickening lurch. The brainbox was inexperienced in actual combat. The stabilizers whined, overloaded. Like a panicked animal, the tank thrashed and overcompensated, trying to lift itself upward. As it was already weak on the right side, applying more thrust caused the entire tank to heel over onto its side. The big gun, still firing, exploded upon contact with the surface.
“That’s our cue, boys! Scatter and advance!” I screamed.
I led by example, charging toward the corral forest past the burning wreckage of the drill-tank. Feet
