Bull concentrated on his HUD as he descended, telling himself that the technology was sound and there was nothing to worry about. The screen inside his faceplate showed over 2600 EarthFleet Marines free-falling into atmosphere, each strapped into an automated parachute rig made to slow the wearer and eventually set him down softly on the ground. Three days of drop training hadn’t been enough to really convince his brain he would be fine.
At least atmospheric heat and friction wasn’t an issue. Conquest had briefly stopped in her orbit and hovered on her massive fusion engines while the Marines lined up and leaped out of auxiliary ports well away from the hot exhaust. Several pinnaces and a few sleds followed them down with supplies and Recluse drones.
The drop wasn’t intended as a hard insertion: it was simply the only way to put the brigade down intact, as most of the sleds had been lost during the mothership assault.
They would land near New Delhi in what once was India. Over the last three days, Conquest and her auxiliaries had used their superior position to systematically exterminate most of the enemy fighters and gunships in that area. With the arrival of the interplanetary tankers, the dreadnought had enough fuel to slow orbit and descend, flying by brute force on fusion engines to engage near-helpless targets below them at a range of less than one hundred kilometers, point blank for Conquest’s massive weapons.
Extensive bombardment of the Marine landing zone from orbit had destroyed all the grounded Scourge craft, the only other source of enemy heavy weapons. With a wing of StormCrows for cover, Bull’s command was probably one of the safest “opposed” landings in Marine history. The only danger was on touchdown – the millions of Scourgelings and thousands of Soldiers that infested the countryside.
As Bull flew his ram-air parachute inexorably downward, he unlimbered his pulse gun and passed his last instructions to his commanders. As he landed, a Soldier popped out of a foxhole and fired its assault cannon, slamming slugs into Bull’s chest and knocking him over. Lucky he didn’t have something heavier, Bull thought as he fell backward and rolled, trying to stay low. For a moment he got tangled in his parachute. When he cut loose and came to his knees to fire, he saw the enemy slaughtered by several nearby Marines.
“Good job, diggers. Get organized and start the bug hunt, now. Hustle! Exterminate everything in your area with minimum ammo, one shot per as briefed,” he ordered.
“Bull, this is Reaper,” Command Sergeant Major Repeth radioed. “Did you ever think we’d be walking into this like cake?”
“No. Thought we’d be fighting for our lives, but we still might be if we don’t move fast.” He jogged toward the nearest pinnace, firing a single shot into each Scourgeling cocoon he came across. “We only have two days.”
The cocoons were everywhere, some in clumps, some just scattered here and there. Bull knew that all across Asia and Europe Earth’s ground forces were on the offensive and were winning handily. Like Reap had said, a cakewalk. Instead of a Marine, he felt like an exterminator, though the occasional Soldier kept the troops on their toes. “Conserve ammo,” he reminded everyone. Even if they killed one Scourgeling with every round, the Marine brigade would only get rid of two or three million of them, out of an estimated eight hundred million now on Earth.
Instead of shooting it immediately, Bull put his armored foot on the next cocoon he found and tried to crush it. The tough resin didn’t budge. He would probably have to use his jump jets to leap upward and come down hard on it.
Not worth the trouble. Ryss hotblades might have been an efficient solution. Now would be a good time to have a brigade of the big cats. Instead of worrying about what he couldn’t have, Bull just rested his elbows on his raised knee and thought for a moment about how easy it had turned out to be.
The admiral always amazed him with his insights. He’d spotted what everyone else seemed to have missed in the mad scramble to repel the invasion and seize the FTL tech: that one innocuous mention in Commander Fleede’s briefing about the Scourge life cycle. “As soon as a Scourgeling eats enough, it will go into a cocoon for several days...” the geek had said. Bull remembered only because the admiral had played it back for them when he finally explained the whole thing.
Ninety-nine percent of the Scourgelings had simply eaten themselves into one common coma. Driven by biology and without the distraction of a fight, they had gorged themselves on Earth’s plant and animal life and then cocooned themselves for their next stage. If left alone, they would emerge within days as Soldiers, much more dangerous opponents.
But they weren’t going to be left alone.
Many of the existing Soldiers had cocooned as well, perhaps half of them giving in to the urge to metamorphose into Centurions.
Now, all across the supercontinent, humanity was on the hunt and their enemy was helpless. Bull was reminded of a documentary he had seen of North Africans swatting clouds of locusts, killing thousands but hardly making a dent in the millions that overran and ate every piece of plant life in sight. Now the humans had the upper hand. Probably every teenager on the planet that could carry a gun was out in the fields, making a game of tallying up his kills and hopefully not shooting his buddies.
On his HUD, Bull watched as his Marines moved in extended firing lines as if policing a parade ground for cigarette butts and trash before an important ceremony. Recluses equipped with sensors followed, now and again finding a cocoon the mass of troops had missed.
Bull was less concerned about the formation of the brigade than its ammo supply. The pulse guns Marines carried were actually overpowered for exterminating cocoons. An interim solution occurred to him. He opened the general brigade channel.
“First Brigade, this is Bull. For those formations with Recluses sweeping behind, I want you to only kill half the cocoons you find. Let the Recluses pick off the rest with their lasers. This will conserve your ammo.” Sure, it would run the Recluses out of juice faster, but it was easier to recharge a battle drone off a pinnace or sled than to come up with pulse gun ammo. Too bad they only had a few laser rifles available. Equipping five thousand new Marines had forced some corner cutting.
“Bull,” Reaper commed, “I got locals here on the edge of the city – they just popped out of some tunnels. They’re lucky they didn’t get shot.”
“Yeah, so?”
“They’re armed, and want to be put to work.”
“By all means, Sergeant Major,” Bull replied. “I’d rather expend their ammo than ours. In fact, let them and the Recluses do the cocoon-killing and our people will guard against Soldiers. And watch your backgrounds! Don’t let our diggers get too froggy. This is ripe ground for fratricide.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Bull sighed with contentment. Only a stupid young line doggie wanted a fair fight. Older grunts like him were happy to take easy victories when they presented themselves. Those were few and far between.
Hard battles would turn up soon enough.
Even though they had beaten the Scourge this time, Bull knew that with the FTL technology, eventually EarthFleet would have to take the fight to the enemy.
When we do, I’ll be there.