Portal Wars 1: Gehenna Dawn (16 page)

“As soon as Frantic’s boys are in place.” He
paused. “Then we drop onto the heights.” He looked out over the
field…in the direction of the main enemy position. “Then it’s a
fight to the death.”

The Dragonfires streaked along the top of the
canyon, moving at 800 mps. “Prepare for attack run.” Captain
MacArthur was edgy, more so than usual. This was a rough gauntlet
for his gunships to run. They were going in low, flying below the
edge of the canyon when they attacked. Their firepower at such
close range would be enormous, but they’d be tightly packed, with
no room to maneuver. They’d be easy targets to AA fire from the
ground.

“Arm all weapons.” They were only making one
run, and MacArthur was going to make it count. Taylor’s troops were
coming in right after the air assault, and they needed his people
to do as much damage as possible. He didn’t envy the ground
pounders this one. This was some of the worst terrain he’d ever
seen.

MacArthur still didn’t like Taylor, but he
was finding it difficult not to at least respect the hardassed
cyborg-soldier. Besides, he wouldn’t put it past Taylor to track
him down and settle things if his birds didn’t give 100%. He’d
almost certainly blame MacArthur for any extra casualties he
suffered because the gunships did a half-assed job. And MacArthur
didn’t want any piece of that kind of grief.

He stared at the command console. All 12
ships confirmed readiness. The drones had fed him the enemy
positions, and the coordinates had been downloaded into the attack
computers. Target visibility was terrible. It was almost impossible
to pick out the Machine forces hidden among the rocks, so he was
going to let the AIs handle the targeting.

“Squadrons, follow my mark.” He grabbed the
controls, easing off on the antigrav, dropping into the canyon.
“Here we go.” He was muttering softly, mostly to himself. He pulled
back on the throttle, dropping to 400 mps. “Commence firing.”

The autoguns opened up, raking the steep
hillsides below with hyper-velocity fire. It wasn’t like the last
fight…that had been shooting fish in a barrel. But the enemy troops
were saturated with fire nevertheless…even with their cover, they
had to be taking heavy losses. It was hard to assess the damage,
but MacArthur knew his people were hurting the enemy.

An alarm sounded in the cockpit. Incoming
fire. MacArthur could see the missiles tracking on the scanning
display. He banked the Dragonfire hard, angling its path away from
the approaching ordnance. “We’ve got interdictive fire coming in,”
he shouted into the com. The missile zipped past, and MacArthur
turned his ship back, moving toward his original course. “Keep your
eyes open. And target launch sites for return fire.”

He turned to his own gunner. “Take out those
launchers, Sergeant.” He angled the ship again, swerving to avoid
another pair of incoming rockets. “Now.”

“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Toomey was a solid
gunner…one of the best in the force. He was already targeting the
enemy rocket batteries when MacArthur issued the order, and it
wasn’t more than a few seconds before the ship lurched hard….half a
dozen sprint missiles launching, homing in on the ground
batteries.

MacArthur turned his body 90 degrees,
flipping the switches that armed the EFAs. He wanted Toomey focused
on taking out missile sites, not dealing with the fuel air bombs.
“All units, prepare to drop EFA’s on my mark.” He flipped the last
switch, slaving all the drop controls to a single button.
“Three…two…one…mark.” He flipped the last control, and the ship
pitched side to side as it dropped the full weight of its EFA
complement.

The gunship raced along and slowly rose as
MacArthur gunned the engines and started feeding power to the
antigrav. He’d made it through. He looked at the scanner. There was
nothing on the screen but a series of large white blooms, the
massive heat signature of the inferno below. It was a straight
line…all his people had dropped right on target, blanketing the
entire enemy position with fiery death.

He fed more power to the antigrav, arcing his
ship up and away from the gorge. One after another
followed…eight…nine…ten. Ten. And then nothing.

“Raptor 05, report.” There was nothing but
staticky silence on the com. “Condor 03, report.” Still nothing.
“Raptor 5, Condor 3…report immediately.” MacArthur was yelling, but
there was still no answer.

Finally, a voice responded. “Raptor 01, this
is Condor 04. I saw Condor 03 go down, sir.” His voice was
tentative, cracking. They crashed right into the firestorm,
Captain.”

MacArthur was silent for a few seconds.
“Acknowledged, Condor 04.” He was staring straight ahead, his right
hand on the stick, his left balled hard into a fist. He’d never
lost two birds in one battle. The Dragonfires were state of the art
both offensively and defensively, and they outclassed anything the
Machines had to throw at them. But the battles on Erastus were
getting more intense. Taylor and the rest of the Supersoldiers had
won a series of big victories, and the enemy was getting more and
more desperate.

MacArthur took a deep breath. “Raptor and
Condor squadrons, assume pre-programmed covering positions.” His
people had done their part to hit the Machine ground forces. Now
they had to make sure no enemy air got through to Taylor’s
people.

“Alright, boys…on my mark…” Lieutenant Riley
Bergen was leaning out of the transport, looking down 200 meters to
the jagged edge of the canyon below. “...three, two, one…mark.”

Bergen jumped through the open hatch of the
transport. His body expected a gut-wrenching drop but, instead, he
drifted slowly down. The antigrav was working. He turned and tried
to look up, to confirm his people were dropping behind him. He
caught a glimpse of a few of them, but he couldn’t bend his head
back far enough to get a good look.

His stomach jumped…the antigrav would keep
him from smashing into the ground, but it was giving him a touch of
motion sickness. It was an odd way to fall…unnatural. He looked
down. The ground was still a good 150 meters below. His LZ was
right along the rim of the canyon, but he was drifting south. Any
farther and he’d come down in the gorge itself, and his antigrav
didn’t have enough power to get him safely to the bottom. He
pressed one of the small buttons on the harness, firing one of the
small airjets…maneuvering himself back from the canyon edge. They
hadn’t had a lot of time to practice the drop, and he hoped the
limited training his people had on the maneuvering jets would be
enough.

The enemy wasn’t positioned to oppose their
drop. Taylor’s entire force was approaching from the bottom of the
canyon. All except for the 213th, which was doing the antigrav drop
up on top. It was a surprise move, one Taylor had devised to insert
forces where the enemy wasn’t prepared to face them.

Riley gritted his teeth for landing. He was
coming in a lot slower than he would have in freefall, but it was
still hard enough to be unpleasant. His feet slapped down on the
gravelly sand, and he felt the enhanced muscles in his legs tense,
his knees bending to absorb the shock.

He slapped the release button, ejecting the
antigrav harness from his exos. His head snapped around, getting a
bearing on his troops coming down. Most of them looked good, but he
could see a few that were struggling…drifting out over the gorge.
He tensed when he saw the stragglers, but there was nothing he
could do. He didn’t have time to worry about it anyway…he had to
get the unit organized. He reached around, pulling his assault
rifle off his back. “Section leaders, form your units.” He could
see that 2 of his 3 section chiefs were already down, climbing out
of their harnesses.

He walked slowly to the edge of the canyon
and looked over. The terrain was as brutal as Taylor promised him
it would be. There were large stretches where it was sheer cliff,
but there were three or four functional paths down. They were
narrow, often with deep drops on one or both sides, but they were
passable. It didn’t look like there were any Machines this far up.
The enemy wasn’t expecting an attack from this direction.

The air was pungent with smoke. The
Dragonfires had incinerated the enemy positions below with their
fuel air bombs. There was no way to do a reliable damage assessment
in terrain like this, but Riley could tell that the bombardment had
been effective.

He saw one of his men slip down below the top
of the canyon, missing the LZ. There was no place near him to try
and land, and the antigrav power wouldn’t last much longer. Riley
was watching a KIA…he knew it, but there was no way he could stop
it. He stared, paralyzed, trying to think of something…anything he
could do. Then he caught another one in the corner of his eye. Then
a third.

He knew intellectually that three fatalities
on a drop like this was a pretty good result, but those were his
men he was watching. He was watching them die, and there wasn’t a
damned thing he could do about it.

He spun around and looked behind him. Most of
his troops were down now, and the section and team leaders were
trying to get them organized. The personal antigravs had worked as
advertised…more or less, but the strikeforce was scattered and
disorganized.

Riley had been told that soldiers from some
of the nation states had conducted similar operations before the
Consolidation, using only cloth chutes to slow their descent. He
couldn’t imagine keeping any semblance of order during a drop like
that. Such tactics hadn’t been practiced by any armed forces for
almost half a century, and even if they had been, the atmosphere on
Erastus was too sparse for it to work anyway.

“Section leaders, confirm readiness to
advance.” He had to hold back a bitter laugh, glancing at the
tactical display on his visor. There wasn’t a team in the 213th
that was really ready. But there wasn’t time to waste. Organized or
not, they were moving out in two minutes.

“First Section…ready.” The answer was wobbly.
Sergeant James’ section was less of a mess than it had been a few
minutes before, but Riley knew James needed another ten minutes
minimum. But it was time they didn’t have to spare. The enemy had
almost certainly detected the drop. If the 213th didn’t hit them
before they could reposition, the whole operation would be
wasted.

The leaders of 2nd and 3rd Sections sounded
off in turn, each bullshitting Riley, telling him they were ready,
though neither one was any better a liar than James.

“All sections, advance.” Riley started
walking toward James’ position. He was going to follow 1st Section
with the support elements. “You’ve all got your assigned paths on
your tac displays. Make sure you stay on them.” The terrain was
worse than rugged, but the recon drones had spotted the best routes
down the cliff. It was still going to be a hard time, but it would
be much worse if the troops strayed from their assigned
positions.

Riley watched as James’ men started on the
winding trail, following along as the last of the 1st Section
headed down. It was a narrow path, barely wide enough for two men
abreast and descending at a 30% slope, at least. It was hard to get
a good footing on the loose gravelly surface, though Riley’s
enhanced legs increased his stability. The rookies, he thought, the
ones who hadn’t gotten their mods yet…they were going to have a
hell of a time getting down the path.

“Lieutenant, are we sure this is the right
way?” It was James, sounding nervous. “I thought those drones were
supposed to find us the best ways down.”

Riley sighed softly. “This is the best way,
Sergeant.” They might manage to surprise the enemy, he thought, but
they weren’t getting it for free. “What did you expect, a stroll on
the beach?” He felt bad mocking the veteran sergeant, but the last
thing he could do was lend credence to any doubts. His people were
going down this cliff. Whether they did it in an orderly fashion or
approaching terminal velocity was going to depend largely on
keeping their cool.

Riley shot a thought to his com, cutting the
line. There was nothing more to talk about. He stumbled a little
himself, sliding down about a meter on the loose stones before he
caught himself. The path was getting worse…and from the sound of
James’ voice, he assumed that was going to continue as they moved
forward. There had been a fairly steep drop to one side when they
started, but now the right was a sheer cliff of at least 100
meters, and the path itself was narrowing further.

Riley could see that the tail of 1st Section
had stopped completely. He reopened the com line. “Sergeant James,
why has the column stopped?”

“Sorry, sir.” James was distracted, clearly
in the middle of something. “The path keeps getting smaller, sir. I
had to put the men in single file.”

“Very well, Sergeant.” Fuck, Riley
thought…this is really the best route? That’s what he’d told James,
and it was exactly what Taylor had said to him. But he was finding
it hard to believe now. “Carry on. Let’s keep moving.”

“Yes, sir.”

Riley stood, looking out over the terrain
below, trying to spot enemy positions. A minute passed, then two.
Finally, he could see the men ahead begin to move. Looking
carefully, he stared down slowly, waving for the troops behind him
to follow.

The path angled sharply, and suddenly it
became a knife edge, steep drop-offs on both sides. Riley stared
straight ahead, his eyes downcast, focused on the ground in front
of him. He could feel his heart pounding in his ears. He didn’t
like heights…didn’t like them one bit. It crossed his mind how
silly it was to be so disturbed by a pointless phobia when he was
on his way into battle. He was far likelier to get shot by a
Machine than to lose his footing and fall. But it didn’t matter…all
he could think about was getting down off the heights.