Armored Tears

by Mark Kalina

  Cal ran up and the two of them began to drag the figure —a framer, a woman, Cal realized, with a sergeant's stripes faintly outlined on the front of her helmet— out of the debris.

  "What the fuck," the woman said, in a confused voice. "What?"

  "Come on, ma'am," Cal shouted. "Come on, Sergeant!"

  "What's going on?" the sergeant asked.

  "We need to get back to the tanks, Sergeant!" Cal shouted. "We need to get out of here!"

  "Tanks? Our tanks? Where?!"

  "That way!" Cal shouted, pointing over his shoulder. "Let's go!"

  "Right," the frame-trooper sergeant said, and suddenly picked up both Cal and the civilian, each with one arm. "Let's go!" she said, taking off in a lumbering run, the servos of her fame whining in protest.

  The tank wasn't where they'd left it. Smoke was still everywhere, and the dust kicked up by tank guns firing and tank rounds hitting the ground. But there was not even the shadow of the War-Hammer where it had been; just a trail of ripped up ground left by its tracks.

  "They left," Cal breathed, eyes going wide behind his helmet visor. "They fucking left us!" he screamed.

  "Keep cool," said the sergeant. "Keep it tight!" But her voice verged on panic, sounding anything but cool and tight to Cal.

  "Oh, god," Cal whispered.

  A War-Hammer loomed suddenly out of the smoke. A helmeted head projected from one of the turret hatches, three meters up.

  "Get the fuck on!" screamed a voice that sounded like the major's. "And if one of you is my driver, get the fuck back in and fucking drive!"

  26.

  General Alan Stirling looked at his displays and wondered if the sense of numb shock was an asset or a liability. The sense of glassy unreality, he thought, might be all that was keeping him functional.

  Reports from scientific sensors inside the gate dome were still getting through —by optical-wire phone lines, of all things— and his technical advisors were now unanimous in their judgment of the readings; the Tannhauser gate was still, somehow, intermittently operational, and the UEN had managed to bring in at least one wave of reinforcements.

  Whatever method they had of powering the gate, it didn't seem to be able to operate continuously, but there was no telling when the UEN forces would be able to manage another opening and receive even more reinforcements.

  What they already had on the ground was bad enough. Eye witnesses had reported Peace Force framers in large numbers, and forward units of the Defense Force had come under heavy missile fire. Meanwhile drones were being burned out of the sky in a manner that proved that the pissers had a powerful battlefield laser system set up for air and anti-bombardment defense.

  And now there were rumors of UEN vehicles being seen in the vicinity of the gate complex. Maybe even tanks. Getting tanks though a gate wasn't impossible, after all. A few seconds per tank was all it would take. How many did they already have, Stirling wondered?

  His own forces, meanwhile, were still racing to get organized. An improvised defensive line had been established between the gate structure and the gate control and power facilities, almost a hundred kilometers away. Right now, it was being held by a few companies of frame infantry, a company of tanks, and men and women taken from any available Defense Force unit, acting as light infantry. A hard push from the UEN forces could break the line, he knew, and take the facilities.

  "We have to stop any move to the control and power facilities," he said into the silence.

  "Worst case, we could blow them. The pissers will never take them intact," said an Infantry Corps brigadier-general named Cooper.

  Stirling knew Cooper's reputation as a hard-charger; the man had been the one in charge of the desperate, mad, airborne framer assault on the gate dome in '70. Stirling had learned to work with him since, though not without some friction. Still, Cooper, though blunt and often abrasive, was far from stupid.

  "The UEN has already shown they have some other power source," Stirling reminded the man. "Blowing our facility might do nothing to stop them."

  "We have forces coming on line rapidly," said an Armored Corps colonel named McMaster. "But I think we need to accept the fact that the UEN has won aerospace superiority. All our satellites are down, and we've picked up hints of enemy 'ghosts' at the edges of our surface laser arrays' range."

  "I'm afraid that sounds right," admitted Colonel Farber; she was still the senior-most Aerospace Corps officer present and her superiors seemed content to leave her in place as the liaison to high command for now.

  "How could they bring 'ghosts' thought the gate?" asked Cooper, sounding belligerent.

  "I think," the Aerospace colonel said, "that we have to take as factual the last report from that 'ghost' we had. I think the UEN has managed to land forces into the southern wastes."

  "How?" demanded Cooper.

  "An orbital Tannhauser gate," replied Farber. Cooper towered over her, glaring, but she met his gaze evenly enough. Not calmly, Stirling thought, but then, no one in the command facility was calm just now.

  "It's possible," interjected Major Villers, the only officer present from the Technical Corps. "They could have generated a new gate, if they started right after the last war; it would be opening just about now. Or... they could have reactivated the original exploratory gate. I know that official UEN policy was to stop using all first generation gates due to instability, but..."

  "It doesn't actually matter, does it?" said Stirling. "Whatever the source, we have reports of multiple engagements in the southern wastes."

  "Yes, sir," confirmed one of his staffers. "We had a garbled report from a frame-infantry company; the 9th, I think it was. And then there's a battalion of tanks that was doing a publicity-stunt escort mission for a charity convoy to the refugee camps. The battalion's colonel says her forces are holding against UEN attacks."

  "So we can take it as fact that the UEN they managed to sneak something into the southern wastes," Stirling said.

  "Sir," said Farber, "along those lines, if I may remind you of the report we had from that 'ghost'..."

  "I remember, Colonel," Stirling said. "One of your 'ghosts' reported tracking something like two-dozen re-entry vehicles..."

  "Twenty-three reentry vehicles," said Farber, "large ones. The report was somewhat garbled, and then it cut off. We've since confirmed the loss of the aircraft. No sign of survivors."

  "Twenty-three... that's got to be wrong," Stirling mused, shaking his head. "I doubt the UEN even has that many, in total. But if they deployed decoys as they re-entered... there could be as many as a half-dozen. You could cram a battalion of infantry into a big orbital cargo rocket. Or a platoon of tanks."

  "A serious problem," said Cooper, "if those forces plough into the back of our defensive perimeter."

  "Well, ladies and gentlemen," said Stirling, "I think this might be the first bit of decent luck today. We've got a whole battalion of tanks, led by Lieutenant-Colonel O'Connor, on site to hold back the second UEN force. She was the officer who led the relief of our infantry in the gate fight in '70, you'll recall."

  "Damn good," said Cooper, barring his teeth in a sudden, hard grin. "She got the job done back in '70. At least that's one thing that's not in the crapper today."

  "Can we get her reinforcements?" asked Colonel McMaster.

  "Not right now," replied Stirling. "She has enough force to hold, and nothing can get past the Isthmus Highlands while we hold them. We've got a laser defense station, and we've got a crack battalion of tanks. We can hold the back door. Let's focus on the front door, or the pissers will open the gate wide and then it won't matter a bit if we hold the Isthmus Highlands or not."

  27.

  "Glad to have you back, Feldman," Tara said, crouching in the shadow of Feldman's War-Hammer, conferring with her company commanders. Major Feldman crouched with her, both of them staying in the shadow. Captain Younger didn't bother; there was no room in the shade for his bulk, so he stood tall, forcing the other two officers to lo
ok up at him.

  "You did good, Major Feldman," Tara added, studying the face of her second-in-command. He looked a bit worn, a bit tired. It didn't worry her; like him or not, Tara knew that Feldman was tough.

  "We managed to rescue twenty-two frame troopers," Feldman said, "and a foreign civilian. Out of a company of eighty-one people. And I lost three of my people, and five Auxiliary Corps troops. I suppose I could count the three surviving Auxiliary Corps people as rescues, too, except I've got two of them as crew in my tank now, and the third one in another tank... so I'm not sure how they count. How does any of that count as doing good, Colonel?"

  "You did what you had to do," Tara said. "You pulled off the rescue. We didn't leave our people behind. You did good. But what's this about a foreign civilian?"

  "Yeah. Seems that there was an Earth reporter on assignment, taking some sort of field trip with the 9th Frame Infantry Company. When it all fell into the pot, he managed to escape with them. We picked him up along with the other survivors of the 9th.

  "Actually," Feldman added with a half-laugh, "he sort-of kidnapped my driver to help him save one of the frame troopers we brought back. I talked with him, the reporter, I mean. He's from the Pacific Alliance, so I didn't have him arrested or shot or anything. I think he's back at the aid station right now, helping with the wounded."

  "Hah. Well, that's something new," Younger said, sounding bemused.

  Feldman nodded, took a deep breath and let it out.

  "Their tanks are something new," he said. "Not the M58s we were up against last time. Heavy fucking armor. My people scored some hits that just seemed to bounce off. We had to concentrate fire from a couple of tanks... I think that might have knocked one of them out."

  "We saw 'em," Tara said. "T-66s. Russian. As for heavy armor, yeah. But at seven kilometers, our Type-51's frontal armor will shed a 41 megajoule hit as often as not, too. We managed to take them out OK at closer ranges. Though I'll grant you; not too many one-shot stops. They are heavily armored."

  "How long will our ammo hold out, if we have to fire bursts at everything?" Feldman asked.

  "As long as it can," Tara replied. "Good job loading your tanks up with extra rounds from that Auxiliary base, by the way. We'll distribute the excess among the tanks with the highest ammo expenditure.

  "There's another thing, though," she added. "Enemy reconnaissance. I noticed they didn't use drones when they sent in their first attack. I've been thinking about that, since. I've come to the conclusion that they didn't send in drones because they didn't need to. I think that we have to assume the UEN has some sats up."

  "Which means they're watching us, huh?" Younger said. "Maybe even now?"

  "It's the way to bet," Tara replied.

  "Damn," Feldman said. "We don't have anything in the way of anti-sat weapons. The laser installation could blind them, but only if we knew exactly where they were. Which we don't. Damn it!"

  "Right," Tara said. "But we can do some things. Let's move the tanks to new firing positions. A parallel move, not giving up any ground. We can use our current fighting positions as alternates to shift to once the fighting starts. We don't know when a UEN bird might be looking, so we do the move under a smoke-screen, and then we set up our camo-netting. Not perfect, but at least the pissers won't know exactly where we are."

  "Yeah, that sounds good, Boss," Younger said.

  "Yes, ma'am," Feldman agreed. "Let's do it. Fast."

  Tara watched her company commanders hustle off to set up the maneuver, wondering again at the wisdom of the Defense Force's stripped-down policy on staff and combat officers. She had no dedicated executive officer, no staff officers of any sort out in the field; a legacy of desperation and maverick informality from the Defense Force's earliest days. As it was, managing her battalion would have been impossible without the integrated Defense Force data-cloud and dedicated military operations "software agent" programs. Of course half the time, the information she needed wasn't in the data-cloud due to info-warfare security concerns. Not that it mattered now, since the whole data-cloud was down, along with the comm satellites. All in all, it still made life damn hard on field commanders.

  Oh, well, she thought, at least it keeps the would-be military bureaucrats in check.

  She reached back put hand on the bow of Feldman's tank, pulling herself up to standing. She felt tired. Not as tired as she was going to feel soon, though, she knew.

  Feldman's driver was head-up in his hatch, and she suddenly met the man's eyes. A very young man, a boy, almost, and not the driver she knew Feldman had had that morning.

  "What's your name, soldier?" Tara asked the ragged-looking blond face projecting from the driver's compartment. The boy didn't look familiar, except for the haunted look in his eyes.

  "Piper, ma'am. Cal Piper," he said.

  "You're new, aren't you?" she asked, and the boy nodded.

  "Just remember your training, Piper," she said, putting calm confidence into her voice. Fake or not, she thought, a young soldiers didn't need to hear anything but confidence from his battalion commander.

  "Ma'am... I... I'm from the Auxiliary Corps," the boy said. "I've just been driving since the regular driver... got hit..."

  "Auxiliary Corps?" Tara said, narrowing her eyes. "And you've been driving the major's tank in battle?"

  The boy nodded.

  "Well, then... Piper, you're not Auxiliary Corps anymore. You're an Armored Corps driver now. And I've seen worse. Carry on, Piper."

  Cal watched the colonel go, somewhere between exhilaration and awe. Lieutenant-colonel Tara "Legs" O'Connor was a legend, and here he was, in her unit, serving under her command. And she had just said he was Armored Corps. He wasn't sure about how that would work, given what he knew about Defense Force bureaucracy, but he was pretty sure that if Colonel O'Connor said it, then it was going to stick. Armored Corps!

  The sound of conversation made him look over to his right. Some of the surviving framers were checking over their frames in the shadow of a tarp set up next to one of the tanks, and Cal saw Bernie —Sergeant Polawski— the lovely redhead girl he'd helped, was one of them. He'd had a chance to talk to her for a minute, to learn her name, and to catch her smile when she thanked him for rescuing her, which made the terrifying, mad dash out of the tank feel completely worth it.

  Cal saw that she had taken off her frame and her armor, and was wearing just her fatigues. And as he watched, she doffed the her fatigue tunic, too, leaving her in a halter-style sports bra. Her bare midriff was athlete-toned, with a ribbon-like pattern of tattoos running across it, weaving up from where her fatigue pants covered her hips. Another scrollwork of tattoos covered most of her back that he could see. Her skin was pale enough that she must have needed to constantly take anti-UV supplements —a product of Arcadian biotech— to avoid perpetual sunburn under the fierce rays of Ravi, Arcadia's sun. Cal found he couldn't make himself look away.

  By some chance —or maybe it was true what people said about being able to feel someone's gaze— she looked over in his direction, meeting his eyes. Cal could feel his face coloring, but she just grinned at him and waved.

  He waved back, feeling like a fool.

  Damn it, he thought, he was an Armored Corps tanker! A driver who had taken his tank into combat! He wasn't going to let himself make an embarrassed fool of himself in front of a beautiful woman, was he?

  Taking a deep breath and telling himself that this wasn't as scary as being shot at —or jumping out of his tank in the middle of a fight— had been, Cal pulled himself out of the driver's hatch of his tank and slid down the armored glacis of the bow to the ground.

  Sergeant Polawski watched him jog over, standing there with a hand cocked on her hip.

  "Ah... Sergeant..." Cal said, trying not to stammer.

  "Yeah?" she asked, looking him over. "You're the tank driver who stopped to pick me up, aren't you?"

  "Ah, yeah," Cal said, suddenly realizing that she'd only seen him with his visor d
own till now. "I'm Cal Piper. I'm... I was Auxiliary Corps, actually. I just got transferred to Armored Corp."

  "OK. What can I do for you, Cal?" she asked.

  "Ah," he said, "well, actually, I was wondering... if..."

  "Come on, Cal," she said, smiling again; it was an amazing smile, Cal thought.

  "If I could ask you out on a date. When all this is over," he managed to say.

  Her eyes, amazing hazel eyes, went wide. "You're asking me out on a date? In the middle of a fucking war?"

  "Well, ah, I mean, the war can't go on forever.... So, ah, yeah. I guess I am."

  Bernie laughed, grinning, eyes wide. "My God, Cal. That's... that's something else," she said. "That's awesome! I've never had anyone try that sort of line on me. OK, man, I am impressed. Yeah. Yeah, if we make it out of this, we can go on a date. I mean, why not? You saved my life, you're kinda cute, and you've got some serious brass. And besides, who knows; it might be fun, being the older woman..." she said, still grinning, shaking her head.

  "Ah, thanks," Cal said, trying not to start stammering.

  "You're welcome, Cal," she said, still grinning as she turned away.

  28.

  Colonel Robert Mbala of the UEN Peace Force looked over the controlled chaos of the operations camp and smiled. Not only a the largest field command he'd ever had, but a command on another world... and perhaps the most crucial command in the history of the UEN Peace Force.

  General Bannerman would go down in history as the brains behind the operation, the planner, the thinker. But Mbala planned to have his own name recorded as the commander who won the battle.

  "Sir," reported one of his aides, a Peace Force major, trim and neat in perfectly pressed camouflage fatigues. "We have a satellite communication from Major Hafez at the gate facility. Our forces hold the facility and are currently holding back Arcadian attacks of increasing strength. The major asks if it would be possible to expedite our push from the south to relieve pressure on his forces."