Armored Tears

by Mark Kalina

  The Arcadians had been utterly surprised by the sudden arrival of UEN Peace Force troops through the gate. That had been the only really scary moment; the possibility that Arcadian forces would be waiting for them. Hafez and Bannerman both had silently feared the possibility of ambush by overwhelming force.

  The first unit had been ordered to send a drone right back through the gate, to avoid the possibility of having the entire strike force might be lost, unit by unit, each one in turn having no way of knowing that they were heading into a trap.

  But that hadn't happened. The first strike force units had come through with perfect surprise, bursting from their transit train cars and moving rapidly to take control of the gate facility.

  In a perfect best case, they would have been able to send through multiple cars per track before the Arcadians realized what was wrong and cut the gate power. That hadn't happened; the Arcadians had twigged too fast, and only one single car from the second wave had made it through before the gate shut down. Still, that was one more than the plan called for, which gave Major Hafez over three hundred men, half of them frame infantry heavily loaded with anti-armor missiles.

  His forces had taken the gate structure and the transit terminal building fairly quickly, though the little fight had been bloodier than he'd expected. Arcadian gate operations staff, and even some civilians, had joined the outnumbered, outgunned security guards in trying to fight the Peace Force infantry. It had been hopeless, of course, but the unexpected, fanatical resistance by the Arcadians had actually cost him some losses among his infantry. It hadn't mattered in the end, of course; the Arcadians had been fighting with pistols and light rifles against modern frame infantry.

  Major Hafez frowned at the thought. Normal, civilized civilians would have simply surrendered, of course. Still, it did serve to remind Hafez that the Arcadians he was dealing with were savage fanatics, rather than civilized human beings.

  A few minutes ago, there had been the sounds of heavy weapons fire from the south, showing that the Arcadian Defense Force units stationed near the gate had become involved. The fire had died down again, though; his force had enough firepower to hold them off. And there were other ways to deal with them as well; the UEN Peace Force had plenty of experience dealing with would-be "national liberation armies." The methods weren't always of a sort that could be publicized, but they were time tested and they worked. He had already given the necessary orders.

  Now that his forces had secured the gate facility, though, all he had to do was hold on. The much stronger force under Colonel Mbala would have transited the orbital gate and landed by now. They would even now be moving fast to take the Arcadian gate control and power facilities.

  Hafez had to admit that the Arcadians had been clever to move those to a location distant from the actual gate. Colonel Mbala's force had enough firepower to do the job twice over, but Hafez did not like depending on anyone.

  Nor did he have to; both he and General Bannerman had been unwilling to put all their eggs in one basket. His men were even now working on splicing an experimental, truck-sized, one-of-a-kind, "portable" fast-discharge power cell into the gate generator. It would only be able to keep the gate for open a few minutes, but that would be enough time to move through another two or three waves of reinforcements, including tanks. If, for some reason, Mbala's force was intercepted by enough of the Arcadian military to slow it down, the gate control and power facility would be taken by Hafez' own forces.

  Once the gate control and power facilities were taken, by whichever force, the gate would be opened again for as long as the Arcadian power facility capacitors lasted. Just a few hours would be enough to ensure the delivery of two full divisions of UEN Peace Force troops; enough to wipe out any possible resistance from the Arcadians.

  And that would be that; General Bannerman would go down in history as the architect and commander of the first successful "interstellar war" and every officer involved —most especially one Major Anwar Hafez— would reap the enormous political rewards from a grateful UEN.

  The sound of boots on the polished stone floor of the transit terminal made Hafez look up to see the captain of C company walking toward him. C company had been tasked with taking the cargo-handling facilities near the main highway, about a kilometer from the edge of the dome. They'd reported success, but then run up against what seemed to be a platoon-strength unit of enemy tanks at the highway. With the Peace Force infantry well entrenched and heavily equipped with anti-armor missiles, Hafez wasn't worried about four tanks being able to take back the cargo-handling buildings, but neither could they be allowed to remain a few kilometers outside his perimeter, ready to snipe or otherwise disrupt operations. Hafez had given the necessary orders to have them dealt with, and now the captain in charge was seeking him out. The man's expression posture suggested that he was something less than good news.

  "Sir," the captain reported.

  "What is it, Captain?"

  "Sir, the perimeter is secure, but we've taken heavy fire from the Arcadian position at the main highway. Enemy tanks, sir. Three of them."

  "Did you implement my orders?" Hafez asked harshly. If this fool of a captain had been too squeamish to do what it took...

  "Yes, sir. That's when..." the captain came to attention. "Sir, we implemented your orders to the letter. Arcadian civilian prisoners were brought forward and..."

  "Not civilians, Captain," Major Hafez interrupted. "They were illegal combatant insurgents."

  "Sir?"

  "Those people were enemy combatants in civilian dress, I want that point to be very clear."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Now, go on. You brought the enemy prisoners forward and made your demands clear? Did you undertake a demonstration?"

  "Yes, sir," the captain said, looking down. "We took several civilians... I mean enemy insurgents to positions where they could be seen. We informed the enemy commander of what would happen if he didn't surrender his forces. And we... conducted a demonstration. We shot several of the civ... of the insurgents, in clear view, where the enemy commander could see."

  "And the enemy commander's response?"

  "Sir, he... his tanks opened fire on our position. Sustained fire from their main guns, sir. 1st Platoon is... is mostly destroyed, sir. Along with most of the prisoners that were brought forward. I had to order 4th and 5th platoons to concentrate their anti-armor missile fire. We were able to drive back the enemy tanks out of missile range, but the cargo-handling facility has been largely destroyed. And I've lost 1st platoon. All but three men are dead or wounded."

  Hafez' eyes went wide. "They fired on the hostages? On their own people?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir," the captain replied.

  "They are inhuman," Hafez hissed. "Savages. Captain, reinforce from your other platoons and hold your position. Keep those tanks away. Coordinate with the anti-aerospace laser team if you need to. If the tanks try to engage from out of missile range, we can use the laser to harass them. We have only to hold on for a short time before the gate is re-opened."

  "Sir. What about the other civ... the other prisoners, I mean?"

  "Send them to the interrogation section. Since these savages will not respect the lives of their own people, we will at least get whatever information we can from them," Hafez said, frowning.

  "And find out how long till we have our own power unit hooked up," he added. "I want that gate open again for reinforcements as soon as possible."

  21.

  "OK, people, here's the deal," Dave said.

  All seven men and women of the Auxiliary Corps squad assigned to Hamilton Station were watching him silently.

  "Sat-Comm is out. I don't know if the system has been spoofed or something happened to the satellites, but we can't talk to anyone that way. Shortwave isn't working worth a damn either. We can get a signal across within line of sight, but not any further. I don't know if that's some sort of jamming, or what. But it's bad news, whatever it is.

  "But
we've got other things to deal with. Radio's intermittent, but we got a signal a few minutes ago from the Schmidt farming station, out by the East Road. We didn't get all of it, but it sounds like they saw what looked like a band of raiders.

  "Now, we already know the gun-boys have got themselves some new rifles. And we can't send this one on to the big guns in Infantry Corps or Armored Corps. There's only eight of us, but I didn't join the Defense Force to hang out and wait while some gun-boy raiders were shooting up a farm just twenty klicks from here.

  "So here's what we're going to do. Cal, Billy, Chattarji, you all are with me. Milton, you're in charge here till we get back. Get your rifles and let's get the mover moving. We're going to drive in, scatter those raider fucks, and if we have to, pull the Schmidts back to Hamilton Station.

  "Questions? No? Then let's move!"

  ***

  Cal could see the smoke of fires long before the mover crested the low hill overlooking the Schmidt farm. Now that the farm was in sight, though, it looked much worse that he had imagined. All the buildings were burning, sending out thick clouds of black smoke. The solar arrays and the glass of the green houses had been utterly smashed; Cal guessed that they had been raked with automatic weapons fire.

  And there was no sign of movement, though there were a half-dozen distant, dark shapes on the ground... which took Cal a while to realize must have been bodies.

  "Oh, fuck," he breathed. "Are we..."

  "Looks like we're too late. Shit!" Dave said. "OK, we got to get down there. Someone might be wounded. Might need help. OK. OK... this is how we do it. We don't drive the mover in. If there's some sort of ambush, we got to keep the mover back. So. Right. Oh, God. OK. Cal, Chattarji, you two stay with the mover. Chattarji, can you run the machinegun? Cal, I want you on that old M39 of ours. You've got some training on it, don't you?

  "I... yeah," Cal said.

  "OK. You two are our overwatch. Our cover," Dave said. "Keep an eye out. Me and Billy, we're going to take the medic bag and walk in there. If there's someone still alive..."

  "Got it, Boss," Chattarji said; Urmi Chattarji was a tiny little thing, Cal thought, barely over five feet and with a habit of giggling like a kid, but her eyes were cold and determined and Cal figured bigger people than him would have gotten out of her way when faced with her expression.

  "Uh, yeah, got it," Cal said.

  "OK, then. Fuck. Ah, and remember the rule about hostages; if they got a hostage, you have to kill the hostage taker. Have to, no matter what. OK? Like they told you in Basic Induction Training, right?

  "OK, Billy, let's go. Keep that zipper ready," Dave said. He sounded nervous to Cal.

  "Yeah, Boss, OK," Billy said. He was a big man, beefy and solid-looking, and he handled the heavy zipper with no signs of noticing its weight.

  It was a hundred meters or so to the nearest of the dark shapes. The nearest of the bodies, Cal knew they were, but something in his mind didn't want to look closely enough to let himself be sure of that.

  Instead he kept the targeting scope of the M39 scanning all around, being guiltily careful not to look at the shapes on the ground. There were more of them than he'd thought, though. Five or six in between the burning buildings, and then some more among the short, sparse fruit-tree saplings in the nearest field.

  God, please, please let there not be hostages, he thought.

  Defense Force policy on hostages was to shoot hostage takers on sight, without hesitation, regardless of the cost. The idea was to make it clear, even to the stupidest refugee gun-boy, the most arrogant gangster warlord, that taking hostages was nothing but a form of suicide. Any negotiation, any hint of bargaining, would compromise that message, and thus encourage more hostage taking. It was a policy that had evolved from bitter experience. The problem was, Cal knew, that UEN refugee relief operations had a totally different policy, which meant that sometimes the gun-boys still tried to take hostages when facing the Defense Force. Cal understood the reason for the Defense Force policy, but he wasn't sure, if it came down to it, that he could make himself carry it out.

  A hint of movement drew his attention, and he zoomed in on one of the shapes in the field. For a moment, what he was seeing didn't make sense. It looked vaguely person-sized, but it was covered in some sort of material that made it hard to be sure of its shape, and there was some sort of equipment laid across it, looking like some sort of bundle of pipes. It looked out of place, but Cal could not tell what it was.

  "Hey, Chattarji?" Cal asked —for some reason she hated her first name, he'd been told— "can you look over into the field, next to the edge of those fruit-tree thingies?"

  "Thingies? Yeah, what is it?"

  "That's what I want to know. I thought it might be... you know, a body. But it's..."

  There was a sudden flash of white smoke and a rocket streaked towards the mover. It was a man with a rocket-launcher, Cal realized numbly.

  "Inbound!" Chattarji screamed, shrill voiced.

  "Shit!" Cal shouted.

  For a second he could see the rocket in the sights of his M39. Something —panic, a nervous twitch, something— made him tap the acquisition button and press the trigger.

  The M39 kicked viciously against his shoulder; he had no frame servos to help take the recoil and the huge rifle's recoil hurt.

  The anti-armor missile exploded in midair, fragments scything down crops in a rough circle ten meters across.

  Chattarji was firing her machinegun, tracers spraying out at the figure in the field. Bullets were kicking up dust in front of and to the sides of the figure, but Chattarji couldn't seem to hit the man.

  "Cal! Shoot him!" she screamed.

  Cal had the man in the M39's sights. He could see him clearly now, a human shape obscured by a full-body suit of camouflage, with a three-shot rocket launcher on his shoulder. He could see the man's eyes amid the gouts of dirt sent up by Chattarji's bullets. The man was looking right at him, and Cal could not bring himself to hit the acquisition button again.

  A second rocket shot out in a flash of propellant smoke. Maybe Chattarji's bursts had spooked the man, though, because the rocket flew over the mover, hitting the ground behind it with a blast loud enough to send needles of pain through Cal's ears. A shower of dirt and debris rang off the mover's thin armor.

  "Shit!" Chattarji screamed again, sawing her bursts back and forth across the ground where the figure knelt, aiming his launcher at them. "Shiiit!"

  One of Chattarji's bullets finally found the target; a puff of dust rose from the man's chest and he fell backwards.

  Just like the last time, Cal thought. Just a puff of dust and a man dies.

  The sound of rifle gunfire, and then the much louder, ripping report of Billy's zipper snapped Cal out of his daze.

  There were men in the smoke of the burning buildings, shooting at Dave and Billy. One man, charging at Billy, was cut down by a burst from the zipper; the heavy rounds suddenly enveloped the man in dust and when the dust cleared, what was left looked like splattered red clay.

  Another man was shooting at Dave, who was prone, trying to shoot back. Bullets were kicking up little columns of dust all around Dave.

  Cal got his sights on the man; easy even in the dust; the thermal signature was clear. It was all just like the instructor-corporal had told him. Find the target, acquire, press the engagement trigger.

  The M39 hammered his shoulder again, and a man fell backwards, punched down by the massive smart-rifle bullet.

  There was another man in the swirling dust, running with a weapon up. Cal acquired and shot him. The massive CRACK of the rifle going off, the savage kick, and the shape in the dust fell.

  Another one, at the far side of the burning buildings; acquire, engage. Crack! Kick! The man fell.

  And then silence, ringing almost louder than the gunfire in Cal's ears.

  I've just killed three men, he thought to himself.

  "They... they were wearing camouflage," Dave said. "They had the same
sorts of rifles we saw earlier. Military rifles. Gun-boys with military rifles."

  "What about the Schmidts?" Chattarji asked.

  "They... they're all dead. All dead. Thank god," Dave said, swallowing.

  "What the fuck does that mean?" Cal asked.

  "Fuck!" screamed Billy, eyes suddenly wide with fury. "Fucking never ask that! Never! Motherfucker! You never ask me that! Never ask Dave that! You hear me?!!! Never fucking ask me!"

  "Billy, cool it!" Dave shouted, getting a hand on Billy's zipper —though the man had made no move to raise it— and another one on the big man's shoulder. "Cool it! Cool it! Cal saved our fucking lives with those shots! He killed those fuckers! They're dead! OK? So cool it!"

  Billy turned and slammed his fists down, pounding down again and again on the side of the mover. Cal watched him with silent horror.

  "They..." Dave said. "They... the raiders got them, to the Schmidts, first. They... they raped them. The girls. Even the kids. And killed them. They... they took their time. They used knives... "

  "No, it's cool," Cal said. "You don't need to tell me, Dave. It's cool!"

  "They... you... you did good, Cal. OK? You did good. But please, don't look at the bodies. OK? Please?"

  "You killed them too fast, man," Billy said, almost whispering, looking at Cal.

  22.

  The automated sensors outpost wasn't much to look at, as far as Bernie was concerned. It stood atop a massive stony outcropping amid a jumps of other boulders and rocks. The outpost was just a cluster of tall antennas and sensor pods, with a tiny concrete bunker —empty, set there to give the maintenance crews someplace to work when they visited— at the sensor towers' base A spread of solar panels surrounded the bunker and sensors towers and around the entire installation was a minimal wire fence that served no purpose except to mark the territory as off limits to anyone who might wander by.