Sigma (War for New Terra, Book 1) Page 7

  “If we’re going to do something,” Duke warned her as the bombers advanced, “we ought to start doing it quick.”

  A sac was already in the “chamber” – Ginger could make out its gentle glow through holes in the cannon’s twisted exoskeleton. She tentatively grabbed the crooked handle of umber bone sticking out from the side and, suppressing a shiver, cranked it backwards, feeling the fleshy tendons inside grow tighter with each rotation, until it wouldn’t turn anymore. A primitive release lever clicked into position at the back. If you were to ask Ginger, it looked like the hammer of a gun.

  “Here goes nothing,” she muttered, and gave the lever a kick.

  The cannon emitted a deafening boom and, for a second, Ginger was sure the whole rancid contraption had exploded. Then she opened her eyes and watched the sac soar into the sky, bursting into green flames as it gained altitude. It detonated in an empty patch of sky a few hundred metres above their heads. A fresh sac was pumped out of the slug and into the cannon’s chamber.

  “Sergeant Rogers,” Ginger announced, giving everyone a sarcastic little bow. “Master of disgusting alien technology.”

  “Okay!” Ghost laughed and shrugged. “So we’re doing this, then. Erm… turn it twenty degrees anticlockwise and about eleven, maybe twelve degrees lower?”

  Ginger dropped to the ground. “Duke, grab a handle and help me turn this thing. Jackson, you bring the cannon down. And Ghost, you get ready to fire. Got it?”

  Ginger and Duke each took a handle on opposite sides of the cannon and started to turn it on its axis. Layers of chitin screeched as they ground together. Brittle segments of exoskeleton snapped off where it had fused with the surrounding earth. At the same time, Private Jackson strained against a second bone crank until the barrel locked into a position about ten degrees lower than it had been before. He dry heaved as the slug’s watery egg sac sloshed beside him.

  “Christ, this is sick,” he groaned. “How could a bug even build this? You know, guys, this has got me thinking…”

  “Less thinking,” grunted Ginger, “and more doing, please.”

  “Stop,” said Ghost, raising her hand. “That should do it. Everyone ready?”

  Ginger gave a sweaty thumbs-up. Jackson jumped down and covered his ears. Ghost waited for the right moment and then kicked the trigger-lever just like Ginger did.

  The payload rocketed out the barrel towards one of the bomber-bugs flying across the field. Everyone watched with bated breath as the sac ignited… and then dipped just short of the monstrous fly. It exploded in empty air. The mammoth, airborne creature slowly changed course towards them.

  “Dammit,” spat Ginger. “Again!”

  Ghost hurriedly yelled out a new set of instructions. Jackson joined Ginger and Duke in turning the cannon slightly to the right while yet another egg sac squeezed through the slug’s external birth canal and into the chamber. The closer the bomber came to their pit, the less the angle of the cannon’s barrel needed amending anyway.

  And it was getting damn close. Ginger could hear its wings buzzing like the propellors of an old World War Two fighter plane.

  “Get clear!” shouted Ghost, kicking the trigger-lever again.

  Once more a sac went screaming out from the barrel. Tiny pockets of green flame rained down in its wake.

  Ginger clenched her fists so hard they started to cramp. This had to work. If the bomber-bug dropped its volatile cargo into the pit, there was nowhere they could run.

  The flying beast tried to pivot at the last second, but it was much too slow. The projectile collided with its flank and exploded, setting off a chain reaction that raged through the sacs carried in its sling. The bug was engulfed in a colossal fireball that cast the entire field in blinding emerald light. Even from a few hundred metres away, the heat on Ginger’s face was as intense as if she’d opened the door to a blast furnace.

  Everyone in the pit cheered – everyone except Private Bradley, that is, who appeared to be trapped in his own private nightmare. Ginger shielded her eyes with her hand and squinted up at the fireball as it dissipated. While everybody else celebrated, her face fell.

  “Erm, guys? I think we’ve got another problem.”

  The bomber-bug flew out from the flames, its wings charred and shredded, its bug-eyes popped and gushing gallons of blood. Its corpse was headed right for them.

  “Everyone back into the tunnels,” Ginger yelled.

  “We blew them up, remember?” Sergeant Parkins replied testily from over by the opening.

  “Right.” Ginger groaned, grabbed hold of her helmet, and stared around the pit. There wasn’t enough time for anyone to climb out. “Okay, everyone take cover behind the wall there.”

  “Is that going to make any difference?” asked Ghost, running across with her.

  “Well it’s that or standing out in the open,” replied Ginger. “Which would you prefer?”

  Everyone dived into cover behind the wall closest to the incoming bug. Duke dragged Bradley as he went. There was nothing else to protect them besides the chained slug and her translucent egg sacs, which seemed about as safe to Ginger as putting a gun to her own head.

  “Brace!”

  The bomber-bug came down about twenty metres short of the pit, furrowing through the earth like a giant’s trowel. The impact kicked a tremendous wave of dirt up into the air, turning day to night. The wall of the pit caved in and threw the marines backwards.

  Something smacked into Ginger’s helmet and as the dirt rained down, everything went black.

  Chapter Eight

  Hands scrambled over Ginger’s arms.

  “Hey, over here.” It was Duke’s voice. “I think I found her.”

  He sounded afraid. Or maybe excited. The words were muffled and distant. Ginger felt a second pair of hands brush over her cheeks and forehead as they dug the dirt away from her face.

  Darkness turned to blinding light and she took a desperate gulp of air. She hadn’t realised how close she was to suffocating until that moment. Duke’s goofy grin swam into focus.

  “You know what? I think she’s gonna live!”

  “What happened?” Ginger groaned as Duke and Ghost pulled her free. “Is everyone…?”

  “Everyone’s fine,” said Ghost. She couldn’t help breaking into a smile of her own. “Jackson’s leg took a beating, but he won’t lose it. Even Private Bradley managed to make it out in one piece.”

  “That is a miracle,” Ginger replied, before doubling over and coughing her lungs up.

  “You all right?” asked Sergeant Parkins. Private Jackson was leant on her shoulders, taking the weight off his bad leg. Luckily for him, it didn’t appear to be bleeding. A pretty gnarly cut on his forehead was, however. Bradley was sat down beside them, breathing heavily.

  “Yeah, I’m good.” Ginger spat out some dirt and wiped her mouth. “Come on. Let’s get moving before the bugs start digging their way out of this mess.”

  She turned around and collapsed to the floor again. The giant, snaggletoothed mouth of the bomber-bug was only metres away from where she lay, its massive corpse having finally come to a half-buried stop inside the pit. The cannon was wrecked and the slug crushed, but most of the explosive sacs were miraculously untouched.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Yeah, it was a close one.” Ghost picked Ginger up and guided her in the opposite direction. “Relax. There’s something I think you want to see.”

  “Is it a bar?”

  “Next best thing.”

  They clambered up the slope left by the collapse of the pit’s easterly wall. Ginger instinctively ducked as they breached the top, expecting a torrent of chitin shards to come blasting their way.

  But the fields were starting to clear. The ash clouds were blowing away, and Ginger could see scores of other squads and fireteams crossing the scorched earth in the direction of the original rally point. An uneasy quiet hung above the battlefield, and suddenly it clicked – the relentless rumble of the bug
cannons had finally stopped.

  “Did we win?” asked Private Bradley.

  “The battle, maybe.” Jackson scoffed. “Technically, the war hasn’t actually started yet.”

  With all of the cannons either captured or destroyed by other fireteams, the two remaining bomber-bugs were now flying back in the opposite direction. Hordes of roaches scampered away beneath their giant shadows. Even bugs were smart enough to know when they were beat, it seemed.

  Ginger jumped as a pair of UEC gunships screeched overhead. Their rotary cannons rained a hailstorm of ballistic rounds at the roaches fleeing below. Each ship launched a homing missile at one of the bomber-bugs before banking hard to the side. The first bomber blew apart in a colossal firework of antennae and blood; the other crashed to the ground like the Hindenburg and was engulfed by its own fiery payload.

  Hundreds more drop ships, gunships and transport shuttles swarmed out from the battlecruisers lingering above the clouds. Now that the bugs’ cannons were offline, the invasion effort could begin in earnest.

  For the first time since climbing on board the drop ship back on the Invincible, Ginger didn’t feel like she was one bad decision away from getting killed. She even managed to crack a dry smile.

  “Rally Point Bravo is still a couple miles in that direction,” said Sergeant Parkins, nodding towards the north-east. “We’d better get a move on if we want to regroup with Baker and the rest of the company.”

  They started walking – all except for Private Bradley, who remained sat on the ground by himself. Duke extended a meaty hand.

  “It’ll be a lot safer at the rally point than it is here, you know.”

  Bradley nodded and clumsily climbed to his feet. The previously dry dirt of the pit had turned to mud from the blood spilling out from the bomber-bug’s corpse.

  “Thanks,” he eventually spluttered.

  “You know what?” Duke studied the young private carefully. “I think I’ll call you Ice.”

  “Because you think I’m cool?” Bradley replied, smiling meekly.

  “No. Because you always freeze.”

  “Oh.”

  They crossed the desolate field. There was no consistency to the terrain. Sometimes their boots would meet hard stone and rock, other times brittle soil that shifted like fine sand underfoot. Moments later, they’d be forced to slosh through deep craters of mud. Ginger shivered not from the cold – if anything, the afternoon sun had grown uncomfortably warm and bright – but from the thick filth that had dried and caked across every inch of her skin. God, she’d kill for a shower.

  Other fireteams trekked across no-man’s land beside them. They all naturally gravitated towards one another as if afraid that a fresh tunnel of roaches might burst up from the ground and restart the battle at any moment. If they were grateful to be alive, they didn’t look it.

  Poor Hitch. Ginger remembered the desperate way he’d thrashed and flailed as the skin melted off his bones. She hadn’t known him well, but…

  Horrible way to go. Horrible. At least Jessie’s death had been instantaneous. Probably worse for everyone who had to watch her rain back down, come to think of it.

  Christ. It suddenly occurred to her that Fireteam Tau was half wiped-out already.

  As they pushed further through the field, they stumbled across bodies from an earlier wave of marines sent out before camp was established. They’d got far, though evidently not far enough. Some lay disembowelled, others with their heads and limbs torn off. Some had even been impaled on the sharp upper branches of burned trees. Judging by the dismembered bug parts scattered about, the poor sods had at least taken a few roaches down with them.

  “This isn’t going to get any easier, is it?” asked Private Bradley, flinching as he passed a row of charred bodies.

  “No, kid,” replied Ghost. “It ain’t.”

  “You don’t understand,” he whimpered quietly, looking up at the battlecruisers. “I’m not supposed to be here…”

  “None of us are, Pimples.” Ginger rolled her eyes. “We’re supposed to be back on Earth, dying of radiation sickness. But you signed up for this, same as everyone else. Get used to it.”

  Bradley went as if to say more, but Jackson cut him off.

  “Hey, you know what I was thinking earlier? The roaches – any of you seen one actually capable of firing a gun?”

  Duke furrowed his brow.

  “Come to think of it, no, I haven’t. Then again, I wouldn’t have pegged them as being able to fire that gruesome cannon thing, either.”

  “That’s just it,” said Jackson. “I’m not sure that they did. I think these roaches have got different bugs for different jobs. Maybe they’re not all the same species, or maybe they are and some of them have just evolved slightly differently. Either way, I don’t reckon we’ve seen the worst of them yet.”

  “Oh, come off it.” Sergeant Parkins shook her head. “They’re bugs. You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, Jackson.” Ghost nodded at Private Bradley. “You’re gonna scare the baby.”

  Bradley frowned sheepishly. Duke gave him a friendly yet patronising pat on the back.

  “No, really!” Jackson looked around at them insistently. “We’ve already seen the regular roaches, those fire-roaches, and now those massive bomber-bugs. Seriously. Take a look at ants.”

  “Here we go,” Ginger whispered to Ghost. “Another zoology lesson…”

  “So the ants have workers and soldiers and food gatherers – and those are just the females. Then there are males for, you know, mating. It’s a colony system where each caste plays a different role. Termites and bees do it too, so why not roaches?”

  “All right, fair enough.” Ginger shrugged. “We’ve seen a few different types already, so I’ll buy it. Maybe they have some sort of special bug that knows how to fire a gun or shoots rapid-fire quills from its back, or something. But I don’t see how that explains them building disgusting biomechanical contraptions like that cannon. Hell, I don’t see how you’d explain anyone doing that.”

  “Or how they’d be smart enough to get hold of guns in the first place,” Duke added. “I suppose they could have stolen them, but from who? The people who used to live here certainly hadn’t invented them yet.”

  “Well, that’s probably because I missed one of the bug castes out,” continued Jackson. “You’re forgetting the most important one. The one who sits right at the top.”

  “Oh, brother.” Parkins shook her head again. “Are you saying you think these roaches have some sort of bug queen?”

  “Pretty much guarantee it. Every bug society has one. The question isn’t whether they have one or not – it’s whether she’s the brains behind this whole bug defence. Sort of like a hive mind, you know.”

  “Okay,” said Ghost, patronisingly. “It sounds like somebody needs to take a lie down.”

  “Sounds like someone’s been watching too many movies, more like.” Ginger laughed. “A bug’s just a bug. When it pops up, we squish it. Simple as that.”

  “Yeah,” said Duke. “Because this was simple, right?”

  Everyone went quiet as they fell in with the other fireteams headed towards the rally point.

  Compared to the makeshift camp, Rally Point Bravo was a city.

  Drop ships transported additional marines down to the planet’s surface, but they also hauled large, metallic shipping containers that doubled as defensive walls. Anti-aircraft artillery cannons – the sort one might normally expect to see mounted on the hull of a battlecruiser – had been bolted onto the top of them. They twitched left and right in search of more bomber-bugs. Within those defensive walls, Command had even ordered the slapdash construction of a village’s worth of identikit barracks, mess halls and infirmaries – though of course, Command itself remained safely within the confines of the cruisers and Arks above.

  And then there were the tanks being airlifted down on chains by gunships. Ginger felt a great weight lift from her chest. There was no more re
assuring sight than a regiment of armoured killing machines going into battle ahead of you. Apart from an enemy’s white flag, maybe.

  With any luck, things would get a lot easier from here on out.

  Ginger registered Tau and Sigma at one of the various checkpoints around the perimeter of the base, which unfortunately also meant notifying them of Private Hitch’s death. The officer on desk duty made a monotone remark about reclaiming bodies once the battle was over. Ginger knew that was a load of crap. Humanity hadn’t the manpower to send out search parties for dead men. And besides, it wasn’t like they’d ever find him down in those roach tunnels.

  They were told they could find Staff Sergeant Baker with Fireteam Quebec over by the bunk houses. It took them twenty minutes of aimless wandering, not to mention a few stops while they waited for entire squads and armoured divisions to cross their path, but they eventually discovered him sitting on a dented supply crate having his arm bandaged by a junior medic.

  “Look who it is,” he said, dismissing the medic as they approached. “Fireteams Tau and Sigma. Am I to understand you were the ones who brought down that…?”

  “Bomber-bug, sir?” Jackson scratched the back of his neck. “That’s what we’ve taken to calling them.”

  “Yes, sir. We, erm, improvised.” Ginger felt an overwhelming sense of guilt wash over her. “Sir, about Hitch…”

  He nodded and held up his data pad. “I saw the notification. Sorry to hear that. Private Hitch was a good man. I know that he and Jessie were especially close, so…”

  Baker sighed.

  “Well, everyone’s impressed. We lost thousands of soldiers today, but that number would have been a lot higher had those – what did you call them? – bomber-bugs made it to camp. Back in the day, you might have got a commendation. Instead, Command has insisted that you lot be front and centre when we take the bridge tomorrow. Don’t say the UEC never treats you.”

  “Oh really, you shouldn’t have.” Ghost’s deadpan expression didn’t so much as twitch. “It’s too much.”