The missiles hit. Destruction in a radius of a mile all around.
The Swifts’ 3rd Squadron passed over head. Hal, bike, the weird armadillo thing, the bulk of the Zoan forces that had come from the lake were gone.
*
Infantry pulled the knot south. Cavalry pulled it tighter north and west.
StratInt knew the bulk of the Cephal would flee, but that was always going to happen, and it was what they needed to happen.
The Swifts’ 3rd Squadron banked west, with the surface of the lake winking in the easterly sunshine to their right and cut a Gordian knot only ever intended to get StratInt their Cephal.
19.
Smack Down
Alante Brockner
‘Patriot Company’s hit trouble, Brockner,’ said Master Sergeant Ohakim as Alante oversaw her troops’ deployment of the retrieval site, north of the bend.
He raised an eyebrow she could see perfectly well through his visor. ‘Been told to hold.’
‘Fuck that,’ she said. She had scars from Fayetteville, but they weren’t outside. She never wanted another soldier to die for some idiot’s orders. She would not allow that to happen on her watch.
Never again.
‘What I figured, ma’am,’ said Ohakim, and she imagined he grinned.
‘Move out, Ohakim. I’ll hold here. Just babysitting a package, right?’
The packages she referred to were on a flatbed truck, loaded up and waiting to go.
‘Ma’am.’
‘Fifty dogs on Ohakim,’ she said through general comms and heard a few mutters come back.
One of those muttering was called Green, like she’d marked before.
They’re going to cry off, give some shit excuse.
Green wouldn’t have made better than Private, 1st Class at most, but he wore a KES and KES was specialist, so he was a sergeant now because he’d served since the second year of the war on Earth. But he wasn’t fit to be in charge of shit. Too dumb, but not only that – he was too full of himself, and not full up enough with giving a shit about anyone else.
‘Selfish’ sat right alongside ‘coward’ in Alante’s list of the Sins of War.
What could she do, though? Should’ve been only those with heart out here in the middle of nowhere. Should’ve been volunteers, those with nothing left to lose, not cowboys looking for a medal or whatever Green’s flimsy motivations were. As it was, she was saddled with a few annoyances. Like ticks on her dog. She was the big dog, though, wasn’t she? So it was her lot to make the best of it. Keep the yapping mongrels in line was her job, same as keeping ‘em fed, and keeping ‘em alive.
‘Unit’s one, two, on me. Hold. Three, four, five advance to Patriot’s location and aid. Hundred metre spacing, dual line on path, expect heavy resistance. Go.’
She didn’t wait to see if they followed orders. They all knew something was up because Alante had never sent anyone to battle without her if there was a damn good reason.
Those from the other units subsumed under her command? They didn’t know her.
They were about to. Alante Brockner was Hard Dog for a reason.
‘Hie ‘em on,’ Alante told Ohakim. ‘I got this.’
In peacetime, she’d have busted Green down or sent him packing. Too late here. What point, when everyone was going to die?
Abject lesson time?
There were plenty of soldiers co-opted from dead companies and battalions into her unit – Bear. Bahati and Chen were from Green’s original outfit and they’d follow the dipshit’s lead, she figured. Like a pack of runts.
At the rear of a pack of little mongrels she saw Green sneering at her.
It was time to remind Bear who she was.
Take down Green, problem solved.
Whether he lived or died at the end of it all depended on how he took a beating.
No time like the present.
How fucked were Patriot? She could see smoke rising a mile or two to the south, hear the din of the big autonoguns, even see the tell-tale flashes of the Cephal’s deadly rifles.
She needed to be sure Patriot weren’t going to die so she could stop more dying later, but she’d made the call. That was on her. She could trust Ohakim to do right. Already the dust was rising from her second in command and the units charging to 45th’s embattled position.
Patriot were in the shit, yes, but if she didn’t control her unit now, they’d fall apart later.
Alante strode to Green, her D-Guard clanking and crushing the sparse vegetation right into the dry dirt.
Everyone from unit one and two were watching, and those were where the highest concentration of soldiers from outside Bear were. It wasn’t just Green’s cronies and friends present. Her men and women were there, too, and they had her back but that didn’t matter. If she wasn’t willing to go toe-to-toe with her heavies, what use was she?
‘Really?’ she said, standing before Green, shoulders squared up and her neck loose and ready even inside her suit.
‘What?’ he said with a smug look she just knew she was going to smack off his face.
She was heavier than Green in her dog, but in his KES he was taller. She reared up, though, her aggression the match for anything. She left her comms on general, so even the squads marching at pace to help out Patriot would pick her up, because this wasn’t a fight, it was a lesson.
‘Going to sit around while the big dogs fight? Put up, Sergeant Green, or fuck off now and die somewhere less embarrassing.’
‘You’re mad, Brockner.’
‘Yeah I’m fucking mad. Insane as all fuck. And that’s Colonel. You know why? Because I’m an officer and you’re my bitch because you’re a fucking idiot.’
Green was wilting already, but Alante wasn’t done, not by a long shot.
‘This is the mission,’ said Green, nodding at the flatbed with the waiting packages tied down.
Alante Brockner stepped from her Dog, the machine whining, tired – like her. Her power cells were low.
She’d started out with dark skin, now she was black with grime – grease, dirt, smoke – in places, running with sweat in others. Since the start of the war she’d shaven her head, lost two suits to the Cephal and one to a burning acid ball-missile from a chelon. Her arm’d been burned in that one, from shoulder to elbow she bore scar tissue and didn’t feel anything but hot and cold.
Her fatigues were stuck to her, and she was mostly bone, now. She only ate when she couldn’t go on, only rested when there was nothing to do...and there was always something to do.
Inside, tired or not, it was Fayetteville that made her. Made her mad. Angry as hell, too, for sure, but she would fight for her troops to her death...even if it meant fighting them.
Alante’s suit steamed as she dismounted.
‘Let’s go, then. Come on,’ she said, almost tiny now she was out of her suit and he was still in his shiny KES, armed and armoured, against her.
‘Name a time,’ said Green.
‘Right fucking now,’ she said.
She was well aware everyone present was watching her. It was what she wanted. No one stopped it, or stopped her. Anyone with a lick of sense understood perfectly well that it was moments like this which meant they’d live or die. It wasn’t the times a superior officer lost it and beat on someone. It was the times a superior officer didn’t lose it and beat on someone that mattered. The times officers like Alante Brockner stood for what was right. Maybe it wasn’t always right. But now, in war, where soldiers lived or died on their word and their heart?
Give up, we all die right now. We’re done. And while we’re alive, we have a chance to make a difference, and that difference is that maybe in a hundred years we still have a planet...and how we do that?
We fight for each other.
She turned her back on Green. She wasn’t any in any danger, but it looked good, and looking the part was half this battle – not the one against the Cephal, but the constant fight to maintain an entire battalion. Without their resp
ect, their awe, their pride, they were just a bunch of losers in expensive armour.
She heard Green get out of his KES.
She really didn’t like him, but this wasn’t an execution. Not unless it had to be.
‘Come on then,’ said Green. His face was angry, but something was underneath, too. Fear.
She laughed at him and flicked her head like a dancer taunting a partner.
‘Get it out your system, then. Take your beating or go sit it out, but you’ll be on your fucking own because you don’t fight, you’ve got no company, and you damn sure won’t be in my battalion because I have no use for cowards.’
‘Coward’ hit him hard.
He moved forward fast. They all had combat training, but you could either take beating or you couldn’t. It wasn’t about knowing where to plant your feet, or how to move a joint the wrong way. It was about heart, and hers was all filled up.
He swung. Alante twisted his fist, his arm, down, against the joint but no hard enough to break it, and brought a knee to his face. He didn’t go down, because she didn’t let him. She twisted Green’s arm back the other way, and was glad to see blood on his face and the dazed look in his eyes, then she hit him five times in the face. Hard enough to knock out teeth, mash his nose up some more, split his lips and make a mess, but not hard enough to knock him out, or make him useless.
She shoved him away, took a few steps back, and waited.
He reeled, off-balance, stunned. Green was stupid and he proved it by doing the dumbass thing of coming at Alante again. He didn’t even know where he was right then. She shoved him – both palms against his chest, her back leg set so she wouldn’t buckle under his weight.
He twirled on his way to the dirt.
‘You stay here,’ she told him. ‘Under that AI tank’s command. Private Green. Only reason you’re not facing a Fields Court Martial is because everyone else is dead, and even so, there’s no place for cowards and fools in Bear!’ She yelled for Green and his ilk and anyone listening who needed to hear some words with balls on them.
That’ll do, she told herself. That’ll do.
Alante took a deep, steadying breath, because fighting was tiring and adrenaline gushed into your system no matter how cool you pretended to be.
She was only part not angry...she was righteously pissed to be wasting time on this, but she was in control of that anger. One lesson a day was plenty.
‘Mount up,’ she said.
Green was off to the side, spitting out blood. The show was over.
This wasn’t a battle for tactics, battle plans. It was toe-to-toe, who wanted to meet Lord Death most. Them, or the Cephal. Standing in line and killing each other until one side all fell down.
Standing tall and smacking idiots in the face, if need be.
No one offered Green a hand. The big man grunted, staggered away dripping blood, and got in his KES suit to stand by the tank like a good boy.
Alante wasn’t only in charge because she wasn’t dead, and ninety-nine percent of them knew it. She was Colonel Alante Brockner. One of the few survivors of Fayetteville who’d seen the war from the very first. She was the tired face of all, she was Bear Rampant. She’d bled for them, stood for them when none would, beat them down when they got too tall for their suits. She wasn’t just Hard Dog to most.
Alante Brockner was their hero.
‘Lunch is over,’ she said through comms, fighting to keep her breath steady, calm, authoritative. ‘Back to work!’
‘Think he’ll be alright?’ said Master Sergeant Ohakim over her private comms as he and forty nine other dogs bounded toward the south of Toledo Bend.
‘He’ll be okay, Ohakim,’ she said. ‘He might be dumb, but he’s tough.’
‘Ma’am,’ said her second.
‘All on you, okay? I’m stuck babysitting.’
‘I’ve got it covered,’ Ohakim told her, then he switched from limited comms to wide comms and yelled at full volume. Ohakim at full volume was a mighty thing indeed.
‘Work it! Run! We got a job to do. Know no grave, motherfuckers! Let’s go have some fun!’
Alante saw a jeep scooting toward her position over bumps, dust coming in dry puffs at each hump in the rough terrain. Alante shaded her eyes to watch it come in. Desert camo...not a patch job. The real thing. It slowed and one of her men pointed in her direction in response to what must have been a yelled question from a superior, followed by a salute from her man.
The jeep slowed twenty yards out from her. At least it didn’t kick up dust into her face.
A stripe. A green epaulet and the insignia of the A.U. Eagle. A woman with him wore civilian attire as out of place as the briefcase she carried in a manicured, moisture hand.
StratInt.
Great.
20.
The Hard Dog
Alante Brockner
Nearing the end of the second year of the worst war in the history of humankind, they had a chance. That possibility came in the shape of three live Cephal on a flatbed truck. They were the package Alante and her D-Guard battalion were to escort.
A whole battalion of armoured for that one flatbed might have seemed overkill to some, but she wasn’t a stupid, even if some were. It was a risk, sending Ohakim away while there were such rich stakes on that flatbed, but there was important, and there was duty, and then there was honour.
For Alante, honour came first. That was why her forces looked to her for leadership, and for an example worthy of their admiration. She would never leave them to die. She would never turn her back on them for the orders of some General and she wouldn’t abandon 45th to death, not even for the first live Cephal they’d managed to capture in two years of a war fought almost entirely in retreat.
To the south Patriot were facing the terrible might of a huge mass of those things she looked at now.
Don’t look like much, she thought.
The Colonel and the StratInt woman approached. They didn’t look like much to Alante either.
The skies to the south remained red with fires that spread for miles now as dry land and scrub and the corpses and carcasses of the dead of both sides burned black. Smoke rose in sickly tendrils, like octopus tentacles waving ink in what should have been a bright blue vista.
245th had only one job out north of Toledo Bend. Her remit was escorting these three things. She had no intention of bringing up the fact she’d sent fifty heavies steaming south to bolster infantry. If nobody asked, she saw no reason to tell.
Alante shaded her eyes. She watched the man, a sergeant major, and the StratInt woman picking their way through brittle scrub toward her in her peripheral vision, but it was the south that held her attention. IFV’s were on fire down there. Fuel from a downed jet burned bright on the surface of the water. The attack had commenced at dawn and the sun was overhead now. It was hot and the stench of death, burning flesh, rubber, plastic, the sting of thick dirty smoke got in her eyes and on her skin even here, where the might of her battalion felt wasted to her.
She wiped her face with a dirty hand that ached from smacking Sergeant Green around and saluted as the major stopped five feet from her.
He smiled, and his smile was warm, but Alante was well used to the games those higher up played, wasn’t she? She didn’t like it.
He nodded his own greeting. ‘You’re Master Sergeant Brockner?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ said Alante.
‘They call you Hard Dog, right?’
‘Sir.’
‘Master Sergeant, eh? Since the start, or...?’
‘Sir. People keep dying.’
The Colonel laughed. Bitter, resigned, but not ill-humoured. She decided she didn’t hate him. The StratInt woman looked on, and kept glancing toward the truck with the three Cephal. The woman looked hungry.
‘Yes, Master Sergeant, people do have a habit of that, don’t they?’
Alante flicked her head toward the heavy swirling and oily smoke to the south. ‘Hard battle, Sir.’ It wasn’t a q
uestion but an observation. She found friendships hard, but knew the value of camaraderie, at least. ‘These Cephal, Sir? Are they worth it?’
‘Someone thinks so,’ said the man, pointedly not looking toward his companion, who somehow managed to keep her pant suit pristine. ‘Wish we’d had a shit ton of armoured to the south, too, Master Sergeant.’
‘Me, too, Sir. We’re just over half strength here, though,’ she said, because with Ohakkim and fifty D-Guard absent it rang true. ‘Hard times.’
‘Well...’ the major’s face was genuinely pained. ‘We got our asses handed to us. I hope this all proves worth the pain. Lot of soldiers died for this moment. You take care of these things...Hard Dog?’
She smiled. She didn’t like many people, but he was disarming and that he truly cared about the men and women under his command was writ plain on his face. It wasn’t just about the Cephal, or StratInt’s whims and schemes, but the men and women they’d lost. That he’d said ‘worth the pain’ and not ‘worth the sacrifice’ spoke volumes to Alante.
‘Hard Dog’s fine, Sir.’
‘Carry on,’ he said.
Like so many others in the years of war, Alante never saw him again.
With a tired grunt from aching knees and a pain in her lower back that niggled at her, Alante stepped back into her D-Guard, brought her systems online and then spoke into comms.
‘All right, we’ve got our orders and you know what they are. Let’s not fuck it up. Two columns moving out. The Cephal didn’t lose here, they moved on. Eyes out, ears on. Move it!’
She heard the groans through her comms, but she tuned them out and focused on the landscape around them. Her mind was already on the next thing – the safest route to Nellis Airbase, Nevada, where StratInt’s boffins would take the things in the truck apart, piece by stinking piece.
21.
Monsters
Delphine Mamet
It was a hard thing for Delphine to realise victory or defeat could be reduced to a matter of barbarism, not valour nor skill.
American Unity Forces or the Union of Russo-China, Viet Cong, The Huns, the Visigoths or Roman Empire, Alexander the Great, the Conquistadors...did everyone think they were the good guy? Was there a line ever drawn in the quest for victory or for the survival of one’s own kind which could not be crossed?
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