“That was a little excessive, Wiz. I said we spec’ed them for one hundred and twenty meters; it turned out to be a bit better than that.” Mike bounded farther into the roof to get a running start. He said, “Michelle, command run and maximum jump, execute.”
The legs of the suit began to blur. In the hundred meters from his position to the roof’s edge it accelerated to over one hundred kilometers per hour in a series of ground-devouring bounds. As the boots of the suit came in contact with the roof, a grappling field would engage to prevent slippage, therefore maximum energy was applied to each thrust. When he reached the roof’s edge the suit’s AID automatically launched him into the air. Under the combination of forward momentum, his inertial compensators’ contragravity function, and thrust from the inertialess thrusters built into the suit, he was carried over two hundred meters onto the far roof. With a return series of bounds he reached the edge of the roof and bounced effortlessly back to the platoon.
“Of course, this is a prototype command suit, not an issue one. Quite the thing, actually. But a suit can take a gap like this without breaking a sweat as you should all know. Powered suit drills is what your jobs are all about now; if you goons had ever been given proper training we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“We will move out in an extended watch formation, twenty meters between personnel, thirty meters between squads, scouts forward leaning left. If somebody misses the jump, the team falls out and recovers them using their winch system. If you miss the jump, don’t worry, your suit will automatically hit the anti-grav and your momentum will carry you to the face of the building. Use the universal clamp in your palm pad, clamp to the wall and wait for your buddies to recover you, or climb up hand over hand for that matter. The first rally point is the resupply rendezvous and we don’t need everybody there at first so if somebody misses, that troop’s team drops and only that team drops, everybody else drives the fuck on, is that clear?”
“Clear, sir.”
“If we take any fire from Posleen, those with weapons take them under fire. Kick their ass, don’t pee on ’em. Lay down all the fire you can and blow the fuckers away. We do not want to get held up on these rooftops without weapons.
“Now, just to get the feel for things, we’ll drop back and start moving forward across the roof as a platoon, not a cluster fuck, right?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Sergeant Green!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want to take this at a long slow lope.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All-righty then, move out.” The platoon moved back, slowly, and the NCOs got it sorted out. With the men in position, Mike got his headquarters’ squad, effectively Sergeant Green and the engineers, in place, right rear, and hollered, “Move ’em out!”
The scout team started forward in long bounding strides and the platoon, spread over nearly a half kilometer, perforce bounded out behind them. As they neared the edge Mike consulted with Michelle.
All of the scouts took the jump without a hitch and when several of the regular troops, naturally, balked, the suits overrode them and jumped anyway. As they crossed the next building, still without opposition or even harassing fire, the troops began to get into the rhythm of the run. Runners all, as any soldier had to be in the modern airborne, the comforting rhythm of a light run was an anodyne to their nerves and the speed and distance involved a boost to their ego. Mike gave it a few more minutes then cranked on the tunes. Suddenly, from each troop’s AID, the Pat Benatar song “Legend of Billy Jean” started to play. “Benefits of not having to be tactical,” he commented to Sergeant Green.
As the kilometers passed with no Posleen in sight, the songs continued. Seventies rock, alternative, raker rock, turn fusion, heavy metal. Many of the songs emphasized the ephemeral nature of life and the importance of honor and courage, or at least resignation, in the face of inevitability. If the troops objected to the playlist there was no evidence, just a susurrant hush of breathing, each troop lost in his own thoughts. As they neared the rendezvous, a megascraper about three “blocks” or six kilometers from the encirclement, Mike cut onto the platoon push, breaking into a live version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
“Okay, hold it up in the middle of this next building, cigar perimeter, personnel with weapons on the outside,” he said, looking around the empty rooftop. “We’re supposed to be meeting our resupply here.”
“Mike,” said a puzzled Wiznowski on a side frequency, “what’s that?”
In the east, towards the distant line of human resistance, a fireworks display had suddenly erupted. “Michelle, enhance.”
Lines of fire were blasting upward from the break between two buildings. Hypervelocity missiles and other kinetic energy weapons along with lasers and lines of plasma reached up to the heavens. Suddenly the broken body of a combat shuttle, gloriously aflame, burst into sight above the intervening buildings. It was followed by six more, one twisting off, crippled, just as the shuttles reached the dubious safety of the air over the megascrapers. One crested too high and a plasma bolt that would do credit to a space cruiser slapped it out of the air. The fire penetrated its antimatter containment field and it exploded with the sun-bright flash of nuclear detonation, destroying the upper portions of the buildings to either side and forcing one of the other shuttles off course into a roof.
The platoon’s visual sensors automatically screened the optical overload. “Damn! There goes half our ammunition,” cursed Sergeant Green as the debris of the buildings crashed down all around.
“More likely a third,” contradicted Mike just as a half dozen Posleen God Kings in their saucer-shaped craft swooped upwards in pursuit of the shuttles. His mind slipped into razor sharp fugue, every detail diamond clear. “Platoon, down! Activate deception systems!”
As the suit careted the Posleen, Mike’s pistol locked onto them automatically. The God Kings were concentrating on the undefended shuttles and Mike’s first silvery burst swept two of them out of the sky from three kilometers away, one of the vehicles disappearing in actinic fire as the relativistic teardrops searched out its power supply. He hopped sideways and dropped as the remaining vehicles’ targeting systems slewed the God Kings’ weapons onto his location. A hurricane of fire swept his former position, but he took out another from his kneeling position. Two of the remaining Posleen went back to attacking the shuttles as one swept towards the platoon’s position.
The suits were doing a good job of mimicking the top of a building in every frequency so the Posleen thought there was a sole human to deal with. Mike missed the rapidly dodging craft with his next two shots and, in a series of wild jumps and somersaults, dodged three bursts of plasma, one of which cooked the external sensors on his right side. The Posleen was moving in at over three hundred kilometers per hour swerving crazily from side to side. Michelle tossed the suit to the side under thrusters as another burst of plasma passed through the space he had just occupied. Mike tumbled over onto his back and was trying to fire upward, an awkward position in a suit, when he was suddenly covered with the flaming wreckage of a God King’s saucer.