Sigma (War for New Terra, Book 1) by T.W.M. Ashford

Author:T.W.M. Ashford [Ashford, T.W.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-05T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Thousands of roaches swarmed towards the bridge in a monstrous tide of scrawny claws and fat pincers. The rocks and boulders of the barren hills were quickly lost beneath their twitching, writhing bodies. Even greater shadows loomed heavily in the mist beyond.

“What do we do, Ginger?” shouted Ghost. “What do we do?”

Back on the UEC side of the bridge, the tanks began to fire. So did the long-range artillery cannons. Huge swathes of bugs blew up in clouds of rubble and limbs… and yet still the swarm kept coming.

“Shoot them.” Ginger joined Ghost and Duke by the parapets and trained her rifle on the incoming roaches. “Shoot them, goddammit!”

They opened fire at the horde. So did the troops crowding onto the bridge. It was hard to tell what good, if any, their rounds were doing from so high up. Whenever a bullet-riddled bug fell, it was instantly drowned beneath a dozen more rushing forth from behind it. More flying roaches soared towards the towers; Duke switched targets and started blasting these out of the sky instead.

“Ginger?” came Sergeant Parkins’ panicked voice over her headset. “What’s going on up there? What do you want us to do?”

“Hold your position for now,” Ginger replied, ducking into cover to reload. “At least until we get new orders from Baker.”

There was a brief pause before Parkins answered.

“Don’t you think we should ask for new orders, given the circumstances?”

Ginger gritted her teeth as she slammed a new magazine into her rifle. The last thing she needed right now was a fellow sergeant fighting for command of the fireteam.

“I think if Baker had new orders to give us, we’d know them already,” she snapped. “Just do what I say and stop any bugs from climbing up here, okay?”

“Ginger?” Ghost sounded concerned. “I think you ought to see this.”

Ginger stood up. Her face fell.

“Oh, crap.”

Thanks to the tanks, the artillery cannons and the wall of marines holding their ground, few of the roaches were yet to make their way onto the bridge. But lumbering through the insect masses was a much bigger threat – bigger being the operative word.

Three bugs bigger than London buses lurched towards them. They were more like beetles than the standard roaches, with six elephantine legs that shook the earth and a black shell that must have been at least a foot thick. Their heads were covered in scarred carapaces and ended in blunt horns like that of a rhino. But it wasn’t the tank-bugs alone that worried Ginger.

No. What worried Ginger were the roach-operated bug-cannons fused onto their backs.

The tank-bug up front came to a grunting stop a few dozen metres from the bridge and burrowed its thick claws into the dirt for stability. The marines turned their fire on the beast but their regular rounds couldn’t penetrate its shell. The roaches crawling over its back retrieved an explosive sac from a sling on the rear of the bug and loaded it into the cannon.

“Not so fast,” Ghost muttered to herself, as she lined them up in her sights.

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