Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(94)
“Lazarus Brigade,” he says.
“What the fuck is that?”
“We are the militia,” he replies, as if the answer is self-evident. “Ask those guys there. We do the job they ought to have done all these years.”
“Stop socializing over there, Andrew,” Sergeant Fallon says on the squad channel. “We have work to do. Get me eyeballs on that alien son of a bitch.”
Two of the troopers dash out to where the overhang ends and peer upward. Instantly, our TacLink feeds update with a three-dimensional representation of the Lanky, hanging on to the wall of the atrium ten floors above us. The rest of the squad follow, and we hurry out into the open, dodging rubble and falling debris.
“Not so much fun now, is it,” I say when I spot the Lanky with my own eyes. It’s crawling—or rather trying to crawl—up the inner wall of the atrium, using the overhangs of the concourse levels as hand-and footholds. But its size and mass work against it. We watch as the Lanky claws for purchase and breaks loose big shoals of concrete, which fall to the atrium in front of us with dull crashes. There’s concerted rifle fire coming from one of the higher concourses—probably the militia squad—and sporadic, random gunfire from the other balconies. The Lanky is slow and sluggish, and there are many holes and scorch marks on its hide.
“MARS launchers,” Sergeant Fallon orders. “Shoot him down, and for fuck’s sake, stay way clear. Fucker’s gonna make a splash when he hits the ground. On my mark.”
She cranks up the amplification on her suit’s PA system and shouts into the hundred-story void above us.
“Cease fire, cease fire. We are shooting rockets. Step back from the atrium. Fire in the hole!”
The civilian gunfire ebbs. Sergeant Fallon jabs an arm upward at the Lanky.
“Three, two, one, fire!”
Four rockets burst from the launcher tubes and shoot upward to where the Lanky is scrambling for purchase on the wall like some gigantic cave spider. This time, nobody misses. Four armor-piercing warheads plow into the Lanky’s torso from below and pluck the creature off the wall like the world’s biggest flyswatter.
“Back off!” Sergeant Fallon shouts, but nobody needs the encouragement. We dash back to the overhang on the opposite side of the atrium. The Lanky screams, and the sound amplifies and reverberates in the giant hollow concrete tube of the atrium until it seems to come from every direction. It flails for purchase and manages to hook a spindly hand into a concourse ledge maybe twenty floors up, but all that mass hanging off it is too much for the concrete, and a ten-foot section of it breaks loose. Then the Lanky and the concrete slab tumble to the ground in a terrifying display of mass in motion.
When the Lanky hits the concrete of the atrium plaza, it feels like we’re at the epicenter of an earthquake. Everyone in the squad is swept off their feet and sent tumbling. The crash from the impact sounds like the explosion of a thermobaric warhead. I feel the ground buckling underneath me. All over the residence tower, windows shatter and things pop out of place noisily and violently. The Lanky lets out one more wail, rolls over, and lies still.
Soldiers don’t leave things to chance. We get to our feet, and everyone unloads whatever weapon they are holding into the bulk of the prone alien fifty meters away. After a few moments, the civvies from the upper floors join in with their own guns, and for a good ten or twenty seconds, there’s a cacophonic fusillade of uncoordinated gunfire, a mad minute with no direction and no other purpose but to put rounds on target. The Lanky in the center of the storm never moves.
“Cease fire,” Sergeant Fallon orders over the squad channel. “Cease fire. He’s done.”
The military gunfire stops immediately, while the civilian fusillade ebbs bit by bit.
“Halley, strike two,” I pant into the air-support channel. “We took out the one in the atrium. What’s your situation?”
It takes a few moments for Halley to reply to my hail. She sounds very stressed when she does.
“Third one’s down, too. Second and Third Squads have casualties, and I’m all out of cannon rounds. Get out here if you can.”
“Affirmative,” I reply. Then I toggle over to Sergeant Fallon and the squad channel. “The other squads need a hand with wounded. Let’s regroup outside.”
“First Squad, grab your toys and let’s go,” Sergeant Fallon says. “We take the east exit.”
Outside, the night is chaotically loud. The security alarms of the tower block are sounding their unpleasant ascending klaxon. On the plaza between the four residence towers, people are streaming out of buildings to either flee or witness the spectacle. I hear gunshots in the distance, the familiar rolling booms of M-80 rifles firing their heavy armor-piercing shells. Overhead, Halley’s drop ship circles above the block, engines roaring, and her searchlights are painting bright streaks across the broken hull of the Lanky seedpod nearby. The sight of so many civilians surging onto the plaza, many of them armed, fills me with more dread than the idea of taking on another Lanky. The last time I was here, fifteen or twenty kilometers to the east, a mob like this fought a battle-hardened squad of Territorial Army troopers to a draw and damn near killed us all. If this crowd decides that we aren’t welcome here despite the Lanky presence, we are about to have a very unpleasant evening.
I turn around to tell Sergeant Fallon to retreat back to the building and go up to the roof for pickup, but there’s another group of civvies pouring out of the high-rise behind us. They’re not as numerous, but most of them are armed as well, and we can’t just bull our way through that crowd without starting a fight.