Major Deskavich is my boss on the organizational chart, being as I’m assigned to the S-3 operations shop. However, as the Tasking, Training, Schools and Movement NCO for the Battalion, I’m really the primary watchdog for Stallion Six. I gather reports from subordinate units and bounce them off my data from Brigade. Who qualified at the Brigade’s ranges, who completed what schooling and who needs to attend a school and who gets to go next, which elements performed to standard in the field and who didn’t. I track corrective training verses incidents of indiscipline, seeing which unit had repeat offenders and which didn’t. I keep track of all that and more, and I report it and make recommendations in accordance with doctrine and disciplinary regulations. Directly to the Battalion Commander. Yeah, I’m the bad guy. It’s my job and I like it.
Alpha Company requires the most tracking, its ranks full of ‘Type A’ personalities. Bold, aggressive, eager for promotions, competitive, with the attitude that whatever they have to do to get ahead is a ticket punch to get up to a higher level. Tracking them to ensure they are qualified for the promotions they seek takes up much of my time, as well as fending off their coercions and bribes to just let them slide. For example, they’re the ones who try to avoid small arms ranges and then later complain that they didn’t get the highest scores because of defective equipment, of course. The Alpha commander is Captain Fiaco, a busty, dusky woman with jet-black hair and mysteriously dark eyes. Her Executive Officer is Lieutenant Rother, a tall skinny man with the deportment of a dispossessed aristocrat. Pale brown eyes and close-cropped yellow hair do nothing to soften his superior attitude.
Bravo Company is made up of ‘Type B’ personalities for the most part, although some of the troops display some characteristics of A and C personalities from time to time. But mostly, they compete against themselves and are happy as long as they can beat their earlier personal bests. They’re the ones who accept awards and promotions with humility and surprise. The Commander is Captain Stovall, a relaxed and friendly man, his Company XO, Chief Logan, the woman sipping iced tea, seated on his left. Seated across the table from them are the Commander and XO of Charlie Company, Master Sergeant Gates and Chief Stone, respectively.
Charlie Company presents the least amount of challenge to me as the Battalion Bad Guy. Made up entirely of ‘Type C’ personalities, the troops in Company C have the most experience. All of them have reenlisted beyond their initial five year commitment and most of them have served in their currently assigned duty positions for more than ten years. They are content to stay where they are and revel in their own high levels of expertise. A machine gunner, for example, is more than happy to spend an entire twenty years as a Trooper, if only allowed to continue to be recognized as one of the best machine gunners in the Brigade. Promotions are slow for ‘C’ types, and they like it that way. They see promotion as necessary evil, a time of transition to new skill sets, new duties. They see change as a chance at doing something wrong, in other words.
The Charlie commander nearly resigned when I brought it to his attention that he’d have to either take a commission or retire after this contract. Those are the rules, enlisted can’t serve beyond twenty years. If he wanted to serve longer, he’d have to take a commission. And that means taking staff rather than command positions for a while, and seeking another promotion before getting a higher-level command. But I did manage to squeeze through an exception to policy waiver, approved through the Bonding Commission itself, to allow Master Sergeant Gates to go on the next contract as a Master Sergeant and not have to retire until that contract was complete. So he’s happy for now. At least until we get back from our next contract. Then he’s retiring. He’ll be past the twenty year mark then, no time to take a commission. Have to do that before the twenty year mark.
Also seated around the conference table are the staff section heads. Captain Shuttler for S-1, a Master Sergeant Payne for S-2 and the Senior Master Sergeant in charge of S-4, along with a Captain and Master Sergeant, Commander and XO of HHS, the Headquarters and Headquarters Service Company. On the battlefield, the Battalion Headquarters shows up as seven Stallion tanks and is labeled HQ. And I have the privilege of commanding one of those tanks, tracking battlefield movements with the tank’s auxiliary status screen, when we’re out on contract. Well, the BN HQ is actually five tanks, with two spare tanks placed with HHS. I command one of the spares, kind of, keeping it functional until another crew in the Battalion needs it to replace theirs, if one breaks down or is damaged, that sort of thing. HHS is a company of service and support and includes wheeled and tracked vehicles. Ambulances, mortars, food, comms, cargo haulers, recovery vehicles, maintenance and repair assets, air defense, stuff like that. A real mixed bag of things to support the Battalion, forty four assorted vehicles and nearly a hundred personnel. The most senior of Captains tend to be put in command of it, after commanding a line company and before taking on the rank of Major. Enlisted commanders are never handed that sort of sandwich. Sort of an initiation reserved for Captains bucking for Major, I guess. A difficult, demanding, thankless job for sure.
Major Wood, the Battalion XO, stepped into the conference room and said, “Gentlemen, the Battalion Commander.”
We all stood. Stallion Six took his seat at the head of the table. Major Wood, the XO, sat to his left. “Take your seats.”
We sat.
Captain Blythe, the A-3, stood and said, “Sir, on behalf of all the members of the Stallion Battalion, welcome back.”
“Thank you A-3. Now what’s been going on while I was gone? You mess up my unit or what?”
“I assure you—”
“Siddown. S-1, brief me.”
The A-3 sat and displayed the S-1 presentation on the screen. Labels to the left with a column of green balls to the right. The S-1 said, “Sir, we’re a hundred percent. We also have a deep bench of 5% over strength in all specialties but intel.”
“Good. Two, what you got?”
The S-2 said, “No immediate threats at this time, and the weather is stable and in line with seasonal expectations.”
“No slide, two?”
“Nossir.”
“Roger, waste of time when you got nothing to say. But prepare to be challenged.”
“Sir?” The S-2 pulled out his personal communicator, prepared to make notes.
“A Brigade survey team comes back tonight. I expect we’re getting a contract soon. Three, what you have for me?”
The A-3 brought up my slide for Tasking. “We met all tasking requirements this quarter, didn’t have to rebuff any of them. But there was some negative feed back from the Sisterhood Friendship tasking.”
Stallion Six said, “How did we mess that up?”
The A-3 pointed at me. “To be fair, I’ll let Sergeant Slaughter explain it in his own words.”
I stood. “Sir, the Sisterhood Friendship tasking failure was due entirely to my poor judgment and misunderstanding. No one else had a hand in it. I received the mission, sent out the takings to subordinate units all on my own, with no—”
Six waved his left hand. “Just tell me what happened.”
I took a deep breath. “I was tasked to provide twenty troops to spend a day with indigenous workers employed by the Brigade here on our compound. Civilian administrative workers. They were to play golf or go bowling or hiking or fishing or whatever. So I screened for unmarried men under age 25, above average intelligence, good medical history. Everything seemed fine. But then a month later the Garrison Commander called me in to his office and chewed my ass. The indigenous office workers were all young women, and many were quitting their jobs to marry our troops. He was mad as hell because he was suddenly having to hire more workers.”
Stallion Six let out a huge belly laugh and the staff laughed along with him. Six said, “You did good, Sergeant. We’re supposed to send our female troops to that stuff. But hey, you did good.”
The A-3 put up my data for training and I said, “Sir, the training—”
�
�You’re good, Sergeant Slaughter.” Six wiped his eyes. “Four, how you doing?”
The S-4 gave his brief. It was long, showing new equipment fielding schedules, vehicle maintenance service charts, low-density specialty training stats, and more things I didn’t care about because I was already tracking most of it. Finally the meeting was over and Six stood and the staff stood.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, good job. Be prepared to meet back here again in a couple of days for a contract brief. I’ll give you a one-hour heads-up on that so hang loose. I have a good feeling about this. That’s all for now.”
The staff saluted and said, “Hundred Percent!”
Six returned the gesture and said “Hundred Percent!” and strode out of the room.
Chapter Two
After the meeting I went to my barracks room and changed into coveralls and took an early lunch at the snack bar. The snack bar was two hundred meters from my barracks, just outside the walk-through gate of the adjacent motor pool. It was two discarded shipping containers welded together, the interior opened up so that one container was the cooking area and the other set up with two-seater booths. A middle-aged Mandarin couple worked inside, the owners. There was also a walk-up window and umbrella tables set up outside. The weather was nice so I used the window to get a hot dog and iced tea and sat at an umbrella table alone, the only customer, it still being too early for lunch. But I was hungry because I’d skipped breakfast so I could go to the office early to prepare my data for the meeting.
I’d just taken the last bite of my hot dog when Corporal Parks came out of the motor pool and got two tacos and a beer from the walk up window. He sat across from me at the umbrella table.
Parks said, “We got another tank, coded out from Alpha.”
“That figures. They tear up more tanks than anybody.”
“Idiots.” Parks took a bite of his taco.
Corporal Parks is my gunner, and we have a driver. She came out of the motor pool and bought a salad and glass of water and sat. She said, “Hi, Sergeant,” bowed her head and crossed her chest in a silent prayer and then started eating.
Her name is Trooper Caldwell and she’s still serving her first year with the Brigade. She has dark brown hair cut so that it hangs longer on the sides and shorter in the back, as though a prankster had just shorn off a pony tail near its base. Tawny skin, her high forehead and wide jaw sit above a sturdy neck, her shoulders wide and her upper torso angled into narrow hips. But still, she looks agreeable and she’s easy to get along with. Certainly not my type with those deep brown eyes, but an honest man would do well to marry her.
Corporal Parks has been with the Brigade for five years and has just reenlisted for another five. He’s often mistaken for my brother, but we’re not related. He’s average height, average build, square-faced with a cleft chin, light brown hair, green eyes, arms a bit too long but muscular, barrel-chested. Just like me. But I’m five years older; he’s twenty four. We worked together before, when I was the Colonel’s gunner and he was the driver. That was in a Hercules tank, the Brigade command tank. That was a great job but it was time for a change.
We three serve as the ‘crew’ of the two spare tanks, or Ordinance Floats, held by the Battalion maintenance section. We perform operator-level maintenance checks and services, run the vehicles through their paces at qualification ranges, and in general advise and assist the Battalion maintenance section with getting them up to standard. When a tank at the Company level gets fouled up beyond the ability of the Company maintenance section to repair, they bring it here and take one of our squared-away tanks. That leaves us with the task of getting the junk they dropped off fixed back up to standard. And mostly it’s Alpha Company screwing up tanks during training. Buncha type A personalities, they all think they have to show off and beat the next guy and generally have a ‘me first me best’ attitude about everything, as individuals. But as a unit, Alpha sucks. Can’t spell ‘team’ with nothing buy ‘I’s. When I first came to the Stallion Battalion I wondered why the units were stacked that way and asked Major Wood about it. Most other Battalions in the Brigade tried to balance out the personalities for more effective team building. Major Wood told me that Stallion Six wanted to put all the Alpha cats in one bag and let them scratch each other. Let the team players and quiet professionals live in peace in B and C companies.
I finished my iced tea and got a refill and sipped it while my crew ate. Caldwell took her glass and tray back to the window and sat back down. She said, “You working with us this afternoon?”
I shrugged. “Nothing happening at the office.”
Parks said, “Suspension brakes.”
I groaned. I knew what that meant. The Stallion tank has an articulated suspension that can be compressed or expanded, and locked into any position in between. When ‘hull-down,’ it’s really hull down touching the ground, the road wheel arms pulled up to the hull, making the tank a half meter lower. Then the suspension can expand, the road wheel arms extended down all the way, to make the tank a full meter and a half taller. Like a pop-up gun, it can drop down and acquire a target with its sensor mast, pop up and shoot the target and drop right back down. The suspension braking system is what locks the suspension at whatever height the crew chooses, or can be used to adjust the ride of the tank across the ground. In effect, the suspension brake takes the place of shock absorbers. A broken suspension brake is a deadline item that makes the vehicle un-drivable, and a tank is a pacing item. So me and my crew won’t get off work until it’s repaired.
I stood. “Let’s do this.”
We entered the motor pool and went into the maintenance bay and met the Motor Officer. She was a Captain with an engineering background, tall and slender with dark red hair pulled back in a pony tail that hung down to the base of the collar of her dark blue mechanic’s coveralls that nearly matched the color of her eyes.
She greeted me with a smile. “Hey, Sergeant Slaughter.”
“Ma’am. What’s going on?”
“There she is,” she pointed at a chassis. Its turret was lifted out and set aside, its upper armor removed and set to the side. The chassis looked naked, rather like a turtle with its shell removed. The fusion bottle at the rear, the lower hull surrounding the turret base and the driver’s compartment like a tub, the torsion bars of the suspension sticking out the sides at the base, the road wheels removed. The final drive electric motors and the sprockets at the front looked like sunken eyes peering out to each side, the sprocket teeth, eyelashes.
She pointed outside through the open bay door. “The track is off; you can go square that away.”
“Got it.”
Me and my crew went out and inspected the track and identified eight dead track shoes. Two were cracked; the rest, the track shoe pins were off center which indicated worn or damaged bushings. On a tank less than six months old. Alpha really knew how to screw up a tank. Trooper Caldwell and Corporal Parks went and signed out tools from the motor bay. I used a breaker bar and a socket to remove the nuts. Caldwell held the L-shaped track guide pin tool while Parks hit it with a sledgehammer. First she held the flat nub against the track pin, to get it started, then the short end, then the long end. I used the pinch-point crowbar to pry the bad shoes out. Caldwell used a cart to wheel over the new track shoes and I helped Parks set them in place. Caldwell and Parks hammered the track guide pin into the new track shoe joints to ensure the bushings were aligned, then hammered the new pins in from the opposite side. I held the new shoes up at a two hundred and fifty mil angle, so that the shoes would ride flat after they were joined. This took the better part of three hours and I was tired. We then loaded the old track shoes and pins and nuts onto the cart and hauled them to the recovery bin, wiped down and returned the tools, and reported back to the Motor Officer.
She looked at me, glanced at a checklist and said, “The mechanics are done repairing the suspension brakes. Check inside the hull for any loose material or debris.”
“Roger. Clean
the inside of the hull. Got it.” Caldwell and Parks got shop rags and a can of denatured alcohol and climbed up inside the tank’s hull and began wiping the surfaces down. It was the first time I’d seen a Stallion tank with the upper hull removed. I stood on a ladder and looked at the power pack. It was different from anything I’d ever seen or heard of before. Instead of a single, large fusion bottle with a single main power cable coming off it, there were two small fusion bottles. There was a mess of wires leading between them and a junction box toward the front, more confusing than a plate of spaghetti. From the junction box, four primary and two smaller cables led away. And on each side of the junction box was a hydraulic line, one in and one out.
The Motor Officer said, “Make way.”
I moved to the side and sat on the edge of the hull, my legs dangling into the engine compartment. The Motor Officer climbed the ladder and pointed at the fusion bottles. “Dual Fusion, Sergeant Slaughter. The magnetic fields feed off each other and increase the agitation of the deuterium.”
“Huh.” I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“It’s efficient but requires more control. But the savings in mass is amazing.”
The War for Profit Series Omnibus Page 58