War Criminals by Gavin Smith (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📕

move, knowing that whatever she did it wouldn’t be fast enough as she tried to roll into a crouch.

The ground shook. She was thrown into shadow. The huge chainsaw bisected the burning wooden torso and head of the creature and drove down into the earth, spraying dirt everywhere.

Miska sat back against the Cyclops and looked up at the Medusa-class mech. Friendly rounds sparking off its armour, roots growing up around its legs, the pollen fall coating it, but somehow Heavy-One-Actual was still moving.

‘Thanks, Mass,’ she told him over direct comms.

‘Told you, boss, when your time comes …’ the Mafia button man replied. His comms link was a mess of static.

Raff finished off the remaining tree-creature with a HEAP and then sprayed it with defoliant to be on the safe side. Corenbloom and a very dazed looking Nyukuti were getting to their feet.

‘Nye, you good?’ Miska asked over direct comms, taking the time to look around, get an idea of the broader picture.

‘Yes boss,’ the stand-over man replied.

‘You and Raff spray down Heavy-One-Actual with defoliant, get him back in the fight,’ Miska told them. Raff moved to obey, as did Nyukuti, albeit somewhat slower.

What little exposed skin that hadn’t been burned and blistered felt like it was full of splinters. She suspected that her gas mask had partially melted to her skin. Her body felt like one big bruise. Again. But the excellent Martian-made body armour they had stolen had absorbed the majority of the blast. Her head throbbed and she felt sick, possibly a concussion. She suspected she wasn’t thinking as straight as she might but she could move.

The wall of fire behind her illuminated the scene. Up on the landing pad she could see bursts of fire from the flame guns and railgun fire from Pegasus 2 and the two Harpy heavy drop shuttles. It was difficult to tell from this distance, but it looked like one of the Harpies’ domed engine housings was buckled. She could see figures around all three shuttles. She was pretty sure they were using squirters to wash down the Pegasus and both the Harpies.

She watched as vines tried to drag one of the Medusas up into the air. It was lifted off its feet but managed to cut itself free with its one still-working chainsaw. It dropped thirty feet to the jungle floor and made the earth shake. Another one of the Medusas was being pulled down to its knees by roots that had burst from the earth to envelop it. As she watched it managed to burst free as well.

‘We’ve got no weapon systems left,’ Mass told her over the static-filled comms link.

‘Mass, there are crates full of that defoliant over at the landing pad, get all the mechs over there. They smash it on anything they see growing out of the earth.’

Mass didn’t reply over comms, instead he made the huge mech nod its head.

‘Hangman-One-Actual to Pegasus-Two and Harpy-One and Two, what are the chances of you guys giving us danger-close air support in the form of missiles?’ she asked.

‘We’re grounded,’ Harpy 1 replied.

‘We can try,’ Perez told her from Pegasus 2. Again the comms connection was awful. ‘But we have systems glitching all over the place and our friendly-recognition system is down. We’ve only got active laser targeting left.’

That was bad news. The friendly-recognition system could locate every Legionnaire and Legion vehicle to ensure it didn’t actually get hit.

‘Okay do it,’ Miska told him. ‘Avoid the landing pads, the northern defensive area and the mechs.’

Harpy 2 had not answered but she was aware of the heavy drop shuttle’s engines firing up.

‘Hangman-One-Actual to all Bastard call signs in the northern defensive area, do not, I repeat, do not fire to the south, four friendlies inbound,’ she told the legionnaires in the trench system.

‘We have to move!’ Miska told Nyukuti, Raff and Corenbloom. They just nodded. Over on the landing pads she could make out the fire from Pegasus 2 and Harpy 2’s engines as they clawed their way unsteadily into the air. ‘Run!’ Miska told the other three and they did, heading around the fallen Cyclops and aiming for the trench system to the north. There was nothing tactical about it, just a straight sprint, moving as fast as they could. She saw roots burst through the earth, more of the tree-creatures seemingly growing out of them. The air filled with red light from the two now-airborne shuttles’ tertiary targeting systems.

‘Hangman-One-Actual to all Bastard call signs, prepare for danger-close air support, repeat, danger-close air support!’ she shouted over open comms. Get your heads down, she thought. Then tracers were flying towards her from the trench system. Which part of don’t fire to the fucking south was hard to fucking understand! she screamed inside.

Her legs went out from underneath her. She face-planted hard. Nyukuti was stood over her again. Spraying her legs down with the defoliant, sending the roots that had grabbed her squealing back into the earth. Over his shoulder she saw the missile engines light up in their cradles. Suddenly Pegasus 2 ejected one of its batteries. It hit the ground and exploded. The force of the blast bounced Pegasus 2 into one of the trees and knocked a nearby Medusa off its feet. Then the night air was full of missile contrails. Miska was back on her feet running towards the trenches, looking at the tracers arcing towards her.

Are they trying to kill me? It was all she had time to think before a round glanced off the side of her head, shattering her goggles on her left side. She staggered, almost went down, but Nyukuti was there by her side again, dragging her towards the closest trench. Then they were taken off their feet by the hot wind pushed by the shockwaves from multiple warheads exploding.

Miska landed on top of Nyukuti in the trench. Fire and force blossomed around her everywhere she looked, plasma, high explosive, clustered area denial weapons that buried into the ground before exploding, anti-personnel