Armored Tears

by Mark Kalina

  "118 seconds, sir," the sensors operator said, barely managing to speak above a whisper.

  "Not enough!" the commander hissed. "Main engine burn! Full power! Get us to a higher orbit!"

  "We're not oriented for a main engine burn," shouted the navigation officer.

  "Then orient us!"

  "Orienting!"

  The thrum of the maneuvering thrusters sounded, loud enough to hear inside the command sphere.

  "We're not going to make it!" the executive officer wailed.

  "Weapons officer!" the commander barked, "can you engage the inbound debris with our laser?"

  "What, sir? Ah, I... that is, I can try. I don't have a clear target. There's no clear target for the laser."

  "Target the largest piece of debris and burn it down!" the commander shouted. "Navigator, can you maneuver us through a gap that our laser makes in the debris field?"

  "I... but... but we're reorienting for main engine burn to a higher orbit, sir!"

  "Never mind that, Navigator!" the executive officer screamed, voice shrill. "Do what the commander said!"

  "I... yes, sir!"

  "No!" screamed the commander. "Keep going with the orbit boosting maneuver!"

  "What? Yes, sir!"

  "Fifty seconds to convergence," the sensors operator said softly.

  Outside, the OSV's main engine ignited, starting to push the Yang Liwei into a higher orbit. The engine noise made everything in the command sphere vibrate slightly.

  The OSV had cleared about 60% of the diameter of debris cloud when its orbit converged with the remains of the two Arcadian weather satellites. Dozens of tiny fragments and six larger ones, massing a kilogram or more, struck the Yang Liwei.

  The OSV had been designed to survive hits from high energy lasers, and to shrug off debris from nearby enemy targets destroyed by its own laser. The minor fragments scoured the armored surface of the OSV, ripping away external sensors and solar panels, but were unable to breach its hull. The major fragments were a different matter. Against kilogram-mass fragments moving at more than 16 kilometers a second, the OSV's armor might as well have been aluminum foil.

  The OSV's structure exploded into a spray of alloy and composite confetti. Sensors, laser arrays, radiator panels and solar panels all turned into a cloud of expanding, glittering fragments. One fragment of debris, almost 2 kilograms in mass, struck dead on to the command sphere, mercifully ending the screaming, tumbling horror of the Yang Liwei's crew.

  Some fragments of the OSV were kicked into higher orbits. Other fragments were kicked down, to burn up over the empty seas of Arcadia is a spectacular shower of glowing shooting stars.

  ***

  By the time the remains of the Yang Liwei came around over the landmass of Arcadia, an hour later, there was only an expanding cloud of debris for the Aerospace Corps telescopes to see.

  Only then did Major Newman and the Aerospace Corps technicians start cheering.

  31.

  Major Anwar Hafez frowned as the reports from the front came in. His last push towards the power facility had been stopped cold, and now, if his subordinates' reports were to be believed, the numbers of Arcadian tanks facing his defenses was increasing. His forces could keep them at bay with enough anti-tank missiles and his remaining two tanks... but only if his people had enough missiles. The more tanks the Arcadians brought forward, the harder it became to keep his surviving tanks out of harm's way and the less defensive firepower per tank his infantry could deploy. And if the Arcadians chose to accept casualties and push, his men would quickly begin to run out of missiles.

  And now, there was even worse news; the suspected loss of the OSV Yang Liwei. If it was true —and Hafez feared it was— then the UEN forces could no longer count on aerospace superiority. The whole plan felt like it was beginning to unravel; an unpleasant, disturbing feeling, Hafez thought.

  "Captain," Hafez said to one of his aides, "I want you to go check again on the progress our technical section is making with using the modular power source to energize the gate again."

  "Sir, I've spoken with them. They insist that if it can be done at all, it would, at best, generate enough power to open the gate for only a matter of seconds. Not enough time to inform our forces on Earth to react to the opening by sending reinforcements. And they tell me that there's a substantial chance the attempt, succeed or fail, would cause a major explosion; the power unit could go off like a bomb, they said."

  Hafez frowned again, but said nothing. He hated to be passive, on the defensive, but it seemed that all that was left was to hope that Colonel Mbala would finally arrive with the overwhelming forces he had at his disposal. That would put an end to any danger from the Arcadians. But it was out of Hafez' hands.

  "Very well," he said at length. "Then get communications established with Colonel Mbala, and tell him that he must push through more quickly."

  Hafez paused, frowned deeper still, as if contemplating something bitter.

  "Tell him our victory depends on his rapid arrival," Hafez said finally, looking as if he wanted to spit the taste of his own words out of his mouth.

  ***

  "Are you sure?" General Stirling asked, looking intently at the Aerospace Corps officer in front of him.

  "We can't be sure, sir," replied the Aerospace Corps colonel. "We got one pass, and the sats we were using were weather birds, so their sensors weren't made for tactical recon, but from what I saw, it's the way to bet."

  "But... how many launchers would it have taken the UEN?"

  "Something like two dozen big ones, at least."

  "So your 'ghost' crew was right," Stirling said, softly. "Twenty-three cargo ships. My god."

  "Sir," interjected McMaster, the Armored Corps colonel, "if it is true, we have to reinforce O'Connor's battalion. If they break past her, they'll ram right into the rear of our forces holding the power and control facilities. We've been concentrating against the gate; our position at the facilities can't handle a major force of enemy armor. Besides which, even if we get our units reoriented, it'll take more forces to hold them on the open flat lands than in the highlands."

  "You're right," General Stirling said. "Scrape up as much as you can spare without compromising our advance on the gate facility and send it to reinforce those highlands as fast as you can."

  "I just hope there's still someone there to reinforce," the Armored Corps colonel said softly.

  ***

  What was left of the battalion was as ready as Tara could make it. The resumption of short-wave communication with Command was a relief, but the news they gave her wasn't. Two more battalions of UEN tanks were on their way, to try to smash aside what was left of her one, battered battalion.

  And she had to stop them. The fight for the gate was slowly turning to the Arcadians' favor, but if the forces she was holding back made it through the Isthmus Highlands and plowed into the back of the units fighting to take back the gate...

  It all always came down to the gate, Tara thought. It felt almost like a nightmare, fighting for the damned gate again. Didn't we bleed and suffer enough for it the last time? Didn't we? Didn't I?

  But there was no point to that sort of thinking. The enemy was coming, and her forces had to hold. That was all.

  There was a little time, according to Command, and Tara planned to use it to walk from tank to tank, and talk to her people face to face.

  A snippet of Shakespeare suddenly occurred to her; Henry V; not at all her usual entertainment, but it had been required reading at the Armored Corps Officer School. There had been a prologue, where the titular king had walked around talking to his men before a desperate battle; "A little touch of Harry in the night."

  Well, she was no king, this wasn't the battle of Agincourt, and it wasn't yet night. But hopefully her people would think that a little touch of "Legs" would do more good than harm.

  Some of her people had problems, and some of those, she could even solve.

  "Had to send Wilkerson t
o the aid station, Colonel," one of her own platoon's tank commanders, a sergeant named Hall, told her when she checked with him.

  "Wilkerson... your sensors operator?" Tara asked.

  "Yeah. He got a whack on the head when we took a hit. Holy shit, it rocked us. Armor held, though. But after the fight, when he got out of the tank, he started getting dizzy... vomiting and stuff. I had to order him to head back there," the sergeant said, jerking a finger over his shoulder in the rough direction of where the aid station had been set up, near the laser installation.

  "Did you get a replacement yet from crews who made it out of one of the knocked out tanks?" Tara asked.

  "Nah," the sergeant said. "Most of 'em are banged up, or else they're working hard at the aid station. And anyway, there's no transport right now; one of the utils is down with a mechanical fault, one got wrecked in the last fight; enemy shot hit close enough that the debris spray wrecked it... and the last one's up at the aid station right now. The support section's got those frame infantry guys helping carry people to the aid station now. Turns out framers are good for something after all," he added with a grim smile.

  "I'd roll the tank back there," he went on, "but that'd mean breaking concealment, so that's a no-go. And it's a bit too far to walk; be a bit embarrassing to be hiking on back there when the pissers show up again."

  "True, that," Tara said with a grim smile of own.

  "But I figure I can run the sensors myself, from the commander's station," the sergeant told her. "It's not like the pissers are making themselves hard to find..."

  "Colonel, excuse me," an unfamiliar voice called to Tara as she walked, trying to think of some way to get a replacement crewmember to Sergeant Hall's tank.

  She turned and found herself looking at a good-looking if somewhat haggard looking man in civilian dress; this must be the Earther reporter, she realized.

  "Mr..." Tara said, and then paused. "I don't know your name, sorry."

  "Aran Hogan," the man replied. "I just wanted to know if there was any way I could help."

  "Help? You're a UEN civilian, aren't you?"

  "Well... I'm a civilian, anyway. I'm... well, let's say Australian. Pacific Alliance. Not really UEN. Especially not now. I... I can do some things. I can lift and carry, at any rate. And I know drones. I mean, mostly civilian models, but I've run series 70 Japanese drones, too. More than once."

  "We use modified series 70s..." Tara said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone, looking at Aran with narrowed eyes.

  Aran nodded. "I saw. That's why I mentioned it," he said.

  "Are you volunteering, Mr. Hogan?" Tara asked, meeting the man's eyes.

  Aran paused for a long second.

  "Yes," he said, taking a deep breath. "Yes, I am,"

  Now it was Tara's turn to be silent for a moment.

  "Very well, Hogan. I could call you something silly like 'provisional recruit,' but I'll skip it, if it's all the same with you. I could make noise about what happens if you try to betray us, too. But somehow, I think I'll skip that too.

  "You say know drones? Well, I've got a tank with no sensors operator. Let's see if you're better than nothing, Hogan."

  ***

  "So you're our new sensors operator?" asked a wiry-looking man with coal-black skin and flat, haunted-looking eyes.

  "I think so... sir... Sergeant," Aran added, noticing the three stripes on the man's jumpsuit sleeve. "I know the Series 70 drones, at any rate," he added.

  "Boss says you're a civvie who volunteered," the man said, his tone utterly flat.

  "That's right, sir."

  "Just 'sergeant,'" the man said. "I'm Hall. Sergeant Wayne Hall. I run #3 tank, 1st platoon, 1st company. What are you called, civvie?"

  "Aran, Sergeant. Aran Silaban Hogan... but just Aran is best."

  "OK, Aran. You can't do the whole sensors operator's job, but I guess you can watch a screen, and if you know drones, well, we have some drones left that it would be nice if we could use. And let's face it; we're desperate.

  "So welcome to the tank."

  ***

  Tara kept walking. The men and women she'd spoken to all sounded... ready, confident, and fake. Fake bravado, masking real fear and real courage. She'd seen it before. Felt it before. Hell, she was feeling it now, and feeding it to her people. Did they even believe her? Or did they see the fear and fake bravado as clearly as she did?

  The burned-out tanks loomed in the slanting afternoon shadows. It should be dark, she thought. It felt like it should be night. So much tiredness, so much weary pain, so it should have been night. It felt off, somehow, to be so tired, and so resigned, with the huge orange sun still riding in a blue sky overhead.

  The burned out tanks mocked her, some of them. A few were obvious wrecks, but others looked almost intact, as if they could come to life and fight. As if their crews weren't burned to a crisp or blown to bloody chunks inside their turrets.

  Suddenly she stopped and blinked.

  "Decoys," she said to herself. "Decoys..."

  They could use the dead tanks as decoys! If they rigged them with some smoke grenades, and working laser range finders; the framers would have some of those on their weapons... might even have some spares. An enemy tank that saw one of the more intact hulks wouldn't be sure if they were looking at a dead tank or not. And if the "dead" tank suddenly popped smoke, or started hitting them with a ranging laser, they'd know it wasn't dead. They engage it. They'd waste their fire against tanks that were already dead, and make themselves targets for her surviving tanks!

  "Feldman! Younger!" she shouted into her portable comm. "I got an idea! We've got some work to do!"

  ***

  "You got your drivers and gunners familiar with the new fallback positions, Younger?" Tara asked.

  The big captain nodded.

  "Everyone has the weak spots for the T-66 loaded into their gunnery computers?"

  "Yes, Boss," Younger said.

  They had sent people up to the nearest knocked out T-66s and looked, really looked, at the shape and angle of the armor. Most tanks had weak spots; inevitable shot-traps, or places where the shape of the tank meant that the armor couldn't present the optimal angle or slope to an inbound round. An hour's careful looking around had given them a good clue where the new enemy tanks were most vulnerable.

  "And the decoys? Are the decoys in your sector are set up?" Tara asked.

  Younger nodded. He looked, she thought, as if he were made of stone, elemental, unbreakable, but eroded.

  "We got it, Legs," he said, in a voice gone soft. "We got it."

  "I know," she said. "I'm counting on it. On you. Your people, your company... they're doing real good. Those kids... they're doing real good."

  Younger was looking down, shaking his head, his voice gone soft and slow.

  "I know it, Legs," he said. "They're good kids. All of them. I... I want to bring them home, Legs. I want to get them home alive. All of them. All that's left... And I know I can't. I know I won't be able to. Kids, Legs; eighteen, nineteen, twenty. They should be out partying... or getting KP duty for going on a joyride in their tanks n' telling their C.O. it was a 'training run.' Not this."

  Tara reached out to put her hand on his shoulder.

  "What were we doing when we were that age?" he said, standing up and looking away just before her hand could reach him.

  "At twenty? I was training in the Armored Corps Officer School," Tara said, from behind him. "At nineteen, though? I was a gunner at Hope Springs in '61, riding one of those old C9 tanks. You know the ones? We smuggled them in from Canada in the late '50s, in pieces... assembled them out in the desert. First tanks Armored Corps had. They've still got two of them, set up as gate guard displays at the Armored Corps Officers School."

  "I know. I seen 'em," Younger said, still not turning around, looking out to the direction that the UEN tanks would have to come from.

  "I was still in basic training in '61," he went on. "When the fight at Hope Springs started, t
hey handed out rifles and had us stand watch at the training barracks. In case the UEN tried to move in and shut us down. Guess I'm a few years younger than you, huh?

  "Fuck," he added, turning to face her again, looking down to meet her eyes. "What a fucked up thing, Legs. Two, three generations of kids, wearing the uniform, fighting, dying. It's fucked up, Legs."

  "What can we do, man? We fight, we win, they come back, we fight again," Tara said. "We had seven peaceful years. That's something."

  "Yeah. Seven years. You ever wonder, Legs, what it'd be like if... I don't know. Out of the service? Just living life? Having a peaceful life? A family?"

  Tara managed a tired laugh. "A peaceful life? I'm not sure I'd know what to do with it, Younger. Maybe... maybe someone else can have that. If I do my job."

  "It doesn't always have to be you, doing the job, Legs. It won't always have to be you, will it?"

  "Don't know..." she said, looking at the man in front of her, and wondering. There's been a time... once; both of them had been drunk; they'd wound up in bed together, woken up together. Daniel Younger had been a surprising gentle lover, she remembered, and her prosthetic legs hadn't seemed to bother him. But both of them had known that it was a bad idea, and they'd never done it again.

  What would it be like, Tara wondered, to see him like that every day? Every morning?

  "I don't know," she said again. "Now's not the time to worry about it, though."

  "Yeah," Younger agreed. "Let's get this job done, then." He smiled wearily. "You take care, Tara, huh?" he said and turned to walk back to his company's tanks.

  "Yeah... you too, Daniel," Tara said softly, to his retreating back.

  Feldman was walking over as Younger headed back. The bigger man gave the smaller a slow nod and then kept walking back to his own company's tanks.

  Tara said nothing as Feldman plunked down next to her. He looked worn, unshaven, tired. But still focused.

  Out ahead, a team from two tank crews was working together to replace the rear-right tread of Feldman's own tank. His new Auxiliary Corps driver was in there, pulling his weight. Piper, his name was, Tara recalled.