“How much do you know?” said John.
“Plenty,” said Koa, “because it’s my job to know.”
“I see. I only have the message from the chief executive of GasAir to go on. Maybe you could share some of your information with me.”
Koa looked toward Galen who said, “Okay, throw him a bone. We’ll call this the first step in a contract negotiation.”
John said, “I thought we were friends.”
Galen smiled. “There’s nothing in the contract about providing EugeneX with intelligence support. But as a good faith gesture we’ll tell you what we know, and if you want us to contain or put down the Seventh City Rebellion, that’s a matter for separate negotiation.”
John rubbed the top of his head with his left hand for a moment, and then sat with his hands clasped together on the table. He pulled his personal communicator out of his jacket pocket, considered, and then put it back. “Okay. I’m listening.”
Koa said, “As best I can tell from signal intercepts, both secure and non-secure, the Seventh City rebellion has sent elements of the Twelfth Legion of Doom to threaten and extort payment from the town around Factory Eight. The initial excursion was a single squad-sized detachment that went into Eight and smashed up a large grocery store.”
Galen said, “Anyone hurt?”
“No. They ordered the people out first, then smashed the building to the ground.”
John said, “A squad. Isn’t that a small group?”
Koa said, “Normally, yes. But the Legion uses powered armored battle suits. They have the strength of twenty men, and the armor is three times as protective as our tank crew’s combat suits. The squad rode there in an armored air car, which is equipped with a laser that is equal to the one on our light tanks, but the targeting system is inferior. Anyway, a dozen Legion troops went to this grocery store and ripped it apart by hand. Then demanded that protection payments be sent to Seventh City, or else.”
Galen laughed, his left hand up, palm forward. “Sorry, folks. It just seems that the rebellion doesn’t have enough money to pay the Legion, so they’re sending the Legion out to extort the money with which to pay them. I just thought that was funny, that’s all.”
Koa said, “Continuing on, based on research from publically available sources, the Legion consists of twelve hundred soldiers, four hundred of them lightly armed, not armored, serving in support roles. The others serve in eight companies, or centuries as they call them, each company with eight armored air cars carrying a squad. They have no tracked vehicles, although they do have two wheeled vehicles with light, rapid-fire rail guns mounted and three more trucks with 85mm mortars on the back. And of course about twenty five basic cargo haulers, also wheeled.”
Tad said, “With those battle suits, our tanks wouldn’t stand a chance against them in the city. They’d tear us apart. And if we send our infantry against them, we’d lose troops at a rate of five to one, since we don’t have that kind of battle armor. We could take them, but casualties would be high and it would wreck out unit’s reputation.”
Galen said, “Well I’m not interested in a high-risk operation that involves casualty estimates above five percent. That’s no way to run a business. So first of all, I need a clearly defined goal or mission, then we can plan around that and see if it’s feasible. John, what is it you want us to accomplish?”
“I…I think, just protecting Eight from attacks would be sufficient. If you’re right about Seventh City not having enough money to pay the Legion, preventing Seventh City from getting any more money should go a long way solving the bigger problem of the rebellion itself.”
Galen said, “So, the mission is to prevent any more attacks on Eight. Koa, how’s the terrain outside Eight?”
Koa fiddled with his communicator and projected a map on the wall. “There, mostly wide open ground on three sides, the side facing Seventh City. Four hundred kilometers of open ground. The mountains at its back offer difficult terrain for the Legion’s air cars, but it’s ideal for their dismounts. It’s—”
Galen raised his right hand. “I just want the terrain. Sorry, but tactical analysis is not your lane today. After Sevin gives his assessment, if you have anything to add, I’ll be glad to hear it at that time. Sevin?”
Master Sergeant Sevin rubbed his beard and stared at the map projection. He scratched his head, he waved off the map so that Koa could turn it off and put away the communicator, and he stood and paced the length of the room. Then he sat back down and said, “We got this. We can do it.”
“Okay.” Galen looked right into John’s eyes. “What’s it worth to you?”
John said, “I’ll have to discuss this with the Director, of course. Would you care to come with me?”
“Sure. Sevin, you’re the Battle Captain for this operation. The rest of you, get busy and get prepared as though we got this contract, I’ll join you as soon as we got something in writing.” Galen stood, the rest of the staff stood. “Prepare to be challenged.”
“Check!” the staff, in unison.
It was a clear, bright morning. Galen stood high in the loader’s hatch of Sergeant Major Stone’s command tank, the lead tank in a long column. The crude vehicle had no electronic devices at all; even the radio had been removed for this operation. Galen yelled into the diaphragm of the Hellcat’s voice comms system, a connected set of elastic tubing that allowed sound to pass, although weakly, between the crew members. The crew wore the pneumatic headsets under their ground troop helmets. “Hey Smaj, how much longer?”
His voice boomed into his own ears, being closest to the source of the sound. The next voice was audible but not loud, and very flat.
“Not long, Command Smaj.”
The column consisted of fifty seven Hellcat tanks, seventeen tanks in three companies, and six tanks for the battalion headquarters. They were lined up outside the crater facing right after exiting the tunnel, an interval of fifty meters between each tank. A squad of riflemen rode on each tank, and they, too, were stripped of any and all electronic hardware. Karen was leading the Logpac convoy which had left two hours before, to set up Refuel-On-the-Move stations along the route.
Galen did a function check on the unloaded 20mm machine gun in front of his hatch, and then looked behind to the rear of the column, its tanks lost from view in the distance. After a few minutes, a green signal flare shot up from the rear, and then Stone used his own flare gun to fire a green flare into the air. The driver pulled forward and gradually increased speed up to sixty kilometers per hour. Stone looked back to ensure the column followed.
The tank’s gas turbine engine drove a hydraulic motor than ran everything on the tank, its low-pitched whine rising and lowering in accordance with the resistance placed upon it by the hydraulic system. Even the main gun ran off hydraulics, where the gunner used a four-way joystick-style valve to elevate and lower the gun and swing the turret left and right while peering into a parallel optical sight.
Galen said, “These are truly cave man tanks.”
Stone said, “Yes, but they build character. All the indigs we put through the four weeks of training gained about five kilos of pure muscle, on average. And I think their brains got bigger too. There’s a lot to learn.”
“Yes. And I’m too tall for this thing. I can’t get comfortable down in there but I’ll fit.”
“Normally you’d have to be shorter than 180cm to get assigned to a Hellcat, but since you want to be on this mission, you get to be my loader. You’ll be all right.”
Galen said, “It’s a long march. The driver’s going to get smoked.”
“Hooah!” the driver’s voice.