by David Drake
The jungle coughed into silence. "Now, who's hurt? Four-four?"
"Zack's bad, sir." Greiler crackled back immediately. "That rocket burned right through the bow and nigh took his foot off. We got the ankle tied, but he needs a doc quick."
Half to his surprise, Holtz found that four-four's driver and the newbie blown off the back of his own track were the only serious casualties. He ignored his own arm and leg; they seemed to have stopped bleeding. Charlie had been too occupied with the damaged cigar to set a proper ambush. Vaguely, he wondered what the Vietnamese had thought they were shooting at. Borrowing the helmet from four-six's loader, the officer painfully climbed off the tank. His left leg hurt more every minute. Heavily corded muscle lay bare on the calf where the film of blood had cracked off.
Davie Womble, the medic who usually rode the back deck of four-six, was kneeling beside the newbie. He had laid his own flak jacket under the boy's head for a cushion and wrapped his chest in a poncho. "Didn't want to move him," he explained to Holtz, "but that one piece went clean through and was sucking air from both sides. He's really wasted."
The boy's face was a sickly yellow, almost the color of his fine blond hair. A glitter of steel marked the tip of a fragment which had zig-zagged shallowly across his scalp. It was so minor compared to other damage that Womble had not bothered to remove it with tweezers. Holtz said nothing. He stepped toward four-four whose loader and TC clustered around their driver. The loader, his M16 tucked under his right arm, faced out into the jungle and scanned the pulverized portion. "Hey," he said, raising his rifle. "Hey! We got one!"
"Watch it," the bloodied officer called as he drew his .45. He had to force his fingers to close around its square butt. Greiler, the track commander, was back behind his cal-fifty in seconds, leaping straight onto the high fender of his tank and scrambling up into the cupola. The loader continued to edge toward the body he saw huddled on the ground. Twenty yards from the tank he thrust his weapon out and used the flash suppressor to prod the still form.
"He's alive," the loader called. "He's—oh my God, oh my God!"
Holtz lumbered forward. Greiler's machine gun was live and the captain's neck crawled to think of it, hoping the TC wouldn't bump the trigger. The man on the ground wore gray coveralls of a slick, rubbery-appearing material. As he breathed, they trembled irregularly and a tear above the collarbone oozed dark fluid. His face was against the ground, hidden in shadow, but there was enough light to show Holtz that the man's outflung hand was blue. "Stretcher!" he shouted as he ran back toward the tracks.
Hauley wore a curious expression as he held out the scrambler phone. Holtz snatched and keyed it without explanation. "Battle six, Battle four-six," he called urgently.
"Battle four-six, this is Blackhorse six," the crisp voice of the regimental commander broke in unexpectedly. "What in hell is going on?"
"Umm, sir, I've got three men for a dust-off and I can't get any action out of the chopper jockeys. My boys aren't going to make it if they ride out of here on a tank. Can you—"
"Captain," the cool voice from Quan Loi interrupted, "it won't do your men any good to have a medevac bird fly into a tree in these clouds. I know how you feel, but the weather is the problem and there's nothing we can do about that. Now, what happened?"
"Look," Holtz blurted, "there's a huge goddamn clearing here. If they cruise at five hundred we can guide them in by—"
"God damn it, man, do you want to tell me what's going on or do you want to be the first captain to spend six months in Long Binh Jail?"
Holtz took a deep breath that squeezed bruised ribs against the tight armored vest. Two troopers were already carrying the blue airman back toward the tanks on a litter made of engineer stakes and a poncho. He turned his attention back to the microphone and, keeping his voice flat, said, "We took a prisoner. He's about four feet tall, light build, with a blue complexion. I guess he was part of the crew of the spaceship the Air Force shot down and we finished off. He's breathing now, but the way he's banged up I don't think he will be long."
Only a hum from the radio. Then, "Four-six, is this some kind of joke?"
"No joke. I'll have the body back at the firebase in four, maybe three hours, and when they get a bird out you can look at him."
"Hold right where you are," the colonel crackled back. "You've got flares?"
"Roger, roger." Holtz's face regained animation and he began daubing at his red cheek with a handkerchief. "Plenty of flares, but the clouds are pretty low. We can set a pattern of trip flares on the ground, though."
"Hold there; I'm going up freek."
It was getting dark very fast. Normally Holtz would have moved his two platoons into the cleared area, but that would have meant shifting the newbie—Christ, he didn't even know the kid's name! If they'd found the captive earlier, a chopper might have already been there. Because of the intelligence value. Christ, how those rear-echelon mothers ate up intelligence value.
"Four-six? Blackhorse six."
"Roger, Blackhorse six." The captain's huge hand clamped hard on the sweat-slippery microphone.
"There'll be a bird over you in one-oh, repeat one-oh, mikes. Put some flares up when you hear it."
"Roger. Battle four-six out." On the company frequency, Holtz ordered, "Listen good, dudes, there's a dust-off bird coming by in ten. Any of you at the tail of the line hear it, don't pop a flare but tell me. We want it coming down here, not in the middle of the jungle." He took off the helmet, setting it beside him on the turret. His head still buzzed and, though he stared into the jungle over the grips of the cal-fifty, even the front sight was a blur. Ten minutes was a long time.
"I hear it!" Roosevelt called. Without waiting for Holtz's order, he fired the quadrangle of trip flares he had set. They lit brightly the area cleared by the alien's weapon. While those ground flares sizzled to full life, Greiler sent three star clusters streaking into the overcast together. The dust-off slick, casting like a coonhound, paused invisibly. As a great gray shadow it drifted down the line of tanks. Its rotor kicked the mist into billows flashing dimly.
Gracelessly yet without jerking the wounded boy, Womble and a third-platoon tanker pressed into service as stretcher-bearer rose and started toward the bird. As soon as the slick touched down, its blades set to idle, the crew chief with his Red Cross armband jumped out. Holtz and the stretcher with the newbie reached the helicopter an instant after the two nearer stretchers.
"Where's the prisoner?" the crew chief shouted over the high scream of unloaded turbines.
"Get my men aboard first," Holtz ordered briefly.
"Sorry, Captain," the air medic replied, "with our fuel load we only take two this trip and I've got orders to bring the prisoner back for sure."
"Stuff your orders! My men go out first."
The crew chief wiped sweat from the bridge of his nose; more trickled from under his commo helmet. "Sir, there's two generals and a bird colonel waiting on the pad for me; I leave that—" he shook his head at the makeshift stretcher—"that back here and it's a year in LBJ if I'm lucky. I'll take one of your—"
"They're both dying!"
"I'm sorry but . . ." The medic's voice dried up when he saw what Holtz was doing. "You can't threaten me!" he shrilled.
Holtz jacked a shell into the chamber of the .45. None of his men moved to stop him. The medic took one step forward as the big captain fired. The bullet slammed into the alien's forehead, just under the streaky gray bristles of his hairline. Fluid spattered the medic and the side of the helicopter behind him.
"There's no prisoner!" Holtz screamed over the shuddering thunder inside his skull. "There's nothing at all, do you hear? Now get my men to a hospital!"
Hauley tried to catch him as he fell, but the officer's weight pulled them both to the ground together.
The snarl of a laboring diesel brought him out of it. He was on a cot with a rolled flak jacket pillowed under his head. Someone had removed his chicken vest and bathed away the crusts o
f dried blood.
"Where are we?" Holtz muttered thickly. His vision had cleared and the chipped rubber of the treads beside him stood out in sharp relief.
Hauley handed his CO a paper cup of coffee laced with something bitter. "Here you go. Lieutenant Paider took over and we're gonna set up here for the night. If it clears, we'll get a chopper for you too."
"But that . . . ?" Holtz gestured at the twilit bulk of a tank twenty feet away. It grunted to a halt after neutral steering a full 360 degrees.
"That? Oh, that was four-four," Hauley said in a careless voice. "Greiler wanted to say thanks—getting both his buddies dusted off, you know. But I told him you didn't want to hear about something that didn't happen. And everybody in the company'll swear it didn't happen, whatever some chopper jockey thinks. So Greiler just moved four-four up to where the bird landed and did a neutral steer . . . on nothing at all."
"Nothing at all," Holtz repeated before drifting off. He grinned like a she-tiger gorging on her cubs' first kill.
As Our Strength Lessens
Dawn is three hours away, but the sky to the east burns orange and sulphur and deep, sullen red. The rest of my battalion fights there, forcing the Enemy's main line of resistance.
That is not my concern. I have been taken out of reserve and tasked to eliminate an Enemy outpost. The mission appears to me to be one which could have waited until our spearhead had successfully breached the enemy line, but strategic decisions are made by the colloid minds of my human superiors. So be it.
When ion discharges make the night fluoresce, they also tear holes of static in the radio communications spectrum. " . . . roadwh . . . and suspe . . ." reports one of my comrades.
Even my enhancement program is unable to decode more of the transmission than that, but I recognize the fist of the sender: Saratoga, part of the lead element of our main attack. His running gear has been damaged. He will have to drop out of line.
My forty-seven pairs of flint-steel roadwheels are in depot condition. Their tires of spun beryllium monocrystal, woven to deform rather than compress, all have 97% or better of their fabric unbroken. The immediate terrain is semi-arid. The briefing files inform me this is typical of the planet. My track links purr among themselves as they grind through scrub vegetation and the friable soil, carrying me to my assigned mission.
There is a cataclysmic fuel-air explosion to the east behind me. The glare is visible for 5.3 seconds, and the ground will shake for many minutes as shock waves echo through the planetary mantle.
Had my human superiors so chosen, I could be replacing Saratoga at the spearhead of the attack.
The rear elements of the infantry are in sight now. They look like dung beetles in their hard suits, crawling backward beneath a rain of shrapnel. I am within range of their low-power communications net. "Hold what you got, troops," orders the unit's acting commander. "Big Brother's come to help!"
I am not Big Brother. I am Maldon, a Mark XXX Bolo of the 3d Battalion, Dinochrome Brigade. The lineage of our unit goes back to the 2nd South Wessex Dragoons. In 1944, we broke the last German resistance on the path to Falaise—though we traded our flimsy Cromwells against the Tigers at a ratio of six to one to do it.
The citizens do not need to know what the cost is. They need only to know that the mission has been accomplished. The battle honors welded to my turret prove that I have always accomplished my mission.
Though this task should not have been a difficult one, even for the company of infantry to whom it was originally assigned. An Enemy research facility became, because of its location, an outpost on the flank of our line as we began to drive out of the landing zone. In a breakthrough battle, infantry can do little but die in their fighting suits. A company of them was sent to mop up the outpost in relative safety.
Instead . . .
As I advance, I review the ongoing mission report filed in real-time by the infantry and enhanced at Headquarters before being downloaded to me microseconds later. My mind forms the blips of digital information into a panorama, much as the colloid minds of my superiors process sensory data fired into them across nerve endings.
Vehicles brought the infantry within five kilometers of their objective. There they disembarked for tactical flexibility and to avoid giving the Enemy a single soft target of considerable value.
I watch:
The troops advance by tiny, jerky movements of the legs of their hard suits. My tracks, rotating in silky precision, purr with laughter.
The concept of vertical envelopment, overflying an enemy's lines to drop forces in his rear, ceased to be viable with the appearance of directed-energy weapons in the 20th century. After the development of such weapons, any target which could be seen—even in orbit above an atmosphere—could be hit at the speed of light.
No flying vehicle could be armored heavily enough to withstand attack by powerful beam weapons. The alternative was more of the grinding ground assaults to which civilians always object because they are costly and brutal, and to which soldiers always turn because they succeed when finesse does not succeed.
Our forces have landed on an empty, undefended corner of the planet. The blazing combat to the east occurs as our forces meet those which the Enemy is rushing into place to block us.
I am not at my accustomed place in the front line, but the Enemy will not stop the advance of my comrades.
I watch:
The leading infantry elements have come in sight of their objective. There is something wrong with the data, because the Enemy research facility appears as a spherical flaw—an absence of information—in the transmitted images.
Light blinks from the anomaly. It is simply that, light, with the balance and intensity of the local solar output at ground level on this planet.
The infantry assume they are being attacked. They respond with lasers and projectile weapons as they take cover and unlimber heavier ordnance. Within .03 seconds of the first shot, the Enemy begins to rake the infantry positions with small arms fire.
While the battalion was in transit to our target, briefing files were downloaded into our data banks. These files, the distillation of truth and wisdom by our human superiors, state that the Enemy is scientifically far inferior to ourselves. There is no evidence that the Enemy even has a working stardrive now, though unquestionably at some past time they colonized the scores of star systems which they still inhabit.
Enemy beam weapons are admittedly very efficient. The Enemy achieves outputs from hand-held devices which our forces can duplicate only with large vehicle-mounted units. Our scientific staff still has questions regarding the power sources which feed these Enemy beam weapons.
Thus far the briefing files. I have examined the schematics of captured Enemy lasers. The schematics show no power source whatever. This is interesting, but it does not affect the certainty of our victory.
Initially, the Enemy outpost to which I have been tasked was not using weapons more powerful than the small arms which our own infantry carry.
I watch:
The infantry is well trained. Three-man teams shoot and advance in a choreographed sequence, directing a steady volume of fire at the outpost. At the present range it is unlikely that their rifles and lasers will do serious damage. The purpose of this fire is to disrupt the Enemy's aim and morale while more effective weapons can be brought to bear. The heavy-weapons section is deploying back-pack rockets and the company's light ion cannon.
An infantryman ripple-fires his four-round rocket pack. The small missiles are self-guiding and programmed to vary their courses to the laser-cued target.
Three of the rockets curve wildly across the bleak terrain and detonate when they exhaust their fuel. They have been unable to fix on the reflected laser beam which should have provided the precise range of the target. The anomaly has absorbed the burst of coherent light so perfectly that none bounces back to be received by the missiles' homing devices. Only the first round of the sequence, directed on a line-straight track, seems to
reach the target.
The missile vanishes. There is no explosion. At .03 seconds after the computed moment of impact—there is no direct evidence that the rocket actually hit its target—the Enemy outpost launches a dozen small missiles of its own. One of them destroys the ion cannon before the crew can open fire.
Puffs of dirt mark the battlefield. The infantry is using powered augers to dig in for greater protection. The Enemy outpost continues to rake the troops with rockets and small arms, oblivious of the infantry's counterfire.
Seven hours before planetfall, a human entered the bay where we Bolos waited in our thoughts and memories. He wore the trousers of an officer's dress uniform, but he had taken off the blouse with the insignia of his rank.