by John Ringo
So far the enemy had been staying out of sight, which was fine by him.
"Not a long drive but a pretty hard one. It's going to be a tight fit going through by Iotla. And there's probably going to be Posleen in front of us and behind. I don't know why there aren't any in this area. There were when we came through the first time, but they were behind us then. I'd, frankly, expected this valley to be crawling with the little bastards."
"I'll put a couple of recon squads of Brads out front," LeBlanc said. "Maybe three, four thousand meters out. In this country any further would be pointless and that way if they run into trouble we can snug up fast."
"Works for me," Mitchell said. "But we need to keep some support on the trucks."
"I'll put Charlie company in ass-end Charlie position," the mech force commander said, taking off her crewman's helmet and scratching her hair. "I'd say Bravo on point, then Alpha, then you, then the support vehicles and Charlie in trail. I'll ride with Alpha."
"Concur," the colonel replied, flicking off the light. "I figure I don't have to remind you to keep an eye out in every direction?"
"Nope," LeBlanc said with a tight smile. "But you can be sure I'll pass the word along."
LeBlanc scanned the commander's viewer around and shook her head. She had paused the company along the forward slope of the ridges south of Cowee Church as Bravo bounded forward. So far the enemy had yet to make an appearance, which just made no sense whatsoever.
There were high ridges to both sides and the Tennessee River snuggled the ridges to the west. It flowed northward from the wide valley near Franklin, then passed through a narrow gap which opened up into the valley they were currently in. The terrain was extremely broken, with a mixture of farms and woodland. The area was actually well suited to defense, against either humans or Posleen. The problem being that they were in a movement to contact and if they made contact they would have to assault through. The terrain was not well suited to assault.
She swung the viewer to the southwest at the lower hills across the river. Posleen, by and large, were not very good at reading maps but they had a certain logic to their movement. They wanted big targets, towns, factories and cities, so they tended to stick to large roads, making the generally valid assumption that they would lead to the best targets. But they occasionally branched off on small roads and there was a network of those across the river. She took another look at the map and shrugged, keying her microphone.
"Juliet Six-One, this is Alpha Six-One, over." Time to send some screening forces across the river.
"Juliet Six-One, over."
Well, at least Lieutenant Wolf, the new Bravo company commander, was awake. He'd been the Bravo executive officer until Savannah, when the former commander had turned up among the missing. She'd found out after the battle that the XO had ended up leading the charge and immediately put him in command.
"Find a ford and send a platoon to make sure we don't have any visitors across the river, over."
"Roger, out."
She waited a moment until she saw a force of three Bradleys and an Abrams nosing down towards the river then looked to the south again.
"Charlie Six-One, what's your position, over?"
"Getting ready to stop just west of Buzzard Ridge; recon elements are just short of Iotla. Be aware that we're basically in road march formation; there's no room to spread out and there's no way to cross the river around here."
"I can see that," LeBlanc called. "Push it a little closer to Iotla; we can redeploy to the east there if we have to."
"Roger, I'll push the scouts up to the edge of the Franklin Valley as well."
"Can they see the Iotla Bridge, over?"
"Stand by."
She waited in the cold, wondering where the platoon from Bravo had gotten to and wondering when the movement to contact would become "contact."
"Negative, Alpha. Sending them forward to the bridge at this time."
"Roger, move up and spread out, get ready for Juliet to pass through your position."
"Roger, out."
She switched over to intercom and ordered the tank to move forward. It was only as it rocked back into motion that she wondered if she should contact Mitchell.
* * *
"She's good," Mitchell muttered.
"What's that, sir?" Pruitt asked. The two of them were nearly alone in the compartment. Reeves' position was forward and a level down, so unless they used the intercom it was impossible for him to hear their conversation. And Indy and Kilzer were somewhere in the bowels of the SheVa. So Pruitt was the only one to hear the comment. He waited, wondering if the colonel would reply, and flipped from monitor seven to eight. He'd seen the platoon of tracks cross the river then disappear behind a range of hills, wondering if maybe that was enough to send.
"She's got good control of her units and she's got pretty good subordinates," Mitchell replied after a moment. "She's also not letting things get ahead of her, she's using her forces effectively and she's keeping control without micromanaging her sub-units. I'd probably push the scouts out farther than she has, but that's more a 'by the book' reaction on my part and it would mean overruling the company commander. Frankly, if I had a battalion of tanks I'd love to have her as a company commander."
"But she's a battalion commander, sir," Pruitt pointed out.
"Truth to tell, there's nothing wrong with her that a tour at Command and General Staff College wouldn't sort out," the commander said by way of reply.
"Except that she could never have gotten to that point other than by how she has, sir," Pruitt said with a shrug. "What happens if her tank has to crack track? Or if the loader gets taken out? She can't slam shell, she can't crack track. She's too small and too light. She can get through some of it by sheer mental discipline, but the reality is she can't fight tank anywhere but in the TC hatch."
"I dunno," Mitchell said with a shrug. "She can do that just fine and, by and large, company and battalion commanders don't pull maintenance on their tracks. Besides, you can't crack a SheVa track."
"Nobody can, sir," the gunner pointed out. "But virtually any guy could crack Abrams track. And they have to in combat. I mean, could she even lift a tow-cable?"
"Probably, but I take your point," Mitchell said with a shrug. "Fortunately, she did end up in command, though. Instead of some guy with big muscles and no brains."
"Yeah," Pruitt admitted, swiveling the monitor around to watch the tracks starting to move down the road. They were spread out as much as possible, but as he watched, first one platoon then the other dropped back into column march formation.
"As long as she can screen us to Franklin, I don't care if she pees standing up, sitting down or standing on her head," Mitchell said.
"Well, I hope like hell it isn't the latter, sir. 'Tisn't a pretty image."
* * *
Corporal Jerry Bazzett flopped to the ground and shimmied forward under the low screen of bushes thinking to himself that it was a damned cold night to be lying on the ground. He surveyed the terrain below the hill with his monocular then switched to the thermal imaging scope on his AIW. With the monocular, even with the moon descending in the west, not much had been visible; just broken country and darkness. But as soon as he switched to thermal he started picking out targets.
The valley below was packed with Posleen, most of them stationary as if awaiting a call. And all of them were looking to the east.
* * *
Mitchell looked at the updated information and keyed the radio. "Alpha Six-One, this is November Seven-Zero. Plan?"
"November this is Alpha, how does 'game called on account of lack of motivation' sound? We have an estimated thirty thousand in the flats and more on the hills. I was prepared to punch through light resistance but this doesn't meet my definition of 'light.' "
"We can try to sneak up Sanders' Town Road," Mitchell said, doubtfully.
"Somehow the words 'sneak' and 'SheVa' just don't work in my head." Even over the frequency-clipping
radio the note of humor was clear.
"The alternative is back up and shoot them with an area effect round," Mitchell said. "Or . . . can we get artillery fire from the 147th yet?"
"Negative, they're still bottled up near the pass; artillery is firing from Savannah, which is way too far."
"These guys are all oriented to the east?" Mitchell said doubtfully.
"According to my scouts," LeBlanc answered. "The description is that they look like they're waiting for something."
"Time," Mitchell said, thinking of the ACS unit trapped in the pass.
"Agreed," LeBlanc replied with a sigh. "This is going to be ugly."
* * *
LeBlanc looked at the map again and frowned.
"November, can you cross the river?"
"Roger, over."
She frowned again and looked at the update from the Bravo platoon. The far side of the river was still clear and they had halted in place when the Posleen large-force had been spotted.
"I think I know how to handle this."
* * *
"We're going to be a major target," Kilzer said as the SheVa rumbled forward. "And a big one at that."
"You said we were practically invulnerable from the front," Pruitt said. "And it's been working out that way."
"Practically is not the same as entirely," Kilzer replied. "And we're not invulnerable at all from the sides. There's a lot of damage that hasn't been repaired already."
"We'll be fine," Pruitt said, slewing the view sideways to where Bravo had gathered just below the hilltop that was holding the bridgehead. So far the Posleen seemed entirely unaware of the presence of the armored force on their flank.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Then 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an' the missis and
the kid;
Our orders was to break you, an' of course we went
an' did.
We sloshed you with Martinis, an' it wasn't 'ardly fair;
But for all the odds agin' you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke
the square.
—Rudyard Kipling
"Fuzzy-Wuzzy" (Sudan Expeditionary Force)
Iotla, NC, United States of America, Sol III
0317 EDT Tuesday September 29, 2009 AD
Alentracla looked around at the massed host and flapped his crest impatiently. The group had been gathered by the host leader for a very specific mission and he should be glad.
He had been grabbed more or less at random, separated from the stream of Po'oslena'ar headed towards the fighting around Rocky Knob. He and the others had given up their weapons, gladly, when told why. Then, as the host had passed, Kennelai from the warleaders had bartered for heavier weapons from passing forces. They had taken the shotguns and light railguns from Alentracla and his fellows and traded them for hypervelocity missile launchers, plasma cannons and three-millimeter railguns. All of them going to Alentracla and his fellows for no debt! It was amazing!
Not only had his oolt been reoutfitted with the most powerful weapons that were available, but it had also been held out of the blind slaughter occurring in the mountains ahead. The humans had continued to press forward and soon it was expected that they would be down onto the flats. There the Posleen would have many advantages and might even stop them, but in the meantime the host was being slaughtered by the human's artillery while the ground fighters moved forward relentlessly.
Better to be here, but it was annoying to wait.
He stepped off of his tenar and walked down the lines of his oolt, checking the oolt'os' weapons. All of them had the skills to handle the devices, but they had only recently been upgraded and he wished to ensure that all was well. Instead of the shotguns and light railguns they had sported only a day before, each of the oolt'os was armed with a plasma cannon or hypervelocity missile launcher. He had been surprised at the apparent generosity of the warleaders, but when he was told the reason it made sense.
If you're going to hunt big game, you need big guns.
He finished his inspection and was walking back to his tenar when he looked to the north and froze; a giant shadow was moving in the darkness under the mountains. As if one of the hills was cruising along the river.
"Up!" he shouted, pointing to the north. "It comes! It comes!"
* * *
Posleen had as much trouble with a flank attack as humans. The oolt'os could care less; they shot where they were told to shoot. But the Kessentai were as susceptible to surprise as humans, perhaps more so. And physically moving the aim-point of the oolt'os was more difficult than moving that of humans; when packed groups of oolt'os tried to turn, simultaneously, they actually tended to fall over.
In this case while Alentracla saw the SheVa's shadow, and recognized it for what it was, many of his fellow God Kings did not. Even after he opened fire.
But when the SheVa opened up all doubt was erased.
* * *
"Hoowah!" Pruitt shouted. "Look at those MetalStorms go!"
The crimson fans of forty millimeter fire were spreading across the mass, erasing whole battalions at a time. And in this case all the guns on the fore part of the turret as well as on the sides were firing simultaneously. For just a moment it seemed their fire would fully suppress the Posleen. But, unfortunately, there were only so many rounds in each pod. And then they had to reload.
Now it was the Posleen's turn.
* * *
"Fire!" Alentracla yelled, suiting action to words in fear of the distant mountain of metal. No wonder Orostan had offered such rich incentives to have it killed; it had just wiped out a third part of this host in one volley.
* * *
"Holy Jesus!" Pruitt shouted as the storm of fire hit the SheVa. Most Posleen units had a mixture of railguns, plasma cannons and HVMs, with the weight thrown, generally, in the direction of the railguns. And with the newer armors, even 3mm rounds generally bounced off. This force seemed to be composed of nothing but plasma cannons and HVMs. The MetalStorms had opened fire only a moment before the Posleen, but the red fans of their efforts were dwarfed by the return fire; the fire was so intense it lit the ground like daylight. It was not so much return fire as a wall of plasma striking the front of the SheVa. And they were firing . . . low.
"Back us out!" Mitchell said. "Now!"
"Doing it," Reeves said tightly. The SheVa suddenly gave a lurch that did not seem to have anything to do with the ground and the radiation alarms started screaming. "I just lost most of my control on the left side, sir!"
"Indy!"
* * *
"Holy Mary Mother of God," the engineer said as the left front of the reactor room seemed to open up to the night air. She actually saw the round that punched through the number six reactor. The black dust that suddenly filled the air was, fortunately, at the far end of the reactor compartment. And it wasn't dust, but the black, layered, less-than-a-millimeter-diameter radioactive beads that made up the "pebble" part of a pebble-bed reactor.
She turned and ran for it. There wasn't much else she could do.
"Reactor breach in the engine room!" she called over the radio. "It hit the pebbles! We're hot, sir!"
* * *
Major Chan involuntarily ducked as a storm of plasma and HVM hit the upper section of the SheVa. Most of the fire had been targeted at the base of the gun system but at least one God King was firing at the MetalStorms. They had engaged with all the forward deployable guns but with the inability to turn the main turret, they were in reload mode before they could significantly affect the mass of Posleen. They had killed a lot of them and cut the fire down somewhat. But not enough.
Now the Posleen were returning the favor.
"This is not fun," Glenn said as plasma rounds rang against the turret. It was upgraded just like the E4s but even room temperature superconductor could only handle so much heat and the interior of the turret was starting to feel like an oven. Suddenly she felt a lurch that seemed to come from the turret itself and an odd sliding feeling.
"What is th
at, ma'am?" Glenn said, turning around wide-eyed.
"I think the turret rings are cutting loose," Chan replied in a totally calm voice as the turret jolted forward again toward the two-hundred-foot drop.
* * *
"We've also got track damage on the left side," Mitchell replied as the SheVa finally backed around the corner of the hills, taking a last spiteful blow to the engine room as it exposed that side. The night was still alight with the glow of plasma from the far side of the hill, however, showing that the infantry company on the hillside was fully engaged. It was amazing they could hold out at all; the air above their positions must be reaching hundreds of degrees just from the plasma heat-bloom.
"I'm back in the reactor room," Indy said, her voice muffled by the GalTech radiation suit. "We took hits in two reactors. One is just vented but the other one scattered pebbles all over the room; it's hot as shit down here."
"This is Kilzer," the civilian said over the same circuit. "It's not track damage on the right side, it's in the motors; one of the wheel motors is fried. I've cut it out but we're going to be moving slow until it's fixed."
"Moving slow is a bad thing," Mitchell said. "Kilzer; Chan's turret has slipped out of the rings or the rings have been shot away. Something like that, I'm getting really confused reports. Get up there and see what you can do. Pruitt, rotate the turret to let the rear Storms fire over the hills. Reeves, park this thing behind Bravo Company. I hope they can hold."
* * *
Bazzett huddled in his scraped hasty fighting position and fired his AIW remotely. He had to stick his hand out into the fire but he could use the connection to his monocular to generally aim it at the approaching mass. Fortunately or unfortunately, there were so many of the centaurs they were hard to miss. The Brads were firing their 25mms in indirect mode from behind the hilltop and that was racking up some kills, and the Abrams had braved the hurricane of plasma to drive forward and engage direct. And, for that matter, the SheVa was still sending its own hell over the hill, wiping out masses of Posleen under the fans of MetalStorm rounds. But that didn't stop the almost continuous stream of plasma, railgun rounds and hypervelocity missiles coming at the hilltop.