Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(95)

Then there’s a loud, tortured rumbling groan in the air. It’s an organic sound, not a mechanical one. It sounds like someone has taken a gigantic chicken bone in both hands and is slowly breaking it apart.

“There’s movement at the wreckage,” Halley sends to the platoon. “Oh, shit. There’s more of them coming out.”

From our vantage point on the eastern side of the building, we can only see the nose of the crashed Lanky seedpod. The bulk of it is around the corner from our perspective. But the sound of material failure is coming from there, and that doesn’t foretell happy news.

Halley turns on the public-address system on her ship, and her voice booms across the plaza, amplified by thousands of watts.

“Everyone get clear,” she bellows. “Everyone get off the plaza and under cover. The wreckage is not empty.”

A murmur goes through the crowd like a wave. Some people heed the warning and try to stream back to the buildings, only to push against the stream of people who decided to stick around and get closer for a look.

We start running toward the corner of the building, toward the spot where the nose of the seedpod has ground a furrow into the concrete plaza. We’re not even halfway there when a chunk of the seedpod’s flank ejects from the hull forcefully and sails through the cool nighttime air. It lands on the ten-meter concrete dam that forms the outer wall between the residence towers and glances off, leaving a deep gouge in the concrete and crashing onto the ground just on the edge of the plaza.

Another Lanky climbs out of the wreckage and onto the plaza, and the mood of the crowd tips from curiosity and concern to full-blown panic in the span of three or four seconds. The crowd surges back, this time in only one direction—away from the Lankies.

Then the hull of the seedpod shudders, and another Lanky emerges, unfolding its limbs and clambering off its broken ride like a giant bug leaving a used-up garbage receptacle. It slides down the hull and lands feetfirst on the plaza with a thud.

Gunshots roll across the plaza as some of the armed civilians start firing at the Lankies. I can’t tell them it won’t do much good because they have no comms gear, and I doubt they’d listen even if they could hear me. The gunfire increases in volume as more and more people join the fusillade. The Lankies look indecisive, like they just woke up from a nap and aren’t quite all there yet, or maybe they are intimidated by the unusual sight of so many human beings right in front of them. The lead Lanky lets out its trilling wail and starts walking forward into the plaza, and the one behind it follows after a moment.

“MARS rockets,” Sergeant Fallon bellows.

I know we brought maybe two rockets per launcher, and we used up most of our supply on a single Lanky already, but there’s nothing else left to do other than run away and let the Lankies wreak havoc down here.

I shoulder my M-80, which seems ludicrously inadequate for this scenario. Then I grab a new pair of shells and stuff them into the barrels. Next to me, our four MARS gunners take a knee and aim at the closest Lanky, fifty meters away. The noise and chaos all around us are apocalyptic.

“On my mark. Three, two, one, fire!” Sergeant Fallon shouts. Four launchers disgorge their payloads, and the closest Lanky is blown off its three-toed feet by the impacts. It goes down in a flailing tangle of limbs.

I hear the thundering staccato of a heavy machine gun. Tracers streak across the plaza and over the heads of the crowd. They lay into the Lankies and deflect off their tough hides in puffs and sparks. I look for the source of the fire and see a machine gun mount on a tripod, set up on the low roof of one of the administrative buildings in the center of the plaza. The people manning the gun are wearing the same olive-drab fatigues as the militia soldiers I met in the atrium of the tower. Lazarus Brigade. I have a brief flashback to a hot summer night five years ago, when a gun mount just like that hosed one of our drop ships out of the sky and killed half my squad when we went out to rescue the pilot.

Everyone is firing at the Lankies now—HD troopers, armed civilians, and the uniformed militiamen with the canister-fed automatic cannon. I load and fire, load and fire, again and again, until the ammo loops on my armor are empty. The Lankies are backing away from the volume of fire that’s getting thrown their way. They cluster in front of the barrier wall, safety in numbers and proximity. Then they start climbing the retaining wall, which is only half as tall as they are.

“Coming in hot,” Halley shouts over the platoon channel.

“I thought you have no cannon shells left,” I shout back.

“I don’t,” she says. “But I have seventy tons at five hundred knots.”

I almost drop my rifle in shock. “Don’t,” I say. “Don’t do this.”

The distant wailing of the Dragonfly engines increases in pitch and volume. It’s coming from the east, a drop ship at full throttle and well above the speed of sound. Then it appears in the sky between the two eastern towers, engines aglow. Halley banks the ship smoothly and elegantly and shoots right through the space between the towers. Then there’s the muffled sound of a low explosion, and Dragonfly Delta Five streaks across the plaza like a huge missile and plows into the barrier dam the Lankies are climbing onto.

The fireball that blooms into the sky and outward from the barrier dam illuminates the whole plaza in a furious shade of orange. The Lankies disappear in the inferno, crushed and flung aside by the impact force of millions of joules, far more punch than all the MARS rockets we are carrying on our backs combined.