Centers of Gravity (Frontlines) by Marko Kloos

Author:Marko Kloos [Kloos, Marko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 47North
Published: 2022-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

I drift on the edge of consciousness, and each time I become aware of my surroundings again, the sounds and sensations feel a little more distant. I hear gunfire and shouts, and the feeling of getting jostled around with rapid movement. The pain is all-pervasive now, if dull. I feel disconnected from the pain, as if I am experiencing it all through an abstraction layer, like observing the sun through heavily filtered optics. A Lanky wails nearby, a sound so intense I feel it in my bones.

Then there’s a new sound overhead, a low roar that drowns out the sounds of the falling rain and whipping winds that have been a constant and somehow soothing background noise since we came out of the burrow. The roar is followed by the rapid concussions of heavy autocannon fire. Each time the guns go off, I feel the slap from the pressure waves of the muzzle blasts as they displace the air around them. Then I’m on my back again, somewhere in a mental zone that is somehow both entirely pain and none at all. When I try to focus on the helmet display, I see a huge shadow directly overhead, just a vague outline against the roiling dark clouds above it. The front of the shape lights up in concert with the thunderclaps of the gunfire, muzzle blasts that reach out for meters in front of the Blackfly’s bow. The spent casings from the cannon shells are raining down nearby, splashing into puddles and careening off rocks with dull metallic sounds. As damaged and pain-soaked as my head is right now, my old memories are intact because I instantly remember being on my back on the street in Detroit in the same way over twelve years ago, hurt and waiting for help, with the empty shells from another drop ship coming down on me and my squad like a brass-and-steel shower. The memory is so strong that I can smell the scents from that night again, the hot asphalt and the burned caseless propellant from our rifles, the dirty air of the city, all enhanced by the stifling humidity of that long-ago summer night. The loud, drawn-out death wail of a Lanky pulls me back to the moment.

Several pairs of arms grab my armor and lift me off the ground. Suddenly I am in motion again, bounced around by the quick and out-of-sync steps of a small group of people at a run, and I close my eyes as a new wave of nausea blooms inside me. More small-arms fire bellows, close enough to us that it sounds like the gun is going off almost next to my head. I hear yelling and recognize voices, but I can’t make out what they are shouting.

The next time I open my eyes, the world is bathed in the red battle light of a drop ship’s cargo bay, and I am suddenly filled with a sense of relief. Someone is carrying me through the Blackfly’s hold and up into the EVA lock between the armory and the cockpit.

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