Armored Tears

by Mark Kalina

  "Then you're in charge of your squad now, Millner. Link your comm into the command push and stand by."

  Maynard dead, thought Bernie, trying to shed the feeling of glassy unreality. This is serious. This is for real. We're in a war, and people are getting killed around me. I could get killed. I could fuck up and get my people killed. Maybe I already have, she thought... though what she could have done to save Private Gambier escaped her.

  "Keep it tight, people," Captain Wilson ordered over the company push. "This isn't over. Keep scanning. They've found us. I don't think they're just going to leave us alone."

  "They might not have anything to hit us with except old-school artillery and gun-boy irregulars," suggested Chief-Sergeant Norton, over the comm.

  "They had guided missiles and tanks," Captain Wilson reminded him. "How long till they bring them up, do you think?"

  "What do we do, then?" asked Lieutenant Sawyer, the 2nd Platoon leader. "We can't just wait here, can we?"

  "I don't think that the parabolic communications dish was hit by the artillery. If we can get it transmitting, we can call for help," the captain replied. "If not, then we'll try something else; we'll rig our last long-range drone as a communications system. We'll record a message, and sent it up into the highlands. It should have the range to reach the Armored Corps station up there.

  "We don't know how big this UEN force, or where they came from, or how widespread their communications jamming is. One way or another, we have to get the word out. And we've got to hold here till we do."

  Bernie let the conversation wash past her. Lieutenant Maynard, her platoon leader, was dead. Private Gambier was dead; one of her squad-mates. Eight out of the eighty-one people who had been in her company that morning were dead.

  Her mind didn't want to deal with it, so she started scanning the barren ground in front of her. There was no smoke left now, but an angle in the slope of the land meant that there was dead ground for an enemy to hide in. Her thermal sensors could see the faint tracks left by what looked like some sort of wheeled all-terrain trucks; it looked like they had driven up within half a klick of the company's position and then headed back out of sight. And there were other rocky outcroppings visible, scattered across the ground, some just a few hundred meters away, some so far that they were just dark patches on the horizon. Plenty of places for an enemy to hide.

  She was only vaguely aware of the two reporters as they scuttled over and crouched near her, taking shelter in her trench.

  "This is one hell of a 'field trip,'" Aran said. He looked disheveled and intense. Ulla crouched next to him, looking starkly terrified.

  "Aran. Shit." Bernie said. "Aran, Ulla, you guys should get back to the carrier. If they attack again, you've got no armor. If there's any sort of explosives, the fragments could shred you."

  "No chance for a battlefield interview?" Aran asked in reply, sounding not quite serious. "I mean, I'm not a war correspondent... or I wasn't... but what reporter hasn't had fantasies of this sort of thing?"

  Bernie shook her head, somewhere between amusement and amazement.

  "You Australians are pretty tough. Or is it Indonesians?"

  "Little of both," Aran answered. "What's going to happen? To us, I mean?"

  "Well, we're trying to call for help. Once we do, we either hold tight till help shows up, or we run for it and try to get to a safe place."

  "Is this a war? Are you at war with the UEN?" he asked.

  "It's sure as fuck a war. Against the UEN? I think so. Those troops had UEN weapons. But I don't know."

  "What..." Ulla started to say. "What will you do with us? If you're fighting the UEN? We're from the UEN."

  "You're civilians. You're not fighting. We'll keep you safe... or try to. And try to get you back out of the combat zone. I'm really sorry I dragged you out here."

  "Nothing you could do," Aran said with a false lightness in his tone. "If we make it, I get a great story out of it. What more could a reporter want?"

  "You're something else, Earther," Bernie said with a grin. "But you two should get back to the carriers. If it's just smart-rifle fire, these trenches are safe enough... if you keep your head down. But like I said, without armor, any sort of fragmentation will kill you."

  ***

  "We need to run away," Ulla said, whispering to Aran as they headed back to the carriers. "Bernie might not turn us in. She seems decent, for what she is. But the rest of the Arcadians? As soon as they remember that they have two UEN hostages? At best, they'll try to use as to negotiate with the UEN forces out there. At worst... Shit, Aran, you've seen what happens when anti-UEN savages take hostages."

  "You mean like in Eritrea or Kyrgyzstan... or those sorts of places?"

  "Yes!" Ulla hissed.

  "I think the Arcadians aren't that sort, Ulla."

  "They're violent anti-UEN savages," Ulla said, wide eyed. "Didn't you see all the dead bodies out there, of the people they just killed? I think you're crazy to trust them."

  "Well, we don't actually have a choice other than trusting them. Where would we run?"

  "If there's UEN forces out there, we run to them!"

  Aran frowned. "That's an 'if,' Ulla. So far, all we've seen is local refugees with weapons. I wouldn't care to take my chances with their 'help,' and I wouldn't suggest you try it either, if I were you," he said.

  "Then we wait for real UEN forces to arrive. Or go look for them!"

  "If you're right about how savage the Arcadians are, those big rifles they have can hit a person at two or three kilometers' distance. And if they let you run without shooting you, then they're not as savage as you think."

  "I think... Aran, I think you're really wrong about these Arcadians. I think you've let them convince you they're like your Australians or something. But they're not. They're going to kill us, Aran. They'll probably r...rape me first. And then they're going to kill us!" Ulla was almost in tears now.

  Aran put a hand on her shoulder and tried to keep his voice calm. "Listen, Ulla. You have to keep calm. If we lose our calm, we have no chance of getting out of this. We have to keep our eyes open, and we have to act fast and smart, based on what we see. Right now, none of the Arcadians has so much as frowned at us. If real UEN forces, Peace Force soldiers, get close, maybe we can run to safety. But we can't panic. And what Bernie said about explosives makes sense. We need to get inside the carrier, OK?"

  Ulla let him lead her, but she was shaking and crying, and she said nothing.

  ***

  Captain Wilson had drones out, so the attack wasn't a surprise.

  "Company, heads up!" the captain voice called over the company comm push. "Just lost our drones. Looks like hostile frame infantry coming in. Stand to and stand by."

  "You heard him, B-squad!" Bernie shouted. "Just like your training, guys. Scan, acquire, shoot, cover and move. Then repeat. Easy, right?"

  A few nervous chuckles greeted her words.

  Each one of her men had a fighting trench, wide enough to let a framer move between firing positions and not need to pop up twice in exactly the same place. Each man also had a fallback position planned out among the rocks behind, though getting to it would mean breaking cover.

  She saw the enemy drones first, skimming over the ground, weaving back and forth to make themselves hard to acquire.

  "Take 'em out, guys," she ordered her squad, even as the captain came onto the comm push and ordered "Company, engage those drones."

  M39 rifles cracked out shots. Pulling the trigger gave the smart-rifle's computer permission to fire when it detected that the round would hit the acquired target. But the system couldn't compensate for targets that weren't where the targeting computer expected them to be when the bullet arrived. Skilled frame troopers, on the other hand, could.

  Bernie watched the drone she was tracking weave, guessing at its pattern and tapping her rifle sight's controls to adjust the targeting solution. There was a crack as the rifle went off, and a second later the drone expl
oded into fragments as the heavy, armor-piercing 8.5mm bullet struck.

  All around her, the rest of the company's frame troopers were doing the same. Against the agile drones, nine out of ten shots missed, but with something like sixty smart-rifles firing, the flight of drones didn't last long. None lasted long enough to overfly the Arcadian's positions.

  "What do you want to bet they send in..." Chief-Sergeant Norton started to say.

  A salvo of missiles streaked into view, coming up out of the dead ground ahead of the company.

  "...missiles next," Chief-Sergeant Norton finished.

  "Take cover!" shouted the captain, over the company comm push. "Frame carriers stand by point defenses!"

  Almost two dozen missiles streaked in, and there was nothing for Bernie to do but hug the dirt at the bottom of her trench. The missiles shouldn't be able to track frames, she thought... or prayed.

  The surviving six carriers opened up with their auto-smartguns, the weapons slaved to the vehicles' point defense control systems. A few bursts hit inbound missiles, detonating them mid-air. A few of the missile detonations set off other missiles nearby. But almost twenty missiles kept flying.

  The sound of the anti-rocket panels going off was like erratic bursts of heavy gunfire; a rattling series of explosions, punctuated by the louder CRACK of exploding missile warheads.

  Then the sound faded and Bernie got her head up to see what had happened.

  Before she could take a look at the carriers, she saw the faint hint of motion. A glance through her M39's targeting sight showed the thermal signature of an enemy framer, darting from cover to cover, heading right at her. The ground ahead of her was full of enemy framers, she realized.

  Training and instinct made her duck just a second before a UEN smart-rifle bullet cracked through the space her head had just been in.

  "Enemy framers!" she shouted on the squad comm push. "Acquire and engage! They're headed in!"

  Crawling fast to the other end of the trench, she popped up and tried to acquire one of the enemy framers. There he was, she saw, not far from where she'd expected. Acquire, press the engagement trigger, a fraction of a second and then the crack of the shot... and down! Back into cover before a counter-shot could hit her.

  Back to another section of her trench, so that she wouldn't pop up exactly where an enemy framer's targeting system was already aimed. Up! Find a target! Acquire with the M39's sight, press the trigger and let the rifle shoot. They were closer now, and she saw her target go down before she ducked again.

  Enemy bullets streaked by over her trench. Too many enemy smart-rifles were targeted on her trench now, she realized. Against unarmored infantry, an air-burst grenade could kill from above; her frame let her wear armor that would protect her from that, but not from getting pinned down till the enemy closed in and hosed her down with zipper fire. Time to fall back.

  Bernie pulled a concealment grenade and lobbed it out of the trench. Then, as a cloud of hot smoke billowed out, she vaulted out of the trench and sprinted for the fallback position behind her. Rounds cracked by next to her but nothing hit her, and she hit the ground behind the rocks, rolling up into a firing position and scanning for more targets.

  All around her, the rest of the company was doing the same. Scanning, acquiring, firing and evading. Falling back when their forward positions became too well targeted.

  And the enemy was pushing closer and closer. In the dust and smoke of multiple concealment grenades, it was hard to tell how many enemy framers were being hit.

  A few calls of "I'm hit!" or "medic!" told her that some of her side was being hit, though. She could see some of the enemy framers clearly now, enough to make out the distinctive outlines of weapons, armor and helmets; they were definitely UEN Peace Force troops.

  She popped up again, acquired a signature where none of her people should have been, fired and saw her target drop. One more, she thought as she ducked back and crawled to another firing position in the rocks. How many of them are out there?

  The sound of one of the carrier's auto-smartguns firing was one of the best sounds she'd ever heard. A short burst rang out, and then another. And another.

  Bernie popped up again, scanned, found a target, acquired and engaged. But this time the target was running away! They were all running away!

  "Run you pisser motherfuckers!" she screamed, not bothering to duck as she acquired another enemy framer and brought him down. "Yeah!"

  One or two of the UEN framers turned to shoot back, but the auto-smart gun kept hammering away, dropping an enemy framer with almost every precisely targeted burst. She saw three go down before the weapon fell silent. No more targets she realized.

  Only then did she think to wonder why only a single auto-smartgun had been firing. She looked back to where the carriers had been parked. The outpost and five carriers around it were a nightmare of twisted, burning metal. Only one carrier was still intact, though its anti-rocket panels were mostly expended and its hull was blackened and dented by the near detonation of missiles.

  Oh, shit, she thought.

  ***

  Aran and Ulla crouched low in the trench as missiles exploded all around them. The concussive blasts of missiles the anti-missile panels going off felt like punches, physically painful and jarring.

  Ulla was screaming, tears running down her face, pounding at the ground with her fists. Aran was trying to hold her down, but the blasts made him want to curl up and scream himself.

  And then the blasts were done. Aran rose to crouch and tried to look around. Choking dust was everywhere, but he could see that the carriers were now burning sculptures of twisted metal, sending columns of black smoke into the sky.

  "Good thing we didn't go back in those," he said.

  Ulla said nothing.

  The sound of single, heavy rifle shots began to ring out. First a few, then discordant volleys; dozens of rifles firing one shot at a time.

  Aran knew that showing his head would be a dangerous risk, but he wanted to see. Hiding in the bottom of trench seemed worse than the danger of being shot, somehow.

  A quick look showed him Arcadian frame troopers aiming, shooting, and then ducking back into their trenches. And out on the field, the dim, smoke-shrouded shapes of UEN Peace Force frame troopers, running, evading, shooting in turn.

  Here and there an Arcadian trooper was hit, slammed down by the heavy bullets fired by the Peace Force troops. But for every Arcadian that went down, four or five Peace Force framers were being hit. The Arcadians were better soldiers, Aran realized. And not by a small margin. But there were many more Peace Force framers than there were Arcadians.

  And then the one surviving carrier, which Aran had not noticed in the smoke and dust, opened fire with its automatic gun. The bursts had a precise, machine-like quality to Aran's ears; each one exactly as long as the previous one, each one fired at exactly the same interval. And with each burst, a Peace Force frame trooper went down.

  Peace Force troops tried to shoot back, but the carrier was armored against them and their shots rang off its armor, striking sparks but doing no harm. The Peace Force framers probably had anti-armor missile launchers, Aran thought; he'd seen them in vids... and likely had seen them in action, just a little while ago. But either the Peace Force troopers had no missile left, or else none of the troopers who tried to bring up a missile-launcher survived long enough to fire.

  And then the Peace Force troopers were retreating, running back and diving for cover. Arcadian framers were standing up, shooting at the running figures. And the automatic gun on the carrier kept up its chillingly precise fire.

  "No!" Ulla screamed. "No! Don't run away! Don't leave me!"

  Suddenly, with a violent shove, she was up and out of the trench, running out into the open.

  "I'm a civilian!" she shouted, waving her arms over her head. "I'm UEN! Help me!"

  A few Peace Force framers were still shooting back as they retreated. Aran saw one half-turn and shoot as Ulla ra
n and waved. A puff of red mist exploded from the back of Ulla's head. Her body dropped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

  "No..." Aran whispered, suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of sick futility. "Oh, no..."

  ***

  Sergeant Li Ziming watched with disgust as the Peace Force frame troopers fell back. It had been beyond foolish to send them into a head-on attack, without the support of the two tanks. Beyond foolish.

  He knew better than to protest, though. None of the regular Peace Force officers were going to listen to a sergeant.

  Now, he thought, only now they will send it the tanks, and finish this. Only after they have killed dozens of their own men.

  Fighting these Arcadians, he thought, wasn't like overwhelming poorly trained separatist militia. Still, the tanks were rolling forward now.

  Sergeant Li shook his head and uttered a silent prayer to the Buddha that he'd never have to work with regular Peace Force troops again.

  ***

  The UEN tanks had announced their presence with a long-ranged burst of main gun fire that eradicated the ruined remains of the communication outpost. They were firing from several kilometers away, but even so, their rounds arrived before the rolling thunder of their cannons' reports. Fragments of stone and alloy flew everywhere, making people duck as they ran for their trenches.

  "Company!" came the captain's shouted order. "All units fall back to Rally Point Zulu!"

  The rally point was just a spot on the map, Bernie thought. Nothing there except for some more rocks. But there was no chance of surviving if they stayed here.

  The last surviving carrier popped a salvo of concealment grenades, shrouding the company's position in white smoke, and then took off across the broken ground, heading in direction that would not take it to the rally point, venting more concealment smoke as it went.

  "Brave motherfuckers," Bernie whispered to herself, watching it go. Then, "B-squad! Move out!" she ordered. "Let's go, people! Let's go!"