The jury was still out on the camouflage. Other schemes had been tried. The blue-green mottled pattern on Connors’ suit had worked as well as any of them, and not one whit better. The Posleen’s yellow eyes were just different, different in their structure and different in what they saw.
Inside his suit, the lieutenant shrugged, unseen by any but the artificial intelligence device that ran the suit for him. He didn’t know what camouflage would work (neither did the AID) and just followed the latest guidance from higher on the subject.
Around him, likewise mottled in the blue-green pattern and likewise struggling for an acceptable compromise between longevity and speed, Second Platoon, Company B-1st of the 508th Mobile Infantry (ACS), was spread out in a very sharp and narrow “V” to either side of a churned-muck trail.
Ordinarily, on Earth, the trail would have been superfluous as a means of control and orientation. The Global Positioning System was capable of telling a soldier, or a group of them, exactly where they were all the time. On Barwhon, however, there was no GPS. Moreover, while the suits were capable of inertial reckoning on their own, by and large the enemy Posleen were not. Thus, the Posleen followed the trail and, thus, the MI were led to battle them along it.
Besides, the trail was the shortest distance to an American light infantry company cut off some miles ahead on the wrong side of a river ford, their backs to the stream and no good way to cross back under fire.
Connors, like the men of Second Platoon, moved forward under radio listening silence. They could hear the commands of higher, when higher deigned to speak. They could also hear the heartbreakingly precise reports and orders emanating to and from one Captain Robert Thomas, commanding the company trapped at the ford. They’d been hearing them for hours.
The MI troopers had heard, “Zulu Four Three, this is Papa One Six. Adjust fire, over.” They’d heard, “Echo Two Two this is Papa One Six. I’ve got a dozen men down I have to get dusted off.” They’d eavesdropped on, “Captain Roberts, we can’t fuckin’ hold ’em… AIIII!”
Connors heard Echo Two Two, which the key on his display told him was the brigade’s medical company, come back in the person of some breaking-voiced radioman, and say, “We’re sorry, Papa. God, we’re sorry. But we can’t get through for your dust-off. We tried.”
Things got worse from there.
“Echo Three Five, this is Papa One Six. We are under heavy attack. Estimate regimental strength or better. We need reinforcements, over.”
A Posleen regiment massed two or three thousand of the aliens. A light infantry company at full strength with the normal attachments was one twelfth that size… or less. In this case, the personnel replacement situation being what it was, the trapped company was less. Much less.
That’s a good man up there, Connors thought, in consideration of the incredibly calm tone of a man, Roberts, who knew that he and all his men were on the lunch menu. Too damned good to let get eaten.
Then came the really bad news. “Papa One Six, this is Echo Three Five, actual;” — the brigade commander — “situation understood. The Second of the 198th was ambushed during movement to reinforce you. We have at least another regiment…”
Things really got shitty then, though the first Connors knew of it was when the point man for the company column shouted, “Ambush!” a half a second before the air began to swarm with railgun fleshettes and the mucky ground to erupt steaming geysers with the impact of alien missiles and plasma cannon.
The problem with killing the stupid Posleen, Connors thought as he lay in the muck, is that the rest of them get much, much smarter.
The air above was alive with fire. Most of this was light railgun fire, one millimeter fleshettes most unlikely to penetrate the armor of a suit. Enough was three millimeter, though, to be worrisome. That was heavy enough to actually penetrate, sometimes, if it hit just right. It had penetrated several men of the company, in fact.
Worse than either were the plasma cannon and hypervelocity missiles, or HVMs, the aliens carried. These could penetrate armor as if it were cheesecloth, turning the men inside incandescent.
Worse still were the tenar, the alien leaders’ flying sleds. These not only mounted larger and more powerful versions of the plasma cannon and HVMs, they had more ammunition, physical or energy, and much better tracking systems. They also had enough elevation on them that, at ambush range, they could fire down, completely skipping any cover the MI troopers might have hastily thrown up. Nor did the jungle trees, however thick, so much as slow the incoming fire. Instead, they splintered or burst into flame at the passing. Sometimes they did both. In any case, the air around Connors resembled some Hollywood idea of Hell, all flame and smoke and destruction, unimaginable chaos and confusion.
The only good thing you could say about the situation was that the Posleen apparently had few tenar. Otherwise, there was no explanation for the company’s continued survival.
Connors traded shots with the Posleen, round for round. That wasn’t really his job though. On the other hand, trying to do a lieutenant’s job was rough, once things heated up.
“Call for fire, Lieutenant Connors?” suggested his AID.
“Do it,” he answered, while cursing himself, I should have thought of that first. “And show me platoon status.”
The AID used a laser in the suit’s helmet to paint a chart directly on Connors’ retina. He’d started movement with thirty-seven men. It pained him to see seven of those men marked in black, dead or so badly wounded that they were out of the fight. Under the circumstances, they were almost certainly dead.
He keyed his attention on one particular marker on the chart. “Show me detail on Staff Sergeant Duncan.”
Instantly, that chart was replaced with another showing vital statistics and a record summary for one of Connors’ squad leaders. He didn’t need the record summary; he knew his men. The statistics were something else again.
Shit, Duncan’s on overload.
It took an experienced eye to see it. The first clue was the soldier’s silhouette projected by the AID. Duncan should have been prone or at least behind some kind of cover. He wasn’t; he had taken one knee and was trading shots with the Posleen, burst for burst. That was all well and good against normals; they were usually lightly armed. But doesn’t the idiot see the goddamned HVMs coming in?
It got worse on closer examination. Adrenaline was up, but that was normal. The brain activity was skewed though.
“AID, query. Analyze record: Staff Sergeant Robert Duncan. Correlate for ‘combat fatigue’ also known sometimes as ‘nervous hysteria.’ ”
AIDs thought very quickly, if not generally creatively.
“Duncan is overdue for a breakdown, Lieutenant,” the AID answered. “He has forty-four days continuous combat — without rest — now. He has over three hundred days in total. He’s stopped eating and has less than four hours sleep in the last ninety-six. Loss of important comrades over the past eighteen months approaches one hundred percent. He hasn’t been laid lately, either.”