A Hymn Before Battle, page 24
Mike drew his magazine again and actually looked at it this time. Yup, thar's bullets init. He reseated it and touched the charging button. With an unnoticed whine the first teardrop-shaped bead of depleted uranium was lofted into place. He felt as though he were looking at the scene through deep water. He recognized it as a fear reaction and ignored it; his mind was going faster than it ever had in his life. He had thorough plans for virtually every contingency. He had prepared so hard for this moment that it seemed as though he had lived it before: a lethal déjà vu.
" `It seems to me as though I've been upon this stage before,' " he quietly sang. The AID, correctly surmising that it was a personal moment, did not broadcast it. " `And juggled away the night for the same old crowd . . .' "
"Charlie company, stand by."
Mike snugged the butt into his shoulder. Talk about target-rich environment. " `These harlequins you see with me, they too once held the floor . . .' "
"Fire!"
Over three hundred rifles and machine guns, the combined firepower of Charlie and Alpha companies, and four terawatt lasers, belched coherent light and metallic lightning at the Posleen horde. As if one animal, the whole phalanx was shocked, its front third vanishing in the silver fire of detonating relativistic projectiles.
Fuckin' A! thought Mike. It fuckin' works! We're gonna get our asses kicked, 'cause there's too damn many of 'em, but the hardware fuckin' works! The HVM launcher began to spit kinetic missiles at the area designated as hostile and the M-300 followed.
Then the thousands of remaining Posleen in view raised their weapons at the source of the fire.
"For what we are about to receive . . ." whispered Mike, shifting fire to the rear body.
In the front phalanx there remained eight thousand normals and twenty God Kings. The combat suits were proof against the majority of the weapons, but there were still fifteen heavy lasers and five multiple HVM launchers with automatic targeting systems, nine hundred 3mm flechette guns and four hundred fifty handheld HVM launchers. As a storm of fire struck the battalion's positions the battle descended into an orgy of mutual annihilation. In the first two minutes following the opening volley six thousand more Posleen died, but over sixty paratroopers died and twenty more were injured. In that moment the battle was lost; there was a finite number of paratroopers, but a steady stream of centaurs replaced Posleen dead. As the output from the battalion reduced the Posleen were able to advance, pouring like a yellow avalanche towards the source of the fire. And as they advanced they were able to search out the sources of fire more effectively.
A heavy laser, targeting on the Charlie company machine gun, scythed into the room housing Mike and the squad. Spec-Four Bennett would never see Trenton, New Jersey again. The laser cut sideways, exploding the wall inward and momentarily blinding the squad with debris. It narrowly missed Sergeant Reese, bubbling the hologram projectors on his helmet, and sliced diagonally across Spec-Four Bennett from left shoulder to below the right nipple unchecked by his force-screen or the immensely refractory armor.
The laser slashed through the front of his armor but was stopped by the combination of his mass and the rear armor from cutting all the way through. The tremendous heat of the coherent beam of light caused his torso to flash into steam and sublimed calcium. The armor held together, however, except a two-inch-wide strip blasted out of it, and Bennett's pureed remains squirted out like cherry soda from a shaken bottle. This ejecta flipped him backwards across the room.
The laser served as an aiming point for the God King's brigade of Posleen normals and a broadside of flechette and missile fire vomited at the hapless machine gun team. The missiles were wildly inaccurate at the seven-hundred-meter range of the current engagement. It would have been the greatest of bad luck to be hit by one, but Madam Chance knows no favorites.
Lieutenant O'Neal and Sergeant Reese were hurled backwards by the weight of metal. For a few moments O'Neal returned fire, riding the wave of rounds as he had practiced, and his heavier prototype armor was proof against the hail of fire. Private McPherson was less lucky. Two 3mm rounds penetrated his abdominal storage, setting off a cache of grenades and popping the blowout panels in a sea of actinic fire, then through his body armor. After that they were unable to exit and began bouncing around inside. McPherson's suit began to hop and flip randomly through the air, arms and legs flailing to keep up as the two hypervelocity flechettes bled off their kinetic energy within the body of his suit. Two seconds later, when it finally, mercifully, stopped, the only evidence of damage were two tiny holes, one above the right hip and one almost centered on the navel. The storm of directed fire had died to a light shower and Sergeant Reese started towards him.
"Forget it," said O'Neal, scanning a map of the area for a new firing position.
"He was having convulsions!" said Reese, surprised and angered to find the lieutenant interfering in first aid.
"He's dead. Check his telemetry. Convulsions don't . . ." he said as he turned to stop the trooper but it was too late. Sergeant Reese popped the seals on the helmet and a red mass, unpleasantly reminiscent of spaghetti sauce, poured out on the floor. Reese began to dry heave as McPherson's head rolled out of the dead helmet and squished into what remained of his body. The underlayer gel, red tinged, oozed out behind it.
" . . . flip you backwards for a full gainer and a half twist through the air. Come on, Sergeant, time to scoot." O'Neal popped the power cartridge out of the grav sled, laid a charge on the ammo, picked up two boxes and trotted to the door. "Come on. They're dead, we're not. Let's keep it that way."
The next thirty minutes were forever a blur for Sergeant Reese. He had forgotten his rank, his unit and even his name; all he could do was blindly follow Lieutenant O'Neal, firing when and how he was told. He vaguely remembered, as in a dream, the views from various windows and rapidly firing before moving to another location. He remembered the order from Lieutenant Browning, the XO, voice cracking in terror, to fall back to Saltren. He remembered inexplicable orders from Lieutenant O'Neal to shatter certain beams and arches, placing demolition charges, in low, brightly lit corridors down which he crouched while the shorter lieutenant floated with lethal, catlike grace. He returned to stark reality during their first close encounter with the Posleen.
They were in a subbasement headed he knew not where running down one wall of a mammoth warehouse. The shelves were filled with green drums, like rubber oil barrels. As the lieutenant passed one of the aisles, both their AIDs screamed a belated warning. A group of fifty or so Posleen, accompanied by a God King, opened fire on Lieutenant O'Neal with everything they had.
There were six high-density inertial compensators along the spine of the suit. They had been placed there to prevent severe inertial damage to the most vital portions of the user. Lieutenant O'Neal launched himself into the air and away from the threat, an instinct of hundreds of hours of simulations, while his AID dialed the inertial compensators as low as they would go. This had several effects, good and bad, but the net effect was to make it less likely that the flechettes would penetrate his armor as they had the private's; at this range their penetration ability was vastly improved.
The lack of inertia permitted the suit to move aside or be pushed away as if no more substantial than a hummingbird. Combined with the strength of the armor it successfully shed the first sleet of rounds, but it made him as unstable as a Ping-Pong ball in a hurricane. He was picked up by the impacts, flipped repeatedly end for end, struck the warehouse wall and blown sideways.
Sergeant Reese screamed and fired on the target vector flashing in his display. The Posleen were masked by the barrels, but he figured with the power of the grav rifle he could saw through the barrels quickly and take the Posleen under direct fire.
As it happened, actually hitting the Posleen became unnecessary. The barrels throughout the entire warehouse were filled with an oil processed from algae. It was used by the Indowy in cooking. It was as ubiquitous as corn oil, and the five million Indowy of Qualtren used so much they needed a half-kilometer square warehouse. Like corn oil, it had a fairly high flash point but given certain conditions it could burn, even explode.
The depleted uranium pellets of the grav guns traveled at a noticeable fraction of the speed of light. The designers had carefully balanced maximum kinetic effect against the problem of relativistic ionization and its accompanying radiation. The result was a tiny teardrop that went so fast it defied description. It made any bullet ever made seem to stand still. Far faster than any meteor, rounds that did not impact left the planet's orbit to become a spatial navigation hazard. It punched a hole through the atmosphere so fierce that it stripped the electrons from the atoms of gas and turned them into ions. The energy bled in its travel was so high it created a shock front of electromagnetic pulse. Then, after it passed, the atoms and electrons recombined in a spectacular display of chemistry and physics. Photons of light were discharged, heat was released and free radicals, ozone and Bucky balls were produced. The major by-product was the tunnel of energetic ions indistinguishable from lightning. Just as hot, and just as energetic. A natural spark plug.
In two seconds a thousand of these supremely destructive teardrops punched through fifty drums of fish oil. One pellet was enough to finely distribute a drum of oil over two to three thousand cubic meters of air. The following rounds found only vapor, and these excess pellets, following the immutable laws of physics, set out to find other drums to divide. The oil from thousands of drums suddenly flash blasted into gas then ignited from compression, rather like a diesel piston. The net effect was a fuel-air bomb, the next best thing to a nuclear weapon in Terran technology, and the basement warehouse became a gigantic diesel cylinder. For Sergeant Reese, in an instant the world flashed to fire.
The warehouse was two levels below ground. It had six levels below it and was three hundred fifty meters from Sisalav Boulevard, a hundred fifty meters from Avenue Qual. The fuel-air explosion blasted a two-hundred-meter diameter crater down to bedrock, gutted the building for a kilometer upward and set off all the charges planted for Plan Jericho. The shock wave smashed structural members all the way to Sisalav and Qual and spit many of the remaining troopers on the ground floor out of the building like watermelon seeds. It killed every unarmored being in the mile cube structure: three hundred twenty-six thousand Indowy and eight thousand particularly quick and greedy Posleen. The Jericho charges worked as planned, shattering a hundred and twenty critical monocrystalline support members. With surprising grace, the mile-high edifice leaned to the northwest and slowly, as if reverently kneeling, fell into Daltrev, blocking Sisalav and Qual and smashing the southeast quadrant of Daltrev. It crushed more Posleen and completely blocked an enemy advance from the massif to Qualtrev.
Following a predetermined plan, when the last shaken but mobile survivors of Alpha and Bravo quit Qualtrev five minutes later, that structure's charges detonated as well. The building settled across Avenue Anosimo and the rest of Daltrev, blocking Posleen advances through both the battalion's sector and the primary axis of advance into the 7th Cav sector. With the Posleen advances blocked, the remnant of the battalion was free to support the Cav. If it could be reconstituted.
Mike moaned and opened his eyes. At least he thought he did but the world was as black as before and he suffered from vertigo. Either there was something wrong with his inner ear, or he was basically upside down and on his back.
"Lieutenant O'Neal," said his AID in her most soothing voice, "you're not blind, there just is no light."
"Suit lights," muttered Mike, dazedly.
"First let me tell you where you are. What do you remember?"
"Headache."
The AID correctly interpreted this as a medication request and chose three items from the pharmacope.
"Whew," said Mike after a minute or two of shutting his eyes against the soul-drinking darkness, "that's better. Now, where am I? And turn on the damn helmet."
"What do you remember?" the AID temporized.
"Entering a warehouse in the basement of Qualtren."
"Do you remember what happened in the basement?"
"No."
"Do you remember Sergeant Reese?"
"Yeah. Is he alive?"
"Barely. You encountered some Posleen. In firing on them Sergeant Reese struck several bladders of oil with kinetic pellets. This caused a fuel-air explosion which in turn detonated the Jericho charges . . ."
"I'm under Qualtren," said Mike in sudden horrified realization.
"Yes, sir. You are. You are under approximately one hundred twenty-six meters of rubble."
28
Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA Sol III
0025 August 5th, 2002 AD
Pappas' eyes were open, his back straight, his arms crossed and a fierce expression was fixed on his face. For all that he was, in reality, asleep.
It was after midnight as the swaying bus ground to a halt at the MP guarded entrance to Fort Indiantown Gap. The bus driver had wondered as they approached about the red glow of flames in the distance, but the greeting from the MPs drove all thought of it out of his head. He leaned out of the window to ask where the recruits and their humorless sergeant were supposed to go, but before he could ask the question the MP answered it for him.
"I don't know where the fuckers are supposed to go, who they are supposed to report to or what the fuck to do with them. Are there any more questions?" the MP private asked in an angry and aggressive tone.
Pappas' eyes flicked open and before he was fully awake he had exited the bus and had the MP dangling by his BDU collar from one hand.
"What the fuck kind of answer is that you pissant?" he raged. The MP's companion started awake and clawed at his Berretta.
"Draw your weapon and you will be splitting rocks in Leavenworth on Thursday, asshole!" said the infuriated Pappas turning his fulminating gaze on the companion. On top of the difficulties of the trip the attitudes of the MPs had just been too much. The backup quit clawing at his sidearm and popped to attention.
"Now," said Pappas as his fury cooled slightly, "what the fuck is your problem, Private?" He lowered the MP so that his feet contacted the ground without actually releasing him.
The MP had had his share of problems lately and plenty of opportunity to practice hand-to-hand combat. But he had never had anyone manhandle him so quickly or completely and the experience was shattering. The NCO in gray silks, which designated him as one of the nearly untouchable Fleet Strike Force, was a mountain of muscle. The dim lighting and red flickering of distant flames turned him into a surreal figure of almost primeval strength and fury, like a volcano on two trunk-like legs. The private did a quick reevaluation of his environment.
"Sergeant," he was definitely a sergeant, although it was hard to read the Fleet stripes on his shoulder, "we got a lot of problems . . ."
"I don't want to hear problems, private, I want to hear answers."
"Sergeant, I don't have any. I'm sorry." The private's face was screwed into near tears and Pappas suddenly had to reevaluate the situation as well.
"What the fuck is going on?" he asked releasing the private and smoothing the fabric of his BDU collar. He finally turned his head to look at the distant fires. "What the fuck is going on?" he asked again, shaking his head.
"Sarge, Sergeant," the MP corrected quickly, "the fuckin' place is out of control." He stopped and shook his head.
"Sergeant," said the backup, "I'm sorry we were so fucked up on our answer. But we really don't know where to send your troops."
The original MP nodded his head in agreement. "The first thing is last week they had to move a bunch of the units 'cause their barracks got burned out in the riots. Then they lost some of the troops and the rest were shacking up in open barracks. When they tried to move 'em there was riots over that. An' whenever we break up a riot, the rioters tend to fire the trailers when they're runnin' away. So, where youse was supposed to go might not even be there . . ."
"Holy shit," whispered the former Marine. He could hear the troops getting off the bus behind him and raised his voice. "Get me Stewart, Ampele, Adams and Michaels." The squad leaders. "The rest of you yardbirds get back on the bus!"
While the squad leaders assembled he watched the flickering flames at a position of parade rest. He gently blew his lips in thought. "You guys getting any help?" he asked.
"Not much, Sergeant," said the MP. "There's about three or four battalions that have their troops under order, but even they have problems. And we can't really use them for riot suppression, 'cause we can't tell the sheep from the goats." The private stopped and shook his head. "It's a real rat-fuck, Sergeant."
"Gunny."
"Okay, it's a real rat-fuck, Gunny." The MP chuckled.
Pappas wheeled on the assembled squad leaders. "This is a fuck-up, folks, but it's one we gotta work with. Apparently the Army has lost control of its units." He turned back to the MP. "How many units are we talkin' about?"
"Two divisions, some attached Corp units and the Fleet Strike battalion. We're havin' most of our problems out of the support units and a couple of the infantry battalions, though. The problem is that most of the senior officers and NCOs haven't got here yet, so all we got is a bunch of fuckin' recruits and castoffs from other units. If we had a full officer and NCO Corp we'd be okay, at least that is what our provost says, but until all the officers and NCOs get here and we start havin' some court-martials it's just gonna continue like this."
Pappas nodded his head and continued. "Here is how we're gonna handle it. First, we ain't takin' the bus into that rat-fuck. So we gotta walk. But we ain't gonna try to find where we're supposed to be loaded down with baggage. So, Ampele, First squad is baggage guard."
"Gunny . . . !" the large private started to protest.
"It's more important than you think. We're gonna unload all the baggage here." He looked around. "Down by the stream." He gestured with his chin. "Hunker down and wait for support. When we find our quarters and unit I'll send back transport and most of the platoon to pick up the baggage. But be aware that you could be attacked." He looked at the MPs and they nodded.
