“Amen.” Spit.
“Amen.”
“Let’s go bust some caps,” he said with a smile. Cally was good at demo but shooting pistols was her real love.
“Okay, but I want a five-point handicap this time,” she said, checking the Walther in the skeleton holster at her back.
“No way. I’m getting old, my hands are all palsied,” he quavered, holding out a shaking left hand. “I think I should have a handicap.”
“You do have a handicap, Grandpa; you’re getting senile. Remember last week? Fourteen points ahead on the twenty-meter range? You know what they say: short-term memory…”
“Are you sure you’re eight?” he asked. A moment later an ant was smashed to its knees by a descending mass of mucus and vegetable matter. After a moment it shook its head and looked around in ant wonder at the largess from the sky.
CHAPTER 10
Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA, United States of America, Sol III
2237 EDT July 28th, 2004 ad
Stewart’s second squad sprinted forward and dropped to the prone, their grav-guns tracking and firing on the advancing virtual Posleen the whole time. Wherever the silver beams of relativistic-velocity teardrops intersected the Posleen wall, racking explosions tore deep gaps in the oncoming line. In response, hypervelocity flechettes and missiles tore at the defenders’ armor, most of the hipshot rounds missing high. But with millions of penetrator rounds coming at the relatively few suits, losses were a statistical certainty.
“Ten-twenty-two, ten-twenty-two, execute!” Stewart said in a steady voice as Private Simmons’s data lead went blank. Half the team checked fire just long enough to reach into a side compartment and pull out a small ball. Flicking off the cover and thumbing the switch they set it offset to their right and went back to firing.
“Clear Ten-Alpha,” said the Alpha team leader as Bravo team duplicated the maneuver.
As Bravo resumed firing, the cratering charges emplaced by the Alpha team went off. They again checked fire only long enough to slither into the impromptu foxholes, then took the Posleen back under fire. “Clear Twenty-Two-Alpha,” called the team leader.
Moments later the entire platoon was under cover.
“So that’s your playbook,” said Colonel Hanson.
“Yes, sir,” said O’Neal, watching Second platoon perform an advance under fire. The hasty defense presented by second squad was temporarily impregnable to the Posleen who were advancing on a narrow strip between a ridge and the Manada River, a much larger body of water than reality for the purposes of the exercise. “We’ve got about two hundred plays, so far, with the various levels of the company trained in their own actions under each play. It’s more or less analogous to the bugle calls the cavalry used. In this case, the squads are performing a Ten-Twenty-Two, ‘form hasty fighting positions and take cover.’ Not that it will help them for long on this exercise.” He worked a bit of dip and spat it into a pocket in the biotic underlayer of the all-enveloping helmet. The saliva and tobacco products were rapidly ingested by the system like all wastes. To the underlayer it was all grist for the mill.
“Is this a fair test?” asked Colonel Hanson, noting how Second platoon was dissolving as inexorably as rock candy in hot water. He wished he could have a cigarette, but they were a bitch to smoke in the suits.
“I think so. By the time Nightingale noticed the flanking maneuver, it was nearly too late for Second to establish the optimum conditions, which was for the Posleen to be a hundred meters farther up river. There the chokepoint is only thirty meters wide, and Lieutenant Fallon could have held them indefinitely. As it is, I don’t think they’ll make it.”
“What would you do?”
“I’d probably try a charge, maybe with some psychological refinements, and try to push them back to the chokepoint,” said O’Neal. He swiveled his viewpoint down into the river for a moment then back to the fighting. “It’s really not a time thing; the length of time they hold is moot. If the Posleen break through now or three hours from now they’ll crack the company defense down the river.”
“Would it work?” asked Colonel Hanson, now paying much more attention to the briefer than the essentially finished engagement.
“According to the scenario, it will work on an irregular basis, dependent on a number of factors not available to adjustment by the tested,” O’Neal answered precisely. Whether any of it would work in the real world was the question in his mind. Every time he looked back at Diess he got cold chills. The chances he had taken were insane. Every single action had been long-ball odds and only incredible good luck had carried the platoon through. His own survival was still placed, by everyone, in the “miraculous” category. And he was afraid he’d used up not only his own quota of luck, but his company’s. If these plans were wrong, it was going to be a massacre. And the fault would rest squarely on his shoulders.
He worked the dip around in thought and spat again. “The Posleen might have a wimpy God King, they might not have enough muscle to the front, minute factors of surface structure on the squad’s armor affects penetration, and so forth. But if you’re this far back you have to hammer them like the hinges of hell, and Lieutenant Fallon’s not a hinges-of-hell kind of guy.”
“So the mistake on Lieutenant Nightingale’s part was farther back?”
“Yes, sir,” Mike answered, in a distracted tone. Something about the scenario was playing false to his experienced senses.
“I almost always leave First platoon in reserve, which pisses the other two platoons off,” he continued automatically. “But Rogers always goes around with such a head full of steam, when I use him to reinforce or blitz it gets hammered home with a vengeance.”
The First platoon leader was a tall, broad, good-looking first lieutenant. As a first lieutenant he would normally have either a heavy weapons platoon or a staff position. Filling a slot for a second lieutenant was beginning to eat him alive; Mike had forwarded four requests for transfer in the last six months.
“Nightingale believes in distributing the load. I am trying to disabuse her of that. The only thing that matters is the mission. You have to pick your units on that basis, not on the basis of ‘fair.’ I finally decided that what she needed was more of a helping hand. But I’d backed myself into a corner being overcorrective.” He grimaced at admitting the mistake.
“Finally I took over most of the stuff the first sergeant had been handling for both of us and sicced him on her. They’ve been spending a hell of a lot of time together and she’s starting to get the hang of it; Gunny Pappas is a top-notch trainer. But I’m still not totally comfortable with her tactical sense.”
“It takes time to learn that,” Hanson admitted.
“Yes, sir. And I hope we’ve got it.” Mike kicked up a probability graph of the engagement if it continued on the current course and fed it to the battalion commander. The casualty graph looked like a mountainside.
For Hanson, who came to his military maturity in the cauldron of Southeast Asia and the Army of the ’70s, the Virtual Reality gear the unit trained with was the next best thing to science fiction.