Rogero saw some of his soldiers get hit and breathed a curse. A lot more of the Syndicate symbols were vanishing, but apparently someone on that side had also finally ordered active countermeasures to be employed because the losses slowed abruptly. Unfortunately, the countermeasures also blocked Rogero’s view of not only the Syndicate positions but also the net linking his own soldiers.
The ground was shaking again, not in the spastic series of jolts that marked enigma weapons impacting nearby, but a prolonged and deep juddering that felt like the planet was tearing itself open.
Which, he realized, was exactly what was happening.
“—two kilometers… planet… again… two ki… north… drop z—”
The broken voice transmission from one of the transports, barely able to cut through the countermeasures, cut off completely. Rogero looked toward planetary north, not seeing anything in that direction, but his armor reported that the soil tremors were coming from there.
Whatever it was, it was big. He hoped the transports were already running for all they were worth.
Even through the dust and chaff Rogero saw to the north vast shapes suddenly hurling themselves skyward. Enigma warships. The aliens had launched another part of their ambush, opening some immense access just to the north of him, from which at least a dozen warships were heading into space as fast as they dared accelerate in atmosphere. They must have hollowed out some huge hangars down there. How big is this base that I’m supposed to capture?
Rogero hit the comm override which would boost his signal strength and use a special low-data-rate frequency which would punch through the chaff. “Everyone break north. All units except First Company advance toward expected very large access to the enemy base.”
He glanced at the little information still showing on his display, remembering where his units had been before the picture went to pieces. “First Company, take up position screening our flank against any attack from the direction of the Syndicate forces.” The Syndicate soldiers were probably still hunkered down against the chance of another incoming barrage, but if any snakes and supervisors had survived the enigma attacks they might order an assault. Or the Syndicate soldiers, confused, scared, and mostly leaderless, might panic and attack the only target they could see, which was Rogero’s force.
Shutting off the special circuit, Rogero scrambled away from his position, knowing that the enigmas had probably spotted his transmission. He zigzagged toward the north, then as a warning appeared on his display Rogero flattened himself to the ground.
He and nearby rocks bounced as something big hit and exploded where Rogero had transmitted from. He felt both relieved and annoyed. Did the aliens think he was amateurish enough to have stayed in that spot? It was nice to be underestimated, especially when it kept you from being killed, but also insulting.
The enigmas had shifted their focus and were concentrating their fire on the area where the Syndicate soldiers and citizens were located. They were probably still getting some data from infected systems over there. Maybe they also thought they should focus on the larger group, though most of the Syndicate presence was civilians who posed no threat to the enigmas.
Nearing the edge of the chaff field, Rogero saw his display begin updating rapidly as his armor systems reestablished links. His forces were all moving, the majority north toward where the enigma hatch was located. Most of First Company, still under the drifting chaff, could not be seen, but intermittent detections of some showed them sliding sideways into the blocking positions that Rogero had ordered.
The Syndicate troops couldn’t do the same, he knew. The Syndicate didn’t want workers thinking for themselves, so Syndicate ground forces were required to carry out detailed plans. With many supervisors dead and countermeasures blocking net links, Syndicate-trained soldiers would be without any explicit instructions on what to do. If they moved, it would be a mob movement.
But, Rogero knew, when under fire and not knowing what to do, the average soldier would stay under cover. Which meant he shouldn’t have to worry much about the Syndicate ground forces for a while.
“That is one BFH,” an awed voice cut across the command circuit.
Annoyed again, this time by the undisciplined message on a critical circuit, Rogero was preparing to chastise the offender when someone else answered. “Yeah. Biggest hole I ever saw.”
His display was updating again as information flowed in from the battle armor of the soldiers who had reached the near edge of the enigma hatch. Rogero stared in disbelief at the small section of arc that filled the upper part of his helmet’s display. He pulled back the scale. He pulled it back again.
Twenty kilometers across. The enigma hole was twenty kilometers from side to side.
Rogero ran past soldiers who were lying or kneeling in covered positions, ran until he reached the edge of the hole and could peer across it and partway down.
It felt like looking into space from a hatch on a spacecraft.
“Send a probe down it,” Rogero ordered one of his scouts, his message now able to go out through the unit net and therefore not broadcasting his position to the watching enigmas.
The scout pulled back an arm and hurled a probe out into the hole.
The probe, designed to be nearly invisible to defensive sensors, had barely begun to drop when an enigma weapon speared it and turned it into falling junk.
“Drop the next one instead of throwing it,” Rogero said. Maybe the enigmas had spotted the motion…
A scout extended an arm holding a probe, only to have the probe shot out of her grasp and two other enigma shots slam into her lower arm.
As a medic dashed to the wounded scout, she wriggled back from the edge. “That didn’t work, sir,” she got out between teeth tightly clamped against the pain.
“This time I want every scout to launch a probe simultaneously,” Rogero ordered.
The probes arched out over the hole. Rogero’s systems registered dozens of shots coming out of the hole, and every probe went dead.
“Sir, we try to go over that edge, they’ll take us apart,” the scout commander reported. “It must be too easy for them to spot movement against the edge of the opening or above it.”
“Try sending down gnats,” Rogero said.
“It’ll take a while for gnats to drop far,” the scout commander cautioned.
“I know. But they’re one of our stealthiest scout methods. Let’s see what they can do.” The gnats were the size of insects, with limited capability and range, but they were very hard to spot.
What they could do, Rogero quickly learned, was go silent when barely inside the hole as something knocked out every gnat.
It didn’t take any particular sensitivity to the mood of the soldiers around him to know that none of them wanted to follow the probes or the gnats down that hole. They might follow him, Rogero thought, if he led the way. But since he would clearly die within a second or two of doing so, they were unlikely to follow him far.
They had a way down into the enigma base, but it was a death trap.
And they had yet to see a single enigma, or even any of the launchers raining death on them.
Another wave of enigma fire swept over, this time concentrated around the rim of the vast hole. Chaff filled the air as battle armor once again tried to protect the men and women wearing it.
Rogero looked upward through the haze of countermeasures, wondering whether the battles in space were going any better for humanity than the one down here.
Chapter Fifteen
Leytenant Mack had only been with Midway’s mobile forces since he and his ship had been captured at Ulindi not all that long ago. It had been a pleasant surprise to learn that it was possible to fight for reasons other than avoiding court-martial and execution by your own side. He had genuinely enjoyed his time working with people like Colonel Rogero.