than he could count, but he'd always been safe inside his transport, a klick or higher in the
air. This was the first time he'd been this close to any part of the planet's surface outside of
its few settlements. He wondered if the snow would hold him or if he'd sink right through
to whatever it was covering—and he wondered how far down that would be.
The snow did give under the several tons of the viking's weight, but the walker's legs
found solid ground to stand on only half a meter down. Whether it was ice or rock or
something else entirely, Erik couldn't tell. He just felt grateful it was there.
Enveloped by the dense white cloud his landing had kicked up, Erik couldn't see a damn
thing. He pushed the machine forward, and it slogged through the thick, heavy snow. The
viking's legs cut through the mess as if it wasn't there, but the movement felt sluggish.
Erik had operated only civilian walkers before, using them to help unload the cargo
from his transport every now and then. That was probably another reason why Varg had
sought him for the job. Not many pilots had any experience in a walker, even if it was just
one of the stomping forklifts he'd tooled around in the distribution center.
He didn't know enough about military walkers to tel whether the machine's movement
was normal. Did its gait feel off due to the nature of the viking, or might it have something
to do with the weather? At this point, he supposed it didn't matter much. Either way, he'd
have to put up with it and account for it.
Once he emerged from the mess that he and the others had churned up around the
landing zone, Erik stopped to survey the landscape. A chain of snow-capped mountains was
huddled off to what the heads-up display on his screen told him was the west. Or maybe
they were mountains of snow. He couldn't tell from this distance. 12
Icy plains yawned to the north and south, wind sending curls of white powder winding
and cutting through the air. Nothing obstructed Erik's view all the way to the darkened
horizons but storm clouds scudding about in the distance, lightning strikes flashing across
them, pregnant with thundersnow.
The sky lightened to the east as the sun's first rays strove to break through the
incessant cloud cover. They il uminated a long ridge that stretched for klicks in either
direction, forming a sheer, crystal ine cliff that had to be hundreds of meters high. Under
other circumstances, the vista would have stunned Erik with its stark beauty. Instead, the
sight of a zerg infestation burrowing through the cliff threatened to turn his stomach.
Erik's time with the Dominion military had been spent fighting other terrans, mostly
rebels. He'd fol owed the struggle elsewhere against the zerg and the protoss through UNN
broadcasts, but he'd never been ordered into battle against any aliens. He had seen dead
zerg before but never a live one, not outside of a recording. Most people who did weren't
fortunate enough to survive the experience.
The way the bugs squirmed along the cliff's ledges, abruptly disappearing and
reappearing through a series of holes that had been eaten or dril ed into them, reminded
him of a termite infestation he'd seen as a kid. The termites had demolished the
infrastructure of the house his family lived in. The exterminator told them the place was
too far gone to be saved. The only thing to do was to have their home destroyed.
Erik wondered whether Braxis had reached that point of no return. He didn't know how
much it would take to remove the zerg from the planet, but if they had infiltrated it as they
had already riddled the cliff, he couldn't imagine that anything less than orbital
bombardment would dislodge them.
"What the hell are we doing here?" Erik said.
"Kil ing the bad guys," Varg said. "First chance we get." 13
Erik checked his rear-view camera and saw that everyone else had emerged from the
landing zone. Could the ice their vikings stood on handle this much weight? A viking might
be able to fly, but when it walked on the ground, it made a deep impression. If they were on
top of a frozen sea, Erik could envision breaking through the crust of ice and disappearing
into the black waters below.
"Let's march out." Varg began trudging forward through the snow. He kicked up a haze
as he went. Erik and the others fel in line behind him fast, and as a group they soon
managed to cause visibility in the area to drop to only a few meters.
"What's the plan from here?" Erik said. Maybe he should have just waited for Varg to
start barking out orders, but he needed to know what he'd gotten himself into.
The major grumbled. Erik had a hard time making out the back of the man's armor
through the snow, and Varg strode only a few steps ahead of him.
"We're meant to provide a distraction," Varg said. "Our job is to keep these bugs
occupied until Command gets the rest of our forces in line—or decides to turn tail and run
along with the civilians."
"They're using us as bait." Baleog gave Varg an approving grunt. "Drop us down on the
far side of the zerg infestation and use us to draw their forces away from the settlements."
"Right," Varg said. "We don't have to take the bugs out. We just have to pul their
attention away long enough for our people to escape."
"What about us?" Olaf said.
Erik hated the big man for asking the question. He'd wanted to ask it himself, but he
feared the answer. Would it real y be better to know?
"How about it, Varg?" Baleog said. "Do we constitute acceptable losses?" 14
"Damn right you do. We al do. What's more important: a wing of vikings or every other
terran on the planet?"
As long as "every other terran" included Kyrie and Sif, Erik knew how he'd answer that.
They trudged on in silence, their vikings carrying them closer and closer toward the icy
cliff. Even though Erik could no longer see it through the snow whirling around them, he
knew it was there, and he dreaded every step forward. Stil , he didn't let that stop him from
marching on.
"Halt!" Varg said, raising one of his viking's Gatling cannons to make sure he had
everyone's attention.
Erik and the others stopped in their tracks. The snow they'd kicked up settled down,
swirling to the ground. The viking's climate-control system kept Erik's windshield clear,
and he could soon see al the way to the ridge again. It sat much closer this time.
Varg gestured at the ridge with a Gatling cannon. Zerg drones squirmed in and out of
countless tunnels in the icy face, parts of which had been coated with creep, a substance
that reminded Erik of a spider's webbing. It covered much of the ridge, turning the
sparkling white surface a filthy gray.
Things that Erik didn't recognize hung in the air over the ridge, scooting back and forth
like flying jel yfish. 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 poi
nted 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 's face cracked and crumbled away,
crashing to the ground like a combination of an avalanche and a waterfall. Erik could feel 18
the impact through the viking's insulation, rumbling like thunder that might never end. As
the ice landed, it shattered and rol ed up into the sky, forming a gigantic cloud that roiled
out from the ridge like a tidal wave of snow.
"Dammit!" Varg said. "Brace yourselves!"
his Gatling cannons. He didn't think the oncoming crush of snow could be much worse. As
soon as it smacked into him, he realized how wrong he was.
The snow wasn't the thin, stirred-up powder that obstructed his vision when he and the
rest of the vikings strode across the land. This was solid, heavy stuff, shards of ice that had
stood there since the planet had refrozen after the protoss purification. It slammed into
him like a tank and drove him backward, burying him deeper with every centimeter he
gave.
At first Erik fought hard, struggling to stay upright, but he soon realized it was pointless.
He raised the walker's Gatling-gun arms and did his best to ride the rising wave of snow. It
swept his viking off its feet, and for a moment he felt as if the machine were treading water
backward in a tsunami.
Then everything went white. And then it went black.
An avalanche hitting you was nature doing its level best to murder you. The noise—a
low rumble like thunder from the ground—tumbled through him hard and fast until it felt
as if it had absorbed him, as if he'd become a part of it. Although he could breathe just fine
inside the viking, the avalanche's speed and force rattled him against his restraints and
knocked the wind from him. He was sure he was aboutto die, and if it was going to happen,
he hoped it would be quick. At least
then, the sheer terror of the instant would be over and
he'd be spared having to endure it any longer. 19
Employing his fear as a spur, Erik struggled to make the viking swim toward the surface
of the avalanche, using its pumping legs and flailing weaponry to keep the craft upright as
best as he could. After a moment, the force of the rol ing snow ripped the bucking controls
away from him and snatched his fate from his hands. As the viking spun down to a stop
inside a massive crumble of ice, rock, and snow, the noise abated, and he realized he was
alive—and stuck good.
Sounds of panic burst at Erik over the comm system. He couldn't make out any of the
words, not for sure. He just knew that the people he'd come here with were in a great deal
of trouble, and he couldn't do a thing to help them.
"Report!" Varg said. He might have been saying it for a while. "Shelve that damn
squealing and report!"
The immediate danger over, Erik felt new dread over his situation threaten to reach up
and swallow him. Hearing the officer's strong, stolid voice gave him a lifeline to hang on to.
"Here!" Erik said.
"Present," said Olaf.
"Yo!" said Baleog.
No one else responded.
"Scorch?" Varg said. "Dammit! Scorch?"
Nothing.
Then her voice came over the comm, soft and weak but clear. "I'm, ah…" she said. "Um,
here."
"Anyone got a visual on her?" 20
"I don't got any visual at al ," said Baleog. "I'm buried up over my head."
"I'm afraid I've fal en over," said Olaf with a pained grunt.
Erik peered out through his windshield and saw little but a dim gray. He supposed that
was a good thing. If he were buried deep, it would be nothing but utter blackness. The fact
that he could see anything meant he wasn't too far beneath the avalanche's surface, or so
he hoped.
"No visuals here." He tried to move his viking's arms. His Gatling cannons had been so
hot that he wondered if they had melted any snow that came near them. Instead, it felt as if
they'd been encased in blocks of flash-frozen ice. "Can't move my guns either."
"Don't panic," Varg said. "We're not licked yet."
"Sure," said Baleog. "As long as your name's not Scorch."
"Not helping." Varg hesitated for a moment. "Anyone got mode-transformation controls