Armored Tears

by Mark Kalina

  She'd timed her tank's move just right, she thought with a certain degree of professional satisfaction.

  "Sensors, get another drone out and tell me if we got that last one," Tara ordered. Their first drone had stopped transmitting, the victim of enemy fire, or maybe just of fragments of dirt and rock kicked up by impacting main gun kinetic rounds.

  "Driver, get ready to move forward into firing position. Sensors, get me a target. Gunner, prepare to engage."

  "Ma'am, enemy tanks are pulling back behind smoke," the sensors operator reported. "Radar's picking up their dust, but no clear targets."

  "Bring us forward to firing position, driver," Tara said, some of the edge gone now from her voice.

  The enemy was indeed retreating, leaving five wrecked tanks on the open ground that stretched out in front of Tara's battalion's fighting positions.

  "OK, people," she said, switching to the battalion comm push. "Sound off. How are we doing?"

  ***

  "What I want to know," Captain Younger said, "is where the fuck they came from."

  He and Tara, along with their platoon-leader lieutenants, and the two lieutenants from Major Feldman's company, were gathered on the ground beside Tara's War-Hammer, all doing their best to all get a look at the roll-out flexible display screen that Tara had set up. With his height, Younger had quite an advantage in that regards, Tara noted with a faint smile.

  Her smile faltered when she thought of the cost of the short, savage little fight her battalion had just been in. Two of her tanks had been destroyed, and a third one hit and damaged, though it would probably be ready to fight within an hour. They'd killed five of the enemy tanks in exchange, but Tara resented any of her tanks being lost.

  Worse, she'd lost seven people, and one more badly wounded; a tank commander from her company's 3rd platoon who, along with his driver, had managed to eject from his burning tank. The driver was fine, but the commander had been badly burned. The other two crewmembers hadn't made it out. For the rest, one of Younger's tanks had suffered a catastrophic hit, leaving no survivors at all. The last casualty was the tank commander she'd seen die when his tank took a skim-hit from the first enemy shot of the engagement; another one of Younger's people.

  Except that they were all her people. All of them. And they were dying again... just like they had seven years ago. Where the fuck had those pisser tanks come from?

  "Good question," she said to Younger, keeping all traces of dismay out of her voice. Younger was a seasoned commander with fighting experience against a roving UEN tank platoon in 2070, and against the improvised gun-trucks of refugee gang-lords since then. But none of the lieutenants in the battalion had ever commanded anything more than a single tank in combat... and half of them had never been in combat at all. All of them were scared now; some of them probably too scared to spit... and not necessarily the newbies. The battalion commander's voice, she knew, had to carry nothing but absolute calm and confidence.

  "Could they have smuggled tanks into the wastes in pieces? Assembled them out there?" asked Lieutenant Higgins, one of Feldman's platoon leaders, and in Feldman's absence, the acting commander of 2nd Company.

  "I guess it's possible. We managed to do something like that in the '50s," Tara replied. "I think we need to worry more about what we're facing than how they got there, though. And we need to figure out what to do about this jamming. Has anyone got any thoughts about how to contact Major Feldman?"

  "I could take another platoon out to find him," suggest Younger.

  Tara shook her head. "We've already seen one company of enemy tanks. What happens if you run into them? Or what happens if there's more than one company?"

  "How would they smuggle in that many?"

  "You're making assumptions, Younger," Tara said. "You're assuming it's smuggling that brought those tanks in; I can't think of any other way, but that doesn't mean there isn't another way. And you're assuming that there can't be that many of them. Even if it is smuggling, what if they started seven years ago, right after we took the gate? How many disassembled tanks could they have gotten past us in that time?"

  "I... ah... No clue, Colonel," Younger said.

  "Me neither," Tara said. "So let's forget about sending out platoons in penny packets. I just hope Feldman can get past whatever the pissers have out there and make it back."

  The battalion was in touch with Feldman's platoon, in a manner of speaking. They had a crude transmission for an Auxiliary Corps station, Hamilton Station, situated well into the Southern Wastes. He had reported running into a defensive line held by hostile infantry, which gave Tara one more thing to worry about, but also gave her a clue as to the enemy's strength.

  The problem was that Feldman's platoon didn't seem to be able to hear their transmissions in return. And they had no idea what might be between Feldman and the battalion's position on the Isthmus Highlands... and, it seemed, no way to warn him about the presence of enemy tanks.

  "Colonel, if I may," interjected Lieutenant Higgins. His voice held more than a trace of a British accent; Tara recalled reading his dossier; an immigrant family that had gotten out of the European Federal Union in the late '60s.

  "Yes, Lieutenant?" she said.

  "I... wonder, Colonel; why do you think the enemy came in without sending drones first? They would have done rather more damage if they'd had a better sense of our positions. I've heard stories about the 'pissers,' but are the UEN forces really so unskilled?"

  Tara frowned slightly. "No...," she said. "All your experience has been against refugee bandits, hasn't it, Lieutenant?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Well, don't assume the pissers are all incompetent. Some are, and their politics dominate their command structure, but seven years ago, I ran into plenty of them where were all too competent. As for the drones, if I had to guess, I'd say they didn't want to alert us. If we'd seen inbound drones, we'd have been more ready. It might have saved us some losses."

  "Colonel! Colonel!" called Corporal Malan, her sensors operator, scrambling up out of the tank and sliding down its sloped bow. "Colonel! There's a drone inbound."

  "Pretty clever of this Captain Wilson to use a drone for communications," Younger observed a few minutes later.

  "Very clever. And in a lot of trouble," Tara observed. "There's no way we can get to him in time."

  "Yeah," Younger agreed, "but Feldman could."

  "We can't talk to Feldman."

  Younger grinned. "Hah," he said. "I just figured out something the famous Colonel 'Legs' missed."

  "Spare me, Younger," Tara said. "I'm not in the mood."

  "Send him a drone," he said, grinning down at her with his huge grin.

  25.

  The best way to proceed, Cal realized, was to pretend that the tank was a simulator. As long as he kept telling himself that he was in a simulator, he didn't have to think about the severe-looking Armored Corps major and his tough-looking gunner riding above and behind him in the turret, or about the looming, overwhelming bulk of the tank itself. Climbing up and into the driver's hatch, he'd felt small and fragile, as if the enormous armored mass of the tank were threatening to crush and grind him out of existence. It was easier to deal with, though, once inside the tank.

  He thought back to Reiko and the wild, crazy night that had left him too tired to pass the Armored Corps simulator test. It seemed to be a memory that had happened to someone else, a long time ago.

  The driver's compartment of the Type-51 Mk.IIIb wasn't exactly spacious, but it wasn't impossibly cramped either, and the wide, high-resolution driver display screens kept the compact space from being claustrophobic, despite the many tons of armor that loomed above him, literally just overhead. The controls were not overly complex and, thankfully, were laid out almost exactly like those in the simulator had been. All in all, it wasn't too bad... though the strong smell of disinfectant kept reminding him of the blood that had been cleaned out of this compartment, and of the dead driver who had occupied it just
a few hours ago.

  The War-Hammer had no shortage of power or turning ability, but it was still seventy-five tons of metal on the move, so it wasn't exactly responsive. You had to think through every maneuver, plan every acceleration and turn. On the other hand, compared to an ATV train, it was like driving a motor-quad racer.

  "Driver, pass to the left of those outcroppings," came the major's snappish voice. "Keep us at least half a kilometer clear of the rocks."

  "Yes, sir," Cal replied, and gently started to turn the tank. He'd jerked it a few times at the very start, but really, he was finding that driving an actual War-Hammer was in some ways easier than running a simulator had been. The feel of the tank, the feel of the quad-tracks rolling over the terrain, the feel of the enormous mass and momentum of it; they all sort of talked to you, Cal thought. And once you stopped feeling like the mass of the tank's armor might crush you, being surrounded by almost half-a-meter of composite-and-alloy armor tended to give you a sense of relaxed security that meshed well with the deliberate, relaxed way you had to drive the War-Hammer.

  "You're doing OK, driver," came the major's voice, which was almost enough of a surprise to get Cal to jerk the controls; the first nice thing he'd heard the major say.

  "Ah, yes, sir," Cal managed to answer.

  ***

  Major Feldman watched the display as his platoon cut across the landscape. No more riding unbuttoned, he thought bitterly. No more stupid losses for his people. The mission in front of him was a hard one, but worth doing. Somewhere out there was the remains of a frame-infantry company, cut off, probably beset by enemies. And he was going to go save them.

  The move was classic Tara O'Connor, he thought. Any other commander, faced with unknown forces at her front, would be doing her best to consolidate and concentrate her strength, pulling back a platoon she'd sent out. But not the colonel. Instead, she'd ordered him to head deeper into what might now be enemy territory, to rescue an Infantry Crops company that might already be dead.

  Well, she could order it. And he could do it.

  "Sir," said the new sensors operator, a female ex-Auxiliary Corps private named Chattarji, who claimed to have some sensors operation training. "I've got something from the #2 drone. Looks light some sort of fighting. Tank gun fire, maybe."

  "Let's see, Private," Feldman said. "Yup. That looks like long range tank fire. Keep the drone high. I don't want to lose it to fragmentation from one of those shots hitting the ground.

  "OK, people," he added, speaking into the platoon comm push, "we have a direction and a target. Let's go!"

  ***

  Bernie ran, trying to keep each leg of her zigzag as random as possible. The gasping sound of her own breathing filled her ears. A part of her mind recalled a line from an old sci-fi book, about walking without rhythm to avoid being eaten by giant sand-worms. Focus, Polawski, you stupid bitch, she thought. Keep running!

  A dozen meters behind her an enemy tank gun round punched into the ground, sending up a spray of dirt and stone fragments.

  The UEN tanks that had been chasing the surviving 9th company framers had refrained from using their main guns at first. At some point, though they had decided that the sport of ultra-long range infantry sniping was a good enough use of their ammunition.

  The tanks were sniping from over seven kilometers away, so each shot took a few seconds to reach out to its target. Even better, there was a wind blowing, kicking up a merciful haze of dust and sand; it probably messed with the tanks' targeting, a bit. Except for that, Bernie thought, they'd probably all be dead already. As it was, a framer running all-out, evading for all she was worth, had a chance of dodging.

  So, it seemed, did an unarmored Earther reporter. The Australian must have been in good condition, Bernie thought, to have kept running for this long. Without a frame and the heavy armor which it allowed a framer to carry, any near miss would kill the reporter. On the other hand, he had no power-pack to supply a signature, however faint, for the enemy tanks to aim at. So far, he was still alive, and so was she.

  A lot of the company weren't. Bernie had seen a shot land too close to Chief-Sergeant Norton; massive fragments of pulverized stone had cut him down, throwing his broken body aside like a discarded rag-doll, in spite of his armor. Captain Wilson had simply disappeared after a shot struck next to him; there one second and then utterly gone when the shower of debris had cleared.

  Some of her squad might still be alive, she thought, but she didn't have the breath to speak into her comm.

  A round exploded in front of her, the blast hitting her as if she'd run into a brick wall. Fragments slammed into the plates of her armor and she felt herself fall. More fragments pelted her from above. She tried to roll back to her feet, but she felt too dazed and weak to force herself back to her feet.

  Out ahead of her, something massive loomed out of the dust and haze. Bernie saw a long main gun; thought, oh, shit, another tank. This was the end, she thought. This is it. This sucks.

  The newcomer tank's main gun fired; the concussion felt like a slap even though Bernie was a hundred meters away.

  ***

  "Let's go, people!" Major Feldman was shouting. "Get those framers aboard. Get 'em on your tanks! Come on!"

  There were two enemy tanks out there. They had been sniping at the frame infantry, like swatting flies with a hammer. Now they were shooting at the Armored Corps tanks.

  "Driver! Reverse!" the major shouted, and Cal slammed the War-Hammer into reverse.

  A line of three explosions erupted in front of the tank as a salvo of UEN shots missed. The inbound rounds were kinetic, but when they hit dirt or stone, the violence of the blast was just as intense as if they'd been high explosive.

  "Driver, stop! Gunner, return fire!" Major Feldman ordered, and the 41 megajoule gun thudded out a three shot burst.

  The War-Hammer fired a salvo of concealment grenades, enveloping everything in smoke, and, hopefully, hiding itself from the UEN gunners.

  "Come on, people!" the major shouted again. "Get those infantry on board!"

  "There's wounded, sir," called Chattarji. "Some of the framers are hurt!"

  Somehow, Cal felt closer to Chattarji than to the other tankers; she'd been in the Auxiliary Corps squad with him; now she was doing the job of sensors operator, just like Cal was doing the driving.

  Cal could see what she meant. Framers were running up to the platoon's tanks, climbing onto the turrets, hanging on for dear life. But some of the figures looming out of the dust weren't running. Some were limping, or carrying their comrades over their shoulders. Some looked like they were crawling.

  Cal saw the ATV mover pull up to a pair of framers, both moving as if wounded, one helping another. In the smoke, he could only see a monochrome outline, but he saw the mover's doors open as someone, maybe even Dave, jumped out to help the two wounded framers aboard.

  And then the mover was gone, replaced by a cloud of dust and smoke, with a shower of jagged fragments and spinning metal panels tumbling down around a burning ruin of twisted metal.

  "Shit! Dave!" Cal shouted, in stunned horror.

  "Keep it tight, driver!" came the major's voice. "Get ready to move the tank!"

  "Yes, sir," Cal managed to say, trying to get the image of the disintegrating mover out of his mind.

  "Alright, driver," the major said a few moment later. "I think we've got all that are left. Reverse the tank two hundred meters, then turn us around and let's get out of here!"

  "Yes, sir!" Cal replied.

  Suddenly there was a shape blocking his vision screens, a man perched on the bow of the tank, hammering at the driver's video sensors and waving frantically.

  "What the hell?" Cal exclaimed.

  The man wasn't a framer. He didn't even look like a soldier; no armor, no weapon, civilian clothes. A civilian, Cal realized. And he was waving his arms and pointing out ahead of the tank, into the wastes where enemy shots were still falling.

  "There's a civilian on the
tank, sir," Cal called into his intercom. "He's in the way of my display sensors!"

  "What? Shit. Tell him to get back onto the turret and hold on!"

  "Yes, sir," Cal said.

  How? he thought a second later. He didn't know of there was any sort of external speaker the driver could use, and even if there was one, he had no idea how to get it to work.

  Oh, shit, he thought, and hit the hatch-open controls.

  "She's still out there!" screamed the civilian, as soon as Cal got his head out of the open hatch. "I saw her fall! She wasn't hit! She's still out there!"

  "Who?!" Cal shouted.

  "Bernie! Sergeant Polawski! A frame-trooper. She fell down just a few meters that way!" the civilian screamed. "You've got to get her!"

  "The major just told me to reverse and get out of here!" Cal shouted. "You're in the way of my video pickups! Get back on the turret and hold on!"

  "No! Come on, we can grab her and bring her back!" the civilian shouted, pulling at Cal. "Come on!"

  "Fuck!" Cal shouted as the man began to pull him out of the tank. "Shit! OK, come on!"

  The two of them ran into the smoke and dust. An inbound round craacked past overhead, loud enough to hurt; the shockwave felt like a slap. The thunder of the explosion as the round impacted on the stony ground was lost in the ear-splitting CRAACK of one of the 41 megajoule guns behind them returning fire.

  "Fuuuuck!!" Cal screamed as he ran, enveloped by the roiling cloud of dust from the tank gun's muzzle blast. At least he had his helmet and visor; the civilian's eyes and ears were unprotected. How he was managing, Cal had no idea.

  "Fuck!" Cal shouted again.

  "Here!" the civilian was shouting, coughing and trying to wipe his eyes from the dust, but also pulling at a figure half-buried in a jumble of dirt and stones. A frame infantry trooper. "Come on! Help me get her!" the civilian shouted.