Steel Breach

by Casey Calouette

  "Let's go! Bastard, take the lead! Holy shit! Hooah! That's how we fucking do it!" Arap bellowed over the comms.

  Tomi grinned and felt the adrenaline surge through him. He keyed up the crew compartment camera and the grin fell from his face.

  There was a hole the size of a melon in one wall. Kallio was on top of someone and frantically stuffing dressings down. Others were clutching wounds and groaning. Cold air whistled through the hole and the crackling sound of the tracks on ice echoed inside.

  An alien being sat between two soldiers. It wore a mask over its face but two large glossy eyes stared out. Its head was almost bulbous without much of a neck. It was swathed in heavy clothing that was covered in melting snow. Its hands were bound before it. Wellington held a pistol to its head.

  "Break contact, keep on Bastard, everyone give me a status update. Bulldog, you got me a prisoner?"

  The calls came in and damage was minimal. Tomi was reluctant to call back but Mick was still helping Kallio. "Prisoner secured, we have casualties and structural damage. We took a helluva hit, sir."

  "Hold on, son. We're headed back," Arap replied on private comms. He switched to company broadcast. "Bodacious, keep your cannon to the front. Everyone else keep the rear covered. It's time to run like hell."

  #

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Mackinof Front - No Man’s Land

  The air in the broken bunker shuddered with every blast of wind. Ice crystals fluttered on nearly a hundred white jackets. The troops inside of the wrecked position took no mind that an hour before, it was occupied by the Kadan.

  "How long we gonna wait?" Private Sedan said. Her teeth clacked together. Her entire face was covered in a thick mask. Ice and frost coated the surfaces around her eyes, mouth, and nose.

  "'Til the tanks come back, or that Baron tells us to go," Karl replied. He stomped his feet and prayed like his grandmother taught him to. Socks, he thought, good, fresh socks.

  Another gust rocked the bunker.

  "Five minutes!" a soldier called out.

  Men and women swore inside of the bunker.

  "God it's cold outside," Sedan said. She pushed herself tight up next to another body.

  Karl wormed in close to someone else. He couldn't see faces, nor did he particularly care who the hell it was. Cold was cold.

  "We can't stay out here much longer! Them bastards are dead," someone called out from the crowd.

  "Shaddup, Larson, we go when we go."

  More grumbles came. "Crazy sons a bitches are dead. We're waiting for dead men."

  "Convicts, you mean."

  "Same thing!"

  Dry coughs followed laughter. It was front line humor, where frostbite was a joke and gangrene the punch line.

  "Who built this?" Sedan swayed from side-to-side and wormed her way in tight to someone else.

  Karl followed the rhythm and looked up at the ceiling. He judged it to be about right for humans, a touch too tall for Kadan. "Us, I think. Kadan bunkers are a bit tighter."

  "How'd they get it?"

  "Summer lines, shithead," someone said in the crowd.

  "Fuck you," Sedan snapped back.

  "Everyone out!"

  Karl checked the action on his rifle and followed the crowd outside. The moment he stepped out, the cold nearly stopped him. He hated the cold. Images of a bonfire came to mind and the ancient poem about Sam Mcgee. "There are strange things done in the midnight sun..."

  A dead Kadan soldier sat next to the door. Its face was gone and a ragged hole replaced it. One-by-one the soldiers patted the Kadan and gave it a little greeting.

  "Good ole boy."

  "Took one for the team."

  "Get fucked."

  "How bout a reach-around after that fucking?"

  Karl slammed the butt of his rifle into its head. The Kadan didn't move much, it was frozen like a slab of meat.

  They hadn't even taken positions when those on the line stumbled into the bunker. Hypothermia was so close that they couldn't take more than fifteen minutes out on the line.

  "Contact!"

  Karl hopped on the edge of the weather worn trench and peaked through a gap. The all clear came a moment later and a recovery vehicle thundered by with one of the tanks hooked to the back. The whole side was peppered with small gunfire. A few larger gouges marked a heavier engagement. The main cannon was slung to the rear and still tracking targets.

  "Lucky bastards, I bet it's nice and warm in that thing," Sedan grumbled.

  Karl tucked back down and shrugged. "A bullet magnet if you ask me."

  The call came for trench leaders. Karl trudged away from his group and worked down the line. The trench was old, broken by craters, and not something he hoped to hold for long. A hundred meters down he crouched into another bunker and decided that this one was built by the Kadan.

  Baron-Colonel Devos stood in the corner. Fur sprouted from his collar and made him look like some sort of lion. He was nose-to-nose with a female Major and the two were shouting back and forth.

  "I'm not risking my troops out here for these convicts! Already they're running back. Look at this. It's a joke!"

  "You have your orders."

  "I'm to hold until I deem the situation warrants a return to the previous line. And that sortie was a failure!"

  A low rumble echoed from the horizon. Everyone in the bunker moved away from the door and the cry of “incoming!” came from outside. Moments passed and no artillery landed.

  Karl watched the two Officers spar. He didn't like the Baron, but Baron owned land and granted titles, so he liked him a bit more. The other Officer wore a unit crest he'd never seen, so he assumed the woman was with the armor. Which made her a convict, and not terribly likely to give him any benefit.

  "Colonel, they're expecting this line to hold. We don't know if they'll be able to punch through another Kadan line."

  "That sounds like someone else's problem," Baron-Colonel Devos said. He crossed his arms, leaned back and glared down at the Major.

  "Coward." She spat on the floor at his feet.

  Devos raised his arm as if to slap her in the face then lowered his hand.

  A runner came in from the cold and reported to a Captain. The Captain looked up from the pair and called to the Baron. "Contact on the West flank, Kadan infantry are probing, sir."

  "Hold and delay," Devos called back. "Send—" He looked around the room at the arrayed Officers and NCOs.

  Karl wanted to slink back. He could feel the Baron's eyes slide over him.

  "You, Sergeant, come here. Everyone else, prepare to fall back."

  Karl marched past the departing Officers. He felt a growing sense of dread. Landed title be damned, he wanted to go back to the line. "Sir."

  Devos slapped his mitts together. He grinned at Karl in a way that made Karl feel particularly uncomfortable. "These are the times that heroes are forged, leaders tested, the best brought out in our troops. You're going to hold that line, soldier. Hold it well. In one hour, you break contact and get back to the line."

  Karl was at a loss for words. He had, at best, fifty soldiers. Fifty worn down, beat up, half-frozen troops. "But—"

  "The Vasilov have generations of fighting spirit." Devos's eyes twinkled and he raised a mitten covered fist. "Do your duty, soldier. I'll see you on the line."

  Karl couldn't move. His feet felt frozen to the floor. The fuck? That Major was right. Coward.

  He tried to find the words to voice a complaint, to protest, but nothing came.

  Devos turned away, then looked back at Karl. "Dismissed."

  Karl left the confines of the bunker and led his troops to the West flank. The trench ended abruptly at a massive crater. He crawled to the edge and found a group of three soldiers manning a MAC-17 rotary cannon. Karl ordered his platoon to spread out in the trench spurs.

  "They popping up on the other side. Bastards tried to take the inside route. Sneaky gits," a Corporal on the gun said. "Y'all gonna hold it?"r />
  "Y'all gonna leave me that gun?" Karl stepped down on the mounting plate and held the MAC-17 in place.

  The Corporal shrugged and disappeared into the trenches with the rest of his platoon.

  "This is bullshit," Corporal Stoden said. He piled broken rocks into a crumbled edge of the trench.

  Karl agreed but didn't say anything. He didn't feel any loyalty to the armored cavalry filled with convicts, nor to the blue-blooded bastard, Devos. For the time being he wanted to hold his position long enough to not look like cowards and maybe just long enough to earn himself a title. Killing the Kadan was just part of the business for now.

  "Pass word, team leads to me," Karl called. He waited and peered across the crater. Every so often he caught a bit of movement. The cold tore at him.

  His team leaders squatted behind him.

  "We're holding this edge while the rest pull back."

  The team leaders said nothing. Corporal Stoden wiped snow from his helmet and shook his head.

  "So we gotta look big and mean. Once the MAC opens up, it's free fire. Your team sees movement, shoot like mad. Punky, get range on your mortar and punk away."

  "How long we holding for?"

  "Until the tanks come back or until we can't."

  Karl looked up at his team leaders and saw the pain in their eyes. They didn't ask for this. No one volunteered. "Just shit luck is all."

  The team leaders spread out and the squad took position.

  Karl set Sedan along with two other privates to tend the rotary cannon. "Wait until I fire," he told them.

  He crawled ahead and laid his rifle on the crunchy ground. He scanned the crater. His eyes focused in and out and he shivered hard. He remembered the last time he did this and the fear touched his soul. "Oh god," he whispered.

  The wind changed. It died like a switch was tossed, then the snowflakes hammered down from the sky. They fell like snow globes, massive and white. Then just as quickly as it came, it was gone and the sky cleared. High clouds whipped past and stars poked through the blanket above.

  A single gunshot cracked off, followed by another. The Kadan burst out from the edge of the trench and scrambled across the open space. More and more of the alien troops surged out. A dozen scrambled through the dirt and ice. Then a larger pack ran out with a man portable anti-tank gun.

  Karl aimed the rifle at the lead Kadan. The alien wobbled back and forth with a rifle in one hand and the barrel of the AT gun in the other. He eased his finger down on the trigger and fired. "Go!"

  The MAC-17 rotary cannon spun with a high pitched whirr and then hammered out an almost continuous string of rounds. The rounds slammed into the frozen ground as Sedan adjusted the aim. The stream of 17mm projectiles punched into the approaching Kadan.

  The Kadan fell onto the icy sheet and the AT gun clattered to the ground. They were caught in the middle. Some scrambled back while the rest fell.

  One Kadan raced ahead through the streaming tracers. The rounds danced around it and, for a moment, it was within grenade range. The alien pulled free a grenade and whipped its arm back. Someone shot it in the arm and the grenade fell at its feet. The grenade detonated with a crack and the Kadan body tumbled away.

  Karl snapped off rounds at any exposed Kadan. He listened to the cries from his own line.

  "North flank!"

  Karl crawled back and sprinted past Sedan. "Cover that! But get ready to move!" He raced down the broken trench and arrived just in time to see the second wave of Kadan troopers coming.

  The Vasilov line fired wildly into the approaching ranks. The infantry stood on stones, wrecked trench boards, or laid in shallow depressions and fired. The approaching Kadan fell, tumbled into cover, but still they came.

  Karl climbed up next to Corporal Billings, the squad lead, and fired into the approaching line. Mortar rounds hammered into the ground behind him. Voices cried out in pain.

  The Kadan fell into the shadows and died in silence. But it wasn't enough. More swarmed out into the frigid wastes and plowed through the fresh snow.

  Karl picked one out, shot, then continued on. The Kadan had a sixty meter sprint through mostly open ground. Only the snowdrifts offered any cover. He fired again and again. Each time the rifle pumped against his shoulder.

  A soldier fell to the trench floor with a gaping wound in his skull.

  "Keep shooting!" Corporal Billings shouted.

  Karl did a quick count of the approaching Kadan. He counted every fifth Kadan, then tripled it. Trench math came quick on the front. If the ratio of attackers to defenders was greater than three to one, it was time to boogie.

  Karl stopped counting. "Billy! We're pulling back!"

  "Punch and roll!" Billy called out.

  Half of the troops on the line dropped down and sprinted back toward the main trench. The other half fired even faster before ending with a barrage of grenades.

  Karl ran in the midst of the second group. Adrenaline replaced the cold. They reached the main trench and the reassuring sound of the MAC-17 rattling of rounds. They took position with the majority covering the trench they just came from. Grenades were laid close by and rifles tucked up against the edges.

  A Kadan trooper sprinted down the center and shot down a dozen steps from the main trench. Then it was on as the massed Kadan surged through in groups of a dozen. Karl heaved grenades. But still the Kadan came. Soldiers perched on the trench edge fired at those who tried to go above it all.

  The rapid roar of the MAC-17 suddenly stopped, replaced by a high pitched whirr. Karl's heart dropped. The rotary cannon was empty. He called to Sedan. "Fall back!"

  The southern flank erupted in gunfire with the rumbling of trench mortars thudding into the ground. The crew covering the open pit ran past with wild eyes. Those on the southern flank streamed in a few seconds later carrying wounded. They ran past with wild eyes and tucked into close cover. There was no organization, just a simple rout.

  A trench mortar exploded on the edge of the main trench and shrapnel tore over their heads. Little bits of metal steamed in the snow. A second one landed closer and collapsed one wall. Soldiers scrambled out of the debris.

  "Get ready to pull back!" Karl shouted. He called to Corporal Billings to get his squad out.

  Grenades slammed into the MAC-17 and the rotary cannon bounced off a trench wall. Soldiers ran from that section and fell back slowly. Karl stayed in the lead and kept his weapon firing as the Kadan pushed around the corner. He eyed up the distance and lobbed a grenade, it didn't quite reach the Kadan but it was enough to keep them down.

  "Go, go!" Karl punched in a fresh magazine and continued firing. Rounds pinged off rocks and punched against those who were already dead. He hadn't counted, no time, these would be covered in trench dirt just like any casualty for the last thirty-five years.

  He roared and stepped back. His rifle thumped against his shoulder and the hate came back. He hated this place, the methods, the war, the Kadan, the COs, everything and everyone. Home, that was all he wanted.

  An explosion blasted into the sky followed by a stream of heavy gunfire. Kadan trench mortars rained down where the Vasilov had been. The alien troops moved ahead, but this time with more caution.

  Karl didn't wait to see. He ran as fast as he could with his soldiers just ahead. They could get away from the Kadan. "Billy! They flanking us?"

  Billy peeked over the trench. "Somethin's coming!"

  Trench mortars fell closer. The sound of a heavy machine gun echoed back.

  Karl cried out and slapped at his shoulder. He plucked a piece of bent shrapnel out of his jacket.

  Billy peeked again. "Here they come!" Then he tumbled back with his helmet split in two.

  "Medic!" Karl shouted, then laid his rifle on a corner and decided that he would stand here. He was out of grenades. He had two magazines left for his rifle and a second handgun.

  The Vasilov troops all formed on the front edge. They found cover behind stone, broken concrete, destroyed equ
ipment, and anything that would give shelter. A few poked out from the entrance of a bunker. Others stood on the broken trench wall and peeked over for an incoming charge.

  Then the Kadan struck. The force of the charge almost overwhelmed the Vasilov. They raged out in a massed group that stumbled over the dead and crested a dozen meters from the Vasilov. The first wave broke and the second wave was just behind. The Vasilov hurled grenades into the mob and shot them.

  Karl emptied the last magazine in his rifle and pulled the pistol out. He pounded out a few more rounds, glanced around, and realized they were stuck. More explosions sounded from behind him. Flanked. Caught. Dead. It hit him they'd die as heroes, right to the last man, and no one would know.

  He leveled the pistol and braced it against the wall before picking his shots. Aim. Fire. Aim. Fire. Some Kadan fell to the pistol, most stumbled a moment, and that was enough form someone else to finish it.

  One man stood and ran out into the wastes back toward the Vasilov line. Then another ran, and another stood and fell dead. The Kadan raged closer. They overwhelmed the first line of Vasilov beneath a mass of bayonet thrusts. A Corporal stood in the midst and miraculously hacked his way free using just an entrenching tool.

  Karl fired until the pistol was empty and tossed it at them. He scooped up a rifle and turned it as a club and smashed it against the first Kadan that came at him.

  A massive roar sounded and the Kadan line shattered. Rounds tore into them. Bodies exploded and the rapid sound of an autocannon shredded what was left.

  Karl spun and cheered.

  One of the Sigg tanks was perched on the edge of the trench and firing with the main cannon and both autocannon turrets. More tanks surged ahead and pulled into position. The combined fire broke the Kadan attack.

  The rear hatch of one tank opened and a soldier leaped into the trench. "Get on! Now! We gotta move!"

  "Get onto the armor!" Karl shouted. He ran and stood next to a tank. Soldiers climbed aboard and those up top helped the wounded get inside.

  The tanks in the rear fired into the distance. Rounds sang out and clanged against one of the nearest tanks. It leapt forward and the infantry struggled to stay on board.