by B. V. Larson
“Very inspiring,” said Loco on the mechsuiter channel. “Not.”
“This isn’t the time for speeches. Or banter, for that matter.”
“There’s always time for banter, Derek. That’s what makes this job fun.”
“Okay, Loco, the fun starts now. Follow me,” Straker said. “Karst, unlike Loco here, keep your mind on your job. Support that infantry. We can take care of ourselves. You’ll have a Foehammer soon enough.”
“I got it, sir. I’m no glory hound.”
“See, Loco? He knows you too well. Go active and assault in three, two, one, mark.”
With a surge of adrenaline, Straker switched on his active sensors and charged over the right side of the hill at an angle. Loco would be doing the mirror opposite to his left. Their lateral movement would make them harder to hit in case the enemy turned out to be alert after all.
Immediately his HUD blazed with information. Instead of mere cold fields, rocks and trees, he saw the camp complex, warm buildings lit with false colors and peppered with icons as his tactical semi-AI sorted items of interest. Floodlights caused his optical processor to adjust, and his active sensors searched for matches against the mechsuit’s military database, which classified everything they saw into threat levels.
He ignored the camp itself for the moment. If there were armored vehicles hidden among its barracks buildings, he couldn’t simply blow them to shreds. Not with the prisoners so close. Instead, he scanned the perimeter and outward, searching for dug-in positions, the places where he’d set tanks if he were the defending commander.
The first one he found was almost underfoot, a light tank half-buried in the frozen ground, occupying a hasty revetment. The waste heat of its fusion engine showed clearly on thermal. If Straker had been in charge of the vehicle, he’d have camouflaged the signature better. The tank’s gun pointed inward, toward the camp.
So that was to be their strategy. Let the rescuers hit the camp, and then trap them between the facility and the ring of armored vehicles.
That would have been effective if they only had infantry to deal with. That assumption, and their lack of care in improving their defensive positions, meant these people were about to have a really, really bad night.
Straker was about to loose a force-cannon bolt into the light tank when he noticed a piece of luck: the vehicle’s top hatch sat open, a man half-out of it with a smokestick between his fingers. His mouth hung open in shock as he stared at the Foehammer looming above.
Switching to his gatling, Straker fired a burst downward through the man, through the hatch and into the inside of the tank. A dozen penetrators, each as long as his hand, turned the tank commander into hamburger before ricocheting around the interior at supersonic speed, shredding everything and everyone there.
Straker stepped over the mess and swung his force-cannon smoothly to line up with the next heat signature identified as the greatest threat. It was a heavy tank, a mechsuit’s nemesis. Only a heavy could shrug off a force-cannon bolt, at least from the front, and only the high-velocity gun of a heavy had the potential to take down a mechsuit with one devastating shot.
The tank’s gun was pointed right at Straker, and for a moment he thought he was dead, but as he threw himself into a sideways roll, he realized the turret hadn’t moved. The crew must still be scrambling to bring their weapons system up. The element of surprise had saved him.
“Loco, it looks like they’re in a ring around the camp, like we expected,” he said as he rolled smoothly to his feet and ran out of the heavy tank’s front arc. “They were hoping to trap us inside. Stay in close, on their flanks, and we’ll be able to roll them up.”
“Roger wilco,” said Loco. “Yeehaw!”
“You watch way too many vids, Loco.”
“And you read way too many books, boss.”
Straker gained the angle he wanted. The turret had just started to swing toward him when, with careful aim, he slammed a narrowly focused bolt of plasma into the engine compartment of the tank. This was a heavy’s weak spot, and as the compact fusion reactor ruptured, its multi-isotopic hydrogen fuel exploded, sending a miniature mushroom cloud into the cold night sky.
Even so, the turret continued to track him. When a heavy’s engine blew, it was a coin flip as to whether the crew compartment and main weapons would survive the blast. This tank had been lucky, and they evidently had enough battery power to fire a few more shots.
If the engine compartment was the heavy tank’s weakness, the recharge time on its force-cannon was the Foehammer’s. Heavier, more complex ammo could have reduced the weapon’s recycle time, but then reloads would have run out sooner, and lack of ammunition on a battlefield could be a death sentence. Thus, the compromise between speed and endurance.
Straker continued his flat-out run, legs churning and throwing up cubic meters of frozen dirt as the spades of his mechsuit’s crysteel alloy feet scooped divots as large as blast craters. On a straightaway, a ’suit could exceed one hundred fifty kilometers per hour.
But this wasn’t a straightaway. Straker found himself in a race for his life with nowhere to go except to continue trying to outrun the turning gun. He ripped off a long gatling burst in hopes of getting a lucky hit, or at least distracting the gunner, but the barrel continued to follow him with inexorable speed.
He was just about to dive to the ground and hope the gunner couldn’t depress his aim enough to hit him when a streak of light struck the tank. It exploded, sending the turret spinning upward to fall heavily, barrel first, to stick in the ground like some bizarre lollipop.
Straker backtracked the streak and saw Karst’s Sledgehammer standing at the reverse military crest of the hill, only his head and shoulders exposed. An arm was raised, its integrated particle beam cannon still white-hot after its shot.
“Dammit, Karst, I told you to support the infantry!”
“They haven’t even passed my position, sir, and I saw you in trouble…”
“All right. Thanks. But keep your focus on your primary mission.”
“Roger wilco, sir.”
Straker couldn’t fault the kid for wanting to get into the action. At least he was keeping a good covered position and sniping, the most effective use of the clumsy but heavily armed Sledgehammer. And… Straker had to admit, he himself wasn’t performing as well as he should. He was out of practice, busy leading the Breakers and the human colony in the Starfish Nebula.
Also, lack of the brainlink made him feel as if the mechsuit were moving through molasses. He longed for the days when mere thinking meant moving and shooting.
“One heavy and one light down,” said Straker to Loco.
“Same here,” said Loco. “Where are the crawlers and hovers? This is supposed to be a mech company, right?”
Straker ran laterally along where he expected the enemy perimeter should be, hunting for more defensive positions. “It might not be a standard one the way we’re used to. We can’t make assumptions they’ll have four of each vehicle type. Stay sharp and keep your eyes open.”
“Just like sex, Derek.”
Straker put a burst of gatling fire into what looked like an infantry fighting position. “Trust you to work sex into any discussion.”
“Sex and violence, baby, that’s the life of a mechsuiter. You should try it sometime.”
Straker opened his mouth to reply when two spider holes popped their tops, one on each side of the position he’d just hosed down. Soldiers with rocket launchers lined up on his center of mass, and before he could turn his gatling on either one, they fired.
Rockets leaped toward him, faster than he could react.
Chapter 2
Prael. Re-education and Training Camp 13.
Straker cursed as the pop-up gunners fired their antitank rockets at him. Somebody was on the ball, it seemed.
In showvids, such weapons moved slowly, the better to be seen by the audience. In real battles, they moved as fast as gun rounds, slowed only by the brainc
hipped perceptions of a properly linked mechsuiter.
Which Straker didn’t have.
But there was an older, more primitive version of this time-compressing phenomenon, a thing of the endocrine system, of adrenaline and cortisol, serotonin and dopamine and a half-dozen other fight-or-flight hormones. The projectiles seemed to crawl toward him. His only chance was to bend his knees and let himself fall backward, slowly, oh so slowly.
One rocket clipped the top of his left shoulder and exploded. Its shaped charge cut a channel in his armor, and Straker’s HUD lit with telltales as the hot plasma licked at the circuitry and polymeric musculature beneath. Fortunately, the blow was a glancing one, and he didn’t lose that arm’s internals.
The other rocket narrowly missed his head where his main sensor cluster resided. Belatedly, his anti-air laser system blazed, too slow to pluck a projectile from its flight at such short range.
Have I really gotten so rusty? Straker asked himself. This Mutual Guard unit must either be better trained than average, or he’d completely lost his edge—and either possibility might kill him. If he died, what would happen to the Breakers and the community of Freiheit? He couldn’t see a guy like Loco holding them together, though Engels and the rest might.
These thoughts raced through his head as he slammed into the ground. He immediately rolled over and bounced to his feet, slashing a long burst of gatling fire into the foxholes. One rocketeer was cut in half. The other, quicker or more prescient, dropped under the storm of bullets and stayed down.
Straker stamped a foot onto the occupied foxhole like a man crushing a gopher in its burrow, and then ran forward, searching for his next target. His HUD highlighted a copse of trees on a low hill ahead.
According to the semi-AI, missile crawlers lurked within. The thin-skinned, slow vehicles normally stayed well back behind the lines to fire their guided rockets. This time, it appeared they were using the trees as cover.
Cover worked both ways, though. The woods would shield him from missiles.
Straker slashed bursts of gatling rounds into the base of the treeline, reconnoitering by fire. Were he the enemy commander, he’d have emplaced infantry there to screen the crawlers. His attacks drew no response, so he increased his pace, charging and aiming at a section of small evergreens that wouldn’t impede him.
As he entered the woods, Straker spotted the flare of launches ahead of him. “Missiles incoming,” he called on the comlink net in order to warn the rest. He himself was in no danger, completely surrounded by trees that would screen him. He couldn’t do anything about the weapons in flight, but he could make sure the enemy didn’t launch again.
The Guard company commander had made an error in putting crawlers out here. Even though they gave the illusion of holding their own part of the ring, and they had an excellent hilltop firing position, they were sitting ducks to a mechsuit that got in close.
Of course, they weren’t expecting mechsuits. That was the heart of the enemy’s dilemma.
Straker burst into a clearing, the hilltop center of the grove, and spotted his prey: four crawlers set in standard firing positions, not even dug in. One dirt road led out, their only egress route.
He wasn’t going to let them egress. His first force-cannon bolt turned the farthest track into an inferno just as it launched its second of three ready missiles. The rocket tipped over in flight and slammed into the woods, exploding and setting the trees afire.
He selected tracers and his gatling shredded the nearest track. Its ready missiles sagged, and then detonated as his hot rounds ignited fuel and explosives. Running to his right, he fired deliberate bursts into the other two thin-skinned vehicles until they too brewed up.
“Four missile tracks scragged,” Straker called as he slowed, taking a moment to check his HUD for the tactical situation.
“I’m dueling with their hover platoon,” Loco said, his breathing ragged. “Could use some help.”
“On my way,” said Straker, locating Loco. “You’re across the camp from me, though. Karst, can you support?”
“Roger wilco, sir. I’ll lay down some long-range fire.”
Straker and Loco might have stuck together as a team, but that would have given unengaged enemies more time to recover and rally. This way, the two ’suits had already taken out half their opposition. However, attacking was getting harder and harder now that the Guard company was alerted.
Straker burst out of the woods to take in an excellent view from his upslope position. A kilometer away, on the other side of the well-lit camp, he could see hovers, and his HUD showed Loco’s transponder near them.
A streak from off to his right slashed across the battlefield and sent a hover spinning with a near miss. That must have been a railgun shot from Karst’s Sledgehammer. A moment later, a particle beam strike blasted another. A force-cannon bolt from Loco wiped out a third, and the last one turned tail to skate away over a low hill.
Off to his right, Straker could see the company of Breakers infantry crest the hill, spread out in skirmish order in the inverted vees of fireteams. A slugthrower opened up from a foxhole, cutting down two of his troops before return crossfire suppressed the enemy and a grenade ended the threat.
That was the only resistance until the force approached small-arms range of the camp. Lasers, slugthrowers and rockets leaped toward the Breakers, much too early in Straker’s estimation. The camp guards were panicking, it looked like. They should have let the Breakers come well within range, the better to exploit the shock of their initial volley.
Straker felt fortunate that this was not a line Hok company. The biotech commando-slaves wouldn’t have let fear cause them to make mistakes. In fact, Hok didn’t seem to feel fear at all.
“Breakers, hold up!” Straker heard Heiser order over the comlink. “Take prone positions, hasty entrench. Snipers only, return fire.”
The infantry dropped to the ground, throwing rucksacks in front of themselves. Still prone, they seized entrenching tools and began to chip at the hard earth, trying to get something between themselves and the enemy.
A few of the Breakers rested their longer-ranged sniper rifles on their rucksacks and began picking off enemies. The laser weapons would recharge slowly, but they could reach farther than the common battle carbine, and they had the advantage of showing no signature in the visible spectrum, as they used ultraviolet wavelengths.
Abruptly, the flare of a bigger gun vomited a fireball into the night. It came from a light tank hidden between two flimsy barracks buildings, and one of the Breakers snipers vanished in a terminal blast, along with two nearby soldiers. The vehicle obviously had broad-spectrum optical targeting. The sniper’s shots would have shown up like a road flare.
“Karst, you see that?” said Straker.
“Roger, sir. Targeting now.”
“Hold fire! If you take them out, both of those barracks will go too, probably full of prisoners. I’m going in. You take down the towers, and then stay on overwatch, but limit your collaterals. And don’t shoot me in the back!”
“Roger wilco, sir.”
Straker sprinted for the camp, taking a serpentine course to dodge any tank fire. There were still two heavies and one light tank unaccounted for, if the enemy company had the standard complement of four each. But that couldn’t be helped; the tank in the camp had to be neutralized, or it would slowly slaughter his pinned-down infantry.
One of the four guard towers blew apart, and then another exploded, courtesy of Karsts’ heavy weapons peeking over the crest of the hill. The Sledghammer was proving surprisingly effective, as long as it remained unopposed by an enemy that could hurt it.
Unopposed…
“Karst, watch out behind you for enemy armor or rocketeers. You’re a sitting duck if they sneak up on you,” Straker said.
“Ritter Two here. I’ll send a fireteam to cover his six,” said Conrad.
Heiser’s voice said, “Sorry, sir. I should have thought of that.”
Straker didn’t answer. He was too busy racing toward the camp, dodging to his left to stay out of Karst’s line of fire and approach the perimeter from the side. The tank gun roared again, slamming a shot into the slope of the hill where his infantry lay.
A shell burst near him. His HUD marked the firer, a heavy from upslope. “Loco—”
“I got it, boss.”
Straker jinked to his right, ignoring sprays of small arms fire spattering upon his armor like hard steel rain. A rocket popped and flew by him, and then he stomped on the fence to enter the camp.
Now, the buildings were his friends. He dared not fire into them for fear of killing prisoners, but they gave him cover from anyone targeting him from close range. His HUD constantly updated the map of the compound with input from his scanners, and he was able to quickly run around behind the light tank.
When he rounded the final corner, he saw the tank crew trying to slew their gun to the rear, but they had parked between closely set buildings, and now their perfect ambush position worked against them. The gun’s muzzle struck first one wall, then the other.
“Gotcha,” Straker crowed. He leaped forward, stepping onto the light tank. It sagged under his weight. He stomped on the gun barrel, bending it to uselessness, and then did the same to the coaxial laser waveguide. “Tank in camp is neutralized. Breakers, move in!” he ordered.
“On our way, sir,” said Heiser.
“Heiser, I’m going to call on them to surrender, so don’t shoot if they give up.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“I just took out another heavy,” said Loco. “Looking for the last one now.”
“Good job.” Straker kept moving, mindful that a rocketeer could lurk anywhere among these crowded buildings. He fired gatling bursts into the two remaining guard towers, and then activated his external speakers at maximum volume.
“Surrender and you will not be harmed. We only want the prisoners. This is a rescue! Surrender now! Give up and live.” Straker continued to repeat similar phrases while striding among the buildings like an angry giant.