David Gunn - Death's head

The hill is overrun.

"Sir…”

It’s the man I made sergeant. He’s out of breath, as are the four troopers who struggle out of the marsh behind him. Five men out of ten-not a bad rate of attrition for a battle this fierce.

“Sergeant?”

“What now, sir?”

“We attack.”

He checks to see if I’m joking.

“ Fucking Death’s Head, ” one of them mutters, but the voice is impressed despite itself.

“What’s your name?”

“Neen, sir.”

“And the others?”

“Troopers Will, Shil, Franc, and Haze.”

Crop-haired and filthy, they salute, looking nervous. In name order they’re runtish, scowling, white-faced, and overweight. Only Neen looks vaguely like a soldier, and that’s probably just the way he carries his gun. At least he looks more likely to shoot someone else than shoot himself.

“Stick with me,” I tell them. “Anyone asks, you’re already obeying orders. Got it?”

They nod like the neat little row of cannon fodder they are. It’s all I can do not to turn my back on the lot of them and walk away, leaving the group to fulfill their manifest destiny, which is get slaughtered for the greater good of OctoV. But being a lieutenant without men to command, that sucks.

So I order my new sergeant to choose himself a corporal.

“Franc,” he says without hesitation. His choice looks young and nervous, but it’s the sergeant’s decision.

“Okay. Now hit some batwings.”

Neen smiles, nods. Catching his mood, the others do the same.

“You’re going to fire this,” I tell Neen. “And I’m going to show you how.”

The belt-fed is a new model. More complicated that any machine gun I’ve handled before, but the thing about belt-feds is that they all follow a basic pattern, and it’s a pattern that is centuries old. A belt goes in, spent ceramic is ejected, somewhere down the line the block and barrel overheat and the firing mechanism jams. An experienced gunner can read the signs, letting his weapon cool between bursts for just long enough to keep it firing the rest of the time.

“Okay?”

He looks doubtful, so I run him again through the routine, doing my best to keep my temper, which is never good at the best of times. We touch on range and the fact that the gun has no brain at all, and why that can be an advantage when the Enlightened start letting off logic bombs.

We’re all aware there’s a battle going on around us.

“Got it this time?”

He takes one look at my face and nods.

“Good.”

Batwings continue to cut swaths through our troops before they can muster. Half the time new drops don’t even get clear of the pods. And our pods are still dropping, providing the batwings with a limitless supply of fresh meat.

We have twenty thousand dead already according to a readout on my visor. From habit, I double that for a true figure, and then double it again for what we’ll have lost by nightfall. Eighty thousand out of two hundred thousand, pretty much what the high command must be expecting.

The fleet can be seen in low orbit; General Jaxx’s mother ship is a black fleck in the sky above that. An early drop managed to set up an anti-aircraft gun. Most of their time is spent trying to take out high fighters before they can chase our pods to the ground. About one shot in ten hits its target. I’ve been in battles most of my life, but combat like this is outside my experience.

Dragging the belt-fed to the edge of the trees, we place it facing the city, because that’s where the batwings are obviously based.

“Kill them all,” I tell Neen.

Remembering his training, he snaps me a salute.

I smile.

Our belt-fed attracts attention, as we knew it would. As soon as the enemy realize we’ve moved it, a batwing peels off from the pod run and doubles back toward our small circle of trees. Bullets rip apart branches and then the batwing’s behind us, banking tightly for another run.

“Anyone injured?”

“Me,” says a voice.

Behind me lies a trooper. A sliver of branch protruding from his stomach. Out here that’s a death wound, three days of blood poisoning and flesh rot. It takes me a moment to remember his name. It’s Will, the smallest of the five.

“You,” I say to Franc and Neen. “Keep firing.” Franc feeds belt to the gun and Neen targets a batwing, making it swerve.

“That goes for you, too,” I tell the others. So Haze and Shil drag their gaze from the injured grunt, sight along their pulse rifles, and start firing. Haze is a shit shot, but at least he’s pointing in the right direction.

“You’re Will, right?”

He nods. “It’s bad, isn’t it, sir?”

“Hell,” I say. “It’s nothing.”

His eyes want to believe me. “You mean it?”

“Oh yeah, definitely.”

The trooper smiles, and he’s still smiling when I stab him through the heart. Flipping his jacket back into place, I close Will’s eyes and make the soldier’s sign over his body. Godspeed, and a better life next time.

“Dead,” my gun tells his friends. “Never had a chance.”

They’re doing well, not yet hitting a batwing but definitely tying up several of the bastards and taking them out of the fight. And they keep doing well, right up to the point their belt-fed jams.

“Fuck,” Neen says.

Franc grabs for the belt, burns his fingers, and swears.

“ Enough! ” I shout.

Both troopers freeze.

“Panic, and I’ll shoot you myself.”

The batwing is finishing its circle and readying itself for another run. My gun’s power pack now holds less than 38 percent, so I’m not keen to waste shots, but needs must…

Coming out of sleep, it scans for local threats and finds plenty. “Don’t tell me,” it says. “We’re up shit creek again.”

“See that batwing?”

A diode on the gun lights for locked on, and then blinks out again. “Thing’s shielded,” it says.

“So deal with it.”

The SIG diabolo whirs, a dozen diodes flicker, and it runs some routine to talk its current load through whatever needs doing.

“Done,” it tells me.

The batwing comes apart like a cheap firework. We destroy a second in the same way, and the others peel off and climb out of our range.

“Out of here,” I tell my new sergeant, grabbing his belt-fed by the barrel. He’s about to help when I shove him away. He looks shocked and I have to remind myself how green this lot are.

“It’s hot,” I say. “Burn your flesh to the bone.”

Flicking his gaze to my arm, Neen realizes the obvious. “Shit,” he says, then, “Sorry, sir.”

I almost ask him, What for?

We run back to our own lines, crouched low. And as we do, the first salvos of an enemy barrage reduce our previous position to splintered wood and an ugly black column of smoke and fire.

“How did you know, sir?”

It’s Franc, the new corporal. No such thing as a stupid question, I remind myself; just several thousand that sound that way.

“Cost them two batwings,” I say. “You think they’re going to let that go?”

“No, sir.”

A line of militia opens to let us through. Some of them are whistling their approval, although this stops the moment a fat young uniformed officer appears. He’s from a later drop, obviously, and the only reason he’s been able to keep his uniform clean is that we’ve pushed the enemy back the best part of five hundred yards.

That’s us, the entire first drop, most of whom are now dead.

“What’s your unit?” he asks Franc.

The grunt glances at Neen, who glances at me. And I’m standing there, dripping mud and clutching a red-hot belt-fed, my uniform splattered with blood and slivers of other people’s flesh. The young man’s gaze sweeps over me and returns to Franc, who’s beginning to look nervous.