Orders of Battle (Frontlines, #7)

by Marko Kloos

I try to think about what would happen if we got an incursion alert right now. Our contingency plan still calls for all personnel to report to the nearest Corps facility to stand by for emergency deployment. I’d probably get moved to a podhead detachment on a Fleet unit somewhere, to get ready for surface action against the invasion spearheads, just like we have been practicing for half a decade now. But it would be a purely reactive action. I’d be suiting up in armor, yanked from a desk job into battle preparations without warning, tossed into a line unit with unfamiliar troops, people I’ve never trained or deployed with. And I realize that I am not prepared for war, even though I’ve kept my marksmanship skills honed and my body in fighting shape. I’m not prepared for war because I’ve let myself pretend that the fight is as good as over, that a desk job and three meals a day from a chow hall buffet are going to be my normal state for the rest of my days in uniform.

“Their cranial shields,” she says and points downhill into the valley. “There’s five distinct types we’ve seen so far. These are all Type Three. All the post-invasion Lankies in one location always have the same cranial shield shape. The samples from Mars are all Type Five. We haven’t been back to Willoughby, so we didn’t know what type they had here. Now I get to fill in that blank.”

A Lanky appears from the patch of churning soil on the ground and wails another piercing distress call into the sky. It moves as if it’s trying to scramble back onto solid ground. When it’s almost out of the restless patch of earth, a fountain of ochre-colored earth sprays up, and something very large and very fast yanks the Lanky back into the dirt. I get a brief glimpse at something that looks like a hook or a pincer, slender and glossy black like the hull of a seed ship. Then the Lanky is gone beneath the ground again, and its wail is cut off abruptly. The soil ripples for a few more seconds after the Lanky disappears. When everything is still again, the patch that swallowed the Lanky forms a new depression in the ground, contrasting churned-up earth and rocks with the moss carpet of the surrounding valley.

When we pass the valley a few moments after takeoff, the pilot does as promised and puts the ship into a slow left-hand turn to circle the area. I watch the feed from the hull cameras as the terrain pans underneath the ship. The spot where the Lankies lost half a dozen of their group is now an almost perfectly circular patch of disturbed soil and shredded vegetation. For a moment, I am worried that even five hundred feet of altitude may not be sufficient to keep us in the clear, but the pilot finishes his turn before I can voice that concern over the radio. Whatever is lurking underneath the soil down there is big and strong enough to seize a three-hundred-ton Lanky and drag it under, and it’s cunning enough to lay deliberate traps for them. There’s no telling if something of that size even registers humans as a potential threat or food source, but I am not curious enough to find out right now. When the pilot levels out the ship and climbs above two thousand feet, I slowly let out a breath of relief.

“The Lankies aren’t,” Elin says. “And the chances that Willoughby has an organism on it that’s adapted in isolation to take them as prey is pretty much zero. Whatever this thing is, I’d bet money that it came from the same place where they evolved.” “What kind of species brings its own predator with it when it goes out to settle another planet?” “It may not have been on purpose,” Elin replies. “Could have been by accident. We’ve introduced invasive species to colonies by accident, and we have all sorts of procedures to prevent that.”

“I don’t think the Fleet gives out an achievement badge for that,” Drentlaw replies. “But I guess there’s one good thing about it. It means I am also as far away from my ex-wife as I’ll ever get.”