by Michael Ryan
To remove a soldier’s ability to think twice when ordered to do something suicidal was a favored Command feature.
I lay still while the medical specialist stuck lines into my forearms. I flinched when the optical contact lenses were placed on my corneas, and was grateful that the topical lidocaine did the trick when the medical specialist shoved the armor’s chest plate down and drove a set of mini-probes into my body.
By the time the umbilical cord was clicked into place, I was nearly asleep. My CPU began running systems checks, and I drifted off after commanding the suit to black out the retinal feed and cut the audio.
If I dreamed during this time, I couldn’t recall.
Eventually the medical tech interrupted my slumber. “Avery, wakey, wakey. You’re good to go. Got to get your beauty rest somewhere else. I need the space.”
I swung my legs off the medical table and stood.
“Go ahead,” the tech said.
I stretched my hands up as far as I was able. A green light blinked on my display screen.
I crouched to the floor and jumped as high as I could. After landing, I repeated the jumping calibration two more times. A message notified me to move to the next step. I kicked a sensing device, punched a metal bar, and completed a handful of other movements.
<
I removed the Silver Wire and closed my medi-port.
“Ground and pound, Sergeant,” the tech said.
“Death from the sky,” I answered.
Callie was waiting for me outside the armory. “I guess we can’t argue about what to load up on,” she said.
“I guess not.”
“You’ll save on chocolate.”
“I wish I had some.”
“I wish we’d gotten up earlier this morning.” Callie typically calmed her pre-drop nerves by demanding I impersonate a nineteen-year-old college boy.
Note that I’m not complaining.
The line into the armory moved faster than I was used to because you couldn’t negotiate or trade. You walked to the door, plugged in a Silver Wire, and a non-talkative private or corporal guided a heavy lifter up to your back. A tech drove a few screws with a pneumatic gun through the EP on your suit, and you were sent on your way. The equipment packs were all the same. The connection to your CPU was via a port that lined up as the bolts did, everything uniformly matching for ease of use.
It was anticlimactic, but each soldier was given enough nano-ammo to fight longer than a rook’s average lifespan back in the early campaigns on Earth.
<
“I’ll see you on the ground,” I said. “I love you more than chocolate.”
“Love you, too.” Callie marched off to her capsule, leaving me feeling strangely abandoned, for which there was no logical reason, I knew.
I watched her until the Torp-Master shouted at me through a close-comm.
“Sorry, Sergeant,” I said as I climbed into the pod.
The world went dark.
There are plenty of great reasons not to drop a warhead on a target, including the presence of noncombatant civilians, vital infrastructure, intel, potential violation of treaties, fear of retaliation, and the unknown. That’s often why SDI is sent in instead of a big-ass bomb. Infantry soldiers are capable of the sort of selective targeting that a weapon of mass destruction can’t achieve.
An infantry soldier can also take prisoners.
Our true mission wasn’t revealed to us until after we were boots on the ground.
While we were still tasked with inflicting damage and killing anything that opposed us, our primary objective was to kidnap a group of computer scientists and project administrators. We also had latitude whether to capture or kill workers who could shed light on the alliance between the Teds and the Chemeckos.
Just before drop, we were given a facial-recognition program to ensure we didn’t accidentally kill any of the high-value targets.
I hit the ground and scanned for immediate threats. Seeing none, I activated the comm line. “Raider Squad! Fall in at set-point fourteen dot alpha.” I rushed to the meet point without being fired upon. This isn’t always a good sign.
I scanned downrange for any opposition using my full battery of heat, vibration, sound, and pattern-recognition detectors.
Nothing.
“No welcoming party,” Callie observed.
“That worries me more than being shot at,” Abrel said.
“Hold one,” I ordered on the squad comm. “I’m getting pinged by our platoon leader.”
I opened the platoon-level comm, which was shared by all the squad leaders and Second Lieutenant Veenz. “Present, sir,” I said quickly, not wanting to jam the comm.
“We’ve been assigned to this lane,” he said as he transferred a map to my screen with various routes marked. All of the assignments headed towards the factory we were going to storm. Raider Squad was assigned the “bravo” run, a straightforward assault right down the throat of any defenses. I transferred the specifics to my squad and prepared myself for what appeared to be a sprint to guaranteed suicide.
“Move, move, move,” came across the all-company comm.
We ran.
Incoming mortars are easy to dodge when you can cover the ground at over ninety kilometers per hour. The problem with suit-enhanced physical feats is that if you’re not careful, you can destroy your muscles. Then you’re like a tank that’s thrown a track. The fastest unassisted human on record peaked at just under forty-six kilometers per hour, while the purvast equivalent, an Olympian on two planets, has hit forty-seven and change.
<
My system didn’t recognize the rounds the defenders were firing, but I estimated from the size of the explosions that being in the blast zone of one would be fatal.
The factory’s defense forces switched from mortars to rapid-fire Gauss guns in an effort to distract us. When that failed, they began shooting mini-grenades.
Those were more problematic for us.
One of the corporals in my squad got tripped up when he couldn’t evade a volley. Although the small explosives weren’t deadly to us, his suit was vaporized a moment later when a mortar dropped directly on top of him.
We’d sustained only two casualties when we reached the first perimeter fence that surrounded the factory.
“Abrel, move to that lower section,” I ordered.
He took out an EPL blade and started cutting through the heavy-gauge wire fencing. The rest of Raider Squad provided defensive cover as he worked, blasting incoming grenades in midflight before they reached us. Abrel wasn’t targeted with a mortar, which made sense; if they were successful in taking him out with a large explosive, they’d also remove a section of fencing for us.
<
I launched several countermeasures ahead of our breach. Chaff exploded overhead, and a dozen high-energy flares randomly orbited high above us. The Raiders lost an additional corporal.
Casualties were becoming unacceptable, but I had no choice but to continue. By the time the entire squad had moved through the hole, we’d lost another member to the mortars. We hunkered down and I scanned for new threats. “Shit,” I said over the squad comm. “Prepare for–”
A robotic drone popped up from a hidden shaft in the ground and slammed into me.
“Mechanical guard dogs,” someone said.
I punched the drone. The blow from my armored fist was adequate to dislodge its circuits, and it dropped harmlessly at my feet. “Stay alert,” I reminded the squad.
“There’s a wall that wasn’t on the map,” someone said.
“Intel’s never perfect,” Mallsin said. “It looks like it’s made of rock. Should I try firing a HE?”
“Green light,” I said.
She launched at close range. The impact was instant and sent chunks of the wall sailing through the air at us. The gap was too small to use as a portal, so I launched a missile of my
own. It took four explosions to widen the wall enough for a single soldier to pass through. The first of my men to try was obliterated by a direct hit from something substantial. A suit isn’t easy to destroy, but whatever had hit the corporal spread him and his armor across the field behind us in barely recognizable pieces.
“Everyone stay back,” I ordered.
“Captain Obvious,” Callie said over our private comm. She resorted to sarcasm when she was scared.
I was a little worried myself, but as squad leader, I had to maintain composure. “We need a plan.”
“Use what’s required to make a large hole in the ground where the gap in the wall is,” Abrel suggested. “Then we can use it for a foxhole and have a look-see at whatever it is they’re using.”
“You’ve got a genius military mind,” I said. “I wish they’d let me pack my sniper rifle.”
Mallsin jumped in. “You make do with what you’ve got. I think this PQ-56 ought to do the trick.”
“That’s part of the package for once we get inside,” Abrel warned.
“What good will it do if we don’t make it?” I asked.
“You’re the boss.”
I ordered everyone to pull back one hundred meters, which was the weapon’s minimum required safety protocol. “Fire in the hole, Mallsin.”
The explosion was bigger than I’d expected. The wall section above the detonation point was blasted away, leaving a gap over the newly created hole in the ground.
Abrel peered into the fifteen-meter-deep pit. “Now we need a ladder.”
“Always the complainer.” Mallsin jumped into the hole, climbed to the far edge, and patched me into her video feed. Her range finder said the factory was a hundred and seventy-five meters away across a flat field of grass. The defenders’ locations were impossible to determine visually, although we could see mortars being launched from the rooftop. Small circular openings in the exterior wall of the building allowed the enemy to fire at us without revealing themselves.
“Looks well defended,” Mallsin commented.
“Pull back now,” I ordered.
We both spotted the round falling toward us at the same time, and barely escaped the foxhole before it landed. The pit instantly turned into a white-hot inferno, with flames shooting high enough to reach the top of the wall. If we waited for them to die down, nothing would stop the enemy from sending a second, or a third, incendiary round.
“Let’s try creating a hole to target through,” Abrel suggested.
“And then we can lob some rounds at the defenses,” Callie said. “I’m getting a bad feeling about sitting here, waiting to get hammered.”
“Agreed,” I said.
We tried Abrel’s suggestion, but whenever we used a hole for sighting and ranging, the enemy attacked that spot. We managed to lob some HE mortars onto the rooftop, but whether they achieved anything or not wasn’t possible to determine. The two times we tried to send up a drone, they didn’t fly more than twenty meters before being taken out.
We next attempted to fire missiles at the openings in the factory walls, but these proved ineffective. As soon as a missile was detected, the offensive weapon was retracted and a heavy plate of armor dropped into place.
“Any other clever suggestions?” I asked over Raider Squad’s comm.
“Magic?”
“Fighting elves?”
“Space dragons?”
“We could tunnel to the target.”
“All the way through two hundred meters of dirt? That’s as realistic as space dragons.”
“It’s only one seventy-five.”
“But you’ve got to get under the–”
“Okay, at ease,” I commanded. I was sorry I’d asked, but sometimes dumb ideas lead to good ones. “Does anyone else have a suggestion besides digging an impossibly long tunnel or calling upon magical little people for help?”
One of the corporals spoke up. “If we get a running start, we could evade anything they launched at us. Looks like they can’t get their weapons far enough out of those keyholes to fire directly downward.”
“So…” I thought about it for a minute. If we created a few openings and randomly ran through them at flat-out speed, it would be hard for the defenders to acquire targeting solutions on us. The downside being that some of us wouldn’t make it, but that’s always the case. We couldn’t just stay in place waiting for obliteration, and if we tried to retreat, our commanders would be as likely to shoot us as the enemy.
I formulated a random pattern of attack, and we created four holes large enough to accommodate a running soldier. Callie programmed a timer, sent it to the entire squad, and hit start.
Eight of us made it, four of whom were me, Callie, Mallsin, and Abrel.
“Now what?” I said to nobody in particular.
“I don’t know,” Mallsin said, pointing behind us, “but the fire just got a hell of a lot hotter.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sometimes you use mechas in order not to have to use mechas.
~ General Floceez Goertezn
I turned to follow her gaze. “I’ll be damned. It’s an Errus attack heli-jet.”
“The Errusiakos are selling heli-jets to the Chemeckos already?” Abrel asked.
“I don’t know, but we’re caught between a solid wall and an attacking heli, so we’d better do something.”
“I love you, Avery,” Callie said.
“Don’t do that,” I countered. “It’s distracting.”
<
I fired countermeasures and evaluated our options.
The heli-jet was blown out of the sky with a neon flare. Pieces of wreckage rained down on the area behind us from a dense cloud of black smoke.
A squadron of our heavy fighters swept down from above us and blasted three AHJs that were moving against troops in the Seventh. Then, from behind the building, three groupings of fighter jets that my system didn’t recognize streaked across the heavens toward them.
The sun hadn’t broken the horizon, but dawn’s vermillion glow arrived in time to add color to the fireworks above us. Fighters circled and launched missiles at each other. Gurt heli-jets attacked a dozen Errus heli-jets that dropped from the upper atmosphere like hatchlings kicked out of the nest.
“At least there aren’t any mechas,” Callie said.
“Don’t jinx us,” Mallsin warned.
The problem of how to enter the building remained.
The gun ports above us couldn’t get enough of a downward angle to hit us, and the mortars and missiles launched from the roof were sailing beyond the wall at other troops, so we had a moment to strategize.
“I say we put a PQ-56 right here,” Mallsin suggested. She set one of the high-explosive weapons on the ground next to the building. “It’ll blow a hole like the one back at the wall–”
“And we can try to punch through the building’s foundation,” Abrel said, finishing her thought.
“Let’s do it,” I said. “Give us ten seconds.”
“Fire in the hole,” she warned. Mallsin ran along the edge of the building, and we followed her out a hundred meters away from the bomb. A few seconds later, the PQ-56 blew. Dirt blasted out from the base of the building in a mahogany cloud. “Hold here,” she said. “I might need to drop another one.”
We waited.
Mallsin dropped another timed explosive into the hole. As her body flew into a full-speed run, an enemy heli-jet strafed the ground around her until it passed over the roof, pursued by one of ours. A single armor-piercing round hit her in the thigh. She tumbled, falling end over end. Blue pressurized gel mixed with blood sprayed from the entry wound and painted the wall. She placed her thumb over the hole and locked down her suit, an action that saved her life.
<
Abrel ran.
“The PQ-56,” I said.
Abrel grabbed his partner and carried her a few steps before the explosive detonated. He remained conscious lon
g enough to lock down his own armor.
<
“Jesus,” I said. “Nobody else do anything stupid. I need an overwatch.”
“On it, sir,” one of the corporals said.
There wouldn’t be much anyone could do if another heli-jet swooped down, but I felt better knowing Corporal Glansberg was looking out for me. Callie and two other corporals joined me. The four of us dragged Abrel and Mallsin to the newly formed foxhole at the building’s base, and we dropped them into the pit. They wouldn’t feel anything landing at the bottom of the deep hole; their nano-pharma programs had already put them into comas. If they were lucky and nothing else hit them, they had a chance of surviving long enough to make the retrieval boat.
But that depended on the rest of us surviving the mission. And the odds of any of us getting picked up were getting slimmer by the minute.
“Squad, get down here,” I said. I crawled under the building where the explosives had cleared the way. I saw exposed concrete and steel, but I had no idea about the thickness of the foundation, nor how much of an explosive charge it would take to break through it and into the building. Worse, I couldn’t detonate a charge unless we evacuated the hole, which would mean putting Abrel and Mallsin into the open.
“Sir,” a corporal said, “should we set off another PQ?”
“Give me a minute to think this through.”
“Callie?”
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Can you hack into Mallsin’s CPU?” I asked.
“I think so. She’s given me permission before,” Callie said. She opened the medi-port on Mallsin’s armor. “As long as she hasn’t changed any of her passwords, I should be good. One sec.” She attached a Silver Wire between their suits, and her fingers moved in the air as she typed on a keyboard I couldn’t see. A moment later she said, “I’m in. Now what?”
“Hack her permission and break into Abrel’s suit. I want you to turn on their LBC systems.” I knew they could still be hurt, but between being locked down and running camo, they’d be as safe as possible.