Stark's Command

by John G. Hemry

  "Use your command overpower setting to punch through the jamming," Vic suggested.

  "I can do that? Sure I can. I got official access to it now. But what are you doing sitting on my shoulder?"

  "Just lucky timing," Vic assured him. "Gotta go and make sure our reserve company is ready to punch out from the Castle. See ya."

  "Likewise." Stark checked the options available on his commander's scan, calling up the overpower and linking it to Corporal Gomez's call sign.

  Chaos sprang to life around him. Stark twitched as another dose of adrenaline surged into his system, urging action against violence being played out far away. "Gomez. What the hell's happening there?"

  "Damn all, Sargento." The view from Gomez's remote swung dizzyingly as she pivoted to pump a round into an enemy soldier who reared up not a meter away. "Hand-to-hand," she added unnecessarily.

  "Can you hold 'em?"

  "I dunno. Real target-rich environment out here." Lunar terrain jumped wildly again as Stark watched a ripple of red warning lights spring to life on Gomez's remote. Grenade, maybe, exploding not far from her. The view jerked several times as she fired rapidly. "Damn. Too close, Sargento, and too many, I think. Bunker's been breached."

  "Hang on," Stark repeated helplessly.

  "Sí, Sargento. Hell. Murphy's down."

  Murphy. How long's he been in my Squad? Forever. Stark stared at the situation projected before him on the command scan, trying to block out emotion.

  "Ethan, Murphy's just one soldier," Vic advised quietly. She'd been listening in again, of course.

  "Every grunt out there is just one soldier. How many one's add up to too many?"

  "I don't know."

  "Me, neither." Stark gazed up at the endless black sky overhead, the symbology on his HUD superimposed on the heavens as if a complicated and intricate new zodiac had sprung to life. "I can't let that position fall, Vic. That's not sentiment. It's got nothing to do with them being my Squad. The whole line will unravel on that flank if that hill goes."

  "You can't weaken any other point. They've got to be watching for that."

  "Maybe they are, but maybe they're already throwing everything they've got at Mango Hill and into the hole that's in our line right now. If they win at either place, they take us down. It must look like a sure thing." He toggled a circuit. "Sanch." Sergeant Sanchez, formerly one of the three squad leaders in their platoon along with Stark and Reynolds, now commanding that platoon.

  "Yes, Stark." Very calm, as if he were discussing the nonexistent lunar weather.

  "You see what's happening to Gomez's position?"

  "Of course. They are taking a great deal of punishment. We are providing as much supporting fire as we can."

  "Thanks, but you're gonna do more. I want you to strip every soldier you can possibly spare from your other two squad bunkers and get over there as fast as possible. That hill has to hold."

  "You are aware the positions we leave will not be strongly enough held to withstand a determined assault." Sanchez made it a statement, not a question.

  "I know. But everything else I've got available is committed. I can only get reinforcements to throw at that hill by robbing Peter to pay Paul."

  "Understood. I am certain I can clear the hill of enemy soldiers," Sanchez stated, imperturbable, as if he were describing a minor difficulty, "but I cannot keep it clear. There will be too much pressure."

  "I'll take care of that."

  "Then we are on our way. I will contact you when I link up with Corporal Gomez." Left unsaid was the distinct possibility that Corporal Gomez might not be alive to link up with when Sanchez got there.

  It added up to considerable risk, leaving only skeleton crews manning the other two bunkers in that sector. Even a small but resolute push from the enemy targeted at that weak point could widen the hole in the front considerably and sweep away the only troops Stark could really rely on in the bargain. But it's either that or lose anyway.

  "Grace," he called Divisional Artillery.

  "I know I'm not stopping the enemy advance, Stark. Didn't say I could."

  "I know that, and you're doing the best anybody can. No, this is about saving one position. How long to set up a barrage onto this spot?" He keyed in the coordinates of Gomez's bunker.

  "We got a unit there, Stark. Looks like more on the way, too."

  "I know. They'll be in a bunker. How long?"

  "How big a barrage?"

  "Enough to sterilize the top of that hill and the immediate area. No penetrators, though."

  "Just surface and near-surface? To protect the troops in the bunker? Stark, I can't guarantee that none of those won't have a fuse malfunction and go subsurface before it detonates. It happens."

  It happens. Stark wavered mentally again, pondering bad choices and worse choices. You'd think commanders would have enough to worry about during a battle without wondering if their weapons will work as advertised. But it's probably always been that way. I'll bet weapons designers in the Stone Age managed to screw up some of the rocks they handed out to the other cave dwellers. "We'll have to chance it, Grace. It's the only way to stop the assault there."

  "Okay, Stark. You're the boss. It's on."

  "Thanks. Stand by for my word."

  Another scan of the oncoming enemy. Some were charging ahead of the rest, heedless of the risk as the fruits of victory danced before their eyes. A couple of those enemy soldiers crested the ridge as Stark watched, their shapes suddenly silhouetted against the stars, the symbology on Stark's HUD momentarily superimposed on the actual objects it represented. Perhaps the overeager enemy soldiers had a brief moment to realize the enormity of their mistake. Perhaps not. A hundred rifles fired almost simultaneously, the impacts of the bullets launching their targets backward into space to fall again in long, slow arcs down the reverse slope.

  "Sanchez. How're you coming?"

  "In among them. Wait one."

  A small force of enemy soldiers, not more than a single squad, came around the ridge to the left, trying to avoid the broken terrain by clinging to the slope above it. The Fourth Batt company positioned there waited until the enemy cleared the slope, then opened up a withering barrage that cut down every soldier in seconds. A low snarl came across the comm circuit as the American soldiers reveled in the small victory. "Good job," Stark called. "There's more coming, and they're gonna get the same treatment."

  "Stark." Sanchez, breathing heavily now, but otherwise nothing in his tone revealing he'd been in heavy combat. "We have cleared the hill of enemy soldiers. They are positioning for another assault."

  "That's fine. They're gonna regret it."

  "Then we hold."

  "No. Not yet. Get everybody down into the bunker."

  "The bunker has been breached."

  "You won't be fighting from it. Get under cover! Fast!"

  "Ah. I see."

  On the scale Stark was using for his command scan, the enemy units hurtling to regain their foothold on the hill seemed to merge with the American symbology as he switched circuits. "Grace. Now. Lay it on."

  "Okay, Stark. Those troops up there have got, uh, thirty-five seconds before they get turned into hamburger."

  "Roger." Stark swapped circuits frantically. "Is everybody down in the bunker, Sanch? You've got thirty seconds!"

  "Thirty seconds. Acknowledged. Our rear guard is entering now."

  Stark watched the rounds arcing in from the rear, trying to imagine almost a platoon of soldiers crammed into a single bunker battered by enemy fire. They'd be lying on top of one another, almost immobile except for those closest to any openings, huddled in the dark, feeling that hopeless fear foot soldiers experienced when they know heavy artillery was coming down on them. At such a moment, only chance and the grace of God mattered as training and experience came to nothing. Counting down the last few seconds to impact. Very easy to do with their HUDs helpfully displaying the digits in bright red numbers. Ten seconds as sensors on the surface revealed
enemy forces charging onto the crest of the hill, expecting desperate resistance from ground level, then pausing as their own sensors told them of the threat coming from above. Five seconds as the enemy began frantically scrambling into retreat, too late and too slow. Only a few of the incoming American shells blossomed into early death as a result of counterfire from too-distant enemy defenses.

  Zero. Silence. Somewhere hell had come to rest on the Moon's surface, massive shells hurling their fury onto a single, small area. On Stark's HUD, streams of symbology converged on the elevation nicknamed Mango Hill, vanishing on impact. Clean, with no vegetation to block or divert the path of shells. Quiet, with no atmosphere to transmit the unbearable thunder of explosions. Precise, without variables like wind to mess up finely calculated trajectories. Someone who had never experienced a shelling would have no concept from the HUD display, from the serenity of the Moon even a small distance away, of the reality where those shells were falling. Blizzards of metal fragments cutting down everything in their path, explosions rearranging the rocks and dust in wild patterns, hurling high-velocity gasses against anything too close to strike with deadly force before those gasses dissipated into the emptiness around them.

  No comm signal could punch through that interference. Stark could only wait while the fury ran its course, wait with the silence that marked so much of the violence of war on an airless world.

  It'd only take one shell, one shell penetrating into that bunker. Collapse the whole thing, expose the troops inside to the rest of the barrage, kill 'em all. And I'm the one who ordered it. Please, God, let it be the right thing. From somewhere, a memory of Vic's voice came. Sometimes even doing the right thing doesn't do a damn thing for your conscience.

  A larger force of the enemy, perhaps twenty, came over the ridge crest, firing as they came, and died in another concentrated fusillade.

  "Stark?" He jerked at the transmission, realizing as he did so that it had not come from Sanchez. "This is Lamont. I've got three squadrons of tanks in position on the right flank of the penetration."

  "You do?" He'd missed that, with everything else going on.

  "Yeah. Reynolds sent us up. That's okay by you, right?"

  "Sure as hell right." Stark opened his scan, viewing a larger area. Lamont's armor sat in a half-dozen clusters, ready to rip the guts out of the enemy flank. "You hold fire 'til I give the word."

  "Sure thing," Lamont acknowledged. "Perfect targets out there. This is gonna be like shooting on a firing range."

  "Ethan," Vic chimed in, "you've also got APCs moving up. I'm setting them behind the ridge to help cover it."

  "Thanks." He'd completely forgotten about armored support in the rush of activity, a ground soldier instinctively depending upon his own weapons. "Good job. Damn good job."

  "Sargento?"

  Stark let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "Anita? Corporal Gomez?"

  "Sí. Sergeant Sanchez, he got a little banged up during that barrage. Partial bunker collapse. Lost some suit systems, but he's okay otherwise. What do we do now, Sarge? Any more of that artillery coming?"

  "Not ours," Stark vowed.

  "Gracias Dios. I don't wanna ever sit through somethin' like that again."

  "God willing, you won't. Now get out on the surface again. That last assault must have been wiped out, but the enemy's gonna try to put some fresh troops together and hit you one more time. Don't worry. I'm about to give them something else to worry about, so just hold on a little longer."

  "Sí', Sargento. We'll hold 'til hell freezes over. This hill is ours. We paid for it, and I ain't letting no one else take it."

  "Stark?" Milheim again, Fourth Battalion commander. "We just going to hold this line?" he asked doubtfully.

  "No. Listen up, everybody." He could see them, in his mind's eye, armored figures still rushing into final position or poised on the line, waiting for his next words under the black sky and the endless stars. "They've come as far as they're gonna come. We're gonna hit them so hard they won't be back for a long time. We're gonna get even for some of what they did to Third Division."

  "Does that mean no prisoners?" a voice inquired.

  Stark had an image of Sergeant Grace, wishing to take personal revenge on General Meecham for the death of his brother. Now he could do the same, in spades, inflicting the same slaughter on the enemy that Third Division had suffered. He clenched his teeth in sudden anger. "Negative, negative, negative. We take prisoners. We are soldiers, ladies and gentlemen. American soldiers. Despite everything. Don't forget that. We do not kill people trying to surrender."

  "Understood," Milheim rogered-up for the entire force.

  Stark paused, wondering how to issue a single command to Fourth Battalion and also to the polyglot collection of soldiers who had been rallied here. "Listen up. Everybody behind this ridge. You are all part of Task Force Milheim. Understand? Vic, can you link them all?"

  "Roger. Wait one. Okay. Got 'em linked. They're all part of one command circuit, now."

  "Good." Stark called up another circuit, speaking to every unit bordering the penetration. "Everybody hold fire until I give the word." Stark switched scans rapidly, seeing the battle from the perspective of other soldiers on other parts of the field. From one of the tanks hidden to the right, threat symbology highlighted shadowy figures gathering below the opposite crest of the ridge from where Stark stood with his line of troops. Better than company strength this time, he estimated, and getting stronger by the moment, preparing for another shove, which the enemy doubtlessly believed certain to shatter the remaining resistance to their advance. "Hold it." Over on the left, an anti-armor team tracked enemy APCs rushing forward to catch up with their infantry, the anti-armor team's HUDs painting a bright aim point along the flank of one APC. "Hold it." Up on the hill, Gomez held the remnants of her Squad and Sanchez's reinforcements among the newly rearranged landscape, firing steadily at enemy soldiers trying to regroup below for another push at Mango Hill, but ignoring enemy forces scrambling through the gap. "Hold it." The right side of the penetration again, where Delta Company had gathered in the lee of the Castle, chafing like racehorses awaiting the starting gun. "Hold it." Back to the tank, watching as the enemy soldiers swarmed up the slope toward him. Easy, far too easy, to imagine himself among those troops, charging to the attack, doped on adrenaline, elated and scared at the same time. They're not monsters. They're grunts like me, and soon they're gonna get cut to ribbons in a crossfire. Hell. But I didn't start this war, and I didn't launch this battle, and I'm damned if I'm gonna lose either one. Or one more soldier than I have to.

  Stark waited, waited until the charge had almost reached the crest. "Now. Open fire. General engagement."

  The enemy attackers hit the top of the ridge and ran head-on into a concentrated barrage from Fourth Battalion and the rallied soldiers from other units. The charge halted as abruptly as if it had hit a brick wall, the leading elements hurled backward by the impact of the American fire, their fall back down the slope dreamlike in the low gravity, bodies slowly spinning from the impact of bullets and the venting of atmosphere, limp arms and legs occasionally striking the slope to generate small falls of dust and gravel to drift gently down in tandem. The scene had all the weird beauty and horror of a mad painter's vision of hell, set against a landscape of dead black shadows and blinding white sunlight.

  The enemy rallied just beneath the crest, but before the assault could resume, fire swept in from the flanks, raking the exposed troops once more. The enemy ranks seemed to dissolve, vanishing from the ridge, a few survivors frantically racing downward. Stark switched vid feeds rapidly, viewing other areas, seeing enemy armored vehicles erupting into flowers of metal fragments and gasses, soldiers hesitating in their charge, falling under fire, then beginning to drop back. "Alright, you apes. We've taken enough punishment. Let's hand out some. Task Force Milheim, let's go! Everybody forward. Keep going until we reoccupy every position we lost. Vic, get Fifth Battalion and Delta Comp
any moving to seal the penetration."

  Stark was charging up the slope, aware of the soldiers following even without checking the symbology on his HUD. To the top and over with one smooth motion, one free hand shoving him down the reverse slope. A figure rose nearby, IFF painting it red for enemy. Stark's rifle swung and fired without his conscious thought, hurling the soldier back against the dead rocks. Maybe the soldier had been trying to surrender. Maybe trying to fight on and buy time for friends running for their lives. Stark would never know.