There Will Be War Volume VII

by Jerry Pournelle

  “Yes, sir. Out.”

  I moved back to the point. Fetching the map-screen from its pocket and jacking it into Cochise’s stock, I discovered that Ridge 772 was about two miles south through rough country without even this miserable excuse for a path. “Blaze a trail for us, pal,” I said to Cochise.

  “Can do, Vic.” My rifle’s pseudovoice came out of the helmet speaker as Arizona-bred as my real one. A twisting red line flashed across the map-screen.

  “Hold up,” I ordered. When the men gathered around, I filled them in on our new job.

  “The braids sure pick some crappy places to fight this war,” Kelly muttered.

  “Maybe next time they’ll check with you first. All right, everyone, let’s move out. Double time. Ears open and mouths shut.”

  I set a dogtrot pace through the shadows under the trees. Fortunately there wasn’t much underbrush. I did my best to follow the red line, and Cochise set me straight when I wandered. The squad was spread out behind me, with Corporal Pena at the rear.

  The Rangers and their counterparts were the successors to the armies made extinct by modern weapons. I had been a Ranger for six years, and a sergeant for two. I had seen action in Iran, Panama, Germany, and a few other places. I should have been used to the chance of catching a blast. I wasn’t. Each time I turned back into the little kid who had wet his bed and run screaming to Dad after a nightmare. It was a self-fulfilling sort of fear, but I couldn’t help it. Dead is the end of everything. All over. Nothingness forever.

  I realized I had the shakes again.

  “Take deep breaths,” Cochise said soothingly. “It’s just stage fright. You’ve gotten past it before, and you’ll get past it this time too. I’m right here with you.”

  I held Cochise at the ready as I puffed along. A Colt Annihilator looks like the bastard child of an old-fashioned rifle and a linear accelerator. Slivers of antimatter iron are stored in the zero-degree stasis magazine ahead of the stock. The stator rings in the barrel kick them out at a few thousand FPS. One can turn a human body into something you clean up with a mop; for a bigger target you keep firing until it’s gone. The AI chips, power pack, and the rest of the electronics are in the stock. Sensor capabilities break down into active (radar, sonar) and passive (vision, sound, magnetic, com, radiation).

  The map-screen and some other upgrades had been added when I made sergeant, but Cochise was essentially the same as the day we were teamed in basic. It encouraged me when I was down, kicked my butt over the humps, advised me, listened patiently to my gripes, and above all calmed my fears. I had friends among the Rangers, but I would never tell them some of the things I told Cochise. And I figured it was the same between them and their rifles.

  Maybe it was the words, or the memories, or the feel of the heavy metal in my gloved hands, but I wasn’t shaking anymore. “Yeah. You cover me and I cover you,” I said. “Now run the mission orders by me, pal.”

  Three minutes of drawling monologue boiled down to this: A Cossack squad was heading for Ridge 772, one element in a move to take the Anaktuvuk Pass. Beyond the pass were Prudhoe Bay and a lot of North Slope oil. By stretching our legs, we could beat the Coms to the ridge.

  Then we would play king-of-the-mountain.

  The forest soon gave way to stands of trees, and then a white meadow. Slips and falls were frequent as we scrambled over a low hill. I tried to watch everywhere, even though Cochise and the other rifles would warn us if we had company.

  The stink of exertion and fear was overworking my helmet’s air system, but it beat breathing neurotoxins or fallout. I sucked on the water tube and tried to ignore my screaming muscles.

  Kelly’s griping worried me. His ideas weren’t new; there had always been opposition to the cable handcuffs and dirty jokes about rifles becoming officers. I used to figure they were just the usual sourballing. But they were getting too widespread, and too many of my men seemed to go along with Kelly.

  “I wonder what Kelly and his rifle talk about,” I said to Cochise. “Besides business.”

  “Very little, I suppose.”

  “He won’t even name it. I wonder how it feels about him.”

  Cochise laughed. “Don’t lose your grip, Vic. We’re not people. Our pseudopersonalities are designed to give you psychological as well as tactical support, but we don’t feel. We’re collections of programmed responses.”

  “Yeah, you keep telling me that. But the domes get pretty tricky when they try to say what alive is. Maybe you are but you don’t know it.”

  “I can’t argue with illogic like that.”

  I paused to bulldoze through a deep drift, then said, “I wish the braids would lose the handcuffs and the reports you make. They chew up morale.”

  “The problem is an old one—Frankenstein’s monster running amok, automation replacing workers. The cables are unfortunately symbolic. But all these things are done to help you.”

  “You know it and I know it. Too many Rangers aren’t sure. And aren’t sure can get you dead.”

  I took another wobbly look at the map-screen, then started to angle up a rough open slope. A few inches of icy snow greased the frozen ground. Even with a couple of stimtabs in me I was jelly-kneed and gasping, and the men seemed just as worn. We slowed almost to a walk, picking our way up the backside of Ridge 772.

  “Any sign of snipers?” I asked Cochise.

  “Wouldn’t I tell you? Try to decompress.”

  Snipers made me twitchy. In a firefight you had some control, but a sniper’s blast could turn you off so you never noticed. It was the big black hand of what the Japs call karma grabbing you, taking you away.

  Near the bald ridge I flattened in the snow. Looking back, I couldn’t see the squad. Good. If I couldn’t, neither could a Cossack. I gave the arm signal to advance. Seven white bulges crept upslope toward me. They were damned fine Rangers—even Kelly, for all his mouth. I wondered how many of them I’d lose tonight.

  I crab-walked to the ridge. Nothing blew up near me, so I lifted my head a few inches and looked around.

  The southern slope dropped irregularly for a few hundred yards before it disappeared under the branches of a lodgepole pine forest. A few small pines and berry bushes, stunted by the frozen ground, were scattered across the slope. The granite bones of the ridge also broke through the snow in places. Mount Doonerak was a vague shape in the distance.

  “Any action?” I asked Cochise.

  “A wolf prowling near the edge of the woods, about five hundred yards southwest. No Cossacks.”

  “Yet.” I could see why HQ had planted us here. To the west a river thrashed and bubbled through a gap in the hills on its way to join up with the John River. It was narrow, but nothing you would want to try to ford. To the east the slope twisted into a white wall almost too steep to climb, an avalanche waiting to happen on top of anyone who dared.

  I mustered the squad behind a rock slab the size of a car. “Corporal,” I whispered, “take Kowolski on a quick scout downslope.”

  Corporal Pena’s “On it, Sarge,” hardly rose above the hissing wind. He and the greenie squirmed away.

  I did too, crawling along two hundred yards of ridge so Cochise and I could check out the topography in detail. I got back to the squad just ahead of Corporal Pena and Kowolski.

  “All clear, Sarge,” Corporal Pena reported. “Found a gully over there that must be a creek in the summer.” He pointed southeast. “Pretty good cover most of the way up the slope. If I was a Cossack, I’d use it.”

  “Thanks, Corporal.” Then I said to Cochise, “This is a lot of real estate to hold with just a squad. I figure two men above the gully should cork it. Kelly and Polk are the best shots.”

  “Alvarez has excellent night vision.”

  “Kelly and Alvarez then. The rest of us strung out along the ridge, dug in on rises with wide fields of fire. Suggestions?”

  “These outcrops”—Cochise showed three red dots on the map-screen’s version of the ridge—“ar
e well positioned and big enough to give cover.”

  “Sounds good, pal.”

  I jacked into the laser com pack and had Dutch raise HQ. “Lieutenant Green, Sergeant Rhine here. We’re on Ridge 772 and digging in, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Green here. Dig deep, Sergeant. The sky is going to fall on you in ten to fifteen minutes. A pogie unit is setting up eight miles southwest of you.”

  “Can you get us some satellite support, sir?”

  “Negative. We’re catching it all along the front. HQ is counting on you to hold.”

  Those words had been the epitaph for a lot of Rangers. “Yes, sir. Out.”

  I filled the men in, and showed them on the map-screen where I wanted them. They looked as enthusiastic as I felt.

  Alvarez shook his head. “Great scenario. Just like the Alamo.”

  “At least you’re on the right side this time,” Polk said dryly.

  “Move out,” I ordered. “Don’t waste shots. You’re packing the most expensive ammo in history, and I have to account to Quartermaster for it.”

  My position was behind a half-buried boulder in the middle of the ridge. Snow sat on top like white hair. Freezing water had cracked a narrow V in the rock, a good observation and firing slot. Twelve feet of granite wouldn’t stop antimatter blasts forever, but it would slow them down. I hoped.

  Dutch and Daley were setting up behind their rocks, while the others dug in. I watched Corporal Pena clear snow from a likely spot with his boot, move back twenty paces, and fire his rifle. The sliver’s stasis broke down as it penetrated the frozen ground. A few square yards of ridge jumped with a muted bang, then dropped back as small pieces. Corporal Pena hacked at the rubble with his field shovel.

  When the men were dug in, I inspected their positions. Then I crawled back to mine. I held Cochise in the V so its sensors had a clear field, and saw other barrels peek out from foxholes and around rocks. We were as ready as we were going to be.

  It’s always hurry up and wait. I knelt in the cold snow, tasting sourness in the back of my throat, trying to get my heart and lungs to calm down. The clouds were getting thicker. Wind whistled across the ridge, kicking up white swirls.

  “Seen any good vids lately?” I joked feebly.

  “Better keep your mind on business,” Cochise advised.

  Like most good advice, I didn’t want to hear it. I stared at the woods below and the sky above. Time oozed by. I tried to stay sharp while death raked her claws across my nerves.

  “Three pogies incoming!” Cochise rapped. “From the southwest.”

  I flipped down the helmet’s IR visor, and the night turned black. Cochise’s padded butt slammed reassuringly into my right shoulder. Reminding myself to breathe, I peered southwest.

  In another few heartbeats the baby cruise missiles would shriek over us, drop enough antimatter to turn the ridge into a plateau, then head for their next target. The only way to survive was to stop them first. At night you couldn’t eyeball them, the range was too long for sound targeting, and radar would give away your location. But their engines showed a good heat signature. We would have almost a second to empty the sky.

  Three white dots flashed in the visor. I snap-aimed and squeezed off three rounds. Aiming a rifle was a team effort. I did the best I could, then Cochise fine-tuned the shot by jiggering the muzzle stator.

  Cochise squeaked like a monster mouse. The kicks jackhammered my shoulder. Seven other squeaks echoed mine.

  There was no time to dive for cover. Two things happened as my finger eased up on the trigger button. A row of bright white balls burst in the visor where the lower slope was. The world groaned, and a tornado ripped past my rock. But as I fell backward I saw three bigger balls of light blossom overhead.

  I hit the hard ground smiling, bounced back into my kneeling position, and flipped up the visor. It took some damned fine shooting to ace a flight of pogies. Now for the main event.

  I waved to the men. One by one they all signaled okay.

  Then I watched the lower slope, where a wide strip had been chewed and spit out, and the dark wall of trees beyond. The Cossack squad would infiltrate tight behind the pogies. I thought about the rifles out there somewhere, hidden, sighting on me. I started to shake again.

  “No time for that now,” Cochise said soothingly. “The curtain is going up.”

  A night fight was scary enough to freak anyone. Combat suits were too well insulated for IR to be useful, so I had to rely on the image enhancer and Cochise’s sound sensor. It was like being half-blind.

  “Two to four Cossacks moving upslope at the bottom of the gully,” Cochise said.

  Kelly and Alvarez would have gotten the word from their rifles. I couldn’t look away from my own target zone, but I heard squeaks to my left, and blasts as MC2 got turned into E. A strong wind and rocky hail tried to knock me down again.

  “Report,” I growled.

  “Kelly and Alvarez fired at targets in the gully. I can’t tell if they took out any Cossacks. The Cossacks returned fire fast. Very fast.”

  “What in hell does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. But be careful. These Cossacks have exceptionally quick reactions and are exceptionally accurate. Alvarez is dead—the big blast was his rifle’s ammo going—and Kelly is pinned down.”

  I felt sweat popping out on my forehead. One moment Ernesto Alvarez had been a big crude human being. The next there wasn’t anything left to bury. But how? He wouldn’t have shown much target, yet he had been nailed from over three hundred yards. And “very fast.”

  “The Cossacks in the gully are moving upslope again,” Cochise reported. “I can hear four of them, so no casualties.”

  I hoped Kelly wouldn’t try anything suicidal.

  Scanning the edge of the woods at full mag, I saw a lumpy drift move. I aimed, fired and missed.

  Four flaming arrows shot through the crack less than a foot over my head. They screamed like wounded coyotes, and toasted my scalp even through the helmet. A rifle varies the muzzle velocity so each sliver reaches its target just as the stasis is breaking down. If it doesn’t hit anything, it flames out.

  I dropped below the crack, feeling a power sledge at work in my chest. The return shots had arrived almost with Cochise’s kick, threading the needle from extreme range.

  “Those guys are damned good,” I whispered.

  “That they are. Your target and three other Cossacks are crawling up the slope, about thirty yards apart.”

  Spreading out was smart tactics, not just because it isolated targets, but because of what happened when a rifle magazine full of ammo cut loose.

  I switched on my helmet com—I was already located, so what the hell—and growled, “Heads down! Those guys can shoot the fuzz off an atom in zero time, so wait for better targets. Daley, help Kelly cover the gully.”

  I popped up for a peek. More lines of white fire widened the crack as I ducked. The four Cossacks were on their feet, zigzagging up the slope and firing on the run.

  “Those guys are double damned good.”

  The ground shook from blasts to my left. “Report,” I told Cochise.

  “Kelly and Daley caved in the sides of the gully ahead of their Cossacks.”

  “Smart move.” Ranger/rifle teams were strong on individual initiative.

  A series of too-close blasts battered and almost deafened me. “What the hell?” I shouted over the noise.

  “Our Cossacks are undercutting this outcrop.”

  I felt like I was about to puke. “How long do we have?”

  “It can give at”—the big boulder behind which I had seemed reasonably safe a few seconds ago shuddered—“any moment.”

  The granite cracked almost as loud as a blast, and started rolling toward the woods. I should have flattened. Instead I followed my cover. It wasn’t exactly round, so it bounced and slid a lot. But it picked up speed on the steep slope.

  “This is stupid,” Cochise advised. “You’re heading right for
the Cossacks.”

  “I know, dammit! Too late now. Where this rock goes, we go.”

  I was running flat out, gasping, trying to stay upright despite the terrible footing. I frantically watched the rock, the ground and both sides of the slope. The sound of tons of granite slamming into the ground a few yards ahead of me was impressive.

  The rock picked up more speed than I could, and it started to leave me behind. I had to be getting close to the Cossacks. Any second now, I thought sickly, the lights go out for good. “Where are they?”

  “I can’t hear anything over the outcrop’s noise. Sorry, Vic.”

  “Sorry, you say–”

  There they were. Four bulky white figures a lot like Rangers, two to the left, two to the right. But they weren’t closing in and aiming at me like they should have been. They were still spread out, zigzagging upslope.

  For a split-second I figured I was crazy. Then I got it. They thought I had flattened back on the ridge. Admittedly the smart move, they were taking it for granted.

  I swung Cochise in a 180 degree arc and fired four rounds. At this range I had them cold. White figures turned into white fireballs that melted the snow for yards around. The image enhancer’s protection saved my eyes. The last Cossack managed an off-balance shot that came a lot closer than it had any right to. The blast to my right knocked me down. I stayed down.

  The rock dropped into a blast crater at the bottom of the slope with a final ground-pounding thud.

  I felt professional satisfaction over the four kills, and overwhelming relief at still being alive. “Those guys are damned good, but not very imaginative,” I gasped.

  Then I heard four blasts almost in synch up on the ridge, near Kelly. “Report.”

  “The other four Cossacks have reached the top of the gully,” Cochise said. “They’re attacking Kelly’s position.”