Europa Strike(73)

Muffled in…

SM-12 Wyvern 5-centimeter smart missiles could track by infrared, magnetic, optical, or laser targeting, or a combination of all four. The robot tanks, though, were shrouded by ice crystals carrying vented heat. The effect smeared their IR signature across a large volume, and probably screwed up their optical configuration as well. Wyverns wouldn’t attack a vehicle shape they didn’t understand.

Waggoner darted forward from the cover of the wrecked bug, dodging past Bailey’s still form and into the open. Two of the tanks fired, the explosions sending shudders through the ice. Waggoner shrieked, then went silent, the radio transmission abruptly chopped off.

Kaminski began looking for options.

The five of them were tucked in behind the wrecked bug, invisible to the tanks above, but nakedly vulnerable if they tried to move. The robots were in hull-down defilade, their laser balls sweeping the entire expanse of the crater.

He was damned if he could see any right now.

Leckie

Ice Station Zebra, Europa

1605 hours Zulu



Lucky fired his laser weapon from the hip, tracking the targeting cursor rapidly across his HUD while simultaneously trying to move, duck, and weave, making himself as tough a target as he possibly could. Four Chinese soldiers were closing on him from three directions. A golf ball-sized hole exploded in the visor of one, venting a cloud of red fog, instantly freezing. Lucky dropped in the same second, landing hard on his left shoulder and letting his momentum carry him in a leg-flailing slide across the ice. He tried to target on a second PRC soldier, but missed as the target’s feet slid out from under him and he collapsed in an untidy, scrambling sprawl.

Rounds from the Chinese Type-110 assault rifles blasted sprays of ice from either side as he continued his slide. One round grazed his helmet, the shock ringing his ears and setting him spinning, but his helmet warning display continued to show he still had suit integrity. Sliding now flat on his PLSS, he bent up and forward hard at the waist, trying to reacquire his attackers on the HUD. With the 580 lying flat down his body and aiming between his wide-flung boots, he saw the cursor snap across one of the enemy troops and managed to stab the firing button at the same instant. The man’s space suit blew out at the right knee, blood and white vapor silently exploding into vacuum as the man toppled backward, arms waving.

Then Lucky, still sliding, collided with the fourth Chinese soldier and sent him sprawling, the two of them tangled in a desperate embrace, the other man on top of him.

There was no time, no thought, no elegance for finesse. Lucky’s right hand found the hilt of his K-bar, sheathed on his hip, popped the locking strap, dragged the knife free. The PRC soldier—Lucky could see the man’s face just above his through the dark visor, could see the terror-widened eyes—reached down and pounded at Lucky’s hel met with clenched, gloved fists, trying to smash the visor.

Lucky slammed the point of the knife up against his opponent’s throat as hard as he could. The black blade glanced off the helmet locking ring and snapped off clean at the hilt, the metal made brittle by the extreme cold.

He shifted his aim and drove upward with the hilt still clenched in his hand, smashing the guard against the enemy soldier’s visor. And again. And again…



Kaminski

Ice Station Zebra, Europa

1606 hours Zulu



Kaminski saw the desperate fight taking place forty-five meters to his left. One Marine—Leckie, according to the IFF tag on his HUD—was flat on his PLSS with a PRC trooper on top of him; a second Chinese soldier was getting to his feet after a fall, while two more lay on the ice nearby, one moving, the other still. Raising his 580, he targeted the lone enemy soldier as he moved to help his friend, blowing out the back panel of the man’s PLSS unit, which exploded in a burst of fast-venting oxygen.

He was drawing a careful bead on the bad guy on top of Leckie when the Marine’s repeated blows to the man’s helmet visor got through. The PRC trooper rolled off of Leckie, gloves scrabbling at his faceplate, which was crazed like a ball of crystal smashed by a hammer.

Leckie must have opened a pinprick of a crack; the visor hadn’t blown, but the soldier had panicked. Kaminski calmly shot him through the chest, putting him down.

“Leckie! You okay?”

The Marine picked up his dropped rifle, waved, and got to his feet. “O-okay, Sergeant Major. Thanks!”

Kaminski was measuring angles with his eyes. Leckie was close to the bottom of the crater slope, close enough, maybe, that the tanks on top couldn’t depress their fire enough to hit him. “Leckie! Can you get back up that slope? We need someone to paint those tanks!”

“Okay! I’ll try!”