Descent from the Black: An Odyssey One Novella Page 9

  Lang sighed again as he ran his hand through his short hair. “Doesn’t make it right.”

  “Do you know what the average casualty rate was today for front-line units?” Clark asked.

  Lang looked up at Clark and shook his head no.

  “Forty-three percent.”

  “Oh wow, I beat the average by seven whole percent,” Lang said.

  “Seven percent from an entire company, and one that’s been out there basically the entire time. Do the math, sir; that’s a lot of people who are alive who wouldn’t be if you weren’t in charge.”

  Lang chewed on that for a few moments, frustrated that success could be measured in the margin via lives. The sergeant had a point, but he knew that he could do better and he said so.

  “That’s the fight fucking attitude, sir. I don’t think I could stand it if you went all mopey on me again,” Clark added with a smile.

  “Fuck you, Sergeant.”

  “Yessir.”

  ***

  Lang was able to grab about four hours of sleep that had felt like ten, which was a good sign. He was still worn out, but his head was much clearer. Command had not requested Bravo Company’s presence at the front yet, but Lang was going to do his damnedest to get them back to fully mission capable ASAP. There was every chance that they would be needed, and probably on short notice, which meant mainly one thing: logistics. Fate could be ironic, he mused.

  The replacement medical supplies had arrived first, which confused him until he remembered that the ratio of killed to wounded was far higher than in a war against other humans. Particle beams tended to either kill or miss the intended target, but not much in between. They still had a decent stock of food and potable water, and they easily found replacements for damaged or destroyed weapons. The one thing which Lang was impatiently waiting for was ammunition. He understood the delay, though.

  The military was using a lot of it.

  He couldn’t help but feel naked, as they only had enough rounds to fully outfit maybe ten Marines. He did his best not to pace around the makeshift headquarters and left his platoon commanders to their jobs. Since he had some downtime, he focused on the various intel and tactical plots. Even though the assault on downtown Los Angeles was progressing slowly, it still didn’t make sense to Lang that an alien race with experience in destroying entire planets would choose to drop into the most contested territories on Earth, especially given their unique strengths.

  “You look troubled, Captain,” Lieutenant Stewart said.

  Lang started a bit, as he hadn’t heard her approach. After recovering and pausing for a moment, he asked her, “Do you think they can be that dumb?”

  “What do you mean?” Stewart asked as Snyder and Johnson joined them.

  “If I were them, I would’ve dropped into Antarctica, the Himalayas, the Amazon, or some other remote region where my troops could keep breeding,” Lang explained. By the time he had finished, Carter, Weiss, and Clark were all in the room.

  “They don’t seem to really fight so much as eradicate,” Snyder said.

  “The captain is right, though,” Carter said. “An advanced intelligence brought them here, and the Drasin themselves are smart enough to wipe out entire planets.”

  “Nobody is denying that,” Snyder agreed. “But their tactics are usually pretty simple.”

  “I guess we shouldn’t be complaining about that,” Stewart added.

  “Unless this is all some sort of decoy,” Johnson countered.

  “Maybe they just hate us that much,” Weiss said. “They just can’t help but be drawn to our cities like moths to a flame.”

  “Wait, go back,” Lang said, gesturing at Lieutenant Johnson. “If these attacks on our major cities are the decoys, then what are the real targets?”

  “Unfortunately, I have no idea, sir,” Johnson replied, seemingly disappointed with herself.

  “With all due respect,” Clark interjected, “shouldn’t we leave that to the intel geeks? I’m sure we’re not the only ones to have thought of this.”

  Lang knew that the sergeant was right, but it was still difficult to tear his mind away from the possibility. “Alright, let’s stay focused on combat readiness. That being said … if you think of anything …”

  “Roger that, sir,” Carter said as they all went back to whatever it was they had been doing. Not less than five minutes later, Lang finally got the notification for which he’d been waiting. He double-timed it to the supply drop and found crates and crates of ammunition.

  “Thank God,” Weiss said as he walked over to Lang.

  “Yeah, about time,” Lang agreed as the order to rearm went out to all of Bravo Company. He grabbed enough ammunition for himself and let his platoon leaders do their jobs. Shortly thereafter, all of the platoons had contacted him and were ready to go. He ordered everyone to get as much rest and food as possible, because none of them knew when their next chance would be.

  ***

  The call finally came, but it was not what Lang had expected. “Rock, Blaze Six; you want us to go where?” he asked. “That area is completely unpopulated, over.”

  “By humans,” the nameless voice from Command responded. “The Drasin have inhabited an old mine and have built an extensive nest there, over.”

  Johnson was right, in part at least. “Rock, Blaze Six; roger that. ETA on the birds, over?”

  “Thirteen minutes, over.”

  “Blaze copies one three minutes; out.”

  Lang sent the order to mobilize and Bravo Company’s area became a beehive of activity. “Sir,” Lieutenant Carter said from behind him.

  Lang turned and asked, “Problem?”

  “The mine … it’s, well, underground.”

  “They usually are,” Lang opined.

  Carter’s face started to flush as she responded. “Well, yes sir, they are. But Charlie Platoon—”

  “I know,” Lang interjected. “You’re not going down with us.”

  “Then you’re leaving us behind?” she asked.

  “Negative, Lieutenant. Charlie Platoon is going to cover the entrance to that mine. If anything comes out of it that has more than four appendages, you make it dead, understood?”

  “Affirmative, sir!” she responded while saluting.

  Lang returned the salute. “Like I was going to leave Charlie Platoon out of this,” he scoffed. “Go get ‘em ready,” he said, dismissing her. He put his combat helmet back on and locked it into place, which triggered the activation of his HUD. He monitored both the progress of his platoons and the incoming helicopters while also scanning the intelligence reports on the mine.

  The situation was not good.

  There were a few Drasin near the entrance, but heat signatures, seismic activity, and other scanners indicated an extremely large nest. Blueprints of the original mine were overlaid on the real-time intelligence, and assuming that they were accurate, the Drasin had made quite a bit of progress in expanding it … and filling their ranks in the process. Lang took a moment to read the orders again, which revealed that his company was the closest combat-ready infantry unit. He had originally figured that they’d be ordered back downtown, but he was glad that they were ready in time for this mission. If it hadn’t been blatantly clear before, it was most definitely clear now—not a single one of these things could be left alive.

  The remaining minutes before the helicopters got there passed quickly, but Lang was proud to see that each platoon was ready and waiting when they landed. They hopped aboard just as quickly, and for the second time in as many days, Lang was on a bird, headed to drop on another group of alien invaders. Their destination was not far away, so he didn’t have much time to dwell on it. “Lieutenant Carter, set up and fire at your discretion,” he ordered as the birds closed in on the LZ.

  Charlie Platoon was the first to drop. The riflemen in that group ran out to secure a perimeter while the SCCMs were loaded and the remaining EXO-12s disembarked. As Lang’s bird touched down, he could hear
the shrieks and booms of the counter-mass missiles making short work of the four Drasin that were outside. The EXO-12 drivers moved quickly to cover the entrance to the mine with a very effective crossfire. They wouldn’t be able to maneuver well in the mineshaft and thus were not going inside, but they were in a position to make sure that nothing came out, especially while backed up by mortars and drones.

  Going inside would be trickier, though, since traditional tactics like “blowtorch and corkscrew” wouldn’t work against these aliens; especially in this situation where simply collapsing the tunnels wasn’t enough. With this on Lang’s mind, the rifle platoons formed up by him, near the entrance where occasional bursts of tri-barrel cannon fire could be heard. He looked the Marines over as they prepared for the assault and realized that he was about to send them into an underground chamber with one known exit that contained a metric fuckton of genocidal aliens. “Sergeant,” he began, on a direct link to Clark, “remember when I said I wouldn’t ask the men to do anything I wouldn’t do?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m fine with it,” Clark responded.

  “You are?” Lang responded with honest confusion.

  “Yeah, Weiss looks about ready to take over, anyway.”

  Lang wanted to be angry at such a serious moment, but he had to laugh aloud. Though the Marines couldn’t hear him, it was obvious by his body language that he was responding to something funny. “I’m only taking lead until the tunnels branch off. Anyway, let’s get this show on the road,” he said to Clark. He flipped to the company’s command channel and said, “Alright, there are five tunnels, so we’re going to have to split up.” He sent them their designated zones as he added, “I’ll lead us to where the tunnels diverge with two fire teams from Golf Platoon.”

  Everyone acknowledged, so he turned to face the entrance to the mine, just in time to see an EXO-12 fire another burst into it. Lang was no longer so gung-ho to enter a dark hole in the side of a mountain, filled with things that wanted to vaporize him. “Time to collect that paycheck,” he said to himself as he led the first element to the entrance.

  “All clear for now, sir,” one of the EXO-12 operators said.

  Not wasting any time, Lang rushed in from the left. The tunnel got dark so quickly that he had to use active night vision, which he wasn’t thrilled about since he didn’t know whether or not the Drasin could see what was effectively an infrared flashlight. Still, active night vision was better than no night vision. Overlaid with the infrared, he’d be sure to spot any Drasin as soon as he encountered them.

  Lang slowed his pace as he re-shouldered his weapon, moving it in concert with his head as he scanned the shaft, slowly heading down and to the left. Each step he took farther into the black raised his heart rate, even as he fought his instincts. Fear is the mind-killer, a wise man once wrote. But biology is not something easily overcome, so his vital signs changed to what they were going to be, and he ignored it.

  He used even more caution as he approached an area where the tunnel made an S-curve to the right. Being on the left wall of the tunnel gave him the best vantage point out of those in the lead fire team, but he still crept around the corner slowly. His neck hairs had been standing up straight since he entered the damn cave, but his subconscious was really screaming at him now.

  Lang was about to resume his previous pace when he saw a flicker of motion ahead. Reflexively, he triggered a three-round burst. The entire advance took defensive positions, but over thirty seconds went by and nothing happened. “What was it, Captain?” the lance corporal next to him asked.

  “Thought I saw something,” Lang responded. Embarrassed, he stood and started to move farther into the tunnel. Lang got no less than ten more feet before the hallway ahead of him lit up with infrared energy. “Down!”

  The wall to Lang’s left was scorched as he and the two other Marines at the front pushed themselves backward as quickly as humanly possible. Lang fired a few bursts with one hand, but firing from a prone position while crawling was basically a waste of ammunition. “Defensive positions!” he yelled as soon as they were around the corner a bit. There was really no cover in the tunnels, though, so the order was more for them to get ready to fire, which didn’t come a moment too soon.

  The first Drasin came crawling around the corner, so Lang and no less than four other Marines all put rounds into it. In such a tight space, it was overkill, but before Lang could give the orders to correct that, a second one came around the corner, and then a third. By the time the fifth and sixth tried to attack them, the gunfire was nonstop.

  The good news was that none of the Drasin had gotten another shot off yet, but the bad news was that they were burning through ammunition—and blocking the tunnel with the dead bodies of Drasin. The situation was untenable, so Lang ordered a slow retreat. The Drasin kept following, so the Marines kept shooting, leaving a trail of dead aliens in their wake like some sort of twisted breadcrumbs.

  Lang didn’t realize that they had backed into a straight section of tunnel until it was too late. He was firing on full auto now, but of the five Drasin within line-of-sight, only three went down; the other two were mostly shielded by their dying brethren. Two beams crackled through the air, and the three Marines next to him simply ceased to exist. “Fuck!” he yelled as he emptied his magazine.

  The next fire team wasted no time entering the fray, but by that time, the Marines were moving backward as quickly as they could. Once they cleared the entrance, they all took cover and joined the defensive line. What seemed like an endless stream of Drasin tried to follow them out, so even the three EXO-12s didn’t have enough firepower to stop them on their own. All of the Marines on the line opened fire, in addition to snipers hundreds of meters behind them.

  After what seemed like a lifetime but was probably only minutes, the Drasin stopped coming. “Think we got all of them?” Lieutenant Stewart asked on the command channel.

  “No,” Lang replied immediately. Both intel and experience suggested that they were only chased by the ones to whom they were close enough to piss off. Everyone else was using this time to reload, which made Lang realize that those of them involved in the firefight were already low on ammo. Without thinking, he sent off a request for more over the network to Command.

  “How are we going to get through, sir?” Clark asked him on the command channel.

  “Can we use something heavier?” Lieutenant Snyder asked.

  “Intel says SCCMs or thermobarics will probably bring the tunnel down on us,” Weiss responded.

  Lang would normally be frustrated that Snyder had forgotten something that critical from the mission brief, but he was far more worried about how they were going to overcome the problem. “If this mine weren’t in a damn mountain, we could drop bunker-busters into it,” Lang said to nobody in particular. The comment was followed by over sixty seconds of silence, as nobody had any ideas. Finally, he sighed before saying, “We have to rush them.”

  “What?” Johnson asked.

  “Our speed is our only advantage in there. We have to eliminate and get past them before they start piling up.” More moments went by in silence. “I don’t see any other way.”

  “What if we can’t get them all, sir?” Clark asked.

  As usual, Lang realized that he was right and they needed a Plan B. Well, the more he thought about it, his idea could also be part of Plan A. For the first time this day, Lang had a smile on his face. “Command, I’m going to need a few things, and I need them five minutes ago …”

  Chapter 12

  It took forty minutes, but Lang finally had everything he needed.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” First Sergeant Clark said as it became obvious what the new contraptions were.

  “I got the idea from the manuals I had to read in preparation for my transfer to Logistics,” Lang admitted. Along with the rest of the command staff, they were both looking at five crudely mobile thermobaric bombs, complete with cowcatchers on the front. “The self-p
ropelled cargo movers can go almost highway speeds on an airfield tarmac, and we already have ones custom built to hold ordnance. I figured if we can’t get the warheads on the bunker-busters in the easy way …”

  “A bomb that drives itself …” Snyder commented. “The Drasin are going to incinerate these on sight, though.”

  “Yeah, that’s where we come in, sir,” Clark said, earning a look from Lang. He didn’t need a breakdown in “unit cohesion” at this particular moment.

  “So we still have to rush them?” Stewart asked. It was clear from her tone that she knew the answer to the question, but felt compelled to ask it anyway.

  “Yeah, we’ve gotta clear paths for these things, but I got us some help,” Lang said, pointing to five rapidly approaching objects. The relatively small airborne reconnaissance drones slowed to a hover about ten meters away from the group.

  “I don’t see how—” Snyder began.

  “—we simply use them as—” Clark started to interject, clearly frustrated with the younger officer.

  “—we’re using them as bait,” Lang said, talking over the first sergeant. Though unorthodox, the plan was relatively simple, and everyone was on the same page shortly thereafter. They then spent the next few minutes lining up all of the relevant equipment and getting ready to enter the tunnels again.

  The drones went in one at a time, so that they wouldn’t all be destroyed in one hit. Additionally, the first drone in was tasked with the longest tunnel, then the next drone was assigned the next-longest tunnel, and so on. Lang watched the video feeds from the drones on his HUD with bated breath, but no Drasin were encountered until the point where the one tunnel broke into five separate ones. As programmed, the drone made its way into the longest tunnel, passing two Drasin as it did.

  Nothing happened.

  The drone then passed several more Drasin, which also ignored it. “Wait, stop the drone,” Lang ordered Charlie Platoon. A Marine took manual control of the drone and complied with the order. “Get closer,” Lang added, and the drone did. Still, the Drasin ignored it. Shit.