Armored Tears

by Mark Kalina

  One of her tanks, from 3rd Platoon, fired a burst in reply, targeting the enemy's muzzle flash, but the enemy tank was back behind cover before the shots reached him.

  "We can't afford this delay!" Tara hissed, mostly to herself, though since she was still on the Company tactical push, all of her platoon leaders heard her too.

  "Cease fire on the pisser tank," she ordered. "Everyone stand by anti-missile defenses and be ready to evade. We're charging though! Full speed! Second Platoon can take care of the pisser tank and keep him from shooting up our backsides! We've got a date to keep at the fucking gate building! Let's go!"

  The six tanks surged forward, articulated tracks churning the desert ground. At full speed, they could push 100 kilometers per hour on this terrain. Tara was hoping that the speed would help keep them safe.

  "Evasive," she told her driver, and her War-Hammer began to make shallow zigzags, kicking up a curtain of dust that would help keep enemy sensors at bay.

  The other tanks were following her lead, snaking across the desert.

  An eruption of dirt a kilometer ahead marked another enemy missile pod's salvo, but with the dust kicked up by her tanks, only the lead tank was a clear target; her tank.

  "Counter-missiles!" she called, but her gunner was launching them before she spoke, and more counter-missiles flashed out from the rest of the company's tanks as well. A dozen enemy missiles died in a cascade of dark cloud-puff explosions as anti-tank missiles and counter-missiles met.

  "Got 'em all!" the gunner shouted.

  "Enemy tank's firing!" shouted the sensors operator as his last reconnaissance drone flashed a warning.

  "Evasive!" Tara shouted, on both the driver's channel and the company push, and the driver jerked the tank into a sharper zigzag.

  The enemy tank had fired a long burst; six or seven shots. The burst of fire passed behind Tara's tank, but walked across the path of Shinobu's War-Hammer, one of the two other tanks of her own 1st platoon. Just one projectile hit, but it came in between the turret and the tracks, through the hull's thinner side armor; a slug of depleted uranium punched through the composite sandwich of steel, tungsten carbide, synthetic sapphire and carbon fiber, flaring into a friction-ignited blow-torch of burning metal particles. Someone screamed on the communications push, shrill and brief, and a second later, three survival pods ejected from the stricken tank; two from the turret and then the driver from the hull.

  But there was no time to stop, or even to wonder which friend or comrade she'd just lost... or even if all the survival pods had carried out living crewmembers; sometimes they ejected a second too late and only saved a burned or mangled corpse.

  "Evasive!" she shouted again into the company push, and then added, "gunner, return fire!"

  The big turret swung half-way around and the gunner fired a long burst of his own, the 41 megajoule gun thudding like some giant version of a slow, old-fashioned machinegun, the muzzle blasts kicking up a massive rolling cloud of dust. Tara watched as the ammo count for the main gun went down to twenty-four rounds, but this was no time for economy of fire. A few seconds later, towering columns of dirt and pulverized rock erupted around the enemy position, and her tank wasn't the only one to fire back. But there was no confirmation of a hit.

  The enemy tank fired again a minute later, but this time, hit none of the wildly evading Arcadian tanks.

  And then there was cheering coming in across the Second Platoon push.

  "Got him!" came Lieutenant Singh's voice. "We took that pisser tank out! Multiple hits; you can use what's left to toast marshmallows!"

  "Good work, Singh!" Tara said. "Maneuver your platoon to follow us. We're not slowing down, so you can't catch up, but you can follow up for support."

  "Roger," Singh said.

  Ahead of them on her map display, Tara could see the low ridge that gave way to the shallow valley that held the gate structure itself. If they could just get to that ridge —and take it, if the UEN had placed defenses there— they would finally be in position to deliver fire support to the Arcadian infantry troops that were fighting take the gate compound. The infantry had been dropped in, at great risk and with great daring, by using stealth air-transport craft. Established doctrine said that it was an impossible maneuver; established laser defenses would always be able to shoot down any aircraft, and no stealth was enough to defeat the sort of sensors that a front-line anti-air laser fortress mounted; stealth could hide from radars, and adaptive camouflage could fool distant optical sensors, but, sooner or later, the big thermal sensors could find anything that flew, no matter how stealthy it was. Usually sooner.

  Established doctrine had been wrong. The Arcadians had managed to hack the security codes for a UEN patrol fight and, for a few crucial minutes, had convinced the sensors of the UEN laser emplacements that the inbound aircraft were UEN planes. The pissers had tumbled on to the ruse soon enough, but not in time to stop over a hundred Arcadian frame infantry from landing. Only the last transport had been burned down by UEN lasers... but that had been the transport carrying the heavy weapons. So now the framers were fighting a desperate battle. And Tara's tank company was the only chance they had of getting support.

  "Keep moving," she said into the company push. "Those framers won't last long without support."

  "What happens if we don't shut down the gate?" asked Corporal Ishida, her gunner.

  "What happens?" Tara said. "The UEN wins. The push tens of thousands of pisser troops through the gate and we lose our planet. All of the Defense Force personnel that survive get sent to re-education camps. The UEN ships in a few million more 'economic refugees,' confiscates everything we've built and micromanages our people's lives until they're reduced 'economic refugee' status themselves. That's what happens. So what we do is, we don't lose."

  "I think we're past their missile pods," came a call from Lieutenant Feldman, the 3rd Platoon leader.

  "I think you're right," Tara replied. "Who has drones left? I doubt the pissers are going to leave that ridge undefended, but whatever they have isn't showing up from this distance."

  "None left for us," said Johnny, her sensors operator.

  "I've got one left," sent Sergeant Kemp, the tank commander of 1st platoon's only other surviving tank.

  "I've got four left in 3rd platoon," said Feldman.

  "Hold a couple back, Feldman," Tara ordered, "and send out two. Kemp, you send yours out, as well. We can't afford to charge in blind."

  The drones launched and sped forward, little ducted-fan-tilt-rotor aircraft, less than a meter long, each one loaded with an assortment of sensors. The sensors operators were about to earn their keep.

  "Hostile framers!" came the call from one of the 3rd Platoon's tanks. "We've picked up camouflaged UEN framers in position in front of us. They've got adaptive camouflage netting laid over 'em, but I'm picking up thermal and electro-magnetic leakage from their power packs. I think they didn't shut down their cooling systems."

  "Alright, put the drones in a good search pattern; not too tight. Don't give away that we've found them, but let's get some good targeting data," Tara ordered.

  Fucking amateurs, Tara thought. As stars went, Luhman-16A —colloquially called "Ravi," after a Hindu sun god— was a tiny "brown dwarf," not quite even a proper star. But as far as Arcadia was concerned, the star was plenty hot, and close; a huge red-orange ball of fire in the sky. Lying out under the looming rays of the local sun would be brutal, so the UEN troopers had run their infantry combat frames' cooling systems... which had allowed the drones to pick up the power signature, and ruined any chance they'd had of an ambush. Or of surviving.

  "All tanks, download target data from the drones, lock it in, and engage,"

  Tara ordered.

  All hell broke loose.

  The closest of the hiding UEN framers were within two kilometers; close enough to engage with the auto-smartguns. Bursts of precisely targeted 10.5mm steel-tipped copper slugs arced out at over a kilometer a second, ripping
into the desert. Each burst tracked precisely across the indicated probable position of a "hidden" enemy framer; some of the bullets deflected off armor; infantry frames allowed their operators to wear heavy articulated plates of carbon-ceramic armor. But some rounds found weak spots or gaps between armor panels and punched right through, into the flesh and bones of the framer troopers, and other rounds shattered the armor panels they struck, leaving them useless against the next bullet.

  Some of the bursts were aimed at probable locations and found nothing. Most found targets and blew them apart in sprays of shattered polycarbonate, flesh and blood. A few of the enemy framers were fast enough realize what was happening and lurched up to dodge out of the way of a burst; from two kilometers out, they had two or three seconds to dodge the incoming rounds. But with their power pack motors still spinning up, they were burdened by the hundred kilogram weight of their frames, armor and weapons, and follow-up bursts cut them down.

  The more distant framer positions called for bigger weapons. One by one the tanks fired single rounds from their 41 megajoule main guns, blasting the hidden powered infantrymen into small, gory fragments.

  Not all of the enemy framers were hit; some probably kept still, huddling under their camouflage and praying that the next second wouldn't be the last one. Others popped up and launched anti-tank missiles, but without surprise none made it past the onrushing tanks' defenses, and the soldiers firing the missiles died to a man within seconds of their brave, desperate act.

  And then the company was running up the shallow slope to the ridge-line, with the enemy left behind them.

  "We're almost there!" called Tara, unable to keep her voice calm now. The ridge-line was just a kilometer ahead, and in the distance, the massive, reinforced concrete dome of the gate structure was now visible.

  "Take positions on the ridge and prepare for precision fire in support of our infantry," she ordered.

  "Stop us as soon as we have a line of fire over the ridge," she instructed the driver.

  "Roger," he replied, and the tank came to bone-jarring halt, throwing up a plume of dust even bigger than the plume it had raised as it raced across the desert.

  The gate dome dominated the shallow valley below, and she could see faint, distant flashes of small-arms fire, and blasts of infantry-carried missiles and grenades, around it. The fighting seemed to be within a few hundred meters of the huge gate structure. As soon as she had confirmation of the enemy positions, her company could rain 41 megajoule fire down upon them; there was no way the pissers would be able to hold against that sort of firepower.

  Tara switched her communication set to the push that the Arcadian framer unit, code-named Cinnamon, was supposed to be using, and prayed that there would be no communications fuck-ups.

  "All Cinnamon units, this is Nutmeg-Lead. I am in position on the ridge to your east with a light company of tanks. Direct fire mission requests through this comm push."

  "Roger, Nutmeg-Lead," came a strained sounding voice. "This is Cinnamon-Lead. Glad to finally see you. Fire missions forthcoming. Stand by."

  A few seconds later, Tara was getting targeting data from the framers below. She brought up the positions of her tanks and the lines of fire on her tactical display and began to assign fire missions.

  "Lock this one in," she told her gunner.

  "All units, double-check your fire missions and open fire. Single rounds."

  Five main guns went off, raising dust clouds for dozens of meters around the tanks. Seconds ticked by, and then the ground near the gate building began to erupt into geysers of pulverized concrete as the rounds impacted. Some of the tanks' main guns twitched onto new targets and fired a second round, and a few seconds later, a second series of blasts showered down on their targets.

  "Good shooting, Nutmeg!" came a shouted call from one of the Cinnamon units. "More fire missions coming up."

  "Roger," Tara answered.

  There was suddenly movement off to the left of her tank; a burst of displaced dirt and sand. Tara slewed her view over and got a brief glimpse of a missile pod ripple firing its dozen missile load into the sky, less than a hundred meters from her tank!

  At the same moment, the tank's laser detectors went off, screaming alarm as a guidance laser illuminated the tank from behind.

  The automatic aerosol grenades thumped and began to envelope the War-Hammer in a fog that was opaque to laser energy, but Tara had time to realize that the laser-homing missiles would reach her tank before the aerosol had time to cover it.

  "Driver, reverse! Evasive!" she managed to shout.

  There was a sudden crash that made the seventy-five ton mass of the War-Hammer lurch, and Tara thought she saw a momentary white flash. Then it was past, and she became aware of a growing, searing pain, rising to unbearable intensity. She couldn't even tell where it hurt, but she could hear someone screaming. Smoke filled the turret fighting compartment, and a second later she felt the sudden pressure as her survival pod inflated around her and then the massive jolt as it launched her out of the tank.

  The inflated pod's bouncing impact on the desert floor was soft in comparison. The survival pod deflated, its job done, and Tara drew a breath. Someone screamed, shrill and violently loud, close by, and it took her a second to realize it was her. She was lying on her side, drawing ragged breaths and screaming despite all her will to stop herself. Some of the crew of one of 3rd Platoon's tanks had dismounted and were running towards her.

  The pain was unbearable, too strong for her to know where it was coming from, and it wasn't dying down at all. Tara tried to look herself over to see where she was hurt, and suddenly she had no will to even try to stop screaming.

  Around her, her company's tanks were still firing, the deafening concussion of their big guns momentarily drowning out her screams. In the valley below, 41 megajoule shots were pulverizing the UEN positions, and Arcadian infantry was surging forward, moving fast to take the gate structure and its control facilities.

  But she saw none of it. All she could focus on, as she screamed, were the charred bones protruding from the bloody stumps of her legs, raggedly burned off above the knees.

  4.

  Lieutenant-colonel Tara O'Connor blinked back the unbidden memory. She still got episodes from time to time; flash-backs to seven years ago. This had been a bad one, she knew, an almost total recall, so intense she had almost been able to feel the searing pain again.

  She shook her head and let herself come back to the here and now; it was about as far from the fighting compartment of a tank as could be imagined. The sound of laughter and splashing water filled her ears and the smell of chlorinated water and lush, decorative plants scented the air.

  Tara let her eyes focus on the crystal blue water of the swimming pool, and felt her shoulders relax. At least she hadn't screamed or cried out; something that had happened with embarrassing frequency in the first few years.

  These episodes never seemed to happen when she had something to do, and they didn't, thank god, haunt her dreams. But relaxing and letting her mind wander sometimes brought them on. Even so, she decided, she wasn't going to head back in. She was on leave, and she'd told her colleagues that she was going to work on her tan. And she wasn't about to let some flashbacks derail her plans.

  She stretched, rather deliberately, and shifted her weight in her lounge chair. This was a family-friendly facility, so she was wearing a swim-suit, though it didn't cover much of her. Maybe another time, she'd get a chance to use a more adult-oriented facility, where she could sun-tan nude to get rid of any tan-lines.

  Tara was getting looks, she knew, and she accepted those as partly her due, and partly just something that couldn't be avoided.

  It was her due because she knew herself to be very good looking; she had a pretty face, somewhat long-featured, with pale gray, almond-shaped eyes that hinted at her quarter-Japanese ancestry. Her eyes, she'd been told, were well suited to her short, straight, chestnut hair. Her body was long limbed, athletic
and trim-figured... and only somewhat decently covered by her little black two-piece swimsuit. Lots of men —and a few women— tended to look at her; it was nothing new.

  It was something that couldn't be avoided because of her legs; they were long and shapely, sleekly curved. But her flesh ended just above her knees, and from the knees down, her legs were gleaming, sculpted, chromed metal. Her prosthetics were top of the line, looking like something from a sexy-robot picture. The shape of a woman's legs and feet was reproduced in artistic, if somewhat stylized detail, down to non-skid soled feet with articulated toes. They were even equipped to give her some tactile feedback. But they were obviously, defiantly artificial. It was something that got looks, but she had decided to embrace it.

  Even the best synthetic skin couldn't make her legs look quite normal, and she had decided that the blatant metal was better than either the somewhat uncanny look of fake skin, or the idea of trying to perpetually conceal her prosthetics with long pants. After all, the Arcadian colony was a warm, desert climate where people often wore shorts. As far as Tara was concerned, if the gleaming metal prosthetics made some people uncomfortable, then too bad. It was even possible, if only just, that someone might see the legs, recognize who she was, and remember that they were free people, living on their own free planet, in some part because of the pain she had endured. If the sight of her reminded someone of the fact that their freedom came at a cost, she wasn't about to regret it.

  "Yo! Legs!" came a bull-bellow shout from near the changing rooms, and Tara looked over.

  Looming over a cluster of swim-suited pool patrons was a man, hugely tall and wide in proportion, wearing a faded tan, sleeveless cut-off, Armored Corps jumpsuit that had been emblazoned with a slogan in neon orange letters; Tankers Have Big Guns. The man looked like he was slouching, but his height still dwarfed everyone around him. A shock of wild red hair topped a pale, square face that looked like a candidate for perpetual sun-burn or a commercial for anti-UV supplements. Farcical purple-colored sunglasses hid his eyes.