“Captain Brandon.”
“AID, partial privacy,” said the captain quickly. “O’Neal? Is that you? I figured you were dead under your pyramid.
“Thanks for the cover,” Brandon continued sarcastically, “unfortunately most of my damn company didn’t quite make it out of the building!”
“That explosion was not the demolition charges, although they were detonated sympathetically,” Mike began, lamely.
“Fine, now come up with some miracle to get us out of this nightmare! Or give me my damn company back!” the captain ended angrily.
“I have some of your troops down here, sir. We’re going to start E and Eing out of here as soon as the rest link up. But, I just tried to report to Major Pauley, and, well, he was…”
“Babbling,” Brandon said, flatly.
“Yes, sir.”
“We know, thank you. Anything else?”
“Well,…”, go ahead, he thought, say it. “What the hell do I do, sir? I’m… I’m just…” he bit back what he was about to say, “… not sure what course to follow, sir.”
“I don’t have time to hold your hand, O’Neal. Do whatever you think will do the most damage to the enemy until you can get back in contact. Take that as an order, if it helps.”
“Yes, sir.” Deep breath. “Airborne, sir.”
“O’Neal.”
“Sir?”
There was a short pause. “Fuck that shit about being a jumped up NCO, you saved our asses by dropping the buildings. Sorry about jumping your ass, it wasn’t right. So, good hunting. Pile ’em up like cordwood, Lieutenant. That’s an order.” The officer’s voice was firm and unwavering.
“Yes, sir,” said Mike, unfelt conviction in every syllable. “Air-fucking-borne.” Vaya con Dios, Captain.
“Now get off my damn freq; I got a war to run here. Alpha team! Position Five! Follow the ball! Move!”
30
Andata Province, Diess IV
0626 GMT May 19th, 2002 ad
As Mike whipped in the current, dangling like a lure on a trolling line, he really wished he had either been smarter, and had come up with a better plan, or stupider and had not thought of this one.
Once the improvised air lock was in place and area flooded, the next problem was how to move through the water mains. Between ongoing use in unconquered areas and unsealed breaches, the flow rate was high. An unencumbered person who is a good swimmer can only swim against three to four knots of current. The water was flowing past their location at what Mike judged to be about seven knots.
Mike had trained under water in battle armor, but never with a current. When he checked the flow going past at the first “T” intersection he experienced a sinking suspicion that his armor would not handle worth a damn, especially since the lack of power meant he could not “fly” the suit under impellers. He was still unsure what the mission plan would be, other than “to stack ’em up like cordwood” but he fully intended to see Diess’ fluorescent light again, and soon. That meant getting out from under the zone of total destruction and the only way out from under the buildings was through the water mains, current or no current. Since swimming the armor was out, that left “rappeling” down the current. He worked out a route that flowed with the currents and would come out under a building three blocks away from Qualtren. Since the first principle of leadership was that you never asked someone to do something you would not do, Mike elected, over the protests of his platoon sergeant, to scout the first bound.
A line would be secured at the starting point by universal clamp and paid out with the scout, in this case O’Neal, dangling from it like a spider in the current. Waypoints had been determined, areas where there should be lower currents, and there personnel could be marshaled for the next bound. After the first bound, it had been agreed, other troops would take over the scouting duties. Once the line was emplaced the following troops would clip to the line and rappel to the waypoint.
The winch and line were built-in features of the suits. The winch was a bulge the size of a pack of cigarettes on the back of the suit and the line was thinner than a pencil lead. Designed for microgravity work they were rated to reel in a fully loaded suit against three gravities. On the other hand although the reel system and the universal clamp, a “magnet” that acted on a proton-sharing technology, had been extensively tested for full immersion, neither had been tested under heavy strain while fully immersed.
That lack of testing, since he had been the test pilot, was a personal indignity of the highest order. If there was any failure Mike had precisely no one else to blame. As he went bouncing off into the darkness he would be forced to curse only himself: designer, test pilot, user. Idiot.
For it was inky darkness his suit lights barely penetrated. Silt from breaks swirled through the tube and as he twisted wildly in the raging current the light swung randomly, illuminating for a moment then being swallowed by the turbidity. A moment’s flash of wall, empty water, wall, opening, broken bits of plascrete from the shattered infrastructure, what was once an Indowy. The feeling of helplessness, swirling movement and flashing lights induced massive vertigo. He abruptly vomited, the ejecta captured and efficiently scavenged by the helmet systems.
“Down,” he continued. “How much farther?” He would have looked, but he had to close his eyes for a moment. That made it worse so he opened them again and glued his eyes to the suit systems, checking the schematic just as the suit slammed into the wall. The heavy impact was more than absorbed by the suit systems and Mike hardly noticed.
“Two hundred seventy-five meters to waypoint one,” answered the AID.
“Increase rate of descent to five meters per second.”
As the descent rate increased, the swirling lessened, the suit moving at approximately the rate of the current. He started stabilizing himself, fending himself away the next time he swung toward the wall.
“Michelle, adjust the winch to maintain a tension of ten pounds regardless of rate of descent, up rate of descent to ten meters per second.”
“Lieutenant O’Neal, if you strike a serious obstacle at ten meters per second, it could cause serious damage. Regulation maximum uncontrolled movement is seven meters per second.”
“Michelle, I wrote that spec, and it’s a good spec, I like it. But there are times when you have to push the specifications a little. Let me put it this way, what was the maximum gravities sustained by a mobile survivor of the fuel-air explosion under Qualtren?”
“Private Slattery sustained sixty-five gravities for five microseconds and over twenty for three seconds,” answered the AID.
“Then I think I can take hitting concrete at an itty-bitty thirty or forty feet per second,” Mike answered with a smile.
“Nonetheless, his suit systems indicate some internal bleeding,” protested the AID.
“Is he still functioning?”
“Barely.”
“ ’Nuff said.”
Her silence was as good as a sniff of derision to Mike after so much time in the suit. He had amassed over three thousand hours before this little adventure and he, the suit and the AID were now a smoothly running team. This was again proven when Michelle started flashing an unprompted warning as the waypoint appeared. Restrained by her programming, she could not override his rate setting but she could communicate the need to start slowing down quite pointedly. He sometimes wondered where she had picked up so much personality. Most of the other AIDs he dealt with tended to be flat. He decided to tweak her nose a bit and let the rate setting ride until the last moment. Playing chicken with an AID, what would he do next?