But he was down to magic tricks and it was about time for the big finale. He gestured at Wilson who rolled up his sleeves. He positioned himself across from Stewart and looked toward the squad. One of the members tossed him a knife and he tossed it to Stewart. Stewart tossed it back and they started a two-man juggle. One of the other members of the squad started to sing a well-known dance tune and they began dancing up and down the bleachers spinning and doing handstands as the squad tossed more and more items into the juggle. After fifteen minutes, Stewart found himself exchanging fourteen items, including the burning torches and two knives, and knew it was time to call it quits. With a nod at Wilson he flipped himself upward one-handed and caught the fountain to complete the act to thunderous applause.
“Gunny,” said Adams, working his way into the packed crowd. “We got more problems.”
29
Andata Province, Diess IV
0019 GMT May 19th, 2002 ad
The journey of a hundred meters begins with one push, thought O’Neal. The suit lights had banished the enveloping darkness, but the twisted masses of plascrete and rubble they revealed was just as depressing.
“Okay, have you come up with any ideas?” he asked his AID.
“Only one. There is a small open area 3.5 meters away at 123 degrees mark 8. If you can worm your way there, you can work your way towards the nearest exit by blasting small openings with the activator charges on your grav rounds.”
“What, you mean use them as explosives? How?”
“If you jam one of them firmly in place then shoot it with your grav pistol, it will fracture the antimatter activator charge, releasing the energy as an explosion.”
“That sounds… odd but possible. Okay, all I have to do is make it ten or eleven feet up and to the right. How do I turn over? Never mind… I’ve got an idea.” His right hand was, fortunately, near his grav pistol. The suit’s biomechanical musculature made short work of the intervening rubble and he sighed as his gauntlet contacted the familiar grip. He drew it and angled the barrel across his abdominal cuirass, the point that seemed most tightly constricted. Whispering a brief prayer to whatever gods might be watching this dust bowl of a planet, he triggered a single round into the plascrete mass.
The concussion belled unexpectedly loud through the armor, transmitting by contact noise that previously had been comfortably muffled. Despite the muffling underlayer, his ears rang as though someone had put a tin bucket over his head and whacked it sharply with a stick. There was a moment’s freedom as he rolled quickly to his left then his right shoulder stuck fast again. If he were out of the suit, he could have flexed his shoulders inward and made the turn. On the other hand, if he was out of the suit he would be dead. The external monitors indicated very low oxygen levels and aerosol toxins, probably a result of all the combusted fish oil and associated burning.
He worked the barrel upwards and carefully turned his head to the side. If the round struck the helmet or any part of his armor dead on he would be pureed as effectively as that poor private in the first contact. Pressing the barrel as much as possible into the slab, he triggered another round. This time it skittered ineffectually along the plascrete and ricocheted off his cuirass. The relativistic teardrop left a deep, glowing trench in the refractory armor that had shed thousands of lower velocity flechettes in the earlier battle and the heat dissipated through the underlayer.
Rattled by the near miss he tried again and on the second attempt cracked the refractory plascrete. He twisted like a cat and found himself on his stomach facing slightly downward. Although there was pressure on several points he could move the rubble after a fashion, courtesy of the tremendous power available from the combat armor. After he twisted back and forth for a bit, the slab piece that had cracked to the left of his shoulder and was now across his right slipped beneath him with a resounding crash and a small area was opened to the upper right. He holstered his pistol and snaked a hand up to a convenient handhold revealed in his suit lights. With a firm grip on a piece of structural ceramet he dragged the rest of his body sharply up and to the right. Since this was the way he wanted to go he braced his feet on the rubble he had extracted himself from and pushed upwards. He was rewarded by sliding sharply backwards.
After a good bit more struggle and twice being forced to use his pistol when vigorous activities were rewarded by large slabs pinning some point of his armor he finally reached the promised open area. Above his head was some indefinable piece of machinery. It was this large something, another indefinable bit of Galactic machinery that created the pocket. He took a sip of water and just sat and scanned his situation for a moment. No rifle, lost sometime during the explosion. Shoulder grenade launchers sheared off clean. Replacement was a simple field repair assuming spares which he ain’t got. One hundred twenty-eight thousand remaining rounds of depleted uranium 3mm penetrators with antimatter activator charge, pretty much useless without a rifle. Grav pistol and forty-five hundred rounds. Two hundred eighty-three grenades, hand or launcher useable. A thousand meters of 10,000kg test micro line, universal clamp and winch. C-9, four kilograms. Detonators. Sundry pyrotechnic and specialty demolition supplies. Personal Area Force-screen; useless against kinetic weapons, as he had pointed out, but of some utility otherwise. His suit had air, food and water for at least a month.
Unfortunately, at his current rate of energy consumption he would be out of power in twelve hours; the kinetic damping systems had been forced to work overtime counteracting not only the effects of the fuel air explosion but also the settlement of the rubble. Combine all of those with the unexpected and unprecedented strains involved in extracting through the rubble and it was a recipe for disaster.
Mike took a bite of suit rations. Ah, pork fried rice pulp. The semibiotic liner of the suit absorbed all bodily wastes, skin-borne oxygen and nitrogen, dead skin cells, sweat, urine and, ahem, and converted them back into breathable air, potable water and surprisingly edible food. In fact the food was quite tasty and constantly changing; just now it changed to broccoli. The texture was still paste, but the system pulled a little power and voilà. No worries about anything but power, as long as he did not think of where the food was coming from.
Well, if it took twelve hours to work through the rubble, he might as well be dead; by then he would be far behind the lines. If he was alone, he would be dead. On the other hand…
“Michelle, how many other members of the battalion are down here and functional?” The GalTech communications network could easily punch through the rubble and determine precise positions of every unit.
“Fifty-eight. The senior is Captain Wright of Alpha company. Captain Vero is also trapped under Qualtrev, but he is severely injured and his AID has administered Hiberzine. There are thirty-two personnel who will survive if they are evacuated to a class one medical facility within one hundred eighty days. All are now in hibernation.”
Mike rocked his armor back and forth on the plascrete pile trying to make a more stable spot. “Okay, gimme a three-D map with locations, and note rank with increasing brightness levels. Those out of action in yellow, functional in green.”
As he spoke the map formed in front of his eyes. Most of the severely injured were those closest to the fuel-air burst or close to Jericho charges.