“Shelly, tell me you’ve hacked into their mainframe or something,” Mike said.
“Sorry, General,” his AID replied. “They’ve got AIDs of their own. And very good cyber systems. So far I haven’t even scratched it and I’m getting outside help.”
“Well, a whole bunch of Indowys and humans came into this base,” Mike said. “They’ve got to be here somewhere.”
The sniper position was long prepared.
Advanced weaponry gave off a whole host of signatures and any decent sensor system could detect not just the antimatter signature of grav-guns but the power signatures of plasma.
For that matter, the ACS suits gathered in the atrium should have been able to detect the hidey-hole. The small shot opening was, after all, lined with a very thin layer of uniarmor, the same thing that made ACS invulnerable to nearly any weaponry.
But where there were measures, there were countermeasures. The wall was carefully constructed to appear to be nothing more than part of the Galplas wall. To any normal test it had the same resonance as normal Galplas and certainly could not retract for a moment then close after the sniper had taken his or her shot.
Papa wasn’t certain that the wall was going to stop grav-gun fire, though, so he personally intended to take one shot and then get the fuck out. The hide also had a drop-out system under higher than normal gravity with a bouncer at the bottom. If they didn’t return fire in microseconds, he was golden. And they’d have to be very good, very good to spot him return fire and get a shot through the loophole that fast.
The ACS point, however, had eliminated all the sensors in the room. So he wasn’t quite sure exactly where they were. He knew they were in there, but not exactly where. He was, and he knew it, going on hope. If the command group, especially the commander, was in the right spot he’d get his shot and at least, for a moment, disrupt the attack.
If not, he was still planning on getting the fuck out.
“The rabbits are in the pantry,” Candy whispered.
The entire base was wired. There was no way they were going to risk radio communication up against ACS. Candy was hooked into an outlet in the wall of the hidey-hole and another wire ran to his rather old-fashioned set of headphones.
“Initiate in five,” Papa whispered. “Candy call it and lift on command.”
“Roger,” Candy said. “Five… Four…”
Papa settled into position and snuggled the heavy grav rifle into his shoulder.
The two ACS suits moved cautiously down the corridor, shoulder-mounted grav-cannons training from side to side, hands ready to attack, defend or draw secondary weapons, the operators monitoring their sensors for any sign of the as-yet-to-reveal-himself enemy.
Sergeant Jonathan Doggette was one of the platoon’s designated Close Quarters Combat instructors. A four-year veteran of the ACS, like most of the platoon he had yet to see combat.
With the long transit times to the areas of main operation, bringing “blooded” personnel back just to be instructors was an enormous waste of time, money and manpower. Instead most instructors came straight from Advanced training, were run through a quick course and then worked their way up the chain from assistant instructor to full, then specialized in one area or another.
The entire platoon recognized the problems with the system. Despite regular communication with in-contact forces, there was really no substitute for experience. They knew, in their bones, that there were things that needed to be in the instruction program they were just flat missing.
One of the biggest problems was close quarters combat. No units had engaged in it with Posleen since the war. And then rarely. Most close quarters work in the war was on Diess in the massive megascrapers that dotted that planet. And most of that wa a harum-scarum affair of “whatever works.” Nobody had ever really sat down and worked out what worked and what didn’t with ACS from a CQB standpoint.
So Sergeant Doggette was looking forward to this engagement. It would give him valuable experience that he could pass on to his trainees and maybe keep some of them alive. It would also give him a basis to make recommendations in changes to the training manuals in the area of CQB.
If the enemy would ever show himself.
“Amy, I’ve got an energy reading at forty meters, mark two point eight minus,” Sergeant Doggette said.
“That’s a secondary fusion plant,” Amy said. “Or I would have highlighted it. There don’t seem to be any…”
The AID broke off as a karat flashed into view. Before Doggette could even begin to engage, fifty rounds of 3mm grav smashed through his frontal armor and turned him into paste.
“General, we have three units down,” Shelly said, highlighting the engagement. “Two WIA, one KIA. Very sophisticated camouflaged ports. Plasma cannons and grav-guns.”
“Roger,” Mike said, looking at the schematic. “Lieutenant?”
“We’re… giving as good as we’re getting, sir,” Cuelho said. If he was nervous it wasn’t evident. “More, in fact. All three defense points that ambushed our units have been taken out.”
“We don’t want to get caught up in furballs,” Mike said, looking at the schematic that had been built so far. “Under, over, around, take them in the side and back.”
“Yes, sir,” Cuelho said, with slightly less assurance.
“Like this,” Mike said, bringing up the schematic so that it was repeated to the lieutenant, and started to trace out paths of attack. “Alpha second goes down, over to the left, up, hook back. That puts them to the rear, flank, of this defensive position. Bring Bravo around the same way to the—”
“GENERAL!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The port dropped and, for Michael O’Neal, Sr., time froze.
The commander of the attack had set up more or less where he expected. And he had him, unquestionably, dead to rights. A hair’s breadth squeeze. The port would drop. He would drop out. Defenses would close around him. He would live. The ACS commander would be dead and that would give some of his men, some of his family, a brief second chance.
He had the crosshairs dead on the sniper triangle of the suit. Right under the helmet there was a slight weakness. His son had mentioned it to him more than fifty years ago and if there was one thing that Papa O’Neal had an elephant’s memory for it was military trivia.
His son.
The armor was distinctive. Papa had seen it on repeated news clips over the decades. News clips that he stored and replayed over and over again in his most private moments.
His son.
The battles that he and Cally had engaged in for decades were important. He would have given up the strife long before if he didn’t believe that. Would have dragged his granddaughter away if he didn’t think they mattered. But they were cold, dank, bitter. There was an honor there, but it was constantly tarnished. There were no parades, few medals and damned well nothing to write home about.
His son.
Of all of his children, his grandchildren, even the immensely successful Michelle, Mike was the one who carried everything, from Papa’s perspective, good and right and clean and perfect in the world. It was not something he would ever mention to Cally. Ever hint. Nothing that his children by Shari would ever suspect. Which is why he replayed those clips only when he was in his most private moments. Really, only Candy ever knew.
A hint, a flinch, a deep breath and the nanometers left of trigger squeeze would be complete.
And his son would be a puree inside of his customized Armored Combat Suit.