by David Poyer
They reached the paddy wall, panting, mud-smeared, exhausted, but without being fired on again. The wall was like a dike, running roughly north and south, about twenty feet above the lower ground behind them and ten feet above the ground ahead. Bodies in green uniforms were sprawled around their weapons. Some were still trying to crawl. The Marines kicked their rifles away, or shot them if they wouldn’t give them up. Beyond the dike to the west flat ground stretched away, stitched with small sheds and, between them, what looked like vegetable fields with stakes and nets. To protect the crops from birds, Hector figured. He’d seen nets like that growing up. In the far distance more brown mountains rose.
Karamete pulled the block out of the enemy MG and whipped it sidehanded out into the paddy. Hector fired several rounds into an antitank launcher with bodies sprawled around it, then looked again at the flat land ahead and wished he hadn’t. They might need a weapon like that if the enemy counterattacked with tanks.
Well, fuck, too late now … should think before he acted … He checked his tablet. The flanking platoons had reached their objective line too. He didn’t understand, it looked like they were parked out here practically in the open, but those were the orders.
“Rampart, consolidate in place,” came down from Company. He pointed his guys out into a hasty 180 and started improving his position, basing it on the dugout they’d just captured. The tablet recommended his geometry of fire and it looked okay, so he got his guns digging in right and left along the paddy wall and threw OPs out. As Vacante, the sark, deployed ground sensors a kilometer to their front, Hector got on the tactical for ACE reports.
A rank of slowly marching machines caught his eye. The robots, just now catching up. They dragged mud-caked extremities through the soft soil as if they were wading. He put the word out to send one back from each squad to bring up more ammunition, and to reintegrate the rest into the fire teams as they arrived.
The drones were still buzzing above them, orbiting, dipping in, optical turrets flicking from one face to the next. Hector waved at them. It was futile, they wouldn’t respond, but he was worried that with the mud covering his guys and the mist over the battlefield the things might not be able to read the uniforms. He was still waving when Karamete bent and picked up a Korean rifle out of the mud.
“Don’t—!” Vacante shouted.
“No,” Hector yelled, taking a step toward her.
The drone had been headed away, toward the front, but suddenly it banked. It rotated in midair and banked again, back toward her. The platoon guide froze, staring upward at it as Hector jerked forward, stumbling as the soft earth gave way, grabbing for the enemy rifle.
A jet of fire lanced down from the drone and drilled into Karamete’s chest. She went down without a scream, without a sound. Or maybe it was just covered by the whirring as the other disks wheeled back, like a swarm of aroused hornets, and began buzzing to and fro over them, optics glinting this way and that.
The whole squad had rifles up, aiming at the drone that had fired, which was still hovering threateningly. “Cease fire,” Vacante shouted. Hector repeated it, waving his open palm in front of his face in the cut signal. For a heart-stopping moment the humans and robots below and the hovering disks above froze, weapons trained on each other. Then, apparently, the disks decided they were friendly. They canted away and buzzed off, zigzagging in erratic but probably closely coordinated patterns to reconnoiter the fields,
Karamete lay still conscious, blinking up. One of the squaddies pulled her jelly armor away. It revealed a charred hole in her chest. There wasn’t any blood. Just black char. Hector took a knee. They looked at each other. “Gloria,” he said.
Her lips twitched, but she didn’t say anything. She looked away from him, up at the sky. Then closed her eyes.
Hector whirled away and fired out his magazine toward the fields. Then the others’ hands were on him. Removing the carbine. Patting his back. The world turning white, like a jet of fire. Then red. Then black.
* * *
HE woke on his back, staring up at the same white sky. Like Karamete. His brain was dead as the sky.
Patterson was crouched over him. “Hey,” she said. “Hey. Staff Sar’n’t. You there?”
“Here,” he grunted, and tried to sit up.
She pressed him back down with firm hands. “The old man’s online again,” she yelled to someone. Then, to him, “Lieutenant says, stand to. Counterattack’s forming up, in those hills.”
He cradled his head. Then groped in the mud. “My rifle. Where’s—”
“Sark’s got it. Sure you ready for it?”
He held out a hand. She handed it over reluctantly.
“Take cover,” Wet Dream said in his earbuds. “Take cover. Gas attack. Gas attack. Set MOPP level four. Active agent, presumed VX. Set MOPP level four. Active agent, presumed VX.”
With a distant rumble fiery trails leapt up far ahead. One after the other, so fast it had to be a rocket battery. The comets arched upward, bent, then plunged. Hector tensed, then sucked a relieved breath; they were aiming over them, past them. Lasers burned the air behind the Marines, searching out the plunging projectiles. Some detonated. But there were too many to stop.
The explosions started. Behind them, back in the paddies, hollow cones of smoke, but mingled with each a silvery mist. The detonations walked forward as the rockets kept falling. Around him Marines were struggling with packs, pulling out masks and suits, ripping plastic, throwing away wrappings, stuffing legs and arms into the protective suits in an ecstasy of fumbling.
Hector tore his mask carrier open, oriented the rubber spider, and snapped it onto his face. As he kicked off his boots he tore wrappings from the one-use plastic suit that had replaced the old charcoal-lined overgarments, thrust his legs into it, his arms, and sealed the seam. The others panted and cursed, fighting their way into the suits as the barrage rolled over them. Hector sealed the hood around the mask, pushed his feet back into his boots, rolled into the bottom of the hole, and pulled Karamete’s body over him as the ground quaked and the air filled with hissing steel.
Been here before. Been here before, he told his terrified mind. In the hills. Taiwan. Heavier shelling than this. You can stand this.
But it hadn’t been gas then.
A marine fell screaming into the hole, thrashing and writhing. Hector grabbed him, shook him. He couldn’t tell who it was through the mask. Jagged rips in the suit showed where fragments had torn the plastic.
Hector groped for an autoinjector, hesitated—he might need it himself in a few seconds—then thought fuck it and banged it into the guy’s thigh. The other marine was doubled over, vomiting into the mask, struggling to pull it off. Hector knocked his hands away and banged him with another autopen. The guy relaxed, maybe passed out, but not fighting him anymore. Hector dragged him down into the hole as another salvo, heavy explosive this time, shook dirt down over them.
Alternating gas, fragments, HE. He had to admire the tactic even as he cowered at the bottom of a hole, clawing more dirt over them. Maybe it would absorb some of the agent. Even a pin speck would kill you, they said. He could see the shit seething in the air, a deadly mist settling on everything: weapons, bodies, live Marines, CHADs with their oculars and the air intakes for their fuel cells sealed.
“Rampart, Foolhardy, Mountain Goat, ACE reports,” the AI said. Hector ignored it, trying to fucking breathe in the mask. Dizzy. Coughing. Thickness in his throat. His chest, hard to breathe. He wanted to tear it off too, but kept his hands down, fists clenched. Only now realizing he’d lost contact with his weapon in the struggle with the suit. Fuck. Fuck. Any minute now—
“Rampart, Foolhardy, Mountain Goat, stand by for enemy counterattack to your front,” the AI intoned, barely audible over the whine and buzz of jamming.
Explosions were still quaking the ground. But he had to force himself to shove the body off him, scoop the dirt away. Get out of the hole. VX heavier than air. The guy he’d atropined lay
motionless, arms flung out. Now Hector saw the torn-away foot, dangling by a ligament. He’d been bleeding out even as Hector injected him. He looted the corpse’s pack for the decon kit and injectors and jammed one into his own thigh. Didn’t feel the puncture, and had to look down and see a spot of blood to confirm the pen worked.
He crawled over bodies, stuck his head out of the hole, and scanned the line through the fogged-up eyepieces. Only a few forms still moved. Fewer carried weapons. Eyes front … a wall of even thicker white was rolling toward them. Antitargeting smoke. The enemy would come out of that to hit them. He looked around again, spotted one of the Pigs. Unmanned. Bodies lay around it. He low-crawled toward it. Silvery condensation sparkled on the cover assembly.
“Safety on ‘F.’ Bolt to the rear,” he muttered. He slotted the charging handle and flipped up the cover. Stuck a plastic-covered finger in to check that the feed tray and chamber were clear.
While maintaining rearward pressure, pull the trigger and ease the bolt assembly forward.
“Double link at the open end,” the voice of a man long dead yelled in his ear. “Free of dirt and corrosion.”
He snapped the first round of the belt into the feed groove, double link leading, open side of the links facing down.
Hold the belt six rounds from the loading end. Ensure that the round remains in the feed tray groove, and close the cover assembly.
The pale shining smoke walked closer, blown on the wind. Shadowy objects moved within it, then were obscured again.
“Gun one up,” Hector yelled, swinging the barrel to make sure he had traverse and elevation. Two boxes. Four hundred rounds. Spare barrel. Tool kit. Beside him one of the masked forms stirred. Built to hands and knees, and swayed into position to help feed the belt.
Hector glanced around for gloves. If he tore the thin plastic of his suit on a link, if a hot case melted through, the agent would penetrate and he’d die. He found one, pulled it on, and snuggled into the butt. Set his face to the sights.
A hot day in California. The mad-sounding old gunny with his Iraqi accent pacing along the top of the berm. Fucking optics gonna go south on you. The internal components shift and you’ll lose the zero. Grease-smear, blood on the lens, you’re fucking toast. Learn the fucking irons too.
“Fuck the queen,” Hector muttered. “You the king.”
He was about to press the trigger when the plain ahead of him erupted in smoke and flame. He crouched, hugging the mud as something roared overhead, shrieking and whining.
The earth tore apart two hundred meters ahead. Flashes flickered just above the ground, succeeded instantly by black bursts of smoke. They sounded like 155s going over, but they didn’t burst like any 155s he’d ever heard.
A tank silhouetted itself through the smoke, infantry trotting behind. They looked tiny and ineffectual behind the hulking machine. Hector swung and started work. The gun battered his shoulder and the bipod feet knocked dirt free. He reset them, aimed again, and fired another burst. Can’t see. Mask fogging. Can’t breathe. Red things swayed at the edges of his vision, like closing scarlet curtains on a stage.
But got to keep firing.
Something burst directly over the tank. A bluish flash, a dazzle of light, and the huge metal beast faltered. “What the fuck,” Hector muttered into the mask. The barrel rose into the air. It halted. It wasn’t smoking or on fire. Didn’t look damaged. Yet somehow that blue dazzle had just … stopped it dead.
When he looked back at the enemy infantry, they were all down. He sent a burst their way, but then let up off the trigger, scowling. Puzzled.
“What the fuck,” the guy beside him muttered through the mask diaphragm. At least, that’s what Hector thought he said. Past him he spotted the upper shell of a half-buried CHAD. Its “head” was bent back at a strange angle, and a good half of the wedge-like “face” was cleaved away. Maybe nerve gas didn’t bother them, but they didn’t seem as adept at digging in as the meat Marines.
When he looked front again more tanks were looming, more troops trotting toward him. He resumed firing. The barrage resumed, built, climaxing to a terrifying roar as hundreds of tiny bomblets tumbled from the sky. They hit the ground, kangarooed up, and exploded. The closest sent fragments whacking overhead, and he pulled his loader back into the fighting hole, pushing his helmet down into the mud. Until they could decontaminate, a slice from a Blue frag would kill just as fast as one from the enemy. Shells rumbled in over them like a steady stream of tractor trailers on a six-laner.
He suddenly realized what was going on.
The Second of the Third was bait.
Nothing but chum for these fuckers, to lure them into the kill zone.
Pushed out to this dike on the edge of the plain so the NK would have to come across it to attack them.
Exposing them to the full weight of Allied air, and drones, and missiles and shelling from the sea.
But he still didn’t get what the blue flashes were. So bright it hurt to look at them, even through the laser shields. They were stopping the tanks. Mowing down the infantry. But he didn’t see how.
All he could think to do was keep as much dirt as he could between him and the killing going on to their front.
He lay there for what seemed like hours. The sky dimmed, whether from smoke or dusk he couldn’t tell. Occasionally the AI would transmit an update, or Company would call for reports. Hector texted short answers on his command tablet. Dimly, through the din, he marveled that this time, comms were holding up. He could even make out, dimly, through the glimpses the sensors sent back, what was happening in the four-mile swathe of flat land between him and the mountains.
It was a zone of annihilation. Whole mechanized divisions rumbled down the road, formed up in battle order, and advanced. The steady thunder never let up. It waned from time to time, but always built again. Missiles flashed over. Now and then he could make out a darker speck: a plane or attack helo, higher up. A conveyor belt of destruction, moving ordnance to the front, chewing up steel and human flesh, then returning to rearm.
But the attacks didn’t stop. They kept coming. A river, unrelenting.
He lay prone, firing only occasionally now, to conserve ammo, when he was sure of his targets. But his fear did not abate. Sooner or later, the planes and ships would run out of ordnance too. If even a platoon made it to the dike, they’d roll over the few Marines left. Another salvo of gas, a few more air bursts, and the thin green line would thin, crumple, evaporate.
The enemy would punch through.
But then … he’d be bogged down in the paddies behind them. A mile or more of wet, soft ground, no microterrain, not even any way, in such soft muck, to dig in. Even if the enemy broke through, he’d still be wide open from the air, from the guided munitions coming in from seaward.
But the platoon, his guys … they were the sacrificial lambs.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world …
He touched the crucifix, beseeching God to help his Marines.
* * *
MUCH later, the rumble lessened. The captain transmitted, “Rampart, Foolhardy, Mountain Goat, stand to.”
Hector and his hole mate pushed themselves up and scanned their fields of fire. Smoke rose slowly from all around. In the gloaming he could make out piles of dead, canted, broken silhouettes of armor. A single figure staggered to and fro out there. He charged the 240, then realized it wasn’t advancing on him, just staggering about. Even as he watched, it crumpled, and lay still.
Something exploded in the distance, sending popping tracers of fireworks into the air. It chattered on for some seconds, then slowly died away.
Hector pushed himself out of the hole. His arms and legs shook uncontrollably. Something soft squished in his trou. He fumbled the decon kit open and wiped the gun down. Checked his ammo. He tapped his loader’s shoulder, pointed to the Pig, and staggered away. Check the line. Report. Ammo. Casualties. Report.
Most of the platoon were dead. They la
y with masks on or off. Those who’d torn them off sprawled blue-faced, foam drying at nose and mouth and eyes. Those with masks on lay smeared with blood where they’d clumsily, futilely tried to patch torn suits before they died. Only a few blinked blankly up at him through the masks, or lifted shaking fists in token they still lived.
A hundred meters to the north one of the tanks had run up onto the dike before being stopped. A T-72, with bricks of reactive armor glued all over the turret. Marines lay curled around it like dead insects.
He climbed up onto its rear deck, faced into the breeze, and lifted his mask, just for a second. The air stank of bitter powder and shit and death, underlaid by a strong kerosene-y smell he figured was the sarin. Bodies and wreckage as far as he could see. The paddies behind them were cratered with shell holes.
His heart began thundering in his ears. A fine sweat broke on his back and prickled along his arms.
He fitted his mask back on and banged another injector into the meat of his thigh. His mouth was dry as the tomb. The sky seemed darker than it should be this early. He staggered as if heatstroked, wincing at a splitting headache.
Orders came down to stand by for another attack. Drones buzzed in from beachward. They landed on the dike and released their cargo: ammo, water with electrolyte replenisher, more injectors, mask filters, replacement suits. Hector set up his remaining MGs and reallocated fields of fire. He got the men digging out the CHADs, pissing the mud off their oculars, finding operable weapons for them, and placing them back on line. Both his 0352 Javelin missilemen were out of action, one gassed, the other missing, but the launcher seemed operable. He assigned two PFCs to see if they could spin it up. “They gonna reinforce us, Staff Sergeant?” one wanted to know.
Hector just shrugged.
* * *