Steel Gauntlet

by David Sherman

  Dornhofer raised his screens and settled the launcher onto his shoulder. He peered through its sights, found his azimuth, and ratcheted the magnification to eight-to-one. He spent a long moment studying what he saw.

  It looked like a pile of rubble, but it had shown red through his infras. Could it be the remnant of an earlier fire, the flames gone but the rubble still warm enough to show as a hot spot? No, if it was still that hot, there should at least be some sort of visible glow emanating from it. He double-checked the range. Four thousand meters. Even if he couldn’t see a glow through his helmet magnifier, it should be visible at eight power. There was an operating power source in that rubble, that was the only explanation.

  Dornhofer pulled away from the sights and glanced to his sides. Both of his men, MacIlargie and Lance Corporal Van Impe, were scanning the landscape through their magnifiers. He went back to his launcher’s view and swore. In a real war, he’d have let the rocket test the rubble, but his fire team would have only one opportunity to fire in the VR chamber.

  He wasn’t positive, but he thought the rubble had moved while he was checking his men. It was in the same place, but some of its elements seemed to have shifted. What’s that? he wondered, and looked at the lower part of the pile. It seemed somehow too regular, like a series of nearly identical blocks. One of the uniform blocks fluttered. Like a skirt panel on an idling air-cushioned vehicle.

  What kind of tank could move on an air cushion? Tanks were too heavy. Even the Marine Corps’ amphibious Dragons, which were classed as light armored vehicles, operated near the outer envelope of weight that could be supported by an air cushion. Wait a minute. Yesterday, Dornhofer recalled, during Van Impe’s turn with a launcher, they didn’t have an MBT as their target. That one was a scout car that went so fast it needed spoilers to keep it from lifting off the ground. Maybe this was a simulation of a different kind of scout car. It was a weird-looking scout car, though. He squinted, hoping to bring the pile of rubble into closer focus. There, on what could be the front end, a short tube stuck out. That might be a gun. He examined the pile bit by bit and saw more details that could be something. This sheet of something could be a hatch. That hole could be a vision port. The other nub could be a machine-gun muzzle. The more Dornhofer examined it, the more he became convinced it was an enemy vehicle. His fingers flexed over the trigger and his thumb caressed the safety.

  No, it was MacIlargie’s turn. He’d have another chance later. This go-through, his job was spotter. He glanced at the range finder and azimuth and fixed the numbers in his mind.

  “Wolfman,” he said, handing the launcher back. “Target. One-four-two. Range, four-zero-five-zero. Pile of rubble. See it?”

  MacIlargie took the launcher and settled it on his shoulder. He looked blasé about it, showed none of the anxiety he felt when he’d seen Dornhofer’s hand on the trigger and thought his fire team leader was going to take the shot. He looked through the sights and found the aiming point. “Pile of rubble, check.” He waited for instructions for where to look from there.

  “Kill it.”

  Kill it? Kill the pile of rubble? He glanced at Dornhofer, half expecting the corporal to grin at him. But Dornhofer wasn’t grinning, and he was looking toward the rubble. MacIlargie looked through the sight again and studied the pile of rubble. Maybe Dornhofer was right, maybe there was something wrong with the pile of rubble. Yeah, maybe it did have too regular a shape. There weren’t any objects sticking out of it at odd angles, except the one cylinder that looked suspiciously like a gun tube. He pushed the lock-on tab and squeezed the trigger.

  “Move!” Dornhofer shouted as soon as the rocket cleared the launcher. The three Marines dropped into the drainage ditch and ran. They stopped when they heard the explosion.

  The shattered landscape winked out and was replaced by the plain white walls of the VR chamber.

  “Very good,” Gunner Moeller’s voice said over the intercom. “That was a Mark 27 stealth light tank. It came in several configurations. That one was called ‘urban destruction.’ The job of the Mark 27 was to sit in place and pick off targets of opporunity, like a sniper. You should have found it faster, but since you didn’t have any idea such a vehicle existed, I have to say you found it pretty damn fast.”

  Chapter 8

  During their eight days of training in the virtual reality chamber, every enlisted man in the 34th FIST infantry battalion below the rank of platoon sergeant had a daily shot with an antitank weapon. They fired four different launchers, and had a different type of target on each shot. Not nearly enough to become proficient, but they were familiarized with the antitank weapons they might use and gained experience at identifying different types of targets. All officers and enlisted men in the FIST’s other units, including FIST and battalion headquarters companies, the composite squadron, the artillery battery, and the transportation company, had one orientation shot with each of the launchers, at four different types of targets. That left them much further from proficient than the infantrymen, but at least they knew which end of the tubes the rockets came out of and could fight if they had to.

  On the ninth day they began training with real antitank weapons, which had arrived the day before.

  “I hate snow!” Dean said. Unsatisfied with the universe’s lack of response, he shouted the sentiment, “I hate snow!” The words reverberated in the crisp air over the snowy training area designated as the tank-killing range.

  “Enjoy the snow while you can,” Corporal Dornhofer said. “Pretty soon you’ll wish it wasn’t so hot.”

  Dean turned in his bulky cold weather gear, his mouth open to reply. He closed it with an audible snap when he realized what Dornhofer meant. He went pensive for a moment, then said, “Snow, beautiful snow. I could bury myself in it and stay here for a long time.”

  “Bury yourself in it and you’re likely to stay here a lot longer than you want to,” Schultz said quietly. He didn’t like the snow either, but he liked even less the prospect of facing tanks in combat. Particularly if they were anything like the tanks he’d practiced against in the VR chamber. Men should fight like men, he thought, not wrap themselves in armor like turtles.

  Dean grumbled to himself. He wasn’t getting any of the sympathy he wanted. Snow now, combat soon. The Diamunde operation was already promising to be worse than Wanderjahr. It might be as bad as Elneal.

  “Do you think this will be as rough as crossing the Martac was?” he asked.

  Schultz spat. He’d been point man for the crossing of the Martac Waste.

  Dornhofer looked at Dean. He’d never faced armor, but he knew something more about it than they’d been taught over the past three and a half weeks. “You’ll wish we were back on the Martac Waste,” he said softly. He’d been the second in command during that patrol. “We all lived through that. If we’d been up against even one light tank, maybe none of us would have made it out of there.”

  Dean didn’t want to think of a fight worse than the one they’d had against the Siad tribesmen; he always thought it was a miracle they survived Elneal. “Then we had best become as good as we can at killing tanks,” he finally said.

  Dornhofer clapped him on the shoulder. “You get first shot,” he said.

  They used specially prepared drones for the live-fire exercise. Quarter-ton, remotely piloted vehicles wore shells that mimicked the size and configuration of MBTs. Many of the shells had arrived from Earth along with the shipment of antitank weapons. The variety of shells was smaller than the number of simulations they’d faced in the VR chamber. Partly that was to make construction easier and faster. Mostly, it was because by the time the weapons were ready to be shipped, more was known about the situation on Diamunde—and how St. Cyr’s forces were equipped. The drones were faster and more agile than the tanks they mimicked, which would make them harder to lock onto. The brass thought that would make better training.

  The three Marines positioned themselves on the reverse slope of a hard-packed drift. Dornhof
er was on the left, Schultz on the right, and Dean in the middle with an M-83 Falcon on his shoulder. Dean’s body lay at a forty-five-degree angle from the launcher.

  “Target,” Schultz said. “Dead on. Three thousand.”

  Dean looked through the eyepiece of the launcher. Schultz was right, a low-rider was straight ahead, churning directly toward them, a corona of thrown-up snow glistening around it. Painted in a mottled gray, red, and black pattern, it stood out clearly against the snow. Even if he aimed for the front glacis, Dean knew this would be an easy kill. “Got it,” he said. He rested his fingers on the trigger and his thumb hovered over the lock-on tab as he waited for Dornhofer’s commands.

  “Ready to lock?” Dornhofer asked.

  “Ready to lock,” Dean replied.

  “Lock on.”

  Dean pressed the lock-on tab. “Locked on,”

  “Wait until it passes two thousand,” Dornhofer said. At the drone’s speed, it would only take it a few more seconds to close within two thousand meters.

  Dean’s eye kept flicking back and forth between his lock-on point and the range finder. Twenty-two hundred meters. Twenty-one fifty. Twenty-one hundred. Twenty fifty. His fingers closed on the trigger.

  Suddenly, the drone veered to its left. Dean twisted his shoulders and upper body to the right to keep it in his sights. The drone passed the two thousand meter mark in a straight line, crossing the Marines’ front. At the same time Dean squeezed the trigger he heard both Dornhofer and Schultz shout, “No!” There was more shouting, but he couldn’t make it out.

  He screamed at the sudden pain that flashed over the backs of his legs. Before the scream was completely out of his mouth he felt himself being pummeled and rolled about, pressed deep into the snow. The backs of his legs felt like they were on fire. He tried to draw in a deep breath to scream again but only filled his mouth and throat with snow. He gagged and choked, but couldn’t breathe. He struggled, but there was too much weight on him, too much pounding and wet on the backs of his legs. He couldn’t roll over, couldn’t sit up, couldn’t get rid of the snow in his mouth and throat. All he could see was black. The black began to rim with red and he knew he was about to pass out.

  Suddenly, he was yanked up and flopped over. A rough hand scooped snow away from his face, a finger forced itself into his mouth and pulled out snow. Hands grabbed his shoulders and yanked him to a sitting position. Something thumped his back hard, then something else shoved into his stomach and up. The little air that was still in his lungs was expelled violently and forced the snow out of his throat. He gasped for breath and choked as some snow began to clog his tubes again. Again something thudded into his back, and he coughed until he could cough no more. Then he shook all over, but he was able to breathe.

  “Slowly,” a voice next to him ordered. “Breathe slow and deep. Slowly. Do it with me. In.” He took in a breath. “Out.” He let it out. “In....out,” at a steady, slow pace. Dean breathed with the voice. After a moment his trembling stopped and he looked toward the voice. It was Doc Gordon, one of the medical corpsmen.

  “Are you okay now? Can you breathe all right?” Gordon asked.

  Dean gulped in more air and nodded.

  “Say it. Let me hear your voice.”

  “I’m okay. I can breathe.” His voice sounded foggy, but he thought it was clear enough.

  “What were you trying to do, kill him?” Gordon snapped at Dornhofer and Schultz.

  “We were trying to put out the damn fire,” Dornhofer snapped back. He was angry—at Dean for making the mistake he had, at the corpsman for snapping at him, and at himself, for not making sure Dean knew not to do what he did.

  Schultz didn’t say anything, he just spat to the side.

  “By burying his head in the snow and pounding on the backs of his legs? You should have laid him on his back and pressed his legs into the snow, that would have done it.” Gordon turned back to Dean. “Lay down and roll over, I want to check you out.”

  “Do I have to?” Lying on his stomach was how he’d gotten in trouble in the first place. He didn’t want to do it again.

  “Lay your head on your arms, that’ll keep your face out of the snow.” Sometimes corpsmen seemed to be mind readers.

  Reluctantly, Dean lay on his stomach. He flinched when he saw how close his nose and mouth were to the snow, but relaxed when he realized his folded arms really were holding his head up and he could still breathe.

  Gordon’s exam only took a second. “We’ve got to get this man into a warm-tent.” Then to Dean, “You aren’t badly hurt, but the back of your trousers are burnt off. You’ll get frostbite if we don’t get you into a warm-tent and get your clothes changed. Think you can walk?”

  “Yeah.” He needed help standing up. He saw but didn’t really notice Moeller, Vanden Hoyt, and Bass standing nearby.

  The three watched them walk away. Gunner Moeller said, “I don’t think anybody will need any more instruction on keeping themselves out of the backblast of the launchers.”

  The day before mount out, Brigadier Sturgeon held a final briefing for his staff and subordinate commanders.

  “Gentlemen, the first thing for us to remember is that all of our information on the Diamundean situation is at least six months out of date.”

  The only way anything, including information, could travel between planets at a speed faster than light was by starship. Radio and laser wouldn’t do the job of interstellar communications because it would take more than four centuries for a broadcast from the farthest reaches of Human Space to reach Earth. Even the shortest interstellar transmissions would take ten years. Starships, on the other hand, traveled at a speed of slightly more than six and a quarter light-years per day. Information from the most remote part of Human Space could travel the distance in little more than two months on a starship. Diamunde was situated about seventy-five light-years from Earth. A fast courier could deliver news from one to the other in less than two weeks. On Earth, the politicians and other policy makers would badger the intelligence people to rush through their analysis of the information and make projections and predictions in less time than a conscientious person would want to spend on it. Then the politicians and bureaucrats would chew on it for a while, massage it awhile longer, spin it around to see how it looked from different angles. Finally, they’d take what they considered the relevant parts of the information, package them with their decisions and directives, and ship them off to the people who needed to take action.

  The wonder of it all was that 34th FIST on Thorsfinni’s World was able to get any military intelligence about the situation on Diamunde in as little time as just over six months. But the situation on Diamunde was a major economic issue for the Confederation of Human Worlds, and huge fortunes and a great deal of power were at stake—not to mention the lives and livelihoods of billions—so decisions were made and directives issued at, for politicians, breakneck speed.

  In a swift and bloody coup, Marston St. Cyr had conducted a hostile takeover of Tubalcain Enterprises. In days he had consolidated his power in New Kimberly, the capital city. In less than one week he had wrested control of the rest of the planet’s industrial and mining companies—hence, its wealth. He then demanded that the Confederation of Human Worlds formally recognize him as head-of-state. Further, as CEO and major shareholder of all of Diamunde’s mining concessions, he required that all commercial dealings with Diamunde be conducted with his office.

  To back him up, St. Cyr had the largest armored land army mankind had seen in centuries. Agents on the ground had positively identified two different kinds of tanks in his army, and had physically counted five thousand of them. There were probably more, a good deal more.

  St. Cyr also had a spacegoing navy, but it consisted of little more than several dozen armed freighters incapable of travel beyond Drummond’s system, and wasn’t thought to be much of a danger. The Confederation Navy expected to make short work of it.

  The Confederation government “ref
uses to deal with someone with so much blood on his hands and violence in his heart,” the communiqué said. “The people and proper government of Diamunde must be restored. To that end, the Confederation Marines will assemble a six-FIST force to make a landing and secure a planethead for follow-on forces of the Confederation Army to land and restore order.”

  “And that’s what we are going to do,” Sturgeon concluded. “Does anybody have any questions about that? Are there any other issues we should deal with before we mount out? Then get your people saddled up. Dismissed.”

  The officers and sergeants major stood and began filing out. Sturgeon watched them for a few seconds, then headed for his office. Commander Van Winkle and Sergeant Major Parant of the infantry battalion intercepted him.

  “Sir,” Van Winkle said, “I have—” He felt Parant’s elbow nudge him. “We have one other issue, sir, but it’s not something I felt appropriate to bring up at the meeting. Especially not when everybody has so much to do.”

  Sturgeon lifted an eyebrow at him, then dipped his head toward his office. “Come on in and tell me about it.”

  After closing the door, Sturgeon invited the other two Marines to sit, which they did, gingerly. He didn’t offer them anything to drink.

  “Commander,” the brigadier said when he took his own seat and leaned forward to cross his arms on his desk. Van Winkle looked uncomfortable, Parant seemed stern.

  “Sir,” Van Winkle said, “it’s about Charlie Bass.”

  “Oh, no. Don’t tell me he’s gotten himself in trouble again.”

  “Nossir! Absolutely not, sir.”

  Sturgeon sighed with relief. “Then what about Charlie Bass?”

  “We’re going on a very tough assignment. We’re liable to lose a lot of Marines in this war. Charlie Bass has tempted the gods of war too many times for me to feel absolutely confident he’ll survive. Sir, I don’t want to risk having Charlie Bass die as a staff sergeant. I—” He glanced at Parant. “We want to promote him back to gunnery sergeant. But I don’t have an empty gunnery sergeant billet to put him into—and I don’t want to give him up to some other command either.”