He felt a shiver running through the suit as he entered the planet’s atmosphere. Target One seemed to shift in front of him, moving from a orb hanging in space to something that dominated the horizon… and then a world falling towards him. His head spun for a long moment, then he gathered himself. It had been years since he’d taken his first jump out of an aircraft and parachuted down to Earth, but it still managed to scare him on a very basic level.
It’s all perfectly safe, he reminded himself. He knew that some of his men had the same fears, even though none of them would ever admit it out loud. The Royal Marines didn’t react well to weakness, particularly ones that might be common. We’ll hit the ground before we know it.
He saw a missile go screeching past him, followed by sparks of purple light that seemed to dance up from the planet and reach out towards low orbit. The aliens were firing on the incoming Marines… he hesitated, then looked back down towards the surface of the planet. Their colossal planetary defence centre was coming into view, far larger than anything humanity had ever built to protect their world. It looked as though the aliens had hollowed out a mountain and converted it into a fortress. The rocky mass surrounding it would give them some extra protection, although it wouldn’t be enough to protect the plasma cannons, not when they had to be exposed to open fire…
The suit blinked up another warning. Charles closed his eyes as the parachute activated, cutting his speed sharply. Moments later, he crashed down on the ground and looked around, activating his suit’s active sensors. The remainder of his unit fell around him, hastily dragging themselves into combat formation. It wouldn’t be long before the aliens realised they’d actually managed to land on the planet.
Scratch that, he thought, as he saw a line of aliens appear from the direction of the fortress. They’re already here.
The aliens opened fire with handheld plasma weapons; the humans returned fire with suit-mounted machine guns. Charles felt a stab of envy as he saw the alien weapons — he wanted something like that, even though they posed an unanticipated threat to his suit — and then concentrated on fighting, leading his men forward against the aliens. They fought back savagely, but they had clearly been caught by surprise. The theory that most of the planet’s defenders were actually reservists seemed to hold water.
A brilliant flash of light distracted him for a long second, then he resumed the attack on the fortress, moving towards the main doors with terrifying speed. The aliens fell back in disarray, slamming their gates closed and sealing the mountain. Charles checked the live feed from the orbital monitors — the plasma cannons had been taken out by a direct hit — and then ordered his men to fall back. There was no need to force their way into the fortress if it was no longer capable of interfering with the landing operations.
The Rhino’s face blinked up in his HUD. “Congratulations, Major,” he said. “The enemy fortress has been neutralised.”
Charles nodded, considering the situation. “They may be impregnable deeper inside the fortress,” he said. “We can’t break through without nukes.”
“Then don’t worry about them,” the Rhino said. “Concentrate on securing the planned landing sites.”
Charles nodded, signalled his men to leave a detachment monitoring the mountain and then led the remaining forces towards the LZ. The aliens hadn’t built a convenient spaceport, unfortunately, but there was enough flat ground inland to serve as a landing zone for assault shuttles. Dozens of warnings blinked up in his display as the aliens continued to fight, yet no one troubled his Marines as they swept through the landing zone, looking for unexpected surprises. Nothing revealed itself.
“The zone is clear,” he said. “You can start unloading your troops at once.”
The American Marine Corps might not, in his considered opinion, be as tactically flexible as the Royal Marines, but they did bring a vast amount of resources to the party. Hundreds of shuttles dropped through the atmosphere, a couple falling to alien weapons that had held their fire, waiting for the chance to take a proper shot, and landed in front of Charles and his men. Moments later, thousands of American Marines had spilled out of their shuttles and started expanding the secure perimeter, followed by tanks and self-propelled guns. The Americans had planned to secure a landing zone and then expand as quickly as possible. Charles had to admit that the plan had worked perfectly.
“We have alien detachments moving out of City One,” an American voice said. “I think they’re soldiers, sir.”
“Good,” the Rhino grunted. “We’ll meet them outside their city.”
Charles briefly accessed the live feed for himself. It was clear the aliens were… uncomfortable away from the water, although they didn’t seem as badly impeded as he’d hoped. Maybe they could endure uncomfortable conditions for quite some time, just like humans. They didn’t seem to have any heavy weapons, although with alien plasma cannons involved it was hard to be sure just what counted as a heavy weapon. He’d seen them wielding handheld pistols that could burn through a tank’s armour.
He ducked instinctively as something flew overhead, then realised to his embarrassment that it was a pair of American helicopters. A troop of tanks roared past the Royal Marines, heading towards the alien forces, followed by a line of armoured Marines. Charles smiled, switched the suit to full power and gave chase. In the suits, infantry could move fast enough to catch their enemy on the hop.
“They seem to be evacuating the city,” the analyst added. “They’re sending everyone into the water.”
“Even better,” the Rhino insisted. “No civilians to get in the way.”
Charles wondered, absently, just how far underwater the aliens could go safely. There were very definite limits for unprotected humans, even with a portable oxygen supply. The aliens might be able to swim down to the bottom of the oceans or they might only be able to go a few hundred metres below the surface. No one knew for sure, if only because no one had managed to get a probe near an underwater city. It was one of the minor objectives for the entire deployment.
He pushed the thought aside as an explosion billowed up in front of him. Cursing, he ducked as streaks of light flared out towards the human forces, one of them striking a tank and blasting it into very little pieces. The humans fell back and waited; moments later, a volley of shells fell from the sky, smashing the alien position. Charles led the charge forward, only to discover that most of the aliens were dead or retreating in a hurry. They didn’t seem inclined to stand and fight.
Makes sense, he told himself. They can delay us indefinitely through a series of ambushes, while we have to take the time to clear them, one by one. It buys time for them to evacuate the city.
“Agreed,” the Rhino said, when he mentioned his theory on the command channel. “And they’ve already prevented us from leapfrogging their positions and dropping troops into their rear.”
Charles nodded. Two American helicopters had died in quick succession; the remainder had been pulled back to await developments. They might have armoured hulls, but they couldn’t stand up to plasma weapons fire. It struck him, suddenly, that that might be why they hadn’t seen any signs of an alien air force. They believed aircraft to be largely useless in modern war.
The march towards the alien city devolved into a series of ambushes, each one costing time to clear. Thankfully, the aliens didn’t seem to have invented IEDs or other insurgent tricks or the battle would have taken much longer. Instead, they jumped out, opened fire and then fell back rapidly. They were moving too quickly to be caught by the shells the Rhino would inevitably direct into their position.