The entire company, or what's left of it, is tumbling across the flats in a formation that long ago stopped pretending to be a line. There's none of that dignified parade-march bullshit you see in recruitment holos; not a single one of these mechs, tanks, or grunts is in dress code or even moving in sync. They're just trying to stay alive, hunched behind whatever battered hull or burning vehicle still moves. Forward, back, sideways, who the hell knows. The comms are pure static punctuated by panicked screaming and the mechanical howls of the Khadak. Every few seconds, Nyla's helmetscreen glitches with one of those urgent, all-caps directives from command, usually obsolete by the time it appears.
This isn't a battle. It's a feeding frenzy. And the company is the chum.
Nyla barely has time to scan the red-bracketed icons on her targeting reticle before they flicker and vanish, replaced by the black smoke of something blowing sky-high. Infantry units scatter in a panic, their formation breaking as they try to flank a monstrous, centipedal Khadak tunneling up from under the sand. The beast is half-molted, its translucent carapace streaked with gore that isn't even its own. Nyla's stomach flips at the memory of what the briefing said about molting: it means the swarm is expanding. Fast.
She squeezes both triggers on the gunsticks, feeling the Ladybird's autocannons buck and kick beneath her like angry oxen. The quad barrels are stitched across the sky, spewing out tungsten shells hot enough to make the metal hull beneath her boots vibrate. The only thing that keeps her from losing it completely is the tremble of the guns—constant, familiar, a rhythm she can trust.
The side-gauge is still flashing. Every time she looks down, the warning is worse. LOW AMMO. BARREL TWO JAMMED. COOLANT LEAK. It's like the Ladybird herself is screaming for a medic.
"Sergeant, one of the cannons isn't cycling," Nyla shouts, her voice fighting the noise of the hull shaking and the endless shriek of the AA alarms. She can hear Knox's teeth grinding over the open channel.
"Just keep firing what you have, Nyla! Command's trying to get us a corridor." The way he says it makes it clear: he doesn't believe a word of it. He's scrolling through a flood of tactical overlays, all of them ugly—concentric rings of Khadak encirclement, casualty projections, the company's friendlies winking out one by one.
She slaps at the controls, toggling to the green diagnostics page. It spatters readouts across her vision-
TANK MODEL: ID-74D
HULL INTEGRITY: CRITICAL
ARMOR PLATING: WEAKENED
MAIN WEAPON: 4× 40mm Auto-Cannons (AUTOLOADER JAM LIKELY)
ENGINE: 80 KMH MAX (DAMAGED COOLANT LEAK)
COMMANDER: SGT. Samuel Knox
The screen flickers. External hull cameras have degraded to static, but the thermal overlay confirms what her ears already know: the Khadak are almost on top of them. The wings in the sky sound like a million wet towels being snapped at once, and the ground shudders with every step of the beetle-sized ones.
Nyla braces her boots against the floorplate and keeps firing until her knuckles go numb. The Ladybird's autocannons scream, each shell carving invisible paths through the living cloud. She watches as several razorbeaks vaporize under her barrage, but for every one she splatters, three more dive in behind it. The company's IFVs are getting shredded, entire platoons erased from the tactical net in seconds. The air is so thick with debris and blood that the Ladybird's filtered vents can't keep up, and the inside of the tank starts to smell like a butcher's freezer after a blackout.
A sudden whump whump whump rattles the hull, followed by a metallic shriek. The Ladybird spasms, and her seat erupts in sparks. Nyla yelps as molten shrapnel splashes her forearm, instantly blistering the skin. She sucks in breath, but the only thing that comes out is, "Motherfucker, that's hot!"
Henley laughs, a high, desperate cackle. "We are in the desert, Nyla. Hot is what it does best." The whole tank vibrates as he swings them back into line behind a burning APC.
"I will strangle you with a radiator hose, you shitlord," Nyla snaps, still shaking her hand as purple blisters bubble up beneath the glove. She rips off the glove and jams her fingers under her armpit, then slams her palm back on the gunstick.
Sergeant Knox is on the comms, patching in to company. From the tone, things are even worse than she thought. "—Delta Platoon's gone, repeat, gone. Only air cover is us. Air support is five minutes out, and that's if they dodge the goddamned swarm—"
Nyla tunes him out, focusing on the autoloader. The jammed cannon is a death sentence if she doesn't clear it. She yanks open the side panel, slamming her elbow into the release. A gory fistful of shell fragments and bug viscera bursts out, slapping her in the face. It's so hot, her eyes water instantly. She grits her teeth and rips the stuck shell casing free, tossing it to the floor with a thunk.
Beneath her, the Ladybird's engine howls. She can feel it stutter, like an animal with too many bullet holes. The next salvo from the razorbeaks slams into their canopy; the kinetic force throws Nyla against the gun mount, and she tastes blood as her tongue bites through itself. The entire inside of the tank is now filled with a haze of smoke and ozone, every surface slick with sweat and hydraulic fluid.
The screens update. LOADER JAMMED. Nyla blinks furiously and slaps the reboot on the gun control, praying at nothing in particular. A tiny green square blinks: JAM CLEARED.
"Cannon three's back online!" she shouts, voice cracking triumphantly.
"Then let's fucking use it," Knox growls, Nyla swinging the Ladybird's turret to cover the wounded rear of the column.
Nyla's fingers dance over the controls, and all four cannons erupt in a savage, desperate volley. She watches as the leading edge of the Khadak swarm fractures, the air filling with the glitter of broken wings and alien ichor. But it's only a momentary reprieve; the next wave is already inbound.
"Incoming! Brace for hit!" Knox roars, and Nyla's heads-up flashes red as a breakaway swarm of razorbeaks arcs toward them like a school of demon fish. The battered Ladybird lurches in the soft sand, and Nyla claws the controls, fighting dead servos and a HUD that's now half static, half screaming. She wrenches the turret to track, but the rotation is shot to shit—the best she can do is angle the cannons to spit shrapnel into the middle of the oncoming swarm.
The first razorbeak slams into the Ladybird's hatch with a sound like a bomb in a scrapyard. Talons screech against reinforced durasteel and Nyla jolts as a fist-sized hole appears in the periscope lens, turning one of her viewports into a spiderweb of refracted colors. The bug is gone in a blink, but it leaves a slick of caustic slime eating into the tank's hull, little veins of smoke unfurling into the cabin. Dozens of more razorbeaks hit in quick succession. The sound is mechanical rain, only instead of water, it's lethal, slicing, and every drop wants to get inside. The Ladybird rocks on its treads and Henley, for once, stops laughing.
"Fucking hell, they're trying to peel us like a can!" Henley shouts, voice an octave higher than usual. He slaps the throttle, but the Ladybird groans, the engine choking out a wet, hopeless rattle.
"Don't you dare die on me!" Nyla spits, as though the threat will convince both machine and man to hold together a little longer. She feels the floor vibrate and then buckle as the enemy clings to the tank, their claws probing for weakness—every mounting seam and rivet a potential entry point.
The tank's frame shudders as a razorbeak beaks its way through a side viewport and is promptly pulped by the auto-loader's next shell. The guts splatter over the inside glass, pooling in the cracks, and the smell is brutal, like ammonia and burnt hair. Nyla retches and tries to focus. She can sense Knox somewhere behind her, getting tossed around the comms compartment, probably collecting new bruises for every second they stay alive.
"Keep it together, keep it together, keep it—" She mutters the phrase on repeat, a prayer or a curse, maybe both.
Suddenly the Ladybird lists starboard and half the dashboard lights go dead. "We lost a tread!" Henley howls, and Nyla can feel the shift in inertia as the tank fishtails, dragging metal teeth through sand and bug gore. The swarm takes the opportunity to double down, razorbeaks clustering along the exposed track like vultures on roadkill.
Nyla yells, "Firing all barrels!" and does, sending a quartet of high-velocity rounds into the writhing mass along their hull. The blast is so close it rattles her teeth and mushrooms a plume of bug viscera and steel fragments into the air. The bodies fall away, some still twitching, and for half a second she can actually see daylight through the new holes in the Ladybird's hull.
But the reprieve is microscopic; the rest of the splinter swarm is already wheeling for another pass, wings snapping, eyes reflecting the burning sky. Nyla grits her teeth and toggles to the manual mag-feed. She's only got maybe a dozen rounds left, but she's damned if she's not going to use every one.
The next collision is worse. The swarm hits the Ladybird with coordinated precision, talons puncturing armor, wings wedging into crevices, some even forcing their way through the already-compromised engine housing. The stench of burning bug blends with the oily sweetness of leaking coolant, and Nyla's left hand slips on the blood-smeared gunstick. She wipes it on her jumpsuit and keeps firing, eyes watering from the chemical haze.
She tracks one especially large razorbeak as it lands directly atop the main gun, mandibles gnawing at the barrel like it's corn on the cob. She pulls the trigger anyway. The shell detonates point-blank, vaporizing the bug into a cloud of char and chitin and knocking Nyla's head against the padded rest with a force that nearly blacks her out.
"Status!" Knox barks, coughing through static. "Everyone alive?"
Henley grunts, which is about what you expect from him.
Nyla slaps her readout in anger. "Main gun's operating. Secondary's fucked. Ammo's dry after this next volley. Hull . . . is mostly cosmetic at this point." She doesn't mention her own state: blood running slowly down her right ear, her arm numb, her hands shaking so bad she can barely read the touch screen. She doesn't want to hear sympathy or concern. She wants to make it out alive.
Nyla's forward viewport is a smear of dust and bug splatter, but she manages to see the rest of the company's armor limping in the same direction, the formation now a jagged, straggling mess of vehicles. The infantry that survived are mostly riding the hulls, hunkered and clutching their rifles, some so caked in gore they look like they're wearing meat armor.
The ground shakes as something huge moves just beneath the surface. "What the-," Knox warns, "big'un tunneling at eleven o'clock!" Sure enough, a centipedal Khadak the size of a city bus gyres up out of the sand, part-molted and leaking black goo from a dozen wounds. Its eyes are glassy, set deep behind a bone crest, and as it rears up, Nyla can see the twitching remains of what used to be a tank crew draped across its mandibles.
She doesn't hesitate—lines up the shot and dumps the Ladybird's last two rounds point-blank into the thing's face. The first round takes out its left eye, the second buries itself so far into brainpan that the whole monster seizes, convulses, then collapses with a sound like a building falling. The impact sends a shudder through the sand and almost tips the Ladybird over.
"Nice shooting, Nyla!" Henley crows, triumphant, and for once Nyla just lets herself grin back, teeth bloody, hands still shaking but suddenly weightless.
The comms crackle again, this time with a new voice—female, clipped, terrified. "All units, swarm is breaking off! I repeat, the swarm is breaking off!"
Nyla looks up and, with something like disbelief, sees the razorbeaks actually disengage, peeling away from the ruined armor and spiraling skyward. The aerial cloud thins, then snaps back toward the horizon in a smooth, terrifying line. For half a minute, the only sound is the labored wheezing of the Ladybird's engine and the weird, high-frequency whine of the retreating bugs.
Nyla sags. The inside of the tank feels suddenly, impossibly large, as if the pressure has been yanked away and left only empty space. She leans her forehead against the gun mount, eyes fluttering. She can taste copper and ozone. Her left leg is asleep.
Above, the sky clears. The smoke dissipates. The only evidence of the last ten minutes is the battered column of survivors, the shredded bodies of both grunts and Khadak, and the Ladybird, somehow still upright, still awake, still angry.
Knox doesn't wait. The moment the threat recedes, he slaps the side hatch and hauls his battered body halfway out, boots catching on the shredded bits of seat and panel. He's not graceful—nobody is, not after a brawl like that—but he moves with a purpose, hands finding purchase on the scorched armor, dragging himself up and onto the Ladybird's exterior like a man who's just clawed his way out of a grave. For a second he just stands there, hunched and blinking in the sudden, abrasive daylight, before planting both fists on the hull and scanning the horizon with a wild-eyed, feral intensity.
Nyla doesn't wait for an invitation. She's running on fumes and adrenaline, fingers still numb from the shock of the last impact, but she's not about to let the Sergeant have the last word. She swings her own legs up, ignoring the flex and throb of her battered knee, and launches herself out of the gunner's seat, climbing after him. The world outside is so bright it stings, and her eyes water immediately, but the cold wind on her face is better than the chemical reek inside. As soon as she's up, she plants her boots next to Knox, and for a moment the two of them are just standing there together on top of the ruined Ladybird, side by side, the battered treads still smoldering beneath them.
The landscape is a mural of violence and wreckage. The column they'd crawled in with is reduced to maybe a quarter of its original strength, the rest little more than burning skeletons and ruptured hulls scattered across the flats. The sand is painted with slicks of iridescent bug blood and the brown-red of human remains. What's left of the mechanized company is regrouping in an awkward, staggering knot, the surviving vehicles limping together like wounded animals for warmth. Even the air crackles with aftermath—there's a pressure drop, or maybe it's just the high ringing in her ears, but everything feels hollowed out, like the world is holding its breath.
They stand in silence. For all her usual wordlessness, Nyla is the first to break it, though it comes out more as a croak than speech.
"Fuck," she says. It's the only word that fits.
Knox makes a sound—half a laugh, half a cough. He doubles over with it, planting a hand on the tank's scorched hull to steady himself. His helmet hangs at a crooked angle, chinstrap snapped by the concussion or maybe just by force of will, and the ugly, salt-and-pepper stubble on his jaw is streaked with sweat and something that might be bug ichor. When he finally straightens, the look in his eye is just pure, raw, animal relief.
Nyla's not sure how long they stand like that, just breathing and listening to the wind howl through the holes in their armor, but eventually the moment cracks. Below them, the rest of the company is beginning to reconstitute out of its own shock. Some vehicles are still smoldering, their crews climbing out to the sand in twos and threes, hunched and blinking and pale. A few of the tanks regroup, forming a loose perimeter, guns aimed outward in case the bugs get a second wind. Medics and officers are already shouting at each other over the comms, voices clipped and hoarse, but nobody seems to know what the next move is.
Nyla turns to scan the length of the Ladybird, half-expecting to see it split in two or leaking fire from every seam. It's battered nearly beyond recognition—the hull cratered, half the viewport glass gone, the main gun barrel actually bent at the tip like a child's toy. Yet somehow the old bitch is still upright, still ticking, still alive. A thread of pride worms its way through Nyla's exhaustion, and she gives the battered tank a pat on the side, like you would a dog that just hauled you out of a burning building.
Movement catches her eye. There's something on the far end of the Ladybird, clinging to the rear engine housing, where the last hits had landed hardest. Nyla squints through the haze, makes out a human shape—bareheaded, wild-eyed, staggering as he tries to right himself atop the ruined vehicle.
It's Henley.
At first, he looks almost comical, like a scarecrow missing its pole. He's stripped of his helmet and one sleeve of his uniform is gone entirely, exposing an arm latticed with razor-thin cuts and angry red splotches. His mouth is working overtime, spitting curses with every breath, but the sound doesn't carry over the wind. He teeters on the edge of the engine deck, then slaps a hand down and grins up at Knox and Nyla like he's just pulled off some epic prank.
Nyla is about to call out, maybe toss him a "nice of you to join us," when she sees it. The blood.
It's everywhere—down the front of Henley's chest, soaking the remains of his shirt, pooling beneath his boots. At first Nyla thinks it must be bug gore, maybe splash from the last shell, but this is too dark, too viscous, and there's an awful lot of it for just a flesh wound. She blinks, and that's when she spots the jagged piece of shrapnel jutting out of his gut, a slick of metal maybe ten centimeters long, punched clean through the body armor and now standing proudly like some sick badge of honor.
Knox spots it a split-second later. He doesn't even swear—just launches himself across the top of the Ladybird, boots slamming into the battered steel, and grabs Henley by the shoulder before he can collapse entirely. The sudden movement stirs up a cloud of fine dust and atomized bug chitin, and for a moment it looks like both of them are about to go over the side together.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Knox snarls, and clamps down on Henley's free arm, bodily hauling him back from the edge. Henley's face goes instantly waxy, the bravado draining out of him all at once. He makes a sound like a broken whistle and folds forward, clutching at the spike of metal in his gut as if he's just noticed it for the first time.
"Henley!" Nyla calls, scrambling across the hull to close the gap. She drops to her knees at his side, hands hovering uselessly above the wound, unsure whether to pull the shrapnel or press down or just start screaming. Her entire world narrows to his face—the eyes already ringed with shock, the lips peeled back from his teeth in a grin that's all pain and no humor.
Knox props him up, bracing Henley's back against his own chestplate, and hisses, "Don't you fucking pass out, you hear me? Look at me, Henley. Stay with it."
Henley's head lolls back, but he snorts, bloody foam flecking his teeth. "You guys see that driving? Best in the whole fucking company." His voice is papery, every syllable a struggle.
"Shut up," Knox says, but the words are gentle. "We're getting you off this hunk of shit right now."
Nyla tears open the medkit pouch on her belt and yanks out a compression patch, slapping it over the entry wound. Blood immediately soaks through, hot and sticky against her palm. She fumbles with the viv-injector, thumb jamming down on the safety catch, and stabs the hypo into Henley's thigh. He doesn't even flinch, too far gone for the pain to register.
Below, the rest of the company is noticing. A pair of medics are already sprinting across the sand, ducking between the flaming wrecks and leaping over bug corpses, their kits bouncing on their hips. Nyla waves them down, shouting, "Up here! He's losing too much—" Her throat seizes up, and she finishes with a cough.
Knox keeps talking to Henley, voice low and constant, telling him bullshit stories about how they're going to get blackout drunk when they hit the next base, how he'll have a scar that'll get him laid until he's forty, how the Emperor himself will probably give him a medal for bug-killing. Henley's eyes roll, but he grins again and gurgles something Nyla can't quite catch.
He didn't make it back to base.