“You are in charge of that, Kovach. Just tell us what you need from us.”

  We went over the manpower and loadouts while we grabbed a quick breakfast and actual coffee. Much of the ground assets would need to be abandoned, they simply wouldn’t fit aboard the craft, not with all the personnel. I’d also considered asking Riggs to send down a ground assault vehicle for me to use to meet Voss. That would have simply taken up too much space. I could go on foot, or I could drop launch later. Sumo and I had a new mission, but I needed to give Deb a hand up there first. My head hurt thinking about how rushed the exfil was going to be. Speed leads to mistakes, mistakes often lead to deaths in our line of work.

  “What about her?”

  I saw the woman the corporal was pointing at. The one I had found the previous night. This was technically Hauk’s command, but he’d deferred to me on anyone outside his command that might look for a ride up to orbit. “Halo, go check this woman out. Something about her doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “Spidey senses again, Boss?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know, but something… we need to know if she’s okay before we take her onto our dropship.” I’d always had a good feel for danger, but with the greater sensory input and my brain working at hyper-speed now, I wasn’t sure if this was gut feelings or something more substantial. Some minor clue that my brain picked up, but my conscious mind hadn’t yet processed.

  “Roger that.” Halo went over, kneeling down in front of the woman.

  “What about the old man?” I’d already forgotten his name, but he seemed to be harmless.

  The corporal shrugged. “No idea, he was gone when we got up. No sign of him anywhere.”

  Troubling, but less so than a thousand other things. I knew Ada would be running through all available surveillance footage to see if someone had spotted him today. Perhaps he was just off doing his business. Somehow, I didn’t think that was the case.

  “She said there was a witch.”

  The comment took me off guard, and I laughed before even turning. Halo was standing there looking perplexed.

  “I swear that’s what she said. A preacher, or witch, or prophet. Someone who seemed to know all this shit was about to happen.”

  “If that’s the case, why is this woman all alone?” Something about the statement reminded me of my conversation with Voss. She had also mentioned a girl alone.

  Halo glanced down, “I don’t think she believed the woman was a witch or had powers, you know. But something fucked her up. In fact, I think a lot of shit went down. The woman has a necklace that makes me think she was a mother. It’s the cheap kind kids give for Mother’s Day gifts and all.”

  I looked at the woman again, she still gave me an uneasy feeling, but I had no real reason to keep her from getting away from all this. Our job was to protect people, not to judge them. I nodded and cleared her for transport with the others just as Hauk gave the order to move out.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-THREE

  The faint sound of gravel crunching beneath boot soles was the only sound as we started our inland trek. We’d left the small beach community before dawn and now had a good two-hour hike to reach the landing zone. So far, we’d encountered none of the creatures from the day before, but everyone was on edge. I could feel the tension radiating from the others like a toxic fog.

  Sumo was holding a perimeter position to my right, and Halo and Gi were on our left and slightly forward. I knew Priest would hold the rear-guard position. The terrain was mostly blackened trees. Wildfires had raged through Texas after the prolonged drought of the last couple of decades.

  Working with an Army unit was not that uncommon for us; we cross-trained often, and because of the strange recruiting tactics of the Space Force, most of us originally came from other service branches. Sometimes the tactics and signaling had to be learned, but we were simply here to amplify Red-7’s own lethality. We weren’t a separate force, we weren’t the ‘A’ team, no matter how some of the other soldiers might look at us.

  Despite that, my team really only trusted each other. If the shit got real, which it probably would, we wanted to know where every member of Banshee was. That was just how it was in all militaries. You fought for each other. You risked your lives for your friends, not strangers. They were family. Sometimes you might want to strangle them, but you would also protect them with your dying breath, or preferably some other dumb bastard’s dying breath.

  The old man, Osan, never showed back up, and I had to admit the other civilians, including the woman, hadn’t really slowed us down. I was beginning to feel a bit more optimistic about our chances, then I heard the first rifle shot.

  It was from the front of the unit. Hauk’s voice was on the comms instantly, “Gomez, report.”

  “Contact, front!” was the shouted reply.

  More shots rang out. These from the rear. Any soldier yelling “Contact” knew to also include the direction.

  “Location?”

  Another voice cut in, “Everywhere… sir.”

  Rifle fire opened up on all sides, but I still hadn’t seen a thing. We had fifty-five minutes to make it two more miles to meet the dropship. Now, I was unsure how possible that would even be. I kept scanning the terrain; a thick canopy of trees was blocking out most of the early morning sun. The shadows and low scrub bushes made it hard to pick out any target. I immediately dreaded another possible encounter with the Bigfoot thing… or maybe hordes of them. That’s not what this was. It took me crucial seconds to realize the warning alerts on my HUD, as well as to see where Sumo’s eyes were pointing. He was looking up.

  “They’re in the trees,” a random voice yelled. I heard a loud ‘snap-boom’ and saw a soldier go down.

  I could now see the movement through the limbs, just fast-changing shadows, really. Nothing that gave me any sense of size or threat. These couldn’t be the Furies, those things were massive. No way those tree limbs would hold them, nor had they exhibited any ability to climb. This was something else. I heard more of the ‘snap-booms.’ Some were so loud that my helmet’s sound dampeners cut in to mask it. It sounded like shotgun blast, but they were coming from the trees.

  The day before, the open ground near the beach had worked against us. Lack of cover had cost us lives. I had agreed with Hauk’s decision to use the forest as cover. Now, our enemies had adapted, or maybe they had maneuvered us right where they wanted us. Just as we had different weapons and tactics for varying battle plans, these enemy creatures seemed to have their own system for deploying forces.

  “They were designed for war, Joe – they were genetically programmed for this,” Ada offered up. She was clearly interpreting my thoughts, or maybe I had spoken them. Either way, she was right. We might be damn good warriors, but none of us were designed from birth to do this.

  I caught a fleeting shadow in my sights as it moved from one tree to another. I fired a three-round burst center mass but saw no evidence of a kill. Ahead of me, I could see the green icons pinpointing Hauk’s soldiers beginning to turn yellow and a few red. Shit, we’re losing more people.

  “Banshee, take charge, covering fire, go heavy. Give Red-7 a safe corridor.”

  Hauk would be pissed, but this was where our weaponry and tactics would be most effective. We couldn’t risk getting bogged down here in a sustained battle with the wildlife, we would lose. Halo and Priest opened up with their heavier Glisson Rattler Mark IVs. Limbs and entire trees came down under the precise barrage.

  Hauk gave the order to move, and the unit began running toward an open patch of daylight a hundred yards ahead.

  “Ada, what are we fighting?” My MK4 was lining up and shooting at targets without my total understanding of what the enemy even was. Then I watched the blurry outline of a gray-furred creature leap at the throat of one of the other soldiers. The loud sound coincided with a massive gout of blood spewing from an open wound on the man’s neck. Another icon flared yellow, then red before fading to black.

  Ada briefly showed me a freeze frame of one of the creatures, and honestly, I wish she hadn’t. These had heads more like a bat but were the size of a large house cat. I couldn’t tell if the body reminded me of a squirrel or a monkey. Something about the rear limbs was off, in fact, the proportion on all of it was off, but what had my attention was the long tail. It was thick, muscular, and flattened and seemed to grasp something at the end. It wasn’t a barb like a scorpion, although that had been my first guess… no, this looked more ordinary. The tail was a full-functioning appendage, and it was holding something that looked very much like a knife. That was what had whipped out just before that soldier had dropped. I calculated the speed of that strike and gasped. The calculations appeared in my head as I considered them. It was faster than the speed of sound. That ‘snap-boom’ was the sound barrier being broken by the hammer strike of the tail.

  “Shit, they’re using tools… weapons, and those tails are supersonic.”

  I went on the all-unit channel, “These…” I needed something to call them. All I could relate them to was a show I’d seen on a killer shrimp. One with the fastest strike in the animal world. “These mantis chimps use their tails as weapons. Their strike is faster than you are, so stay clear. Keep moving, and let Banshee plow the road,” I yelled into the comms.

  Honestly, over the sounds of battle and the massive whoosh of our heavier caliber Rattlers, I wasn’t sure anyone heard what I’d said. Then I was ducking. Not on purpose but reflex, possibly augmented by Ada. I reached out and grabbed the bat-like head of the thing just before pain exploded across my back. My hand automatically tightened, crushing the remarkably fragile creature. Blood spewed out as the thing fell to the ground. How in the hell can something that fragile pack such a punch? I didn’t know what it had hit me with but thank God for my battle suit. My entire spine stung like fire, though.

  It took the group precious minutes to adapt to this new fighting style and to make it to the clearing. The murderous little chimps needed the trees to get close. On the ground, they were much slower and easily taken out. Halo blasted one as it dove for the woman, splattering its purple blood over several others.

  The countdown clock in my display let me know we didn’t have time for this. Also, I had to assume the larger foe would have heard the sounds of battle and be showing up soon. We damn sure didn’t need Furies attacking right now.

  “Disengage, Banshee.”

  It was time to join Red-7 in getting the hell out of here.

  “Mantis Chimps, Boss? Really?” Priest asked minutes later as we set a perimeter on the most open ground of the LZ.

  “I was rushed, admittedly not one of my better designators.” I could see the numbers of wounded and dead as well as our remaining ammo counts. We’d gone through a shitload of p-cells just to get this far.

  “War wagon is on the way,” Gi said, walking up. It was the first I had seen of the man since early in the battle. His battle suit was nearly unrecognizable. It was covered in dried purple blood and many dents and a few actual holes where he’d been attacked.

  “Good,” I responded before passing the information to Hauk. “Gi, what’s your status?”

  The sergeant knew I could look at my admin panel. It gave me complete readouts on everyone under my command, but I preferred to hear it from my people directly. I’d also learned to trust the Korean in the few days I’d known him. He was not a person who tended to bullshit anyone.

  “I am seventy percent chief.”

  My readout showed he had compound fractures in one arm and a possible dislocated shoulder. Knowing how the man fought, though, seventy probably was about right.

  “Fall back, Sergeant, and guard the loading of the dropship,” I ordered, getting him to an area of relative safety. My sense of the enemy was they would wait to attack then. I wanted our best shooters out front. Jordan Hauk seemed to agree as he and several of his top guys were forming up beside us.

  “Two mikes,” Ada said indicating the ship was two minutes out.

  I held up the corresponding number of fingers for the others to see. We leveled our guns at the tree line, but Sumo’s bark alerted us to the right side where the rolling hillside seemed to erupt with dozens of the scaly Furies. I was unsure if they had been using the ground as camouflage, or maybe they could burrow under. Either way, we were about to get hammered. Little bastards had used the Mantis Chimps as distractions. It sounded crazy, but somehow, I knew it was true, these things could coordinate attacks.

  “Thirty-seven new targets, Prowler.”

  “Not helpful, Ada.”

  “This shit seems oddly familiar, Halo,” Priest stated.

  Halo just grunted his agreement. I knew both men had barely gotten out of the jungle with Bayou on an earlier mission. “Designate targets, make it count,” I said unnecessarily. Our battle suits, hell, even our weapons communicated with each other and wouldn’t let us both target the same enemy unless massed firepower seemed necessary.

  From behind, I heard a collective gasp as the small clearing fell into darkness. I knew that meant our ride had arrived. The creatures tried to swarm us; we used the most destructive settings our weapons had. The twin flechette plasma rounds that sliced the damn things in half. The downside was they ran through the magazine’s power in seconds. Didn’t matter, in seconds we wouldn’t be here, and as a former CO once said, “Our ammo count didn’t matter if we were dead.”

  Hauk’s rifle barked beside me as he felled several of the beasts as well. His men still had a habit of firing at the head or center mass instead of the less thick, armored thighs. They were getting the message, though. Red-7’s enemy body count was about half of Banshee’s, but without both teams, we would have all been killed.

  I felt, then saw, Gomez’s head slam off my shoulder before toppling into the weeds. It was no longer attached, and the monster that killed him was now moving in on Priest.

  “Load up, Hauk–take your men.” I could tell we were down to mere seconds.

  Hauk paused to look at the body of his fallen man before leaving the line. I closed the gap the best I could. We began backing up, tightening the circle. Selectively taking targets that moved into our killing field. Part of my brain registered that Sumo was engaged with one of the things, and I swung to the side, fired just over his head and returned to my target without fully knowing what I was shooting at. My combat skills were no longer by the book.

  Priest moved into the beast in a move that was counter-intuitive unless you’d trained on edged weapon combat tactics. The creature’s main weapon, the claw, became a significant disadvantage in close-quarter fighting. Priest moved inside the arc of the blade which swiped harmlessly down the soldier’s backplate. Unfortunately, it meant Priest was also unable to use his main weapon, but the man had a plan. While lacking in the pure fighting aesthetics as Gi, Priest was a Ranger at heart, a warrior. He drove his armored fingers into the Furie’s inner thigh. The one weak spot we’d identified.

  The creature gave a screaming howl of pain, and blood covered Priest’s hands as he continued to wrench the thing’s muscle and tendon from the inner bone. This was the essence of battle, and the soldier knew there would be no prize for coming in second. As the thing backed away slightly, he brought his weapon under its hideous chin and unleashed a carnage round into it at point blank range. The threat disappeared in a mist of purplish-red blood.

  Ada gave me a running count of the dropship loading, and I could see it moving to the single digits. I could also still see eighteen enemy targets in my display. I moved behind Halo, tapping him on the shoulder to fall back. He nodded, disappearing toward the ramp. His gun barking several more times before he disappeared. Priest was next to go. I would be the last. Sensing their quarry getting away, the remaining creatures rushed me and my dog.

  “Sumo, go!” I yelled, knowing full well he wouldn’t until I did.

  In the past two days, I had fought harder and moved faster than I ever had, but what happened next caught me totally off guard. My left hand grasped my Damascus steel vibrasonic blade, and in my other was the Mark IV Rattler. I dove to my right, narrowly missing one creature while slicing up and through the arterial vein. My rifle was sending pulse rounds into the legs of every one of the other three closest to me. Sumo had also caught on and was funneling the things into my path as I swept, slashed, and fired in an arc of death winding my way to the dropship platform. I turned and used the grab handle on the dog’s armor to shove Sumo up the meter of space toward the hovering door. I leapt, catching the narrow supports, still firing with my other hand. The TriCraft rotated away and up as I backward crab-walked up into the interior allowing the bay door to finally close on the nightmare outside.

  Shit, that was not fun. I sheathed my weapons and turned to look at who had made it. Every face was turned to look at me. No one spoke.

  “What?” I asked.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “Welcome back.”

  Bayou looked at me, then the rest of the unit coming off the transport.

  “Jesus, Joe—you guys all look like hell.”

  Sumo had nestled beside the lieutenant wagging his tail so hard the rest of his body was bobbing side to side. She knelt and rubbed the animal’s ears before offering him a bit of jerky.

  “Need a quick SitRep, LT Any progress on breaking the lockout?”

  She had locked eyes with Jordan Hauk, who was busy helping his wounded down the ramp of the TriCraft.

  I caught the look between the two warriors, definitely some history there, but now wasn’t the time or place. “Bayou–I need an update.” I motioned for Sumo to go get chow. We weren’t going to be aboard the battle cruiser for long.

  She seemed to get the message. “You aren’t taking back command up here, are you.”