The voice of the Master Sergeant commanding the light armor company came over the intercom. “Dismount and gather around.” The commander left his helmet on the turret of his tank when he dismounted. He was almost as tall as Galen and as broad as Tad. After a moment, bare-headed tank crew members stood around him in a half circle.
“Gentlemen, let’s discuss the mission we just knocked out. I’ll start with a break-down of the tactical situation. The infantry battalion cleared the raiders out of these hills and forced them onto the plain. The raiders had heavy weapons and air defense that made infantry assault or air attack unfeasible. The infantry battalion commander requested a light armor company to finish them off. Chief Dawson, take it from there.”
“We were in a rest cycle when the mission came down. Our crews linked up with the tanks and casualty replacements in orbit around Hobart. We detached from the ship in four assault boats, three holding a platoon each and one holding the company headquarters element. We skid-dropped fifty klicks out from the objective to keep the boats outside the raider’s anti-aircraft artillery range.”
“Chief Miller?”
“We charged on-line and closed with the objective at top speed. The enemy attempted to rake us from right to left with a flak gun. The enemy fire knocked out a tank in third platoon just as we came in range.”
“Chief Dawson?”
“We returned fire, neutralizing the threat. Our laser cannons were on auto-fire. My gun was set to center-of-mass. One tank was set to half a mil lower left, another upper left, upper right and lower left. That gave my platoon a ninety percent hit probability.”
“Good. Chief Raper?”
“I lost the first tank, three four, from the enemy flak gun. Second platoon eliminated the threat. The enemy chose that moment to attack from concealed positions by popping from the ground to fight. I put my coaxial machine gun on auto-fire and popped my hatch to operate my cupola gun manually.”
“Fine. Chief Miller?”
“We kept up our speed because the target density wasn’t enough to slow us down. We could engage the targets at top speed, no problem with bypassing by accident. Even after I lost two tanks to enemy cannon fire, we were still clearing our sector at top speed.”
“Chief Dawson?”
“One of my tanks threw a track. The computer was too busy adjusting the drive to the road wheels to properly calculate the threat. The crew of two two was destroyed with their tank. Two four took a hit from an antitank rocket in the base of the turret, but the crew ejected in time.”
“Chief Raper, you slowed your platoon and went into a cautious advance with no order from me. The rest of the company followed your example. What made you do it?”
“We were in the objective area and I had no targets. It was simple reflex to the training I received at the Ostwind Academy.”
“We would have hit more mines if it weren’t for your initiative. Normally I’d chew your ass up one side and down the other for trying to usurp my command but you made a good call. I won’t dock you for making a good call.”
“Right, Master Sergeant.”
“Okay, we got them. All the raiders on Hobart are dead but due to circumstances beyond my control, extraction won’t be for a couple of days. So we have time to conduct some training. There’s about two companies of infantry left of the grunt battalion, so the ratio is just about right. We still have two platoons worth of tanks, one to train with each company of grunts.”
The commander looked around, gathered his thoughts. Then he said, “Why don’t we just chill out and relax while we wait for extraction? You, Chief Raper, tell me.”
“We have to be proficient?”
“Yes. Chief Miller, you elaborate.”
“We have a high operations tempo, many deployments, and we have to train whenever we have the chance?”
“Okay Chief Dawson, you tell them.”
“We train to fight and fight the way we train. We are always prepared to fight, even if there is no enemy but peace.”
“Good! Exactly the right answers. We train all the time so that we know our jobs forward and backward, inside and out, and can perform our duties in our sleep or under extreme duress or under the most extreme privation. We know our jobs, the jobs of our subordinates and superiors, of other troops on the battlefield. We fight like a syncopated machine, regardless, even if ninety percent of the unit gets wasted in the first nanosecond of combat.” The company commander glared at his troops and paced back and forth for a minute. The infantry carriers started to move forward.
“Mount up! We have a simulated infantry frontal assault to support!”
The tankers scrambled to their vehicles. One of the troops who had ridden on Galen’s tank climbed into the auxiliary gunner’s hatch to Galen’s left. Sergeant Boggs pulled the machine gun from the glacis plate and handed it up from the driver’s compartment to the troop. He mounted it in the swivel in front of his hatch, connected the power cord and performed a function check on the weapon.
“Move out, driver.”
Sergeant Boggs joined the convoy of infantry carriers. Galen checked his status screen and noticed that all the other tanks had three troops in their crews. They were augmented by the crew members whose tanks were destroyed in the battle. Each panzer grenadier company had ten carriers, one for each squad and another for the commander. The combined arms convoy had a tank between every two carriers. They rolled through the foothills and onto the open plain. Twenty five kilometers outside the hills the convoy made a left turn. They drove along parallel to the hills until the unit was on-line and then stopped and faced the mountains. Galen watched his situation map and heard the briefing given by the infantry battalion commander.
“Okay. We have to clear the foothills and establish a defense at the base of the mountains.” An oval drew itself to cover the nearest foothills, three kilometers deep and eight kilometers wide. Galen watched as symbols for simulated enemy units showed up. Control centers deep in the valleys, observation posts on the hilltops, anti-armor weapons and ambush squads recessed in the rocky draws. Some heavy direct-fire artillery guns faced out onto the plain.
“Okay, we’ll charge at fifty klicks an hour, top speed for the carriers. You tankers, don’t get out in front of my grunts. Concentrate on knocking out the howitzers…Oh hell, you know your jobs. Let’s do this.”
Galen marked the nearest howitzer as his first target. It was still out of range but he wanted the status screen to show that he planned to target it. Soon all the howitzers were marked as targets. At a range of seven klicks Galen fired his laser cannon. The weapon pulsed three times before the simulator credited him with the kill. He checked his status map and marked an observation post. He fired and eliminated the target. The going was slow, the tanks keeping back with the infantry carriers. The infantry carriers had Gauss machine guns swivel-mounted for their track commanders to use. They fired at a range of three kilometers at simulated enemy positions to discourage simulated enemy antitank crews from firing their weapons.
Galen fired his laser cannon at a simulated antitank gun and registered a simulated hit. The troop in the aux hatch was firing at something, probably just caught up in the moment or facetiously feigning combat action. Either way, Galen didn’t care. The weapons were in simulation mode, not actually wasting ammo or wearing out diodes and capacitors. Just wearing out track and bringing the next maintenance service interval that much closer. The line slowed at the base of the hills and stopped. Galen had no clear line of fire to a target. The infantry squad leader beside the tank motioned for it to pull forward so that his troops could use the tank for cover as they dismounted. Two squads huddled behind the tank.