So far the enemy had been staying out of sight, which was fine by him.
“Not a long drive but a pretty hard one. It’s going to be a tight fit going through by Iotla. And there’s probably going to be Posleen in front of us and behind. I don’t know why there aren’t any in this area. There were when we came through the first time, but they were behind us then. I’d, frankly, expected this valley to be crawling with the little bastards.”
“I’ll put a couple of recon squads of Brads out front,” LeBlanc said. “Maybe three, four thousand meters out. In this country any further would be pointless and that way if they run into trouble we can snug up fast.”
“Works for me,” Mitchell said. “But we need to keep some support on the trucks.”
“I’ll put Charlie company in ass-end Charlie position,” the mech force commander said, taking off her crewman’s helmet and scratching her hair. “I’d say Bravo on point, then Alpha, then you, then the support vehicles and Charlie in trail. I’ll ride with Alpha.”
“Concur,” the colonel replied, flicking off the light. “I figure I don’t have to remind you to keep an eye out in every direction?”
“Nope,” LeBlanc said with a tight smile. “But you can be sure I’ll pass the word along.”
LeBlanc scanned the commander’s viewer around and shook her head. She had paused the company along the forward slope of the ridges south of Cowee Church as Bravo bounded forward. So far the enemy had yet to make an appearance, which just made no sense whatsoever.
There were high ridges to both sides and the Tennessee River snuggled the ridges to the west. It flowed northward from the wide valley near Franklin, then passed through a narrow gap which opened up into the valley they were currently in. The terrain was extremely broken, with a mixture of farms and woodland. The area was actually well suited to defense, against either humans or Posleen. The problem being that they were in a movement to contact and if they made contact they would have to assault through. The terrain was not well suited to assault.
She swung the viewer to the southwest at the lower hills across the river. Posleen, by and large, were not very good at reading maps but they had a certain logic to their movement. They wanted big targets, towns, factories and cities, so they tended to stick to large roads, making the generally valid assumption that they would lead to the best targets. But they occasionally branched off on small roads and there was a network of those across the river. She took another look at the map and shrugged, keying her microphone.
“Juliet Six-One, this is Alpha Six-One, over.” Time to send some screening forces across the river.
“Juliet Six-One, over.”
Well, at least Lieutenant Wolf, the new Bravo company commander, was awake. He’d been the Bravo executive officer until Savannah, when the former commander had turned up among the missing. She’d found out after the battle that the XO had ended up leading the charge and immediately put him in command.
“Find a ford and send a platoon to make sure we don’t have any visitors across the river, over.”
“Roger, out.”
She waited a moment until she saw a force of three Bradleys and an Abrams nosing down towards the river then looked to the south again.
“Charlie Six-One, what’s your position, over?”
“Getting ready to stop just west of Buzzard Ridge; recon elements are just short of Iotla. Be aware that we’re basically in road march formation; there’s no room to spread out and there’s no way to cross the river around here.”
“I can see that,” LeBlanc called. “Push it a little closer to Iotla; we can redeploy to the east there if we have to.”
“Roger, I’ll push the scouts up to the edge of the Franklin Valley as well.”
“Can they see the Iotla Bridge, over?”
“Stand by.”
She waited in the cold, wondering where the platoon from Bravo had gotten to and wondering when the movement to contact would become “contact.”
“Negative, Alpha. Sending them forward to the bridge at this time.”
“Roger, move up and spread out, get ready for Juliet to pass through your position.”
“Roger, out.”
She switched over to intercom and ordered the tank to move forward. It was only as it rocked back into motion that she wondered if she should contact Mitchell.
“She’s good,” Mitchell muttered.
“What’s that, sir?” Pruitt asked. The two of them were nearly alone in the compartment. Reeves’ position was forward and a level down, so unless they used the intercom it was impossible for him to hear their conversation. And Indy and Kilzer were somewhere in the bowels of the SheVa. So Pruitt was the only one to hear the comment. He waited, wondering if the colonel would reply, and flipped from monitor seven to eight. He’d seen the platoon of tracks cross the river then disappear behind a range of hills, wondering if maybe that was enough to send.
“She’s got good control of her units and she’s got pretty good subordinates,” Mitchell replied after a moment. “She’s also not letting things get ahead of her, she’s using her forces effectively and she’s keeping control without micromanaging her sub-units. I’d probably push the scouts out farther than she has, but that’s more a ‘by the book’ reaction on my part and it would mean overruling the company commander. Frankly, if I had a battalion of tanks I’d love to have her as a company commander.”
“But she’s a battalion commander, sir,” Pruitt pointed out.
“Truth to tell, there’s nothing wrong with her that a tour at Command and General Staff College wouldn’t sort out,” the commander said by way of reply.
“Except that she could never have gotten to that point other than by how she has, sir,” Pruitt said with a shrug. “What happens if her tank has to crack track? Or if the loader gets taken out? She can’t slam shell, she can’t crack track. She’s too small and too light. She can get through some of it by sheer mental discipline, but the reality is she can’t fight tank anywhere but in the TC hatch.”
“I dunno,” Mitchell said with a shrug. “She can do that just fine and, by and large, company and battalion commanders don’t pull maintenance on their tracks. Besides, you can’t crack a SheVa track.”
“Nobody can, sir,” the gunner pointed out. “But virtually any guy could crack Abrams track. And they have to in combat. I mean, could she even lift a tow-cable?”
“Probably, but I take your point,” Mitchell said with a shrug. “Fortunately, she did end up in command, though. Instead of some guy with big muscles and no brains.”
“Yeah,” Pruitt admitted, swiveling the monitor around to watch the tracks starting to move down the road. They were spread out as much as possible, but as he watched, first one platoon then the other dropped back into column march formation.
“As long as she can screen us to Franklin, I don’t care if she pees standing up, sitting down or standing on her head,” Mitchell said.
“Well, I hope like hell it isn’t the latter, sir. ’Tisn’t a pretty image.”
Corporal Jerry Bazzett flopped to the ground and shimmied forward under the low screen of bushes thinking to himself that it was a damned cold night to be lying on the ground. He surveyed the terrain below the hill with his monocular then switched to the thermal imaging scope on his AIW. With the monocular, even with the moon descending in the west, not much had been visible; just broken country and darkness. But as soon as he switched to thermal he started picking out targets.