Stark's War

by John G. Hemry

  "But Sarge—"

  "Just do it." Stark held his breath as several soldiers shifted position, ready to shout a command to get back under cover if the enemy responded to the sight of apparently easy targets, but the unnatural silence from the enemy fortifications continued.

  More time passed, another timeline running down until it hit zero. Additional commands sprang to life. Advance along planned route. Engage enemy front-line positions. Stark studied the routes laid out on his Tac, puzzled. We're not attacking. Not like this. Firing from those locations won't accomplish anything. A diversion? Gotta be. But the enemy would have been firing at us already if they were worried about us. Maybe they're just waiting for us to get closer.

  "Let's move it. Real careful." Stark advanced cautiously, rock to rock, one eye on the terrain that could mask his movements and the other on his Squad members as they followed his lead. "Chen, keep your head down. Kidd, keep your rushes shorter."

  "Okay, Sarge."

  "Yes, Sarge."

  Stark reached the position ordered by his Tac, crouched behind a low rise, rifle at ready. As his Squad dropped into their own places, Stark raised his weapon, aiming carefully toward enemy lines. As the timeline ticked down to zero, his Tac ordered Stark to begin shooting. "Open fire," Stark ordered, and the Squad's weapons spat fire toward the seemingly empty ridges ahead. One clip expended, Stark reloaded, firing at the aiming points dictated by his Tac, since he lacked any real targets. A few enemy weapons fired back—scattered, harassing shots that fell around the Squad's position without doing damage. Stark switched to command level scan for a moment, seeing that squads and platoons all around the perimeter were engaged in similar light probes, then returned to watching his own Squad closely.

  Another timeline reached its end, triggering the next order: "Fall back." Stark retreated just as carefully as he'd advanced, taking a slightly different route just in case the enemy had tracked his earlier movements, until he and the rest of the Squad reached their starting positions once more. "Action completed," Stark reported.

  "Okay." Captain Noble sounded genial but distant, as if he hadn't been paying much attention.

  "Captain," Stark pressed, "if that was intended as a diversionary action, it failed. The enemy did not respond in a manner that indicated any concern about our actions."

  "Thank you, Sergeant."

  "Captain, my assessment is that this action did not fulfill its intended purpose."

  "Sergeant," Noble stated in a noticeably less genial tone, "the purpose of the action is not your concern."

  "Captain, we did not draw any significant enemy fire."

  "That's enough, Stark. Just follow your Tac."

  You lay on the rock, more rock stretching away as far as the eye could see, which even after years of viewing, your mind still insisted wasn't far enough because the horizon was just too damn close. The dust never seemed to settle completely anymore, as humans tossed it up by movement, by digging, and by explosions and impacts of various sorts. No matter how the Moon tugged in a stubborn, tireless effort to bring its dead components back to the rest they'd known until humans came to disturb things, disturb them humans did. "Moon fog," the veterans called it, a slight haze hanging everywhere people fought and labored here, a form of air pollution in a place without air.

  He began to feel some cold seeping through the suit's insulation despite its efficiency. One foot began tingling slightly in that way that foretold a limb falling asleep. Stark moved as best he could without moving, trying to generate both warmth and circulation with minor tremors. Phantom pains started sprouting where enemy weaponry had wounded him in the past, as if his cells remembered the damage and were broadcasting it now in reminder of what could come.

  Stark could only concentrate on himself for so long, even while scanning his Squad for any problems or carelessness. He finally called up the back door into the command scan, seeing what every officer could see, despite his misgivings.

  On the highest level of command scan, Stark could finally discern the outline of the attack plan. The three brigades of Third Division had been positioned at roughly even intervals around the American perimeter, one of those brigades behind Stark's own unit. As he watched, that closest brigade jumped off, advancing to pass through the forward positions.

  "Vic, you watching the command scan?"

  "Yeah."

  "They've got armor in with the ground apes. They're actually sending tanks forward as part of an assault."

  "I noticed." Vic sounded far away, as if she'd detached herself from what was about to happen.

  "Dammit, you don't send armor up against an unshaken defensive line. They'll die faster than the infantry."

  "I know, Ethan."

  Stark's eyes were locked on his scan, oblivious for the moment to the ravaged lunar terrain, seeing the massed symbols sweep forward until they had nearly reached his own position, waiting for something else, something he finally recognized by its absence. "Vic, where's the artillery? Why hasn't any artillery opened up to screen this advance?"

  "There won't be any artillery. Remember? They want the enemy to have their heads up, to see what's coming and be overawed."

  It made an insane kind of sense, in the sort of world Generals inhabited. Stark stared at the display, mesmerized by a sight he'd never imagined seeing outside of a simulator. A full brigade of soldiers advancing in skirmish formation, heading for a single point on the enemy line, a hammer aiming to smash its way through entrenched defensive positions by the force of its will and the strength of the individual bodies that made it up. Studded throughout the formation like mobile fortresses, the tanks slid forward without apparent effort, black shells studded with weapons canted toward the still-silent enemy positions.

  It's beautiful, in a way. Or maybe magnificent is the word. Watch it. Fix it in the brain. Before it all ends and you never see the like again. Stark said a quick prayer for the brigade moving to attack, knowing as he did so that prayers were poor substitutes for common sense.

  The Third Division brigade moved through the forward American positions, some of the ranks passing Stark's own Squad where it lay in gape-jawed amazement. "Sarge?" Billings whispered. "Are they gonna—?"

  "Shut up. Everybody shut up."

  Up ahead now, the assaulting units began to lose their carefully knit formations as the soldiers displayed more difficulty moving in the unfamiliar gravity and terrain. The enemy line stayed dormant as the leading units came farther within range, the objective ridge looming dark and apparently vacant while the brigade surged farther forward at a more rapid clip, most soldiers abandoning any attempt at keeping to cover as they sought to maintain the formations dictated by their Tacs.

  Maybe it'll work, Stark thought desperately. Maybe the enemy'll be scared senseless, pull back. Maybe, maybe, oh, please God—

  His HUD screamed. Tied into the command circuit, alarms cried frantically from every vector as the ridge erupted with enemy fire so intense it seemed a sunrise had sprung to life from the muzzles of their weapons. Incoming rounds swelled into life, threat symbology dense enough to obscure the view ahead. The limited defensive umbrella the assault troops carried was swamped in milliseconds; then the fire hit and rolled over the attackers like a wave.

  As Stark watched in horror, entire formations vanished, their green symbols flickering into the fixed markers of death or simply disappearing as suit systems were destroyed. On the left flank, an advancing platoon froze in its tracks, every soldier dead in moments, their symbology glowing eerily, still in almost perfect alignment. Tanks burst into ragged fireballs as flurries of antiarmor weapons slammed home, their now-useless armor converted into clouds of shrapnel flaying their own infantry.

  The formations dissolved, some symbols going to ground, others falling back in various degrees of order and disorder, and incredibly, many still advancing, moving forward into a gale of fire that nothing living could front for long. Comm circuits, overloaded beyond capacity and stressed by ene
my jamming, broke up into a thousand fragmentary messages.

  "—where's it coming from?"

  "C'mon, let's—"

  "Medic! Med—!"

  "—enemy strongpoint on the right—"

  "—not on Tacs—"

  "—Sarge? Lieutenant? Anybody?"

  "—take it under fire—"

  "—get—"

  "—down! He's down!"

  "—where? Where?"

  "Keep going—"

  Suddenly the wild stream of broken conversations shrank into near-silence. Stark checked his command tap, confirming his suspicion. They're filtering out unauthorized comms at the relays. Everybody's shouting into silence now. Calls for help, reports to other units, last words from those who had time to say them, all consigned to nothingness.

  Many of the survivors of the Third Division brigade surged onward, shedding newly dead and wounded as they went like a stream of water evaporating as it rolled across a hot griddle. Somehow a few made it to the enemy positions, scattered clusters of two or three friendly symbols clawing their way up the ridge in the teeth of the enemy fusillade. They made it up, onto the top of the ridge, and then they died, isolated among defensive positions that poured fire into them from every angle.

  The wave retreated, survivors of the assault falling back, losing more soldiers as they came. Stark watched, his Tac silent and unchanging. "Captain," he finally demanded, "are we going to cover them?"

  "You'll see any orders on your Tactical, Sergeant."

  "Captain, they're being slaughtered out there and we're just lying here!"

  "I don't want to hear another word out of you, Stark."

  Stark felt himself trembling, but he stayed silent, checking his command scan to see that new orders had at last gone out to the attacking units. The remnants of the Third Division brigade reached an area about one hundred meters short of the First Division positions, then halted, somehow maintaining enough discipline to take cover rather than continuing to retreat.

  The enemy barrage finally lessened, dropping in intensity as it shifted to precision fire, trying to take out every American soldier spotted forward of the line. Okay, you had your damned assault, Stark seethed inwardly. Now call a ceasefire so we can get medical aid to the wounded out there.

  Instead, Stark watched in amazement at the command scan as another Third Division brigade, about one-third of the perimeter away, jumped off for an attack similar to that which had just occurred to his front. He screwed his eyes shut, unwilling to watch, until he heard the alarms sound again and knew another couple of thousand soldiers were being butchered. The futile attack lasted, if anything, a little longer than the first had. Stop. Now. It's not working, dammit. Your 'sequenced assaults' and 'focused application of force' aren't accomplishing anything but wiping out your own soldiers.

  But the third brigade jumped off in turn, and died in turn. Stark lay, almost physically stunned by the events he'd been forced to witness, then stared in shock again as new orders came through to the surviving Third Division troops, not only those to his front but also at the locations of the other two attacks.

  "General advance. Assault your objectives."

  In blind obedience to duty, the soldiers came to their feet, unit by unit, trying to advance a little smarter this time, trying to take advantage of cover, but usually failing because of their unfamiliarity with moving under lunar conditions. The enemy fire doubled, then redoubled, raking the advancing troops. The assault stumbled, as if the soldiers had hit a wall they couldn't breast, then ground to another halt.

  Stark's back door into the command circuit came to life again as headquarters began hurling individual Third Division units forward, one by one. "Bravo Company. Assault and seize Objective Yorktown. Acknowledge."

  Bravo Company of First Battalion of First Brigade of Third Division. Stark's Squad belonged to one of the Bravo companies in First Division. He felt an extra, irrational bond with those foolish, inexperienced soldiers who were being cut to pieces out in front, a bond formed of shared identities built around one letter of a phonetic alphabet. Another Bravo Company dying under unrelenting enemy fire, and that somehow made it a little worse to bear.

  After a long moment, a reply came, the words slightly ragged, as if their speaker were having difficulty stringing them in sequence. "This is Lieutenant McMasters, acting Bravo Company commander. I have twenty-five effectives left in my unit. Did not copy your last. Say again."

  "Bravo Company, assault and seize Objective Yorktown."

  Another prolonged moment passed while Stark lay in the dust, watching weird lights flash up ahead where soldiers were fighting and dying in violence rendered unreal by its silence. Scattered in broken patterns around the terrain, the shattered hulks of armored vehicles burned like ancient funeral pyres, their fuel and explosives providing the means for self-contained fires on a world too dead to supply any support for the brilliant death-flares. Finally, another answer came, slower, the words spaced for effect. "I say again, I have only twenty-five soldiers left. We are under heavy fire and cannot advance."

  "Lieutenant McMasters, this is Division headquarters. You are ordered to assault Objective Yorktown in accordance with the plan spelled out in your Tactical Display. Carry out your orders or you will be relieved of command. Acknowledge."

  Stark stared at the lights, his eyes flickering to his HUD, where symbols crawled in wild patterns to mark the tracks of threats and defenses. It was all too easy to put himself in McMasters' place, to feel the frustration and hopeless anger, and to know what the inevitable reply would be. "This is Bravo Company. Acknowledged. Assaulting Objective Yorktown."

  Stark breathed another silent prayer, understanding even as he did so that it was futile. All he could do, all anyone could do, was lie in the dust and wait, listening in on the chaos of a battle that had long since spun out of control.

  Perhaps ten minutes later, as a welter of communications marked hopeless attacks by a multitude of shattered units, Stark's ears keyed on another specific message. "This is Bravo Company." The voice was thin with exhaustion and drained of emotion.

  "We have heavy jamming interfering with your signal. Lieutenant McMasters?"

  "This is Corporal Cozek, acting Bravo Company commander. Lieutenant McMasters is dead. Bravo Company is down to maybe ten personnel, myself included."

  "Continue your assault, Bravo Company."

  Cozek's voice would have been unrecognizable this time if Stark's suit hadn't tagged it with Bravo Company's ID. "Brigade, goddammit, most of us are wounded. We're pinned down. We can't move. Get us out of here."

  Stark checked his HUD grimly. Bravo's symbols lay in a staggered crescent about three hundred meters forward of the front line, farther forward than any other surviving Third Division unit. Threat symbols converged on Bravo's crescent in an almost continuous stream, every disappearing symbol marking another explosion, another shell, another burst of death.

  "Bravo Company, continue your attack. That is an order."

  "We can't," Cozek screamed. "We are pinned down under heavy fire. Position untenable, less than ten effectives left. Jesus, help us."

  "Corporal Cozek is relieved as acting commanding officer. The next senior soldier is to assume command and continue the attack. Acknowledge."

  No reply came, whether out of defiance, or because it had been blocked by enemy jamming, or perhaps because there was no longer anyone left in Bravo Company able to respond. Stark studied his HUD, trying to bury himself in an analysis of the battle, anything other than think of the soldiers trapped in front of friendly lines. The situation gradually came clear, even through the enemy jamming and the partial picture Stark could derive from his back door into the overloaded command net. Headquarters had been dealing with the disaster by throwing the least damaged units into already failed assaults, and now they'd run out of even those units and were using whatever was left, reinforcing failure in a panicked fixation on the original plan. Everything was coming apart, the brass
didn't know what to do, and they were sacrificing more and more of the front-line soldiers rather than admit failure. For the first time in his career, Stark truly hated the faceless minds directing a battle. Hate accomplishes nothing, he tried to remind himself. But these deaths aren't accomplishing anything, either.

  "For God's sake, get us out of here!" someone pleaded, the words partially obscured by the thunder of almost continuous concussions transmitted through the lunar rock into armor clinging to that rock in desperate search for safety.

  Stark lay still, an ache in his belly building as if fire and acid warred there in match to the violence outside. Thoughts ricocheted through his head, cascading memories and visions. Corporal Pablo Desoto, dying instantly in the hellfire of a heavy shell. His father's voice: Don't ever let them down, they depend on you. Lying alone on another ridge, trying to hold off pursuers and pretending help would come when he knew his chain of command didn't give a damn what happened to him or any other soldier as long as the officers could sit in the rear and play their promotion games. And long ago and far away, another set of friends, dying one by one amid grass slick with their blood. It had happened before. It was happening again. It wasn't supposed to. It was never supposed to happen again. Kate, goddammit, I promised you.