It’s that kind of war.
We had dropped onto a planet named Niffleheim about a month ago, and been in our armor, every seal tight, every moment since then. The dense atmosphere was made up of various highly corrosive gases that would literally dissolve human flesh and bones.
Cady was looking toward the Canary lines east of us, just barely raising up enough to see because any time anyone shows too much above the rocks the Canaries target it with some really impressive accuracy. “Rain’s coming.”
“Better get your wash in off the line,” Iko commented, then laughed at his own joke.
The acid droplets began pelting us and the rocks that were all that Niffleheim had in the way of landscaping, and then the winds started coming through. “Everybody anchor,” Sergeant Hel ordered.
Before we could start to manually do that, the Armor Assists started punching out spikes from the arms of our armor. “Place anchor here,” my AA told me, highlighting a spot nearby as I got a good grip on my spike.
My AA has a sort of mechanical voice, nothing recognizably male or female. Most soldiers set the voice for someone they know, and then grow to hate that someone as the voice nags at them. Or after a while, living literally inside this thing with a nice voice, a few soldiers get way too attached to it. When they get weird like that they get sent home for a while.
But they have to be really weird before they get a ticket out of a combat zone.
I planted the anchor with the boost from my armor’s muscles. It went deep into the solid rock, then I just locked my armor’s grip on the anchor, told the AA not to relax the grip, and relaxed myself even though the wind was trying to throw me across the landscape.
“Why the hell do we want this place?” Corporal Higgins muttered. We were all linked by the tactical net, so that even in the midst of the hell outside our armor we could talk in regular voices.
“Because the Canaries want it,” Iko replied.
“So why do they want it?”
“Because it’s here,” Afrit suggested.
“It’s worthless. You can’t see more than half a kilometer under the best conditions, the storms make air transport too risky for routine use, and even orbital launches can be hairy. It’s not good for anything.”
The Sarge answered this time. “You thinking again, Corporal Higgins?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking.”
“I warned you about that.” Hel’s voice was as flat and even as it was during any of her lectures. “You keep thinking and they’ll make you a lieutenant. You know what happens to lieutenants.”
“That last one,” Gonzo said, “what was his name? He was with us like six hours.”
“Stuck his head too high,” Cady commented.
“Yeah. Did they ever find it, Sarge?”
“Nah. Listen, there’ll be another lieutenant here soon. You apes try to keep this one alive at least a few days.”
“Why the hell we gotta listen to some snot-nosed—” Cady started to grumble.
“What was that?” Sergeant Hel asked. The Sarge hadn’t raised her voice, but Cady shut up fast and I was glad I’d kept my own mouth shut. “Oh, look,” Sarge continued, “it’s time for a mandatory law of war training session, and we have nothing else on the schedule.”
Considering that we were all hanging onto anchors while the wind made flags out of us in our heavy armor none of us could claim any other priorities at the moment, but a chorus of moans and groans sounded anyway. “Listen up for the verbal prompts,” Hel told us, then ordered our AAs to start the session.
The metallic voice of my AA started the canned lecture. “Discipline on the battlefield is critical to the success of the mission and survival of your comrades. Which of the following offenses require a mandatory death penalty if committed in a combat zone? A, disobedience of an order. B, disrespect toward a superior officer. C, absence from place of duty. D, desertion. E, all of the above.”
“E,” I said. All of the above was almost always a safe answer on military tests, even if I hadn’t had this same information drilled into my brain every week.
“Correct. True or false: Planning to commit an offense is not as serious as actually carrying out the offense.”
“False.” I fantasized for the millionth time about dismantling my AA, teeny-tiny piece by teeny-tiny piece, while it jabbered on about “unauthorized maintenance activity” until it finally shut up when I’d taken enough of it apart.
That’s the thing about AAs. They’re stupid. A friend of mine who’s a code geek says they used to call stuff like that artificial intelligence, but there wasn’t anything intelligent about it. The artificial intelligence stuff kept running faster and faster, but it stayed just as stupid. Hard to believe, but even someone like Cady has got a lot more brains than an AA. The AAs handle housekeeping and routine tasks for the armor, keep everything working right, assist in aiming weapons, monitor our health, life-support, and damn all else. They also monitor whether we’re following orders even though they’re too stupid to create orders themselves.
Which meant I had to get a passing grade on this lecture or Sergeant Hel’s AA would be told by my AA, which would also inform everyone else up the chain of command that Private London had failed weekly law of war instruction. That would make Sergeant Hel very unhappy, and there’s not a lot of things in this universe worse than making Sergeant Hel very unhappy.
“Failure to accompany your unit in any movement while in a battle zone is A, dereliction of duty. B, a betrayal of your comrades. C, indirectly lending aid and comfort to the enemy. D, an offense justifying summary battlefield execution. E, all of the above.”
“E.” When you came down to it, as long as you assumed the correct answer for any offense in a battle zone was death you’d pass the test.
Which was another reason why we hated our AAs. Summary executions didn’t require firing squads, not when the AA handled everything keeping you alive. Weird soldiers might sometimes grow attached to their AAs, but the AA never got attached to the soldier in the armor. A summary execution order was just one more instruction for it to carry out, and you couldn’t even run, not when the AA could freeze your armor.
The storm had finally subsided, though visibility would still be worse than usual for a few hours, and the lecture ended when my armor reported a new arrival. My systems updated automatically, linking to whoever was inside that armor, and then an ID popped up. Lieutenant Yvonne Karolla. But instead of launching into the usual “I’m your new boss and we’ll work great together” speech, Lieutenant Karolla waved back behind our lines. “General MacDougal is coming through.”
That made us sit up. A little. No sense in exposing anything to the Canaries on the heights facing us. MacDougal had a reputation for touring the front himself, something I gave him grudging credit for. Most high-ranking officers were happy to study the battlefield using virtual tech, but MacDougal would actually come and look it over.
“The General is coming here?” Sergeant Hel asked. “Lieutenant, the General visited this same position a couple of days after we dropped.”
“Then he’s visiting here again,” Karolla said in a don’t-ask-questions voice. Even inside our armor I could easily imagine pairs of eyes rolling at the rookie mistake. Telling a senior non-commissioned officer to shut up is almost always a bad idea.
We waited silently after that, the tension radiating from the new Lieutenant strong enough that I wondered why it didn’t show up on my armor’s sensors. Then MacDougal arrived, his armor worn from long use. He had a half-dozen aides and guards with him, which made things a bit cramped among our rocks.
“How’s it going?” the General asked no one in particular. Generals say stuff like that. It doesn’t mean anything, and it especially doesn’t mean they really want you to tell them how it’s going after a month in armor getting shot at and rained on by acid.
None of us answered, even though my AA prompted me. “You have been asked a question by a superior officer.”
“He didn’t ask me,” I told it, which confused the AA enough to shut it up.
Finally, the Lieutenant spoke up, trying to sound chipper amid the noxious atmosphere swirling around us. “We’re doing fine, General.”
“Good. Good.” MacDougal moved forward a little more, toward the Canary positions, while his aides hovered nervously. I noticed he moved a little haltingly, but word had gone around that the general had been banged up a bit on the drop so that wasn’t surprising. Once the injury stiffened up inside the armor it would have made it harder to walk.
MacDougal stood there, peering through the murk toward the Canary positions he couldn’t actually see from here right now, then pivoted to look south. He had done that last time he was here, too, so it made me a bit nervous. “We’ll remain on the attack,” the general announced.
One of the colonels linked in with the general must have said something.
“There,” MacDougal said, pointing to a rise to the southeast. Axe-handle Hill, we called it. The haft of the axe was covered with Canary foxholes. “We will swing a diversion to the south of the hill, then hit the front with a heavy assault.”
More conversation that we couldn’t hear, then MacDougal again. “Make it happen.”
He walked away, while we stared after him.
“Oh, man,” Higgins muttered. “Frontal assault on the Axe-handle?”
“Are you questioning orders?” Lieutenant Karolla demanded. “Corporal…Corporal Higgins?”
“The platoon will follow orders,” Sergeant Hel said. “Lieutenant, request a private conference.”
“Not yet, Sergeant. I need to familiarize myself with unit personnel statistics and the local terrain first.”
Lieutenant Karolla was still working on that about ten minutes later when the orders to attack came down through our AAs. I looked over the attack route, suppressing a worried whistle. “Gonna need some tactical autonomy, Sarge.”
“Really, London? Why the hell do you think I’ve been beating tactical autonomy into all of you?”
Tactical autonomy is the loophole in terms of following orders. It lets you deviate some from an ordered route or select a different target. Stuff like that. You can’t go backwards, but you can go a bit to the side. In this case, it meant we could sneak along a path shielded by some more rocks until we were fairly close to the Axe-handle instead of charging across open rock with no cover at all like the AAs were telling us to.
“Tactical autonomy?” the new lieutenant asked. “I haven’t—There’s—”
“Jump-off,” Sergeant Hel told her as the order came in. “We have to go now, Lieutenant.”
My own AA echoed the command, as did everyone else’s AA. The brass didn’t care whether or not the Lieutenant had time to study the plan. They didn’t care whether any of us had time for that. We were just supposed to follow the plan, and the AAs would ensure we knew where to go and what to do when we got there.
We didn’t even have to coordinate. Sarge had drilled it all into us. While the new Lieutenant fussed and complained we headed out, falling into an open formation with the Sergeant off to one side, Corporal Higgins off to the other, and the Lieutenant near the rear to oversee and coordinate everything. That’s all standard. Being in the back doesn’t protect the junior officers much, though, because the Canary gear can spot comm nodes among armor. They can always tell who the unit commander is, and the Canaries aim everything they’ve got at that commander. Which is one of the big reasons why lieutenants don’t last very long.
I pulled out the range on my display so I could see the diversion going in. Light Mechanized Infantry, jumping fast to hit the Axe-handle on one flank. It was crazy to use the Lights under those conditions. I waited for them to get slaughtered.
But with Niffleheim’s atmosphere fouling targeting gear and the Lights moving so much faster than Heavies could, the Lights kept coming through an intense Canary barrage that didn’t score many hits. The Lights were taking hits, but not too many, and we could see Canary fire all along the Axe-handle shifting to engage them.
Sergeant Hel veered to the left and we charged out of the rocks toward the Canaries, everyone dodging as they ran and keeping position on the Sarge even though the AAs kept trying to tell us where to go. The Axe-handle itself was just starting to emerge from the murk as we ran toward it, which meant we were emerging into the sight of the Canaries up there.
“Stick to the assault corridor!” Lieutenant Karolla ordered us.
We all kept our eyes on Sergeant Hel. She was amazing. Confusing enemy targeting means being almost totally random in dodging while still moving toward your objective. Nobody could do that like Sergeant Hel, and now she kept heading pretty straight for the Axe-handle even though the assault corridor glowing on our displays was about a hundred meters to the right. “Tactical autonomy,” Hel advised the Lieutenant.
“There’s no justification for deviating from orders here!”
“Lieutenant, going right a hundred meters will cost time and every second counts.”
“Get this platoon inside that assault corridor now! I won’t tell you again, Sergeant!”
“Lieutenant, if you keep active transmitting it will make it easier for the Canaries to—”
The first couple of Canary artillery rounds aimed at us bracketed Lieutenant Karolla, then a dozen more slammed into the area between the first hits.
Her link cut off completely, which meant chances were pretty high that those rounds had already killed the new Lieutenant. We kept going.
“Less than an hour!” Gonzo gasped as the Axe-handle loomed ahead of us and we began jumping recklessly up the slope. “You got to feel sorry for Lieutenant…uh…her. She never had a chance.”
Most of the Canary fire was still aimed at the Lights who were falling back now. The Canaries were starting to realize we were coming in as fast as Heavies could move, but it took time for them to shift the aim of their heavy weapons, and our armor could handle most of the lighter Canary weapons. We made the top without losing anyone else even though our armor took some damage.
Canary armor isn’t as good as ours. At close range, we could put holes in it easy. On Niffleheim, holes let in the atmosphere, which dissolves Canaries just like it does humans.
We cleaned out the Canaries who tried to hold the Axe-handle, but most of them fled into the murk, leaving the top of the hill and their heavy weapons in our possession. According to our map displays there was another ridge about a kilometer onward that the Canaries could fort up on and establish a new line linked to their other positions. “Should we pursue?” Higgins asked.
“Our orders are to take and hold the Axe-handle,” Sergeant Hel replied, “maintaining defensive positions until relieved. You gonna show some initiative, Corporal?”
“Hell, no, Sarge. I know what would happen to us even if we won.”
“All of the above,” I couldn’t help adding.
“Hey, Private London’s a comedian!” the Sergeant announced. “Get your funny ass back down there and find what’s left of the Lieutenant.”
“The Canaries are dropping artillery rounds on that area to discourage reinforcements coming up here,” I protested.
“Try not to let any hit you. Get going.”
A day later we were back among the same rocks we called the fort. The guys from the Thirty-Second took over defending the Axe-handle, and we trooped back to our rocks. When you’re sleeping in your armor, it doesn’t make too much difference which rocks you’re around, but at least the rocks on top of the Axe-handle had been high ground. Now we were back with Canary positions on the ridge ahead of us looking down on us.
The latest Lieutenant joined us there. Lieutenant Cathar had the sense to make nice with Sergeant Hel, or least listen to her, and he kept his head down, so he survived for several days while we huddled among the rocks and the Canaries tossed shots our way occasionally.
“Routine servicing,” my AA announced.
“What routine servicing?�
�� Not that I cared, but I was seriously bored.
“Backing up files. Reviewing automated assist routines. Complete.”
I laid on my back, staring up at the swirling mess of an atmosphere which covered Niffleheim. No stars shining down on us here.
Automated assist routines. That reminded me of something. “Hey, AA.”
“Yes, Private London.”
“When I found what was left of Lieutenant, uh…what was her name?”
“Lieutenant Karolla.”
“Yeah. That Lieutenant. Her lower torso looked like it had walked maybe five meters after she got hit before it collapsed.”
“Emergency full assist. When Lieutenant Karolla was incapacitated, her lower armor began walking autonomously to bring her to aid. However, system damage was too extreme and atmospheric corrosion caused additional damage, resulting in rapid total armor failure.”
“Incapacitated? Everything above the Lieutenant’s waist was gone.”
The AA didn’t answer, probably because its little code routines had decided my last statement wasn’t a question. But it might have been because the answer was classified. You never knew. Those special functions for the tubes below the waist might not actually exist, but we all knew stuff was embedded in the armor that we hadn’t been told about.
“The General is on the way,” Lieutenant Cathar announced.
“Again?” It slipped out before I could stop it.
“Shut up, London,” Hel told me. “If the General wants to come back here every week, that’s his call. Everybody try to look like soldiers.”
I rolled to my side and got into sort of an alert-looking crouch near a really big rock while the other members of the platoon also took up more active positions.
General MacDougal came through the same way as before, once again accompanied by his aides and guards. “How’s it going?”
Lieutenant Cathar answered immediately. “Great, sir!”
“Good. Good.” MacDougal moved farther forward, peering at the enemy lines. “We can’t stay on the defensive. We need that position.” His hand raised and pointed to the ridge.
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