Arkady Simosin looked at the radio for a moment and then shrugged. “We’ll be right behind you.”
He turned to the driver of the Bradley he was currently occupying and gestured. “Son, if you don’t catch that SheVa before it’s halfway across the valley I’ll have you shot.”
“Yes, sir!” the driver said, kicking the armored fighting vehicle into gear. “Not a problem,” he added with a feral grin as the track commander cycled his guns. The Bradley was one of the scout systems equipped with double 7.62 Gatling guns; and it was getting ready to do some harvesting.
Simosin brushed his RTO aside and keyed the division command frequency as the Brad lurched into gear. There was garbled conversation coming from half a dozen commanders but he overrode them.
“All units, assault NOW, NOW, NOW. Follow the SheVa. Forget plans, forget frag orders. The order is FOLLOW THE SHEVA.”
“Move it!” LeBlanc snarled as she climbed the steps of the tank. And it was a long goddamned way up for a female who was just five feet tall. Really, she should be in a Brad or a Humvee. More radios and fewer distractions. On the other hand, if she wanted to command her unit she had to survive.
“But what are we doing?” the commander of Bravo Company called. The idiot was just standing by the Abrams looking around in confusion.
“We’re going to Savannah!” LeBlanc said, plugging into the vehicle intercom system. She was about to order the driver forward but he had already closed his hatch and started the tank forward. It moved with the smooth oiliness that was the hallmark of the Abrams series and it seemed that nothing could stop it. Of course, one plasma gun that hit just right would do just fine. There had been improvements in the armor of the Abrams series over the course of the war, but they could still be taken out with plasma or HVM fire. If it hit right.
“Get back to your unit and get it moving!” she screamed at the company commander then keyed the battalion command frequency. “All units, general breakout! Follow the SheVa!” She looked out of the TC hatch as the tank accelerated up the hillside and shook her head. The 147th was a cock-up outfit. That was for sure and for certain. But in the last day or two something had happened, a new spirit had infected them. They might be cock-ups, but they had led the charge from Balsam Pass to here, where other units had failed. And they seemed to have caught the spirit of winning against the Posleen, instead of just taking it on the chin.
Which was why she realized she didn’t have to kick her useless company commanders in the ass. On either side, rising out of their holes like an unstoppable tide, the men of the 147th were rising. And running forward, screaming.
The Posleen were turning and running before the mass of the SheVa, and the troops of the 147th were going to get some.
“What a bloody mess,” Mitchell muttered, looking in the monitors. He hadn’t really expected support but he was by God getting it.
The troops of the division, in some cases it seemed without orders, had climbed out of the defensive positions they had occupied for the past several hours and were charging forward. Most of them weren’t in vehicles so they were falling far behind the SheVa, but they were drawing fire away from it. And getting slaughtered themselves.
It didn’t seem to matter, though. Mitchell saw one Bradley crest the ridge and drive right into a concentration of Posleen, running several of them over. For a moment the troops inside raved at the aliens with their mounted weaponry then the troop door opened and they poured out, taking positions around the fighting vehicle and pouring fire into the Posleen.
The aliens, used to throwing themselves onto human defenses, were reacting with shock and apparent fear. It must have seemed to them that the rabbits were attacking the wolves and it was happening everywhere.
The valley was an absolute madhouse. Groups of humans were running down the valley, some of them on the flats and others on the steep ridges along the sides, while a stream of armored fighting vehicles and tanks poured through the Gap. Other vehicles, tanks, Bradleys, Humvees and even some trucks, were coming over the ridges where they were negotiable and charging forward, sometimes stopping to pick up infantry but always moving forward.
The artillery had gotten totally confused and rounds seemed to be falling almost at random, some of them into the human troops. But even that didn’t seem to be slowing them down.
“Are we all insane?” Mitchell asked, flipping back to monitor forward. He looked at the rippling waves of Posleen and the heavy fire coming from them and smiled maniacally. “Yep.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Green’s Creek, NC, United States of America, Sol III
2238 EDT Monday September 28, 2009 AD
Paul Kilzer grinned as he tapped the controls for the close-in defense systems and a ripple of fire tore out from the SheVa. Reeves had apparently been anticipating this because he had driven right into a mass of Posleen and the millions of ball-bearings tore through the group like a mechanical thresher.
“It’s good to be the king.” Kilzer chuckled as the SheVa’s tracks ground the aliens. “I think I remember something about ‘use their guts for track grease’?”
“Patton,” Pruitt said over the intercom. “ ‘Why I almost feel sorry for those poor Kraut bastards.’ I’ve often wondered what he would have done with the Posleen.”
“Seen how many of them he could make die,” Mitchell growled.
LeBlanc stared at the CEOI for a second and then shook her head. “Alpha, this is battalion, what’s your situation?”
She waited a moment then keyed the radio again as the Abrams hit the bottom of the slope and pitched her around like a marionette. “Bravo!” she coughed. “Charlie! Anybody this net, dammit!”
“This is… oh, hell, this is Captain Hutchinson’s RTO, ma’am,” the radio operator for the Alpha company commander panted. “The company just… got up and started charging after the SheVa, ma’am! The captain’s trying to get them stopped.”
“Stopped, hell!” she shouted. “All stations this net, you will move forward and aggressively engage the Posleen! Support the SheVa! Move forward! Any company commander who doesn’t keep up with his company is going to be relieved. And the last company to Savannah is on extra duty for a month. Don’t stop them, push them.”
She flipped frequencies and snarled as the tank dropped into a streambed and shook her around again. “This is no way to run a railroad,” she muttered. “Scouts!” she snapped, keying the mike.
“Alpha Six-Seven, over.” She remembered that the Scout Platoon commander was a graduate of VMI, a regular of sorts. And apparently he could keep up with the damned CEOI even in the middle of a battle. Although that would be easy if he was still sitting back at Church Hill.