Amasia

by Kali Altsoba

  None of the armed men in green utes are paying attention to anything in particular. Except those watching a pretty 20-year old girl in a short cotton skirt. It provocatively catches a brisk, morning breeze as she swishes a sensual path though the center of the square. Her pert breasts silhouette against a clinging white blouse that’s nearly sheer. Eyes drink in her form. Her mother taught her how to walk across a room or square, like cotton candy sex waiting on a stick.

  Second Lieutenant Joachim Suri, ACU Marine Corps, thinks maneuver commands into his com link. His gray flecked eyes squint into his HUD. He can smell his own breath inside his helmet. It’s not pleasant. There’s a hint of morning eggs.

  ‘Move up. Close on the scouts, four-by-four sets.’ Twenty seconds pass as the rest of the patrol closes behind the four lead scouts. ‘Assault pattern Tango.’

  Instantly, orders appear on HUDs of his platoons, projecting visual movement indicators showing how each marine should deploy in Tango pattern. 1st Platoon obediently fans into the open end of the square, hugging building walls, protected by thermal camouflage, gel undersuits, and light-and-sound adaptive armor. ‘Nice and crisp. Just like we practiced,’ Joachim proudly observes this to himself. After training as a marine assault officer for two months, finally this is his chance to show what he can do. He knows he’s ready. He’s sure…

  BOOM!!

  A plangent explosion unexpectedly rips apart a lowrise building directly in front of the lead scout, stunning and slamming her hard to the ground. Clouds of white dust, thick wood splinters and large plaster blocks fly up-and-out in all directions. Sheer luck that none of the crouching marines is hurt by spreading debris as it deflects off their horizon blue, cloth armor utes.

  The blast sends civvies scattering in panic. Women scream, scoop up small children and run. Old men move faster than they have in years, maybe decades. The pretty 20-year old is kicking her heels high as she runs like a sprinter, arms up and tight to her sides, cotton print skirt tangling around her thighs, her blouse taut across breasts that bounce with every athletic step. All the civvies race away with uncanny quickness as things go all sparky in the square in an instant. ‘It’s almost as if they knew what was coming before the perimeter bomb blew.’ Joachim has the thought, then discards it. ‘No time for that now.’

  “Squids!” Inside the square, someone shouts a pejorative for Calmaris.

  Two marines stupidly break sound cover to shout back the opposing ethnic insult. “Fucking locusts!” They just exposed their chalk’s position.

  Hellfire starts to fall on the four lead scouts and first chalk as instantly alert Guards drop into shooting positions and open a disciplined and accurate peppering of the open end of the square. A smoke obscured officer in green yells out strange, indecipherable but sharp commands in an especially thick Grün dialect. His men move sharply to each order. They're very good.

  Stunned and surprised by the explosion and even more by the fast enemy reaction to it, half of 1st Platoon is dangerously bunched under fire. Worse, the lead squad of 2nd Platoon is clumsily jamming into the rear ranks of 1st. The loose Tango assault pattern they’re still trying to execute is badly disrupted. Half of 1st Platoon actually stops, uncertain what to do or why.

  ‘Gods no! Don’t freeze. And don’t run to AWR.’ He means Allah’s Waiting Room. It’s a term the rest of ACU picked up from the New Meccan divisions. It means that if his marines all run for the same shelter now that they’ve been exposed and are out in the open, the enemy will call in a mortar strike and they’ll all ascend.

  “All hands, return fire! Shoot at will!” Joachim’s command erupts inside each marine’s helmet, audibly as well as in bright blue screeching patterns streaking across HUDs. Plasma pulses ejaculate from marine rifles, reaching out toward the green clad Guards now methodically securing the inside perimeter of the square.

  Every shot misses as the Guards displace faster than the marines react. They shoot back, rapidly and to effect, aiming for muzzle flashes of belching marine masers. Shooting, displacing, shooting again, moving a third time, Guards curl methodically from two directions toward the open end of the square where too many marines are now bunched, badly crowded and exposed.

  Shooting from shifting positions, Guards disperse rapidly into an expert buddy system, leapfrogging parallel sides of the enclosure. The tactic disorients the young marines, leaving the four scouts and a dozen more fighters exposed to double flanking fire. It’s a brilliant display of professional soldiering by what first looked to Joachim like rear area sloths in filthy utes.

  Pssst! Kee-RACK! A marine’s down, a strange ringing wail emanating from the com system built into the shoulder of his cloth armor. Two more marines are panicking, making the ‘Death Blossom,’ spinning and firing indiscriminately in all directions. One hits a fellow marine in the head. She goes down.

  Click clack, click clack, click clack! Three incredibly accurate maser shots take out three more marines. The enemy’s shooting is unbelievably fast and accurate. Guards also fall, one tumbling flat on his face, his head and HUD scrunching audibly as it bounces against stone. At the least, he’s concussed. The balance of shooters with clear lines-of-fire shifts decisively against the inexperienced and inaccurate Blues. Two more boys in blue spin around, hit by full on torso shots before they can dive under cover. Their coms also emit strange wails, like a ship’s siren, as they stumble into discrete piles of broken plaster from the smoking building shattered by the bomb.

  Guards keep advancing, ducking in and out of squat buildings, shooting from windows and doors into the crowded end of the smoke filled square, reemerging only to dash to the next cover. Inside a half-minute, they take down another three marines with deadly accurate maser shots. All four scouts are down.

  “Recover casualties!” Joachim yells the order, unsure if it’s the right one. He’s under fire, too, and has to duck for partial cover under an open doorway leading into a dark, oddly empty building. It’s eerie. 1st Platoon turns, frantically, clumsily hauling its wounded backward. Some marines running back slam straight into the lead element of 2nd Platoon, and stop. Bewildered and combat lost. It’s a total Charlie Foxtrot, a cluster fuck.

  “Fall back! Fall back! Break contact!”

  A rudimentary idea forms in Joachim’s overexcited brain. Once he gets clear of the square he plans to order everyone into a 360, a full circle perimeter defense. Until he figures things out. ‘I gotta get 1st outa there now, under cover fire from 2nd.’ He sends a center peel command, ordering a standard diagonal retreat taken right out of the Basic Infantry Combat Officer’s Training Manual.

  “Peel one, cover two! Now!”

  He yells it even though his HUD command relay recognizes order-thought, checks against the evolving tactical situation, and confirms with visuals and AI voice command to all marine HUDs. It all happens infinitely faster than he can mouth the words, yet it’s human nature to shout loudly as well as think-send action commands in combat. It’s also an adrenal, rookie default mistake that he shouldn’t be making on this critical combat mission.

  Joachim yanks a sonic grenade from its looped perch on his shoulder, primes it with a pump action, and rolls it at two Guards kneeling to shoot his men from 20 meters away. The roll is fast and accurate. The time delay’s short range, but it still seems to take forever as he watches two more marines go down. Finally the grenade rolls to a stop and blows.

  Whump!

  Two dead Guards splay flat onto bronze cobblestones. In the shooting lull, a squad from 1st Platoon completes the peel out maneuver, then pauses in cover fire positions while a second squad, minus several wounded or dead fighters, peels away right behind. Just like in the manual. ‘So far so good.’ Joachim congratulates himself. He might yet get his company out of this gods awful trap. Instead, he defaults to SOPs again, issuing a command for a slanting retreat maneuver. It’s faux affectionately known in barracks talk, and even called in the official Basic Tactics Manual, the Tunnel of Love. It maximizes c
over fire by keeping open long fields-of-fire, trying to delude the enemy into thinking he faces many more defenders than he does as the platoons pull out.

  “Covering fire! All rifles.” Click clack, click clack, click clack, click clack.

  “Grenades! Grenades! Hit ‘em with the gerbil launcher!” Pom! Pom! Pom!

  “Now, use the SAWs!” A satisfying burp burp, burp burp, of two Squad Automatic Weapons erupts into the square, spraying bursts of red plasma balls toward the Guards. Four fall, clawing at scorched and smoking utes. Two more flee from the SAWs behind a cracked, storefront wall.

  He’s in control now. “Bring up the XM-7s. 1st Platoon: defilade fire on the left. 2nd Platoon: defilade right. Take the bastards out! Cook ‘em! Let’s go, marines! Move, move!”

  An XM-7 gunner sets her brand new weapon to defilade and lases the target. A heavy microwave beam penetrates through exterior wall to search out organic matter in the room behind. If there are Guards in there, they’ll be cooked. Same on the other flank. But there’s so much more to do. So many inputs flooding his brain, demanding attention and decisions. He needs to bolt from his small wall cover to take personal charge of the evac of wounded.

  BOOM!!

  That’s when he gets hit. A brutal, elemental force hurtles into his middle back, knocking all air from his lungs and bending him over from the knees. The big explosion rocks the air around him. Wood splinters and plaster shower down onto his chest and faceplate as he turtles onto his back and instinctively heaves for air. The petard went off close enough to rip him in half.

  Somehow it doesn’t. He lies on the ground gasping, stunned and disoriented as chalky air struggles back into his gasping lungs. His HUD keeps flashing green vital warnings about his extreme stress and adrenalin levels, suggesting that it be allowed to order his suit med pack to inject him with a tranquilizer. He feels rather than hears a dull roar all around. Like the thick sound in a conch shell he put over his ear as a boy, convinced that he could hear the ocean from whence it came. Blood pounds at his temples. A sharp ache reaches from the front-to-the-back of his head. His whole scalp itches unbearably, which is almost the worst thing. It feels like it wants to crawl away to be forever separate from his pounding, aching, swelling-with-pain head. Only now does he notice a deafening, factory whistle shriek coming from his com system. It confuses him more.

  ‘What’s that awful sound? I know it. I’ve heard it before.’ He can’t remember when or what it means. He just wants it to stop. All he can do with his stunned, uncontrollable body is lie helpless on his back, looking uselessly skyward. Simple impressions and disconnected thoughts arrive unbidden and unstoppable.

  ‘How blue the sky...’

  ‘How white the clouds...’

  ‘That looks like two sheep humping.’

  ‘I think I need to piss…’

  Joachim feels more than recognizes a dark shape loom over him, uncertain what it might be. Then he realizes a green arm is reaching down. Choking fear rises in his parched throat, but he can’t move. The enemy’s hand gropes him. It grips something on his chest. The wailing siren stops. Silence. An abrupt relief. His mind starts to defog.

  Now he sees the man in green clearly. It’s the unshaven gochō from the town square. His faceplate is still pitched up, only pushed farther back over his helmet. He’s still chomping and chewing on a stinking cheroot he never spat out all through the firefight in the square. A choking odor of raw hemp so close to his face, curling up his nostrils, makes Joachim nauseous. But it’s the RIK stub maser shoved hard into his cheek, a low hmmmm audible, that really has his attention.

  ‘Is it time to die?’

  ‘No! Wait! My father…’

  ‘I must tell my father...’

  ‘What? What can I say?’

  Fear is a mortal grip.

  No sound escapes him.

  His throat is too dry.

  He raises his arms up.

  They're too heavy.

  They fall back down.

  Is this his great moment or just his last? Does it really come down only to this, dying because he stepped left instead of right, looked up instead of down? That can’t be what decides everything, can it? Spatial intersection with time?

  He expresses no defiance.

  He makes no proclamation.

  He abjures heroic gesture.

  He has no fine, last words.

  ‘Is that all it means? All the training, all the hate and hope? Is that all my war amounts to, five mikes of action and I’m dead?’ Joachim’s whole being focuses on the warm maser barrel pushing hard into his cheek. He waits for the signature click clack that must portend his death, his extinction from this and every mortal coil of the Thousand Worlds.

  Obliterating his uniqueness.

  Randomizing all his atoms.

  His dust unto dust returning.

  Disgrace

  The sound never comes. Instead, he hears a deep, male voice. It’s shouting in accented Calmarese. ‘What’s that it’s saying?’

  “Cease fire! Game’s ova, boys an’ girls. Ya’ll lose.” The voice adds mockery that echoes in Joachim’s ringing ears and com. “An’ switch off dose godsdamn ‘screaming fifes!’ Dere be so many clangin’ sirens in dis heah square, I can’t proper hear meself fuckin’ ‘tink.”

  As Joachim’s head clears he blanches with sudden recall. This is his first live fire training exercise, using 1/50th powered down weapons and ‘kill sirens’ triggered by active hits. ‘Oh gods, I just walked my first command into a bloody instructor’s trap.’ So, it does come down to this. At least for his hopes for a fine military career and record, and coming home one day looking grand in uniform.

  “Git up, son.” The drill sergeant’s voice is stern and disapproving, his black-on-white eyes narrowed to slits of angry contempt. “Ya got ate up pretty bad out there. But yo git up now.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I should never have given the Tango order, sir.” Joachim pleads for forgiveness with his words and a beseeching look, lying on his back, covered in white plaster and other mockup building debris.

  The gray haired master sergeant looks down at Joachim coldly, even unkindly. He taps his stubby, Grün style training maser against his right leg. “We’ll talk ‘bout yore tactics later, son. And dunna call me ‘sir.’ Yore boot to me, but I ain’t no damn officer.”

  “Sorry, sir … errr, I mean…” He blushes. He falls silent. He hauls himself to his hands and knees. Except for the giveaway of his pale blue utes and Second Lieutenant’s gold bar, now looking white under plaster dust, he might be mistaken for a supplicant playing humble at a Life Temple.

  “Get all dah way up right now, sir.” The master sergeant’s contempt is open. Severe and unmistakable. “Ya need to git yore marines on der feet and head ova fah dah debrief.” As the older man walks away he tosses a parting shot over his shoulder. “Includin’ dah faw’teen kids ya jus’ got killed.”

  “I’m so sorry…”

  “Jeez, loo’tenant! Ya wanna ah’‘pol’o’gize ta someone? Talk ta der fuckin’ mudders.” It’s a cruel remark, even for a veteran instructor, an ‘acting jack’ tasked with toughening new marines and the soft-faced 1st and 2nd lieutenants who will soon lead them into combat. Joachim says nothing. The man has 30 years on him, even if he is a lower rank. Joachim is ‘boot’ to him in years, and sometimes that counts more than higher rank in wartime.

  Then there are those ACU combat ‘ribbons’ twinkling neon on his fake RIK utes, over his left breast. They announce to anyone who knows how to read them that the sergeant saw action in two failed prewar insurrections, an unfortunate civil war on Novaya Bator, and then all out combat on Oberon and the fight for the Caliban moons. They say that for the past year-and-a-half he was deployed on Lemuria, fighting popovs in the snow then locusts in The Sandbox.

  Now he’s training doofus recruits on a rear zone planet, fifty bohrs from any enemy. Shooting toy masers at children on a mockup battlefield. He can’t adjust or forget. He wa
nts to go back, but the Army wants him here, needs him here, sent him here, and will keep him here. It pisses him off, but it’s smart policy. Rotating hardened veterans back as instructors for the fresh intakes means not killing them off, which is inevitable if they stay in combat. The price in short term reduction of battlefield efficiency on Lemuria and other contested worlds is more than made up in leavening of fighting skills throughout growing, improving ACU armies.

  The other side doesn’t do it, and it’s starting to show. Rikugun Main HQ on Kestino keeps making its original mistake, looking to win fast but lacking the forces to do it. What that means is that RIK hurls its most veteran soldiers again and again into a grinding fight. As for the DRA, once a krasno goes to war he’s not coming back short of victory or death, no matter how rational it might be to rotate units. It’s another sign that the Alliance intends to fight a much longer war.