It didn’t matter to Cal what you called the giant metallic beast crawling across the dead zone towards the 43rd Mechanized Scout Division. Fuck that! It wasn’t even the second thing on his mind as he charged towards the indentation in the rocky landscape that his squad leader had marked on his heads up display. Pushing his suit to its max Cal practically skated across the barren field. Behind him he could hear the thump of the Mk-19 grenade launcher mounted to his squads troop transport. Thump….thump…thump. The heartbeat of the battlefield. Cal could feel it in his bones.

Diving into cover he finally risked a look down range at the approaching enemy, his HUD highlighting the silhouette of the gigantic metal bug lumbering across the field. It fired at the mobile artillery mech that had spent the last five minutes shelling the beast as it slowly but inevitably advanced. Barely a scratch showed on the chrome armor plate.

Refocusing on his objective Cal quickly pinged multiple joints in the mechanized spiders armor, automatically sending these suggestions to his squad leader who used his HUD interface to quickly sort and make sense of the information sent by his squad. In an instant he recirculated the information, selecting two of the weak points and labeling them A and B.

“Fire Team Alpha. Target objective Alpha.” Cal mentally acknowledged the order and in one step leaped the waist high ledge the squad had been using as cover. Falling into a staggered line formation with his team as they once again raced across the cracked earth, this time falling into two groups. Cal ran in behind Brunns who ran twenty meters ahead and to his left. “Standard procedure for tactical advances called for adequate spacing between team members in order to maintain firing lanes.” His instructors had said but what the hell did firing lanes matter against something that wouldn’t even notice small arms fire. Still Cal reminded himself to check his spacing and match speed with his team leader Vasquez who ran ahead of Brunns.

The ground shook violently as they neared their objective, the section just behind the front leg. Multiple times he stumbled causing his suit to forcibly stabilize him in order to maintain his feet. Luckily this thing had no anti-personnel weapons, seeming to just have the single laser cannon on the “head”. Until now Cal had forced himself not to look at the line of vehicles and men in front of the machine. They still held but barely, dozens of bodies littered the ground and more than a few burnt husks of vehicles or machinery smoldered leaving an easy to read timeline of the battle and how much ground the soldiers had given up. All of this was to buy time for Cal’s squad and ultimately provide time for the mobilization of air support.

“Here!” Vasquez called over their headsets, once again Cal’s HUD lit up outlining a square meter on the ground in front of them. “Place the ordinance”

Quickly the team went to work unpacking and setting up the XM99 land mine. The machine was only a few giant steps away as they finished and recalled toward their previous position. The weapon was designed to send most of its payload upward so the team didn’t need to move far in order to escaped the blast radius. In fact they had been told this new type of anti-armored mine wasn’t truly an explosive device at all. That was all made very clear when the chromatic arachnid crossed overtop of the two land mines setting them off by proximity. Two lasers lit up the night burning a white line across Cal’s vision and cutting into the legs of the monster. It wavered and then fell headfirst into the dirt sending a cloud of dust obscuring it’s entire body and the rest of the army.

Screams…. No! cheers echoed across the barren landscape, breaking the moment of silence left behind from the titans crash.

Everyone cheered….. except for Cal. He had seen movement in the distance right as the mines went off and as his eyes cleared he starred in the direction the beast had came from. Then one by one his HUD began highlighting the silhouette of hundreds of the giants moving slowly but inevitably towards them out of the darkness.