In my experience—it was. I unclipped Sumo and gave him the signal to guard right. I saw a green dot moving in our direction. Gomez, Joseph, PSC. I moved to flank left so the private would be between me and my dog. In the meantime, I pinged the rest of my squad. We’d landed on a small peninsula of dry land with marsh and ocean on three sides.

  “Here, Boss,” Halo called. I saw his marker show up on the far-right side of my suit’s field of view.

  Gi signaled, the man was precisely where he’d targeted. No surprise.

  “Where the fuck is Priest?”

  “Where else? Dumbass is in the water,” Halo called back.

  Figures, if the suit was under too much water, the beacon wouldn’t transmit.

  “You think he knows what direction to walk?”

  The suits held plenty of air and were sealed to the environment, but if he gets into those vines, he may have a bit of trouble. I kept those thoughts to myself.

  “I’m coming, Prowler, don’t wait on me,” Priest said. “Larger, more manly bodies need more cushion to protect the vital parts, you know?”

  “Master Sergeant… er…” the young Ranger man began speaking, the uncertainty clear in his voice.

  “Sorry, sir. Um, Captain Kovach.”

  I assumed my ridiculous new rank had just updated in the FOF ident my battle suit AI was broadcasting. Gomez would see my digital name tape and rank on his HUD. I subvocalized for Ada to try and reverse my shipboard promotion status…at least while I was down here. Ada acknowledged but added that the suit’s own basic combat AI would likely keep reverting it back.

  Fuck!

  “Talk to me, Gomez. Where is your captain?”

  “Waiting on us, sir. Please follow me.”

  I saw one of the green dots in my own HUD begin to radiate circles out. That was the commander. I relayed the position to the others. I knew Gi would go find Mister Bishop before moving off to get their own take on the battle space. Halo and Sumo would shadow me all the way in.

  Captain Hauk and I knew each other mainly by reputation. He had a solid service record, very by- the-book commander most of the time. When he went off the reservation, though, he did it in some very dramatic fashion.

  Bayou had given him high marks, so that was good enough for me. Shit, simply being alive right now was an achievement.

  “Captain,” I said, stepping up, sleeving my helmet back and up and gripping the outstretched hand.

  “Kovach. Really glad to see you. Your men all down safe?”

  I saw him eying Sumo as he spoke.

  “We’re good. One is soaking in the pond at the moment, but he’ll be along shortly.”

  Hauk looked concerned. “There are… things in the water, Kovach. Very bad things.”

  “Scaly green skin? Alien eyes, mouth full of worms?”

  He smiled and nodded. “I take it you’ve met.”

  “Yes, Furies was what I called them. Mean, ugly bastards.”

  “What can you tell me about them?”

  “Aim for the inner thigh, femoral artery. Don’t let them get close. They have Ginsu knives for fingers.”

  “Yeah, we’ve figured that much already. Any idea where they came from?” he asked.

  I knew he meant what terrorist labs, or maybe just what country. “They are Hammer tech.”

  “No fucking way!” His shoulders sagged as the truth hit.

  “Pretty sure, I raided one of their black labs a while back. I saw hundreds of the things and signs that even more had been there.”

  “Hope you erased that facility from DARPA’s inventory,” Haul growled.

  I nodded.

  He spat and wiped away a bit of blood from a cut above his brow. “So, we are fighting our own assets.”

  I shrugged. “Seems like. I don’t think the sides matter much anymore, Captain. Someone wanted humans gone, and they have gone to great lengths to make that happen.”

  I saw the weariness behind the man’s eyes. “You’ve seen some things, I take it.”

  “Oh yeah, more than I want to remember.”

  He eyed the name tag stenciled on my armor, the one that still read my actual rank. My new intellect ran through all the likely thoughts the man was having, resentment, jealousy, curiosity. “Ignore it, brevet promotion or battlefield promotion. Off that ship up in orbit, it doesn’t really count. I’m a working stiff.” I could see in his expression that it did matter. He wanted someone else to be making the tough calls; he just wasn’t sure that it should be me.

  “Kovach, Red-7 is…was trained for conventional warfare. Like Banshee, we were an elite group and highly skilled for those kinds of battles. Now, almost half the force is made up of acquisitions, really just remnants from other outfits, and this is nothing even remotely like conventional.”

  “I feel you, brother. This is more in our wheelhouse. Banshee has been battling monsters for years.” I took a moment and stared out over the battlefield. “Not normally in battles of this scale, though.”

  “So, what do we do, Master Sergeant?” he asked.

  I bit my lower lip, eyed the AO once more before responding. “We are men of action, Hauk. When needed, extremely violent action. We kill these fucks and get our people to safety.”

  Our eyes met, and I saw agreement.

  “That something we can agree on?”

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  “So, what’s the situation, Captain?”

  Hauk just stood there eyeing me in that way. Like I should already know. Like I would never be able to know, maybe that I wouldn’t live long enough out here for it to matter. I’d been in his shoes plenty of times. Watching the horrors of war, your men dying, the relentless killing, then some new guy shows up wanting to know why you were struggling with such an easy fight.

  The man scratched at a red whelp that encircled much of his neck. The wound looked angry and was blistering in places. It was a telltale mark of the thunder vines.

  “Deep in the shit.” His voice was flat, devoid of emotion. The vocal equivalent of the thousand-yard stare that battle-weary soldiers sometimes have. This wasn’t the Jordan Hauk I had expected. “We have injured… dead, low on food and ammo, and a highly indefensible position.”

  That was undoubtedly admitting more than any commander wanted. Still, I knew it wasn’t his fault.

  “They left us here, no plan, no exfil, no fucking ship. Sent us in on a fucking suicide run for the HVI, and for what? We save one person and ignore thousands more. Shit… more like tens of thousands.”

  Captain Hauk was a man unused to defeat, but anyone could see even he was nearing a breaking point.

  “What’s your take on all this, Kovach?”

  I thought I knew what he meant, the mutant creatures… the Furies, the vines, the lack of survivors. I told him what I knew.

  “The Sapphire bombs. You think the pretty lights caused all this shit?”

  The guy was a bit of an ass, but I was here to help him, so…

  “No, I think,” I stopped and backed up. “I know we created them, the Furies. My guess is we created some of the others, too. The bombs just added a whole new level of crazy. Something about it alters the DNA at the genomic level, causes the normal biosphere to go apeshit crazy.”

  “No shit. I was nearly decapitated by a glorified morning glory earlier.” He absentmindedly rubbed at the blister again. Hauk moved farther down his lines, checked on something, then eased his way back with quick, precise movements. “Those labs, did they build an entire army of these things? And you said that was in Tennessee. How in the hell are they down here already?”

  “I saw hundreds. Not an army of them, not in Tennessee at least. Those are good questions, though.”

  The man rubbed his short hair and stared out. I wasn’t sure what he was seeing, ghosts maybe, but he was someplace else.

  “I saw something else out there.”

  His words chilled me, I had a feeling the mutations were not just limited to what I had seen already.

  He continued, “I may be wrong, but it seemed in control… of them… the Furies. It wasn’t one of them, though, it looked more… aquatic to me. Maybe like a squid or something. You know, tentacles instead of arms.”

  Shit, that was great. One more thing to worry about.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Kovach. I just wish you’d brought a brigade with you because that’s what we’re going to need.”

  I flinched as a K8 Disruptor began firing a few hundred yards away. I couldn’t see what it was firing at, but I saw the result. What had been remnants of a neat little grouping of bungalows disappeared in a cloud of debris and smoke. The man on the trigger was good, he wasted little ammo. As the last of the cover fell, others then took up the call, and I got my first look at the attackers. They were Furies but looked somewhat different from the ones back in the Nightmare Factory.

  These gathered and spread out several times and sent individuals out to test our lines. Even though I knew they engineered these things for battle, they didn’t have all the advantages. We could see them, yet they seemed unsure as to exactly where we were. Which gave us time to engage.

  I’d unlocked my Rattler without even thinking about it, the action as routine as tying my shoelaces. I shifted my aim to the nearest target, a tall, gangly bastard who was snorting as he approached to my left. One of Hauk’s men beat me to the shot, driving a jacketed round through his thigh and another into its head. The thing fell forward, the back of his head completely missing where the soldier’s round had torn its way out.

  “You did figure out the weak spot.”

  Hauk nodded. “Any other tips you care to share?”

  “Yeah, fuckers are strong, incredibly so,” I answered, snapping off a pair of shots at a trio of beasts heading toward our flanks. I heard Sumo bark and instructed him on comms to help guard the civilians. Priest and Gi showed up and began passing out the fresh ammo packs, rifles, grenades, and just about everything else we’d robbed from the ship’s small arms locker. I grabbed Gomez and thrust one of the Glisson MK4s in his hands. The extended magpack was set to launch nothing but carnage rounds. Those would take off legs even if it didn’t finish the bastards off. He shouldered his standard rifle and grinned.

  “Now we’re talking!”

  Gi gave out all the other heavier weaponry. Not smart giving troops a new weapon in the midst of battle, but if what you had was ineffective, then you must adapt. Besides, I’d been a Ranger once, I knew they all trained on the Rattlers in basic, the damn Army was just too cheap to buy them. The Silka 88s they carried were sweet, reliable, and most importantly, cheap to build. We’d brought down a butt load of 5.56 ammo for those as well. The Rattlers had the edge on the Army’s Silkas, but you just had to love the reliability of those weapons.

  We were dropping them, but it didn’t seem to slow them much. It still amazed me at the number and variety. Something had clearly changed, or Voss had been right about the possible number and variety of Hammer’s productions sites. A smaller one of the things trampled over a larger corpse lying in the sand, its clawed foot pushing the bloodied head deeper into the dirt. That one didn’t make it much farther as I sliced his neck open with a carnage round a split second later.

  Fortunately, most of our shots were on the mark. There just were many more targets than we had trigger-pullers. My auto-targeting was synched with my team members, so we didn’t shoot at the same targets unless they were within a certain range. Red-7 had their own system, though, and I found my rounds impacting multiple times with theirs. Ada flashed me a warning; she didn’t need to as my warrior mind had come to the same conclusion.

  Looking at Hauk, I told him we needed to move. This place was minutes from being overrun. He glanced my way, nodded, and gave the signal. Despite our differences, Hauk was not just capable, he was in the zone. The man was making good choices, listened to others, and seemed to have excellent battlefield presence. He would have had to in order to get this group all the way from central Texas.

  One of Hauk’s men caught something in the throat and went down spewing blood. Did the beasts have weapons now?

  No… I could see they were picking up rocks and debris and flinging them with deadly speed and accuracy. Then one removed a knife from a downed soldier and sent it into the chest plate of a corporal who had just popped up to fire. The man coughed up blood and sagged down behind the embankment. The Furies were learning to use tools and improvise weapons. They weren’t mindless. That was fighting. Despite my urging to the men to make every shot count, we just had to pour the firepower on in great gouts. ‘Spray and pray’ is what my old DI would have called it. And, as Stalin supposedly said, ‘Quantity has a quality all of its own.’

  Red-7 began to pull back, my guys were in better condition, so Banshee covered the retreat. It had sounded good when I had said it, but the reality made me second guess myself with every passing second. Objects smashed into my armor from three sides. Without the protection, they would be breaking bones and worse. A broken bone in this situation would be the same as a death sentence. That the creatures were learning how to fight even better and also as a group, was setting off alarm bells in my brain. This could be exponentially worse than I’d expected.

  Banshee dropped Furies in singles and small groupings. Our shots were precise and coordinated, but more of them came at us. I could see their strange mandibles opening and closing and the odd needle-like teeth gnashing into the air. They were obsessed with ending us. What drove them to this insane level of ferocity?

  We were killing all we could, but we weren’t slowing them, not enough for Hauk’s men to pull back to a safer position. Shit, there were no safe positions. The front lines of the beasts were coming in close now. Close enough, I didn’t have to rise above the broken wall to strike killing blows. My rifle’s targeting reticle’s image fed directly into my HUD, allowing me to more or less pick them off. Not that I needed to stay hidden; the shit they were throwing would not injure me, but years of training said stay hidden. Also, when they noticed us, several of the things would charge our positions at a speed that was almost too fast to react to, much less track with a gun. I already knew first-hand the damage those claws could do to an armored soldier.

  With sad realization, I knew we’d done all we could. Retreat chapped my ass as much as it did Hauk, but I gave the order anyway. Defending this Texas ditch accomplished little in the long-term. “Move your asses, boys!” I yelled and signaled to Red-7 that Banshee was coming in hot. I did not want to get shot in the face by the people we were here to help.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  We ran flat out to get ahead of the damn things. A trained RDT soldier in full battle armor can reach speeds of forty-five miles an hour. I felt confident we exceeded that safety limit as I had to swing wide to make several turns, and I saw Gi lose traction and run into the side of an abandoned restaurant taking out a chunk of the wall.

  Hauk had pulled his men into the burned-out ruins of what once had been a massive, ornate church. The roof and stained-glass windows were gone, but the walls were solid. It wouldn’t work for long, but it was better than the exposed position we’d just fled.

  “Damn, everything is bigger in Texas,” Halo said walking by and looking from side to side.

  “They like their churches here,” a young boyish looking woman said. She was busy working on some of the wounded, and Sumo seemed glued to her side. Ada flagged her as the HVA, or high values asset, Red-7 had been tasked with securing. I was surprised to see she was wearing a Dragonhide Battleskin. These were German versions of the Revix model we wore, but when worn alone, it offered much better protection than ours.

  Hauk motioned me over before I could even respond to her. No appreciation nor concern from the man. He was all business. “We need an exfil, Kovach. We can’t fight them off much longer, even with you guys.”

  The man reminded me way too much of my dad. He was demanding, stubborn, and unflappable. Besides that, something about him just rubbed me the wrong way.

  “We can get a dropship but not quickly.” I had Ada running orbital vectors to see when the Stone Mountain would be back overhead. “Also, we won’t all fit.” The TriCraft were large, and if we removed the Wulf and everything else, we could probably hold a hundred people. Ada had flagged our current group at closer to 140 with around twenty of those injured and difficult to transport.

  “We can leave the camels and a lot of our gear,” Hauk said hopefully.

  I shook my head. “It would take two trips and likely at least twenty-four hours between. Could half of your men survive an extra day?”

  “Goddamnit!”

  I felt the man’s frustration, we just didn’t have the assets available to do all that was needed.

  “They’re coming!”

  We both turned back toward the voice. Disruptors began pumping out ordinance at an impressive rate. Red-7 had positioned them on the far left and right sides of the building.

  We rushed civilians to the rear as soldiers lined every opening on the front wall and began firing again. Almost immediately, a giant Furie jumped over an abandoned car into the same door I’d just entered. The thing was massive. With one swipe of its razor-edged claw, it disemboweled two of Hauk’s men. As guns turned toward it, the thing leapt sideways, crushing a young woman against the wall, then sped directly toward Captain Hauk.

  I was firing, but I swear the thing could sense where all of our rounds were going. Gi shot the raging monster from about two feet away, pumping multiple rounds into him so fast that they blended into a single prolonged execution. The Furie barely noticed. It kept the bony armor toward us and the vulnerable thigh shielded. The creature began moving through the crowd of combatants as if on a single mission. The captain seemed to realize what that mission was before any of us. He was being targeted. Take out command and control, battlefield basics. And now our enemy had advanced its war-fighting capabilities yet again.