by Mark Kalina
"Yes, sir. Quite viable. We have him in the second van."
"Very well, Major," Bannerman said, nodding.
"I know fucking Federal senators, you hear me, you UEN fucks?" Fitzmorton was shouting. "I can get you all thrown in jail and gang-r..."
The sound of Major Hafez's pistol going off wasn't very loud across the open space of the apron. Fitzmorton fell to his knees. Blood spouted in two brief fountains, from his right eye and a hole in the back of his head, and then he fell forward onto his face. His body convulsed for a while and then was still.
Bannerman looked down at the corpse with an expression of distaste. The Peace Force colonel's face was slack with horror.
Two of the visored Peace Force soldiers took hold of the corpse's feet and began to drag it away, leaving a smear of red blood on the concrete.
"I do hope the next Regional Secretary-Treasurer will be more cooperative," Hafez said mildly, holstering his pistol and looking over at the second van.
"My god!" exclaimed the colonel, looking at General Bannerman with an expression of desperation. "You... you just.... But... but why, sir? The gate is shut down. It can't be opened from this end. The Arcadians control the timing of any opening, and the total traffic they allow doesn't even saturate the remaining infrastructure."
The general looked at Major Hafez, and the major looked up at the colonel.
"That's right, Colonel," the major said, with a cold smile, "we can't open it from this end. And the Arcadians don't have the power facilities to keep it open for very long, or to open it very often. No nuclear power, you see, and no fossil fuels; they have to build up power in jury-rigged capacitors fed from solar power stations. It's actually quite a clever solution, given what they had to work with...."
The colonel tried to meet the smaller man's eyes, but blinked and looked away. General Bannerman couldn't really blame him, though; meeting Major Hafez' eyes was like meeting the eyes of a serpent.
"Don't concern yourself with that, Colonel," the general said. "All you need to do is get these rail lines back into condition to take what's coming. When the time comes, we'll be moving several divisions of Peace Force troops. Your only job is to make sure the rail lines can carry the load."
"Divisions?" the colonel said, as the implications dawned. "Yes sir," he snapped, saluting again.
"And Colonel?"
"Sir?"
"This is, as I said, a class three priority. So if this leaks to the media, or the global data-cloud... or if the lines can't take the troops when the time comes.... There will be no second chances. Not for your career in the Peace Force... and not for anything else. Do you take my meaning?"
"Yes sir," snapped the colonel, keeping his face utterly without expression.
2.
The Induction Day ceremonies had a lot of the feeling and character of a celebratory fair. There were people wandering about, looking at the exhibits and displays. There were Defense Force officers and NCOs, dressed in their sharpest and most impressive tan-and-black uniforms, giving demonstrations. There were vendors selling food and drinks... and hats for anyone who'd neglected to bring one; the red-orange sun was huge and fierce in the cloudless indigo-blue sky.
Cal thought it was a fraud. Like all of the inductees —recruits conscripted for their more-or-less mandatory term of service— he had no real choice in the matter. Not unless he wanted to be an "opt-out," a social outcast who refused to do his stint in the Defense Force. So it wasn't much of a celebration as far as he was concerned.
Of course, a lot of the recruits looked excited or eager. Cal tried to capture the feeling of excitement that he'd sometimes managed to feel in the prior months, as his term of Defense Force service had grown closer and closer, but it was elusive. The festival atmosphere felt pretty thin to Cal, and the rows of Defense Force buses —the exact same make as the school bus he'd ridden to school in every day, but painted in Defense Force tan— waiting to take the inductees to the training bases loomed like a dark sand-storm cloud at the edge of the festivities.
His mother and sister were with him. Annie looked like she was enjoying herself, peering wide-eyed at the Aerospace Corps display. She was two years from her own induction; sixteen E-years old and looking way too grown up for Cal's comfort in her sleeveless summer vest and cut-off shorts. She was getting looks, too, with her short-cut dark-blonde hair and her deeply tanned limbs.
As for his mother... she looked like she always did; you could see the family resemblance; the same dark eyes as both her children, and roughly the same cast of features, though she didn't have the blond hair that Cal and his sister did, or the height, and her skin was a shade darker than her children's. Her expression was the same as usual, too; simultaneously bored, put upon and worried. If he stayed near her, her anxiety would be worse, though... and so would his. It was best to keep his distance.
Cal didn't bother with the Aerospace Corps kiosk. The Aerospace Corps ran the space program and also operated the sleek, ultra-stealthy "ghosts," advanced, variable geometry combat-reconnaissance planes. Unlike the one and two man fighter aircraft of the past, "ghosts" were relatively large planes, carrying crews of four or five elite specialists who managed arrays of advanced sensors, stealthy "parasite" drones and stand-off laser weapons. Though they were potentially supersonic, "ghosts" spent most of their time gliding without power in the high, thin upper atmosphere, spying on the ground below as they hid in plain sight from ground based thermal sensors and anti-aircraft laser batteries. Air combat between hostile "ghosts," on those very rare occasions that it happened, tended to have more in common with submarine warfare than with the air combat of the late 20th and early 21st century. The days of "dogfighting" were long gone, banished by modern laser weapons; modern air combat was all about each side patiently seeking to track the other and set up an attack without being detected themselves. Not that there'd ever been much in the way of modern air combat, outside of theory and simulations.
Still, the Aerospace Corps was a very prestigious service. On the other hand, Cal knew damn well there'd be no place for him in it. You had to have gold-tier academic marks in advanced math and at least two of the sciences just to make it into evaluation for the Aerospace Corps. Cal's indifferent academic record ruled that right out.
The Armored Corps display drew his attention, though. Apart from the obligatory kiosk, with its laser-projection display and troopers and officers in full uniform, there was a fully functional Type-51 Mark IIIb "War-Hammer" tank on display. The tank dwarfed the display table; dwarfed everything around it, really. Almost ten meters long —not counting the long barrel of its main gun— just over four meters wide and just about three meters tall to the top of its turret, it was a huge mass of smoothly angled, faceted armor and projecting weapons, all dominated by the long, sinister tube of its main gun.
Inductees and visitors crowded around it as close as the rope barriers would allow, and its crew sat in their open hatches, taking questions and talking to the crowd. Cal didn't bother crowding in, but the sleek, armored mass of the tank was... neat. Over the years, he'd read and watched a lot about the Arcadian Defense Force Armored Corps and its tanks, even before he's gotten old enough to give serious consideration to how he wanted to spend his years of mandatory Defense Force service
The Type-51 was a Nihonjin design, not cutting edge anymore, but not obsolete either. Besides which, the Mark IIIb "War-Hammer" was thoroughly upgraded compared to the original Type 51. Like most modern tanks, it rode on closely spaced, articulated multi-module tracks; four track units, two per side, could pivot to hug the terrain or turn the tank on a dime. The track units held up the low-slung hull, atop which perched the huge, low, wedge-shaped turret. With a multi-fuel-cell power pack and its articulated tracks, the War-Hammer could put a dune buggy to shame, or break open highway safe-speed limits.
The tank bristled with weapons and sensors, but the effect was focused rather than chaotic. The main gun was the iconic 41 megajoule electrothermal-ch
emical kinetic cannon, but the tank carried a lot more than just the main gun. Four automatic smartguns projected from little, armored ball turrets set on the edges of the big main turret. The slightly larger dome of the anti-missile close-in "Metal Storm" projector perched at the rear of the main turret. Almost-hidden panels on the sloping sides of the turret concealed defensive micro-missile batteries and similar panels at the back of the turret covered the sensor drone launch bays.
The tank crew, three men and one woman, sat with their heads and shoulders up, out of their hatches. They were dressed for the event in neatly pressed Defense Force tan uniforms instead of the fire-resistant jump-suits they would have normally worn. Their features were anonymous with the high-tech-looking visors of their data-interface helmets down. The driver's hatch was off to the side in the hull, in front of the turret; a bit archaic, since most cutting edge tanks put the driver into the main turret. The commander, gunner and sensors operator sat in hatches on the main turret, each with the manual controls for their associated auto-smartgun deployed, though Cal knew that it was very rare for a tank crew to control the automatic weapons that way.
The tank was displaying a smooth expanse of Defense Force tan on its smart-paint coat, but Cal knew that the smart-paint layer could be programed to display any color or pattern; even to match the colors of the surrounding terrain, almost in real time. The tank was seventy-five tons of fast, heavy armored firepower; lighter than most of the latest generation of tanks, but still fit to take on any of its rivals.
And since there was literally zero chance for him in the Aerospace Corps, Cal thought that, all in all, the Armored Corps would be a pretty good bet. The same lack of school marks that precluded even a chance at Aerospace made the Technical Corps a long-shot, and the one thing Cal knew he did not want to spend the next two E-years doing was operating an infantry combat frame in the Infantry Corps... or even worse, just carrying a rifle in the Auxiliary Corps, assigned to Refugee Patrol. Compared to that, spending two years in the Armored Corps would be a treat. After all, Refugee Patrol was probably the only really dangerous job in the Defense Force these days, and as long as the Defense Force controlled the Tannhauser gate back to Earth, there wasn't much chance of that changing.
3.
Captain Tara Yukiko O'Connor winced as the War-Hammer ahead of hers took a missile past its defenses and erupted in flames. The initial hit raised a cloud of dust from the tank; seconds later white-hot fire blew open all four crew hatches and shot out of the cooling vents of the tank's fuel-cell power pack. None of the crew survival pods ejected. No chance of survivors, a distant part of Tara's mind noted; that's Ben and his crew, dead.
Her own gunner was firing again, trying to nail the UEN tank that was sniping at her company from the rocky heights seven kilometers away. A swarm of sensors drones launched from her tanks had found just one enemy tank, but the bastard had a good position and lots of deployed countermeasures; her drones hadn't lasted long.
And now that one enemy tank was pinning down the whole advance. He was badly outnumbered, but far enough away that as long as he kept shifting his position he was very hard to lock on to and hit. And he'd deployed multiple countermeasures pods that were laying down a continuous barrage of laser energy to keep the Arcadian tanks from getting a decent firing solution. The UEN's autonomous countermeasures pods were something new to the Arcadians; a nasty surprise that gave their enemy a serious defensive advantage.
The muted thud-thud-thud of the 41 megajoule gun's burst vibrated the tank like a beat to some satanic dance track. Fire from her tank, and from other tanks of her company, was taking out the enemy laser jammer pods one by one, but so far, the bastard still had some left.
"Gunner, nail that pisser bastard!" Tara called out, trying to keep her voice calm, even as she watched Benjamin's tank burn. It was important to keep your voice calm; they'd drilled that into her in tank commander school; if the commander sounded panicked or rattled, the whole crew got rattled.
She took a moment to track her view-scope back behind her, to the burning tank. The fire wasn't dying down at all; fuel cells and ammo were both burning fiercely. No survivors, she thought numbly. A quick end; no pain, no suffering. She hoped.
She shifted her main view forward again just in time to catch sight of the geysers of displaced sand and dirt as another salvo of autonomous missiles lifted out of one of the concealed launch pods that the UEN troops had buried. The gunner and the sensor operator were both busy trying to track and kill the enemy tank, so she took over the point defense station and released a salvo of soda-can sized counter-missiles. Three other tanks from her company did the same; dozens of bright fireflies of light streaked together to explode in flashes that left dirty brown puffs of smoke hanging briefly in the air and peppered the hard desert floor with sprays jagged fragments.
A UEN missile made it through the defensive salvo, and Tara triggered the "Metal Storm" close-in weapons system; a mini-turret mounting a cluster of stubby giant shotgun barrels that spat out a dozen giant shot shells. The last missile detonated a few meters short of the tank, close enough for the blast to feel like a ringing metallic slap against the hull and turret. Fragments knocked a few sensors off-line and scoured away some of the smart-paint layer, but the Type 51 Mark IIa War-Hammer drove on, emerging from the cloud of dust, firing another three round burst from its long 41 megajoule cannon.
"Did you get him?" Tara asked, as the gunner's shots arced out and exploded into rising pillars of debris in the far distance.
"No! I can't get a lock-on."
"Switch to single shots on the forty-one. We're down to less than thirty rounds!" Tara ordered.
"Johnny, get me a lock on that bastard," she said to the sensors operator. "He's probably the one sending guidance to those autonomous missile pods!"
"Working on it," the sensors operator replied. "We only have one drone left,"
"Use it!" Tara snapped.
"Drone out," announced the sensors operator.
Keep it low, Tara almost said; if the sensors operator let the drone climb too high, it would be an easy target for counter-measures. But the sensors operator, Corporal Jon Miller, was a good man; he didn't need his tank commander minding his business for him.
I don't think we can just push through, she thought. The pissers —UEN Peace Force troops— had had most of a day to prepare, in which time they could have dug in hundreds of autonomous missile pods between here and the gate structure. A tank's focused bow sensors could pick up most sorts of mines before the tank rolled over them —if not from the signatures of the mines themselves, then from the faint thermal pattern of disturbed earth— but the missile pods could be dug in a kilometer distant and still be deadly dangerous.
A preliminary reconnaissance with a swarm of sensors drones hadn't spotted anything, so the pods had been a total surprise to her company when their missiles had started erupting from the ground.
Autonomous targeting sensors would almost certainly have been spotted; you couldn't bury them deep enough to fool the drones; not if you wanted them to be able to detect their targets. Which meant, Tara thought, that the UEN forces probably didn't have any autonomous targeting sensors placed. Instead, they had one lucky —and skilled— tank watching the approach and feeding targeting information to the concealed missile pods.
"Can you jam that pisser bastard's link to those missile pods?" she asked the sensors operator.
"No," he replied. "I can't even pick out his signals from background static. If he's guiding them at all, that is."
"He is," Tara said, and thought that it figured that the pissers would have top-of-the-line gear.
"OK," she said, transmitting into the company push. "2nd platoon move off the axis of advance and head north. Get an angle on that pisser tank and take him out. 1st and 3rd platoons, slow it down and focus on your anti-missile defenses."
"Roger," came the acknowledgement from Lieutenant Singh, the 2nd Platoon leader. He only had two tanks left
in his platoon, but she was down to three herself, and so was 3rd Platoon; only eight functional tanks left in the company, out of the twelve she'd started with that morning. And all of the survivors had at least a little damage, by now. Not to mention that ammo —for both the 41's and the counter-missile batteries— was getting pretty low, too.
Singh's two tanks peeled off, cutting out into the hard, boulder-strewn slopes to the north. Even an articulated-track tank was going to have trouble maneuvering through that terrain, but there wasn't much of an option left. Singh's two tanks had to take it slow, weaving around the bigger boulders, moving at maybe 30 or 35 kilometers per hour; less than a third of what the tanks could do on open ground. Even so, they'd hopefully get an angle on the pisser tank and take him out.
A quick check of the strategic communication push showed that the fight at the gate building wasn't going well. The pissers were moving in reinforcements through the gate and the Arcadian troops had all they could do to hold on. And if they couldn't take the gate... then the choice would be to let the UEN forces pour through and take over the entire colony, or to try to destroy the gate, cutting Arcadia off from the rest of humanity, maybe forever. Though that was assuming that they could destroy the gate.
Her tanks were the best chance to win that fight, though. If she could just push them through to the gate building and bring their firepower to bear in support of the Arcadian infantry fighting for the gate.
The UEN tank unmasked from cover and fired again. He wasn't using laser targeting for his shots; laser targeting allowed for almost perfect accuracy, but lasers could also warn the targeted tank to evade and deploy counter-measures. Firing without lasers was a lot less accurate, but increased the chance of catching a target off guard.
Not this time, though; all the tanks of her company knew where to expect enemy fire from, so the flash of the pisser's 41 megajoule gun —the same model as her tank carried— was enough to trigger sprays of concealment aerosol and emergency evasions. It took only three seconds for the burst of fire from the enemy tank to cross the seven kilometers of range, but none of Tara's tanks were where they had been when the shot was fired. A burst of three 41 megajoule kinetic projectiles slammed into the desert floor, sending up plumes of dirt and pulverized rock a hundred meters high.