The Tetra War_The Katash Enigma

by Michael Ryan

  ~ Master Malkz Teezled

  Warfare is addictive.

  Callie and I enjoyed our on-ship leave. We rediscovered our love for each other and made love more times than I can count. But you can only have sex and dinner parties so often before routine sets in, and you find yourself daydreaming about launching a missile or taking a head shot at an unsuspecting foe.

  What probably saved us from losing our minds was we discovered a pirated copy of War Demons of the Atlantic. Sam Jordan’s addiction to the virtual heli-jet RPG saved our lives on Talamz, so with a bit of nostalgia we created avatars and challenged each other to see who could pass level one hundred first.

  Callie won.

  Killing virtual enemies in a well-designed RPG was addictive, too.

  But nothing compared with surviving a mission that didn’t include resurrection points, saved games, and restarts.

  Command accepted Sergeant Veetea’s re-up. He’d requested and been granted an assignment in my platoon. I was no longer a provisional lieutenant colonel, but it was just as well. Lieutenant colonels tend to have thankless jobs and get stuck with writing a lot of reports, most of which probably never get read. I enjoyed being a line officer and gratefully accepted my promotion to first lieutenant. The rise in rank included Callie, who was part of the platoon’s leadership, but not the supreme leader, which was me.

  General Balestain had pulled a few strings on our behalf. Callie and I both had a special provision in our contracts: If one of us died, the other would be auto-discharged. I suspected the general had plans for us, but whatever they were remained a cryptic mystery. Abrel, still suffering from PTSD caused by his horrific torture, was granted, along with Mallsin, a temporary suspension of duties.

  He objected, of course.

  Balestain’s reach was longer than I thought. While he couldn’t have possibly communicated with the Kuznetsov, once Abrel mentioned his name, the suspension was lifted and the only two people in the universe I completely trusted besides my wife were returned to my platoon. All was right again, and our company was ordered to drop into a small city on the other side of the planet.

  Command had concluded that none of the lizard population on Drekiland was local.

  Golonist confirmed this assumption; the Drekis mined the resources of the planet, but none called it home.

  The city housed factory workers who built coil-guns, grenades, and small-caliber munitions.

  So not a single lizard was off-limits.

  “Kill anything that moves, breathes, fucks, or shits,” Captain Hollingver instructed us pre-drop.

  “Death from the sky!” the cadre responded.

  Our drop into the downtown section of the reptile city we’d designated Scaly Town, or Sierra Tango, went by the book, and nobody died on entry. My responsibility was the Second Platoon, which had five squads of twelve. Abrel, Mallsin, and Callie were with me in the command group, as it allowed me more flexibility. If a squad leader took a nap, I could stick one of the command team into their slot if required. Sergeant Veetea led the Blue Squad, and the other four units were led by equally capable NCOs.

  All used color designations. It made my life easier. Blue, green, red, brown, and silver were easy to remember when the comms got jammed.

  We were instructed to “wait ten” for instructions after we’d secured cover and fields of fire.

  I listened to the company comm.

  “Sector two, respond.”

  “Jesus, get that heli off my back.”

  “Iguana actual. Over.”

  “Iguana actual, go.”

  “I’ve got rail-cannon available. Over.”

  “Send it.”

  “RC team, Romeo Romeo Seventeen. Over.”

  “Go.”

  “Sector Paper Paper Ten, up twenty, right fourteen, copy?”

  “Copy, on the way.”

  “Shit, those things are fast, Paper Paper Ten, move left three, copy?”

  “Copy, look for Orange, Iguana, we’re out of purple.”

  “Roger…go, go, go, fire for effect!”

  “Sending heat, Iguana actual, good luck, Dave. We’ve gotta move.”

  “This is Heli-squad Yankee November; I need eyes on sector twenty-two. Anyone?”

  “This is Mike Lima, I’ve got eyes. Over.”

  “I count four friendly Tee-Tee One-oh-sixes, confirm?”

  “Roger, four friendlies, that’s a…correction, three friendlies, Yankee November.”

  “Shit, eyes on my impact. Over.”

  “Nice shot! One tanker OOC, you’ve got two–”

  “Mike Lima?”

  “He’s down, Yankee November. Eyes here. Over.”

  “Impact?”

  “Negative, Yankee November. Come up a notch. Over.”

  “Sending a message. Over.”

  “Delivered.”

  “This is Charlie Command actual. Avery, what the fuck are you doing?”

  I switched over to the CO-PL comm. “Sir?”

  “I expected you to be at checkpoint Delta-five by now,” he said.

  “On the way, sir,” I said.

  “Pay attention out there, dammit,” he said.

  Captain Hollingver had ordered Third Platoon to move to Delta-five, but correcting an officer in the middle of a battle for no good reason was stupid. I ordered my men to secure their weapons and prepare to move. I switched over the PL-only comm. “Third, Third, Nollensrart, you online?”

  “Damn, Avery,” Nollensrart said. “Why aren’t you at Delta-five, you slacker?”

  “Roger, you want me to go ahead and take it?”

  “All yours, buddy. I’ll move into your spot. Hell, all the fighting is happening out in the hills.”

  “Moving now to Delta-five,” I said. “Don’t worry, any moment we’ll find out the Drekis have a secret stash of mechas and a fleet of mobile track-rail heavy guns, and without a doubt they’ve laid landmines in a large circle around the main factory.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you were a damn fine pessimist?”

  “Every mission,” I answered.

  “Good luck.”

  “Roger. But it’s not luck.”

  “Death from the sky!”

  We moved up a deserted road in a herringbone formation, and I wondered what was watching us.

  It was nearly always something.

  <>

  That was fast.

  I fired a nano-screen, which I hoped would catch more than one missile. Others had the same idea, and the fire above and in front of us filled with tiny rotating cubes. A dozen missiles fractured into harmless bits of shredded metal. “Eyes on anything?” I asked over the platoon comm.

  “This is Brown actual. I have movement in that tall gray building to the left.”

  “Roger,” I said. “Brown and Red, take a look.”

  The two squad leaders broke off from the company. They entered the ground floor after blowing a hole in the wall, and the rest of the company provided an overwatch as they filed into the gap. “Green and Silver, move to the end of the block. I want a status report in a minute.”

  “Roger,” Green actual said.

  “Right behind Green,” Silver actual reported.

  “Veetea, bring Blue up to this point,” I ordered while sending him a pic of a distant hill. “See if you can find a spot to provide cover fire if we have to bug out in a hurry.”

  “Moving now,” he said.

  “We’ve got incoming mortars,” Callie reported. “From sector twenty-three or twenty-four, maybe both.”

  “Okay,” I said. Nothing coming at us was much of a threat, not with the numbers we had. Out of sixty-four troops, we hadn’t lost anyone. That wasn’t normal, not that I was complaining. “Abrel?”

  “Go.”

  “Take Mallsin and jump over Blue’s position on that hill. I want eyes on what’s beyond. We’re supposed to be joining the main assault in less than twenty minutes, but god only knows if that’s an actual twenty minu
tes or a ‘things-changed-and-it’s-the-army’ twenty minutes.”

  “You got it, boss,” he said.

  Nineteen minutes later we were in a position to advance on the primary target.

  Captain Hollingver assigned Second Platoon to a pre-mapped lane behind a tracked battle tank. Dropping such a heavy vehicle from a starship was usually more trouble and expense than it was worth, but the JFUA had leaned towards the Guritain philosophy that building mechas wasn’t a good investment. I had mixed feelings about it, but the tracked beast in front of us was impressive.

  It was immediately obvious that the factory wasn’t constructed to withstand an assault. The defenses combined hastily dug trenches, Dreki tanks, and several squadrons of heli-jets. Our side had heli-jets as well.

  Like a Middle Ages battle on Earth, the cavalry units were forced to focus on each other.

  I linked into the tank’s comm, a privilege granted by right of my position as a platoon leader. “This is Second actual,” I said. “We’re right behind you. Anything interesting out there?”

  “This is TC Massy. Is that you, Avery?”

  “Roger that,” I said. “I didn’t know you’d become a tanker.”

  “I couldn’t handle being encased in TCI-Armor any longer. At the end of the day I can climb out of here.”

  “But I look good,” I bragged.

  “Yeah, and I can hold my dick when I piss.”

  I’ll have to admit the catheter and other waste-management devices weren’t exactly prime selling features. But after a time you got used to not thinking about it. The tank had a crew of three: the commander, the gunner, and the pilot. I’d driven a tank years ago; it was fun. Running free is more my style, but to each his own.

  A squadron of JFUA heli-jets, the latest Erru-designed dragons, screamed over at low altitude and dropped bombs and strafed the trenches before being chased off by their Dreki counterparts.

  “If I could go back,” Massy said, “I’d be a heli-pilot.”

  “Those things are flying tanks,” I said. “I survived a crash once.”

  “They crash often enough…hold one. Gunner, heat up this spot. Driver, move in two.”

  I imagined the tank commander giving his gunner a picture with a spot marked, and the driver triggering forward movement. The command “in two” meant two seconds, so essentially by the time you heard the order, it was time to act on it. The tank lurched from the huge scar in the ground like a camouflaged tortoise poking its head from its shell. The five rail-cannons that comprised the primary weapon of a Volsobaz-class tank fired a series of rounds downrange. The factory building was three clicks away, but the selected trenches and enemy tanks were half that distance.

  The high-explosive shells exploded in bright bursts of hot white.

  Dreki mortar teams lobbed dozens of rounds back at us, but they were too light to harm the tank, and those of us in armored suits were fast enough to evade them.

  “Give me five more minutes, Avery,” Massy said. “I’ll advance after a few more barrages, and you can follow behind.”

  “Roger.”

  Above the factory a heli-jet burst into a ball of fire. I couldn’t make out which side it had been. I began wondering why we hadn’t dropped something huge, like the rumored MHE-19c, a weapon that was supposed to leave a two-kilometer-wide crater a couple of hundred meters deep. It’s not as if the Gremxula and the tri-planets had any treaties regarding weapons of mass destruction.

  About the time I was wondering why we didn’t level the facility, Command sent out the real mission’s objective to all the line officers in the company.

  To: First Lieutenant Ford, Avery

  UNSN: AF-98o8-9oo876.rkl

  CIRO: Joint Forces Command Section Velmonsitder

  Lieutenant Ford:

  Updated mission:

  Intel has indicated that the Dreki-Nakahi facility labeled HZR-56 has several Chemecko and Tedesconian engineers. Other potential hostages may include unknown species, including, but not limited to, the aliens known as muldvarps.

  There is a likelihood of the presence of human, purvast, and talarrstan slaves.

  Engineers: Priority Alpha

  Aliens: Priority Alpha-secondary to prime

  Others: Priority Beta-expendable

  <>

  <>

  S/Command Section Chief

  Colonel Allverston Fearolner

  Because they’d waited until the very last minute to inform us of our mission, I had three thoughts.

  Does Command think the Drekis have spies in the JFUA?

  How long have they known the Drekis have kidnapped civilians?

  Did Pow and Balestain lie to me again?

  The answers, if they ever came at all, would have to wait. Massy messaged me that we were advancing.

  “Keep up, pups,” he said. “We’re going in hot, fast, and dirty.”

  “Like you treat your women,” Captain Hollingver said.

  “Roger that! Gunner, heat up those Dreki troops!”

  “On the way!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  In the Tedesconian army it takes more courage to retreat than advance.

  ~ Lieutenant Graalend Folescezt

  I kept my lines behind the tank.

  We reached the first row of trenches, and a firefight broke out with Dreki infantry that hadn’t retreated. Their small-caliber rounds weren’t a danger, but they also had grenade launchers, which posed a lethal threat. We spread out as an enemy heli-jet dropped into a strafing run.

  “I see two more helis,” Massy announced over the platoon comm. “Driver reverse in two. Avery, get your men…oh shit, now, now, now! Gunner, KE heli!”

  “Identified!”

  “Fire, goddammit!”

  “Shit.”

  The tank sped backward at incredible speed. It dawned on me that the tank’s tracks and gearing systems were designed to allow it to move forward or backward at the same speed. That, and it could spin in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle in the blink of an eye.

  I messaged, “Get out of the way!” over the platoon comm as fast as I could, but it was too late for one of my slower troopers.

  She was crushed like an aluminum can under a boot.

  Friendly casualties were a battlefield constant, but it always hurt to see them happen.

  “Jesus Christ, pay attention out here.” I verified the private was dead and fired an antimissile flare to keep from joining her.

  Tank Commander Massy fired kinetic rounds at the pair of heli-jets that were flying in evasive arcs while launching missiles and strafing with multibarreled nose guns. I opened a pop-up that placed icons for each of my platoon members on the field.

  Three had gone black, which indicated a confirmed death. Two were orange, meaning injuries of unknown seriousness. The lone red icon, which represented a life-threatening injury, was a squad leader. “I need Sergeant Bellows to take over Brown,” I announced.

  I sent a quick burst to medical support, but I knew it was only a formality. Rescue units wouldn’t be dispatched until the hostilities were over; otherwise who would rescue the rescuers?

  “Bellows here. Acknowledged. Move up, sir?”

  “Confirmed, a quarter click. Watch your flank. That trench has collapsed, but there’s still a Dreki mortar team somewhere.”

  “Roger.”

  Platoon leaders were often like movie directors: we called the shots and moved actors around a set. I didn’t mind the dual roles of fighter and manager. But I tended to get anxious to jump into the ring. I had to be careful not to forget what I was being paid to do: coach, command, and fight.

  “Avery,” Callie said, “I’ve got eyes on a well-protected position that would make a good nest, permission to snipe?”

  She sent me a picture of the place she was proposing to move to, and I concurred it would be advantageous to have an overwatch there. “Roger, but take Mallsin as a spotter.”

  “Moving,”
she said.

  “Abrel, can you join Red Squad?”

  “I need half a minute,” he said.

  “Take a whole one.” I wasn’t planning on moving them for two, so I let Abrel finish whatever he was doing. Part of being a good line commander was finding the sweet spot between managing well and micromanaging to the point someone in your unit was likely to “accidentally” shoot you in the back.

  “Massy?” I called out.

  The tank commander didn’t respond.

  I could see he had his hands full. Another squadron of heli-jets had shown up.

  JFUA helis flew from our rear and passed overhead. As they engaged the enemy, a Dreki tank lurched from a hole and fired relentlessly at Massy’s. I ordered Blue Squad to put as many KE missiles on it as possible, in spite of the fact the rounds we carried weren’t usually effective on the heavy armor employed by the lizards’ battle tanks. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to lose our shield, and sometimes a miraculously placed shot could do wonders.

  One of the helis disengaged from a dogfight and flew towards us at a low altitude.

  “Golvin, I need air support,” I said over the squadron’s comm. It was likely they’d ignore me, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

  “I see it, ground-pounder,” one of the copilots responded. “But we’ve got our hands–”

  The comm went dead around the same time a bright orange burst flashed in the sky.

  <>

  <>

  The enemy heli-jet dropped a load of HE and fired another dozen missiles.

  Massy’s gunner tried to engage it, but a moment after he moved the turret, one of the enemy’s rounds struck home.

  I launched several chaff rounds to confuse the incoming missiles and dove for cover. At the last moment, a kinetic bolt flew past me, barely missing.

  Our tank support was burning, and a dark column of smoke poured from its wounds.

  “Can you cover me?” Massy asked.

  “Roger,” I said. “Silver Squad, move to your right half a click and give that tank crew a hand.”

  “Silver actual here, sir,” the squad leader said. “I’m pinned down.”