Conflict: The Pythan War, Invasion

by DK Williamson

  Brad squinted in anger.

  Felix brought the tank to the first firing position.

  “Watch left,” Felix said even though he knew Brad had the turret facing that way already.

  Brad said nothing.

  Human silhouettes popped up on both sides of the tank. Both turrets rotated as they locked onto their targets and each turret fired at the same time. 13mm fire from the crew turret and 25mm from the main. Brad could hear the staccato of the auto-cannon pump out its four rounds per second over the noise of his own heavy machine gun. A short traverse from each turret and all the targets were down.

  The tank rolled again, stopping at more firing points, then the tank moved into the mobile fire portion of the range.

  Targets popped from each side of the road, silhouettes representing men and machines. It was up to the crews to decide the proper weapon and ammunition used to attack each type of target.

  In the course of the range, Brad forgot his anger with Felix, and Felix his disdain for Brad, and both concentrated on the task at hand.

  At one point along the road, Brad covered right while Felix looked left. Targets came up simultaneously on each side of the road.

  “Infantry left,” Felix said.

  “Tank right,” Brad said at the same time as his teammate.

  The two turrets whirred in opposite directions to lock onto the new targets.

  13mm rounds from Brad’s heavy machine gun tore a line across the row of human silhouettes just as the 50mm cannon in the main turret barked, sending an armor-piercing round into the tank silhouette.

  “First crew to get that one correct and under time today,” the range officer said over the headset.

  “You finally did something right,” Felix said. “Or was it luck, slick.”

  Enough is enough, Brad thought. “Stop calling me slick, son, and meat, tank. I’m sick of it.”

  “Whatever you say, tiger,” Felix replied.

  “Two-Two, your crew turret score was best of the day that last run. Main turret, third best. Best aggregate of the day. Well done.”

  “Thanks control. FUkr-Two-Two out.”

  “Third best? You must be getting old, tank,” Brad said.

  “Maybe, cowboy. Mine wasn’t luck.”

  And I volunteered for this, Brad thought.

  When they pulled into their unit’s laager, Brad was out of the turret before the vehicle stopped moving. He hopped from the hull and went to the mess hall.

  He was still visibly upset as he sat down at a table with a tray of food clattering in front of him.

  The troop second sergeant, Master Sergeant Benton, sat down across from him.

  “You’ve really taken to recon tanks. You did well at the range today, Roberts. Best in the squadron as a matter of fact.”

  “Thanks. Tell that to Felix.”

  “You having troubles?”

  “You might say that. I imagine we would have had a fistfight by now if he wasn’t a tank. I would ask for reassignment, but it’s not practical now, I know.”

  The sergeant laughed. “Felix is a tough one, and you’re right, we go back to operations tomorrow. If things don’t smooth out, we’ll see if we can accommodate you.”

  Sergeant Benton looked over Brad’s shoulder and pointed. “There’s the guy you should talk to,” he said.

  Brad turned in his chair and saw Bobby West moving through the chow line. When the mechanic turned toward the seating area Benton signaled him, and West walked over and joined them.

  Benton stood. “Felix and Roberts here ain’t getting along, West. Think you might help smooth things over?”

  “Honestly? I doubt it, but I’ll try, sergeant,” Bobby replied.

  Benton patted West on the shoulder as the mechanic took the just vacated seat. “Do what you can,” Benton said, then walked toward the exit.

  “What does it take to please the guy?” Brad asked.

  “Sometimes nothing will please him, but you have to cut him some slack. He’s got a lot weighing down on him,” Bobby said as he shoveled some food in his mouth and grimaced. He cast a glare at the kitchen.

  “He’s not the only one. It’s hardly fair for him to act that way.”

  “I never said it was fair, but he’s dealing with some things you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “Felix will grind me into a fine paste if he knew I was telling you, so keep it under your hat, got it?” Bobby said poking his fork in Brad’s direction.

  Brad nodded as he stabbed what the mess hall menu called cherry pie.

  “This isn’t his first war, Brad. He fought in the Rump War sixteen or seventeen years ago, the Rim Wars eight or ten years ago. Seen other shit since then. He doesn’t want to get close to you because that’s the way it works in combat. You keep new guys at arm’s length. Always been that way.”

  “I know, but he’s not just keeping some distance. He’s like a verbal abuse machine, not to mention what his driving style is doing to my ribcage.”

  Bobby nodded and smiled as he swallowed a mouthful of food. The taste erased the smile. “Yeah, there’s more. We’ve been groundside three months. He’s lost four crew,” he said holding up a quartet of fingers. “Two dead, two seriously fucked up. On top of that he’s due for a refit, and that means a new hull.”

  Bobby could tell by the look on Brad’s face that the corporal did not understand. “Felix had a spatial episode when they moved him from his first hull.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “I don’t fully understand it either, but it’s where a brain that is wired for interface like Felix loses contact with the outside. I guess it’s… like the connections don’t work. No sensory perception. It means the poor sap in the brain box is completely and utterly isolated. They are aware, but they can’t perceive anything but their own thoughts. I mean, if someone chucked us in a deep dark hole we could yell. We could touch the wall, hear, taste, and smell, but being stuck in your mind and nothing else? I guess that’s being absolutely alone.”

  “Shit,” Brad said with a grimace.

  “Yeah. It freaked him right the fuck out. The head shed folks say most brains don’t come back when it happens. He did, of course, but he has a fear of it happening again.”

  “Thanks for telling me, Bobby.”

  “Sure. Don’t know if it helps any, but I’ll talk to him and see if he’ll ratchet it back a little. We go back on the line in the morning they say. If you get tabbed I would imagine things will go smoother. Felix is all business on a mission.”

  “I’ll suck it up. Then we’ll go from there.”

  -(o)-

  “Troopers, this morning we go back to work,” Lieutenant Colonel Dominguez said to the assembled armored recon squadron. “The Pythans are up to something. Command thinks they are going to try and preempt our offensive with one of their own. Our job is twofold: one, we need to find out what the Pythans are up to; two, we are to provide support to the infantry on the line. A and B Troops are support, C Troop is recon. Gear up, fuel up, arm up, and mount up. Assignments will come forthwith.”

  -(o)-

  Felix pulled from the motor pool bay when Bobby banged on the hull to let them know when to roll out.

  “We have the southernmost area to recon. You get it set up in the nav system?” Felix asked over the vehicle communication system.

  “Roger that,” Brad replied. “Division has navigation drones up. I have them locked in so we can update our plots quicker.”

  “Good. I see you bringing a rifle on board?”

  “Yep. Secured in the main turret with my rucksack. If I have to recon on foot, then I want more than my belt knife for armament.”

  “Good, but the smart ones refuse to leave the vehicle unless we’re on fire.”

  Felix’s attempt at humor was ignored or misunderstood by his teammate.

  “I thought you made it abundantly clear I’m not smart, or competent.”

  “Look, you per
form like you did yesterday and we’ll do fine. Bobby said he thought you might not be a fuckup, so don’t make me regret my decision to listen to him.”

  Brad looked upward with a glare, but said nothing.

  -(o)-

  Thirty minutes later Felix turned off the road and rolled cross-country half a kilometer, coming to a stop behind an infantry unit. ERod-423 from A Troop followed behind. That tank would be staying with the infantry to provide support.

  A grizzled sergeant walked toward Felix with a broad smile on his face. He opened a box on the left side of the hull, removed a headset, and placed it over his helmet.

  The vehicle coms hissed briefly when the sergeant spoke.

  “Felix. I figured they retired you to hauling trash,” the sergeant said.

  “First Sergeant Jackson. You ought to be in a wheelchair. You’re sure as shit too old to be in the field.”

  They both laughed.

  “You our support, Felix?”

  “No, recon. Edgar, the youngster behind me is your support. Seems solid, but he doesn’t have much experience.”

  “He just might get some today. Maybe we finish off the Pythans here on Beaumont and get off this rock.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Smitty still crewing with you?” Jackson asked with a gesture at the crew turret.

  “Smitty’s dead. Two months ago.”

  “Shit, I didn’t know,” Jackson said glancing up at the crew turret. “See ya when I see ya.”

  “Roger that, Jacks.”

  The first sergeant replaced the headset in the box and banged on the hull.

  “We’re rolling,” Felix said.

  Brad didn’t ask how Felix and Jackson knew one another.

  -(o)-

  “Raising the pole,” Felix said.

  A five meter long cylinder rotated from its horizontal position on the left side of the hull above the tracks and locked in a vertical position at the front left quarter of the tank. Atop the cylinder was a sphere with optics and other sensors inside.

  Officially called the Vehicle Sensor Array, Extendable, Retractable, or VSAER, but crews nearly always referred to it as ‘the pole’.

  The cylinder could be extended up to ten meters high. The device was used to make observations from behind structures or terrain features like the rock outcropping FUkr-22 was parked behind. The tank was atop a ridge overlooking a wooded valley.

  “Tree cover is heavy. You could hide an infantry brigade in there,” Felix said.

  Brad looked at the satellite images and topographic maps on his screens. “That’s a narrow valley. Another ridge half a klick east.”

  “Roger that,” Felix replied. “Got nothing on the sensors. The vegetation is thick enough to keep us blind. An air drone would come in handy.”

  “Division has them committed up north. Pythan are dug in tight up there.”

  “They’ll be probing down here. They always probe all along the line.”

  “Let me see if one of the nav drones is close enough for us to tap into its vid feed.”

  “Nice thinking, kid.”

  Brad sighed. At least it’s an improvement over ‘slick’. “It was a nice idea,” Brad said looking over his screens, “but we got nothing.”

  “Shit. That means we gotta roll down into the valley. I’ll notify squadron.”

  -(o)-

  Felix crested the ridge and moved down the steep incline to the valley floor. The tree cover near the ridge was light, but farther across the floor it was obvious to the teammates that they would have to knock down some trees to make their way anywhere else in the valley.

  “If there are Pythans in there, they’ll hear us playing lumberjack for sure,” Brad said.

  Felix made a noise over the headset that Brad thought might have been a chuckle.

  Felix rolled forward and Brad rotated the crew turret to the right, covering the nearest clump of trees.

  Felix pushed trees over at angles to their direction of travel. “If we need to unass the area I want to do it as fast as we can,” he said. “Hopefully we can wind our way between the downed trees, otherwise it will be a rough ride.”

  It was slow going, and not stealthy in the slightest. The closer they got to the stream that ran near the ridge on the other side of the valley, the larger and more dense the tree coverage became.

  Eventually Felix stopped. “We might as well call in combat engineers to build us a road.”

  “Division needs to send some aerial recon over this. I’m going to scout forward on foot and see what it looks like,” Brad said as climbed from his seat and crouched on the floor of the main turret. He removed his rifle from where it was secured to his rucksack.

  “Take the pack radio with you.”

  “Got it,” he replied as he opened the main turret hatch and unplugged his headset from the vehicle coms.

  Once outside Brad made a commo check, then slowly made his way into the trees and underbrush.

  “Don’t go too far,” Felix said. “I can’t come to you if you get in trouble, remember that.”

  “Roger,” Brad replied in a whisper.

  Sixty meters from the tank, Brad heard something. He went into a crouch and could hear the stream that wound its way through the narrow valley.

  “I’m near the stream,” Brad whispered over the radio. “I’m going forward and see what it looks like on the other side.”

  “Roger,” came Felix’s reply.

  Brad stood and walked forward a few steps when he caught movement in his peripheral vision. He crouched once again and looked through a hole in the brush to his right. Pythan infantry.

  He looked to the left and thought he saw more movement. He could hear footsteps not far away that sounded as if they were coming closer. “We have a sizable Pythan infantry force moving through the trees. On both sides of me and closing,” he hissed into the headset.

  “Get your ass back here, now.”

  “It may be too late for that. Maybe I can hide.”

  “The Pythans are top notch light infantry, Brad. It’ll never work. Make your way to me. If you think they are on to you or they fire at you, yell for help.”

  “I’m moving, but how are you going to help?”

  “I’ll make them hit the deck with armor piercing rounds.”

  “What? If you want me dead, just let the Pythans get me.”

  “Stay cool. I know what I’m do—”

  A weapon chattered and a cluster of rounds burst through the trees.

  “Shit! Consider this a yell for help,” Brad said.

  “In the dirt, now,” Felix replied. Moments later rounds flew from both main turret cannons, tearing through the trees, punching holes in trunks, branches, and Pythan soldiers.

  “I’m traversing from my left to right. When the rounds get past you, haul ass back here. Got me?” Felix broadcast as he continued to fire both main turret armaments.

  “Got it!” Brad yelled. Felix could hear his own auto-cannon fire and reports from Pythan small arms over the radio.

  Pythans emerged from the trees two hundred meters to the left of Felix and fired bursts from their odd, small-caliber weapons. Bullets peppered the hull and turret, but were no danger to the tank. Felix ignored them as he continued his traverse.

  “I’m moving!” Brad yelled, his voice stressed and ragged as he ran.

  Moments later Felix saw Brad sprinting through the trees just in front of him. He rotated the turret left and switched to antipersonnel rounds in the 25mm. When the cannon came to bear on the Pythan soldiers, who were still firing at him, he ranged them and opened fire.

  Antipersonnel rounds for the 25mm were a new take on an ancient concept, the cannister round. The modern version flew through the air as a conventional round until it was approximately twelve meters away from its ranged target. At that point, a small charge ruptured the jacket allowing the 10mm alloy balls inside to scatter into a swarm of death.

  The Pythans who fired at Felix were dead or dyi
ng by the time Brad scaled the hull and dropped into the crew turret as Felix brought the turret around to face forward.

  “You saved my ass, Felix,” Brad said once he plugged into the vehicle communication system.”

  “You’d do the same for me,” Felix replied. “I’m calling for artillery as I get us the fuck out of here. Cover us.”

  “Already there.”

  Felix was multitasking, driving the tank in reverse, calling for a fire mission, and watching for Pythan threats to the front and sides.

  The tank jostled and bounced as they moved in reverse away from the Pythans. The turret stabilizers took up much of the movement, but Brad had to make constant adjustments as he fired into the trees.

  “Arty on the way,” Felix said. “Let’s get out of—antitank missiles left!”

  “Antitank missiles right!” Brad called nearly simultaneously.

  Brad fired a burst into a group of men to the right. As they fell he saw another Pythan emerge from the trees with a missile launcher on his shoulder. Brad aimed and fired just as the rear treads clawed their way over a downed tree trunk, causing Brad’s 13mm rounds to miss. He corrected and fired, but too late, he saw the missile leap from the launcher as the enemy soldier fell.

  At the same time, Felix rotated the turret left as he kept the tank in reverse. As the 25mm auto-cannon came to bear on the group of soldiers that had the antitank missile, he ranged just as the rear treads clawed their way over a downed tree trunk. He adjusted and ranged, then fired, but he knew it wasn’t good enough, the missile was in the air and streaking at them.

  As if the passage of time slowed to a crawl, Felix saw the Pythans fall and the missile closing. Even though the throttles were wide open he fruitlessly willed the engines to produce more power as the tank bounded over the tree trunk under them.

  “Missile inbound!” Felix and Brad yelled at the same time.

  Brad’s eyes tunneled in on the missile from the right, while Felix’s optics were focused on the left. The nose of the tank tilted upward as they came over the tree trunk.

  The tank jolted and a metallic clang sounded through the interior. A hit!

  Brad could see nothing but white smoke from the missile that passed less than a meter from the crew turret. The jolt confused him for a moment as his mind caught up to the fact that Felix called an inbound missile as well.