Steel Gauntlet

by David Sherman

  He tried a person-size door of a nearby windowless building. It was unlocked and swung open to a touch. Inside, when his infra showed no people or operating machinery, he slid the infra screen up and his night vision screen down. It was a warehouse stacked with crates. Most of them seemed to be on skids. He went to the nearest crate and found it was sealed shut. He looked around but didn’t see anything at hand to unseal it with. Muttering to himself that a crate wasn’t infrastructure, he stepped back, set his blaster to low power, then fired a grazing shot along a top edge of the crate. The plasteel bubbled and split where the fireball ran along it. Careful not to touch the hot surface with his hands, Bass pried a split open a little farther with his combat knife, then prodded inside. He gave a satisfied grunt. Whatever was inside the crate was hard, heavy, and gave out a metallic ring when the knife blade hit it.

  Now, how could he get this crate and several others into the road?

  Deeper in the building he saw a squat machine with a lip on uprights. He looked closer and saw wheels under the machine. It was a freight mover, exactly what he needed. He ran to the mover. “So what if I’ve never driven one of them,” he said to himself. “I learn fast.”

  The assembly of butts on the operator’s lap console were totally unfamiliar to him, nothing like the controls in any vehicle he’d ever driven, and none of them were labeled with words—not that he’d be able to read them via the night vision screen. But he could make out icons on some of the buttons.

  The one with the up arrow and the one with the down arrow seemed pretty obvious, but he couldn’t be sure of any of the others. He felt along the edges of the console and found grips on its sides. Probably driving controls. But how did he start it? Maybe that button that didn’t seem to have an icon and looked vaguely red. He pressed the unmarked button and was rewarded by the whirring of a motor. Experimentally, he pressed first the up then the down arrows. The verticals squealed and clanked and lifted and lowered the lip, just as he’d suspected. He twisted and tilted the hand grips one at a time to see what they did. One moved him forward, left, and right. The other controlled speed and moved him backward.

  Confident that he knew basically what he was doing, he rumbled forward to a crate and maneuvered to slide the lifting lip under its skid. It took more maneuvering than he’d thought it would. Lip under the skid, he pressed the up button. The lifter groaned as it hoisted the crate, then began to rip forward as it kept lifting after the crate was cleared of the warehouse floor. Quickly, Bass hit the down arrow and lowered the crate. He peered at the console again. One of those buttons had to tell the lifter to stop lifting. Maybe the one with the two horizontal lines on it. He hit the up button again and then the horizontal lines as soon as the crate was clear of the floor. The lifting stopped. All right! Now, how to get the crate out of the building and onto the road? It was too wide to get through the door he’d come in by. He got off the mover and walked to the wall. There, where he couldn’t see it from where he’d been, was a double door that looked wide and high enough. It was locked. It was also wood. Telling himself a door wasn’t serious infrastructure, he went back to the mover.

  Again, it took more maneuvering than he’d expected to align the front of the mover with the door, but after several attempts he was aimed straight at it. He told himself it took so much maneuvering because he couldn’t see through the crate he was hauling. Then he accelerated as fast as the mover would go and rammed through the door. The wood was thick and hard, it resisted. But it couldn’t resist long, and with a rending crack, it splintered all around its locking mechanism and slammed outward, to crash against the sides of the building. Still accelerating, the mover jumped across the road and slammed into the building across the way. Bass barely threw it into reverse in time to keep it from going through.

  That was when somebody took a shot at him.

  The bolt passed through the operator’s compartment behind him, close enough that he felt the heat of its passage—he could smell the acrid aroma of burnt hair. Bass dove out of the mover and hit the ground prone. He belly-crawled away from the mover, keeping it between him and the direction the shot had come from. Wait a minute, the shot came from the direction the Marines were in. He twisted around to face back, but remained flat on the street.

  “Cease fire!” he bellowed. “Who do you think you’re shooting at?”

  “Charlie, is that you?” came Vanden Hoyt’s voice.

  “No shit it’s me. Who do you think?”

  “What are you doing, Charlie?” He could hardly get the question out he was laughing so hard.

  Bass rose to his feet and began stomping toward his platoon commander. “Why are you shooting at me?” he demanded when he’d cut the distance in half.

  By now the officer had himself under control. “We heard the crash. I thought a tank was coming through the building at us.”

  “No, it was me. Had to get through a locked door.” Bass stopped and looked at the wall he’d nearly driven through. Tanks were bigger and stronger than movers. If a mover could burst through one of these walls so easily, a blockage wouldn’t work.

  Vanden Hoyt saw where he was looking and guessed what he was thinking. “I’ve seen the vids too, Charlie. A tank can go through one of those walls. But they can’t go sideways. There isn’t room in this road for a tank to turn. That’s why we picked this place, they don’t have maneuvering room. If we block the ends so they can’t get through, they’ll be stuck.”

  Bass grunted; the ensign was right. He hoped. “If nothing else, they’ll be slowed down.”

  “Any more movers in there? The job’ll go faster if more than one man’s doing it.”

  There were two more movers in the warehouse. And another two in the next warehouse. Vanden Hoyt and Bass made their plans while other Marines built the barricade. In fifteen minutes they had a barrier of heavy crates six meters high and even wider across the width of the road, and more crates stacked against the inside wall of the warehouse. They would have done more but a platoon of tanks entered the area they were in.

  Dawn was breaking.

  Dean turned to run out of the room as soon as Ratliff fired at the tank, and was knocked back by the blast of superheated air that bounced off the wall next to the door. He barely heard Ratliff say, “Got it!” The blow of hot air wasn’t enough to daze him, but all of his attention was taken by the fire that suddenly licked all around the frame of the door—the door that was their only way out of the room.

  Ratliff turned and swore when he saw the fire. “Don’t stand there, let’s go!” he shouted. Putting action to words, he ran through the growing flames, shielding his face with an upflung arm. Dean followed, and they both got out with no more than a light singeing. Dean began to slap at the smoke wafting from one sleeve as he ran behind Ratliff. Then they were staggered by the concussion from a tank round that hit the ceiling of the room they’d just vacated. A few pieces of shrapnel zinged through the air past them and they were peppered by bits of debris.

  “You okay?” Ratliff asked.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Then we better get out of here right now.”

  Another round hit in the room behind them. The flames grew, sending flickering light ahead of them. The sound of another cannon shot was almost drowned out by the roar of many tank engines starting up.

  “Positions, everyone,” Vanden Hoyt ordered into his all-hands circuit. None of the five Marines operating movers took the time to turn off the motors; they didn’t have time to waste. Besides, the low whirring of the motors would be inaudible under the roar of the tank engines.

  Bass sprinted to the building from which he and Vanden Hoyt had examined the narrow road, and dove through a doorway just before the first tank rumbled into view. Clarke, who had been operating one of the movers, raced with him. They made it into a stairwell before that tank passed a window in their line of sight. Corporal Lonsdorf and Lance Corporal Stevenson were waiting for them on the second floor. Lonsdorf had found a pos
ition where he could see out while still being shielded from any infra devices the tanks might have. He had the team’s Straight Arrow. Stevenson stood by with the assault gun.

  “How many?” Bass asked when he reached Lonsdorf. Until the fighting started, they were avoiding radio communications in case the tankers were able to monitor their frequencies.

  “Six so far,” the assault gun team leader replied. “They’ve got real good spacing, twenty-five meters between tanks. If it was us, not all of us would get caught.” If Marines moving in a column ran into an obstacle, they wouldn’t bunch up behind their point, they’d maintain interval. If the Diamundean Armed Forces were well enough disciplined to maintain their interval, fewer than a dozen tanks would fit into the four-hundred-meter length of the narrow road between its entrance and the roadblock.

  “Let’s hope they aren’t as good as we are. Any sign of infantry?”

  “Negative.” Lonsdorf shook his head and grinned. His training had taught him that properly trained and equipped foot soldiers could defeat armor unless the tanks had infantry to protect them.

  “Here’s hoping they aren’t as good as us. Let’s get into position.” Crouching low enough that their heat signatures couldn’t be seen by the tankers, the Marines headed for the back stairs. Lonsdorf led; he’d scouted the route while Bass and the others were preparing the roadblock. When they reached the door that gave egress to the street the tanks had come down before turning onto the narrow road, Bass took the lead again.

  He stood next to the closed door and listened. He didn’t hear any tanks still coming, all the noise was in the direction the tanks were headed in. Cautiously, he cracked the door open and peered out. Nothing was visible coming toward him. He eased the door open farther and stuck his head out. The last tank, a TP1, was fifty meters away, making the turn. Halfway into the turn it suddenly stopped.

  Bass ducked back in. “Damn! Its turret is reversed.”

  “They saw you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. The tank commander was standing up, but he was looking ahead instead of to the rear.” Marines called the tail end of a column the “rear point,” which always watched to the rear so no one could come up behind them unobserved. This tank was supposed to be guarding the rear, but the commander wasn’t looking that way.

  “Can I get a shot?” Lonsdorf asked, hefting the S.A.

  “Maybe. You’ll have to.” If Lonsdorf couldn’t get a shot and kill that tank, the trap would fail and they’d all get killed. Bass moved out of the way.

  Lonsdorf opened the door the rest of the way, got onto his belly, eased his upper body through the doorway, and laid the S.A. tube across his shoulder. The rumbling of the TP1’s engine increased. Lonsdorf fired, but a brief burst from the TP1’s plasma gun hit near him before it was cut off by the explosion when the S.A. struck the tank. The combination of plasma bolt and blast overwhelmed Lonsdorf’s shield and the assault gun team leader went up in a flash.

  Bass swore. Clarke gagged. Stevenson gripped his assault gun tightly and said, “Let’s get some.”

  “In a minute,” Bass said. He took a quick look outside to make sure the tank was dead and blocking the road, then flicked on his command circuit and called Vanden Hoyt. “Six, this is Five. We blocked the entrance. They’re trying to push the tank we killed out of the way.” The dead tank was already rocking back and forth as the tank ahead of it worried at it. But the dead tank was at an angle at the corner and the tank ahead of it couldn’t push it in a straight line.

  “Five,” Vanden Hoyt said back, “we were right—they can’t swivel their turrets, all their guns are pointed forward. Put the plan into effect.”

  “Roger, Six.”

  “Everybody all right?”

  “Negative, Six. Three-two-one is down.”

  “Bad?”

  “The worst.”

  There was a pause before Vanden Hoyt said, “Roger, Five. Carry on. Six out.”

  Bass flicked off the transmitter and used voice to speak to his remaining men. “They can’t bring their guns to bear. Let’s get behind them and take out anyone brave enough to stand up in the turret.”

  Stevenson was the first one out He tried to climb onto the dead tank to make himself level with the turrets of the line of tanks in front of him, but Bass ordered him away from it.

  “That thing’s too hot, it’s ammo could cook off. Let’s stick with the plan.”

  Stevenson kicked at the dead monster, then entered the building across from the one they just vacated. A second-story window overlooked the three-hundred-meter road. Bass could see thirteen tanks, five TP1s and eight mediums edging back and forth, but mostly back. Close at hand a medium tank kept rocking backward, bumping the dead TP1 in hopes of moving it out of the way. Near the far end of the column a tank commander stood tall in his turret, talking into a radio.

  Stevenson sighted in on him as soon as he and Clarke had the assault gun, a heavier, rapid-fire version of the standard infantry blaster, set up.

  “Not yet.” Bass put a restraining hand on the gunner’s shoulder. He scanned the row of tanks, looking for other open turrets. He saw one. “Fifth tank up, the TP1. Think you can put a burst into it?”

  “You know I can.”

  “Six,” Bass said into his command circuit, “can somebody take out the dumb guy? We can get number five from my end.”

  “Affirmative, Five. Wait until the dumb guy’s down.”

  “Roger.” Then to Stevenson, “Somebody else’ll get him. Soon as he goes down, pour some fire into that open turret.

  “Got it.”

  “That’s probably the platoon commander,” Bass said softly of the standing man, the one he’d called “the dumb guy” when he talked to Vanden Hoyt.

  “Yeah,” Stevenson said. “I’d like to get me an officer.”

  “You’ll probably get another chance. But if you fire at him first, that hatch might close before you can—”

  Thirty meters away to their right front, two blasters fired. Both of them hit the standing officer. Before the man completely collapsed, Stevenson was pouring fire into the open turret of the closer tank. He thought he heard abruptly cut-off screams as the bolts hit around the bottom of the forward lip of the hatch opening and spattered plasma inside the tank.

  The tank lurched when the dead driver fell onto his controls, then rolled forward and slammed into the rear of the medium tank in front of it. Tortured metal shrieked and gears ground loudly as the medium being pushed tried to reverse, but the TP1 was too heavy and powerful, and the medium lacked the power to stop the heavy tank that was slowly shoving it toward the next one in line.

  Other tanks started swiveling on their treads, trying maniacally to turn in the narrow space so they could shoot back, but the space was too narrow for them to turn or to get any momentum to bull through the walls that hemmed them in.

  “Want me to try for the command tank?” Stevenson asked. The hatch the dumb guy had stood in was still open.

  “Think you can get into it?”

  “I can try.” At nearly three hundred meters, it would be very difficult to strike the lip of the open hatch at an angle that would ricochet plasma into the tank crew compartment.

  “Do it.”

  Stevenson carefully took aim and pressed the firing lever. A stream of plasma bolts so close together that they looked like a stream of fire shot out of the muzzle of the assault gun and splattered on the turret.

  Almost immediately, the other assault gun added its stream of plasma at the command tank. Between them, they managed to get enough fire on the open hatch to overheat and ignite the oxygen inside it. The tank swerved wildly, stuttered, then sat still, looking almost deflated.

  “Cease fire,” Bass ordered. “I think you killed it.” He clapped Stevenson on the back.

  One TP1 was dead. Two more had their crews killed, and maybe enough of their controls and electronics were fried to keep them from being used again without major repairs. A medium tank was slow
ly being mangled between two TP1s. It was beginning to look like the assault squad was winning its battle against the tank platoon. Then the farthest visible tank fired its gun at the wall in front of it and crashed through the weakened structure. Inside the building it found space to turn around, and came back out with its gun pointed toward the Marines.

  “Time to get out of here,” Bass said. They ran. Over the command circuit Bass heard Vanden Hoyt ordering the rest of the Marines away from their positions. They headed for the rendezvous point. It wouldn’t take the remaining tanks long to escape the trap now, and the Marines only had one rocket left.

  “Are they bottled up?” Hyakowa asked when the two killer teams rejoined the unit.

  “We killed ours,” Leach reported. “They aren’t getting out that way in a hurry.”

  “Same here,” Ratliff said.

  Hyakowa looked at them in the dawn light. He could see them in part because he knew how to look at a man in chameleons. He could also see Ratliff and Dean because where the fire had singed their uniforms, the chameleon effect wasn’t working anymore.

  “You look like you were in more of a firefight than you bargained for.”

  Ratliff shrugged. “That’s the hazards of firing a rocket inside a structure.”

  Amazed at the calm understatement, Dean looked at him. If they’d been a little slower getting out of that room, or if the angle of the shot had been a little different, they might have been burned to death.

  “Now, again, are they trapped?”

  Schultz spat to the side. No fighter worth the name is ever trapped for long.

  The two men looked at each other, wondering if the tanks really were trapped. “For a little while,” Leach finally said. Ratliff nodded agreement.

  Hyakowa’s mouth twitched. “I hope for long enough. I managed to get contact with a flight of Raptors, long enough to give them the coordinates. They said they’ll check it out on their way back from their strike at the spaceport. If they’ve got any ordnance left, they’ll use it on those tanks.”