This was written a few years ago by me. The challenge was to write a military SF story in 2000 words.
Shining armor. Usually that was all that was needed to fight a dragon, at least in the stories. Dragons aren’t real, they say, except on Thessalo. And on Thessalo, shining armor makes a pretty coffin.
It was supposed to be a routine patrol. Two light guncraft, each bearing a squad of Hee-Hees aloft, as graceful as pregnant bats, in their titanium wombs. I was a Hee-Hee. Hostile Environs Enfanterie - Heavy class. We were usually deployed in real holey shit, urban combat against rebels, boarding actions, you get the idea. If it was too hot for a skivvy and too small for a tank, a guy who was halfway between would do both jobs half as good. Thessalo was the site of man’s first contact with an alien intelligence. It was also the first grain of stargrit where we were deployed in open combat.
Inside the aero, we were typical Legione fare. I was a big pink-hided bull from Nouveau-Quebec. Signed up to avoid penal time. Hauser was a big blonde-headed bull from Vega III. Also signed up to avoid penal time. He was loud and had a smile like a half-demented shark, and i considered him a frere. Michel was a big black-skinned bull from Chinese Africa. He signed up to avoid execution. Michel was quiet and his eyes were full of ghosts. We didn’t like talking to Michel. Even for a Legionaire, he was a scary homme. The rest were stand-up guys.
Targets for this mission were Opies. Short for can-opener. [Censor’s Note: Several definitions of slang terms and other Enfanterie parlance have been provided post-media for Civilian-caste readers.] Fuckers the size of pickup trucks on steroids and twice as ornery. They’ve evolved a kind of natural metal skin that is straight-up bastille (Note: unbreakable) against all but tank-poppers. Speaking of tanks, that’s their main food source now. A pack of ‘em will surround a Char. 70-M, the poor beast’s auto-turret wildly swinging its main gun like a club as they spit acid into its guts. Liquefies the crew in minutes. After that they start eating the electroniques, the hull, the ammunition, even the fuel. Vet tankers have started fitting their chars with autobombs that go off when the acid hits the hull, but some rookies are still dumb enough to think they might escape and load their SMGs. The Orientale troops call these bento boxes.
So that’s where the Hee-Hees come in. Our plate is useless against these things, but the integrated faux-muscles let us lug around tall iron. Most of us carried stripped-down recoilless rifles, the clip-fed kind that jammed when you sneezed, firing big AP-HE rockets. These were unguided (to “save weight”. Merde.) but a direct hit on an opie could make salad out of him. Each squad’s sergeant (myself and a grim one named Garn from Antarctica) carried a signal launcher, and the lieutenant was authorized a single nuclear rocket. Why only one? Fuckin’ Syndicalistes snuck in an arms reduction bill on the back of the last Economic Edict. Put a lot of nuke-makers out of a job. “Liberales,” i had spat when I heard the news. “Civilians,” Hauser had corrected me, before actually spitting.
Anyway, we were carrying enough hammer to lay waste to Grand Eurasia, and we’d fought opies before. We were confident. Or cocked. Whichever. Blame the Legione for teaching us that second-guessing led to the second life.
Our aero touched down on the northern edge of Free-Fire Zone Bravo. If you don’t know Bravo, you don’t know war. The zone comprises a broad archipelago of massive titanium deposits, jutting kayems into the sky, pure-white and blinding bright. Around the islands is a sea of what looks like bluish obsidian, veined through with precious metals. It was a desert of volcanic flow from the polar zone to the south. Seemed prefectly flat from the sky, but constant tectonic upheaval led to the obsidian cracking and smashing into itself, forming a field of knives. The opies were all over the planet, but here they were the most saturated, feeding on the veins of gold and nickel and using their acid to tunnel through the rock. A famous nature journalist came to Bravo once and said the whole thing looked like “tall white angels in mourning over a death shroud for a giant.” He was turned to goo when an opie pissed acid on him as he tried to vid it. Like Hauser said, civilians.
As soon as we landed and the pilot had given the OK, I grunted a signal word loudly into my helm and the squad deployed from the aero’s rear belly-hatch in single file. A man in a Hee-Hee suit was broad enough to fill the hatchway, so this took time. As soon as one man was out, he quickly scanned the black desert in a pie-slice in front of him, his tall iron following his helmet sensors. By the time the last man was out, we had formed a circle around the dropzone, and our firefields overlapped. I was blushing proud, but didn’t show it. This was routine.
The midday suns above us blazed like the red eyes of God Himself, illuminating the crystal sea before us with a fish-scale fire. The titanium towers in the distance became pillars of pure light, paragons of order in a desert of chaos.
Operation Vantablack was now underway. Mission: Search and Destroy.
Weapons: Free.
Rules of Engagement: Individual discretion.
It had been two hours and fifty-four minutes of marching when we encountered the first pack of opies. The drudge of marching was quickly banished as war-rage strobed our cerebral cortices like a laser. Civilians don’t know the pure joy of a combat high. The suits pump Hee-Hees so full of adrenaline and stimulants we’re lucky we can remember to breathe. We need them, though, because the Opies, despite being ten tons and fully bastille, have the reflexes of a pro goalkeeper. Not only that, but they can cover ground like nothing else alive. Imagine twelve legs, all razor-sharp and thick as girders, moving so fast they become almost invisible, making a sound like metal shavings in a food processor times a thousand, all working to move this thing the size of a small fishing boat with the killing mind of a tiger. It’s like having a small aerocraft fly at you, at speed, at three meters above the ground. Now imagine there’s fourteen of them.
Michel spotted them first and yelled “Contact right 90.” We swung around , the gyros in our suits compensating for the inertia and gently bringing our guns to rest on target. The recent seismics in the area had thrown up plenty of cover, and the opies zig-zagged across the open ground, the smaller ones running interference for the big dogs, acting as living shields. Standard opie small-unit assault. The reflective metal of their armor was put to good use, using variable geometry to reflect sunlight, breaking up their outlines like a herd of zebras. Must have been habit for ‘em, because it had no effect on our thermal cams.
We were outnumbered but we had the range advantage. We got into defillade to minimize our profiles and locked our suits’ legs for a stable firing solution. Risky, but i wanted as few opies to actually touch us as possible, so i gave the order. When they reached one kayem from our position, we opened up on them like the wrath of God. The big rifles poured rockets downrange, throwing up clouds of razors when they hit the rock. The opies didn’t mind. A few rounds slammed home, one taking a beast in the chest, another breaking a few legs. One of mine hit a weak spot in the shoulder and it went up like a frag mine.
But like i said, opies are fast. They’re also smart. Using the terrain on the way in, the big ones were able to minimize attrition. The little ones were mostly destroyed, but even half an opie can move and fight. Their organs are constructed in such a way that the vital parts are almost ninety percent redundant. The ones that were too damaged to fight began ponderously tunneling into the ground, to feed and heal. The rest scuttled along at reduced speed behind their big brothers.
Closer now, five hundred ems. We kept firing, scoring more hits now. Hee-Hee suits have only a rudimentary targeting computer, but it’s primarily programmed for man-sized hostiles at close range. Opie-hunters had to be marksmen, which is why most of us were country bumpkins or had killed men before. My gun jammed. I kept her pointed down range in case of a delayed ignition. No such luck. I had to remove the rocket from the breech manually, and by then the opies would have moved into our neighborhood. So i launched a signal grenade for air support, knowing it probably wouldn’t be noticed. The grenade arced high into the air, strobing red and green, before touching down just behind the opies.
It was then that the Dragon showed up.
A huge sound, furious, arose up behind us as the black desert splintered, thousands of giant crystal shards launched into the air as if by a bomb. I remember thinking it was our air support, and my stomach clenched as I realized it had come from below.
If the opies had religion, this must have been their God. As if a centipede had been crossbred with a freight train in Satan’s mad science castle, the monster reared up from its ambush tunnel. It was the size of a missile silo if you were to pull one out of the ground. It crashed down, splintering obsidian as its metal frame made contact with the earth. Two men were thrown by the shockwave. The rest froze. The Lieutenant was silent.
Seizing the day, I ordered my men to turn and fire on the Dragon while I went to go retrieve a functioning launcher. I tensed my legs and nothing moved. The suit’s legs were still locked. They had jammed like the gun. The Dragon was getting closer. I had looked at Sodom, and was frozen stiff.
The Dragon writhed and dove, smashing aside rockforms and its lesser kin alike. It must have been attempting to absorb our fire on its thicker armor. The giant opened an orifice and a wave of white-hot lightning burst forth, arcing towards Michel and cooking him in his armor. He writhed like an insect before his body exploded inside his suit. If it weren’t for the combat drugs, I’d have vomited.
It was only Hauser, the Lieutenant, and myself against the beast. Both were well-trained, and kept the Dragon engaged on its flanks. The thing might have been invincible, but it couldn’t turn too good. I was still frozen where I stood. Pretty soon, the big alien fuck would just flatten me by accident.
The lightning flew again, this time torching Hauser. I screamed so loud I blew blood vessels in my eyes and could barely see. The Dragon whipped around, attempting to crush the LT, who dove just in time to only be launched towards me, bowling me flat. He could have been dead, but I had no way of knowing. I was on my back, and saw the LT’s launcher within reach. The clip had two rockets left, the last one marked with red and yellow checks. My stimulated killing-mind overcame fight-or-flight as one pure thought cooked my brain like an egg.
I’m gonna nuke the fucker.
The last AP/HE round busted a big hole in the thing’s face. It stared at me, its wrath palpable. The orifice opened. The lightning came. I answered with thunder.
C’est fini.