by Michael Ryan
“I have two BT-782s at three hundred forty degrees, Sergeant,” I said over the squad comm. The vehicle was a medium tracked battle tank with a remote operator. “Orders?”
“Move to fix Alpha-2 and find a good spot to engage from, Avery,” he replied. “The Second has the tanks.”
I zigzagged into position and watched for enemy support troops or guards, but all I could see in my DS was fire, which showed up as neon flares on my screen.
“Anything, Juliana?” I asked.
“Negative,” she said. A few moments later she cursed and reported a mecha moving into our lane.
“Jesus, look at that thing,” I said.
“I see it.”
“Sergeant,” I said over the squad comm.
“We got it, Avery,” he said.
The rail-cannon, which was firing from ten kilometers to our south, dropped six HE-34s on the mecha. The unit fired wildly back toward us before grinding to a halt and toppling over with such force that the ground beneath us shook. Another mecha emerged from the smoke like a giant robotic annihilator, its targeting hub pulsing red in the darkness. I waited for it to be neutralized by our team, but nothing more came from the rail-cannon.
“This is Green Actual,” our sergeant announced. “The RC has been hit. We’ve got to take this bitch ourselves.”
I zoomed in on the mecha, which had covered half the distance to where we were lying since I’d spotted it. “I identify the unit as an MW-73, possibly with a CFM. Shit, make that a definite on the CFM.” The mecha had a centrifugal force machine gun mounted to its right upper appendage and had a grenade launcher on its left. It was systematically working its way across our line. “Is somebody going to support us on this?”
I didn’t get an answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
But my enemies, those who would not praise my reign over them, bring them, and slay them at my feet.
~ Holy Writs of Vahobra, 4:28
Guritain forces don’t employ bipedal mechas. Tedesconian forces have several models, but because of the expense, use them in limited numbers. Endless arguments among military nerds haven’t settled which side has it right.
The lone remaining mecha lumbered across the sand toward us. It approached at a pace we could outrun, but that didn’t mean we could escape its arsenal. The heaviest weapon our platoon was equipped with was an AA-16 missile, a self-guided projectile designed to disable armored craft with a kinetic energy round smaller in diameter than a human female’s pinkie finger.
I called up the missile’s launch screen and made adjustments to its flight path.
<
I hesitated while watching our lane, and made mental notes of where Ted service personnel were working to extinguish the spires of burning oil. “Jules, can you put some rounds into that group in grid B-18?”
“Sure.” She fired off several bursts, each several hundred rounds. She paused and inspected the results before reporting back. “They’re well armored.”
“Yeah, I wanted to see if the mecha… Shit. I’ve got a bird. Incoming!”
“I’m on it,” she said. A missile, fired from the mecha, was dropping to our position after arcing skyward. Juliana fired a series of countermeasures above and behind us, and the warhead struck the ground less than twenty meters away, exploding in a spray of sand that left us unharmed.
“That was close,” Juliana said.
“Okay, get ready,” I warned. “I want you firing into B-18 again on a ten count, but release your AA-16s to me.”
“Done. Ready to fire on your count.”
I counted down. Setting my Gauss assault rifle to fire random groupings into the grid, I concentrated on tweaking commands on our eight remaining missiles. On “one,” we began hammering rounds into the well-armored service teams. As expected, the mecha made an adjustment and launched another missile at us. It was during that transition that I unleashed eight missiles in succession.
“We need to move west fifty meters,” I said, and sent her a sat image. “To that outcropping, as soon as we take care of this–”
“I’m on it,” she said as she fired antimissile countermeasures.
The mecha had more than our weapons to counteract. It had gained the attention of a good portion of our platoon, who were throwing everything they had at it. Fearsome as the giant mecha was, bigger isn’t always better on the battlefield. That said, our problem was that its centrifugal gun was extremely effective as an antimissile defense weapon. It could put hundreds of bolts into the path of an incoming missile and either detonate it in flight or destroy its guidance systems. Our combined forces had slowed the monster’s progression across the battlefield, but it was still closing as my missiles began their run.
The first missile abruptly dove eight hundred meters short of the target and curved into a ground-hugging flight plan. It was easily destroyed by the mecha, but the second missile took the monster another fraction of a second to lock onto and destroy. The third missile altered course as I’d programmed it to do, and headed toward the B-18 grid.
A high-density kinetic energy round is overkill as an antipersonnel weapon, but apparently the mecha’s purpose was to defend the troops behind it, and the operator destroyed my third missile.
The fourth missile was programmed to alter its course and veer off toward nothing in particular.
Number five went in the opposite direction from the fourth.
The sixth missile slammed into the ground ahead of the mecha. A high-speed projectile can’t make significant adjustments in a close-range fight, and our AA-16s weren’t large enough to carry the fuel required to make radical flight changes like U-turns. For that reason, the mecha could ignore the missiles that flew past it, although it continued to defend as best it could. My seventh missile came at it from its right side, and the eighth from its left. Both had made large arcs but neither had crossed the path of no return.
The second-to-last of my missiles was shot down, but the mecha turned to engage the eighth an instant too late. The round pierced through the machine’s torso like a miniature shooting star.
The slender round of depleted uranium in an AA-16 superheats and self-sharpens as it penetrates armor. The death of crew members can result from spalling, being splattered with the molten metal of the round itself and equipment fragmentation, or from secondary explosions of munitions and fuel ignited by the intense heat.
The mecha stopped as if someone had commanded it to freeze.
I felt confident that if my round hadn’t killed the pilot, at least the equipment had been damaged enough to prevent it from defending itself. After a second of sitting exposed and defenseless, my hope was rewarded with the sight of the mecha being lit up by various HE rounds from my platoon.
Secondary explosions and a bright orange-red fire capped its destruction.
“Nice shot,” Jules said.
“Thanks. Let’s move west.”
We raced to the new coordinates and evaluated our area of responsibility.
Another barrage of HE rounds tore into the remains of the mecha. Whoever had fired them had done so too late to have any impact on the battle. It was likely nervous troops who’d been hiding behind cover and didn’t want to explain in debriefing why they’d returned without having fired all their ammunition.
“Better late than never, right?” Juliana said.
“Not really.”
“We need to get in closer,” she advised.
“I agree.” I searched for the rest of our platoon. They were spread out across several kilometers, with some of their signals off-grid completely – which meant those soldiers were dead.
I found Visnaal’s and Valsea’s trackers. They were working a grid adjacent to ours, five hundred meters to our west.
I sent Juliana a pic of the spot where Visnaal and Valsea had taken cover. “Should we move there?” I asked.
“Good as any, but I’m not sure it’s close enough.”
“We’ll adjust.”
We landed heavily beside Visnaal and Valsea, who were unsurprised to see us, our approach having been announced by their screens so they wouldn’t shoot us apart.
“What’s up, buddy?” Visnaal asked.
“Same shit,” I said.
“See anything big out there?” Valsea asked.
“No,” Juliana answered. “Not after Avery took out that mecha.”
Visnaal seemed impressed. “That was you?”
“I couldn’t have done it without support,” I deflected. “What’s our plan here? The Teds don’t have any air support. Currently, at least.”
“We need to get closer,” Valsea said. “And as of now, we don’t have any air support either.”
“What a cluster-fuck,” Visnaal said. “We might be moving into an ambush. A field of land mines. Something.”
“Hold one,” I said. I tried to contact our squad leader, but Sergeant Terllvering had his comm set to block. At least he was still alive. I scanned the platoon comm screen, but it held nothing that I wasn’t already aware of, and no new orders.
“Terllvering is off comm,” I reported. “I think we continue with our last orders.”
“So move in closer?” Juliana asked. “We’ve got the ammo, but I don’t know…”
Our Gauss assault rifles weren’t effective against armored troops unless deployed at close range and with massive numbers of rounds. That kind of close-quarters attack wasn’t recommended by the book because it created too much vulnerability. We had no certainty about what firepower or defenses the enemy possessed.
I scanned the far grids to see if I could gain any intel by observing the other teams, but with all the smoke, fire, and action, it was impossible to make out whether anything was working or not.
I received a short reply from our squad leader.
<
“The SL responded. Continue,” I said. I forwarded a marked-up map. “We should move together to here, and then we can split into our own A of R.”
“Agreed,” Visnaal responded. “I’ll lead.” He took off at a run, and we followed in a line. An occasional burst of small-round fire ricocheted off my armor, but we didn’t draw any large ordnance or missile attacks. Once behind cover again, we compared pictures of the grids we’d taken while on the move.
“I don’t see any other defenses,” Valsea said.
“Mines, maybe?” Juliana asked.
“I haven’t heard about any of our troops setting off mines,” Visnaal stated. “But maybe nobody has gotten close enough.”
“We’ll deal with the possibility when we get nearer,” I said. “How about you two cover me and Jules while we move here?” I highlighted a point on our collective map. “And then we’ll cover you to these coordinates.” I sent another picture.
“Done,” he said.
We moved again. The only rounds we took bounced off our suits. We covered for Visnaal and Valsea, but there was nothing to defend them against. They settled in, and we turned our attention to our assigned grid.
~~~
“Thoughts?” Juliana asked.
“I don’t see any defenses except that they’re well armored,” I said.
“So, what? A battle with firefighters and combat engineers?”
I grunted. “If that’s what it takes.”
“I sense a trap,” Juliana said.
“I think we can expect that from now until the war ends.”
“Touché.”
I glanced toward Visnaal, but so much smoke had drifted across our line that I couldn’t locate him visually. The Ted engineers had successfully put out one of the oil fires, and they were moving toward another one. They were using a heavily armored tracked vehicle, but didn’t appear to have much in offensive weaponry. Perhaps it was commercial in design, I thought, and not military. I tried scanning other grids to see if any of our platoon was having any luck, good or bad.
We still needed to get closer, the sooner the better. Our heli-jet would be in the LZ for pickup in six minutes, and while the infantry’s protocol was not to leave troops behind, protocol and reality occasionally failed to align. Green troops in this period of the war were often listed as KIAs, when in reality they’d been left behind and were quite possibly prisoners. Experienced troops weren’t anxious to die sitting in an LZ, and pilots could sometimes comply with orders by finagling the incoming reports as needed to get off the ground and out of the enemy’s range before all the friendlies had arrived.
I set a warning timer as a visual in my DS to be sure we’d make it to the LZ on time.
A high-priority message popped into view.
<
“Jules, we got the rail-cannon. Four rounds.”
“Finally some good news.” She sent me a pic with a little arrow drawn above one of the tracked engineering vehicles. “I think we light up this target.”
“With all four?”
“I don’t know; we could do two on that one” – she sent me another pic – “and two on this one. But I don’t think one round each will be enough.”
“Agreed. Okay, two each. And then we move in?”
“I don’t have a better plan. We’ve got pickup in just over five minutes.”
“I’ve got a timer going,” I said.
The authorization appeared in my display screen to deliver a firing command to the RC for a total of four HE-4c rounds, which were large enough to stop any known tracked vehicle in the Ted arsenal, provided the targeting was spot on. I accepted the authorization.
<
I replied instantly with the four grid points I’d selected. The rail-cannon was firing from a dry riverbed located over twenty kilometers to the south, and the HE-4c didn’t use guided munitions. If the vehicles moved in the next few moments, our allotment would be wasted.
<
I watched downrange. Firing solutions were determined by the rail-cannon crews. They often varied speeds and angles to achieve what they determined was the best trajectory, so I didn’t know the exact timing of impact. Unlike a round fired through a barrel with a set explosive charge and a fixed muzzle velocity, the HE-4c projectiles could be lobbed at different speeds, enabling different trajectories to deliver a pounding to the same spot.
I’d varied the targeting slightly, as the vehicles were moving at low speed toward the fires they were fighting.
At just after twelve seconds, a blinding flare of orange obliterated my view of the first vehicle.
“Move now,” I said to Juliana, and leapt to my feet.
The next round hit the second vehicle.
Juliana was behind me by only a second when we entered grid B-18. The third and fourth rounds had been fired high, and both came down on top of their intended targets. A moment of whiteout appeared in my DS as the initial explosion lit the night. My screen adjusted instantly, giving me a view of burning wreckage, but the surroundings went black. I took a steady burst of Gauss rifle fire from the combat engineers until I was able to dive behind a sand dune.
“Success?” Juliana asked. “They appear to be down.”
“I think so,” I answered. It was impossible to be sure without sticking my head into the shooters’ line of sight.
“We’re pinned down,” she said.
“Grenades left?” I asked.
“I have ten.”
“Okay. I’ve got six.”
“Mister trigger happy.”
“Suggestions?”
“We need to scan for mines.”
“I’d like to make the LZ so we don’t end up as prisoners and taken to a Paluastic slave mine on Purvas.”
“You don’t believe that rumor, do you?”
“I don’t believe anything,” I said dryly. “But I also think anything’s possible.”
“We’re approaching four minutes,” she warned.
“How long to get there?”
“Medium,” I said. “Take the average.”
“Flat out, without any complications, two minutes, fifteen seconds.”
“Crap.” I didn’t like how fast time moved when you needed it to crawl by. I also hated how slow time moved when you didn’t want it to.
“How about we move a hundred meters?” Juliana suggested. “We can fire our grenades and head to the LZ.”
“Get there a few seconds early and provide cover fire?”
“Sounds like a fair plan to me,” she said.
“Let’s make it happen.”
We tore through the sand, taking light incoming. The engineers and fire control teams were now busy with another inferno. I ran a density scan, looking for anomalies in the ground, hoping that if there was a minefield, I’d pick it up before we ran into it. “There’s a good spot,” I said to Juliana. “To the left.”
“I see it,” she said, altering her course.
Rifle rounds continued to ping harmlessly off my armor.
Several explosions lit up the sky. I tried scanning above to see if we had air support coming, but whatever had been up there had gone dark. I returned my attention to the ground.
“Stop!” I shouted.
A bright spot lit up on my DS, and Juliana went sprawling into the sand.
“I saw it,” she said.
I dropped to the ground and ranged on the unit of engineers. “You okay?”
“Sort of. I fired a hundred rounds into that mine right before I ran through its blast zone. But I’m damaged.”
“How bad?”
“I can’t work my left leg.”
“Hell. Hold tight.”
The effective range of my grenades was shy by ten meters. We were running out of time. I trotted over to her.
“Transfer control of your grenade launcher.”
She didn’t answer.
“Juliana?”
Still no answer. I logged into her system and scanned her health report.