Lost Vikings by JJ Wolficus (good summer reads txt) 📗

He couldn't tel what kind of zerg they were, but his HUD identified

them as overlords. They were sprinkled with a strong force of mutalisks.

"We're going in by ground until we get close enough to hit those bastards with as much

firepower as we can muster. Vikings move too fast in the air for us to get decent targeting

on anything standing there." 15

Erik groaned. "You would think the engineers who built these things could have

included guns that pointed down." His Wraith had been able to attack both ground and air

targets as it soared above the battlefield, and the lack of that flexibility pained him.

Baleog growled at him. "The viking is and remains the pinnacle of terran personalcombat

systems. You want to fight something in the air? You get in the air and shoot it. You

want to fight something on the ground? You slam down and get your feet dirty. No other

weapon is as flexible or dangerous. Inside my rig, I can take on any terran machine and tear

it apart. Anytime you think you're up for it, you're welcome to climb into a different ride

and give that chal enge a try."

Erik muttered an apology. "I was only making a—"

Baleog cut him off. "You might be the best damn transport chief around. Out here,

you're nothing but a baby bird with a big mouth. Now shut up and try to learn something

that might keep you from getting us all killed.

Erik didn't respond.

Varg pointed his Gatling cannon at the ridge again. "We go in fast before they notice us,

then hit them hard with our big guns. Once that gets their attention, they'l send out some

ground troops to deal with us. We'l jump into the air and switch to fighter mode before

they reach us."

The tip of Varg's Gatling cannon rose up to target the airborne zerg. "From there, we go

in and take out as many of those sky bugs as we can. Focus on the mutalisks first, the ones

with wings. They're the biggest threat."

"And once we're done with that?" asked Scorch. Erik liked that she thought ahead.

"We land and start taking out the ground bugs again. We keep at it until we get the

word that it's time to go home. Clear?" 16

"As ice," Scorch said. The others chimed in as well.

The plan seemed like a good one. It had the benefit of simplicity, which Erik prized,

given how little experience he had in a viking. Back when he'd been flying a Wraith, his

commanders had employed the same sort of hit-and-run tactics, only without the wrinkle

of landing and taking off again. Erik felt a surge of hope, which he hadn't known since he'd

first heard of the zerg invasion.

At Varg's signal, they resumed their march. Once they got within what the major

deemed to be an acceptable range from the zerg, he called a halt again. When the snow

settled this time, Erik saw how large the ridge real y was, and hope drained right out of

him.

From this distance, Erik could see the color of the zerg carapaces, the bruised purples

and unnatural greens that bulged out of their basic palette of shit browns. He could see

their mandibles moving, chewing, and his stomach churned in disgust. He didn't have much

time to wallow in his growing sense of dread, though.

"Hit 'em hard!" Varg opened up with his Gatling cannons, and the rest of the vikings

joined in.

Erik spun up his own cannons, one mounted on each of his walker's shoulders, and let

loose. A fire-hose spray of metal slugs spat out and tore through the hard-shel ed zerg, the

thick and viscous creep, and the honeycombed ice underneath. The viking's carapace

protected Erik's ears from the thunderous racket the guns produced, but he could stil feel

the constant rattle of the discharge thrumming through his bones.

Baleog howled with glee as the vikings' assault turned the zerg on the cliff's face into

dark purple paste, and Scorch and Olaf chimed in. The vikings had caught many of the

creatures unawares, kil ing them before they had a chance to flee. Others, though, had

managed to slip back inside the ridge through the myriad tunnels they'd chewed into it,

disappearing from sight. 17

"Keep it up!" Varg said. "We got 'em on the run!"

A grin broke out on Erik's face, and he found he couldn't suppress it. Taking out the

bugs was more of a thril than he could have imagined. The fact that doing it might save his

wife and child and everyone else in the settlements only made it that much better.

His guns began to glow. At first they just showed a hint of red around the tips, but it

soon crept backward along the barrels, growing brighter. The heat from the friction of the

bul ets must have been tremendous, especially given how cold it was outside.

"Looking good, my little vikings!" Varg said.

Rather than burrowing into the ridge, one line of zerg made a mad dash for the foot of

the cliff. Erik fol owed them with his weapons, tearing them to pieces. The few that he

missed managed to escape into tunnels near the base, and Erik redoubled his efforts to

blast the zerg out of there, exposing them in their hidey-holes one vicious bul et at a time.

"Watch it, kid!" Varg said. "Raise your guns! You keep that up, you're liable to bring the whole—oh, shit."

As Varg spoke, the face of the ridge began to collapse. It started with the small section

near the bottom where Erik had been focusing his fire. He'd just spotted a huge infestation

of zerg, and no matter how many bullets he'd fired atit, more of the creatures squirted out

of their burrows, as if there wasn't enough room for them all to hide.

That turned out to be true, Erik saw, when the first several meters of ice crumpled and

gave way. The exposed zergwere packed in so tight that they almost exploded outward

with the fragmented ice, and they scrambled for cover like cockroaches from light. They

didn't get far, though, before the rest of the wal tumbled down on top of them.

Without the ice at the base to support it, the wal