He had been nearly seventy when recalled and although he had continued in business after the Army, he was one of those executives for whom computers were Greek. These systems, however, were as far from modern computers as a Ferrari from a chariot.
Taking his lead from the resident expert, he started calling his artificial intelligence device, a Galactic-supplied supercomputer the size of a pack of cigarettes, “Little Nag.” He now used her for all his official correspondence and, now that he had gotten her over the annoying literalness of a new AID, she was better than any secretary he’d ever had. In the regular exercises the battalion was conducting, Little Nag kept better track of friendly and enemy disposition, personnel and equipment levels, and all the other minutiae that made for a successful military operation, than any staff in history. The newly arrived S-3 and the other battalion staff officers were getting used to their own AIDs and the staff was approaching a level of perfection seldom to be dreamed.
There was a rapid shuffling below as second squad left their positions and the others moved to cover the extended front. The reduced fire pressure permitted the Posleen to begin moving slowly forward, piling up windrows of their dead but willing to take the sacrifice to overrun the position. However, what remained of second squad eeled past the other positions and, using a gully that kept them more or less out of Posleen sight, slipped one by one into the river and out of Virtual sight.
“Oh, God damn,” whispered Mike, cutting in an overlay of positions to track second as they moved up current. He smiled and spit into the vacuole again.
“What?” asked Colonel Hanson. “It looks like a forlorn hope to me.” He tapped a series of virtual controls to project the course of the unit. The leader, the Sergeant Stewart he had met his first day at the unit, had entered orders for his team and the group of eight survivors was headed for a point in the river opposite the narrow chokepoint the platoon had been unable to reach.
“Not necessarily, sir. Even with the few that remain, second squad could take and hold that chokepoint for a moment, given the right conditions. Maybe long enough for the rest of the platoon to charge forward and relieve them. Damn, I didn’t think that by-the-book Long-Grey-Line son of a gun had it in him.”
Mike watched as the squad formed under the cover of the green waters then erupted upward. As they moved, the water began to hump and wriggle as if infested by snakes. What surfaced was not a group of suits, but a swarming mass of worms, each gray body surmounted with a fang-filled maw. As lines of silver explosive lightning flicked God Kings out of existence, the worms snatched Posleen from the banks and dragged them screaming into the suddenly yellow-stained water. The air, at the same time, was filled with an evil caterwaul and the thunder of drums.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Colonel Hanson. His own half-smile was unseen. The flair of their company commander was obviously rubbing off on some of the members of the company. O’Neal’s own use of music in battle had become legendary almost overnight.
“If you think that’s the Seventy-Eighth Fraser Highlanders’ bagpipes slamming out ‘Cumha na Cloinne’ it is. Stewart’s been listening to my CDs again.”
“Your idea?”
“No, sir, but now I know what infested Lieutenant Fallon’s mind. That would be Sergeant Stewart.” The smile of the company commander was hidden by the faceless armor but the battalion commander could clearly hear it in his voice. “You remember him, sir.”
“Mmm,” was the only comment. The battalion commander had recently returned a request from the Ground Force Criminal Investigation Division for an investigation into various items of equipment that had gone missing around post. His basis was insufficient evidence of it being traced to Bravo Company. In fact, he was fairly certain that the diminutive second squad leader was responsible.
“You know,” the battalion commander commented. “Bravo had a fairly shabby reputation before you took over. You might want to ensure that it doesn’t get one again.”
Mike’s abbreviated nod was unseen. Prior to the nearly simultaneous arrival of First Sergeant Pappas and Lieutenant Arnold, the company had been a center for black marketeering at the post. The easy and unquestioned availability of technology that was centuries ahead of current had created a tremendous profit for the former first sergeant. Stewart and his squad of recent basic trainees, along with the first sergeant and Arnold, had been instrumental in cleaning up the situation. The former first sergeant was now serving time in the Fleet military prison on Titan Base. The prisoners were used for work out in the vacuum that was considered particularly hazardous.
“I’ll point that out at the next leaders’ meeting,” was Mike’s only comment. He let out another stream of tobacco juice and smiled at the course the battle was taking. Stewart was definitely a subordinate worth having around. Too bad he was only a squad leader.
Their God King lords dead, and under assault from a creature of an evil mythology, the Posleen advancing through the gap turned and tried to fight their way to the rear as the mass of worms humped itself up onto the ground and began attacking in both directions.
“How are they snatching the Posleen?” asked Colonel Hanson, watching one struggling centaur being dragged below the water.
“Well, sir, you’ve got me there, unless they’ve retrofitted the suits somehow.” Mike keyed into a higher level of oversight, on channels poorly understood by most of the AIDs, much less humans.
O’Neal had been in on the design of the suits from the very beginning and had been fighting in them from the first contact on Diess. He knew more about the real abilities of the weapon than any other human in the Federation. His last suit had more hours on it when it was lost than any two others in the armed forces, and his new suit was climbing in hours fast. Single-mindedly devoted to the mission, he spent virtually every waking hour, and a significant amount of sleep time, in armor. He had, as far as Hanson could tell, no social life and interacted with the other battalion officers only on business matters or at required social functions.
Not that there were many of those. Indiantown Gap did not present many amenities to the units forming there. The clubs, officer, NCO and enlisted, were overrun with activating units, and the town of Annville, which was the only civilian area reachable without a personal vehicle, was equally overrun with servicemen. In addition, with the limited training costs of the suits the unit could train 24/7 if so desired. The colonel was taking full advantage of these facts, and the battalion had been in the field nearly every day since they completed fitting.
“Okay,” Mike said in a distant voice, consciousness deep in an electronic world. “I see what they’re doing. They’re grabbing them with space grapples. Could work.”
“The AIDs are going with it,” said the colonel, overlooking the lack of a “sir” in the sentence. “They’re not disallowing it anyway.”
“I don’t know if it would work or not, I’ve never tried it,” Captain O’Neal continued in a distant tone. “That’s odd.” He had finally found what was bothering him.
“What?”
“The Posleen are being run at only eighty percent efficiency.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you can adjust these scenarios to the user. It’s kind of like levels in a computer game. You don’t want to kick the ass of a basic trainee; it takes their edge off to get beat all the time. So, you set the level of difficulty.”
“What level was this set to?” asked the battalion commander. Sometimes the things he did not know about his job frightened him and most things like that were not in any manual. With the exception of a few people like this captain, there were no “old hands” with suits. He wondered how the battalions without an O’Neal were able to prepare at all.