by Kali Altsoba
“Once you learn the new meditation techniques…”
‘Oh, fuck me with a hot poker!’
“…we’ll give you those designer drugs.”
“Oorah!”
Snana Ojinjintka looks well pleased.
‘Now you’re talking!’
He thinks he’s a great success.
‘I’ll chant anything you want doc, if you give me great drugs after.’
He’s just a little disappointed that there’s no applause.
‘Hey there, doc! You done yet?’
Except for the drugs.
“Oorah!”
“Thank you, marines.”
‘Can you please shut the fuck up now…?’
‘…and let us pick up our trousers?’
Sergeant Aung calls out so loudly it makes all marines in the front rank start and wince. “Corp’ral Smythe! Make dese maw’rines run 20 klics. Bring ‘em back oh’six’hun’dread.”
He hands Joachim a chit sending him for further training. He looks right through him, adding: “Ya’ll wanna skip dah run, sah. Ree’mee’dee’al small unit tac’tics faw jun’ya off’ee’sirs starts in one owah. Hut 73, sah. If ya don’ go, I’ll add dat to yore OQR.”
Joachim flushes, his morning’s disgrace is complete. Or so he thinks. When he gets there he’ll be assigned humiliating duty for an officer: running a red disk up-and-down a signal pole for artillery units practicing on the gunnery range. It’s called “lifting Maggie’s Drawers.”
“Corp’ral Smythe will ass’sem’bell squad leed’ahs at 0:300 toe’morra. Rev’el’lee for dah rest of ya blue’horns is 0:2:30 I’m gonna per’son’al’ly es’cort yore sorry ass’ses to coun’tah’ sni’pah train’ng.” Aung flashes a sadistic grin. “Wear yore clean di’a’pairs toe’morra, ya kliba!”
Smythe barks. “Pick up trousers and drop gear! We’ll come back to collect it. I want you all in boots-‘n-‘utes. Hut, hut, hut! Double time, run!” For marines, some things never change.
Joachim watches his platoons form columns, then break into an open country jog. ‘Can I still call them my platoons, after what happened?’ He sighs, then heads off to find Hut 73. Only after he arrives does he remember that he forgot to bring his Basic Tactics Manual.
Reed
Pyotr sees black walls that hold Dark Territory grow long and complex. And he decrees it from on high. Offensive spirit must be reclaimed by Rikugun. Attack operations must resume. Aggressive war cannot pause. Offense is everything. The relentless God of Logistics is building armies on the other side to hurl against the Imperium. He must be slain. It’s a very old idea, coursing from high born to the low across the Imperium since the war state was founded by the Jade Eye, greatest of generals and conquerors in all the histories of all the Thousand Worlds.
“To overcome in battle and subdue star nations, and bring home spoils with infinite slaughter, shall be held as the highest achievement of human glory.” The poet’s words are inscribed in inlaid emeralds on Jade Eye’s tomb. He’s encased standing upright so that he may hold a sword in one hand and a mace in the other, and glare from a tidally locked lunar perch onto the Waldstätte. His death mask is frozen stone rage. It accuses the old capital world, gone quiet since more content successors moved the seat of power to Kestino. It demands: ‘Where are the new worlds you have added to my legacy? Why do no clouds of martial glory trail from the Jade Throne I left you? Why are there still so many free and farfolk worlds?’
There can be no more straight ahead assaults like the First Shaka Offensive that stalled out in Year Two, washing red against Alliance ramparts. Main HQ on Kestino and fortified Amasia HQ at Xiamen on the Thalassa know that failure cost over a hundred Rikugun generals their lives, and their family fortunes, when Pyotr retaliated. Personal fear is a powerful motivator, but it does not necessarily lead to good operational planning. Strategic impatience is a great Imperium flaw. Operational patience is another gowning Alliance advantage.
A new offensive plan for Amasia is issued by Rikugun strategists. It calls for the next offensive on Lemuria to be exactly like all the others in aggressive spirit, in line with Pyotr’s demand. “Armies of the Imperium will advance swiftly and ruthlessly, pausing for nothing, overcoming all obstacles.” The one thing that’s new is largescale diversions. “Preliminary operations on the strategic flanks will keep the enemy always off balance as to where the main blow is coming. He will be compelled to spread his forces, unsure of our main attack axis.”
Really big diversions, at Army Group strength in a cascading series of attacks, north, then south, only then the main attack at the center. On the northern flank, the place HQ Xiamen calls The Veranda, Rikugun VIII Armored Guards will lead in three infantry armies totaling 2.4 million men against a bulge festering into Rikugun’s line from 7,022 to 7,972 klics north of the Amasian equator. The great hernia pushes in front of the Alliance trench sector is known to sheetmakers, on both sides of the black, as Prairie Dog City.
The northern diversion goes in first. Advancing alongside the infantry will be four oversized, armored and mobile artillery divisions recruited from Tohoku. They have been scratched together from old men and too young boys, and actually wear Second Orion War uniforms from the warehouses of the Sendai Garrison. They’re a baleful lot. Backworldsmen, raw conscripts, scrubeens who managed to avoid serving ‘till now. But they have lots of big guns. In The Sandbox, two million fighters in a Royal Guards Army and three Infantry Armies will make the second thrust of the two stage diversion. Rikugun XIV Royal Guards will lead the attack from 2,480 to 3,530 klics south of the achingly dry equator, heading out from RIK Bitter, across the black, then into close fighting down the grid streets of Alliance Watertown. It will probe, push and divert Alliance divisions into faux cities of Tornado Ally, where foehn winds from the austral ranges hurl dry twisters against rolling dunes. Along with the northern flank diversion, it will draw in New Beijing’s mobile reserve of seven ARGs. That will leave the center vulnerable.
Once the trap is sprung, 6.2 million Rikugun will easily overwhelm the center, a mailed fist drive for the Panthalassa coast. When it gets there, the enemy will be split in two. Leading the offensive are ten armored divisions of Rikugun V Royal Armored and Rikugun XIII Royal Guards, supported by forty divisions of elite assault infantry, hover grenadiers, and fast motorized divisions organized into five oversize Infantry Armies. This immense Grand Jade Army deliver the decisive blow on Amasia, perhaps even in the Fourth Orion War.
Four armored and sixty infantry divisions will be held in central reserve, in Third Trench right behind Grand Jade Army. They’re main job will be to exploit breakthroughs by the crack assault troops at the center, but they can also move swiftly by maglev to shore up any weakness on the flanks that may open. Or more likely, exploit maneuver opportunities that present to RIK.
Once again “the honorable lead” goes to the elite unit in all the Imperator’s armies. Gross Imperium will take point at the center. It’s mostly recovered from its unexpected setback in the desert, in front of Ghouls Snakes City, where for the first time in their long rivalry the Enthusiastics blunted and bloodied it badly in Year Two. It’s ready to fight for Pyotr’s glory, for Purity, For God and Death. It’s reinforced, rested, refitted. Unfortunately for the fine soldiers and tankers and gunners of the division, it’s still led by the same sorry ass incompetent, an untouchable prince of the blood royale, General Johann Oetkert.
***
The Veranda juts from the edge of the pampas that marks the transition zone from the achingly dry south and The Sandbox to the wet, central belt. It frames a dozen, big trench cities that interlock along its curving perimeter, protruding into black soil country where farms still thrive, though farmers don’t. The fields are abandoned where armies roam instead of herds of sheep and llamas. No one is left to repair endless fences men and machines broke. Crops tend themselves, seeds ripening and falling with no cutting of stalks or harvesting of unkempt grains. Tall blue rapeseed rea
ches higher than men. This time of year, at that latitude, fields are pregnant with summer growth, stalks lean with heavy heads of ripening grains. Mostly blue in adjusted coloration, but also gold and green and red, as well as the original brilliant yellow left alone by the wise AI bot terraformers. Together, the vast horizon of colored crops make a patchwork quilt landscape of rare beauty.
Grasslands beyond the farm zone are even richer and more varied at ground level than can be appreciated in the monotonous flatness of a recce overflight. Escaping crops block enormous grazing herds that traverse the prairie along undulating ridges, except where natural trails follow shallow valleys cut by slow moving streams. Wild grasses abound in low fens and fells, straining for rootholds down gullies and ravines. Infantry have as much trouble with the tall grains as do the bearded bison, gazelle, and mustang herds. So low lying areas are blackened and visibility restored with controlled burns on the outer sides of winding Dark Territory, making ugly gashes of freeway for the constant military traffic.
Black topped surface roads are guarded by silent, stationary gun bots and by night patrols. On the Rikugun side, where the food supply situation is growing dire, patrols collect burnt flesh from fire zones. For the mockmeat vats no longer meet the needs of the immense forces gathered on Lemuria to make war. Troops poach incautious herds that seek easier north-south passage via the burned out pathways on the outer borders of the Yue ming, where no herd or man walks or lives at all, or for long. Shorter grasses cover elevated uplands, a long line of blunted moraines left in place by the last grinding, glacier age 150,000 years ago. Some are flattened by engineers setting up clear fields-of-fire for spandaus. Other short grass fields are burned off in careful conflagrations.
Some not so careful. Several wildfires outrun great bison and wild horse herds, life racing death in the age old contest that life never wins. Braying and bellowing, terror stricken animals are trapped by wild, whipping fires, overcome by smoke and flames. Strewn among finer plant ash are large clumps of soot from which jut white bones, where sizzling fat and meat roast and burn. Some wildfire moves so fast it consumes unlucky infantry, caught out by sudden blazes without retardants or acoustic hovers. Skin graft printers and plastic surgeons are busy for weeks.
Yet, the surface blazes do little damage to an immense subsoil root system of the prairie ecology. They even make fertilizing charcoal out of thick sagebrush, enriching the black soil. Fast green growth returns with the first cleansing and quenching spring rains. Now, in midsummer in the temperate latitudes, the grasses are high again. Just in time to be trampled by millions of RIK boots and many thousands of armored treads in the Second Shaka Offensive.
***
A modest nobody, with much to be modest about, stands in a wormy slit trench on the Alliance side of the black 7,774 klics north and 9,402 klics inland of Rikugun HQ at Xiamen. In that far off complex sits a broody prince of the blood royale, born into power and privilege, to high office and High Command. Two very different men, yet intimately connected by the war, by what’s coming soon to this sector of the line on Lemuria. By a gathering storm of immense sound and fury.
ACU Lieutenant Second Class Joachim Suri, and Rikugun Major General and Prince of the Royal House Johann Oetkert, could not be more different men. One self-loathing and a failure at everything he has ever tried. The other vainglorious, unconscious of his flaws and overconfident in his ability and rights. Yet each is a tine on a single tuning fork of life and war, of history and destiny in Orion. Small and great, unaware of each other, each man thinking that he acts and exists alone, Yet they resonate together with musica universalis, a shared music of the spheres.
Out of this gossamer connection, what will come? Harmony or discordance? Resonance or shattering? A minor player and would be conductor, trapped inside a cacophonous symphony of combat, inside the dread and random harmonies of war. The stick waves above all, but it makes no noise. A lone, thin reed, warbling even outside the wind section, can make no difference to the scoring or ensemble, command performance. Or is this Joachim Suri’s moment? Does he have one?
After a second awkward try, during which his training sergeants never let up in sneering contempt for his lack of leadership, Joachim graduated Officer Basic Training with a much-less-than-mediocre OQR. In fact, his Officer Qualification Record was one of the worst scores ever. He gets passed over, again and again. He knows he’ll never recover from the time he led two rookie platoons into a faux ambush and lost 14 fighters to “kill” shots by expert instructors disguised as slovenly Rikugun. That failure was followed by others, which led to firm refusals of his repeated requests for assignment to a frontline, combat outfit. The kind his father would be proud to know he served in. Or so Joachim still hopes. He’s only had contact with his mother since he nearly washed out of the OTS course. He says to himself, ‘Father must be very busy.’
It has been over a year since he graduated, and he has seen no promotion. Not even in the midst of a huge war, where fresh lieutenants like him die like so many worker ants in a tsunami. Highest casualties among any officer rank, because they’re on the ground level with troops and expected to lead small units and Dark Territory patrols from the front. And because too many are also too stupidly young and so take reckless chances for their honor’s sake that get them killed.
Not Joachim. He was sent to take charge of 2nd Platoon, 4th Company, 1st Battalion, 22nd Marine Division. It’s a notorious outfit, the 22nd. ACU uses it as a scrub unit for bustups and near washouts like him, men as useless and uncertain in combat as choir boys in a cathouse. General Wu Sangui, its woeful commander, is a “recovering” robusto freak. His running lights are white as snow, cornea and pupil both. That’s the telltale signature. He has serious political juice, however, enough to avoid a courts-martial. His top connections are in the Hornet’s Nest on Caspia, where old Kars Academy mates protect him from forced retirement. Yet even they can’t stop his assignment to 22nd Marine. That was before the war, back when the 22nd was designated part of the “strategic reserve” and therefore based on a northwest Orion moon, far from the still quiet border stars in the east.
No more. 22nd Marine got reassigned to Amasia. That means Wu Sangui and his officers and fighters are all exposed as incompetents, pretty much all down the line of the duty list. For in addition to its robusto freak commander, it’s saddled with two vice commander alcoholics who slump about their duties with heavy looking, reddish and droopy eyes, blaming everything that goes wrong on someone else. They’re in charge of heavy weapons and logistics, respectively.
In the ranks, almost all 22 Marine is second rate. Or worse. Some marines list as “physically inadequate,” with bad eyes or gimps or slow reflexes or missing fingers or toes. Others are written up as “psychologically substandard.” Not a few are common criminals. Its levies are swollen with shirkers and discipline cases from every other Marine division in the Army of the Calmar Union. And from a couple of Army divisions that took advantage, each command eager to be rid of its soured apples by dumping them into the 22nd’s rotten barrel. On good days, 22nd Marine is better known as the “Dismal Division.” As in the MoD field report that says “top down, a dismal record of basic performance failures.” Other troops on Lemuria hear about it and take to calling its marines “Dismals.”
It’s not entirely unfair.
It kinda fits the 22nd.
Don’t matter, ‘cause it sticks.
Most of the division’s washout fighters slip into their old, bad habits at night. Whatever they may be. Some days its frontline companies are below half-strength, with fighters staggering back to the black all drunk, high on robusto, or exhausted from rutting in underground or rear area playhouses. The kind called barracks and bunkers, but which everyone knows are drinking dives and pay-to-play sex houses run by the 22nd’s Quartermaster. Virtual and eager or real and young, as you like.
There are some good men and women in the 22nd. The best are badly wounded officers on the slow path back to recover
y, and hence bumped from their old units. Some are shaky, but they’re still the best the division has. It also has far too many busted up nerve cases, once good officers who “lost it” in battle and are no longer trusted to command active combat troops. Yet they, too, shipped out to a war zone when a desperate call was made to the Hornet’s Nest by HQ in New Beijing. They sit in the division bunker or stand behind the black wall looking into DT, waiting. They’re careful not to look back to the disappointed and failed lives and careers from whence they came, nervous to remain locked forever in fear where they are, dread what’s coming over the horizon in a war they know they can’t escape.
***
Joachim thinks of his time with the 22nd as a child’s story, hardly soldiering at all. He’s not playing the starring part in a manly tale he once imagined, and his father expects. He can’t believe or stop fretting that he nearly washed out of OTS. That he was designated a discard and held back from deployment for months, time he spent with a lot of other ill made grunts the prewar ACU hoped would get the point and quit. Waiting on what everyone called the “Moon of Misfit Marines.”