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Grass Eaters | 49 | Fearless II
🕑 Added 2024-04-24 16:47:01 +0000 UTCDatsot
For the third morning in a row, Longclaw Commander Skhork woke abruptly to the shrieking warning of the base sirens.
The increasing regularity of these attacks was why, despite it being cramped and uncomfortable, the vehicle crews opted to sleep inside their armored vehicle. Now, fog fading from their heads, they burst into action with practiced efficiency. Skhork reached up outside his station, pulled his commander hatch into the closed position, and secured it. He booted up the Longclaw computer and confirmed the status of the vehicle and its occupants. Everything checked out.
“Is everyone else buttoned up?” he bellowed into the radio without taking his eyes off his screen.
“Fearless Two, here.”
“Fearless Three, here.”
“Fearless Four, here.”
“Good.”
They watched on the Longclaw external optics as the other soldiers and Marines streamed out of the barracks towards their dug cover and vehicles. A trickle at first, then a flood as troops ran towards any form of hard cover they could reach with urgency.
The next warning they got was from their Longclaw sensors. Data-linked to the base’s counter-battery radar, the Longclaw crews could see the explosive threats in their terminal stage marked with clarity. Then they heard the whistle. Skhork didn’t think he would forget that sound until the day he returned to the Prophecy.
The first artillery shell hit the barracks. Whether it was pure luck or the Lesser Predators were just getting better with experience, it hit exactly the worst place it possibly could. The top of the shoddily constructed barracks disappeared into a cloud of smoke. The windows shattered, blowing debris and glass away from the building and towards the infantry sprinting away from the strike zone. Skhork spotted two soldiers, one he recognized as a four whiskers who sat at his table for lunch: they crumpled onto the ground and did not get up.
Several shells landed in the courtyard, or barely missed the dug trenches.
One landed squarely in the mortar pit, destroying the equipment and the concussive force knocking the bodies of two of its operators out of the sandbag reinforced fighting position. By some miracle, there was no secondary detonation.
Or maybe they were out of ammunition.
Skhork glanced desperately at the short-range point defense base turrets. None of them activated. Then he remembered: those turrets had been out of ammunition for days too.
Another few shells fell, trashing other soft targets inside the base producing no more visible casualties as the rest of the infantry seemed to have gotten into better cover.
It was another minute until their own counter-artillery finally barked a response. They sent a barrage of counter-battery shells towards the direction that their radars saw the Lesser Predator artillery had come from.
Skhork hoped that the enemy would still be there when those shells arrived.
---
“We have a problem,” the base commander admitted. In the room were Skhork, two of the other six whiskers that commanded the conscripts of the ground forces, and the unpleasantly familiar face of the supply officer. “We are running dangerously low on munitions for our main battery. We’ve got two, maybe three days left. After that, we’ve got no answer for the enemy artillery besides hoping our ships are overhead, and I hear even they are running low too.”
A murmur of shock and discontentment spread through the gathered. Running out of artillery ammunition? That was only supposed to happen to predators!
Recovering, Skhork asked, “Do we know when we are getting resupplied?”
The base commander shook her head. “No. None of the bases in our theater have gotten anything for weeks. We have been requisitioning shells from some of the back line bases, but those just ran out. It’s not even a problem with our ground logistics; as far as I know, every forward base on this entire continent is facing shell hunger in the next week or so.”
“What are we going to do? The Lesser Predators are eventually going to figure out that we can’t fire back, and they aren’t going to stop pounding us. We’ve been taking heavy fire from Hill 37 lately, and I don’t think those stubborn pests are going to go away anytime soon,” one of the other six whiskers pointed out.
“What’s the problem there?” Skhork asked, frowning. “I thought your battalion was supposed to occupy that hill last week.”
“I take responsibility for our failure to take Hill 37,” the infantry commander said, bowing slightly in shame. “But I am afraid I will not be able to succeed without the additional troopers we had planned for. Unfortunately, the supply of conscripts from Gruccud has dried up since the supply shipments stopped coming. If we attacked without them, it would just be another waste of paws and equipment.”
“Your responsibility is noted,” the base commander said. “But we must take the hill as soon as possible. Having the high ground in the area may buy us some time to stay ahead of the Lesser Predators until our supply resumes.”
She thought for a moment, then added, “Six Whiskers Skhork, can you get your Longclaw platoon ready to join them in the assault later this afternoon?”
“Seven Whiskers, it is risky to employ our Longclaws for that task. The reason we have held back so far is so our more expendable formations can clear the forests of entrenched infantry first before we move in,” Skhork replied matter-of-factly.
The base commander nodded. “Indeed. However, as you may have noticed, our expendable formations are no longer expendable, and our previously limitless supply of conscripts is no longer limitless. Even as Longclaw crews, your lives were—”
“Our lives were forfeited the day we left the hatchling pools,” Skhork finished without hesitation. “I understand, Seven Whiskers, if that is your directive?”
“It is my directive. I take full responsibility for any risk this entails.”
“That is unnecessary,” Skhork dismissed, projecting confidence. “My Longclaws will join the infantry assault on Hill 37, and we will take that hill today.”
The other commanders bowed their heads and chanted in unison, “May the Prophecy be fulfilled through us.”
---
Skhork watched his accompanying infantry advance forward up the hill, about a hundred paces ahead of his Longclaw platoon. There were two companies of them, one on each side of the road. They blended into the thin forestry, best as they could, moving cautiously and tightly gripping their weapons at the ready as they had been trained. Barely trained, he corrected himself.
In his mind, the only reason they were there was to protect his Fearless Platoon from close-range ambush by enemy infantry. For all the talk of their lives being expendable for the Prophecy, their expensive Longclaws were most certainly not.
His vehicles creeped up slowly, keeping pace with their escorts. Fearless Four led the convoy, followed by Fearless Three, then his command Longclaw, finally trailed by Fearless Two.
Skhork noted that one of the squads on the right had crested a small dip in front of them, their line of sight to the road obscured from view. He got on the radio to warn them. “The leading troopers on the right, you’re too far ahead. Wait for the rest of your company to catch up.”
The reply came back, “Yes, Longclaw Commander.”
About half a kilometer up the road, even though the pace of the advance was not rapid, some of the conscripts in the rear were beginning to fatigue and it showed: they dragged their paws and began to lag from the rest of the company. He got on the radio again, “Five Whiskers, you should take a break and let your rear catch up.”
The company commander halted the troops from the front of the column. “Thank you, Longclaw Commander.”
A short water break, a bend in the road, and after another steep climb, Skhork noted the infantry formation rear lagging again as the point troopers started to advance well past the hilly crest in front.
“These conscript amateurs,” he remarked to his crew, shaking his head in exasperation. He flicked the switch on the radio to get in contact with the escorts once again.
Then, all hell broke loose.
The Lesser Predators chose exactly this spot to set an ambush for their troops. The hills in front of them came alive with movement and muzzle flash.
Machine guns roared, spitting out deadly rounds that mowed down the unsuspecting conscripts at the head of the column on both sides of the road. A deeply dug-in machine gun nest unleashed a storm of kinetic fire. No respectable Znosian, not even a conscript, would let fear for their life override their drive to follow orders, but with their immediate commanders at the head of the column dead, the soldiers hit the dirt and struggled to get organized.
Useless conscripts.
As Skhork hastily switched his screen over to thermal optics, he identified more Lesser Predators on the hillside throwing off their thermal concealment blankets to pick off his escorting infantry in the dirt.
He identified the greatest threat to his troops and barked an order. “Gunner, take out the machine gun!”
On command, the Longclaw’s cannon swiveled to the spot he marked in his sensors, and its coaxial fired a short burst of light kinetics in the direction. One hit the machine gunner in the head, taking it clean off. But before its body had time to fall, another Lesser Predator next to it shoved the corpse aside briskly, getting on the gun itself, the volume of fire not easing.
A plasma shell from their Longclaw cannon put the entire machine gun crew out of commission permanently two heartbeats later.
The other Longclaws began to zero in on the other enemies pinning down their infantry. Burst after burst, they systemically cleared the opposing hillside of Malgeir rifles, taking them out like targets at the training range, until Skhork saw a Lesser Predator stand up to throw the thermal blanket off a dugout to reveal—
“Anti-armor team!” he yelled into his radio as he pinged the high priority targets on their battle sensors.
His Gunner pivoted the cannon over to engage, but before she could open fire, the dugout erupted into a cloud of smoke as the four Lesser Predators simultaneously launched their short ranged anti-armor munitions at the head of their column. Following the trails of smoke, Skhork saw multiple hit envelope the leading Longclaw, sparks flying off her front and side armor. His heart sank as he watched its gravity engine fail with a horrible noise, and Fearless Four sank into the road, half a meter deep in the mud.
“Get them before they—” he ordered, but it was unnecessary. One of the other Longclaws’ main cannons turned the entire Lesser Predator dugout into a mist of pink to his satisfaction and relief.
A few more bursts of kinetics and plasma, and then the forest was quiet again.
Skhork got on the radio. “Fearless, status report!”
“Fearless Two, here.”
“Fearless Three, here.”
His heart stopped for a brief moment… then a familiar voice replied on the radio, its signal crackling and her commander coughing hard. “Fearless Four… We’re alright, a couple light injuries; nothing critical. Our active protection system saved our ears. But both our engines are toast. Not even the backup tracks are going to work for us. You’re going to have to continue the assault without us, Six Whiskers. May the Prophecy be fulfilled through you.”
“Understood,” Skhork said, relieved. “Standby, I’ll have my Controller call an armor retrieval team.”
---
With the most eager and experienced of their conscript escorts killed in the ambush, the combined arms advance got a little slower, but at least they did not meet any additional Lesser Predators on the way until the saddle point right below the peak.
Skhork connected to the base with his radio. “Fearless to Base. Any chance we can get some orbital fire support to take the summit? We are just one crest away from it—”
“Base to Fearless, that’s a negative. There are no available orbital resources at this time. They have all been moved to the Eastern theater for an urgent matter. Good luck with the hill.”
“Too bad. Guess we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way,” he remarked to his crew, slightly disappointed.
The Engineer pinged a scorched clearing on the console, marked with fallen trees and signs of gunfire. “That’s where our last assault was stopped. I can’t see the predators on the thermals, but they must be at the top, aiming their weapons right down that clearing.”
Skhork nodded in agreement. He turned to his Gunner. “Put a few smoke rounds at their edge of the forest. Our troops might not have cover, but at least we can give them some visual concealment.”
“Yes, Six Whiskers,” she said as the autoloader extracted the plasma shell in the Longclaw’s breech, replacing it with one filled with a white phosphorus compound instead of pure killing power. “Smoke away!”
The shell hit where he designated — near where he expected the enemies to be — bursting into a white, lingering cloud of smoke. Following his example, the other two Longclaws also began walking smoke shells up the hill towards the presumed enemy positions as the infantry escort began to advance through the clearing, as fast as they could on their exhausted paws.
Seconds later, the enemy revealed themselves. Unable to see through the smoke, several of the inexperienced predator rifles haphazardly abandoned their carefully hidden positions to try to get a better line of sight on the advancing infantry.
The Longclaws did not give them the chance. Their movement obvious through the vehicle’s thermal optics, bursts of kinetics cut them down.
“Die! Stupid predators!” the Gunner shouted as she casually gunned down a clumped trio of enemy rifles trying to crawl to the edge of the smoke effect. As they kept up the covering fire, their conscripts managed to storm past the clearing and the crest, advancing onto the peak of the hill.
“Advance!”
At Skhork’s command, the armored column roared into action, tailing the foot soldiers up to the hilltop. The summit clearing was a storm of chaos. A scrappy cluster of conscripted rifles had dug in at the fringe, exchanging fire with enemies hiding behind the giant artillery guns under camo netting in the middle of the hill. Without hesitation, the Longclaws unleashed a torrent of firepower — kinetics, canisters, and plasma blasts — towards the now-outgunned enemy.
The air vibrated with the sounds of battle, the cacophony of destruction filling the sunny afternoon. Stubborn as the Lesser Predator defenders were, they were no match for the combined firepower of the deadly vehicles and the large number of Znosian conscript infantry that were now pouring onto the hilltop without resistance.
Methodically, the infantry started sweeping the summit, clearing out enemy positions one by one. They moved from trench to trench, dugout to dugout, fueled by the fury of the fight. After the blood and sweat spent taking this position, the conscripts were in no mood to take surrenders, nor did the predators bother to offer any.
A few well-placed grenades snuffed out the last pockets of resistance, and the hill was once again silent but for the hums of their gravity engines, the faint groans of the wounded, and the infantry going around and putting wounded enemies out of their misery.
Skhork activated his radio. “Fearless Lead to Base, we’ve secured Hill 37. It’s ours!”
“Congratulations, Fearless,” came the prompt reply from the base commander. “Give the infantry a few minutes to set up defenses, and you can return to— Hold on a second… Base to Fearless, an enemy rotorcraft just popped up on radar near you! They should already be at your position—”
Her words were drowned out by the muffled, rhythmic sound of an enemy rotary wing rising over the summit, its cockpit glass gleaming in the setting sun. They had somehow snuck in so close in the din of battle that Skhork swore he could see the predator pilot’s bloodthirsty grin in his exterior camera screens.
“Longclaws, take cover!” he shouted into the radio urgently.
As his Driver hit the reverse gear, the enemy aircraft loosed a torrent of rockets at the recently captured summit, instantly engulfing the entire landscape in fire and smoke.
A shockwave hit the Longclaw, rattling Skhork’s skull and knocking him back into his seat.
He screamed in pain, surprised he was even alive. Then, training and generations of bred instincts kicked in. Looking through his console, he managed to make out a shape on his console through the pain and brain haze. “They’re in range and within our turret arc. Gunner, can we track them with our guns?”
“I have a track!” the Gunner shouted after a split second. She fired without needing his command.
As she did, the enemy aircraft started to dip below the horizon for cover. But they were too late. The Longclaw anti-aircraft shell detected its proximity to the flying target, detonated, and showered it with enough plasma to poke holes through a medium armored vehicle, much less any thin-skinned rotorcraft. The Longclaw crew did not see the hit out of their line of sight, but they sure heard the ensuing secondary explosion as the remains of the enemy machine crashed into the valley below.
Skhork looked around the summit clearing. Most of their infantry were lying on the ground. A few were just getting up, some gingerly checking to make sure they still had all their limbs and body parts.
Not all did.
But that wasn’t what he really cared about. He spoke unsteadily into the radio, his combat hormones still raging in his bloodstream. “Fearless, everyone still here?”
A voice coughed out onto the radio, “Fearless Two, here… Our frontal reactive armor ate… hit, but we… still combat effective.”
Then silence.
Skhork spoke into the radio again. “Fearless Three? Are you there? Fearless Three! Fearless Three!”
He panned the external cameras towards the head of the column. There it laid. Fearless Three’s Longclaw was perforated in multiple places by the rocket attack. Her engines were disabled. Her gun tube was shredded. And her rear was being consumed by a raging fire. As he was about to call them on the radio again, he saw one of her front hatches pop open. With some effort, her Driver managed to pull his upper torso through the opening, struggling to squeeze through—
Then, the flames reached the plasma ammunition. No amount of armor or blow-out panels in the galaxy could have saved them.
Her magazine detonated; the blast of the explosion incinerated the interiors of the Longclaw, including her unfortunate crew, and threw the turret clean off several lengths into the air. Bits of metallic debris and biological matter rained down on the hill, some splattering onto his vehicle’s hull.
Skhork looked away. He didn’t think he’d forget that sight until the day he returned to the Prophecy.
It took him a full minute to compose himself before he could speak on the radio again. “Fearless Lead to Base, predator aircraft destroyed… Five armored crew members have rejoined the Prophecy… We are going to need medical evacuation for some of the infantry.”
